Heavy Metal magazine May 1978

'Heavy Metal' magazine, May, 1978

The May, 1978 issue of Heavy Metal featured a striking front cover by Philippe Druillet, and a back cover by Tom Barber.

Along with installments of 'Airtight Garage', 'Barbarella', '1996', 'Urm', and 'Orion', there is an advertisement for science fiction / fantasy art books, primarily works by Roger Dean, and the newly launched 'Ariel: The Book of Fantasy'. Patrick Woodroffe's 'Mythopoeikon' was perhaps the best in the lot.

Among a number of good-quality, shorter strips was a three-pager by Sergio Macedo, titled 'An Image'.

Book Review: Interfaces

Book Review: 'Interfaces' by Ursula K. Le Guin and Virginia Kidd

2 / 5 Stars

‘Interfaces’ (310 pp) was published by Ace Books in February, 1980; the cover illustration is by Alex Abel.

In the Introduction – which consists of an interview with each of the editors – Ursula Le Guin and Virginia Kidd declare that ‘Interfaces’ is indeed primarily an sf anthology, despite the cover allusions to ‘Speculative Fiction’. ‘Interfaces’ contains original stories (and poems) written exclusively for the anthology by both established, and new, writers.

Needless to say, 'Interfaces' is dedicated to showcasing the New Wave movement, even though by 1980 the movement was plainly exhausted, both creatively and economically.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

‘The Reason for the Visit’, by John Crowley: an author has conversations with the ghost of a deceased writer. This story is as lame as it sounds.

‘Set Piece’, by Jill Paton Walsh: slight fable about two young men, and the paths they choose through Life.

‘Everything Blowing Up: An Adventure of Una Persson, Heroine of Time and Space’, by Hilary Bailey: Michael Moorcock’s heroine Una Persson journeys across the ever-changing landscape of the Multiverse on an important mission.

‘The New Zombies’, by Avram Davidson and Grania Davis: The best story in the anthology. Davidson and his wife tell a tale of San Francisco, the seamier aspects of its hippy culture, and the unpleasant activities hidden under the peace and love vibe. Sits alongside Harlan Ellison’s ‘Shattered Like A Glass Goblin’ as a shrewd exploration of the squalid nature of the hippy generation.

‘Earth and Stone’, by Robert Holdstock: a time traveler from the future journeys to the British isles of 3,000 BC to study a Neolithic tomb-building tribe. He discovers disturbing rituals, and a world-view traumatic to his sensibilities. This story has the underpinnings of a good tale, but its unwieldy length, self-absorption with ancient languages, and the histrionics of the main character, leech too much momentum from the narrative.

‘A Short History of the Bicycle: 401 BC to 2677 AD’, by Michael Bishop: an effort at a humorous, vaguely satirical ‘speculative’ fiction piece, involving a planet where bicycles are living beings. The worst story in the anthology.

‘Shadows, Moving’, by Vonda McIntyre: aged person makes the Final Journey. Tries to mix pathos and quasi-religious optimism, but winds up just…..unremarkable.

‘The Pastseer’ by Philippa C. Maddern: the wise woman of a primitive tribe channels the Jungian consciousness of her people in order to direct their migrations. Trouble sets in when she has visions of otherwordly intent. Imaginative, if handicapped with too-vague an ending.

‘Hunger and the Computer’ by Gary Weimberg: spaceman confronts dysfunctional machinery. Unsuccessful effort at a ‘Twilght Zone’- style story.

‘Household Gods’ by Daphne Castell: offbeat take on the ‘alien invasion’ story. Another of the better entries in the anthology.

‘Bender, Fenugreek, Slatterman and Mupp’ by D. G. Compton: regimented life in a near-future dystopia. A more cleanly-written, coherent short story than the type Compton usually wrote, so I was pleased.

‘Precession’ by Edward Bryant: a man is afflicted by a unique ailment that abruptly places him out of phase with the passage of time. An interesting concept, but Bryant’s use of a too-figurative prose style, and a focus on the Heartache of Sundered Relationships, fails to sustain.

‘A Criminal Proceeding’ by Gene Wolfe: labored satire of a trial set in a future Idiocracy. The second-worst tale in the anthology.

‘For Whom Are Those Serpents Whistling Overhead ?’ by Jean Femling: bored housewife encounters a mythical creature.

‘The Summer Sweet, the Winter Wild’ by Michael G. Coney: the gestalt consciousness of a caribou herd serves as the third-person narrator of an eventful period for the herd.

‘Slow Music’ by James Tiptree, Jr (i.e., Alice Bradley Sheldon): as Cosmic Reincarnation grips the Earth, a young couple embark on a fateful romantic relationship. Somewhat unlike Tiptree’s usual man + woman stories of the mid- to later- 70s, the conflict between the genders is more nuanced, and less acerbic, than he (she) usually portrayed such topics..

The anthology features a number of short (one page) poems, all of which are not really recognizable as sf.

In summary, ‘Interfaces’ is neither any worse, nor any better, than the other short story anthologies released during the New Wave era. 

‘The New Zombies’ can be found in dedicated Davidson anthologies, so potential buyers must weigh the value of the other stories in ‘Interfaces’, as they come to their decision.

'Father Shandor, Demon Stalker'
'The Empire of Sin'
from Warrior (UK) No. 5, September, 1982

Artist David Jackson continues his impressive pen-and-ink work on this installment of the Father Shandor saga. 

When you compare the quality of the art in this comic from 1982, with that appearing nowadays in the seemingly endless slew of 'B.P.R.D.' comics from Dark Horse, there's no comparison

A single panel of Jackson's intricate cross-hatching and shading is superior to the entire B.P.R.D. catalog. 

 

Debbie Harry, 1977

Debbie Harry
photoshoot, 1977
from the book Punk: The Whole Story, 2006

'The Bus' by Paul Kirchner

Book Review: 'The Embedding' by Ian Watson

1 / 5 Stars

‘The Embedding’ was published by Gollanz (UK) in 1973. This Bantam Books paperback (217 pp) was released in April 1977, with a cover illustration by Paul Lehr.

‘Embedding’ was English author Watson’s first novel.

The book contains two alternating sub-plots, both of which eventually mesh later in the narrative. In one sub-plot, Chris Sole, a linguist at a research institute in England, is working with traumatized, semi-catatonic Bangladeshi refugee children (?!) and trying various elaborate social conditioning methods – including a brain-stimulating drug – to get them to communicate.

In the other sub-plot, a French anthropologist named Pierre is living with a tribe of Amazonian Indians called the Xemahoa. The Xemahoa possess two languages, one being a ‘conventional’ method of spoken communication. The other Xemahoa language is an ill-defined, esoteric form of semi-telepathic communication that involves taking hallucinogenic drugs, which in turn triggers an all-encompassing Awareness of the True Nature of the World.

When an alien spaceship is discovered en route to Earth, both of these plots begin to converge, as the communication becomes the all-important key to managing First Contact.

‘The Embedding’ was a struggle to get through.

Author Watson was intent on using various linguistic theories, that were hip and trendy in the early 70s, as the underpinning of his novel. Many passages are over-written efforts to introduce concepts of a Universal Consciousness through Communication, and these paradigms are too half-baked, and too tepid, to drive the narrative.

The reader must confront clunky mediocre exchanges of dialogue, such as this interaction with one of the aliens:

“Not so,” howled Ph’theri , raising both arms and tick-tacking his thumbs in the utmost anger or agitation. “We Sp’thra are not sick. We are aware. Change Speakers exist – in another reality plane ! When they phased with This-Reality, the event set up a resonance which is this Bereft Love and this Anguish and this Grim Haunting all at once. You have not known this. No other race has. The Change Speakers modulate all the reality tangents to the plane of our embedding here….”

Even FanFic dialogue is superior !

‘The Embedding’ is a yet another New Wave sf novel that concentrated too hard on layering its narrative with gimmicky tropes from the soft sciences – psychology, sociology, anthropology, etc. – while failing to tell a good story in the process.

Unless you are a dedicated follower of linguistic theorizing, this book can be passed by without penalty.

Heavy Metal magazine, May 1983

'Heavy Metal' magazine, May 1983

May, 1983, is here, and I graduate from college. Much like today, the economic situation for new graduates is not very good. Many in the upstate New York area of Broome County are leaving, or have left, for the Sun Belt, where the economy is booming. In fact, in the next year of 1984, I, too, will depart for points South.

On heavy rotation on MTV is ‘Der Kommissar’, by the British band After the Fire. The band actually had recorded the song a year earlier, in the Summer of 1982, after original artist Falco had a big hit with the song in Germany at the start of that year.

After the Fire’s single went nowhere in the UK, and by the end of ’82 the band had split. Somewhat improbably, the single picked up airplay in the US, entering the Billboard Hot 100 list in February, 1983, and eventually making it all the way to No. 5 later that Spring.

The May issue of Heavy Metal is on the stands, and this month’s magazine features a front cover by Frank Riley, and a back cover by Rick Meyerowitz.

The Dossier section leads off with an interview with Canadian director David Cronenberg, at that time filming 'The Dead Zone'.

The ‘Future Tense’ section reviews sf books, including John Varley’s MIllenium, Poul Anderson’s Orion Shall Rise, and Robert Thurston’s A Set of Wheels (stay tuned for a forthcoming review here at the PorPor Books Blog). 

Also getting coverage is the proto-cyberpunk novel Mindkiller by Spider Robinson.

The emerging genre of rap gets its own section in HM, the ‘Rap-up’ section. Releases by founding fathers Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, the Sugar Hill Gang, and Afrika Bambaataa, are reviewed by Stuart Cohn. 

HM Editor Ted White can’t resist plugging jazz releases, even though he must have realized that the final nails in the Jazz coffin were being driven by the rappers being profiled elsewhere in the same Dossier.



 

The graphics / comics material in this issue includes ongoing installments of ‘The Ape’, ‘Zora’, ‘The City That Didn’t Exist’, and ‘Starstruck’. Among the better singleton pieces is ‘Space Crusader’ by Pepe Moreno, which I’ve posted below.