Showing posts with label Warner Paperback Library. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Warner Paperback Library. Show all posts

Monday, December 18, 2023

UFO #2: Sporting Blood


UFO #2: Sporting Blood, by Robert Miall
June, 1973  Warner Books
(Original UK edition 1971)

I’ve mentioned before how crazy I am about that ‘60s/70s ultramod Spaced Out vibe, as displayed in such ‘60s sci-fi flicks as Barbarella2001: A Space Odyssey, and Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun. But in my mind the highest paragon of this ultramod “future 1960s” look would have to be Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s UFO, which was produced for UK television in ’70 and ‘71 and used many of the costumes, sets, and props from the aforementioned Journey To The Far Side Of The Sun (which was another Andersons “Century 21” production). 

To be sure, UFO is glacially paced, overly grim, and seldom if ever makes use of its colorful ultramod trappings. It’s almost as if all the colorful stuff was from the mind of Sylvia Anderson, from the silver “space age” suits worn by the characters to the purple wigs and miniskirts of the “girls” who worked at Moonbase. But Gerry Anderson sort of flew in the face of this, delivering a “grim and gritty” vibe that was more so just dour, with an often unlikeable lead character and plots that focused too much on loss, suffering, and despair. Only late in the series’ run, when many of the cast members had been replaced due to scheduling conflicts, did the producers bring more of a “fun” vibe to the show, but the earliest episodes – three of which are novelized here – are usually too “serious” for their own good. 

Make no mistake, though: I love the show, and could watch it over and over on permanent repeat, preferablly blitzed out on cheap blended whiskey. I’ve got the original DVD release but the discs are just gathering dust; I prefer to watch the high definition remastered episodes free with ads on Prime, and have watched the series through a few times over the years. There is something wonderful about this modtastic future that never was (the series takes place in the early 1980s), and I’d rather watch UFO than Star Wars or Star Trek any day of the week. 

The show didn’t make much of an impact in the US, where it played in syndication, but there was enough support behind it that the two novelizations Robert Miall had published in the UK in 1971 were brought by Warner Books to the US. However no changes were made to the text: we still have single quotation marks for dialog and British spellings are used throughout. This was the second of the two novelizations, and it’s interesting that Miall (of whom I know nothing) plants seeds for a third novelization at the end of Sporting Blood (the title has no bearing on the plot, by the way). 

This slim, 140-page book novelizes the episodes “Computer Affair,” “The Dalotek Affair,” and “Survival.” It’s worth noting that these are not comprehensive novelizations of the episodes; Miall leaves out scenes and often rewrites stuff to fit these three unconnected episodes together. But then, UFO was an episodic series to begin with; there was only the overall plot, of secret agency SHADO and its various high-tech craft waging an undercover war against aliens – all of it occuring in the “future ‘60s” of 1981 (or thereabouts – the show, as explained below, wasn’t always faithful to its own setting). 

The important thing to note is that the main appeal of UFO, the colorful ultramod setting, is not captured here by Miall. Rather, he has focused more on the “dour” aspects of the show, rarely if ever bringing to life the ultramod futuristic settings but instead focusing on the inner turmoil of the characters. He does at least cater the book to a male readership, with the main characters being the men on the show, and thus there is a narrative focus on the appeal of the shapely female SHADO agents (who themselves of course were another huge part of the show’s appeal). But then, there is very little racy stuff in the novel, with Miall never giving in to exploitation – I mean, the dude doesn’t even use the word “breasts” when describing Moonbase commander Lt. Gay Ellis (aka actress Gabrielle Drake – sister of singer Nick Drake): 


I mean that’s some serious restraint on the author’s part, friends. But then, Miall makes clear something the TV show only hinted at: the male agents of SHADO are damn horny, particularly given that they have curvy dishes like that sashaying around them in form-fitting catsuits and miniskirts…and there’s a friggin’ rule that prevents SHADO agents from becoming romantically involved with each other! In fact this is the plot of fist storyline “Computer Affair,” but then again it’s another instance where the show couldn’t seem to make up its mind, as there’s a lot of innuendo in the show that some of these agents were getting along in more than a professional fashion. 

Robert Miall treats everything with deadly seriousness; there is no camp here, no spoofery. We’re told the “girls” at Moonbase wear purple wigs, for example, but we aren’t told why. (Presumably costume designer Sylvia Anderson said the idea was the wigs were anti-raditation or somesuch…but then this begs the question why the men on Moonbase didn’t wear purple wigs!) Also the various SHADO vehicles are seldom described, and indeed Miall pulls an interesting trick throughout in that rarely if ever does he focus on characters who are operating these vehicles. Rather, the “action” is usually relayed from the perspective of whoever is commanding the mission from afar, watching viewscreens and sweating bullets in the hope that everyone survives. Again, the focus is on the grim and the dour, with very little in the way of fun escapism. 

Back to the glacial pacing of the show: it says something about how padded the average episode of UFO was that Miall is able to novelize a full episode in about 40 pages. I’m not sure how these three specific episodes were chosen for the novelization treatment, but Miall does a fairly good job of making them all seem part of a larger storyline, save for the issue that the aforementioned Lt. Ellis disappears from the text – because the actress was only in one of these three episodes, “Computer Affair.” Her disappearance from the rest of the text is due to a cold, it’s explained to us via dialog between SHADO honcho Colonel Ed Straker and his second-in-command Alec Freeman, and thus she must be quarantined from the safe and secure Moonbase. 

Speaing of Colonel Straker, he is the “unlikeable” main character mentioned above; while Striker (as portrayed by Ed Bishop), with his “bleached” white hair, is the character most associated with UFO, he seldom featured as the protagonist in early episodes, the three novelized here being prime examples. Only late in the series run, when Alec Freeman (George Sewell) was replaced by the uber-sexy Colonel Virginia Lake (aka Wanda Ventham, who would become the mother of actor Benedict Cumberbatch), did Straker take more of a Captain Kirk-esque place in the proceedings. In the earlier episodes, like the ones novelized in Sporting Blood, he mostly stays at his desk, barking orders, pushing his underlings, and looking dour. 

Another thing I want to point out is that not only was UFO episodic, but the episodes were broadcast way out of order from how they were produced; I follow this viewing order when watching the series. But even that viewing order conflicts with this novelization, which places “The Dalotek Affair” before “Survival.” Meanwhile for both the suggested viewing order and this tie-in novel, “Computer Affair” occurs first, yet per the Pop Apostle site I linked to above, “Computer Affair” seems to take place later than most other episodes, given references in the episode to the year. At the end of “Computer Affair” a character takes up a bottle of wine, looks at the label, and remarks, “1984, what a year,” or something to that effect. Clearly this means 1984 is in the past, so it must be at least ’85 (or they just serve really cheap wine at this particular restaurant – or hell maybe wines in this “future” have expiration dates!). Meanwhile “The Dalotek Affair” is stated as taking place in 1981. 

Anyway. The first forty pages of Sporting Blood are devoted to “Computer Affair,” probably one of the slowest-paced episodes in the entire series. In this one Alec Freeman is tasked with figuring out what’s going on at Moonbase, and ultimately determines there’s a blossoming romance between busty Lt. Gay Ellis and burly Lt. Mark Bradley (Harry Baird), one of the Interceptor fighter pilots on the base. Ellis happens to be white and Bradley happens to be black, but this is not a concern – in fact it isn’t even mentioned – for SHADO. Rather, it’s that this romance could conflict with duty and cause havoc. In fact race isn’t even mentioned in the book until the final story novelized, “Survival,” where Bradley is offered the opportunity to command Moonbase and is concerned his skin color automatically prevents him from this honor – a concern just as quickly dashed as it is raised. 

It's pretty slow going. Robert Miall proves posthaste that he is more interested in the inner turmoil of his characters, particularly that of Alec Freeman, than he is in catering to a sci-fi action vibe. The majority of this opening section keeps Freeman in center stage, which makes his sudden disappearance later on in the novel a bit bumpy for the reader. Here he flies in to Moonbase, ponders how friggin’ hot all these Moonbase chicks are, and then tut-tuts the burgeoning romance between these two young people who are trapped up here on a base separated from the Earth on a mission so secret that can’t even tell their closest family members about it. When another astronaut is killed during a fight against a UFO (the entire sequence as well from Freeman’s perspective, even though he’s safe and sound on Moonbase), it’s back to Earth for some computer-assisted psychological testing of Ellis and Bradley. 

Here we get some of the shrill and unlikeable Straker, who alternately bosses Freeman around and then worries over a UFO that’s landed in the wilds of Canada. Even the ensuing “Shado mobile” action is relayed from Freeman’s perspective. But humorously, just as in the actual episode, the Ellis-Bradley romance is passed off as being okay, and indeed the two don’t even kiss or anything…nothing more than an exchange of words…and also the two characters never even appeared in an episode together again! Miall even makes their romance less of a thing than the episode did; the episode ends with an Earthbound Ellis and Bradley in a restaurant, and Bradley’s the one who makes the remark on the wine bottle that’s dated 1984. Miall cuts this scene from the novel. 

This could be because the dates don’t jibe; Miall inserts dialog in the opening of the novel that “Computer Affair” takes place in November of 1981; Lt. Ellis makes the announcement that Mark Bradley was born in November of 1952, “twenty-nine years ago,” which would go against the “1984” reference in the actual televised episode. But then, Miall himself goofs; the second story novelized here, “The Dalotek Affair,” is set in April of 1981 – the date mentioned both in the episode itself and in this novelization – even though Miall has the story taking place after “Computer Affair.” 

Speaking of which, we are sort of thrust directly into “The Dalotek Affair,” not to mention we are suddenly given a new main character: Colonel Paul Foster, virile alpha male type who really was the closest thing to the show’s action lead. Memorably portrayed by Micheal Billington (who apparently was frequently short-listed for the role of 007), Foster when we meet him is commanding Moonbase in place of Lt. Ellis, who we are informed is still Earthbound due to a cold she picked up. Of course, none of this is in the actual episode. This story is my favorite of the three here, and the episode is good as well, if for no other reason than the majority of it takes place on the ultra-groovy Moonbase. This one concerns a mining combine called Dalotek which has insisted on getting to work on the moon, unaware – as is everyone in the world – that UFOs are a constant threat up here. 

But just as with Freeman, we here are often reminded how damn horny Foster is up on Moonbase, with all these chicks! And again all the groovy décor and escapism is ignored, Miall instead focusing on the dourness and the boredom of being stuck in this isolated base on a dead world. This is the closest the book gets to risque, though; one of the Dalotek people is a sexy babe named Jane Carson, and Foster is able to start something up with her even though she’s not on Moonbase and he has to drive across the lunar surface to see her. Miall changes a bit from the episode, though; in that, we know from the start that Jane does not remember Foster due to an “amnesia pill” she’s been given, and the entire episode is a flashback on Foster’s part. Miall ignores that and shows it all as it happens, but with a darker edge – in the climax, Jane does not know she’s about to be given an amnesia pill (so as to forget about SHADO and UFOs), and Foster, about to bed Jane, feels just a little guilty about it. I mean it’s basically a UFO roofie. 

Otherwise “The Dalotek Affair” is slight on the action front, as most every episode of UFO is. Again it’s more down to the turmoil and the arguing, with Straker in “one of his moods” and ranting and raving on Earth and Foster blaming the Dalotek people for causing various SHADO crashes on the Moon. It turns out to be an alien plot, of course – and here Robert Miall cleverly ties things together with the ensuing story, “Survival.” This one also stars Foster, and also is primarily set on the groovy Moonbase; the opening of the episode is very colorful in this regard, with Foster and a pal hanging out in an ultramod rec room and getting drunk before a window blows and Foster’s pal dies via decompression. Miall has it that this pal is the replacement astronaut for the one killed in “The Computer Affair,” and also the alien who shoots out the window was dropped by the UFO that inexplicably came and went in “The Dalotek Affair.” 

Regardless, here’s the goof – when the dead astronaut is given a space funeral, it’s mentioned that the date is April, 1981. Meanwhile Miall had “Computer Affair” as occuring in November of ’81. At any rate this one’s plot is a prefigure of the ‘80s sci-fi movie Enemy Mine, concerning as it does Foster and the alien stuck together on the harsh terrain of the Moon and having to work together to survive. Before that though we have an angry Foster going Earthbound for a bit to seek out Jane Carson for a little nookie – only to be turned down cold, as she has no memory of him. (An incident which, as mentioned, occurs in the beginning of the televised “The Dalotek Affair.”) Then he goes over to his girlfriend’s place for some off-page lovin’, and here we get Miall’s one reference to the show’s groovy décor, Foster noting the “psychostyle painting” in his girlfriend’s apartment. 

Another interesting thing about “Survival” is that it was the last appearance of Harry Baird as Lt. Mark Bradley; any appearances after this were just recycled footage. What’s curious is that “Surival,” both the episode and here in the novel, features a go-nowhere subplot where Straker, thinking Foster is dead, offers Bradley the opportunity to command Moonbase. Bradley accepts…and does nothing but send out a Moon mobile that will ultimately discover Foster is still alive…and Foster will resume command of Moonbase. Bradley as Moonbase commander is never mentioned again, either in the novel or in the show, and given that Bradley wasn’t featured in any other episodes (other than recycled footage, that is!), it almost gives the indication that the dude got pissed off and quit. 

Anyway, “Survival” is also slow paced, and the Foster-alien journey across the Moon isn’t just rigorous for them; it’s boring as hell to watch, let alone read. As I say, UFO was incredibly static and probably would best be appreciated after downing a few tranquilizers. But man it looks great…though as mentioned many, many times now, the “look” of the show is the one thing Robert Miall fails to deliver. That said, he clearly intended to write another novelization at least: Sporting Blood ends with Straker and Freeman discussing their concerns about a SHADO agent named Roper (and Roper’s wife), and they also decide to send Paul Foster to the seabound SHADO vehicle Skydiver for “three months.” These are direct references to the episodes “Flight Path” and “Ordeal,” and presumably these would have been two of the stories that Miall would’ve novelized in a UFO #3

Monday, February 27, 2023

Lion’s Fire (The Year Of The Ninja Master #2)


Lions Fire, by Wade Barker
April, 1985  Warner Books

If you’re looking for an ‘80s ninja fest with guys in black costumes jumping through the air and slashing at each other with swords, then you’ll likely be disappointed in this second installment of The Year Of The Ninja Master. But if you’re looking for a quasi-mystical excursion into unfathomable prose, plus a lot of travelogue about Isreal, then chances are you’re gonna love it! 

But man, it’s becoming increasingly hard to believe that this is the same Ric Meyers who wrote the awesome Ninja Master #2: Mountain Of Fear. (On the other hand, it is easy to believe it’s the same Ric Meyers who wrote Book Of The Undead #1: Fear Itself.)  With this four-volume sequel series, it’s as if Meyers wanted to drop the pulp action of Ninja Master and go for more of an Eric Lustbader vibe. And as I think even my six-year-old kid could tell you, that was a mistake. I mean I can appreciate that Meyers wanted to do more than just a sleazy cash-in on ‘80s ninja action, but at the same time that’s exactly what I want this series to be. Instead he’s gone for a strange, almost surreal vibe, a very dark one, and in the process has dropped the entire “ninja vigilante” setup of Ninja Master

Anyway, it takes us quite a bit of time to learn this, but Lion’s Fire takes place two years after first volume Dragon Fire. The setup for The Year Of The Ninja Master appears to concern the former Brett Wallace, the hero of the previous series, now calling himself “Daremo” and on the run from his former friends while waging war on some shadowy ninja overlord sort of group that is behind world events. Or something. But Ric Meyers is one of those men’s adventure authors who wants to write about everyone except for the series protagonist; in truth, Daremo only appears on a handful of pages. The true protagonist, as with Dragon Fire, is Jeff Archer, now sometimes arbitrarily referred to as “Yasuru” (Japanese for “archer”). This series could more accurately be titled The Year of the Ninja Master’s Student

Meyers took poor Archer through the wringer last time, hitting him with a crippling nerve disease (that caused him to shit himself repeatedly!) and then having him beaten up throughout the book. So in the climactic events of Dragon Fire, a South American shaman-type localized Archer’s nerve disease in his left arm, so now Archer goes around with a limp left arm and must fight one-handed. It soon becomes evident that Meyers is inspired by the various “one-armed swordsman” movies in ‘70s kung-fu cinema; despite only having one arm, Archer is of course more deadly than most everyone he meets, and there are lots of parts where he takes on several opponents who understimate this one-armed guy. 

The action picks up in Isreal, and will stay there for the entire narrative. Archer doesn’t even appear until about a hundred pages in – as with the previous book, this one’s a too-long 287 pages – and the protagonist of the first hundred pages isn’t even anyone we’ve met before, but a sexy Israeli female cop by the name of Rachel. Meyers introduces sleaze to the series with an opening in which Rachel picks up some dude on the road – not knowing or caring that he happens to be a Muslim terrorist – and takes him back to a cabin for some sexual tomfoolery. After which a crying Rachel cuts her own thigh. The lady has some mental turmoils, and we learn that this “pick up a guy, screw him, then cut her thigh” thing is a recurring schtick for Ms. Rachel. 

The reader can’t help but wonder what any of this has to do with ninjas. It gets even more involved with Rachel getting in a firefight with some terrorist-types and her colleagues getting wiped out. There’s also the revelation of a plot involving nuclear armageddon. It’s all like a different series. Occasionally we will have murky cutovers to Daremo, who himself is in Israel, surrounded by an “army of dead” who exist in his mind – the ghosts of everyone he has killed. There is an attempt at pseudo-Revelations imagery with talk of a “Hooded Man” and metaphysical confrontations of the Lion taking on the Dragon and etc, etc. I mean it’s all very weird, and on a different level than the previous series. 

Oh and adding to that Biblical vibe, we get a lot of stuff about the Biblical Rachel. I mean a lot of it. And a lot of incessant travelogue about Isreal. We also get that Meyers staple of a female character being depredated; Rachel is captured and tortured by terrorists who grill her for info. And yes of course this part features the recurring Meyers motif of the female character being gagged. However she’s saved by the “cloaked one,” Daremo himself, who somehow is drawn to Rachel and has been shadowing her…if I understood all the metaphysics correctly, it’s because Rachel’s estranged husband is like a nuclear scientist or something, who might be part of that nuclear attack subplot. Also, there’s a wildly unbelievable reveal toward the end of the novel of who has been posing for the past several months as Rachel’s husband. 

On page 87 the actual protagonist of the series shows up: Jeff Archer, standing there along the road in Israel with his limp left arm and getting a ride from Rachel. Somehow he’s become fluent in Hebrew since the last volume. Meyers really goes to some odd places with these two characters. Essentially, they fall in love over the span of a few days – but it’s a cosmic sort of love…one that actually entails them being able to speak to each other telepathically. Yes, read that again. A little past midway through the book the two are sending each other their thoughts and communicating mentally and it’s…well, it’s just lame. While the sex is mostly off-page, there is infrequent action, with Archer displaying his one-armed skills against various opponents. A memorable action scene occurs in a “harlot” encampment. 

But where is Daremo, aka the protagonist once known as Brett Wallace? He’s here and there. He mostly appears for a few pages intermittently, getting in weird pseudo-apocalyptic battles with the Chinese ninja who was posing as Brett Wallace in the previous volume. This villain even has his own quasi-Biblical name: The Figure In Black, and as described he sounds like the second-wave version of Snake-Eyes, from the mid-‘80s: the one in the black costume with the visor over his eyes. This is exactly how the Figure In Black is described. He almost kicks Daremo’s ass in a desert battle, and the intimation is that he is the representative of the ninja world order that wants Brett Wallace/Daremo dead. 

Speaking of which, on page 225 Rhea and Hama show up, aka Brett’s former girlfriend and colleague, respectively. As we’ll recall, in Dragon Rising Hama was retconned into being this guy who hated the hell out of Brett Wallace and Jeff Archer, resenting these white guys from infringing on Japanese-only ninjutsu. He continues acting in the role of villain here, blindly following the whims of ninja tradition, which demands that Daremo be killed for disrespecting the clan. Meanwhile Rhea just stands around blinking away the tears and not doing anything else – a far cry from the tough ninja-babe she was in Ninja Master. These two get in a quick fight with Archer – who is again fighting in place of Daremo – and here Archer shows off some surprise skills with his limp left arm. Regardless, it’s annoying because this entire Hama-Rhea subplot just comes off as a nuissance. 

But then, the entire plot of Lion’s Fire is a nuissance. Meyers really goes hard for the metaphysical stuff with Archer and Rachel suffering some sort of mind-explosion that cancels out their short-lived telepathic abilities, there’s that lame and unbelievable reveal of who’s been posing as Rachel’s husband, and the book ends with everyone in the exact same place they were in at the start: Daremo is still off in the shadows, hiding from everyone, Archer is obediently pursuing him – and fighting for him, and Rhea and Hama are duty-bound to kill them both. 

Surprisingly, there was another four-volume series after The Year Of The Ninja Master, this one titled War Of The Ninja Master. Hopefully these later volumes drop the pseudo-mysticism and get back to the vibe of the original series. Even Vengeance Is His was better than this!

Thursday, January 5, 2023

Nightblood


Nightblood, by T. Chris Martindale
January, 1990  Warner Books

I’ve wanted to read this one for a long time. First of all, I think I am legally obligated to note that Nightblood is First Blood meets Salem’s Lot. You will see this claim in practically every review of the book. Hell, the novel is compared to Morrell on the first page, in a blurb from novelist J.N. Williamson. And as it turns out, there is truth to this claim…as Nightblood is really just First Blood meets Salem’s Lot

It’s been over thirty years since I read Salem’s Lot; as a teen in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s I went through the expected Stephen King phase…hell, I even subscribed to the Stephen King Book Club. I read Salem’s Lot at this time and I recall loving it, and I think it was even my favorite King novel for some time. To this day I’ve never seen the ‘70s movie based on it, and also my memory of the novel is now dim. Literally the only part I remember is where a guy tries to use a cross to stop a vampire and King builds up the tension – only for it to turn out the cross doesn’t work because the guy is faking his belief. And hey guess what, a scene just like that is here in Nightblood! 

So yeah, the story is pretty much identical: vampires, led by a powerful king vampire, take over a small town in the US. The First Blood comparison comes in the form of the novel’s protagonist, Chris Stiles, a ‘Nam shit-kicker who now goes around the country in a van at the behest of his brother (who is a ghost!), fighting “Evil” with Uzis and a katana and pipe bombs and etc. It’s a great idea…and I seem to recall at one point it was rumored that Sylvester Stallone was considering taking his Rambo franchise into supernatural territory…wasn’t one of the rumored Rambo V plots about him taking on vampires or something along those lines? 

The only problem is, Chris Stiles is no John J. Rambo. In fact, the dude comes off poorly in his first – and only – book. He makes one mistake after another, gets knocked out and captured a bunch. Hell, it turns out he has a penchant for reading Romance novels. What the fuck kind of vampire-kicking hero is that?? Plus the guy’s name sucks, I mean “Chris Stiles” sounds more like an insurance agent, or even worse a Hollywood actor…the name has none of the impact of a “Rambo” or even a “Bolan.” I mean maybe if his name was Johnny Stiles, or heck even Connor Stiles…but I digress. It’s also kind of funny that author T. Chris Martindale named his vampire-busting hero “Chris.” 

At 322 pages of small, dense print, Nightblood is more concerned with characterization and suspense than I would have suspected about a novel featuring an Uzi-bearing vampire hunter. One thing I appreciated was that Martindale didn’t waste our time with background; we meet Stiles while he’s already been in the game for some time, and there’s no setup with him in Vietnam and etc. In fact the back cover gives us more detail on this than the novel itself does, at least at first. But the long and short of it is that Stiles and his brother Alex were both in ‘Nam, and Alex was killed by something over there, and now Alex’s ghost occasionally comes to chat with Stiles, telling him that “Evil” is manifesting in such and such a place. It’s up to Stiles to load up his Uzis and go kick Evil’s ass. 

Driving around in his van, it’s hard not to see Stiles as a horror paperback equivalent of Traveler…again with the caveat that Stiles goofs up a whole bunch for someone who has been doing this so long. He poses as a handyman, or occasionally as a writer, and when we meet him Alex’s ghost has appeared and told Stiles to hie the hell hence to Isherwood, Indiana, a small town in which Evil is coming up. Alex even has the name “Danner” for Stiles to look into. Speaking of equivalents, Danner will be the equivalent of the king vampire in Salem’s Lot

And friends Martindale is very on the level that he’s been inspired by King; there’s a part where we are informed that Stiles dealt with “heavy vampire activity” in Maine…which happens to also be the setting of Salem’s Lot. The King comparisons also come in the form of the hardscrabble smalltown yokels Stiles hobknobs with. Just kidding – I grew up in a town smaller than Isherwood so I am quite familiar with hardscrabble smalltown yokels. (Here is evidence to support that claim.) Speaking of my Stephen King-reading teen days, I still recall this older guy at the time who always got drunk with my uncle Jim…can’t remember the guy’s name but I remember him once sneering at me, “Are you still readin’ them Stephen King books?" I mean the way he asked it, it was like he was asking if I was still mainlining heroin. 

It's also to Martindale’s credit that he gets to the action quick. Stiles heads into Isherwood, makes friendly eyes at busty waitress Billie at the local diner, and that night he’s out on Danner’s property and shooting up the vampire himself. Now meanwhile Billie’s kids, teen Bart and 11 year-old Delbert, have snuck onto Danner’s property…and end up running into the vampire. These two kids seem to have come out of The Monster Squad in how they are little Monster Kids quite aware of vampires and whatnot – so at least for those two there’s none of the “vampires don’t exist!” schtick that will take up the brunt of the ensuing novel. 

But here’s the thing. Stiles gets Danner dead bang, just blitzting the shit out of him with a laserscoped machine gun…and then lets the mutilated, cut-down vampire run off into the darkened woods. Del and Bart plead with him to go finish off the vampire, but Stiles is like, nah, it’s all good. Of course, this will turn out to be incorrect, and perhaps Martindale was hoping to show how even an experienced vampire hunter could be surprised by a true king vampire, but the truth of it is, this makes Stiles come off like a buffoon. I mean if you’ve chopped the vampire down to pieces, finish the job there and then, don’t be cocky about it and assume the daylight will finish the job. 

So this sets in motion the Salem’s Lot stuff. I was not prepared for the “small town minds” ethic that Nightblood would appropriate (that phrase, by the way, is the title of a book my mom always wanted to write about the town I grew up in…I’ll steal it someday). I mean what I’m saying is, there’s a ton of stuff about the various hardscrabble smalltown yokels, and for lots of sequences Chris Stiles disappears. Or he’s sleeping. Seriously. I was hoping there’d be some actual Monster Squad fun, with Martindale at least focusing on Del and Bart, but they too don’t do much. I did appreciate the bit where their mother Billie considers reading their copies of Famous Monsters of Filmland for research. 

It's these sorts of fun touches that are for the most part missing in Nightblood, making the novel a bit too listless for the action onslaught I expected. The book is also repetitive. The entire middle and final half is comprised of various scenarios in which Stiles corners Danner, or Danner corners Stiles, but one or the other will escape. I mean Stiles gets the drop on Danner several times, even blowing him up at one point, but the vampire keeps getting away – and coming back stronger than ever. And hell now that I think of it, Danner also comes off like a dolt in the book. He too makes several mistakes, underestimating Stiles…there’s even a part where the mega horrible king vampire is afraid of running into Stiles. 

There is at least action…and also Stiles takes a lot of damage, but again it’s due to his own shortsightedness. Like the part where Danner totally captures him, breaking a few of Stiles’s fingers and even about to make Stiles suck him off, but our hero is saved by…a ghost. I mean this is literally the only time in a novel where I’ve encountered “ghost vs vampire;” I don’t think Bewitched even ventured into that territory. And again, main baddie Danner runs away from the ghost. It’s all very puzzling because it’s like Martindale keeps belittling his own protagonist and antagonist. 

The finale takes a page from William W. Johnstone, with the town cut off from the world and overrun by Satan’s minions, save for a few plucky survivors. More First Blood stuff here with Stiles teaching people how to set traps and make bombs and whatnot. There’s also a cool part where Stiles has to dash for safety past several vampires, armed with a katana, and starts lopping them apart. Mainly though he does his fighting with his guns. There’s also a fun part where Del tries to pass himself off as a vampire with fake blood and fake vampire teeth. But again the novel is undone by the repetitious confrontations between Danner and Stiles…made even worse that Danner’s ultimate defeat is made possible by a newly-introduced character. 

Martindale also gets props for working in a subtle First Blood allusion. Those who have read Morrell’s novel will recall that Rambo and his trainer Trautman begin to share a psychic bond, knowing what one another think. Stiles and Danner begin to experience the same situation. I thought that was cool, but I didn’t think it was cool that there was no naughty stuff in the book. Stiles and Billie develop feelings for one another, but there’s no gratuitous part where they consumate their burning yearnings. I mean Stiles does goes to bed several times in the novel, but it’s just to sleep. The poor guy’s tuckered out from searching the town all day for Danner’s resting place. 

Overall though, Nightblood does sort of capture the First Blood meets Salem’s Lot vibe, with the caveat that it’s not as good as either of those novels, coming off as too similar to the latter and with a hero who compares poorly to the hero of the former.

Thursday, April 21, 2022

Dragon Rising (The Year Of The Ninja Master #1)


Dragon Rising, by Wade Barker
January, 1985  Warner Books

It’s not noted on the cover or in the book, but this is actually the first volume of The Year Of The Ninja Master. The first page does state that this is “The Year Of The Ninja Master: Spring,” so I guess Warner was using seasons instead of numbers to differentiate the volumes of the series. At any rate this is the followup series to Ninja Master, with Ric Meyers serving as “Wade Barker” for the entire four-volume series (as well as the four-volume series that followed this one, War Of The Ninja Master). 

Dragon Rising takes place “two years, almost to the day” after the final installment of Ninja MasterOnly The Good Die. Meyers refers to that volume, as well as many other volumes of Ninja Master, throughout this novel, so it would certainly help to have read that earlier series before reading this book. Curiously though Warner Books makes no mention of Ninja Master on the cover or back cover, etc. The title on the back cover states that “Brett Wallace is the Ninja Master,” but otherwise there’s no mention that hey, this is a sequel to an eight-volume series we published a few years ago. Also the publisher has clearly packaged this sequel series differently; gone are the action-focused cover paintings of Ninja Master, replaced with a fairly generic “ninja silhouette” cover theme by Gene Light. Also this novel is a good hundred pages longer than those earlier books; each volume of The Year Of The Ninja Master and War Of The Ninja Master comes in around 280 pages. The print’s pretty big, though, so we aren’t exactly talking a Russian epic here. My take from this is that Warner was trying to cater more so to readers of Eric Lustbader’s The Ninja than to readers of, say, The Executioner

However Dragon Rising makes for a pretty frustrating read for anyone who enjoyed Ninja Master, as the “heroes” of that previous series spend the entire friggin’ novel trying to kill each other. The close-knit group who took on scumbag psycho killers in the earlier books are now mortal enemies; Brett “Ninja Master” Wallace has become a psychopath, his student Jeff Archer has been cast adrift, Brett’s gal Rhea is now a spurned woman who cries all the time, and cook Hama is revealed to be a “judge” whose job is to monitor Brett for the ninja family that trained him…and to kill Brett for dishonoring the family. I don’t remember anything about Hama from the other volumes, but he did feature prominently in Only The Good Die, so my assumption is Meyers used that final volume as his springboard for The Year Of The Ninja Master. Because as it turns out, the events of that final volume – which featured Brett and team taking on a trio of vigilantes who were killing innocents in addition to criminals – really messed up hero Brett Wallace. 

Now he is plagued with nightmares, in which he sees himself shooting the lawyer who was the boss of those vigilantes. There’s a definite horror vibe to this novel, with lots of visions and nightmares, and even a metaphysical bent that becomes more prominent. There’s even a veritable cockroach attack in the final pages, not to mention the appearance of the Aztec lord of the dead. But then a very dark vibe permeates the book. This is not a fun read by any means. Our heroes from that earlier series are truly messed up now; fighting their own demons in between fighting each other. Jeff Archer takes the brunt of it, riddled with a disease called “Huter’s chorea” which causes him to go into frequent seizures in which he is reduced to rolling around on the floor while he spouts gibberish and pisses and shits himself. Oh and there’s no cure…he’ll just get worse and worse and then lose his mind. So it’s like Meyers was just really in a bad mood when he wrote this one and decided to take it out on the characters. 

And they really do try to kill each other throughout the novel. Hama and Rhea will try to kill Archer (as Meyers refers to Jeff, so I’ll start doing the same) even when he’s in the hospital…there’s a part where Hama’s about to chop Archer’s head off even when Archer is convulsing on the floor (once again shitting himself…there’s even more of a “shit your pants” fetish here than the average William Crawford novel). And meanwhile Brett Wallace has become a terse cipher who realizes he enjoys killing and getting away with it. It’s like the characters have nothing in common with their earlier incarnations. Hama here is a stubborn defender of the clan, and also it’s revealed that he and Archer basically hate each other…this before the developments of the plot cause them to start trying to kill each other. Rhea meanwhile is also affected; established as a ninja babe in the earlier books, here she basically does nothing but cry over Brett…or help Hama try to kill Archer. But then, Meyers has never seemed to know what to do with Rhea. He seems to prefer female characters who are tied up and subjugated (as Rhea herself was in the final volume of the earlier series), and it’s kind of hard to do that when the female character in question is supposed to be a “born ninja.” So Meyers basically just keeps Rhea off-page so he doesn’t have to deal with a strong female character. For this volume, at least. 

I mentioned in my review of Only The Good Die that the finale was a bit off-putting, as it featured Brett Wallace torturing one of his enemies to death. Again Meyers has used this as a springboard, as we learn that Brett was very affected by his encounter with the Gun Club (ie the trio of vigilantes), given that he realized their modus operandi wasn’t much different from his own. We’re to understand that Brett’s increasing sense of loss over this has led to a rift in the “Wallace school,” with the four characters now opposed. Ultimately we’ll learn that the breakdown is this: Brett himself has embraced his dark side, uncaring how his former friends feel about it; Archer has been cast aside, loyal to his sensei Brett, but shut out by him; Rhea too has been shut out by Brett (we learn that Brett told Rhea to stop sleeping with him months ago!); and Hama has resolved to “judge” Brett for dishonoring the clan and thus execute him. Rhea will go along with this, given that she was born into this clan and represents it just as Hama does. 

The only part in the novel that seems reminiscent of Ninja Master is a fun early sequence where Brett, dressed up like a gas station attendant, pulls off a daring dayling hit on a mobster. As ever Meyers excels in featuring unexpected weapons; Brett makes his kill with a sharpened credit card, which he hurls like a throwing star. But even here the darkness descends; Brett makes his escape in a sewer tunnel, chased by a pair of Mafia goons, and kills them sadistically. But when one of them starts crying in fear as he dies, Brett realizes what he has become. There is a surreal texture to the entire novel; this sequence climaxes with Brett wandering around a desolate part of San Francisco, where he randomly comes across a pedophile about to rape a little girl. Brett almost casually kills the guy…and then wonders if he imagined the whole thing. After this he realizes that he has become a “magnet;” it was a million to one chance that he would come across a pedophile in action, so Brett reflects that now sick people find him so as to be killed. 

After this though the novel becomes a steady beating in which Archer becomes the main protagonist and goes through various levels of hell. This starts in another off-putting sequence where Rhea, Hama, and Archer finally put aside their hatred of one another to confront Brett in his dojo. There they find the Ninja Master waiting for them in full ninja gi, complete with black goggles hiding his eyes – and he immediately goes on the attack. Like literally trying to kill them. Rhea in particular he seems to relish in beating unmerciful, and trying to kill her even when he’s in the middle of combat with Hama or Archer. Curiously though, he keeps using Chinese styles, which is odd for a man trained in Japanese ninjutsu. Just when the reader can’t take anymore of this, the real Brett Wallace magically appears – turns out it wasn’t him in that ninja gi – and fights to defend his former friends. It all ends with everyone practically dead, Brett and the fake Brett taking off, and the dojo burning down. 

The narrative picks up eight months later and Archer’s in a special hospital or somesuch, and we learn that it’s been a hard road to recovery for him. Plus he finds out he’s contracted the apparently-fictitious Hunter’s chorea. The cop who appeared in Ninja Master #6 interrogates Archer, trying to pin the dojo fire and “deaths” of Hama and Rhea on him…and then meanwhile the real Hama and Rhea show up in Archer’s room that night and try to kill Archer. Man, it’s a real beating to read as these former friends try to kill each other. As mentioned, Hama even prepares to chop off Archer’s head when Archer goes into one of his pissing-and-shitting-his-pants seizures. But Archer manages to convince the two to let him go, as he claims to know where Brett Wallace is. 

Here Archer becomes the main protagonist of the novel. And here too I picked up some bad flashbacks to the latter volumes of Jason Striker; a South American setting, ninjas, amnesia, mysticism (complete with visions of Aztec gods), and more shit-yourself escapades. (Shitscapades?) Archer goes through Mexico and on down into South America, at this point the novel becoming a travelogue. The chorea attacks him in waves, and there’s lots of stuff of him abruptly drooling on the floor as he, you guessed it, pisses and shits his pants. Curiously Meyers never notes that Archer washes his pants afterwards, but whatever. At length Archer finally reaches his destination: El Salvador, where Archer has figured out that Brett Wallace might be located. 

At this point the “ninja” stuff has been lost and it’s as if we’re reading the average ‘80s action novel; it’s all about Contras and Sandanistas and guys with M16s wearing camo. Archer runs afoul of various rebel groups and whatnot, at one point nearly dying (while suffering yet another shit-himself “spaz out,” naturally), and he comes to amid a pile of corpses. Eventually he stumbles upon another group of rebels – and among them is a white man with sandy hair and dead eyes who is none other than Brett Wallace. Yet we readers know that Brett Wallace is no more; something Ric Meyers dwells on, which I’d forgotten, is that Ninja Master #1 (which wasn’t even written by Meyers) established that “Brett Wallace” was originally named Brian Williams. This was his birth name, and he only became Brett Wallace after returning to the US as a ninja to gain vengeance. As such, Brett Wallace was just another disguise, and it’s now been dropped. 

The former Brett Wallace now refers to himself as “Daremo” (and presumably will for the rest of this series and the next). This is Japanese for “Nobody.” Archer learns this when the American commando working with the rebels informs him that “the new guy,” ie Brett, is named “Dare Moe.” However there’s a problem with this. I studied Japanese in high school and spent a semester of college in Japan, and while I’ve forgotten a lot of the language I still know Japanese pronunciation. Daremo is pronounced “daahrey mo.” There’s absolutely no way an English speaker could mishear “daahrey” as the English word “dare.” And yet this American commando, Frank Bender, states that the new guy’s first name is Dare. Anyway this is a minor quibble – I mean we’re talking about a surreal ninja yarn – but it still bugged me. 

Even here though there is no emotional reunion between student and sensei. Daremo is a cipher, and doesn’t even seen touched that Archer has traveled all the way to El Salvador to find him. Hell, Daremo doesn’t even seem much bothered by the whole Hunter’s chorea thing. There’s even more ‘80s-style action combat here, as Daremo, Archer, and Bender get in various firefights. Also the mysticism becomes more pronounced, with Archer stating that he and Daremo “share the same nightmare.” In fact Archer suspects that the Hunter’s chorea was intended for Daremo, but Archer got it instead. The two will occasionally go into seizures, victims of metaphysical psychic attacks. And also Daremo is determined to find an ancient Aztec temple called Milarepa, where he thinks he will find the answers to what is going on. 

There is a horror element to Dragon Rising, particularly in the last quarter. After surviving several hellish battles, Daremo and Archer arrive in the remote Milarepa location. Meyers delivers memorable horror-esque moments here, like terrorists in hoods and infrared goggles hiding beneath cockroaches, and coming out from under them with AK-47s blasting. There’s also a creepy bit where the two ninja heroes must wade through a tunnel of cockroaches. Milarepa is this hellish place where terrorists, led by a white man and woman, use sound wave technology to brainwash and train recruits. Lots of splatterhouse-type stuff here, with people being ripped apart and tortured and whatnot, and meanwhile Archer gets laid by the lady in charge of the operation. But it’s more repugnant than sleazy (plus Meyers doesn’t elaborate on it at all), with the girl smiling afterwards, “I’ll think of you during the abortion.” 

The horror vibe gets stronger as Daremo and Archer, inspired by yet more Aztec god visions, hack and slash their way to freedom. Despite all the violence, though, this isn’t a very gory novel, as Meyers usually doesn’t get into the grisly details. Instead he peppers the action narrative with a lot of martial arts terminology. Given that we’re at the end of the novel, Rhea and Hama magically appear, having tracked Archer here…and so too appears the mysterious “fake Brett” ninja from earlier in the novel. After another battle between him and Daremo, the ninja escapes – the representative of a Chinese clan that has vowed to destroy the “Brett Wallace family.” Apparently the gist here is that all the festering bad blood among Daremo, Archer, Rhea, and Hama has been due to the psychic attacks from these Chinese ninja, or something. 

At novel’s end Daremo feels reborn, though there is absolutely nothing redemptive for him in the climax, at least nothing the reader experiences vicariously through the narrative. All of his former friends are out cold: Rhea and Hama knocked out during the melee, and Archer again suffering from his various medical misfortunes. The chief priest of Milarepa however claims that he can cure Archer, though Archer will need to stay at the temple for quite some time. Presumably Archer, Hama, and Rhea will return to the series at some point, but so far as Daremo’s concerned it’s so long to the old crew, and he rushes off to his new destiny alone. We’re informed that the season of “Summer” has now begun, which wouldn’t you know it is the subtitle of the following volume. 

I continue to struggle with Ric Meyers’s narrative style. He creates effective imagery, but at the same time doesn’t properly exploit it. At times the novel almost comes off like a screenplay, with little insight into the motivations or reactions of the various characters. It’s basically a lot of flat declarative sentences with little emotional content. And also Meyers still POV-hops like crazy, going in and out of various character perspectives with zero warning. What I mean to say is, no line breaks or anything to let the reader know that we’re suddenly in someone else’s thoughts. Actually as I read Dragon Rising it occurred to me that what I dislike about Meyers’s style is that he seems to write with the assumption that the reader knows what he is thinking; there isn’t much attempt at bringing anything to life or explaining anything, so that we readers feel we are missing out on a portion of the story. 

Overall this one was cool if you like ‘80s ninja action mixed with splatterpunk horror, but the outline-esque writing style kind of ruined it for me, and the storyline of these former friends trying to kill each other left the bitter-sour taste of defeat in my mouth.

Monday, March 21, 2022

Ninja Master #8: Only The Good Die


Ninja Master #8: Only The Good Die, by Wade Barker
May, 1983  Warner Books

Once again I’ve taken years to get back to the Ninja Master series. This final volume is courtesy Ric Meyers, who after Ninja Master wrapped up spun hero Brett Wallace and crew out into two ensuing series: Year Of The Ninja Master and War Of The Ninja Master. Initially it seemed to me that Meyers was just rewriting his previous volume here, with Brett up against a trio of psychopaths, but as it turns out Only The Good Die is a bit more complex…and muddled. 

Maybe it’s my new contacts, which require me to wear friggin’ readers to even see the words on the page, but this time I found Meyers’s prose a bit too hard to follow. Some of his sentence structures I thought were a bit awkward, particularly in the action scenes, which often pulled me out of the moment. In fact I get the impression that he wrote Only The Good Die on a tight turnaround. The plot is also as jumbled, opening as it does with a trio of psychopaths killing some poor young girl (a recurring Meyers staple if ever there was one – that, and jamming an s&m rubber ball in the mouth of the girls before their torture). But then this ghoulish opening incident is completely ignored until very late in the novel. The result is that the reader keeps wondering who the hell those three psychopaths were and how their story ties in with the novel itself. 

So serial killers torturing and then offing young women is a thing with Meyers; that’s been established in every other book of his I’ve read. This installment opens with three separate chapters in which three separate women experience brutal fates: in the first, and most squirm-induing, a young black girl in New York is abducted by those three psychopaths and driven off to her death. In the second, a successful businesswoman in New York is pushed in front of an oncoming train. And in the third, a young Japanese girl is burned alive when a gang war breaks out in a New York club, the place being set on fire in the melee. Nothing connects these three atrocities, and Meyers does his best to confuse readers by next jumping into another seemingly-random chapter, where a bald and muscular Chinese dude barges into an apartment filled with New York lowlifes and starts beating the shit out of them. 

Eventually we’ll learn that this is Hama, the cook “at the Rhea Dawn in Sausalito,” ie the Rhea who is the Japanese beloved of series protagonist Brett Wallace. Not that Brett still bothers to show up, though. Instead, Hama seems to be the star of the show, next wading into another group of gangsters, these ones Chinese triads, in a Manhattan movie theater. Meyers here indulges in his own interest in martial arts cinema, with mentions of the Shaw Brothers and Japanese samurai movies. And finally, on page 60, the Ninja Master himself appears, slipping out of a hole he’s cut in the film screen with his ninja sword and taking out the triads who have gotten the better of Hama. At length we’ll find out that the young Chinese girl killed in chapter three was Hama’s niece, and a vengeance-minded Hama headed for New York without informing anyone. Brett, Rhea, and Brett’s student Jeff Archer quickly followed him. 

This is the setup. But it’s a clunky first quarter before we figure out what the heck is going on. And really, Meyers just turns the tale into a series of extended action scenes. Brett and team get in frequent clashes with various street punks, to the extent that you keep wondering what the point of it all is. And Brett too seems to wonder what the point is. For there is a muddled mystery at the heart of it all – the gang wars, the Triad club-burning in which Hama’s niece was one of the victims, and even those opening murders of the three women are all somehow connected. But this isn’t Agatha Christie we’re talking about. Instead the vast majority of Only The Good Die is comprised of Brett Wallace engaging a seemingly-endless series of New York punks in bloody combat. 

But the helluva it is, I found the action scenes so awkwardly handled. I constantly found myself having to re-read certain passages to determine what was going on. Maybe it’s just me, though. Meyers does include some fun stuff in the narrative. Brett kicks one guy in the crotch and we learn afterward that the guy’s “private parts looked like three-alarm chili.” And there’s a long sequence where Brett battles a “street mob” in a tenement building that’s very reminiscent of Able Team #8, only minus the auto shotguns and drug-mutated street punks. Brett hacks and slashes his way through an endless horde of punks, using a variety of ninja weaponry. In this sequence Brett learns that the punks aren’t just after him, but given that they’re members of rival gangs they’re trying to kill each other at the same time. There’s a crazy bit where Brett kills several of them in sixty seconds while they are occupied with fighting one another: “They were all biodegradable punks on a one-way trip.” 

Meyers introduces a nursery rhyme conceit to Only The Good Die, with occasional mentions of “The Butcher, The Baker, and The Candlestick Maker,”’ as well as “Jack jumped over the candlestick” and such. In fact the first-page preview would have you believe the Butcher, Baker, and Candlestick Maker – ie the three psychopaths in the opening sequence – will be the main villains of the tale. While that ultimately proves true, it isn’t until very late in the novel that we learn how it connects. And for that matter, this too is muddled, as it turns out the villains with nursery rhyme nicknames are really just underlings in this crazy army, not the leaders. For example the “Baker” turns out to be a psycho chick who gets off on being tortured, and who has lured Brett into this long tenement battle…again, it’s all very hazy and jumbled, but apparently “the Baker’s” bosses learned about this “Oriental” avenger who wiped out the Triads (ie Hama – though they think Hama is really Brett…or something), and this tenement attack has been staged to entrap him. 

I’m assuming in the ensuing series Meyers further elaborates on Rhea and Jeff; the former only has one memorable scene here, and the latter doesn’t do much except get shot (in the chest!). Rhea’s bit has her using “saimin jutsu” on a detective, a sort of seductive hypnotism which has the cop slackjawed at Rhea’s beauty and thus giving up confidential info to her. But for all this empowerment Rhea ultimately suffers the same fate as most other female characters in a Ric Meyers novel: she’s caught toward the end of the book, tied up, and shipped off to an “elegant sexual torture chamber,” which made me think of the swank sex chamber in the groovy film version of The Adventurers. And yes, a rubber ball is shoved down her throat when she’s tied up. I mean it just wouldn’t be a Ric Meyers novel if one wasn’t. As for Jeff Archer, I honestly thought he was killed in the finale; he gets shot in the chest and that’s the last we see of him, before Brett quickly exposits in the final chapter that Jeff’s seriously wounded but will recover. 

Meanwhile, the Candlestick Maker turns out to be aligned with the Black Liberation Army For Social Terrorism (which totally shouldn’t be confused with BLM); this group of black terrorists has taken credit for the nightclub fire that killed Hama’s niece. This entails another extended action scene, but one with a bit of a TNT flair, as Brett faces attack dogs in explosive vests in a TV studio. His sort-of companion here is Tommy Gun Parker, a mountain of muscle-type who is fond of wielding Mac subguns in each hand. While they start off as enemies, Parker being one of the thugs hired to kill Brett, they ultimately develop a sort of Lethal Weapon relationship of bantering. But speaking of Tommy Parker and Meyers’s sometimes-confusing prose style, check out this excerpt and tell me if you too think it’s a bit hard to follow what’s going on: 


Things wrap up in an estate outside the city where the three freaks from the opening paragraph finally return. And it turns out they aren’t psychos in the purest sense; indeed, they’ve been hiring “homicidal psychopaths” to do their dirty work in the city. And their dirty work is cleaning up the streets. These three men have suffered their share of misfortune due to rampant crime and have decided to go outside the law to restore law and order. To this end they’ve started a variety of gang wars, hoping to use their homicidal psychos to stir shit up. Of course, the resulting loss of innocent life is just seen as collateral damage. These are the guys who capture Rhea in the finale – despite her being an asskicking ninja babe in her own right – but Brett and Jeff are there to save the day. The final sequence is very odd, as Brett wants the main killer to suffer horribly, and tortures him via drowning. Overall a strange, somewhat off-putting way to finish off the Ninja Master series. 

A year or so later Brett Wallace was to return in Year Of The Ninja Master, also published by Warner. Since I took so long to read Ninja Master I think I’ll dive into the first volume of that next series posthaste.

Monday, February 21, 2022

Biofeedback


Biofeedback, by Marvin Karlins and Lewis M. Andrews
September, 1974  Warner Paperback Library

It doesn’t get much more “early ‘70s” than biofeedback; I mean just look at that girl’s frazzled hair on the cover. It practically epitomizes the post-Altamont comedown that followed the Aquarian Age. I’ve been interested in this subject for a long time but have never read much about it. I got this Warner paperback – which followed the original 1972 hardcover edition – some years ago, but have only now got around to reading it. The book definitely made an impact at the time; my edition, shown here, is the fourth paperback printing. So that’s a total of five printings in two years, counting the hardcover. 

The first I ever heard of biofeedback was in an old book, probably sometime in the late ‘90s. I bring this up because Biofeedback states in the opening: “To our children, biofeedback training will be as commonplace as television has become to us.” I guess I could be considered the “children” referenced here, given that I was born the month after this fourth paperback edition was published. And so I can confirm – no, biofeedback training did not become as commonplace as television. At least I’d never heard of it until coming across references in old books. But who knows, maybe others out there grew up listening to their own breathing on bizarre gadgetry and employing other high-tech gadgets to control various parts of their bodies, minds, or whatnot. 

Accordingly the book opens with a vaguely sci-fi intro in which we take a peek into a “voluntarium,” a biofeedback-equipped hospital of the future in which patients use machinery to conquer their own ailments. Biofeedback, we’ll learn, is the process of using “feedback from different parts of our body,” in other words listening to our body to figure out what is wrong with it. There’s quite a bit of Future Shock here, ie Alvin Toffler’s epochal study (which is even referenced in the text). That very ‘70s mentality of an oncoming future in which minds and bodies are united with technology. Again, the cover photo tells you pretty much all you need to know. 

Biofeedback runs to 190 pages, but only 138 pages are composed of narrative; the remaining pages are comrpised of notes and further reading suggestions. Much of the book is given over to the history of biofeedback research, and the training in action. The authors are specialists in this field, and occasionally deliver a personal insight, but for the most part they stick to a formal tone. That said, Biofeedback still manages to capture the groovy vibe of the era, particularly when the authors provide imaginary scenarios of how biofeedback training can be used. However it isn’t until near the end of the book that they give probably the best example of biofeedback training that is commonplace: when athletes or sports teams watch videos of themselves, using this “vision feedback” to improve their game. This is indeed so commonplace that I never realized the practice started as a sort of biofeedback exercise. 

The authors focus on biofeedback as a way around traditional medicine, which is how they envision the practice will ultimately evolve. Instead of a regimen of drugs or surgery for an ailment, a person would hook himself up into b.f. machines to figure out what’s wrong with his body and how to fix it. We get a lot of success stories on test trials of various training, to reduce hypertension or other maladies. There’s also material on how biofeedback training can be used for less severe things, like subvocalizing when reading; a case study shows us how a machine was able to make a noise when hooked up to a test subject who was subvocalizing while reading without any awareness of it. Some of the experiments capture that post-psychelic Spaced Out vibe of the era:


It gets even groovier in the speculative sections, where the authors give a glimpse of their “voluntarium.” The below could be a scene in Rollerball


This sort of material is the highlight of Biofeedback, but for the most part the authors rein in their speculative impulses and just give us somewhat dry rundowns of biofeedback history. But sometimes they are able to incorporate the groovy speculative scenes with history, as with this account of the biofeedback study one of the authors particpated in while a college student in the late ‘60s:



True to the era, there’s a fair bit of America-bashing in the book. Not to the level one would encounter today, but the authors take a few swipes at American culture…how it is business centered, with a focus on quick rewards. This in particular comes under fire when the authors look at how biofeedback could be a shortcut to nirvana. Whereas some people devote lifetimes to meditation to achieve a sort of cosmic awareness, the authors claim that b.f. gadgets could just as easily lead to the same destination. And Americans, we’re informed, love their gadgets, thus this reliance on biofeedback gadgetry to achieve the wisdom of gurus is a very American thing. This gets into the speculative arena again, and I almost wished the authors had just written a near-future novel imbued with this whole biofeedback-fueled Future Shock vibe. It looks like Lawrence Sanders sort of did, though, with his 1975 novel The Tomorrow File (which I’m currently reading and will review eventually…it’s one long book!). 

Speaking of other authors, the final section of Biofeedback could almost come from the mind of Joseph Rosenberger. Here we learn of “underground science,” how biofeedback has been used – especially behind the Iron Curtain – to study ESP and telekinesis. I’m pretty certain Rosenberger dealt with this very topic in at least one Death Merchant installment. But coming away from Biofeedback I wanted to see more of these concepts put into action, even if it was just speculative fiction. Another intriguing speculation the authors put forth is that biofeedback centers would be everywhere in the near future, but obviously that too never happened – unless I’m just completely clueless about them. Which is possible. 
 
Actually, I came away from the book interested in the biofeedback phenomena, and I wondered why it never caught on like the authors predicted it would. If anyone out there could share some history on the topic, I’d appreciate it.

Thursday, January 6, 2022

Every Which Way But Loose


Every Which Way But Loose, by Jeremy Joe Kronsberg
January, 1979  Warner Books

Here’s another one to file under, “They did a novelization of that?” The Every Which Way But Loose tie-in is kind of special, though, in that it was written by Jeremy Joe Kronsberg, who not only wrote the script but also had a minor role in the film as a biker. Kronsberg also wrote the script for the 1980 sequel Any Which Way You Can, but didn’t write a novelization for it (and also didn’t appear in the movie). 

I’ve never seen Every Which Way But Loose, or if I did I was very young and don’t remember it. I was aware of it and the sequel, though. Actually, it’s the sequel I was probably more aware of, as I was 6 in 1980 but only 4 when Every Which Way But Loose came out in late 1978. I knew the name of the movie, though, and also that there was an orangutan in it. I grew up in West Virginia, and you can just imagine how popular these movies, with their country music-listening heroes and redneck shenanigans, were with us “poor, illiterate and strung out” West Virginians. I seem to recall these movies making a big impact at the time, and I probably just figured they were along the same lines as The Dukes Of Hazard, which I also wasn’t really into. 

Despite the rural vibe, the movie (and novel) takes place in Los Angeles, and Kronsberg brings the place to life, calling out specific spots and locations. But really it feels more like a smalltown than a big metropolis, particularly given that so many of the characters are redneck yokels. For one there’s hero Philo Beddoe (Clint Eastwood), a truck driver of sorts who listens to country music on a radio he’s taped to the dashboard. When he isn’t truck-driving he’s either working on cars at his place or getting in fights in country bars. He’s tall and described as being more brawny than Eastwood himself was (6’4” and 220 pounds); in fact, with the redneck vibe and muscular protagonist, I got the impression that Every Which Way But Loose was more suitable for Burt Reynolds. I had a hard time picturing Clint Eastwood in many of the scenes in this novel, but obviously audiences didn’t, as I’ve read that this was his highest-grossing film. 

But then, that could be just because the movie so tapped into the zeitgeist. Every Which Way But Loose, at least in the novel, is very ‘70s; not so much in the sleazy shag rug aspect, but in its loosey-goosey approach to “plotting” and its burned-out, mind-fried characters. I was well into the novel before I realized there really was no plot, and in fact what passes for one is cribbed from innumerable country songs: a guy keeps getting burned by his untrustworthy girlfriend, all while other problems pile up on him. The problems are a gang of bikers, a pair of sadistic cops, a hot-tempered old lady, his girl’s jilted ex-boyfriend, and a horny orangutan. Philo deals with all this stuff while trying to get his woman back – that’s pretty much the entire plot. 

Kronsberg treats his story on the level in this novelization, but it’s clear he’s intended it as a light comedy. Those sadistic cops, for example; while at one point they get some guns with the intent to take out Philo permanently, there’s never a moment where you are concerned for our rangy hero. And for that matter, Philo’s frequent – very frequent – fights, while almost apocalyptic at times, are never overly violent or have any repercussions. I mean the dude walks through the movie getting in a jillion fights without barely a dent, sort of like the average Bruce Le movie (that’s Le, not Lee, ie the star of the most bottom-of-the-barrel Bruceploitation flicks). But then the novel doesn’t become a slapstick farce, either, as despite the lack of tension things actually matter to the characters themselves. 

And Philo is a very ‘70s hero; he’s so comfortable in his zero-goal life that he’s achieved a sort of zen. He doesn’t even have his own place, living in the back yard of his toothless pal Orville and Ma, Orville’s grumbling mother who spends the entire novel trying to get a driver’s license. Then of course there’s Clyde, Philo’s orangutan, which he won in a fight. Philo fights for money, but really for “fun;” in a rare bit of backstory we learn that he could’ve gone a professional route, but prefers fighting for self-entertainment or such. There’s no bitter history or personal loss Philo’s hiding from, as there would be in one of today’s over-thought films; he’s just a guy who likes to listen to country music, drink beer, and get in fights. That all changes the night he sees singer Lynne Halsey-Taylor performing at a country club. 

It was only after I finished the novel that I realized Kronsberg was likely parodying the subject matter of most country songs, as Lynne is forever leaving Philo in the lurch and he’s always going after her. She is a very curious lead female character, as she has none of the expected qualities: she’s self-involved, she lies, she’ll drop Philo without a moment’s notice or even an explanation. But at least she’s pretty, and apparently this is why Philo becomes so hooked on her; plus he enjoys her singing. Ultimately we’ll learn that Lynne is from Colorado and has a goal to open her own bar, where she’ll of course be the featured entertainer, but she needs a few thousand dollars for the down payment. She’s always in search of this, while Philo is always in search of her. 

We get an idea that this won’t be your standard romance when Philo meets Lynne after he sees her singing, and they hit it off, and she invites him back to her place…and then informs him when they get there that she has a boyfriend, but Philo can come on in anyway. A stunned Philo backs off, and spends the next several pages pining over Lynne and trying to figure out how he can steal her from her boyfriend. Meanwhile he runs afoul of various people: first the Black Widows, a biker gang, and then a pair of cops who get in a bar fight with Philo. In both cases the other parties start it: first the Black Widows throw a cigar in Clyde’s face, and later the two cops are drunk and start hassling Philo. However they’re not in uniform, and the fact that they’re officers is only revealed later. 

In each case Philo is so superhuman that, again, there’s no tension. The “action scenes” are the only part of the novel that truly approach slapstick; for example, when the two bikers toss a cigar at Clyde, Philo rounds them up, beats the stuffing out of them, and jams them headfirst into a garbage can. Later on, when the cops finally track down Philo and grab their guns to wipe him out permanently, Kronsberg plays out the scene for laughs, with Philo about to land a big trout and more annoyed at the interruption than concerned about being shotgunned to death. And once again, his fate isn’t at all in doubt. No one’s killed in the novel, and in fact blood is rarely mentioned. It’s basically just a goofy comedy about a guy who enjoys fighting a lot, and doesn’t have any of the darker connotations that such a story would have today. 

Even the sexual material is inexplicit; when Lynn and Philo actually “do the deed,” it’s kept off-page. Kronsberg for that matter doesn’t much exploit his female characters, and overall the novel has a very PG mentality. It’s almost like a slightly more “mature” Dukes Of Hazzard, now that I think of it. Much of the narrative is taken up with Philo and Orville trading goofy banter, but there are also several sequences from the perspective of lesser characters, for example the Black Widows. In many ways the novel reminded me of Sylvester Stallone’s novelization of Paradise Alley, not in content but in tone. Both books are almost liked warped representations of reality in which street bullies grow up to be adults but keep acting the same. There are no real-world concerns and everything can be solved by an old-fashioned fight. 

Kronsberg opens things up with a multi-state journey in which Lynne abruptly takes off, Philo follows after her (Orville and Clyde coming along – and on the way they pick up a hippie-country chick named Echo, who takes to Orville), and meanwhile both the cops and the Black Widows follow after Philo. Even here the romance doesn’t pan out as you’d expect; there’s no emotional reunion between Philo and Lynne (she literally just drives by him as he’s walking along a road), and the untrustworthy babe again leaves Philo in the lurch. She’s a quite unlikable character and it’s hard to understand Philo’s obsession with her. 

We also get a nice climax in which Philo takes on the legendary bar fighter Tank Murdoch, whose legend is occasionally mentioned throughout the text, Kronsberg craftily setting up the novel’s climactic confrontation. This is the only part of the book where Philo shows much depth, as he realizes that, if he were to win, he’d be plagued with endless challenges, like Tank himself now is. Otherwise there’s no big wrap-up for Every Which Way But Loose. Overall the novel was pretty good, and I appreciated the downhome, easy-going way Kronsberg told his downhome, easy-going story, but truth be told the novelization didn’t have me raring to finally see the movie itself.