THE BIG ONE by Harrison Arnston

It was just a matter of time ... there's only so many potential titles for an earthquake disaster novel, and sooner or later it had to be THE BIG ONE!

Our hero Ted Kowalcyzk - pronounced Kowal-sis-ick as an unfunny recurring gag informs us - is retired Special Forces, retired FBI now working in insurance, which is how he starts to sniff out something rotten in the state of California. It seems the big insurance companies are suddenly spooked about earthquake policies, almost as if they've got some inside intel ... and then Ted gets a mysterious package from an old friend who's just suffered a mysterious accident, and we're off to the races!

Or, at least we should be. Unfortunately, after a promising start all the sound and thunder about the Big One turns out to be a big MacGuffin for some substandard shoot-em-up action. All the depth and sensitivity that went into the characters of yesterday's The Nightmare Factor is lacking here, and good guy Ted is Exhibit A. He's a cardboard hero who's only flaw is that he just cares too damn much, and his tragic backstory - wife and kid shot down by a drug fiend connected to a case he worked - is cliche, as is his romance with his dead buddy's hot widow. The resident expository scientist, Dr. Winifred Wickshire, is an elderly rock doc whose treacly presentation soon becomes condescending. This is the kind of book where the good guys are just too cute, which robs the action of any suspense. We know how things are gonna go, especially when Ted can call up 70 (!!!) ex-Special Forces friends for an impromptu commando raid on the bad guys' compound. Again, where The Nightmare Factor's conspiracy unfolded with sinister precision and plausibility, here author Arnston also fumbles things. Spoiler: there's a bunch of government goons out at the Nevada Test Site working on some anti-earthquake super science, and there's some push and pull among the ranks whether the cure will be worse than the disease. There's potential here, but Arnston just can't pull it off!

All the silly runaround might be forgivable if the titular Big One lived up to its potential, but here too we're robbed. After an opening tremor sets the scene, the only other real action we get are some limp nightmare scenarios that wake Ted in the middle of the night, poor guy. Eventually we get round to LA's evacuation and martial law, but this is also bungled, with a top down view that wastes our time with Senators and Generals and "President Byron Walsh" all growling underbaked dialogue at each other. Will the Army's top secret nuclear fracking device defuse the Big One, or trigger an even bigger quake? Will the evacuation of LA prove to be the cure that kills, with millions of refugees at risk? Who cares!

For being one wet noodle of an action thriller, Arnston's The Big One gets ZERO destroyed cities out of four:

At least the cover's cool.

Zebra Books, 1990

THE NIGHTMARE FACTOR by Thomas N. Scortia and Frank M. Robinson

A thousand times deadlier than Legionnaire's disease? It's a delightfully dated apocalypse as disaster duo Scortia and Robinson unleash THE NIGHTMARE FACTOR! The authors had helped shape the disaster scene earlier in the '70s with The Glass Inferno, one of two novels bundled together in adaptation as the 1974 mega-blockbuster film The Towering Inferno. They followed with a timely nuclear disaster in The Prometheus Crisis, and then naturally followed that with today's offering, a disease/epidemic thriller in the best dark '70s conspiracy mode. Before Dr. Calvin Doohan has tracked his killer bug to its source he'll have fallen in with assassins and hustlers, military goons and DARPA spooks, and an unfolding plot involving spiked mayonnaise, ipecac torture, and aborted hamsters!

Scortia and Robinson write a mean machine of a thriller, blending savvy plotting with naturalistic characters. Dr. Doohan brings to mind Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a dedicated professional finding himself lost in a system that refuses to save itself, that almost seems dedicated to its own destruction. A citizen of the world penned in by clashing nationalisms, he's a nuanced, flawed character, making his victories all the more satisfying and his failures all the more human. His supporting cast follow suit, including his personal antagonist the rigid Major Hanson - the two will discover too late that they have more in common than either could have guessed at the start of this nasty business. Characters dodge and weave, lying to themselves and each other with practiced acuity for reasons personal and professional, with repercussions ranging from the pathetic to apocalyptic. The authors artfully construct a massive conspiracy involving recombinant DNA and out-of-control wargames, layering true biowarfare history like the Dugway sheep kill, US plague bombs in Korea, and Operation Sea-Spray into the background of their all-too believable Nightmare Factor. There's some brief, shocking grue here and there, but the real horror springs from the implications of unmanageable, hubristic power and the sheer suicidal madness of our "civilized" systems. The last two pages sum this up well - spoiler free:

For their ripping, gripping tale of technological terror, Scortia and Robinson's The Nightmare Factor gets four shattered test tubes out of four:

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

Bantam Books, 1978

AVALANCHE by Robert Weverka

Infamous exploitation impresario Roger Corman hopped onto the '70s disaster bandwagon late with a star studded pseudo-epic about a brand new ski resort on the edge of catastrophe. His film version of Avalanche is universally derided as cheap, dull, and ineffective, but Weverka's tie-in novelization brings the thunder! Weverka was an old hand at tie-in novels, and here his writing is strong and clear as his characters flit about in the best '70s tradition of bed hopping, drink tossing melodrama, while a whiteout storm blankets the scene with one snowflake too many until the inevitable AVALANCHE!

Lobby cards for the film

Weverka sets the scene with economy, laying out the shortcomings of mogul David Shelby's hubristic resort project through the sharp eye of mountain man/wildlife photographer Nick Thorne (how's that for a man of action's name?) while Shelby's ex-wife Caroline is caught in the middle. Shelby has a real blowout extravaganza planned for his suckers guests, with some famous skiers and skaters, plus famous (fictional) superstar TV host Mark Elliot, but nature has other plans as everyone will learn all too soon. Whereas the film version has been dinged for poor chemistry between the leads and inept SFX, this adaptation neatly slaloms around these obstacles. Weverka's characters are flawed but relatable people, thrown into the ordeal of their lives, and he dabs just the right amount of exposition down about snow, ice, and natural disaster. It's a pleasantly professional read and just long enough at 181 pages. If only Corman's film had been as solid!

For Weverka's brutal blizzard of prose, Avalanche gets four terrible tors out of four!

Bantam Books, 1978

UFO - HO HO! by Joseph Farris

Take me to your ... reader? We've got some intergalactic knee slappers here as cartoonist Joseph Farris presents a roundup of '60s flying saucer funnies, guaranteed to make you go UFO - HO HO!

Your mileage may vary, as it turns out. Farris does deliver some bangers here and there and his house style aliens are whimsical enough, but cartooning is a tough job, especially delivering reliable single panel yuks day after day. I think Farris can be forgiven for his share of duds given the highs along the way. By way of example, above we have two cartoons. One features a horny astronaut, the other some space trash, both chuckle worthy but no world beaters. Let's move on.

Here's a cute one illustrating a sci-fi truism about our limited perspective with regards to other forms of possible life in possible places.

This one just falls flat half a century later. The alien is a hippie! Hippies are weird, in the manner of space aliens, ho ho! Who needs the space corps, am I right?

Here's some midcentury sci-fi black humor in a popular vein, paired with a very midcentury joke about the (former) Pan Am Building. You can land on top of it!

This one on the left looks like it belongs in Playboy, but it's actually from Medical Economics, a long running magazine that provides "the expert advice and shared experiences doctors need to successfully meet today's challenges in practice management, patient relations, malpractice, electronic health records, career, and personal finance." Different times, I suppose. If we could zoom in on the globe on the right we might see the USSR or Formosa too.

Completely indistinguishable covers!

Two final toons which represent the breadth of Farris' output. On the left, a cute gag about hotels and traveling on the road in America. On the right we have some more Americana of a much darker tone. Not life as we know it ... Once again, our search for life out there leads within ourselves.

Popular Library, 1968

COSMIC DEBRIS: Significant Egyptian Pyramids

From Pyramid Prophecies by Max Toth. Courtesy Warner Books, 1979. 

THE OGDEN ENIGMA by Gene Snyder

It's been waiting a million years ... to scare you to death! It's got the government so panicked they've locked it away for thirty years in a hangar, tucked away in a far corner of the sinister Dugway Proving Grounds with orders to shoot to kill anyone who tries to get inside. But something's happening now, there are lights in the sky and death on the ground, and soon the whole world will understand THE OGDEN ENIGMA!

I'll quote a previous entry featuring this book's maps for some background on Ogden, Utah: "Before Roswell entered the popular imagination (and after an infamous VX gas leak that killed nearly 4,000 sheep) this was a likely location for Hangar 18 or similar skulduggery." Author Gene Snyder plays coy and writes his novel as based on a "true" personal experience, identical to the opening action where a mysterious student tells writer/professor Ted Lawrence a whale of a tale about that hangar outside Ogden. It's a cute meta structure as Lawrence and his sexy editor Cathy Seward workshop a novel based on their unfolding story.

Some of the cloak and dagger action feels like filler and the climax comes in a bullrush during the final 20 pages, but Snyder manages a tidy tale in just over 300 pages. The enigma is something from out there, and it's been here with us since the dawn of history. Our sick Cold War psychopolitics can only kill or coverup, stacking lie upon lie for fear of submission to truth.

For a solid conspiracy thriller, Snyder's The Ogden Enigma earns three mystery hangars out of four:

Playboy Press, 1980

COVER UPDATES: WORLD OF THE STRANGE

A groovy green cover for Susy Smith's World of the Strange!

Pyramid Books, 1970