PREDICTIONS FOR 1974 compiled and edited by Warren Smith

Here's a real load of midcentury occult meatloaf that must have been waiting to spring off the grocery store spinner rack, as working writer Warren Smith assembles 33 psychics of varying pedigree for predictions on the upcoming year of 1974! We get some big names like "PK Man" and all around self promoter Ted Owens, the Countess Amaya (last seen in The Strange Ones by Smith, from 1972), Malva Dee and Beaverton's own Tenny Hale, as well as also-rans and unknowns like "Aquarius" the anonymous college student, the "Black Psychic" Dr. Ernesto Montgomery (who seems ill-served by this reductive label), fake fakir Komar, and a host of others who are lost to the ages, with nary a wikipedia page or archived news article to commemorate them. Regardless of their purported status, we get the expected spread of generic, oddball, infuriating, and just plain wrong predictions about what to expect in '74 ...

Cancer will be cured, as will schizophrenia. Nixon will resign, be impeached, or be totally vindicated. Stuff will get more expensive. Young people will either accept their lot, or raise hell! China, the USSR, or some terrorist group will start a nuclear war ... or bring about world peace! Liza Minelli will divorce, get remarried, and divorce again. On and on it goes, a numbing litany of "predictions" that soon blend together between psychics, to the point where it would be hard to remember who to credit with any actual hits. Regardless, Smith and Award Books are sure to place a disclaimer front and center that NONE of the predictions within are to serve as the basis for any financial decisions!

One of the standout chapters features Leo Martello, a legendary gay rights and wiccan activist and author of an excellent witchcraft primer featured on the blog back in 2020. Martello's predictions seem less ethereally inspired than simply savvy, with a mix of accuracy. Near misses include predicting impeachment for Nixon post-Watergate and farm strikes which were still a decade off in actuality. Dead on predictions include the the implication of the CIA in SE Asian drug trafficking. Silly stuff from Martello includes massacres by psychotic Vietnam vets and "a dubious witch killed in a car crash," (now who exactly was he throwing shade at?) along with the usual celebrity divorces everybody else comments on throughout this volume. Martello is the rare left-wing celebrity psychic, and even predicts that reactionary race baiter Jeane Dixon will face public backlash for her stances.

Martello looking tres sinistre ...

... and a little more approachable!

In line with Martello, Tenny Hale ("looking chic like a model instead of a psychic") predicts that fundamentalists will take over Christianity in America. Again, this is less of an astral vision and more straight observation, though it's better than the piffle some of these other psychics dredge up to fill pages. India/Pakistan and Palestine/Israel are two big geopolitical topics that crop up again and again, with varying pessimism and perspectives. Another hot topic of the time is the status of the American Indian: some psychics are bullish on America's first people gaining full rights and reparations, while others feel the issue will fade from the headlines.

Tenny Hale

Our final chapter is from Ruth Zimmerman, the Illinois housewife who tunes in. True to the era and focus of this volume, she says Jack Paar may suffer a head injury and that Dean Martin should be careful of his nose! The backpage ads are solid gold, with Brad Steiger, Brinsley le Poer Trench, and some titans of SF represented.

This book was owned by Earle L. Blanton, Jr.

Award Books, 1973

KYRIK AND THE WIZARD'S SWORD by Gardner F. Fox

Kyrik moved forward, knifeblade up to cut her bonds. The girl eyed him, then cried out. “I must tell you I am a witch. I have been put here by the people of a small fishing village as sacrifice to the demon that roams this part of the world.” “What do I care for demons?”

“You’d care about this one,” she told him darkly. “It slays and slays, it is like a mad thing, ravening here and there. They have even sent soldiers from Sokarjus to hunt it down and slay it.”

In the tradition of Conan! And a new tag on the blog, "flashing swords" for swords, sorcery, barbarians, and the days of high adventure!

Author Gardner F. Fox was a prolific master of the fantasy genre, as well as a titan of the comics industry responsible for many early tales of DC heroes like Batman and the Flash! Unfortunately, Kyrik represents the lesser of his sword and sorcery efforts, decidedly weaker than his well-reviewed Kothar series. Fox's full bibliography is available in ebook and vintage cover galleries at the handsomely curated website for the Gardner Francis Fox library:

One mark against poor Kyrik is that publisher Leisure Books didn't take much care with him - typos and misprints abound, as well as editing/continuity issues. On page 21, Kyrik's new companion Olvia remarks that the wizard Upanikol may share food with them if they can reach his tower. Unbeknownst to our heroes, Upanikol has just died in the middle of a dread ritual! Just later on page 27 however, Olvia is suddenly privy to the wizard's fate, saying they'll have an easy time finding food and shelter in the tower "since Upanikol died!" There's a fine line in pulp between the muscular prose of Robert E. Howard and the diffident recitations of his imitators, and Fox strays over that line a mite too often with Kyrik. Our poor barbarian boy has been trapped as a statue for millennia since his last adventure, only to bust out and rescue a mysterious witch-girl before getting wrapped up in the wizard Upanikol's unseemly machinations, alongside characters with names like Ammalauth-Vul and Harakan, monsters like the serpent Coroboran, plus other magically imprisoned warriors and haunts like the Boar's Tooth ... you know, all that kind of swords and sorcery stew, sometimes filling, sometimes a pale imitation of better memories. If you can dig lines like He rode a big roan stallion across the flatlands that lay south of the Hyakian Hills, you can roll with Kyrik.

It holds interest for the full 186 pages at least, and hopefully paid some bills for Fox. Kyrik can be read in full, absolutely free, at the Gardner Francis Fox library.

For mediocre barbarian thrills, Kyrik earns himself 2/4 stars.

Leisure Books, 1976

THE BLOOD SNARL by Ivor Watkins

The year is 1999. The Gulf Stream has died. The UK has fallen into a dark winter, with Scotland locked in ice. Down from the frozen highlands, they come. The wolves. Not seen in England since Henry VII, some 500 years ago. Now they've returned, to new hunting grounds, to a land that lays ripe for the taking. And now, huddled in their snowbound villages, the people of Scotland will know true terror, when they hear THE BLOOD SNARL ...

That cartoonish cover hides a high tension terror tale, one that navigates its near-future setting (published in 1980, set in 1999) with admirable restraint. The institutional rot visible in the UK in 1980 has simply progressed, and now the climate has shifted to accelerate the decay. Typical of most futuristic stories of the time the USSR is still intact, though it's also dealing with entropic slowdown. Those wolves are ravenous, and they're devilishly intelligent. None more so than Darkmind - his name tells it all, a cracked actor if there ever was, twisted with some dark perversion of nature. His fevered mind is uniquely suited to tracking human prey, and he's pushing his pack to greater and greater heights (and lower and lower latitudes) to feed their hunger, egged on by the wildcard scrounger Slackjaw. Wolves are social animals, after all, maybe more in tune with their communal needs than the poor humans in their path.

An undated photo of the author

Our English and Scottish characters are in dire straits, trapped on the ground and helpless in their command centers. Enter the Russian wolf hunter, Bukhanovich. His superiors have informed him that his wife will remain in psychiatric hospital until he completes his impossible mission. His minder Spassky will shadow him to ensure compliance. With his rifle, his wits, and his two beautiful, doomed borzois, Bukhanovich must outwit Darkmind. His slavic fatalism may prove the attribute most key to his survival, just as the phlegmatic set of the Scots characters might just save them while the suits in London dither and Spassky obsesses over his own asinine mission. Typical of these English affairs is Watkins' focus on class and status: from the ivory towered intellectuals who set the UK on its mad course to slaughter, to the beige government men born to (mis)rule, down to the granular level of local bigwigs, lackeys, and then ... the rest of us. Eventually, as in all the best man-vs-nature stories, it comes down to the blood and the blade, our civilized veneers stripped apart in the final fatal moments as everything falls away except pure survival. Somewhere within our weak bodies and our muddled minds we must draw the power to live, to overcome these perfect killing machines ...

A slightly better cover, from Signet

The Blood Snarl earns a full 4/4 for its harrowing near-future horror.

Futura, 1980

THE PLANTS by Kenneth McKenney

It happened ... because of THE PLANTS! Author Kenneth McKenney delivers a very English apocalypse in the classic vein of Wyndham and Roberts, wherein some cosmic quirk overturns our complacency in our not-so-solid civilization. Here it's in the small village of Brandling, nestled in the southern country of Somerset. Place is always important in these English affairs - Brandling isn't too far away from the Mendip Hills where Keith Roberts' survivors take shelter in The Furies. It's a sleepy sort of town, with but a single pub and no traffic to speak of save the locals, fixed in lifelong circuits, wearing ruts through the social space of Brandling.

As Brandling's citizens go about their days as best they can, numbed by the record breaking heat, a riot of life is growing around them. Some are overjoyed at the profligate growth of their roses and gardens, some are irritated at the explosion of weeds and thorns, but all anyone can really do at first is make small talk in the pub. Until Charlie Crump smashes up his own prize winning squash in a fit of drunken paranoia. And then old Ted Wilkes finds Charlie's crumpled body lodged in a rose bush. And then something pulls the phone lines down, leaving the town cut off. And then suddenly the patrons in The Bunch of Grapes have a lot more to talk about.

Some of the more straightforward urgency of McKenney's volcano thriller The Fire Cloud might have been helpful here, as he's maybe a little too effective at conjuring the anesthetizing atmosphere of the dog days of summer. The feeling is enough to put you to sleep at times, and THE PLANTS themselves are in no hurry, moving at their own alien, inexorable pace. The result is honestly a bit of a bore! We know where things are going, we know something is wrong in Brandling, so just get on with it! Our human characters finally get with the program and piece together the plan of the plants: coexistence, at a price. McKenney's a strong writer and the conclusion of the story is satisfactory, but it feels like we took an afternoon snooze in the middle. 

The cover blurb doesn't help things, as this is more of a thoughtful science fiction piece than outright horror. The Plants earn 2/4 for their rather languid assault on humanity.

Golden Apple Books, 1984 (original pub 1976)

COVER UPDATES: FLYING SAUCERS ARE HOSTILE

A spaced out cover by UK publisher Tandem for Steiger and Whritenour's Flying Saucers Are Hostile, matching their edition of Steiger's Strangers From the Skies. Reprint copyright 1972, original Tandem edition from 1970, original Award Books printing from 1967.