Secrets of the 70s: Genital Herpes
Part Two: Relief for the Afflicted

In 1977 a paper written by Gertrude Elion and her colleagues at the Burroughs-Wellcome Company in Research Triangle Park in North Carolina appeared in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In the paper, Elion described a novel compound, 9-(2-hydroxyethoxymethyl) guanine, or ‘acycloguanosine’,  as an inhibitor of herpes virus replication in cultured cells. This was the among the first reports of an effective antiviral compound, and the discovery of what would come to be called ‘acyclovir’ (among other work) would earn Gertrude Elion the Novel Prize in 1988.

chemical structure of acyclovir

By 1979 acyclovir (also referred to as aciclovir) was being experimentally tested in human patients receiving the drug intravenously (de Miranda et al. 1979, Clin. Pharmacol. Ther.), and by the early 80s clinical trials were underway,  with the drug being administered orally as  200 mg capsules taken 5 – 10 times a day (True and Carter, 1984, Clin. Pharm.).

Not only did acyclovir reduce the intensity and duration of herpes lesions, but it could also suppress reactivation of the virus. The drug was effective in immunocompromised individuals, including AIDS patients, who were suffering from disseminated herpes infections. Side effects were minimal.

In due course, in 1984 the FDA approved Zovirax ointment, a cream containing a 5 % concentration of acyclovir, as well as oral formulations of Zovirax, for treatment of genital herpes.

At last, relief was at hand !

 

Fast forward to today. Valtrex (valacyclovir), a more bioavailable variant of acyclovir, is widely advertised and seemingly the drug of choice for the Hollywood set. 

 chemical structure of valacyclovir

Somewhat disturbingly, even the participants in so-called ‘reality shows’ are gobbling Valtrex like it was candy. According to 'Jersey Shore' producer Sally Ann Salsano, "We hand it [Valtrex] out like M&Ms !" She adds that the show's set is a 'herpes nest'. 

People in the 21st century can rejoice in the advances of modern medicine, something unavailable, an impossible dream, to those legions of 70s swingers.

Secrets of the 70s: Genital Herpes
Part One: The Intimate Agony 


NOTE: graphic photographs of Diseased Genitalia below !!!!!!

 

It may be 1972 and you’re looking forward to a forthcoming ‘key party’ at a neighbor’s house elsewhere in your subdivision, and when you arrive you notice that some of the other couples have chosen not to come; “they weren’t feeling well”….

Or maybe it’s 1974 and the last week in August and the gang has gathered at the beach house for one last good time party before the summer ends and you find that one or two of your friends are feeling a little ‘down’ and just aren’t into the festivities all that much….

Or maybe it’s 1976 and at your workplace you notice every now and then that some of your younger, hipper co-workers have those occasional days when they seem a little…unwell. They’re not blowing their noses or sneezing or coughing, they don’t sound congested, they don’t seem to have the ‘flu bug’ or the ‘stomach flu’ but they nonetheless seem lacking in energy, slow, tired…and when they think you’re not looking you may catch them furtively pulling at the front of their slacks or trousers or dress with a quick grimace passing over their faces….

Or maybe it’s 1977 and a professional athlete everyone was counting on to step up and deliver an impressive performance in the Big Game instead flubs the plays and trudges to the dugout or sideline or bench in a slow and tired manner….

Or maybe it’s the late Spring of 1978 and you and your chick have been attending Plato’s Retreat on a monthly basis now for several months of great ‘Swinger’ fun. But one morning you wake up feeling a bit flushed, a bit tired, and you notice that the shaft of your penis has a reddened, inflamed area and when you look closer you see what looks like a set of tiny blisters raised above the skin, and these blisters are painful and they feel like they are burning when you touch them. You think to yourself, dumbfounded: maybe I’m allergic to my girlfriend’s spermicide, or her diaphragm, or maybe that Tiger Balm we were using the other night….

Or maybe it’s 1983 and you’re lounging on the couch and a TV movie comes on starring the heartthrob ‘Luke’ from the popular soap opera ‘General Hospital’: Anthony Geary. The movie is titled Intimate Agony and as you watch, it becomes clear it’s one of those public service-type films and it’s concerned with…genital herpes !

 Ahhh, yes, genital herpes…also known as herpes simplex (not to be confused with herpes zoster, the viral agent of chickenpox). One of those things that pop culture references to the swingin’ 70s tend to avoid mentioning. One of those things that doesn’t get worked into the scripts for ‘The Ice Storm’, or ‘Swingtown’. One of those things that was a real part of life for many unfortunates back in the 70s….and worst of all, there WAS NO CURE.

 

The herpes simplex virus (electron micrograph) 

www.unc.edu/~jdglab/emphotopages/emicp8recombination.shtml

Millions of otherwise healthy, horny young adults spent multiple intervals throughout the year dreading the sensation in their private regions that meant the onset of a ‘flare-up’. They developed a low-grade fever, headache, muscle and joint aches, fatigue, and painful blisters and ulcers on the most sensitive parts of their bodies. With the exception of simple topical remedies, which really did little but dull the discomfort a bit, there was nothing the herpes sufferer could do but wait the infection out. With some luck, after a week (or longer) of abject misery, the blisters would resolve, the redness and inflammation would subside, and within another week or two, there would be no sign that that particular section of tissue had been teeming with herpes virus. 

Our young swingers could get back into their scene…..until, at least, the next flare-up came about. Because once you contract genital herpes, you have it for life: the virus resides in a latent form in the large, long-lived nerve cells that connect the spinal cord with the nerve network of the body. A waning in one’s immunity- triggered by illness, exposure to UV light, fatigue, or drugs – and the virus will travel down the nerve cells to invade the epidermal cells at the end of the nerve cell network. Once in the epidermal cells, the virus will replicate. 

The insidious thing is, there can be infectious virus present in the skin at this site of replication, even though the host may not yet be aware of any physical symptoms. So even if your 70s swinger didn’t have any visible ulcers or redness, he or she was still perfectly capable of passing the virus on during those Intimate Moments rolling around in the darkness on the shag carpet.

No one really knows how many people harbored genital herpes in the 70s. I've tried to find information on the prevalence and incidence of the disease at PubMed, but what few documents or journal articles are available from that era focus mainly on the management of symptoms. 

Genital herpes became one of those burdens of life you couldn’t get away from, like diarrhea, acid reflux, and migraines.

But in 1977 a ray of hope emerged. And that's the topic of Part Two: Relief for the Stricken.

Book Review: On the Symb-Socket Circuit

Book Review: 'On the Symb-Socket Circuit' by Kenneth Bulmer 

Ever since 1979, when I purchased Ian Summer’s book of 70s SF and fantasy art, Tomorrow and Beyond (Workman Publishing, 1978), I wondered what paperback book used this neat illustration by David Schleinkofer:

The answer was revealed when I recently found a copy of ‘On the Symb-Socket Circuit’ by Kenneth Bulmer. This Ace paperback (174 pp.) first was released in 1972. The copy in my possession (below) was published by Ace Books in August, 1977.

Matt Wade is a ‘coord’ (coordinator), one of a unique race of people gifted with a superhuman ability to intuitively understand computer / AI programming. Uneasy with his role as a member of the CIDG, the galaxy-wide Overmind that controls interstellar commerce and politics, Wade has fled to the planet Ashramdrego, where the Kriseman Corporation maintains plantations of an alien plant called geron. Geron pods produce a potent compound capable of extending the human lifespan to several centuries….a Elixir of Youth that governs the fate of billions throughout the Federation. 

Like all other colonists on Ashramdrego, Wade survives its atmosphere of toxic gases not by wearing a spacesuit, but by the aid of a ‘symb’: a ferret-like animal, native to the planet, whose circulatory system interfaces with that of the human host via a shunt in the carotid artery of the host's neck. 

Wearing a symb draped around one’s collar, like a sort of living scarf, permits the colonists of Ashramdrego to go about their business in the open air, free of the need for oxygen tanks and respirators.

As long as they have a symb attached to them, colonists can tend to the geron bushes, the once-a-year harvesting of which promises ample reward to those itinerant workers on the interstellar labor ‘circuit’. But soon after his arrival on Ashramdrego, Wade becomes aware of some troubling events that the Corporation seems overly willing to dismiss as random anomalies: for some inexplicable reason, symbs are abruptly abandoning their hosts, leaving humans at risk of dying in the lethal atmosphere unless they can be equipped with an emergency respirator. 

And out among the plantations, a plague of enormous wasp-like creatures known as ‘ruptors’ (depicted on the book’s cover) are tearing up the precious geron bushes and endangering the horticulturists responsible for ensuring a productive crop. Are more dire developments waiting to unfold on Ashramdrego ? For in their single-minded rush to exploit the gifts of the geron bushes, the Corporation may have made some flawed assumptions about the interplay of species on this strange world, assumptions that could threaten the survival of everyone on Ashramdrego….

‘Symb-Socket’ belongs to that subgenre of SF in which a Terran colony, or a crashed spaceship's crew,  finds itself in peril due to an inadequate, often chauvinistic understanding of their adopted home’s ecology. There’s nothing inherently wrong with author Bulmer’s placing another novel in this subgenre, and his use of the symbiont concept as a means by which humans can conduct affairs more-or-less ‘normally’ on an otherwise hostile world brings some innovation to the narrative.

Unfortunately, ‘Symb-Socket’ is a chore to read, because Bulmer relentlessly tries to make his prose too witty and precious, an affectation not unusual among authors succumbing to the New Wave approach to writing. He seems unable to decide if he’s writing a satirical piece in the mold of Ron Goulart, R. A. Lafferty, or Robert Sheckley; or a more conventional SF adventure, albeit one with ‘sophisticated’ literary intentions. Witness this paragraph:

Or- and how sneakily diabolical that would be- just for a moment turn on those circuits in his own brain he had switched off when he’d left Altimus and reach into the computer and pump the hysteresis cycles of ‘The little Preet had a treet whose feetless greetings calokreeted it’ directly into the scientific marvels of the computer’s innards.

These prose contrivances litter every page, and negotiating them left me wanting to abandon the novel well before its midway point. This is a shame, because there is a decent SF story lying underneath the stylistic encrustations of ‘Symb-Socket’. It just stays helplessly smothered under the weight of its author’s pretentions.

Only hardcore New Wave enthusiasts will want to search for this volume on the used book shelves.

2 / 5 Stars

Book Review: Inherit the Stars

Book Review: 'Inherit the Stars' by James P. Hogan

 3 / 5 Stars

By 1977, many fans had become tired of New Wave content and were eager to see a newer generation of hard SF novels come upon the scene. It thus was apt timing for Del Rey to issue ‘Inherit the Stars’ (216 pp., July, 1977), the first novel by British writer James P. Hogan. 

Hogan, who passed away this past July, met with considerable success with ‘Inherit’ and went on to write a number of well-received books, including the sequels ‘The Gentle Giants of Ganymede’ (1978), ‘Giant’s Star’ (1981), ‘Entoverse’ (1991) and ‘Mission to Minerva’ (2005).

Del Rey took pains to present ‘Inherit’ as something new and progressive in SF. The cover features a realistic, eye-catching illustration by Darrell Sweet, in marked contrast to the abstract artwork that occupied many New Wave paperback covers. The advertising blurb from Isaac Asimov compares Hogan to Arthur Clarke, then the reigning king of hard SF. 

In 2027, a UN expedition on the Moon comes across the space-suited corpse of a man lodged in a small cavern just under the lunar surface. Carbon dating indicates the corpse is 50,000 years old; his equipment is unlike anything ever manufactured on Earth, and the writing in his notebook is unknown to any linguist. ‘Charlie’ clearly came to the Moon from somewhere else. But where was ‘somewhere else’ ? And what implications does Charlie have for the origin of the human race ?

‘Inherit’ is unabashed hard SF. The main character is a physicist, his right-hand man an engineer. Any psychological angst generated by the narrative revolves solely around solving the grand scientific puzzle posed by the discovery of ‘Charlie’ in his crypt on the Moon. Labored dissections of personal relationships, thoughts, emotions, etc. are avoided. Conversations are to the point, and devoid of references to angst and despair, stylistic tropes much beloved by New Wave authors. 

At times the book can become quite didactic, although Hogan usually breaks his lectures off before the reader’s eyes can glaze over. Almost every chapter introduces yet another ‘cosmic’ revelation, with the reasoning behind these revelations presented with care and deliberation.

‘Inherit’ does indeed borrow some of its themes from Clarke, particularly 2001: A Space Odyssey. But Hogan does a good job with his story, however derivative; he writes as well as, if not better, than Clarke (and for that matter Asimov). 

Looking back nearly 34 years later, it’s easy to see how the fan base, tired of the more self-indulgent tenor of so much of mid-70s ‘speculative fiction’, was ready and willing to embrace SF that successfully updated the traditional mind-set of the genre.

Barlow's Guide to Extraterrestrials

'Barlow's Guide to Extraterrestrials', by Wayne Douglas Barlowe and Ian Summers

I picked up a copy of 'Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials' (1979; Workman Publishing Company, 146 pp) as a present to myself for Christmas 1979. It's a neat little paperback book that provides color illustrations of various aliens, taken from well-known SF works from the 30s to the 70s.

Along with some page scans (carefully) taken from my old and yellowing copy of the book, I've scanned a preview of the book that appeared in the December 1979 issue of Heavy Metal magazine.

The book's format gives each alien a two-page treatment. One page is a description of the physical characteristics, biology, and culture of the depicted alien, and may also provide illustrations of particular anatomical features of interest. The other page is a portrait of the alien as interpreted from the original literary source.

Along with the gallery of aliens (or ETs, as you may prefer), the book includes a folding three-page chart that allows for a comparison of the sizes of the various creatures:

The last 30-odd pages in the book are a gallery of sketches and preliminary drawings made by Barlowe in the course of preparing his final portraits.
 

Barlowe's artwork is meticulous, finely crafted, and well worth multiple viewings. Don't be surprised if the illustration of a particularly interesting alien creature leads you to search out the original novel it appeared in.

And, needless to say, it's always fun to see the ET from one of your favorite SF novels depicted in this book, particularly if the original image of it in your mind is a bit hazy and unformed.

One of the best examples is Barlowe's illustration of 'The Thing', from John W. Campbell's novelette 'Who Goes There ?' It certainly is more otherworldly than the creature portrayed by James Arness in the 1951 film, and it stands up to the creepy crawlies depicted in the John Carpenter film from 1982 and the Dark Horse comics from the 90s.

Copies of the paperback edition are readily available from amazon.com for very reasonable prices, so SF fans may want to get a copy of this entertaining book for their collections.

Arthur Suydam's 'Mudwogs'

from 'Echo of Futurepast' issue 1

continuing with part 2: things get even stranger (and more scatalogical !)

 

 

Book Review: Solution Three

Book Review: 'Solution Three' by Naomi Mitchison

 1 / 5 Stars

‘Solution Three’ (Warner paperbacks, 1975, 142 pp., cover art by Vincent di Fate) was one of a number of novels and short stories produced by Mitchison during the late 60s and 70s, her novel ‘Memoirs of A Spacewoman’ perhaps being the best-known of these.

‘Solution Three’ is, unfortunately, a chore to read. The author uses an oblique prose style, inserts too many unhelpful euphemisms (food riots are labeled ‘The Aggressions’),  and has too many sentences displaying awkward syntax. It’s unclear if this is an affectation designed to give the book a ‘futuristic’ tenor, or just.......poor writing.  

The story is set in the near future, after overpopulation has caused the collapse of society. In North America and Western Europe civilization has reconstituted itself within a number of crowded, but technologically advanced, mega-cities, with most of the territory around these city-states devoted to food production. These city-states are governed by cabals of technocrats, who have implemented the ‘third solution’ of the book’s title: conditioning people to embrace same-sex relationships, and thus limit procreation. 

Breeding is limited to the production of clones, derived from the germplasm of a mythical ‘He’ and ‘She’, Adam-and-Eve figures from the pre-collapse period. Motherhood essentially consists of serving as surrogates for implanted zygotes; at age nine or ten, the progeny of these pregnancies are taken off for ‘strengthening’, a closely managed program of schooling and psychological testing designed to make the adult clones a super-race of problem solvers. This approach to replenishing the population represents Solution Four, in the jargon of the technocrats.

There are several threads to the narrative, the main one involving a bi-racial couple, Miryam and Carlo, who have refused to adopt homosex and instead live as ‘deviants’, i.e., a heterosexual couple who reproduce the old-fashioned way. The ruling Council, handicapped in large part by the desire to be politically correct in all aspects of social policy, tolerates their deviancy, but makes clear that any bestowing of economic and professional perks will be limited. When the vast monocultures of cereals that feed the megacities start to show signs of infection with plant pathogens, Miryam and Carlo must investigate the causes of the outbreaks; their research may have unexpected implications for the Council, and indeed the entirety of post-collapse civilization.

‘Solution Three’ is not a 'feminist' novel, but it does focus on female characters and their relationships rather than the usual tropes of eco-catastrophe SF. Perhaps as a consequence, this is not the most exciting of novels. What little conflict or tension that makes an appearance is muted, and mainly serves to elicit some musings about the personal interactions of the characters. 

‘Solution Three’ doesn’t stand the test of time as one of the more engrossing examples of 70s SF.

John Norman of Gor interview 1980

John Norman (aka John Eric Lange) interview
from Questar magazine, February 1980

There are no more quintessential examples of the PorPor ethos than the novels of John Norman, the pen name of American author John Frederick Lange. Starting with 'Tarnsman of Gor' in 1976 and working up to 'Captive of Gor', I dutifully purchased the Ballantine paperbacks with their Boris Vallejo covers, and then, when publishing rights for the remaining entries in the series moved to DAW books, 'Hunters of Gor' on up to 'Tribesmen of Gor'. 

I thought the Gor books were cool. When you're 16 years old, and it's 1976, and there is no such thing as the internet, the Gameboy, and your TV has only 4 channels, and you really don't know what a 'dominatrix' is, or why some adult men might have Impure Thoughts involving clothespins, 'Tarnsman of Gor' is real entertainment.

It's beside the point to mock the Gor books for having puerile plots, stilted dialogue, a relentless atmosphere of misogyny, and an unhealthy obsession with S&M. Despite all these flaws they were always very readable. I'll take 'Raiders of Gor' any day over 'Island of the Blue Dolphins', 'To Kill A Mockingbird', 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' or any other piece of literature handed out to generations of hapless high school students. Indeed, the Gor books are nowhere near as subliminally warped and perverted as 'A Separate Peace' by John Knowles - !

Posted below is a five-page of an interview with John Norman from the February 1980 issue of 'Questar' magazine. Norman, who at the time of the interview was a member of the philosophy department at CUNY, is wordy and pompous and plainly stung by the criticism heaped on his books. Of course, the interviewer carefully avoids inquiring about the Freudian underpinnings of Norman's fantasy vision of Bondage and Domination....

'1941: The Illustrated Story'

'1941:The Illustrated Story' by Heavy Metal magazine / Pocket Books

After the great commercial and critical success of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, whiz-kid director Steven Spielberg could do no wrong by the Hollywood moguls, and thus Columbia and Universal Studios together handed over an estimated $30 million for him to make a comedy about a (true-life) Japanese attack on California in the early days of World War 2.

Preceded by a massive marketing campaign, 1941 was released during the 1979 Christmas season, and while it failed to get much in the way of glowing reviews, it did do quite well at the box office, aided in no small part by the tremendous popularity of Blues Brothers stars John Belushi, who played ‘Wild’ Bill Kelso, and Dan Aykroyd, who played Sgt. Frank Tree.

Heavy Metal magazine released a graphic novel adaptation of the movie, ‘1941: The Illustrated Story’, by Stephen Bissette and Rick Veitch. The graphic novel is a strange collage of both original art, and advertising images and photographs from the early 40s. Thus one may see a black and white photo of popular 40s singer Kate Smith in one panel, and a distinctive illustration by Boris Artzybasheff in another.

[The depiction of the Japanese as buck-toothed subhumans was well in keeping with the tenor of the World War 2 era but, needless to say, is very politically incorrect by today's cultural standards.]

The plot is barely coherent and I won’t divulge it in any detail to avoid spoilers, but it’s sufficient to say that the entire comic – and by extension the movie script – relies heavily on the sort of crazed presentation pioneered by the early Mad comic books of the 1950s.

Readers looking for something different in terms of art, layout, and plot, as well as readers nostalgic for late 70’s – early 80’s comic art, might want to give this graphic novel a try. Copies of ‘1941: The Illustrated Story’ can be had for affordable prices from amazon.com and eBay.

 

 

Book Review: The New Tomorrows

Book Review: 'The New Tomorrows' edited by Norman Spinrad

2 / 5 Stars

‘The New Tomorrows’ (Belmont Tower, 1971, 235 pp., cover artist uncredited) is compiled by editor Norman Spinrad to showcase the New Wave Movement, at the time when the Movement was much in vogue. Many of the stories in this anthology first appeared in the late 60s and early 70s in the very influential UK sci-fi magazine New Worlds.
 
The anthology opens with a Introduction by Spinrad; this is an engaging overview of SF publishing at the time of the early 1970s, with Spinrad mildly rebuking ‘mainstream’ magazines and books for refusing to release works by Movement authors. There is a cogent discussion of the phrase ‘speculative fiction’ and the rationale taken by some authors for adopting the term in order to further their careers. The statistics Spinrad provides on hardback and paperback sales figures and magazine circulations are an interesting snapshot of where the genre stood in the marketplace at the time of the book’s release.

As is to be expected with New Wave content, the majority of the stories focus on mood, setting, and character rather than plot or narrative; many are devoid of traditional SF topics, and some are so ‘experimental’ as to represent self-indulgence on the part of the author. Some capsule descriptions:

‘The Pleasure Garden of Felipe Sagittarius’ by Michael Moorcock: detective Milos Aquilinus arrives in an absurdist Berlin to investigate a murder; he interacts with various historical personages.

‘Driftglass’ by Samuel R. Delaney: a genetically engineered merman, crippled by an accident at a deep-sea construction project, advises a younger counterpart. This is one of Delaney’s more accessible stories.

‘Sending the Very Best’ by Edward Bryant: an incomprehensible, patently New Wave short-short. It features greeting cards.

‘Going Down Smooth’ by Robert Silverberg: underwhelming tale of a computer that develops a cranky sort of AI.

‘The Garden of Delights’ by Langdon Jones: gripped by anomie, a young British man returns to the abandoned house where he grew up. He experiences an X-rated version of ‘Somewhere in Time’ involving…. incest (!) At the time of its publication I’m sure this story was considered Explicit, Provocative and Daring, but with the passage of time it comes across as little more than skeezy porn….and Jones as a very creepy personality….

‘Surface If You Can’ by Terry Champagne: satirical tale of a couple of grad students who rent a bomb shelter from an absent-minded heiress. There is a surprise ending that makes this the best story in the anthology.

‘Masks’ by Damon Knight: a man horribly injured in an accident survives via transformation into a cyborg, only through the cost of predictable angst and spiritual anomie.

‘Pennies, Off A Dead Man’s Eyes’ by Harlan Ellison: a mutant investigates a woman who steals from the dead.

‘Flight Useless, Inexorable the Pursuit’ by Thomas Disch: in the near future, a man flees high-tech pursuit. An undeveloped fragment rather than a genuine short story.

There are three entries that display the artiest of New Wave prose forms, the ‘experimental fiction’ piece in which the conventional narrative structure is replaced by a loosely connected series of non sequiturs, leaving it to the reader to attempt to synthesize a coherent plot. About all that can be said of ‘198-, A Tale of ‘Tomorrow’ by John Sladek, ‘The Last Hurrah of the Golden Horde’ by editor Spinrad, and ‘Down the Up Escalation’ by Aldiss, is that Spinrad’s story is the easiest to follow. But that’s not saying much.

A story by one Michael Butterworth has such a long title that I’m not going to repeat it here. Butterworth’s tale features short stretches of text mingled with hand-drawn geometric diagrams (below); who am I to say this is not Art ?

‘The Definition’ by Bob Marsden: a rock musician encounters unruly fans in a near-future world reminiscent of ‘Clockwork Orange’. A short-short story.

‘The Jungle Rot Kid On the Nod’ by Philip Jose Farmer: William Burroughs does Tarzan. The sort of facile, opportunistic literary trickery that earned Farmer much praise in the early late 60s and early 70s.

The verdict ? There are three or four stories that may please hard-core New Wave fans. But all others can probably pass on ‘Tomorrows’.