Showing posts with label Signet Books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Signet Books. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 14, 2024

Black Samurai #4: The Deadly Pearl


Black Samurai #4: The Deadly Pearl, by Marc Olden
September, 1974  Signet Books

Marc Olden takes the Black Samurai series in a Blaxploitation direction this time; while previous volumes have been standard action stories without any true “blaxploitation” trappings, The Deadly Pearl is very much in the subgenre, with Black Samurai Robert Sand going up against a Superfly-esque pimp in the grungier areas of New York. One can almost hear the wah-wah guitar on the soundtrack. 

It’s surprising director Al Adamson didn’t choose The Deadly Pearl as source material for his Black Samurai film; it certainly would have been cheaper to film than the installment he did adapt, The Warlock. Whereas that volume has a large cast, settings in Europe, and such crazy things as “lion men,” The Deadly Pearl is of a piece with standard Blaxploitation fare of the era, taking place in grungy urban locations and only featuring a few characters. There would’ve even been a part for Harold Sakata to play: one of the super-pimp’s main stooges is a hulking Asian martial arts master memorably named “Chink.” 

This one’s also different from the previous volumes in that Sand operates in more of a lone wolf capacity; the previous three installments had him working at the behest of his boss, ex-President William Clarke, going about the globe to stop some world-shaking plot. But when we meet up with Sand this time, he’s already in New York, about to beat the shit out of a pimp – and he’s here due to a guy named Foster, one of Clarke’s Secret Security guards. Foster’s 15 year-old daughter Rochelle has gone missing, and Foster suspects she’s been abducted, particularly by a group known to be involved in the sex-slave trade. Foster didn’t go to Clarke because Foster is black, and assumed the rich old Texan wouldn’t be concerned, hence his going to fellow black man Robert Sand. 

Olden gives Clarke the opportunity to argue in defense of his lack of racism, but this isn’t even the main source of contention between Sand and the ex-President throughout The Deadly Pearl. It’s that Sand is a free man, not a personal agent beholden to Clarke, and thus free to take up his own assignments. And only just now as I typed this did I realize that Marc Olden, himself a black man, has cagily worked in a free man/indentured slave angle with this subplot. But then, none of this stuff is really focused upon very much. The true focus of The Deadly Pearl is The Black Samurai kicking pimp ass in New York City. This means that the action is more smallscale than previous books – but then, Black Samurai has never been an action rollercoaster. Olden is at ever at pains to make Sand seem human, which ultimately comes off as ridiculous given how superheroic he is. 

This means that Sand gets nervous, or is concerned when confronted by opponents; the opening of the novel, for example, features Sand and Foster busting into a room in which a pair of drug dealers are holding a captive young girl, and Sand’s breaking a sweat over the odds, how he’s going to handle these guys, etc. Compare to contemporary kung-fu pulp like Mace, where the hero would wade through ten times as many opponents without trouble.

In these instances Sand will often flash back to some particular samurai training – always the highlights of each book – and pull off some trick outside the ability of a regular guy. But on the other hand, some of this can be too much. For example, later in The Deadly Pearl there’s a part where Sand knows Pearl (ie the Superfly-type pimp villain) has set a trap for him, with armed men waiting on a rooftop building to blow Sand away. So Sand goes to elaborate lengths to scale the building across from them, and then takes out a bow and arrow and waits patiently for the two would-be snipers to line up so he can shish-kabob them both in one go. There’s a great bit here where Sand flashes back to the grueling training under Master Konuma which saw him holding a notched bow for hours at various levels of intensity, until his arms hung uselessly at his sides. 

All of which is to say, Sand can stand there in the dark on a rooftop and hold a notched arrow without a single muscular tremor for hours if need be, until he has the perfect shot lined up. It’s cool and all, and yet another indication of his samura bad-assery, yet at the same time it seems a bit ridiculous. I mean, Mack Bolan could take both these guys down in a fraction of the time, sniping them from afar with a rifle. One almost gets the impression that Robert Sand is just an anacrhonism, determined to use the old ways even when better new ways are available to him. It also comes off as foolhardy, given that he’s expending energy on the whole “notched arrow” thing…energy he could be saving for his inevitable hand-to-hand fights. 

Speaking of which, hand-to-hand is the majority of the fighting in The Deadly Pearl, which again makes it interesting that Al Adamson didn’t get the rights to this volume. Robert Sand shows off his martial arts wizadry on sundry New York lowlifes, as usual greatly outmatching them. Which brings me to main villain Pearl: certainly the least impressive main villain in the series yet, Pearl is essentially a pimp with grand ambitions, well below par of the average Black Samurai villain. Olden attempts to bring him into the series mold by making Pearl a fencing adept, mostly using a sword that is hidden inside a cane. We get to see many sequences featuring Pearl – as always, Olden spends just as much narrative on his many villains as he does on hero Robert Sand – and Olden tries to make Pearl seem tough, usually cutting up his underlings or engaging in his daily fencing practice. But it’s clear the dude isn’t going to be a match for Robert Sand. I mean it would’ve been like Jimmie Walker as the villain in Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off or whatever. Actually the villain in that one was Ed friggin’ McMahon, but I digress. 

This of course means that the colorfully-named Chink carries the brunt so far as “the heavy of the piece” goes, and Olden does a good job of making him seem menacing and sadistic. With a fondness for nunchucks, Chink is quite content beating people to death, setting up the inevitable confrontation between himself and Sand. One thing I’m happy to report with The Deadly Pearl is that Marc Olden doesn’t short-change us in the climax; there’s actually comeuppance for all the villains, and it’s well-handled throughout. But the battle between Sand and Chink, toward the end of the book, is sufficiently brutal, and also features a great start where Chink challenges Sand, who is holding a gun on him, and Sand cooly puts aside the gun and accepts the challenge. 

While Pearl isn’t much of a match for Sand in the physical arena, he’s still a good villain in the way that he’s almost like an evil variation of contemporary Blaxploitation paperback hero The Iceman. He doesn’t have the gadgets and weaponry of Iceman, but Pearl is similar in how he’s a successful pimp with a stable of women, one that he’s launched into a lucrative global enterprise. But as mentioned Pearl’s bit is that he abducts young girls, drugs them, and then sells them on the international slave market. Setting up a scenario in future volume The Warlock, Pearl’s main customers this time are the Chavez brothers, a sadistic pair who run their own sex-slave business in South America. 

Speaking of sex, poor old Robert Sand doesn’t have any this time around, but then again, Black Samurai isn’t the most sex-focused of men’s adventure series, either. Midway through the novel he does meet up with an attractive lady named Ursula who runs a shelter in the city, but Sand’s more concerned with getting info out of her. It’s only at the very end of the novel that we readers are assured some tomfoolery will be in their immediate future, as Ursula asks “little black boy” Sand back to her place(!). And yes, Olden does play on the race angle in this one (Ursula happens to be white), but for the most part it’s done in humorous fashion; as ever, there is no racism directed toward Sand, given his bad-assery (other, that is, than through Chink, who also is non-white…and, uh, who is named “Chink” himself, so he might be predisposed to racism). 

Overall The Deadly Pearl moves at a fast clip, taking place over just a few days. It really brings to mind the inner-city action of Olden’s contemporary Narc series, and I still say it was a helluva miss on Olden’s part that he never had his two heroes, Robert Sand and Jon Bolt, meet up at some point. One thing I did appreciate though was Olden’s indirect reference to the Fillmore East, where a few years before Jimi Hendrix had given his Band Of Gypsys concert; there’s a part where Sand is being chased through the darkened streets of New York, and he heads into an abandoned concert hall that was once the location of big rock acts. While Olden never actually gives the name, it seems evident he is referring to the Fillmore East, which closed down in 1971.

Thursday, September 14, 2023

Cage A Man (The Demu Trilogy #1)


Cage A Man, by F.M. Busby
May, 1974  Signet Books
(Original hardcover edition 1973)

First off, an admission: I didn’t read this actual paperback, but the reprint included in full in the 1980 Pocket Books collection The Demu Trilogy. On a recent visit to the nearby Half Price Books this thick paperback grabbed my attention, and they only wanted two bucks for it. I’d been in the mood for some late ‘60s/early ‘70s sci-fi, so I figured what the hell. 

This first volume of the trilogy was initially published in hardcover, but the next two novels were paperback only. Actually, the last volume of the trilogy can only be found in The Demu Trilogy. Cage A Man was the first novel published by F.M. Busby, and it’s my understanding he was 50 or so when he started writing; before that he ran a well-regarded sci-fi fanzine or somesuch. So he was clearly a sci-fi fan, and he went on to be a pretty prolific author, passing away in 2005. He’s certainly got a handle on pulp sci-fi; Cage A Man is a fast-moving 144-page novel that features a macho hero fighting (and eating!) lobster-like aliens. 

But then, Busby throws a helluva curveball with this book, as Cage A Man starts off in one direction and ultimately veers in another. It very much reads like the first half of a story, so you have to figure there were some frustrated readers back in the day; the story wouldn’t continue until 1975’s The Proud Enemy (which came out in paperback only, and courtesy a different publisher to boot), and then the final volume, End Of The Line, didn’t show up until 1980’s The Demu Trilogy (itself courtesy a different publisher!). I wonder though if Busby wrote the whole thing at once…whether or not, he clearly knows this is just the start of a bigger story, as he doesn’t even finish anything by this novel’s end, despite the fact that the novel keeps building and building…to a resolution that never comes! 

I mentioned “macho” above, but an interesting thing about the hero of Cage A Man, the thirty-something Barton (no other name provided), is that he’s kind of a dick. Indeed, F.M. Busby almost goes out of his way to make Barton unlikable at times. Initially though I thought we had a hero in the mold of Leigh Brackett: a resourceful individualist willing to get savage when necessary. And this is the Barton we get for the first half of the novel. After that, though…actually to tell the truth, the books I kept flashing back to when reading Cage A Man were the spy-fy novels John Quirk wrote a decade earlier: Busby has a very similar narrative style, and the similarity of a self-centered “masculine” hero flying around on his own private spaceship while dealing with humdrum “business stuff” was very reminiscent of that earlier series’ self-centered “masculine” hero flying around on his own private jet fighter while dealing with humdrum “business stuff.” 

When I picked up The Demu Trilogy I checked out some reviews online, and I have to say that most of the reviews out there are very misleading in that there’s a ton of sex and whatnot in Cage A Man. Maybe it you read nothing but Star Trek tie-ins or Harry Potter or whatever the hell, this book might seem to have a bit more of a focus on sex. But folks, all the sex happens off-page! All of it!! And the exploitation is minimal at best. Even the violence is minimal, and pretty sparse. 

Indeed, another parallel to those John Q. books is that not much really happens in Cage A Man. A lot of the novel is given over to the preparation to do stuff. But the first half of the novel is a different story, because it’s all about the mystery and the buildup. It starts cold, with Barton waking up to find himself naked and stuck in a room with a bunch of other naked men and women. Gradually he will discover that some of them are aliens. Busby gives no background or setup, so that the mystery is just as puzzling to as as it is to Barton: how did he get here, and who has taken him? 

So yes, it’s an alien abduction story, but it sure isn’t Whitley Streiber. Busby will dole out little details, like that Barton is a ‘Nam vet and is 32 years old at the time of abduction, which happens in the early 1980s. So it’s a “near future” sort of thing, given that the novel was published a decade before. There’s no real futuristic stuff in the first half, though…just a lot of stuff about Barton pissing and shitting. Seriously, there is a focus on feces here that’s on the level of your average William Crawford novel. Barton, in this room with others and later alone in his own cell, will find that he must piss or defecate directly onto the floor and the waste, even the “solid waste,” will slowly just slip through the floor, even though Barton himself can’t go through the floor. 

So yeah, there’s more scat-sleaze than real sleaze in this one, so if you’ve ever hankered to read about a guy who is kept nude in a cage for eight years and must always piss and shit on the floor, you’re definitelly gonna want to run out and get a copy of Cage A Man. And yeah, late spoiler alert, but Barton’s here for years and years…but the years are almost casually dispensed in the narrative. Barton’s caught, confused in his cell, then a page or so later we’re told that he figures, by the length of his beard and hair and such, that he’s been here for a few years. 

But first we do have some of that hanky-panky; soon after awakening at the beginning of the novel, Barton encounters fellow captive Limila, a nude alien beauty who looks like an Earth girl, save for having only six fingers and toes, and double rows sharklike rows of teeth…and also her breasts are lower on her ribcage. She wants some sex with Barton posthaste – she has limited English because she’s been a captive for longer and has met more Earthlings – and Barton gives her the goods, though as mentioned it’s off page. And that’s it for Limila until later in the novel, which makes it quite odd that Busby will ultimately spend so much time developing this soap opera romance between she and Barton. In fact the entire second half of Cage A Man concerns Barton’s realization that he’s in love with Limila. 

After this boffery Barton is placed in his own special cell, which is nothing but an empty room with a floor that you can relieve yourself through, and he’ll stay there for years and years. Oh and also occasionally food – a sort of mush – will pour through the also-pourable walls, and Barton will have to put his face up to it to eat. There is quite an off-putting vibe about Cage A Man, what with this nude and dirty guy crapping and pissing in a cell and lapping mush-like food off the wall. In a way the novel practically captures the entire gross, burned-out bummer vibe of the post-Altamont early ‘70s era, or maybe that’s just me. 

This goes on for a long time and Barton develops “hallucination” skills, in which he sits in a corner and visualizes things in his mind, thus making the years pass by quickly. The never-seen aliens keep screwing with him, though, like at one point sending a Tilaran woman into his cage – not Limila, but of the same alien species, with the low-hanging jugs and six fingers and whatnot. This whole bit is weird with the two engaging prompty in (mostly undescribed) sex and eventually the alien gal becomes…pregnant! And Barton, unable to deliver the ensuing baby, has to break the girl’s neck to end her misery and pain! After which she vanishes, the aliens clearly having watched all this from their hidden place but never interfering to help. 

It goes on…like eventually the aliens start trying to teach Barton their language, via some sort of projection on the wall. He also gets a glimpse of them: humanoid lobsters, basically. And their whole schtick is, they consider themselves the only true thinking creatures, and all other aliens they encounter are “animals.” But, if these lobster creatures, ie the Demu, find an “animal” that can learn their language, then that alien becomes Demu – complete with forced surgery to remove/add various bodyparts so that they look like Demu. Now that’s some freaky and weird stuff, which basically sums up the whole vibe of Cage A Man

The Leigh Brackett similarities are in how Barton is a hero who refuses to bend his knee; he fights the Demu relentlessly. The similarities become even more pronounced when Barton manages to escape and runs roughshod over the planet – plus even more Brackett similarities here, as there’s no real concern over “science” in this part, ie how Barton can even breathe on this alien planet. But Barton gets hold of a few of the Demu, learning to his satisfaction that their hard exterior shells are very breakable, and he starts breaking arms and limbs and – most memorably – eating some of the “lobster meat” within. 

But this hard edge is lost when Barton gets in a Demu spaceship, and it all just becomes rather juvenile in tone; Barton’s able to take off and fly this thing with rudimentary instructions, and also manages to free Limila and two of Barton’s fellow Earthling captives. But all three of them have been surgically changed by the Demu, so there’s a lot of body horror stuff afoot. Barton also makes off with the apparent leader of this research facility, and the leader’s “egg child,” a little Demu that Barton eventually takes a liking to – despite breaking “her” arm on first meeting and later threatening to eat her. 

At this point the second half of Cage A Man gets underway, and we’re grounded on Earth – and grounded in very humdrum, mundane things. All the tension and payoff of the first half is lost. It’s also very juvenile in tone; Barton flies his spaceship to Earth, figures out how to use the radio to communicate with the (undescribed) Earth space vessels that try to shoot him down, and manages to land the craft unscathed. I mean it’s all on the level of Tom Swift. It gets even goofier, with Barton lording it over the “Space Agency” rep, Tarleton, who serves as the official government contact for Barton for the remainder of the book. 

And meanwhile Barton’s brought along his alien prizes: Histhtoo, the leader; Eeshta, the little girl; Limila, the lobsertized Tilaran. And also there are the two humans who have been Demu-ized. And also meanwhile F.M. Busby decides to turn the whole thing into a melodrama, with Barton slowly realizing he’s in love with Limila, but he can’t bring himself to touch her, because she’s a friggin’ lobster and all, with all her bodyparts hacked off. So off she’s sent to a plastic surgeon to try to get some semblance of human form back; I mean folks seriously, this takes up a huge chunk of the plot. Talks with the surgeon, Limila’s refusal to get human breasts (ie higher up on the chest than the low-hangin’ Tilaran ones), and also lots of talk on how fake ears will be necessary because real ears would be impossible. And also how Limila won’t be able to have her sixty sharkteeth. 

And through it all Barton hops on his commandeered Demu spaceship and flies around, helping Tarleton create a fleet of similar ships to launch an attack on the Demu planet – an attack of vengeance, given that those damn Demu have been abducting humans right and left these past eight years Barton’s been gone. And speaking of which, Busby’s powers of description are minimal at best, so there’s no attempt at bringing this “future” Earth to life…only mentions that there’s a lunar colony now, and also three-dimensional TV, or Tri-V. More focus is placed on the “slop” Barton eats via ready-made packets, complete with Barton bitching over the constant commercials for said slop on Tri-V. 

It was with a crushing sensation that I realized Cage A Man wasn’t building up to anything – the entire second half of the novel is nothing more than the preparation for the next volume. Barton and Tarleton putting a fleet together, comprised of forty ships of various nationalities, to attack the Demu home planet. And Eeshta learning to speak in English while Limila tries to become human again so Barton will screw her. And in that regard we get a lot of stuff about how she insists on only wearing a padded bra, plus she wants a wig made up to look like her real Tilaran hair – an “Elizabethan” style in which her forehead is bald and the hair, which runs down her back, starts in the middle of her forehead, which sounds real friggin’ lovely – and when it finally gets down to the long-awaited conjugation between the two, Busby again leaves the act entirely off-page. Vey curious, then, how so many reviews of Cage A Man go on about the rampant sex. 

Things limp to a close on the act that should’ve happened like a hundred pages before: the Earth fleet launches into space for the voyage to the Demu planet. But before that Busby must grind more gears: we have this super lame, nonsensical subplot in which Barton keeps avoiding this government psychiatrist who is trying to figure out if Barton’s mind has been scrambled by his eight-year abduction. Well, duh! So he keeps “hallucinating” in the tests to throw them off, and finally the “climax” of the novel features Barton being ordered into a last test before they’ll let him fly on one of the spaceships, and he goes berserk when they replicate the cell he was imprisoned in…but it was all a test, you see! Just a test! 

I didn’t much enjoy Cage A Man. But since the novel ends on a cliffhanger I’m already halfway through the next volume, The Proud Enemy, and will be reviewing it anon. Finally, special mention on the cover (credited to someone by the handle FMA, per the signature), which is great, and almost looks like it could be on a prog or krautrock LP.  Or the cover of a direct-to-VHS sci-fi flick: “Starring Lance Henriksen!”

Wednesday, August 9, 2023

2001: A Space Odyssey


2001: A Space Odyssey, by Arthur C. Clarke
July, 1968  Signet Books

If I could see just one movie on the big screen it would be 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially if I could see it on the original Cinerama curved screen setup. Every few years when the movie makes it back into theaters for a special screening I either don’t hear about it or forget about it; the closest I ever came to actually seeing it in a theater was when my wife and I were in London in Fall of 2012 and we were out in the suburbs somewhere, I think the place was called Battlesbridge or something like that, and we passed by a theater that had 2001 listed on the marquee. But the start time was only shown as “Late.” When I asked the snotty British ticket-booth guy when exactly “Late” was, he gave me the snotty British answer that, “It’s generally after the sun goes down and it’s dark out.” I admit, that was very funny, but I was like, “Dude, over in America we have this thing called time.” 

Anyway, I never did see the movie – it had been a long day, and 2001 is a long movie (and not the most snappily-paced one), and the timing just wasn’t right. So I had to be content with my Blu Ray, which I admit I only play every few years, if that. But none of this long preamble has anything to do with the novel at hand, which of course is a well-known book written by one of the more noted science fiction authors of the 20th Century. That said, I’ve never actually read an Arthur C. Clarke novel, even at the height of my sci-fi nerd era as a middle school student in the mid-1980s. Some years ago, in a fit of “vintage space books” collecting, I picked up several of Clarke’s ’60s and ‘70s non-fiction books, like for example The Promise Of Space and Report From Planet Three, but still have not read them – though I have thumbed through them. 

And, judging from this off-hand, casual observation, I want to say that Clarke’s novelization of his own 2001 script reads, for the most part, just like one of Clarke’s non-fiction space books. Whereas Stanley Kubrick’s film leaves much to the viewer’s interpretation, Clarke spends the majority of his novel lecturing the reader on philosophy or explaining how and why this or that happens. In many ways it is a guidebook to a “future” that never happened, same as Arthur Clarke’s non-fiction space books of the era were. For the most part Clarke’s 2001 goes out of its way to leave nothing to the reader’s interpretation, thus cutting out the mystery and esotericism that make Kubrick’s film so fascinating to this very day. 

On the other hand, it is neat to see how this world of 2001 actually works; we’re told how the interstellar craft operate, how HAL 9000 “thinks,” and most notably even what exactly the mysterious Monolith is up to in the Dawn Of Man opening. Again though, this undercuts the drama, and I could imagine Stanley Kubrick (to whom Clarke dedicates the novel) seething at some of Clarke’s “explanations,” mainly because they are rather unimaginative. I mean the Monolith chooses the “Moon Watcher” monkey-man in the Dawn Of Man sequence because he shows the most intelligence of the monkey-men; I mean that’s so much more direct and “duh” than how it’s done in the film, where you wonder if the Monolith itself is directing events (which the novel makes implicit) or if it’s merely the presence of the Monolith that causes the monkey-men to begin thinking. 

This is the line Clarke walks throughout the book. We’ll have a little “narrative material,” where the plot will proceed along, then we’ll have a bunch of expository info-dumping about space exploration. I imagine Clarke must’ve been excited to get this material out to those who wouldn’t be so interested in reading a book about space exploration, but the caveat is there isn’t much “fiction stuff” in his 2001. I mean honestly, if we are looking solely at dramatic thrust and an exciting plot, then the novelization of Moon Zero Two is actually superior. This is of course because there isn’t much plot per se in the film, and Clarke of course follows his own script: the Dawn Of Man sequence, the discovery of the Monolith on the Moon, the flight to Jupiter which climaxes in the psychedelic Dawn Of New Man. While Kubrick follows an absorbing pace (or, conversely, a leisurely pace), letting the visuals tell the story, Clarke must fill pages, gussying up a barebones plot. He does so as if he were writing another of his nonfiction space exploration books; be prepared to learn much of the orbits of asteroids, or what the surface of Jupiter is like. 

That’s another of those little changes to the text – the second half of the film concerns a trip to Jupiter, but here in the novel Jupiter is just the first stop along the way, with Saturn the ultimate goal. That said, there is a sequence – again as if shoehorned in from one of Clarke’s nonfiction books – in which the ship, Discovery, hitches a ride on Jupiter’s orbit to get a boost in speed. This entire sequence is almost lifted from the real-life Apollo 8 mission, which was the first mission in which human occupants of a spacecraft went around the “backside of the moon,” losing contact with Earth. A total “baited breath moment” if ever there was one, but not nearly as dramatic here in the novel – though Clarke does have monosyllabic astronaut heroes Dave Bowman and Frank Poole silently shake hands when the mission completes successfully and they are set on the proper path without any trouble. Curiously this was exactly what real-life monosyllabic astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did when they landed on the moon over a year after 2001 was published – they silently shook hands. 

All these decades later, 2001 can be seen as its own thing, but it’s clearly intended to be the natural progression of where everyone thought the space race was headed; monosyllabic astronauts Bowman and Poole are terse ciphers, same as their real-world counterparts in the Apollo Program. The Cold War is still on in this 2001, but in the novel it isn’t nearly as pronounced as it is in the film; the only Russian character is a scientist who appears in the brief opening sequence in the Space Station, same as in the movie, but here in the novel we learn he is good friends with Dr. Heywood “Pink” Floyd (not his real nickname, btw). Floyd is our main protagonist after the Dawn Of Man opening (which by the way doesn’t climax with the famous “bone toss” scene of the film), and he too is cut from the same overly-formal and reserved cloth as Bowman and Poole. 

Floyd’s actually less relatable in the novel. The bit of him calling his daughter back on Earth (Kubrick’s actual daughter, I seem to recall) is not in the book, but we do get more about him getting a solo ride all the way from Cape Kennedy to the Moon in a little over a day, all at the behest of the President. Nor is the equally-famous bit where Floyd is introduced, napping in zero-gee on his way to the Space Station, here in the novel. And speaking of which, yes the zero-gee toilet is also in the novel; indeed, we get to see it in action, as Floyd uses it (Clarke focused on the the mechanics of the equipment, I should clarify). We also get a lot more pondering on what the Monolith is, and it’s also carefully explained – several times, in fact – that the Monolith was intentionally buried beneath the surface of the moon three million years ago, and let off a “scream” of radio static when the sunlight touched it upon its excavation. 

In other words, as Floyd explains late in the novel, the Monolith is an “alarm,” one set there by some mysterious race of beings. But otherwise there is a lot of pondering throughout 2001, to the point that the narrative often comes to a dead stop. And it’s all space-geek stuff, too. Like a part where Discovery is coming upon its first asteroid – the orbits of which, we are informed, have carefully been laid out in the navigation so the ship will never encounter any of them on the journey to Saturn – and Poole and Bowman geek out about taking photos of it via missile-launched robot. And this goes on and on, a somewhat thrilling scene…with the caveat that the asteroid is thousands of miles away. But again it’s just a chance for Arthur C. Clarke to show off his knowledge of space exploration and how such things are done, and it’s just more stuff that seems to be shoehorned in from a science journal. 

There is no mystery in Clarke’s 2001. Everything is told in a bald, matter of fact style that comes off as insulting, at least when compared to how the film left so much to the viewer’s interpretation. HAL 9000, referred to simply as “Hal” in the book, also suffers – Clarke is at pains to explain away the AI’s responsibility for the events of the final quarter. Again, the movie leaves it vague; did Hal go nuts, or is it the effect of the Monolith? (Notice how when the Monolith appears, it also teaches how to kill – first the man-apes who kill animals and then their fellows, and later in the film HAL 9000 goes on a killspree.) All the events on Discovery are different in the novel: Poole’s fate, the fate of the scientists still in cryo – even Bowman’s fate is different, as after all this happens, including his shutting down of Hal, he’s on the ship for three more months before we get to the Star Child finale. 

This is what I mean about forward momentum being nil in the novelization of 2001. I mean really. We have this huge catastrophe on the ship…then a few pages later we have Bowman walking around the cleaned-up ship and listening to opera. Even here there is endless pondering and info-dumping; all fascinating if you are looking for science fact, but kind of distracting when you are looking for science fiction. But anyway, I was going on about the explanation on Hal. This is where Heywood Floyd returns to the scene; he calls Bowman (rather than the video briefing Bowman accidentally activates in the film) and tells him that Hal had been programmed with the ship’s true mission, and keeping that knowledge secret caused the AI to go haywire. 

The climax is mostly the same, but instead of a psychedelic lightshow it is, once again, a bunch of info-dumping. Bowman, having reached Saturn and knowing he doesn’t have enough oxygen to surive the years until a new ship can be built to come rescue him, gets in a pod and decides to investigate the massive “Big Brother” Monolith that is floating around the planet. Nearly a thousand feet long, this Monolith is “full of stars,” per Bowman’s frantic last call back to Mission Control on Earth – and no, he doesn’t say anything in the film. But even here, while floating through changing worlds with crashed space ships beneath him and strange sights in the varying skies, Bowman still ponders over everything in a factual, reserved, “man of science” style that is impossible for the reader to identify with. And again it just comes off as several pages of Clarke showing off his knowledge of astrology and science. 

It's also kind of goofy – compared to how creepy the finale of the film is. Here there’s no question Bowman is being watched by aliens as he finds himself in a makeshift cottage…complete with even boxes of cereal! And TV shows with “a famous African reporter” on television! All of it, he realizes, stuff from two years ago, when the Moon Monolith was discovered (neither the film nor the book bother to spell out that the stuff with Heywood Floyd is actually in 1999, not 2001). So Bowman theorizes that the aliens used TV broadcasts of that time to create a perfect little cage for him. Then he goes to sleep(!), and we get a sort of psychedelic sequence where he turns into a Star Child advanced human thing with cosmic powers, Clarke calling back to the finale of his Dawn Of Man sequence earlier in the book: “He would think of something.” 

I’m glad I finally got around to reading Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001, but to tell the truth I feel that he took away a lot of the film’s magic. Sure, much of the plot is based around Clarke’s own story ideas and whatnot, but still. His incessant need to explain and exposit just stops the narrative dead at times, and the book has none of the ultramod sixties sci-fi vibe I so love, like the film did…a look which I believe reached it’s apotheosis in Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s UFO. Undeterred, Clarke went on to write 2010 and 2061 and others in the series, but I doubt I’ll ever read them – though I will read some of his nonfiction space books.

Wednesday, June 7, 2023

Marc Dean Mercenary #1: Thirteen For The Kill


Marc Dean Mercenary #1: Thirteen For The Kill, by Peter Buck
July, 1981  Signet Books

Signet Books got back on the men’s adventure train in the early ‘80s with this series that ultimately ran 9 volumes. “Peter Buck” was the pseudonym of a British author named Peter Leslie, who also in the ‘80s wrote several volumes of the Gold Eagle Executioner and related books – in other words, Peter Buck isn’t some relative of Pearl S. And I’m sorry to report that a British vibe extends to Thirteen For The Kill, at least insofar as the pulp goes, with a clinical detachment to the narrative style, a plodding pace, and way too much narratorial padding. 

Also, at 224 pages of small, dense blocks of print, the novel’s just too long. Actually the length wouldn’t be bad if so much of it wasn’t devoted to scenery description or to hero Marc Dean and his titular thirteen-man force navigating treacherous stretches of the North African desert. One thing to note straightaway is that the cover makes Thirteen For The Kill look like the typical “lone wolf commando” yarn this genre is known for, but in reality it turns out to be more along the lines of the earlier Donovan’s Devils or the contemporary Soldier For Hire, only without the wonderfully bonkers reactionary vibe of the latter. Indeed, there is a blasé, bland vibe to the entirety of Thirteen For The Kill. But it is similar to Soldier For Hire in that Marc Dean, rather than being a lone wolf commando type, is actually a “leader of men” (as outright stated in the narrative), commanding a force of…forty men. Actually, the setup is even more similar to The Liberty Corps, which also eschewed the typical lone fighter setup for such large forces. 

I concur with the mighty Zwolf, who also was not fond of our series protagonist: Marc Dean, a 36 year-old career officer who now makes his living as a mercenary. As Zwolf notes, Dean’s a bit too much of an asshole officer to be a series protagonist, not much listening to his men and needlessly putting them in jeopardy. But then, this is more of a team book, as Dean doesn’t operate in a solo capacity: the core seems to be comprised of Sean Hammer, Dean’s Irish best budy, and Mazzari, an African with a British accent (and who per pulp demands is the immensely muscled black guy on the team). Atypical for most men’s adventure protagonists, Dean has both a wife and a kid – though the wife’s recently become an ex-wife, and the kid, a 4-year-old son, lives with his mom. This means then that Dean is still free to engage in the casual sex also demanded by the genre, though you win a no-prize if you’ve guessed that Brith author Leslie doesn’t get too risque in the sex scenes. Hell, even the violence is mostly PG. 

As with a lot of British pulp the vibe here is very continental, despite Dean being an American. I mean when I personally think of a professional mercenary, I don’t think of some guy who went to Harvard and has lush penthouses around Europe; Dean is very much a “man of action” in the Jefferson Boone mold. But unlike Boone he doesn’t work alone, and the gist of the series seems to be Dean putting together teams to take on his jobs. And also Dean does not have any emotional connection to these jobs, so again the usual revenge angle of men’s adventure is gone here. In Thirteen For The Kill Dean’s task is to destroy a fortress in North Africa that has been taken over by an “Arabic non-Muslim” extremist force. 

Leslie pulls a number from the average men’s adventure mag story by opening the tale late in the action, then flashing back to the establishing events. It’s very much in the men’s mag mold as we meet Dean, suffering from momentary amnesia, as he wakes up off the coast of some North African hellhole, trying to remember how he got here. Soon enough he regains his memory and recalls that he was leading a force of 40 men on an attack of a fortress, but the majority of his men were killed in a sea wreck and now Dean only has the titular thirteen mercs at his disposal. From there we jump back to the long establishing material; Leslie proves himself more comfortable in the non-action scenes, making his future career as a Gold Eagle scribe a little suspect. 

But then, there is a ton of ‘80s gun-p0rn in Thirteen For The Kill. Straight-up exposition as Dean will discuss guns and ammo and whatnot with his underworld dealer, or where there will even be asterisked footnotes explaining what certain weaponry acronyms mean. There’s even a laundry list, late in the game, of the various weaponry Dean and force still has at their disposal, complete with number of rounds for each. It gets to be a bit much, and certainly brings to mind Gold Eagle. The only notable thing is that Dean, at a bargain, picks up several Dardick pistols; Leslie explains to us via exposition (and later another footnote) that these odd-looking pistols were developed for the Air Force in the late ‘40s but were never actually put into service for various reasons. 

Not that much is made of it when all these guns are actually put to use. Peter Leslie seems to be writing more of a suspense thriller than he is a men’s adventure novel; the action scenes are sporadic at best, and certainly bloodless. They also have more of the feel of war fiction, same as Soldier For Hire and Liberty Corps, with Dean directing fire instead of actively engaging in it like a lone wolf men’s adventure protagonist would. Personally I feel this takes away from the excitement, and I didn’t much enjoy it. I did however like Dean’s hatred of all things martial arts; twice in the novel (including even in dialog with his 4-year-old son!) Dean claims that karate and such is just “jumping around” and that a “pencil in the eye” is much more effective. Take that, Joon Rhee! 

Speaking of Dean’s son, he factors into a random flashback late in the game to when Dean last saw him, just a few weeks before the novel’s opening. More focus however is placed on Dean’s ex; our hero is still hung up on her, claiming she’s the only woman he ever loved, and this entire flashback is about the most recent time he banged her. That said, Dean does pretty good for himself otherwise, picking up some nameless blonde early in the book for some off-page shenanigans, and then, just a few pages later, he’s entagled with another babe once he’s gotten to Morocco. This is Rada, who might or might not be an enemy agent. Leslie handles the sex scenes with the same white glove treatment as the action scenes, with lines like, “He went into her, deep as a sword wound.” The flashback frolic with Dean’s ex contains an even better line: “[Dean] was easily, scaldingly, wonderfully inside her.” Scaldingly? Sounds like the ex Mrs. Dean might want to pay a visit to her gyno. 

Another humorous line is when Dean, after crawling through the hot desert to scope out an enemy base, decides to disguise himself as one of the Arabic soldiers: “There was still enough grime on [Dean’s] face to give him a swarthy appearance.” This reminded me of the part in Team America where they “disguised” the main puppet as a radical Muslim terrorist. Such things might implly that Leslie had his tongue in cheek, but otherwise the tone is flat and serious throughout. There isn’t much spark to Thirteen For The Kill, is what I mean to say, and I’m hoping the ensuing 8 volumes are an improvement.

Monday, January 2, 2023

Black Samurai #3: Killer Warrior


Black Samurai #3: Killer Warrior, by Marc Olden
July, 1974  Signet Books

Within the first few pages of this third volume of Black Samurai we see it’s going to be a slightly more pulpy installment than the previous two; Marc Olden opens the tale in France, where an Apache Indian warrior, armed with an axe and wearing facepaint, brutally kills two Muslim terrorists who tried to burn the Apache’s boss in a weapons deal. 

Around this time Olden also wrote Narc #2, which also featured an Apache villain; here though the character has more precedence in the plot, and also I’m happy to report that for once Olden doesn’t short-change us in the climax. Both in Black Samurai and Narc Marc Olden had a tendency to pile on too many villains and then brush them aside in the harried finale; Narc in particular suffered from too many climaxes in which the villains got away, never to be heard from again. This is what happened with the Narc Apache warrior, in fact. But in Killer Warrior Olden delivers on the climactic confrontation between his hero, Black Samurai Robert Sand, and the Apache villain, the wonderfully-named Mangas Salt. 

The plot of this one is similar to the previous volume: Sand tries to prevent the destruction of a city in America. And once again he doesn’t know which city. This time the main villain, sort of, is a Japanese guy who wants revenge for Hiroshima. But as Marty McKee noted in his review, this villain, Saraga, is “something of an afterthought” in the novel. Really it’s Mangas Salt and his employer, arms dealer Valbonne, who serve as the main villains of Killer Warrior. Saraga only appears in the finale, though several of his Japanese stooges frequently appear so Robert Sand can have a few redshirts to bump off. 

It's only now occurred to me that Black Samurai is everything I’ve always wanted The Destroyer to be. I mean it features a character who is almost superhuman due to his martial arts skills, and it features memorable villains, but it’s all played on the level, without any of the satire of the Sapir/Murphy series. I like my pulp straight, no chaser! And Olden certainly plays it straight; the narrative is almost as humorless as Sand himself is. Everything is deathly serious – not to mention realisitc, at least insofar as the action scenes go. Sand only ever goes up against a few people at a time, and Olden strives to not make the Black Samurai come off like a superhero…even though that’s exactly what he is. 

As evidence of this, Killer Warrior opens with Sand training in Japan with an elderly sensei who was friends with Sand’s original sensei, Master Konuma, murdered in the first volume. Part of the regimen includes Sand wrapping a chain around himself and doing leaping exercises. Sand actually breaks the friggin’ chain with the force of his jumps, causing even the old Japanese dude to gape in astonishment. And utter, “Samurai!”, which is like the ultimate compliment from old Japanese senseis. Marc Olden excels at such subtle but touching moments; one can tell his heart was really in this series. 

A recurring schtick of Black Samurai seems to be that the narrative will go from Japan to France, then to the US; this happens in Killer Warrior as well. One thing I like is that you see the series title “Black Samurai” and assume it will be a bunch of “Oriental” adventures, but for the most part Robert Sand spends his time in Europe. But then in Marc Olden’s world you’ll also find facepainted Apache Indian warriors in Europe. And by the way, Olden doesn’t play perspective hopscotch as much as usual this time; most of his adventure novels feature a lot of stream-of-conscious ruminations from the various one-off villains, but these sequences are few and far between in Killer Warrior

What I mean to say is, this is the most focused installment yet. Olden keeps the plot moving from beginning to end, and even indulges in a bit of ‘70s-mandatory sleaze, a first in the series. This doesn’t feature Robert Sand, though – however, as with the last volume, he manages to score again. Even if it happens off-page. But there’s a part where a one-off character, a scientist who is helping Valbonne create an atom bomb for Saraga, meets with a hooker, and Sand has given the hooker a secret message to convey to the scientist. A message she is to write in lipstick on a bathroom mirror…and the lipstick tube has been hidden in her, uh, ladyparts. Olden gets enjoyable sleazy here, with the gal getting naked and showing off for the guy, then plucking out the tube from her inner recesses. However when the actual deed is transpiring Olden fades to black, as is his wont. 

Action isn’t as frequent this time. Sand only gets in a few fights, and probably the action highlight of the novel occurs midway through when he dresses all in black and takes on a few of Valbonne’s men at an airport. There’s also a cool part at a zoo outside Paris where Sand first tangles with Salt. And speaking of which, I did find having both a “Sand” and a “Salt” in the same novel to be confusing, but I assume Olden was trying to demonstrate how they were two sides of the same coin – something very much reinforced as the novel winds to a close. Also there’s a “Saraga” in the book; too many characters whose names begin with “Sa!” Instead of all-out action, Olden goes for more of a suspense angle, like for example a bit seemingly lifted from Doctor No where Sand encounters a rattlesnake in his hotel room, one left there for him by Salt. 

But then Olden undercuts the suspense with a bit of lameness. For example, in that zoo battle in which Sand and Salt have their first face-to-face, Sand has Salt dead bang…but just has him lie down while Sand escapes. And keep in mind, we readers already know Salt is a merciless killer, and Sand knows this as well, having been thoroughly briefed by his boss William Clarke on how brutal Salt is. (Like Salt’s penchant for hanging victims upside down over a fire until their heads cook and their brains explode – something we see happen in the course of the novel.) I mean it’s understandable in a way; Salt is a warrior (whether Sand or Salt is the “killer warrior” of the title is up to the reader to decide – though again it’s probably more of that “two sides of the same coin” schtick), and Sand would not want to kill an unarmed warrior. Okay, that’s fine. But even worse is the later bit where Salt leaves the rattlesnake in Sand’s hotel room…and Sand is bitten by it…and Salt comes in to fight Sand, amazed that the Black Samurai gets to his feet and screams out a “Kiya!” despite suffering a bite that would kill a lesser man. And then Sand…passes out, and the chapter ends. 

And when Sand wakes up next chapter, he’s in the hospital and Clarke is there, Sand having been rescued at the last moment…and Salt, it turns out, ran off after Sand passed out, presumably assuming Sand was dead. It’s just lame. At first I thought Olden was going to go in an unexpected direction with Salt, due to his sudden respect for Sand, helping his former enemy escape, but that was not the case. That said, Olden works up an effective finale in which Salt, who this time is the one who is injured, decides to go out as a warrior, challenging his “brother” Robert Sand to one final fight. It’s cool and all, but at the same time kind of hard to buy given how merciless Mangas Salt has been shown to be earlier in the novel. 

Robert Sand shows even less personality this time than in previous books. He has none of the sass of other volumes, for the most part remaining terse. He still manages to score, though, with a pretty lady named Moraida who serves as a courier for Saraga. Sand saves her in another tense scene in which a few of Saraga’s goons accost Moraida in her hotel room and attempt to kill her. Olden also excels at depicting mortal combat in enclosed spaces; there’s also a cool part in that Salt-Sand confrontation in Sand’s hotel room where Sand uses the narrow space of his bathroom to his advantage. It’s little touches like this that convey how Marc Olden himself was familiar with martial arts technique. 

Overall I really enjoyed Killer Warrior, and it was another great installment of Black Samurai. And if I hadn’t already read The Warlock, I’d say it was my favorite yet.

Monday, July 11, 2022

Black Samurai #2: The Golden Kill


Black Samurai #2: The Golden Kill, by Marc Olden
May, 1974  Signet Books

The second volume of Black Samurai dispenses with the revenge-driven angle of the first volume and instead features hero Robert Sand, the Black Samurai, acting more in the capacity of your typical men’s adventure protagonist. He now “works with” (not “for”) William Baron Clarke, former President of the United States, and goes about the globe to stop various threats. But again indicating the rapid speed which Marc Olden wrote this series in, the threat Sand is determined to prevent in The Golden Kill is very reminiscent of the one in the first volume: an entire city is going to be wiped out. 

The revenge stuff that fueled Sand in the first volume is gone, but in its place is the Olden mainstay: lots of villains, who have their own subplots. The pulp vibe is also more apparent, mostly in the form of Talon, a harelipped sadist who employs vultures and dogs to torture his prey. Talon works for Print Drewcolt, a sort of proto-Bill Gates who has amassed great wealth in his business ventures. Speaking of reminiscent, Drewcolt’s name brings to mind the name of the main villain in #6: The Warlock: Janicott. I mean it’s nothing major, but it just seems to me another example of how Olden rejiggered material throughout the series. But it’s not like we’re talking about The Butcher, where every volume was the same. However The Golden Kill isn’t nearly as pulpy as The Warlock, despite having a villain who lives in a castle. It’s still mostly grounded in realism, as was the first volume…despite featuring a modern-day samurai who happens to be a black man who “works with” the former President of the US. 

But then Black Samurai isn’t nearly as grounded in realism as the other series Olden was writing at this time: NRC. Actually there’s a bit of a Narc vibe in the opening of The Golden Kill, to the extent that I wonder if Olden ever considered teaming up his two protagonists. I mean the opportunity was there – both series were courtesy the same publisher, and Olden outed himself as “Robert Hawkes” on the copyright page of each volume of Narc. This opening sequence could give an indication of what such a team-up might’ve been like, as it features Robert Sand in New York, trying to foil the assassination by bombing of a Chinese official…and Sand soon finds himself in the cluthces of a trio of fake cops who are working with the assassin. It’s all very tense and up to Olden’s usual high standards, as Sand is taken off to a remote cabin and handcuffed, waiting for his opportunity to strike. 

With this series Olden wants his cake and to eat it, too; Sand is of course “The Black Samurai,” and we’re often reminded of the superhuman training he endured. But at the same time we’re reminded that he’s not superhuman, a la a fellow martial arts progatonist of the day, Victor Mace. So even though you’d think three random thugs would be absolutely no match for a dude who trained for years in the art of samurai and whose body is basically a living weapon, Olden still writes the ensuing action scene with an eye for realism, as Sand seizes the chance to free himself and fights earnestly with his kidnappers. In other words, he doesn’t just decimate them without a sweat. 

It's like this throughout The Golden Kill, and also of note is that Olden doesn’t play up on the whole martial arts vibe as in Mace or Jason Striker; Sand is just as prone to use a .45 or even a bow and arrow as his hands and feet. But also he doesn’t go up against fellow martial artists, as in those other series. In other words, the action never devolves into endlessly detailed kung-fu moves as two specialists fight each other. Sand’s samurai background has more relevance insofar as his character is concerned: he’s stoic, terse, and always prepared. He’s gotten a bit more sass this time, though, talking back to Clarke and other characters in a way he didn’t in the previous volume. And most importantly so far as the trash quotient is concerned, Sand gets laid this time – by two different ladies, as if Olden were making up for the lack of boinkery in the first volume. Not much in the way of explicitness in these sequences, I’m sorry to report. 

The setup of the series is intact with this volume: William Baron Clarke literally briefs Sand on his mission, meaning there’s none of the revenge impetus of the first volume for the Black Samurai himself. He’s merely acting in the capacity of an action protagonist, trying to thwart Print Drewcolt’s plan to wipe out a city in China so as to foil a Russia-China trade agreement involving gold. Drewcolt meanwhile is a classic villain: he has his own army, lives in a castle, and employs a sadist as his chief security agent. This would be Talon, a harelipped freak who uses vultures and dogs to torture and kill prisoners who are chained naked in the court of Drewcolt’s castle. We see this happen a few times in the course of the novel, and it's all wild – like when Talon uncovers two of Clarke’s informants in Drewcolt’s ranks, and puts one of them in full suit of medieval armor while the other is ripped apart, Talon toying with the man until it’s his turn. 

Not only that, but it’s intimated that Talon is…well, intimate with his animals, in particular a vulture he favors. I wonder if director Al Adamson was inspired by this stuff when he made his Black Samurai film, as it features Robert Sand fighting a vulture in the climax – even though no such thing happened in The Warlock, which is the volume of the series Adamson’s film was based on. But with Talon you can see what I mean above: he’s a sadist, and he’s merciless, but he’s not a specialist in any form of unarmed combat, as you’d expect in a martial arts-themed series. He’s just a freak who trains animals to kill. So it’s not like Sand will square off against him in some kung-fu fest in the climax. Indeed, the confrontation with Talon at novel’s end is a bit anticlimactic. 

Clarke is given a bit more of the spotlight this time, and Olden well plays up the schtick of a former President using his vast global resources to make things happen. It’s never been stated what party Clarke represented, but he’s from Texas and he’s definitely a salt of the Earth type. He does at one point refer to the “idiot” currently in office, which would be Nixon given the period in which Olden was writing, but that could just be a general dislike and not party animosity. But Clarke isn’t the only character who gets a bigger focus this time, as all the supporting characters have their share of the spotlight. We get a lot of stuff from the perspectives of Drewcolt and Talon, as well as the various underlings who find themselves going up against Sand. As with Olden’s other novels, this sometimes has the effect that the Black Samurai comes off like a supporting character in his own novel. 

And whereas Black Samurai #1 was pretty much a “men only” deal, Olden features two female characters in The Golden Kill. The first is Lisa Warren, lovely young “interior decorator” for Drewcolt’s castle, aka his mistress. She’s one of Clarke’s informants, and will be the damsel in distress Sand must save in the finale. Then there’s Andrea Naiss, who a la Doctor No takes Sand’s photo at an airport at the behest of one of Talon’s security men. Apparently of mixed races (black and Filipino, I believe we’re told), Andrea has been ignored all her life, despite being very pretty. Sand ends up giving her the goods in a scene that’s mostly off-page (as he later does Lisa Warren in a scene that’s entirely off-page), but curiously Sand shows no awareness that his interest in Andrea might cause some dire ramifications for the poor girl. 

Olden certainly knows his market, as there’s a fair bit of lurid stuff in The Golden Kill, from Andrea’s torture to Talon’s various executions. There’s also an early scene where Sand swings into the apartment of a high-class escort who is about to be raped by a sadist. This part features Sand turning up the building’s heater to over a hundred degrees and then climbing up the wall to bypass the men waiting outside the door. Throughout The Golden Kill Sand uses strategy more than he does his fists and weapons; there’s another tense action scene later on where he gets the drop on the men who are transporting a nerve gas. As ever though Olden hopscotches around the various perspectives, like the guy in charge of the nerve gas transport, or the thugs in the escort’s apartment, which I feel somewhat nullifies the impact of the action. But this POV-hopping is part of Olden’s schtick. 

The finale would be a case in point of the overall impact being lessened. Sand, armed with his bow and arrow, swoops onto Drewcolt’s castle, planning to use a bomb Lisa will set as his diversion. Things don’t go as planned, with Lisa soon dragged out into that courtyard and Talon’s vultures employed. But Olden keeps hopscotching around the perspectives, including even the guys who control the vultures for Talon, to the point that it keeps delaying the fireworks. For that matter, this results in that anticlimactic faceoff I mentioned earlier, with Talon; Sand doesn’t even realize he has dealt with Talon until later, which really harms the vicarious thrill the reader needs after putting up with the sadistic arrogance of Talon for the entire friggin’ novel. But Olden is just getting started, because The Golden Kill ends with Sand about to go take care of the last remaining villain…and we don’t even get to see it happen! 

So overall this second installment of Black Samurai was entertaining, but lacked the emotional content of the first one. And also one can see how the “Olden factory” of writing is getting in place, with constant cutovers to the thoughts and feelings of various characters, no matter how minor they are in the grand scheme of the plot. That said, there is still an undeniable something about the series which elevates it above the rest. I think the issue in these earliest books is that Olden still hasn’t fully embraced the pulpy aspects of his own creation – as he will, with much gusto, in The Warlock.

Thursday, June 16, 2022

Love Me Tomorrow


Love Me Tomorrow, by Robert H. Rimmer
December, 1978  Signet Books

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a hotstuff poet “in the Sylvia Plath tradition” who once starred in a porno flick cryogenically freezes herself in 1980 so she can wake up and screw her way through the Brave New World of 1996! Yes, folks, that is the plot of Love Me Tomorrow, “a novel of Future Shock Sex” per the awesome cover slugline (the best kind of future shock, if you ask me). The only problem with this bonkers setup is that the book was written by Robert H. Rimmer, he of The Harrad Experiment and The Premar Experiments, and he once again delivers a turgid crawl of a “novel” that’s filled with navel-gazing and bald exposition. 

Speaking of Future Shock, I wonder if whoever at Signet wrote that slugline realized how accurate the comment was, on two levels; for, not only is Love Me Tomorrow clearly influenced by Alvin Toffler’s nonfiction bestseller, but Rimmer himself also appeared in the bizarre 1972 documentary which was based on Future Shock (and hosted by Orson Welles!). Rimmer is fully on board with a progressivised future, and as demonstrated in The Premar Experiments he is wholly devoted to socialism. In this way Love Me Tomorrow is the antithesis of another book of the day that was influenced by Toffler: Lawrence Sanders’s The Tomorrow File. But the main difference between these novels is twofold. For one, Sanders’s novel is immensely better – but then, Sanders actually writes a novel, with drama and characterization and tension. Rimmer on the other hand writes an exposition-laden treatise. The other big difference between the two novels is that Sanders clearly sees the horrors of a fully-progressivised society, whereas Rimmer presents it as a utopia of sorts. (Guess which of the two progressivism is proving to be in the real world?) 

Actually a third difference would be that The Tomorrow File received an initial hardcover edition, whereas Love Me Tomorrow, same as The Premar Experiments, was a paperback original. It’s also a bit shorter than Sanders’s novel, though Love Me Tomorrow isn’t a short novel by any means: 430 pages of small, dense print. In reality it turns out that only 414 pages are comprised of the narrative, with the remaining pages given over to a bibliography. This should give you an idea of what you are in for; Rimmer has for the most part written an expose on his intended socialist utopia of the near future, based on the ideas and research of progressivists of the day, and has tried to pass it off as a novel. Like I mentioned in The Premar Experiments, Rimmer is like the antimatter universe version of Joseph Rosenberger, in that he has his characters baldly exposit on arcane books or research papers they’ve read…but whereas Rosenberger is clearly a right-winger Rimmer is very far to the left. 

He's also pretty humorless (befitting someone far to the left, one might argue), and this is evidenced throughout the novel, which is incredibly dry and incredibly talky. In essence, Rimmer was inspired by an obscure 1800s novel titled Looking Backward, by a utopian named Edward Bellamy, and here in Love Me Tomorrow has attempted to do a similar sort of novel. But he couldn’t just write a novel inspired by Bellamy; instead, Rimmer fills his own novel with rampant exposition about Bellamy’s book, quoting it and summarizing it (in addition to sundry other books, research papers, and magazine articles), and he overlooks such little things as characterization and drama and plot. He also totally fails on the “future shock sex” angle, with pathetically few sex scenes in the novel…and those sex scenes we do get are repugnant, like “mother having sex with her own son” sort of repugnant, more on which anon. 

The biggest slap in the face is that Love Me Tomorrow is boring. I mean it’s like Lustbader’s The Ninja, which took a novel about a ninja and turned it into a slow-moving excess of boredeom – this is a book about a former porn actress who freezes herself for sixteen years and wakes up in a slightly psychedelic and very progressive future, and it’s boring as hell. And like Sanders’s The Tomorrow File this is indeed a psychedelic era, with even a drink similar to Sanders’s “Smack:” C&C, a carbonated beverage that includes cannabis and coke among its ingredients. And just like Sanders’s projected 1998 was wildly progressivised when compared to the 1970s (or even today), so too is Rimmer’s 1996…but then only so far as the societal impacts go. While Sanders’s 1998 was suitably “futuristic,” thanks to its society of drug-taking young geniuses, Rimmer’s is more low-tech hippie, with the biggest innovations being a sort of immersive television and helicopter-hotel things. 

One similarity between The Tomorrow File and Love Me Tomorrow is that both novels are written in first-person. However the narrator of Rimmer’s novel is a woman…which means that Love Me Tomorrow is one of those strange (to me, at least) novels in which a male author writes explicit sex scenes from the perspective of a woman. Kids, don’t try this at home! But as mentioned there isn’t much sex at all in the novel; instead, there’s a ton of navel-gazing introspection…humorless navel-gazing introspection at that. This is the sort of book where our narrator, 33 year-old poet, porn actress, and cryogenic test subject Christina “Christa” North, will say, without even a hint of humor, stuff like, “If [Mory] had married me, I would have sucked him into my Stygian nothingness.” 

It takes a helluva long time to get to the future, too. The first hundred-plus pages of Love Me Tomorrow are a nightmare of psychoanalysis, as Christa North tells us of her sordid history. Long story short, Christa is now in an experimental cryogenic facitilty in 1980, sent here due to her frequent attempts at suicide. She’s 33, married to a wealthy older industrialist, and has two kids – whom she clearly doesn’t give a shit about. (Not that this stops her from screwing her son in the future section…but we’ll get to that…) But Christa sure does care about herself, as she blathers at us incessantly for a good hundred pages, detailing her life up to that point, complete with pedantic, verbatim discussions she had with a college boyfriend named Mory in the late ‘60s who thought he was the reincarnation of Edward Bellamy and vowed to become president one day. 

The navel-gazing is horrendous in this opening section as Christa’s narration hops from 1980 back to the late ‘60s, with periodic detours about her bestselling “dirty book,” The Christening Of Christina, which was about her sexual awakening and whatnot. Vaguely we are informed a film was made of this, somewhere in the early ‘70s, starring Christa herself – and it was one of those mainstream porn films of the era, complete with Christa giving blowjobs and having sex on camera. After this Christa became a famous “sword swallower” a la Linda Lovelace in Deep Throat, but she soon escaped that life, marrying older man Karl, having two children with him, and trying to make her name as a poet. And also trying to kill herself, and she recounts each failed attempt in total self-obsessed detail. 

As with Rimmer’s other books, most of the action occurs in Boston, so we get a lot of flashbacks to Christa’s Harvard days. There is a ton of exposition here from Christa’s boyfriend Mory, on how in the year 2000 people will be so different the US will need a new constitution and a “philosopher” President, ie Mory himself. Again, very similar to The Tomorrow File, so similar that I wonder if Rimmer borrowed some ideas – Sanders’s novel projected a radically altered Unitied States, alterations which had been spearheaded by “the first scientist President.” Mory endlessly talks as he screws Christa and roommate Jenny, just on and on talking – yes, there’s even exposition during the sex scenes. Mory’s goal is to get “the liberal wing of the Republican party” to vote for him when he runs in 2000 (ie RINOs, who curiously do control the party today, but for how long is the question). 

In between the rampant flashbacks we have the “main” storyline in 1980 with Christa in the clinic, and it all finally culminates in a big business deal Karl is trying to achieve on his yacht, and Christa gets super drunk, leading the other wives in some skinny dipping, after which she tries to screw one of Karl’s business partners – and kill him along with her as she pulls their fornicating bodies down into the dark sea. After this Christa is sent off to the funny farm, only it’s a special type of funny farm, as she’s become the unwilling guinea pig in a cryogenic experiment. Why Christa? Given the high rate of failures, the clinic is looking for subjects who are prone to suicide…in other words if the cryo fails, no big deal, because the subject planned to kill himself anyway! It gets a bit creepy when Christa sees her own obituary in the paper; the false story has it that she’s drowned, leaving behind a husband and two prepubescent children. 

Rimmer pulls an interesting narrative trick, so far as when exactly Christa’s “autobiography” is being dictated, and around page 130 we come to the future portion of the novel. And here the exposition becomes even more incessant. Rather than bring his progressivised, vaguely sci-fi 1996 to life via action, suspense, or drama, Rimmer instead has a variety of characters baldly exposit on all the changes that have occurred in the 16 years Christa has been asleep. What makes it humorous is that most of the characters are men, so therefore according to current sentiments the novel is a barrage of “mansplaining.” But then Love Me Tomorrow is yet another indication of how Leftism has changed over the decades; Rimmer’s version of it is essentially the late ‘60s projected into the ‘90s, with “Love Groups” of open marriages and wanton hedonism, with the expected sex and drugs…even psychedelia courtesy lightshows people go to see in large arenas. There is none of the straightjacketed wokeism and identity politics that defines the Left today…but then again the “future” Rimmer depicts here is nearly 30 years in the past. 

The only real tension occurs soon after Christa awakens; she tries to escape from the clinic, only slowly realizing that it’s now 1996. This entails a cool scene where she wanders into a cryo room and sees a bunch of dates on the sleeping forms that range from the 1980s through the ‘90s; in other words, to paraphrase Dorothy in The Wizard Of Oz, it’s not 1980 anymore. Here too Christa sees that David, the head scientist in the cryo project, has gotten much older since she last saw him a few “days” ago, but there’s not much else in the way of drama. And keep in mind, Christa has two kids who now would be in their 20s; Christa is so obsessed with herself that she doesn’t even think to ask about them until many, many pages detailing various incidental societal changes have gone by. 

Rather, it’s an onlsaught of “mansplaining,” with David even giving Christa specific “don’t have sex” instructions: 


This proceeds immediately into a discussion about abortion: 


And keep in mind, Christa has yet to ask about her kids! But hey, at least Rimmer has his leftist priorities in order…I mean sex and abortion should be discussed before finding out what’s happened to your children in the 16 years you’ve been sleeping. Good grief! 

But speaking of children, Rimmer’s progressivised 1996 has also achieved that (un)holy grail of the left, same as in The Tomorrow File: the sexualization of children. Christa is taken back to David’s Love Group, which is like an extended “family” of communal living…and the kids are free to walk around naked and sleep with their parents, as bluntly exposited for us by an 11 year-old: 


And still our heroine fails to ask about her own kids, or even about her former husband. But then, she did try to kill herself, so I guess Rimmer assumes Christa wouldn’t be much concerned with them anyway. It’s just an example of the author’s complete lack of understanding when it comes to writing a compelling novel. Hell, when Christa does finally ask about her kids, she’s told in like two sentences that they’ve grown up and gone on to relatively normal lives…and then we get three times as much detail on how toilets operate in this future: 


You might note the strange words in the above excerpts. Fully committed to his own nonsense, Rimmer has the people of his 1996 even employing a language called Loglan, which we’re informed via more exposition was invented some years ago. They’ve also taken words from an obscure book on some Himalayan tribe or somesuch, referring to wealthy people as “iks” or some other such bullshit. It’s all so stupid and mundane. And the cool groovy “future shock sex” stuff you want is minimal at best: we learn that see-through blouses are all the rage among jetsetters, and you can watch fullblown sex on TV (another similarity to Sanders’s vastly superior novel). For that matter, there’s an arbitrary attack on sci-fi; it’s mansplained to Christa that science fiction isn’t very popular in this 1996, as reality is so much more futuristic than anything some hack author could conceive, and from there Rimmer goes into a puzzling attack on Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, mocking the “patriarchal” vibe of it. So yeah on that point Rimmer’s certainly in touch with the real future; lots of Love Me Tomorrow comes off like the Twitter feed of some easily-triggered leftist of the modern day, ranting and raving at that goddamn patriarchy. 

This is also one of the first novels I’ve ever read where a footnote informs readers that we can jump ahead 32 pages if we want to skip the narrator’s rundown (“in an ongoing way”) of Mory’s book, Looking Backward II. I mean it’s nothing but info-dumping from beginning to end, and the sleazy stuff is off-putting. Back to the sexualization of children, on page 270 Christa kisses a teenage boy’s dick, wondering why mothers don’t teach their sons about sex…by actually having sex with them, and then later in the book Christa does this very thing. Her son, now a handsome young man in his 20s, is campaigning for Mory, ie Christa’s old Harvard boyfriend, and Christa is posing as some woman Mory has met – and the reunion between Christa and Mory is underwhelming at best. But then Rimmer fails again and again to add any impetus to the novel; it’s all just dry exposition with no emotional content. Mory is aware from the start that this mysterious woman is indeed Christa, but the truth of her having been cryogenically frozen is hidden from the public. 

So Christa decides to put the moves on her own son, Christa playing it sly that she might be his mother, and next thing you know he’s going down on her. This of course made me think of William Hegner’s unforgettable line “Kiss where you came from,” in The Ski Lodgers. (Some people quote Shakespeare; I quote trash.) From there it proceeds to full sex…I mean all the way, son screwing his mother, with the added sickness that the poor guy doesn’t know it’s actually his own mother he’s screwing. And of course nothing much comes from any of this. Instead more focus is placed on Christa campainging for Mory, complete with a sex tape they make together which is played on TV and of course only serves to make Mory even more popular. 

Curiously the novel is written with the conceit that it’s being read by someone in 2000. In the finale we learn that the nation pretty much resets in January of 2000, upon the last election of the country, and Christa is one of the prime movers of this new United States. Of course the name Rimmer has given the character, a female play on “Christ,” is our allusion to this from the get-go. But unfortunately Rimmer has not given us a novel in which we can read with anticipation as all this plays out. Instead it’s a soul-crushing block of deadened exposition which spells out every incidental detail of this “future” while ignoring all of the drama. 

In sum Love Me Tomorrow was one of the most disappointing novels I’ve read in a long time…the book I wanted, the “future shock sex” novel about some progressivised future, is not the book I got, and readers in 1978 must have been just as disappointed in it, as Love Me Tomorrow appears to be entirely forgotten these days, and justifiably so.