Book Review: The Ice Monkey

Book Review: 'The Ice Monkey' by M. John Harrison

4 / 5 Stars

'The Ice Monkey and Other stories' first was published in 1983 in hardcover by Gollancz. Copies of that book have very high asking prices, but a trade paperback edition published in 1993 in the UK by Flamingo (above) is affordable. The cover artwork is by Carol Fulton.

‘Monkey’ contains seven short stories that first appeared in the interval from 1975 – 1982 in magazines (such as Interzone) and anthologies ('The Year's Best SF').

Soon after his first novels, 'The Committed Men' and 'The Pastel City' were published in 1971, Michael John Harrison (b. 1945) emerged as one of the most accomplished of contemporary writers of sf and fantasy. Adept at both the novel and the short story, he brought a New Wave sensibility to his prose, yet skillfully avoided the self-indulgence that tended to mar so many New Wave fiction pieces from authors well-known and lesser-known.  Unfortunately, over the past 25 years or so, Harrison’s output has centered more on novels, and his sporadic short stories have adopted a Speculative Fiction style that I find too diffuse to appreciate.

Most of the stories in ‘Monkey’ are set in nondescript English landscapes, urban or rural, where it is always drizzling, and, along with the chilly mist, entropy shrouds the terrain. The characters in these tales are depressed and adrift, yet unable to salvage themselves; we can only look on as their destinies unfold within underlit rooms with worn rugs and sagging furniture; dilapidated apartment houses with dusty windows; and deserted streets marked with overflowing rubbish bins. 

My capsule summaries of the contents of ‘The Ice Monkey’:

The Ice Monkey (1980): in a London suburb laid waste by urban renewal and passivity, the narrator tries to negotiate a meeting between an estranged couple. More of a story about rock climbing (Harrison’s favorite pastime) than anything else.

The New Rays (1982): in a dreary northern England town, the first-person narrator seeks treatment for her incurable illness from Dr Alexandre and his mysterious New Rays. Creepy, and threaded with a proto-steampunk consciousness, this is one of Harrison’s best stories.

 

The Incalling (1978): As a favor to Clerk, a promising writer (albeit one with an unpleasant personality) the narrator agrees to participate in a strange religious ceremony staged by immigrants, whose intentions have more to do with greed than altruism. The narrative delivers a growing sense of unease, and a revelation that surprises, without being contrived. 

 

Settling the World (1975): God has come to the UK, and erected a massive, otherworldly  superhighway across the length of the country. Oxlade, an agent with the British Secret Service, is tasked with finding what lies at the highway’s end. Among all the stories in ‘Monkey’, this one is frank sf, or fantasy, or even magic realism; but there is a downbeat, unsettling note to the discovery that lies at the end of the highway.

The Quarry (1983): An invalid finds restoration in the English countryside. This is  the only tale in the anthology with an optimistic note, derived from a pantheistic perception of nature.

Running Down (1975): Lyall is infected with entropy; the narrator, his onetime classmate, can only look on as Lyall’s life winds downward in a trail of growing decrepitude. Despite the inclusion of too much rock-climbing activity, the story remains one of the most original to come out of the New Wave movement in sf.

Egarno (1981): Lucas is the proprietor of a small shop in a rundown neighborhood in Manchester. He  tries to give meaning to his increasingly disordered and shabby life by believing in the existence of the mythical land of Egarno. Not really sf or horror; more a tale of urban anomie. 

In summary, 'Egarno' really is the only entry that detracts from this anthology, and the anthology is deserving of a Four-Star Score. If you are a fan of Harrison’s work, then you will want to have a copy of ‘The Ice Monkey’. If you are new to Harrison’s work, this is worth picking up, as it offers a good overview of his short stories.

National Lampoon April 1981

National Lampoon

April, 1981

April, 1981, and the top single on the Billboard Hot 100 chart is 'Kiss On My List', by Hall and Oates.

The April issue of National Lampoon is a 'chaos' themed issue. I can't say it's a very good issue overall, although it does have some amusing content.

As far as advertising goes, we get a full-page ad for the latest album from Journey, a live, double-album LP titled Captured. This LP features the Old School Journey, back when the band still was a progressive rock outfit, with Gregg Rolie, Steve Smith, Russ Valory, Neal Schon, and Steve Perry in the lineup. The entire contents of Captured is available here; I suggest the best place to start is by going to the 1:107:22 mark for the only track that is not a live track, but a studio track: 'The Party's Over', one of the very best of all Journey songs (in my opinion).

And also, we have one of the most striking movie posters of the 1980s, the one for The Howling.

There is a comic book satire, titled 'Young Ron', aimed at Ronald Reagan Jr., known as 'Ron' Reagan. 

The son of president-at-the-time Ronald Reagan and Nancy Davis Reagan, Ron was a ballet dancer (eyebrows raised), and politically, openly sympathetic to liberal causes. Although Ron was married at the time the comic was published, that didn't stop the Lampoon's Ted Mann, Tod Carroll, and Frank Springer from depicting him as a Dainty Dude........

We get some boobies (!) in a Foto Funny:

And we've got some black-and-white comics, too. All of this, back in April of 1981...........

Book Review: A Nice Place to Live

Book Review: 'A Nice Place to Live'

4 / 5 Stars

This novel is one of the more obscure Paperbacks from Hell. It first was published in 1981 as a trade paperback by Crown, and then a year later, issued in mass-market format by Bantam.

The trade version features some groovy gold-colored highlights on the front cover, certainly in keeping with the Paperbacks from Hell aesthetic !

A sequel, titled ‘The Vengeance’, was issued in 1983 by Random House.

I couldn't find much information about author Robert C. Sloane, so I don't know if he is 'real', or a pseudonym.

'A Nice Place to Live' is set in the early 1980s. The protagonists are Nick and Christine Marino, the kind of young and photogenic couple who like to look deeply into each other’s eyes, and whisper sexy remarks. 

[ Yeah……… we’re already rooting for the monster(s) ! ]

Nick and Christine recently have moved into the village of Mill Harbor on the north shore of Long Island. It’s an idyllic place to live, although the neighbors are a little eccentric, even threatening. Karl Anderson, a brutish and unpleasant man, is fixated on Christine, while Bowen Stirner, an anthropologist, also signals he wants to be more than just friends with her. And Karl Anderson's daughter Karla, a stunning blonde, has clear intentions towards Nick.

These domestic melodramas are complicated by the discovery that the Marino's dog has been killed in a violent manner. It turns out the neighborhood has a history of animal mutilations. Who, or what, is responsible ? Nick, Christine, and her aunt Henrietta are about to find out…….

I won’t divulge any spoilers (although the fact that there is a sequel has its implications). Sufficient to say that ‘A Nice Place to Live’ is akin to many Paperbacks from Hell that deploy the well-worn trope of a couple moving into a seemingly wonderful place, only to find it steeped in EVIL !!!!!!!!!! (such as, for example, ‘Harvest Home’ by Thomas Tryon, or ‘New Blood’ by Richard Salem). More than a few of such titles are duds, mainly because the slowly unfurling malevolence turns out, in the end, to be underwhelming.

In 'Nice Place', however, author Sloane keeps the reader off-balance with some plot twists and turns. And in place of the traditional tropes of ghosts, or vague occult phenomena, he introduces some genuinely disturbing adversaries, whose depredations benefit from Splatterpunk shadings.

Where the novel slips from Five-Star to Four-Star territory is in the climax, which goes on too long, and features stereotypical 'bwah ha ha !' speeches from the villains. The sort of speeches that are designed to give our heroes, trapped in a lethal predicament, those precious additional seconds to try and come up with a winning strategy............ 

Summing up, if you want a better-than average Paperback from Hell, that is a short and engaging read, then ‘A Nice Place to Live’ will satisfy.

Book Review: Kingdoms of the Wall

Book Review: 'Kingdoms of the Wall' by Robert Silverberg

3 / 5 Stars

'Kingdoms of the Wall' first was published in the U.K. in 1992, with a Bantam Spectra hardcover edition released in the U.S. in 1993. This mass market paperback edition (370 pp.) was published in February 1994, and features cover art by Chris Hopkins.

'Kingdoms' is a 'Quest' novel, much like Silverberg's 'The Face of the Waters' (1991). The reader is invited, so to speak, to accompany a group of adventurers on their journey to a Big Revelation about the world they live in.

In 'Kingdoms', the lead protagonist, and first-person narrator, for the Quest is one Poilar Crookleg, a young man residing in the village of Jespodar. Each year, villages all over the world assemble a cohort of forty pilgrims (twenty men and twenty women), who set out on a journey to clamber up the immense mountain range known as the Wall and onward to the summit of the mountain called Kosa Saag. The Gods, so it is said, live in splendor atop Kosa Saag, and those resolute enough to travel all the way to their abode will be blessed with knowledge and grace sustaining. 

The road to the summit of Kosa Saag is no easy one, and all manner of dangers and distractions test the commitment of the pilgrims to their holy task. Indeed, only a fraction of any Forty who set out for Kosa Saag ever return, and those that do return, have been irrevocably changed. Some are mute, others crippled by madness. None of the returnees will tell of what they found in the land of the Gods.

Poilar's father and grandfather had been among the lucky ones, the shining ones, recruited to be pilgrims, and while they never have returned, Poilar yearns to follow in their footsteps. In the early chapters of 'Kingdoms' readers learn of the arduous, at times lethal, training recruits for the Forty must undergo. And thus it is that after eight years of training, one hot and humid morning Poilar and thirty-nine other men and women from the village of Jespodar march out the of village and onto the trail that will take them into the Wall, and beyond the Wall, the summit of Kosa Saag and a rendezvous with the Gods.  

As the Quest progresses, Poilar and his companions will witness all manner of horrors, as well as things sublime. But none of their encounters will prepare them for what lies at the summit of Kosa Saag..........

Well before I finished 'Kingdoms of the Wall' I was agreeable to assigning the novel a Three-Star Rating. As always, Silverberg's prose is smooth and effortless, but as was the case with 'The Face of the Waters', the straightforward plot contains quite a bit of padding in the form of internal monologues, and various digressions. Not until page 267 does Silverberg begin to tip his hand as to the nature of the Big Revelation, and when the closing chapter discloses said Revelation, it comes with some holes in logic that were a little too big to ignore. However, I found the denouement of 'Kingdoms' to be superior to that of 'The Face of the Waters', and in that sense I was content. 

Those readers who are at ease with Silverberg's dilatory approach to storytelling likely will find 'Kingdoms of the Wall' to be rewarding, but not overly memorable.

Rock Dreams

'Rock Dreams' 

by Guy Peellaert and Nik Cohn

Guy Peellaert was born in Brussels in 1934 and in the mid-1960s moved to Paris to pursue a career in commercial art. In 1966 a French magazine published Peellaert's Pop Art comic, 'Les Aventures de Jodelle'. 'Jodelle was considered an exemplar of hip and groovy and brought 'Continental' renown to Peellaert.

In the early 70s Peellaert teamed up with the British rock critic and writer Nik Cohn (b. 1946) to do a book of pictures of prominent rock and roll artists. 'Rock Dreams' was published by Popular Library in January 1973 as a trade paperback, and became the iconic rock art book of the 1970s. 

The story goes that Mick Jagger saw the proofs of the book and promptly invited Peellaert to do the cover for the Stones' forthcoming (i.e., 1974) album It's Only Rock and Roll. 

'Rock Dreams' is 170 pages of art depicting individual and group performers in not just the genre of rock, but the genres of blues, 'adult contemporary', and country and western.

The book is chronological in order, going from the birth of rock in the 1950s, up to the early 1970s.

Peellaert's work speaks for itself. It depicts its subjects in a idealized, satirical, or even poignant manner. 

Nik Cohn's captions are a mixed bag. Some simply are fatuous (Gene Vincent is like a 'maimed black leather animal'), while others, such as Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young ('Highway songs full of light and space' ) ably complement the artwork.

After 'Rock Dreams', Cohn went on to write for the U.S. media market. His 1976 article for New York magazine, 'Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night', became the basis for the movie Saturday Night Fever. Later it was revealed that Cohn had fabricated much of the events supposedly profiled in the article.

For his part, Peellaert went on to do two more books of paintings of prominent personalities in the world of movies, popular culture, and politics. 'The Big Room' (1986) and '20th Century Dreams' (1999) focused on Las Vegas, and 'imaginary' historical encounters, respectively. 

It's hard to overestimate the impact of 'Rock Dreams'. I was fortunate to get a copy of the 1973 edition in late 1970s (maybe from a remainders table at Waldenbooks).

In their review of April 11, 1974, Rolling Stone magazine labeled the book 'Teen Fantasies as Art'. 

It was an essential part of every stoner's library during the 1970s, and Peellaert's approach was mimicked by other artists, such as John Youssi, who provided the illustration below for a March, 1976 Playboy article about Bruce Springsteen:

Baby Boomers are the audience for 'Rock Dreams'. I can't see anyone under 50 having much interest in the book, apart from admiring the art. 

Some of the portrayed artists nowadays are fringe figures: Johnny Ray, Annette Funicello, P.J. Proby, Conway Twitty, and Cilla Black. It's difficult to imagine those names resonating with anyone who came of age during the MTV and CD eras. And I can't see anyone in the cohorts of Gen-Y, or Gen-Z, having sufficient familiarity with even the major performers profiled in 'Rock Dreams', to grasp the insinuations couched in many of Cohn's captions.

Copies of the 1973 edition of 'Rock Dreams' fetch high prices ($40 and up, at Abebooks). The Taschen Books reprint of 2003 is a little more affordable.  

Beautiful City

'Beautiful City'
from the movie Godspell (1973)

If you're a Baby Boomer, then you may be familiar with the 1973 movie Godspell, which was based on a  stage play written in 1970 by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak. Godspell first was performed off-Broadway in 1971.

Godspell came on the scene just as another New Testament-based play, Jesus Christ Superstar, was gaining considerable attention on Broadway. Like Superstar, Godspell was a commercial success, with one of the songs from the soundtrack, ‘Day By Day’, becoming a Billboard top 20 hit in the Summer of 1972.

Plans were implemented for a cinematic version of Godspell, with filming taking place from August through November 1972 in New York City. The film was released in theaters in March 1973.

Viewing the film today, I am struck by how pleasant and appealing (!!!) New York City looks in the lighting and atmosphere of early Fall 1972, before the advent - just a year later-  of the Arab Oil Embargo, the resultant financial crises, and the crime, squalor and decay that were to grip the city until the mid-1990s. The film has the sort of goofy, amiable energy that was still evident in some aspects of the counterculture in 1972, when the hippie movement still had some degree of vitality.

If I were to describe Godspell to someone who has never seen it, I’d have to say it is a cross between Superstar and The Electric Company. Unlike Superstar, Godspell takes a decidedly more saccharine view of the Gospels; save for the more poignant moments, the songs and dialogue are upbeat and amiable, the cast dressed in clown’s clothing, and Jesus and his followers presented as a peculiar breed of ‘flower children’. 

Listening to the soundtrack for the film, there is plenty of (rather mawkish) early 70s folkie goodness. But there also are some tunes that perfectly capture the idealism of the Youth Movement of the era, and none does this better than 'Beautiful City'. A video clip of this song being performed in the movie is here, while the audio file (better quality sound) can be listened to here. Enjoy !

Book Review: Shadrach in the Furnace

Book Review: 'Shadrach in the Furnace' by Robert Silverberg

1 / 5 Stars

'Shadrach in the Furnace' (247 pp.) first was published in hardcover in 1976 by Bobbs-Merrill, with a cover illustration by Fred Samperi. A mass market paperback edition was released by Pocket Books in February, 1978.

'Shadrach' is set in 2012. A series of geological catastrophes, and the Virus War, have caused the downfall of the West and allowed a Chinese Communist Party apparatchik, the Mongolian Genghis II Mao IV Khan, to install himself as a global despot.

From his complex in Ulan Bator, Genghis Mao Khan - who is ninety years old - surveils events all over the world from a network of CCTV cameras. Dissent from his rule is negligible, hampered by the fact that most of the global population slowly is succumbing from the disease of 'organ rot', with treatment offered only to those in the Khan's inner circle.  

The eponymous Shadrach Mordecai is the Khan's personal physician. A black American man, Shadrach is personable, skilled, and utterly affectless about the disastrous state of the world. Living a life of privilege, sheltered in the complex in Ulan Bator, Shadrach attends to the increasing medical needs of his patient, who requires regular transplants of organs procured from the viscera of comatose rebels and dissidents interned at the 'Organ Farm'. 

When not providing care to his autarch, Shadrach enjoys dalliances with two female scientists on the Khan's staff, who are working on methods to increase the longevity of their employer. Shadrach also enjoys frequent trips to the pleasure city of Karakorum, which offers a variety of recreational delights to the Khan's bureaucrats and functionaries.

I'm not spoiling anything by revealing that Shadrach's idyllic life soon is to be disrupted by the discovery that the Khan hopes to extend his life, and regain his youth, by having his consciousness downloaded, as it were, into the body of one of his subjects. 

And it is Shadrach who has been chosen for this peculiar 'honor'.............. 

So 'Shadrach in the Furnace' would seem to have an intriguing, inherently gripping premise: our hero knows he is in a metaphorical furnace, so what will he do to save himself ? Unfortunately, with this novel, Silverberg's approach to plotting is so anemic that the novel never achieves much in the way of drama or excitement.

Indeed, Shadrach doesn't learn he's been selected to be the repository of the ailing Khan's consciousness until page 123, and despite that revelation, Shadrach eschews any sort of urgency. We are treated to expositions on the use of woodworking as a meditative tool. There are phantasmagorical excursions into Virtual Reality (as it was envisioned in 1976). Shadrach has melodramatic exchanges with his girlfriends. And in the closing chapters of the novel, Silverberg has Shadrach indulge in travel to places around the globe, this serving as a mechanism to advance Shadrachs' personal growth, and empathy with the masses of humanity suffering under the Khan's despotism. 

These divagations ensure that, when it finally arrives, the novel's denouement is underwhelming and contrived, and failed to justify the investment in time I had made for the preceding 242 pages.

The verdict ? Like most (all ?) of Silverberg's New Wave era novels, 'Shadrach in the Furnace' suffers from a preoccupation with characterization over plotting, and an emphasis on discourses into humanistic themes, discourses that can't help but seep momentum from lethargic narratives. 

It's interesting to note that after the release of 'Shadrach' Silverberg published no new works for four years, and when he did resume publishing, it was the combined fantasy / sci-fi novel 'Lord Valentine's Castle'. 

'Valentine's Castle' was considerably more energetic and plot-driven than Silverberg's New Wave entries, and as a result, also was more commercially successful.

I am comfortable with a One Star Review for 'Shadrach in the Furnace', as it is only for those readers with the patience for a dilatory narrative that exemplifies the New Wave ethos.

Penthouse March 1976

Penthouse magazine
March 1976

March, 1976, and the Billboard Hot 100 of pop singles indicates that 'Oh What A Night', by the Four Seasons, is the top-selling song in the USA. At number 2 is the late Eric Carmen, with the weepy 'All By Myself'.

The latest issue of Penthouse magazine is on the stands. Let's take a look inside, shall we ?

The cover subject, and this month's Pet, is a lissome, twenty-six year-old English girl named Joann Witty. Joann coyly discloses that flying is her passion: '...the only thing I've ever found that excites me as much as making love.'

(According to PorPor Books Blog reader Lawrence, Joann, using the stage name 'Priscilla Barnes', starred as 'Teri' in the sitcom Three's Company !).

In the advertisements, we see yet another pitch for 'Hair Dimensions', a New York City medical office that got away a 'restoration' procedure that involved implanting plastic sutures into the scalps of balding men. Tufts of hair then were attached to the sutures. The procedure invariably led to infection of the scalp and loss of the attached hair. Victims of this 'breakthrough medical implant technique' required surgical removal of the sutures, with resultant scarring and disfigurement. 

Elsewhere in the March issue, we get an advertisement for an exploitative book called 'The Viva Rape Letters', a sleazy publication that no major magazine publisher would issue nowadays, in the 21st century. But things were different 48 years ago.

The music column for this March issue highlights a New York City band called Television, who are adamant that they are not a 'glitter' band (the term 'New Wave' was still some years in the future).

We have a cartoon that also would not pass muster nowadays........

The Interview in the March issue is with Star Trek producer and creator Gene Roddenberry. Roddenberry goes to considerable effort to present himself as a Humanist of rare and powerful insight, as well as a Deep Thinker: towards the end of the interview he expounds on his theory of the 'socio-organism', a new 'species' that has come to dominate the planet.

Roddenberry is reticent about the status of the Star Trek film that he is working on at the time of the interview.  Of course, we now know, from Harlan Ellison's lengthy footnote in the 1981 Stephen King book 'Danse Macabre', that conflict between Roddenberry, his ego, and the studio, was complicating development of the film:

Paramount had been trying to get a Star Trek film in work for some time. Roddenberry was determined that his name would be on the writing credits somehow….the trouble is, he can’t write for sour owl poop. His one idea, done six or seven times in the series and again in the feature film, is that the crew of the Enterprise goes into deepest space, finds God, and God turns out to be insane, or a child, or both.

For a review by Ellison of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, readers are directed to this blog.

I hope you have enjoyed this excursion into pop culture, as it was 48 years ago.............