Book Review: Farewell Horizontal

Book Review: 'Farewell Horizontal' by K. W. Jeter

5 / 5 Stars

‘Farewell Horizontal’ (237 pp.) first was published in hardcover by St. Martin's Press in February 1989. This paperback edition was published by Signet in November 1989; the cover artist is Bryn Barnard.

The Cylinder is an immense building, miles high and miles in circumference, built long ago by a polity no longer remembered. Within, the population labors at mundane pursuits, factory jobs, and dull administrative tasks. True nonconformists make for the ‘Vertical’, the outside of the Cylinder, where the metal surface is intagliated with a network of grids and attachment points for high-tech ‘pithons', retractable Smart Cables that extrude from one’s boots and belt to anchor one safely to the wall. 

An entire society of ‘Mad Max’ – style warring gangs, scavengers, and thrill seekers wander the vast expanse of the surface of the Cylinder, only their slings and pithons keeping them from falling miles downward to the mysterious cloud layer masking the lower regions of the Cylinder.

Ny Axxter earns a living as a Graffex artist out on the surface, designing and applying icons, military regalia, and totems for the various lower-league gangs operating on the Vertical. It’s not an easy life, and Ny is always looking for the one major contract that will fill his bank account. When he gets word that the Havoc Mass, one of the two largest paramilitary forces in control of the top portion of the Cylinder, is looking for a Graffex artist to revamp their image, it’s the break Ny needs to get into the big time.

The Havoc Mass are indeed pleased with his work….but when one deals with the movers and shakers on the Vertical, one gets caught up in the turf wars and conspiracies that come with being among the powerful and ambitious. Ny soon discovers that he’s in over his head, and running for his life beyond the morningside of the Cylinder to the little-explored eveningside, where lurk the dreaded Dead Center tribes….and perhaps things much, much worse…..

‘Farewell Horizontal’ has an original, cool concept for its core. The world of the Vertical is consistently interesting and full of surprises. Ny is no superman, and occasionally rather too mercenary for his own good, but he remains an engaging character, as do the various other personalities he comes across in his travels on the surface. The chapter dealing with the Havoc Mass encampment is genuinely funny, but author Jeter is also adept at writing believable action sequences.

‘Farewell’ stands as a good example of late 80s cyberpunk, where traditional world-building melds neatly with the more traditional concepts- ‘jacking in’, virtual reality, wet-wired interfaces - of the cyberpunk genre. It's a solid 5-star novel from an era when cyberpunk was really starting to hit its stride as the savior of science fiction.

Killraven Amazing Adventures No. 33

Killraven: 'Amazing Adventures' No. 33

(November 1975)

‘Amazing Adventures’ No. 33,  featuring Killraven in ‘The War of the Worlds’, was issued with a publication date of November 1975. Don McGregor is replaced as writer by Bill Mantlo, while Herb Trimpe replaced Craig Russell as the artist.

This episode, ‘Sing out loudly…Death !’ is one of the more inventive in the series. Killraven and his crew are hiking through West Virginia when they decide to rest up in a cave. While the other members of his party sleep, Killraven, troubled by Psychic Visions, wanders into the interior of the cave. There he comes upon an African village (!) complete with grass huts, and bare-chested natives in loincloths chucking spears - !

Killraven is subdued and brought before a pimp (!) who reveals that during the conflict of the Martian invasion, he led a small army of black folks away from the cities and into seclusion, refusing to join Whitey in the fight against the invaders:

Things aren't looking to good for Killraven, for the 'brothers' holding him in captivity have no love for honkies. But then a Martian monster rears its ugly green head.....

Will Killraven - raised in the postracial world of the invasion aftermath - be able to convince the homiez not to smoke his ass ? Will the Kumbayaa Spirit take hold and bring racial harmony to the cave dwellers ? This is a Marvel comic from 1975, after all, so don't expect any major surprises. 

But this remains one of the more entertaining installments of the series, which was starting to look vulnerable in the eyes of the Marvel editorial staff....although its readers were blithely ignorant, the Killraven saga was on its last legs as 1975 drew to a close....

Book Review: Identity Seven

Book Review: 'Identity Seven' by Robert Lory

 

2 / 5 Stars

In the first few years of its existence DAW Books regularly filled out its catalogue by releasing short novels of 150 pages or less. Some of these novels were well-written (‘Blue Face’ by G. C. Edmondson), while others were forgettable. ‘Identity Seven’ unfortunately falls into the latter category.

Robert Lory wrote a large number of paperback novels in the 60s and 70s, and is perhaps best known for authoring all the volumes of the ‘Dracula’ series published by the New English Library in the mid-70s. ‘Identity Seven’ (155 pp.) was DAW Book No. 95, released in March 1974, and features a striking cover illustration by Kelly Freas.

The plot has something to do with a galactic organization called Hunters Associated, which hires out agents to take the identity of corporate officers and magnates whose lives might be in danger. The unnamed first-person narrator, known only as agent Seven, is dispatched to the planet Usulkan to assume the identity of a powerful businessman named Kalian Pendek. It seems Pendek has been assassinated, and before the world recognizes his demise, the Hunters have inserted Seven to take his place and to investigate the circumstances of the assassination. 

As his inquiries proceed, Pendek quickly learns that the conspiracy to deprive his predecessor of life and liberty is growing in intensity and threatens the stability of the entire planet. The keys to identifying the conspirators ? An exotic jeweled pendant, a talking squid, and a set of blueprints to a massive underwater redoubt lying somewhere on the sea floor of Usulkan…..

In terms of its prose style, ‘Identity’ reads as a series novel from the 60s spy genre – think ‘The Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ –with a science fiction coating hastily applied. The plot is frenetic, and shifts from one danger-filled moment to another in the span of a few pages. The novel’s sentence structure is so carelessly assembled that I found myself having to re-read many passages in order to ferret out exactly which words and phrases were governing the assignment of the Subject, Object, and Verb.  The author regularly employs  the clipped, wisecracking prose style commonly encountered in the more campy 60s spy literature. You will  find passages in which the same words are used multiple times, and hyphenated constructions are tossed around in a manner that apes the worst of the New Wave approach to writing:

I let it pass as a holdover from my morning’s mind-wanderings under the approaching death-spell of the jackal-grain. Or let’s say I tried to let it pass. At the end of that dream world was a large pit of blackness, a mammoth blot of smothering death. And in this real dream world there was waiting, below the crags, on the sea floor strewn with memories of past slaughters, a very real and mammoth blot of smothering destruction.

 ‘Identity Seven’ is best avoided, even by those intent on reading everything in the early DAW catalogue.

Questar magazine November 1979

Questar magazine, November 1979

Questar was a 8 x 11"  magazine published from 1978 to 1981 by MW Communications of Pittsburgh, with William Wilson serving as editor. The magazine was a 'slick', printed in color on higher quality paper stock, with a newsstand / magazine rack distribution alongside more mainstream publications .

The runaway success of Star Wars in 1977 had made possible the commercial viability of a new generation of SF magazines devoted to covering the genre in film and television. The leading publication of this type was Starlog, which debuted in 1976 and soon achieved a respectable circulation. Questar was aimed at the same audience. It did not achieve the economic success of its competitors, however, and the magazine folded after issuing its 13th and final issue in 1981.

The November 1979 issue features the hit movie Alien on its cover and devotes a good portion of its interior to articles reviewing the film, and interviews with the cast and crew. In addition to the Alien coverage there are some black and white / graytone comics, an article about a 'Kiss' stage play, another about the newly released James Bond film Moonraker, and an interview with Mike Gornick, the cinematographer for George Romero's zombie film Dawn of the Dead, which was released - to considerable success -  in 1979. 

I've excerpted the Gornick interview here; it's an interesting look at low-budget film-making back in the late 70s. 

The idea of placing a zombie series on network TV with the requisite gore intact, like with AMC's Walking Dead, would have seemed most unlikely back in the Old School days of the late 70s.

Also scanned is the magazine's 'Panorama' section, providing a nice overview of what was going on in the SF / fantasy culture throughout 1979.

Book Review: The Disciples of Cthulhu

Book Review: 'The Disciples of Cthulhu' edited by Edward P. Berglund

3 / 5 Stars

I remember picking the DAW book up from the rack at Gordon’s Cigar Store in October 1976, back when Steely Dan’s ‘The Fez’, ‘Muskrat Love’ by the Captain and Tennille, and “Disco Duck’ by Rick Dees, were playing on the radio. TV offered ‘(Dick) Van Dyke and Company’, ‘Police Woman’, ‘Baretta’, and ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep’.

‘The Disciples of Cthulhu’, DAW Book No. 213 (288 pp.) , was issued in 1976 and features a cover illustration by Karel Thole. Long out of print, copies of the DAW version have very high asking prices.

In 1995 Chaosium published a trade paperback reprint, used copies of which unfortunately also go for very high prices. It has some editorial meddlings, in terms of dropping the Carter and Brennan entries (synopsized below) for new ones by Robert Price and A. A. Attansio.

‘Disciples’ is a reasonably good anthology of Cthulhu stories, particularly in comparison with the endless fanfic anthologies churned out over the past 15 years by Chaosium, and the more polished collections (Cthulhu 2000) published by Del Rey. 

All its entries were written specifically for 'Disciples', and veteran authors, as well as newcomers, were included in the lineup. 

As a Cthulhu anthology, ‘Disciples’ tends toward the quieter end of the horror spectrum, focusing less on blood and gore than on the psychological derangement that comes with encountering the Old Ones and their warped human acolytes.

My opinions of the stories:

‘The Fairground Horror’ by Brian Lumley: the creepy owner of an amusement park side show reserves a set of eldritch artifacts and collectibles, for viewing '....by appointment only'. When an archeology professor requests to see the objects, he may see more than he bargained for…...sharing the same English setting as Lumley’s ‘Titus Crow’ stories, ‘Fairground’ takes a leisurely approach in getting to its denouement.

‘The Silence of Erika Zann’ by James Wade: in a seedy music club, an acid rock band named The Electric Commode, led by a striking singer named Erika Zann, starts to attract attention from the hipsters. The band’s music is strange and unearthly, and not all of the sounds are coming from the players on stage. [The theme of rock music as a natural outlet for Cthulhu worship is recycled by Alan Moore in his comics ‘The Courtyard’ (2003) and ‘Necronomicon’ (2010) for Avatar Press.]

‘All Eye’ by Bob Van Laerhoven: in the Canadian wilderness a scholar gets lost and finds himself confronting an evil entity from Beyond Time and Space. Van Laerhoven was a newcomer to writing and his first-person narrative, while holding the reader’s attention, can be confusing at times.

‘The Tugging’ is the inevitable entry from Ramsey Campbell. An art critic for a British newspaper is troubled by dreams of an undersea island coming to the surface; these dreams may be triggered by the approach of a rogue planetoid into the solar system. As is usual with a Campbell contribution, the plot is an afterthought, weighted down by a thick encrustation of metaphors and similes: buses ‘quake’ and ‘fart’, telephone calls ‘leap prankishly’ (?!), the dawn ‘clutches’, memories ‘tear’ their way through insomnia…..you get the picture.

“Where Yidhra Walks” by Walter C. DeBill, Jr. : in the wilds of West Texas, a traveler finds himself stranded in a small town named Milando. The townspeople don’t take kindly to strangers, particularly strangers who start to ask too many questions about an ancient cult that worships an entity called Yidhra the Devourer…..this is one of the better tales in the anthology, making a well-crafted transition from the atmosphere of unease that starts out most traditional Mythos stories before ramping things up to a chase sequence reminiscent in some ways of ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’.

‘The Feaster from Afar’ by Joseph Payne Brennan: a supercilious novelist decides to take a sabbatical in a remote area of New England. He begins having disturbing dreams, but dismisses them as manifestations of the depression induced by the gloomy countryside. This is not a good attitude to take when in Cthulhu Country…...one of the best stories in the anthology.

‘Zoth-Ommog’ by Lin Carter: a young museum staffer is troubled by a statue from a collection of artifacts recovered by a South Pacific expedition. He enlists the aid of the faculty at Miskatonic University and discovers the statue is the manifestation of one of Cthulhu’s offspring; there are unpleasant implications for the safety of all who view it. Carter can’t resist belaboring the reader with a detailed exposition on the background of the Mythos, making this novelette too long and rambling to be very engaging.

‘Darkness, My Name Is’ by Eddy C. Bertin: vacationing in Freihausgarten, a remote village in Germany, Herbert Ramon decides to investigate rumors of a temple located somewhere within a nearby Dark Hill. The locals don’t like talking about the Hill, or the strange ceremonies that are supposed to take place during the full moon…This story is the most innovative in the collection, moving from the familiar theme of the seeker into Eldritch Mysteries to a decidedly Cosmic, sci-fi perspective. Bertin’s use of a New Wave prose style in accompaniment of this narrative shift is overdone, but ‘Darkness’ stands as a very capable modern contribution to the Mythos.

‘The Terror from the Depths’ by Fritz Leiber: on the California coast, Georg Fischer has weird dreams of a vast network of tunnels lying under the trails in the hills surrounding his home. Are they connected to the bizarre shrine to a marine Deity in the basement of the house ? ‘Terror’ is a rather pedestrian reworking of the major storylines of the Mythos, and Leiber mimics too closely Lovecraft’s overwrought prose style (caves are referred to as ‘subterranean vacuities’).

Summing up, 'Disciples' is a decent anthology and worth picking up if you are able to find a copy with an affordable asking price. 

'The Dunwich Horror' by Breccia
from Heavy Metal magazine, October 1979 

PART TWO

'The Dunwich Horror' by Breccia
from Heavy Metal magazine, October 1979 

PART ONE

 

'H.P.L.' by Jean-Michel Nicollet

'H.P.L.' by Jean-Michel Nicollet

Despite its brevity, one of the most artistically impressive features ever to appear in the early days of Heavy Metal magazine (October 1979)

Book Review: 'Stickman' by Seth Pfefferle

3 / 5 Stars

‘Stickman’ (279 pp.) was published by Tor in July 1987; the cover art is by John Zielinski.

In an unnamed hellhole of a country in southern Africa, a delegation of US Senators arrives to investigate the massacre of a television documentary crew (‘Sporting Chic’) out in the bush. Escorted by a team of mercenaries and Governor Mobatasi, the local chieftain, the delegation journeys into a barren landscape wracked by drought and starvation. Once at the site of the murders, it becomes disturbingly clear that the ‘rebels’ responsible for the death of the television crew liked to collect the severed heads of their victims.

Kurt Dietrich, one of the more intelligent members of the mercenary team, suspects that something  otherworldly may have been responsible for the massacre. Was it the ‘Stickman’ featured in the primitive paintings made on the walls of a cave located near the massacre site ? Does the Stickman represent the embodiment of a warrior from the spirit world ? If so, can he be killed with earthly weapons ? As events quickly lurch into a disastrous confrontation between the delegation and a predator from another world, the prospect of another massacre at the hands of the Stickman seems likely.....

‘Stickman’ is certainly creepy and engrossing for its first 140 or so pages. Author Pfefferle keeps the Stickman’s on-screen appearances sparse, but holds the reader's attention by letting the squalor and brutal violence plaguing the postwar African landscape represent a parallel horror story in and of itself.

Unfortunately, the middle section of the book sees the action slow to a crawl as the author devotes way too much text to exploring the psychodramas between the various members of the delegation and its guardians. Page after page unfolds filled with squabblings, arguments, selfish behaviors, and various acts of domestic mayhem, until the point was reached where I wanted all of the characters to be snuffed out by the Stickman. [To be fair to Pfefferle, this sort of middle-act meandering is the bane of many horror novels, particularly ‘The Ruins’ (2006) by Scott Smith].

The narrative doesn’t regain momentum until the last 30 pages of the novel, at which time it does deliver on the requisite suspense. But I came away from ‘Stickman’ thinking that it would have benefited from being a good 60 – 75 pages shorter in length.

Readers looking for a decent mid-80s horror novel reminiscent of the 'Predator' franchise, and with a willingness to put up with a great deal of melodrama among the beleaguered party, may want to give 'Stickman' a try.

'Skull' comix No. 4: H.P. Lovecraft issue

‘Skull’comix No. 4 (1972) was a special issue devoted to H. P. Lovecraft stories and contained some good material, such as Richard Corben’s ‘The Hound’, ‘The Hairy Claw of Tolen’ by Charles Dallas, and ‘Pickman’s Model’, with noteworthy pen-and-ink artwork by Herb Arnold, which I’m posting here.