The Big Brain #2: The Beelzebub Business

The Big Brain #2: The Beelzebub Business, by Gary Brandner
July, 1975  Zebra Books

I enjoyed this second volume of The Big Brain more than the first one. Gary Brandner again turns in a tale that has more in common with private eye fiction than men’s adventure, given that it’s a sort of slow-moving yarn with lots of dialog and scene-setting. But he peppers it with enough paranormal stuff and Satanic sleaze that it just comes off a lot more entertaining that The Aardvark Affair.

It’s sometime after that first adventure and Colin “The Big Brain” Garrett is back in California, hanging out with his girlfriend Fran. Not that this will prevent Garrett from hooking up with two other babes in the course of this novel; Fran is off-page for the duration, only appearing here in the opening chapters. Garrett is concerned over her safety, after she almost got killed trying to help him last time around, and demands she stay behind. Our hero is called in once again by his old Army colonel, Jefferson Judd, now head of strictly off-the-books spy outfit Agency Zero.

But even Garrett has a hard time understanding why Judd wants him. The case doesn’t really sound like something that needs the Big Brain: Darrell York, son of one of Judd’s old friends, has a job on the unofficial foreign relations committee that’s run by a guy named Alec Danneman, who got the gig because he’s been a longtime friend of the current President. Despite his lack of a political past, Danneman’s actually gotten a lot done in Washington, and thus he’s made a lot of enemies among the political hacks.

However, York claims that Danneman has been acting weird lately, and the concern is that Danneman’s about to head to Taiwan to help prevent the nuclear war that’s about to break out between that country and China. Brandner tries to pull us in with an opening chapter that lets us know something weird is going on, after all – we witness an unnamed man in a Satanic temple, where he receives orders from a guy wearing a goat mask and then has sex with two women, one a redhead and the other a black woman (both of whom first engage in a little lesbian shenanigans for his viewing pleasure!). Brandner by the way isn’t very explicit, but it’s all a bit more risque than the previous volume. After which the person, armed with a knife, heads out onto the streets of DC to kill in the name of Beelzebub…

But Brandner really page-fills with what amounts to lots of red herrings. It’s more so in the “political thriller” vein instead of the “Satanic sleaze” we might want, as Garrett, who is tasked by Judd to figure out what if anything is going on with Danneman, goes around the political circuits and hobknobs with various VIPs. Along the way Judd sets him up with a partner, a fellow Agency Zero agent, and of course it’s a sexy young babe: Trudi McKenzie, who is written in a way that would send modern feminists into paroxysms of rage. She basically throws herself at Judd, pouts when he gives her the cold shoulder (he’s determined not to mix work with pleasure, given how Fran was almost raped and killed last time), and goes out of her way to get him to notice her.

Mostly though it’s Garrett meeting this or that political bigshot, some of them on the right, some of them on the left, all of them enemies of Alec Danneman, who by the way is described as looking like Albert Einstein but somehow is very successful with the ladies. Things pick up a bit when Trudi, who works at the State Department officially (all Agency Zero agents are only part-time as a cost-saving measure!), takes Garrett to a party at socialite Bebe Schuyler’s place; all the major characters converge there, with the addition of the femme fatale of the piece: a six-foot beauty with “blue-black” hair and a body that is “beautifully and generously proportioned.” Her name is Liana Wolfe and she is a self-proclaimed witch who runs the Satanic-themed Beelzebub Club.

Garrett makes a beeline for her (much to a still-pouting Trudi’s dismay) and sets a date; his research proves that the Beelzebub Club might have something to do with things, as we already know that Danneman is a member. And also we already know Danneman is under Satanic mind-control, as we watch him murder Darrell York. But this only serves to set up more padding from Brandner, as we readers already know Danneman was the killer, yet we still must read many, many pages of Garrett and Judd trying to figure out who killed poor Darrell – Garrett of course doubting the words of a hoodlum who claims to have done it, as Garrett (correctly) detects some brainwashing at work. 

Speaking of which, “The Big Brain” is less a brainiac this time around, and more of a supernatural sort along the lines of the protagonist of The Mind Masters, at least in how he can read minds. What I mean to say is, rather than just expositing reams of data on this or that like a true smarty pants, Garrett is also capable of “probing” the minds of people, to “penetrate” thoughts like the Shadow or something. He can even instill thoughts into the brains of weak-minded people. All of this lends the book more of a paranormal bent than I recall there being in the first volume.

Club Beelzebub looks like “Hell as it might have been designed by Walt Disney;” it’s a tacky-sounding place with red carpet and black candles, with a fireplace that emits wailing sounds, as if of the sufferers in hell. But it’s a big hit with the DC circuit, and rumors have it that privileged members get to take part in Satanic orgies in the back room. Not that Garrett has any concerns on that score – after a single drink with Liana and some flirtatious banter, she invites him up to her swanky room above the club. As mentioned, The Beelzebub Business is a bit more risque than its predecessor – what I mean to say is, the Big Brain gets laid this time, folks.

“They made love wildly, exultantly, with a fierce joy in their sensuality,” is about the extent of it, but we do get lots of mentions of Liana’s “nipples,” in particular one head-scratcher of a note that, when she later wears a skimpy gown, her nips make “dollar-size” protrusions in the fabric. Boy, those must be some wide nipples! Anyway a groovy time is had by all, but Garrett still suspects Liana. After the guy who claims he killed Darrell York commits suicide (with poisoned chewing gum!), she becomes the only suspect our hero still has.

This leads to more red herring-chasing, as Garrett heads to San Francisco to look into the members of Liana’s old coven. Lots of padding here, and the shame of it is that Brandner would’ve been better-suited to just feature more stuff with Liana herself, as she’s by far the most interesting character in the novel. But she stays off-page until the very end, with Garrett again in private eye mode, going around and asking old coven members about her. Here follows the novel’s first “action scene,” as Garrett is knocked out by a pair of hoods and taken off to be killed. Here too we see the series’s new paranormal bent at play, as the Big Brain implants various thoughts into the weak minds of his captors, causing them to freak out over various things; he also manages to appropriate their guns and kill them both.

Brandner keeps things going in the paranormal direction into the climax; after giving in to Trudi’s romantic pleas, Garrett goes out to dinner with her and back to her place for a bit of casual screwin’, only to do a cursory “probing” of the girl’s mind and discover the same hidden barrier he’s detected in the other brainwashed members of the Beelzebub Club. Sure enough, she goes nuts and comes at him with a knife. Trudi safely in a sanitarium, Garrett next visits Liana again in her swank penthouse above the Club, where despite himself he’s drugged and put in the presence of Beelzebub, that goat-headed demon we saw in the first chapter.

It’s a veritable war of the brains as Garrett uses his mental powers to offset the brainwashing of the drugs and the supernatural demands of Beelzebub, who turns out to be one of the minor characters we met earlier in the book. Brandner skirts straight-up paranormal action with it seeming that Garrett kills the guy with the power of his mind, only to reveal that it was actually a knife-wielding Alec Danneman, suddenly freed of his mental yoke thanks to Beelzebub’s being distracted while fighting with Garrett. As for Liana, she’s gone and doesn’t appear again, which is a shame; we get a tepid wrap-up courtesy Garrett that Liana was “innocent” of what really went on in the Club, and that she’ll no doubt get a lawyer who will arrange an all-male jury who will promptly acquit her of all charges!

Once again I have to take a moment to discuss the cover, which like the first one misrepresents the series protagonist as a freak with his brain outside of his skull. One suspects the artist got his wires crossed; note how the Big Brain is clutching that knife in a pose that’s more “psycho killer” than “action protagonist.” Zebra Books must’ve figured out they were sending the wrong message with these covers, as the next volume, Agency Zero, completely removes any depiction of the Big Brain and goes in a different direction. However that one was to be the last in the series, so perhaps the damage had been done…

Yolanda: The Girl From Erosphere (Yolanda #1)

Yolanda: The Girl From Erosphere, by Dominique Verseau
May, 1975  Grove Press
(Original French publication, 1972)

This is one of those books I’ve wanted to read for a long time, but it was always exorbitantly priced. But, in one of those random flukes, I recently came across it at a jawdroppingly low price – pretty much the exact same thing that happened, years back, with another book I hunted for: Jackboot Girls. Anyway, enough preamble – Yolanda: The Girl From Erosphere is an English translation of a French sci-fi sleaze novel from 1972. “Dominique Verseau” was in reality prolific pulp writer Henri Rene Guieu.

A curious thing about this book is that it is packaged identically to a Dell paperback of the day, even down to the blue tippings on the pages. Was Grove Press a subline of Dell? I don’t think it was, but Yolanda looks just like a Dell book. Another curious thing is that no info is presented about the French provenance of this novel, when it was originally published, who Dominique Versea was, etc. About the only thing we get is a blurb on the very last page that another Yolanda novel, The Slaves Of Space, would be forthcoming from Grove. It came out in 1976, and that one is so astronomically priced on the used books marketplace that it’s not even worth thinking about tracking down.

Not that this is something to lose sleep over, as if it’s anything like this first volume, I can already guess what the contents will be – endless hardcore screwing, with occasional references to French poets, Classical literature, or philosophy. I was hoping for a Barbarella-esque softcore space yarn, but instead The Girl From Erosphere is pretty much all about the sex. In this regard it’s similar to another sci-fi sleaze yarn of the day, The Moonlovers. Like that novel, this one also has a humorous tone about it; not an outright parody or satire, but just a lighthearted romp about an oversexed four-person crew on the first voyage into hyperspace.

It’s the sexually-liberated future of 2107, and our heroine is Yolanda Hammerlove, a gorgeous, phenomenally-built blonde who works as a “sexologist.” In reality Yolanda mostly just sexually-bullies people throughout the novel. We only get vague setup about this future world, mostly that men and women now hardly wear anything, just “jerkins” or “minishorts.” Instead it’s really just all about sex, usually shoehorned into the narrative; like in the opening, in which Yolanda, on board a jet that’s taking her to Washington, reflects on her recent lez experience with a 16 year-old German girl, celebtrating her SF day (aka “Sexual Freedom”).

The sex scenes in this novel make those in The Baroness seem restrained in comparison. They are more along the lines of the sleaze in The llusionist, though not to the same gross-out levels, however it must be stated that some of the descriptions are so thorough that they do reach off-putting levels. At least in The Baroness Donald “Paul Kenyon” Moffitt knew when to say when. Not so with Guieu, who goes to explicit levels that are not for the squeamish. As ever with ultra-hardcore sleaze, this only serves to make sex more repugnant than arousing.

Yolanda encounters test pilot Bob Rowland on the flight, and promptly they make plans to screw. This will serve to be one of the recurring jokes in the novel, as it takes forever for them to accomplish this, even though they think they have, multiple times over. Turns out they’ve both been called to the Pentagon, now a large black “monolith.” There General Murdock of the Spece Security Committee tasks them with taking the experimental ship Torgar, the first capable of hyperspeed, and heading for the Capella sun, in the Charioteer constellation, 42 light years away. Along for the ride will be Ted Cunningham, astrophysicist and co-pilot, and Jany Jankins, psychologist.

The mission is top secret and the four can tell Murdock has something up his sleeve. But regardless they get right around to sexually-harrassing one another; Jany in particular, she of the beautiful face, awesome body, and “flaming red forest” of pubic hair, is taken through the wringer throughout. The author is not concerned with sci-fi realism, per se; despite entering hyperspeed, and thus exiting the time-space continnuum, the crew is able to keep in touch with Murdock via a viewscreen, making periodic check-in calls to Mission Control.

The focus is instead on hardcore shenanigans. Soon enough Yolanda is bullying Jany into some lesbian action, our heroine taking umbrage at the redhead’s “prudish” demeanor. Apparently being a “sexologist” (and Yolanda even has a doctorate in it) means harrassing and bullying people over any conservative thoughts they might have about sex, and then forcing them to do the deed. It goes on like this for pages, documented in ultra-thorough detail. It gets even more outrageous in an interminable sequence which has Bob and Ted banging Yolanda and Jany, respecitively.

Only it turns out it wasn’t them – thick pubic hair is a recurring motif in the novel, often mentioned, save for the thin blonde “fringe” of Yolanda’s nether regions. Yet the women Bob and Ted screw all night are bare “down there,” and the men Yolanda and Jany have sex with – and they too think it is Bob and Ted, respectively – have massive wongs. All this occurs with the lights off, hence the confusion. Anyway when everyone’s nude on the deck of the ship next day, the guys can’t help but noticing those bushes and the gals can’t help but noticing how much smaller the guys are – Yolanda even speculates that Bob and Ted might’ve screwed ‘em with dildoes.

Gradually – plot development takes a leisurely backseat to hardcore sex – we will learn that Bob and Ted actually screwed an alien woman last night, one who came to Bob’s room and then went to Ted’s. Her name is Iyrinndoa and she’s a seven foot tall bald chick with big boobs. The women actually screwed a male bald alien of the same hieght named Kaloon Ghour. They are from the very planet our heroes are headed for, and teleported aboard to “test” the crew sexually. This leads to more screwing, Jany once again getting the most of it, probed and banged by all and sundry. Oh, and Yolanda busts out a host of sex gadgets from her attache case. It’s all kind of gross.

It gets grosser in the cliffhanger finale, which has the crew and their two alien friends captured by the Rigelians, known as the “sexually insatiable ones.” As tall as the other aliens but hairy (and memorably described as smelling “gamy”), the Rigelians immediately go to town on our heroes, screwing them endlessly – we’re informed Bob and Ted are abused by Rigelian women and men. And Jany gets the worst of it again. Even Yolanda is worn out after the “two hour orgy.” The novel ends with them all in prison on the Rigelian ship, wondering how they will ever get free – and here is where we leave them. And will leave them; as mentioned the sequel is atrociously overpriced, but to tell the truth I wouldn’t want to read it anyway.

This is another of those novels that is best described via quotes, most of which I’ve chosen at random:

Now it was their companions’ turns to emit muffled screams. For the penises of both men emerged out of thick forests of dark-brown pubic hair! -- pg. 88

Before either man could respond, Yolanda reached over and gently palpated both of their sexes. “The only rational explanation I can think of,” she continued, “is that you two came to us equipped with dildoes.” -- pg. 98

[Yolanda] held up a transparent plastic box containing some green pellets. 

“These, my dears, cause the anal sphincter to expand temporarily so that one cannot run the least risk of being ripped apart inside. In fact, one-half hour after swallowing two of these, one’s rectum walls have opened wide enough to allow a man’s fist all the way in without the slightest danger. I know, darlings, for I’ve tried it. And it’s wild, kids – wild and wonderful!” 

“Do you like being sodomized?” Now it was Bob’s turn to look astounded. 

Yolanda tossed her golden mane over her shoulders. “Doesn’t every woman, from time to time? What’s more, I’ve found that most men enjoy it also.” -- pg. 120

Ever the gentleman, Ted seized the end of the artificial member which still protruded from between Jany’s creamy buttocks and withdrew it – although not completely. -- pg. 126

The Great Spy Race (Philip McAlpine #2)

The Great Spy Race, by Adam Diment
June, 1969  Bantam Books
(Original UK publication, 1968)

Seven years ago I read The Dolly, Dolly Spy spy, the first of four novels about “bird-chasing, hash-loving” young British spy Philip McAlpine. I pretty much forgot all about the series after that, given that I didn’t much enjoy the book. But then I came across this second one, which I’d picked up along with the others back then, and figured I’d give the series another go. And I’m glad I did, because I enjoyed The Great Spy Race a lot more.

First of all, a big thanks to Aaron Jeethan, who posted a comment the other year on my review of The Dolly, Dolly Spy, linking to a 2015 Esquire UK article in which reporter John Michael O’Sullivan fruitlessly tried to track down the still-reclusive Adam Diment. The article, which is highly recommended, gives what little insight exists about the guy, who appears to have dropped out of sight in the early ‘70s, at least so far as the publishing world goes. It also gives the impression that the majority of his “hip” persona was created by his manager; even this American paperback edition goes to great lengths to compare Diment to his narrating protagonist, McAlpine, so I’m sure the gimmick was even more forcibly employed in England.

I enjoyed this installment more, but be advised it still suffers from the same problems as the first one, or at least what I consider problems. Mainly, the narrator-protagonist, Philip McAlpine, who comes off like a dick. The novel is infused with his cynical bitching about this or that; he has a massive chip on his shoulder, only equaled by his massive sense of entitlement. Nothing’s good enough for him, everything sucks. This, coupled with his first-person narration, gives the novel more of a hardboiled pulp vibe than the “mod spy” angle the publishers so desperately want to imply. Indeed, there’s nothing remotely “psychedelic” about McAlpine, other than occasional mentions of his mod clothing (colored satin capes, etc) or the occasional joint he smokes.

Special sidenote – anyone who wants to read a ‘60s “psychedelic spy” novel that does tap into the acid era zeitgeist and doesn’t feature a cynical protagonist should read, as soon as possible, The Psychedelic Spy, which is everything – everything! – the Adam Diment novels are supposed to be. (It’s even written in third-person!) If only there had been four books about that character.

Anyway, it’s a year or so after the previous book, and McAlpine just has three weeks left in his contract with Rupert Quine, “gargoyle”-like man behind “6,” the secret department McAlpine was roped into working for last time around. Quine is basically the M to McAlpine’s Bond, though this is an even grumpier M, one who is given to wearing all the latest fashions (up to and including an “LSD hallucinatory tie”). After a lot of scene setting – in which McAlpine’s “flat” is broken into by a dude McAlpine punches in the throat and escapes from – we get down to business: Quine wants to send our hero out on a “simple courier job.”

Meanwhile McAlpine has hooked up with sexy but “thick” Josephine, meeting her at a hip Chelsea party; we get a lot of talk courtesy McAlpine about how big-butted, thick girls are “nice to lie down on,” and also the sex scene is a bit more risque than those in the previous book. (Speaking of which, we’re informed that McAlpine’s girlfriend from last time, Veronica, is off chasing greener pastures or somesuch.) The Chelsea party by the way seems to exist so Diment can show off his “hip” cred, with mentions of The Who and The Stones, the chapter even titlted “Let’s Spend The Night Together.” 

McAlpine’s convoluted job has him getting money from Quine, to pay a “little, gay Gaul” in a mod clothing store for some ancient stamps, which the Gaul informs McAlpine are to be sold to a dude in Mali. This is a fictional island “on the Indian ocean” which is home to Club Oceana, a luxury resort for the mega-wealthy. Supposedly there is a Quine contact there who has some info he will sell in exchange for those stamps and twenty thousand pounds. Even Mali withers beneath McAlpine’s jaded, cynical eye, though we do learn you can buy “marijuana cigarettes” from vending machines, packaged and wrapped in “psychedelic” paper.

The resident spy turns out to be the owner of Club Oceanic, an old, clearly rich former spy named Peters who is very much in the Fleming mold. He is given to florid speeches and expensive tastes, and even retains a memorable henchman: Petite, a towering, very old butler who is superhumanly fast with a gun. This talent is shown off for McAlpine’s benefit in a sequence that could’ve come straight out of the classic Bond films. But don’t be fooled – McAlpine is no Bond. He’s more along the lines of the protagonists who starred in the more spoofy spy-fy series of the ‘60s: “There’s hardly a man alive more a coward than me,” he casually informs us.

But it turns out to be a typical Quine setup; McAlpine’s real job here is to deliver the twenty thousand pounds, which is Peters’s entry fee for “the Great Spy Race,” which he explains is “a competition to exercise the oldest virtues of our art: to wit, extortion, blackmail, and seduction Especially seduction.” Agents from organizations around the world (save for Red China) will compete for the grand prize: a list of every Red Chinese spy currently operating in the Far East. Daniel Honneybun, a portly Ministry employee who was the guy who broke into McAlpine’s apartment early in the book, shows up with a bandaged throat (and a grudge against our hero) to bring word from Quine: if McAlpine doesn’t take part in (and win) the Race, Quine will either have McAlpine killed or something worse.

McAlpine mostly slobbers over the sight of Mallia, Peters’s ravishingly-hot (and topless) fifteen year-old “child concubine,” who sits obediently on her master’s lap while Peters regales McAlpine with stories, taking the occasional moment to dab expensive champagne between the girl’s bare breasts. I don’t think you could swing a scene like this in the present day, but then such are the wonders of vintage pulp. McAlpine takes a few days off to bask in the “Malikin” sun and smoke some of those “manufactured reefers” (he also bumps into an old “friendlet” I assume returning from the previous book, but I couldn’t recall her), before heading back to London to begin the Race.

Anyone hoping for a peek of Swinging London will be disappointed. As in the first book, McAlpine is more focused on just mentioning the things that annoy him, rather than bringing to life the mod fashions, the swinging “birds,” and whatnot. This is I think the main thing that annoys me about this series; I read all the industry blurbs and expect this wide-eyed look at that long-ago world, but instead I get a dude who sounds like your average gumshoe, slouching through a world that both irritates and bores him. It’s like something a burned-out old contract writer would’ve turned in, instead of a “hash-loving” twenty-four year old.

McAlpine has another run-in with the “gay Gaul,” who turns out to be named Pierre Roussin, a Commie French agent taking part in the Race and given to wearing outlandish fashions (ie knee-high purple suede boots). But our hero isn’t much for Bond-esque action; even the literary Bond, who is mostly prone to kicking guys in the shins and running away, is more gung-ho. Instead McAlpine steals a camera and takes blackmail photos of a male bank employee having sex with Roussin; McAlpine threatens to send the bank board the photos if the employee doesn’t tell him the contents of the bank deposit box both he and Roussin (and the other Race participants) were after. It’s a note from Peters, informing the reader that the next step of the Race will occur in Nice.

Here McAlpine drafts Josephine in a plan to co-seduce Mr. and Mrs. Omega, the latter of whom is Peters’s latest step in the game – a notorious slut of incredible beauty (her exotic look courtesy a mixture of “African” and “Indo-Chinese” blood). While Mr. Omega is an old French general, Mrs. Omega is “upper-strata sexy” and when McAlpine first glimpses her she’s dressed in “modish chain mail.” Here he runs into an Irish agent and a “Jap” agent (who speaks with a “Harvard accent”), but manages to mostly see his plan through. McAlpine beds Mrs. Omega shortly after Samura, the Japanese agent, fails to satisfy her; again Diment delivers a somewhat risque sequence, but nothing outrageous. McAlpine tells Mrs. Omega she is “the greatest lay” of his life.

But to tell the truth, the “Great Spy Race” is kind of underwhelming. After the briefest of stopovers in Geneva, McAlpine ends up back off the coast of Mali; he gets there by booking passage on an International Charter flight, in a nice callback to the previous book – turns out his former employers hold no grudges over McAlpine having betrayed them last time. Diment finally delivers at least a little action as McAlpine must dodge machine gun fire from a pillbox to enter the building that holds the prize – which doesn’t turn out to be a list of spies at all, but plans, stolen from NASA, for hyperspeed engines.

As if tossing the entire “spy race” idea, Peters next has McAlpine run for his escape from Mali, an old Nazi plane waiting for him; he will be chased by eight fellow secret agents. This part is just downright dumb – Peters has left a handy table filled with guns and McAlpine grabs a “Schmeisser” (another callback to the previous book) and runs for his life, shooting no one. No one, that is, save for Petite, Peters’s quick-draw servant, who shows up at the plane for “the last test.” McAlpine guns him down accidentally and then feels like “crying” as he stands over Petite’s corpse. Mind you, this is McAlpine’s first and only kill in the book. And the dumbass manages to lose the hypserpeed plans in the plane, which ends up catching on fire after getting him to safety.

The funny thing about these McAlpine novels is that Diment was hyped as the hip, countercultural Ian Fleming, but in reality, Diment’s books are almost exactly like those by Fleming himself – dry, more grounded in realism than in outlandish thrills, and very, very British. Save for a single mention of McAlpine smoking a joint, or listening to rock music (at a party – and we get the impression that, surprise surprise, McAlpine doesn’t even like it), none of the material here would’ve been out of place in a Bond novel. (And even the literary Bond wouldn’t cry after killing someone who just tried to kill him!)

In this regard I’d say the New York Times blurb quoted on the cover is accurate – Diment truly was “Fleming’s successor.” And Diment, for a 24 year-old, is even more obsessed with WWII than actual war veteran Ian Fleming was; The Great Spy Race is filled with references to the war; at least every other page mentions Nazis or war surplus or what have you.

I’m still not sold on the series – I much prefer other swinging sixties spies, in particular Nick Carter: Killmaster, Mark Hood, and Joaquin Hawks.

Death Merchant #37: The Bermuda Triangle Action

Death Merchant #37: The Bermuda Triangle Action, by Joseph Rosenberger
February, 1980  Pinnacle Books

The 37th volume of Death Merchant treads familiar territory, as Joseph Rosenberger turns in an installment that seems much indebted to the plots of #17: The Zemlya Expedition and #30: The Shambhala Strike – this time nutjob Richard “Death Merchant” Camellion again visits a massive underwater Russian complex, and again (sort of) meets some aliens (of the outer space sort). However he’s more worked up about people who talk while eating. 

Rosenberger as ever goes full out with his manuscript – the book comes in at a whopping 177 pages of small, dense print; a whole heaping ton of it could’ve been cut for a more streamlined (and less taxing) read. For example, we know from chapter one that those wily Russians (aka “pig farmers” and “ivans”) are up to no good on the floor of the ocean, near Jamaica; drilling into the tectonic plates or somesuch to trigger massive earthquakes and other destruction across the United States. Oh, and while they’re down there, they might as well look into all those “UAOs” everyone’s been talking about (aka Unidentified Aquatic Objects).

Then when we cut over to Camellion, here in Kingston, Jamaica with the usual group of easily-confused comrades, we endure a long, long chapter where everyone exposits on what the Russians might be up to down there. As ever, Camellion’s the only one who gets it; everyone else doubts those damn pig farmers could be that evil. The fools! Meanwhile Camellion munches on figs from a box and insists on waiting until he’s finished chewing to talk – he becomes “annoyed” with those who talk while eating. And that’s pretty much the entire glimpse we get into our hero’s personality (such as it is). As ever, Richard Camellion is a total cipher, more of an android than a man.

He’s also the Walking Encyclopedia we know from other volumes; a US nuclear sub disappeared here three months ago, and Camellion’s certain that his own theory is the correct one – that the notorious Bermuda Triangle of this area is in reality a rift in the space-time continuum, and the ship has merely slipped over into another dimension! We get lots of exposition about the Triangle, as ever Camellion expositing from his encyclopediac memory. But unfortunately none of it will ever progress into full-blown sci-fi (despite the arbitrary appearance of aliens later on), and instead will devolve into the usual endless gunfights the series is known for.

Camellion’s main comrade here is Josh Forran, a Navy Intelligence operative stationed in Kingston for years. As usual, the supporting characters have more personality than Rosenberger allows for Camellion, even if the personalities manifest themselves at the most arbitrary of times, like for example during the climactic battle: “Forran was still fighting the nostalgia he felt over having been forced to leave Kingston, Jamaica. All his Dvorak records were still in Kingston.” This mind you is while he’s dodging Russian bullets. There’s also Billy Coopbird hanging around, a Jamaican with an Ivy League education who enjoys speaking like the cliched native for tourists.

But Forran is Camellion’s main teammate for the most part; together they board a mini sub that has fancy “invisibility” gear and head into the depths. On the way they, with the crew of the mother ship, see an actual UAO – a massive underwater craft that defies reality. They watch in shock as it sits there on the ocean floor, then takes off at an impossible speed. Camellion, who refers to the thing as a “OINT,” ie an “Other Intelligence,” takes it all with the same sort of casualness he displayed for the aliens he met back in The Shambhala Strike. And for that matter, Camellion never even once pauses to reflect to himself about those earlier aliens.

Nope, Camellion’s more like, “Okay, that’s that – on with the mission.” To me, this represents probably one of the main sources of frustration about the Death Merchant series. It has all this fringe science and supernatural stuff, but all of it’s just used as window dressing. What does it matter that you have aliens, UFOs, spontaneously-combusting people, and myriad other weird things, when your protagonst clearly couldn’t give two shits about any of it?? Even later, when after the mission the Navy dudes find an object of alien metal mysteriously deposited in their ship, clearly left (somehow) by those aliens, Camellion basically shrugs and forgets about it.

But anyway Camellion and Forran make their way to the massive underwater Soviet complex, which of course brings to mind the similar one in The Zemlya Expedition. Not that Camellion even once reflects back on that, either. It’s sad when the reader actually knows more about Camellion’s past assignments than Camellion himself does. About the only bit of continuity in the book is an arbitrary bit where Camellion thinks of “the coming horrors” of the 1980s, in particular those having to do with spontaneous human combustion – clumsy foreshadowing, I suppose, of the next volume. 

They infiltrate the place and sneak around, Forran “feeling as uncomfortable as an armless poker player.” Soon enough they’re spotted and engaged in a firefight with KGB guards, a bit where we see Camellion’s insanity, as he literally laughs in the face of death. To Rosenberger’s credit, Camellion’s comrades almost always realize that the dude’s a psychopath. After this we’re back to the exposition, as Camellion again faces off with the dumbass intelligence bigwigs who bicker over what the Russians might do, now that Camellion’s gotten visual sighting of their massive underwater drills. Once again, only Camellion insists that those damn ivans might nuke everyone.

One expects a Thunderball-esque underwater battle at the complex, but instead The Bermuda Triangle Action plays out in an overlong (way overlong) battle aboard the ship Camellion and crew are on, which is attacked by Cubans and KGB soldiers. The underwater complex is almost casually destroyed by submarines. Camellion leads a crew of Navy SEALS, armed with grenade-bearing crossbows(!), against the Cubans, leading into another mostly-boring Rosenberger action scene that seems to never end. But at least Rosenberger has a sense of humor, for after shedding copious amounts of blood, Camellion tells Billy Coopbird at the end: “I hate violence.” WTF?? Even Billy is thrown by that one, thinking to himself how there is something “alien” about Camellion, “another kind of presence staring out through his eyes.”

This volume does have a lot of underwater action in it, and I’ve always been a sucker for that stuff, having seen Thunderball at an impressionable age. Or was it the underwater part in For Your Eyes Only that hooked me? In fact it might’ve been, as I saw that one in ’82, or whenever it debuted on HBO, when I was seven or so. But anyway we get a lot of that in The Bermuda Triangle Action, which despite the title and (brief) appearance of an underwater flying object, is really just the same old, so far as the Death Merchant goes. 

Here’s Allan’s review. 

My letter from Gold Eagle

Back in the early days of the blog I posted my 1988 letter from Gar Wilson; in it I mentioned that I’d also received a letter from Gold Eagle at the time. Well, here it is – but this time, thanks to the magic of technology, I was able to scan it.

As a bit of background, this response was to an unsolicited idea I’d sent Gold Eagle for Phoenix Force, in which the team goes to Mars for some reason that now escapes me. I should mention I was like 13 at the time, so it sounded like a good idea to me. So then it’s pretty cool that GE’s “Reader Management Editor” Judy Newton (who was married to Michael Newton at the time) actually took the time to write me back – she could’ve just trashed my letter and grumbled “stupid damn kid, wasting our time,” but instead she wrote me this nice letter:

I also love how she so politely butchers my far-out idea!

As I mentioned before, the biggest thrill I recall at the time was her mentioning that a copy of my letter had been sent to Gar Wilson, and it was just a few days later that I received a letter from him; big thanks again to Stephen Mertz, who let me know the other year that the “Gar Wilson” who wrote me was William Fieldhouse.

I recall I had another letter from Gold Eagle, from a little later or something, in response to a question I’d written them – there was a cable movie titled Jake Speed, about a men’s adventure character who was real, or something, and I saw it on HBO when it was first broadcast. The movie occasionally showed some Jake Speed paperbacks (I haven’t seen the movie since then, by the way), and I instantly noticed the Gold Eagle logo on them. I wrote GE asking if they had plans to release the actual novels, but as I recall their response, which was shorter than this one, informed me that those books were just props for the movie and that there were no plans for a Jake Speed series. Anyway I can’t find that letter, but if I ever do I’ll post it as well.

The Baroness #2: Diamonds Are For Dying (second review)

The Baroness #2: Diamonds Are For Dying, by Paul Kenyon
March, 1974  Pocket Books

I’m still enjoying my re-reading of The Baroness; coming back to this series, you can see how it was a cut above the genre norm, despite the repetitive nature of each volume. But I’ve found that most all the series books “produced” by Lyle Kenyon Engel have been a cut above; regardless, Diamonds Are For Dying is still one of the weaker books in the series, though I have to say I enjoyed it more this time than the first time I read it.

As mentioned in my second review of #1: The Ecstasy Connection, enterprising Baroness fan ppsantos discovered, via series author Donald “Paul Kenyon” Moffitt himself, that Diamonds Are For Dying was the first installment to be written, and should have been the first volume of the series published. Either Engel or Pocket decided to hold it back in favor of The Ecstasy Connection. If their intention was to hook readers with a stronger story, then I completely understand their decision – The Ecstasy Connection is one of the best men’s adventure novels ever, and, with it’s borderline sci-fi plot mixed with hardcore kinkiness, works as a much better series hook than this one does.

There were clues strewn about The Ecstasy Connection that it was actually second in the series; in particular there were a few mentions of Baroness Penelope St. John-Orisini’s previous mission, which took place in Brazil. That of course would refer to the events of this volume – humorously, though, the intros to the Baroness and her team aren’t much more fleshed out here than they were in the first volume. So clearly Moffitt was writing each of these books to stand on their own, with little focus on continuity.

Moffitt might’ve gotten better with his second-written installment, but that’s not to say Diamonds Are For Dying is bad. It’s just that, whereas The Ecstasy Connection hurtled along from first page to last, this one doesn’t feature nearly as many thrills. However Moffitt’s already got his series outline worked out – the only difference between this one and ensuing volumes is that it does not open with the inciting incident that will gradually get the Baroness on the job. Rather, Diamonds Are For Dying opens with what would normally be the second scene of each installment: the Baroness’s latest party for the jet-set.

“The Baroness stood at the center of it all, a martini in one hand and a joint in the other.” So we meet our heroine: long, leggy, busty (and lusty) brunette babe of all babes Penelope St. John-Borsini, throwing this massive bash in her Rome villa. She displays the randy stuff of which she’s made posthaste, taking a bet with another jet-setting gal that she’ll be able to get studmuffin Sir Hugh into bed – and Penelope succeeds, of course, within the hour. Moffitt delivers what will become the patented hardcore screwin’ the series would be known for, with the Baroness eagerly boffing Hugh not once but twice – the “back-to-back bangs” being another recurring element of the series. No detail is left unmentioned, though personally I felt The Ecstasy Connection was a little more hardcore, what with Penelope’s “foamy pubes” and all. Or hell, maybe she was just more excited in that one.

Right on cue her watch goes off, zapping her with the demand to contact her secret control at NSA, John Farnsworth, aka “Key.” The Baroness’s own codename is “Coin,” which means that, like The Butcher, this series isn’t titled after the protagonists’s actual codename (the Butcher’s codename was “Iceman”). But like with The Butcher, I wondered why Moffitt went to all these lengths, anyway; why all the busywork about “Key” and “Coin” when he could’ve just made Penelope’s codename “The Baroness” and have done with it? Anyway in this one Farnsworth flies over to Italy to give Penelope her assignment in person – US intelligence is in a dither over it.

Also another thing made somewhat clear in Diamonds Are For Dying is that “the President’s man,” who appears each volume in the meeting with the Intelligence heads and gives them their marching orders, is actually Henry Kissinger, real-life “President’s man” at that time; we are informed he has a “slight German accent,” and later on he is referred to as “Henry.” Speaking of “German,” this volume’s villain is that old pulp menace, the unrepentant Nazi who plans to launch the Fourth Reich and conquer the world, picking up where Hitler left off. His name is Wilhelm Heidrig, and he lives on an old coffee plantation deep in the jungles of Brazil.

The Baroness’s team is actually given less of an intro in this one than The Ecstasy Connection. Members like Yvette and Eric make their first appearance as ciphers and will stay that way throughout the series, though we do get the oddball comment that Eric is a “mathematical wiz.” We learn unusual stuff about some of the others – like for example that bulky Green Beret Dan Wharton is a chemist, and this time has made for Penelope a “synthetic black widow spider venom” which is uber-potent, and which she can eject via a hidden button on her cigarette lighter. Team geek Tom Sumo though as ever provides the main gadgets, which are heavy on the “co-polymer” tip this time, from sandals that can turn into blades to a bra that can turn into a bow. We also get lots of talk on series staple the Spyder, which is a grappling hook that gets Penelope out of many a pickle.

Perhaps the Baroness’s background bio is a bit more fleshed-out in this one; it runs from pages 39 to 46. After which it’s on with the show, and on with the template; promptly upon landing in Brazil, and being hassled by some asshole customs inspector, Penelope and team are saved by an attractive local male, same as in The Ecstasy Connection. This is wealthy lothario Silvio, who turns out to be a leftist who secretly provides medical help to the destitute inhabitants of the slums outside Rio; he’s banging the Baroness that very night, in yet another tour de force of hardcore shenanigans – back-to-back shenanigans at that.

Meanwhile we meet our villains, a curiously-uninmpressive lot, at least so far as this series goes. In addition to Heidrig, the stereotypical died-in-the-wool Nazi who is now in his 60s, there’s sadistic, effiminate Horst, a blonde-haired freak who will ultimately turn out to be Hitler’s son. Heidrig will tell Penelope all about it late in the book, but it goes that Hitler, insane after the war, was spirited out of Germany and hidden in Heidrig’s jungle villa, where he was fooled by his followers into thinking the war was still raging. In the mid-‘60s he managed to sire a son with a local whore, who was later killed off – Hitler himself died in ’65. But Horst doesn’t contribute much to the book, and mostly just enjoys feeding various unfortunates to the pirhanas in a pool on Heidrig’s estate. Or having his dogs tear people apart. Heidrig’s plot centers around Dutch jeweler Peter van Voort, who has figured out how to use diamonds to power a laser that will in turn power an atomic bomb, or somesuch.

Moffitt as ever makes The Baroness feel like the trash fiction equivalent of the typical men’s adventure novel, complete with descriptions of Penelope’s revealing, high-fashion clothing to topical mentions like “a bossa nova with the new, acid beat” that Penelope and Silvio dance to. But Penelope uses Silvio as her means to get into Heidrig’s orbit; dressed as Marie Antoinette for a Louis XVI-themed party the old Nazi throws, the Baroness succeeds in ensnaring Heidrig’s attention, much to Silvio’s dismay. Not that she doesn’t make it up to him. A few pages later and we’re getting more Penelope-Silvio double-banging (actually this time it’s a triple banging). For this Silvio is, unbeknownst to Penelope, beaten to a pulp by Heidrig’s men, but curiously enough Silvio just plumb drops out of the novel afterward, not appearing again until the end of the book, when he shows up at the airport to tell Penelope so long and thanks for all the sex.

Penelope ventures to Heidrig’s jungle estate, only bringing along Tom Sumo and blonde cipher Inga, whose big role this time is to get nude, put on a wig, and pretend to be Penelope to fool Heidrig’s hidden cameras. Oh, and at one point she also frees the Baroness’s big dogs, which have also come along for the occasion.

Here the novel comes to sort of a standstill, with Moffitt continually stretching things out as Penelope tries to maintain her cover as fussy jet-setting mega-babe while both keeping prudish Teuton Heidrig at bay and figuring out what he’s really up to. Meanwhile Sumo sneaks around and puts listening bugs in various places. The writing is good but it’s just sort of slow-going, almost a prefigure of #8: Black Gold, which similarly slowed to a dead crawl for a long duration (and which, now that I’ve re-read Diamonds Are For Dying, would easily have to be my least-favorite volume of the series).

Things pick up in the final quarter; Heidrig, assuming Penelope hates “the inferior races” as much as he does, blabs about his “laser-trigger fusion bomb” and how he plans to rally together old and new Nazis under Horst, proclaiming him as Hitler’s son and heir. Surprisingly, Heidrig then goes about finally banging Penelope – in a mainstream thriller, I doubt this would happen, and our heroine’s honor would be untarnished. But Penelope lays there and thinks of, well, not England, ‘cause she’s an American agent, but anyway she lets Heidrig screw her, then kills him while he’s climaxing. At least she gives the old sadist a memorable send-off.

Interestingly, the Baroness doesn’t spend a single second thinking about how she allowed herself to be probed by Heidrig’s “gristle-tough tool;” Moffitt is with it in that he understands that, as a female agent, the Baroness has no qualms about having sex solely for the mission. Oh, and of course she kills the old bastard with that black widow venom Dan made for her.

As I mentioned in my first review, though, the finale is sort of anticlimactic, as these old Nazis don’t prove much opposition for the Baroness and her team; there’s a nice part where Penelope and the others escape the compound while the main team infiltrates via the jungle, but regardless per series template Penelope is captured. Here too it’s less outrageous than similar such scenes, later in the series; Horst merely pulls her along, still clad only in the lingerie Heidrig gave her, and attempts to feed her to his precious pirhana. Instead, Horst himself becomes fish bait, thanks to the miraculous presence of Penelope’s dogs – those damn dogs save her ass just about every volume.

The finale is just as stretched thin as the middle half; the team splits up and heads for Rio, but Penelope is waylaid by a group of Nazi leftovers, soon to die thanks to radiation poisoning from the atom bomb her team set off in Heidrig’s compound. Here the Baroness puts to use her bra-bow, but despite the nice cover painting she’s not in her black catsuit while she wields it. As ever she’s barely clothed. And now that I think of it, even the gore level is subdued in Diamonds Are For Dying. While The Ecstasy Connection was rife with exploding heads and guts, this one is more reserved.

And that’s pretty much it – it’s back to Rome, where Penelope’s already set her sights on another jet-setting stud to share her bed. Overall Diamonds Are For Dying is fun, and certainly well-written, but pales in comparison to its predeccessor and the other volumes that were to follow, save for Black Gold. But I’m finding that I’m appreciating The Baroness even more upon this re-reading of the series.

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.