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.

Book Review: 'Songs from the Stars' by Norman Spinrad

2 / 5 Stars

‘Songs from the Stars’ was first published in 1980. This Pocket Books paperback (275 pp) was released in January 1981, with cover artwork by Mara McAfee.

Several centuries after WWIII, civilization in North America survives in the higher ranges of the Sierra Nevada mountains. While the country on either side of the range is a blasted, radiation-baked wasteland, amidst the Sierras, Ernest Callenbach’s ‘Ecotopia’ exists…. as the nation-state of Aquaria.

Aquaria is the living embodiment of 1970s California ‘granola’ culture. The only technologies allowed are those powered by wind, water, sun, or muscle. Vegetarianism and New Age religions are embraced, while prewar technologies are considered ‘black science’, and advocates and possessors face banishment. 

Free love, free pot, and the hippy aesthetic govern social interactions. Citizens pepper their conversations with terms widely used by the Commune Culture ca. 1974, such as ‘karma’, ‘bummer’, ‘the Way’, and ‘righteous’.

Author Spinrad creates this culture with such conviction that at times ‘Songs’ reads like an (unintentional ?) satire.

Higher up in the Sierras are small outposts of ‘mountain williams’ rednecks. The mountain williams supply the citizens of Aquaria with solar technology obtained from the Spacers, a little-known clan, located in even more remote territory, that embraces black science. The trade with the Spacers is carefully ignored by the citizens of Aquaria, who would prefer not to know the details of how their solar cells ultimately are manufactured.

As the novel opens, male protagonist ‘Clear Blue’ Lou is en route via solar-powered glider to the capital town of La Mirage, there to mediate a dispute between two clans accused of promoting black magic. It seems that radios sold by the Lightning Clan of mountain williams contain – gasp – nuclear-powered energy cells !

Also en route to La Mirage is prototypical California blonde Sunshine Sue, a member of the Sunshine Tribe, one of the clans with the misfortune to purchase the illegal radios.

Events conspire to bring Clear Blue Lou and Sunshine Sue together as romantic partners. But when a fateful encounter with a practitioner of black science gets Sue involved in a conspiracy that could get her expelled from Aquaria, Sue decides to turn to Lou.

Against his will, Clear Blue Lou finds himself drawn with Sue and the Spacers into a mission that represents an embrace of the technology, and the attitudes, that had destroyed the planet. But as Lou discovers, sometimes the sacrifice of one’s beliefs is a necessary evil….

‘Songs from the Stars’ is in many respects a well-written novel, but I doubt it will appeal to contemporary sf readers.

The depiction of 70s tofu-head culture will draw blanks from anyone under 40, as will the  one-dimensional portrayal of female characters as horny hippie chicks always willing to disrobe and ‘sport’.

Much of the narrative revolves around the psychological and emotional dramas that Lou and Sue must confront, and surmount, as they proceed with their mission. After a while these dramas become more contrived and more annoying – one wonders why the technologically advanced Spacers even need the assistance of self-absorbed, conflicted New Age stoners in the first place.

Spinrad can’t resist filling the latter stages of the book with drawn-out sections of highly figurative New Wave prose; by 1980, this style of writing was becoming more and more passé, and its presence in ‘Songs’ injects notes of tedium, rather than vibrancy.

In summary, ‘Songs’ is reserved for dedicated Spinrad fans, and those with particular interest in early 80s sf. All others can pass on this novel.

The Alien Nation: Overpopulation from Eerie magazine

'The Alien Nation: Overpopulation' 
by Richard Margopoulos and Paul Neary
from Eerie No. 49, July, 1973

 

Here's a great little sci-fi tale about a favorite early 70s subject, overpopulation. The script is by Richard Margopoulos, and the artwork - impressive as always - by Paul Neary, of 'Hunter' fame.

Book Review: 'Yurth Burden' by Andre Norton

1 / 5 Stars

‘Yurth Burden’ is a DAW original (No. 304), and was published in September, 1978. The cover artwork, and the interior b & w illustrations, are by Jack Gaughan.

The story is set in the earth-like planet Zacar, which is inhabited by two human races: the telepathic Yurth, and the non-telepathic Raski. There is enmity between both races, which is manifested in willful segregation. At times, open violence has broken out between the Yurth and the Raski; the latter hate and fear the Yurth for their telepathic abilities, while the Yurth regard the Raski as little more than barbarians.

As the novel opens, a girl named Elossa is making her way towards the mountain range where she, as a member of the Yurth race, must undergo an obligatory Vision Quest –type experience. As with all such acolytes, the exact nature of the knowledge she will receive has not been disclosed to her by the elder members of her tribe, but there are warnings: not all who attempt the Quest, return.

As Elossa approaches the site of the Vision Quest, she discovers she has a pursuer – a young Raski boy. His intentions are unknown, but Elossa will find her fate and his bound together. For in the mountains lies the truth behind the events that have made the Yurth and the Raski enemies – and the maddened remnants of an ancestral culture, one with little love for trespassers……

While the odds are that a given Andre Norton novel will be readable, even entertaining, ‘Yurth Burden’ is one of her worst novels.

Norton appears to have made a conscious decision to adopt the over-written, highly stylized diction employed by Tanith Lee and C. J. Cherryh in their fantasy and sf novels of the 70s. Unfortunately for Norton, the result is wooden dialogue devoid of the use of contractions, and clunky, stilted, descriptive passages that I often had to re-read multiple times in order to understand.

Things aren’t helped by the plot, which is hampered by the inclusion of overly contrived, episodic material, as if author Norton decided to begin writing without having any sort of overarching storyline in place beforehand.

The book was clearly written for a young adult readership, and however bad the predicaments in which our two heroes may find themselves, it’s not divulging much to hint that they just, might, possibly emerge victorious in the end.

There is a perfunctory quality to ‘Yurth’, a lack of polish, an observation that isn’t too surprising when one realizes that Norton’s tendency towards overproduction made it likely that some of her fiction pieces were going to be clunkers.

The verdict ? Even dedicated Norton fans are going to find ‘Yurth Burden’ slow going. This one safely can be passed by.

'Harzak' by Moebius

from the May, 1977 issue of Heavy Metal 

This is probably the quintessential Arzak strip ( although here Moebius uses the name 'Harzak').

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Review: 'Mute Evidence' by Daniel Kagan and Ian Summers

2 / 5 Stars

In the early-morning hours of December of 1979, Ian Summers, an editor and ‘packager’ of such illustrated 70s sf and fantasy novels as Urshurak, The Art of the Brothers Hildebrandt, and Tomorrow and Beyond, was in the studio of Denver station KOA.

Summers was the guest on ‘The Tony Larson Show’, a late-night talk radio show devoted to oddball topics such as ghosts, UFOs, the Bermuda Triangle, etc.

Larson was more or a less a predecessor of the fringe culture’s most successful radio program, Art Bell’s 'Coast to Coast AM'.

Summers was promoting his latest publication, Barlowe’s Guide to Extraterrestrials. In the course of the broadcast, which despite its late hour drew many call-ins, one caller brought up the subject of cattle mutilations, and whether Summers believed that ‘extraterrestrials’ were responsible.

Summers facetiously replied that although he knew something about extraterrestrials, he knew nothing about cattle mutilations.

A month after that radio program, Summers read an article about cattle mutilations by Harry Lebelson in the ‘UFO Update’ page of the January, 1980 issue of Omni magazine.

Sensing a publishing project in the offing, Summers contacted another New York City –based author and writer, one Daniel Kagan. Together, Summers and Kagan spent most of 1980 researching the mutilation phenomenon.

The result of their investigation is 'Mute Evidence' (Bantam Books, July 1984, cover art by Gary La Sasso). At 504 pages, it’s a thick chunk of a book.

For those who remember, cattle mutilations were one of the more prominent manifestations of 70s fringe culture, particularly in the American West. Expanding reportage of mutilations began in 1973, and quickly became a major topic of local news for the ensuing 7 – 8 years.

The main features of the mutilation phenomenon were the unusual nature of the wounds observed in deceased cattle and other livestock: ‘surgically’ removed genitals, eyes, lips, tongue, or internal organs. Some onlookers remarked that the wounds bore signs of being made by lasers, and that the carcasses were unusually resistant to decay, or had strange glowing lights associated with them. 

Other witnesses reported scorch marks or large indentations in the terrain around the carcass, suggestive of the presence of an enormous, heavy object. Still other witnesses claimed that the animals had broken bones, suggestive of being dropped from a considerable height; some observers even recounted finding dead animals high atop trees.

The high point of the whole mutilation culture probably came with the release of the 1982 low-budget horror film Endangered Species, starring Robert Urich and JoBeth Williams.

After that the whole phenomenon started to die down, and today it remains noteworthy more as a footnote to 70s pop culture, than a high-profile topic in the fringe culture proper.

Summers and Kagan devote the first half of their book to an overview of the cattle mutilation phenomenon, followed by recitations of meetings with prominent members of the mutilation ‘network’, comprised of ‘mutologists’ devoted to discussion and theorizing about ‘mutes’. 

The team also meets with law enforcement and veterinary personnel in a number of Midwestern and western states. They learn that there is no shortage of theories as to what (or who) is behind the mutilations: cultists practicing animal sacrifice; UFOs; and secret government organizations conducting chem-bio warfare.

By the end of 1979, concern about cattle mutilations in New Mexico, and the outcry from residents and cattlemen, had prompted the state to carry out a major investigation, headed by a former FBI agent named Ken Rommel. Kagan and Summers devote an entire chapter to a laborious examination of Rommel’s report, which firmly declares that ‘mutes’ are the result of predator damage to the carcasses of dead cattle.

An entire chapter is also devoted to analyzing a mutilation documentary released in 1980, titled A Strange Harvest, by an indie filmmaker (and UFO Believer) named Linda Howe.

The second half of the book is one lengthy travelogue, and Kagan and Summers journey to Canada and several Midwestern / Southern states, interviewing ‘mutologists’, law enforcement personnel, members of the media, and veterinarians.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, as Kagan and Summers wend through their investigation, they come to the realization that the ‘mutology’ network is peopled by hoaxers and cranks; that the suggestive influence of the media trumps common sense; and that many of the statistics on livestock mutilations are utter fabrications.

At times ‘Mute Evidence’ becomes tedious and dull, as the authors trudge on with their interviews and queries, trying to maintain an attitude of impartiality even as the credibility of the mutilation phenomenon dissipates with ever greater speed.

Perhaps the best parts of the book are those that shine a light on strange little aspects of the popular culture in 1980.

For example, Kagan and Summers have a phone conversation with none other than Beatrice Sparks, who is best known as the ‘editor’ of the classic 70s teen drug memoir, Go Ask Alice. It seems that in 1980 Sparks ‘edited’ yet another lurid teen ‘autobiography’, this one titled Jay’s Journal.

Journal is about an American teenager who becomes involved in a Satanic cult (!) that counts many teenagers among its adherents. ‘Jay’ describes participating in a cow mutilation in Colorado, as part of a cult ritual. Sparks tells Kagan and Summers that, in the course of ‘interviewing’ teen cult members for the book, she witnessed them bending bobby pins and levitating coins as a demonstration of their ‘powers’ (!).

Other chapters of the book introduce all the tried and true manifestations of 70s Paranoia: Black Helicopters, Men in Black, tapped phone lines, secret experiments in biological warfare, media participation in coverups, the collusion of law enforcement and the feds, etc., etc.

In the final chapter Kagan and Summers conclude with the obvious: the mutilations are a manifestation of the same fringe culture that gave us UFO abductions, Bigfoot, ‘cryptozoology’, and The X Files.

The verdict ?  ‘Mute Evidence’ is a slow read at times, but may be interesting to those with a fondness for the more bizarre side of American pop culture of the 70s and 80s.

The Clash: The Last Gang in Town

'The Clash: The Last Gang in Town'
('The Clash: El ultimo gang en la ciudad')
from issue 8 of Metal Hurlant (Spanish language edition), 1982

The European editions of  Metal Hurlant routinely featured content that never made it to the pages of Heavy Metal. One such story, produced by Serge Clerc in 1982, featured the New Wave rockers: the Clash (!)

It's not clear if the band gave Clerc permission to use them in a comic strip. But even if you are not fluent in Spanish, the strip comes across very well, and serves as an interesting look at the influence the band had on music culture and pop culture, back in those days.