Thursday, June 22, 2023

Sunstop 8


Sunstop 8, by Lou Fisher
January, 1978  Dell Books

Sometimes you come across just the book you’re looking for. Such was the case a few weeks back at the Plano Half Price Books while I was scanning the sci-fi paperback shelf for something to read…something in that ‘70s psychedelic sci-fi vibe I like so much. And something not too pricey…I mean the days of “Half Price Books” actually selling half price books are long gone. But they were running a Memorial Day Sale, with like 25% off or something, so what the heck. 

Anyway, I’m not really a cheap person. It’s just hard for me to accept that books that used to cost less than a dollar at Half Price Books now have sticker prices on them that are at least double the original price, if not more. Anyway, the spine of Sunstop 8 jumped out at me from the shelf and I picked it up; my original thought was that it was a groovy late ‘70s Dell paperback along the lines of Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy (also published by Dell at the time, and a trio of books I was flat-out obsessed with at one point in my life…in fact, perhaps I should read them again, finally after all these years, and post my reviews on here). I think I might’ve seen this book before, maybe at this same Half Price Books store, but this time the moment was right, it looked to be just the pyschedelic ‘70s sci-fi book I wanted – complete with even lame interior illustrations – so I bought it, for the strangely specific price of $2.49 plus 25% off! 

Now it’s only via the ISFDB that I know Louis “Lou” Fisher was a not-very-prolific science fiction author of the time, only publishing two novels, this being the first…and the second one not published until 1986. He also did some short stories and whatnot. While I wasn’t sure at first, as I got several pages into Sunstop 8 I discovered that Fisher’s main influence, at least for this novel, was most likely Ron Goulart. I say “at first” because for the first few pages you don’t realize Sunstop 8 is going to be a somewhat satirical romp through a very 1970s “future,” with more of a comedic overtone than serious. Generally I bail at this – if you’ll note, there isn’t a single review of a Ron Goulart novel on this blog – but something about Sunstop 8 kept me reading. 

For one, the tone isn’t too comedic. Like Goulart, Fisher writes the novel with his tongue clearly in his cheek. But while it is all told spoofily, the events actually matter to the protagonists. Meaning, it isn’t all a big joke. And that’s another thing. The black-and-while illustrations in the book almost look to be taken from a Choose Your Own Adventure novel; they make the book appear to be a juvenile. And indeed, at first I wondered if Sunstop 8 was a juvenile sci-fi novel. But within the first few pages our hero is checking out a hotstuff redhead on vacation planet Sunstop 6, and flipping through some pages I saw a lot of saucy sex talk and even a bit of ‘70s-mandatory rape “humor.” So, this isn’t a book for kids. At least in the 1970s it wouldn’t have been! 

Another thing was that even though I read the back cover and the first-page preview copy, I still couldn’t figure out what the hell Sunstop 8 was about. I had to read the book to find out. And here’s what it’s about: a young bookie named Chet McCory who lives off the Earth on his own swank satellite has come to the planet Sunstop 6 for vacation…and he’s soon abducted by agents of another planet in the system, Sunstop 8. This planet was originally a tourist spot itself, but various wars have resulted in it being a hotbed of intrigue and chaos, and all the civilized planets avoid it – I assumed the whole thing was a Vietnam War metaphor. Well anyway, Chet is kidnapped and taken to Sunstop 8…where he learns that he’s been kidnapped so he can run a global lottery to drum up interest in the ruling party of despot Pawk Lundiner. Why Lundinder and his minions insist on an “Earthman bookie” to run their lottery is a question Fisher is unable to properly answer, but the plot outline should tell you all you need to know about the novel’s tone. 

But man, it’s those “sci-fi ‘70s” topical touches that kept me reading…sort of like contemporary novels The Tomorrow FileColonyMythmaster, or The Savage Report. Actually, one more reference to a previously-reviewed book: a lot of Sunstop 8 is very similar to the material in the anthology Infinity Five, only not as focused on sleaze or kink. That said, this is a pretty kinky book, with a lot of reference to sex and the physical attributes of the female characters, but the sole sex scene in the novel occurs entirely off page. But I figure this is the same vibe as actual Ron Goulart novels…I have several of them, picked up many years ago (at Half Price Books, in fact, when they truly were half off the cover price), like Gadget Man or somesuch, and I recall from my aborted readings of them many years ago that they too were mostly comedic escapades in funky future ‘70s settings, but otherwise rated PG. 

Well anyway, Fisher doesn’t belabor us with a lot of world-building; this isn’t a “hard science” novel by any means. The date is even specious, something like 2076.3 or whatnot, leaving us to wonder if this is some new “stardate” type of nomenclature or if the number after the period just denotes the month. Who knows? I got the impression Fisher didn’t want us to worry over such incidentals. I mean, there’s galactic flight and you can whisk from one corner of the galaxy to the next in almost no time, so again the impression is a little juvenile. About the most we get in the hard science department is a part where Chet’s brawny and dimwitted assistant Rocky tries to call Chet on Sunstop 6 from their satellite outside Earth orbit, and we’re informed it takes 9 minutes each ways for messages to get through. 

As mentioned though, Fisher isn’t so much concerned with the science of things. He has a tale to tell, a goofy tale, and one where I wonder what the origin of the book even was. I mean, Sunstop 8 is the inverse of the old rub that “all first novels are autobiographical.” I mean who in the world would come up with a plot like this? Other than Ron Goulart, that is? But what makes it frustrating is that Fisher doesn’t even exploit his own goofy tale. Chet is “Shanghaied” by some Sunstop 8 agents while vacationing on Sunstop 6, told by the ancient and decrepit ruler of Sunstop 8, Pawk Lundiner, that Chet’s services are needed to run a lottery, and that Chet will be payed handsomely for the deal. Even given a woman of his own. Chet says no…and spends the rest of the friggin’ novel saying no. 

I remember years ago I read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces, or whatever it’s titled, and at the time there were some how-to writing books out there on how you could use that whole idea to plot out your novels. And one of the caveats was that the titular hero could refuse his quest, or watever, but ultimately he would have to undertake it. And also that this decision should happen rather quickly. Certainly this refusal isn’t something that should be going on for a few hundred pages! And yet in Sunstop 8 that is exactly it; Chet says no, he says no again later, he’s captured by other people and still saying no. It gets to be aggravating. 

So the novel starts off with that fun ruggedly virile ‘70s vibe I love so much: Chet is floating in this sort of zero-g sauna on Sunstop 6 and sees this curvy female form floating around him (apparently the “du-metal” outfits worn in such environments obscure the majority of the body), and reflecting how, unlike the spaceship he just disembarked from, she’s “a structure you want to get into. Not out of.” Turns out she’s a hotstuff redhead who works in one of the attactions here and her name’s Avon. She’s not interested in Chet due to the guys who have been shadowing him. She floats off and later Chet is taken captive by those guys, who turn out to be the aforementioned Sunstop 8 agents. 

Through the rest of the novel Fisher will refer to Avon as this sort of blossoming romance for Chet, though Chet hardly spends any narrative time with her. Indeed, Chet’s sole sexual excursion in the novel will be with the slim, petite brunette Sunstop 8 beauty Juell, a gal who has one of the best intros in the book – blasting “the electronic speed-beats of Carter Lee Cash” on a sort of quad-system-of-the-future stereo rig. With her long brown hair, wrapped with a bandana, it’s hard not to see her as a future hippie. Her dialog here is also suitably bizarre; Chet mentions he broke an antique while escaping his Sunstop 8 kidnappers, and Juell replies, “I despise antiques!” 

But man, these weird touches unfortunately fade as Sunstop 8 moves on. There’s action, occasionally, but the problem is Chet comes off as so obstinate that he refuses to move the plot forward. I mean it’s constantly him just saying “no” to this or that, until finally he’s forced into doing it – even then he tries to undo the entire lottery idea, and is put in front of yet another firing squad by Pawk Lundiner. Oh, and the novel’s weirdly structured. Chet says “no” for like the entire book, then finally starts planning the lottery – all while planning also to dismantle it so as to get revenge on Lundiner – then suddenly he’s making yet another escape attempt. Then, later in the novel, we have a random flashback to a few weeks before, when the lottery was running, and Chet’s making his only trip outside of the fortress he's been locked in. And we see how the lottery is advertised by sexy women (everyone here is human, btw, despite the manifold planets). It’s just strange…like, why didn’t we read all this while it was happening, and not as a random flashback in the middle of an action scene? 

Along the way Chet learns of Abraxas, the leader of the rebels who are against Pawk Lundiner; of course this made me think of Santana. One of Lundiner’s people is a spy, and Chet starts working with this person – and meanwhile Avon, who has also been brought to Sunstop 8 against her will (Lundiner’s agents under the mistaken notion she’s Chet’s “woman’), is a prisoner of Abraxas. Oh and I also forgot, but back in Earth orbit we have Rocky, Chet’s muscle-bound oaf of an assistant, who has his own running subplot in the novel. Again, the tone is super juvenile with chapter headings like, “Rocky takes a pod” or the like, describing events that are about to happen. Well anyway, dimwit Rocky is another who brings us the kinky tone; he has a busty babe of his own on the satellite he and Chet live on, and he's rammed her so much she’s “sore,” a running joke in her dialog that gets old. This gal gives us the rape humor I mentioned above; part of her schtick is getting on the interplanetary waves and screaming “Rape!” to see if any cops will respond to the call – all so as to suss out the cops who are constantly looking for that pernicious bookie Chet McCoy, we’re informed. 

But then the humor goes away when Chet learns that poor Avon has been raped; the novel takes an unexpected turn into the grim when the two are finally reunited and Chet finds his “beloved” chained up in a cave, for daily sexual subjugation and beatings by one of Abraxas’s men. Or, as Avon herself explains to Chet, gesturing to herself, “Do you see a woman or a beat-up broad?” Here Chet and Avon themselves get the closest to sex they’ll ever get in the novel, stripping down and feigning sex to distract that very same rapist. The novel heads to a close with Chet taking on Abraxas, presumably the inspiration for the otherwise confounding cover art by Larry Kresek, which makes Chet McCoy look like Peter Fonda. 

Overall, Sunstop 8 started off strong and I was loving the freaky-funky-future-‘70s vibe. But midway through it got mired in a repetitive formula of Pawk Lundiner ordering Chet to do something, Chet saying no, Lundiner throwing Chet in prison, and then Chet finally doing what he’d been ordered to do in the first place. Also, the swank future-‘70s touches abruptly went away, the highlight of course being Juell’s stereo system. I did like the somewhat raunchy tone (Rocky for example constantly thinks of sex), and the humor is for the most part like a sci-fi Porky’s. But the story was just let down by the sluggish, repetitive pace; even the action scenes tend to trudge on, and also lack much impact given the novel’s overall comedic tone. 

Here’s a sample of the interior illustrations, which are credited to a Stuart Shiffman; this one depicts Chet struggling against a massive android that plagues him for the first half of the novel: 

No comments: