Book Review: The Pyx by John Buell

Book Review: 'The Pyx' by John Buell

1 / 5 Stars

'The Pyx' (127 pp.) was published by Popular Library in 1959. The cover artist is uncredited.

Canadian John Buell (1927 - 2013) was a university professor. He published 5 novels in his lifetime, one of these, 'The Shewsdale Exit' (1972), I read and found underwhelming. So I was hoping 'The Pyx' would be more engaging........

The novel is set in Montreal, in the summer. A cabbie driving through an affluent neighborhood sees a dreadful sight: a woman falling to her death onto the sidewalk in front of his car. A world-weary detective named Henderson arrives on the scene and identifies the dead woman as one Elizabeth Lacy: young, beautiful, and not disposed to suicide. Henderson investigates the penthouse suite of the apartment building from which Lacy fell and judges that it was the site of some illicit activities.

'The Pyx' is a crime novel, and the reader travels alongside Henderson as he conducts his investigation. It's no spoiler to say that Lacy was a higher-quality call girl, and her clients lodged on the kinkier side of the moral ledger. As the plot progresses there are additional deaths, and these are unambiguous.

The novel culminates in revealing Whodunit, along with some mild allusions to the supernatural and / or occult; not enough to declare 'The Pyx' as a murder mystery crossed with (say) 'Rosemary's Baby.'  

Much like 'The Shewsdale Exit,' 'The Pyx' heavily is padded with psychological passages; these are overwritten, and made me feel as if the novel was twice as long as its page count:

....She couldn't afford that: the thoughts she had demanded oblivion or complete alertness. In an in-between state they would possess her and grow more inconsistent and stay in the mind like a frenzied cosmos excluding everything else and feeding on her own cerebral energy until mere exhaustion brought her back to the real world and the ever-present causes of it all. When breakdown comes, she thought, it will be something like that. But then they say some people attain a sort of peace that way: the exhausted juggler is no longer a juggler.

Encrusting what is a simple and unadorned mystery narrative with this stuff is not productive, and I bestow upon 'The Pyx' a One Star Rating. I finished the novel thinking that postwar noir writers like John D. MacDonald or Lawrence Block could have taken the premise and done something memorable with it. But unless you've a high patience threshold, this novel can be left on the shelf. 

Book Review: The Traveler in Black by John Brunner

Book Review: 'The Traveler in Black' by John Brunner

1 / 5 Stars

'The Traveler in Black' is a fixup novel constructed from four novellas and short stories first published in various science fiction and fantasy magazines over the interval from 1960 to 1971. Multiple editions of the novel have been issued, some of these retitled 'The Compleat Traveler in Black', which is available in print, and as an ebook. 

 

In 1979 Brunner published a fifth Traveler tale, 'The Things That Are Gods,' which is included in The Compleat Traveler in Black. 

 

The Ace Books edition (222 pp.) reviewed here was published in 1971, and features cover art by Leo and Diane Dillon. 

 

The eponymous Traveler is a small man, cloaked in black and wielding a magic staff with the power to grant wishes; 'he has many names, but one nature.' His adventures take place in quasi-medieval settings, in a past (or perhaps future) era where the forces of Chaos gradually are giving way to those of Law. The Traveler apparently has been tasked by the Creator to serve as a Change Agent for this process.

 

The Traveler makes his way to cities like Acromel, Ryovora, Barbizond, Teq, and Ys, whose rulers greatly are troubled by the recession of Chaos, as this recession voids the power of the gods and deities which historically have governed the welfare of said cities. Deprived of the ability to truck with the supernatural, the rulers are beset with anomie and despair. The Traveler offers counsel, but the rulers tend to scorn his assistance. Likewise, the people residing in these cities often are as self-centered, and as dismissive of the Traveler, as their rulers.

 

A plot device used regularly in the novel is for the selfish, corrupt, and malevolent persons in the abovementioned cities to wish for something to improve their station in life; by striking his staff on the ground and announcing "As you wish, so be it," the Traveler grants the wish, but always in a manner that is the opposite (in a bad way) of what the wisher expected. 

 

In the past, I've tried several times to read the entirety of The Traveler in Black and given up, mainly because the novel has the self-consciously 'artistic' sensibility of the New Wave era and a prose style that is wordy and obtuse:  

 

Yet the rule bound him, and the traveler's nature was not such that he should complain. Forth he went on paths grown unfamiliar, and spoke with many people in many places, as for example in Wocrahin, where once-

 

Memory ! Memory ! He had never foreseen that that intangible, binding the fluid nature of eternity into the sequential tidiness of Time, would also hamper the will like age itself ! Almost, he began to envy those who could die..... 

 

The novel is filled with these empty phrasings, which obviously Brunner hoped would come across and Enigmatic and Profound, but they are a chore to wade through.

 

This time I completed my reading of the novel, and I was underwhelmed. While the reviews of 'Traveler' posted online are quite laudatory, I am comfortable with giving the novel a One Star Rating. 'Traveler' belongs to the fables / fabulations sub-genre of Speculative Fiction, and if that sub-genre appeals to you, you'll find the novel rewarding. All others should pass. 

National Lampoon March 1981

National Lampoon

March, 1981

March, 1981, and Blondie has the top single in the USA, with 'Rapture.' 

The latest issue of National Lampoon is out on the stands, and it's clear that the magazine has taken a hit in terms of faring in this new decade. As compared to the mid- and late- seventies, the volume of advertising has thinned, with no comedy LP promotions to be found. Under editor P. J. O'Rourke, the text features in this issue are lame, and show fatigue. The momentum generated by the success of Animal House, now three years in the past, well has receded. By mid-decade circulation would drop, and in 1986 the magazine would reduce its publication schedule to bi-monthly. 

 

In this March issue, 'Foto Funnies' perseveres, in its own corny way......

The comics are worth scanning and presenting, so here they are: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And that's what you got for your $2, back in that long-ago March of 45 years ago......... 

Book Review: High Sorcery by Andre Norton

Book Review: 'High Sorcery' by Andre Norton

3 / 5 Stars 

 

'High Sorcery' (156 pp.) was published by Ace Books in March 1970, with cover art by Jack Gaughan. Two of the five stories and novelettes in this anthology are seeing print for the first time.

 

A Kindle edition of 'High Sorcery' is available from amazon (be warned, there are many typos and, apparently, missing pages).

 

My capsule summaries of the contents:

 

'Wizard's World' (1967): a novelette about an 'esper' named Craik, who involuntarily teleports himself to a stereotypical 'barbarian' world called Sampur, where his powers are amplified. Unfortunately, the dreaded Black Hoods also wield considerable psy powers. In his confrontation with the Hoods, Craik will have to rely on aid profferred by a barbarian girl named Takya, who has her own ideas as to who will rule the roost in Sampur.........

 

This story is mediocre. Stilted dialogue and prose, and perfunctory story beats that come across as something borrowed from comic books. Norton plainly was on autopilot with 'Wizard's World.'

 

'Through the Needle's Eye' (1970): it's the South, a residential neighborhood, the 1950s, and Ernestine Williams, a little girl crippled by polio ("In those days, before Salk....") meets the spinster in the house next door. There are supernatural events. A well-composed story, with tones of Southern Gothic. Had it been published two or three years after 1970, this tale likely would have made it into 'The Pan Book of Horror Stories,' or perhaps a volume of 'The Year's Best Horror Stories.'

 

'By a Hair' (1958): in the aftermath of World War Two, in a remote Baltic village, the evils of a Communist regime provoke resistance. The dark arts of the area's pre-Christian beliefs come to the fore. Another tale with supernatural elements; it would have been right at home in the 'Alfred Hitchcock' magazines and anthologies of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

 

'Ully the Piper': an engaging fable about a crippled man named Ully, who does a good turn to the rustic inhabitants of the Witch World.

 

'Toys of Tamisan' (1969):  another novelette, this one about the planet Ty-Kry and a young woman named Tamisan who, via the use of special headgear and connecting cables, can invite others to enter into, and participate in, her dreams. As a 'professional' dreamer, Tamisen provides dreaming service to an aristocrat named Starrex. When a dream, set in the older times of Ty-Kry's history, goes badly awry, there is melodrama.

 

'Toys' is a solid dud: badly overwritten, in stilted prose, no less. The premise is contrived and Norton's handling of the concept of sharing dreams less than skilled. A touchstone in the early history of cyberpunk and virtual reality ? No, this is not.

 

Summing up, it's the three shorter tales in 'High Sorcery' that best present Norton's storytelling skills and serve as attractions for those readers who are not dedicated fans of her fiction. 

Phantom Stranger: Gerontion Vertigo/DC 1993

Phantom Stranger: Gerontion

Vertigo / DC, 1993

 

Phantom Stranger: Gerontion is one of six titles in the 'Vertigo Visions' imprint, all released from 1993 - 1998.

The writing chore is handled by Alisa Kwitney, with artwork by Guy Davis, letters by Clem Robbins, and colors by Robbie Busch.

I've always considered the Phantom Stranger to be one of the lamer superheroes in the DC inventory, a true Z-lister along with The Question and Aquaman. He doesn't really do much other than passively observe things, making Enigmatic Comments, before stepping in at some crux point to propel things to a conclusion.

 

In 'Gerontion,' lead character and Woman of Color Naomi Walker arrives at the Paradise Gardens care home, there to start her job as desk manager. It's quite obvious that the home is in a state of decay, and its residents and staff are a tad......eccentric.

Eventually, the Phantom Stranger makes his appearance, albeit in a confusing way; there is a man sitting in an upstairs room in the home, pondering things and making.........Enigmatic Remarks, and then there is a Phantom Stranger 'apparition,' that loiters outside the grounds of the home.

I won't give away spoilers, but I will say that as the narrative progresses we learn that Paradise Gardens is in fact a sort of portal to Hell, and more than a few demons and devils have sought to escape that wonderful place by relocating to the Gardens. This disturbs the Phantom Stranger, but he's unable to send the demons back unless he can convince Walker to aid him. 

Guy Davis's artwork is better than much of that presented in Vertigo titles in the 1990s, but still inferior to what you'd see in many non-Vertigo titles from Marvel, DC, Valiant, Image, etc. of the same era. The colors use the 'Dogshit Palette' peculiar to Vertigo. Whether use of the Dogshit Palette was something imposed by Vertigo's editorial policy, or something voluntarily applied by the colorist, is unclear. Also unclear is whether this comic used the Flexographic printing process. But the palette works poorly in 'Phantom Stranger.'

 

I found 'Gerontion' to be a dull and plodding read. Given 56 pages, writer Kwitney errs in having all of the action take place inside the Gardens, which hamstrings the narrative by restricting it to one location, and one set of characters. There is a lot of dialogue, and lots of gimmicks that pad the storyline: monsters materializing in rooms and corridors, arms reaching out from the walls, malevolent phantasms and spirits making threats, etc., etc. These never amount to much but distractions, and can't compensate for the talky, too-slow unfolding of the narrative.

As for our hero, the Phantom Stranger, he, true to nature, doesn't do much of anything, but simply looks on as Walker grapples with the otherworldly denizens of the Gardens. Once in a while he makes some remark or suggestion, but overall, he easily could  be interchanged with The Question, or Dr. Occult, or Deadman, or any other of DC's 'supernatural' heroes.

Again, not giving away spoilers, I'll say that the conclusion of 'Gerontion' makes sense, but doesn't do all that much to make me a devotee of the Phantom Stranger.

This comic solely is for fans of the Phantom Stranger, and those who are intent on collecting as many Vertigo titles as they can.    

The Permanent Playboy: science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories

'The Permanent Playboy': Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror stories 

edited by Ray Russell

3 / 5 Stars

 

'The Permanent Playboy' was published in hardcover by Crown in 1959. It's a slipcased, 503-page book, and a reminder that as the 1950s drew to a close, Playboy magazine was a powerful entity in American popular culture. The top fiction writers and essayists of that day would submit to the magazine, as it was one of the best-selling periodicals in the country.

The stories compiled in this anthology first saw print in Playboy from 1953 to 1959. They range in subject matter from romantic comedy, to crime / suspense, to urban satire, to horror, fantasy, and science fiction. 

 

Editor Russell is quite clear about the editorial policy in place at Playboy:

 

Fiction readers of marked avant-garde persuasion are hereby warned that they may find the majority of the stories in this book somewhat unstylish. They are, with few exceptions, stories.

 

If construction skill, firm plotting, the creation of suspense and the knack for satisfying and entertaining the reader are currently among the lost and unfashionable arts, PLAYBOY has had the guts to fly in the face of fashion, to start a counterrevolution, to seek and find those writers who persist in using the classic tools of storytelling. Happily, quite a few were and still are being found. 

 

It took me come time to read each entry in TPP. Rather than summarize the contents in one long long post, I thought it best to deal with the 49 entries in separate posts, as catalogued by genre. 

 

As far as sci-fi goes, George Langelan's 'The Fly' remains a standout, nearly 70 years after it first was published. 

 

Also good is Charles Beaumont's 'The Crooked Man,' about a future where homosexuality is legal, but heterosexuality is not. The eponymous Man is looking for girl love, which makes him a pervert. Beaumont's description of the gay lounge (where the Man has gone for an assignation) is greasy and disturbing. This story was quite provocative for its time, but likely would not be well-tolerated in today's popular culture. 

 

Another Beaumont composition, 'Black Country,' is about a black jazz band whose leader, Spoof, is a combination of Magical Negro, and Doomed Black Bluesman. Using overheated prose intended to mimic the rhythms of jazz, Beaumont relates how Sonny, a young white boy, learns from Spoof how to bring that big sound. I hate jazz, and worshipful stories about jazz, so this entry did nothing for me............

 

'Victory Parade,' by Henry Slesar, takes a trenchant look at patriotism in the age of nuclear warfare.
 

Ray Bradbury contributes 'In A Season of Calm Weather,' about an American tourist who encounters Pablo Picasso, on a beach in Biarritz. This encounter is transcendental. It's also rather boring.

Robert Bloch's 'The Traveling Salesman,' a fable about a man doomed to immorality, is unremarkable. Indeed, the February, 1957 Playmate, Sally Todd, is much more appealing......

 

Robert Sheckley's 'Love, Incorporated' is about Alfred Simon, a young man living on the backwater planet of Kazanga IV. Seeking true love and excitement, Simon travels to Earth, and to the 42nd street district of New York City. It's a 'rube meets the city' tale, and while I am not a big fan of comedic sf, this story is readable.

In 'The Noise,' by Ken Purdy, Barnaby Hackett, a telepath going insane from receiving a continuous barrage of human thoughts, seeks aid from the psychiatrist Dr. Kabat. The fate of humanity might be at stake - ! A good treatment of the telepathy theme, and one of the better entries in the anthology.

 

Richard Mattheson's 'The Distributor' is about a man who moves onto Sylmar Street in a majority-white, middle-class, suburban neighborhood. Bad things begin to happen; could it be due to the fact that on Sylmar Street, everyone internally is seething with suppressed bigotry, hostility, and sexual desire ? But then again, isn't that the trope mined for racy excitement by almost every Sleaze paperback ever printed ?!

 

image from the 'Killer Covers' blog

Overall, the sci-fi and horror entries in 'The Permanent Playboy' are, with the exception of 'Fly' and 'Crooked Man,' are not that special. That said, there is other content, in other genres, in the volume that make it more appealing, so I'll address that content in future blog posts.

Book Review: K-9 Corps by Kenneth Von Gunden

Book Review: 'K-9 Corps' by Kenneth Von Gunden

2 / 5 Stars

 

'K-9 Corps' (229 pp.) was published by Ace Books in February, 1991, and features cover art by Jim Thiesen. This is the first of four titles in the 'K-9 Corps' series, the others being 'Under Fire' (1991), 'Cry Wolf' (1992), and 'The Last Resort' (1993).

Author Von Gunden published a number of sci-fi novels with Ace during the 1990s. He also authored two nonfiction books, 'Twenty All-Time Great Science Fiction Films' (1982), and 'Flights of Fancy: The Great Fantasy Films' (1989). 

The K-9 Corps are nine dogs that have been genetically engineered to have high intelligence, and the ability to speak (albeit broken) English. They are scout dogs, trained to follow the commands of their master, a young man named Ray Larkin. Larkin and his Corps earn their livelihood by contracting to provide security and protection to colonization efforts on distant planets. 

As the novel opens, Larkin and the Corps have a contract on the newly discovered world of Chiron, a hospitable planet considered extremely important to the aims of the Triumvirate that governs Earth. For reasons that are not disclosed to Larkin and his colleagues, Chiron is vital to the Triumvirate's goal of expanding to other regions of the galaxy. 

Along with his 'throuple' partners Mary and Taylor (don't get excited anyone, this is presented in a very chaste manner), Larkin is responsible for the welfare of the gigantic, genetically modified earthworms, known as cholos, that chew up the Chiron grasslands in preparation for seeding said lands with Earth flora.

The terraforming is proceeding well when trouble arises. The indigenous 'centaurs,' a cross between reptiles and the centaurs of ancient Greek mythology, are displeased at the thought of their lands being dispossessed by two-legged aliens. When Ray discovers that the centaurs are sentient, the conflict takes an unexpected turn, one that will cause Larkin to question his allegiance to his mission..........

I was confident with assigning 'K-9 Corps' a Two-Star Rating. While the initial chapters hold interest as framing devices, the middle section of the novel badly loses momentum, as Von Gunden decides to turn the narrative into a 'first contact' storyline. 

There is invented anthropology, with the centaurs representing counterparts to the Sioux Indians of the great plains. The reader must gird for stilted Injun-speak, vision quest ceremonies, burial ceremonies, medicine men, Great Spirit allusions, buffalo hunts, bad blank verse poetry intended to mimic Native American fireside songs, etc. The K-9 dogs essentially are sent backstage, and there is some  melodrama between Taylor and Mary that doesn't contribute all that much to the novel. 

In the final chapters author Von Gunden tries to reseat the plot, and there are some action sequences, but these couldn't prevent me from finishing 'K-9 Corps' with the feeling that other authors could have brought more imagination, and excitement, to the concept.

[I was queasy to learn that the K-9 series is endorsed by the so-called 'Furry' or 'anthro' communities, but it turns out that this is true of many sci-fi and fantasy books involving talking animals.............]

So, unless you're a Furry, or you've a keen interest in the mingling of talking dogs with standard-issue sci-fi tropes, you're probably not going to find this novel to be very engrossing.  

Prez: Smells Like Teen Spirit

Prez: Smells Like Teen Spirit

Vertigo / DC, September 1995

Prez: Smells Like Teen Spirit is one of six one-shot comics issued by DC's Vertigo imprint from 1993 to 1998. Presumably, these titles were designed to attract 'traditional' comic book readers to Vertigo. They were priced a little higher than 'regular' Vertigo comics, and were lengthier (Prez is 56 pages long).

 

The advertisements will take you back to those early Nineties days:

  

'Prez' first appeared in 1973 in a brief, four-issue series about 'the first teen president.' The 1995 incarnation of the character necessarily involved a postmodern reboot, as the original, 'Archies' sensibility of Prez clearly was unsuitable for the Vertigo aesthetic. 

Ed Brubaker was a sensible choice for scripting the one-shot, but it's Eric Shanower who really makes this comic stand out. Ninety percent of Vertigo titles issued in the 1990s had crude, 'figurative' artwork, the intent being that Vertigo needed to distinguish itself from those puerile 'superhero' comics elsewhere on the shelving. But Shanower was the rare Vertigo artist with impressive draftsmanship skills, and his line art is ideal for a one-shot with lots of conventional scenes and characters (and lots of speech balloons and text boxes.....)

Prez also benefits from great colors from Robbie Bisch. Almost all Vertigo comics had 'dogshit' palettes, so Prez really shines here:

The premise of our tale is that it's 1998, and P.J. (his surname never is disclosed), a slacker in his early twenties, has been told by his mom that he is the progeny of a one-night stand in the early Seventies between his mom........and none other than Prez Rickard, himself !

 

P.J. has been through a bad patch lately, taking up drugs and a dissipated, self-destructive lifestyle. But so does every clinically depressed 1990s latchkey kid, right ?! 

 

Anyways, by chance, P.J. sees a tabloid with a story about Rickard, who is something of a mystery, having gone into seclusion following his term as President back in the Seventies. 

In the hopes that finding and connecting with good ole Dad will bring salvation, P.J. persuades his buds Jason and George to set out on a protracted road trip, from San Francisco to Willowfield, Kansas, where it seems Prez emerged to have a meal in at a local diner.

Of course, the journey proves to be a long one, with lots of revelations along the way. 

For his plot, Brubaker ably taps into the Nineties zeitgeist. For example, P.J., Jason, and George wear Grunge fashion and listen to the Lemonheads. And in Kansas, our heroes encounter a young woman with a David Lynchian aura about her - very Nineties:

 

There are 'Americana' segments, one of which takes place in Rickard's hometown in Maine. Shanower shows us his illustration skills with a streetscape rendering; few Vertigo artists would go into this much care in their compositions:

As he journeys, Prez learns that his alleged father was, from a very young age, an idealist who labored to learn the ways and means of being a genuine Man of the People:

There is an encounter with an elderly hippy, a man who 'knew' (wink-wink) Prez Rickard. There is an imparting of knowledge to our naive P.J..........

 

This in turn leads to some 'Don Juan Matus' -style phantasmagorical experiences for P.J. 

I won't give any secrets away, but the denouement of Prez: Smells LIke Teen Spirit is something of a letdown; it takes a predictable route. Brubaker gets on a soapbox and pontificates about how humanism can overcome the innate cynicism of politics. In terms of plotting, the chance to do something offbeat is evaded. And, given that P.J. is an unlikable character (he is whiny, consumed with self-pity, and, at times, a real asshole) any personality turn-around seems pat and unconvincing.

In the end, Prez: Smells Like Teen Spirit is best approached as an excursion into Nineties nostalgia, one brought to life through Shanower's great artwork. If remembering the Nineties is your thing, then Prez is a rewarding cultural artifact.