Book Review: Arcane

Book Review: 'Arcane' by Carl Sherrell

3 / 5 Stars

'Arcane' (320 pp) was published by Jove Books in August 1978. The cover art is by Boris Vallejo.

Carl Sherrell (1929 -1990) published several novels in the horror, fantasy, and sci-fi genres in the 70s and 80s.

In his Preface, the author states that he used the Tarot deck as the inspiration for this novel; each of its 22 chapters is inspired by a card randomly drawn from the deck. Accordingly, the book's opening chapter is titled The Fool, with succeeding chapters titled The High Priestess, The Magicians, The Tower, The Moon, etc. 

'Arcane' takes place in a bucolic, if generic, fantasy landscape where a tribe of people live simple, but rewarding, lives under their cantankerous leader, an elderly man named Niko. When Niko encounters a young man - the Fool of the chapter's title - coming down the trail from the mysterious heights of the Mountains, initially he is dismissive of this seeming simpleton.

However, the young man, whose name is Abeth, soon shows himself to be no simpleton, but a man gifted with a strong intellect, a man armed with powerful magic, including the ability to read minds and communicate telepathically. As Niko looks on in dismay, he is gradually ousted as the leader of Arcane, as Abeth's activities transform the land and its people into the residents of a powerful empire, one that uses new technologies and new ways of thinking to expand its territories at the expense of the neighboring tribes of wild men.

Even as Abeth's rule brings prosperity and power to Arcane, a disgruntled Niko schemes for ways to subvert Abeth's rule. The stage is set for a contest of wills to determine the future of the land and its people...........

I finished 'Arcane' with mixed emotions. The idea of having a random draw of the Tarot deck dictate the content of each chapter certainly is a novel one, and the lack of an overarching storyline means that the narrative is avoids being overly predictable.

At the same time, the author uses a prose style that is more in keeping with a hard-boiled detective novel than a fantasy novel. Sherrell keeps his prose spare and concise, and eschews completely the trappings of the 'standard' fantasy novel: there are no italicized words representing an Elvish Vocabulary, no glossary, no polysyllabic names for places, people, and things, no dwarves, no Dark Lords, no Towers of Doom, no goblins, orcs, or demons. (A dragon does make a brief appearance.)

However, the lack of an overarching plot means that at its midpoint the novel starts to lose momentum; the vagaries of each new chapter made it hard to feel all that invested in the setting and its characters. The book also suffers from closing chapters that seem unconvincing in terms of disclosing any Big Revelations about Abeth and his designs for Arcane.

The verdict ? 'Arcane' deserves some merit for author Sherrell's decision to let the Tarot govern his narrative. However, that decision also prevents the novel from being more than a straightforward tale of the rise and fall of a civilization. If you are someone with a strong yearning to read all of the fantasy novels of the late 70s then picking up 'Arcane' is justified, but all others likely can pass on this novel. 

Prison Ship by Esteban Maroto

Prison Ship
by Esteban Maroto (art) and Bruce Jones (story)
IDW, April 2018

Issue 24 of the Warren magazine 1994, with an April 1982 cover date, debuted a new series written by Bruce Jones and illustrated by Esteban Maroto, titled 'Diana Jacklighter, Manhuntress !' 

The plot was relatively simple: Diana (renamed Faye in the graphic novel) is an intergalactic bounty hunter, who has all manner of adventures on alien worlds as she sets forth to capture the escapees from the titular prison ship.

The series would go on for another four issues.

The story's cheesy title and concept were in keeping with the effort by 1994 editor Bill Dubay to lure the same readership of Heavy Metal magazine. The emphasis with 'Diana Jacklighter' was on fun, and T & A, rather than deep explorations of Weighty Themes. Needless to say, artist Maroto was quite capable of catering to the HM crowd with his choice depictions of Diana wearing little, if any, clothing:

As part of its efforts to compile classic comics from Esteban Maroto, publisher IDW has packaged the 1994 strips under the less..... exploitative...... title of Prison Ship. Like the other volume in this series, Lovecraft: The Myth of Cthulhu, this is a hardback graphic novel printed on a high grade of paper. 

It's unclear if the contents are scanned from the original artwork - in his Introduction to Prison Ship, Maroto states that many of the original art pages he sent to Warren 'disappeared under mysterious circumstances'. But the reproductions of scanned pages (if that's what they are) come across reasonably well here.

Maroto's artwork for 'Diana Jackson' / Prison Ship show him in top form. For all of its cheesy nature, I find it superior to many of the sci-fi comics (like the grossly overpraised Saga, as well as Black Science, Descender, and ODY-C) found nowadays on the store shelves. 

I've posted a scan of the initial episodes below. Whether you're a fan of Maroto's art, or the sci-fi comics of the early 80s, getting a copy of the book from your usual online vendors is recommended.

Book Review: The Teachings of Don Juan

Book Review: 'The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge' by Carlos Castaneda

4 / 5 Stars

'The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge' first was published by the University of California Press in 1968, after which it became a countercultural touchstone; having 'read Castaneda' became a mark of true hipness.

In 1974 Pocket Books released this mass market paperback edition (256 pp), which immediately became a best-seller. Succeeding volumes dominated the bestseller lists throughout the remainder of the 70s and on into the early 80s. 

It's hard to overstate how influential the 'Teachings' became on American, and worldwide, pop culture. The photography session the Eagles took for their first album cover is derived from Castaneda. Castaneda was gently satirized in the pages of 'The Furry Freak Brothers' underground comic. And the 1981 film Altered States had a Castaneda-inspired segment where the protagonist, played by William Hurt, participates in a peyote ceremony and acquires Cosmic Awareness.

The Eagles at Joshua Tree National Park for their first album photography session, 1972

The cover for the paperback version was the same as that for the hardcover version issued in 1972 by Simon and Schuster; the artist was Roger Hane (who also did the cover for the second volume in the Don Juan series, A Separate Reality).

Original cover art by Roger Hane

I remember reading 'Teachings' in early 1981, when I was in college, and finishing the book with an immediate desire to head to the Sonoran desert to locate Don Juan, take peyote and mushrooms under his tutelage, and become A Man of Knowledge. So many other people who read the book had the same idea, that a crisis of peyote over-harvesting has emerged.

By the time I had finished all four of the books in the initial Don Juan series I had begun to doubt their truthfulness. At the time there was no internet and no Google, and so getting information on the entire Castaneda phenomenon was not easy. Nowadays such information can be easily accessed and the fact that everything that Castaneda wrote was fake is now common knowledge.

(For a particularly uncomplimentary look at the 'real' Castaneda, readers are directed to this excerpt from John Gilmore's Laid Bare).

I recently re-read 'Teachings' and despite my awareness that is fictitious, I found the book to still be engaging........in many ways I wanted to believe it was true. Which, I suppose, is as good a measuring method for any work of fantasy fiction as any other criterion.

For those who are unfamiliar with the whole 'Don Juan' library, Castaneda claimed that from 1960 to 1965 he regularly visited the Sonoran desert to commune with a Yaqui Indian medicine man or 'brujo' named Don Juan Matus. Matus agreed to teach Castaneda to become 'A Man of Knowledge', albeit with warnings and admonitions that such a path is arduous, even fatal.

Meeting the shaman: lobby card for Altered States (1981) 

Castaneda's first person narrative relates how he learns to ingest psychedelic substances extracted from Jimson weed, mushrooms, and peyote; under the influence of these substances, he experiences visions of otherworldly entities that bring with them profound insights into the existence of 'A Separate Reality' underlying our own.

I won't divulge any spoilers, save to say that the while 'The Teachings of Don Juan' ends on a note that suggests it may originally have been intended to be a one-volume book, its commercial and critical success led Castaneda to issue a number of sequels.

Whatever his faults, and however all-encompassing they might have been, Castaneda was a skilled writer, and he knew how to keep his readers engaged. There is little fluff or padding in the 'Teachings'; the chapters are short and to the point; the conversations have an air of authenticity; and Don Juan Matus is one of the most fully realized characters in fiction or nonfiction.

If you haven't yet read 'The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge', then I recommend doing so. The paperback edition is so ubiquitous in used bookstores that finding an affordable copy isn't much of a problem. And when you're done reading it you can draw your own conclusions about whether it contains a grain of truth........... or not.

Real Vision by Liberatore

Real Vision
by Liberatore
from Video Clips, Catalan Communications
1985

A brilliantly disturbing.........or is it disturbingly brilliant ?.......comic from Gaetano Liberatore.

Book Review: The Infernal Device

Book Review: 'The Infernal Device' by Michael Kurland

4 / 5 Stars

'The Infernal Device' (251 pp) first appeared in hardback in 1978; it was published by Signet Books in paperback in January 1979. The cover artist is uncredited.

Author Kurland (b. 1938) has written a number of novels in the sci-fi and crime / detective genres, starting in the 1960s and continuing to the present day. My review of his 1975 sci-fi novel Pluribus can be viewed here.

'The Infernal Device' features as its hero Professor James Moriarty, the nemesis of Sherlock Holmes. Succeeding volumes in Kurland's 'Moriarty' series include Death by Gaslight (1982), The Great Game (2001), The Empress of India (2006), and Who Thinks Evil (2014).

'The Infernal Device' opens in Turkey in 1885, where an American reporter named Benjamin Barnett has made the acquaintance of a young British naval officer named Lieutenant Sefton. Barnett takes up Sefton's offer to witness firsthand the demonstration of a Submersible craft, newly purchased by the Turkish government, in the Bosphorus Strait. Barnett is intrigued by Sefton's avowal that the Submersible heralds a new era in naval warfare.

However, as Barnett and Sefton look on, something very wrong takes place at the demonstration. Barnett soon finds his situation in Turkey to be a precarious one.......but Barnett has had the good fortune to have befriended the Napoleon of Crime, Professor James Moriarty. And by working with Moriarty, Benjamin Barnett will find himself enmeshed in a web of intrigue and danger, as Moriarty pits himself against an evil Russian genius bent on triggering global conflict.

Unfortunately for Barnett and Moriarty, Sherlock Homes believes Moriarty to be a villain in his own right...........and is intent on sending his archenemy to prison no matter the consequences.........

'The Infernal Device' doesn't really feature enough sci-fi content to be labeled a work of proto-Steampunk (although it uses technologies that certainly were cutting-edge for the Victorian era as its centerpieces). While Moriarty remains the hero (or villain) of the story, Holmes does make enough appearances to make the book a credible entry into the large library of Holmes pastiches, although perhaps less so as a traditional detective novel and more as a swashbuckling adventure tale.

Author Kurland keeps the narrative moving at a good clip, using well-written dialogue and well-drawn characters to give his novel an engaging quality that will have you finishing the book within three or four sittings.

Summing up, 'The Infernal Device' is an entertaining novel, and one fans of Steampunk will want to consider.

Burton and Cyb

Burton and Cyb
by Antonio Segura (story) and Jose Ortiz (art)
Catalan Communications 1991

These Catalan Communications graphic novels are becoming harder and harder to find, and those that show up for sale often have pretty steep asking prices. However, if you poke around you can occasionally find one for a reasonable price, and such was the case for this compilation of six 'Burton and Cyb' comics from the 1980s.

'Burton and Cyb' appeared in the Spanish sci-fi comic magazine Zona 84 in the mid-80s, and later in that decade English language translations began to appear in Heavy Metal. Several of those strips are compiled in this Catalan Communications graphic novel.

This graphic novel apparently was intended to be the first in a series, but sadly, Catalan went defunct in 1991, and the additional volumes never materialized. So quite a few Burton and Cyb tales remain uncollected.

Burton is a parody of the square-jawed All American action hero, while Cyb (short for 'cyborg') is a trigger-happy misanthrope. Both are amoral con men, grifters, and hardened criminals who have few reservations about fleecing gullible aliens. 

The stories featured excellent artwork by Ortiz, and Segura's plots always combined humor with an edgy, cynical undertone that often is missing from equivalent American comics.

Posted below is one of the entries in Burton and Cyb: 'The Jellyfish from Space', from Heavy Metal magazine, July 1989.

A Clockwork Orange and UK teens, 1973

'A Clockwork Orange' and UK teens, 1973

Nowadays films are likely to spawn their own niche in Cosplay culture, leading to the appearance of young people in elaborate costumes at comic book and geek culture conventions. It's all wholesome, good clean fun.

According to Chris Brown in his 2009 memoir of being a soccer thug, Booted and Suited,  the release of the film A Clockwork Orange in the UK during the early 70s led to quite a different outcome. 

Here's his insightful take on the tremendous impact the film had on the culture of the young, white, working-class fans of the Bristol Rovers football club, as they journeyed to a match at Chesterfield in April 1973:   

There had been a bizarre and sinister change in fashion and youth culture over the past 12 months. It was blamed on a joint attack on British sensibilities by a freakish American rock singer named Vincent Furnier, better known as Alice Cooper, and the eventual release of the classic, but very controversial Stanley Kubrick film A Clockwork Orange. Young men up and down the country had taken to wearing make-up. It was not worn in the same way that women wear make-up – to make themselves more alluring – but in such a way as to make us appear more menacing, more evil. Unfortunately this wasn’t just a fashion or a mere fad, it was something altogether more malevolent.

Whereas Alice Cooper and his snake and whips were purely theatrical, the menace of A Clockwork Orange was very real indeed. After much deliberation by the British Board of Film Censors the uncut film was eventually released in December 1971 with an X-certificate. Many provincial councils, however, refused to allow the British-made film to be shown in their local cinemas due to the graphic scenes of rape and violence – one scene shows a gang rape set to music by Rossini and another a vicious mugging set to the tune of ‘Singing in the Rain’. Eventually Kubrick himself pulled it from British cinemas in 1973 after the film had been linked to a number of horrific incidents, including the rape of a 17-year-old Dutch student in Lancashire by a gang chanting the words to Gene Kelly’s jolly show tune. A judge in another case spoke of the ‘horrible trend inspired by this wretched film’. The film remained banned in Britain for the next 27 years. However, what was really disturbing about the film was that it was supposedly portraying Britain in the future, when casual violence and gang warfare were a way of life for Britain’s youth. It was a true tale of life in Britain all right – but 1970s style.

In the manner of Malcolm McDowell’s gang leader, Alex, and his assorted Droogs, disorder reigned as innocent citizens were set upon in random and unprovoked attacks of ‘ultra violence’. Tramps in particular (one is set upon in the film) came in for unwarranted attention as delinquents the length and breadth of the country mimicked both Alex’s actions and his vocabulary with his boasts of going to ‘tolchock some old veck in an alley and viddy him swim in blood’. Ludwig van Beethoven topped the album charts as thousands of adolescents clamoured to buy the soundtrack of the most controversial British film ever made. As the awesome effect of Clockworkmania raged, the strains of ‘Singing in the Rain’ echoed out from every football terrace in the country as a prelude to violence. I rushed to buy Anthony Burgess’s original 1962 book but its bleak vision of Britain in the supposedly not too distant future and its use of the bizarre Nadsat teenage vocabulary made it demanding and laborious.

Myself and a number of other young smoothies sported false eyelashes and heavy black mascara as we arrived in Chesterfield. Our minds were as warped and twisted as the town’s famous spire – and with our white overalls, white strides and single, solitary black leather-gloved hands we all thought we looked the epitome of terrace fashion culture. Brian Willis and the rest of the Tramps thought we looked total prats.

Lest anyone doubt that film - or by another name, Art - can impact human behavior and pop culture for good or for ill, they need look no further than what happened in the UK with the release of this one film. 

Somehow I don't think that Crazy, Rich Asians is going to have quite the same impact........

Soldier of Fortune: Horizons of Stone

Soldier of Fortune
'Horizons of Stone'
by Alfredo Grassi (story) and Enrique Breccia (art)
from Merchants of Death No. 3, October 1988
Eclipse Comics

Viva la revolucion ! But in the bleak and cynical world of early 1900's Bolivia that is the setting for the 'Solider of Fortune', sometimes the most idealistic ambitions can be subverted by the timely application of dinero............and violence.