Letter to Xaviera

Letter to Xaviera Hollander

from the July, 1974 issue of Penthouse magazine

Sometimes I think it would be fun to have been the guy at Penthouse whose job was to write the 'letters' to Xaviera Hollander ('Call Me Madam') in her monthly column. 

This missive from 'Betty' is a classic combo of over-the-top humor and sleaze, 1970s style........

Book Review: Fires of Freedom

Book Review: 'Fires of Freedom' by Jerry Pournelle

4 / 5 Stars

'Fires of Freedom' (616 pp.) was published by Baen Books in July, 2010, and features cover art by Kurt Miller. 

'Fires' is a compilation of two early novels from Pournelle: 'Birth of Fire', and 'King David's Spaceship'.

'Birth of Fire' first was published in March 1976 by Laser Books. As the novel opens, protagonist Garrett Pittson is involved in a gang fight among the decaying cityscape of a 21st century Baltimore, Maryland. Police intervention sees Pittson arrested, and given the choice of 'volunteering' to join the Federation colony on Mars, there to start life over as an indentured servant to the corporate firms conducting mining and other businesses.

Resigned to never seeing Earth again, Pittson decides to make the best of his situation on Mars, where, if nothing else, one's past history is not held against someone. In due course, Pittson makes the acquaintance of some 'Marsmen' and embarks on a hard-working path towards advancement in the bleak, windswept territories outside the city of Hellastown.

But as he works towards a future on Mars, Pittson becomes aware that all is not well between the hardy colonists staking claims in the wilderness, and the corporate entities who levy taxes and direct energy development. When the corporate hand weighs too heavily, the colonists revolt.........and a civil war erupts on Mars.

Compared to the Federation and corporate police, the Marsmen are undergunned. But they have a firsthand knowledge of surviving in a hostile environment, and they plan to use that knowledge to their advantage.........

'Birth of Fire' is a competent action-adventure sci-fi tale. For the first-person narration, Pournelle adopts the clipped diction of a private-eye or suspense novel, an approach to storytelling that was - depending on your point of view - either reactionary, or transgressive, in 1976 during the height of the New Wave era.

'Birth of Fire' is adept at incorporating scientific knowledge of Mars, circa 1976, into its plot. There are no life forms, or 'canals', or ancient ruins on the Mars of 'Birth', just geological formations that are portrayed as attention-worthy entities in their own right. Curiously, in its closing chapters 'Birth' incorporates a plot device that is reminiscent of that deployed in the 1990 film Total Recall. 

'King David's Spaceship' is a revised version of Pournelle's 1973 novel, 'A Spaceship for the King', which I reviewed here. As best as I can tell, the revisions made to 'King David's Spaceship' were designed to incorporate the novel into the CoDominium / Moties franchise, and in particular synchronize the 'Spaceship' narrative with that of Pournelle's 1974 novel 'The Mote in God's Eye'.

I can't say that the expanded text introduced in 'King David's Spaceship' improves on 'A Spaceship for the King' all that much, and I finished 'King David's Spaceship' content with retaining the four-star rating I gave to the original novel.

Summing up, those who like action-oriented, military science fiction with an unashamedly conservative flavoring probably will find 'Fires of Freedom' rewarding.

Motel Bizarre

Motel Bizarre
by Stephanie Crabe
Scapegoat Publishing, 2007

The PorPor Books Blog is devoted to covering sci-fi, fantasy, and horror paperbacks published during the interval from roughly 1968 to 1988, and I rarely deviate from reviewing and promoting media from that era. However, I occasionally make exceptions, when I feel an obligation to promote books that fall outside that range of time and topic.

So it is with 'Motel Bizarre', which probably is too contemporary, and too eccentric, to get coverage from sites like 'Glorious Trash' and 'Paperback Warrior'. And 'Motel Bizarre' is deserving of coverage, because I believe it has appeal to those paperback fanatics who are fans of sleaze and noir content (but then, who isn't a fan of sleaze and noir content ?!).

Anyways, 'Motel Bizarre' is a 10 1/2 x 8 1/4 inch landscape format trade paperback published in 2007 by Scapegoat Publishing, a short-lived, small press publisher founded by Chris X, aka Christopher Neu, aka Christopher Xavier Donovan, the owner of Reptilian Records, a record, comic, and memorabilia shop located on South Broadway Street in Baltimore's Fells Point neighborhood in the 1990s. 

[ I used to be a regular patron of Reptilian, back in the day, and I could write a blog post alone on that store and the hipster scene in Baltimore in the early 1990s.......... ]

But on to 'Motel Bizarre', which features an introduction by Christopher Mealie, whose photos of dilapidated motels are sprinkled throughout the pages of the book. The introduction starts off with some interesting observations about the origin and heyday of the motel in American culture and commerce, but then Mealie inexplicably veers off into an adjective- and adverb-littered parody of  hardboiled crime fiction, and becomes just another example of a hipster trying too hard to be hip............

The staged photographs, all taken in color and featuring friends and models of Ms. Crabe, appear to have been taken in genuine motel settings and depict all manner of patently sleazy acts that are in keeping with the theme of retro-influenced American noir, as inspired by David Lynch and John Waters.

There are elements of provocation, and also of humor, in the tableaus presented in 'Motel Bizarre'. The decor, lighting (no soft focus or flesh-toned makeup operating here, folks), and framing of the pictures gives them the authenticity necessary to shock (wink-wink) bourgeoisie sensibilities.

The few reviews of 'Motel Bizarre' that I have found online go overboard with quasi-academic jargon, and in that spirit I might declare that:

'........the Transgressive Iconography of Stephanie Crabe's pictorial narratives ushers us into a world that, however repugnant it may seem at first glance, is nonetheless as fully realized as any translational zeitgeist of postwar American popular culture.'

How do you get a copy of 'Motel Bizarre' ? Well, Stephanie Crabe - now with the surname Petersen (perhaps her married name ?) is alive and well and running a photography studio in Bayonne, New Jersey.  Her website has a link to order the book directly from her, or you can go to amazon and do the same thing for the very reasonable price of $9.99, plus $4 for shipping and handling.

This is one book I'm going to prominently leave lying around my house when friends, family, vegans, recovering alcoholics, hipsters, and Womyn's Rights activists come to call.....................

Olivia Newton-John
from the movie Toomorrow (1970) 

Magnificent Obsession

'Magnificent Obsession'

by Fehlfarben

1983

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

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

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

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

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

 3 / 5 Stars

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

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

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

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

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

leopardine: rabbit fur processed to simulate leopard-skin

monitory: giving warning

damson: relating to plums.

mulberry: purplish-black color.

incarnadine: pinkish-red in color. 

lacertian: relating to lizards.

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

Anyways, my capsule summaries of the contents:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

National Lampoon August 1973

National Lampoon 

August 1973

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turnpike from Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor issue one

Turnpike

by Harlan Ellison

Adapted by Max Allen Collins

Art by Craig Elliott

from Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor, Issue One

Dark Horse Comics, March 1995

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

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

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

Book Review: Twilight of the Empire

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

3 / 5 Stars

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

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

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

Cover illustration by Sanjulian, Ace Books, September 1992

Cover illustration by Mark Salwowski, Gollancz, November 1992

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

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

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

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

Cover illustration by Sanjulian, Ace Books, March 1993

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

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

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

Cover illustration by Sanjulian, Ace Books, September 1993

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

 

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

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

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

People Make the World Go Round

People Make the World Go Round

by The Stylistics

July 22, 1972

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

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

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