High Times February 1986

High Times

February 1986

February, 1986. The single at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 is 'How Will I Know' by Whitney Houston.

Let's sit down with the latest issue of High Times magazine !

This issue has some genuine highbrow content: an interview with French film director Jean-Luc Godard, and a feature on the UK author and philosopher Colin Wilson.

There's a music article on up-and-coming folkie, and geek girl icon, Suzanne Vega. Her song 'Luka' would be a breakout hit in 1987.

Indicating the editorial board's greater emphasis on promoting not just marijuana-related issues, but all left-of-center political causes, there's a lengthy article on anti-abortion politics.

The magazine does stay true to its roots with the traditional columns and features from botanical guru Ed Rosenthal. Kids, can you believe that back in 1986, it was a big deal to send in photos to High Times of you and your plants, all in a clandestine fashion ? Quite a change from how it is nowadays, where you can stroll into your fave dispensary and select from an impressive array of legitimate 'product' !

The advertisements showcase a 'dope' board game, various formulations of 'food supplements' (gotta cut that coke with something !) and pot growing paraphernalia. 

I never bought any of those mushroom growing 'kits', as my understanding was that even if you were able to grow the Psilocybe spp. mushrooms in the first place, the yield was so tiny that you weren't going to catch a buzz.

Harkening back to the days of yore, we get a reminiscence of how it was in the early 1980s to make dope-buying trips down into Mexico. But in the mid-80s, things were becoming very dangerous..........

And on the pop culture front, well, the High Times editorial staff aren't all that happy with those Death Wish films and their glorification of vigilante violence.

That's how it was, folks, 38 years ago, in the pages of High Times. Truth be told, I read this issue with some disappointment. The goofy, hippie / Cheech and Chong / counterculture vibe that made the magazine resonate so well with the stoner culture during the 1970s and early 1980s, was by the mid-80s replaced by editorial concepts and directions that considerably were more 'corporate' in attitude. Admittedly, this editorial strategy was increasing circulation, but at the same time, it felt like something of the original soul of the publication was leaching away............

Hardboiled paperbacks February 2024

Hardboiled Paperbacks

February 2024

Looking to take a break from a steady diet of science fiction, fantasy, and horror paperbacks, I stopped in at a bookstore in downtown Charlottesville this past weekend and picked up a selection of hardboiled crime paperbacks. 

I have to admire the grasping way Fawcett Crest took old John D. MacDonald novels and novelettes from the detective fiction digests of the 1950s, and repackaged them for paperback publication in the 1980s. Hard Case Crime displays a similar sense of enterprise in reprinting Richard Prather's 1963 novel 'The Peddler' in 2006, with a nice Robert McGuiness cover illustration. 

And who knew that sometime in the early 1970s, Roger Zelazny had written a spy / suspense novel ?! I'll have to see if it incorporates New Wave parlance, or sticks with a straightforward prose styling...........

Book Review: The Jones Men

CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2024

Book Review: 'The Jones Men' by Vern E. Smith

5 / 5 Stars

Here at the PorPor Books Blog, we like to celebrate Black History Month by reading and reviewing a book (fiction or nonfiction) that describes the Black Experience. For February 2024, we are reviewing 'The Jones Men' by Vern E. Smith.

'The Jones Men' first was published in 1974. This Old School Books / W. W. Norton trade paperback edition (222 pp.) was issued in 1998.

Vern E. Smith was born in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1946. In 1971 he joined Newsweek  magazine as a reporter in the Detroit office, later serving as the bureau chief in Atlanta from 1979 to 2002. Although Smith has contributed pieces to nonfiction books (such as 'Charlie Company: What Vietnam Did To Us'), and written screenplays, 'The Jones Men' remains his only published crime novel.

'The Jones Men' is set in Detroit in the early 1970s. The two protagonists, Lenny Jack and Joe Redd, are youngbloods looking to make it big as drug dealers - 'jones men' - in the city underworld. Lenny Jack intends to get his heroin inventory in a particularly dangerous fashion: stealing it from Willie McDaniel, Detroit's drug kingpin.

While ripping off Willie McDaniel is something of a death wish, Lenny Jack is living with a fatalism born in the jungles of South Vietnam, where, as a soldier in the American Army, he recovered from a serious wound. As far as Lenny Jack is concerned, he has nothing to lose. Either his heist works, or it doesn't.

But while Lenny is a reckless man, he isn't a stupid man. He's willing to pay top dollar to hire a team of gunslingers to protect himself. And he's taking all manner of precautions to avoid alerting the Detroit criminal enterprise to his plans.

As snow falls on the mean streets of the city, Lenny Jack and Joe Redd are about to pull off a robbery that will bring chaos and violence to Detroit. The question is, will they live to enjoy the proceeds ?

'The Jones Men' is one of the best crime novels I've ever read.

The author uses a clean, clipped prose style that communicates a hardboiled sensibility. But it avoids the pitfall of getting so caught up in the hardboiled diction that the prose comes across as an unwitting self-parody.

The chapters are short and the plot unfolds with speed. There are subplots that contribute to the narrative without retarding it. The novel builds in a careful and deliberate way to a slam-bang climax of violence and mayhem, that leaves no plot threads dangling.

Author Smith fills the pages of 'The Jones Men' with descriptive passages communicating the street culture of the Detroit of the mid-1970s. These passages give the action an authentic sensibility. In your mind's eye, as you read the book, you can visualize the El Dorados and Fleetwoods cruising the ghetto streets under overcast skies, their drivers wearing the latest and greatest in Player fashion, listening to Marvin Gaye and Al Green on the dashboard tape deck.

Anyone who appreciates a well-written crime novel is going to want a copy of 'The Jones Men'.

Al Stewart LPs

 Al Stewart LPs

top: Time Passages (1978) and 24 Carrots (1980), center, Year of the Cat (1976) and Live / Indian Summer (1981), bottom, Modern Times (1975)

If you are a Baby Boomer than you undoubtedly are familiar with the music of Scotsman Al Stewart (b. 1945). While Stewart's first album, Bedsitter Images, was released in 1967, he really became prominent following the release of the LP Year of the Cat in 1976. Its eponymous track was perfectly made for the FM, Album Oriented Rock radio stations of the 1970s. 

Successive albums saw heavy airplay for the tracks 'Time Passages' and 'Midnight Rocks'. Stewart released studio albums all the way up to 2008 and continues to tour the UK.

Stewart's albums from the 1970s and 1980s are readily available at used record stores and websites, for quite affordable prices. These LPs feature his distinctive lisping voice and impeccable musical accompaniment and production (check out the flamenco guitar on the track 'What's Going On'). They are AOR at its most polished, and the musicianship is the antithesis of modern-day Algorithm Pop. Certainly well worth a listen to, now that vinyl firmly is back in fashion.

Book Review: The Eye of the World

Book Review: 'The Eye of the World' by Robert Jordan

3 / 5  Stars

‘The Eye of the World’ first was published in hardcover by Tor Books in January, 1990. A mass market paperback edition was released in November of that year. In 2022, as a tie-in to the amazon.com series based on the ‘Wheel of Time’ franchise, Tor released 'Eye' as one of the volumes in a boxed set of trade paperbacks compiling the first five novels in the series.

Robert Jordan was the pen name of author James Oliver Rigby, who published the first 12 volumes in the Wheel of Time series prior to his death in 2007. Thereafter, based on notes from Rigby, Brian Sanderson completed an additional three novels. So the entirety of the Wheel of Time series consists of 15 novels. Most of the cover illustrations were done by Darrell K. Sweet. 

Some of these 'Wheel' novels are gargantuan, approaching 1,000 pages in length as mass-market paperbacks. The trade paperback edition of ‘The Shadow Rising’ is 955 pages long…………

Back in the early 1990s I was aware of the Wheel of Time novels, but had no real desire to read them, mainly because the decade saw the advent of the practice by publishers of releasing lengthy novels that were components of multivolume series. I already had committed to David Wingrove’s ‘Chung Kuo’ franchise, and there was only so much content I could process.

Having procured the five-volume box set at a discount from Ollie’s Bargain Outlet this past Fall, I decided I was in the proper frame of mind to approach the Wheel of Time. 

I learned that the initial volume in the series is ‘New Spring’, which was released in 2004 as a prequel. It was a digestible 299 pages. After that, I ventured into ‘Eye of the World’, which is a hefty 779 pages. So between them I processed some 1,078 pages of Wheel of Time content.......

It’s no spoiler to say that the Wheel of Time franchise is modeled on Tolkien; indeed, anyone familiar with the 'Lord of the Rings' will recognize characters and themes that have been imported into ‘The Eye of the World’. 

The world in which the Wheel novels are set has no formal name, but fanboys apparently have designated it ‘Randland’. It is the standard-issue medieval landscape where magic is practiced, and the safety and peace of the world gradually are being threatened by a Dark Lord.

‘New Spring’ introduces us to two of the lead characters in the initial novels in the series, a female incarnation of Gandalf, known as Moraine; and her taciturn bodyguard Lan, who is an Aragorn clone. 

‘New Spring’ was a chore to get through, and I almost gave up on it numerous times. The novel, which is set in a kind of Hogwarts academy for sorceresses, is entirely devoted to exposition. Exposition about interior décor, furniture, fabrics and textiles, wardrobes, mess hall comestibles, student hijinks, student rivalries, student jealousies, enigmatic Prophecies of Doom, sorcery proficiency exams that can be fatal, and the political machinations of various nations embedded in Randland.

After finishing ‘New Spring’ I took a deep breath and started in on ‘The Eye of the World’. The first 106 pages are more exposition, serving to introduce the reader to the large cast of characters, including Rand Al’ Thor, the Wheel’s counterpart of Frodo Baggins. Rand lives with friends and family in the placid hamlet (and Shire clone) of Two Rivers, where people live as they have done for centuries, vaguely aware of momentous events that took place far, far away and long, long ago.

As it turns out one of the boys residing in Two Rivers is a Chosen One who, alone among the innocents of the world, can defeat the Dark Lord (aka Shai’ Tan, aka Ba’alzamon, aka Lord Foul, aka Sauron………….you get it). 

So, the minions of the Dark One arrive, with murder and mayhem on their mind, on page 106. Thereafter novel embarks on its main narrative, which is a Quest to the eponymous Eye and, hopefully, a resolution of the conflict with the Dark One.

Inevitably with a novel of its length, ‘Eye’ can drag at times, but it must be said that the author does inject moments of suspense and action at regular intervals so the narrative is not as dilatory as it perhaps could be.

I approached the end of the book aware that it was simply an opening installment in a franchise, but the denouement of ‘Eye’ does deliver some degree of resolution and is not simply a ‘continued in the next volume’ contrivance.

I am comfortable with giving the tandem of ‘New Spring’ and ‘The Eye of the World’ a Three Star Rating. Those readers who have the patience and temperament for contemplative, lengthy narratives will find the Wheel of Time to be rewarding. Those preferring shorter works, with more compact world-building and characterization, might want to think for a bit before sitting down with 'The Eye of the World'. 

Robocop 2 comic adaptation

Robocop 2
Official Comic Book Adaptation

Marvel, August 1990

The official comic book adaptation of the movie Robocop 2 was published by Marvel in August, 1990 and is 61 pages in length. The book was adapted by the script by Frank Miller and Walon Green by Alan Grant, and Mark Bagley provides the pencils.

The comic book adaptation adheres pretty closely to the script, so there are no surprises in terms of including scenes that were present in initial drafts, but cut from the shooting script.

Presumably the licensing deal for the comic book did not include the rights to the likenesses of the major actors, so Bagley's art renders the characters in a generic fashion. 

Bagley's art is serviceable, but not very impressive. I will say that reading the book, when I hadn't seen the film in some 10 or more years, had me laughing and brought back an appreciation of the sardonic humor that Frank Miller suffused in almost every scene in the movie. In my opinion, Robocop 2 was a sequel that surpassed the original.

Who will want a copy of the comic adaptation of Robocop 2 ? Well, it's clearly a least-possible-effort by the Marvel editorial staff: they were looking to get something out to capitalize on a movie release, not to make a comic that would be cherished by fans for decades to come. If you are a hardcore Robocop fan and you just have to have Everything Robocop, then you'll probably want to grab this adaptation. 

If you're someone who wants a good treatment of the second installment in the franchise, I would direct you to the 2007 Avatar graphic novel that compiles the issues of 'Frank Miller's Robocop'. Unfortunately, that graphic novel is long out of print, and used copies have exorbitant asking prices (i.e., $99 on up). So the 1990s Marvel version at least has affordability in its favor..........

Book Review: Beowulf's Children

Book Review: 'Beowulf's Children / The Dragons of Heorot' by Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steven Barnes

1 / 5 Stars

‘The Dragons of Heorot’ was published by Orbit Books (U.K.) in 1996. The cover illustration is by Fred Gambino. 

Given the title ‘Beowulf’s Children’ in the U.S., this is the second volume in the so-called ‘Heorot’ series, the first being ‘The Legacy of Heorot’ (1987), and the third being ‘Starborn and Godsons’ (2020).

[ My review of ‘The Legacy of Heorot’ is posted here. ]

‘Dragons’ is set twenty years after the events of ‘Legacy’. Having secured their island redoubt, Camelot, from the hostile life forms indigenous to the planet Avalon, our multi-ethnic, sexually liberated team of colonists have set up a safe and prosperous society that fulfills the dreams and wishes of everyone who agreed to place themselves in cryosleep for a one-way trip to colonize the stars.

However, as the novel opens, discontent is rising among the 280 sons and daughters – known portentously as the ‘Star Born’ – of the colonists. Smart, physically impressive, and ambitious, the Star Born chafe at their elders’ prohibitions against setting up colonies on the mainland of Avalon. Whiling away their time with orgies, glorified boy scout camping trips, surfing, and pranking the old folks, is only increasing the impatience of the Star Born and their de facto leader, a golden boy named Aaron Tragon.

Cadmann Weyland, the hero of ‘Legacy’ and the embodiment of the legendary Beowulf, now is older and a little wiser, but still the authority figure in the colony. Weyland is willing to allow the Star Born greater autonomy in setting up operations on the mainland, but the collective trauma the colonists suffered at the hands of the monsters causes them to overmanage these efforts, angering Tragon and his followers. 

But even as tensions between the Star Born and their parents threaten to give rise to overt violence, the wildlife of Avalon presents a new danger to the Earthmen who thought they had tamed an alien world………. 

‘The Dragons of Heorot’ is a mediocre book. I had to struggle to get through it.

I gave ‘The Legacy of Heorot’ four stars, because it was a well-plotted, action-adventure sci-fi novel with touches of horror. I was rooting for the monsters all throughout the novel (which probably was not the authors’ intentions) and while the colonists won in the end, there was a sufficiently high body count that I was satisfied that the monsters got their due.

‘Dragons’ suffers in comparison. Its length of 594 pages works against it, because the authors fail to provide a single, focused narrative as they did in ‘Legacy’. ‘Dragons’ is not an action novel but a world-building novel, meandering and scattered. 

For example, there is exposition on the cultivation, processing, and consumption of coffee on Avalon. There are lengthy passages describing efforts to convert the indigenous herbivores into the equivalent of pack animals. There are passages that provide ‘first person’ insights into the thinking and behavior of one of the monsters. And the presence of much bed-swapping triggers plentiful soap opera-style melodramas. 

The monsters don’t make an appearance until nearly 200 pages into the novel, and then, only in a brief and cryptic fashion. Afterwards, they primarily stay offstage, emerging every now and then to lend some brief momentum to an otherwise dull narrative.

The book’s denouement, which commences on page 532, is lumbering, obtuse, and seems to take forever to unfold, probably the result of having to accommodate ingredients from three authors. It is gratifying in the sense that the monsters finally get do so some crunching and munching on the colonists, but this seems a thin reward for having to plow through the preceding chapters.

For a book published in 1995, the prose in ‘Dragons’ reads as if it was composed in the 1970s. Dialogue is wooden, and segments detailing the emotional and psychological conflicts of the lead characters have a trite quality that indicates that Niven and Pournelle are not all that motivated to try and emulate the advances in the qualities of sci-fi prose brought about by the New Wave era and the cyberpunks.

The verdict ? I finished ‘The Dragons of Heorot’ with no interest in pursuing the final volume in the series. 

‘Dragons’ mainly will appeal to those who are keenly interested in the fate of the protagonists in ‘The Legacy of Heorot’. All others can pass on this novel.

'Disciples' by Gardner Dozois

'Disciples' by Gardner Dozois
from Penthouse, December 1981

Gardner Dozois (1947 - 2018) mainly published shorter fiction over the course of his career. In my experience his pieces written during the New Wave era were among the better such entries seeing print in digests and anthologies. Some of his stories were understated and humanistic, such as 'Strangers', while others, such as 'Flash Point', presented a much more acidic analysis of man and his actions.

I get the impression that 'Disciples' first was submitted to Omni before subsequently being forwarded to Penthouse. It got a nice treatment in the December 1981 issue of Penthouse, underscoring the role the 'slick' magazines played in sustaining science fiction in the print media during the 70s and 80s.

'Disciples' is brief, only a little over three printed pages in length, but it's well-plotted and well-written. The story is set in wintertime New York City in the early 1980s, with the city in all its shabby, scabby glory. The protagonist is a professional panhandler, and quintessential New York character, named Nicky the Horse. Nicky has little regard for the other denizens of the gray and gritty streets that are his enterprise:

........Occasionally a group of med students would go by or a girl with a dog or a couple of Society Hill faggots in bell-bottom trousers and expensive turtlenecks, and Nicky would call out, "Jesus loves you, man," usually to no more response than a nervous sideways glance. One faggot smirked knowingly at him, and a collegiate-jock type got a laugh out of his buddies by shouting back, "You bet your ass he does, honey." A small, intense-looking woman with short-cropped hair gave him the finger. Another diesel dyke, Nicky though resignedly. "Jesus loves you, man," he called after her, but she didn't look back.

As the panhandling day wears on, Nicky has an unexpected encounter with hot dog vendor Saul Edelman. Saul, it seems, knows something the goyim do not. And Nicky confronts a dilemma: what if you learned the Rapture was coming..........but it's a Jewish rapture ?!

In my opinion, 'Disciples' is one of the best sci-fi short stories of the 1980s. It's available in the 1994 Ace Books anthology of Dozois's short stories, 'Geodesic Dreams'.

National Lampoon January 1981

National Lampoon

January 1981

It's January, 1981, and the number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'Starting Over', by the late John Lennon.

Looking at the latest issue of National Lampoon, the lurid cover promises more than the contents deliver. This usually was the case with these 'sexy' Lampoon covers. Deceptive enticements !

Here, at the dawn of the 1980s, the magazine noticeably is thinner as compared to the glory days of the 1970s. Far fewer record album ads, cigarette ads, liquor ads, clothing ads, etc. 

P. J. O'Rourke now is the editor, and Matty Simmons, the publisher, is off on the West Coast, working on film treatments of Lampoon properties, such as the forthcoming National Lampoon's Class Reunion (which turned out to be a dud).

The Letters page makes fun of people of Puerto Rican ethnicity:

We are alerted to the latest album from Stevie Wonder.

There is a cartoon. And an advertisement for a film, The Idolmaker, which I never saw and know nothing about.

An ad parody takes presents urban wastelands as new venues for federal parks.

John Hughes, on the cusp of fame for the movies National Lampoon's Vacation and Sixteen Candles, contributes a satire of 'The New Millionaires'.

There is quite a lot of comics content.

The Iranian Hostage crisis was ongoing early in January, and only when Ronald Reagan took office as President on January 20 did Iran release the hostages. The Lampoon imagines the crisis as a sales and marketing opportunity:

There's an ad for comedy and rock record albums from Passport records. The ad uses the 'New Wave' color scheme: pink and black, that was popular in the early 1980s. 

All of these albums are available at YouTube, and they are not that special. The best-known track on the album That's Not Funny, That's Sick is the 'Bass Player Interviewed by Mr. Rogers' bit, featuring Bill Murray.

Let's close with a 'Foto Funnies' about kids and drugs.

And that's how it was, 43 years ago..........