Olivia Newton-John
from the movie Toomorrow (1970) 

Magnificent Obsession

'Magnificent Obsession'

by Fehlfarben

1983

Fehlfarben ('full colors') was a (West) German New Wave band that formed in 1979 in Dusseldorf. During the interval from 1980 to 1981 they released three albums. Unfortunately, the band never got the exposure in the Anglophone radio and record networks that bands like 'Nina' or 'Kraftwerk' enjoyed. The band briefly split up after 1983, but regularly re-formed over the ensuing decades to record and release new music. A new album, titled '??0?', is scheduled for release in October, 2022.

The group's 1983 album Glut und Asche ('Embers and Ash') featured a little gem of New Wave music, the track 'Magnificent Obsession'.  

I think that, had Heavy Metal magazine 'rok' critic Lou Stathis heard 'Magnificent Obsession', he breathlessly would have promoted it. I guess we never will know...............anyways, suck in your cheeks, assume a brooding expression, wait for a drizzly, gloomy day, and rock out to 'Magnificent Obsession' !

Book Review: The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 10

Book Review: 'The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 10'

 3 / 5 Stars

'The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 10' (254 pp.) was published by DAW Books in October 1984, and is Book No. 597. The cover art is by Jim Burns.

In addition to editing the Year's Best Fantasy series, Arthur W. Saha (1923 - 1999) is perhaps best known as the originator of the term 'Trekkie', and as the father of Heidi Saha, who in 1973, at the age of 14, appeared as Vampirella at various comic book and sci-fi conventions and ignited an erotic frenzy among the elderly, dirty old men attending those conventions.......

All the stories in 'Series 10' first were published in 1982 - 1983 in various anthologies and magazines such as Shadows, Whispers, and The Twilight Zone.

One thing that is quite apparent from reading Series 10: many of its authors are conscious of a need to lard their tales with verbiage. Lots of florid prose, and metaphors, and similes, and adjectives. It was as if the contributors felt that to use unadorned, colloquial language in a 'fantasy' piece was a disservice to the genre. 

I was regularly looking up obscure words......

leopardine: rabbit fur processed to simulate leopard-skin

monitory: giving warning

damson: relating to plums.

mulberry: purplish-black color.

incarnadine: pinkish-red in color. 

lacertian: relating to lizards.

subculum: I think Tanith Lee made up this word. It apparently refers to a room or structure in a wizard's dwelling ?  

Anyways, my capsule summaries of the contents:

Blue Vase of Ghosts, by Tanith Lee: a melodrama involving Subyrus the Mage, who is afflicted with world-weariness, and his sometime paramour, the courtesan Lumaria. Underneath Lee's baroque prose, there isn't much of a plot..........

She Sells Sea Shells, by Paul Darcy Boles: a resident of the New England seacoast makes the acquaintance of an exotic young woman. One of the better stories in the anthology.

Green Roses, by Larry Tritten: a demon, and a game of Monopoly.

Wong's Lost and Found Emporium, by William F. Wu: the eponymous emporium is a mysterious place that can grant your heart's desire.........but not without risk. An unremarkable treatment of humanistic themes.

Huggins' World, by Ennis Duling: what if the characters of an Olde Tyme comic strip existed in the 'real world' ?

The Curse of the Smalls and the Stars, by Fritz Leiber: a Fafhrd and Gray Mouser tale. Annoyed godlings visit curses on our heroes. Making things worse, Fafhrd and the Mouser are the targets of an assassination plot........

I've read some dire stories from Lieber, but this novella is among the most dire. The prose is so stilted, and self-consciously ornate, that reading it was painful. And yet, because Leiber was a 'name' writer at the time this anthology was compiled, Saha included 'Curse' as one of the 'Year's Best Fantasy Stories'.......?!  

The Silent Cradle, by Leigh Kennedy: a suburban family finds themselves in possession of a 'ghost' child. It's competently written, but bland.

Into Whose Hands, by Karl Edward Wagner: this story originally appeared in Whispers and it's more horror than fantasy. It utilizes Wagner's past experience as a psychiatrist. 'Into Whose Hands' is set in a depressing state mental hospital, located in the rural American South, and follows the protagonist, staff psychiatrist Dr. Marlowe, on his night shift. There is lots of sardonic humor, and an ending that is both ambiguous, and disquieting. One of Wagner's better short stories, and one of the better entries in the anthology.

Like a Black Dandelion, by John Alfred Taylor: a slight tale about mysterious goings-on in the Aleutian Islands.

The Hills Behind Hollywood High, by Avram Davidson and Grania Davis: Hollywood High teen Dorothy discovers an unusual route to being an actress. This story tries hard for humor and too quickly becomes boring. It lacks the compactness, and sharp denouement, that mark the best of Davidson's short fiction.

Beyond the Dead Reef, by James Tiptree, Jr.: a horror story, rather than fantasy. This is another of the entries in Tiptree, Jr. 's 'Tales of the Quintana Roo' canon. Dealing with the hazards of scuba diving, it avoids the oblique qualities of the other Quintana stories I've read, and thus is effective.

The verdict ? 'The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 10' has more than its share of duds, but merits a three-star rating due to the inclusion of the entries from Tiptree, Wagner, and Boles. It demonstrates the limitations imposed by Arthur W. Saha's editorial stance: determined to curtail the appearance of 'traditional' fantasy stories (limited here in this anthology to those of Lee and Leiber) he winds up including too many marginal pieces, and the anthology suffers as a result. 

National Lampoon August 1973

National Lampoon 

August 1973

Let's go back in time 49 years to August, 1973. On the yellow plastic AM transistor radio we listen to in our house, 'Yesterday Once More', by the Carpenters, is in heavy rotation. The nostalgia craze sparked by American Graffiti was well underway back then.........

The latest issue of National Lampoon is on the newstands, featuring a cover by Frank Frazetta. 

There are advertisements for new and established rock and roll artists. 'Edward Bear', a trio of Canadians, had a hit in 1973 with the single 'Last Song'; but their album 'Close Your Eyes' was to be their last.

There is a 'Cheech Wizard' comic from Vaughan Bode. I can't say I've ever been a big fan of Bode's stuff, but this comic has a kind of imaginative perversity that makes it stand out.

Gahan Wilson contributes a funny look at kids with 'Strange Beliefs of Children'. 

In her half-page comic 'Trots and Bonnie', comix artist Sherry Flenniken takes aim at the hippie / vegan lifestyle.  

And let's not overlook some obligatory 'tits' stuff with a Photo Funny:

And, only in 1973 could you buy a short-sleeve shirt that allowed you to masquerade as a priest ?!

Yes, that's how it was, in those warm days of August 1973........

Turnpike from Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor issue one

Turnpike

by Harlan Ellison

Adapted by Max Allen Collins

Art by Craig Elliott

from Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, Issue One

Dark Horse Comics, March 1995

In 1995, Dark Horse comics released a five-issue miniseries of comic books, titled 'Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor', that anthologized selected short stories by the renowned author.

The series featured comics, all-text pieces, and illustrated stories.

'Dream Corridor' wasn't very good, for a variety of reasons. I'll have a post on the series coming up soon. But in the meantime, I thought I'd post one of the better entries in the series: 'Turnpike', from issue one. It features an ambiguous ending, and the highly stylized artwork that was very much prized in the mid-1990s.

Book Review: Twilight of the Empire

Book Review: 'Twilight of the Empire' by Simon R. Green

3 / 5 Stars

Simon R. Green (b. 1955) is a UK resident and a prolific author of novels and short stories in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. His ‘Deathstalker’ novels are a very successful Space Opera franchise, with at least 8 novels published from 1995 – 2005. 

‘Twilight of the Empire’ is an omnibus edition compiling three shorter novels that are loosely connected with the Deathstalker storyline: ‘Mistworld’ (1992), ‘Ghostworld’ (1993), and ‘Hellworld’ (1993). ‘Twilight’ (525 pp.) was issued by Roc in August 1997 and features cover art by Don Maitz. 

All three 'World' novels are set in a far-future galaxy under the oppressive of an evil Empire, whose Queen demands absolute fealty from her subjects......under pain of banishment or death.

Cover illustration by Sanjulian, Ace Books, September 1992

Cover illustration by Mark Salwowski, Gollancz, November 1992

‘Mistworld’ takes place on the eponymous planet, which alone of the worlds in the galaxy remains unconquered by the Empire. This is due to the fact that Mistworld hosts a large population of espers, whose combined mental projections are capable of causing mass catatonia, and even death, in attacking spaceship crews. 

But Mistworld pays a price for its defiance; deprived of access to technology, it putters along in a barely medieval state of existence. Its winters are miserably cold, dark, and snowy; its population mostly is made up of criminals and reprobates wanted by the Empire; and its economy is in dire straits, with only the most dedicated of smugglers willing and able to elude Empire patrols and make planetfall to exchange goods.

Topaz once was one of the most feared of the Investigators, a special class of individuals endowed with superhuman esper powers and created by the Empire to enforce its laws and edicts. Having fled the Empire, Topaz now is an outcast, condemned to live on Mistworld. Topaz makes the best of the situation, but as ‘Mistworld’ opens, she finds the planet’s very existence threatened by traitors who are hoping to earn the gratitude of the Empire by selling out their fellow citizens. It will be up to Topaz, and a loose coalition of politicians, bureaucrats, schemers, and thieves, to save their home from elimination by the Empire……

‘Mistworld’ is the best of the three entries in ‘Twilight of the Empire’. The low-tech setting is atmospheric and imaginative, and communicated without laborious world-building. The characters are engaging, and the plot maintains momentum till the final pages, never tipping its hand as to whether Topaz and her compatriots will succeed or not.

Cover illustration by Sanjulian, Ace Books, March 1993

In ‘Ghostworld’, a team of soldiers, espers, and Investigators, led by the battle-scarred Captain John Silence, are dispatched to the planet Unseeli, where Base 13, a mining installation vital to the technological well-being of the Empire, has gone silent. Silence is very familiar with Unseeli, having participated in a past military campaign against the Ashrai race indigenous to the planet, an unusually brutal campaign which ended with the complete eradication of the Ashrai. 

Upon landing on Unseeli Silence and his team find themselves under a concentrated psychic assault, and are forced into an uneasy alliance with a rogue Empire agent named Carrion whose presence on the planet is something of a mystery. As for the status of base Thirteen, there are disturbing signs that the entire installation has been taken over by malevolent entities of unknown origin………

‘Ghostworld’ is a horror sci-fi novel that suffers from too prolonged a buildup to the advent of the marquee attraction, the monsters. There are a surfeit of passages about our heroes feeling uneasy, feeling that Something Is Watching Them, that they are in danger, etc., etc. Once the monsters finally do make their appearance, the narrative doesn’t stray too far from a formulaic plot construction, with darkened corridors, strange noises from dimly-lit corners, Unspeakable Horrors gathering in the gloom, and other staples of sci-fi horror narratives. 

Cover illustration by Sanjulian, Ace Books, September 1993

The third and final novel in the compilation, ‘Hellworld’, adheres to the same template as ‘Ghostworld’. Again we have an Away Team, this one led by Captain Scott Hunter, descending to mystery planet (in this case, Wolf IV). To give some depth to the characters, we learn that this Away Team is in fact a 'Hell Squad', peopled by the Empire’s outcasts, former stalwarts whose transgressions against the Empire have led to their designation as expendables. Hell Squads are dispatched to investigate the most dangerous of places, and the members of this particular Hell Squad all have been psychologically damaged from past ordeals.

 

Once on the surface of Wolf IV there are the same labored adumbrations of Bad Things to Come as we encountered in 'Ghostworld', although in ‘Hellworld’ they are given something of a Lovecraftian flavor, such as alien architecture whose 'wrongness' provokes sensations of fear and loathing; unseen, but sinister Entities lurking in the desert lands; an advanced, eons-old civilization that collapsed from an awful catastrophe. 

When the monsters finally make their appearance, the plot settles into a chase narrative regularly interrupted by life-or-death combats and much psychological and emotional introspection (at one point in the narrative, the action is suspended while our heroes are consumed by hallucinations designed to reveal that said heroes are battling not just the external monsters of Wolf IV, but their own internal demons as well…………..meh…….).  

Summing up, after finishing ‘Twilight of the Empire’ I felt that author Green is a capable writer, who keeps his prose unadorned and his plots manageable. However, only ‘Mistworld’ rises above being a perfunctory effort at Space Opera, thus I’m comfortable with giving ‘Twilight of the Empire’ a three-star rating.        

People Make the World Go Round

People Make the World Go Round

by The Stylistics

July 22, 1972

Let's go back 50 years to July 22, 1972, when the song 'People Make the World Go Round', a track from the self-titled 1971 debut album from the Stylistics, peaked at number 25. The song featured the distinctive falsetto vocals of Russell Tompkins Jr., and an extended coda with an early 70s jazz flavor. It epitomized the smooth groove sound that the band would become known for.

The band would go on to be a mainstay of 70s soul and R & B with hits like 'Break Up to Make Up', 'You Make Me Feel Brand New', and 'Can't Give You Anything (But My Love)'. 

Tompkins Jr. continues to perform live as 'Russell Tompkins and the Stylistics', and as this clip from 2021 shows, he still has the falsetto down cold ('People Make the World Go Round' starts at the 53 minute mark).

Vintage paperbacks July 2022

Vintage Paperbacks

July 2022 

Another sweltering, 90+ degrees day in mid - July in Central Virginia. It's too hot and humid to do much outside, what with the heat and mosquitoes. So why not take a drive to a used bookstore and see what can be found on the shelves ? 

These cost me only $2.75 each, so it's a cheap thrill. Cheap thrills are good thrills when a gallon of gas costs $4.19.

Well, I came away with a genuine 'Paperback from Hell' in the form of 'Junkyard', by Barry Porter, from Zebra Books, 1989. 

Bookjackers at amazon are asking $125  to $500 (!) for this novel, which gets four- and five- star reviews. A commenter at the 'Too Much Horror Fiction' blog says the book is not about vicious dogs, but rather, mutant rats...........?! Ring this book up as a real score !

Two potboilers that promise much, but probably deliver rather tame content.......'The Voyeur' (1969) is a fictionalized treatment of Hugh Hefner and Playboy, while 'Ellie' (1973), about a domineering young woman, is an unknown. It's not among the Herbert Kastle paperbacks reviewed at Glorious Trash.

'The War God' (May 1981) features an elaborate stepback, fold-out cover.......... they really knew how to make paperbacks back then.......

Back in the 1970s journalists were revered personages, particularly those who cultivated a 'man of the people', proletariat-friendly persona. This was very true of Pete Hamill of the New York Daily News. His novel 'Dirty Laundry' (1978) features a reporter who drinks too much, and occasionally does some crime investigating, as its hero. Roman a clef, anyone ? 

[ Hamill did have legitimate credentials as a fiction writer, publishing ten novels and one hundred short stories. ]

'Run', by William Sleator (1975) apparently was written for the Young Adult market. It has an amazing cover. The artist's signature is in the lower left corner, but it is illegible.

And then there's ''The Khaki Mafia' (1971), a potboiler about illicit activities on the grounds of Fort Benning, Georgia, during the late 1960s. Author Moore was a very successful writer during the 1960s and 1970s, with 'The French Connection', 'The Green Berets', and 'The Happy Hooker' among his credits.

So there you go...........although the store's air conditioning was inadequate and I was dripping sweat by the time I left, shopping on a 93 degree day can have its rewards ! 

Book Review: Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Scream Along with Me

Book Review: 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Scream Along with Me'

4 / 5 Stars

The 'Alfred Hitchcock' franchise was ubiquitous in the Baby Boomer years following World War Two. Something like 170 anthologies of short stories were issued in hardback, and mass market paperback, under the Hitchcock moniker. 

There also was a monthly digest, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, that was very successful (it was launched in December 1956, and still is published today).

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 1967

Robert Arthur, Jr., the US author who edited much of the media in the Hitchcock franchise, even launched a series of mysteries for juveniles, using the Hitchcock affiliation as a marketing tool. From 1964 to 1987, 43 volumes of 'The Three Investigators' books were published. I read a number of these and found them to be entertaining, back in my junior high school days.

Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Silver Spider, 1967

Of particular prominence among the franchise's enterprises were the 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' paperback anthologies from Dell. These were commonplace on store shelves during the 60s and 70s. According to the Dell wiki, the 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' series began in June 1958 with 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: 12 Stories They Wouldn't Let Me Do on TV',  and ended in October 1979 with 'Alfred Hitchcock: Breaking the Scream Barrier'.  

I remember reading the Hitchcock anthologies, and even buying a few of them, as a teenager. I have five or six of them sitting in a box somewhere in my basement.........

Anyways, 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Scream Along with Me' (224 pp.) is an abridged version of the 1967 hardcover anthology 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories that Scared Even Me'. My copy of 'Scream' (above) was issued in September 1977. The first Dell edition (pictured below) was published in 1970. 

The stories in 'Scream Along with Me' all saw print in an eclectic assortment of various books and magazines, including the more popular 'slick' magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, in the interval from 1913 to 1967.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

Fishhead, by Irvin S. Cobb (1913): the eponymous backwoods resident isn't someone you want to mess with.

Camera Obscura, by Basil Copper (1965): a moneylender meets the intriguing Dr. Gingold.

A Death in the Family, by Miriam Allen deFord (1961): oldie but goodie about a man with peculiar habits.

The Knife, by Robert Arthur (1951): it's not just an ordinary utensil. I suspect most readers will see where the plot is going well in advance. I would argue that 'The Knife' ably prefigures two of the most provocative stories in Harlan Ellison's 1967 anthology Dangerous Visions.

Casablanca, by Thomas M. Disch (1967): a middle-aged American couple, self-absorbed and dismissive, find their vacation in Morocco abruptly upended. 

First published in New Worlds magazine, this is a very well-plotted and well-written story, with low-key sci-fi overtones. 'Casablanca' had me concluding that when Disch wasn't trying so hard to turn out 'speculative fiction' pieces (like 'The Squirrel Cage') for the New Wave movement, he was quite capable of writing very good, 'traditional' short stories.

The Road to Mictlantecutli, by Adobe James (1965): Morgan, a ruthless criminal, is travelling on a deserted road in Mexico. The strange sights and passions he encounters will lead him to change his life........for good, or for ill.

'Adobe James' was the pseudonym of American writer James Moss Cardwell (1926 – 1990), who had his short stories published in a variety of magazines and anthologies during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. 

'Road' first appeared in issue 20 of the Adam Bedside Reader, and went on to be a staple entry in many anthologies, including The Sixth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1965) and The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (1981). It skillfully imbues supernatural gongs-on with a moral theme, and in my opinion, is one of the best horror stories of the sixties.

Guide to Doom, by Ellis Peters (1963): short-short tale of a chateau with a disturbing history.

The Estuary, by Margaret St. Clair (1950): another short-short tale, and perennial anthology favorite.

Tough Town, by William Sambrot (1957): a travelling salesman finds himself in the wrong kind of town.

The Troll,  by T.H. White (1935): mild tale about a creature from Scandinavian fable.

Evening at the Black House by Robert Somerlott (1964): this first appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine (?!). It's a tale with a twist at the end. Well done.

One of the Dead, by William Wood (1964): this story originally appeared in The Saturday Evening Post in October 31, 1964 (the illustration below is from that issue). While a bit over-written, it's one of the better psychological horror stories I've read. 

It adroitly combines the haunted house trope with insightful observations about the anomie of mid-century suburban life in Los Angeles. There is an undertone of creepiness that comes to fruition in the story's final sentence. I finished 'One of the Dead' thinking that this sole story from Wood is markedly superior to many stories originating from better-known 'quiet horror' practitioners like Robert Aickman, T. E. D. Klein, Dennis Etchison, and Charles L. Grant. 

Information about author Wood is scant. According to the Science Fiction Encyclopedia he may have been a UK author, who wrote a 1962 novel titled The News from Karachi.

Illustration for 'One of the Dead' in the Saturday Evening Post, October 31, 1964

The Real Thing, by Robert Specht (1966): short-short about the village simpleton, with a 'shock' ending.

Journey to Death, by Donald E. Westlake (1959): a sea cruise can be problematic.

The Master of the Hounds, by Algis Budrys (1966): strange things are happening in rural New Jersey. Another story that first saw print in The Saturday Evening Post (August, 1966; cover above). Who would have thought The Post published so many horror / suspense stories back in the day ?!

The Candidate, by Henry Slesar (1961): corporate competitiveness gets a new dimension. Another story that reinforces my belief that Slesar (1927 -2002) was one of the more talented short-short story writers of the second half of the 20th century. 

It, by Theodore Sturgeon (1940): old-school tale of the predecessor to the 'swamp monsters' of the 1970s (like the Man-Thing and the Swamp-Thing).

Summing up, when reading these Hitchcock anthologies during the mid-70s, I tended to regard them as rather fuddy-duddy. 

But when read nowadays, with the benefit of greater familiarity with the horror / suspense genre, it's very clear that, compared to anthologies such as The Year's Best Horror Stories or Whispers or Shadows, there often are better short stories in the Hitchcock volumes, even if these stories had previously been published in the 1960s (or even earlier). 

Accordingly, I recommend 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Scream Along with Me' to fans of horror and suspense literature.