On the shelf in the back of the store

On the Shelf in the Back of the Store

The other day I stopped in at a rather disheveled comic book shop in upstate New York and walking into the lesser-trafficked back portion of the store, I saw they had shelving set aside for paperback and hardcover books. Most of the titles were Star Trek and Star Wars franchise stuff, but they had a surprisingly large collection of vintage sci-fi paperbacks from the 1960s and 1970s. I purchased the five books, pictured above, for $2 each. 

I doubt any of them are memorable works, but still, it's always worth poking around those neglected little corners of the store where the owners stash the more obscure items in their inventory......

The Science Fiction Encyclopedia

'The Science Fiction Encyclopedia / The Encyclopedia of  Science Fiction'
Edited by Peter Nicholls

Over the past few months, I've been dipping into my rather battered copy of the 1981 Granada edition of 'The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction ' (672 pp.), which first appeared in 1979 in the UK and USA (where it was titled 'The Science Fiction Encyclopedia').

'The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction' (TEoSF) was one of a number of such tomes that appeared in the late 1970s, signals that the genre, in the aftermath of the release of Star Wars and the visibility of the New Wave movement, was rapidly becoming a powerful commercial presence not just in book publishing, but the entire mass-media environment. 

It's impressive to consider that the encyclopedia was assembled in an era well before the internet and Google. Indeed, it's about as comprehensive as one could expect given the data gathering technology of the late 70s. 

Editor Nicholls was joined by 33 other contributors, including Brian Aldiss, John Brosnan, David Masson, Franz Rottensteiner, John Saldek, and Brian Stableford. Nicholls acknowledges that the reference library at the the Science Fiction Foundation of North East London Polytechnic (now titled the Polytechnic of East London) was crucial to compiling the encyclopedia.

Any encyclopedia is vulnerable to criticism that it neglects some topics in favor of others, and this criticism could of course be leveled af TEoSF. But of course, emphasis would be given to topics that were deemed important in the period of the late 1970s, and other topics, such as Cyberpunk, either simply didn't exist back then, or were in too nascent a state to be given a full treatment. So the book's themes of 'television', 'esp', 'suspended animation', and 'mainstream writers of SF' may seem quaint in 2023, but 44 years ago, they were very au courant.

Thumbing through the pages of TEoSF brings with it all sorts of strange and entertaining little revelations that Baby Boomers like myself will cherish. And of course, I wound up making a list of paperbacks that, based on entries in the book, seemed worthy of attention.

The writing in TEoSF can be uneven, as the contributors are given the rather difficult task of providing content for a reference book that also is intended to be read for some degree of pleasure. Nicholls's entries are well-written and successfully balance the goals of being scholarly, but accessible. 

But the worst offender is the UK critic and editor John Clute, who is second only to Nicholls in the number of contributions. Clute's entries have the self-consciously pretentious and jargon- riddled quality of someone who very much wants to be perceived as a Serious Scholar. I've criticized Clute in another post here at the PorPor Blog, so I won't beat a dead horse...........

One thing that becomes apparent in reading TEoSF is the the degree of dedication and commitment to the project displayed by editor Peter Nicholls, an Australian writer for whom the book was his first major foray into the editorial landscape. Nicholls would go on to write two books that were quite informative, and well served both fans and the general public, 'The Science in Science Fiction' (1982), and 'The World of Fantastic Films: An Illustrated Survey' (1985). 

Nicholls would co-author another print edition of TEoSF in 1993, but thereafter, increasing ill-health limited Nicholls's efforts as writer and editor. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2000, and died in 2018. One can only wonder what contributions to the genre he could have made, had he not been stricken while still at a relatively young age.

Who will want a copy of 'The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction' ? Well, Baby Boomers, who can remember how the genre was nearly 45 years ago, likely will find perusing its pages to be worthwhile and nostalgic. 

But I doubt newer sci-fi fans will find the printed version from 1979 to be very useful, given that the current, online version - which is free - constantly is updated, and reflects the enormous growth in the subject that has taken place in the past four decades. Perhaps it's best to view the Encyclopedia of 1979 as a product unique to its time and place, and those interested in such things are its recommended audience.

James Blish's A Light to Fight By

 A Light to Fight By

by James Blish

Penthouse, June, 1972

The June, 1972 issue of Penthouse magazine featured a short story from sci-fi writer James Blish.

'A Light to Fight By' is mildly sci-fi. It's set in a near-future New York City where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is wider and the police are prone to addressing street incidents via interdicting with armored vehicles.

Protagonist Ken Cassidy is a white savior (back in '72, the term was revered, mind you) who has turned aside a potential lucrative career as a stockbroker to instead provide counseling and supervision to Puerto Rican youth patronizing the Third Avenue Youth Center in East Harlem.

Ken had served in Vietnam, and upon arriving back in the City, had undergone a transformation:

When Ken had come back, he had made the mistake of going to see the quiet Puerto Rican who had been his First Sergeant; and there he had seen also the families jammed together five and six to a room, the kids just able to walk playing with empty beer cans for lack of a better toy, the 12 year-old boys hustling their 13 year-old sisters, the useless young men blustering and shooting craps or pitching pennies by the stoops, the screaming bruised women, the black-eyed unwanted babies, the dried old men who had arrived too late to learn English....and the cops hovering around them, waiting for any damn excuse at all to bring one of their expensively armored riot-control crawlers.

Wow......what a terse, hardboiled, description of life in the dark corners of the American dream !

Facetiousness aside, I found 'A Light' to be one of the better fiction works of Blish that I have yet read (although, to be honest, I tend not to seek out his stuff). The story has a subversive little twist at its end that keeps it from being yet another glib Moral Message about discrimination, poverty, and privilege.

Unfortunately, 'A Light to Fight By' doesn't appear in any of the Blish story collections published to date, probably because it's not a sci-fi tale.

So, I'm going to post the printed pages here at the PorPor Blog. They are as legible as I can make them from 300 dpi scans of a 52 year-old magazine............

Book Review: Tower of Dreams

Book Review: 'Tower of Dreams' by Jamil Nasir

4 / 5 Stars

 

'Tower of Dreams' (231 pp.) was published by Bantam Spectra in January 1999. It's one of six science fiction and fantasy novels author Nasir has published between 1995 and 2013. My review of his 1995 novel 'Quasar' is here.

 

'Tower' is set some 25 or so years into the 21st century. Blaine Ramsey, the protagonist, is an 'Image digger,' one of a select group of people with the ability to enter into a dreamlike state and receive imagery being fabricated by the collective unconscious of the surrounding populace. The use of meditative techniques and special herbs allows the digger to retain images encountered in dreams, and archive them into computers. The saved images can be used by multinational corporations for advertising and marketing campaigns. The more unorthodox an image, the more valued it is to the corporations.

 

As the novel opens, Ramsey is working for a prominent West Coast firm called Icon. He's been dispatched to a rural area in Jordan, there to dig into the surrounding Arab culture for new and provocative images. While engaged in his reveries, Ramsey has a particularly vivid dream about Buthaina, a beautiful Arab girl who lives in the home adjacent to his. However idyllic the start of his dream, it ends in tragedy when the girl is brutally beaten by her father. 

 

Ramsey becomes obsessed with Buthaina, not only convinced that she is a real human being, but that he can rescue her. Ramsey arranges to travel to Cairo, where he hopes to learn more about Buthaina's true identity and hopefully, her whereabouts. 

 

This near-future Cairo is a nightmarish place; Egypt has a population of 100 million, 35 million of whom live in the city. Stuffed into crumbling buildings and breathing dangerously polluted air, the vast majority of the populace are overwhelmed by poverty:

 

Beggars suddenly swarmed around the car, hanging on the windows on both sides with their dirty hands, entreating in broken English and French, trying to catch Blaine's eye, reaching into the car to clutch at him. Many were children or women holding babies. They made room for a security policeman to approach the car but otherwise ignored him. For the first time since coming to Cairo Blaine felt suddenly afraid of them, of the starving, homeless, desperate people in their hordes upon hordes. He rolled up the taxi windows with difficulty, almost catching a few insistent fingers in the glass, feeling guilty, angry, and a little sick, as he guessed visiting foreigners - it was only a courtesy to call them 'tourists' anymore - felt.

 

Ramsey's search takes him from the slums to the glittering nightclubs and high-rise apartment buildings of the city's wealthy elite. But his search is constrained by ominous events: debilitating visions of Buthaina come to Ramsey in his waking hours, and the visions coincide with alarming indications that a catastrophic earthquake looms for Egypt. Increasingly, the quest to find Buthaina requires a willingness to risk loss of life or limb. But Ramsey is too far gone in his obsession to think about stopping..........

 

I won't disclose spoilers about the denouement of the novel, but it involves a kind of 'Arab Magic Realism' that, for me, was unsatisfying and led me to award the book four, rather than five, Stars.

 

While the word 'cyberpunk' appears neither in the book nor in any of the advertising blurbs, I believe 'Tower' to be a second-generation cyberpunk novel. It's the book's cyberpunk aspects, and its Middle Eastern / Arab / Muslim setting, that give 'Tower' its offbeat quality. In this regard it is something of a spiritual successor to the 'Budayeen' novels of George Alec Effinger. But Nasir, who is the son of a Palestinian father and an American mother, has an inherent familiarity with the culture of the society he writes about that Effinger did not have. This familiarity gives the book a powerful verisimilitude.

Summing up, readers looking for a cyberpunk novel that eschews the traditional First World, or East Asian, locales and characters will find that 'Tower of Dreams' offer something new and imaginative.

Theme from 'S.W.A.T.'

Rhythm Heritage, 1975

Yesterday as I was driving along I was listening to the Sirius XM 'Seventies' channel, and the deejay was talking about how she was soliciting nominations for the 'greatest theme songs' of the decade, from listeners. On the Facebook page, there are at present over 300 nominations.

 

After about 10-15 seconds of contemplation, I knew that I had my candidate.

'The Theme from S.W.A.T.'

 

The show aired on ABC for two seasons, 1975 - 1976, before being cancelled (ostensibly because it was too violent; from what I remember from watching episodes in '76, the show was quite tame by modern standards). The theme song to the show, performed by the group 'Rhythm Heritage', was released as a single in November 1975 and peaked at number one on the Hot 100 chart in late February, 1976.

 

Rhythm Heritage did some cool stuff, including the theme to the TV show 'Baretta.'

I defy anyone to listen to 'The Theme from S.W.A.T.' and not immediately be geared up for some Special Weapons and Tactics action !

Dressing Up with Don (and the Girls)

'Dressing Up' with Don (and the Girls)

There was one negligee, it was six feet long, it was the prettiest one....six feet long, and it had a kind of drawstring at the chest so you could expand the chest....of course, this was my father's nightgown.

Every sci-fi fan who grew up during the Baby Boomer era is familiar with DAW Books, an imprint founded by Donald A. Wollheim, who was an author and editor of note in the genre.

Over at PBS, there's an interesting documentary about 'Casa Susanna,' a summer camp in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York where, in the 1950s and 1960s, crossdressing men would go to enjoy their fetish among others with similar attitudes.

 

Wollheim was not only a frequent visitor to Casa Susanna, he wrote (under the pseudonym 'Darrell G. Raynor') a novel, titled 'A Year Among the Girls,' about life at the camp.

 

The documentary features an interview with Wollheim's daughter Betsy, who has her theories as to why her father was emotionally and psychologically invested in crossdressing. According to Betsy, Wollheim at times could be 'cruel' to his wife and daughter and to his authors, but never to his fellow crossdressers.

 

I can't say I'll look at DAW books quite the same way again.............

Book Review: Montezuma Strip

Book Review: 'Montezuma Strip' by Alan Dean Foster

 4 / 5 Stars

'Montezuma Strip' (215 pp.) was published by Warner Books in August, 1995. The cover is by Don Pucky.

Alan Dean Foster (b. 1946) is one of the more prolific sci-fi writers of the past 50 years. His first novel, 'Luana,' was issued in 1974. That same year he was assigned to write the novelization of the movie 'Dark Star,' after which he embarked on a very successful career writing novelizations for many properties. His 1978 novel 'Splinter of the Mind's Eye' was the very first Star Wars spinoff novel, and one of several that he wrote for the franchise. Foster also produced a sizeable body of tie-ins for the Star Trek, Aliens, Transformers, and 'Dinotopia' franchises.

Foster has had success with his own novels, with some these, such as the 'Icerigger' series, representing the more popular sci-fi paperbacks of the 1970s and 1980s.

Perhaps because Foster 'wrote for a living,' and was content to focus on salable productions, he was not a member of the sci-fi literati during the New Wave era: he never published any stories in any of the 22 volumes of Damon Knight's 'Orbit' series, nor in any of the 12 volumes of Robert Silverberg's 'New Dimensions' anthologies.

When cyberpunk came on the scene, unsurprisingly, Foster embraced the genre. Starting in 1988, under the pseudonym 'James Lawson,' he published five stories in the digests Amazing and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, these featuring a Chicano detective named Angel Cardenas. 

In 2002 Foster published a full-length novel, titled 'The Mocking Program,' featuring Cardenas.

Cardenas lives in a near-future USA where the border with Mexico is more a concept than a reality, and high-tech corporations, maquiladoras, and the underclass compete for money and power in the region from Los Angeles ('LaLa') east to El Paso ('East Elpaso Juarez'). In this eponymous Strip, Cardenas has value as an 'intuitive,' meaning he can assess whether someone is being honest, or concealing something, when speaking. This quality of being a human lie detector makes him an important member of the Nogales, Arizona, federales office.

Foster's diction get can rather florid, especially when it comes to hardboiled similes: 

There were at least a dozen gangs that called Puerto Penasco home.....They lived in a condition of colloidal anarchy, battling among themselves as often as with rivals. This made it tough on the local federales, since a gang member one week might metamorphose into an independent skim artist the next.

***

....they clung to the flanks of the plants like whale lice to favored cetaceans.

***

Wormy G tied his boat up beneath the gaping maw of an old, broken piling that looked like a leviathan's half-extracted tooth.

***

 ....the captain shuffled through a pile of printouts on his desk like an aborigine digging for edible grubs before finally shoving a hard copy at his guest.

 ***

As well, I came across the words and phrases 'elutriate,' 'omphalos of noplace,' and 'chalcedony,' so readers of 'Montezuma' will need to gird themselves for some thickened prose..........

Anyways, my capsule summaries of the entries in 'Montezuma Strip':

Sanctuary (Amazing, 1988): Cardenas and his dog Charliebo are assigned to investigate the mysterious deaths of two programmers, Wallace Crescent and Vladimir Noschek, who were the top programmers at their respective companies. Something, or someone, has performed a remote lobotomy on the programmers, and may be looking for other victims. 

This story starts out well enough, but as it progresses the plot becomes overly complicated (real-world scientist Rupert Sheldrake, and his theory of 'morphogenetic fields,' is invoked) and the proto-Singularity phenomenon that underlies the denouement is a bit contrived.

Heartwired (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1992): an incel named Wormy G hangs out with the Teslas gang, mostly because Nita, gangleader Paco's girlfriend, will sometimes smile at Wormy. Could love be a possibility ? This story is well served by a street-level perspective, and a touch of pathos. 

Gagrito (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1993): the Strip has a booming trade in 'magimals'; these are animals that have been outfitted with wireless controller chips and circuitry that allow the animals to be manipulated into walking on their hind legs, opening doors, operating simple machines, or even speaking. A band of animal rights activists are taking violent action against the sellers of these altered species.

Hellado (Amazing, 1993): Esteban and Chuy come up with a scheme to raid the cargo cars in the train yard. They discover something disturbing in one of their targets........

Our Lady of the Machine (Amazing, 1994): a holographic manifestation of the Madonna is shaking down business owners. Those who won't come across, wind up dead.

Summing up, 'Montezuma Strip' joins the 'Budayeen' novels of George Alec Effinger as  foundational works that meld the crime / private eye and cyberpunk genres. In this regard, Foster and Effinger laid the groundwork for later novels in this genre, such as the 'Carlucci' books of Richard Paul Russo, 'Noir' by K. W. Jeter, and 'Black Glass' by John Shirley. If you like those novels, you're going to like 'Montezuma Strip.'

Playboy September 1974

Playboy

September 1974

September, 1974, and the number one single on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'I Shot the Sheriff,' by Eric Clapton. Quite a few classic soul / R & B tunes also on the list.

The September issue of Playboy is formidable; 246 pages, including a lot of advertising. Advertising for men's fashion, which, in 1974, was either horrible, or inspirational (depending on your point of view). For my part, I think the 'Casino' hat is pretty stylin' !

There is a lot of worthwhile content in this September issue, such as the interview with UK author Anthony Burgess. He reveals that an inspiration for his novel 'A Clockwork Orange' was a brutal incident involving his wife, that took place during the Second World War..........

It's a measure of how integral magazines were to the print media of the 1970s that this issue has some rather elaborate formatting, including a keyhole (the iris centered in the star) overlay of a brilliant illustration by Don Ivan Punchatz:

Elsewhere, we have a 'stepback' illustration for a short story by John Collier. These kinds of special inserts were expensive, but publishers (back then) deemed them valuable. It's doubtful if magazines being printed nowadays would be willing to do this sort of thing.........

The magazine's 'After Hours' section highlights the growing footprint of comics, and Marvel comics, in particular, as a pop culture phenomenon.

A noteworthy short story in this issue is 'A Place to Avoid' by David Ely. Ely (b. 1927), perhaps best known for his 1963 suspense novel 'Seconds,' presents a well-told tale of an Ugly German interacting with the peasantry of postwar Italy.

On the topic of Nudies, this issue makes clear the efforts by the Playboy editorial staff to emulate Penthouse. But they can't do it right. Trying to imitate Bob Guccione's softcore, soft-focus, simulated sex portfolios, Playboy does something called 'Do It Now !' about sex in public. The photos are cringey, even gross (an overweight middle-aged man in the steam room ?!). Guccione has Playboy beat by a mile.

 

At least this September issue gives us the traditional blonde nubile, this time in the form of 19 year-old Jane Lubeck, who is a 'Raiderette' cheerleader. I like Jane. She's that all-natural, 70s kind of a girl.

That's how they did it, fifty years ago in the Fall of '74 !