National Lampoon February 1974

National Lampoon

February, 1974

Let's step back in time 51 years, to February, 1974. 

 

The February 23, 1974 Billboard Top 200 album chart shows none other than Bob Dylan with the number one selling album in the USA, Planet Waves.

 

The latest issue of the National Lampoon is out on the newsstands, with the theme of 'Strange Sex.'

 

Perhaps sensing an opportune moment, Bob Dylan's record company bought some full-page advertising for Dylan's back catalogue:

 

Elvis (!) still was releasing albums, although they were mediocre, and got zero play on the album oriented rock (AOR) stations then dominating the FM airwaves. If you wanted to listen to Elvis on the radio, you went to the AM frequency and the Top Forty stations.

It was bands like ELO, 10CC, the Jackson Five, and Foghat getting attention on the AOR FM stations, and they would come to be chart-toppers as the decade wore on. Compared to them, Elvis and Dylan increasingly were old fashioned and out-of-date.......

This February issue highlights 'Strange Sex,' more of a Matty Simmons marketing come-on rather than anything really substantive. Although the Lampoon staff did do something transgressive:

 

As part of the Nostalgia Craze of the seventies, Marilyn Monroe came back into prominence, mainly through the bestselling 1973 photography book (below) authored by Norman Mailer, who was infatuated with Monroe and saw her as something of a timeless Muse and eternal avatar of female beauty and sexuality.

Satirizing the Monroe craze in a truly deviant fashion, the Lampoon staff featured a '1974 Marilyn Monroe Calendar' which consisted of a gruesome parody, artfully rendered by Melinda Bordelon, of Monroe's 1953 picture in Playboy magazine. 

 

Monroe, the Lampoon staff were telling Mailer and his fellow nostalgia enthusiasts, was dead and gone. Long dead, and long gone........!

 

 

The four-color comic insert in this February issue is 'First Lay Comics,' which features a primordial Animal House storyline from Doug Kenney and Joe Orlando. 

 

[Note to modern-day readers: David Eisenhower was the grandson of President Dwight Eisenhower, and a frequent target of derision from the Lampoon and the counterculture for two reasons; first, in 1968 he married Julie Nixon; and second, in 1970 he enlisted in the Navy Reserve, thus avoiding being called up in the draft and possibly serving in Vietnam. The counterculture saw this as a blatant act of political privilege.] 

 

 

 

 

 

 

'Boxed In,' the short story by Chris Miller, starts off as a satirical look at horny teens: Benny is hoping to score during a hot-and-heavy makeout session on the couch with the luscious Suzette Kornfeld. However, when Benny arrives at the Kornfeld home, he must endure some odd remarks from Mr. Kornfeld about his daughter, including "Do you ever...squeeze her tushie ?"

 

When Mr. Kornfeld and his wife head upstairs  to give the young couple the living room and some privacy, Benny can't help but wonder what is going on in the Kornfeld family.

 

The story takes a real turn into horror in its closing paragraphs. Another great entry from Miller, and another reason why I'm hoping that someday he can get permission from the current owners of the Lampoon property to release a compilation of his work for the magazine.

Keeping to the theme of 'strange sex' (i.e., gay) editors Tony Hendra and Sean Kelly (?) do a 'Homo Funnies.'

And we of course have the comics and cartoons that are present in every issue of the Lampoon.

 

 

 

That's what you got for your 85 cents, back in February of '74..............

Ten Great Vintage Stories and Overpopulation and Eco-Catastrophe

Ten Great, Vintage Stories About Overpopulation and Eco-Catastrophe

Star Trek: 'The Mark of Gideon,' 1969

The 1960s and 1970s were the golden years in science fiction literature for stories about the horrors inherent in ecological collapse and overpopulation. In the interests of prompting people to take action, such stories often were provocative, even hectoring. 

Here is a list of some well-known, and lesser-known, stories on eco-catastrophe and overpopulation, all designed to make you think. And maybe bring a touch or two of nostalgia for those who are Baby Boomers ! 

[ Given the age of these stories, and the increasing costs of acquiring paperbacks first published some 50 or more years ago, I've tried to give multiple sources for these tales. Hopefully this makes it a little easier to access them. ]

Billenium (1961), by J. G. Ballard: this Old School gem frequently has been anthologized, such as in the 1976 anthology 'The City: 2000 AD,' edited by Clem, Greenberg, and Olander, as well as 1962, eponymous compilation of Ballard tales. Despite the passage of the decades since its first appearance, ‘Billenium’s’ account of the street-level reality of overpopulation, where people are desperate to find another square yard of living space, remains one of the most powerful treatments of the topic ever to be published.

***

The Purple Child (1966), by Emilio Belaval: this tale can be found in the 1971 anthology 'Voyages: Scenarios for A Ship Called Earth.' It’s a particularly grim, but effective, account of poverty and childbearing in rural Central America. Belaval, a Puerto Rican author, offers a rebuke to those gringos who wonder, “why don’t those grubby peasants practice birth control ?”

***

The Vitanuls (1967) by John Brunner: This first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, July 1967, and later in the 1972 Brunner anthology 'From This Day Forward.' An American MD stumbles across an unusual phenomenon when he tours a maternity hospital in India. The atmosphere of this story is somber and unsettling.

***

Eco-Catastrophe (1969) by Paul R. Ehrlich: Famous in his day for his bestselling book The Population Bomb, Ehrlich crafts a convincing ‘what if’ story about a near-future world endangered because it didn’t follow the proscriptions outlined in Population Bomb. This story is included in Best SF: 1969, edited by Brian Aldiss and Harry Harrison. 

***

Total Environment (1968), by Brian W. Aldiss: this first appeared in the February, 1968 issue of Galaxy magazine, and later in 'The City: 2000 AD' (1976). The ‘environment’ of the title is an arcology in which 500 young Indian couples are sequestered, and left to their own devices. It’s an experiment in social science, designed to see how humans cope with severe overcrowding. Aldiss clearly intended this story to explore the implications of the iconic 'behavioral sink' experiments on rodents conducted in the late 1960s at the National Institutes of Health, by zoologist John B. Calhoun.

***

Brian Aldiss also wrote Orgy of the Living and the Dying (1970), which is available in the 1970 anthology 'The Year 2000,' edited by Harry Harrison. ‘Orgy’ is set in an impoverished region of India in the midst of severe drought and famine. In this bleak and seemingly hopeless setting, the lead character (who is something of an Ugly European) is offered the chance to be an unlikely hero.

***

Population Control, 1986 (1970), by Horacio Paredes, is an interesting entry, first appearing in Atlas magazine in 1970, and later, in the 1971 Zero Population Growth anthology 'Voyages: Scenarios for A Ship Called Earth.' It’s a rare tale by a ‘third world’ writer (Paredes was a Filipino) about the Population Bomb. ‘Population Control’ is a brief, but competent, tale of drastic measures taken to curtail population growth in India and the Philippines.

***

And Watch the Smog Roll In (1971) by Barry Weissman: This was published in the 1971 anthology 'Protostars,' edited by David Gerrold. It’s a dark satire of a near-future California in the grip of overpopulation, severe pollution, and a dysfunctional bureaucracy gone amok (making this story, some might argue, rather uncomfortably predictive of our current reality).

***

A Happy Day in 2381 (1970), by Robert Silverberg: this story first saw print in the 1971 anthology 'Nova,' and later in 'The City: 2000 AD' (above). In the Future City, Earth's population of 75 billion live in arcologies three kilometers high. Mattern, an inhabitant of one such arcology, hosts a visitor whose remarks leave Mattern wondering about the wisdom of Unchecked Fecundity. Silverberg later would expand this story into his 1971 novel 'The World Inside,' about an overpopulated Earth where people live their entire lives indoors.

***

Triage (1976), by William Walling: this story first appeared in Analog in November, 1976. It later was included in the anthologies 'No Room for Man' (1979) edited by Clem, Greenberg, and Olander, and 'The Crash of Empire,' (1989) edited by Carr and Pournelle. In ‘Triage,’ a U.N. bureaucrat in charge of distributing food aid to the starving millions in third-world countries is forced to play God, a position in which no human being ever wants to find themselves.

Book Review: NYPD 2025

Book Review: 'NYPD 2025' by Hal Stryker

0 / 5 Stars

'NYPD 2025' (185 pp.) was published by Pinnacle Books in May, 1985. The cover art is by John Berkey. 

'Hal Stryker' apparently is a pseudonym, as the book is copyrighted by George H. Smith (1922 - 1996). According to his Wiki entry, Smith churned out more than 100 novels, in a variety of genres, for a variety of paperback publishers, making him a genuine 'Paperback Writer.'

So, how well does a forty year-old novel set in the 'future' predict what 2025 actually will be like ? The answer is, not very well. Indeed, 'NYPD 2025' essentially is an exercise in facetiousness.

As Stryker imagines it, the New York City of 2025 is like something out of 'Magnus, Robot Fighter,' or the film The Fifth Element. Meaning, 200-story skyscrapers, thousands of aircars buzzing though the skies, wall-sized TVs that transmit 3-D programs called 'solidios,' miraculous medical technologies, androids / robots, ray guns, colonies on Mars, communications devices wired directly into brain tissue, etc., etc.

The novel's opening chapters introduce us to the lead character, the square-jawed, rugged, All American man of action Zack Ward. A veteran of campaigns waged in Central America against the commies, Zack is in a spot of trouble, having been kidnapped by a team of anarchists. Led by the villainous Pablo and Kruger, the anarchists, trusting that the Media is the Message, want to abuse him for a solidio, this being the best vehicle to discredit Zack's anti-communist ideology and advance the cause of the Socialist International.

Luckily for Zack, he meets up with the eponymous NYPD 2025 unit Ten. This is a team of operatives, including the unfortunately named android 'Andy Jumbles,' who are led by the stunning Judge Portia van Wyck. The Ten are something of an extralegal unit, tasked with using all means at their disposal to combat the epidemic of crime loosed on the city, and the greater USA, by the ultra-liberal rule of President Buchanan.

Judge Portia sends Zack off on a mission to investigate leading silidio producer Dynamic Studios, whose hit show is a 'snuff' feature starring '...the Slasher of Slaughter Gulch, who has dismembered thirty-five victims so far in his demonic search for [the lubricious young woman] Foxxy [van Pelt].'

This sets Zack on a course for a fateful encounter with the Slasher, one sure to end in bloodshed and death - !

I picked up 'NYPD 2025' with the realization that it is a 'Men's Adventure' novel in a thin sci-fi coating. I wasn't expecting deathless prose, measured pacing, or in-depth characterization. 

But even when giving the novel wide leeway in evaluative terms, it comes up as a very, very lame entry in the genre. While author Stryker suffuses the book with sarcastic humor that takes aim at liberal and progressive idiocies, the constant stream of winking asides quickly grows tiring, as does the contrived nature of the action sequences and the inane dialogue. It's not difficult to see why, despite the cover blurb, no additional volumes in the series ever saw print.

Even dedicated fans of the Men's Adventure novel genre are going to find 'NYPD 2025' forgettable. I give it a Zero Star Rating. With prices for used copies starting at $23 on up, you're better off passing on this one !

Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows

Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows

by Jean-Claude Mezieres (art) and Pierre Cristin (story)

Dargaurd, 1981

'Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows' (48 pp.) first was issued in 1975 as a serial in the French magazine Pilote, then later, an album des bande dessinee (Franco-Belgian comic book). 

It's one of a number of Valerian albums des bande dessinees that were translated into English and published in the United States by Dargaud during the early 1980s; 'Ambassador' was issued in 1981. That same year, it was serialized in Heavy Metal magazine.

Some of the contents of 'Ambassador' were incorporated into the 2017 feature film Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets.

The Dargaud editions measure 8 3/4 x 11 1/4 inches, which corresponds to the dimensions of the traditional bande dessinee. It's nice to see the artwork in the format in which it originally was published.

As 'Ambassador' opens, our heroes Valerian and Laureline are tasked with escorting the Galaxity ambassador to an important diplomatic conference on the massive artificial planet of Central Point.

Central Point, which has been in existence for hundreds of years, is home to envoys from all the civilized races of the galaxy; these are accommodated in neighborhoods custom-tailored for the physiologies of their inhabitants.

This being a French comic, the ambassador likely is a satirical depiction of an actual French politician from the mid-70s, but I confess to not knowing exactly who that French politician is..........

Soon after their arrival on Central Point, a group of assailants ambush the team and abduct the ambassador and Valerian. It is up to the resolute Laureline, accompanied by a reluctant Colonel Diol, a 'protocol officer' of cowardly bent.

The search for the ambassador and Valerian will takes Laureline all over Central Point, and involve encounters with all manner of strange alien races.

'Valerian: Ambassador of the Shadows' is another good episode in the Valerian Canon. The action is well-plotted by Cristin, who takes advantage of the sprawling nature of Central Point to introduce the characters into a new milieu every other page or so. This being a comic intended for a juvenile audience, there is no explicit violence or risque content, but there certainly is some satiric humor that will be understood on a 'adult' level.

As with other Valerian titles, there is a political subtext to Cristin's story, namely, Galaxity (a stand-in for Earth) is a less than noble entity, and the ambassador's mission has an underlying motive that belies Galaxity's outward appearance of cooperativity and mutual respect. 

Mezieres' artwork is very good, and the color schemes are arguably more advanced as compared to those appearing in the American comic books of the 1970s and 1980s.

If you're interested in getting a copy of 'Ambassador of the Shadows', copies of the Dargaud edition remain available for prices under $20. Also available is a smaller-dimension English version, released by UK's Cinebook in 2013. And, as the sixth book in the Valerian series, 'Ambasador of the Shadows' currently is included in Cinebook's 'Valerian: The Complete Collection' hardbound edition, Volume 3 (2017).