Sunday, October 5, 2025
ARCHIVAL UPDATES: MORE STRANGE STEIGER
Saturday, October 4, 2025
COSMIC DEBRIS: Astro-Word Puzzle
It's fun for all with our big 500th post! Theme: authors and their birth-signs. From Dell's Horoscope magazine, Volume 41 - Number 11, November 1975.
Monday, September 29, 2025
STRANGE WORLD: Midwest Monster
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Here's an undated copy of Brad Steiger's syndicated "Strange World" column from the early '70s, which was "carried in 80 American newspapers and publications around the world." Here Brad reuses a Bigfoot story from prior work and adds a newer story on top.
Steiger had previously used the first story of the student outside Rochester, MN, in New UFO Breakthrough with Joan Whritenour, and The Abominable Snowman, writing as Eric Norman. In these books the student is christened "Bob." The second tale is from 1970 and so postdates those works, otherwise I'm sure Brad would have made multiple uses of it! Truck driver John Hartsworth describes the creature he saw (and Mike Busby tangled with!) as looking like "a giant cat running on its hind legs" ... yowza!
Unknown paper, unknown year!
Sunday, September 28, 2025
SPEARMEN OF ARN by Del Dowdell
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Crave a smoke while questing? Why not a Newport? |
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Tuurla? I never even knew her! |
Consider the mysterious "Tuurla" who Bumper reminisces over along with all the other people he's met in Arn ... except he never got around to meeting her! Later, at the climax, Bumper rushes into the slave quarters to grab his friends Ryssta and Otar - except they were supposedly left behind with the Lady Arrmon several chapters ago, and Bumper was explicitly sent alone to the Thelonesian slavers! Ay yi yi!
Dowdell includes a few creepy critters, but compared to John Jakes' inspired descriptions in the Brak stories, they're pretty lackluster. We get the giant birds, the snakes in the pit, some kind of octopus thing, and a big cat that's like a tiger. A few more or more interesting creatures might have livened things up, ho-hum! Mostly Bumper just wanders around getting into trouble with the locals, until he finally winds up in Thelonesian custody and upsets their apple cart. By the time the heat is on, we're practically done with the story! Dowdell sets us up for an ongoing series, but nothing doing: Bumper is a one and done hero.
Dowdell also wrote another standalone planetary romance, Warlord of Ghandor, starring Robert of Eire:
This title is also reviewed by Charles Gramlich at the Black Gate link previously mentioned. And as also mentioned earlier, Dowdell specialized in Mormon history/apologia, like the Nephi Code series:
A love for the absolute accuracy of the Book of Mormon hasresulted in this four-volume series of books regarding the numerous misconceptions about where Lehi landed, where the Nephites' Land of Promise was located, and who really settled in Mesoamerica--including who the Jaredites of Noah's posterity were and how and when they came to settle in the Western Hemisphere. In a way no other work has done, this thoroughly researched and footnoted series of books discloses the descrptions [sic] and clues Nephi, Jacob, Mormon and Moroni left us throughout their writings and abridgements [sic].
For all the bugjacked errors and a less-than-ferocious pace, Bumper's adventures in Arn earn a rough 2/4 rating. There's some fun stuff here, like Arn's bizarre cosmology and the pan-galactic water thieving Thelonese, but not enough to overcome the lows. For those who wish to follow Bumper Phillips into oblivion, Spearmen of Arn is available to read and download at archive dot org. The nifty cover art is by Doug Beekman, by the by.
Belmont Tower Books, 1978
Friday, September 26, 2025
ARCHIVAL UPDATES: STRANGE TIMES THREE!
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Author photo for Manning (1927-2006) |
Monday, September 15, 2025
SASQUATCH by M.E. Knerr
Tuesday, September 9, 2025
JAPAN'S MYTHICAL MARTIAL ARTS MASTERS by John Lindsey
‘‘Tengu’’ are vampires that rage in the air. Each lives on his own mountain peak. Were they remnants of the old Gods? The giant Tengu “‘So Jo Bo’’ appeared to Ushi-Kawa and taught him the art of writing. These proud beings are divided in two groups. The ‘‘Officers'' wear red robes, have long noses, and long, matted hair. When Admiral Perry first landed in Japan, he was drawn by a Japanese artist like a Tengu. Other Tengu—the ‘‘soldiers’’—have bird heads (space helmets?) and wings. Tengu hold secret conventions in remote mountain valleys, like those the early Jomon inhabited.
The ‘exceedingly long nose’ of the ‘winged creature in human form’ no doubt referred to some headpiece with breathing apparatus, for to some Extra-terrestriala our oxygenated atmosphere may be poisonous; we are reminded of Oannes, a Being with the body of a fish, who according to Berossus taught the Babylonians the arts of civilisation, his likeness to a fish probably denoted the Stranger was wearing a Spacesuit, perhaps one of those Jomon Dogu ‘pressure suits’ reproduced in the various statuettes found all over Japan? Since the long-nosed winged creature gave rise to a superstition it would suggest that his manifestations in the mountains of Japan were not infrequent throughout several centuries showing regular surveillance of the Children of the Sun.
Wednesday, August 27, 2025
MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Bermuda Triangle Deluxe
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Too bad the little plane and boat icons aren't keyed to corresponding disappearances ...
From Saga magazine's Bermuda Triangle Special Report 1977, which was chock-a-block full of Triangle updates from luminaries such as Charles Berlitz and Ivan T. Sanderson.