Starstream: Adventures in Science Fiction Issue One

'Starstream: Adventures in Science Fiction' Issue One (1976)

'Starstream' was a color comic book priced at 79 cents and published by Whitman / Western Publishing Company; four issues (all devoid of the Gold Key insignia) appeared in 1976 before the title vanished into obscurity. 

Issue one featured a painted cover by Richard Powers, so Western was perhaps trying to produce a book with better production values than the norm from DC and Marvel.

The books featured adaptations of stories by well-known SF authors. In the main these are decent enough stories, if not particularly adventurous in writing and style. Even though all four issues of 'Starstream'  lacked a Comics Code Authority stamp, like the Gold Key comics line they were clearly marketed for a young adult / juvenile audience.

Excerpted here from one of the issues (they had no date or month indicator on the cover, and a minimal indica) is a story adapted from  'The Music of Minox', a story by Howard Goldsmith from the anthology 'More Science Fiction Tales' (1974) by Roger Elwood.

 

'Salammbo' by Phillippe Druillet

(conclusion)

from the March 1981 issue of Heavy Metal

Book Review: Vector

Book Review: 'Vector' by Henry Sutton

2 / 5 Stars

‘Henry Sutton’ was a pseudonym used by the American poet and playwright David Slavitt (b. 1935) when he was writing ‘popular literature’ for the paperback market during the 60s and 70s. ‘Vector’ was published in 1970 (Dell, 320 pp.); the artist who provided the striking cover design is uncredited.

‘Vector’ takes for inspiration a March 1968 incident involving Dugway Proving Ground, an Army test facility located in a remote region of Utah. It seems that in the course of conducting an open-air release of the nerve gas VX that involved spraying the agent from a jet plane, the Army screwed up and exposed Skull Valley, 30 miles away, to the gas. As many as six thousand sheep in Skull Valley were killed or permanently injured by inhaling VX. 

The Army initially tried to blame the sheep casualties on pesticide spraying, a half-witted excuse that fooled no one. The Army wound up paying compensation to the ranchers. As a consequence of the sheep kill, in 1969 President Nixon banned open-air testing of CBW agents.

(The 1972 film Rage, starring George C. Scott, also is based on the Dugway incident ).

With this novel, Sutton adopts the documentary style used by Michael Crichton in ‘The Andromeda Strain’, to relate a tale in which a virus, rather than a nerve gas, is accidentally released by a test plane. The virus drifts onto the small, dilapidated town of Tarsus, Utah. Soon a number of townspeople are ill with fever and a physician at Dugway, Captain Norman Lewine, makes a visit to Tarsus. What he sees raises deep misgivings within the good doctor, and thus a few hours later an Army intervention team descends on the stricken town.

But even as medical care is provided to the sick and dying, generals and administrators in Washington, DC are meeting to determine how to respond to the incident. Will the government tell the truth about the Tarsus disaster ? Or will it try to cover it up ? And if a coverup is put in place, what will happen to any survivors ? For the Intelligence Agency directors in DC care more about the preserving their elite weapons testing programs than they do about 70 people in some squalid little Western town…..

 ‘Vector’ starts off promisingly, with author Sutton ably mimicking Crichton’s approach of relating events in a low-key, dry manner that emphasizes the immoral, clinical detachment of the higher-level admins surveying the accident’s consequences. The first 100 pages are engaging and hold the reader’s interest. 

Unfortunately, once the book hits its midway point the narrative starts to drag, and the novel suffers from being about 100 pages too long. I won’t disclose any spoilers, but I think most readers will see the denouement coming well in advance.

‘Vector’ is an interesting effort, but in my mind it can’t join ranks with ‘The Andromeda Strain’ as a must-have example of the late 60s – early 70s bio-catastrophe thriller.

Arthur Suydam's 'Mudwogs'

from 'Echo of Futurepast' issue 3

With the giant defeated, our hero now contemplates his pending Fatherhood.....

 

'Heavy Metal' magazine March 1981

 The March 1981 issue of 'heavy Metal' features a cover by Matti Klarwein titled 'God Jokes', and a back cover by Jeronaton, one of his 'Champakou' -themed illustrations, titled 'I See Spots'.

Inside, there are continuing installments of Corben's 'Bloodstar', 'What Is Reality' by Ribera and Godard, 'Salammbo' by Druillet, 'Ambassador of the Shadows' by Christin and Mezieres; and some one-shot pieces:  'Milady 3000' by Magnus, 'Tex Arcana' by Findley, and 'Edward in Love' by Dominique He, which I excerpt below.

As always, outstanding pen-and-ink draughtsmanship by He.

Book Review: New Writings in SF 7

Book Review: 'New Writings in SF 7' edited by John Carnell

3 / 5 Stars

‘New Writings in SF 7’, edited by John Carnell, was published by Bantam Books in August 1971; the interesting cover illustration is by David McCall Johnston. All of the contents were written in 1966, exclusively for this anthology.

Colin Kapp opens the collection with ‘The Pen and the Dark’, in which the Unorthodox Engineers travel to the planet of Ithica to investigate a mysterious artifact. It’s a well-written hard SF tale.

Next up is Arthur Sellings’ ‘Gifts of the Gods’, in which the residents of a newly-constructed English exurb awake to find mysterious artifacts scattered on their lawns. The story has a very Roald-Dahl-ish flavor, mixing offbeat humor with a tone of increasing disquiet.

William Spencer contributes ‘The Long Memory’ , set deep in the bowels of an enormous city where everyone, and everyplace, is continually monitored by surveillance cameras. The ending is perhaps a bit predictable.

There are two entries by the same author, the prolific John Rankine:

Under the pseudonym of Douglas R. Mason, Rankine contributes the New Wave tale ‘The Man Who Missed the Ferry’. Set in mid-60s Liverpool, a clerk named Arthur Sinclair experiences some amazing events on his morning commute. Less SF than Speculative Fiction, the story suffers from Rankine / Mason’s use of a determinedly elliptical prose style, making it the least impressive story in the collection.

Writing under his given name, Rankine provides ‘Six Cubed Plus One’, which features swingin’ 60s dialogue and social mores. Some newfangled computerized teaching machines are installed at a high school, and when the setup births an AI, its vehicle for communication with the befuddled staff is a Marianne-Faithful lookalike named Sarah Joy. This story has a touch of pathos, reasonably clear writing, and indicates that despite his high-throughput approach to his craft, Rankine could produce something of quality when the mood took him.

Robert Presslie provides ‘The Night of the Seventh Finger’. In a newly built English exurb (rather a recurring setting in these stories), swingin’ bird Sue Bradley comes home late from a night of clubbing; her walk takes her by an abandoned house, rumored to be haunted. Also incorporating dialogue heavily laden with slang terms and uniquely British idioms, American readers may want to brush up on their ‘Groovy 1960s London’ vocabulary prior to reading ‘Finger’.

The final story in the anthology is the best. Vincent King’s ‘Defense Mechanism’ is set on a far-future Earth where the remnants of the population live amid the spaces of an enormous underground city complex. When some Aliens encroach on the turf of the first-person narrator, he is obliged to gather a posse and pursue the attackers and eliminate them. The dimly lit environs of the empty city complex are a perfect setting for a tale of pursuit and close-combat; there is an offbeat ending. 

All in all, ‘New Writings’ is a reasonably good 60s SF anthology, and readers interested in this era might want to pick this volume up.

'For the Next 60 Seconds' by Bob Larkin

from the Spring 1980 issue of Epic Illustrated