Taurus Four

Taurus Four, by Rena Vale
January, 1970  Paperback Library

Hippies in space! Well, that’s sort of the premise of this paperback original, or at least what’s hyped on the back cover. In reality the hippies of this “2270 AD” are more along the lines of stone age primitives, with the intelligence level to match. Okay so they’re just like regular hippies…only they’re on another planet.

Rena Vale had a career that was sort of the opposite of Leigh Brackett’s; she started as a screenwriter in Hollywood in the ‘30s, then moved to writing science fiction stories and novels in the ‘50s. Taurus Four was one of her last novels; she died in 1983. The cool psychedelic cover, by the way (which I’m assuming is by Robert Foster, given its similarity to Foster’s cover for Mythmaster), has nothing to do with the actual contents of the book – not sure what the hell’s going on there, but you won’t find anything like it occuring in the novel.

You also won’t find any space hippies of the sort featured in the “classic” Star Trek episode “The Way To Eden” (I put “classic” in mocking quotes but I actually enjoy that episode…I mean Mr. Spock channeling his inner Hendrix on a Vulcan harp, what’s not to love?). Which admittedly is what I was hoping for when I cracked open this slim paperback. Instead, it’s more of a character-driven piece about a portly but determined “space sociologist” who crash-lands on a planet in the Taurus system and there encounters a group of hippies, descendants of ones who were abducted from Earth centuries before.

Our hero is Dorian Frank XIV, out on his first mission; his assignment is to inspect the planet Taurus Four with its two suns and determine if it is suitable for human colonization. But he crashes his ship and is stranded here for two months until the mother ship can come collect him. Dorian is an interesting character; coddled due to the emasculating nature of the 23rd century, in which women run everything. This is total prescience on the part of Ms. Vale, but don’t go dusting off your “I’m With Her” banners just yet – she clearly is not fond of the idea.

In Vale’s future, “space is the man’s world;” women, having cemented their authority on Earth, have no desire to travel in space. Thus it is men who fling about the cosmos, declaring habitable planets for Earth; the women who do go into space usually do so in the capacity of servants to the men. Space is the only place where men can be men, yet they are for the most part confused about what exactly “being a man” entails:

The male aggressiveness was fading out of the human race…Women forged ahead in the professions and in politics; they took over many, if not most of the Earthside positions. As a rule, they dominated their mates, made puppets of them.

And:

Male-female relationships on Earth had become tests of strength…of willpower. Men loved women for their physical charm and grudgingly ceded as much of their independence as necessary to obtain their desires. Women loved men who obeyed their commands.

Damn, if I could go back in time I’d have the preacher read that last one at my wedding!

Dorian encounters all manner of flora and fauna on Taurus Four, which has an Earth-like atmosphere, save for the two suns; one is red, and the “night” sun is a white ball of fire that paints the sky in psychedelic hues. There are tree roots that move in the soil, fawn-like creatures that are harmless, bats that nearly rip Dorian to shreds, and intelligent bear-like creatures which Dorian is certain are not native to the planet. He will turn out to be correct; these are the daels, or at least so referred to by the transplanted hippies, and they too are part of a colonization party.

The hippies don’t appear until a quarter of the way through; Dorian stumbles upon them after a near-fatal encounter with vampire bats. Their presence initially baffles him, as Taurus Four was marked as an uninhabitated planet. Plus they are not only humans, but Earthlings – ones who speak to Dorian in English, at that. Though it is a crude, gutteral English, and these people have descended fully into tribalism. They go about nude, the men sporting long hair, rangy beards, and nails so long they are claws. The women are practically baby-making machines, some of them having born fourteen childreen. Even the “crones” are naked, much to Dorian’s discomfort.

Dorian gradually learns the history of the colony, his memory sparked by a tale told by elderly “witch” Bernedine, who recalls a story from the time of “twenty grandmothers ago.” Basically, a hippie in Haight Ashbury in the late ‘60s was approached by a reptilian being, which promised to take the hippie and his flock to a faraway place where they could live free, in the commune fashion the hippies so loved. Dorian instantly understands what happened; in the time of the “Space War,” two hundred years before, the “green Saurians from the Cygnus chain” abducted many humans; abductions which eventually sparked the war.

In his history classes, Dorian heard vague mentions of hippies that disappeared in that long-ago era, but Dorian in his time has no concept of the hippies, only that they were part of a “drug culture.” He realizes that he has stumbled upon the descendants of those Saurian abductees, living here in primitive squalor on Taurus Four. And they are a primitive bunch, sacrificing “virgin white” women to the “god in the well” so that the daels – ie the “devils” in their pidgin English – won’t come eat everyone. There is also the “daelsnarks” in the ocean, which apparently refers to sharks, but these go unseen.

Leading the hippies is a young man named Pete – all the leaders are named “Pete,” after the original Haight Ashbury hippie who brought them here – who uses his role to exercise his mean streak. There’s Billum, a young hippie who doesn’t appear to be as distrustful of Dorian as the others are. And most importantly there is “virgin white” Teeda, a lovely blonde Dorian falls instantly in love with, despite her innocent, “fawn-like” nature and primitive attitudes. Dorian is already engaged, his fiance back on Earth the usual strong female type, thus he constantly puts off the temptation to “take” Teeda, even though she clearly wants him and he her. There’s also the fact that she is being saved in her untouched condition to be given as the Great Sacrifice to the god in the well, part of the ancient belief structure that keeps the daels and daelsnarks at bay.

Speaking of which, these “savages,” as Dorian refers to them, are so primitive that the “god in the well” is merely one’s own reflection when gazing in a certain pool. They have regressed to such a state that they don’t even understand they are looking at their own face in the water. One thing they share with their hippie forebears is their love of weed; their “Sacred Garden” is filled with hemp, though surprisingly this isn’t much exploited by Vale. I mean there isn’t a single part where Dorian gets high. Instead, he spends most of his time transcribing “spools” of his sociologist findings, to be used as the material for a groundbreaking study upon his return to Earth.

Dorian also spends most of the time under guard in a cave, his precious “pack” with his stunner gun, clothes, and other gadgets separated from him. The hippies bring food to him; they only eat “manna,” a native fruit. He also gets occasional visits from Teeda, with the two falling in love, though Dorian has a habit of condescendingly referring to her as “dear girl.” Teeda’s need for Dorian’s strength is a new concept for him, given the strong females of Earth; subtext capably conveyed by Vale. Again, Vale’s connotation is clear that a “girl power” future might not make for the most attractive concept. 

Despite the coddled nature of his upbringing, with an overbearing mother and an overbearing fiance, Dorian is pretty tough, mostly due to his space training. Thanks to a few judo classes he can toss these dirty hippies around with ease; for “play” the hippie men like to engage one another in brutal wrestling matches, using those nails as claws. Even the toughest of them doesn’t stand a chance against portly Dorian, who due to the hardscrabble nature of hippie life on Taurus Four quickly slims down.

When Dorian learns that Teeda is planned as the next Great Sacrifice – to be raped by an increasingly-insane Pete beforehand – he makes his plan to escape the savages with her. But Dorian’s end game is a bit vague; he has no plans to take Teeda back to Earth with him, as his “grasshopper” transport ship is a single-seater. Also, he would be expressly forbidden to do any such thing by the captain of his mother ship. Dorian also has no plans to have sex with Teeda, to remain faithful to his fiance back home. But anyway he manages to stage an escape, thanks to a pair of friendly hippies, one of whom is Billum, Teeda’s brother.

Vale works in an imminent invasion subplot which is a bit clumsy; we’re told the bear-like daels came here long ago as part of a colonization fleet, but their ship crashed, and now the modern daels – who occasionally steal away hippie children and eat them! – are but pale reflections of the original crew. However a second colonization ship is supposed to come at a later date. Gee, guess when they’re coming? That’s right, shortly after Dorian crash-lands on the planet. Dorian learns all this from a dael female who “sings” her tale in their bizarre language, a language which Teeda understands, thanks to some tutoring from witch Bernedine. Dorian will be able to use Teeda’s knowledge of this language to get her off the planet, so as to warn off the invading ship of daels.

The finale sees Dorian finally mete out some payback to nutjob Pete, who we learn, upon finding out that Dorian and Teeda had escaped, went full-on psycho, even raping and killing an 8 year-old girl! His payback isn’t bloody enough, but he does show his cowardly colors when Dorian, a full-on man now thanks to the rigors of Taurus Four (not to mention the strength which has been borne in him thanks to the compassion and respect Teeda has shown him), challenges Pete to combat. Vale gets a few more digs in on her post-feminist future with the captain of Dorian’s mother ship, finally having come back to pick him up, marrying Dorian and Teeda as a slap in the face to Dorian’s mom and fiance, given how much trouble they got the captain in for abandoning Dorian when he crashed on the planet.

Overall Taurus Four is a quick, mostly entertaining read, though to tell the truth I would’ve preferred something more along the lines of “The Way To Eden,” with actual space hippies.

The Stars My Destination (aka Tiger! Tiger!)

The Stars My Destination, by Alfred Bester
March, 1957  Signet Books

Originally appearing as a four-part serial from October 1956 to January 1957 in Galaxy Science Fiction (available for free download at the Internet Archive here, here, here, and here), The Stars My Destination was published, in slightly different form,* in a single volume in the UK as Tiger! Tiger! in 1956. This Signet editon came out in 1957, under the Galaxy title and also featuring the edits of Galaxy editor H.L. Gold, more of which below.

I think I first became aware of this book over twenty years ago, when it received the Vintage Books reprint with the appropriate industry coverage. I got a copy at Half Price Bookstore, which I’d recently discovered, having just moved down here to Texas. (This was back in the days when books there were really half off, and LPs were super cheap…I mean I got “Abbey Road” for under two bucks!) When I read it at the time, I was surprised by how good the book really was. Re-reading it again these years later – I couldn’t believe how great it was.

At that time, one of the main proclamations about The Stars My Destination was how prescient it was, and how, despite being written in the mid 1950s, it felt so modern. In particular, it was championed by cyberpunk writers and readers. However I don’t think this is so much because Bester was prescient (not that he wasn’t); it’s that all those cyberpunk writers were ripping him off. There’s enough for five or six novels in The Stars My Destination, Bester hopping from plot development to plot development in true pulp style – it’s like comparing a super-compact, super-fast Stan Lee/Jack Kirby comic from the ‘60s to a super-contrived, super-“cinematic” comic from today – and no surprise, given that Bester wrote comics for a time.

But the story changes, constantly. We meet our hero, Gulliver “Gully” Foyle, who is really more of a villain, adrift in space; the sole survivor of a ship called Nomad which has been crippled by a ship from the Outer Planets – it’s the 25th Century, the solar system is inhabited, and the inner planets of Earth, Mars, and Venus are at war with the outer ones. Foyle is a “common man,” a minor mechanic on the ship; at 30 years old, a guy who has never applied himself. But he’s managed to survive alone on this ship for 6 months. The ship is owned by Presteign, a vast corporation – another of those elments that makes the novel seem so modern is how powerful corporations have become – and when a sister ship, Vorga, finally passes him by, Foyle thinks he’s been saved. (We will later learn that this occurs on September 16, 2436.) But Vorga abandons him – and the common man is no more; Foyle is reborn for the sole purpose of revenge.

Bester made clear his intention to write a sci-fi version of The Count Of Monte Cristo, and that’s what we get here, but as mentioned it’s a lot more colorful, pulpy, and fast-moving. I wouldn’t say The Stars My Destination classifies as “forgotten fiction,” so I’ll forego my usual belabored, long-winded, digressive sort of review and just go for the highlights. Because basically if you haven’t read the novel, just go read it.

The stuff with “Foyle surviving in space” is enough for one novel, but before we can grasp it he’s been saved by “Joseph and the Scientific People” (a name for a ‘60s acid rock group if ever there was one), who live on the “Sargasso Asteroid” amid space detrius. Bester is a superb scene-setter and describer, and well brings to life these innovative future worlds – more presience in how these places are cluttered with the junk of the past. Joseph not only gives Foyle a “wife,” Moira, but also tattoos his face like a Maori mask, all in black, with “Nomad” emblazoned on his forehead. He does both these things without Foyle’s being aware of it, and much to Foyle’s wrath.

Before we can catch up with all this, we’re in New York, where Foyle’s secretly learning how to “jaunt” again. Another thing I recall from back when I first learned about this book; the reviewer in whatver magazine I was reading said something to the effect that, to enjoy The Stars My Destination, you’ll just have to accept the fact that, in this future century, human beings have abruptly discovered that they can teleport. I admit, I still think the jaunting stuff is goofy – and again, it’s enough for a novel all its own – but Bester has it that a scientist named Jaunte spontaneously teleported in the lab one day, and from there it spread that practically all mankind could do the same. Bester has really thought the whole jaunting thing out, too, with “jaunt-mazes” and people escaping citywide destruction instantly, to even the women of the 25th century being practically “cloistered” due to concerns of improriety.

Speaking of which, Foyle rapes a woman in this section – a scene which makes clear that he’s not a hero. Initially I thought this was so Bester could give the Galaxy artist a “spicy” scene to illustrate (which he does), but it turns out that there’s more here than that. The victim is a “lovely Negro girl” named Robin Wednesbury who also happens to be a telesend, meaning she can broadcast her thoughts – usually unintentionally – but cannot receive them. This is a “century of freaks” as Bester describes it, but in reality it’s like the comic books he had written, only normal people have superpowers. But Foyle rapes her – the act of course off-page – after she’s learned he can jaunt, despite being in her beginner’s class. In truth, the “rape” deal is sort of awkwardly used – it happens apropos of nothing and is not dealt with again until later in the book. Plotwise, Bester wants Foyle to do something awful for which he’ll later want to be forgiven.

Special warning: this rape scene is known to trigger the sensitive readers of today, most of whom fail to grasp that 1.)Foyle is not a good guy, or at least doesn’t start out as one; 2.)And, most importantly, that Foyle spends the entire last quarter of the novel wanting to be punished for his raping of Robin. I already had a run-in with a reviewer who took the opportunity to rail against the “fucking vile” treatment of the women in this novel. She was not grasping – no doubt intentionally not grasping – the two items mentioned above, not to mention the fact that Bester clearly states that, due to jaunting, the women of the 25th century do not have the freedoms of today’s women. Also not to mention the fact that, you know, the entire crux of the novel is sin, redemption, and forgiveness.

She also failed to grasp how important women actually are in The Stars My Destination, and that each of them has an impact on the future of the entire galaxy. More importantly, Robin Wednesbury has the power of forgiveness, telling Foyle in the end sequence – in a cool psychedelic bit that takes place thirty years in the future – that “all that is long forgotten and forgiven,” or something to that effect. I can’t recall too many pulp novels in which the act of forgiveness is employed. But this is just one of the many things that elevates The Stars My Destination above the norm.

Another thing elevating it is the multiple characters. While you have Foyle with his tattooed face running around like a bull in a china shop, you also have Presteign of Presteign, his daughter Olivia (who in another comic booky element can only see in infra-red), CIA honcho Y’ang Yeovil (who is Chinese but doesn’t look it – in another bit of prescience Bester has race becoming a moot point in the future; due to jaunting, races have mixed to the point that most everyone has the same complexion); female radical Jisbella McQueen, whom Foyle meets in prison and who basically educates him (and I have to admit I got a sophomoric chuckle out of how Foyle always called her “Jiz;” now you tell me if “Jiz McQueen” isn’t a pornstar name waiting to happen); Dagenham, a former scientist who now runs a sort of courier company, who is “hot” due to radiation; and a host of minor characters, from a doctor who keeps a circus of surgically-augmented freaks to a child telepath who is 70 years old.

Just as compelling are the colorful scenes Bester captures throughout, all of which are incredibly cinematic. Foyle is sent to infamous undergrond French prison Gouffre Martel early in the novel, a place that is pitch black; in his inevitable escape, Foyle gets hold of a pair of infra-red goggles worn by the guards, and Bester appropriately brings the setting to life. It’s in Gouffre Martel that Foyle meets Jiz, who teaches him over the course of several months via the “Whisper Line:” a freak occurrence in the caves which allows them to converse, even though they’re separated by miles. They take up a sort of correspondence class, and Foyle’s character begins to subtly change, losing the “gutter” language he started the novel with. They also fall in love, sort of, and eventually have sex – though of course Bester leaves it off page, and for that matter isn’t much for exploiting his female characters, in fact barely even describing them.

And again the material with Jiz and Foyle is enough for its own novel, in particular a gripping part where they take a “Saturn Weekender” out into space (one of the things I like about the novel is that it doesn’t stay Earth-bound throughout) to find the wreckage of Nomad, now integrated into the Sargasso Asteroid. Foyle has determined that something valuable must be there – he’s found out there are millions of credits, but what he doesn’t know is that the true treasure aboard is all that exists of PyrE, an experimental substance which we’ll eventually learn could not only hold the key to the balance of the Inner-Outer Planets war, but also to the future of mankind. The scene is masterfully built up and played out, as Foyle, consumed only with his vengeance, actually abandons Jiz to Dagenham’s men.

My favorite part soon follows; now we are very much in the “Count Of Monte Cristo in the future” mold, as Foyle, a millionaire many times over, poses as eccentric Fourmyle of Ceres, who runs the punningly named “Four Mile Circus.” More importantly, Foyle has had “Space Commando” surgery to his body, which has augmented his reflexes to inhuman speeds. (I wonder if this “fast reaction time” business might have inspired author Robert Vardeman in his unpublished volume of The Baroness.) Foyle is now “more machine than man,” and with a touch of his tongue on an upper molar, he can go into Six Million Dollar Man-type superhuman speed.

More comic-booky is that, thanks to Jiz earlier paying some quack doctor, Foyle has had his face tattoos surgically removed, but he later discovers that, when he is angry or consumed with passion – or basically anything that makes him lose control of himself – the tattoo reappears on his face, but this time it is red. So now we have a red-faced “tiger” with “Space Commando” reflexes, and it’s very cool, and Bester delivers several thrilling parts where Foyle, face glaring red, activates his speed setting and takes out pursuers Matrix style, wiping them out in fractions of a second. However Bester does not dwell much on violence, and there’s certainly no gore in the novel.

Also returning here is Robin Wednesbury, whom Cyrano de Bergerac style Foyle has hired to be his social mediator, introducing “Fourmyle” to all the jet-setters, but really using her telesending skills to let him know who is who so that his cover never falters. More dramatic sparks here with Robin learning that Foyle is the same “monster” who raped her, but deciding at length to assist him, mainly so she can use him to discover the fate of her family, who appear to have been casualties of the solar system war. This entire sequence is a lot of fun, with the two jaunting around the world and tracking down the crew of Vorga; it also introduces the eerie “Burning Man,” a flame-consumed vision of Foyle which keeps appearing in front of Foyle and others at random intervals.

On and on it goes – the novel’s not even 300 pages but man is it meaty. In fact it’s breathless. Today, it would’ve been written as a trilogy (at least!), but then today it wouldn’t have been half as brutal or pulpy. Bester, despite writing in 1956, even factors in psychedelic stuff, from various reality-warping drugs to a finale which sees Foyle – having of course become the Burning Man due to PyrE – jaunting across the space-time continnuum, the text warping and expanding courtesy artist Jack Gaughan. There’s another great psychedelic visual sequence where Foyle stands beside Olivia Presteign while the Earth is being bombarded by intergalactic missiles; the Earth defense system kicks in, up in the night sky, but only Olivia can see it, due to her infra-red vision, and her descriptions to Foyle are downright lysergic.

The Stars My Destination starts off being about Gulliver Foyle’s drive for revenge, not to mention his lunkheadedness – he starts the novel so simple-minded that he literally wants revenge on Vorga, ie the ship itself, before Jiz informs him that it’s the crew who made the decision to abandon him – or, as she so wonderfully puts it, that Foyle must begin to use “brains, not bombs.” The novel gradually diverges into the Monte Cristo parallel with Space Commando trimmings, before changing again into a metaphysical probing of mankind’s right to determine its own fate, not to mention its right to travel the stars. Fittingly for old comic writer Bester, the philosophy behind this comes from a bartender android, whose circuits are shorting due to Dagenham’s radioactivity.

Anyway to finally sum up (and there’s a ton of stuff I haven’t even mentioned!), I rank The Stars My Destination as one of my favorite novels, up there with Boy Wonder.

*The publishing history of the novel is a little scewy. After a lot of research – imagine my “shock” when none of this could be found on “usually reliable” Wikipedia – I’ve discovered the following: 

There are three versions of the book extant: the original Galaxy serial, collected in this Signet paperback; the UK version, titled Tiger! Tiger!; and finally the 1996 Vintage Books edition, which per the copyright page features a “special restored” text. This last one might be the definitive version, as it tries to find a healthy balance between the original US and UK editions.

The Galaxy and Signet versions feature minor edits, courtesy Galaxy editor H.L. Gold; I found a reference in some book that Bester often complained that Gold made unwarranted edits to his text. However the differences I found when comparing the serialized version to the Vintage Books edition – and it wasn’t a thorough A/B test – were minimal. It appears that most of the material Gold added was for purposes of clarification. For example, early in the book during the Sargasso Asteroid sequence, Bester notes that the tattooed names on the faces of the women feature an “O” with a “tiny cross at the base.”  He leaves it at that, but Gold adds, “the sign of Venus and female sex.” When Dagenham visits Foyle in prison, he reminds Foyle (and the reader): “I’m dangerously radioactive, you know.” This does not appear in the Vintage/UK edition, and clearly was inserted by Gold because this sequence appeared in the second serialized installment; Dagenham was introduced in the first. Gold also removed minor things – sometimes, I feel, for the better. Like during the tense scene where Foyle abandons Jiz to Dagenham’s men in space. In the US edition, Jiz merely screams, “Help me, Gully!”

The UK edition does not feature Gold’s edits, but it does feature the edits of some unknown and apparently skittish UK editor; most notably, all of Foyle’s promises that he will kill Vorga “filthy” are changed to “deadly.” In the sequence with Dagenham’s men capturing Jiz, mentioned in the paragraph above, Jiz has the additional dialog, “Do something, Gully! I’m lost!” I think these extra lines interfere with the intensity of the sequence. Finally, the psychedelic printing tricks of Chapter 15, courtesy artist Jack Gaughan, do not appear; at least, so I have been able to determine, in most of the original UK editions.

The Vintage edition from 1996 is basically the British version, Tiger! Tiger!, only with the US title and without the H.L. Gold edits, but it does have “filthy” instead of “deadly.” Otherwise I think it is the same as the version detailed in the paragraph above, save that this Vintage edition features the psychedelic font tricks in Chapter 15.

Personally, I most prefer the original US version, as presented here in the Signet edition. I think Gold’s edits are, for the most part, beneficial to Bester’s text. But the Vintage Books edition is much easier to acquire these days – it’s still in print 22 years after it was published – so that’s probably the one I’d recommend. Or you could just follow the links way up above and read the original version, as serialized in Galaxy.

Logan's World (Logan's Run #2)

Logan's World, by William F. Nolan
December, 1977  Bantam Books

Ten years after Logan’s Run, William Nolan returned to the character he had created in July, 1963 (per the Author’s Afterward of this book); this time he wrote the book without a co-author, and picked up hero Logan 3’s life ten years after the events of the previous book. My assumption was Nolan was trying to catch fire, what with Logan’s Run the film coming out the year before and Logan’s Run the TV series (which was very short lived) coming out the same year as this book. But it does not appear that Logan’s World resonated as strongly as its predecessor did.

The original book was almost two halves; the first was about Logan in his psychedelicized future world, playing Sandman and slowly gaining a conscience. The second half was a series of mostly disconnected adventures, with Logan and new “pairmate” Jessica 6 running around their strange post-nuke world, being chased by other Sandmen and encountering a host of bizarre “outcasts,” all of whom wanted to kill them. Of the two halves, I vastly preferred the first, even more so in the film version, which as I stated in my review I also preferred to the source novel. So you can imagine my dismay that, for the most part, Logan’s World follows the vibe of the second half of Logan’s Run, with Logan running around a post-nuke Earth and encountering a variety of bizarre “outcasts” and former Sandmen, all of whom are out for his blood.

Nolan has published many, many novels, and is well respected in the sci-fi field, but I’m having a hard time connecting with his writing. I’m not the type of reader who needs every little thing spelled out for me, but boy, Nolan really expects his readers to do a lot of heavy lifting. Hardly anything is described, and what is described is done so in the vaguest manner possible. Most characters and items aren’t described at all – for example, Logan spends the first half of the book flying around the country in a “paravane,” and I had no idea what the thing was supposed to look like. But then it seems description would’ve made the book longer, and Nolan appears to have been going for speed, and thus brevity; the novel is filled with single-line paragraphs and in many ways comes off more like an outline than an actual completed novel.

Another hindrance to my enjoyment: the reader can’t help but feel, through the first quarter or so of Logan’s World, that he has missed an earlier sequel. It’s ten years on and all kinds of stuff has happened – Logan and Jessica escaped to the moon colony Argos, where they had a son, Jaq, but over the years the ships bringing the food stopped coming and famine has resulted in most all of Argos being dead, and now Logan and family have come back to Earth, ten years after the last novel, to survive. And six years ago Ballard, the guy who got Logan to the sanctuary of Argos and saved so many others, came down to Earth, destroyed the AI construct “the Thinker,” and thus broke down the entire roboticized civilization of America, sacrificing himself.

But all the above is slowy eked out in the fast-moving narrative, to the point that nothing has any impact. We’re caught up on important things almost in hindsight. For example, we’re told Logan and Jessica have a son, and the next page we’re told he’s already dying of an Earth-borne virus his Argos-raised body has no natural defenses against. For that matter, Jaq has like a line or two in the book, and makes no connection with the reader, and thus his fate, while terrible, doesn’t have the impact it should. We don’t even know for sure what happened to Ballard until midway through. But anyway all the stuff I liked so much about the first half of Logan’s Run is gone; when Ballard killed the Thinker and shut down the mechanisms that ran society, all that stuff like the “hallucimils” and the domed cities and whatnot ceased to be. Indeed, the city people are now known, goofily enough, as “the Wilderness people.”

Logan when we meet him is squatting in an old colonial mansion on the Potomac, fretting over his rapidly-dying son. Logan is not re-introduced to us with much fanfare, however he is consumed with guilt over his Sandman past. There are many scenes throughout where he will flash back or dream about a past Sandman kill, constantly reminding himself that he had no choice at the time. Local Wildnerness People leader Jorath tells Logan that a certain serum could cure young Jaq, but it’s a hot commodity on the black market; Logan will have to venture into the crime-ridden area of “the Arcade” to find any.

So Logan pulls the first of many dumb stunts in the novel, plumb leaving Jessica and Jaq to their own defenses, without even a weapon – Logan we learn threw away his own “Gun” (ie his Sandman Gun, always capitilized), and he himself goes into Arcade on his “paravane” with nothing to defend himself. Right on cue, a gang of “outcasts,” dressed in lace and Florentine styles and dubbing themselves “the Borgias” move in on the colonial mansion, abduct Jessica, kill Jaq (the cardinal pulp rule broken in like the first twenty pages – ie a kid is killed), and make off with their booty. We will later learn that Jessica is repeatedly raped and gang-raped and even lez-raped, given Borgia leader Lucrezia’s sapphic impulses. Gee, I wonder why this one wasn’t made into a movie, too?

Logan, after being chased by various thugs, gets the serum, only to get back home and find the corpse of his son. A harrowing moment, but one that is ruined by the terse, outline-esque treatment the novel receives. Worse yet, Logan hardly even reflects over the boy, and when he does occasionally think of him, it is to fuel his rage. Folks, my son turns a year old tomorrow, and if something God forbid were to happen to him, I don’t think I’d be capable of rushing into action for revenge, at least not as promptly as Logan does. I mean, you’d think the dude would be just a little upset. But then Logan is just a cipher, really. He’s out for blood and wants to get Jessica back, too. So he does what any other former Sandman would do, finds an old Runner named Andar who happens to be a seer, and who looks into his mind and tells Logan that Jessica has been taken to the Florida Keys!

Nolan also isn’t much for paying off on reader expectations; we want to see Lucrezia and her sadistic underlings pay, and pay bloodily. But when Logan sows his vengeance, wielding a newly-acquired Sandman Gun and blasting away with undescribed rounds like “Flamers” and “Rippers,” it’s merely rendered as: “It was over very quickly. In a pain-blurred rage, Logan killed them all.” That’s it, folks. I mean, I would’ve liked to have seen a few “Rippers” to the crotches of the rapists, and maybe some special torment for the bastard who killed Jaq. But it’s this very outline-esque vibe that undermines the novel throughout. Oh, and Lucrezia, before meeting her own quickly-rendered fate, informs Logan that Jessica is dead.

Well, we’re not even a quarter of a way through the novel yet, so that’s not good – I mean Logan’s already lost his wife and his kid. So eventually he hits on the idea of dosing himself with R-11, a drug that, in the old days, was used in special “Re-Live” parlors. R-11 allows users to re-live their lives, but the parlors gave exact doses that allowed specific moments to be re-lived; Logan wants to take a heroic dose and lose himself in the past, forever. He has to go all the way to “the New York Complex” to find any of the expensive and rare stuff; it’s in the hands of a woman named Lacy 14, who runs a black market empire from a building that still functions, given that it was not connected to the Thinker in the old days and thus didn’t shut down when Ballard destroyed the AI.

The novel is a bit more spicy than its predecessor, not that we get much detail or anything – Logan just gets laid a lot more. Lacy’s demanded “payment” for the R-11 is to watch Logan screw two sexy black women; Logan decides, what the hell, to “lose himself in flesh” and complies. The act happens off-page. In return, Lacy gives Logan a “full dex” of the drug, as well as a room to occupy for his trip. The novel takes a psychedelic turn as we get fractured moments from Logan’s past, presented wily-nily, from his childhood to his Sandman days to finally his time with Jessica and Jaq. But meanwhile Lacy has decided to kill Logan for his Gun (not sure why she can’t just take it, as he’s comatose from the drug), and poisons the room.

Logan’s ass is saved by the telepathic aid of Dia, beautiful blonde daughter of Andor. He gets his Gun, maybe kills Lacy (he shoots her with a “Tangler,” which I guess is maybe a net?), and escapes. But the reader questions why Logan even wants to live. His goal with R-11 was to escape this horrible new world without his wife and kid, and to live in the past. So why should he be concerned he’s going to die? Actually, he would die while in the re-live grip of the R-11, ie with his family again, so wouldn’t death be exactly what he’d want at that moment? But Nolan hopes the reader won’t think of this.

Instead, Logan goes and lives in a coral castle along the sea with Dia and her equally-beautiful sister. I mean why not?? More off-page sex for Logan, who is so consumed with the telepathic women that he’s about to give in to their requests that he deny his actual sight and join them in full telepathy, blinding himself via a large mirror(!?). Once again someone shows up just in the nick of time to save Logan’s ass; Wildnerness leader Jorath, who brings word that Jessica is alive, after all. Lucrezia Borgia was lying, in a vain attempt to save her life.

The final quarter of the novel is comprised of Logan freeing Jessica from the grip of Gant, a former Sandman who has gathered together an army of former Sandmen, all of whom still hate Logan for his treachery in the first book. And Gant, we’re told, has long been Logan’s archenemy. Gant might be black; I’m not sure, again due to Nolan’s vague descriptions, which merely inform us that Gant is almost seven feet tall and has “dark, burnished skin,” whatever that means. He also has replaced his teeth with rubies. He makes his base on Crazy Horse mountain, in the Dakotas, a familiar setting from the previous book, as here was the home of the Thinker, which sprawled across entire acres. Now Gant is repairing the computer with the intent of taking over the world anew.

Meanwhile he has purchased Jessica, from Lucrezia Borgia of course, and uses her to taunt Logan. Our hero again comes off poorly, captured promptly and thrust into a “stormroom,” where he is battered by artifcially-controlled elements to the point of insanity and incontinence. Gant tosses the near-vegetable Logan into a cave with Jessica, who tends to him, and periodically shows up to force Jessica to whip Logan for his amusement. Weird, wild stuff, as my man Johnny Carson would say. 

But Logan’s saved again, this time courtesy Mary-Mary, a teen girl who apparently once met Jessica, back when the City was still alive. She’s part of a resistance movement dedicated to stopping Gant. The finale sees an incredibly drawn-out sequence in which a healed Logan marshals a strike force against Gant’s men, with the intent of destroying the Thinker (again). Meanwhile various characters are captured anew, forcing periodic rescue attempts. The finale goes down as expected, with Gant’s plot foiled and the Thinker again destroyed – blown up real good.

“I intend to keep [Logan] running for a long time to come!” Nolan assures us in the Author’s Afterward, but as it turns out, only one more novel was forthcoming: Logan’s Search, in 1980. Perhaps the failure of the TV series, coupled with the failure of this novel to attain the fame of its predecessor, soured him on the idea of doing much more.

Phoenix Prime

Phoenix Prime, by Ted White
No month stated, 1966  Lancer Books

Ted White was an editor of various science fiction magazines and, in addition to writing many short stories, published several paperbacks. I’m not sure how well they resonated with the readers of the day, as it seems that many of them only received a single printing, Phoenix Prime being one such example. And perhaps the novel itself provides the reason why – it’s a bit ponderous, self-important, and takes forever to tell a story that proves to be underwhelming and familiar.

Humorously, Phoenix Prime starts off being about one thing before taking a sudden plot change and becoming something else – almost a prefigure of the later Richard Blade series, but without the lurid charm. For White, strangely, wants to play it serious throughout, invoking the novel with a gravitas that comes off as more irritating than compelling. This is particularly strange when you consider that Phoenix Prime is about a superhero-type guy who is thrust into a Conan-esque world. One expects lots of comic book-type fun, but instead one gets lots of ponderous page-filling, including lots of walking in the desert.

I’m not sure when the novel is set. It seems to be the mid ‘60s, as there’s no effort to make it sound like the future; people still listen to transistor radios, there’s no mention of space travel, etc – though World War II is referred to as “long ago” and our hero apparently feels the need to explain what it even was to his girlfriend. But then that could just be the pedantic nature of our hero – and the pretentious tone of the novel itself. (Actually of the decade itself! Friggin’ hippies!!)

Our hero is Maximillian Quest(!), a 23 year-old New Yorker who has never applied himself; while intelligent, he dropped out of school and makes his meager living via various menial jobs. But the novel opens with Max waking with newfound, inexplicable powers – levitation, pyrokinesis, etc. He just plumb wakes up with superpowers, folks. His girlfriend Fran walks in on the latest display of superpowers – “the Human Torch and all that,” and freaks out; Max explains to her his new condition in a rambling dialog that displays the ponderous nature of the entire novel:

“It was like double vision, a second sight. I could turn it on and off. I could make it overlap my normal vision, or supplant it. The funny thing was, I discovered that I could function on my new sense equally well. I could look at the whole room that way, ignoring the minute patterns and seeing the larger ones. In a way, it blended right in with normal sight. I mean, have you ever really looked at things? If you stop just glancing over all the familiar objects, and look at the room as though you’d never seen it before, it can be fascinating. You can make out all sorts of relationships, the rhythms of color, the placement of masses and empty areas, the similarities and clashes in the lines of different furniture – this place is a real hodgepodge – and you can see the whole room as a three-dimensional area, an integrated whole.”

Have I mentioned yet that Max drives a taxi?

Seriously though, Phoenix Prime is so of its time you can almost hear The Jefferson Airplane in the background. Normally I like such things – any era is better than this one – but in this case it comes through most strongly in the pretentious vibe. On the other hand, I suspect I would’ve loved this novel had I read it several years ago, when I was into the hippie literature of the ‘60s and early ‘70s. White hits all those bases, from mentions of The Fantastic Four to Alan Watts. But he appears to want to take this sort of psychedelic superhero concept he’s come up with and treat it seriously, instead of the fast-paced pulp actioner the concept demands.

To put it another way, folks: at one point in Phoenix Prime we get a two-page dissertation on “What is love?”

Anyway, just a few hours after getting these powers, Max discovers that he’s being watched, and then tested in increasingly-dangerous (but pretty humorous) ways: first he’s attacked by a squirrel and some pigeons in Central Park, and later some kid turns momentarily nuts and tries to push him into the path of a train. Max dubs his unsees assailant “The Other,” assuming correctly that someone else has the same powers as Max. He gets confirmation of his theory later that day; a conservative-dressed but nondescript man gets in the back of Max’s taxi and tells Max he is to “renounce his gift” or else suffer the consequences. There isn’t just one “Other,” but a few, and they are evil and do not appreciate the fact that Max intends to use his gift for good.

Max tells ‘im to go to hell, the guy disappears, and later Max finds that, of course, Fran has been kidnapped. The Other had given Max an address in Manhattan, for a law office, and there Max finds a party of the jet-setters in full swing. In one of the novel’s few cool sequences, the Other and his comrade summon Max through a mirror, where they wait for him in some sort of pocket reality. Fran is there, unconscious on a couch. They tell Max they’ve sent her soul into another dimension, and he can follow her there to reclaim it. I guess it’s one way to get rid of the competition. Max takes the challenge, and is promptly zapped away, his body left behind here on Earth.

Now here, at page 54, the novel changes entirely. We’ve spent this first quarter expecting a story of superhero Max taking on the supervillain Others, but instead he’s zapped off to a new planet – a planet where he no longer has his superpowers! Folks this was so goddamn dumb I almost tossed the book, but I didn’t want to damage the awesome Frank Frazetta cover. I mean the entire point of the first 50 pages is rendered moot! Why even bother with the belabored intro of giving your protagonist superpowers, when in reality you just want to write a planetary romance about some guy sent nude and confused onto some alien planet?

But anyway here Phoenix Prime prefigures Andrew Offutt’s Ardor On Aros, only this one’s in third-person and it isn’t as snarky or satirical (however Offutt’s book also had a Frazetta cover, so how’s that for unironic irony??). Finding himself in the middle of a seemingly-neverending desert, Max trudges on…and on…and on. The novel is an uphill climb, as it’s nearly 200 pages of dense narrative, with hardly any dialog or white space – it’s practically all telling instead of showing. Even the action scenes are boring, like when Max is attacked by what he dubs “desert pups,” and later on when he takes on some wolves by a pool – a scene Frazetta captures in his masterful cover painting. 

Max picks up one of the wolves and it becomes his sort-of pet; he calls it “old boy” in what few patches of dialog we get in this turgid section of the book. Again befitting the style of the times, Max at one point drinks the “water” from a cactus even the wolf seems to shy from, and of course it sends him on an arbitrary drug trip which entails him carrying on a coversation with mental projections of Fran and his Other enemies. Eventally Max comes to a city, Ishtarn, and there befriends some desert folk; the tribe leader “gives” him 15 year-old girl Bajra, but Max turns down her offer of sex, as she’s too young. He apparently changes his mind later on, as they engage in some off-page screwing – Max consoling himself that the people of this world, despite their actual age, are of hardier, tougher stuff than the humans of his own world.

The Richard Blade parallels get stronger with a bonkers sequence that has Max and his new desert pals attacked by a tribe of gay desert warriors who put women in harems, using them only for procreation, but look to men for their true sexual delights(!). Bajra’s put in a harem, a development she takes almost casually, and Max himself is harrassed by the desert chieftan who “won” him in battle; Max makes short work of him before he can act on it. From a harem girl Max learns that Fran, for whom he’s been searching in vain, was briefly in the harem as well, and was the favorite of Rassandra, ruler of these desert warriors.

But when Max catches up with Fran, he finds that she’s already gone – through a “matter transmitter” that took her to another world! It’s like this from now on in Phoenix Prime, almost like a Looney Tunes cartoon, Max eternally just missing Fran. Anyway he steps through the portal and finds himself in another part of this world, which is called Qanar; this new place is an island kingdom, and the matter transmitter is used by a “sorcerress” who herself is from a different place – actually a different era, as she’s from this world, just not this age. Through her Max learns the transmitter creates a “local anomaly” in the space-time continuum which lets him, at much explanation, retain the use of those superpowers he had back on Earth, but here he draws the power from within himself and thus quickly tires.

Oh, and Fran’s no longer here, either – just missed her! But Max uses the machine to somehow track Fran, and gradually locates her in another place, one called Qar. After a fight with some Robin Hood-esque outlaws, Max frees Fran, who casually informs him, “I’ve been raped a number of times,” as if she were telling him the hour of the day. But hey, at least they’re together again. One problem, though: Max, the dumbass, only now figures out that the Others, back home, have destroyed his body, so he has no body to return to! So they continue with the ‘60s tenor of the novel and merge together into Fran’s body, voyaging back into the dimension of Earth.

Now Max-Fran wreak their vengeance on the two Others…and White, for reasons unknown, keeps the vengeance off-page. He keeps it off-page!! Instead we are informed the two Others have themselves been cast into Qanar. Now, vengeance sated, Max takes his leave of Frank’s body, having become a “phantom;” indeed, the “next step in human evolution.” He don’t need no stinkin’ body, folks. No, he’s gonna venture on into the infinite, to probe and think and whatnot, and he leaves Fran to her own devices – and meanwhile we learn that, during her own time on Qanar, her comatose body here on Earth was repeatedly raped by paying clientelle. She takes this raping just as casually as the raping she endured on Qanar.

White published two more novels that take place on Qanar, The Sorceress Of Qar and Star Wolf!, but I don’t think I’ll seek them out.

Venus On The Half-Shell

Venus On The Half-Shell, by Kilgore Trout
February, 1975  Dell Books

I think this is maybe the third time I’ve read Venus On The Half-Shell, which as is now commonly known was really written by Philip Jose Farmer, posing as fictional author Kilgore Trout. The story of this has been told too many times to recount again, but in short in the early ‘70s Farmer found himself empathizing with Vonnegut’s character Kilgore Trout, a “sad sack” writer of science fiction who appeared in a few of Vonnegut’s novels. Farmer requested permission to do a novel as Trout, and after a bit of dithering with Vonnegut, permission was granted.

In 1988 Venus On The Half-Shell was reprinted by Bantam Spectra, this time under Farmer’s own name. In an intro he explains that he chose this story as the one to write because it was the only Trout novel (at that time) that wasn’t given a plot synopsis by Vonnegut; in the other novels that referred to Kilgore Trout, the plots of his books were expounded upon at length. Given that the only thing Vonnegut stated about Venus On The Half-Shell was a “racy scene” (Trout’s books and stories being published by sleaze outfits), Farmer felt that he’d be able to flex more creative muscle by writing this one.

In 1973 Farmer published a facetious monograph about Trout, “The Obscure Life And Hard Times Of Kilgore Trout;” it was collected in the anthology The Book Of Philip Jose Farmer (DAW, 1973). Following the manner of Farmer’s pseudo-histories of Tarzan and the like, the piece discusses Trout as if he were a real author with a real body of work to his name. In it Farmer sums up Trout and his work:

Vonnegut calls Trout a science fiction writer, but he was one only in a special sense. He knew little of science and was indifferent to technical details. Vonnegut claims that most science fiction writers lack a knowledge of science. Perhaps this is so, but Vonnegut, who has a knowledge of science, ignores it in his fiction. Like Trout, he deals in time warps, extrasensory perception, space-flight, robots, and extraterrestrials. The truth is that Trout, like Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and many others, writes parables. These are set in frames which have become called, for no good reason, science fiction. A better generic term would be “future fairy tales.”

[Trout is] miserable, he wrestles with concepts and themes that only a genius could pin to the mat (and very few are geniuses), he feels that he is ignored and despised, he knows that the society in which he is forced to live could be a much better one, and, no matter how gregarious he seems to be, he is a loner, a monad. He may be rich and famous (and some science fiction authors are), but he is essentially that person described in the previous sentence. Millions may admire him, but he knows that the universe is totally unconscious of him and that he is a spark fading out in the blackness of eternity and infinity. But he has an untrammeled imagination, and while his spark is still glowing, he can defeat time and space. His stories are his weapons, and poor as they may be, they are better than none. 

Trout's favorite formula is to describe a hideous society, much like our own, and then, toward the end of the book, outline ways in which the society may be improved.

Farmer faithfully follows this in his own Trout pastiche; however, in the ’88 intro, Farmer states that he didn’t exactly follow the simple, “see Spot run” writing style Vonnegut deployed for his own Trout pastiches. While Farmer’s style in Venus On The Half-Shell is somewhat simple, it doles out a lot of puns and in-jokes, and indeed has a very ‘70s vibe to it. Ironically though, Farmer’s intention is that the book was really published in the ‘60s, but this Dell edition is a revision – to add an extra level to the in-joke irony, the “Obscure Life And Hard Times Of Kilgore Trout” piece ends with the announcement that Venus On The Half-Shell will soon be “republished.”

I love the super-‘70s cover on this original Dell paperback (courtesy “Gadino”), but it is a bit misleading; protagonist Simon Wagstaff, aka “The Space Wanderer” (as Vonnegut solely referred to him in his own Venus On The Half-Shell pastiche), does not go around in star-emblazoned shorts, nor at any point does he wear a fishbowl-esque space helmet. Indeed the novel is so juvenile in regards to the science realm that at no point is Simon stated as wearing any sort of oxygen equipment, despite the fact he spends a few millennia traveling around the cosmos. Simon’s constant clothing is instead: black levis, a baggy gray sweatshirt (with the letters “SW” stitched on it at some point), and imitation leather sandals. He does however wear an eyepatch over his left eye, but the event causing this doesn’t happen until late in the novel. This look was faithfully captured on the ’88 reprint, courtesy cover artist Enric – ie, the guy who did the covers for the 1971 reprints of The Secret Of Sinharat and People Of The Talisman:

Re-reading the book this time, the one thing that most struck me is how similar the style here is to that of Len Levinson. Indeed, if Len had ever written a sci-fi novel, it probably would’ve been like this – not concerned with “science,” but more of a humorous, satirical probe into philosophy – a “parable,” as Farmer himself described Trout’s work in that 1973 monograph. But the question that compels Simon to scour the universe is itself simple: Why are we born only to suffer and die? At least, this is just one of the questions Simon constantly asks – what I mean to say is, this isn’t a deep philosophical work. It’s more about Simon visiting a few planets, encountering the repugnant creatures that live there, and noting their sexual proclivities, sometimes joining them in the shenanigans.

Farmer is likely most remembered for introducing hardcore sex to sci-fi. However it should be noted that there’s no actual sex in Venus On The Half-Shell. There’s a lot of focus on it (we’re always informed of each new alien’s sexual apparati, for example), but no actual sordidness. But I don’t think the sex-focus is Farmer being Farmer; rather, I think it’s Farmer providing an extra layer of in-jokery. For, like a regular Ennis Willie, Trout’s work was solely published by disreputable sleaze purveyors, most of whom changed the original title of Trout’s work to something lurid and put photos of nude women on the covers. The “sex” stuff in Farmer’s Venus On The Half-Shell is likely a reference to this, “Trout” smutting up his book to suit the sleazy whims of his publishers.

The novel opens in the year 3069; our hero Simon Wagstaff is getting busy on the head of the Sphinx in Egypt. The goofy tone of the novel is displayed posthaste as a sudden flooding wipes out civilzation (not to mention Simon’s girlfriend) in the span of a few pages. Simon manages to stay afloat on a plastic mummy display case. Along the way he picks up a pair of what will become constant companions: a dog, which he names Anubis, and an owl, which he names Athena. They are the last survivors of the planet Earth; eventually Simon will learn that the planet was wiped out by the Hoonhoors, an alien race that ventures around the cosmos and “cleans” planets that have become too dirty. At this point the reader of today will see that Venus On The Half-Shell was clearly an inspiration for Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy.

Simon and his companions come upon a spaceship floating on the water. It’s named the Hwang Ho and is of Chinese make. Simon moves into the empty ship and studies Chinese so he can handle the controls. After an encounter with an old space traveler (who has returned to Earth merely to find out who won a particular ballgame in 2457), Simon takes off into space. His goal is to get to “the Truth” behind reality and life. Instead he’s promptly chased by a Hoonhoor ship, and accidentally slips into a black hole, which takes him into another galaxy. The bizarre tenor of the book is further evidenced by the “69x drive” which powers the Hwang Ho’s engines; the 69x drive channels into the fourth dimension and sucks the life out of the stars there. Thus, passengers on ships traveling at 69x speeds hear a constant, terrible screaming – the victim stars wailing in pain.

The first planet up on the menu is Shaltoon, which is populated by humanoid felines. Here Simon’s “atomic-powered electric banjo” playing is a cause for celebration and he is feted by the native critics; a recurring joke throughout the novel is how Simon’s genius was neglected by Earth’s critics, yet more in-jokery via Farmer. But Shaltoon swarms with the “thick, ropy odor of cat-heat,” as the natives are permanently horny. This is because the Shaltoonians store their ancestors inside their cells, and due to a “rotation” each ancestor gets at least one day every hundred or so years to live again in a body. So all they want to do is screw when it’s their turn. All this is explained via lots of setup and exposition and background material.

Venus On The Half-Shell is one of those satires in which the “comedy” is mostly relayed this way – lots and lots of narrative setup, followed by a quick punchline. As if this weren’t enough, Farmer also handles this via novels within the novel itself. In what is intended as another tribute/reference to Vonnegut, Farmer has Simon Wagstaff often thinking of the novels of his favorite writer, Jonathan Swift Somers III, just as Vonnegut’s character Eliot Rosewater often thought of the novels of his favorite writer, Kilgore Trout. So, we have lots of in-depth plot rundowns (too in-depth, one might say) of various Somers novels and stories, from those concerning his intelligent dog protagonist Ralph von Wau Wau (and Farmer by the way published two Wau Wau stories – as by Jonathan Swift Somers III – in 1975 and 1976), to some about his parapalegic space explorer John Clayter. (Author Spider Robinson so liked Ralph von Wau Wau that the dog has appeared in several of his own novels.)

Simon gets his own taste of that “cat-heat;” invited to a personal meeting with Queen Margaret of Shaltoon, Simon enjoys some (off-page) sex with the lady, and more importantly is served an elixer by her that grants immortality. He shares the drink with Anubis and Athena after some mulling over if it’s right to make animals immortal. But he turns down the queen’s offer to rule beside her and heads off again, eventually landing on another planet: Giffard. This one is a bizarre world with “zeppelin” males that fly and “pyramid” females that graze on the grass. After the sexual functions are duly noted, Simon basically starts a revolution here by encouraging the females to demand their partners allow them some flying time.

More importantly so far as the novel goes, here Simon also meets what will become his other constant companion, though to tell the truth on this reading I discovered she’s less narratively important than I remembered her being: Chworktap, a blonde beauty with a “nice figure” that Simon first glimpses coming nude out of the water – just like the famous Titian painting of the title, though without, “Trout” notes, the clam shell or angels or whatnot. However, the clouds look similar to the painting(!). More time passes as Chworktap moves into the Hwang Ho with Simon and they learn how to speak each other’s language.

Only after they have the expected sex – which again occurs off-page – does Simon learn that Chworktap is…an android! She leaves with Simon when he must escape Gifford, when Simon pisses off the natives with his suggestion on how they manage the male-female discord he caused – a suggestion which ends up with Simon being labelled “Simon the Sodomite” by the angry natives. Next up is the planet Lalorlong, which curiously Chworktap suggests, as the natives there might have the answers Simon seeks, as they have nothing to do but ponder. I say “curiously” because all this is overlooked once they get there and the Lalorlongs turn out to be sentient tires that think of nothing but endlessly circling around the planet. This sequence is middling and plays more on a bunch of “tire” jokes, but caps off with more mulling as Simon puts an injured native out of his misery and wonders later if he should have done so.

Next up is the planet Dokal, which takes up a good portion of the text. Also here Chworktap drops out of the book for a long period, not even going onto the planet with Simon; they have a brief fight, after which Chworktap wants to study the computer that runs the Hwang Ho, as she’s certain it is capable of free thought. However Trout/Farmer completely drops this subplot, never revealing if the ship does or not; either it’s a pure miss on Farmer’s part, or more likely it’s yet another in-joke – playing up Trout’s notoriously sloppy/bad writing.

Dokal is populated by humans with tails, and Simon has a tail attached to his body via surgery, urged to do so by the natives. He goofs off here for a while, once again scoring some off-page sex, and eventually heads off into a no man’s land which is home to the planet’s wisest native. After weeks of hiking Simon finds a castle in which he’s ordered by the gross, obese “wise man” to fatten up – the ultimate intention, of course, to eat Simon. This part sees the only action scene in the novel, as Simon manages to defend himself, but loses his left eye in the process. However this is almost an afterthought and there’s no real pain for Simon; the loss of the eye is more of a minor setback. The novel suffers because Simon and the other characters never ascend beyond cipher status.

The planet Goolgeas is the next stop, and this one takes up nearly as much text as Dokal did. It is however the most irritating section of the novel, as the planet is a satire of litigation run rampant. First Simon gets drunk a lot, as all the human-like natives do is drink all the time, and he lets his pets drink too. But then he’s arrested for letting animals get drunk – Chworktap is arrested as well, after beating up a few cops in an escape attempt. They’re all thrown in prison for trial…and wait decades until it’s their turn, due to how swamped the courts are. Eventually everyone on the planet is in prison for some technicality, and our heroes are finally let go because so much time has passed that a “normal lifespan” has been reached. All told, they spend 130 years in prison.

By this point Chworktap and Simon’s love has run its course, having spent a century living in cramped quarters together. Simon drops her off back at her home planet, and this is a scene I always remember because “Trout” makes it clear that “eternal love” is impossible because people will eventually get sick of each other. We’re close to the end, so “Trout” skips over three thousand years; Simon is now a legend in the cosmos, the “Space Wanderer,” who still seeks the answer to his question. The reader feels a bit cheated, as it turns out the entire book is really just the opening quarter (or less) of Simon Wagstaff’s story.

And once again he’s in prison, arrested on the planet Shonk for covering his genitals but not his face, contrary to native custom. Five years later Simon’s sprung by a Hoonhoor ship; the occupants apologize for their ancestors having destroyed Earth, and to make up for it they send Simon off to the planet of the Clerun-Gowph. A recurring subplot in the book is Simon’s search for these elusive, impossibly ancient beings; in most planets in the galaxies, one will find a massive “candy heart-shaped” structure, planted there billions of years ago by the Clerun-Gowph. Simon’s certain if they are that ancient then they will know all there is to know about life.

The year is now 8,120,006,000 AC (“After Creation”), and the Clerun-Gowphs are massive cockroaches. Their leader is named Bingo and he was one of the first to plant those structures; he actually worked with the Supreme Being, whom he refers to as “It.” Those expecting a probing answer to Simon’s burning question have come to the wrong book; after much goofy back and forth, Bingo’s response to why “It” created life, despite all the suffering that would ensue, is a mere “Why not?”

And here the book ends, Simon trapped forever on this world of cockroaches, as the 69x drives have sucked the life out of the last 4th dimension stars. An unusual thing about Venus On The Half-Shell is that it’s kind of irritating as you read it…you start to want more from the characterization and a little less of the goofy vibe…and yet when you’re finished the book, you sort of miss it! At least that was my experience. I mean it’s not a great book by any means, but there is something indefinable about it that’s enjoyable. Maybe it’s that shaggy ‘70s vibe.

Farmer planned to do more novels as Trout, but this was scrapped by Vonnegut himself, who to tell the truth sounds like a bit of an ass. (Anyone read about how he snubbed MST3K’s Kevin “Tom Servo” Murphy?) It appears that Vonnegut misunderstood a comment some sci-fi scholar stated on a PBS program, about how Farmer was going to write his Kilgore Trout novel whether Vonnegut gave permission or not (which wasn’t the case), and he got ticked off. He was also supposedly angered by all the fan mail he got asking if he’d written the book – some claiming it was his best book ever. Further, Vonnegut prevented a planned animated film of Venus On The Half-Shell which would’ve had music by the Grateful Dead.

But by 1988 it appears Vonnegut had forgotten all about the book; in the Bantam Spectra reprint, Farmer gets a little dig in on Vonnegut, stating that, by the late ‘80s, college-age science fiction fans didn’t even know who Vonnegut was anymore, let alone Kilgore Trout. As mentioned Farmer wrote two stories about smart canine Ralph von Wau Wau, as “Johnathan Swift Somers III;” these were collected in the 2006 Subterreanean Press anthology Pearls From Peoria. I intend to read them someday, mostly because they would thus be a sort of continuation of Venus On The Half-Shell, at least so far as the fictional characters within the book itself go.

Nightmare On Vega 3 (aka Space Probe 6 #2)

Nightmare On Vega 3, by Charles Huntington
No month stated, 1972  Award Books

The Space Probe 6 “series” limps to a close with this second and final volume that appears to have been published at the same time as the first volume. Perhaps Award Books wanted to get it over with as soon as possible. One wonders if producer Lyle Kenyon Engel had more volumes of Space Probe 6 in the pipeline, or if he too realized these two books were probably the worst things he’d ever associated his name with.

Because folks I hate to say it, but Nightmare On Vega 3 is, unbelievably, worse than The Soul Stealers. At least that first volume attempted to be science fiction; once it got out of the sadism and vaguely-described sex, it featured robots and space battles and whatnot. But man, Nightmare On Vega 3 is nothing but sadism and sex (a bit more described, this time), with the sci-fi vibe of the series gone and forgotten.

I’m not sure, but I think this one was written by another author than the first volume. Don’t get me wrong, the style is still clunky and the writing itself is bad, with hardly any description (except, curiously, when it comes to descriptions of the various clubs which are used to beat around our protagonist). If I had to make a guess, given Engel’s writing stable at the time, I’m wondering if Nightare On Vega 3 (and perhaps its predecessor) was written by Arnold Marmor, particularly given the sleaze angle. Marmor wrote a ton of sleaze, and while it wasn’t on display in the one volume of Nick Carter: Killmaster he wrote for Engel (Peking and The Tulip Affair), the same sort of clunky and bad style was on display throughout – in particular when it came to the vagueness of description and the paper-thin characters. 

One thing that makes me suspect this is courtesy a different author is that this one doesn’t seem to know what the hell to do with the series concept; at least The Soul Stealers made clear that Captain Matt Foyt and android Ivan 3-69(M) voyaged around the cosmos aboard Space Probe 6, looking for…something. Actually that part wasn’t made very clear. But at least there was a dymanic between the two, even if they were basically clones of one another (as mentioned, the author proved his lack of imagination with these two not only described as looking similar but also basically acting the same). This author however seems unsure what to do with poor old Ivan, and leaves him off-page for the entire narrative.

Instead, the focus is on getting Matt Foyt onto a planet he dubs “Vega” and having him screw a busty native gal, while at the same time engaging in a plot that is wholly ripped off from The Tenth Victim. One holdover from the previous book is that Matt is not presented as the most capable hero; in the first one he was arrested and spent the majority of the book in jail. In this one he briefly ventures around Vega, a planet he and Ivan come upon after getting sucked into a black hole (man I hate it when that happens); immediately he gets chased by a pterodactyl, falls while running from it – and gets amnesia. Yep folks, he gets amnesia, like right off the bat. (Oh, and he eventually gets put in jail in this one, too!)

As mentioned Ivan is back on the ship, where he stays throughout. Matt’s named this place Vega, and it’s the third planet in this new solar system – methinks, per Engel’s Book Creations Inc. norm, that Engel must’ve come up with the “Vega 3” title and story outline, and the author filled in the blanks. For humorously enough “Vega” turns out in reality to be the planet Alcantarn, thus named by its natives, human-like beings with yellow eyes. So “Vega 3” has nothing to do with anything, as the planet’s referred to as Alcantarn throughout. Matt, after waking up with no memory of Ivan or his still-undescribed Space Probe starship, finds himself in the undescribed city that is apparently the capital of the planet – the author doesn’t really bother with any details.

Rather, “Charles Huntington” wants to get to the sadism, same as last time – as we’ll recall, there were periodic depictions of public torture and extermination in The Soul Stealers, so hell, maybe it’s the same dude writing this crap after all. But Matt discovers these yellow-eyed locals murdering each other in wanton acts of cruelty, and strangely, no one bothers to help the victims. Matt does, though, getting in a couple fights, sticking out like a sore thumb due to his dark hair, eyes, and “blue uniform” (at least this time we learn his uniform is blue). But the action scenes are woefully inept: “The crunch of nose bone and a muffled yell from the fellow was heard, and he fell backwards.” Folks, when writing an action scene, don’t ever use phrases like “was heard.” Or describe your protagonist’s opponent as “the fellow.”

After beating up a few random would-be murderers, Matt next stumbles upon some guy trying to torch a friggin’ school. From the conflagration he saves the pretty, busty teacher – her name is Ryana, she’s a redheaded beauty, and she takes Matt back to her place. She explains that on this planet one can buy a license to do anything; given the levels of corruption, if you can pay the government to do something, no matter how horrific what you want to do is, they’ll let you do it. (Boy, sounds like a certain political party run amok – talk about “pay for play!”) So if you want to torch a friggin’ school building filled with kids, you can do it, as long as you can pay for it. And no one can stop you, unless they have a license to do so. However if you are the “victim” being “hunted,” you do have the legal right to defend yourself. (I wonder if Robert Sheckley was aware he was being ripped off?)

Actually the author isn’t just ripping off The Tenth Victim; he also rips off Logan’s Run, at least briefly. For Alcantarn also has an enforced termination once you reach a certain age, and guess what – Ryana’s mom has hit the age. What’s more, she’s due for extermination in a day or two, so how’s that for convenient plotting. Matt beats up the government thugs who come to collect her, then kills them with his DSA pistol, which as we’ll recall disintigrates people. Meanwhile the government thugs have batons (curiously overdescribed by the author, as are the clubs used in the previous street fights Matt gets in with would-be murderers – let’s’ all say “hmmm”), as well as guns called Tempistols that can freeze or enflame. It’s stupid.

Even more stupid, but hilariously so, is that Ryana’s friggin’ mom stumbles out of her room just in time to get blasted by a freeze ray, turns into a statue of ice, topples over, and her head smashes off!! Well, so much for Ryana’s mom. Matt “cleans up” Ryana’s apartment so no one will know there’s been a fight here, Ryana mourns her mom for a hot second – “It was her time to die soon anyway,” being her outlook on the sad situation – and then Matt and Ryana get down to the serious business of screwing:

Matt moved onto the girl decisively and thrust his manhood into her; he thrust it hard and deep, and a second gasp escaped her lips, this one more audible. 

“Ohhh!” she moaned. 

Matt thrust deeply and stayed there. And then it began happening. Her interior muscles began moving rhythmically all along him. The motion increased in intensity, and then something else deep inside her was caressing the most extreme part of him. In moments she was driving him crazy with the internal manipulation and caresses. 

She saw his face. “Now,” she gasped. “Now ravage me!”

Well, now! It goes on for a bit, and the two get along so famously that, I kid you not, practically every scene ends with them rushing back to Ryana’s place for another somewhat-explicit sexual excursion. But that isn’t even the funniest part – Matt gets his memory back thanks to Ryana’s incredible skills in the sack! So now Matt remembers he’s on some still unspecified mission and even has a spaceship nearby, complete with an obedient android best bud who is no doubt waiting frantically (or at least as frantically as an android can wait) for word from Matt.

So what does Matt do? He dials up Ivan on his handy belt communicator and tells the android to hang on for a bit. Why? So “Charles Huntington” can get back to more sin and sadism. Ryana’s got a brother who was banned from society for goofy reasons, and she wants to visit him with his fellow outcasts in the cemetery they’re hiding in. Matt goes along, and on the way out of the place they’re nearly caught by a trio of hunters who go after outcasts for sport. Ryana’s nearly raped, the author going full-bore with this particular grimy angle.

This is just the start of Ryana’s problems: first her mom buys it in spectacular fashion, then she’s almost raped, and now an old flame named Megnus shows up – and displays the license he’s just purchased which grants him the right to murder her! This sadly proves to be the plot of the remainder of the book; Megnus, a wealthy sadist, makes periodic attempts on Ryana’s life, Matt saving her each time. Our dumbass hero tries again and again to plead for Ryana’s life, trying to talk “sense” into Megnus before finally realizing he will need to kill him. Matt even visits the local government offices to try to get the whole thing called off. He proves himself a complete buffoon.

Not that this stops Matt and Ryana from screwin’ as often as possible. Each time we get reminders of those “internal manipulation” skills of Ryana’s; Matt thinks to himself that there can be no better lay in the entire galaxy! So you’d think he’d be a bit more determined to protect the poor girl from harm. But Matt is a buffoon, remember, and after dinner one night Ryana is abducted by some men Megnus has hired – and when Matt finally tracks her down to the abandoned warehouse where she’s been taken, he finds that Ryana’s already dead, her head crushed by Megnus.

I actually found this upsetting, which is more than can be said for Matt himself, who after a second of remorse finally gets hold of Megnus and puts him to death in one of Megnus’s own torture devices. I forgot to mention, but part of the uncountable annoyances in Nightmare On Vega 3 is that Megnus constantly escapes Matt in all the prior action scenes; he’ll make an attempted hit on Ryana’s life, Matt will stop it, Matt will then pursue Megnus, but Matt will lose him in some contrived fashion. This happens many, many times. So you’d think the author would let us relish Megnus’s long-demanded comeuppance a bit more. But nope – don’t forget, this author sucks, and he is incapable of delivering on any expectations. Except of course the expectation that his work will suck. He doesn’t disappoint on that one.

But since the book isn’t dumb enough yet, Matt’s arrested due to his various infringements upon the law, and he’s thrown into prison. There is no reflection on his part that he spent the previous book in prison. He’s to be exterminated publically as an example, and the natives gather in an excited throng. Here comes Ivan to the rescue, finally showing up in the text, skimming over the crowd in a flyer and dousing them with poisonous gas. Matt manages to escape, tells Ivan thanks, and doesn’t regret murdering all these bloodthirsty Alcantarns. Now the two of them head on back to Space Probe 6 to get back to that game of chess they were playing before the black hole interrupted them(!).

And that’s it for Nightmare On Vega 3, which truly was a nightmare, but I have to admit there was a clunky charm to it. I mean any book where an old lady’s frozen head shatters can’t be all bad. And the frequent Matt-Ryana bangings also had their own sleazy charm. But otherwise this was a bad book, and Space Probe 6 was a bad series. There is one mystery, though – namely, the cover art clearly seems to have been intended for the first volume, which did feature scenes of Matt Foyt blowing the heads off androids. No such scenes occur in Nightmare On Vega 3, so who knows what happened, there.

The Valley Where Time Stood Still and The Martian El Dorado Of Parker Wintley

The Valley Where Time Stood Still, by Lin Carter
February, 1976  Popular Library
(Original Doubleday hardcover edition, 1974)

Between 1973 and 1984, Lin Carter published a “sequence” of four novels and one short story that was inspired by and dedicated to  Leigh Brackett. Carter, in his afterward to the final book, Down To A Sunless Sea (DAW, 1984), stated that as a teenager he’d been a fan of Brackett’s pulp sci-fi novels, and wanted to pay tribute to her version of “legendary Mars.” Carter’s novels were not published in chronological order (the first to be published, 1973’s The Man Who Loved Mars, actually takes place last chronologically – and was also the only one to be written in first-person), and they did not feature any recurring characters – other than Mars itself, which as in Brackett’s stories is a dying, dessicated world, home to an impossibly ancient race.

I’d never really thought much of Carter, other than I always remembered his name from the Conan books I read as a kid. But then when I met with Len Levinson last year, my interest in Carter was piqued – Len and Lin were friends from the early ‘60s until Carter’s death in 1988. Len told me some crazy stuff about the guy, who sounded like quite a memorable character – indeed, like a character in one of Len’s novels. Len himself has only read two of Carter’s novels (the first two Thongor installments), but he still thinks fondly of Carter, mostly because of the inspiration he gave Len to get started on his own novels.

Lin Carter was incredibly prolific, and outside of the Conan stuff maybe he’s most remembered for his Callisto series, which was greatly indebted to Edgar Rice Burrough’s John Carter of Mars books. Carter appears to have been a pastiche sort of author, maybe even a fan fiction author; at least he appears to be as such in The Valley Where Time Stood Still, as for the most part he does an effective job of capturing Leigh Brackett’s style. Carter’s pastiching certainly isn’t as evocative or poetic, but it does at time attain the ring of a Brackett original – to wit, “If ever a dead city had ghosts, thought M’Cord, it was Ygnarh dreaming of her lost empire in the golden twilight…” He also tries his hand at various Brackettisms, like “[M’Cord] cudgeled his memory.”

Carter considered these novels to be part of a “sequence” he referred to as The Mysteries of Mars, each of them taking place “about two hundred years” in the future. Chronologically The Valley Where Time Stood Still takes place second, I think, though note that in 1969 Carter published a novella titled The Flame of Iridar that was part of a Belmont Books Double which was also set on Mars, and also dedicated to Brackett (as well as her husband, Edmond Hamilton), but that one took place millions of years in Mars’s past and was more of a fantasy story – indeed, somewhat similar to Brackett’s The Sword Of Rhiannon in setting and fantasy vibe.

This one was the only novel in the sequence to be published in hardcover; Carter dedicates it to Brackett, “because it’s her kind of story.” He doubtless means this both ways – it’s Brackett’s kind of story in that it’s something she herself would probably enjoy reading, but also because Carter has done his best to retain her style and to set his novel on her Mars. Even the names of the various Martian cities are similar – ie Carter’s Tharsis to Brackett’s Valkis. And his Martians have that same vibe of decayed nobility; Carter’s have “coppery-red” skin and yellow eyes, and the men sport “furcaps” which are styled according to their status. The native women are generally topless and wear bells in their hair, just as in Brackett.

One difference is that Carter seems to go for more of a Western vibe than Brackett did. It would be easy to transpose the plot and characters of The Valley Where Time Stood Still from the deserts of Mars to the deserts of the Midwest, with his “lean and ragy” human protagonist M’Cord coming off just like a cowboy hero, even down to the dual “energy guns” he wears on his “lean hips.” (And those energy guns are made by General Electric, folks!) Likewise, Carter’s main Martian progatonist, Thaklar, is basically the Indian of Western yarns, abiding by his own code of nobility.

M’Cord himself is gruff and taciturn; he’s a desert prospector, having spent the past decade scouring the desert wastes of Mars for uranium, which is valueless to the Martians themselves. Instead of a horse he rides a slidar, one of the “ungainly, long-legged scarlet reptiles” which Martians use as “riding beasts.” (As we’ll recall, Brackett’s were described as “lizardlike mounts.”) An interesting detour from Brackett is that the humans of Carter’s books have undergone surgery to survive on Mars without the aid of a “respirator;” thanks to the “Mishubi-Yakamoto treatments” he received years before, M’Cord needs less oxygen. However like other “Earthsiders” on Mars, he wears a “thermalsuit” against the harsh elements.

Our hero comes upon a native stuck beneath a dead slidar. This turns out to be Thaklar, a former prince of the “Dragon Hawk clan.” It takes a long time to eke the info out of the injured warrior, but long story short: Thaklar is the latest in a line of fathers and sons who protect the secret location of Ophar, the so-called Valley of Lost Time, a sort of mythical Eden that also has a Fountain of Youth. The place, known as “The Holy,” is forbidden to Martians, and only Thaklar’s people know where it is. But he recently gave away the secret for a piece of ass: a hot native dancer-babe named Zerild, she of the “shallow pointed breasts” and “long, slim, coltish legs,” with hair like “a banner of black silk.” But the “wicked slut” took the sacred info and ran – without even giving poor old Thaklar that promised piece of ass!

Thaklar only relates his sad tale to M’Cord because the two have become “brothers,” following the ancient Martian tradition of sharing water – this after M’Cord is nearly killed by an attacking “sandcat.” Given that M’Cord himself saved Thaklar’s life, the Martian feels indebted to him, even if he is a “f’yagh,” or “hated one,” as the Martians refer to Earthmen. Thaklar gives water to an unconscious M’Cord, whose leg has been torn open from hip to knee, and this sharing of water is a holy and sacred thing, as water on dessicated Mars is more precious than life.

The two stop off to rest in Ygnarh, an incalculably ancient city that is “the first stop on the road” to Ophar. Thaklar’s own leg has healed, but M’Cord is in a bad way, but luckily here in this deserted “first city” of Mars they find other people – a Martian outlaw with the face of a wolf named Chastar, a “little priestling” named Phuun, and none other than Zerild herself. Chastar, who leads the group, keeps prisoner two Earthlings: a brother and sister from Sweden named Karl and Ingrid Nordgren. Of course, Ingrid is a hotstuff, stacked blonde, but she tries to hide it, and more so serves as an obedient servant to her brother. She helps to heal M’Cord with lots of high-tech equipment.

Thaklar has bargained for their lives with the revelation that he didn’t give Zerild all the details on the path to Ophar, so if the three want to go there – for whatever reason – they’ll need Thaklar’s help. And he demands safe passage for his “brother” M’Cord as well. Thus the group stays in Ygnarh for like…well, for like forever. The novel hits a holding pattern here for what seems to be endless chapters as M’Cord heals (I swear the phrase “His leg healed” appears like every other page, even though we’re informed he’s still healing). Carter strives for Brackett-style word painting as the humans muse over how ancient the city is, the first marble of which was set down while dinosaurs walked on the earth, but it does go on.

It’s a bunch of padding and slows the novel right on down, which is a shame, as prior to this it moves at a snappy pace. Finally though M’Cord has healed, for real this time, though we’re also informed he now has a “game leg” that he’ll forever have to drag along behind him. He can still ride a slidar, so off they head for fabled Ophar. But even here the novel is slow-going at best, Carter constantly stalling all forward momentum wth inordinate padding; repetitive padding, at that. It is clear he is having a hard time of filling up an entire novel – which isn’t even too long, coming in at 222 pages. Carter keeps stalling, ending most chapters on lame “what might happen next?” cliffhangers.

Ophar, when it is finally reached after arduous (and page-filling) journeying, is an Edenic paradise hidden in a valley at the bottom of a massive crater. An artificial crater-floor serves as a mirage to hide the place; Thaklar leads them down the stairs cut into the thousand-foot drop of the crater, and on through the mirage-like portal into Ophar. The cover painting of this Popular Library edition* pretty faithfully captures how Carter describes Ophar, even down to the big-eyed cat – which M’Cord theorizes might be the “mammal-like cat” from which the Martians themselves descended. Strangely, despite trying to invest the tale with “science,” Carter has it that his version of Martians might have a feline heritage…yet they’re still “humans.”

For Ophar is truly the place where time stood still – there are all manner of flora and fauna here that went extinct so long ago that no fossils even remain of them. The biggest surprise is the giant scarlet telepathic reptile that greets them – a kindly Guardian, and just one of several that still live here in the Valley. Even here though Carter shamelessly pads out the pages; it seems like every other page M’Cord pauses to worry over what might happen next. At any rate the Guardian fixes his game leg while he’s asleep; Carter works up a somewhat-lamely delivered reveal that the Valley heals those who have good hearts, but curses those who have come here for evil.

Here also Carter develops an 11th hour love between M’Cord and Ingrid, who it turns out is sometimes whipped by her brother…and might just enjoy it. After a lot of padding and exposition on this or that element of the Valley, the climax goes down quick, with Chastar and Phuun revealing their (incredibly lame) plan to conquer Mars – threaten destruction of the Valley itself! They’re going to bottle up water from the Pool and show it to people around Mars, or something…it’s pretty dumb. Oh, and the Pool gives off “bubbles” which, if they touch you, instantly zap your mind back to childhood and remove all stain from your heart, etc. But too much of it and you permanently regress, as evidenced by the flocks of nude young people running around, most of whom have been here for millennia.

The finale features various bizarre send-offs: one character is turned into a babe by the Pool, another is strangled by a tree that comes to life, like it just walked out of The Lord Of The Rings. Another is cast back into a bestial mode. Dancing “slut” Zerild (who might actually be a virgin – and by the way there’s zero sex in the book) freaks out and decides she loves Thaklar after all, devoting herself to him if he will accept her. And meanwhile Ingrid’s in danger of becoming one of those brainless Valley kids, thanks to an errant bubble, but M’Cord finds her…and conveniently enough she’s forgotten about practically everything except her love for him!

All told, not much really happens in The Valley Where Time Stood Still; as mentioned, it was more like a novella that was padded out to excess. The blood and thunder of vintage Leigh Brackett is nowhere to be found in this novel. The characters are not very interesting; the late reveals and turnarounds are so carelessly delivered as to almost be an insult to the reader. But I did enjoy the vibe of the novel, or at least the opening of it, which implies that The Valley Where Time Stood Still is going to be a lot better than it actually is.

Carter does an okay job of capturing Brackett’s style, though he does have an unfortunate tendency to lecture the reader, breaking the narrative flow. This is usually in regard to background on Mars, and thus isn’t too egregious, but sometimes it can be, with stuff like, “But that is one of the best things about living – one of the most precious gifts ever given to us by Those who shaped our being: We cannot ever know what is to come.” He does stuff like this throughout the novel and it isn’t very “Brackettian” at all; she was much more of a “show rather than tell” kind of author, and would’ve shoehorned such philosophies into action or dialog. But these things mark the difference between a good author and a great one.

*Every time I looked at that funky cover painting on this Popular Library edition, I kept thinking of Shea and Wilson’s almighty Illuminatus! trilogy – in particular, the similarly-funky cover paintings of the original Dell Books editions. I puzzled over the signature on this The Valley Where Time Stood Still painting, researched online, and at length discovered that it is indeed by the same dude: Carlos Ochagavia! Though he just went as “Carlos Victor” for the three Illuminatus! covers.

As mentioned above, The Valley Where Time Stood Still chronologically takes place second in the sequence. In 1976 Carter published a short story in the DAW Science Fiction Reader which would take the first chronological spot. It is titled “The Martian El Dorado of Parker Wintley.” Here’s the cover of the anthology, which is dated July, 1976:

The story takes place in “’67,” which I wager means 2167; in the afterward to Down To A Sunless Sea, Carter states that the Mysteries Of Mars sequence takes place about 200 years in the future. Or as Carter puts it in this story, “This was rugged, Colonialist Mars of the frontier,” further referencing the global revolution which apparently serves as the climax of The Man Who Loved Mars. But anyone hoping for a Brackett-esque short story about “legendary Mars” will be disappointed. Rather, Lin Carter apparently wants to do a comedy…one written in an annoyingly omniscient tone at that. 

Our “hero” is Parker Wintley, a self-involved lothario who has come to Mars after running into some female troubles on Earth. His plan is to get rich quick, capitalizing on the diamond rush currently dominating the red planet; while hard to find, diamonds are not much valued by the natives. Parker’s figured he can find some in the south regions of the planet, whereas everyone else is up north. He uses his charm to score a free “sand crawler” from the pretty lady who runs the rental place, and sets off on his trip.

But the majority of the 10-page tale is given over to “comedy” about the inordinate customs and rituals of the Martians, who we are informed perfected their culture millennia ago, so that there is no new art or entertainment or etc. So instead they enjoy talking floridly and endlessly beating around the bush. To this end Parker, when he meets a tribe of “yellow-faced natives in their loose brown robes,” spends five days haggling with them, most of it composed of days-long words of welcome from the Martians. Luckily, none of this crap is in The Valley Where Time Stood Still, and one hopes it only exists in this short story – the Martians seen in that novel, and hopefully the other three, aren’t so bound by ridiculous formality.

Worse yet, the story winds up to a lame comedy climax; after all this haggling, Parker makes off with what he believes are cannisters of diamonds. But then his sand crawler breaks down and only then does he look inside – the Martians have given him water, thanks to a mistake on Parker’s part in the Martian words he used. He referred to a “precious thing” he wanted in exchange for the salt he was bartering with the Martians – salt being incredibly rare and desirable here – and to the Martians there is nothing more precious than water.

But the water keeps Parker alive for the long walk back to civilization, and the story ends with him figuring he’ll go shack up with the pretty sand crawler rental babe. And that’s it for the story, which I guess can be considered part of the Mysteries of Mars sequence due to the reference to The Man Who Loved Mars. Otherwise I’d say this one could be skipped; it doesn’t even have a Brackett vibe, as the novels do.

FYI, only one post next week, on account of the holidays; it will be on Wednesday. Merry Christmas!