Book Review: Orbit 11

Book Review: 'Orbit 11' edited by Damon Knight

3  / 5 Stars

Well, here we go with another review of another installment in the 'Orbit' franchise, the franchise that delivers pure and unadulterated New Wave sci-fi. Or 'Speculative Fiction', as they were fond of saying back in those New Wave days. Editor Damon Knight always was receptive to stories that pushed the boundaries of the genre, which sometimes worked, but more often, didn't. Anyways.........

'Orbit 11' was issued in hardcover (216 pp.) in 1972 by G. P. Putnam, and in paperback, from Berkley Books, in March 1973. The cover art is by Paul Lehr.

The cover blurb tells us that Orbit 11 offers 'The Most Exciting Fiction of Our Time !'. Does it really ?

Well...............no. It's just another 'Orbit' volume. A few good stories, and some bad ones. Many stories have no sci-fi content. All exclusively were written for this anthology.

My capsule summary of the contents:

Alien Stones, by Gene Wolfe: a miles-long Terran spaceship, the Gladiator, meets up in deep space with an alien ship that is also miles long. Are the aliens friendly or not ? How do you find out ? This novelette stakes a claim to the Giant Spaceship theme a year before Arthur C. Clarke and his 'Rendevous with Rama', which I guess is to author Wolfe's credit. It's a hard sci-fi story, competently written, so it's one of the better entries in 'Orbit 11'.

Spectra, by Vonda N. McIntyre: the first-person narrator endures a dystopian future where dissent is punished by messing with your eyesight. This story is more horror than sci-fi, and is effective.

I Remember A Winter, by Fredrik Pohl: a middle-aged man ponders the choices he made in life and wonders how things could have, and would have, been different...... had he not made those choices. There is no sci-fi content.

Doucement, S'il Vous Plait (Gently, if it pleases you), by James Sallis: I challenge anyone to dispute my contention that James Sallis was the most pretentious of New Wave authors. And yet, the editors of New Wave anthologies never could turn down a Sallis submission. This story is the first-person narrative of a letter, experiencing the process of being delivered. Is such a concept the apogee of Speculative Fiction, or what ?!

The Summer of the Irish Sea, by Charles L. Grant: clad only in a loincloth, a feral man navigates the terrain of a near-future United Kingdom. This early-career story from Grant is quite untoward, reading more as a Harlan Ellison tale than the kind of overwritten, decorative fiction that would come to represent Grant's literary style. Because it emulates Ellison, it's a good story and one of the standouts in the anthology. 

Good-Bye, Shelley, Shirley, Charlotte, Charlene, by Robert Thurston: this tale opens with an allegorical scene of the narrator playing cards with God. I sighed and prepared for metaphysical, artsy-fartsy bullshit in that inimitable New Wave style. But after the prologue, 'Good-Bye' settles into more conventional storytelling, about a man whose girlfriends are so similar in looks and temperament as to suggest otherworldly forces at work. There's little sci-fi content, but it's a readable story.

Father's in the Basement, by Philip Jose Farmer: Millie's father is busy writing the Great American Novel, and he must not be disturbed. A subdued horror tale from Farmer, one that would have been more at home in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine than 'Orbit'.

Down by the Old Maelstrom, by Edward Wellen: some people in a research laboratory have dreams, which are related to the reader in surrealistic prose. The verbs 'amoebaed', 'alligatored', and 'depontiated' are encountered. This easily is the worst story in the anthology.

Things Go Better, by George Alec Effinger: allegory about a nice Jewish Boy named Steve Weinraub who decides to hitchhike across Pennsylvania, to 'find' both himself, and America. It's devoid of sci-fi content.

Dissolve, by Gary K. Wolfe: the author of 'Killerbowl' addresses the philosophies of Marshall McLuhan, who, in 1972, was very much an influential figure in both pop and highbrow culture. The narrative, which is designed to mimic the changing of channels on a TV, is choppy and a bit contrived.

Dune's Edge, by Edward Bryant: some people find themselves in the desert, and compelled to climb a dune. It's all so very existential.

The Drum Lollipop, by Jack C. Dann: Her parents' marital quarrels lead Maureen Harris to project her anxieties onto a toy drum, which in turn leads to all sorts of phantasmagorical phenomena. An exemplar of seventies, New Wave, speculative fiction. I found it boring.

Machines of Loving Grace, by Gardner R. Dozois: in the Future City, machines will do everything for you. And perhaps that can be a bad thing. Sardonic humor makes this one of the standout stories in the anthology.

They Cope, by Dave Skal: in the future, everyone is bipolar, which makes for a complicated society.

Counterpoint, by Joe W. Haldeman: some are born into wealth and privilege, while others, into poverty and misery. This is a very good story, but it's devoid of sci-fi content and would have been more at home in Esquire, Playboy, Penthouse, Cavalier, or any other early seventies 'slick' that published fiction.

Old Soul, by Steve Herbst: a nurse's interactions with a dying elderly man are complicated when his memories of his younger days 'infect' her mind. This story is supposed to say something profound about The Human Condition. I was bored.

New York Times, by Charles Platt: a three-and-a-half page prose poem about the dangers of living in the city. There is no sci-fi content. I was bored.

The Crystallization of the Myth, by John Barfoot: a two-page prose poem about the aftermath of Armageddon. Meh.

To Plant a Seed, by Hank Davis: using something called the 'McJunkins Field', researcher Roy Cullins wants to put a spaceship into suspended animation for billions of years, with the goal of having humans present when a new universe emerges from the old. It's an interesting premise for a sci-fi story but the author's prose veers from the straight-faced, to the awkwardly comedic, even puerile:

Cullins, Cain, and Erika realized simultaneously that the thing looked like an enormous athletic supporter. Looking at it made Erika hornier than ever. 

On the Road to Honeyville, by Kate Wilhelm: Elizabeth and her mom are making the long drive on two-lane blacktop to the town of Salyersville, by way of the town of Honeyville. En route, they enter the Twilight Zone. The story lacks sci-fi content.

The verdict ? As with the other entrants in the 'Orbit' series, Damon Knight's eccentric approach to selecting content meant that the anthology has more than its share of duds. I am comfortable giving 'Orbit 11' a three-star rating based on the contributions from Wolfe,  McIntyre, Grant, Dozois, and Haldeman.

National Lampoon April 1973

National Lampoon

April 1973

Let's take another trip back in time, fifty years ago, to April, 1973 and the latest issue of the National Lampoon. Like many of these 1973 issues,the April issue is not very good: still overly reliant on lengthy, boring text pieces. But it's also true that, with the collapse of the underground comix industry later in 1973, the Lampoon was one of the few outlets where comix artists could publish their work (and be paid for it).

The April issue is devoted to the theme of 'Sweetness and Light', and has plentiful advertisements for newly released LPs from various artists, some of whom were rather obscure.........I have to say, I never heard of Doug Sahm, back in the 1970s. He apparently was a Country and Western singer / songwriter.

One LP ad is for a new artist from Asbury Park, New Jersey, a guy named Springstein, or something. 

A guy who, in the era of glam rock, very much was trying to portray himself as a working-class poet, what with his scruffy beard and proletariat clothing (no polyester and sequins here !) Certainly, something of an odd duck...............

Don McLean, who had a massive hit with his album and single 'American Pie' in 1972, released an eponymous album in November of that year. It suffered somewhat from not having a hit single.

Chris Miller, who normally could be relied upon to create something funny and offensive, has a rather tame piece, 'Pharmocopoeia', that presents vignettes of drug use by various personages.

Well, at least the Foto Funnies gives us what we always hope to see: a glimpse of boobies !!!!!

Mary K. Brown provides a comic, done in her usual quirky style:

In the early 70s, there was considerable interest in the occult and the supernatural, and there was a book club that could supply you with necessary tomes on these topics.

Edward Gorey, someone who perhaps was a little too highbrow for the Lampoon, nevertheless had a lengthy portfolio in this April issue.

We'll close with some recurring feature cartoons: a 'Trots and Bonnie' comic from Sherry Flenniken, and a new installment of 'Cheech Wizard' from Vaughan Bode. It's vintage early 70s humor, rendered in black and white............

Book Review: The Shockwave Rider

Book Review: 'The Shockwave Rider' by John Brunner

0 / 5 Stars

In the 1930s the American author John Dos Passos (1896 – 1970) wrote three novels, referred to as the ‘U.S.A. Trilogy’, which relied on an experimental prose style. With these novels, Dos Passos adorned the traditional, main narrative with insertions of vignettes: a ‘Newsreel’ consisting of headlines and excerpts from newspapers; stream-of-consciousness musings, labeled as ‘Camera Eye’; and song lyrics. Dos Passos intended these ancillary materials to give a more expansive quality to the narrative, placing the adventures of his characters within the larger context of the world around them, including events such as World War One, labor unrest, and the Roaring Twenties (Dos Passos, an ardent Communist, intended the trilogy to be an indictment of Capitalism).

During the 1950s and early 1960s, the U.K. writer John Brunner had made a career out of writing a large portfolio of conventional science fiction short stories and novels, but with the advent of the New Wave movement, he eagerly embraced constructing new science fiction novels on the template of Dos Passos. 

Beginning with ‘Stand on Zanzibar’ in 1968, followed by ‘The Sheep Look Up’ (1972) and ‘The Shockwave Rider’ (1975), Brunner received considerable critical praise for his presentations. However, the reading public was less enthused, and by the early 1980s, Brunner had reverted to more traditional narratives.

Having read ‘Stand on Zanzibar’ in the early 80s, and finding it a bore, I was not expecting much from the March, 1976 mass-market paperback version of ‘The Shockwave Rider’ (Ballantine Books, 280 pp., cover art by Murray Tinkelman).

In his Acknowledgement, Brunner states that Alvin Toffler’s 1970 book ‘Future Shock’ was the inspiration for ‘Shockwave’, and indeed, at one point in the novel a character references ‘Toffler’s Law’, namely, “the future arrives too soon and in the wrong order.”

Brunner’s novel explores prominent Future Shock tropes, such as the universal identification card; the replacement of traditional long-term employment, and living in one locale for lengthy periods of time, by a nomadic lifestyle; and the risk of experiencing abrupt, intense nervous breakdowns (‘overload’) due to a surfeit of information.

The protagonist of ‘Shockwave’ is a man named Nickie Haflinger. Abandoned at a young age by his parents, Haflinger’s innate genius is recognized by a secretive government think tank called the Tarnover Institute. Tarnover’s purpose is to raise savants who can guide society through the era of Future Shock. Repulsed by the amorality of the Tarnover system, Haflinger escapes the institute and, a man on the run, slips from one identity to another as he negotiates an early 21st century America (as envisioned by Toffler).  

‘Shockwave’ is a dull and plodding book. The narrative is divided into two storylines. One, set in the present, deals with the efforts of Tarnover personnel to subject Haflinger to a 'humane' interrogation, in the hopes of persuading him to disclose the particulars of a computer virus, or 'worm', he has uploaded to the Net. 

The other storyline, interwoven with the first, is a flashback, dealing with Haflinger’s adventures following his escape from Tarnover. There are protracted discourses that present the near-future USA of Future Shock to the reader, and introduce a love interest named Kate Grierson. 

Much of the book is constructed around lengthy dialogue passages in which Brunner, using his characters as mouthpieces, expounds on sociological and psychological topics. These dialogue passages have a pedantic quality that quickly becomes numbing. 

With the third Book, titled ‘Splicing the Brain Race’, Brunner has an opportunity to inject some excitement into the narrative, as Haflinger and his allies prepare to bring down the government via his ‘worm’. But alas, this section also is afflicted by overwriting and wooden dialogue:

“Our society is hurtling in free fall towards heaven knows where, and as a result we’ve developed collective osteochalcolysis of the personality.”

What few moments of excitement arise in ‘The Shockwave Rider’ are scant, and limited to the later chapters, when rival biker groups decide to attack the Ecotopia where Haflinger is residing. And, when a covert, federal operative sets out to nuke the 'resistance'. Combined, these segments take up less than three pages and have a perfunctory quality.  

The ‘mixed-media’ insertions into the novel – which range from a few sentences to several pages – are more like distractions, than enhancements, to ‘Shockwave’.

The verdict ? ‘The Shockwave Rider’ is yet another New Wave Era dud. While it may be said to prefigure some of the themes of cyberpunk, beyond that, it has little to recommend it. 

The Art of Ron Cobb

The Art of Ron Cobb

Titan Books, 2022

'The Art of Rob Cobb' (208 pp.) was published by Titan Books in 2022. Like all the Titan titles it's a well-made hardbound book, measuring 9 1/4 inches by 12 1/2 inches.

The book is 'produced' by two women, Rachel Meinerding and Nicole Hendrix Herman, who make up the 'Concept Art Association', an organization "....committed to elevating and raising the profile of concept artists, their art and their involvement in the entertainment industries." The text is written by Jacob Johnston.

Prior to the publication of 'The Art of Ron Cobb', the only book dealing with Cobb's works was 'Colorvision', a 1981 trade paperback that, being long out of print, was very expensive. I was fortunate to pick up a copy back in the early 1980s.

'The Art of Ron Cobb' opens with a Forward by James Cameron, followed by a brief biographical sketch. Cobb (1937 - 2020) was born in Los Angeles but made Australia his home. Early in his career he earned recognition as a cartoonist for the Los Angeles Free Press. When his friend Dan O'Bannon asked Cobb to contribute a spaceship design to the 1973 indie film Dark Star, Cobb found his calling: providing art design and direction for films, particularly science fiction films. Cobb assisted with the creation of some of the aliens in the famous 'cantina' scene aliens in Star Wars, and came to the fore when O'Bannon hired him as an art director for Alien.  Cobb's work on Alien made his reputation among Hollywood producers and directors and set him on the path as one of the premiere art designers of the 1980s, 1990s, and into the 20002.

The book's core is a chronological overview of Cobb's work in film and video game art conception and design, starting from Dark Star and going all the way to The Sixth Day (2000). These chapters are illustrative of how Cobb contributed, in larger or smaller ways, to many of the blockbuster films of the 80s and 90s.

Another chapter deals with Cobb's work in the video games industry.

Also receiving attention are Cobb's contributions to commercial art in the form of magazine covers and LP record covers. Then there is a chapter devoted to Cobb's cartoons for the Free Press.

The text is filled with anecdotes and reminiscences from major film industry figures, such as Cameron, Robert Zemeckis, and Paul Verhoeven, and these give insights into the processes by which Cobb envisioned the sets and images that were used in big-budget productions. it's quite clear that Cobb was a go-to creator for many productions, and his approach to a functional, engineering-based concepts of future technologies had a tremendous influence on science fiction cinema and television.

Then, too, I was unaware of Cobb's presence in the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s. I had no idea that he was the originator of the iconic 'Ecology' flag / symbol.

While 'The Art of Ron Cobb' is a worthwhile book, it's not perfect. Perhaps its biggest weakness is that it's devoid of pictures of Cobb's 'finished' designs as they appeared in the films. This may be because the Concept Art Association was unwilling to pay fees to studios to use copyrighted material. 

It's also true that there is memorable content in 'Colorvision' that, arguably, deserved inclusion in 'The Art of Ron Cobb'. Again, it's not clear if this was due to difficulties in securing permission for reprinting such materials, or if Concept Art Association was disinterested in 'recycling', so to speak, previously presented artwork. 

In my opinion, then, the definitive collection of Cobb's commercial and studio works remains to be published. However, until such time as that takes place, 'The Art of Ron Cobb' is a good overview of Cobb's contributions over the course of his very successful career. 

Book Review: Quag Keep

Book Review: 'Quag Keep' by Andre Norton

4 / 5 Stars

'Quag Keep' first was published in hardcover in 1978. This DAW Books paperback edition ( No. 353, 192 pp.) was issued in September, 1979, with cover art by Jack Gaughan.

In his 2022 history of TSR and the Dungeons and Dragons franchise, Ben Riggs notes that by the late 1970s D & D was no longer an obscure 'war game', but a rising (and lucrative) pop culture phenomenon. So it wasn't that unusual that Andre Norton and DAW Books would arrange to publish a novel derived from the D & D world. Indeed, in her acknowledgements, Norton thanks 'E. Gary Gygax', creator of the '....war game, DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS'. Interestingly, Norton also thanks DAW editor Donald Wollheim, who apparently was an avid collector of 'military miniatures'.

'Quag Keep' (the 'quag' in the title is a reference to 'quagmire') is framed as an intersection between 'our' world, where young people are playing D & D, and the world of D & D itself, particularly the Greyhawk setting. In the opening chapter Norton introduces us to some D & D players, one of whom, Martin, is entranced by a miniature warrior figurine of unusual fidelity. When Martin grasps the figurine, the action immediately shifts the narrative to a tavern in Greyhawk, where we are introduced to Milo Jagan, the warrior upon whom the figurine is based. In due course Milo, along with six other greyhawk Denizens, is summoned to a meeting with a mysterious wizard known as Hystaspes.

Hystaspes informs our party that they are under a powerful geas, the resolution of which will require a long journey, through dangerous territories, to the inhospitable Sea of Dust. There they must confront the agency that has erected a strange barrier against any type of sorcerous oversight. What lies behind the barrier, and what danger does it present to the world of Greyhawk ? It will take all of the skills, courage, and resourcefulness of Milo and his fellow party members to overcome the challenges in their path, and complete their rendevouz with the mystery awaiting them in the wastes of the Sea of Dust............

'Quag Keep' is a solid fantasy novel and deserving of a Four Star Rating. While the premise of an interaction between D & D Youth and the game world they vicariously inhabit is a bit contrived, for the most part, the book reads as a straightforward D & D adventure (indeed, I would argue that leaving out the references to 'our' world would have strengthened the novel). 

While Norton takes her time in getting the plot underway (nothing of note happens until page 68), once the party ventures a sufficient distance from Greyhawk the action sequences, which are well-written, come with sufficient frequency to avoid the dilatory quality that marks so many of Norton's non-franchise novels. Norton clearly understands that with 'Quag Keep', she is writing a novel based on a 'war game', and combat is to be an integral component of the narrative.

The concluding chapter is the weakest in the book. It fuses 'our' world with that of Greyhawk, but in an inconclusive fashion, indicating that Norton, Gygax, and DAW intended to compose additional, licensed novels featuring this roster of characters. Perhaps because of Norton's increasing ill-health, no additions to the Quag Keep storyline appeared until 2006 when a sequel, 'Return to Quag Keep', representing a collaboration between Norton (posthumously) with Jean Rabe, was issued.

(For another review of 'Quag Keep', readers are directed to this 2020 piece at Tor.com)

Robot Psychosis

'Robot Psychosis' at the Paperback Palette

The posts at the Paperback Palette website are infrequent, but when they do arrive, they are full of content.

Currently up is a retrospective of vintage paperback covers, all of them from books dealing with robots and AI. It's well worth checking out.

Quite a few titles that were unknown to me, but seem like they would be interesting reads.........

The Complete Book of Wargames

The Complete Book of Wargames

by The Editors of Consumer Guide with Jon Freeman

Fireside / Simon and Schuster, 1980

I played wargames in the 1970s, when I was a teenager. At the time I wasn't aware of this book, and looking through it nowadays transports me back 45+ years to an era when there were no computers, no internet, phones were rotary-dial, and when you went to the more higher-end hobby stores and department stores, you would see Avalon Hill games on the shelves. And in the pages of magazines like National Lampoon, you'd see ads from Strategy and Tactics magazine, aimed at the under-40 male demographic.

Being a publication of Consumer Reports, which usually covered things like automobiles, appliances, lawn tractors, hi-fi equipment, and other items, 'The Complete Book of Wargames' has a rather low-budget printing quality. 

In 1980, the year the book was published, the tabletop gaming enterprise was gaining the attention of Wall Street and other entities, mainly through the rising popularity (and notoriety) of Dungeons and Dragons.

'The Complete Book' opens with some chapters that provide an overview of the field, the design and conception of wargames, and how to play a wargame, using as an example a game called Kassala, concocted for this book. These sections work quite well in explaining things to a novice.

The core of the book is 11 chapters that provide reviews of selected wargames, as categorized by the time period covered by the game. 

Things start with ancient-era warfare, proceed through medieval times to the Napoleonic Wars, and then on into the conflicts of the 20th century, including Cold War 'what if' scenarios. An entire chapter is devoted to science fiction and fantasy games.

If you were a wargamer during the Baby Boom era then you're sure to see some favorites mentioned in the pages of 'The Complete Book'. For me, it's seeing Panzerblitz, Sixth Fleet, and Invasion America that brings back memories.  

The book does a pretty good job of covering games from a gamut of publishers, from the major companies Avalon Hill and SPI, down to the smaller, indie publishers like TSR, Metagaming Concepts, and Game Designer's Workshop (among others).

The rating system for each game is pretty well thought-out and useful, avoiding the fanboy attitudes that tended, back in those days, to muddy the waters. The reviews present a 'complexity' score (a '9', for Avalon Hill's Gettysburg, is the highest score given in the book) that reflects when a game has a steep learning curve and perhaps best is left to the most hardcore gamers.

The book's final chapter addresses 'Computers and the Future of Wargaming'. At this stage (i.e., 1980) of computer development, the term 'microcomputers' was used for what we now call PCs, and the field was defined by text adventures like Zork. But the authors of the book were confident that over time, more and more titles would be released on computers (which of course turned out to be quite true).

I note that the Board Game Geek website offers a listing of every game featured in the pages of 'The Complete Book'. 

(Needless to say, copies of these games that are in very good or better condition are going to have high prices, so nostalgia will come with its costs).

Who will want to read 'The Complete Book of Wargames' ? To be honest, it's too outdated to appeal to gamers under 50, who nowadays are preoccupied with card-based games like Magic: The Gathering and video games like Baldur's Gate 3. So, it's only Baby Boomers who remain an audience for the book, and likely as a source of nostalgia rather than as a guide for purchasing of wargames. But then again, who am I to say what is happening in the recreation rooms of the Old Folks Homes...........?!