Traveler #11: The Children’s Crusade

Traveler #11: The Children’s Crusade, by D.B. Drumm

February, 1987  Dell Books

I get the impression that Ed Naha prepped for this volume of Traveler by reading the installments that were written by series co-author John Shirley. Instead of the spoofy banality that was #9: The Stalking Time or the parodic descent into Hell that was #10: Hell On Earth, Naha finally delivers exactly what this series needs: a fast-moving action thriller with a taciturn protagonist who despite his bad-assery always finds himself defending “the little guy.” 

Naha does pick up on elements from the previous volume; as we’ll recall, that one had an opening sequence in which Traveler, now dubbed “Storyteller,” was living on some pueblo where he’d tell stories to a pack of mutant children. Naha drops this in the opening chapter of The Children’s Crusade, with Traveler deciding to head back out onto the road. 

We are told that it’s been a year that Traveler has been living here in the pueblo, so at least this time around I’m not as confused by the dating of the series. Naha frequently states that the bombs dropped “two decades ago,” and there are a lot of references to how Traveler’s battles with roadrats and other post-nuke scumbags was “long ago,” in “the early days” after the war. 

It’s curious that Naha has introduced this “long time ago” scenario to Traveler, and my best guess is that he wanted to distance himself from Shirley’s installments, so he could write a series (and hero) that was slightly different than John Shirley’s version. 

In other words, Shirley’s volumes took place in those “early days,” and by setting them long ago in the past, Naha is free to refer to them, but without the emotional trauma that would be necessary if they were events that had occurred recently. Like in particular Jan, Traveler’s soul mate who went off with Traveler in a Happily Ever After in #6: Border War, before we found out at the start of #7: The Road Ghost that she’d been killed – Traveler thinks of Jan once or twice in The Children’s Crusade, but it’s more in a wistful, “she’s been gone a long time” sort of way. 

That said, Ed Naha brings a lot of “emotional content” (as Bruce Lee would say) to the series; for the first time ever, Traveler thinks of his lost wife and son…like throughout the book. Methinks Naha is setting up the final volume in some fashion, but it is otherwise curious that these two characters, who have never been seen in the series and only sporadically mentioned, are the focus of so many of Traveler’s thoughts this time around, up to and including an emotional dream sequence in which Traveler goes out shopping to buy his four year old son some Legos, only to come home and watch as the child and his mother are blasted away in nuclear hellfire, with Traveler unable to help and forced to watch. 

Also curiously, the “children” of the title are not the mutant kids “Storyteller” would entertain; it’s a new pack of kids, new to the series I mean, and Traveler runs into them in an abandoned shopping mall in California. Naha seems to do a Yojimbo riff here with Traveler the lone wolf heading into a town and helping one side while pretending to help the other; perhaps I make this connection because Naha specifically refers to Lone Wolf and Cub in the narrative, so it would seem he is a bit of a fan of samurai movies. 

Otherwise we are very much in John Shirley territory here, only minus the nuke-spawn mutant monsters Shirley would often bring to his tales. Instead of bogging things down into pseudo-epic or religious satire, Naha keeps things moving with Traveler getting in frequent scrapes while doling out action movie-esque one-liners. Traveler is once again a smart-ass, I mean to say, and he delivers a bunch of memorable lines throughout The Children’s Crusade. And unlike The Stalking Time, the action and storyline itself are never mocked; it’s merely Traveler mocking the people he goes up against. In other words, Ed Naha plays it on the level, just like John Shirley did. 

Traveler comes across a group of teens who are drinking beer and talking about a conspiracy back in their hometown, and Traveler immediately takes a liking to them and helps them hide from the mercenaries who come looking for them. Again Naha clearly has his series set in a different world than the earliest volumes; it is made clear to Traveler again and again that this is a “new America” and “his kind” – ie mercenaries and other men of violence – are no longer welcome or wanted. Naha even gets in a little Right Wing-mocking in an early scene where Traveler makes an impromptu stop at the Grand Canyon to see it for the first time in his life, and a local tells Traveler to get out or he’ll be shot dead: “After all, it’s the American way.” 

The changing of the times is especially pronounced when Traveler arrives in Bay City, on the Pacific; actually it’s more like pre-war times, as the little town is fully functioning and has everything from a police force to an amusement park for the kids. At this point Naha has retconned Traveler into essentially a standard men’s adventure series, without any of the post-nuke trappings of the earlier installments. 

Here the Yojimbo stuff arises, as Traveler discovers that something rotten is going on; the scar-faced but good-hearted mayor of the town is secretly being held prisoner, taken captive by a turncoat police chief (who looks like William Shatner, we’re told, in what appears to be intended as a joke that Naha loses interest in). Traveler poses as a guy just visiting town while helping the group of teens hide – their leader is the mayor’s grandson, and they too are wanted by the merciless cops and mercs who have taken over the town. 

It’s more of a long-simmer setup here as Traveler investigates and gets in occasional scrapes. Naha skirts some boundaries with Traveler finding himself attracted to a girl in the group of teens – she’s apparently only 15 or thereabouts – and developing a rapport with her, before Naha drops this as well. Indeed he even has Traveler briefly reflect on his passing fancy with the girl, at the end of the novel, and wonder what he was thinking! But at any rate this is the rare volume where Traveler does not enjoy any female companionship…which, now that I think of it, seems to be a recurring element of the Naha installments. 

That said, Naha does want to tie back to the earlier volumes, but often in unintentionally goofy ways…like when Traveler calls old buddy Orwell on a payphone, who is now working for the new CIA in Las Vegas(!). This sequence exists only to set up ensuing volumes, as Orwell relates that a civil war is brewing in the new United States, and rumor has it that none other than series villain President Andrew Frayling – presumably killed in earlier Shirley installment  Border War – is plotting to overthrow President Jefferson (himself a character in earlier installments). 

Frayling as we’ll recall is a wildly overdone Reagan caricature, but he was old even in the Shirley installments, which as we’ll further recall were two friggin’ decades ago. Naha has it that Frayling is now nearly a hundred years old and what’s more he’s wheelchair bound and with a fried face, so in other words like the original Enterprise captain on Star Trek. Traveler ultimately discovers that Frayling is behind the plotting in Bay City, which entails Frayling getting hold of a few nukes that have been deposited in the area. 

The gore has also been removed from the series, and the climax is mostly bloodless when compared to Shirley’s books. But Naha does set up the next volume; Frayling and his henchmen escape, headed for China (which it is rumored survived WWIII unscathed), and Traveler heads after him – along with a newly-introduced character named Persky. A female cop on the Bay City force, Persky is invariably described as “feline” or “small,” and otherwise is not exploited in any way whatsoever, but she does have a snappy rapport with Traveler, so one wonders if she will become Traveler’s new flame. 

Two more volumes were to follow, and hopefully they will be more like this one than the others Naha wrote for the series.

Succubus

Succubus, by Irving A. Greenfield

September, 1970  Dell Books

Leave it to Irving Greenfield to write a paperback original that comes off like a sleazy, X-rated, “in the tradition of” take on William Blatty’s The Exorcist, with the added bonus that Greenfield’s novel was published the year before Blatty’s novel! Now that’s an impressive feat. 

I picked this one up many years ago, along with a concurrent PBO Greenfield published with Dell, The Sexplorer, and it seems to me now that the two novels are connected in a way. Not in the repeating characters or situations – like with Greenfield’s later Making U-Hoo and Julius Caesar Is Alive And Well – but in how they are essentially sleaze paperbacks that were published by a mainstream outlet. 

Speaking of “in the tradition of,” one thing I’ve always meant to mention on here is that Harold Robbins was the only bestselling author who actually got more explicit than his “in the tradition of” imitators…save for Irving Greenfield. For make no mistake, Greenfield’s novels are incredibly raunchy, leaving no juicy stone unturned – and it seems now that the same raunchy material repeated throughout his oeuvre, like for example his focus on “dining at the Y,” something much dwelt upon here in Succubus, just as it was nearly two decades later in Depth Force. 

Seriously, while Succubus is marketed as “horror,” explicitly so in the 1979 Manor Books reprint (where Greenfield was strangely credited as “Campo Verde”), it is in reality a piece of steamy fiction, filled with characters having sex, thinking about sex, dreaming about sex, fantasizing about sex, or talking about sex. The “possession” stuff is just an add on, with the additional note that techinically it isn’t even a “succubus” that posseses the main character! 

No, it’s a priestess from ancient Sumeria, her spirit taking possession of a lovely young brunette named Rina, she of the “tantalizing upturned breasts.” The priestess, we’re told, has blonde hair, and presumably that’s supposed to be her on the photo cover. Rina is married to Thomas, a 30 year-old professor of Etruscan history in New York City. They have only been married for a short while, and Greenfield builds up some mystery over how and why they met. Eventually we’ll learn that Rina was guided to this meeting, but unfortunately the entire plot unravels if you think about it too much. 

Greenfield keeps the reader from thinking about the plot holes by focusing on sex for nearly the entire 205 pages. Mind you, this isn’t a complaint. No one writes an explicit sex scene like Irving Greenfield. I mean, this dude himself was a teacher. I’ve always imagined what one of his classes might have been like: “Professor Greenfield, should it be written as ‘come’ or as ‘cum’?” (That’s a joke I’ve been meaning to write on here for like 13 years!) 

Proving my point, Succubus opens with Thomas and Rina lounging in their home, Thomas dozing as he reads and Rina relaxing on the couch…and soon enough Thomas is thinking and dreaming about sex, as is Rina, and shortly after that they are going at it full-bore. Here Greenfield will quickly prove his fondness for cunnilingus, with lots of detail of Thomas working on Rina’s “lips” and whatnot. It’s pretty crazy and certainly has that hardcore ‘70s vibe in full effect…again, pretty impressive given that the novel was published just as the ‘70s were beginning. 

As if that weren’t enough, we have another long sex scene as Thomas sexually fantasizes about a woman walking ahead of him on the street as he makes his way to his school; this is the material that made me think of The Sexplorer, which I started to read back in 2010, back when I started the blog, but for some reason never finished. From there Thomas goes into his office…where later he is propositioned by a sexy young student (“We’ve been talking about sex so damn much that my crotch is already wet!”), who strips for him and then, after more of the Y-dining, the two go at it on Thomas’s desk. No juicy stone is left unturned. 

Meanwhile Rina “sees” all of this, and thus is certain Thomas has cheated on her. Greenfield pulls an interesting conceit here that Rina is possessed, but does not know it…even after mental conversations with the priestess who has possessed her, and who can take over Rina’s body at whim, Rina will come out of the mental conversations with no recollection of them. Greenfield, who also plays an interesting conceit in that he doesn’t concern himself with explaining any of it, provides a few genuinely creepy moments as Rina will go “into a room” in her mind and talk to this priestess, and see things via remote vision. 

But still, Succubus isn’t much of a horror rollercoaster. It’s more of a character study; Greenfield’s narrative style is somewhat different this time around, as he is very much concerned with probing the thoughts and feelings of his characters. Very much of the novel is stuck in the headspace of Thomas and Rina, going on about their feelings and how they react to each other – and, given the otherwise formal tone of Greenfield’s narrative style, this gives the book an almost stuffy feel. 

Rina, post that beginning-of-the-novel sex, has suddenly announced her desire to go see Thomas’s estranged uncle, William. Eventually Thomas agrees, and meanwhile Greenfield has fun with Rina being bitchy and catty to Thomas, as she “knows” he had sex with that girl in his office, and thus wants to be spiteful…even though Thomas does not know that Rina knows. And meanwhile Rina will frequently go into long, pages-filling dreams about ancient Sumeria, where we learn the horrific backstory of the priestess, who betrayed her people with a foreigner and who was then raped by a few hundred slaves until she died, her corpse fed to the ravens…oh, and meanwhile her soul was cursed! 

Greenfield does not do much to bring the priestess to life, so to speak. Her goal is simple: the retrieval of a “scroll” Thomas’s uncle, a globetrotting rake, has gotten hold of…a highly-valued scroll from Sumeria that no one can read. We are to understand that the ancient Sumerians have a cult, or something, that still operates in the present day, and they want this scroll back – it is the very thing the priestess betrayed her people with, centuries ago, and thus she has now possessed Rina’s body to acquire it. 

Here’s where the plot falls apart: why didn’t Rina just go after Uncle William? A handsome older man who is unmarried and who lives alone on a castle in Antigua, William would be prime for the plucking by a sexy brunette babe with tantalizing upturned breasts. I mean, wouldn’t we all be? One wonders why the priestess even bothered ensnaring Thomas, if her ultimate goal was William. But then who can understand the mind of an undead ancient Sumerian priestess? 

It’s very heavy on the psychological tip as Rina and Thomas go to Antigua, bickering and bantering all the way, and then William comes along and there’s more bickering and bantering, and Rina decides to screw him to get that scroll, which was her plan all along. Meanwhile Thomas is hoodwinked into screwing a phantom female of his mind, created by the priestess – who seems to have whatever power Greenfield needs her to have, for the convenience of the plot. 

Indeed, Greenfield has spent so much time focused on introspection and sex-fantasizing that he must rush through the conclusion. Basically William and Thomas realize Rina is possessed like in the final eight pages, and they get a voodoo priestess, and there’s chanting and whatnot…but while the main problem is resolved, Greenfield is stingy with the details. 

For example, William mentions a “cult” that has tried to take the scroll from him. Who are these people and what happens to them? In fact, the priestess tells Rina that the leader is the literal god Enki, so what are we to make of this? The old gods still walk the earth? We also are not given a satisfactory reason why Rina was even possessed, nor why the gods had Thomas and not his uncle in their sights…and Greenfield brushes this all aside, having all three characters not remember a single thing about Rina’s possession at the end of the book. 

So while it was a frustrating read as a horror paperback, it must be stated that Succubus was certainly a success as a piece of paperback sleaze; I could imagine a horny 14 year-old kid taking notes from this damn book in the pre-internet world. “Girls must really like it when you rub on something called a ‘clit!’ I’ve gotta remember that!”

Orgasm

Orgasm, by Brian Richard Boylan

July, 1973  Dell Books

Now here’s a book on a topic I think we all might find some interest in. Subtitled “The Ultimate Experience,” Orgasm is part of the glut of sex paperbacks turned out in the early ‘70s; author Brian Boylan gives no bio for himself, but in the book he does reveal that in 1972 he published another sex-themed Dell PBO, Infidelity, which was taken from his interviews with a few hundred married couples who had cheated in some capacity. 

In his intro to this book, Boylan states that he personally has noticed that the orgasm itself is rarely focused on in these sex books; it is the end goal people work toward, and writers and researchers leave it at that. Or, “The last taboo,” as Boylan puts it. But what does an orgasm feel like? And how would women or men describe it? This apparently is the germ idea for Orgasm, but Boylan loses the plot, and for the most part the book comes off like any other early ‘70s sex book. 

This is humorous, given that Boylan spends the intro chapter of Orgasm ranting about the glut of sex books in the marketplace and how they are all essentially retreads of one another. That said, this is a good idea of how the market was responding to the sex glut of the early ‘70s; even the researchers were getting burned out. That is, if Boylan was indeed a researcher. His occasional self-references give the impression that he was, but there was no biographical detail about him I could find in the book. He’s certainly done his homework on the sex research front, though, but humorously he never refers to himself, maintaining an objective view and just telling us what the people he spoke to said. 

So then, Orgasm is not like How To Be A Tiger In Bed, but more like The Groupsex Scene, in that the majority of it is comprised of ribald dialog from early ‘70s men and women on how they like to get down. Boylan notes in his intro that he did not take notes nor record anything when talking to his subjects – saying that this often kept them from being totally open with him – and he admits that the dialog is filtered through his own writing style, which explains why all the characters “sound” the same. In other words, Boylan didn’t invade the privacy of his subjects like Robin Moore did in The Making Of The Happy Hooker. 

Occasionally Boylan does move away from the dry, factual tone, especially when complaining about all the misleading sex books of the day, or imagining how the average guy would describe an orgasm. There’s also a lot of complaining about sleaze novels, which Boylan asserts is the level to which most “sex books” stoop to. And yet, Orgasm also stoops to those levels, if only due to the sometimes-crazy comments Boylan’s subjects tell him. Oh, and given the lack of the male imagination in describing a climax, the majority of the commentary in Orgasm is from women. 

As with most of these books, Orgasm provides a glimpse into the era in which it was written: an era in which women were coming out of the shackles of the early twentieth century and were on The Pill, freely gabbing about their extramarital affairs and their love of the male genitalia (see below). Speaking of which, I am currently working on my time machine. 

In closing, I think this is one of those books where a bunch of random excerpts will do a better job of describing the book than I ever could:

Duffy

Duffy, by Harry Joe Brown, Jr.

October, 1968  Dell Books

One of those movies that seems to be completely forgotten, Duffy was a caper film that tried to tap into the late ‘60s zeitgeist and starred James Coburn as the titular character. The only reason I ever heard of it was many years ago when I was into the work of Donald Cammell, who later wrote and directed Performance. I’ve still never seen Duffy, but now I’ve read the novelization – which was written by Harry Joe Brown Jr., who was the other writer of the script. 

So far as I can tell, this is the only writing credit for Brown, and also Duffy appeared to be his only movie. He died in 2005, and was born into “Hollywood Royalty.”  But man, having read this book I can see why he didn’t do any other movies. Duffy is a dud, even in book form…and I have the suspicion that Brown wrote the original script before Donald Cammell was brought in to rewrite it. Further, I suspect that, like Paradise Alley, this novelization is a reflection of the author’s original screenplay…I’ve browsed online for reviews of the film, and have found mentions of scenes that aren’t even in this novel, so I’m guessing this was stuff added by Cammell that did not exist in Harry Joe Brown Jr.’s draft of the script. 

Essentially the novel is a basic heist yarn, only very drawn out, and made relevant with a “groovy” Eurotrash vibe. It’s a lot like the film version of The Adventurers by Harold Robbins, only without the saucy stuff. It’s short, too, coming in at 140 big-print pages. This is because there isn’t much story. Basically it’s about two half-brothers who decide to rip off their mega-wealthy father, and Duffy is an American expat they go to for help in the caper. There’s also a hotstuff American girl named Segolene who gets caught up in the mix. But it takes forever for anything to happen, and when it does, it’s not very memorable. 

One thing the novel seems to make clear that the movie might not is that the characters are all European, save for Duffy and Segolene…but then the latter is presented as one of those annoying American girls who goes overseas and starts acting “continental,” with a fake accent and etc. Plus her name is confusing; you’d never guess she was an American. The mega-wealthy father being heisted is named Calvet, an Onassis-type who was played by James Mason in the film (where he was renamed “Calvert”). The plotting half-brothers are Stefan, Calvet’s 20 year-old French son, and Anthony, Calvet’s half-British son of a previous marriage. The gist is that Stefan, as Calvet’s “main” son, has all the family wealth, whereas Anthony, as the “former” son, has nothing and must work. The two men hatch a scheme to heist Calvet’s ship, The Osiris, which will be hosting “currency transfers” around Tangier. Anthony needs the money because he has none, and Stefan wants to pull a heist just for the fun of it. 

It's through Stefan that we get most of those “groovy” period details. He likes to smoke joints and is prone to spouting New Age hippie philosophy, like how time is meaningless and whatnot. His girlfriend is blonde American model Segolene, but Segolene is a free spirit and not truly attached to him. This is another of those topical details, but the problem is Brown makes Segolene seem more like a narcisstic whore than a free-spirited, free-thinking woman. But then, perhaps that was precisely Brown’s intent. Susannah York played her in the movie, while future Performance co-star James Fox played “Stefane,” indicating that another name was changed from Brown’s original script. John Alderton played Anthony. 

Duffy meanwhile is described as a beach bum in his thirties, a former Navy man, who now makes his living as an artist in Tangier. Reviews of the movie have it that his pad in Tangier is decorated with tacky sculptures of the female anatomy, but none of this is present in the novelization. Rather, Duffy is a cipher with no real motivation…perhaps more commentary on the hippie mindset, for Duffy is clearly identified as a hippie. Dell Books was very intent on getting this across, with a headline announcing “Take a trip” on the first page of the book. Otherwise Duffy’s hippie-ism is mainly evident in how he has no real life intentions, other than lazing in Tangier and creating art. He doesn’t even display much of a libido. 

Brown is in no hurry to tell his tale. None whatsoever. There’s also no real drive to the heist. The two brothers want to hit their father’s ship, and go about their leisurely plotting of the job. Brown’s also in no hurry to introduce Duffy, who doesn’t even appear in the narrative until page 33. Here we are told he’s 32, with sandy brown hair and “Bogart-ish” looks. Duffy previously worked for Calvet, thus the brothers know of him, and ultimately they hit upon the idea of using him in the heist. Even the way Stefan and Anthony bring Duffy into the caper is lame; they essentially hang out with him for a bit and get into a “daydream” discussion about hitting a boat in the ocean and stealing four million bucks off it, and how such a job could be done. 

In the meantime there’s a lot of stuff with Segolene, who is more annoying than arousing, at least in the book. Stefan sort of puts her on Duffy, as a honey trap I guess, but even here it’s just more “hip” dialog, like her admission that “Stefan calls me a whore. I guess I am a whore.” How shocking! It takes a while, but Segolene does eventually give in to Duffy’s virility: “Slowly, fully, she let him enter her.” A clever thing here is how after their initial boink, there’s a part where Duffy and Segolene awake in bed and Duffy muses how, in books, sex scenes are often glossed over, with the author jumping immediately to the post-sex material…which is exactly what Brown does in Duffy. I thought this was funny, particularly given how I always note in my reviews if the sex scenes are off-page; Harry Joe Brown Jr. was noting the same thing in 1968, it appears. 

But Duffy’s still a bit of a square; when he wakes up next morning to find Stefan and Anthony standing over the bed, Duffy feels uncomfortable, given the fact that the two clearly know that Duffy’s been having sex with Segolene, ie Stefan’s “woman.” But man, it’s the late ‘60s! Get with it! And plus, as Segolene insists, she belongs to no one. In other words, she’s a “slut,” as Duffy calls her shortly before their sex scene. Now that’s how you get a woman! Anyway, at this point Duffy is as expected in on the heist, which sees him disguised as a Bedouin and the two brothers also disguised as they board their father’s ship and then rob it with “Israeli submachine guns,” clearly Uzis, though Brown never identifies them. 

The heist is bloodless and more on a suspense angle, but only takes up several pages and really isn’t much to get hung up about. Indeed, it’s the post-heist material that takes us into the climax, with a “shock twist” reveal that one of the plotters is actually working with Calvet…for reasons that aren’t even made clear. But Duffy gets the last laugh; having figured out the duplicity, he “finds” the money that’s been heisted and returns it in a public setting, ensuring plenty of media coverage and making himself look like a hero. It’s a clever ending, only undone by the fact that Duffy hasn’t done anything clever before this. 

All told, Duffy wasn’t so much a “trip” as it was a “bore.” I doubt I’ll ever see the film now, and if I want some Donald Cammell material I’ll just watch Performance again…or The Touchables, if I’m really desperate. That one’s only slightly better than Duffy, but at least has a super-mod look and features a cast of smokin’ hot swingin’ ‘60s babes.

The Gravy Train Hit

The Gravy Train Hit, by Curtis Stevens

November, 1974  Dell Books

Nominated for an Edgar Award in 1975, The Gravy Train Hit clearly seems to be “inspired” by John Godey’s The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three (which is even referenced on the cover); author “Curtis Stevens” is in reality the writing combo of Richard Curtis and Paul Stevens. The book is copyright them and the first page informs us of the pseudonym; I haven’t bothered to research them much but I believe Richard Curtis was an agent and/or an editor. 

I got this book several years ago during one of my frequent ‘70s crime kicks, and of course was drawn to it because it’s a paperback original. Plus it takes place in ‘70s pulp-crime sweet spot New York. Similar to another Edgar nominee of the day, Death Of An Informer, this one features a black protagonist; indeed, The Gravy Train Hit almost comes off like the novelization of a Blaxploitation movie that never was. But man the first twenty or so pages are a bumpy read for sure, and for a while there I thought maybe this was part of that unofficial Dell “sleazy paperbacks” line of the day, a la Making U-Hoo and Black Magic. 

Because, it surprised me to discover, The Gravy Train Hit is a comedy, a goofy one at that, with humor that won’t resonate much today…the Prologue being a case in point, which takes place in 1881 and features a bumbling black guy who comes across a train wreck and is mistakenly identified as “the first n-word train robber” (and no, they don’t write “n-word”), and eventually he is hanged for it…and it’s all played as comedy, complete with painful “former slave diction” for this guy, like “heah” instead of “here” and the like. 

Then the book proper begins and we are introduced to our hero, 24 year-old Cleron Jonas in early ‘70s New York, descendant of the protagonist in the Prologue (and sharing the same name), whose “large ears jut out of his closely barbered kinky hair.” So I wondered if we were in for an entire book of this stuff…my concerns compounded when Cleron was revealed to be a bumblng fool, taking a hot dog with him on his first day at the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s new central office and inadvertently jamming the hot dog into a computer key slot during training. Otherwise it was cool to read about computers and their “Twenty First Century sounds” here in a 1974 novel; Cleron, having worked for the MTA for four years and knowing every inch of the New York subway system, is one of the chosen few to oversee the computer that monitors the rail system. 

Fortunately the comedy becomes slightly less goofy in nature as the book progresses, and for the most part the humor comes through the actions of the characters. And luckily Cleron Jonas will prove to be less a bumbling fool than he is a good-natured guy who harbors a lifelong dream of becoming a master criminal. Inspired by his ancestor, Cleron daydreams about being Wild West outlaw “Black Cleron,” and we have a couple fantasies featuring this character before Cleron realizes he has the makings of a real-world, first-class crime act right in front of him: robbing the “gravy train,” ie the armored train that collects all of the subway system’s receipts for the day. 

That said, when the sexual material transpires, it’s just as explicitly-rendered as in those aforementioned sleaze paperbacks Dell published at the time. All of which is to say, The Gravy Train Hit is more comparable to, say, Sexual Strike Force than it is to a crime thriller. The cover photo of a revolver could just as easily have been replaced by a scantily-clad female model, same as those other Dell paperbacks, to the point that I wondered if The Gravy Train Hit was in fact written as part of this line. The fact that it’s a comedy, with zero in the way of violence, further lends credence to the theory that it was never intended as a “serious” crime novel…which is how Dell packaged it. 

And hell it must’ve worked, otherwise the book wouldn’t have been nominated for an Edgar. But it’s curious that it was, as really The Gravy Train Hit is kind of stupid, let down by its goofy tone. Basically, young Cleron Jonas, an up-and-coming MTA computer worker who has never lived up to his full potential, strikes upon the idea of robbing the titular gravy train, while trying to also swindle the Jewish Mafia, the Black Mafia, and the regular old Mafia, each of which is trying to horn in on the caper. Plus he falls in love with a “light-skinned” black babe named Verna who engages in frequent explicit sex with him. 

It’s through Verna that Cleron comes up with the idea to rob the gravy train; there’s a nice “meet cute” between the two when Cleron, on his first day as an MTA bigwig, is riding the subway in full uniform, and a sexy young chick named Verna asks him for directions. Since he’s been ordered to ride the rails all day, as an “owner” of the system now, Cleron gets the idea that he can just keep riding with Verna, working up the nerve to ask her out. The way this plays out is a caper in itself, and nicely handled. Also Verna is an interesting character: as the weeks progress and she and Cleron become a steady item, she is the one who keeps trying to initiate sex with Cleron. But Cleron refuses, wanting to “become a man” first (by pulling a big robbery), and then “taking” her. And when the naughty stuff finally does happen, boy does it leave no juicy stone unturned, again reminding the veteran sleaze-hound of material in those other Dell paperbacks – super hardcore stuff. 

As for the caper itself, as mentioned it plays off on a comedic angle. Not even a “light” comedic angle; it’s straight-up slapstick, as Cleron goes from one racial stereotype to another as he first tries to get the Mafia in on the heist and then, having been turned down by the Italians, goes to the Jewish Mafia. Which also says no. Meanwhile Cleron’s older brother, a thug in the Black Mafia, starts to suspect Cleron is up to something (there’s no love lost between the two), and soon enough all three of these organizations come back to Cleron and basically insist they take part in the heist. 

How the caper goes down is kind of fun and no doubt why The Gravy Train Hit was nominated for the Edgar. But those expecting a gritty ‘70s crime thriller will be let down; again, the cover photo is very misleading. Instead Cleron orchestrates the entire thing from the computer terminal at the MTA office, speaking to the various thugs via the radio system; he cleverly works them against each other in what is the highlight of the book. This takes up the final quarter of the slim novel – the book’s only 157 pages – and the authors keep the narrative moving, with a calm and cool Cleron giving directions to the increasingly-panicked crooks who carry out his scheme…in ways they don’t comprehend. 

The problem with Cleron directing affairs remotely is that there’s no impact to the finale of The Gravy Train Hit. For that matter, the “hit” of the gravy train itself happens off-page, with Cleron merely instructing one group of thugs to go in and tie up the gravy train guards, simple as that. Instead, it’s still on the comedy angle with the increasing bewilderment and panic of the various thugs Cleron orders around down in the subway system, moving them like pawns. But then Cleron does prove to be rather brutal, nonchalantly sending some of them to their doom – though he specifies it’s only those who “deserve it” who will get hurt. 

Overall The Gravy Train Hit is a quick read, sometimes funny but for the most part kind of annoying. That is, if judged as a crime novel. If judged along the likes of, say, Black Magic or Michelle, My Belle, then it’s certainly a success, as unlike those novels there’s more to the story than just goofy shenanigans and bursts of sleaze. I also enjoyed the feel for mid-‘70s New York; in particular the reader gets a good appreciation of the byzantine byways and mainlines of the MTA.

Traveler #10: Hell On Earth

Traveler #10: Hell On Earth, by D.B. Drumm

October, 1986  Dell Books

Ed “D.B. Drumm” Naha takes a page from the Doomsday Warrior series with this tenth installment of Traveler, which turns out to be a literal take on the title: In this one, Traveler actually finds hell on Earth, and ventures down into it like some post-nuke Orpheus to rescue his beloved, Jan. While Hell On Earth starts off with some actual “emotional content” (to quote Bruce Lee), it even gradually takes on the same “R-rated Saturday morning cartoon” vibe as Doomsday Warrior. 

This is unfortunate, as I was ready to declare Hell On Earth as one of the greatest volumes of Traveler ever (or any post-nuke pulp in general)…for the first twenty or so pages. But as the narrative went on it became clear that Naha was up to his usual tricks, spoofing his own content with lots of bantering and humorous asides – and really the entire setup is straight out of Ryder Stacy, with the titular hell being modelled after a 1980s shopping mall, complete with an escalator that takes one down the nine levels. I kept expecting Ted “Doomsday Warrior” Rockson and team to show up and lend Traveler a hand. 

Of course we know this would be impossible, given that Doomsday Warrior takes place a century after 1989 – one of the few things consistent about that series was the “hundred years after” setting. But friends there’s still a disconnect between Ed Naha and the guys in the office at Dell Books. Because they’ve yet to get their stories straight on when the hell Traveler takes place. The back cover threw me for a loop with its mention that it’s “nearly thirty years after doomsday,” and as we’ll recall the previous volume had back cover copy stating it was twenty-plus years after. 

And when the novel opens, we meet Traveler with a gray beard, living alone outside a pueblo in “the Southwest” and his traveling days apparently long behind him – the indication is clear that it’s a helluva long time since the previous volume. So I was like wow, this really is 30 years after the nuclear war, and Traveler’s basically retired from the, uh, “Traveler” business…but almost immediately after this evocative setup Naha informs us that Traveler is not old, despite looking old, and is only “in his midforties.” And also guess what…it’s only six months since the previous volume, and only three years since the events of #6: Border War! Also we are told, later in the novel, that without question the nuclear war was “two decades ago,” meaning that the novel takes place in 2009. Not 2019, as implied by the back cover. 

This sort of thing irritates me. 

But man, that opening. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess Naha was inspired by Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, which came out in 1985, ie right around when Naha was likely writing Hell On Earth. As with that film, Traveler when we meet him is alone and bitter and it seems much time has passed. And like Mad Max, Traveler here becomes a protector of children…for those first few pages, at least. Frustratingly, Naha has a perfectly fine setup at the start of the novel, but ditches it for the “hell on Earth” scenario…which is ultimately undone by Naha’s penchant for spoofing and mocking his own material. I mean I get it that he feels this sort of shit is beneath him, but still – couldn’t he have kept it to himself and not let his derision spill into the narrative? 

Traveler when we meet him isn’t even “Traveler” anymore (and, we’ll recall, his real name is Kiel Paxton, anyway): he’s now “The Storyteller,” and he’s living here in a shack or something outside of a pueblo that was untouched by the nukes. Naha pulls a double “background story” thing here: first we’re told that “Storyteller” got his name because each morning he tells stories to the mutant children that live in the pueblo. Then shortly after that we have yet another background story, detailing how Traveler got here in the first place: he came across a caravan of youth while he was headed South, six months ago, and sort of lost his mind after witnessing their grim fate – a grim fate Traveler himself unwittingly sent them off to. 

I was more moved than I thought I’d be by the opening of the book, which features “Storyteller” reading a book of nursery rhymes he has recently discovered in the post-nuke rubble; he can’t even get passed “once upon a time” without being hammered with questions by the mutant children, none of whom can grasp a “once upon a time” in which their weren’t mutant children like themselves. Naha pulls a double “rip the reader’s heart out” bang for his buck with the next chapter, in which he flashes back six months to when Traveler met that caravan of youth on their way out of the South; in this nuke-blasted world, they had “chosen to remain kids” instead of becoming the hard-edged survivors required in this new world, and Traveler mindlessly avoided the opportunity to provide them with some much-needed security. 

So the potential was there…Traveler, blaming himself for the death of one group of kids, now a sort of guardian for another group of kids; all kinds of potential for a redemptive storyline here, with roadrats or other post-nuke brigands descending on the pueblo and Traveler fighting to save the kids. But Naha skips this and instead sends Traveler to hell – literally. The surprise return of Link, Traveler’s companion last seen in Border War, sets the narrative wheel in motion. Traveler has assumed Link dead all these years, but here he is, ravaged and near death (for real this time), with a crazy story about having escaped from hell – where he’s been these past three years, along with Jan. 

As we’ll recall, Jan was the American Indian beauty who featured in the installments written by series co-author John Shirley; she and Traveler went off into a post-nuke Happily Ever After in the denoument of Border War, only for Naha to buzzkill that in the opening of #7: The Road Ghost, where we were bluntly informed that Jan had been killed almost immediately after heading off into that Happily Ever After! Naha has seldom referred to Jan since – naturally, given that Jan wasn’t one of the characters he created – but now we are reminded of how Traveler “loved her once.” So, if she’s still out there, off he’ll go, getting the Meat Wagon geared up and heading out. 

Naha has a knack for mystically-attuned guides for Traveler, and Hell On Earth has not one but two of them. First there’s Willy, who acts as the sort of shaman for Traveler/Storyteller, and in one of those typically-inexplicable events of the series was the one who prevented Traveler from killing himself six months ago: after discovering the grim fate of those kids, Traveler attempted to blow his brains out, only for the gun to be knocked out of his hand just as he pulled the trigger – knocked out of his hand by a friggin’ tomahawk! A tomahawk thrown by a punk-haired mystic by the name of Willy, who appeared just at that moment to tell Traveler it “wasn’t his time” to die…and as if that weren’t mystical enough, this dude even called Traveler by his real name, Kiel Paxton. 

But this will be yet more interesting material Naha will cast aside; Willy is soon gone from the text, having givenTraveler some arrows for his crossbow, the blades of which have been treated with Willy’s magical “herb.” Traveler accidentally knicks himself on one of the blades, immediately seeing LSD-style flashes of color; this will be Ed Naha’s way of having his cake and eating it too, with the overhanging possibility that the rest of the novel could be nothing more than the herb-caused hallucinations of Traveler. However Willy’s gone…to almost immediately be replaced by another “mystic guide” type, this one an older gentleman in a robe who insists he is Saint Michael, ie the actual angel himself. 

As we’ll also recall, Naha has no problems with taking Traveler outside of the already-wide boundaries of its internal post-nuke logic: previous installment The Stalking Time featured an alien, complete with spaceship, assisting Traveler. So the actual Saint Michael of the actual Bible appearing here doesn’t seem to out of place. What I found most interesting was reading this from a post-modern perspective; today belief in religion isn’t nearly as commonplace as it was in 1986 (it’s actually no longer the majority religion in England, with the US surely soon to follow), so I wonder how many modern readers would respond to the Biblical and religious overtones Naha sprinkles through Hell On Earth. 

The problem with this is that these spiritual and mystic guides only serve to lessen Traveler himself. Naha will build up a nice rapport between Saint Michael and Travel, with the “angel” often questioning Traveler’s lack of belief and sort of taunting him that he’s wrong, but at the same time it’s all so frustratingly similar to modern-day drek in which the male protagonist is constantly questioned, criticized, and belittled by a “strong empowered woman” who once upon a time would’ve been nothing more than a damsel in distress. But seriously, I’m not joking – not only does Saint Michael constantly question and criticize Traveler, but he’s always saving him! Indeed, Traveler hardly does anything in Hell On Earth; his bullets will have no affect on the demons and hell-beasts he and Saint Michael go up against. 

Otherwise Saint Michael isn’t that bad of a character; he claims without question he is the angel of myth, and what’s more has two big scars on his back, right where ripped-off wings would’ve gone. But then, he remembers nothing from before the war, so there is the possibility he’s just some guy who had a psychotic break after the collapse of society. Again, Naha wants his cake and to eat it too (and really, who doesn’t??), so throughout the novel he dangles the idea that all this could just be a big trip for Traveler. Regardless, Saint Michael is learned on mythology and the general outline of hell, and for the rest of the narrative will explain this or that to the constantly-befuddled Traveler. 

Again, this is a far cry from the confident and capable ass-kicker of the John Shirley installments. Naha’s Traveler is more prone to self-doubt and, most unforgivably, can’t even save himself, at least this time. Throughout Hell On Earth he totes an HK-91 or Uzi, blasting away, but his bullets don’t do anything, and Saint Michael will show up with a wand or even a bag of holy water to save Traveler’s ass. This is because the stuff Traveler fights this time is straight outta hell, with actual demons and the like walking on the Earth. But even here, Traveler will tell himself they might just be a type of mutant he’s never seen before, or perhaps “hell” was a top-secret genetics research lab before the war, and what’s been unleashed is a man-made hell. 

The caveat here is that these action scenes are more along the lines of a fantasy novel, and nothing like the post-nuke carnage of previous installments. There’s little in the gun-blazing gore one might reasonably expect, with instead Traveler getting his ass handed to him by a pterodactyl-type creature from hell and the like. Even the finale sees Traveler fighting a massive demon. And that’s another thing – Link tells Traveler that “Lucifer” reigns in this hell Link has just escaped, and for no reason Traveler immediately assumes that “Lucifer” is really President Frayling, ie Traveler’s arch-enemy of earlier volumes. The only problem here is that Traveler killed Frayling in Border War…which, again, was written by John Shirley, and for all intents and purposes was a volume that could have easily served as the final isntallment of Traveler. 

But we aren’t even reminded here that Traveler himself killed Frayling (perhaps Naha forgot, given that Shirley is the one who told us of this incident), and as Hell On Earth proceeds he becomes more and more confident that Lucifer is Frayling. Yes, cue more taunting from Saint Michael, who insists that Lucifer is really Lucifer, ie the devil himself, and that is who they will face in the center of hell. But still, it’s just another indication of how lessened Traveler is, given his muleheaded insistence, apropos of nothing whatsoever, that Frayling is the ruler of this hell, which has sprouted like a radioactive mountain out of the desert. 

The Doomsday Warrior parallels are strong as Traveler and Saint Michael take the escalator down into the shopping mall that is hell, with each level themed along the lines of Dante’s Inferno – the film version of which plays on TV screens on one of the first levels. Another level is given over to red light districts and cathouses (the horror!), and another level has victims lined up to be ground into bloody paste. Also I forgot, there’s a lake at the entrance complete with a Charon at the boat, which gave me bad flashbacks to Clash Of The Titans (truly not a movie that has aged well, but damn I loved it as a seven year old – I even had the toys!  And I recall shooting the Charon figure in the face with a BB gun when I was older for some mysterious reason!). 

You can skip this paragraph due to spoilers, but for those who don’t want to bother with reading the novel, Traveler does indeed find Jan, on the sixth level, but this too is a lessened Jan – she is zombielike, and barely has any dialog. Oh and I forgot, along the way Traveler and Saint Michael also pick up some other young woman, this one named Diana, who claims to be escaping from hell – but like everyone else here, she has no memory of how she even got here. Our heroes even meet a former lawyer turned “samurai for hire” named Patrick Goldsteen – “An Anglo samurai?” thinks a shocked Traveler, but this is just even more indication of Naha’s contempt for his own material. It’s all just spoofed throughout. But anyway, we can see where this is going – Jan, Goldsteen, the other “zombies” Traveler meets…hell even Link in the opening…all of them are dead, and this really is hell, folks, and it’s not President Frayling but the devil himself – a twenty-foot demon in a lake of fire – who runs the place. And once again Saint Michael saves the day while Traveler just stands there. 

Well, end spoilers. Hell On Earth even has a Doomsday Warrior-esque “reset” finale, with Traveler on his way back to the pueblo, wondering if all this has just been a dream courtesy that “herb” Willy spiked his arrows with. Here’s hoping that the next volume will pick up the thread Hell On Earth started off with, instead of detouring into satire and spoofery. 

Oh, and last note on the lameness – Traveler doesn’t even get laid this time. Now if that’s not a shocker I don’t know what is!

The Happy Hooker

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Sunstop 8

Sunstop 8, by Lou Fisher

January, 1978  Dell Books

Sometimes you come across just the book you’re looking for. Such was the case a few weeks back at the Plano Half Price Books while I was scanning the sci-fi paperback shelf for something to read…something in that ‘70s psychedelic sci-fi vibe I like so much. And something not too pricey…I mean the days of “Half Price Books” actually selling half price books are long gone. But they were running a Memorial Day Sale, with like 25% off or something, so what the heck. 

Anyway, I’m not really a cheap person. It’s just hard for me to accept that books that used to cost less than a dollar at Half Price Books now have sticker prices on them that are at least double the original price, if not more. Anyway, the spine of Sunstop 8 jumped out at me from the shelf and I picked it up; my original thought was that it was a groovy late ‘70s Dell paperback along the lines of Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy (also published by Dell at the time, and a trio of books I was flat-out obsessed with at one point in my life…in fact, perhaps I should read them again, finally after all these years, and post my reviews on here). I think I might’ve seen this book before, maybe at this same Half Price Books store, but this time the moment was right, it looked to be just the pyschedelic ‘70s sci-fi book I wanted – complete with even lame interior illustrations – so I bought it, for the strangely specific price of $2.49 plus 25% off! 

Now it’s only via the ISFDB that I know Louis “Lou” Fisher was a not-very-prolific science fiction author of the time, only publishing two novels, this being the first…and the second one not published until 1986. He also did some short stories and whatnot. While I wasn’t sure at first, as I got several pages into Sunstop 8 I discovered that Fisher’s main influence, at least for this novel, was most likely Ron Goulart. I say “at first” because for the first few pages you don’t realize Sunstop 8 is going to be a somewhat satirical romp through a very 1970s “future,” with more of a comedic overtone than serious. Generally I bail at this – if you’ll note, there isn’t a single review of a Ron Goulart novel on this blog – but something about Sunstop 8 kept me reading. 

For one, the tone isn’t too comedic. Like Goulart, Fisher writes the novel with his tongue clearly in his cheek. But while it is all told spoofily, the events actually matter to the protagonists. Meaning, it isn’t all a big joke. And that’s another thing. The black-and-while illustrations in the book almost look to be taken from a Choose Your Own Adventure novel; they make the book appear to be a juvenile. And indeed, at first I wondered if Sunstop 8 was a juvenile sci-fi novel. But within the first few pages our hero is checking out a hotstuff redhead on vacation planet Sunstop 6, and flipping through some pages I saw a lot of saucy sex talk and even a bit of ‘70s-mandatory rape “humor.” So, this isn’t a book for kids. At least in the 1970s it wouldn’t have been! 

Another thing was that even though I read the back cover and the first-page preview copy, I still couldn’t figure out what the hell Sunstop 8 was about. I had to read the book to find out. And here’s what it’s about: a young bookie named Chet McCory who lives off the Earth on his own swank satellite has come to the planet Sunstop 6 for vacation…and he’s soon abducted by agents of another planet in the system, Sunstop 8. This planet was originally a tourist spot itself, but various wars have resulted in it being a hotbed of intrigue and chaos, and all the civilized planets avoid it – I assumed the whole thing was a Vietnam War metaphor. Well anyway, Chet is kidnapped and taken to Sunstop 8…where he learns that he’s been kidnapped so he can run a global lottery to drum up interest in the ruling party of despot Pawk Lundiner. Why Lundinder and his minions insist on an “Earthman bookie” to run their lottery is a question Fisher is unable to properly answer, but the plot outline should tell you all you need to know about the novel’s tone. 

But man, it’s those “sci-fi ‘70s” topical touches that kept me reading…sort of like contemporary novels The Tomorrow File, Colony, Mythmaster, or The Savage Report. Actually, one more reference to a previously-reviewed book: a lot of Sunstop 8 is very similar to the material in the anthology Infinity Five, only not as focused on sleaze or kink. That said, this is a pretty kinky book, with a lot of reference to sex and the physical attributes of the female characters, but the sole sex scene in the novel occurs entirely off page. But I figure this is the same vibe as actual Ron Goulart novels…I have several of them, picked up many years ago (at Half Price Books, in fact, when they truly were half off the cover price), like Gadget Man or somesuch, and I recall from my aborted readings of them many years ago that they too were mostly comedic escapades in funky future ‘70s settings, but otherwise rated PG. 

Well anyway, Fisher doesn’t belabor us with a lot of world-building; this isn’t a “hard science” novel by any means. The date is even specious, something like 2076.3 or whatnot, leaving us to wonder if this is some new “stardate” type of nomenclature or if the number after the period just denotes the month. Who knows? I got the impression Fisher didn’t want us to worry over such incidentals. I mean, there’s galactic flight and you can whisk from one corner of the galaxy to the next in almost no time, so again the impression is a little juvenile. About the most we get in the hard science department is a part where Chet’s brawny and dimwitted assistant Rocky tries to call Chet on Sunstop 6 from their satellite outside Earth orbit, and we’re informed it takes 9 minutes each ways for messages to get through. 

As mentioned though, Fisher isn’t so much concerned with the science of things. He has a tale to tell, a goofy tale, and one where I wonder what the origin of the book even was. I mean, Sunstop 8 is the inverse of the old rub that “all first novels are autobiographical.” I mean who in the world would come up with a plot like this? Other than Ron Goulart, that is? But what makes it frustrating is that Fisher doesn’t even exploit his own goofy tale. Chet is “Shanghaied” by some Sunstop 8 agents while vacationing on Sunstop 6, told by the ancient and decrepit ruler of Sunstop 8, Pawk Lundiner, that Chet’s services are needed to run a lottery, and that Chet will be payed handsomely for the deal. Even given a woman of his own. Chet says no…and spends the rest of the friggin’ novel saying no. 

I remember years ago I read Joseph Campbell’s The Hero With A Thousand Faces, or whatever it’s titled, and at the time there were some how-to writing books out there on how you could use that whole idea to plot out your novels. And one of the caveats was that the titular hero could refuse his quest, or watever, but ultimately he would have to undertake it. And also that this decision should happen rather quickly. Certainly this refusal isn’t something that should be going on for a few hundred pages! And yet in Sunstop 8 that is exactly it; Chet says no, he says no again later, he’s captured by other people and still saying no. It gets to be aggravating. 

So the novel starts off with that fun ruggedly virile ‘70s vibe I love so much: Chet is floating in this sort of zero-g sauna on Sunstop 6 and sees this curvy female form floating around him (apparently the “du-metal” outfits worn in such environments obscure the majority of the body), and reflecting how, unlike the spaceship he just disembarked from, she’s “a structure you want to get into. Not out of.” Turns out she’s a hotstuff redhead who works in one of the attactions here and her name’s Avon. She’s not interested in Chet due to the guys who have been shadowing him. She floats off and later Chet is taken captive by those guys, who turn out to be the aforementioned Sunstop 8 agents. 

Through the rest of the novel Fisher will refer to Avon as this sort of blossoming romance for Chet, though Chet hardly spends any narrative time with her. Indeed, Chet’s sole sexual excursion in the novel will be with the slim, petite brunette Sunstop 8 beauty Juell, a gal who has one of the best intros in the book – blasting “the electronic speed-beats of Carter Lee Cash” on a sort of quad-system-of-the-future stereo rig. With her long brown hair, wrapped with a bandana, it’s hard not to see her as a future hippie. Her dialog here is also suitably bizarre; Chet mentions he broke an antique while escaping his Sunstop 8 kidnappers, and Juell replies, “I despise antiques!” 

But man, these weird touches unfortunately fade as Sunstop 8 moves on. There’s action, occasionally, but the problem is Chet comes off as so obstinate that he refuses to move the plot forward. I mean it’s constantly him just saying “no” to this or that, until finally he’s forced into doing it – even then he tries to undo the entire lottery idea, and is put in front of yet another firing squad by Pawk Lundiner. Oh, and the novel’s weirdly structured. Chet says “no” for like the entire book, then finally starts planning the lottery – all while planning also to dismantle it so as to get revenge on Lundiner – then suddenly he’s making yet another escape attempt. Then, later in the novel, we have a random flashback to a few weeks before, when the lottery was running, and Chet’s making his only trip outside of the fortress he's been locked in. And we see how the lottery is advertised by sexy women (everyone here is human, btw, despite the manifold planets). It’s just strange…like, why didn’t we read all this while it was happening, and not as a random flashback in the middle of an action scene? 

Along the way Chet learns of Abraxas, the leader of the rebels who are against Pawk Lundiner; of course this made me think of Santana. One of Lundiner’s people is a spy, and Chet starts working with this person – and meanwhile Avon, who has also been brought to Sunstop 8 against her will (Lundiner’s agents under the mistaken notion she’s Chet’s “woman’), is a prisoner of Abraxas. Oh and I also forgot, but back in Earth orbit we have Rocky, Chet’s muscle-bound oaf of an assistant, who has his own running subplot in the novel. Again, the tone is super juvenile with chapter headings like, “Rocky takes a pod” or the like, describing events that are about to happen. Well anyway, dimwit Rocky is another who brings us the kinky tone; he has a busty babe of his own on the satellite he and Chet live on, and he's rammed her so much she’s “sore,” a running joke in her dialog that gets old. This gal gives us the rape humor I mentioned above; part of her schtick is getting on the interplanetary waves and screaming “Rape!” to see if any cops will respond to the call – all so as to suss out the cops who are constantly looking for that pernicious bookie Chet McCoy, we’re informed. 

But then the humor goes away when Chet learns that poor Avon has been raped; the novel takes an unexpected turn into the grim when the two are finally reunited and Chet finds his “beloved” chained up in a cave, for daily sexual subjugation and beatings by one of Abraxas’s men. Or, as Avon herself explains to Chet, gesturing to herself, “Do you see a woman or a beat-up broad?” Here Chet and Avon themselves get the closest to sex they’ll ever get in the novel, stripping down and feigning sex to distract that very same rapist. The novel heads to a close with Chet taking on Abraxas, presumably the inspiration for the otherwise confounding cover art by Larry Kresek, which makes Chet McCoy look like Peter Fonda. 

Overall, Sunstop 8 started off strong and I was loving the freaky-funky-future-‘70s vibe. But midway through it got mired in a repetitive formula of Pawk Lundiner ordering Chet to do something, Chet saying no, Lundiner throwing Chet in prison, and then Chet finally doing what he’d been ordered to do in the first place. Also, the swank future-‘70s touches abruptly went away, the highlight of course being Juell’s stereo system. I did like the somewhat raunchy tone (Rocky for example constantly thinks of sex), and the humor is for the most part like a sci-fi Porky’s. But the story was just let down by the sluggish, repetitive pace; even the action scenes tend to trudge on, and also lack much impact given the novel’s overall comedic tone. 

Here’s a sample of the interior illustrations, which are credited to a Stuart Shiffman; this one depicts Chet struggling against a massive android that plagues him for the first half of the novel: