THE PRESENCE by Rodgers Clemens

Dig those "true" space titles from Keel, Binder, and friends!

There's a mistake in the lake, and it's growing by the day. Not just in size, but in intelligence, as it claims victim after victim and expands its neural net across a burgeoning behemoth of a body. Too bad the mayor doesn't want to cause a panic, and the only scientist researching the matter is considered a crank ... it's a familiar sort of monster story, to be sure, albeit one with a great '70s mean streak in it, and a delightful cast of period appropriate scumbags and assholes! There's the corrupt Mayor Spilokos, toxic divorced couple Blake (the scientist) and Gloria Wiley, hottie Hannah McKittrick (from Channel 5!) and a host of working stiffs and clueless citizens, and of course there's our big blossoming blob from the depths, a voracious protoplasmic void that's just learned about the all-you-can-eat Midwestern city located just past the beach ... Beware the blob! There's face melting, bone crushing, gut punching action throughout as THE PRESENCE tears through the cast, delivering capricious death and just desserts equally to the innocent and guilty alike. Eventually, Blake attempts communication, and there's a breakthrough worthy of that trippy cover art, but it's a long bloody, destructive road getting there. Author Clemens balances the sci-fi grue nicely with realistic scenes of a city in panic and that delicious '70s paranoia over the authorities and their undoubtedly unsavory plans for us plebs, leading to a smashing climactic set piece in the city sewers.

A review of this title at the Por Por Books Blog twigged me to the fact that Rodgers Clemens was a pseudonym used by one Roger Lovin, a mysterious fellow who turns out to be just as unseemly as his story. Starting in 1968, Lovin wrote a counterculture zine in New Orleans, at the time a hotbed of hippie thought. Quoting from an article in Antigravity magazine:

Some of his Discordian philosophy makes its way into THE PRESENCE'S all-caps pronunciations at the climax of the story, as it reveals to Blake that humanity has been surpassed as the most intelligent thing on the planet. It also claims that HITLER WAS ELECTED BY POPULAR VOTE, a popular canard in pop history, but hey, THE PRESENCE is working off our answers, so to speak, so GIGO. Cracked thoughts aside, a more disturbing aspect of Lovin and his work shines through when you learn that he was a convicted pedophile! Again, from that Antigravity article:

The opening scene in The Presence of a teenaged girl preyed upon, first by a lecherous old man and then by the titular being, takes on a new dimension when you learn of the author's predilections, but Lovin has even more surprises up his sleeve ... would you believe a connection to the Kennedy assassination? An exhaustive four part series at the Historia Discordia site tracks down as many facts and rumors about Lovin as possible, including a tangential thread about JFK:

Lovin also claimed to have ran guns to Castro before a change of heart, which author Gorightly says may or may not be true - there's a lot about Lovin's life that's still up in the air, including if he's even still alive or not! He supposedly passed in 1991, but Gorightly digs into some reasons to doubt that. Even his bibliography isn't clear cut, with pseudonyms and gaps in titles leaving us a threadbare entry at the SF Encyclopedia. We know he crossed paths for a brief time with SF great Norman Spinrad:

And the internet gives up fragments of his work here and there:

 

Above, three more titles by Lovin. The Complete Motorcycle Nomad was maybe his most successful work, in terms of sales. Eleven is pedophilic smut, while the religious-themed Apostle features illustrations by the great Frank Kelly Freas (and Polly).

And here's a gooey Italian edition of The Presence retitled What Came Out of Lake Michigan! It seems publisher Urania was fond of medical art, as can also be seen in their edition of Sum VII:

The Presence by Lovin earns a solid 3/4 rating as sci-fi/horror, but beware, anyone who goes digging into the rest of Lovin's work! What you find might end up being a lot grosser than plain blood and guts ...

The author in happier times ...

... and trying to beat the rap

A Fawcett Gold Medal Book, 1977