MYSTERIES OF OUR WORLD by Peter Briggs

Not a mystery mongering text, but a solid pop-sci volume covering the cutting edge in earth science c.1969. Author Peter Briggs lays out the debates and scientific developments leading to our new knowledge of the world around us, from the ocean depths to the mountain tops, atmospheric heights, and beyond! There's a healthy dose of natural disasters, with volcanos and earthquakes making for engaging reading. Oceanic investigation is another exciting subject, with plenty of ships dredging and scanning and netting all around the seven seas - the Glomar Challenger is here, a few years before the Explorer would launch its now infamous secret mission. 

Reading on through Briggs' explorations, dense but smoothly flowing, it makes me think. We only just saw the announcement of the phasing out of "pocket" paperbacks, and here's a relic of that soon-to-be-bygone age: a portable, dependable, entertaining science primer, readable by anyone, anytime, anywhere, packed with references and sources - put out by a relatively sleazy/lowbrow publisher, even. Nowadays google is just as likely to give you a completely hallucinated "AI summary" for your search terms as a straightforward URL ... maybe I'm just being cranky, I don't know! Google also doesn't offer as many cigarette ads as vintage paperbacks:

Briggs appears to have been a prolific nonfiction writer - here's a spread of titles including Water, The Vital Essence, which Briggs references in this current text, and a title on the Glomar Challenger.

"And if California falls into the ocean/
Like the mystics and statistics say it will"

 

True to their rough and tumble image, Belmont Tower included a two page spread of mafia books as part of their nonfiction advertising. "You liked reading about volcanos, Billy? Well how about Lucky Luciano?"

This educational title is available to read and download at archive dot org.

Belmont Tower Books, 1969

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).

ERUPTION by Paul Patchick

Zebra Books present the most terrifying disaster novel of 1979! It's ERUPTION, in all its red foil. fire spitting glory! After the dry fart of Edwin Corley's The Genesis Rock, we're due for some real volcanic terror, and wouldn't you know it, author Paul Patchick delivers.

The first couple chapters are a little rough, starting with Dr. Jon Dana and his wife Katy having a quickie in first class on their flight to Hawaii! We know she's volcano bait the second we meet her. Then Jon takes some time after sex with his wife to look at his reflection and describe himself to the audience. They tour the big island, Jon exposits on volcanos to his perfect, unsuspecting family, and eventually Katy falls into Halema'uma'u crater.

This is all real rough and clumsy, and thankfully things smooth out after we're through Dana's tragic backstory. Maybe this would have been better as a flashback or just hinted at, but it's not Patchick's style to hint at things when they can be fully explicated instead, for better or for worse.

Once the story hits its stride it starts to feel like a classic '80s TV miniseries, like Shogun or The Thorn Birds, and lanky stud Dana could easily have been played by Richard Chamberlain. After the cheesy intro Patchick settles into a pretty realistic style of tracking Dana's life and career over the years, as he works in Japan and then the tiny, fictional Central American country San Cristobal - it's here that the titular terror of the eruption will occur, but we've got a long road to get to that point ...

Chamberlain from 1980's Shogun

In Japan the scale of the story really blooms, and Patchick successfully conveys the drama of scientific research, with real volcano history and the juxtaposition of ideals of pure knowledge set against our human frailty. Dana is mentored by elderly Japanese volcanologist Dr. Mochizuke, and there's a fantastic dual exposition dump/action scene where the good doctor quizzes his students on volcanic knowledge as they race their truck down a mountainside to warn the village of impending eruption. Patchick is warm with his characters, showing us our own strengths and weaknesses reflected back from them. As the years pass we start to fear for Dr. Mochizuke's life - not from any volcanological threat, but from the simple passage of time. Elsewhere in this beefy, 475 page epic, Dana woos a Norwegian lady scientist named Erika, and always the science of volcanos marches on.

Patchick nails this aspect of disaster fiction, as we get a crash course on volcanology and start to worry alongside Dana as to just what may happen if he isn't able to decode the earth's rumblings in time. Once he's dispatched to San Cristobal to investigate the sulking Black Tower crater, we're locked in until the climax. There's a goofy action scene where Dana captures some guerrillas using a high tech ground scanner, and then true to Patchick's style this comic book action is followed by some fraught moral wrangling as Dana reflects on his role in giving a propaganda coup to the regime of President Zamorro. The dictatorship, flush with American arms and CIA support and deep in planning an invasion of neighboring Honduras, is poorly poised to listen to any of Dana's warnings about the Black Tower's eminent eruption. Coke fiend Colonel Ramirez and the inept Zamorro make a sharp contrast to the dedicated General Sanchez from Kenneth McKenney's The Fire Cloud. Dana and his kids pass right over Popocatépetl and Iztaccíhuatl on their flight down to San Cristobal, followed by a hit parade of real Central American volcanos until they reach the (fictional) villain El Torre Negro.

Dana also takes some time on this long flight to reflect on psychic frauds like Edgar Cayce and Jeane Dixon, and damns them for their easy jobs of doomsaying, while scientists like him have to weigh every real consideration and possible unknowns, risking panic or disaster through false alarms or inaction. Fuck 'em up, Jon!

The climax, when it comes, is depressingly realistic, with no room for action heroics. This being a Zebra Books production, there's a few typos and formatting errors here and there. The cover art is ultra generic but at least the shiny foil effect on the lava is cool. Patchick actually sued Zebra in 1983 for "failing to publish and promote his book, Eruption."

Some text of the case:

1. On June 27, 1983, Appellant Paul Patchick filed this diversity action for breach of contract against five named defendants: Kensington Publishing Corporation (Kensington); Zebra Books, Inc. (Zebra); Richard Curtis, Richard Curtis Literary Agency, and Richard Curtis Associates, Inc. (Curtis defendants); and other unnamed defendants. Patchick alleged that defendants failed to publish and promote his book, "Eruption." Patchick filed an amended complaint on October 6, 1983, naming the same defendants.

2. In November 1983 defendants Kensington and Zebra filed a motion to dismiss the action as to them for lack of personal jurisdiction, or alternatively, to transfer the case under 28 U.S.C. Section 1404(a) to the District Court for the Southern District of New York or to stay proceedings pending arbitration pursuant to 9 U.S.C. Sec. 3. Only these defendants had been served at the time their motion was filed.

3. Patchick attempted to serve the Curtis defendants in late 1983. Curtis's attorneys contested the adequacy of service on the grounds that (1) the person upon whom service was allegedly made, John Bradley, is not the managing agent of Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., and (2) the process server never mailed the summons and complaint as alleged in the affidavit of service.

4. On March 16, 1984, the district court granted defendants Kensington and Zebra's motion to dismiss for lack of personal jurisdiction. The court held that Patchick failed to establish that Kensington and Zebra engaged in continuous and systematic activity within the State of California. The dispute over service of the Curtis defendants meanwhile remained pending. Patchick filed a notice of appeal from the March 16 order on April 4.

5. After appellant filed the opening brief, appellees Kensington and Zebra filed a motion to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction on the ground that the district court's order dismissing some but not all of the defendants is not a "final decision" appealable under 28 U.S.C. Section 1291. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 54(b). We agree.

6. If an action is dismissed as to all of the defendants who have been served and only unserved defendants remain, the district court's order may be considered final under Section 1291 for the purpose of perfecting an appeal. See, e.g., DeTore v. Local, 245, 615 F.2d 980 (3d Cir.1980); Leonhard v. United States, 633 F.2d 599 (2d Cir.1980), cert. denied, 451 U.S. 908, 101 S.Ct. 1975, 68 L.Ed.2d 295 (1981); Siegmund v. General Commodities Corp., 175 F.2d 952 (9th Cir.1949). In such circumstances there is no reason to assume that there will be any further adjudication of the action.

7. When, however, defendants remain in the action upon whom service has been made, we cannot assume that the action is final. Here, Patchick attempted to serve the Curtis defendants. Although the Curtis defendants have not yet appeared in the action or filed an answer to the complaint, Patchick has not conceded that service was improper. The action cannot be final until the service dispute is resolved by the district court in favor of the Curtis defendants or until the action is dismissed as to those defendants.

8. The appeal is therefore premature and is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

Perhaps this legal wrangling is why Patchick never wrote any other novels, or maybe he just had the one epic in him. Eruption earns a 3/4 rating for being a beautiful mess of a saga.

Zebra Books, 1979

THE GENESIS ROCK by Edwin Corley

The Big Apple's about to get the big one, and the only warning is THE GENESIS ROCK!

That's an ancient rock from deep within the earth, the most famous example being a sample taken from the moon by Apollo 15 in 1971, where it had lain undisturbed for 4 billion years after being ejected from the earth during some primordial upheaval. Geologist Janet McCoy has just identified a piece found in Central Park during construction for subway expansion as just such a rock, meaning that the bedrock under Manhattan isn't nearly as stable as formerly thought ...

A volcano in NYC should be a no brainer for extreme disaster thills, but Corley's story is disappointingly limp and unfocused, spending way too much time on pointless filler flashbacks to Janet and her estranged husband Linus' courtship down in Mexico while also piling on more and more ancillary characters until we can hardly keep track and don't hardly care. Corley is also too cutesy with his characters, letting us know just who we're supposed to cheer for and boo hiss at in clumsy scenes of would-be snappy repartee - and would you believe that all the male characters keep noticing how fricken hot McCoy is? Brains and beauty, wow!

When the earth finally erupts, there's a little bit of action, but not enough, and the climax involves too many meetings and phone calls to be very suspenseful. The techno thriller aspects around McCoy's volcano knowledge are adequate, anyways. Corley drops references to prior work, like his NYC race hate thriller Siege and his nuclear thriller The Jesus Factor, and weaves a secret Mars mission into the plot to no real end. It doesn't add up to much.

Hardcover art

The official Edwin Corley website features biographical information, pseudonyms, and a bibliography. Corley died young at the age of 50, just months after his wife passed.

Author Edwin Corley (1931-1981)

The Genesis Rock earns a shabby 1/4 rating. Find your volcanic thrills and sexy scientists elsewhere.

Dell Publishing, 1981

ATLANTIS FIRE by Gary Goshgarian

After Wednesday's disappointing plague thriller, it feels good to dive into some gritty Grecian action courtesy Gary Goshgarian and his debut novel, ATLANTIS FIRE! Goshgarian later adopted a pen name, Gary Braver, under which he wrote a series of successful commercial technothillers, but it's this early, rough hewn work that we're interested in today. It's about a team of broken down wreck divers and dirty dreamers, searching for the impossible off the shores of Santorini ... but what they find will be more than any of them can handle!

Goshgarian writes with feeling, never overburdening the reader but always giving us the perfect glimpse into his characters' inner selves as they work, in this case as archaeological divers looking for the remains of amphora cargo from ancient Grecian freighters. Of course somebody on the team has bigger dreams, involving theories of sunken cities: we're talking Atlantis, baby! The remnants of the Colonels' reign are trying to shake them down, and the semi-legal avenues the team pursues to keep at their quest make up much of the plot's grist, as does the devil's bargain they strike with local bigwig Bouboulis: some of their specialized diving equipment in exchange for free reign over the islands. Maybe they should have wondered why the millionaire Bouboulius needs their dinky little wunderwaffen, but by then it's too late: Santorini's about to blow its top!

Goshgarian threads the needle, raising tensions to nerve wracking heights while keeping the story tight, even as he threatens to blow an entire regional unit off the map. This is sublime thriller territory, with an engrossing cast of flotsam characters, washed up on the shores of destiny: Sarkis, Deke, Bernardo, Jessie, all finely drawn with their hopes, fears, pushed beyond their limits by the wracking tides of infinity. Bravo to Goshgarian for this delicious piece of vintage mayhem! Atlantis Fire earns a full four sunken amphora out of four!

Avon Books, 1980

 

FIRE MOUNTAIN by Janet M. Cullen-Tanaka

Oh to live on FIRE MOUNTAIN, with the barkers and the colored balloons ...

Rainier over Tacoma

"Due to its high probability of eruption in the near future, Mount Rainier is considered one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world." You better believe it, this mutha's about to blow! 

Cullen says in her foreword that she wrote the story on a lark way back in 1970, and sat on it until 1979 when Zebra picked it for their burgeoning disaster line. Suddenly, Mount St. Helens blew her top in March of 1980, and some last minute rewrites were in order! The story had suddenly taken on new timely import, though Cullen's adamant that it's meant as pure entertainment. As such, things don't get quite as dire as The Nightmare Factor or The Black Death - there's some government fuckups and media fuckery but despite the vintage there's a distinct lack of post-Watergate malaise and the characters all seem strangely child like, babes in the pyroclastically demolished woods. Here's one of the novel's weaknesses, as we meet too many characters who are too poorly drawn to compel our keeping track of all of them! Thankfully some are pure disaster cannon fodder, and Cullen isn't shy about wiping out whole boy scout troops or protesting American Indians. However, we send too much time navigating the volcanologist scene with flat characters like Ilyana the beautiful Russian, hotheaded young Martiniquais St. Jean, and regular American schmoes like Andy and Howard. A volcanologist named David fares better, as he feels a mystic connection with Takhoma and draws closer and closer to his adoptive mother goddess as the pressure builds.

And the pressure is intense! Here's the novel's strength, as Cullen gives us some lovely passages on the incredible, mind boggling natural forces building within the earth, power on a scale that renders all of us minuscule. Like Meteorite Track 291 we're faced with our true insignificance amidst an uncaring, unceasing universe. Our characters can only dance and strut around like toy soldiers as nature unrolls its implacable order.

It's so lonely at the fair, but all your friends are there ... For moments of near greatness and some rarefied volcanic grit, Fire Mountain earns three sleeping giants out of four:

Zebra Books, 1980