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

ON THE TRAIL OF UNIDENTIFIED FURRY OBJECTS by Jerome Clark

Jerome Clark investigates the thing that came to visit Roachdale, IN in the summer of '72. Unsettling details like glowing eyes, lights in the sky, a penchant for leftovers, and (almost) no footprints to speak of make this one for the weird "hairy biped" records. Whatever it was, it killed the Burdine family chickens but seemed to leave humans well enough alone ... for now.

Reactions from local authorities were ambivalent. Clark quotes two skeptics, a town marshal and a conservation officer, alongside a neighboring sheriff who put out a bizarre BOLO for a "ten foot tall monster covered in fur." Sheriff Gary Cooper (yup) goes on to say the mystery creature could be a bear, or a badger. Clark describes a horde of rubberneckers descending on the town, the small panic among locals that developed, and also places the case in context alongside other Midwestern monster flaps that year.

This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

Courtesy Fate magazine, Volume 26 - Number 8, August 1973.

THE TELEPATHIC DOLPHINS by Fred P. Graham

Fred P. Graham writes up some dolphin/ESP experimentation by Patricia Hayes and Ann Phillips of the Arthur Ford Academy of Parapsychology and Research. Flipper's Sea School has changed hands multiple times and is currently known as the Dolphin Research Center. Meanwhile, the Arthur Ford Academy lives on as Delphi University, a school for mediumship and spiritual studies.

Graham also quotes Dr. John C. Lilly for some background on potential dolphin intellect, and helpfully defines the intuitive PSI SCAN, codeveloped by Phillips and Jan Clema, and utilized by one Bill Clema on dolphin Terce.

This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

Courtesy Fate magazine, Volume 31 - Number 7, July 1978.

SECRETS OF THE PYRAMIDS REVEALED by Robert K. Moffett

By now, it may have become apparent that doctorates carry substantial weight among the nonconformist schools of pyramid study. In fact, academic titles abound to a point where it is hardly paranoid to conclude that they are used for the purpose of impressing the reader with the author’s scholarship. But do they not also imply a promise that the scholarship in the books will be sound?

Perhaps a more accurate title would have been Secrets of Pyramidology Revealed? Author Robert K. Moffett teases us with a pointless introduction in a style that seems to have been de rigueur for skeptical works in the '70s: dressing up your critical work like it's just another mystery mongering meatloaf volume. Moffett mentions Karel Drbal and his razor sharpening pyramids, Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, and Uri Geller - but none of these are relevant for the rest of the book. Moffett's actual text is about how we got here, to the pyramid mania of the '70s, through a history of the theories of the original pyramidologists. It's a crash course on writers like John Taylor and Howard Vyse (and their precursor John Greaves), fine tuners like Piazzi Smyth, and then bandwagon jumpers on up to the 20th century and the modern day. 

Moffett gives context on why specific writers were interested in certain aspects of the pyramids, and how oftentimes their facts and figures had less to do with the actual stones in the sand than with contemporary religious and political struggles:

At this point, Taylor was sure he had had a revelation, for this was a matter of keen topical interest.

The metric system, developed in France, had by this time spread throughout the Continent, and there was agitation both from the scientific community and export-conscious manufacturers to adopt it in Great Britain. But there was a strong British resistance movement largely based on religious grounds. The French Revolution, with its strong anticlerical bias, had aroused grave misgivings in Britain, and the metric system was closely identified with it. As originally proposed, the metric conversion had involved switching to a ten-day week. Genesis made it perfectly clear that the Lord endorsed the seven-day week. That, after a period of trial, the French themselves had abandoned the decimal week was immaterial. If, in this, the original thinking had been contrary to the Will of God, the entire system was suspect.

Now Taylor could perceive the true function of the Great Pyramid: It was not by chance that the pyramid used the British system of weights and measures. Rather, it was a compendium incorporating the original, Divinely inspired system which had survived in Britain. The Great Pyramid was a message passed down to modern times to strengthen the wills of the anti-metric faction.

The search for cosmic truths collapses inward! Moffett writes with a dry humor, respectfully conveying various crank ideas but occasionally popping an especially ridiculous balloon such as in the case of psychic gadfly Edgar Cayce:

In terms of both current popularity and sheer volume, the most important of the clairvoyants to have contributed to the story of Atlantis was Edgar Cayce who, despite the widespread belief in his ability to communicate across the barrier between this and the afterworld, hasn’t been heard from since his death in 1945.

Once we've completed our journey with Moffett from Ancient Egypt to 19th century Europe to 20th century America, we might be able to say we've learned something about human thought and frailty.

Tempo Books gifts us a few typos here and there, but at least they also give us a picture spread in the middle with lots of vintage images. Moffett, a class act, also gives us a bibliography:

Moffet has a few other books available, including one coauthored with (presumably) his wife - not the title you'd think though! Their shared author blurb says that "Robert and Martha Moffett are both editors as well as published writers. Mr. Moffett's introduction to the animal kingdom was as a snake farmer."

Pyramid Power now and forever! This title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Tempo Books, 1976