Penthouse August 1976

Penthouse magazine
August 1976

It's August, 1976, and the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'Don't Go Breaking My Heart' by Elton John and Kiki Dee.

Let's take a look at the latest issue of Penthouse magazine. 

At this time, the CB craze was in full swing, so along with the usual advertisements for cigarettes, we have ads for CB radios (including a 'pocket CB' that seems more than a little contrived), along with a feature profiling available brands of radios. The article also informed readers of the lingo of the CB culture, if you didn't already know from C. W. McCall's 1975 hit 'Convoy'.

(I don't know how many Americans under 60 years of age realize this, but in 1974, the federal government implemented the Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act, which mandated a maximum speed of 55 mph on interstate highways. A major factor in the advent of the CB radio era was its ability to allow truckers to communicate information about highway speed traps set up by state police.) 

A portfolio features 20 year-old Colleen Carney, who has a fetching streak of gray hair in her tousled mane.

An article about Ed Hanna, the mayor of Utica, New York, celebrates his maverick approach to politics. Sadly, contemporary Utica is a Rust Belt wasteland. So it all was for naught, back in '76.

The Interview in this issue is with Princeton physicist Gerald K. O'Neill, who was well-known as an advocate for installing space stations at the 'L5' position in the combined orbits of the Earth and Moon. O'Neill's interview is a perfect example of how the most impractical ideas could be communicated with a Messianic fervor.

A short story by one D. G. Bredes features a brilliant illustration, but the artist is uncredited.

Terry Pastor is credited, for this great illustration for an article by 'Maggie M'.

The Pet of the Month is a lithe redhead named Victoria Lynn Johnson, who had a role in the 1976 B-movie Grizzly.

Only in the 70s could you not only sell Penthouse and Viva tee shirts in kids sizes, you could include kids in an advertisement for said tee shirts ! 

The 'erotic' pictorial in this issue eschews the usual lesbian theme in favor of heterosexuality. Perhaps it originally was intended for Viva.....?!

And there you have it, a trip back into an era of simpler times, when a CB radio was the height of consumer electronics and the federal government's National Maximum Speed Law dictated a maximum of 55 mph on interstate highways (the Law was repealed in 1995).

The Best Science Fiction Novels of the Seventies

The  Top 10  Science  Fiction  Novels  of the  Seventies

I've been writing this blog for nearly 15 years, and so I think I've accumulated sufficient experience with the literature to display my egomania, and stand forth with my top 10 science fiction novels of the decade from 1970 to 1979. 

I am quite comfortable with ignoring novels that were awarded Nebula and Hugo awards during that time, as most of those novels are mediocre: 'The Gods Themselves', 'Inferno', 'The Fountains of Paradise', 'Rendezvous with Rama', 'The Forbidden Tower'. Best-seller status, and acclaim from professional critics, have no impact on my decision-making. 

One thing that stands out with my selections: many are short, under 250 pages as mass-market paperbacks (with some even under 200 pages). As compared to the modern era and its ponderous, 600-page tomes, this says something about the ability of authors in the 1970s to world-build, and get a plot up and running, with economy and skill.

These aren't presented in any particular order, but simply represent a 'Top 10' compendium of 5-Star novels.

Here we go:

'The Cloud Walker', by Edmund Cooper (1973): Cooper wrote for a living, and more than a few of his novels were perfunctory in nature. However, ‘The Cloud Walker’ deserves accolades as one of the best sci-fi novels of the 70s. It’s the tale of a postapocalyptic United Kingdom where the Luddite Church holds sway, and a young man risks death in his efforts to revive old technologies. ‘The Cloud Walker’ does much in its 216 pages to provide a gripping, impactful narrative.

‘Stolen Faces’, by Michael Bishop (1977): a disgraced starship pilot named Lucian Yeardance is assigned to be the chief administrator at Sancorage, the headquarters for the leprosarium on the planet Tezcatl. Yeardance’s charges are hardly the saintly folk of Father Damian’s mission at Molokai, Hawaii; in fact, they are violent, self-centered, unpleasant people. As the novel progresses, Yeardance learns the underlying truth about Sancorage and its lepers. This novel, while a slow read at times, best displays the advances in the genre’s treatment of characterization, mood, and setting bestowed by the New Wave movement.

'The Pastel City', by M. John Harrison (1971): in a far-future, depleted Earth, Queen Jane’s realm struggles to retain the remnants of technology, and prevent civilization from further decay. A crisis arises when barbarian hordes, wielding powerful weapons from older times, descend upon the Southlands. It will be up to Lord tegeus-Cromis, a swordsman and poet, to defend the realm and solve the mystery behind the revival of ancient knowledge. This was Michael John Harrison’s second novel, and in its 157 pages it fulfills the promise of the New Wave era by delivering a fast-moving plot; a memorable setting; and a vividly crafted cast of characters who subvert the traditional depiction of science fiction protagonists. 

'The Deep', by John Crowley (1975): In a strange, self-enclosed world, a medieval society composed of Red and Black factions is engaged in perpetual conflict. Then a mysterious being known as the Visitor arrives, and the Reds and the Blacks find their world forever changed. This was author Crowley's first novel and it adopts an understated, oblique approach to storytelling. There are strong overtones of entropy and futility to the antics of the Red and Black factions, and this invokes favorable comparisons with M. John Harrison's novel 'The Pastel City'.

'Jack of Shadows', by Roger Zelazny (1971): the eponymous Jack is a thief, seeking riches and power on a fantasy version of Earth where one side of the planet is perpetually in shadow, and the other side, perpetually is in daylight. As Jack is to learn, the lords of the dark and light realms do not take kindly to thieves. While many of Zelazny’s novels from the New Wave era could be self-indulgent exercises in avant-garde prose, ‘Jack’ features an imaginative mix of sci-fi and fantasy themes, inventive settings, and a lead character who is the antithesis of the traditional square-jawed, obstreperous hero.

'The Bladerunner', by Alan Nourse (1974): in a near-future, dystopian New York City, those suffering from illness risk sterilization under the mandates of the Eugenics Laws. A boy named Billy Gimp serves as a ‘bladerunner’, a courier of surgical equipment used by doctors to perform clandestine procedures on those who don’t want to be sterilized. But the advent of the mysterious ‘Shanghai Flu’ places all of the city’s residents, both rich and poor, in danger. 'Bladerunner' is a progenitor of Cyberpunk, presenting many of themes that later would come to define the genre.  

'The Warlord of the Air', by Michael Moorcock (1971): after falling asleep in a mysterious temple in the Himalayas, a British Army officer named Oswald Bastable wakes to find himself in 1973….a 1973 where the British Empire is intact, and travels by airship commonplace. But political ferment is growing, and with it, a threat to the empire. A fast and engaging read, in its 175 pages, 'Warlord' packs a lot of imaginative concepts, including alternate universes, proto-Steampunk, the liberation of people of color from their colonialist oppressors, and even a cameo from Mick Jagger (?!). 

'Hiero's Journey', by Sterling Lanier (1973): in a postapocalyptic North America, Hiero Desteen, a priest in the Metz Republic, ventures south from Kanda into the vast wilderness of what once was known as the United States. His mission ? Find and recover a lost technology that will aid the Metz Republic in its clandestine war against the Dark Brotherhood. This is the first entry in the two-volume 'Hiero Desteen' series, and it has much to recommend it: great world-building, interesting characters, a plot that never gets stagnant, and a simple, declarative prose style that well serves the novel's length of 372 pages.

'The Ginger Star', by Leigh Brackett (1974): Eric John Stark seeks the whereabouts of his mentor Simon Ashton on Skaith, a planet gripped by physical and psychological entropy. The people of Skaith resent ‘outworlders’, but then, they’ve never met anyone like Stark…….. Brackett won acclaim for her Golden Age planetary romances, and ‘The Ginger Star’ is an updated planetary romance, written by an experienced, and very underrated, author. The remaining volumes in the ‘Skaith’ trilogy, ‘The Hounds of Skaith’ and ‘The Reavers of Skaith’, are excellent novels in their own right.

'Altered States', by Paddy Chayefsky (1978): Eddie Jessup, a brilliant psychologist and faculty member at Columbia University, investigates the alternate realities that are induced by the use of psychoactive drugs. Eddie won’t abandon his obsession, even when it becomes apparent such a line of inquiry brings with it disturbing revelations about man and his place in the universe. This novel started as a screenplay before Chayefsky turned it into a novel, one of the best treatments of ‘inner space’ ever produced in the New Wave era. 'Altered' takes the self-absorption of the 'Me Decade' and lends it a 'cosmic' flavoring that makes the novel a fun read some 45 years after it first was published.

There you have it. I'm curious to see to what degree - if any - my blog readers concur.......

Bad Attitude: the Art of Spain Rodriguez

Bad Attitude: The Art of Spain Rodriguez

'Bad Attitude: The Art of Spain Rodriguez' debuted in 2021 and now is available for rental, for $2, at amazon ($10 to purchase).

Directed by Spain's wife, Susan Stern, the 1 hr., 11 minute documentary covers Spain's life and art, from his growing up in Buffalo; his move to New York City in 1966, and his involvement with the counterculture through his employment at the East Village Other; his move to San Francisco later in the 1960s; and his role as a chronicler of places and people in the Mission District.

The documentary features interviews with Spain's sister Cynthia, his daughter Nora, and comix artists Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Trina Robbins, and Robert Williams, among others. 

Spain, as were his fellow comix artists, was an iconoclast and unapologetic about his material which, in this Woke day and age, is at the very 'transgressive'. 

The documentary does some mental gymnastics in terms of addressing the transgressive aspects of Spain's art, while at the same time not celebrating it with sufficient enthusiasm to give offense to liberal sensibilities. Spain's girlfriends and wife offer some interesting discourses on reconciling the contradictions of a man who admired, and enjoyed the company of, strong women, but was perfectly comfortable with presenting women in an exploitative manner in his art. 

Analyses of the uncompromising nature of Spain's 'bad attitude'  become awkward when dissecting his tale of gay-bashing, 'Dessert', which appeared in 1977 in Young Lust No. 5.

While the narrative adopts a 'this is Spain.......being real' ideology towards the subject matter, it carefully avoids mentioning the subversive last panel of the comic.

The documentary gives justifiable attention to Trashman, Spain's first 'star' character, modeled on himself and (arguably) comic's first genuine 'alternative' action hero.

Also of interest is the documentary's examination of Spain's work, starting in the 1980s, to paint murals in the Mission District. Spain was conscious of the value of 'people's art', not only as a creator of such art but also as a mentor to a younger generation of Mission artists seeking to represent themselves and their culture through art.

The documentary's coverage of Spain's final months, when he continued to work despite ill health due to prostate cancer, is affecting. 

To me, the documentary fell short in one area: how Spain actually did his art. There is footage of Spain working on pencil roughs, and other glimpses of him hunched over his drawing board, but unfortunately, there is no in-depth coverage about how he approached composing and drafting his comics, posters, studio pieces, and other graphic works. When I finished watching the documentary, I felt that it would have benefitted from a greater focus on the nuts and bolts of Spain's art, as opposed to the political and ideological stances represented by his endeavors.

Summing up. if you are a fan of underground comix, the counterculture era, and 'lowbrow' graphic art, then 'Bad Attitude' well is worth viewing.

The end of Heavy Metal magazine

The End of Heavy Metal Magazine

Over at Fred's HM Fan Blog, comes word that Heavy Metal magazine has ceased publication.

I haven't bought a copy of the magazine in over a decade. Fred's honest reviews of recent issues didn't give me a powerful reason to run out and spend $15 for the magazine. At the same time, I'm sad to see the magazine fold, as in its heyday it was a touchstone of sci-fi / Baby Boomer / stoner culture, an enterprise that revolutionized the presentation of graphic art and comics-based storytelling when it first appeared in April 1977.

For nostalgia's sake I opened up a copy of the August, 1980 issue and read, with some affection, Lou Stathis' pretentious review of 'Rok Muzick' recorded by the New Wave band The Residents; Steve Brown's scathing dissection of Robert Heinlein's turgid novel 'The Number of the Beast'; and Jay Kinney's overview of the comix scene. There are good pieces from Druillet ('Salammbo'), Bilal ('Progress'), and Ribera and Godard ('The Alchemist Supreme'). There's an interview with Moebius, in which he spouts all manner of bullshit, trying too hard to present himself as the eccentric (but visionary) comics artiste.

The minor one-page and third-page comics that were used to max the layout come across as silly, but sometimes interesting, little exercises in art and storytelling. They're part and parcel of a media package that did quite a lot for sci-fi fans back in the day. I'm skeptical that the floundering magazine market here in the U.S. will allow for any kind of resurrection of the magazine, but I know Fred will keep an eye out for any developments........

Book Review: Neq the Sword

Book Review: 'Neq the Sword' by Piers Anthony

4 / 5 Stars

'Neq the Sword' (192 pp.) was published by Corgi Books (UK) in 1975, and features rather gruesome cover art by Patrick Woodroffe. In the 1970s, this sort of graphic illustration could pass muster, but it's doubtful if it would be acceptable nowadays...........

This is the third volume in the 'Battle Circle' trilogy, the other entries being 'Sos the Rope' (1968) and 'Var the Stick' (1972). My review of 'Sos' is here, and 'Var', here.

All three volumes were packaged for the U.S. readership by Avon, in the omnibus 'Battle Circle'.

'Neq the Sword' is set in the same post-apocalyptic America as the first two volumes in the trilogy, in which Neq briefly appears as a minor character. 

As 'Neq' opens, due to the machinations of the enigmatic superman known simply as 'the Master', the nomad society in which Neq lives is in increasing disarray due to a breakdown in the distribution of food, clothing, medicine, and shelter by the technocrats known as the 'Crazies'.

The practice of the Battle Circle, which served to direct aggression into ritualized combat, has been abandoned. The landscape is infested by outlaws and bandits who murder, rape, and rob without fear of retribution. Truck convoys supplying goods to the Crazy hostels scattered around the landscape are being intercepted, and their contents pillaged. 

The Crazies, sworn to pacifism, can do little to prevent the depredations of the outlaws. But Neq, one of the greatest swordsmen in the history of the nomad empire, is willing to help the Crazies revive the supply convoys. He realizes that the nomad society is collapsing, and stern measures are needed to prevent the resumption of the barbarity that defined life in the aftermath of the Blast. 

Accompanied by a young Crazy woman named Miss Smith, Neq sets out on a long-distance drive across northern America, hoping to restore the hostels and quell the activities of the outlaws. His journey will reveal the fate of the former leaders and heroes of the nomad empire, their children, and underscore the need for cooperation between the the advanced society that ruled the world before the Blast, and the devolved remnants of that society.

Like 'Sos' and 'Var', in 'Neq the Sword' author Anthony (the pseudonym of Piers Anthony Jacobs) provides an engrossing action novel within the span of less than 200 pages. More so than the first two novels on the series, the violence in 'Neq' is more explicit and could said to verge into Splatterpunk territory. There also are prominent traces of a softcore porn sensibility in the pages of 'Neq', which perhaps is not so surprising, given that Jacobs wrote sleaze paperbacks ('Pornucopia') in addition to science fiction. 

Where I had to deduct a star for 'Neq' was in its closing chapters, wherein our hero decides to purse the spirit of Kumbaya, and renounces the use of violence. This abnegation has a contrived quality, as if Piers Anthony belatedly had decided to infuse the closing stages of his violent trilogy with a 'make love, not war, sensibility'. Each reader will make his or her own decision as to whether this is a successful maneuver, but for me, I found it facile........

Summing up, while it's not perfect, the 'Battle Circle' trilogy remains a worthy read fifty years after it first was published. The trilogy's tight composition and action-centered discourse made it stand out from the New Wave compositions of the same era, and for this, it deserves accolades.

National Lampoon July 1971

National Lampoon
July 1971

It's July, 1971, and the top single on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'It's Too Late' from Carole King, whose album Tapestry was the biggest-selling record of all time, until displaced later in the decade by the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever.

The latest issue of National Lampoon is on the stands and it's a 'pornography' themed issue, loaded with transgressive content.

The nostalgia craze of the 1970s is under way and with it, advertisements for pop culture artifacts from the prewar era, like a compilation of 'Buck Rogers' comics. I remember reading this book, back in the day.

The Letters pages are their usual snide selves.......particularly the 'Helen Keller' joke.

The 'Hot Flashes' section takes aim at High Hefner, and the Pope, quite a combination of insultees.

A parody of the erotic novel My Secret Life takes aim at the hapless David Eisenhower, grandson of Dwight D. Eisenhower. David married Julie Nixon in 1968, an event that earned him the derision of the counterculture (which included the Lampoon staff, of course). It didn't help matters that when Eisenhower's student deferment ended he sidestepped the draft, and the potential to be sent to Vietnam, by enrolling in the Navy reserve, where he served for three years as an officer.  

The extremely popular book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, by David Rubin, is satirized.

A cartoon takes aim at Flying Nuns:

Then we have a full-color portfolio, titled 'Groupies for Everyone', which provides what every red-blooded American male wanted from the National Lampoon: boobies !

A Foto Funnies features editor Doug Kenney.

The cartoon titled 'A True Story: The Two Paths' reworks the theme of the Good Girl and the Bad Girl in a clever and subversive manner:

There is another transgressive cartoon:

Chris Miller's story 'Caked Joy Rag' features a brilliant, if grotesque, illustration by Roy Carruthers:

A questionnaire piece, titled 'Are You A Homo ?', probably would not pass editorial muster in any magazine nowadays.........

The issue closes with 'Nancy Reagan's Guide to Dating Do's and Don'ts', in which a motherly Nancy instructs excitable teens to practice restraint, and Save it for Marriage !

And there it is, snide humor from July of 1971.

Book Review: Science Fiction Terror Tales

Book Review: 'Science Fiction Terror Tales' edited by Groff Conklin

 3 / 5 Stars

Here we go with one of the more than 40 anthologies edited by the indefatigable Groff Conklin (1904 - 1968) between 1946 and 1968.

'Science Fiction Terror Tales' (262 pp.) first was published in hardcover in January, 1955 by Gnome Press. A paperback edition was released by Pocket Books later that year. The edition I have, and which is pictured above, was issued in 1970. The artist who provided the striking cover image is uncredited.

The entries in 'Terror Tales' all first saw print in the 1940s and early 1950s.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

Introduction, by Groff Conklin: Conklin states that with this anthology, he sought to include lesser-known, but high-quality, stories.

Punishment Without Crime, by Ray Bradbury (1950): George Hill, a cuckold, seeks vengeance on his wayward wife. An overwrought, contrived tale from Bradbury.

Arena, by Fredric Brown (1944): a Federation fighter pilot named Bob Carson is obliged to engage in a one-against-one, winner-takes-all combat with an alien. The future of the Earth hangs in the balance. Still a good story after these many decades, and the Star Trek episode which is based on this novelette would have been better, had it adopted Brown's ending.

The Leech, by Robert Sheckley (1952): an alien life form lands on the Earth and it proves to be unfriendly. Sheckley, when he wasn't writing comedic sci-fi, could write very good 'straight' stories, and this is one of them.

Through Channels, by Richard Matheson (1951): Leo Vogel's parents see a very strange display on their television screen. An effective story from Matheson. 

Lost Memory, by Peter Phillips (1952): robots investigate an unusual artifact. This story relies on dark humor and, despite somewhat awkward prose, succeeds as a satirical treatment of human nature.

Memorial, by Theodore Sturgeon (1946): Grenfell, an idealist, seeks to convince the nations of the world to abandon warfare. 

Even by the standards of 1940s sci-fi, Sturgeon's prose is painfully stilted:

"Whew !" said Roway, his irrepressible humor passing close enough to nod to him. "Keep it clean, Grenfell ! Keep your.....your sesquipedalian pollysyballics, for a scientific report."

"Touche !" Grenfell smiled.

Prott, by Margaret St. Clair (1953): an astronaut cultivates friendship with exotic alien life-forms; this turns out to be a bad idea.

Flies, by Isaac Asimov (1953): three men who were college acquaintances attend a reunion. This is a real dud of a story from Asimov: stilted prose (He did not like to witness wild murder-yearnings where others could see only a few words of unimportant quarrel), and an underwhelming denouement.

The Microscopic Giants, by Paul Ernst (1936): strange goings-on in the depths of a copper mine. An imaginative story, and one of the better ones in the anthology.

The Other Inauguration, by Anthony Boucher (1953): a historian accesses a parallel universe and discovers that Absolute Power, Corrupts Absolutely. Boucher intends this story to be a minatory analysis of the American political system, but it's the worst entrant in the anthology, overloaded with obtuse prose, including the use of shorthand (?!).

Nightmare Brother, by Alan E. Nourse (1953): Robert Cos finds himself drafted into an unpleasant experiment. This story is too overwritten, and too slowly paced, to be effective.

Pipeline to Pluto, by Murray Leinster (1945): A young man named Hill is desperate to take the clandestine route to Pluto, where the work is hard and the pay quite generous. While the plot can be a bit confusing to follow, Leinster imparts a hard-boiled sensibility to this story that makes it another of the better ones in the anthology.

Impostor, by Philip K. Dick (1953): Spence Olham is a premiere researcher in what may be Mankind's final, desperate effort to stop alien invaders. But the government seems to think Olham is not quite himself........an effective tale from Dick. I'm sure readers familiar with his later writings will find many of Dick's more prominent themes in those works expressed, in nascent form, in this story. 

They, by Robert A. Heinlein (1941): the un-named protagonist is confined in an asylum, because he is convinced that the rest of the human race are aliens masquerading as people. This story vies with Sturgeon's story for 1940s sci-fi awfulness: badly overwritten, wooden prose, and a denouement that fizzles.

Let Me Live in a House, by Chad Oliver (1954): a team of four Terran colonists endure isolation and psychological stress in their transparent dome on Ganymede. Then, one day, there's a knock at the door............Yet another 'paranoia' themed dud, suffering from too many empty sentences steeped in melodramatic prose.

The verdict ? 'Science Fiction Terror Tales' is too short on quality pieces to rate as a must-have compilation of mid-century sci-fi. Those quality pieces it does possess, impart a Three-Star Rating.