EXTRATERRESTRIAL by Julian Shock

Successful author Spencer Torrence has arrived with his family at the Hotel Holroyd for a mysterious writer's convention. His friend the "science expert" Dan Lloyd is there, along with some real life big names, but nobody seems to know who's running things, and people start experiencing hackneyed horror scrapes from the very start - Spencer's daughter Lauren sees her doppelgänger behind a curtain, Spencer himself notices that the furniture's been moved all around the lobby, and everyone is on edge with an impending feeling of doom. They're right to be afraid, because the convention is actually a trap laid by EXTRATERRESTRIAL visitors who have some unearthly, unthinkable plans for their guests!

Our aliens? A male and female pilot, and their offspring. Humanoid, just like you and me really. But the fourth member of the crew? A hideous being, a biological computer called the Selector, which suffers a parody of life submerged in a chemical bathtub and grants its crewmates glimpses of future probabilities through its psychic powers. Scanners may live in vain, but the Selector lives for pain, inflicting the purest nerve shredding agony on any being unlucky enough to touch minds with it - turns out, telepathy is an exquisitely awful experience. The female pilot suffers greater indignity still as the Selector mentally manipulates her "erotic centers," forcing her to enjoy their interactions and "filling her with a transient urge to mate." This grotesquerie is a highlight of the story, and too bad we've peaked on page 12 ... it's all downhill from there.

Author "Julian Shock" was actually a pseudonym for one J.N. Williamson (1932-2005), a prolific writer, editor, and old horror hand who also acted as a mentor for authors starting out in the field. Those who knew him have nothing but kind words, while readers of his books have more mixed opinions. Extraterrestrial suffers from slack writing, slapdash storytelling, and the overriding feeling that Williamson just didn't care that much! The tone throughout is of shrill cynicism, with occasional, awkward stabs of cornball cuteness thanks to young daughter Lauren and her adorable kitten named Puck. Williamson loads his story up with literary references like J.D. Salinger and portentous quotations from the likes of Carl Sagan, Alvin Toffler, and the Epic of Gilgamesh - I'm usually a sucker for that sort of thing, but none of the text that follows really seems to engage with the heavy framing. The aliens (minus the Selector) are straight out of '50s comic books, 100% human except for their high technology and their alien cuss words: francle striv! The male pilot is a real dickhead, and a dullard besides as he makes the same old ET observations about how much we look like ants from up here and how pathetic and dumb we are, blah blah blah! The female pilot gets some deeper characterization as she's fully engaged with the (im)moral questions of their mission, and maybe if their plan wasn't so goofy it'd make for some righteous sturm und drang ... but again, it all seems like something out of a '50s comic book, with the aliens setting up a writer's convention to brainwash/replace these influential members of society, terrorizing them with cliched horror jump scares in the process ... and how silly does that sound nowadays in 2023, by the way, targeting novelists for a culture war campaign? Williamson is extremely self-indulgent throughout, playing lots of games with his doppelgänger theme and having fun with UFOlogy and hoary old sci-fi tropes, but it's all for naught on the reader's end. I'm sure there's also lots of clever references to writer friends and inside jokes about the industry peppered through the text.

The author ...

... and some of his work

Zebra Books did a nice job packaging this dud, at least. The front and back page ads let you know the audience they were trying to entice - he-man readers of The Survivalist series and spy novels where "video joy games" become deadly SPY GAMES, plus desperate horror junkies willing to try another Williamson joint, Death-Coach (this one released under his own name).

Despite the slick presentation, Extraterrestrial earns a limp 1/4 rating for brief flashes of cosmic angst amidst a pedestrian horror tale.

Zebra Books, 1982

PURSUIT ON GANYMEDE by Michael D. Resnick

Grand old man of SF Michael D. Resnick knocked out a duology of "sword and planet" stories -  a subset of planetary romance - in the late '60s, and today's entry is the second of these, as space-wrecked astronaut Adam Thane finds himself chasing the love of his life Delisse, helpless in the foul clutches of the deposed demigod Tarafolga in a PURSUIT ON GANYMEDE! Thane is transmitting his adventures to author Resnick via a jerry-rigged radio, and isn't it always fun to read the prologues to these Barsoom pastiches, and see how the he-man heroes are getting their stories to Earth?

Adam Thane is your typical protagonist of the sword and planet thriller: male, of Earth, stronger and smarter than any alien foe! Just as for John Carter on Mars, Thane finds that the lighter gravity of the moon Ganymede (known as Kobar to its inhabitants) grants him superhuman strength against the locals ... but Resnick is too fine a writer not to surround him with interesting characters who bring value to the story through their own heroism and contributions, and Thane's superhero powers are leveled with a certain humble caution in the face of Kobar's alien threats. He's about as likeable and relatable as he can be while still embodying a power fantasy. It helps too that Resnick's writing during the post-ERB Barsoomian renaissance, when Burroughs' cruder racism and colonial designs were being tempered with then-modern attitudes. This is obvious in Resnick's treatment of the heroic black tribe that guards the mountains between the civilized west of Kobar and the atom-blasted eastern wastelands: Thane must best them if he's to continue his pursuit of his bride Delisse and the villain Tarafolga. The guardians are presented as honorable people faced with severe culture shock from Thane's reckless slashing of age-old planetary taboos with his modern American astronaut boldness. These austere fighters may have been influenced by Resnick's lifelong interest in Kenya, its people, and their experiences with colonialism. The headman of the guardians gets his own subtle characterization too, when he sends a boorish bully as his champion against Thane: if Thane loses, he deserved it, but if he wins, everyone's down one asshole nobody likes!

Another piece of the planetary romance where Resnick excels is in Thane's travails against the many, many species of hostile Kobarian wildlife, which bring suspense and verve to the proceedings - dig the hideous karix, and the bizarre centauroid/sauropod predators (with 10 foot tongues!) who rule the post-nuke jungles of Eastern Kobar! I love any author who indulges in creating weird and nasty alien wildlife.

Thane of course makes it into the eastern wastes and encounters these and more hideous beasts, including endless flocks of vicious blind pterodactyloids and grotesque golden apemen wearing mysterious medallions. The story starts going in circles after Adam Thane's arrival at the city-state of Luros, with plots and counterplots between Thane and the dread sorcerer Tarafolga, but Resnick keeps things lively enough with (for example) Thane being drafted into a gladiator death match against a hit parade of all the most awful Kobarian monsters - this portion is genre daftness at its best, as Thane as his luckless Lurosian comrades battle on for hours against waves of hideous monsters, before loosing the surviving creatures back upon their tormentors and the city at large! We're in prime sword and sandal territory here, as the city also catches on fire! With further developments our hero and his friends win the day, and here Resnick ends their story, with no further sequels. His work with Ganymede is equal to ERB's early Barsoom titles, and better for my money than anything Burroughs wrote past Chessmen of Mars.

The excellent but somewhat generic cover art is by fantasy art titan Jeffrey Catherine Jones. Pursuit on Ganymede earns 3/4 stars for solid, enjoyable planetary romance.

Paperback Library, 1968

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Loch Ness IV

A useful pair of maps from Roy P. Mackal's The Monsters of Loch Ness, only two of many maps, tables, and illustrations from this handsomely produced volume. Mackal rules out whales, sirenians, and plesiosaurs as candidates for Nessie, settling on some unknown species of large amphibian or eel - though he later changed his mind and endorsed the Zeuglodon, an extinct "serpentine whale" that became a popular ID for sea serpents and lake monsters in the '80s and '90s. His book is an interesting time capsule, published in the twilight of the "golden age" of Loch Ness monster hunting when Nessie believers felt they were on the precipice of a breakthrough with all their modern tools of sonar, submarines, and surveillance ... unfortunately, the 1980s would prove lean years, and other monsters like mokele-mbembe, Champ, and Cadborosaurus would have to pick up the slack.

We also get your standard maps of Loch Ness and Scotland that every good Nessie book needs, plus some tongue-in-cheek action shots of author Mackal:

Courtesy The Swallow Press, 1980 (original pub. 1976)

 

TARK AND THE GOLDEN TIDE by Colum MacConnell

"What do you think these people are doing now that cigarette ads are il-legal?"

People try to rape me

Always think I'm crazy

Make me burn the candle right down

Baby I can't stay 

I don't need your jewels in my crown

IN THE TRADITION OF CONAN! Or more properly, in the tradition of the tradition after Conan, as Tark of the Tumbling Cliffs and Morned the Flea have more than a passing resemblance to Fritz Leiber's famous rogues, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Author MacConnell does Leiber one better though, as Tark and the Flea lack any of the sentimental streak that plagued Leiber's friends from Lankhmar - they won't hesitate to spill some fiend's coiling bowels (one of MacConnell's favorite descriptions) or ram a rapier through his groin into his heart! It's this ruthlessness that sees Tark and the Flea arrested on the evening of the second day of the month of Meskadene in the quartz city of Sorne by the Shallow Sea, in a desperate ploy by the scheming caste of priests who run the city ... It seems the Golden Tide is drawing nearer, across the grasslands and over the mountains, and Sorne the Sweetly Foul is trapped between their advancing armies and the (not-so) deep blue sea. Tark and the Flea must ferry some VIPs to distant allies in the Silver Mountains, that these last holdouts of civilization on the Shallow Sea will stand together against the Golden Tide and their demigod leader the Great Kan. But of course, this journey will prove even more treacherous than our cynical heroes could imagine ...

Well hey now baby

I'm the rank outsider

You can be my partner in crime

Baby get it straight

You got to roll me

Call me the tumbling dice

I thought our mediocre hero Kyrik was ill-served by his hosts at Leisure Books, but they take the cake this time with Tark! There's scattered typos throughout the text but thankfully no editing/continuity issues like those that plagued Kyrik's bout with the Wizard's Sword (besides a single mention of the Flea's "watchful eyes" when our lustful little rogue has but one). The real crime is the back summary, which fills our heads with a bunch of stuff that's not even in the story: there's no coveted blue sapphire, no beasts of the Burning Wood, no giant fighting camel (!), and the villain's name is Akor-Ut, not "Akor-Lut," thank you very much! Akor-Ut is also a very proper general in the army of the Golden Tide and only an "usurper" in the most general sense of messing up everyone's pots and pans with his conquering - he's totally loyal to his master the Great Kan. The Tide, by the way, is one of MacConnell's crowning jewels of this story, a vicious, visceral force that mixes the obvious inspiration of the Mongol Horde with a weird fantasy strain: the Tide all have white hair "the color of dirty milk," and they ride giant golden spiders into battle! MacConnell gives us brief glimpses into their martial mythos and builds a solid, earthy foe out of this bizarre bunch. MacConnell is a pro at building these fantasy societies, giving us just enough mesmerizing details and broad strokes that feel true to carry us into the text, and the world he crafts for Tark is a strange one indeed, one step beyond a standard barbarian milieu but not quite a full High Fantasy landscape. It's dark and dangerous, and the unknown lurks behind every corner, over every hill, and under cover of night. People still build their lives as best they can, as farmers and traders and artisans, and we meet a broad swath of folk alongside Tark and the Flea. Some of them will die horribly, some mercifully quick, and some still might live.

Of the other subjects on the back cover that do appear in this story, the Princess of the Silver Mountains is one of the VIPs Tark and the Flea are escorting. The pirates make for an enjoyable diversion, but are dwarfed by the bizarre Caythians who rule a forbidden lagoon under an Amazonian dictatorship and feed captured pirates to their great god Oth ...  a truly A+ monster in the annals of sword and sorcery, too good for me to even describe here and spoil. Much of the joy in this story is through MacConnell's seemingly endless imagination and ability to craft an immersive tale out of the building blocks of genre that are so often fumbled. This is all in a short 150 pages too, a length that achieves an epic scale while never feeling rushed. MacConnell can cram more set pieces and character work into 15 pages than many authors into 100, and our quick glimpses into Tark's past as someone whose home and family were ridden under by the Tide give him more pathos than your average Conan clone. MacConnell also really seems to relish his fighting scenes. It makes me suspect the author is working under a pseudonym, as this was his only credited work but reads as from a consummate professional.

The generic but serviceable cover art is by Scottish artist Ken Barr, no stranger to flashing swords and fantasy.

UK publisher Trojan also published an edition, with a cover by American illustrator Don Maitz which is a variant on art Maitz did for the fourth Flashing Swords! collection the same year of 1977. It's dynamic but has nothing much to do with the story, looking more like it belongs on a Moorcock work. Barr's piece at least matches the tone of the text.

For a tight, professional work of swords and sorcery, Tark and the Golden Tide earns a full 4/4 spilling coils of bloody bowels! Get Tarked!

Leisure Books, 1977

COSMIC DEBRIS: Eye of Wisdom Sunseal

Here's an undated but undeniably vintage piece of spiritual product, a very fetching Eye of Wisdom designed to filter the light of the sun for inspiration and focus. This item originally went for $5.99 at the Thamel Gift Shop. Today you can get your Eye of Wisdom straight from Illumination Mandalas' online store for $7.95, and learn a little bit about IM's story while you're there:

Illumination Mandalas opened its doors as a wholesale business in 1979. Our business started by importing our luminous window decals from the USA. In 1983 we began designing and manufacturing exclusively in Australia. Illumination Mandala products are now sold around Australia and we export to many overseas destinations including Europe, USA, South East Asia and New Zealand.

Our central product range consists of silk screened luminous “stained-glass” window decals for windows and doors. We offer a wide variety of sizes and themes from Australian Wildlife to Spiritual Symbols. Also included in this range of products are Fridge Magnets, Bookmarks and Colouring Books.

Complimenting our core range of Australian made products is a large range of imported Incense, Smudging Products and Giftware from India, Nepal, Bali/Indonesia and USA. Our ranges are forever changing, so make sure you check back to see what’s on offer.

Illuminated Mandalas' Australian roots shine through in many of their designs, but the Eye shines brighter as a classic, clean design ideal for thoughtful meditation or simple appreciation.

Here's the Eye in action, helping cover a crack in a suitably retro window. Here's to a happier and more peaceful world ...