The Time Machinate

The Time Machinate
by Nicola Cuti
from the December, 1982 issue of Heavy Metal magazine

An offbeat, steampunk-flavored little black-and-white one-pager from Nicola Cuti.

Book Review: Forsake the Sky

Book Review: 'Forsake the Sky' by Tim Powers

3 / 5 Stars

'Forsake the Sky' (217 pp.) was published by Tor Books in April, 1986, and features cover art by Boris Vallejo. It's a revised edition of the book 'The Skies Discrowned', author Powers's first novel, which was issued by Laser Books in 1976.

I picked up 'Forsake' after plowing through over 1,000 pages of fantasy novels ('Shardik', 'Well of Shiuan', and 'Fires of Azeroth'), and was intent on reading a novel that was short, devoid of orotund prose, and featured a simple, straightforward plot with an emphasis on action over characterization and atmosphere. In this regard, 'Forsake' delivered.

The novel is set in the far future, when the Galactic Dominion is in rapid decline and as a result, communication between member planets is atrophying. As technology becomes less accessible, the planet of Octavio has regressed to a 19th century level of civilization. Firearms are in short supply, edged weapons have come into prominence, and horsepower has supplanted the gasoline engine. What little interplanetary commerce still taking place within the Dominion is conducted by the Transport corporation, which seeks to co-opt - or coerce - planetary rulers into its service.

The protagonist of 'Forsake' is a young man named Frank Rovzar, whose father is the painter in the court of Duke Topo. When a palace coup engineered by the amoral Prince Costa interrupts a portrait painting session of the Duke, Frank and his father father resist the plotters, only to have the father murdered, and Frank arrested. Sentenced to a life of labor in the mines of the planet Orestes, at the spaceport, Frank makes a desperate try for freedom and succeeds. 

Frank's only option for a hiding-place from Costa, and his Transport allies, is the metropolis of Munson and its considerable Undercity, a warren of tunnels, passageways, and buildings where the alliance of the Subterranean Companions serves as the clandestine ruler.

Taken in by an Undercity aristocrat, Frank must prove his worth in a landscape of literal and figurative darkness. Schemes and intrigues abound in the torchlit corridors of the Undercity, and Frank's skill at swordplay regularly will be called upon to deter the conspirators operating against the Companions.

But as Frank and the Companions are to discover, the Transport corporation has no intention of letting the Undercity and its criminal enterprises operate with impunity. As punitive forays against the Undercity mount, Frank and is companions will have to decide if they want to risk death in a fight for freedom against the tyranny of Costa and Transport.............

'Forsake the Sky' is a traditional sci-fi adventure, with a Ruritanian flavoring derived from affectionate portrayals of swordfights, the enjoyment of fine liqueurs, pipe-smoking, gourmet meals, and conversations held in well-appointed drawing-rooms. One can see themes in this novel that author Powers later was to incorporate into such works as 'The Drawing of the Dark'. 

If you are a fan of action / adventure sci-fi, or the novels of Tim Powers, then you will find 'Forsake the Sky' a quick and easy read.

Out of Work

'Out of Work'
by Gary U.S. Bonds

It's the week of September 11, 1982, and after peaking at number 21 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in August, 'Out of Work', the single from Gary 'U.S.' Bonds, is at number 61 and on its way down the charts. 

The song, which was a track on Bonds's 1982 album On the Line, was written by Bruce Springsteen.

For me, living in upstate New York at that time and in my final year of college, the song had a real resonance (the Comments at the YouTube page for 'Out of Work' are illuminating). 

The great Recession of 1981 - 1982 was going on, and the national unemployment rate stood at nearly 11 %. While some areas of the country were prospering from 'Reaganomics', upstate New York and the wider Rust Belt were in pretty bad shape. Factories were closing and the blue collar jobs, that had allowed anyone with a high school diploma and a decent work ethic to earn a good living, fast were evaporating.

It was plain that finding a good job in my hometown was increasingly difficult. Many of the people in my age cohort were leaving New York state for the Sun Belt and better prospects. And indeed, I was to do just that in 1984.............and I haven't lived north of the Mason Dixon line since..........

Eight a.m., I'm up and my
Feet beatin' on the sidewalk
Down at the unemployment agency
All I get's talk
I check the want ads but there
Just ain't nobody hiring
What's a man supposed to do
When he's down and

Out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work
I'm unemployed, I'm out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work

I go to pick my girl up
Her name is Linda Brown
Her dad invites me in
He tells me to sit down
The small talk that we're making
Is going pretty smooth
But then he drops a bomb
"Son, what d'ya do?"

I'm out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work
I'm unemployed, I'm out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work
Yeah, yeah, yeah

Hey, Mr. President
I know you got your plans
You're doing all you can now
To aid the little man
We got to do our best to
Whip that inflation down
Maybe you got a job for me
Just driving you around

These tough times, they're enough
To make a man lose his mind
(I'm out of work)
Up there you got a job but down here below

I'm out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work
I'm unemployed, I'm out of work
I need a job, I'm out of work

Ooh, I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work
I'm out of work

Paydirt from Creepy issue 124

'Paydirt'
by Roger McKenzie (story) and Carmine Infantino and Alfredo Alcala (art)
from Creepy issue 124, January 1981

When Carmine Infantino was summarily fired early in 1976 as the Publisher of DC comics, according to Reed Tucker's 2017 book Slugfest, more than a few people were happy to see him go: " 'Carmine was a prick', says inker Joe Rubenstein".

Infantino became a freelancer, providing art to a number of publishers, including Marvel and Warren.

In 1981 he teamed up with Alfredo Alcala for this fine treatment of a Weird Western theme.

Book Review: Shardik

Book Review: 'Shardik' by Richard Adams

2 / 5 Stars

‘Shardik’ first was published in the UK in hardback in 1974. This Avon Books paperback was released in the US in February, 1976.

By the time ‘Shardik’ hit the paperback racks, author Adams had gained fame and fortune from the success of his 1972 novel ‘Watership Down’, and it was because I found ‘Watership Down’ entertaining that back in February 1976, I purchased a copy of ‘Shardik’ despite its alarming length (620 pages). I remember getting about 75 pages into the novel before I gave it up due to profound boredom…….

In the spirit of completism, 46 years later I again took up ‘Shardik’, this time prepared for a less-than frenetic read. I was aided by the knowledge that it’s August in Central Virginia, and the crushing heat and humidity make it uncomfortable to do anything outdoors. So, listening to my central A/C blowing cool air through the HVAC vents, I settled into my armchair and opened up ‘Shardik’.

The novel is set in a Bronze Age world governed by the Beklan Empire. In the northern fringes of the Empire sits the Telthearna river, and in the middle of the river sits the island of Ortelga. 

The island and its populace are impoverished, relying for spiritual nourishment on the utterances of secretive priestesses, who in their redoubt of Quiso worship a vaguely Old Testament-style God in the hopes that the Deity will bestow, at a time of His choosing, wealth, power, and prestige to His people, the Ortelgans.  

The protagonist of ‘Shardik’ is a young hunter named Kelderek, who, if not very bright, is skilled at his craft. As the novel opens, Kelderek faces almost certain death at the hands of a leopard when a miraculous intervention, in the form of a bear some 13 feet tall, saves his life. The sight of the monstrous ursine moves Kelderek to revelation: the bear can only be the reincarnation of the Shardik of Ortelgan mythology. Shardik, God’s messenger, and a portent that the Lord’s power again will descend on his people. 

The Baron of Ortelga initially is skeptical of Kelderek’s announcement of the return of Shardik, and demands a consultation with the priestesses of Quiso. This in turn triggers momentous events that will see Kelderek rise to the heights of power in the Beklan empire. But of course, as Kelderek is to discover, some gods can be fickle, and when he finds himself fallen into degradation and despair, can Kelderek still retain his belief in Shardik as the holy messenger of God, and a comfort to those of the Elect ? 

So: this time, I finished 'Shardik'. It was not a compelling read, and took me quite some time to accomplish. The novel’s deliberate, meandering pacing reflects the narrative’s primary focus on chronicling Kelderek’s personal journey from naïve backwoods boy, to an adult man with a stark and disturbing knowledge of the world’s cruelties. This journey is accompanied by much exposition describing the psychological, emotional, and theological dilemmas confronting Kelderek. 

Plot developments (such as battles) that, in other ‘epic’ fantasy novels would receive considerable attention, are given a brief, almost perfunctory treatment in ‘Shardik’.

The last 80 pages of the novel are quite plodding, as they deal with the advent of a kind of pantheistic humanism to replace the more brutish elements of Shardik-worship among the bear’s followers. There is also a recapitulation of the mythology of the civilizing effect contact with Arab / Muslim cultures had on the ‘barbarian’ polities of medieval Europe. 

In some ways, I found Shardik to be the most interesting character in the novel. He doesn't do much but eat, sleep, shit, and occasionally run amok, but his simple nature was a welcome change from the novel's relentless emphasis on Kelderek's internal turmoils. Curiously, author Adams never reveals whether Shardik is a 'living fossil' bear who has survived from the Pleistocene era, or a 'regular' bear converted by mutation into a giant. 

I finished ‘Shardik’ with no desire to read the quasi-sequel, ‘Maia’, which was published in 1984 and clocks in at a daunting 1,223 pages. Those with the patience necessary to digest such tomes are welcome to ‘Shardik’.............. 

Book Review: Well of Shiuan

Book Review: 'Well of Shiuan' by C. J. Cherryh

2 / 5 Stars

‘Well of Shiuan’ (253 pp.) was published by DAW Books as book number 284 in April, 1978. The cover art is by Michael Whelan. This is the second volume in the so-called ‘Morgaine’ trilogy from C. J. Cherryh. The first volume in the trilogy is ‘Gate of Ivrel’ (1976), and the third, ‘Fires of Azeroth’ (1979). These three volumes are available in the DAW omnibus ‘The Morgaine Saga’ (2001).

Cherryh produced a fourth and final book in the series, ‘Exile’s Gate’, in 1988. 

As ‘Well of Shiuan’ opens, our hero Morgaine, and her dutiful servant and man-at-arms Vanye, have traveled through a star gate from the world of Andur-Kursh, the setting of ‘Gate of Ivrel’, to the world of Shiuan. There, Morgaine aims to make her way north, to the star gate located near the eponymous Well, in the hopes of destroying the gate and thus preventing the villainous Roh from manipulating said gate for his own purposes.

Entropy was a very fashionable theme in sci-fi published during the New Wave era, and in ‘Well’, author Cherryh suffuses her setting with plenty of entropy. 

There is much exposition on the entropic state of life in Shiuan. The land is beset with rising sea levels, earthquakes, and torrential rains, and its bedraggled populations of serfs, and degenerate aristocrats, are beset with apprehension. Sodden and surly in their soaked and crumbling villages and castles, they pin their hopes on a Deliverer – who just may be Morgaine - to open the gate at the Well, and allow the people to escape to a world better than Shiuan.

The problem with 'Shiuan' is that Cherryh's prose never rises to the level of that of Michael John Harrison, a master at invoking the atmosphere of entropy, as he does (for example) in this passage from his 1983 'Viriconium' novel 'The Floating Gods' :

…….Strange old towers rose from a wooded slope clasped in a curved arm of the derelict pleasure canal. About their feet clustered the peeling villas of a vanished middle class, all plaster mouldings, split steps, tottering porticos and drains smelling of cats. Ashlyme trudged up the hill. A bell clanged high up in a house; a face moved at a window. The wind whirled dust and dead leaves around him. 

 

Moreso than the other two volumes in the trilogy, ‘Well’ suffers from indolent pacing. Much of the narrative is preoccupied with documenting melodramatic exchanges between Vanye and Morgaine, and between Vanye and various residents of Shiuan. A plot device employed in all the Morgaine novels, in which the dimwitted Vanye is captured by his enemies and must use cunning and guile (related in lengthy passages of stilted dialogue) to escape and rejoin Morgaine, lends little momentum to the narrative.

Things become a bit more action-centered in the closing chapters of ‘Well’, when the interminable journeying over waterlogged terrain, through mean and miserable landscapes, comes to an end. But the fact that this is the middle volume of a trilogy means that the denouement necessarily can’t get very adventurous. 

The verdict ? ‘Well of Shiuan’ is the weakest of the three volumes of the Morgaine trilogy. It’s best approached with a large measure of patience, and the awareness that it is designed to propel, in an unambitious fashion, the narrative into the third, and final, arc of the storyline.

Penthouse magazine August 1974

Penthouse magazine

August 1974

Let's travel back in time to August, 1974. 

'Billy, Don't Be A Hero', by Bo Donaldson and the Heywoods, and 'Band on the Run', by Paul McCartney and Wings, are in heavy rotation on FM radio. And on the stands is the latest issue of Penthouse magazine, with a 'retro' themed cover that reflects the Nostalgia Craze then prominent in American popular culture.

Along with the unintentionally (?) comical Penthouse Forum, 1974 offered a monthly feature called 'Couples' which provided risque 'interviews' with swingin' men and women, whose exploits were 'analyzed' by 'the eminent sexologist Dr.  Robert Chartham'. Like the Forum, I know that the content of every 'Couples' feature was 100%, absolutely, utterly true and factual !

One thing that is readily apparent in looking at the 'pictorials', is that back then the girls were pretty, and personal grooming standards a bit different............

This month's interviewee is none other than film director Roman Polanski, who took care to  present himself as a super-stud. In 1977, Polanski would be arrested and charged with rape of a minor, but in '74, he was living the high life.

In August of '74, you could join the Occult Arts Society..........the movie The Exorcist no doubt motivated some into taking a membership. 

In '74 Penthouse didn't have quite the advertising portfolio of Playboy, although it was beating the former in terms of circulation. There was enough advertising to get the page count up to 152. Among the products on display were aphrodisiacal products, which are a potent (pun intended) reminder to us that back in '74, there were no such things as Viagra or Cialis. 

The most you could hope for was a jolt from the 'I, Brute', supplement marketed by Joe Weider (!) which offered the promise of ginseng and other 'Oriental herbs' to those suffering from........errr.............difficulties. 

And only in '74 could you get the decade's most quintessential swinging bachelor cocktail, the Tequila Sunrise, in a can !

Swinging bachelors also could take advantage of Xaviera Hollander's game to make that all-important transition from foreplay to erotic 'action'...............

Let's close the show on a high note, with a consumer product sure to raise eyebrows..........do you know that back in '74 you could procure Male Comfort Spray to ensure your crotch area is free of 'chafing, stickiness, and irritation' ?! Maybe it had to do with those tight doubleknit slacks everyone was wearing............anyways, before hitting the Regal Beagle singles bar, a bit of MCS surely was a confidence-builder.

There you have it...........a look back in time to a different era, and a different attitude towards what it meant to be a Manly Man..............

20 Years of Heavy Metal

20 Years of Heavy Metal

Heavy Metal Books, February 1997

20 Years of Heavy Metal (266 pp.) was published to celebrate twenty years of the magazine, which by 1997 was owned by Kevin Eastman, of 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles' fame. 

This is a well-produced 'coffee table' book, printed on a high grade of paper and with topnotch color separations.

The contents are something of a mixed bag. 

Material from prior to 1980, which I consider the magazine's heyday, is in short supply. Whether this was due to expired printing rights and / or licenses is unclear.

The opening pages are a gallery of T & A pictures. Looking at these, one can see how the magazine changed over time from its early focus on finely crafted, imaginative, sci-fi-flavored content stuff, to become a T & A showcase.

Despite the predominance of material from the late 1980s and the 1990s, there are worthwhile pieces in this book. An undoubted masterpiece is 'The Cathedral' by Jean-Claude Gal, with its intricate black-and-white draftsmanship. Also of value are a 'Mercenary' story from Segrelles, and the post-apocalyptic western 'Children of the Spider' by Segura and Ortiz (the duo behind 'Burton and Cyb'). Also standing out is  'L'Lobo' by Caza.

I was pleased to see a transgressive Ranxerox story, 'Aie, Robot !', from Liberatore. 'Druuna' artist Serpieri is represented by a Western tale, titled 'Women of the West'. This has, as one might expect, female nudity, but no tentacled monsters consumed with lascivious intent. And Enki Bilal contributes 'On the Wing'.

Artist William Stout teams up with Moebius for 'Arzaq', a homage to the franchise.

The remainder of the book is filled with marginal pieces from the late 1980s, and the 1990s. The artwork is makeshift, and the plotting forgettable.

I was able to buy my copy of '20 Years of Heavy Metal' in 2013 from the magazine's website. I think I paid about fifteen dollars for '20 Years', as Heavy Metal was having a sale on their graphic novels and art books. 

So it's alarming to see the bookjackers and speculators advertising copies of the book for $75 on up to $500. At eBay, the prices are just as exorbitant.

The verdict ? If you can find '20 Years of Heavy Metal' available for an affordable price (say, $30 or less), then it can be a worthwhile purchase. But there's no way I can condone spending more for this book.

Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor

Harlan Ellison's Dream Corridor

Dark Horse Comics, 1995

From March to August 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.

Each issue of 'Dream Corridor' led off with a one-page Introduction, rendered in graphical form, in which our hero indulges in raillery designed to remind readers that even though he's a Big Author, Harlan is excited about this, his latest foray into comics.......

Along with the venerable 'I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream', some older tales, and some newer ones, are serialized in the pages of 'Dream Corridor'.

One thing about 'Dream Corridor' that immediately is apparent is its modelling on DC's 'Vertigo' comic book imprint, which by 1995 was receiving lavish praise from the more intellectually inclined members of the comic book readership. The stylized, abstract artwork that was prominent in Vertigo's titles is self-consciously mimicked with 'Dream Corridor':

Most of the stories presented in 'Dream Corridor' are unremarkable. They usually have a twist ending, and are designed to impart some degree of comeuppance to their amoral protagonists. The one exception to this format is the story 'Cold Friend', which is serialized in issues four and five and as a more traditional sci-fi theme, and slicker artwork.

The text pieces featured in 'Dream Corridor' are disappointments, mainly because Dark Horse elected to print them in teeny-tiny, 4 pt font in order to accommodate them within the page count restriction for each issue. I didn't have the energy to pull out magnifying spectacles to read these stories, so I can't tell you if they are any good or not.........

Summing up, I really can't recommend 'Dream Corridor' to anyone other than those diehard Ellison fans who just have to have anything and everything that came from the hand of The Master. Along with the mediocre artwork and unremarkable stories, the imposition of cringey segments featuring Harlan's efforts to be a mensch tend to grate..........

'Dream Corridor' simply doesn't live up to the standards set by Ellison's earlier foray into graphic art packaging, 1978's The Illustrated Harlan Ellison.