ARCHIVAL UPDATES: WARREN SMITH'S AUTHENTIC DICTIONARY OF CB

Breaker, breaker! Warren Smith's Authentic Dictionary of CB is now available to read and download at archive dot org! This marks the title's digital debut.

Get hip to all the trucker lingo:

Study up on the rules and regs:

And don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya!

Courtesy Award Books, 1976.

COSMIC DEBRIS: Scotland Claims New Mystery Animal

Speculative news item by Michael Goss, who previously mapped out some "ABC" sightings across the UK. Here he cites one Jim A. Johnston wondering if a lynx may not have been introduced into the Scottish countryside, owing to reports of slain livestock and sightings of a "puma" or other big cat. Goss also mentions the delightful muntjac deer and some porcupines living in Devon.

Featured in Fate magazine, Volume 34 - Number 5, May 1981.

STRANGE WORLD: Talk to Your Plants

Another entry in Brad Steiger's syndicated "Strange World" column, this time wowing us with plant ESP and the research of Cleve Backster, last seen in National Wildlife magazine. Put that in your pipe and smoke it! But watch the polygraph while you do so ... 

"Tell me the truth Rhoda, there's another gardener, isn't there ..."

This article is rated SSC: Shrimps Strongly Cautioned. Clipped from an unknown paper, unknown year! 

FOOTPRINTS ON THE SANDS OF TIME by L.M. Lewis

 

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver space ships flyin'

In the yellow haze of the sun

There were children cryin' and colors flyin'

All around the chosen ones

You might think that 1975 is getting a little late in the game (after the gold rush, even) for yet another bold type, going-beyond-Chariots-of-the Gods? blurbed Ancient Astronauts piece, but author L.M. Lewis tells us he's been working on the mystery behind THE MASTER RACE for years, and far be it from us to deny him sharing the fruits of his life's work ...

Looking back fifty years later, despite Lewis' frequent invocation of the MASTER RACE that came from the stars and gifted humanity with our civilizational uplift, thankfully this isn't another Holocaust denyin' or otherwise fascistic work. Frankly, Lewis comes out far ahead of von Daniken in this regard. No, this is enjoyable, pure crank writing - Lewis has pegged the arrival of the MASTER RACE to exactly 6790 BC, and walks us through his maths as the enlightened ones from outer space interact with burgeoning human societies, ultimately taking their leave in 1451 BC for reasons Lewis will also elucidate ...

We've seen all this before, of course: Ezekial's wheel was a UFO, Sodom and Gomorrah were nuked, the pyramids were built by aliens - or, more properly in this case, inspired by aliens, as Lewis gives the Egyptians full credit for the hard work, albeit in an outdated way as he believes they relied on slave labor for the feat. Anyways, the point is that Mr. Lewis presents some tried and true Ancient Astronaut grist in an engaging manner, all killer no filler. Let the man speak for himself:

In 1970 the author became convinced that (1) the Master Race landed on this planet in 6790 B.C., with as much wheat as they could conveniently carry. (2) Quickly establishing themselves, they multiplied their stocks by two harvests a year - one natural, the other artificial - for five years. (3) With an eye to the future, they instructed the Egyptian nomads (who began to settle down two years later, namely in 6783 B.C.) in the growing of wheat and in agriculture. Villages and towns began to grow up, and officials of the Master Race guided the affairs of the infant nation for the next forty-nine years- "when gods ruled Egypt"! (4) Members of the new nation taken gradually into the government as they progressed (in 6770 в.c.) wished to build the biggest monument ever to the freedom they had been promised within fifty years. (5) The Master Race agreed to supply the brains and "know-how," the Egyptians, the materials and labor, which the Master Race would control. As stated earlier, Memphis was founded and work started on the great road in 6764 B.C.

By these calculations, it will be observed that the coming of the Master Race, the founding of Memphis, and the building of the Great Pyramid, all took place in the seventh century before the Flood.

History is full of the manifestations of novel ideas, unusual happenings, and unlooked-for results, all of which make it stranger than fiction! How many decisive battles have been won and lost. How many great men have stepped upon the mighty stage of Earth's affairs for one brief day of glory that at evening passed away. Some names will always be remembered, but they are few in number. Undoubtedly the most amazing is Jesus Christ - that astounding young man who put the world on fire, whose memory has often changed the intentions of mankind, and whose words, after nearly 2,000 years, are still a living power! Because he lived - and died - even man's reckoning of time has changed.

Lewis is fond of lists and summaries. Compare this to W. Raymond Drake's endless and interminable series of Gods And Spacemen from hither and yon as featured in the opening ad page. By the time Drake has gotten around to Gods and Spacemen in East Lansing, Michigan, Lewis has already said his piece and retired to a sensible evening after this one and done title.

No quickie cash-in huckster he, it's only right to give Lewis the final word as well:

Poised on the brink of a third and final world war, the nations of mankind stare enviously at each other in mutual fear, akin to mesmeric terror. How much time will elapse before the seemingly inevitable happens and the nations again start murdering their neighbors?

No! Don't deny the fatal probability. As an unbiased and logical person, take a good look for yourself at the world of today. The peoples of the Earth stand armed to the teeth! The majority are half-starved, because the world's substance is being squandered on hydrogen bombs, ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines, poison gas, and offensive germ cultures. All this is in the cause of "defense," of course! What utter stupidity!

If these international propensities were manifested in individuals rather than by nations, we should be well justified in immediately incarcerating them in a criminal lunatic asylum!

If it's not too late, Footprints on the Sands of Time is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Signet Books, 1975

STAR FORCE by Robert E. Mills

Haaass! Quaarg scuttled down the garden path, darting nervous glances left and right as he went, feeling, for the first time, more secure in the open, sunlit gardens of Kallidor than in the close and murky halls of Ylang’s new residence.

He had beaten a hasty retreat from the lair while that dreadful thing was still exulting over its resurrection. Consistent with its hideous sense of humor, the Dark Emperor had certainly surprised him, all right. The mechanoid horror it had created was not just a supermachine, not just another one of the emperor’s many sinister toys; no, it was Blorg himself!

Or Blorg’s brain, anyway: all that was salvageable after his last encounter with the star-pirate, Red Rian. But that was enough. Blorg was back!

BLOOD CURDLES! FLESH CRAWLS! BLORG LIVES!

There's something about Blorg. Maybe it's the shine of his chrome dome now that he's been transformed into Mecha-Blorg after his last near escape from the brave heroes of the Fellowship of Light ... or maybe it's just endearing how he's always pissed off, always Haaaaas-ing, and always loyal to the dark cause. In any case, Blorg and the snakelets of Ysss have one last chance to destroy those humanoid turds in the Fellowship of Light, and secure the universe for the Dark Emperor Ylang-Ylang's endlessly evil designs.

No points for guessing how this will go.

In other news, Lady Nila chooses Red Rian over Dann Oryzon, but don't worry because Dann has a new sweetheart already lined up. Thank God, we might have had some tension or conflict there! Our heroes continue to be drips, if you couldn't tell.

Mills might have benefited from the long creative and collaborative process George Lucas had to go through to whittle down or fine tune names from the Journal of the Whills like Mace Windy, C.J. Thorpe, and, well, the titular Whills, instead of dashing off the whole Star Quest trilogy in a year - here, names like Mr. Purpur and Siiin (Dowager-Empress of Sserp and mother of Blorg) sit dead on the page. Heck, even ol' Blorg himself has a bit of a silly moniker, right? Don't tell him that to his face, though ...

Mills doesn't always have a tin ear and heavy hand - Androids Altektu and D-Anacom make decent sidekicks, especially given their slightly ethereal character, with soft green skin and enlightened attitudes vs the nuts and bolts and neuroticism of Artoo and Threepio. Al and D-Ana feel like something out of some comic or animated Euro SF, and the way their names shorten is an effective bit of nice Star Wars style humanization. The beautiful, terrible Kallidorians are also nicely done, with the Fellowship of Light and Ylang-Ylang competing to influence them. Plus this time the (still uncredited) cover art isn't such a tawdry ripoff of Star Wars to the point of borrowing a Rebel Trooper, and looks pretty cool. It's the type of generic but evocative art that could be used for lots of random SF books.

After all the sound and fury of a thousand suns and a trillion souls crying out, and dread immortal Ylang-Ylang finally getting extirpated from this plane of existence, Mills ends things on a limp cliffhanger, as Nila gets kidnapped and the gang has to rush after her. Well, fine. Oddly, there's zero SF titles in the back page adverts here. Meanwhile, Star Fighters had exactly one: Garbage World by one Charles Platt.

The Schlock Value blog also reviewed this entry, and like the previous reviews in the series it's a hoot:

I’m not sure which book I’d consider the worst. I’m leaning toward the middle one, just because of the way they managed to take Dann out of the picture for the entire book by hitting him in the head with a rock. Dann was hardly in this one, too, but it was at least because he was off somewhere else training with the Fellowship (something that should have been dealt with much earlier in the series) and getting laid (which I can’t begrudge anybody).

Star Force did have the good graces to have a title that almost rhymes with Star Wars, and also finally gave me the satisfaction of misspelling Red Rian’s name as “Red Rain.” It took them most of the series to finally do that, and that’s incredible.

As noted by Thomas at Schlock Value, typos remain rampant. He also details some '70s pulp sleaze that the Kallidorians get up to, blurring lines with Nila and Red Rian, if you'd like more details from the text. Otherwise, hop to it yourself, as Star Force is available to read and download at archive dot org!

The final, Force-ful chapter of the Star Quest saga blunders into a 2/4 rating for consistently silly and sometimes endearing sci-fi schlock. Whither Mecha-Blorg?

Belmont Tower Books, 1978

STAR FIGHTERS by Robert E. Mills

Haaass! Haaass! The sound of Blorg’s stertorous breathing drowned out the gentle hum of the levitator that took him down to the city beneath the surface of dead Flaigon. Dwarfing the humanoid equerries who escorted him to the Forbidden City, the reptiloid lord stared vacantly at the door-panel in front of him. Since, for some unknown reason, the Dark Emperor had not probed his consciousness once he touched-down on the black planet’s surface, the lord of the Yss allowed himself the luxury of brooding over his recent misfortunes.

Not only had the mighty star-armada been demolished, thereby disrupting his plans for the conquest of the Primula galaxy, but that bearded man-ape, Rian, that hairy and disgusting piece of humanoid trash, had actually bested him in deep space combat. And the worst was yet to come: he must now answer for his disgrace and defeat to Ylang-Ylang, the only thing he feared in this life. It was a dark day for Lord Blorg and, as he left the levitator and strode through the eerie and self-illuminated corridors of black rock that led to the lair, the weight of fear lay on his body with the pressure of several dense atmospheres.

Lord Blorg. Dann Oryzon. Mr. Purpur. Villains and heroes in a galaxy some distance off, in a time uncertain, with questionable copyright status. Author Robert E. Mills dashed off a whole trilogy of sci-fi schlock in 1978 based on the success of Star Wars, and, in keeping with George Lucas' own style, we're diving in with book two of that trilogy - Haaaaas! Haaaaas!

Most of the fun here is comparing how Mills - not usually an SF writer, by the way - borrows from Lucas and how he brings in his own original ideas. The uncredited cover artist made some interesting choices as well, what with the Rebel trooper helmet. The best characters are undoubtedly Lord Blorg and the Dark Emperor Ylang-Ylang, who spend most of their page counts reveling in evil for the sake of it. Blorg is a four armed reptiloid Ysss from planet Sserp while Ylang-Ylang is a disembodied energy being of pure, you guessed it, evil. Ylang-Ylang wants to revive the ancient, evil Mordlings, of which he was one before ascending to his current state of pure energy evilness.

Mills manages some decent pulp SF scale with Ylang-Ylang's immortal quest for universal domination, even if he does seem to mix up galaxies and solar systems - our heroes are constantly liberating this or that galaxy named for single inhabited planets like Primula and Aquaea. 

Those heroes are pretty much a bunch of dorks, if you couldn't guess. Luke Skywalker is kind of a dork himself, so Dann Oryzon makes a fine young padawan in that mold, but space pirate Red Rian doesn't have half of Harrison Ford's swagger and sleazy charisma, and since this trilogy was written before The Empire Strikes Back and its shocking reveals (dig the back cover tagline though!) Leia character Lady Nila spends this entry dithering between Dann and Rian's love. The possibilities of Lord Blorg actually being Dann's father are left sadly unexplored, and the honor of paternity of young Dann goes to the Obi-Wan character, Garthane.

Mr. Purpur, meanwhile, is an 8 foot tall cat person who (like poor Chewbacca in the classic Star Wars expanded universe novels of the '90s) mostly growls in agreement with his captain Rian. He definitely licks Rians more than Chewbacca ever licked Han, though.

Ween Leever, pride of Red Rian. Ween's middle name is Nerdeen.

Mills avoids using lightsabers or the Force, with Garthane and the Jedi stand-ins being sort of generic New Age espers. There's dolphins, too, for that great '70s New Age vibe. Dann hails from Aquaea, a water world with twin suns, which makes his background totally different from Luke who of course was from a desert planet with twin suns!

The Schlock Value blog by Thomas reviewed this title back in 2015, along with the rest of the trilogy. Thomas has a lot of the same ideas that I did reading this, but also wonders if maybe Mills was writing a low key parody of Star Wars and SF what with his almost deliberately silly Blorgs and Purpurs and Mordlings and so on. Thomas also points out some of the most hackneyed writing in the book, when hero Dann Oryzon gets conked on the head with a rock and spends about a third of the story unconscious! How's that for classic serial writing?

Belmont Tower books littered this work with typos, sometimes in the middle of sci-fi names. Is Lord Blorg a Ysss or a Yss? Are we allowed to ask that question in reptiloid culture?

These wannabe Star Warsians earn themselves a 2/4 rating for some bright patches amid a ridiculous tapestry - it's not as bad as it could have been, but we're starting out with extremely low expectations. Viva Blorg!

Star Fighters is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Belmont Tower Books, 1978