ARCHIVAL UPDATES: UFO TREK

Warren Smith's UFO Trek is now available to read and download at archive dot org. The file contains the Sphere edition, the original Zebra Books artwork and Zebra's retitled reissue artwork as well.

Courtesy Sphere Books, 1977 (original pub. 1976).

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: STRANGE SECRETS OF THE LOCH NESS MONSTER

Warren Smith's Strange Secrets of the Loch Ness Monster is now available to read and download at archive dot org, including back page ads for his other Zebra specials.

Courtesy Zebra Books, 1976.

AVALANCHE by Steve Cohen

Light the candle

Put the lock upon the door

You have sent the maid home early

Like a thousand times before

Like the castle in its corner

In a medieval game

I foresee terrible trouble

And I stay here just the same

The Lodge at Hightown is ready for its grand opening, and handsome, honest, wonderful hotel manager Bob Coombs is afraid his sleazy boss Everett may have cut one too many corners building his winter wonderland. The intimidating architectural writer sent by the NYT has already pointed out cracked walls and a bad foundation. And now someone smells eggs in the basement ...

Comparisons are helpful. Robert Weverka's Avalanche, published just two years before, manages twice the action in half the pages, and scratches that disaster itch with evocative passages on snowfall and ice layers. Cohen doesn't really bother with any of the science behind his disaster, and in fact (spoilers here), an avalanche isn't even really the big event! It goes back to Everett's glad handing deal with his brother-in-law who owns a propane heating business, and maybe didn't do the best job installing the furnaces in the basement. We'll have to slog through hundreds of pages of melodrama and dark hints of imminent destruction before we get any payoff ... though Cohen does start things off with a pointless scene of Coombs witnessing the big explosion as the lodge goes up in flames, before flashing back for a long, long build up.

Some characters are more successful than others. Dr. Feldman and his wife Miriam are lovely, as is heiress ski bunny Ann Heath. Coombs is too perfect by half, a boring cardboard superman who is failed by everyone around him. The depressed artist Souvaroff and the bitchy Hollywood starlet Patricia Sindt (Sindt? SINNED? Get it?) are flat as well, and Sindt's death is petty and ridiculous - Cohen has her body crammed into a toilet bowl by the blast. There are too many other guests and employees who make little impression. Cohen's attempts at weaving a grand tapestry bore me! Even his final destruction of the lodge lacks verisimilitude, failing to tune us in to that sublime disaster frequency, that terrible knowledge an author can share with readers about just how wrong things can go and are going, right now! But this work lacks immediacy, urgency, or even any purpose.

Coomb's steady gal Kay works for the lodge doing graphology on potential employees - that's handwriting analysis! She doesn't seem too good at her job, what with the quality of workers who slip through, but Coombs stands by her work. It's an interesting bit of midcentury flavor, at least.

In an oddity similar to Belmont/Tower's advertising for Rochelle T. Larkin's The Raging Flood, there's an ad for this very title right on the front page, credited to an author named "Max Steele!" What was going on in the cheapo publishers back then? Paul Patchick's Eruption gets an entry in the back page ads, if we want to be reminded of other, better books we could be reading. For another odd note, Cohen's own website claims that this book was the basis for the 1979 disaster film of which Weverka's book was an adaptation ... but this just seems flatly incorrect.

Cohen's Avalanche earns a pitiable 1/4 for wasting our time. It's a lovely cover by Zebra anyways, with the title text embossed.

Zebra Books, 1980

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

ARCHIVAL UPDATES: STRANGE ABOMINABLE SNOWMEN and THE SECRET ORIGINS OF BIGFOOT

These two classic Warren Smith titles are now available to read and download in their entirety at archive dot org: Strange Abominable Snowmen and The Secret Origins of Bigfoot.

Courtesy Popular Library, 1970, and Zebra Books, 1977.

EXTRATERRESTRIAL by Julian Shock

Successful author Spencer Torrence has arrived with his family at the Hotel Holroyd for a mysterious writer's convention. His friend the "science expert" Dan Lloyd is there, along with some real life big names, but nobody seems to know who's running things, and people start experiencing hackneyed horror scrapes from the very start - Spencer's daughter Lauren sees her doppelgänger behind a curtain, Spencer himself notices that the furniture's been moved all around the lobby, and everyone is on edge with an impending feeling of doom. They're right to be afraid, because the convention is actually a trap laid by EXTRATERRESTRIAL visitors who have some unearthly, unthinkable plans for their guests!

Our aliens? A male and female pilot, and their offspring. Humanoid, just like you and me really. But the fourth member of the crew? A hideous being, a biological computer called the Selector, which suffers a parody of life submerged in a chemical bathtub and grants its crewmates glimpses of future probabilities through its psychic powers. Scanners may live in vain, but the Selector lives for pain, inflicting the purest nerve shredding agony on any being unlucky enough to touch minds with it - turns out, telepathy is an exquisitely awful experience. The female pilot suffers greater indignity still as the Selector mentally manipulates her "erotic centers," forcing her to enjoy their interactions and "filling her with a transient urge to mate." This grotesquerie is a highlight of the story, and too bad we've peaked on page 12 ... it's all downhill from there.

Author "Julian Shock" was actually a pseudonym for one J.N. Williamson (1932-2005), a prolific writer, editor, and old horror hand who also acted as a mentor for authors starting out in the field. Those who knew him have nothing but kind words, while readers of his books have more mixed opinions. Extraterrestrial suffers from slack writing, slapdash storytelling, and the overriding feeling that Williamson just didn't care that much! The tone throughout is of shrill cynicism, with occasional, awkward stabs of cornball cuteness thanks to young daughter Lauren and her adorable kitten named Puck. Williamson loads his story up with literary references like J.D. Salinger and portentous quotations from the likes of Carl Sagan, Alvin Toffler, and the Epic of Gilgamesh - I'm usually a sucker for that sort of thing, but none of the text that follows really seems to engage with the heavy framing. The aliens (minus the Selector) are straight out of '50s comic books, 100% human except for their high technology and their alien cuss words: francle striv! The male pilot is a real dickhead, and a dullard besides as he makes the same old ET observations about how much we look like ants from up here and how pathetic and dumb we are, blah blah blah! The female pilot gets some deeper characterization as she's fully engaged with the (im)moral questions of their mission, and maybe if their plan wasn't so goofy it'd make for some righteous sturm und drang ... but again, it all seems like something out of a '50s comic book, with the aliens setting up a writer's convention to brainwash/replace these influential members of society, terrorizing them with cliched horror jump scares in the process ... and how silly does that sound nowadays in 2023, by the way, targeting novelists for a culture war campaign? Williamson is extremely self-indulgent throughout, playing lots of games with his doppelgänger theme and having fun with UFOlogy and hoary old sci-fi tropes, but it's all for naught on the reader's end. I'm sure there's also lots of clever references to writer friends and inside jokes about the industry peppered through the text.

The author ...

... and some of his work

Zebra Books did a nice job packaging this dud, at least. The front and back page ads let you know the audience they were trying to entice - he-man readers of The Survivalist series and spy novels where "video joy games" become deadly SPY GAMES, plus desperate horror junkies willing to try another Williamson joint, Death-Coach (this one released under his own name).

Despite the slick presentation, Extraterrestrial earns a limp 1/4 rating for brief flashes of cosmic angst amidst a pedestrian horror tale.

Zebra Books, 1982

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

 

THE OMNI STRAIN by Cliff Patton, M.D.

It was supposed to be harmless. A beneficial bacteria, genetically engineered to subsist on oil. It could clean up toxic spills or sabotage an enemy's energy reserves. But now THE OMNI STRAIN is loose and nothing will ever be the same ...

Author Cliff Patton, M.D. brings his medical knowledge to bear with some engaging exposition on the rarefied world of lethal disease research, as his CDC characters go through the motions on this strange new bug that's cropped up dead center in their own archive! It seems the Army cut a deal to sit on some ... new strains, guaranteed access in exchange for no questions asked. But that doesn't cut it for Dr. Charlie Prentice, especially when old Sam the night janitor drops dead in the middle of a lab, along with a whole herd of guinea pigs. The Army claimed P-61 was "nonpathogenic" and they'd know, surely?

Meanwhile, the biggest oil tanker in the world, on her maiden voyage, is attacked by a mystery sub! History's largest oil spill! Here's some technothriller intrigue, and Patton manages well without getting bogged down into technical minutia, dated geopolitics, or dull exchanges between military men about nuclear options and so forth. It's a mildly convoluted setup but once the Navy borrows P-61 we just know things are going to spin out. And boy do they ever, just peep that back cover: millions dead! Things get a little rushed towards the end and Patton has to resort to a "Died in Vietnam" style postscript for his characters, doing a little world building in the process as the ravaged Mid-Atlantic states are reorganized into New Columbia. Patton doesn't quite reach the most sublime highs, but these are acceptable thrills and you have to appreciate his professionalism as the plot unfolds. He doesn't skimp on the gross-out factor, either, as the Omni Strain dispatches its victims with some nasty effects.

Zebra Books gave us a beautiful abstract cover for The Omni Strain, with some thematically appropriate obscuration of the title. For delivering the gruesome goods with a modicum of style, The Omni Strain earns three putrid Petri dishes out of four:

Zebra Books, 1980