Thursday, November 10, 2016

Lost on Venus

Lost on Venus
cover artwork by Richard Clifton-Dey
For the novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs
New English Library, 1965

Sunday, November 6, 2016

Book Review: Four Came Back

Book Review: 'Four Came Back' by Martin Caidin


1 / 5 Stars

‘Four Came Back’ (214 pp) was published by Bantam Books in February 1970. The cover artist is Sanford Kossin.

The novel is set in the near future, i.e., the mid-70s. The international space station Epsilon is in orbit 460 miles above the Earth. Its eight-person crew have been aboard for nearly six months, with just three weeks to go before returning to Earth.

The crew is led by the rugged, square-jawed American astronaut Mike Harder. Also on board are two women, June Strond and Paige Alison; the German doctor Werner Koelbe; the Frenchman Henry Guy-Michel; the Britisher Tim Pollard; and two other Americans, Bill Jordan and Luke Parsons.

One of the tasks the crew are obliged to perform in their final days aboard the Epsilon is to obtain samples of space dust, and store them for delivery back to Earth. The collection effort goes well, but just a few days afterwards, Bill Jordan becomes ill….his skin marred by an unusual rash. Despite the best efforts of Dr. Koelbe, Jordan's condition deteriorates with alarming speed........

To the horror of commander Mike Harder, it appears that an unknown pathogen has gained access to the ship’s crew……and as the healthy crewmembers struggle to aid their shipmates, the knowledge that they, too, are potential victims of the unknown plague fills them with dread.

And to make things worse, when news of the crisis on the Epsilon becomes known to the Earth’s population, conflict breaks out over whether to bring the crew home for treatment….or leave them to die in the airless void of space…….

The cover blurb for ‘Four Came Back’ leads the reader to believe that the novel is a sci-fi thriller in the mode of Crichton’s classic ‘The Andromeda Strain’. But the reality is that ‘Four’ is really more of a clone of the 1968 disaster novel ‘Airport’, by Arthur Hailey.

For author Caidin, the space plague is simply a background upon which the narrative – which primarily is devoted to elaborating on the melodramatic interactions of the characters - unfolds.

Indeed, in ‘Four’, the exposure of the crew to the space dust doesn’t take place until the halfway point of the novel. The first half deals with the evolving romantic relationship between June, the idealized 60s liberated, sensual Norwegian bombshell, and the reserved Mike Harder. Complicating things is the presence of Henri, who – as the inevitably randy Frenchman – is happy to try and bed June, while Harder- the stereotypical American man of action who is out of touch with his feelings - can only look on with increasing frustration and resentment.

While Caidin displays competence in writing about the technical aspects of life and work aboard the Epsilon, he is utterly over his head, and tone-deaf, as a romance novelist. The book has a large number of embarrassingly awful passages, such as this one:

And, all the while, he remained blind to the desires that surged through June’s young body.

As the novel’s title makes apparent, only four of the crew of the Epsilon will come back…..I won’t disclose any spoilers and declare who survives, who doesn’t, and whether the plague is defeated or not. I will say that for me, ‘Four’ was a dull and unrewarding slog. Unless you are a dedicated Martin Caidin fan and absolutely have to read every one of his novels, I recommend passing on this book.

Thursday, November 3, 2016

Judge Dredd: The Apocalypse War

Judge Dredd: The Apocalypse War
IDW, April 2014

'Judge Dredd: The Apocalypse War' (231 pp., IDW, April 2014) is a high-quality graphic novel from the 'Judge Dredd Classics' imprint, which compiles past issues of the character's appearances in the early years of 2000 AD comics from the UK.

If you ask any American comic book fan what he or she regards as the best comic book series or storyline in the early 1980s, they most likely will tell you it's the 'Dark Phoenix' saga from The X-Men issues 129 - 138 (January- October 1980). There was much turmoil and angst both in the Marvel editorial offices and in fandom when Dark Phoenix, aka Jean Gray, casually wiped out the entire population of aliens ('asparagus people').

The 'Dark Phoenix' saga was as overwrought and humorless as anything in American comics, before or since.

But over in the UK, in October 1981, a series that was markedly superior, one that can rightfully be called one of the best of the decade, was launched in the pages of the weekly comic book 2000 AD. This was the epic Judge Dredd adventure 'The Apocalypse War'. 

The problem was, no one in the USA besides those few people who followed UK comics had any idea of what was going on within the pages of 2000 AD. There was no internet in those days, no digital comics, and only a smattering of UK books made the transatlantic journey to the racks of the few American comic book shops that stocked British publications. 
This compilation from IDW compiles all the episodes from 'Block Mania' (the prequel to the Apocalypse War) and 'The Apocalypse War'. The original black-and-white comics have been reproduced in a higher resolution, and colored.
Without disclosing too many spoilers - and certainly no major ones, here's a synopsis:

Without warning, there is a drastic rise in inter-block aggression in Mega City One. The slightest insults trigger homicidal assaults from the thousands of residents of one block upon another. The cause is unknown, but as the body count rockets, the resources of the Judges are increasingly inadequate to maintain law and order.

It's up to Judge Dredd to try and discover the cause of Block Mania - before Mega City One becomes a gigantic insane asylum.....
The writing for 'Block Mania' was done by Alan Grant (using the pseudonym T. B. Grover), who does a very good job of seeing that each episode ratchets up the mayhem and anarchy gripping the city, and the helplessness of the Judges to restore any sort of order. These episodes avoid the emoting that would have been heavily applied in an American comic, in favor of healthy doses of violence, mayhem, and black humor that had me laughing out loud at regular intervals.

The artwork, by 2000 AD stalwarts Mike McMahon, Brian Bolland, Ron Smith, and Steve Dillon, is all top-notch and effective (despite the habit of British comics of eschewing sound effects). Given that 2000 AD were printed directly onto cheap newsprint-grade paper, the reproductions in this IDW compilation show how good the original artwork really was:

With issue 245 of 2000 AD (January 1982) the 'Apocalypse War' story proper began.
Alan Grant again handled the scripting duties, along with contributions from John Wagner. 

In the opening chapters of 'Apocalypse', the Russians - represented by the East Meg One megacity - launch a nuke strike on Mega City One. Grant's writing takes a kind of fiendish glee with amping up the nuclear devastation and the concomitant body count, an attitude that- needless to say - never would have passed an editorial review by Jim Shooter at Marvel comics......

 No sooner has the destruction ended then the Russians deploy their army and endeavor to capture Mega City One and, by extension, most of the eastern seaboard of the USA. It's up to Dredd and a ragtag group of surviving Judges to resist the onslaught.
In these later episodes, Grant's scripting adopts a gleeful mingling of satiric, laugh-out-loud humor and violent action. 

Not only is there an outbreak of 'Apocalypse Fever'.....
......but Judge Dredd's lisping robot Walter, and Dredd's landlord Maria (who talks in Italian-accented English), get in on the action, too.........
And Dredd has no qualms about dealing roughly with Mega City One citizens who side with the Commies.......can you imagine any American comic book hero in the early 80s displaying this kind of ruthlessness ? The Punisher was still several years in the future....
The concluding chapters of 'The Apocalypse War' get genuinely suspenseful as Dredd leads a 'suicide squad' of Judges in a desperate attempt to retaliate against the Russians...
The depictions of a nuclear strike, a nuclear winter, and combat amid the ruins of Mega City One all were patently 'transgressive' by the standards of American comics and American Pop Culture in the early 80s. This was, after all, the era of increasing alarm over the Cold War and the likelihood of a deliberate (or unintentional) nuclear exchange. 

Jonathan Schell's book about the effects of a nuclear war, 'The Fate of the Earth', was a New York Times bestseller in 1982, and the subject of considerable angst in highbrow circles....
And also in 1982, the Fixx were on MTV singing their single 'Red Skies at Night'.....
By turning WW3 into an over-the-top action fest rather than a sober exposition on The Fate of the Earth, Alan Grant and the 2000 AD crew pretty much thumb their noses at these pop culture expressions of angst. They certainly didn't subscribe to the 'shared humanity' ethos that dominated the pop culture's treatment of a future conflict with the Soviets. Indeed, Grant depicts the Russian leaders as homicidal psychopaths devoid of morals:

Summing up, whether you're a fan of Judge Dredd, UK comics of the 80s, or someone who simply likes a good read, 'Judge Dredd: The Apocalypse War' is well worth picking up.

Monday, October 31, 2016

Book Review: Death Spore

Book Review: 'Death Spore' by Harry Adam Knight


5 / 5 Stars

Harry Adam Knight was the pseudonym used by the Australian author and film critic John Brosnan (1947 - 2005). Under his own name, or 'Simon Ian Childer' ( yet another pseudonym), Brosnan wrote a number of Splatterpunk horror novels during the 80s, including such gorehound faves as Slimer (1983), Carnosaur (1984), and Worm (1987).

Knight / Brosnan published The Fungus in 1985 as a paperback with UK publisher Star.



A hardcover version was published in 1989 by Franklin Watts.



The U.S. version of the book was retitled 'Death Spore' (256 pp) and published by Pinnacle Books in May, 1990. The cover artist is uncredited.

(Note: The reviews for The Fungus at amazon give away much of the plot - use caution when consulting them).

Whether it's titled The Fungus or Death Spore, this book is a fun read !

The novel is set in London in the mid-80s. Its opening chapters are a string of vignettes describing how various people become ill with horrible fungal diseases. The only link among them ? Contact with a glamorous blonde woman who is roaming the streets of the city.

As the hospitals see more and more cases of people suffering from drastic infections, suspicion grows that an epidemic has begun. But this is unlike any epidemic the world has ever seen before.

Barry Wilson, a former mycologist turned detective novel writer, may be the only one who can combat the epidemic. But as the social order breaks down under the strain of the epidemic, time is running out for Wilson.....and perhaps the entire world......

'Death Spore' makes no pretense of being a 'quiet' or 'literary' horror novel. To the contrary, it's very much in the vein of the classic James Herbert novel The Fog. Indeed, author Knight adopts the spare, clinical prose style of Herbert, with some well-timed moments of gross-outs and sarcastic humor.

Despite a fast-moving plot that has little time for Deep Musings, the lead characters are interesting, and their adventures engrossing.

If you're looking for a creepy-crawlies horror novel, one that sits comfortably on the shelves reserved for James Herbert, Shaun Hutson, and John Halkin, then you'll want a copy of 'Death Spore' !

Thursday, October 27, 2016

The Hungry Ghoul

The Hungry Ghoul
by Dick Ayers
from Witches' Tales (Eerie Publications) 
Vol. 4, No. 1 February 1972


I remember first reading this comic was back in the early 70s when I was in junior high school. I found it depraved and disgusting - and fantastic ! 'The Hungry Ghoul' was permanently seared into my consciousness. It was indeed 'comic gore that warped millions of young minds.' 



Only in the black and white comic magazines from Eerie Publications would you find something this unapologetically gross. The Warren magazines certainly wouldn't have touched it, and as for the color comics from Marvel and DC - well, needless to say, printing 'The Hungry Ghoul' in an issue of House of Mystery would have nuked the Comics Code.

Dick Ayers drew this strip, and it features his artistic signature: the 'detached eyeball' effect of the mutilated corpse.

For your viewing pleasure, here's the mind-warping 'Hungry Ghoul' from 1972.........






Monday, October 24, 2016

Retribution in Blood

Retribution in Blood
Story by Don Glut, art by David Wenzel
from Savage Sword of Conan (Marvel / Curtis), #26, January 1978


Marvel had Solomon Kane tangle with Dracula in issue 3 of their black and white comic magazine Dracula Lives (October 1973). That memorable encounter ended in a draw. 

It was nearly five years later before Marvel offered a rematch, this time in issue 26 of The Savage Sword of Conan.

As with the first installment, this episode suffers somewhat from the tendency to have too many panels and too much dialogue crammed into each page. But David Wenzel's art is of good quality, and Don Glut's script avoids another draw.......I won't disclose any spoilers, but I will say that either Kane, or Dracula, will not survive this fight.........












Friday, October 21, 2016

Book Review: Tales of Terror from Outer Space

Book Review: 'Tales of Terror from Outer Space', edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

3 / 5 Stars

‘Tales of Terror from Outer Space’ (190 pp) was published by Fontana Books (UK) in 1975. The cover artist is uncredited.

Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes (1919 – 2001) was the British equivalent of Roger Elwood in the US; like Elwood, Chetwynd-Hayes edited a large number of anthologies on sf, horror, and other topics during the 1970s and 1980s. Critics considered the majority of these anthologies to be mediocre.

The entries in 'Tales of Terror from Outer Space' all were previously published in sf magazines and digests during the interval from 1953 – 1975.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

I, Mars, by Ray Bradbury: a man stranded on Mars finds himself ‘haunted’ by telephone calls from someone he knows very well……too well, it seems……….like all of Bradbury’s ‘Martian’ stories this one dwells on psychological tension rather than external threats. It’s not particularly rewarding.

Eight O’Clock in the Morning, by Ray Nelson: a man is convinced that aliens, using a mind-control ray to deceive everyone in the world, have taken over the planet. He takes action. This story first was published in ‘Fantasy and Science Fiction’ in November 1963, and was the basis for the 1985 John Carpenter film They Live.

Heresies of the Huge God, by Brian W. Aldiss: an alien creature 4,500 miles long, with eight legs, decides to lie atop the globe; the ensuing geographical disasters give rise to violent religious conflicts. This story is really more of a dark satire about religious dogmatism than a horror story per se; there is much dry humor.

The Head-Hunters, by Ralph Williams: an old school inspiration for the film Predator.

The Animators, by Sydney J. Bounds: a Terran expedition on Mars confronts a disturbing event. One of the better stories in the anthology.

The Night of the Seventh Finger, by Robert Presslie: walking home late at night, teenager Sue Bradley passes the old house that is rumored to be haunted…..

No More for Mary, by Charles Birkin: on holiday at an Italian villa, Toby Lewis spots something unusual in the garden.

Invasion of Privacy, by Bob Shaw: a boy named Sammy insists that he saw his recently deceased grandmother alive and well in an decrepit old house….although the sf element in this entry from veteran sf author Shaw is a bit contrived, this remains a good story.

The Ruum, by Arthur Porges: in the remote Canadian wilderness, a prospector comes upon a disturbing alien artifact. One of the better stories in the anthology.

The First Days of May, by Claude Veillot: first published in 1961, this story by French author Veillot was translated by Damon Knight. It’s a ‘buglike aliens take over Earth’ story that really works. It’s not a satire or an allegory, but a genuinely creepy tale, and one of the better sf horror stories I’ve ever read.

Specialist, by Robert Sheckley: a starship crewed by aliens needs a new member….and an Earthman can fit the bill. More of a humor story than a horror story.

No Morning After, by Arthur C. Clark: William Cross receives a telepathic message from the alien Thaar. This story relies more on sardonic humor, than horror.

Shipwreck, by R. Chetwynd-Hayes: when Sarcan the alien crash-lands on Earth, he’ll use whatever means are necessary to get back to his home planet………

The verdict ? Anthologies of sf-themed horror stories are quite rare, so it’s difficult to find other volumes to compare this one to. However, there are enough good stories in ‘Tales of Terror from Outer Space’ to make this anthology worth picking up if you see it on the shelves of a used bookstore.

Tuesday, October 18, 2016

Horror Movies: Tales of Terror in the Cinema

Horror Movies
Tales of Terror in the Cinema
by Alan G. Frank
Octopus Books, 1974


When I first spotted this book on the shelves of the public library in my hometown in upstate New York in the mid-70s, I immediately checked it out. It went on to become one of my favorite books of that era.


While nowadays you can go to an online book store and easily find any number of volumes on horror movies and horror films, back in 1974, there were few such publications. Some were academic studies that were unrewarding to read, while others were perfunctory affairs designed as 'budget' treatments of the genre.


'Horror Movies: Tales of Terror in the Cinema' (160 pp), with its higher quality binding and higher quality reproductions of stills and posters, was a welcome advance in terms of surveying the genre.


The book is organized into chapters covering Frankenstein and his creatures; vampires; wolfmen and mummies; zombies; women monsters; mad scientists and psychos; and sci-fi monsters.



Most of the stills are in black and white, with some in color.

The text sections are necessarily limited, and consist primarily of providing an overview of theme for a given chapter, with longer descriptions or synopses afforded to those films that the author feels are truly memorable.


While the author does cover the 'classic' movies of the 30s, 40s, and 50s, much of the contents is devoted to the Hammer films of the 60s and 70s. In this regard the book is sure to spark nostalgia among those fans who remember the great films and the great stars of that era in British cinema.



In the U.S. in the mid-70s, of course, video cassettes were still in their infancy. There was no internet, and cable TV choices were limited. Accordingly, many of the Hammer films (and films from other UK companies, such as Amicus), if they were viewed at all by American audiences, were done so as features in drive-ins or 'grindhouse' movie theatres.


There are sure to be some Hammer films in this book that have escaped notice from U.S. fans and may be worth hunting down. However, when checking Netflix's catalog, I found only a few such films available. I've yet to look at the many 'cult' film channels on Roku, which rely on archives of films in the public domain.

That said, I'm skeptical that younger members of contemporary horror film fandom will find the movies described in 'Horror Movies' to be all that compelling. The slower-paced films from Hammer, with moments of grue carefully parceled out in-between lengthy segments of dialogue, will probably seem stilted and dull...... I recently watched the 1957 film The Curse of Frankenstein on the TCM channel, and I had to conclude that it likely will have little appeal to those raised on The Walking Dead, or the Paranormal Activity movies.


One drawback to 'Horror Movies' is Alan Frank's habit of disclosing spoilers for many of the films he surveys.


Other than that, however, reading 'Horror Movies: Tales of Terror in the Cinema' is to once again encounter 70s Pop Culture Goodness. If you are a fan of the movies of that era, then getting a used copy of this book - which are quite affordable - is recommended.