CAN ASTROLOGY SOLVE "THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE" MYSTERY? by M.A. Smollin

The readers were clamoring for answers! Writer M.A. Smollin starts off with disclaimers about the Triangle's per capita spookiness and the responsibility of relevant authorities to investigate accidents and disappearances ... and with that out of the way, we're ready to interrogate how Uranus, Mercury, and the rest might influence us towards evil, self destructive ends! This is on top of more earthly issues such as instrument failure, which Smollin says can aggregate alongside the heavenly alignments to cultivate a sense of impending doom. Smollin picks out the Cyclops and Flight 19 as the most important Triangle mysteries requiring this astrological analysis.

Smollin also says that theories of Atlantean atomic piles under the Triangle are unsupported.

This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

From Dell's Horoscope magazine, Volume 41 - Number 11, November 1975. If this article put you on edge, you could always try to relax with the same issue's astro-word puzzle!

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: The Great Lakes Triangle

A new zone of terror, from The Great Lakes Triangle by Jay Gourley. Says Gourley:

There exists within the United States and Canada - principally between longitudes 76° west and 92° west and between latitudes 41° north and 49º north - a region in which several peculiar events have been recorded. The concentration of such events is far greater than any random statistical dispersion would place within these narrow boundaries. The region, on the whole, is sparsely populated, but there are areas of dense population within it. The principal geographic features of this region are five freshwater lakes.

Courtesy Fontana Books, 1977. 

SPEARMEN OF ARN by Del Dowdell

Bumper Phillips was nothing special on Earth ... but true to planetary romance, on Arn he becomes an unstoppable killer! The most interesting thing about this work from Mormon apologist Del Dowdell is the hook whereby Bumper travels to the world of Arn: he's a last minute addition to the doomed Flight 19, and as they fly out over the Bermuda Triangle they encounter a horrifying portal to another world! 

Author Del Dowdell (1936-2022)

This is a neat enough trick by Dowdell, as one of the Avengers planes had an empty navigator seat, and since Bumper jumps in too late to be added to the flight list, he's never listed as missing alongside the rest of the crew. After flying through the portal, Bumper and the real life crew of Lieutenant Taylor and student pilots Powers, Stivers, Gerber and Bossi (and the rest!) are attacked by spearmen riding gigantic birds! Only Bumper survives, and thus begins his quest to run roughshod over this alien world, in the classic sword and planet tradition.

First though, he has to be trained in Arnian language and combat by the blind Tamarra, who lives in the deadly snake pits that Bumper is dumped in after his first, failed battle with the locals. Tamarra gives us some exposition too, about the dread Thelonese and their Sluices, the portals they use to rob water from other worlds. While the Thelonese work their dread machinations, the rest of Arn engage in petty struggles and backstabbing, and soon enough Bumper finds himself in the middle of some courtly intrigue among a society of cave people descended from other lost Earthers. Bumper, by the way, is prophecised as the Tyjen, a hero who will break the Thelonese of their hold on Arn, which causes him all kinds of problems.

Crave a smoke while questing? Why not a Newport?

Unfortunately, Dowdell has a tin ear when it comes to characters. Tamarra and Otar and Pelan are all decent enough sword and sorcery names, but what are we to make of Sram D'Crooz and Scarduun O'Grlea? D'Crooz and O'Grlea are two of the cave people, and I get that Dowdell was going for the garbled descendants of Earth names in their case, but it falls flat for me. Can't win 'em all, I guess ... but it doesn't help when the book is riddled with typos and these names are also being constantly mispelled!

In fact, if you thought that barbarian hero Kyrik had a tough time with editing flubs, wait 'til you meet Bumper Phillips! This poor guy ... not only are names misspelled left and right, continuity blows up in our faces more than once. Over at the Black Gate fantasy review site, Charles Gramlich says "at least one chapter appears to be completely missing between Chapters 12 and 13."

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

MAPS OF THE UNKNOWN: Bermuda Triangle Deluxe

Click to embiggen

Giant sized map of the deadly Triangle, detailing specific cases within a strictly defined boundary - not always the case for the Triangle legend! They do still manage to sneak in a couple of edge cases though, like the C-124 Globemaster listed in March of 1950, which disappeared in the North Atlantic less than 500 miles west of Ireland ... and they get the date wrong to boot! It was in March of 1951, not 1950. The R7V-1 Super Constellation listed in October 1954 was also nowhere near the Triangle when it disappeared en route to the Azores from Maryland. Hey, them's the breaks for mystery mongering in and around the Triangle!

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.

ON THE JOB IN THE DEADLY "DEVIL'S TRIANGLE" by Peter Michelmore

Live! Writer Peter Michelmore is on the scene with the Coast Guard as they investigate distress calls in the deadly Bermuda Triangle! Who will they find, and what will be left of them? 

All told, it's a quiet time out there, so Michelmore details superstitions that still bedevil even the Coast Guard's finest, and goes over a couple of close calls that could have become Triangle lore if things had gone a little differently. The spooky highpoint of Michelmore's ride is a sudden drop in oil pressure which inexplicably resets itself ... phew!

Detail of the article's main map, courtesy of Wide World

Michelmore namechecks Charles Berlitz and Lawrence David Kusche as the two extremes of Triangle writing and poopoos both, despite falling very neatly in line with Kusche when he says that the most important factor in the Triangle is "the human element." Some of it comes down to nitpicking over exact wording, as Michelmore wants to get across that the Triangle is a very dangerous place indeed even without any paranormal elements, and he feels that Triangle debunkers may overstate the lack of danger and the hard work that goes into the Coast Guard's patrol of these devilish waters.

And the secondary map, with less detail

This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org.

Courtesy Argosy magazine, Vol. 282 - No. 2, August 1975.

 

DISASTERS IN THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE by Eileen Sperber

Eileen Sperber gives the basic Triangle rundown, including testimony from skin diver and oceanographer Jim Thorne, a quote from Charles Berlitz, and a reference to John Wallace Spencer's "limbo of the lost." This article is also available to read and download at archive dot org. 

Courtesy Front Page Disasters magazine, Vol. 1 - Issue 1, October 1977.

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: STRANGE MONSTERS AND MADMEN

Warren Smith's Strange Monsters and Madmen is now available to read and download at archive dot org!

Courtesy Popular Library, 1969.

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: THE DEVIL'S SEA

The psychic survey of The Devil's Sea by Elizabeth Nichols is now available to read and download at archive dot org. Featuring the ESPer visions of Otto Binder, Irene Hughes, Ted "PK Man Owens," and others, alongside classic Triangle terror tales ...

Courtesy Award Books, 1975.

PREHISTORIC GERM WARFARE by Robin Collyns

IS MANKIND AN ALIEN EXPERIMENT? Brother, sometimes I feel like one! Author Robin Collyns has packed one hell of a head spinning hypothesis into 146 pages of punchy planet busting potpourri!

Just dig those chapter titles. Ancient astronauts? Of course! Ancient nukes, ancient genetic engineering, ancient secrets of time and space and color blindness? You betcha! Various indigenous legends from the Sioux, Maori, Australian Aborigines and others are crowbarred into the ancient astronauts matrix: this guy came from the sky, those guys wore something on their heads, these other fellas had powers beyond our comprehension ... all aliens!

Bigfoot and all his friends? Alien as all hell! How about the Bermuda Triangle? Do you even have to ask? Collyns' dedication is admirable as he stitches together almost the whole damn paranormal smorgasbord into his tapestry. Did you know the asteroid belt is all that remains of Planet X after a nuclear war with Mars? Collyns kind of stole that one from James P. Hogan and his 1977 SF novel Inherit the Stars, but then again Hogan was a Holocaust denier so we'll let it slide. Tunguska, of course, was an out-of-control alien craft that suffered nuclear detonation over Siberia. Stanton Friedman, Carl Sagan, CUFOS, and France's GEPAN try to ground things, relatively speaking, but Collyns will not be contained! Incan cities on Mars, titans from outer space, ginseng as a cure all wonder drug ... all food for thought and grist for the mill.

Collyns makes frequent reference to his prior works, including Ancient Astronauts: A Time Reversal? and the delightful title Laser Beams From Star Cities? The present work moves too fast for this padding to become an issue, and Collyns never belabors a point before moving on to the next wonder. The author also makes lots of references to film and TV: the germ warfare chapter features The Satan Bug and The Missing Are Deadly, to name two. This chapter's pretty creepy by the way, not only dealing with hypothetical alien attacks but also real life germ warfare from very earthly sources!

Recently departed Australian fringe researcher/yowie hunter Rex Gilroy is also referenced, as is good old Zecharia Sitchin and von Daniken's beloved iron pillar of Delhi. Collyns manages an entertaining brew mixing all the old standards.

Don't just take my word for it, though: Prehistoric Germ Warfare is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Star Books, 1980