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.  

Zardoz portfolio Playboy March 1974

Zardoz portfolio

from Playboy, March 1974

Directed by John Boorman, Zardoz is one of the weirdest sci-fi movies of the 1970s. My review of the film's novelization is here.

 

To coincide with the film's February, 1974 release, the March issue of Playboy magazine featured a brief portfolio of stills and staged shots from the movie. I have to say that Charlotte Rampling looks amazing, while Sean Connery.....well......he looks rather foolish. But then again, things were different in the 1970s. And in my mind, it's a better portfolio than what you would get in those old issues of Starlog and Famous Monsters and Fangoria..........

 

Book Review: The Oxygen Barons by Gregory Feeley

Book Review: 'The Oxygen Barons' by Gregory Feeley 

2 / 5 Stars

‘The Oxygen Barons” (264 pp., Ace Books, July 1990; cover art by Dave Archer) is one of the last books in the Ace ‘Science Fiction Specials Series 3,’ which was edited by Terry Carr. Following Carr’s demise in 1987, Damon Knight took over the editing duties. It is unclear whether Carr or Knight was responsible for handling this novel.

‘Barons’ is set several centuries in the future, at which time the bodies of the inner Solar System have been colonized or exploited for raw materials, which are delivered via mass drivers from one outpost to another. 

The Moon has been terraformed and possesses a stable, breathable atmosphere and a network of rivers and large bodies of water. Its government is divided between two feuding factions, the Nearside and the Farside. These polities loosely are confederated with a variety of offworld corporations and trading blocs, who are competing for power among themselves. A particular bone of contention is the extravagant amount of oxygen needed to sustain the operation of the Moon. Some of the offworld corporations are lobbying to divert this oxygen for use in sustaining other colonies elsewhere in the system.

As the novel opens, a Nearside engineer named Galvanix is attempting to prevent an opposing faction from driving an asteroid into the Moon, a decidedly unfriendly action. He finds unexpected assistance in his task from Beryl Taggart, a cybernetically enhanced super-soldier. The first half of the book is one extended chase sequence, as Taggart and Galvanix find themselves stranded on the Farside, fleeing hostile authorities in an effort to retrieve an important database.

The novel then moves to a large space station orbiting the Earth, and from there, to the Earth itself and an entire floating city anchored off the coast of India, as the various entities referred to as the ‘Oxygen Barons’ engage a series of maneuvers designed to bring a hapless Galvanix under their control.

‘Barons’ does have its positives; every few pages another ‘gee whiz’ moment rears its head, and the physics of living and working in low-gravity environments accurately are represented. 

 

But overall the novel is a labored read, and needed better editing. Feeley’s prose is very dense and overly descriptive. For example, in one segment of the narrative, Galvanix has to ascend a narrow shaft embedded belowground in a lunar installation. Most authors would deal with this segment within several paragraphs, perhaps, but Feeley spends nearly two pages on the event, turning it into a sort of prolonged mini-epic. The novel is clogged with too many of these instances of over-writing.

The backstory involving the political and economic conflict surrounding the Moon never is adequately communicated to the reader. Indeed, whatever plot underlies the events in the narrative is so poorly outlined that I finished the book with no real idea of why Galvanix was such a pursued character in the first place. 

Things aren’t helped by the author’s tendency to use some of the more stilted dialogue I’ve encountered in a recent hard SF novel:

Beryl answered these questions with alacrity. “Cognitive modification is negligible, since it cannot be accomplished without jeopardizing sophic integrity. If your memories and expertise were readily separable from your sense of self, they would have been decanted alone.”

A steady diet of such awkward phrasing tends to wear on the reader, and makes ‘Barons’ a too-hard slog. I only can recommend this novel to those readers with a particular affectation for hard science fiction narratives.

Comics from Vertigo

1993-1998

 

I never was one for DC's 'Vertigo' comics imprint. 80% of the titles were pretentious crap and 90% had awful artwork and 'dogshit' quality coloring. But - perhaps in the spirit of nostalgia - recently I got four titles in the 'Vertigo Visions' lineup, all of these one-shots published in the interval from 1993-1998.

 

Dr. Occult, aka 'The Ghost Detective,' was first created in 1935 by Siegel and Shuster, and pops up every now and then in some DC titles.

 

Tomahawk is a colonial-era frontier drama, featuring Native Americans. Tim Truman had considerable success with illustrating the Joe Lansdale-written 'Jonah Hex' Vertigo titles of the 1990s. 

 

DC's long-running Z-list character Phantom Stranger gets the postmodern treatment in his own Vertigo Visions book. The plot has something to do with the residents of a down-at-heels nursing home. I'm not encouraged..........

 

Probably the best of the four titles is Prez: Smells Like Teen Spirit, from the well-regarded team of Ed Brubaker and Eric Shanower. This comic is another postmodern take, this time on the short-lived, 1973 teen comic 'Prez.' 

 

I'll likely do a post about the Prez title, but as for others, well.....I'll see if they are Worthy. But right now it's a warm early Spring day, and it's a good day to sit on the porch and read some comic books.......

Playboy February 1974

Playboy

February 1974

Well, it's February, 1974, and atop the singles charts is Barbara Streisand, with 'The Way We Were.' My main man Barry White and his Love Unlimited Orchestra are in second place, but 'Love's Theme' eventually would reach Number One. That single, with its chucka-whucka sound effects, prefigured the advent of disco. Rrrright-on, baby !

 

Sitting at position number 6 is one of the stranger chart entries in that chilly Winter month of February: 'The Americans,' by Byron MacGregor, a Canadian broadcaster. This single was a spoken-word tribute to - you guessed it - the Americans, to the accompaniment of 'America the Beautiful.' In the era of inflation, the 55 mile-an-hour speed limit on the interstate, the economic damage of the Arab oil embargo, spiritual and psychological anomie, and the increasing mistrust of the Nixon administration, MacGregor's single was a rebuke to 70s fatalism. Not as effective, in my opinion, as the Kink's 1979 LP track 'Catch Me Now I'm Falling,' which was a similar treatment of the U.S. in decline.
 

 

The February issue of Playboy is on the stands, and it's a good issue. Interestingly, while the traditional (dyed-) blonde is on the cover, elsewhere in the issue is a short portfolio of an 'ethnic' woman, a rarity in those days. The eponymous 'Butterfly Girl' is Ratna Assan, from Indonesia.

Looking at the contributors to this issue reveals a lineup of some of the nation's most prominent authors, writers, actresses, and intellectuals: 

 

Richard Rhodes (b. 1937) wrote the celebrated nonfiction books 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb,' 'Farm,' and 'Deadly Feasts.' Susan Sontag (1933 - 2004) was of course one of the major cultural critics of the postwar era, and John Kenneth Galbraith (1908 - 2006), one of the eminent economists of his time. Nat Henthoff (1925 - 2017) was a well-known author and columnist. 

 

Frank M. Robinson (1926 - 2014), who assists with music reviews at Playboy, would become a major author and screenwriter in the 1970s and 1980s with such works as 'The Glass Inferno,' 'The Prometheus Crisis,' and 'Blow Out.' Robinson also authored the nonfiction work 'Science Fiction of the 20th Twentieth Century An Illustrated History.'

 

Top-billing actress Candice Bergen (b. 1946) writes about her trip to China as a member of a motley assemblage of 'artists' and lefty agitators. 

 

And while white, male, urban Jewish men and women are heavily represented, also contributing to the issue are artist Ignacio Gomez and photographer David Chan; diversity is there, if you look for it.....!?

One thing that I always highlight in these vintage issues of Playboy and Penthouse is the high quality of their illustrations. Nowadays magazines and their graphics are dwindling as media enterprises, but 50+ years ago, editors commissioned outstanding pieces to accompany articles. 

For an article by Malcolm Braly about an upstate New York 'fat farm,' where - gasp - the overweight are treated with fasting (no semaglutide in 1974, folks), George Hirsch provides a brilliant painting that calls to mind the subdued, luminous renditions of George Tooker. 

For Sontag's story 'Baby,' designer Gordon Mortensen and photographer Bill Frantz concoct a creepy illustration that complements what is otherwise a too-lengthy, and utterly mediocre, piece by Sontag.

For Bergen's travelogue, Herb Davidson puts together a fine illustration.

The ongoing series, 'Playboy's History of Organized Crime,' sees Peter Palombi channel the sensibility of a pulp magazine cover to craft one of the more striking images in any Playboy of the decade. And there's also a suitably grim depiction, by George Roth ('after Edward Hopper') of a gangster meeting his end in the electric chair.

Sontag may have contributed a dud of a story, but at less than two pages, Henry Slesar's 'Nothing But Bad News' ably delivers black humor. It benefits from a fine illustration by Kinuko Craft.

The cartoons in Playboy could be cruel, especially in those years before the advent of Viagra:

The February interview subject is none other than Clint Eastwood, an actor who rarely gave interviews. He comes across as down-to-earth and unassuming.......carefully calibrated.

But let's not forget the nubile young women ! For February they are the 'Girls of Skiing,' and rather than digitally enhance the coloration of these scans of a five-decade-old magazine, I'll retain their rather faded coloration and provide that nostalgic, Kodachrome-style glow.......

 

And that's how we do Vintage, from those long-ago days of the mid-1970s............