Book Review: The Death Cycle

 January is Gold Medal Books Month at the PorPor Books Blog

Book Review: 'The Death Cycle' by Charles Runyon

3 / 5 Stars

‘The Death Cycle’ (159 pp.) was published by Fawcett’s Gold Medal imprint in January 1963, as number s1268.

Charles W. Runyon (1928-2015) wrote a sizeable number of short stories and novels in the mystery, private eye, and sf genres during the 60s and 70s. Some of these saw publication under the house name 'Ellery Queen'. I consider his 1971 novel ‘Pig World’ to be an interesting, overlooked example of proto-Cyberpunk, while ‘Soulmate’ (1974) is a reasonably effective horror novel.

As ‘The Death Cycle’ opens our protagonists, Brett Phelan and his wife Jeanne, and Carl Newsome and his wife Doris, are on motorcycles, and on the run. It turns out that they have stolen $65,000 and are fleeing Chicago, where a jeweler was shot dead in the course of a robbery, for Southern Mexico.

Brett is not the nicest of men, and there is a rivalry between he and Carl that goes back to the days when they served in the same unit during the Korean War. For his part, Carl dislikes and distrusts Brett, but realizes that until they reach safety in Mexico, the two are obliged to work together.

Doris and Jeanne are complete opposites. Doris is, in the parlance of early 60 pulp fiction, a ‘nympho’ who constantly craves attention, while Jeanne’s life as Brett’s spouse has left her steeped in misery……and bruises.

As the couples travel ever closer to their final destination, where the money is to be split and separate ways taken, the likelihood of a double-cross looms ever larger. And the man to deliver it will be a sadistic Mexican pistolero nicknamed ‘Trinidad’…………

‘The Death Cycle’ is a serviceable, if not particularly imaginative, example of early 60s noir fiction. The novel is suffused with hard-boiled language, and here are some examples:

His blue eyes measured the world from a face that was locked up tight, like a house shuttered from a storm.

****

Sometimes she looked at them with the shocked fascination of a girl caught up in a lynch mob on her way to Sunday school.

****

When Frieda’s husband was away, her mind roiled with sexual fantasies which would make a Ciudad Juarez puta squirm uncomfortably on her pallet.

****

I’ve got a nose for death, thought Brett. I can smell people who are about to die.

***

And I encountered, for the first time in my life, the noun (?) ‘asininity’ within the pages of ‘The Death Cycle.’

I won’t disclose any spoilers, save to say that the conflict between Brett and Carl is resolved in a satisfactory way.

The verdict ? Those who like crime and suspense novels from the Gold Medal catalogue probably will find ‘The Death Cycle’ rewarding. Those accustomed to more sophisticated styles of writing may be disappointed.

Byron Preiss appreciation

Byron Preiss Appreciation

Byron Preiss (1953 - 2005) was a major influence in the effort to persuade publishers to pair science fiction and fantasy content with graphic art, back in the 1970s and 1980s.

photo by Travis T. Shuler, from https://www.facebook.com/groups/byronpreiss/

Here's an article by Edo Bosnar about the impact Preiss's books had on genre publishing, back in the days when the sci-fi enterprise just was starting to become the commercial juggernaut it is today. 

Not all of Preiss's efforts were overly memorable; much of the 'Weird Heroes' franchise turned out to be too cheesy to appeal to me neither back in the 1970s, nor when read nowadays. 

But there were more than a few Preiss productions, such as 'The Complete Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination', 'The Illustrated Harlan Ellison' and 'Empire', that were real assets to the field of fantastic literature. They ensure Preiss's place as an innovator in genre publishing.

Book Review: The City: 2000 A.D.

Book Review: 'The City: 2000 A.D.' 

edited by Ralph Clem, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Joseph Olander

 3 / 5 Stars

'The City: 2000 A.D. Urban Life Through Science Fiction' (304 pp.) was published by Fawcett Crest in July, 1976. The cover art is attributed to Larry Kresek.

This was the first of two sci-fi anthologies co-edited by Ralph Clem and the indefatigable Martin Greenberg, the other being 'No Room for Man' (1979). These anthologies, as well as others published by Olander and Greenberg in the 1970s, were of educative intent, designed to be textbooks for high school and college courses. 

As such, the Clem / Olander / Greenberg productions were among the more accessible sci-fi anthologies of the New Wave era, as they necessarily relied upon short fiction that was devoid of the unconventional, avant-garde mannerisms that marked much of the New Wave's output of that era.

'The City' contains stories first published during the interval from 1911 to 1975. Some of the stories previously appeared in Roger Elwood's 'Future City' anthology from 1973. And some of the entries here in 'The City: 2000 A.D.' are present in 'No Room for Man'.

Each of the entries in 'The City: 2000 A.D.' has an introduction from the editors; these introductions are pedantic, admonitory, and tinged with a progressive, liberal political ideology. It's clear that the editors view the city as a malevolent construct, and the selections in this anthology are designed to reflect this view.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

 New York A.D. 2660 (1911), Hugo Gernsback: an excerpt from Gernsback's novel. It's mainly of interest as one of sci-fi's first treatments of the modern city as a technological wonderland, the apogee of American resourcefulness.

Jesting Pilot (1947), by Henry Kuttner: the Future City is bounded by an impenetrable wall; a malcontent persists in wondering about what lies outside the wall. I've never been much of a fan of Henry Kuttner, and this story, with its stilted prose and inane plotting, reminds me why. It's the worst entrant in the anthology.

Chicago (1973) • short story by Thomas F. Monteleone: the future metropolis is completely automated; a robot questions why. 

Street of Dreams, Feet of Clay (1967), by Robert Sheckley: fed up with the rat race of life in an overcrowded, polluted New York City, Edward Carmody decides to visit the 'smart city' of Bellwether, New Jersey. An underwhelming social satire from Sheckley.

The Vanishing American (1955), by Charles Beaumont: the impersonalized nature of life in the Future City drives Mr. Michell into a profound state of alienation. 

Billennium (1961), by J. G. Ballard: despite the passage of the decades, this tale of the street-level reality of overpopulation remains one of the most powerful treatments of the topic.

Total Environment (1968), by Brian W. Aldiss: 500 young Indian couples are sequestered in an arcology and left to their own devices; it is an experiment designed to see how humans cope with severe overcrowding. Aldiss clearly intended this story to explore the implications of the iconic 'behavioral sink' rodent experiments conducted in the late 1960s at NIH by zoologist John B. Calhoun. In this regard, 'Total Environment' is an exemplar of the sci-fi of the Population Bomb era, and one of Aldiss's better novelettes.

Black Is Beautiful (1970), by Robert Silverberg: this story first appeared in Harry Harrison's 1970 anthology 'The Year 2000'. In Silverberg's story, White Flight has led to Manhattan being covered with a transparent dome, and black people constituting the overwhelming majority of the population. A youngblood named James Shabazz is out to make sure Whitey understands his place in the new social order, you dig, baby ? A cool tale from Silverberg.

In Dark Places (1973), by Joe L. Hensley: gritty, grim tale of racial warfare in a decrepit near-future cityscape. Its offbeat, proto-Cyberpunk sensibility makes it another of the standout stories in the anthology.

East Wind, West Wind (1972), by Frank M. Robinson: in a devastatingly polluted Future City, the protagonist investigates a report of someone operating banned machinery: a gasoline-driven car. An effective Eco-Catastrophe tale from the genre's heyday in the early 70s.

Disposal (1970), by Ron Goulart: when Lon's futuristic garbage disposal breaks, it means disaster for the entire family.

The Undercity (1973), by Dean R. Koontz: in the Future City, liberal reformers have made permissible offenses that, in the past, were felonies. But that doesn't stop enterprising criminals from making a living from breaking the law, often in ingenious ways. 

Gas Mask (1964), by James D. Houston: brilliant little tale about the Traffic Jam from Hell.

Traffic Problem (1970), by William Earls: dark satire of a future New York city where traffic is so bad the World Trade Center is encircled by highways, and Central Park has been converted to a parking lot.

Gantlet (1972), by Richard E. Peck: this story first appeared in 'Orbit 10' (1972) and it's among the few stories in that series, that I read back in the early 70s, that I found engaging enough to stay with me over the ensuing decades.

'Gantlet' is about a commute out of the Future City and into the suburbs. A commute that involves a passenger train with metal shields fitted over the windows, and machine guns and lasers mounted on the engine car. Needless to say, the train will be going through some very tough neighborhoods en route to its destination.........!  There is a proto-cyberpunk atmosphere to this story. 

City's End (1973), by Mack Reynolds: New York City circa 2000 AD is a depopulated wasteland, a refuge to outcasts and criminals. Teenager Bobby tries to survive, aided by his .22 rifle. The opening segments of this story have an impactful, dystopian quality, but, as the story progresses, Reynolds inevitably introduces discourses on political theory; these drain momentum from the narrative.

The Slime Dwellers (1975), by Scott Edelstein: to reduce urban blight, a space-age suburb is constructed in 'Basin City'. But.........what if no one wants to buy a house in Basin City ?!

A Happy Day in 2381 (1970), by Robert Silverberg: 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 bundle this story into his 1971 fixup The World Inside.

The verdict ? There are enough good stories to give 'The City: 2000 A.D.' a solid 3-Star review. This is an anthology that displays sci-fi's 1970s pessimism to good effect, particularly the entries by Aldiss, Silverberg, Hensley, Houston, Earls, and Peck. If you like stories that fall into the same bin with pop culture classics like The Omega Man, Soylent Green, and Escape from New York, then this is worth picking up.

Book Review: The Camp of the Saints

Book Review: 'The Camp of the Saints' by Jean Raspail 

2 / 5 Stars

The Frenchman Jean Raspail (1925 – 2020) was a prolific author of nonfiction and fiction books, only a few of which were translated into English.

‘The Camp of the Saints’ first was published in France in 1973 as Le Camp des Saints. Several editions of an English translation of ‘Camp’ have been published over the decades, including a hardcover edition in 1975, from Scribner; mass market paperback versions in 1977 from Ace Books and Sphere; and a trade paperback version, issued in 1994 from Social Contract Press. 

All of these editions are out of print and have exorbitant asking prices, partly because the book nowadays is very politically incorrect and no publisher will touch it. For my part, I was fortunate to pick up the Social Contract Press edition for under $20 back in ’94 (it’s currently available at amazon for $113 on up).

I should state at the outset that ‘The Camp of the Saints’ only mildly is science fiction. It is not a near-future eco-catastrophe or overpopulation novel like other early 70s books, such as Christopher Priest’s Fugue for a Darkening Island, or Don Pendleton’s Population Doomsday, or D. Keith Mano’s The Bridge. ‘Camp’ is much more of a polemic wrapped in a ‘what-if’ scenario. Even making allowances for the translation from French to English, the narrative is wordy, and leans heavily on sociopolitical musings.

The plot is simple; in the near-future (i.e., late 20th century) the Third World, ever more squalid and desperate, decides to invade Southern France as the first step in a conquest of Europe. 

The catalyst for this event is the decision by the conscience-stricken Belgian consulate in Calcutta to allow a cohort of impoverished Indian children to take up permanent residence in Belgium. When a mob of rioting Indians besiege the consulate, thrusting babies through the consulate gates, the Belgian government has second thoughts about their seemingly generous act; this ignites a furor among the Indian population. 

In Calcutta, a physically imposing Indian man, known as the ‘turd eater’, allies himself with a malformed dwarf; this duo has sufficient charisma to convince a million impoverished fellow Indians to board a flotilla of decrepit vessels on the Ganges river. In a kind of Hindu version of the wanderings of the Hebrews, the flotilla sets out for the Mediterranean and France, the land of succor and salvation.

As the flotilla makes its slow and utterly wretched transit to its destination, the liberal elites of Europe are torn between acknowledging that the arrival of the ships will be a demographic and economic disaster for France; and their desire to present themselves as ‘woke’ (the term didn’t exist in 1973), and obliged to welcome the starving million. Raspail’s intent clearly is to savage the actions of the liberal elite and their complicity in what is essentially Europe’s suicide.

Interestingly, a character in ‘Camp’ is a Third World immigrant to France, who, as an ‘outsider’, can see through the strictures of political correctness to recognize the disaster to European civilization that will ensue from a decision to allow the flotilla to land. His attitudes are contrasted with the willful blindness of his native-born neighbors, who, cowed by the rhetoric from the political and cultural elites, can only helplessly dither as the flotilla draws ever closer. 

I won't disclose spoilers about the conclusion of 'Camp', save to say that it is in keeping with the book's goal of acidulous satire.

Should you be willing to invest in a copy of this book ? My advice is, no, not at the prices currently being sought by bookjackers and speculators. If an eBook edition ever is issued then that may be the best choice for access. But if you do decide to read 'Camp', be prepared for a novel that is a political tract rather than an 'action' novel. 

3-D eyeglasses and 'The Illustrated Harlan Ellison'

3-D Eyeglasses and The Illustrated Harlan Ellison

The 3-D experiment with Steranko and “Repent, Harlequin, Said the Ticktockman”, whatever you may think of it, there are people I know, I swear, with very, very highly developed artistic sense, I mean, they are people who have hanging in their homes Mark Rothkos, Picassos, I mean, they know art, they are not dilettantes, and they look at the Steranko stuff and they say, “This is fine.” Other people say [in a weaselly voice]: “What the hell is this? I don’t understand it.” I have a beef on the plates in the special limited edition portfolio [of “Repent, Harle­quin, Said the Ticktockman”]: The Thoreau quote was cut. I mean, you can cut my words if you want to on those damn plates, but for Chrissake, you don’t cut Thoreau. You don’t edit Thoreau because the lines don’t fit. And we can’t really figure out whether it was Steranko who did because he didn’t like the art layout or if Byron allowed it… But it doesn’t matter. It happened. So, I have my minor beefs, my minor cavils.

But I really like that book. I am pleased and proud of it. And Byron Preiss did it. He was the one who did it, dammit. He ramrodded it, he put it together, he babysat the goddamn crazy artists, he sat with me through my crazinesses where I insisted on things. It’s a book that I’m pleased to add to my oeuvre. And I read these incredibly pompous, sententious, powder-pigeon martinet analyses by schmucks I never heard of. God knows what the fuck they do for a living. They pack ice cream at Baskin-Robbins or something and in their spare time they write you a review. And they sit there and judge those who are their betters. Because Byron Preiss is one of the best, man. You know why I think he’s one of the best? Because he takes the chances. Byron did the Weird Heroes series, Byron did Empire, Byron did The Stars My Destination, Byron did The Illustrated Ellison. Byron did all these things. Some of them may be failures, but goddammit, he did them! He didn’t just sit down and do fuzzy-footed little creatures for “Weirdworld.” And I think he is deserving of respect and deserving of respectful attention for the intent and for the execution. If he fails, it’s possible to say, “This was an attempt, it was an interesting attempt, it failed. It failed for these reasons.” That’s okay.

-interview of Harlan Ellison, conducted in 1979 by Gary Groth

Copies of The Illustrated Harlan Ellison (the Baronet Books 1978 trade paperback, not the Ace Books mass-market, abridged, paperback edition from 1980) still can be had for under $30, but are fast increasing in price.

One of the more imaginative chapters of the book is Jim Steranko's 3-D illustrations for the short story "'Repent, Harlequin !' Said the TickTockMan".

If you are going to invest in the book, I recommend you also get a pair of cheap, plastic 3-D eyeglasses from amazon for $10 a pair (the book provides its own pair of cardboard 3-D glasses, but they don't work nearly as well as the plastic pair). 

Once wearing the 3-D glasses of any kind, you have to gaze at the page for a bit before your eyes adapt to the meshing of the images (Steranko cleverly provided a tiny '3-D' cube in each of his illustrations to serve as a visual cue for the '3-D' effect). But soon the magic of 3-D will be revealed to you !

Of course, the 3-D glasses from amazon work just as well for those other eccentric books that feature 3-D artwork, such as Alan Moore's The Black Dossier (2007).

The Shadow: Blood and Judgment

The Shadow: Blood and Judgment
by Howard Chaykin (story and art)
Dynamite, 2012

This trade paperback from Dynamite compiles the four-issue miniseries first published by DC comics from May to August, 1986.

The 1986 Chaykin / DC reboot of the Shadow garnered controversy when first it appeared, with many fans disapproving of the comic's seeming glorification of violence, and the depiction of the Shadow as an individual whose 30's - era attitudes and sensibilities were in decided contrast with the more progressive, liberal nature of society in the USA in the 80s.

[The trade paperback features a reprint of a 1987 interview between Howard Chaykin and DC editor Joe Orlando, in which Chaykin discusses what motivated him to do a Shadow miniseries. Chief among Chaykin's motivations was a desire to see if he could convincingly place the character in the modern era.]

I won't reveal any spoilers, save to say that the plot, which is set in the mid-80s, focuses on a campaign of harm aimed at the elderly survivors of the Shadow's network of friends and associates. While some of these survivors are able to fight back, the mastermind behind the campaign eludes detection, leaving the Shadow's associates at a disadvantage.

But all is not lost. Although he has not been seen in 35 years, the Shadow is aware of the mayhem unfolding among his associates.........and he will be out to revenge their deaths.....

While I am a fan of some of Chaykin's work - his contribution to the 1970s graphic novel The Stars My Destination is one of his most significant achievements - The Shadow: Blood and Judgment is a dud.

TA major problem is the plot: it is incoherent. Chaykin tries to keep too many story threads running at the same time, and the result is utter confusion, a situation aided and abetted by the failure to include any sort of omniscient narration.

The artwork is subpar; too many panels have a sketchy, hasty quality that makes them difficult to decipher. The color scheme, which was handled by Alex Wald, doesn't help much, either, as it suffers from the flat, dull coloration that characterized the majority of comic books published during the 80s.

But probably the biggest fault with The Shadow: Blood and Judgment is that it assumes the reader to be entirely familiar the whole Shadow mythology. If you are not a fan of the Shadow, than this series will be unintelligible to you, for Chaykin makes no effort to give the reader even the most basic introduction to the myriad characters appearing in this series. I had a vague idea of who Margot Lane was, but.... Clyde Burke ? Harry Vincent ? Without knowing who they are, it is difficult to get all that invested in the drama surrounding their struggle to survive.

The Shadow: Blood and Judgment also gives the impression that when he wrote and illustrated it, Chaykin was consciously (or perhaps unconsciously) trying to emulate Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, which, by early 1986, was the template for rebooting a franchise and making it relevant to the modern era. As I made my way through Blood and Judgment, I found it filled with not-so-subtle evocations of the visual style and design used by Frank Miller in Dark Knight.

The verdict ? The Shadow: Blood and Judgment never really comes together as a rewarding re-envisioning of the classic pulp hero. This one is for Chaykin completists only.

Book Review: The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIV

Book Review: 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIV', edited by Karl Edward Wagner

2 / 5 Stars

‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIV’ (291 pp) is DAW Book No. UE2156 / 688, published in October, 1986. The cover art is by Michael Whelan.

All of the entries in this edition were first published in 1984 -1985, usually in the pages of other anthologies, or in magazines like The Twilight Zone Magazine, Interzone, and Night Cry.

There is a brief, two-page introduction by editor Karl Edward Wagner.

‘Series XIV’ is a standard-issue ‘Year’s Best’ compilation; in other words, the Usual Suspects are represented and accounted for: Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Charles L. Grant, Tanith Lee. 

But there also are some newcomers to Series XIV, and they provide the better entries.

My brief summary of the contents:

‘Penny Daye’, Charles L. Grant: mildly threatening British ghosts, ancient monuments, and the anomie of modern life. Another forgettable psychological horror tale from Grant.

‘Dwindling’, David B. Silva: Quiet Horror story about a boy whose family life is subject to unusual circumstances.

“Dead Men’s Fingers’, Philip C. Heath: in the South Pacific, the American whaler Reaper is found adrift, her crew vanished. One of the best stories in the anthology.

‘Dead Week’, Leonard Carpenter: a coed has unusual visions. Predictable, if competently written.

‘The Sneering’, Ramsey Campbell: British pensioners find life in a neighborhood undergoing urban renewal has its drawbacks. I wasn’t hoping for much from Campbell with this story, and he didn’t disappoint me........ Although it’s the first time I’ve ever read the sentence: ‘A car snarled raggedly past the gate.’ Cars …….snarling…..? Raggedly ? But then, who am I to say what is Art ?

‘Bunny Didn’t Tell Us’, David J. Schow: a burgeoning splatterpunk practitioner makes it into a DAW ‘Year’s Best’ anthology ! Hurrah ! Clever tale of grave-robbing gone bad…..because the grave belongs to a deceased pimp……!

‘Pinewood’, Tanith Lee: predictable tale about a grieving widow.

‘The Night People’, Michael Reaves: a hipster seeks solace for his angst by walking the city streets at night. I suspect most readers will guess the ending well in advance.

‘Ceremony’, William F. Nolen: a late-night bus ride leads to a creepy small town. Atmospheric, with a good ending; another of the better entries in this collection.

‘The Woman in Black’, Dennis Etchison: while employing his usual oblique, overly wordy prose in this story about a boy navigating a troubled neighborhood, Etchison makes this tale work by virtue of a bizarre ending.

‘Beside the Seaside, Beside the Sea’, Simon Clark: more a fragment rather than a genuine short story. Supernatural events at night, in a British seaside resort.

‘Mother’s Day’, Stephen F. Wilcox: a man attends to his nagging mother. Not really a horror story, but in fact a psychological drama.

‘Lava Tears’, Vincent McHardy: confused tale of a psycho killer.

‘Rapid Transit’, Wayne Allen Sallee: an aimless young man witnesses a murder in a train yard. Essentially plot-less, and badly overwritten by Sallee, who at the time was a poet trying his hand at short fiction.

‘The Weight of Zero’, John Alfred Taylor: not a short story per se, but actually the first chapter of a never-published novel…?! It’s never a good indicator of editorial competence when the editor has to use a first chapter of an unpublished novel in order to meet his obligation for a requisite number of entries….anyways, this is the vague tale of a Euro-hipster pursuing occult rituals.

‘John’s Return to Liverpool’, Christopher Burns: as you can guess, Dead Lennon is resurrected and visits his hometown. Relying on New Testament tropes, the story comes is too mawkish and insipid to be effective.

‘In Late December, Before the Storm’, Paul J. Sammon: unimaginative tale of a dissipated young man fated to relive a traumatic event. Sammon would go on to edit the seminal Splatterpunks: Extreme Horror anthology of 1990.

‘Red Christmas’, David Garnett: a murderer is on the loose, just before Christmas. I started this story thinking it was yet another clichéd ‘serial killer’ tale, but it provides a genuinely imaginative, offbeat ending. The best story in the anthology !

‘Too Far Behind Gradina’, Steve Sneyd: it’s not a good sign when a story in a horror anthology starts off with a really awful poem in blank verse….this despite the fact that the author is a published poet…..’Gradina’ is about a bored British housewife on vacation in Croatia; she follows a pair of German tourists, brother and sister, to a forbidding destination in the hills above the coast. This novelette was a true chore to finish, as it consisted of the type of run-on sentences, heavily overloaded with stilted, figurative prose, that typified SF writing of the New Wave era. It closes the anthology on a very unimpressive note. 

The verdict ? ‘The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIV’ is no better, and probably a little worse, then the other volumes in this series that were edited by Karl Edward Wagner. But hardcore horror short story aficionados may want it for the virtues of the tales by Heath, Schow, Nolen, and Garnett.

Book Review: Set of Wheels

Book Review: 'Set of Wheels' by Robert Thurston

1 / 5 Stars

‘Set of Wheels’ (281 pp) was published by Berkley Books in February, 1983. The cover illustration is by Alan Daniels.

Robert Thurston (1936 - 2021) began his authorial career as an attendee of the 1968 Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop, with his first story ('Stop Me Before I Tell More') seeing publication in the anthology 'Orbit 9' (1971). Thurston's short stories saw print in magazines and anthologies all during the New Wave era. Along with his own short and long fiction, Thurston wrote novels for the wargame-derived 'Battletech' franchise, and the TV show-derived 'Battlestar Galactica' franchise.

'Wheels' is an expansion of a short story, titled simply 'Wheels', that Thurston published in 1971 in an anthology devoted to pieces produced at the Clarion science fiction writers' workshop. A review of 'Wheels', and other Thurston tales, is available at the MPorcius Fiction Blog.

‘Set of Wheels’ is not a very good book. In fact, it was a struggle to finish..........

The novel is set in the early 21st century, after some poorly defined economic and / or social collapse has transformed the nation into a loose collection of city-states. Outside the cities the landscape is slowly being depopulated, the highways are abandoned, and drifters, outcasts, criminals, the destitute, and religious fanatics control the dwindling numbers of small towns, road stops, and villages.

Within the cities, car ownership is heavily regulated (drivers must obtain a ‘safdry’ license). Vehicles are prohibited from travelling at high speeds, drivers are subject to random police checkpoints, and even minor moving violations can result in the permanent loss of a license.

Teenager Lee Kestner is bored, sullen, and rebellious. Not only is living with his alcoholic father depressing, but Lee has been turned down for a learner’s permit 17 times. Desperate to get his own set of wheels, and to experience the freedom of independent travel, Lee hands $500 over to his onetime friend Lincoln Rockwell X. In return, Lee gets a barely-running, beat-up, antique, 1967 Ford Mustang.

Despite the questionable mechanical status of his newly acquired car, Lee promptly takes off for the unregulated countryside outside the city limits. There he joins up with a loose coalition of outlaw drivers, gets his Mustang fixed up, and enters into a tumultuous romance with a girl named Cora.

Before long, Lee finds himself heading out across the under-populated landscape of the USA, unsure of his destination, but convinced that somewhere out on the open road, he will find purpose for a life otherwise marked by aimlessness and spiritual anomie.

‘Wheels’ is not much of an sf novel. Indeed, the sf elements are very muted, and serve as a sort of vague backdrop to the central goal of the narrative, which is to allow author Thurston to write lengthy, tedious passages of dialogue in which his characters expound on their existential despair.

Thurston’s efforts to impart a wistful, melancholy atmosphere to the activities of his modern-day nomads seems contrived and unconvincing. Let’s face it, whether made in 1967, 1975, 1982, 1996, or even today, the Ford Mustang always has been a piece of shit car, relying on its ‘cool’ appearance, and industry myth-making, to screen the fact that it has always been shoddily designed, shoddily manufactured, and overly prone to mechanical breakdowns.

(Although, to be fair, the same thing can be said about practically every vehicle made by Ford….)

To make things worse, Thurston adopts the affectation of eschewing quotation marks to set off dialogue. Readers will need to supply the patience to decipher these sorts of exchanges:

Get us out of here.
Her smile vanishes. Logical, perhaps, it’s been a ghost-smile.
Not a chance, honey.
But you and me, we-
I know what we done, but that’s just ice in the Amazon, far as I’m concerned. 

If you’re hoping for something that resembles George Miller’s ‘Mad Max’ and ‘The Road Warrior’, or John Jake’s ‘On Wheels’, then you’re very much out of luck. The few episodes of action that take place in ‘Set of Wheels’ seem forced and tangential. 

My recommendation ? ‘Set of Wheels’ is best avoided, unless you are adamant about reading any and all sf novels with a 'car' theme.