Strange Seventies Textbooks: Mixed Bag and Montage

Strange Seventies Textbooks

In the early 70s there was a push to reboot the ‘composition’ textbooks intended for introductory English classes in colleges and universities. According to faculty in Ed Schools and English departments, textbooks needed to move away from the staid presentation of short stories, poems, and play and novel excerpts found in traditional composition books, into a ‘multi media’ or 'mixed media' format that was modern, cutting-edge, and resonated with the Younger Generation.

According to an abstruse 2019 doctoral dissertation by Nidhi Rajkumar, two exemplars of the multimedia textbook were ‘Montage: Investigations in Language’, by William Sparke and Clarke McKowen, and ‘Mixed Bag: Artifacts from the Contemporary Culture’ by Helene Hutchinson. Both titles were released in 1970.

‘Mixed Bag’ is a compilation of stories, poems, song lyrics, and essays, with an emphasis on material issued in the 1950s and 1960s. Visual media is represented by advertisements, paintings, photographs, and graphic art, such as cartoons and comics.

The chapters are organized around the ‘heavy’ themes of Family, Violence, Race, Death, Religion and……………TIGERS ?!

Groovy !

'Mixed Mag' is markedly superior to 'Montage', which is.......utterly incoherent. The authors of 'Montage' plainly were carried away by the lure of presenting mixed-media formatting; they Overdosed on it, in fact.

Typesetting and printing 'Montage' must have been a nightmare; in 1970 there was no such thing as desktop publishing, no digital typesetting, no Adobe InDesign, no Photoshop. Each page was its own collage, painstakingly assembled by hand and photographed. All 495 pages.

Reading the content in ‘Mixed Bag’ and to some extent, 'Montage', is to travel back in time more than 50 years, to era of political and cultural ferment. Racial conflict, the Vietnam War, the Generation Gap, and (in an oblique way) the Sexual Revolution. 

The presented material is, by 21st century standards, provocative, even offensive. Indeed, some of the material in 'Mixed Bag' likely would get it banned from contemporary classrooms and lead to the suspension or dismissal of course instructors………..but things were a little different, back in 1970.

Book Review: Into Deepest Space

Book Review: 'Into Deepest Space' by Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle

3 / 5 Stars

Fifty (!) years ago, in the summer of 1974, I joined the Science Fiction Book Club. My selections included 'Again, Dangerous Visions', and 'The Ice People', by Rene Barjavel. Another of the books I wound up getting was 'Into Deepest Space', by Fred and Geoffrey Hoyle. 

How well does the novel come across when re-read five decades later ?

Well......

'Into Deepest Space' was published by Harper / SFBC in hardcover in September, 1974. A mass-market paperback edition was released in November, 1975 by Signet, with the cover artist uncredited.

'Deepest' is a sequel to the 1969 novel 'Rockets in Ursa Major', but it's not really mandatory to have read 'Rockets' in order to understand the background of 'Deepest.'

As 'Deepest' opens, lead character Dick Warboys, and his alien friends from Ursa Major, Alcyone, Betelgeuse, and Rigel, are enjoying their victory over the malevolent Yela (who, as detailed in 'Rockets', were prevented from destroying the Earth by a stratagem administered by Warboys). However, the Ursa Major crew's celebration quickly is ended by the discovery that a massive cloud of hydrogen is entering the solar system. It appears the cloud is the result of an action by the Yela; should the cloud impinge upon the atmosphere of Earth, it will trigger a catastrophic explosion that will end all life on the planet.

So it's back to dealing with the Yela, and Warboys and his friends board the Ursa Major vessel, and join up with a hastily assembled armada of Terran warships for a rendezvous near Jupiter. The fleet will then speed to a confrontation with the Yela. It seems at this point in the narrative that 'Deepest' is going to unfold as a traditional 'spacewar' novel.

However, barely a quarter into the novel, the plot undergoes a considerable shift, focusing on the travails of the ship carrying Warboys and friends consequent to an encounter with a Yela vessel. There is much exposition on the mechanics of space travel, with drama generated from the need for the Ursa Major crew to come up with solutions to various engineering dilemmas, such as the loss of power, malfunctioning navigational arrays, broken intercoms,  uncooperative airlocks and hatches, and ship-to-ship combat with the Yela. 

Inevitably with this type of sidereal, 'hard' science fiction narrative, things get rather boring, for the realism permeating the book doesn't bring with it much excitement.

Where 'Deepest' redeems itself is in the closing chapters. I won't disclose spoilers, save to say that the Ursa Major ship does indeed travel into Deepest Space......and beyond. The book's ending brings with it a 'cosmic' revelation that strains credulity quite a bit, but at the same time, is in keeping with the Hoyle's intent of giving the novel an educative quality.

The verdict ? 'Into Deepest Space' deserves commendation for being an unashamedly hard sci-fi novel during the apogee of the New Wave movement, and for its efforts to present concepts of astrophysics and space travel to intellectually inclined laymen. Thus, I am assigning it a rating of Three Stars. 

Penthouse June 1974

Penthouse magazine
June 1974

June, 1974, and the single at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart is 'Billy, Don't Be A Hero' by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods. Cool ! I remember hearing it on the little yellow AM transistor radio we had, back in that Summer of '74.......... 

Let's dip into the pages of the June issue of Penthouse, the cover of which showcases the delectable ladies vying for the Pet of the Year honor.

The ads in this issue are eclectic. Who remembers Schlitz brand beer ?! It was considered a working man's beer, back in '74. Schlitz, Ballantine, Pabst.......they all were pretty much birds of a feather. Always, much preferable to Budweiser.

Buried in the back of the magazine is a small ad for something called the 'National Vasectomy Club' ?! Strange stuff, back in the mid-70s........

As for the Pet of the Year contestants, in my opinion, all of the ladies are genuine contenders. It's a shame the photos in the magazine are underexposed; trying to correct for display on a modern-day PC monitor can be problematic.

The non-nudie content in the June issue is underwhelming. An interview with heavyweight champ Muhammed Ali focuses on his training camp, his poetry, and the Nation of Islam. Yawn.

Fortunately, one of the portfolios in the June issue, titled 'Georgia Girl', is an outstanding example of the soft focus, David Hamilton-inspired photography in which Penthouse specialized. Lensed by Earl Miller, our Georgia girl - 'Deborah Clearbranch' - looks exceptional when posed against the various backdrops.

Pretty girls, and good times with Schlitz beer, all from fifty years ago........!

At Wonder Book and Video Gaithersburg

At Wonder Book and Video Gaithersburg

Last month, while returning from a weekend trip to Baltimore, I decided to make a detour to the Wonder Book and Video store at 15976 Shady Grove Road in Gaithersburg. I hadn't been there in 15 (?) or so years, so I was overdue for a visit.

This is the smallest Wonder Book and Video store, and not an easy one to find. It's located in the 'Shady Grove Center' plaza on Shady Grove Road. You have to turn off Shady Grove Road into an alley that runs alongside a Sherwin-Williams paint store, and ends up behind Shady Grove Self-Storage (photo below).

Looking up the alley from Wonder Book, towards the plaza entrance at Shady Grove Road

There is a large selection of CDs and vinyl in this store. You can spend a couple of hours (if not longer) poring over the inventory.

The aisles are pretty cramped; if claustrophobia is a problem for you, then preferentially you may want to visit the Hagerstown and Frederick outlets.

There is the usual large selection of paperbacks. On the day I visited, they had just gotten in a sizeable number of Very Good / Like New DAW books, and vintage sci-fi titles, all on display up front.

The older sci-fi paperbacks, back in the shelving, tend to be in Acceptable and Good condition. There also are some hardbound sci-fi and fantasy titles shelved in the back, too. And pinned to the ends of the shelves are vintage magazines and digests.

As is the case for the Hagerstown and Frederick stores, there are sections for westerns, classics, general fiction, and horror.

I came away from my visit with some nice old school DAW books and a Six-Gun Samurai western novel, at prices ranging from $4 to $8 (below).

One caveat about the Gaithersburg Wonder Book and Video: Shady Grove Road, even on a weekday afternoon, is heavily trafficked, and on the weekends, it's a mess. Trying to get into and out of the plaza where the store is located is not going to be for the faint of heart, whether you are coming from the east or the west. Stuff to think about prior to visiting !

Book Review: The Crystal Empire

Book Review: 'The Crystal Empire' by L. Neil Smith

2 / 5 Stars

'The Crystal Empire' first was published in hardback in December, 1986 by Tor Books. This paperback edition (449 pp.) was issued by Tor in February, 1989 and features cover art by Michael Whelan.

cover illustration by David Mattingly for the 1986 hardback edition, courtesy of 'Scifi Art' (tumblr)

'Crystal Empire' arguably is the forerunner of novels and short stories that envisage an alternate Earth where the Aztec empire, with all its devotion to conquest and human sacrifice, reigns supreme, as in Christopher Evans's 1993 novel 'Aztec Century.'

'Crystal Empire' is set in a timeline where the Black Death results in the collapse of Christianity and its replacement by a Muslim-Jewish alliance. By the late 20th century, Europe, and the Near East, are under the control of the Caliphate of Rome, led the enlightened and benevolent Abu Bakr Mohammed VII. East Asia is under the thumb of the Mongol Empire, which seeks to dominate the known world. 

As the novel opens, the low-intensity border wars between the Caliphate and the Mongols have blossomed into full-scale world war, waged with steampunk-level technology. The Caliphate's technological edge is starting to falter in the face of the overwhelming manpower wielded by the Mongols. And more disturbingly, the Mongols are adopting newer technologies in their arsenal - including a primitive submarine.

Desperate to defeat the Mongols and preserve his Caliphate, Abu Bakr decides on a precarious strategy: forming an alliance with the mysterious Crystal Empire of the Sino-Aztecs, whose kingdom, occupying the western coast of the Savage Continent (i.e., North America), is rumored to have advanced technology......and weapons that could turn the tide in the combat against the Mongols.

Abu Bakr dispatches his young, pretty, and brilliant daughter Ayesha on a long and dangerous journey across the Atlantic to the east coast of North America, after which Ayesha and her party travel by 'landship' to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. There, the voyagers encounter the novel's lead character 'Fireclaw', also known as Sedrich Sedrichsohn. 

The descendent of Europeans who migrated to North America in an effort to escape the Black Death, Fireclaw is a formidable warrior, and the de facto ruler of the American Indian tribes who occupy the Great Plains. Driven by curiosity, and a desire to prevent the Mongols from overtaking the Savage Continent, Fireclaw agrees to guide the Caliph's party across the Rockies and into the territory of the Empire. 

The journey to the coast will not be an easy one, and at its end awaits a confrontation with the Sun-God who rules the Crystal Empire. An Empire constructed on great cruelties and strange sciences, an Empire where those whose who enter its boundaries never are granted leave to exit. 

I finished 'The Crystal Empire' thinking it a more laborious and tedious read than it should have been. This was unexpected, given that the back story is imaginative (think Indians on steam-powered motorcycles loosening pneumatically-launched arrows at a wooden ship that travels across the prairie, via canvas sails and 20 feet-high iron wheels). 

However, the book is badly overwritten, with too many passages that labor to 'tell,' rather than 'show,' the perspectives and attitudes of the characters. The exposition, and dialogue, often comes across as stilted and difficult to follow (for example, Smith insists on using the word 'e're' instead of 'ever'). A running subplot, involving Ayesha's night-time visions of other times and places, pads, rather than enhances, the narrative. And the novel's closing chapters have the frenetic quality of the climax of a storyline in a superhero comic book. There is so much mayhem, and colossal death and destruction, taking place that the narrative struggles to keep up.

The verdict ? 'The Crystal Empire', for all its careful world-building and character development, fails to fulfil its promise of an engaging alternate world tale. I'm comfortable giving it a Two-Star Rating. 

Gene Wolfe and Pringles

Gene Wolfe and Pringles

Gene Wolfe is well-known as a science fiction writer, but also he was responsible for developing the process for cooking 'Pringles' brand potato crisps, as he details in this excerpt from an interview, conducted by Lawrence Person, and published in the Fall / Winter, 1988 issue of the sci-fi zine Nova Express:

LP: Along those lines, is it true you invented the machine that makes Pringles potato chips?

GW: I developed it. I did not invent it. That was done by a German gentleman whose name I've forgotten for years. I developed the machine that cooks them. He had invented the basic idea, how to make the potato dough, pressing it between two forms, more or less as in a wrap-around, immersing them in hot cooking oil, and so forth and so on. And we were then called in. I was in the engineering development division, and asked to develop the mass production equipment to make these chips. And we divided the task into the dough making/dough rolling portion, which was done by Len Hooper, and the cooking portion, which was done by me, and then the pickoff and salting portion, which was done by someone else, and then the can filling / can sealing portion which was done by a man who was almost driven insane by the program because he would develop a machine, and he would have it almost ready to go, and they would say, ‘Oh, instead of 300 cans a minute, make it 500 cans a minute.’ And so he would have to throw out a bunch of stuff, and develop the new machine, and when he got that one about ready, they'd say ‘Make it 700 cans a minute.’ And they almost put him in a mental hospital. He took his job very seriously and he just about flipped out.

Something to think about, the next time you pop open a can of Pringles !