National Lampoon April 1971

National Lampoon
April, 1971

Let's take a trip back in time again, to April, 1971, and the latest issue of National Lampoon, which features a fine cover by Frank Frazetta.

There's some interesting advertising in the magazine. 

Psychology Today offers an intriguing array of games for adults, including one - 'Blacks and Whites' - that promised that players will 'find out what it's like to be black and poor'. The game resonated quite profoundly with white liberals.

There are advertisements for record albums from Ian McDonald and Michael Giles, who were British musicians; their album is available at YouTube, although I don't think it's very good. 

Two albums originate from members of the Taylor family: Kate Taylor and Alex Taylor, who were brothers and sisters of Livingston, Hugh, and James Taylor. The albums from Kate and Alex offer decent early 70s folk tunes, nothing earthshaking, but nothing awful, either. 

Two Years On was the Bee Gees reunion album, recorded after Robin rejoined the band. It yielded the hit 'Lonely Days'.

Lampoon editor and founder Doug Kenney stars in the 'Foto Funnies'.

The best feature in this April issue is a parody of the men's 'sweat' magazines, titled Real Balls Adventure. It's a dead-on satire of the genre.

Considerably more acid in its tenor is a parody of baseball and football cards. 'Booblegum Cards' features professional athletes who got in trouble for a variety of things. It's a sign that back in the day, more than 50 years ago, the transgressions of professional athletes very much were the stuff of pop culture discourse.

There you have it..........satire from the long-ago year of 1971.

Book Review: The Marksman

Book Review: 'The Marksman'
by Hugh Rae

2 / 5 Stars

Hugh Rae (1935 – 2014) was a Scottish author who, during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, published novels in a wide variety of genres, including crime, suspense, science fiction, and fantasy. Using the pseudonym ‘Jessica Stirling’, from 1974 to 2014 he published over 50 books, which were very popular, in the historical romance genre.  

The area did not have the air of a Glasgow suburb, but rather that of a small mining community. Damp November darkness swallowed the far horizons so that Weaver could easily sustain the illusion that nothing lay out there but fallow pastures and the ochre heaps of shale dumps. 

The men walked side by side along the pavement. It was cracked and pot-holed and mud-flecked like a newly excavated relic of the Roman period. The open acres adjacent to it were planted with surveyors’ stakes and construction dumps, tarns of mud and sour surface ash, foundation pits like mass graves and long bunkers of flung clay………

‘The Marksman’ first was published in 1971. This Sphere books paperback edition (269) is a 1987 printing. It is a tie-in to the BBC miniseries based on the novel, that aired the same year.

The novel is set in Glasgow in the early 1970s. Its protagonist, Donald Weaver, is a Glaswegian ‘hard man’ and felon, who has been living in comfort in Spain on the proceeds from a successful armed robbery. When Weaver gets a letter from the elderly Vincent Doyle, telling him that Weaver’s estranged son Gordon was brutally murdered in Glasgow almost a year ago, Weaver returns to his old haunts on a mission of vengeance.

Weaver has little love or sentimentality for his hometown, but doggedly makes the rounds of the neighborhoods in the early Winter darkness and drizzle. It's no easy task; the police closed the case after making a cursory effort to solve it, and the Glasgow demi-monde are less than helpful in responding to Weaver’s inquiries. 

To maintain his short-term stay in Glasgow Weaver is obliged to procure more money, and despite misgivings, teams up with a fellow thief for what seems to be a straightforward job. But a crooked cop is in on the take, and when alliances go bad, Weaver discovers that even as he pursues his son’s murderers, he himself is pursued by parties who prefer to dispense their justice in as unpleasant a manner as possible. For Donald Weaver, time is running out, and with each passing day, the operatives in the Glasgow underworld come closer to putting a bullet in his brain…….

‘The Marksman’ starts off well, benefitting from its setting in Glasgow and the author’s familiarity with that milieu. Weaver’s misadventures take place against a backdrop of gritty, threatening landscapes and supporting characters. 

Unfortunately, as the novel progresses, it becomes very slow going, heavily padded with lengthy philosophical and psychological expositions that indicate author Rae wanted 'The Marksman' to be a 'literary' work, one that transcended the crime genre. 

The final confrontation between Weaver and his adversaries relies on a series of improbable actions that, after dutifully plodding through 255 pages of plot set-up, I found deflatingly contrived.

'The Marksman' is a two-star Brit Crime novel. Recommended only for those with the patience for a dilatory narrative preoccupied with character development, mood, and atmosphere over plot.

On 4th and Broadway: Remembering Tower Records

'On 4th and Broadway: Remembering Tower Records'
by Michael Gonzales

Over at the 'We Are the Mutants' blog, a reminiscence of the New York City of the 1980s, from Michael Gonzales. 

I didn't have a Tower records store where I lived in upstate New York, but I did have 'The Listening Booth' in the Oakdale Mall, and, at the campus of the State University of New York at Binghamton, 'Slipped Disc', the student-run record store. 

And like Gonzalez, I was partial to the albums in the cutout bins (and the LPs with the 'Nice Price' sticker !).

Back in January, I posted a link to Gonzales's article about comic books, artists, and publishers in that same era of 1970s and 1980s New York City. It's also well worth reading !

Once again at the Library Sale

 Once Again at the Library Sale

Yep, time once again last week to make for the twice-yearly Library Sale. As always, I was able to pick up some worthwhile titles for really affordable prices. 

Quite a few Science Fiction Book Club entrants, from the 1970s. 

'Epoch' is a hefty tome, of 623 pages, from November 1975. I am sure that more than a few of the stories in the collection are duds, but that's how it was, with those 'all original' anthologies. Sometimes the contributors just grabbed something off their 'return' pile and mailed it in.

I'm not a huge fan of Thomas Disch, but 'Triplicity', an omnibus of of 'Echo Round His Bones', 'The Genocides', and 'The Puppies of Terra', was only two bucks. So if it turns out badly, not a big outlay of my personal finances.

'Whetted Bronze' is the second volume in the so-called "Odan the Half-God" trilogy. 'Manning Norvil' was the pen name of the prolific UK author Kenneth Bulmer. I'm not all that excited about those of his other novels that I've read, but maybe I'll give 'Whetted' a try.

I also came away with some 'Orbit' anthologies from 1972 - 1973, and their offerings of unadulterated New Wave goodness........

Rounding out my acquisitions were two classics of 1970s trash / pulp fiction............!

'Thunder la Boom' (January 1975) is one of several pulp fiction novels authored by Anne Steinhardt. 'Thunder' is about the girls at 'Obie's Topless, Bottomless Bar', which, the back cover blurb tells us, is the 'wildest, raunchiest watering place in California'.

'The Queen of America' (May, 1973) was one of a number of crime / suspense novels authored by Russell Greenan. 'Queen' is about Betsy, a chick who doesn't take any shit from anybody hanging out in the downtown Boston hippie world of the early 1970s. 

All of Greenan's books are long out of print, and have pretty steep asking prices, so I was lucky to find this somewhat battered copy. 

All in all, a good outcome from this April's Library Sale..........

Book Review: The Smoke

Book Review: 'The Smoke' by Tom Barling

1 / 5 Stars

'The Smoke' was published by Corgi Books (UK) in 1986. 

[The term 'the smoke' apparently is British slang for the criminal life.]

'Smoke' opens in 1963, on a dismal, dreary Spring day in London's East End. Archie Ogle, the city's crime boss, is surveying a construction site with Charlie Dance. Charlie is a fixer, a hard man, willing to do dirty deeds for his surrogate father Archie. When Archie, who is in declining health, steps down, there is a very good possibility that Charlie will inherit Archie's 'firm'.

But all plans are suspended when an 'accident' involving a crane and a wrecking ball dumps the side of a building onto Archie and Charlie. The former is seriously injured and at death's door, while Charlie suffers a broken arm and cuts and bruises.

Word quickly travels through London's criminal underground: Archie Ogle is an invalid, one facing a greatly reduced life span. The gangs and their bosses who, until now, have acknowledged Archie's sovereignty, begin scheming to take over control of all the rackets percolating in the alleys and bars and clubs and warehouses of the city. 

Tommy and Jesse Troy, the debauched gangster lords of Bethnal Green, see opportunity in taking over Archie's gambling operations. Connie and Wally Harold, who run a crooked scrap metal business, have their own ambitions, which include eliminating the Troys. Eyetie Antoni, the Mafia's representative in London, longs to take over the drug distribution networks in the city. 

As these and other organizations arms themselves for confrontation, Charlie Dance sets out on his own path towards retaining Archie's holdings. And with everything to lose, and much to gain, Charlie isn't holding back. Nobody involved in London's criminal underworld is prepared for what Charlie's going to bring to the table. And for him, there's no such thing as too high of a body count.............. 

At 555 pages, 'The Smoke' can't afford to be a slow read. Unfortunately, I gave up on the book just 85 pages in. This is because the author is so fixated on infusing his prose with a British gangster vernacular, (along with heavily purpled metaphors and similes) that the book is very difficult to understand.

Some examples:

'Glass of Bass and a ham on white. And Gawd have mercy on us sinners if it ain't Charlie Dance. Thought you was too high on the firm to trudge the cobbles to cop the subs.'

Charlie added whiskies to Flynn's pint and sandwich and paid with small change.

"What's the crack with the coffin ?'

*****

'He never was the cleverest yiddle on the fiddle. What do Antoni and Kosher think they're playing ? Ethnic Monopoly ? "You give me Greek Street and I'll swap you Leicester Square and two dozen used toms" ?'

'Ain't no laughing matter, Arch.'

'Ain't "Spot the Virgin", neither. I take it you've smiled at both sides and kept your khyber to the alley wall ?'

'Does it rain downwards ? Smooth Bad Alice first.'

*****

Bulstrode sank his beer chaser.

    'Cotton's used us and blown us out as bubbles. He's done a deal with Buck's CID and rowed us out. We've opened the doors and they've slammed them in our faces. They can have the kudos for this train job, but that's where it ends for this kiddy.'

*****

Valetta simmered. 

    A furnace of marzipan buildings under a hot and white Sahara sky. Whiter than snow and hotter than sand. The noonday promenade in Kingsway had been a listless mill of bored soldiery and young Maltese, all too jaded to flirt or exchange the usual ribald banter.

*****

The manager's office was a warm womb of oiled teak with a splash of light over the partners desk. Tommy lounged in the manager's chair to be close to the Armagnac and ice. His cigar hadn't the class to travel the six miles from Bethnal Green, and his pomaded hair gleamed like a swash of petrified tarmacadam. Charlie leaned by the aquarium with a small Irish.

While I understand that hardboiled prose is necessary to impart verisimilitude to a crime narrative, wading through the content of 'The Smoke' was simply too onerous a chore for me. Perhaps UK natives can understand the vernacular sufficiently to make this novel engaging, but for me, 'The Smoke' is a firm One Star rating. 

Mickey Rat in 'Bored to Raise Hell'

Mickey Rat
'Bored to Raise Hell'
by Robert Armstrong
from Mickey Rat No. 3 (1980)

We've all been there, at one time or another......

Book Review: Harry's Game

Book Review: 'Harry's Game' by Gerald Seymour

4 / 5 Stars

Gerald Seymour (b. 1941) is a UK writer. In 1963 he joined the staff of the Independent Television News and covered the conflict in Northern Ireland, among other newsworthy hotspots. ‘Harry’s Game’, published in hardback in 1975, was his first novel and successful enough to allow Seymour to devote his career to writing. His Wiki entry lists over 35 novels to his credit. Some of his novels were adapted for television productions; ‘Harry’s Game’ aired as a miniseries in 1982 on the ITV network.

The Fontana paperback edition (256 pp.) of ‘Harry’s Game’ first was published in 1977. My copy is dated 1987, a twelfth printing.

The novel is set in Northern Ireland in the mid-1970s. A British cabinet minister has been assassinated by a IRA gunman, an atrocity that the government cannot allow to go unpunished. However, increased police and army raids in the Catholic part of Belfast fail to uncover any useful information. A frustrated Prime Minister decides that a man should be sent in, undercover, with orders to find and apprehend, or kill, the assassin.

A British Army captain, thirty-four year-old Harry James Brown, agrees to carry out the mission. Brown has had some experience in undercover operations, and, being born in Portadown, is familiar with Northern Ireland and its people.

Masquerading as a seaman, come home to Northern Ireland after 10 years in the merchant marine, Harry takes lodgings in a home in Catholic Belfast and sets about learning the identity of the assassin. It’s a dangerous job, made even more difficult by the fact that his minders have allotted Harry no more than three weeks to find his quarry.

Unknown to Harry, the Provos - the footsoldiers of the Provisional Irish Republican Army – keep careful track of any newcomers arriving in the Catholic neighborhoods of Belfast. Can Harry keep up his cover story long enough to keep from being ‘made’ by the Provos, and find the man he has been sent to kill ? With each passing day, the margin of error grows ever slighter…….and the likelihood of Harry’s tortured and bullet-ridden corpse being found lying on a patch of bare ground in Belfast  grows ever larger…………. 

'Harry's Game' is an impressive first novel. The author's familiarity with The Troubles and the environs of Belfast lends authenticity to the segments taking place in Northern Ireland. As well, Seymour carefully avoids sympathizing either with the IRA or the Crown, preferring to present each side's justification for their actions without sermonizing. It is left to the reader to determine the legitimacy of the mayhem committed by the IRA assassin, or his ideological counterpart, Harry. 

'Harry's Game' is very much a 'British' action novel, in that the embellished heroics of American-style adventures are absent. Indeed, in the pages of 'Harry's Game, random events and blunders account for success or failure as much as careful planning and personal gallantry. The endeavors of Harry and his quarry are related in a detached prose style, and tinted with enough cynicism to lend the closing chapters a bleak quality that refuses to provide any optimism about a peaceful resolution of the conflict roiling Northern Ireland. 

If you like your British crime and suspense novels to be hard-bitten, then 'Harry's Game' will deliver.

April 2023 is Brit Crime month

April 2023 is Brit Crime Month at the PorPor Books Blog !

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to take a break from reading science fiction, horror, and fantasy media from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, and instead focus on another genre of literature.

For April, 2023, we're going to look at British crime and suspense novels. Now, everyone and his brother has reviewed 'Get Carter' (aka 'Jack's Return Home') by Ted Lewis, so I thought I'd look at some rather less well-known titles:

These books have expanded my vocabulary, with words like 'dreich' (Scottish for gloomy, dull weather) and 'blagging' (Brit term, for achieving something through guile and trickery). I've also learned that the UK in November is marked by overcast skies, chill drizzle, widespread clinical depression, decrepit tenements discolored by layers of soot initially deposited in the early 19th century, and vitamin D deprivation. 

Stand by for reviews of Brit Crime all this month !

Book Review: Cthulhu 2000

Book Review: 'Cthulhu 2000' 

edited by Jim Turner

 3 / 5 Stars

'Cthulhu 2000' first was published in hardback in 1995 by Arkham House. This Del Rey trade paperback version (398 pp.) was issued in June, 1999 and features cover art by Bob Eggleton.

The stories and novelettes compiled in 'Cthulhu 2000' all first saw print in the interval from 1964 to 1993. 

I should note that the selections in 'Cthulhu 2000' have mild horror content. They were not intended to explore the Mythos in the splatterpunk manner of Alan Moore (with, for example, his Neonomicon and Providence properties), but rather, to see how different authors take inspiration from Lovecraft and his view of the cosmos.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

The Introduction is provided by Jim Turner (1945 - 1999), who was an editor at Arkham House from 1973 to 1996. It's badly overwritten and more than a little pretentious (for example, at one point, Turner uses the adjective 'perdurable'). Rather than remarking on the stories, as an anthology editor is supposed to do, Turner tries to use the Introduction as a vehicle to demonstrate his erudition concerning the universality of all things Lovecraftian. I was bored.

The Barrens, by F. Paul Wilson (1990): Jonathan Creighton is a seeker of Eldritch Knowledge and hopes to find it in the wilderness of the New Jersey Pine Barrens. A decent Mythos tale.

Pickman's Modem, by Lawrence Watt-Evans (1992): Henry Pickman likes to participate in online chat rooms. The problem is, his PC's modem is of unusual design. A clever updating of the Mythos for the early 1990s, and the age of America Online, DOS, and floppy disks. One of the better entries in 'Cthulhu 2000'.

Shaft Number 247, by Basil Copper (1980): in a dystopian future, within the confines of a massive underground city, something odd is happening. This story has an interesting sci-fi / dieselpunk setting, but the denouement is too restrained to be effective.

His Mouth Will Taste of Wormwood, by Poppy Z. Brite (1990): two bored Goths try to spice up their jaded lives by dabbling in occult rituals. Laced with splatterpunk imagery, and tinged with carefully crafted notes of squalor, this is a standout piece in the anthology. 

The Adder, by Fred Chappel (1989): Uncle Alvin drops a book off with his nephew for safekeeping. The problem is, the book is an excerpt from the Necronomicon......This story has a decidedly 'literary' quality, dependent as it is on myriad excerpts from the poetry of Milton. I can't say I found it electrifying.

Fat Face, by Michael Shea (1987): two Working Girls in L.A.'s red-light district attract the attention of an odd man whose office in a nearby building offers 'hydrotherapy'. Shea's overwriting handicaps this story, which otherwise could have been a good entry in the Mythos canon.  

The Big Fish, by Kim Newman (1993): Los Angeles, February, 1942, and a private eye is investigating the whereabouts of a major underworld figure. Could the weird 'Church of Dagon' in Venice Beach shed some light on the subject ? Newman's story is a carefully crafted homage to Chandleresque private-eye fiction.  

"I Had Vacantly Crumpled It into My Pocket......But By God, Eliot, It Was a Photograph from Life !", by Joanna Russ (1964): Irving Rubin, a virgin and geek, meets the woman of his dreams. Or is she ? This story's relevance to the Mythos is negligible.

H. P. L., by Gahan Wilson (1990): a Fanboy travels to Providence, and meets Howard Phillips Lovecraft in the flesh. Although....... it's 1990, the Great Man is 100 years old, and in seemingly very good health. But didn't H.P.L. die in 1937 ?! An affectionate treatment of H.P.L. and his legacy.

The Unthinkable, by Bruce Sterling (1991): what if the Cold War had been waged with Eldritch Magic ? This is one of Sterling's most imaginative short stories, and the best entry in the anthology.

Black Man with A Horn, by T. E. D. Klein (1980): a Christian missionary returns from a remote region of Malaysia, with disturbing tales of a malevolent entity who is worshipped and feared by the natives. This novelette has the strengths and weaknesses of Klein's fiction: the plot unfolds in a well-composed and deliberate manner, but the denouement is purposely vague in order to emphasize the 'quiet' flavor of horror. 

Love's Eldritch Ichor, by Esther M. Friesner (1990): Robin Pennyworth, a downtrodden editor at a romance novel publishing house, is assigned a manuscript from a Miss Pickman of Arkham, Massachusetts. The manuscript is quite unusual for a romance novel...........for example, what author would use the adjective 'batrachian' ? This is a comedic story, that quickly becomes too cutesy for its own good. 

The Last Feast of Harlequin, by Thomas Ligotti (1990): the first-person narrator is an academic who specializes in the anthropology of the clown figure. Hearing about a Winter Solstice festival, featuring clowns, held in the remote town of Mirocaw, he decides to attend. And discovers there are Eldritch Mysteries underlying the town's eccentricities. While slow-paced and deliberate, this story is a very good homage to the Mythos, and delivers requisite horror in its closing pages. Another of the better entries in this anthology.

The Shadow on the Doorstep, by James P. Blaylock (1986): the first-person narrator relates his history of examining unusual aquariums. A story that relies on atmosphere and mood, and doesn't offer much of a payoff.

Lord of the Land, by Gene Wolfe (1990): Cooper, a scholar of folklore and Eldritch Knowledge, interviews a Tennessee man about a strange apparition. The premise is interesting, but this is not really a hardcore Mythos tale.

The Faces at Pine Dunes, by Ramsey Campbell (1980): Michael and his creepy parents are 'travellers', and have parked their caravan at the eponymous campground. Strange things are happening in the wooded area adjoining the Pine Dunes. Campbell's prose is as florid as ever ('.....a sea dark as mud tossed nervously and flopped across the bleak beach'). But there is a functioning plot, and sufficient allusions to the Mythos, to make this tale a convincing Cthulhu encounter.

On the Slab, by Harlan Ellison (1981): an overwrought retelling of an ancient Greek myth. Its qualification as an entry in the Mythos is faint, at best. I have been tired of Harlan for a while, now..........

24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai, by Roger Zelazny (1985): a woman named Mari conducts a pilgrimage in the vicinity of Mount Fuji. We are gradually informed that she is going to contest with a cyber entity for the Fate of the World.

This novelette is the longest, and least impressive, of the entries in 'Cthulhu 2000'. Zelazny writes as if the New Wave approach to diction still operated in 1985 (the year this story was published) and as a result '24 Views' is burdened with stilted, pretentious prose. The story picks up momentum in its final pages and reveals that, had Zelazny observed a degree of restraint, '24 Views' could have been memorable, instead of disappointing.

The verdict on 'Cthulhu 2000' ? There simply are too many duds to raise this anthology higher than a three star Rating. Mythos aficionados will want a copy, but others can pass on it without penalty. 

National Lampoon March 1976

National Lampoon
March 1976

It's March, 1976, and the number-one song on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'December 1963 (Oh What A Night)' by the Four Seasons, and the latest issue of National Lampoon is on the stands.

The advertising sees continued representation of Hereford's 'Cows' beverages. These seem to be a kind of alcoholic milkshake ?! (I've never had one).

Grand Funk, now known as Grand Funk Railroad, has released a new album, Born to Die.

This issue of the Lampoon takes aim at Nelson Rockefeller. By 1976, Rockefeller was kind of a passe figure to be satirizing, and this can be seen as a sign that the Lampoon staff were getting out of touch on the political front.

Also being advertised is a strange new form of media, 'Fiction Illustrated', something we nowadays call a 'graphic novel'. The advertisement uses the term 'adult comic'. I've never read 'Schlomo Raven', but it was a early project from Byron Preiss, a man who did much to pave the way for the concept of graphic novels.

The color comic presented in this March issue is 'Turtle Farms of South America', which, in my opinion, is not very good.

This cartoon from Sam Gross works better:

Underground comix artist Bobby London provides a 'Dirty Duck' episode:

M. K. Brown contributes a weird 'Mr. Science' comic:

And then we have Gahan Wilson's 'Nuts'.

That's how it was, 47 years ago !