Showing posts with label Fantasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fantasy. Show all posts

Thursday, December 10, 2020

Kyrik: Warlock Warrior (Kyrik #1)


Kyrick: Warlock Warrior, by Gardner F. Fox
April, 1975  Leisure Books

I picked this one up a few years ago when I was on a sword and sorcery kick; the typically-great Ken Barr cover drew me right in. Barr has always been my favorite of these ‘70s cover artists, and as ever his art completely captures the subject matter. Also if you closely inspect the cover art, as I did, you’ll note that the green-haired babe is fully nude. However Barr’s artwork is more risque than anything in Kyrik: Warlock Warrior; the book is very tame in both the sex and violence departments, more tame even than Robert E. Howard’s original Conan stories. Also I hate to inform you of this, but Barr’s cover is also incredibly misleading: there is no green-haired babe in the book…nor is there a pterodactyl-type flying creature, either. There is a brawny dude with a sword in the book, though, so at least there’s that. 

Speaking of Conan, Leisure Books clearly wanted to follow the trend, hence Fox delivers an intro where he tries to argue that the novel, which takes place in days of old when magic filled the air, could’ve possibly happened in some prehistorical era. His Kyrik is sort of a combo of Conan and Howard’s other creation, Kull, in that Kyrik is a legendary, almost mythical ruler of the past. As the novel unfolds we find that Kyrik’s backstory is a little involved, but here’s the gist of it: a thousand years ago he was a powerful barbarian who took control of a kingdom, a la Conan. But he ran afoul of a black magician and was turned into a statue…and the statue was lost. Now, a thousand years later, the statue is found by a young sorceress, and Kyrik is brought back to life. This first novel details his battle against the descendant of the man who turned him into a statue. 

Aryalla is the young sorceress who finds Kyrik; beautiful and built, with “long black hair, like that of a harlot of the traveling fairs.” Her own involved backstory has it that she was the daughter of the chief mage of Tantagol, the kingdom which Kyrik once ruled. But rival sorcerers plotted to get the ruler of Tantagol to kill her father, and now Aryalla travels around the known world, seeking out the Kyrik statue she learned of through her father. She believes that a reborn Kyrik will help her gain revenge on Devadonides, despotic ruler of Tantagol – and the descendant of the original Devadonides, who had Kyrik turned into a statue a thousand years ago. As the novel opens Aryalla, still in her early 20s, has been searching for a few years or somesuch, and finally comes across the statue in the booth of a travelling salesman. 

Demons are very active in this world; Fox almost implies that all the “gods” people worship are in fact demons. But nothing much is made of this, really, other than Aryalla and others standing in pentagrams when they call forth this or that god or goddess. What’s interesting is that these various gods are clearly not omniscient nor omnipotent; later in the book Kyrik summons his personal goddess, Illis, an Aphrodite-type whose cult has disappeared in the past thousand years. Not only has she lost power on earth because no one worships her anymore, she also often tells Kyrik she’s unable to do this or that thing for him – and, when she appears in human form (as a super hot, super-built blonde, of course), she comes off more like a damsel in distress, displaying no godlike attributes at all. 

Illis no longer having any followers is one of the few ramifications Kyrik experiences a thousand years in the “future.” Humorously, almost nothing has changed in this prehistorical world; there’s even a part where Kyrik reveals to Aryalla that he hid something in a favored tavern…and not only is the same tavern still there, but so is the item Kyrik hid in it! About the most we get out of the whole “thousand years” schtick is Kyrik’s constantly going on about how he hasn’t eaten in a thousand years, or drank any ale, or had a woman – which of course he pointedly reminds Aryalla of several times, though suprisingly the two of them never do the deed. It got to the point where I kept waiting for Kyrik to go to the bathroom so he could boast that it was his “first dump in a thousand years.” 

Well anyway I got ahead of myself; Aryalla finds the statue, summons some demons, and they help her bring Kyrik back to life. He seems pretty blasé about it being a thousand years later, so I guess he didn’t leave a wife or children or any friends behind. But then, the characters here are pretty one-dimensional, and Fox delivers only what is expected of him: a cheap Conan knockoff for a low-rent publisher. But then again this is what elevated Howard’s original stories over all the ripoffs; there was a lot more meat to Howard’s stories. And as mentioned they were more risque as well, despite Howard publishing his stuff over forty years before Fox. We’re sometimes informed that Aryalla has “high breasts” and whatnot, and there’s also a part where she gets hot and bothered by Kyrik’s “Luststone” (a magical gem that arouses lust in whoever looks upon it – the item Kyrik hid in that tavern centuries before), but the two are constantly spurning any opportunity to get busy, as there are “more important” things to do, like the whole thing’s a stupid TV show where they’re constantly putting off the sexual tensions between the male and female protagonists, like that dumbass Lost show, where we were supposed to buy into a love triangle scenario when these damn people had just been in a plane crash and were now stranded on some remote island (which turned out to be about as populated as Manhattan), but it was a loooong-simmer of “will they or won’t they,” while you’d figure in reality any such inhibitions would be tossed aside. Same goes for Jerry Ahern’s The Survivalist series, which took that whole love triangle nonsense into even more absurd dimensions – literally the end of the world and the titular “survivalist” was wondering if he should be unfaithful to his wife (who could’ve been dead, for all he knew) and give it to the hot Russian spy-babe who was in love with him. And this went on for like twenty novels! I remember listening to the Graphic Audio adaptations of the series years ago, during the commute to work, and ultimately banging the steering wheel in frustration over this endless, go-nowhere subplot – I know not once but several times I yelled, “It’s the end of the world, just do it already!” 

But I digress. I bring this up because we’re constantly told Kyrik is a lusty warrior of legendary repute, so you’d think he’d be tossing little sexpot Aryalla into the nearest bed. And he has the opportunity to do so several times. He doesn’t, and it’s an indication that Fox is much more conservative in this regard than Howard; same goes for the violence, which lacks any of Howard’s customary gore. Curiously Kyrik does get lucky, but it’s with newly-introduced Myrnis, a busty vagabond-type beauty who has been living in Kryick’s cabin in the woods – yes, even his cabin is still here, a thousand years later. A love triangle quickly develops, with Aryalla jealous of the attention Kyrik gives Myrnis, and vice versa; luckily Fox doesn’t draw this out for the entire novel, with Kryick finally “getting laid for the first time in a thousand years” (not an actual quote from the book) courtesy Myrnis. Fox leaves the event entirely off-page, as he does Kryick’s few other “encounters” with Myrnis. 

As for the action quotient, Kyrik doesn’t make his first kill until nearly page 50. His customary sword is named Bluefang – it was turned into a statue along with him. As for Kyrik, he’s also a Conan ripoff in physical stature, save that he has “tawny” hair. Otherwise there’s no personality about him, and the “warlock” aspect of the title is seriously unexplored. Indeed, late in the novel Kyrik tells Aryalla that he’ll need her magic in the climactic battle, so any hopes of Kyrik casting spells while waving his broadsword are quickly dashed. But then, even later in the book Fox reminds us that Kyrik is “also” a practicioner of magic, same as Aryalla…not that he does anything to prove it. This “warlock” deal promised to be the only thing that would separate Kyrik from Conan, but I get the impression Leisure just came up with the title and Fox didn’t do anything to exploit it. 

Aryalla gets Kyrik’s aid, after bringing him back to life: they will return to Tantagol and Kyrik will help her vanquish Devadonides – the descendant of the Devadonides who turned Kyrik into a statue. Along the way they encounter various brigands and foot soldiers of the evil king, and Bluefang tastes blood “for the first time in a thousand years.” Along the way Kyrik also “encounters” Myrnis, who initially promises to be a more colorful personality than the mostly-icy Aryalla, but then drops from the text when the trio arrives in Tantagol, only to return at the end so she can ride off into the sunset with Kyrik. About the most she does is darken Kyrik’s skin so that he can pass as a vagabond and enter the city undetected. But immediately after this Kyrik gets in a two-hour bar brawl which promptly gets him tossed into prison. 

Here Kyrik manages to reconnect with his goddess, Illis, who appears to him in human guise – and implies she wants a little lovin’, though curiously once again Fox doesn’t follow through. Instead, Illis spends the rest of the novel in the form of a snake, wrapped around the hilt of Bluefang, speaking telepathically with Kyrik. The confrontation with Devadonides isn’t very memorable, as he’s fat and powerless; the real battle is with the demon he and his chief mage worship. Everyone’s whisked away to a magical lair, where Kyrik supposedly uses his own warlock powers to suss out the demon’s location, but even here the fighting’s mostly done with Bluefang. By novel’s end Kyrik has deposed Devadonides and could regain control of his old kingdom of Tantagol, but instead he decides to hand it over to Aryalla so that he can hit the road with Myrnis and have more adventures. 

Three more novels followed, all published by Leisure and now all available as cheap eBooks, it appears. I found this one pretty tepid, but it must be stated that Fox acquits himself better in the fantasy arena than he did in sci-fi, at least judging Kyrik: Warlock Warrior against Beyond The Black Enigma.

Thursday, January 16, 2020

A Time Of Ghosts (Raven #2)


A Time Of Ghosts, by Richard Kirk
May, 1987  Ace Book
(Original UK edition 1978)

The Raven saga continues with a second volume that seems to be set shortly after the first; Raven and her guru warlock (plus occasional bedmate) Spellbinder are still in the same region in which the previous volume concluded, however now Raven is training some new character named Silver on how to be a warrior in the army Raven’s apparently decided to form. Oh and meanwhile the novel has opened with that same future prologue with some unnamed old guy traveling around a desolate world and telling tales of long ago – tales about Raven. Last time I opined this guy was Spellbinder but I could be wrong.

Anyway in the narrative itself – the prologue and epilogue are the only parts set in this post-disaster future – Raven’s taken on a Conan-type barbarian from the north named Silver, who when we meet him is being trained by the ghost of Argor, the warrior who trained Raven herself a year ago. It’s not really Argor’s ghost, though, but just his spirit or somesuch, magically teleported here by Spellbinder as Argor doesn’t want to venture out of his city. Silver has long black hair and a Conan build, with the novel addition that he’s a mutant who can turn his body into silver, hence his name. Backstory has it that he scaled some magical tower in his homeland, the result of which gave him this supernatural ability. We’ll roll with it.

Now you might think a barbarian warrior with mutant powers is cool enough to warrant his own series, but “Richard Kirk” (aka British authors Richard Holdstock and Angus Wells) doesn’t have much time for Silver: more focus is placed upon two other new characters who become part of Raven’s growing army. Like some primordial Spartacus Raven’s intent is to free slaves, train the notable ones as warriors, and use them as her personal army of chaos. Or something. I’ll admit it’s been a while since I read the first volume, so it’s possible I’ve forgotten some of the finer details of the saga. At any rate Raven and Silver crush a slave caravan, hacking and slashing the slavers, and two of the freed slaves get Raven’s interest: one’s a hotstuff brunette, also from the northern tribal lands, named Karmana, the other’s a tall and lanky guy with pale, haunting eyes named Moonshadow.

Of the two, Karmana is the one to gain the most spotlight, at least initially. Karmana is a proud warrior woman who was captured and enslaved, but worse yet was raped – the memory of wich haunts her. I have to say, speaking from the perspective of our #metoo world, the subject of rape is treated rather delicately here, at least so far as ‘70s fantasy goes (the series didn’t make it to America until about a decade after its British publication…things just moved more slowly then, folks). Whereas other series of the day like Gor had tons of rape-fantasy throughout (I should admit I’ve never actually read a Gor novel), the female characters in Raven struggle with how to cope with the fact that they’ve been raped. Of course, this being a fantasy adventure series and all – plus the women in question being kick-ass warrior babes – the coping method involves gutting, emasculating, and just in general killing their rapists.

All three of these things Raven did to her own rapist, Karl ir Donwayne, at the conclusion of the first volume; thus imagine Raven’s shock when she learns that the man who raped Karmana was…Karl ir Donwayne. Now, my immediate reaction was that maybe Donwayne did this particular raping you know, before he was emasculated and gutted by Raven, but Raven’s immediate reaction is that Donwayne is still alive. This just proves once again that the “Swordmistress of Chaos” knows more than I do, because Raven turns out to be correct, at least sort of – at length she decides to consult one of the apparently-many oracles of her world to find out what the hell is going on. Eventually she and Karmana set off for the Sons of Ulthann, a remote area which is the remnants of a once-great civilization.

There’s a fair bit of world-building here, more than last time, with lots of stuff about the new lands Raven visits, their history, and their people. After many pages have elapsed Raven and Karmana hook up with Moonshadow, who upon being freed by Raven has set off on his own quest – one which coincidentally also involves speaking to the oracle of Ulthann. With his long hair, slim build – so unlike any warrior Raven has ever met – and moon eyes, Moonshadow brings to mind David Carradine, and given the ’78 publication date it’s possible our authors were inspired by Kung Fu. Whereas Silver and his mutant abilities sounds ripe for the exploiting, the authors set their sights on Moonshadow, and he too has a story that could warrant its own series: he appears to be from some other world and is on a lifelong hunt for a force of evil known as the Crugoan. His power is also fueled by the moon: when it’s full he is at the height of his strength, but when it fades away in the sky his energy ebbs to almost nothing and his skin becomes transluscent.

Eventually the trio wind up in the courtroom of Karagan, high prince of Ulthann (the authors still have the unfortunate tendency of giving their characters similar names, I mean “Karagan” and “Karmana” in the same book)…and eventually Raven winds up in the bed of Karagan. Surprisingly, this being Raven’s first bed action in the novel (and we’re almost halfway through), the scene isn’t overly explicit (“When he entered her” and the like). Even more surprisingly, when Karmana shows up and pushes Raven aside for her time with the hunky high prince, the authors not only skip the opportunity to depict a friendly three-way but also leave the ensuing boinkery off-page.

Raven talks to the ghostly voice of the oracle, which tells her that Donwayne is sort of alive, his spirit or somesuch saved by that dastardly necromancer Belthis after the gory denoument of the previous volume. Sadly friends this means that A Time Of Ghosts is a retread of the first volume, given that the two main villains of that one return for this one…even though one of them was soundly killed by Raven in the previous book. The oracle opines where Donwayne might be, and of course this becomes Raven’s new destination; conveniently it’s pretty much where Spellbinder wants her to be, given the main plot thread of the novel – that Gondar Lifebane, the viking ruffian of the previous book, has abducted the fair Kyra, co-ruler of the empire of Altan (and yet another of Raven’s bedmates in the previous volume…as was Gondar himself).

We’re getting pretty well into the book now and there haven’t been any major action setpieces for our heroine. This occurs finally; while aboard a ship taking her to the waiting Spellbinder, Raven and Karmana are attacked by the crew, all of whom want a piece of these two hotstuff, busty, scantily-clad babes they’ve taken on as passengers. So the two warrior chicks start hacking and slashing their would-be rapists, with Moonshadow assisting, proving finally he’s the warrior Raven suspected, despite his frail build. This part features the unforgettable moment in which Moonshadow slips on a trail of gore and knocks himself out. It also features the memorable moment of a friggin’ sea monster coming out of the ocean and attacking all and sundry, only to be stopped by a giant bird Raven calls for help.

Now reconnected with Spellbinder, Silver, and a bunch of other characters the two have drafted in the interim – Raven’s “army” now up to a total of 12 warriors – Raven and her comrades scale the cliffs of Lifebane’s island fortress Kragg, Raven surprising the brawny viking while he’s in the bath. However Lifebane swears he has nothing to do with the kidnapping of Kyra, and that it’s all a setup. He gives Raven one of her ships and it’s off to meet the navy of the Altan to tell the crazed ruler that his sister is not on Kragg. The authors realize they’ve been short on action, thus provide a sequence in which Raven fights the Altan’s “Night Warrior,” a swordsmaster who happens to be invisible. Raven uses her wits and the help of Silver’s shining hands to see the unseen foe – Silver’s hands allowing Raven to see the outline of her opponent.

In a cool sequence Spellbinder sees back in time and their ship follows the ship which abduced Kyra, a few days before. They follow after it over a few days to see its destination, the spell exhausting Spellbinder. Eventually they learn the ship has gone far north, to the Ice Lands, but for some reason they don’t head straight there to kick ass and rescue Kyra. Like last time the plot just jumps everywhere; eventually Raven and army head back to the Altan’s home, which they’re surprised to learn has been overtaken by an “army of millions” comprised of various tribes. Raven stages some campaigns which end up freeing the city, after which she and her comrades finally head up north to free Kyra.

Here the novel gets down to what it’s supposed to have been about from the beginning: of course, necromancer Belthis and zombiefied Karl ir Donwayne were the true abductors of Kyra, and when we finally meet up with them the zombie Karl has just finished raping the poor girl yet again. Silver again comes to the rescue, turning his whole body silver and fighting a bunch of warriors made of ice. The climax has Raven again fighting Karl ir Donwayne, even though we already saw her defeat him last time, but the bastard escapes yet again, annoyingly enough. Belthis isn’t as lucky, as it turns out he is the current vassal of the Crugoan entity Moonshadow has been hunting across worlds. But it escapes, too, pulling itself out of Belthis’s body (the corpse of which is unceremoniously kicked off a cliff) and disappearing into the void, Moonshadow following behind. And meanwhile Raven’s army suffers a surprising loss, but curiously not much is made of it.

And with this A Time Of Ghosts finally comes to a close; at 198 pages of small print it was a longer read than I expected. This was mostly due to the slow-moving nature; whereas Swordsmistress Of Chaos was a bit juicer in the sex and gore departments, this one was downright sluggish, and often faded to black when the goings got good. In fact, Raven manages to hook up with Moonshadow as well, but it too happens pretty much off-page. I’m too lazy to research it but I wonder if this wasn’t so much a case of authors co-writing each volume, but taking turns on them. Meaning, a different writer churned out A Time Of Ghosts than the one who wrote Swordsmistress Of Chaos. Not that the writing seems totally different, it’s just the vibe that has changed, and more importantly while I enjoyed the first one I found this second one a chore to read.

Monday, August 26, 2019

Richard Blade #9: Kingdom Of Royth


Richard Blade #9: Kingdom Of Royth, by Jeffrey Lord
March, 1974  Pinnacle Books

This was the first volume of Richard Blade written by Roland Green, whose name I’ve always associated with Conan; when I was a kid and new Conan novels populated the bookstore shelves, Green’s name was on the majority of the covers. It appears then that he cut his teeth writing this pseudo-Conan series for book producer Lyle Kenyon Engel, who must’ve liked Green’s work, as the dude wrote the series until it ended ten years later. (Ended in the US, at least; I think Blade’s still having adventures in France.)

Given this I was under the impression that Kindgdom Of Royth would at least be entertaining. Unfortunately, it was such a damn beating that it took me months to read it; I kept putting it down and swearing I was done with it before a sense of duty pulled me back. This was a “contract read” in its purest sense, as I felt it was my obligation to see it through and report back so that no one else would make the mistake I did: reading the damn thing. But it was hard going, folks. I mean I could’ve read Gravity’s Rainbow in the time it took me to get through Kingdom Of Royth.

There’s no pickup from the previous volume, but it’s clear Green has a passing familiarity with the earlier books, which of course were written by Manning Lee Stokes. However Green chooses to ignore all of the subtext and thematic material Stokes brought to each of his installments – they might’ve been belabored and ponderous but it was damned clear Stokes was invested in them, something which cannot be said for Green. In fact Green goes out of his way to dismiss Stokes’s earlier work; when Blade reports for duty in this volume, ready for the latest zap into Dimension X, Green writes, “This time, of course, [Blade] was not running away from a broken love affair or running toward some place he hoped might cure an inexplicable and maddening impotence. No, it was just a case of going out once more to do what he did well and, when you got right down to it, enjoyed doing.” One can almost envision Green airily waving away all the subtextual material Stokes invested his novels with.

Which would be fine…if Green offered anything else. Sadly, Kingdom Of Royth is truly awful. If you were under the impression that a new author would bring fresh ideas and vigor to the series, you would be sadly disappointed, perhaps as disappointed as I was. The banality of the plot is mind-numbing; Blade goes to a new dimension which follows the fantasy world template of previous volumes, only with a “pirate” overlay, and he basically jumps from one group to another, displaying absolutely zero of the macho mystique of the Stokes installments.

Indeed, Kindgom Of Royth features a neutered, emasculated Richard Blade, one who constantly doubts himself or waits for another person to make the first move. As we’ll recall, “bluff or brawn” was the central tenet of Manning Lee Stokes’s Richard Blade; in fact it was the central tenet of Stokes’s entire oeveure. The macho mystique component of a man bluffing or beating his way into a position of dominance. You won’t find that here. Here you will find a shell of what Richard Blade once was. And here you will find a shell of what the series itself once was.

He might’ve dropped all the deeper stuff, but Green stays true to the basic repetitive nature of the Stokes plots: Blade goes to a new dimension, meets a dude who will become his loyal ally, bangs a few willing babes, and eventually gets involved in some court intrique, climaxing with a big battle scene. So all that holds true, it’s just a pale reflection of what came before. The pirate angle gets to be overbearing after a while, with long, long stretches comprised of Blade at the deck of some new ship, voyaging through choppy waters. It’s not helped that the characters he encounters, save for one, are cipher-thin forgettable – so forgettable that Blade’s first female conquest, Alixa, promptly disappears from the narrative…even though she stays with Blade for the duration of the book.

Well anyway Blade lands in the middle of an ocean when entering this dimension – Green doesn’t get near as psychedelic with the interdimensional travel, either – and fights off some pirates, saving the crew of a ship. It’s captained by Brora, who will become Blade’s loyal comrade per the template. Then these guys hook up with another ship, this one captained by some dude headed for the empire of Royth – this dimension’s worls is one big land mass with a massive ocean in the center or something, and pirates operate out of a sort of pirate utopia there called Neral. So Blade’s eager to go to Royth because he’s figured it’s the biggest nation on this world and he might get something useful there – Green, even more than Stokes, seems uncertain how to factor in Blade’s H Dimension interests with his Dimension X exploits. Actually he comes up with something at the very end, but it’s ridiculous.

More importantly the lovely Alixa is on this new ship, and she makes her sexy interest known…and comes to Blade one night. Here we get the first of our infrequent sex scenes: “She rolled toward him and he rolled toward her and entered. At the first moment he knew he had been right in his guess; this was no virgin. She accepted him smoothly and sheathed him snugly, milking him with muscles at first delicately controlled, then wilder and wilder in their motions as she was swept away by her own rising tide.” So on the average, about as risque as the material Stokes delivered, with the caveat that Stokes at least brought his female characters to life. Alixa disappears after this, even though she remains in Blade’s entourage for the rest of the novel; Green merely makes passing references to her, reminding us that she’s still around.

On the way to Royth this latest ship is also attacked, by a larger pirate force, and Blade ends up beating them and taking charge of the pirates. All of it very much indebted to the Conan pirate yarns. Blade is even sworn in as a pirate and must head back to the pirate utopia of Neral, thus throwing off the trip to Royth. Not that Blade’s much concerned. He’s very much in a “manana time” mindset here…there is absolutely no impetus for his trip to Dimension X, no dramatic thrust.

Green’s lurid imagination also pales in comparison to Stokes’s. While in Neral Blade drops off Brora and Alixa – his only two surviving companions at this point – and checks out the island kingdom. A baccanal is going on, and Green tries to make it seem sleazy and outrageous, but it’s yawnsville after the previous eight books. There’s a room with “colored smoke” that makes everyone high (Blade literally runs from it) and an orgy room where everyone gets busy en masse (Blade runs from this one as well). Further evidence that a lesser author is now “Jeffrey Lord:” Blade is sickened by all this, and vows to escape Neral posthaste.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, because at this point Blade has become the mate of a feisty female pirate who is quickly becoming a major force in Neral: Cayla, a blonde beauty who is a priestess in the long-suppressed Serpent Cult. She basically steals the show, and is the only memorable character. Having caught a glimpse of Blade as his ship entered Neral’s port, she’s made it clear he will be hers…and this could be bad news for Alixa, Blade is warned, however nothing comes of it. Alixa is so buried under the narrative carpet that she only exists so that people will occasionally have something to threaten Blade with. Oh yeah and I forgot another stupid thing – everyone pronounces his name “Blahyd” throughout the book, as apparently the word “blade” doesn’t exist in this dimension. Even though every single damn weapon is bladed. That’s how stupid the book is.

Well, Cayla wants to bring back the Serpent Cult, and she wants Blade to join her in the effort so they’d made a regular power couple. Blade, expectedly, goes along with it, displaying no initiative or backbone of his own. Green does incorporate supernatural elements in his version of the series; during the most memorable part of an altogether forgettable book, Cayla and Blade launch an assault, and we learn that Cayla’s intents are twofold, given that the ancestors of the people who rule this city were one of the chief suppressors of the Serpent Cult. The villainous babe calls forth an actual sea serpent in her attack, and further she gets her own sword bloody, diving into the ocean and slipping out of it to stab people in the back, slit throats, and etc.

But Blade is horrified still and thus makes plans to escape Cayla as soon as possible. That’s our Blade, folks! Or at least, that’s our new Blade. Stokes’s Blade would’ve tamed Cayla within a few pages. Instead, Blade, Brora, and Alixa manage to escape, leading to more egregious sea voyage stuff, then they’re shipwrecked again and end up in Royth, a vast empire run by ineffectual rulers. Here we are in for the long haul, though Blade again manages to get lucky thanks to a hotstuff countess. It goes on and on, made worse by Green’s periodic attempts to recap everything that’s happened so far:

It occurred to Blade that there were now no less than five different plots all focusing on the Kingdom of Royth. There was Indhios’s scheme. There was that of the Council of Captains and the Neralers generally. There was Cayla’s monstrous notion of a revival of the Serpent Cult. There was the ambitious and ruthless little countess. Each of these four would cheerfully sell any or all of the others to the devil to get them out of the way. And there was his own comparatively simple plan, to save Royth from the pirates. But was this decadent and ancient land worth the effort? And even if it was worth the effort, would he live long enough to carry his efforts through?

Perhaps that gives an indication of the sort of shit you endure throughout Kingdom Of Royth. It’s almost William Johnstone-esque in a way; Green is one step away from ending every other chapter with, “What might happen next?” But the thing is – who cares?? It’s all so relentlessly turgid and boring. But perhaps you noticed the line “to save Royth from the pirates.” Yes, folks, this turns out to be Richard Blade’s new m.o., as revealed at the end of the novel – going forward, his mission won’t be so much to exploit each new dimension for H Dimension benefit, but to help the people of that dimension. That’s right, folks – Richard Blade is now going to become a hero of the interdimensional people. This is so far removed from the previous version of Richard Blade that it made me laugh. 

Well, the thing gradually wears to a close with a big battle scene, which is by far better than any that came before, mostly because it has some dramatic content. Blade and Cayla have their final confrontation as she attacks Royth, but Blade’s too busy chopping off the heads of her pet sea serpent to handle the pirate queen herself – Brora, disappointingly, takes care of that. At this point Blade is finally zapped home…and it seems like he’s been in this dimension for years. Seriously, months and months pass for Blade in this dimension, almost a full year, but at novel’s end J and Lord Leighton marvel over the fact that Blade was “only” gone for four months. Which to tell the truth is about how long it took me to read this damn book.

As mentioned, Green went on to write many more installments, so I can only assume Lyle Kenyon Engel saw some promise in his work and Green improved. But to paraphrase John Lennon, “He couldn’t get much worse.”

Monday, June 17, 2019

Circle Of Iron


Circle Of Iron, by Robert Weverka
February, 1979  Warner Books

I was probably one of the very few 19 year-olds who had a copy of Circle Of Iron on VHS in the summer of ’94, and I certainly was the only one who got his girlfriend to watch it…several times! It’s a wonder she didn’t break up with me halfway through the first viewing, because Circle Of Iron is a bad movie, one that should’ve been roasted on Mystery Science Theater 3000 but for some reason never was.

The film, released in early ’79, started life a decade before as a script by none other than Bruce Lee, co-written with his student, screenwriter Sterling Silliphant. Then it was titled The Silent Flute and was envisioned as not only a vehicle for Lee but also for his Jeet Kune Do style. James Coburn was to star in it as “Cord,” arrogant but open-minded fighter who would serve as an empty vessel for Lee, who would play several roles in the film, from the old and blind Ah Sam to Death itself in the form of a panther-man. The movie, due to studio nonsense, was going to be filmed in India, with the trio even heading over there to scope out locations.

Ultimately the film fell apart and Lee ended up going back to Hong Kong, where of course he became a sensation. At some later point someone got their hands on the Silent Flute script and realized the now-dead Lee’s name could be exploited good and proper. Now it would star David “Kung Fu” Carradine in the role(s) Lee would have played…and instead of James Coburn as Cord we’d get unknown actor Jeff Cooper, who I always thought was the guy who played Rostov in Invasion U.S.A. but actually wasn’t. Oh, and we’d get Eli friggin’ Wallach in a cameo as a nude guy hanging out in the middle of the desert in a big vat of oil. Plus Roddy McDowell and Christopher Lee.

Years ago in one of the Bruce Lee DVDs the Silent Flute script was included as a PDF extra and someone sent me a copy. I read it and couldn’t believe how outrageous it was – full nudity, graphic sex, hardcore violence, the works. It would’ve been rated X at least. It was also written in the style of a novel; I recall a note in the intro stated that it was in the “European style” of scripts, so it intentionally read more like a book. But anyway no one could’ve made the film in ’69, it was too extreme then (and perhaps now, too, at least so far as the sex and nudity goes…but you can see gory corpses and heads blown off on TV shows, because that’s okay).

By 1979 films were already more conservative in tone than they’d been a decade before, so Circle Of Iron, as the property was eventually released, doesn’t nearly have the exploitative bite of the original Lee-Sillphant script. Nor does it have the quality. This is one of those movies where you’ve gotta wonder if the filmmakers knew they were shooting a turkey and just decided to go all the way with it. 

Veteran movie tie-in novelist Robert Weverka, for his part, treats everything on the level, save for one or two instances where he clearly mocks things. He doesn’t do much to elaborate on the plot, either, so like the Prime Cut novelization it’s sort of a case of what you see is what you get. The only “new” material is a bit of background on main character Cord, how he’s come from a temple; there’s an occasional flashback to some teaching he received there.

Otherwise the novel proceeds on exactly the same path as the film. As the back cover helpfully informs us, Circle Of Iron takes place “beyond Time,” as if this were a Zardoz sort of thing…and in fact, one could argue that Circle Of Iron is to martial arts movies what Zardoz is to sci-fi. There’s more of a fairy tale-esque vibe to this one, though, or at least fantasy; it takes place in some pseudo-ancient past in which all and sundry practice the martial arts and everyone wants The Book of Wisdom, which is owned by a legendary but never-seen warrior named Zetan.

Cord is an arrogant young fighter who when we meet him has come to an apparently-annual tournament in which fighters from various tribes compete for the right to seek Zetan. An interesting thing about Cord is that, even though he’s a top fighter and overly confident in his abilities, he’s still open-minded enough to change his methods when necessary and to learn from others. In other words he’s a top candidate for Lee’s Jeet Kune Do. So then Cord sits and watches other fighters, already knowing which will be the opponent he faces to win the entire deal: Morthand, a big but oafish fighter whose clear weakness is that he has no imagination and sticks rigidly to his style.

But in the inevitable fight Cord makes “hard contact” with Morthand, taking advantage of an opening when the other lets down his guard, and this is against the rules. This part is clearly inspired by Bruce Lee’s own criticisms of martial arts tournaments of the day, which were even more strict. Morthand is made the victor, but Cord argues that he was the true victor. When the judges don’t budge, Cord merely waits around and then follows Morthand when he begins his journey to find Zetan.

Here Cord has his first encounter with the man who will become his ultimate teacher: a blind beggar-type who plays a flute only Cord seems to hear. The bickering and bantering between Cord and this blind man is the highlight of Circle Of Iron, with the blind man, whom Cord dubs “Ah Sam,” bouncing Zen koan sort of teachings off Cord’s dense, bullish head. And Ah Sam is clearly a top fighter; his memorable intro has him taking out a group of nigh-primordial “assassins” who attack him in a ruined castle.

It quickly becomes apparent that Ah Sam’s riddle-ish teachings have import on Cord’s upcoming trials – there are a few trials the Zetan-seeker must overcome, and upon each victory he is given the info on how to proceed in his quest. The first trial, which Morthand faces, is against a group of “monkey-men” who tear Morthand apart off-page. Cord helpfully assists him in some hara-kiri ritual suicide. After this Cord takes advantage of the situation and dubs himself the true seeker of Zetan. However, in plot that’s not explored, other fighters seem to be on the same quest.

Cord’s fight with Jungar, leader of the monkey-men, is pretty cool. Ah Sam has already displayed to Cord how one fights a monkey – always keep your face to him. So when Jungar goes through all his chattering and jumping and moving around, ie psychological tricks to break his opponent’s concentration, Cord keeps facing the monkey-man and kicks his ass. He doesn’t kill him, though, even though the monkey-men are fond of ripping apart their opponents.

However one thing that’s not apparent in Weverka’s novelization is that the same actor playing Ah Sam also plays Jungar – David Carradine. Indeed Carradine plays all the opponents Cord must face. Here in the novel Jungar just comes off as a one-off opponent Cord must defeat, and thus misses the pseudo-mystical connotations of the film, that all the various opponents in the trials are really Ah Sam, testing Cord in a host of different guises.

Jungar tells Cord to look for a rose, which will lead him to the second trial. Thus begins more travelogue as Cord walks over endless stretches of tough terrain. A lot of Circle Of Iron is made up of Cord walking…and walking…and walking, only occasionally livened up. Like when Cord encounters a dude in the middle of the desert who stands in a big cauldron of oil to melt off his friggin’ dick so he won’t have anymore lustful thoughts and cheat on his wife!

As, uh, “memorably” portrayed by Eli Wallach, the Man in the Oil is one of the more bizarre figures in film history. Weverka himself struggles with the concept; as Cord trades “what the hell??” dialog with the man, who happily explains that he put himself in the oil ten years ago, Cord thinks to himself that he’s never seen anything so “stupid” or “ridiculous.” If that isn’t commentary by the author I don’t know what is.

The next trial is a little more belabored. Cord finds himself in the middle of a rioutous caravan that’s settled down in the desert, with orgies and drinking in progress. A Turk named Changsha runs the place, and the rose Cord seeks turns out to be carried by one of Changsha’s wives, a beautiful babe named Tara. Cord, despite his vow of celibacy, has some tame, mostly off-page sex with her (ie, “They once again affirmed their need of each other” and the like). Here the novel gets goofy because Cord immediately falls in love with her and wants to run off with her, to hell with the quest, etc.

Next morning Tara’s gone and Cord finds her corpse nailed to a friggin’ cross! This is the trial, as Cord realizes so quickly that it’s almost funny – that one cannot possess love. Cord might be a hothead, but damned if he doesn’t quickly absorb the most esoteric of teachings. More comical stuff ensues when, mere pages after Cord’s freaking out about Tara’s fate, he bumps into Ah Sam again and starts joking around with him! Anyway Cord’s also learned Changsha’s secret, even though he hasn’t yet fought him: he’s the “rhythm man,” using the beat of a drum and sinnuous movements to throw off his opponents.

Things get progressively goofy with the duo first encountering a guy and his nagging wife who have a boat for rent, followed by a random bandit attack in which Ah Sam calmly walks around despite the flying arrows, trying to rebuild a damaged house. All of which is later explained, sort of, though again Cord quickly accepts things, even though there’s no way Ah Sam could’ve known any of this stuff without the omniscient gift of foreknowledge. This is passed over in the text with yet more rumination courtesy Cord, in which he basically just decides to go with the flow.

The best opponent doesn’t come off as well here in the novel as it does in the film: Death itself, as personified by a Panther Man. Cord is confronted by the beast one night, and again in that comically-quick way he has of figuring things out, he immediately knows it’s Death. And just as quickly he’s like, life is a passing thing and death is inevitable, so come for me anytime you please. This ultimately leads to the finale in which Cord fights Changsha, who morphs into Jungar the Monkey Man and Death the Panther Man, but Cord is undeterred, and of course is victorious.

Which brings us, finally, to Zetan, who lives on a far-off island where he is surrounded by beauty. More like stifled by beauty. In a clever reveal it’s learned that Zetan, decades ago, decided to take ownership of the Book before first looking at it – and now he’s desperate for someone else to be as stupid. For the Book turns out to be “pages” that are really mirrors – another of Bruce Lee’s bits of wisdom. I’m not sure if the movie makes it as clear, but here in the book Zetan mentions that past seekers who turned down the offer of guarding the Book have gone back into the world as teachers. 

This of course would mean Ah Sam, and the novel ends with Cord meeting back up with him and the two going off into the world. And that’s pretty much all she wrote for the movie and for the book. I can’t say Weverka’s novelization had me raring to watch the movie again after all these years, but he does a passable job of conveying the pseudo-mystical vibe of the film without making it seem like the farce that was the movie.

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Richard Blade #8: Undying World


Richard Blade #8: Undying World, by Jeffrey Lord
July, 1973  Pinnacle Books

Manning Lee Stokes ends his tenure on Richard Blade with a whimper, not a bang; it seems clear to me that the poor guy peaked way back in #5: Liberator Of Jedd and has been coasting ever since. For that one – which in hindsight I’d say is my favorite of the eight volumes Stokes wrote, mostly because I remember it the most – was such a multi-layered, “everything and the kitchen sink” sort of affair that I suspect Stokes was unable to drum up any more enthusiasm.

And sadly this one’s lacking everything we know from the series…I mean it’s all still here, following the usual template, but it’s all so dispirited. Stokes fails himself, really, for the novel opens with Richard Blade, in London some unspecified time after the previous volume, suffering from impotence. Or, “A member of the limp phallus club,” as Blade thinks of himself. Despite taking tons of gorgeous babes to bed, Blade’s been unable to get it up for them, and has even resorted to visiting psychiatrists. One of them suggests “a new setting,” so Blade takes this as the doctor’s unwitting order to get back to Dimension X.

Stokes skips over the usual belabored setup of Blade’s other-dimensional jaunt, other than an off-hand mention that yet another potential replacement for Blade has failed; this one came back from his sole trip to DX repeating “The worm has a thousand heads” over and over. However the psychedelic “trip” scenes in which Blade travels into DX only get more outrageous; this one features a leggy blonde traveling with Blade on a train to Hell. But anyway I say Stokes fails himself because Blade’s impotence is just another indication of the validity of my “alternate reading” of Stokes’s work on Richard Blade: that all these trips to Dimension X are really just the products of Blade’s own limited imagination. Not only would this explain why each and every volume is mostly the same, but it would also explain how Blade’s troubles in Home Dimension are either mirrored or solved in Dimension X.

Thus, Blade has absolutely no problems getting it up in DX – and he even spends the first weeks as a royal stud, his mission to impregnate hundreds of women. Brace yourself for this one, folks: Stokes keeps all of it off-page! Indeed, there isn’t a single “full-on” sex scene in Undying World, not even the previously-mandatory bit where a busty native babe remarks something to the effect of, “You are very big” to our strapping hero. Even though Blade bangs more DX women this time than in any of Stokes’s others, there’s hardly any salacious content.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Upon his arrival in this latest patch of DX, Blade finds himself among a modernistic city filled with “sleepers,” humans with small antennae behind their ears. It’s as if they were all knocked unconscious en masse; Stokes fills pages with Blade exploring the place, finding an eerie scene of people just lying around as if they were frozen in time. There’s also a moon that’s somehow so close that Blade can not only see cities but cars on the road(!). Eventually he encounters the Gnomen, hairy primitives who live in the sewers beneath the sleeping city. The sleeping people are called the Morphi, and they were knocked into a centuries-long sleep by a “sweet-smelling bomb” dropped by the “orbfolk,” aka the Selenes, the high-tech people who live on the moon.

The recurring theme of the series (and Stokes’s work in general) is the “bluff or brawn” ethic, and posthaste Blade puts this to use, challenging the Gnomen who surround him. He kills two in a bloody battle, the Gnomen using hooked spears (as depicted on the cover, once again courtesy Tony DeStefano) and Blade using a sledgehammer. And per the template here Blade gets a loyal native follower: Sart, leader of this group of Gnomen, but per tradition bound as Blade’s slave due to being defeated by him. Regardless of this temporary victory, Blade is soon a prisoner of the Gnomen, who we learn are all sterile, save for their leader, Jantor. Oh, how could I have forgotten to mention this: prior to challenging the group of Gnomen, Blade stripped off his clothes and fought them in the nude…so one gander at that massive wang and Jantor wants to know if Blade can, uh, get it up.

So here is clear indication that all this is a product of Blade’s imagination…I mean he’s suffering from impotence in the “real world,” and here, in this fantasy world that he can only access via his mind, he finds himself in a situation where all other men are impotent, and only he can satisfy the women. You don’t have to be Harold Bloom to see the metaphorical connotations. So he’s put on stud duty, his order to screw an endless stream of Gnomen women. Stokes doesn’t give any details, picking up the narrative thread weeks later, with Blade having banged countless women already. You would think Stokes would’ve at least documented the first such bang, given that the entire first quarter of the novel was concerned with Blade’s concern over his impotence.

This might be because the Gnomen women are “a mangy lot, dirty and stupid” …not exactly the usual DX sort of babes with the bodies of Victoria’s Secret models. Save, that is, for Norn, a Gnomen woman who has “visited” Blade a few times. Given her general hotness, Blade favors her, insisting she take a bath(!) and grooming her a little before the – believe it or not – ensuing sex occurs off-page. I mean WTF, Stokes?? Anyway Blade soon deduces that Norn is spying for Sybelline, the white-haired, half-Morphi sexpot who co-rules the Gnomen. And for all you Richard Blade vets who can see an inevitable Blade-Sybelline boff coming, prepare to be shocked: it doesn’t happen, even though she throws herself at Blade a few times.

Here’s a funny story, friends – I was well over a hundred pages into Undying World when it occurred to me that hardly anything had happened! Blade spends a lot of time serving as Gnoman stud, learning what he can about the Jantor-Sybelline rivalry (another recurring bit – trouble in the palace and whatnot) and learning about the silent Morphi city above, which is powered by this deus ex machina device that can revive (or shut down) the Morphi people with the touch of a single button. I mean there isn’t even a failsafe or anything. Things finally pick up when Jantor summons Blade and tells him that together they’ll rule the Morphi city and etc, and meanwhile here’s my favorite daughter, Alixe – be sure to have a lot of sex with her.

Did I forget to mention that the Gnomen like to scrawl swastikas on their heads and practice incest? I often wonder what the hell was wrong with Manning Lee Stokes. Alixe turns out to be a troublesome, prepubescent nuissance, and enjoys sexually taunting Sark, Blade’s slave. Sark snaps and kills her, and he and Blade must escape deep beneath the Gnoman city, down to the power control center, Sybelline showing them the way. It all gets goofy with quick reactivations of the Morphi, and various turnarounds and betrayals. Soon enough Jantor’s Gnomen are up there raping and looting the silent city. The raping occurs while the Morphi women are still comatose, and they wake up to find that countles Gnomen have been at them, so they commit suicide by jumping off buildings, per Morphi custom. Again, I often wonder what the hell was wrong with Manning Lee Stokes.

As if things weren’t weird enough, Blade even goes to the trouble of shaving off his hair and smearing blood all over his half-nude body, so he can blend in with the raping and pilaging Gnomen. Then we have an arbitrary “Blade to the rescue” bit where he saves Norn, who has grown to love Blade (even though we’re reminded again and again that he doesn’t love her – I mean, as if!). She’s dangling over a pit of “mole rats,” ie the feral creatures depicted on the cover, clearly used as bait by Jantor. Things get even more haywire here with the surprise reactivation of all the Morphi, and a pitched battle ensues…then Stokes, even though he’s pages away from the end, realizes he forgot all about that moon with its high-tech Selenes, so he has Blade summoned up there by its godlike rulers. 

At this point the reader wonders why the entire damn book hasn’t been set up here…not only are the Selenes, aka the orbfolk, so technologically advanced that they have spaceships and sci-fi weaponry, but they even have their own DX technology, and have sent their own people out into the various dimensions!! I mean folks, this is the sort of thing you focus an entire novel on, not just the last five or six pages. Blade has a glib conversation with his Selene handler, his head pains alerting him to the fact that his return to HD is imminent, and sure enough he’s zapped back. The novel ends with our reassurance that Blade’s impotence has been cured; the scientific formula he brought back from the Selenes may “gibberish,” but by god he gets a hard-on at the sight of a hot nurse…

And this is the sad end of Manning Lee Stokes’s duty on Richard Blade. At least he ended where he began, focusing on Blade’s dick. But his exhaustion is evident – he never showed much variety in his novels, and there’s only so long you can keep banging out the same story. My assumption is this book, like the previous volume, was one Stokes wrote a couple years before publication; note Pinnacle published both volumes the same month. He would be replaced on Richard Blade by Roland Green, who wrote the series until Pinnacle cancelled it a decade later; I look forward to seeing how his work compares to Stokes’s.

Monday, January 14, 2019

Conan The Freebooter (Conan #3)


Conan The Freebooter, by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague De Camp
November, 1986  Ace Books
(Original Lancer Books edition 1968)

I had a tough time with this third volume of Conan. In fact I read it over a year ago, but at the time I found myself skimming the collected stories, to the point that when I “finished” the book I didn’t have any idea how to review it! So I waited a while until getting back to the series, only to find my interest again sagging at times. I guess the tales here didn’t pull me in like the ones in the previous books did, other that is than “Black Colossus.” But it also appeared that Robert E. Howard himself was bored; in the stories collected here, Conan is usually in a supporting status.

At least the posthumous tinkering isn’t as egregious this time; Lin Carter is a no-show, and L. Sprague De Camp only works his “magic” on two of the tales, where he again demonstrates he has no real understanding of Conan. This is especially true in a story he and Carter later wrote that isn’t actually in Conan The Freebooter but takes place within this time period (or at least this time period as defined by De Camp and Carter), but I’ll get to that one anon. Even the Howard originals here sort of come off like repeats of his previous ones, or vice versa.

“Hawks Over Shem” opens the book, and this is one of the two stories Sprague edited; it was first published in 1955, and De Camp tinkered with a Howard manuscript titled “Hawks Over Egypt,” which featured the character Diego de Guzman. I’ve never looked for Howard’s original, but I wonder if it’s as all-over-the-map as this one is. The plot changes constantly and Conan spends long stretches off-page, providing an early indication of the ensuing stories and novellas.

I like the opening, though, because it reminds me of John Milius’s Conan film; Conan’s slinking through the dingy streets of Asgalun in Shem and runs into a Hyrkanian archer-thief who becomes his best bed. All sort of like the relationship between Conan and Subotai in the movie. After Conan bashes the guy in the head for following him, they become BFFs; he says his name is Farouz. While drinking at nearby tavern Conan exposits (there’s lots of expositing throughout the book) that he’s come here to get revenge on some guy, and Farouz says what the hell, let’s do it now.

So what is initially promised to be the plot of the story is resolved within a few pages; Conan and Farouz break into the royal chamber – Conan’s target, Othbaal, is one of the rulers here – and kill him without much fuss. The storyline then sort of focuses on a busty redhead named Rufia; apparently once owned by Farouz, but then belonging to Othbaal, but now trying to maneuver her way into the graces of nutcase King Akhirom, who rules the city with an iron fist. I suspect the Rufia stuff was more central to the original Howard tale, but here comes off like, well, like material from a completely unrelated story.

Akhirom is at least interesting, a ranting and raving madman with delusions of godhood. Conan takes a break as we focus on Rufia, who doesn’t come off as a very likable character. It’s especially frustrating because the entire narrative seems to build up to Conan meeting her, but this doesn’t happen until the very final sentences and the story ends with Conan hauling her off – he does of course get a new woman each story. Much more interesting than Rufia is Zeriti, a witch in an Anita “The Great Tyrant” Pallenberg sort of vein. She schemes to get hold of Rufia for her own twisted ends, torturing her in the finale.

It’s all just very random and disjointed. Conan returns long enough to arbitrarily decide he wants to track down Zeriti, and of course comes upon her just as she’s torturing Rufia. She summons some creature from the darkness, and our hero Conan just sort of stands around while the other characters deal with everything. He doesn’t even fight the demon, which disappears(!). Then he picks up Rufia and takes off, and here the story mercifully ends.

“Black Colossus” follows, and it’s my favorite in the book by far. This one’s solely by Howard; I read the original version as published in The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian (Del Rey, 2003). This is a very cool tale, even though it has elements from other Conan yarns. But one can see how Leigh Brackett was so inspired by Howard, as this story is quite similar to the Eric John Stark novella Queen Of The Martian Catacombs, particularly in how an ancient menance has risen in the desert and is slowly invading the surrounding areas.

But I’d say Brackett handled the setup a lot better, if only because she kept her protagonist in the action throughout. “Black Colossus” is unfortunately yet another story in which Conan disappears for long stretches. He’s absent until the story is well underway; we get a too-long but otherwise sort of cool opening in which a thief breaks into an ancient Egypt-style crypt, thus unleashing a ghost or malevolent entity or what have you. Then we get lovely Princess Yasmela, ruler of Khojara, having a bad dream – she’s awakened by the ghostly presence of Natohk, the Veiled One, whose army is slowly coming upon Khoraja. He is the spirit unleashed in the opening, and he basically tells Yasmela that her hot little body will soon be his.

This finally leads us to Conan – Yasmela and her maid get nice and nude and pray to the old god Mitra, who tells Yasmella to go out on the street and offer her kingdom to the first man she sees. Sure enough, it’s Conan himself, skulking around the dark streets and looking for a tavern. Howard proves once again that his Hyboria is a strange amalgamation of barbaric and High Middle Ages; Conan, when Yasmella presents him to her slackjawed military leaders, is bedecked in full plate armor. I remember as a young geek this is one of the things that always annoyed me about Marvel’s Conan comics…about the most they’d ever give Conan was a helmet or something.

The tale simmers on and on, with Conan marshalling the army to take on Nahtok’s horde. Strangely though, Howard keeps the climactic battles off-page, for the most part, and even worse when Conan’s around he’s playing general and isn’t even in the fray. Some characters are killed off-page and we only learn about it thanks to Howard’s usual reliance on exposition. But still, it’s all like a pulp version of the Iliad, with lots of chariot battles and the like. I found the finale a bit underwhelming, though, with Conan merely throwing a sword through Natohk. That said, the story ends with Conan about to get some fresh after-battle booty courtesy Yasmella.

“Shadows In The Dark” – This one’s a bonus, because it’s not in Conan The Freebooter. It’s actually in Conan The Swordsman (Berkley, 1978). I only include it here for two reasons – one, because chonologically it takes place right after “Black Colossus,” and two, so as to warn others to avoid it. This short story is L. Sprague De Camp and Lin Carter at their very worst. Even someone with zero knowledge of Howard’s originals will know something is amiss within the first pages, in which Conan, now raised to a high military rank in Khoraja, stomps about the palace, pouting that Princess Yasmella doesn’t spend any time with him! And when he pleads with her for more time together and Yasmella says the people would frown on their princess consorting with a barbarian, Conan suggests that they get married!!

From there it devolves into the usual cliché fantasy junk these two authors seemed to love…Conan heads out with a small retinue on some mission to free Yasmella’s brother. It goes on and on, with the expected supernatural trimmings and random betrayals. Conan’s ostensibly on the mission so as to free Yasmella’s brother so he can rule and thus Conan and Yasmella can be together more(!), but what’s especially dumb is that by story’s end Conan has had a sudden change of heart and just goes on his merry way, not returning to Khoraja. But yeah, don’t seek this one out.

“Shadows In the Moonlight” is the actual next story in the collection, and is an all-Howard yarn; I read the original version as reprinted in The Coming Of Conan The Cimmerian, where it appears under the title Howard gave it, “Iron Shadows In The Moon.” This one has many similarities with the superior “Queen Of The Black Coast,” which is interesting given that it was written directly before it – I almost suspect Howard wasn’t happy with this one and reworked some of the elements in that later tale.

There are also similarities to “Hawks Over Shem,” in that the story opens with Conan promptly getting revenge on some guy he’s been hunting for a while. Along the way he manages to save yet another nubile wench, Olivia, a perennially-distraught type who both clings to and shies away from Conan for the rest of the tale. She’s pretty annoying, but she’s also a princess, same as Yasmella was. As a sidenote, I find it interesting that in his “edits” De Camp never includes minor references to the previous tales, say for example Conan briefly ruminating on what led him here after the events of “Black Colossus.” Obviously such a thing wouldn’t be in Howard’s original, but you’d think De Camp would’ve figured he could tinker with these stories to make the book seem more like one multi-chaptered story instead of a sequence of random short stories.

Making their escape, Conan and Olivia find refuge on an island. Here the story reminds me of the later epic, in that Olivia has a dream – which goes on for pages – about these creatures that once lived on the island and might, gasp, still be here. Then some pirates come along and Conan goes to powow with them, getting knocked out for his efforts. Here ensues another stretch where Conan takes a bit of a break, and we must deal with Olivia, who spends most of her time either worrying or passing out from worrying. She does at least manage to free Conan from the pirates.

This is another one where you get the feeling Howard added a “supernatural” element to appease the Weird Tales editors. The thing that has been following them around the island turns out to be a giant ape with vampire fangs. A humorously-nonchalant Conan (he’s basically like, “Oh, it’s one of those things”) makes short work of it, and then Howard decides the true climax is Conan making himself the new leader of the pirates – that is, after Olivia’s dream has come true and a bunch of castle statues have come to life and gone on the attack.

“The Road Of The Eagles” is next, and this is another non-Conan yarn that De Camp has tinkered with. It’s so lame that on this second reading of Conan The Freebooter it took me over three weeks to finish it – that’s how little I wanted to return to the tale. It too is similar to “Hawks Over Shem” in that it’s clearly several unrelated storylines jammed together; the majority of the tale is about some Zamoran dancer babe trying to free her brother, and meanwhile Conan’s hanging out with some pirates and seeking revenge on a commander who betrayed them. I honestly can’t remember much else about it, other than it’s another where Conan sort of stands around while other characters finish each other off in the finale, clearly because Conan wasn’t even there in Howard’s original version.

“A Witch Shall Be Born” is the mercy shot that finally finishes off this drag of a book; it’s another Howard original, and I read the version featured in The Bloody Crown of Conan (Del Rey, 2005). Considered one of Howard’s best Conan tales, “Witch” provided inspiration for one of the most famous scenes in Milius’s Conan (though to be fair, the scene was originally in Oliver Stone’s script): Conan being crucified. Parts of the plot also appeared in the sadly-lackluster Conan The Destroyer (1984). And yet for all that, this is another Conan story in which the hero barely appears. 

There’s a bit of a “shudder pulp” vibe to this one, mostly due to the cruel horrors bodacious babe Queen Taramis of Khauran endures throughout. First she’s awoken from a nightmare – a recurring image throughout the book – to find a sister she has long thought dead glaring at her. This is Salome, Taramis’s twin, who was born with the sign of the witch (a crescent shape on her breast – which she of course happily shows off), and thus castigated from Khauran per tradition. But, as Salome relates via endless exposition, she was found by a sorceror from Khitai who raised her to be a super-powerful witch for real. Now she’s back for some hot vengeance, baby!

First Salome hands Taramis over to Constantius, evil ruler of a mercenary army; in fact, posing as Taramis, Salome has even opened the city gates to Constatius and his horde. But anyway a leering Salome commands Constantius to lock Taramis up in the dungeon, but allows him to have his way with her first. Eventually we get to one of Howard’s more famous scenes; after a sort of narrative jump-cut to some weeks in the future, we finally come upon Conan as he’s nailed to a tree. Conan, again serving in a mercenary capacity, has been stirring up the army that “Taramis” is not who she says she is – for of course Salome has been posing as her sister.

Unlike in the film, Conan doesn’t die on the cross, though he does take out a vulture looking for an easy meal. In the story he’s saved by a guy on horseback who turns out to be an infamous bandit leader. The guy makes Conan walk through the desert as a test; if he survives, he’ll give him some water. We learn via a letter that seven months pass, and when we meet him again Conan is of course fully recovered, and basically he’s become the leader of the bandits without the other guy realizing it. He dispenses some sweet revenge to the guy – sending him off into the desert – and goes about marshalling the bandit warriors to launch an attack on Khauran.

But this is another one where Conan just sits out large portions of the narrative. There’s even a running subplot about some Khauran native who loves Taramis and is sneaking around the gutters of the city, picking up choice intel – like confirmation that the queen on the throne is an imposter, and the real Taramis is in a dungeon. Speaking of which we get more shudder pulp stuff with occasional cutovers to Taramis enduring some new torture at the hands of Salome. But anyway the big battle is again relayed via exposition, with Salome learning that her much-vaunted warriors have been taken out by a bandit army.

The finale is even reminiscent of “Black Colossus,” with minor characters killing off main characters while Conan’s off-page, but this time Howard doesn’t have the excuse of being posthumously messed with. He once again blows any cool potential with Conan going up against a witch, instead having someone else take care of Salome…who manages to hang onto life long enough to unleash a demon, again like the previous yarn. Even more lame, the demon is killed by some arrows courtesy Conan’s archers. It’s all so anticlimactic, but at least in the end Conan gets to crucify the guy who did the same to him at the start of the tale.

Well, I was happy to be done with this volume of Conan, and I sincerely hope the next one is better.

Monday, October 29, 2018

The Ginger Star (The Book Of Skaith #1)


The Book Of Skaith, by Leigh Brackett
May, 1974  Ballantine Books

Two decades after her last published story featuring Eric John StarkLeigh Brackett returned to the character with this paperback original sporting an awesome Steranko cover.* It would be the first in a trilogy dubbed The Book Of Skaith, and unlike those pulp tales of the ‘40s and ‘50s, here Stark would be flung into the far cosmos, Brackett’s “Old Solar System” with its ancient Martians and whatnot now thoroughly discredited by those buzzkilling scientists.

Yet I wonder why Brackett didn’t persist, as Skaith, the outpost-esque planet which orbits the titular “Ginger Star,” is basically a stand-in for Brackett’s Mars, with a little of her Venus thrown in. More pointedly, the year before Lin Carter had begun publishing his own “sequence” of novels inspired by Brackett’s pulp novellas, Mysteries Of Mars, so if he could get away with setting tales on a now-discredited “Old Mars,” then why couldn’t Brackett? My assumption is she must’ve felt the only way for her work to be taken seriously was to cater to the style of the time, thus it was goodbye to her decadent Mars and psychedelic Venus, and more’s the pity.

But other than that…all I can say is, I’m very glad I read Brackett’s early work before reading The Ginger Star. Because the author who wrote this is a pale reflection of the author who delivered such standout novellas as “Enchantress Of Venus,” “The Moon That Vanished,” and “Sea-Kings Of Mars.” Whereas those earlier stories burned with a special kind of fire, filled with inventive ideas, fully-fleshed characters, and memorable dialog, this one is a tired, turgid trawl that endlessly repeats the same sequence of events. And shockingly enough, the characters here are practically ciphers; there was more character depth in Brackett’s pulps, all of which were half the size of this novel.

Without any exaggeration, here’s the plot of The Ginger Star: Eric John Stark will go somewhere on Skaith, meet a few cipher-like characters, exchange some exposition with them, then they’ll all get ambushed and someone will knock Stark out and abduct him. Stark will be taken along by this new group of cipher-thin characters, trading exposition with them, and then another group will spring from the woodwork, ambush them, and take Stark captive. This goes on for the entire novel. There’s even a part a hundred pages in where Stark vows to never be abducted again…which is a laugh, because he’s captured yet again not too long after!!

Or to put it another way…when I read Brackett’s pulp novellas, I was so enthralled that sometimes I found myself re-reading sections. But with The Ginger Star I found myself skimming sections.

I’m not sure how this could’ve happened to a writer of Brackett’s caliber. And certainly she returned to Stark because it was her main character – her Tarzan or Conan – so she must’ve felt some drive to go back to him after so long. In fact I’m sure she wrote the unpublished-for-decades “Stark And The Star Kings” shortly before this one, so it would appear she was planning to return to Stark for a while. And yet even that novella, cowritten with her husband, was subpar, especially when compared to her ‘40s and ’50s material, so had she just lost her mojo?

Regardless, I can’t really recommend this novel, as I found it a trying, tiring read, with little of the spark Brackett once so easily displayed. But for posterity, it goes like this – Eric John Stark when we meet up with him is headed for the distant world of Skaith, newly introduced to the galactic union, something which I believe wasn’t mentioned in those early novellas. But then, not much of those stories are mentioned at all, other than a bit more fleshing out of Stark’s background, in particular how he was raised by a sort of space bureaucrat named Simon Ashton, a character often mentioned but who only appeared in the first Stark novella, “Queen Of The Martian Catacombs.”

Ashton is central to this because he was last seen on Skaith, trying to bring the desolate, decadent, and dying world into the union, and after a couple months boning up on the planet’s culture and languages, Stark is on an interstellar voyage to find him. Not much detail on the space trip, by the way, but it doesn’t appear to last very long – another difference from those earlier yarns, where hyperspace travel didn’t appear to exist. Bracett is more concerned with the Robert E. Howard-esque setting of Skaith, which is fine by me – I’ve never much been into “hard” sci-fi that goes to elaborate lengths of explaining how things work.

When Stark arrives on Skaith it bodes well for the novel ahead; it seems like vintage Brackett, with this dessicated, ancient world and its mysterious people and Stark the mysterious newcomer everyone’s after. There’s a vintage pulp vibe when he takes on these sea creature things, almost holy monsters that the natives of course avoid due to superstition. Stark takes care of one of them with his blade. But sadly that’s about it so far as Stark’s bad-assery goes; he’s been whittled down a bit, same as he was in those mid-‘60s rewrites The Secret Of Sinharat and People Of The Talisman. Because from here on out it’s the endless cycle of Stark meeting some new people, traveling a bit, getting knocked out and captured, traveling some more, then getting knocked out and captured again.

There are interesting touches at the outset, though. Brackett initially seems to be doing a parable of the late ‘60s/early ‘70s, with an indolent group of hippies called the Farers who range around Skaith and get high off illegal plants. They’re like the children or something of the never-seen Lord High Protectors, who control the planet from their hidden fortress, the Citadel; a sadistic lot called the Wandsmen are in charge of law and order, apparently serving the whims of the Protectors. Stark runs into the Wandsmen posthaste, as well as their loyal Farers: in particular there’s a fully-nude, bodypainted Farer named Bayas who has an instant lust-hate thing for Stark, trying her damnest to get him killed. But ultimately she’s one of the main characters who is introduced, given lots of narrative space, and then abruptly dropped from the text.

I almost forgot – there’s a prophecy, of course. Some native witchwoman named Gerrith has prophecized that a “dark man” from space will come and lead the people of Irnan to freedom, and he’ll destroy the Citadel, mystical home of the Protectors…it does go on. And apparenty every single person on Skaith has heard of this recent prophecy, so now everyone wants Stark, who is of course clearly this figure from the prophecy. First Stark hooks up with Yarrod, a guru who commands a “pod,” basically real hippies as opposed to the plastic fantastic Farers in that they’re more into hivemind mentality and Oneness and such and not just laying around and getting high.

But this is just another of the many unexplored elements Brackett doles out; we get an offhand statement that these pods only live a few years, implying that the members all die, but instead we get in-fighting between resident tough guy Halk and Stark. Yarrod meanwhile has of course heard of the prophecy and saves Stark from some attacking Wandsmen and Farers; he and his people are from Irnan and have come here to try to find out how to escape the planet. They eventually meet up with prophecy-spouter Gerrith, however it’s the daughter of the woman who made the actual prophecy(!); the original Gerrith has been killed by the Wandsmen due to her “false” Dark Man prophecy.

Anyway this Gerrith is a smokin’ hot blonde and she ends up being Stark’s sole bedmate in the tale…not that Brackett really gets into too much. Gerrith tags along with Stark as he makes his seemingly-neverending journey across Skaith, as does Halk and a few others who don’t do much to make themselves memorable for the reader. And Brackett’s similar names don’t help much – we’ve got Gerrith, Gelnar, and Gerd, all in the same book (one of them’s a dog, by the way). She also rarely describes anything – gone, friends, is the evocative word-painting that was so central to Brackett’s pulp masterpieces. Gone! Action scenes, when they happen, also lack the blood and thunder of vintage Brackett, though Stark does make a few kills in the book.

Stark and company make their laborious way across Skaith, moving from the coastal area into a forest area and finally into a frozen area. The Lords live remote from the people, so remotely that they are considered supernatural beings by the rank and file. Their Citadel is guarded by the large mutant telepath Northhounds, canine beasts that apparently will be featured more in the second volume. Brackett ties in Stark’s oft-mentioned but seldom-displayed “wildman” history in that, thanks to his own “animal” cunning, he’s able to break through the telepathic hold of the Hounds and challenge their leader, thus becoming the alpha of the group. He uses the beasts to run roughshod over the Lords, who of course turn out to be spindly, weak old men.

Folks it was a plumb beating getting through this book. I’m sorry to say it. I love Leigh Brackett, you all should know that. I’m new to her work but by damn I rank her as one of my favorite writers of all time, ever. But The Ginger Star makes it clear that there was a huge difference between 1950s Brackett and 1970s Brackett. The author of this book comes off like someone desperately trying to mimic that earlier, superior author’s style, and failing miserably. Here’s hoping that the next two books are better.

*Steranko’s cover painting is actually of a barbarian character of his own creation, but the story goes that when Leigh Brackett saw his artwork – probably on the cover of Comixscene #5 (July – August, 1973) – she declared it the greatest representation of Eric John Stark ever, and was able to use it for The Ginger Star. Steranko went on to do the covers for the next two volumes, but as you’ll note Stark looks a bit different on them. Also it’s worth noting that on none of the three covers does Stark have the “sun-blackened skin” Brackett always made a point of mentioning.

Thursday, May 31, 2018

The Nemesis From Terra (aka Shadow Over Mars)


The Nemesis From Terra, by Leigh Brackett
No month stated, 1961  Ace Books

The copyright page of this Ace Double doesn’t mention it, but The Nemesis From Terra is actually a reprint of a novel by Leigh Brackett originally titled Shadow Over Mars, which first appeared in the Fall, 1944 issue of Startling Stories and was later reprinted in the March, 1953 issue of Fantastic Story.  This was Leigh Brackett’s first novel, and any worries that it might not be up to par with her later work are quickly dashed. Also, unlike
The Secret Of Sinharat or People Of The Talisman, this one has not been expanded or otherwise changed in this Ace reprint, other that is than a few editorial snafus.

Brackett, despite her recent intro to the world of fiction, is as evocative as ever, her fast-moving pulp tale both masculine and poetic. I mean this one covers everything from dewey-eyed love at first sight to a fistfight in which a dude’s thumb is ripped off…and then later he’s bashed in the face by the severed “trunk” of a corpse! It’s also interesting that Shadow Over Mars (as I prefer to call it – doubtless Ace changed the title because they didn’t want to scare away dweebs who’d get upset over the fact that there’s no life on Mars) has elements which would be expanded upon in later Brackett work.

I get the impression that this one is set later in Brackett’s future chronology than the other tales I’ve read; perhaps around the era of the latter stories in the anthology The Coming Of The Terrans. Terran “exploitation” of Mars is more rampant than in the other Brackett stories I’ve read – and just so you know there’s no fooling, the organization actually calls itself the Terran Exploitation Company. There’s also use of the Banning shocker weapon, which featured in the late-chronology (but also early-written) Brackett yarn “Child Of The Sun.” It appears that Brackett’s early stories, coincidentally or not given that WWII was raging when she wrote them, were more concerned with a despotic galactic government than her later material.

Anyway I’m guessing that Shadow Over Mars takes place at least a few decades after, say, “Enchantress Of Venus,” and perhaps around the same time as the beginning and ending sections of The Sword Of Rhiannon. And speaking of which, there are similarities between that tale (aka Sea-Kings Of Mars) and this one; both feature ruggedly virile but hardbitten bastards of protagonists who are, despite their nefarious nature and crime-laden backgrounds, thrust into prophetic positions as saviors of Mars. 

Such is the case with this novel’s hero, Rick Gunn Urquhart, and I have to say, I do love it that the savior of Mars is named “Rick.” He’s a cynical, tough-talking, Bogart-esque brawler who, we learn, was born in space; the first planet he ever set foot on was Mars. When we meet him, like Matt Carse in The Sword Of Rhiannon, Rick is on the run, but in his case it’s from the “black boys” (aka “black apes”!) of “the Company,” aka the Terran Exploitation Company. Another resemblance to Rhiannon is that this future Mars is filled with splinter strains of native life, such as the winged humans who appear in both novels and the Dhuvian snake-men of Rhiannon. But this I think is the only mention I’ve so far encountered of the “black apes,” aka “anthropoids,” which are used as brainless muscle by the Company.

The title of the novel, at least the original title, comes from an ancient Martian “seeress” whose hovel Rick sneaks into while hiding from the apes. She goes into a trance and declares that Rick’s “shadow” will fall over Mars – uniting its people as one and ruling them. Then, as if in denial of her own prophecy, she comes at Rick with a knife and he takes her out with his “blaster.” Speaking of which there’s more blaster-fighting here than in the other Brackett yarns I’ve read, most of which go for more of a Conan vibe with swords and axes and whatnot.

The action opens in Ruh, an ancient Martian city I don’t believe I’ve encountered before; like all the others in Brackett it’s a decayed fossil of its former self, with an Old Town that’s nearly haunted and a New Town filled with strip clubs and bars and the like. In fact, Shadow Over Mars has the first – if brief – sleazy elements I’ve yet encountered in Brackett, as later in the novel Rick walks through the grungy New Town section with its stripper Venusian girls, 3-D cinemas, and various drug parlors. The Venusians don’t come off very well here, mostly used as muscle or as sex objects by the Martians; we also get the mention that they have greenish skin and blue hair.

The novel features a small core of characters, as ever graced with those Brackett-esque names which would be sort of pillaged by George Lucas: a chief example would be Jaffa Storm, a Star Wars name if ever there was one; he’s a “Terro-Mercurian” with skin burned black by the sun, same as  Eric John Stark. But unlike Stark, Jaffa Storm is a villain through and through, a 7-foot sadist with a limp who is telepathic to boot. He’s the main villain of the novel, though we start off thinking it will be Ed Fallon, heartless owner of the Company. However Fallon’s sort of anticlimactically removed from the narrative. On the female front, there’s Mayo McCall, hotstuff brunette babe who is a spy for a Martian rights movement led by Earthman Hugh St. John and his Martian pal Eran Mak. (Yes, the name had me thinking of former actresses turned sex-slaving cultists, too!)

In true pulp style, Shadow Over Mars veers all over the Martian map; I’ll forego my usual belabored rundown of the plot. Rick is basically traded around for much of the narrative, variably captured by the inhabitants of Ruh – who want him for murdering the seeress – to being captured by the Company. In this latter sequence he meets Mayo, and it’s a love at first sight thing, but bear in mind Rick is very much in the vein of the later Gully Foyle, of The Stars My Destination (another pulp sci-fi novel with some narrative resemblances to this one), so there’s a lot of hostility and distrust in this particular love. That being said, Rick and Mayo are barely in the novel together. Also, Mayo isn’t one of Brackett’s more interesting female characters, most likely because she spends the majority of the novel off-page.

Actually two women love Rick – there’s also Kyra, diminutive winged gal who latches onto him in a more poignant subplot than the entirety of the Mayo storyline. For Kyra loves Rick even though she knows he doesn’t love her back – indeed he refers to her condescendingly as “kid.” Further, she knows he’s in love with Mayo. But Kyra is young and resents that Mars thinks itself “old” and dying; there’s a part late in the tale where she says goodbye to Rick, brining up reincarnation and the planet’s future, and it’s one of those heartbreaking moments Leigh Brackett does so damn well.

She also does action and violence well, and there are several such scenes throughout the novel. Rick (rather quickly) lives up to his prophecy and unites the Martians against the Company – that is, after he’s been captured and escaped a few times – and leads them in a grand battle against Jaffa Storm’s forces, Storm having assumed control of the Company. However Brackett doesn’t give this sequence as much focus as one would assume. The smaller, more private battles are the ones that make the most of an impression, like the aforementioned climactic brawl, or a cool part midway through where Rick escapes via “flyer” to the other side of Mars, lands in Valkis (familiar from other Mars tales), and is captured by olive-skinned desert barbarians.

This part comes off like a prefigure of the later masterful novella “Beast-Jewel Of Mars,” with a drugged Rick put on display in a pit for a group of bloodthirsty Martians (Rick having been set up as a traitor by Hugh St. John and Eran Mak). They watch eagerly as the Earthman trips out in various hallucinations, mostly involving Kyra and Mayo. There follows perhaps one of the few instances in fiction in which cigarettes actually save life; Rick regains his thoughts due to the cigarette burning into his hands, and sees that he’s about to become part of the soil that feeds these hallucination-causing plants. Further, the smoke wards off the effects of the plants and allows Rick to think clearly. So he fires up a fresh cigarette and starts inhaling away, crawling off to safety!

Overall though Shadow Over Mars gives a great view of Brackett’s Mars; you’ll find here everything from the desolate, haunted ruins of its beyond-ancient past, familiar from the Stark tales, to the decadent sprawls of its Earthling-populated areas. There’s even a somewhat arbitrary trip to the polar cap, an area drenched in mystery, where the legendary “Thinkers” lay in suspended animation, their minds moved on to a realm of pure thought. This part has the haunted vibe of the later Brackett story “The Last Days Of Shandakor,” but gradually builds up to the brutal fistfight mentioned above, complete with thumb-ripping and severed bodyparts used as impromptu clubs. This part also reminds the Brackett fan of The Sword Of Rihannon, as here too our Earthling hero comes upon ancient weapons of mass destruction.

All told, a lot goes down in these 120 pages of small, dense print, and Brackett never lets up – something’s always happening, and it’s always entertaining. In a mid-‘70s audio interview I recently discovered, Brackett makes a few disparaging comments about her early work. Hopefully she wasn’t thinking of Shadow Over Mars, because I really enjoyed it, and would rank it as one of my favorites yet. And that audio interview is highly recommended, if only to hear her voice, but unfortunately the majority of it concerns her screenwriting work, with her sci-fi writing only briefly discussed. (Note how she perks up at the sudden mention of Eric John Stark 54 minutes in! But sadly the interviewer asks no further questions about the character or his stories.) And I have to give the lady props for not only claiming she “walked out” on Kubrick’s 2001, but for saying that she thought the movie was “foolish!” Perhaps the only time I have ever seen that particular word used to describe the film!