Traveler #9: The Stalking Time

Traveler #9: The Stalking Time, by D.B. Drumm

June, 1986  Dell Books

Traveler takes on a new vibe with this ninth volume, which was written by Ed Naha (who will serve as “D.B. Drumm” for the rest of the series). Apparently feeling that the sub-Road Warrior theme of the previous books has worn thin, Naha introduces the concept that the titular Traveler is now basically a “diplomat” who serves the newly-formed U.S. government. This means that Traveler comes off a bit differently than he did in previous volumes, and truth be told his determination to represent the government seems a little forced. 

One thing that’s made clear is that some time has passed in the series. We’re often reminded that the nukes fell “twenty years ago,” whereas previous volumes had it as thirteen or even fifteen years ago. Not only that, but Traveler when we meet him this time is headed up into the mideast, his first time here since before the war, having undertaken a “year-long mission” for newly-elected President Jefferson. When Traveler tangles with a group of roadrats (ie the leather-garbed road scavengers “inspired” by the ones in the Mad Max films), we’re told that they are better-equipped than the ones Traveler fought “a half-dozen years ago” in the western portion of the US. In other words, we’re about five to six years out from the earliest books in the series, and the year – though it’s never outright stated – is now 2009. 

In a way The Stalking Time works as a series reset; in previous volumes Traveler always had someone with him, whether it was one of his old army buddies or Jan, the American Indian babe who was the love of Traveler’s life and whatnot. This time Traveler is truly alone, driving along in the Meat Wagon and listening to John Coltrane tapes, and there’s no mention of those earlier comrades. Other that is than a few sequences where Traveler dreams about them. So in a way Traveler lives up to his mantle this time, traveling the post-nuke roadways alone…save that is for the new motive Naha has given him. 

Traveler as a diplomat is one thing, but what’s worse is that in The Stalking Time he’s often getting saved by someone else. Traveler does not come off nearly as badass as he did in the superior volumes by John Shirley. And also, whereas Shirley’s installments were fast-moving slices of horror-tinged post-nuke pulp, Naha’s are often sluggish. Even though the novel’s the same short length as those earlier books, it feels a lot longer – the same sentiment I had about Naha’s previous installment The Road Ghost. 

I think the reason behind this is that Naha thinks the whole storyline is ridiculous, and one can sense his sneering through the pages. I never got that impression from Shirley’s books; he was clearly having fun with them. Naha on the other hand goes for a pseudo-“spoofy” vibe that’s almost as egregious as in The Destroyer. What I mean to say is, neither the author nor the characters seem to take anything seriously, and Naha is constantly making snarky asides via the narrative or the dialog. Now to be sure it’s not as bad as in The Destroyer, I mean things still matter here and not everything’s a joke, but the vibe is close. Actually if I want to stay within the post-nuke realm, The Last Ranger would be a good comparison, with the same dark humor. Only whereas The Last Ranger has a nihilistic streak, Naha’s Traveler has a satirical streak. 

So throughout Naha constantly undercuts the tension he himself creates in the plot with sarcastic rejoinders or snarky comments ridiculing the situation. It just gives the sense that it’s all a joke, and folks if you know anything about me you know I don’t like shit like this in my men’s adventure. I want it straight no chaser. Naha’s sarcastic fun-poking was fine in his Robocop novelization, as it matched the vibe of the movie itself, but here it gets in the way of the post-apocalyptic fun. At any rate, his books so far have suffered greatly in comparison to John Shirley’s; Shirley too might have thought the series was ridiculous, but the reader never got that impression. 

But seriously, you know you’re in trouble when Naha spends more time on the trashy décor of a hotel Traveler stays in than on the action scenes. This sequence too is evidence of the new starical vibe of the series; at one point Traveler ingratiates himself into the orbit of a post-nuke warlord who calls himself Dragon, and who has taken over a hotel for his headquarters – one that is done up with themes for various rooms, and Traveler gets one with an “Arabian Nights” theme. And rather than a hockeymasked Lord Humongous type, Dragon is a dapper black man who wears “Day-Glo pimp clothing” and patterns himself after a Blaxploitation character. 

However that’s not to say we don’t have any of the customary Traveler horror vibe. There’s a cool part where Traveler almost gets eaten by blind scar-faced ghouls who live underground, only to be saved by a hulking bounty hunter called Angel Eyes. The uncredited artist who did the cover must’ve read the book or gotten some seriously good art direction, as the depiction of Angel Eyes on the cover – iron helmet, flamethrower-esque attachment on his back – is exactly as he’s described in the book. (Though I’m not sure why the artist had to put so much focus on the guy’s ass!) But this is also part of the problem. Angel Eyes saves Traveler, and Traveler is saved a few other times in the book. It just seems at odds with previous installments. That said, Traveler does save Angel Eyes immediately after. 

Traveler also seems at odds with his past self in another way – he makes dumb choices. As part of that belabored “ingratiating into Dragon’s forces” scenario, Traveler finds himself sent off with two other stooges to create a diversion. Traveler ties these guys up and leaves them to an overly-complicated fate, driving off. It’s almost as if Naha is telegraphing what will happen next, and sure enough those two eventually show up to blow Traveler’s cover story. The Traveler of the Shirley installments would’ve seen this eventuality and would’ve just blown their brains out to save himself the trouble. 

One of the highlights of the novel is the town Traveler comes upon. It seems to have come out of a Norman Rockwell painting, mostly because it was designed before the war as a tourist attraction. There’s also an underground vault of goods that the mayor, a hotstuff blonde who was in kindergarten when the nukes fell, is desperate to keep secret. This underground vault is what Dragon wants, and what Traveler must stop him from getting. But it’s almost as if Naha changes his mind about this, as in the climax it’s the town’s kids who turn out to be Dragon’s target – which leads to a nice action hero-worthy bit of Traveler racing to save a schoolbus full of abducted kids. 

The focus on youth is another weird new element to the series. Quite frequently in The Stalking Time we’re reminded that WWIII was 20 years ago, and the young roadrats and such scurrying around were, like Mayor Emma Fowler, just kids when the bombs dropped. Yet they’ve grown up in a world of hate, which is all they know – and thus Traveler sometimes has a hard time shooting these roadrat punks who are trying to kill him. It’s an understandable sentiment on Traveler’s part, yet at the same time it’s nothing that has ever occurred to him in the previous volumes. One really gets the impression here that he’s an old man wandering around a world of angry youth. 

Speaking of which there’s a reveal on Angel Eyes that’s crazy but also sort of telegraphed, and also way out of the realm of previous installments. It does however have an unexpected emotional impact, given the reason behind Angel Eyes’s determination to kill Dragon. The problem though is that Traveler sort of sits on the sidelines in the climax, that is after he’s saved that schoolbus of kids. After this Traveler sits around – or perhaps that should be flies around – as Angel Eyes gets his revenge on Dragon. But it’s just another indication of the sort of weakened state Traveler has in this volume. 

Maybe it’s just something we’ll have to get used to, as Naha wrote the rest of the series. And given that he wrote the first volume, perhaps Naha’s Traveler can be considered the Traveler. Who knows; as usual I’m probably putting too much thought into it. All told, The Stalking Time was an entertaining installment of Traveler, maybe less violent than previous ones – and certainly less sexually-explicit, with Traveler’s one score occuring off-page at the very end of the novel – but entertaining nonetheless. I mean when it comes to post-nuke pulp, I’d certainly rather read this than Roadblaster.

Robocop

Robocop, by Ed Naha

July, 1987  Dell Books

I did not see Robocop in the theater when it came out, even though I was an action movie junkie and saw the majority of the big ones in the theater (despite being well under the 17 years of age required for R-rated movies). I skipped Robocop because I’d heard it was ultra-violent and I was skittish about such things, even though I eagerly read the gore-soaked pages of Phoenix Force. But reading about exploding heads is a lot different than seeing exploding heads. 

My brother, who is seven years older than me, came home on leave from the Air Force around the time Robocop was released on VHS; he rented it, and I tried watching some of it. Literally the first thing I saw was the mutated guy getting hit by the van and exploding. That was pretty much it for me. I’m not sure when I finally sat down and watched Robocop on my own, but I can say that several years ago I got the Blu Ray, which features the uncut version, and man I loved the hell out of it. It was brilliant in how it operated on two levels: as an ultra-gory action flick you could take straight and as an ultra-gory satire of an action flick. But then director Paul Verhoeven pulled the same trick a few years later in Total Recall. 

Once upon a time I knew a guy who had two minor roles in Robocop. Humorously, the film was shot in Dallas, despite being set in Detroit, and about twenty years ago I worked at a successful startup based in Carrollton, Texas (essentially a Dallas suburb), and there was a Hispanic guy in his 40s or so who worked there named Tomas who had done some extra work years before. He told me he’d been in Robocop, in two non-dialog bit parts: as a cop and as a gang member (he even re-enacted his scene for this part, to my amusement). Tomas didn’t seem like a guy who would make such stuff up…and, sure enough, when I watched my Blu Ray years ago, I spotted a younger Tomas as a cop.  I did not catch him as a gang member, though, so maybe his face is not on screen for this role or it was just a cut scene.  But I just rewatched the movie for the first time since I got the Blu Ray, and Tomas appears at the 52:46 mark, as the moustached cop who steps out of Robocop’s way in the precinct data room.  

Well anyway, so ends my personal connection with Robocop, as paltry a connection as could be. Now let’s talk about this novelization! Another one Robert Mann has kindly sent me, and once again I am very thankful for it. This is not a novelization I would’ve considered seeking out, but man I’m glad I read it, as author Ed Naha – who around this time was also writing Traveler – has done a great job of capturing the darkly comic vibe of the film. He’s also added a lot more humanity to Robocop than there is in the film. The only thing he does not convey is the gory ultra-violence of the film…but honestly an accomplishment like that would take someone like David Alexander in his Phoenix prime. 

The main thing Naha nails in this novelization is the satirical vibe of the film. I’d love to know whether this was accidental or by design. There is evidence here and there that Naha was at least familiar with who would be playing various roles: main villain Clarence Boddicker is described as having a “high forehead,” which would be an accurate description of future That ‘70s Show dad Kurtwood Smith, who played Boddicker – and I bet it would make for some serious head-fuckery to watch a couple episodes of That ‘70s Show right after Robocop. But anyway Naha really seems to understand that Robocop, at its core, is an over-the-top dark parody of action movies, and he clearly has a good time writing the book. 

First thing to note though is that Naha’s novelization is everything the Robocop rip-off series Steele should have been. It also seems evident that Cybernarc was inspired by Naha’s tie-in novel; some of the descriptions of how Robocop acts and thinks are very similar to those of Rod the robot in Cybernarc. We even get minor mentions that Robocop has a “combat mod” setting, same as Rod. So really Naha’s Robocop could be seen as an inspiration for those later series, and probably other similar ones that I haven’t yet read, like Horn. 

Another notable thing about the novelization is that it veers – if only slightly – from the finished film. The most notable difference is that Robocop, or “Robo” as Naha refers to him in the narrative, has a lot more personality in the novel, with more dialog and more emotional drive. There are also minor variances in some of the action scenes. Also the proto-meme that derived from the film, “I’d buy that for a dollar!,” is not present in this novelization. However, Naha does serve up a lot of pop culture spoofery, with a Benny Hill-esque show often mentioned, and most humorously there’s the TV show T.J. Lazer, a not-so-subtle spoof of T.J. Hooker, complete with a lead actor in “a badly-designed toupee.” Another random bit of piss-taking occurs late in the novel, when we’re informed by a TV broadcast that 97 year-old Sylvester Stallone has died, due to a failed brain transplant. We’re further informed that his last movie, Rambo 38: Old Blood, will be released posthumously. 

If we’re to take Stallone’s stated age literally, that would place Robocop around the year 2043. However the year is never outright stated in the novel. Even though the vibe is very much 1980s, what with the pop culture references and whatnot, we’re informed off-hand that there’s a moon colony and regular space flight. But otherwise this is a solely terrestial story, the entirety of it taking place in the hellish New Detroit. Otherwise this “future” is less tech-savy than our actual future, with people still watching regular televisions and of course no cell phones or internet mentioned. The cops in New Detroit do have dashboard GPS monitors on their “TurboCruisers,” which probably seemed pretty sci-fi in 1987. 

At 187 pages of small-ish print, Naha’s Robocop does a good job of capturing the vibe of the movie and adding a bit more emotional depth. One gets a better glimpse here of the plight of Robo himself, who of course starts life as a cop named Murphy. Naha I felt did a better job than the film of capturing the horror Murphy undergoes when he is killed in action, and then brought back to life by science, his memory erased. Naha has a recurring stylistic trick of “Good. Very good.” which runs through the narrative, conveying Robo’s gradual regaining of his memory. But as mentioned the one thing Naha does not convey is the nutjob violence of the film; while the novel is certainly violent, Naha does not dwell on the gore, usually going more for the emotions of the people shooting at each other than the sprays of arterial blood. 

There is prescience both here and in the movie that New Detroit has fallen into ruin, overcome by crime, and the cops are powerless to stop it. But rather than a “Defund the Police” movement, the cops aren’t around – and eventually go on strike – because they’re just outnumbered by the violent criminals. “Super predators,” as they were referred to at the time, even by left-leaning politicians who were unafraid of being called racist. Thus corporations have stepped in to take control of some police precincts, in particular megacorp OCP, which runs the New Detroit precinct. Cops wear OCP patches on their uniforms and are treated like just another product in the corporation’s portfolio. One wonders if this will become a reality someday, but again a dfference here, same as in Colony, is that these fictional future corporations are devoted solely to profit. 

So only in the “bloodthirsty corporate executive” aspect does Robocop seem dated. Hell, even the ‘80s-esque TV shows in this mid-21st Century setting are believable, given the endless spate of remakes, reboots, and recyclings Hollywood gives us these days. I mean hell, even Robocop itself has already been remade, though I never saw it – and don’t know anyone who did. And I don’t know what the point would be, as surely the Hollywood of today couldn’t give us something as skewed as Verhoeven’s original. But as for the future setting, Naha doesn’t beat us over the head with it, and in fact doesn’t go for much set-up or world-building. It’s the future, crime is rampant, and the cops are owned by a corporation, and that’s pretty much it. 

Also, cops are still seen as the good guys in this future; there’s absolutely none of the stigma of today, and further the cops aren’t hamstrung by politicians. If anything the impression Naha gives is that it’s that the criminals are just too populous and too heavily-equipped, and the cops aren’t a match for them. He presents New Detroit as a bombed-out hellhole, one that you’d have to be insane to be a cop in. But when we meet him Officer Murphy has just been assigned to the precinct, and Naha puts more focus on Murphy’s home life than the film did. To the extent that you really feel bad for Murphy and his loss. In fact, we learn that Murphy and his wife, Jan, are fighting on his first day at work – which as we know will be his last day at work. As Murphy, at least. 

The plot of Naha’s Robocop so follows the film that I’ll save you all the misery of my usual rundown. It only diverges in the little details, and, mainly, the fact that Robo has more personality here. But the elements of the film are all here, like Murphy being partnered with a tough female cop named Anne Lewis, though it’s the ‘80s now and Naha refers to her as “Lewis” in the narrative. In other words she isn’t “Anne,” as she would’ve been if the book had been written a decade or so earlier. But all this stuff is basically the same as the film, including the brutal murder of Murphy by Boddicker’s men – brutal, but not as brutal as the film itself, particularly the uncut version. But then, Murphy does get his hand shotgunned off in the book, too. 

Some of the action scenes are different, in particular an early one in which Robo stops a convenience store robbery. Robo also has occasional one-liners, like when a perp shoots at him and Robo responds, “Now it’s my turn!” Again, he’s more of a standard tough cop action hero than the robot of the film. Other minor but notable changes: Boddicker’s awesome line “Bitches leave” is instead here, “Okay, sluts. Take a hike.” Not nearly as impactful, I’d say. Also, there’s a different ending. Whereas the movie ends with Robo proudly announcing his name is “Murphy!,” the novel continues after this scene with an epilogue in which Robo picks up a stray dog, to be his new companion, and gets back in his TurboCruiser to kick ass. 

Naha’s writing in Robocop is strong and he moves the story along with good imagery. However he is a terrible POV-hopper. We’ll be in one character’s perspective, then a paragraph later we’re in someone else’s, and then someone else’s after that, and there’s nary a line break to warn us. As ever this makes for a bumpy read. Naha wrote for Creem, I believe, and his snarky rock attitude is in effect throughout; for example, we learn some recurring cop characters in the New Detroit precinct are named “Manson” “Ramirez,” and “Starkweather,” ie the last names of some of the more infamous serial killers. Wait, I just checked Google and these characters are in the film, too, so it wasn’t Naha’s doing. But I’m sure a guy who could come up with a spoof of T.J. Hooker would’ve appreciated that. 

Overall I really enjoyed Robocop, to the extent that I intend to watch the movie again sometime. I’m also inspired to check out Naha’s novelization of Robocop 2, which Robert also sent me. I’ve seen that movie exactly once: when it came out in the theater and I was 15 years old. I can’t recall if I liked it…I remember being annoyed with the punk kid in it. But at least I saw it in the theater, even though I was still underage; I recall my dad bought tickets for me and my friend. I also saw Predator 2 with the same kid a few months later, and that one I loved; in fact I’m sure I’m one of the very few who prefers Predator 2 to the first Predator. And I’m not ashamed to admit it.