THE PRESENCE by Rodgers Clemens

Dig those "true" space titles from Keel, Binder, and friends!

There's a mistake in the lake, and it's growing by the day. Not just in size, but in intelligence, as it claims victim after victim and expands its neural net across a burgeoning behemoth of a body. Too bad the mayor doesn't want to cause a panic, and the only scientist researching the matter is considered a crank ... it's a familiar sort of monster story, to be sure, albeit one with a great '70s mean streak in it, and a delightful cast of period appropriate scumbags and assholes! There's the corrupt Mayor Spilokos, toxic divorced couple Blake (the scientist) and Gloria Wiley, hottie Hannah McKittrick (from Channel 5!) and a host of working stiffs and clueless citizens, and of course there's our big blossoming blob from the depths, a voracious protoplasmic void that's just learned about the all-you-can-eat Midwestern city located just past the beach ... Beware the blob! There's face melting, bone crushing, gut punching action throughout as THE PRESENCE tears through the cast, delivering capricious death and just desserts equally to the innocent and guilty alike. Eventually, Blake attempts communication, and there's a breakthrough worthy of that trippy cover art, but it's a long bloody, destructive road getting there. Author Clemens balances the sci-fi grue nicely with realistic scenes of a city in panic and that delicious '70s paranoia over the authorities and their undoubtedly unsavory plans for us plebs, leading to a smashing climactic set piece in the city sewers.

A review of this title at the Por Por Books Blog twigged me to the fact that Rodgers Clemens was a pseudonym used by one Roger Lovin, a mysterious fellow who turns out to be just as unseemly as his story. Starting in 1968, Lovin wrote a counterculture zine in New Orleans, at the time a hotbed of hippie thought. Quoting from an article in Antigravity magazine:

Some of his Discordian philosophy makes its way into THE PRESENCE'S all-caps pronunciations at the climax of the story, as it reveals to Blake that humanity has been surpassed as the most intelligent thing on the planet. It also claims that HITLER WAS ELECTED BY POPULAR VOTE, a popular canard in pop history, but hey, THE PRESENCE is working off our answers, so to speak, so GIGO. Cracked thoughts aside, a more disturbing aspect of Lovin and his work shines through when you learn that he was a convicted pedophile! Again, from that Antigravity article:

The opening scene in The Presence of a teenaged girl preyed upon, first by a lecherous old man and then by the titular being, takes on a new dimension when you learn of the author's predilections, but Lovin has even more surprises up his sleeve ... would you believe a connection to the Kennedy assassination? An exhaustive four part series at the Historia Discordia site tracks down as many facts and rumors about Lovin as possible, including a tangential thread about JFK:

Lovin also claimed to have ran guns to Castro before a change of heart, which author Gorightly says may or may not be true - there's a lot about Lovin's life that's still up in the air, including if he's even still alive or not! He supposedly passed in 1991, but Gorightly digs into some reasons to doubt that. Even his bibliography isn't clear cut, with pseudonyms and gaps in titles leaving us a threadbare entry at the SF Encyclopedia. We know he crossed paths for a brief time with SF great Norman Spinrad:

And the internet gives up fragments of his work here and there:

 

Above, three more titles by Lovin. The Complete Motorcycle Nomad was maybe his most successful work, in terms of sales. Eleven is pedophilic smut, while the religious-themed Apostle features illustrations by the great Frank Kelly Freas (and Polly).

And here's a gooey Italian edition of The Presence retitled What Came Out of Lake Michigan! It seems publisher Urania was fond of medical art, as can also be seen in their edition of Sum VII:

The Presence by Lovin earns a solid 3/4 rating as sci-fi/horror, but beware, anyone who goes digging into the rest of Lovin's work! What you find might end up being a lot grosser than plain blood and guts ...

The author in happier times ...

... and trying to beat the rap

A Fawcett Gold Medal Book, 1977

ASTROLOGY ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS by Edward Lyndoe

Self help before it got so slick, originally published in 1949 as Plan With the Planets. Celebrity astrologer Edward Lyndoe gives some BS straight talk in the introduction, promising that this book isn't for those seeking "empty flattery" or "amusing half-truths." Indeed, this volume is for those brave searchers who seek only the highest universal truths, such as ... their "special foods?" Yes, it turns out that "Capricorns are in greater need of meat diets than any other group!" Locations are covered as well: "It must be taken, too, that the capitals of the Indian states now incorporated as Hindustan have a Capricornian rulership." Lyndoe assures us that no calculations or charting are required on our part. Just read on, and file away the foods, locations, days, colors, and so on associated with your sign! Learn your high and low attributes as well, along with health afflictions common to your sign. Even just an hour of reading will elucidate, Lyndoe promises.

The author's portrait by Howard Coster

Some famous folk are listed by sign, de rigueur for this genre. Stalin was a celebrated Capricorn! Speaking of communism, Lyndoe once analyzed Karl Marx's chart for Prediction magazine, and British socialist Harry Young took some offense at his sloppy science:

What Mr. Lyndoe is completely ignorant of, and what he must do, to write about Marx for intelligent people is get some idea of what it was that Marx was advocating. Significant for the ideas of Marx is not that he was born in the conjunction of Uranus— Neptune, but in the early stages of a new kind of social order—Capitalism.

Incidentally Mr. Lyndoe cannot have it both ways. If the actions of individuals are not their own, but predestined by their "charts" or "stars," what is Mr. Lyndoe complaining about —fraud, hypocrite, spy or not, Marx was merely fulfilling his destiny—he couldn't have been anything else. But the critic makes these actions the grounds for moral strictures and homilies. He complains that "Marxian Communism is the religion which not only glorifies the ends regardless of the means, but glorifies the means themselves. We should not be too sanctimonious about some of the methods used in our part of the globe—but, at least we do not feel disposed to trumpet them abroad as a new morality." What all this has to do with Marx and his stars nobody will ever know!

November 1958 issue of Prediction

For shame, Mr. Lyndoe. The promise of transcendental knowledge crashes against the rocks of history. Marx was a Taurus, by the way.

Original title

A Fawcett Gold Medal Book, 1969 (original pub. 1949)

THE BEAST by Walter J. Sheldon

Carnal hunger! Horny Bigfoot has a long pedigree going back to the original "Sasquatch" people of British Columbia, who were said to abduct mates from neighboring tribes, and as Bigfoot evolved into a subhuman apeman in the '50s he kept his lust for human women, as can be attested by a multitude of stories from Men's Adventure magazines. The fine folks at The Men's Adventure Library have collected an indispensable volume of classic stories about Bigfoot, Yeti, and other cryptozoological monsters:

These stories were an ephemeral connection in the web of Bigfoot mythology, mostly forgotten until The Men's Adventure Library came along. Bask in this small representative gallery of horny Bigfoot taken from their Cryptozoology Anthology:

Suffice to say, Bigfoot smut is part and parcel of Bigfoot at large, which brings us to today's novel. A mountain man finds something unbelievable in a wilderness cave: bones, massive bones. Bones too fresh to be prehistoric, too massive to be human. The only thing he can take along is a gigantic molar, but it's enough. It's proof! Meanwhile, one special Bigfoot is having a crisis of consciousness in a mountain valley. Her name is Self, and she's starting to realize that she thinks, therefore she is. She's also starting to get some ideas about all the funny business going around the Bigfoot family unit, as Big Male chooses mates without regard to how any of the Bigfoot ladies feel. The Old One and Giver of Milk both say she should accept this as the way things are, but Self is already groping her way down a whole new path of being.

Like I said, horny Bigfoot is nothing new, but it's rare to see lady Bigfoot's perspective. Self makes for an engaging character. The same can't be said for the humans - "pink skins" as Self and her family call them - who organize a trek to bag a live Bigfoot. Sheldon loses his grace with these characters and their paint-by-numbers trials, which is just too bad. There's a lot of promise in the setup but the big Bigfoot action never quite arrives. Really, it's not the humans' story at all, which is fine, we might as well just jettison their deadweight!

How embarrassing!

This was Walter J. Sheldon's only novel after a career of SF short stories in the '50s. Still, I'm glad I read it. For a fair cop at a horny Bigfoot thriller, The Beast earns two massive molars out of four:

A Fawcett Gold Medal Book, 1980

WHAT WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT FLYING SAUCERS by Otto Binder

What a difference a year makes! Binder put out this fantastic flying saucer guide just one year before his awful piece of Ancient Astronaut hackwork, Flying Saucers Are Watching Us. I guess a man's gotta eat. This time around Binder quotes extensively from NICAP's "UFO Evidence" report, compiled by Richard Hall, which results in reams of data not normally found in cheapie UFO paperbacks such as Binder's very next book! Some charts and diagrams are also reproduced (see two images below). The full report is available for download on NICAP's website, along with some other classic UFO titles. 

Binder excludes contactees entirely from this volume, and only just touches on the Ancient Astronaut "theory" as one of several UFO ideas floating around. Next year von Daniken's bestseller Chariots of the Gods? would blow the field wide open for copycat cash-ins but for now, in the calm before the storm, sober scientific appraisal appeared to be winning out over the "UFOnuts." That's John Keel's own term for the lunatic fringe, from his introduction. Of course Keel himself was no stranger to the wilder side of the weird, so perhaps this slip-sliding tension was inevitable in the field. For what it's worth here Binder does a capable job sticking to just the facts, ma'am.

The photos included are of mostly indeterminate pedigree, excepting the Trinidade Island sequence recorded by the Brazilian Navy. A few confirmed hoaxes do sneak through, like one of Paul Villa Jr.'s spiffy saucer models and the very respectable McMinnville UFO photographs.

Paul Villa Jr. - too good to be true!

The McMinnville photos - ditto!

Some fringe ideas filter in as well, represented here by our pal Brad Steiger's large format special from Award Books, The Flying Saucer Menace. Binder mentions this text in his chapter on health effects from UFO sightings. Ray Palmer, Maury Island, and the Shaver Mystery are also mentioned for their fringe qualities. Brinsley Le Poer Trench is quoted on prehistoric UFOs, as are Carl Sagan and Fred Hoyle. The 1917 Fatima visions in Portugal come up as possible pre-Arnold UFOs. For the most part though, Binder avoids the wild speculation that was Steiger and Co.'s bread and butter. 

Flying saucer occupants are recorded as reported, including that other pair of Venezuelan dwarfs, merely one of a host of little men popping up in the '50s. Binder notes that reputable sighting reports of saucer occupants are frequently "frustrated" in one way or another, as if the UFOnauts are perpetually just out of reach, and connects this with Vallee's theorizing on the continuity between flying saucers and fairy folk. He does point to Betty and Barney Hill as the single credible UFO contact experience amid a field of contactees. The word "abduction" was not yet in currency, by the way, showing how different the UFO field really was in 1967 from our modern construct. And while the Aztec, New Mexico UFO hoax gets a mention, with Binder rejecting crashed saucers as hoaxes and wild rumors, there's not a word on Roswell. That only makes sense, as that now-iconic lore wouldn't be popularized until the '80s.

The most noticeable difference between this text and Binder's sloppy work from next year is his attitude toward the US Air Force. Next year Binder would present the standard conspiratorial picture of a omnipotent government coverup. Here now Binder is quite perceptive, pointing out the USAF's "vacillation" on the flying saucer question and its almost schizophrenic attitude, sometimes debunking and sometimes encouraging sighting reports. It's a smart appraisal of a gigantic government bureaucracy being pushed and pulled by multiple agendas and occurrences, and a necessary level of analysis if one wants to make any progress at all on UFOs.

Binder's so serious about wrangling his saucer facts that he gives us a helpful summary towards the end of the book, allowing us to take an overview of the ideas presented thus far:

As you can see above he also reprints the USAF's form for reporting UFO sightings, another useful thing to have on hand. A rundown of UFO types by Jacques Vallee follows, and Binder finishes the appendix section by summarizing John Keel's "Project B" appraisal of UFO data for 1966. And so we end on an uneasy note, surrounded by scientific data but dogged by the Men in Black - or at least, the man who most popularized them.

Thankfully, this is the book Binder chose to dedicate to his deceased daughter Mary Lorine Binder. It's a suitable honor, because as a UFO reader, as a time capsule, as a fascinating journey, this title is recommended.

What We Really Know About Flying Saucers is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1967