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!

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.

WITCHES U.S.A. by Susan Roberts

Witchcraft '71! Author Susan Roberts covers big names in the midcentury American witchcraft scene like Joseph Wilson, the Air Force man who publishes a quarterly zine called The Waxing Moon, and Bill and Phyllis Janney, heads of a Cincinnati coven. There's another Bill on the scene, last name Saffin, and together he and Janney are "the two Bills." Get ready to meet a lot of Bills and Eds and Jennies who all swish about mysteriously over coffee and casseroles and cocktail parties while dropping cryptic hints about the divine thread and the caves of the unknown.

Roberts' perspective emerges early as she claims that a witch named Joe told her to write this book the day before her agent calls with the same suggestion ... spooky, right? 

Joseph Wilson's zine

As far as gossipy guides to midcentury magic go, Roberts' work here pales in comparison to Today's Witches (1970) by Susy Smith. There's way too much self satisfied preening by random witchy ding dongs and too much filler from Roberts about how kind, beautiful, intelligent, and wonderful your neighborhood witches are. Watch out, though, because Roberts also warns us that witches can zap us if we cross them! This is a dopey section where Roberts claims on the one hand that dedicated witches won't use their powers to harm people, but on the other hand, the universe might hit us with karma if we cross them! How convenient!

The most interesting chapter concerns the law firm of Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander - yeah, that Nixon!

Yet the law firm in which President Nixon served as senior partner until his inauguration on January 20, 1969 — Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie and Alexander — apparently agreed with the views of Bill and Joe when they filed a petition at 4:47 p.m. on June 7, 1968, before the National Labor Relations Board. They requested that the Board set aside the victory of the International Association of Machinists in an election held on May 31, 1968. The employer the Nixon firm represented was the General Cigar de Utaudo of Puerto Rico.

The attorney’s charge? Witchcraft. Their client, they claimed, was hexed.

The National Labor Relations Board puts the kibosh on things, but Roberts goes over the 13 page white paper on historical witchery the firm filed to support their claim. This overview, covering grimoires and folk traditions, makes up a good chunk of Robert's historical treatment of witchcraft, and elsewhere her background on the craft also repeats the basic witch-cult hypothesis that a lot of vintage witch books took as read. Beside the high point of the Nixon chapter, the real meaty bits here are the profiles of real, random witches across America, who despite all their protestations come across as your average atomized suburbanites, searching for deeper meaning just like the rest of us.

Roberts ends with a ritual of self-blessing to "bring the individual into closer contact with the Godhead."

Above, a 1974 edition from Phoenix House. Susan Roberts also wrote The Yogi Cookbook (1968) with Yogi Vithaldas and The Magician of the Golden Dawn (1978), about Aleister Crowley. Roberts briefly covers Crowley in Witches U.S.A. too, along with the de rigueur chapter on Anton LaVey. 

Bill Janney died in a car accident before publication, but Roberts (tastefully) doesn't ask if this could be another case of karmic zappage. Witches U.S.A. is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Dell Publishing, 1971

THE HUNTING SHACK by Gunnard Landers

I'm reading last year's papers

Although I don't know why

Assassins, cons, and rapists

Might as well die

Man of action Gunnard Landers (1944-) delivers one mean corker of a thriller here, from the very first page as the unknown killer picks his target - the group of men have come to this wilderness for a hunting trip, and of course one of them has a different sort of prey in mind. Our killer won't remain nameless for long, and we'll come to know him and all his friends very well in Landers' easy, piercing style.

The hardcover

Protagonist Norm suspects there's something wrong with one of them; something more than the usual midcentury neuroses, I mean, something even more dangerous than the domestic problems and work struggles and homosocial minefield that the men navigate. But then, Norm's a little off himself, and maybe his buddies don't want to put too much stock in any random thing he says ...

And our author

The Paperback Warrior blog reviewed this title back in 2022 and on the strength of their recommendation I had to search out a copy for myself. I'm glad I did! The characters live, breathe, and die with shocking emotion, and Landers writes so vividly that you can easily see the story happening here and now - this could your town! The killer isn't some slasher film maniac or wannabe Hannibal Lecter, he's the same guy you've seen a million times before on the news, and how could anyone know? He was such a family man ...

And his prey? His camouflage? His hunting buddies, all jeering and jockeying to release some pressure, to escape the rat race if just for a weekend, to prove something, to do something ... with a gun. They don't know they're playing for keeps now, though.

The Hunting Shack ranks 4/4 - very recommended! This title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Dell Publishing, 1979

SNOWMAN by Norman Bogner

Something in the night

Something in the day

Nothing is wrong but darling

Something's in the way 

There's slaughter in the air 

Protest on the wind 

Someone else inside me 

Someone could get skinned, how

Hard boiled pulp action meets creature feature thrills in this oddity from literary and genre novelist Norman Bogner (1935-2022). The monks of Tibet call him Sogpa - Satan. The sheriff and the local editor are claiming it's a gigantic rogue grizzly. But disgraced climber Bradford knows ... it's the SNOWMAN!

He handed Bradford the photos of Janice's head with the black stars burned into her face. The other photographs were close-ups in color of the triangular footprints.

"Christ," Bradford said, "he's on your mountain."

This beast is no normal animal, no simple brown haired hominid, as Bogner makes clear right away. He's an atavistic, evolutionary freak, 25 feet tall, burning with elemental hatred and an insatiable hunger for flesh. Alone and perpetually pissed off, he burns the land with his footsteps leaving a bizarre rainbow effervescence. His hair is hard as stone, his skin sharp as daggers, and his teeth leave burning starpoints as he rends his prey, leaving mutilated bodies in his wake.

Now he's found a new feeding ground, at the summit of the Great Northern Ski Resort's peak. And now he's PR woman Cathy Parker's problem.

Cathy had messed around when she was younger in a series of painful affairs. Now she had little respect for men, since most of them were in search of an easy piece, mothering, or both simultaneously. Her job demanded the front of glibness, friendliness, and she fell into the role rather than expose her vulnerability. She had mastered the shades of public relations, which she understood as civilization's method of counterfeiting reality.

Bogner blends pulpy grit, mundane reality, and flashy fantasy into this unique concoction, as Bradford's old Vietnam buddies and his Sherpa pal Pemba are enlisted as yeti bait. The extreme realm of mountaineering demands special considerations as to tactics - would you believe nuclear cross bows? Bogner dots his eyes and crosses his tees without ever belaboring a scene, and before we know it we're at the end of this 221 page (gut) ripping yarn wishing there was a little more to come.

The striking hardcover!

Partially traced from a Frazetta piece!

No matter, but it would have been nice if maybe the Snowman got one more big scene devouring some skiers ... Bogner keeps things ratcheted down fairly tight throughout, despite his willingness to go out there with mini-nukes and mega-yetis, and part of what makes this such an enjoyable read is his precise control of the story, with not a word wasted. Bogner's working us like a fish on a line, but ain't it a wonderful way to die!

A little romance, a little action, a little bit of the ol' ultra violence - this one has it all. Bogner knows just when to dip out on a scene, and just how far to push things.

Across the pond, Snowman got a gruesome edition courtesy the New English Library:

Which copies the monster from Terror in the Midnight Sun, aka Invasion of the Animal People (1959)!

My, my, someone fetch a priest! You can't say no to the beauty and the beast as Bogner's Snowman slaughters his way to a bloody 4/4 rating!

Man is still the prey ...

The Snowman is available to read and download at archive dot org. This title was also reviewed by one Tony Caro and the ever reliable PorPor Books Blog, check 'em out.

Dell Publishing, 1978

TWISTER by David Hagberg

It's about time we kicked our DISASTERTHON into overdrive, and who better than master of disaster David Hagberg? Hagberg is back with a vengeance as he drops us into the roiling maelstrom of a small town blown apart by the TWISTER!

Hagberg deftly balances cutting edge weather forecasting and creeping disaster dread with the pungent small town milieu of Cambridge, WI. As the "hook" lines on the screen start to multiply, meteorologist Peter Geiger is faced with the nail biting decision: call a tornado warning? A false alarm could be devastating to Geiger's career, but if he hesitates ...

True to Hagberg's style, Geiger's conflict isn't easy, black and white genre grist. It'd be simple to cast Geiger as the villain of the piece, or a bumbling fool, but instead we're right there with him as he tries to thread a dangerous needle. Given the book's title we know how it's going to shake out but Hagberg's skill, as with all the best disaster stories, is in the unwinding of the inevitable.

The people of Cambridge are a motley lot: families and loners, Plain Folk and freakazoids, the doomed and the damned and the just plain unlucky. Hagberg structures the story into chapters named for each character, as paths cross and fates divert over the course of the big blowdown. It's a juicy cast just like in Hagberg's Blizzard, and everyone is drawn with Hagberg's typical skill and sensitivity. They feel like real people, thrown into an unbelievable horror. Hagberg dedicates his story to the people of Xenia, OH, who experienced a real life tornado disaster in 1974 that left 33 dead and 1,150 injured.

Smoke break! Poor Julia could sure use one right about now ...

Dell reuses the same backpage ads from Barney Cohen's Coliseum, giving us a real snapshot of the zeitgeist.

Hagberg's Twister earns 4/4 for some sublimely satisfying drama and marks the highpoint of our DISASTERTHON thus far. Get twisted!

Dell Publishing, 1975