STARDRIFTER by Dale Aycock

He's a lady's man, always greets with a kiss on the hand

Protects us all, at the ready to answer our call

He's a spacer, a star chaser

Author Dale Aycock delivers some interminable space swashbuckling with her Stardrifter, as reluctant hero Gil Corbett is pulled into an interstellar conspiracy involving his lost brother Ken, his newly upgraded ship the Gabriella, and his mysterious new lover Beth, the future Marquessa of Sandyminder.

Aycock has a way with names, anyways - the dangerous nobleworld Sandyminder, the (also dangerous, and mysterious) Brothers system, Federation man Pelonyi - and she's gentle with her characters, even the nasty ones. We're all just trying to make it in this big bad universe. Her space opera tech is delightfully retro, with Corbett demanding day capsules for the pain and eying up a deadly LEM - that's a light-emitting matrix, AKA a laser gun, by the way. There's some daring space maneuvers with some plausible-sounding reasons why XYZ has to happen for our characters to make it to their destinations intact that allows for Corbett to strut his stuff as an ace pilot. Meanwhile, Corbett and Beth trade screwball dialogue and will-they-won't-they moments.

This universe is a lonely one. Humanity is limited to a few star systems, longing for a lost golden age of old Earth and truly galactic civilization. Aycock is coy about the reasons for our reduced state, but her setting is pleasingly unsettling. Unfortunately, once the plot is truly up and running, we find ourselves in Scooby-Doo mode: our heroes running around room to room, finding clues, tying up bad guys, and rescuing old man Silvernight (a genius with new formulas for starship fuel). It's stock genre madlibs, basically.

He will blast off tonight 

He puts his life on the line every time he's in flight 

A man you can't trace 

But our love will last beyond time and space

The cheekily Star Warsian cover art is, of course, completely unrelated to the actual story. At the most, Corbett could be vaguely defined as a Han-esque rogue who's been running from doing the right thing, until circumstances force him to man up. He's also a Federation academy washout and former classmate to hard ass Pelonyi. This galaxy doesn't have any alien sidekicks, or even robots.

Aycock's fair go at space opera thrills settles down for a rough landing of 2/4 stars. In the end, everyone involved deserved a better class of transport.

Leisure Books, 1981

BOMB SQUAD by Mark Andrews

Goldman, obviously no longer the star of the show, just smiled at Jake and walked away. As he crossed the studio he heard a muffled gunshot in an adjoining room. And he knew that Dr. Daniel Rubenstein had been taken care of - permanently.

It was a pity, in a way. In his day, Rubenstein had been a genius, probably the world's top authority on nuclear weapons.

But nuclear experts were a dime a dozen now. These days, practically anyone could make a bomb.

It started with letter bombs: some were duds, and some were disarmed in time. Some killed and maimed. Then the church in Harlem blew sky high from a basement packed with high explosives. Then a group calling themselves the American People's Liberation Army made their demands known. And now, the working men of the NYPD's Bomb Squad, pushed to their limits by the panic gripping the city, have 24 hours to find and disarm the last bomb.

The Hell Bomb.

Author Mark Andrews mixes the best classic disaster genre tradition of specialized workplace action - the Bomb Squad! - with some classic '70s domestic strife and a heartless, unflinching perspective of the lives and limbs shattered when time runs out.

Bomb Squaddie Tom Gilbert thought things were going pretty great with his mistress Mary Jo, until she opened up a letter bomb while at her secretary job for a big Madison Avenue ad agency. Now Mary Jo is atomized, and Gilbert's in danger of cracking up - his wife almost killed their newborn baby in a benzo'd out haze, to boot! But the bombs keep coming, and then the letters too, and the Bomb Squad realize that this isn't your average crank mad bomber, no way. The APLA have got big plans for NYC, and America afterwards, and it might have something to do with that mysterious Danny Lee - Is he a student? A man about town? - who Mary Jo was catting around with while Gilbert dreamed of remarried bliss.

Danny has some friends from China. And from Congress. And some friends who know how to build a basement nuke ...

At times things get a little too loose, and Andrews jukes us around a little too much dropping threads and switching gears. Bomb Squad really has only the barest skeleton of a story per se, and every time we think we might be settling in to some traditional plotting ... well, we ain't! The mystery of the bombers' identities is resolved pretty damn quickly, for us readers anyways, and characters mostly walk into fait accompli like clockwork automatons winding down to detonation. But the dark, crackling energy of Andrews' writing holds it together.

Andrews (if that is his real name) also penned two horror novels for Leisure Books the same year of 1977:

The two fisted Paperback Warrior blog reviewed Bomb Squad a few years back, and let's just say our opinions differ:

I have a suspicion that Andrews wrote this in a particularly bad part of his life – like a child dying or a downward spiral into financial ruin. That is my hope. If not, then this guy has a hard-on for destroying people and property and channeled his maniacal depression through some sort of how-to guide masquerading as a men's action-adventure novel. Make no mistake, Bomb Squad is the nuttiest thing I've ever read. And extremely dangerous. Consider yourself warned.

I'll agree on one point though: Bomb Squad is nuttier than all hell, and reads as coming from a very dark place indeed from Andrews! This being Leisure Books, typos abound, and we don't even get any juicy back page ads.

Mark Andrews' wild and wooly writing carries Bomb Squad to a 3/4 rating. No foolin', this stuff'll kill ya!

Leisure Books, 1977

IMPACT! by R.V. Fodor and G.J. Taylor

Brace for IMPACT! Geologist R.V. Fodor joins with G.J. Taylor (having also coauthored Junior Bodybuilding) for this hefty addition to the big space rock genre of the late '70s. What are we in for when a swarm of meteoroids crosses our path?

Fodor and Taylor have written an odd duck here, with too many dropped threads and dead ends. They give us just a taste of the usual big disaster tropes, with President Stein and his men debating doomsday, scientists decoding the composition of the rocks, and us little people facing oblivion, but soon enough we realize that we're halfway through a 400 page would-be epic and nothing much has happened!

Stein's science advisor is a Malthusian creep with a roster of self serving double talk as to why we should let the big one smash into Central Asia, knocking out the USSR and China and launching a new ice age that will kill billions worldwide. There's some unsatisfactory '70s style cloak and dagger action over exposing this evil plan, but like everything in the story it reads as a pale shadow of other, better writing. There's not much from the POV of the rocks either, which is usually my favorite part of space rock disaster thrillers. 

Again and again, Fodor and Taylor drag us through pages and pages of establishing characters only to drop them for the next batch, without building on anything they're already written. The highlights are front loaded, with the complete destruction of small town Ardmore, KS due to a single relatively "small" meteor, and a charming detail about how the satellite surveillance nerds of the Intermilitary Data Center enjoy watching volcanic eruptions change the landscape. Unfortunately nothing really gels as the story unfolds, and the last 100 pages read like filler. By the time the apocalypse smashes down we don't really care, which is never a good sign when you've got the fate of the world in the balance.

The Sino-Soviet split makes for some attempted suspense, with those goddamn Chicoms playing the long game - what's a few hundred million deaths to those inscrutable Orientals anyways?

We get some perfunctory space action in the home stretch, and a ridiculously convenient reveal that saves our boring lead couple from vaporization. Yawn!

Fodor and Taylor's disaster slog earns a very sad 1/4 rating ... It's not as outright crap as Mayhew and Long's Fireball, but there just isn't enough to recommend here. Getcher space rocks off elsewhere.

Lesiure Books, 1979

KYRIK FIGHTS THE DEMON WORLD by Gardner F. Fox

The tiger-men were many in number, but those very numbers appeared to hamper them. They could not throw their combined weight against the six, for the alleyway was narrow; they could only come in twos and threes, and Bluefang and Lalery's long dagger and Porthis' horn-handled battle-axe flew to meet them.

"Cat beings from Ulxnar," Myrnis whispered once, and was silent, though Kyrik's bellowings might well have drowned other words. For the warlock-warrior was in his element here, fighting flesh and blood enemies into whose meat he could bury Bluefang, tear its blade free to swing and cleave again. No reptilian horror from Moforgon's realms, these tiger-men, but semi-human beings that could die writhing and screeching on a sword-point.

Once more into the breach, once more, you merry mother grabbers! It's time for another bout of swords and sorcery with the mighty Kyrik, and thankfully our warlock-warrior fares much better here than in his last adventure against the Wizard's Sword. Those skinflints at Leisure Books keep things tight enough on their end - I only caught one typo, misspelling poor Kyrik's name at one point, and no blatant continuity problems like last time. Indeed, Kyrik Fights the Demon World is a slick little narrative, structured almost like a classic DnD game! Our hero and his Gypsy love Myrnis (she's truly Romany in this fantasy world, for what it's worth) fall in with a band of thieves who were tasked to retrieve five magical artifacts for the demon lord Moforgon, only to find that, of course, his dark majesty has even darker designs on our realm, and the artifacts are his key to total dominion over Terra! Moforgon is locked in a rivalry with fellow demon Eldrak, and our mortal heroes will have to navigate these demonic power politics if they're to survive ... Kyrik's love Myrnis has a secret ally though, in the love goddess Illis, who's temporarily possessed her!

More smokes!

Author Fox delivers some classic sword and sorcery action right from the start in this one, with Kyrik gifted a treasure map from a dying thief in an alleyway. Before you know it he's fighting a giant snake to retrieve the Bells of Salmalinda from the bowels of a ruined temple in the Doomday Swamps - and if that kind of cheerful nonsense perks you up, this is the story for you. Fox's worldbuilding is a mite goofier than Robert E. Howard's classic Hyperborea, but he succeeds in transporting us to his dark fantasy world with strong, professional prose, even if we can see the story guardrails guiding our heroes through to their epic showdown with Moforgon. It all culminates in a hellish fight through a demonic fortress projecting into our realm, with skeletal wraiths tearing through the walls and floors, bedevilments to resist, and evil priests to slay. The thieve's band is whittled down, with the gorgeous platinum haired (and purple eyed!) Lalery the obvious survivor - and rival to Myrnis for Kyrik's love-lust! Fox handles his characters with some subtlety despite their circumstances, which is appreciated. True to his title as warlock-warrior, Kyrik is more comfortable with dark magics than your average barbarian, so wizards had better beware.

The atmospheric cover art is by Ken Barr, and it does well enough for not having much to do with the story. Kyrik Fights the Demon World is available to read for free and to purchase as an ebook at the Gardner Francis Fox Library. This Kyrik adventure earns a muscular 3/4 rating for good, strong barbarian thrills!

Leisure Books, 1975

SMOKE BREAK: Vintage Cigarette Ads

Put down that paperback and have a smoke! Tobacco giant Lorillard spent good money on these ads, inserted into countless vintage paperbacks for their brands Kent, Newport, True, and Max. Whether sandwiched into UFOs and ghosts, smut, or swords and sorcery, we've seen our fair share here at the blog:

A True ad from Tark and the Golden Tide, from Leisure Books

On the bitter cold eve of December, here are some more warm and fuzzy vintage ads culled from the paperbacks:

Lorillard's patented "Kent Micronite" filter was infamously made of crocidolite asbestos between 1952-1956, touted then as a safety measure and taste enhancer. Cigarette plant workers, their families, and smokers all were devastated by exposure to the carcinogenic fibers. The cigarettes in these '70s ads are sporting a replacement cellulose filter, though as multiple cancer/cigarette archives online will tell you, no filter of any kind is going to make smoking any safer, and neither will smoking "low tar" cigarettes such as Lorillard's True, advertised below:

However, smoking could bag you some sweet swag at a discount! For the proof of purchase of just two packs of Kent Menthols, you could get 60% off an ugly utensil set, some hideous "permanent dinner candles," or a cheap camera or radio. You'd be throwing money away not to send for them!

Here's another ad for True, the low tar cigarette marketed to smart fellas who knew smoking wasn't great for you but couldn't quite kick the habit. Meanwhile, Max was Lorillard's cigarette for women, complete with an insulting ad campaign and gimmick as detailed by Stanford's Tobacco Archive:

Ads from the 1970s featured stylish women who explained, “The longer they are, the fewer I smoke.” Because the statement is completely false, the woman goes on to say, “It’s wacky, but it works. Max 120’s take longer to smoke so you don’t light up as often.” The truth of the matter is that the human body will seek a certain amount of nicotine to feed addiction, regardless of the length of the cigarette.

This pair of ads from Stanford's collection illustrate:

"Whadda I know, I'm just a dipshit woman!"

Look sexy as hell while killing yourself

$19.95 plus two pack bottoms doesn't seem like such a steal compared to the knickknacks on offer from Kent, but I dunno, maybe they were really nice body wraps. Smoke 'em if you got 'em!