MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Krakatoa, West of Java

Some maps and diagrams concerning Krakatoa's 1883 eruption, relevant to author J.V. Luce's discussion of the destruction of Thera in his excellent book The End of Atlantis. Krakatoa was famously misplaced in the 1968 Hollywood disaster flick titled Krakatoa, East of Java, but the fourth image of the Sunda Strait illustrates its true westerly position relative to Java ... glad that's settled!

Ash fall from the eruption
(Click to embiggen these horizontal images)

The Sunda Strait, flood zones, and the volcano west of Java 

Courtesy Bantam Books, 1978 (original pub. 1969).

COVER UPDATES: BEYOND EARTH

Beyond Earth: Man's Contact with UFOs by Ralph and Judy Blum gets a flashy 1978 edition from Bantam Books. See also this sinister 1976 edition. Original publication 1974. 

MAN-EATER by Ted Willis

Got shiny diamonds

Like the eyes of a cat in the black and blue

Something is coming for you ...

Look out!

A washed up circus trainer dumps two tigers on a dark country road and so begins THE SHOCK EXPERIENCE OF THE YEAR ... or maybe not quite, for author Ted Willis is very restrained with his mayhem, and aims for more emotional blows than bloody guts and grue. Though not as feverish as Andrew Sinclair's action in The Cat, Willis delivers a similar setup: a small English town (in this case Whitford) that will soon learn that killer cats are the least of its problems, as their predations on the populace uncover an unholy tangle of sex, lies, and rape that runs straight through the halls of power. It's almost too much for an honest copper like Gosford, but thank God that strange fellow Birk is skulking around, having rented a cottage on the hill ... he seems to have some experience in hunting beasts, whether human or feline. Gosford, Birk, and the rest are about to find out that the tigers are just two of the predators on the prowl in Whitford.

The author

Author Ted Willis (1914-1992) was no slouch, being a prolific playwright, screenwriter, and novelist, a devoted communist, Chairman of the Writer's Guild of Great Britain 1958-1964, and a recipient of a life peerage in 1963! His Man-Eater is artfully drawn out, introducing us to the town of Whitford through the man-eaters' first victim Tom Pickford, stepping out with a local girl on a forest road, and then through Chief Inspector Gosford's stumbling investigation of Pickford's disappearance, which proves frustrating as nobody wants to talk lest they expose Pickford's double life and their own shady dealings. Our tiger mates Ranee and Mohan seem almost perplexed by this bizarre community that's become their hunting grounds, and Willis keeps sympathy for them strong throughout. Meanwhile his focus on his human characters verges on the parapolitical, as we get a feel for the class lines and power networks that keep little Whitford plugged into the national body politic - what a day for some bloody tigers to ruin your child pornography ring!

As philanderers, innocent bystanders, and biker hooligans are rent and bloodied on the moors and in the woods, as the suicides and self incriminations ring out, and as the fierce, lost, doomed tigers find a net tightening inexorably around them, it's enough to drive you to drink. Says gunman Birk, "I'm a bit of an anachronism too, you see, part of the post-imperial hangover. Like those tigers - a member of a doomed species. I'm not really equipped for life in the last half of the Twentieth Century. And frankly, the more I see of it, the less I feel inclined to care."

Some other editions

With Ranee and Mohan burning brightly in the night, Man-Eater hunts down a 3/4 rating.

They're out there ...

Bantam Books, 1977 (original pub. 1976)

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Santorini Part III

Lost Atlantis, reconstructed as Santorini. Previously mapped in Atlantis Fire and Atlantis: The New Evidence. From The End of Atlantis by J.V. Luce, courtesy Bantam Books, 1978 (original pub. 1969).

DELUGE by Richard Doyle

"Kennington Park Road - water entering from north-east," called out the officer in charge and another marker was moved up. The pattern was becoming clear; the surge had spilled over in Bermondsey and was cutting across the bend in the river into Lambeth. By the time the tide overtopped on the other side, along the Albert Embankment, people trying to escape southwards would find themselves trapped with the river at their backs. His thoughts were interrupted by an urgent shout from Carswell.

"Derek," the Controller's face was pale with dismay, "it's the Undergound," he said in an unnaturally high voice. 

"They still have passengers in the tubes."

It's panic on the streets of London (and all up and down the eastern English coast for that matter) as hurricane force winds drive the storm of the century up the Thames, threatening seven million souls with a horrible death via an inescapable DELUGE!

After an exciting opening with a threatened freighter in the North Sea and reports of record surges from coastal towns, we quickly bog down into bureaucratic exposition as Peter Collins (Flood Room officer on standby) and displaced Kiwi Derek Thompson (Chief Engineer to the London City Council) feel out the first warning signs and begin their doomed attempts at prodding the system into action. We know exactly how that's going to go, don't we ... This is a necessary part of any disaster narrative, the pregnant menace, the foreknowledge that something's terribly wrong. We spend a little too much time here, though, and the first third of the story starts to feel like we're wading through hip deep water, sloshing and straining to make any progress. Eventually the storm arrives and things really get bent, as we're hoping, but it's rough going getting there, with too much back and forth with a slimy Labour pol named Miles Wendoser doing everything he can to stymie emergency efforts for fear of panic. Big mistake, we know! Wendoser is a plastic politician in the Tony Blair mold, with no real principles or scruples beyond what's best for his image in any given moment. Oh yes, and to make things worse, the American President is due for a tour!

Hardcover jacket artwork

Thompson has a memory of a flood back in New Zealand, which wiped out a tiny village, and he shudders at the thought of that power brought to bear on a modern metropolis. Doyle takes a ghoulish glee in showing us exactly how awful a flood could get in a modern city, with bridges smashed by loose barges, power plants blown up, slums flooded out and gas lines exploding, hospitals becoming death traps, those poor bastards in the tube, all this and more, and everywhere masses of people trapped by the rising waters and left to die by a government paralyzed by indecision and ignorance. Doyle doesn't mind dispatching his characters with clinical precision, sometimes scores at a time, sometimes in singular vignettes, and he does a good job for the most part in sketching people in before they meet their fates - it's a cross section of '70s society in the UK here, with "colored" chaps and working girls, pensioners and posh types all in danger from the flood. Nobody deserves what they get, and here Doyle is effective in illustrating the sheer waste and folly on the human level within a massive catastrophe, and the very human decisions that play into the death toll from a "natural" disaster.

Above, an American edition from Bantam Books, 1978. There's much to like here but the pacing is just too off. Doyle would revisit this setup a quarter century later as Flood, from 2002. The description makes it sound like more of a modern thriller, with American and NATO forces aiding Britain and "an explosion the size of a small Hiroshima" ... I wonder how much Doyle's style evolved over the years, for better or for worse? A great-nephew of Arthur Conan Doyle as noted above, Richard Doyle (1948-2017) has a brief but intriguing wikipedia page and was especially concerned, it is said, with the effects of climate change. After slogging through this bleak but unsatisfying read, maybe you'll spare a moment in thought as well ...

Deluge earns a disappointing 2/4 rating.

Pan, 1978 (original pub. 1976)

COVER UPDATES: WISDOM OF THE ANCIENTS and LIVING WITH THE LAMA

A double dose of T. Lobsang Rampa today, beginning with the Bantam Books edition of Rampa's occult guide from 1978 (original pub. 1970). "He survived torture, imprisonment, starvation," but not really.

And another Corgi edition of Living With The Lama from 1968, which plays coy with the concept of Rampa translating his cat's biography from "the Siamese Cat language" (original pub. 1964).

Cute logo!

FIRESPILL by Ian Slater

The ocean is on fire. The ocean is on fire! Off the coast of British Columbia, two supertankers have collided, spilling a combined 600 million gallons of oil that ignites into an unstoppable inferno. As the conflagration rages, the rickety diesel trainer sub HMCS Swordfish is given an impossible task: rescue the Vice President of the United States of America, currently stranded on a 30 foot fishing trawler directly in the path of the FIRESPILL!

This is pure, sublime disaster fiction: our modern, interconnected world, which we're uniquely poised through our high technology to burn to ash. American and Soviet oil tankers, an out-of-order collision radar, a surly crew of post-Vietnam submariners and a cast of Presidents, Prime Ministers, and sheiks, all of us like children playing house with our finger on the button. It isn't just one broken link, one failed piece that brings destruction, it's the whole rotten edifice, the whole out-of-control monster we call civilization. It's inevitable, it's inescapable, it's the final judgment for guilty and innocent alike! There's no special dispensation for main characters, no plot-armor for heroes, no - these, then, are the damned.

It's a very Canadian disaster as well, dealing as it does with the nexus of superpowers and global trade, of stiff upper lip fait accompli decisions made to save face in the face of the unthinkable. A fierce debut novel from author Ian Slater, who would later find his niche writing a series of WWIII thrillers.

Armageddon on the brain ...

For its killing heat and a searing finish, Firespill earns four flames out of four:

This isn't the only book Elaine Hartsock owned.

McClelland & Stewart-Bantam Limited, 1977

STAR BRIGHT by Martin Caidin

Now here's an author who's long overdue at POTG, Mr. Martin Caidin! A glance at his author blurb will be enough to elucidate, but let's go on anyway: Caidin was a naval/aviation buff and prolific author of subjects fiction and nonfiction, including coauthoring Japanese flying ace Saburo Sakai's autobiography and penning multiple tie-in novels including the source novel for the hit TV show The Six Million Dollar Man and the novelization of the '80s time travel sci-fi actioner The Final Countdown. Other works integrated UFOs and the Bermuda Triangle, making Caidin the perfect author for this blog! It just so happens that his debut here is a slightly sideways apocalyptic techno thriller, is all.

Marty! Lookin' sharp bud!

Once again, mortal man has been mucking about with powers beyond his ken. This time it's a project for fusion power, which has spiraled out of control and spawned a voracious black hole smack dab in the foothills of picturesque Cumberland County, Tennessee. If somebody doesn't do something fast this hungry little bastard is gonna gobble up the entire planet!

Caidin gets off on the wrong foot with a cutesy action opening that dredges up memories of yesterday's limp-dicked wannabe "action" novel The Big One, as some super secret special forces guys get absolutely owned by scientist/warrior Dr. Owen Kimberly while attempting to shanghai him as a trouble shooter for Project Star Bright. This opener could have been scrapped without losing anything of value. It's one of several missteps along the way that make me wonder if Star Bright was some kind of fix-up novel - there's no background info really available on the web but the herky jerk pacing coupled with some archaic science fiction prose style leads me down that path. Neutron stars and black holes were cutting edge maybe a decade before this novel's publication date which is another odd note. Anyways, moving on to the actual story ...

It's alright. There are some truly beautiful moments of "hard SF" poetry, descriptions of powers and forces beyond anything we could imagine if they weren't staring us in the face, but there's also a lot of clunky dialogue and broad characterizations to sit through getting there. Once shit truly hits the fan we're home free to a crackerjack finale. At his best, Caidin achieves some sublime levels of existential terror. To go back to The Big One again, in Star Bright we're treated to thousands of casualties off screen, as end times cultists and martial law rack up the body count. Where in The Big One we felt cheated by the glib mentions of mega-death, here the effect is to heighten the tension as our scientist characters are locked off from the rest of the world, truly alone and solely responsible for the fate of the planet.

A former owner made a note of Sodium Penethol (sic) on the inside frontis, possibly referencing another book they were reading. For a modest but sometimes effective little apocalypse, Caidin's Star Bright earns two swirling black holes out of four:

We'll see more Caidin in the future ... Bantam Books was kind enough to also give us a sneak peek at the first few pages of a crummy political thriller called The Elijah Conspiracy at the end of it all. Thanks fellas!

Bantam Books, 1980