War Of The Gurus (The Savage Report #2)

War Of The Gurus, by Howard Rheingold
No month stated, 1974  Freeway Press

The second and final installment of The Savage Report is just as breathless and hyperbolic as the first, but this time Howard Rheingold unfortunately tells more than he shows, with the cumulative effect of rendering the reader insensate from the constant barrage of “futurespeak” words, phrases, and worldbuilding.

Picking up four months after the first volume, War Of The Gurus feels like it takes place years later – Rheingold as usual is very prescient in how quickly events will move in the future. Once again, his 1994 comes off like a hyper-accelerated 1974, and one thing the series has going for it is that it shows what future might have ensued if the hippies of the ‘70s had remained tuned in and had not become soulless capitalist yuppies in the ‘80s.

Anyway, Jack Anderson, main protagonist of the previous book, has been living in seclusion on an island bought for him by his boss, media sensation Eve Savage. Anderson quit after the events of the preceding volume, and you know you’re in trouble when within the first few pages the hero is going on about how much he hates being a spy and getting in danger and etc. But soon enough a completely-nude (well, other than a pair of boots) Smoky Kennedy parachutes onto Jack’s island and, after a full night of undescribed adult shenanigans, tells him she needs his help.

Smoky barely had much narrative space in the previous volume, but in this one she’s the star of the show, with Jack relegated to a supporting role and Eve Savage hardly in the novel at all. This makes me suspect that Eve would’ve starred in the third volume, had there been one. Smoky comes off like a female version of Jack, really, a well-seasoned spy who kicks all kinds of ass. This installment plays up more on her smarts, particularly with her gift for computer programming.

The plot, such as it is, is very convoluted this time out. First we have TRIGGER, which is like a ‘70s concept of the internet, a global computer interface that will allow people to vote for political candidates and also send in their opinions on whatever matters. This system is about to be incorporated, to much debate, especially given the recent allegations that TRIGGER might work both ways – ie, users might be unwittingly brainwashed by whatever the person on the other end is sending them.

Then there’s the Seven Elders who worship the Ha-Marani, “boy god” figurehead of a global cult of inward voyagers; they’ve been clashing with the New World Organ, a consortium of computer geeks who claim they are not a religion but that computers can be used to gain salvation, or something. Eve Savage, in her worldwide-watched Savage Report, lights the fuse between these two competing cults, with an actual religious war threatening to break out.

Smoky has apparently gotten herself in deep somehow, and has also quit working for Eve so as to go fully undercover, or something. Honestly my friends, this book is written in such a dizzying rush of “let me describe this and that in hyper-English” that the reader quickly becomes lost. This was the last volume, but the back cover still hypes The Savage Report as a “monthly” series; I’m betting it ended because Rheingold couldn’t keep it up. Seriously, there’s no way an author could write like this on a monthly basis:

Seventeen brands of demonic fury besieged Savage Communications while Eve sat and stared at the impending scenario of carnage; incoming calls lit-up her comboard while she merged with the billionfold audience watching Marshall Law grab the spotlight and lift his bloody truncheon to the skull of the world. The naked face of political sadism had a sweet paralyzing thanatophilic attraction mingled with bestial hatred and stinking fear. It was hard to tear her attention from that image, but Eve Savage was distracted by one small flashing blue light on that christmas-tree comboard. The signal drew her from Marshall Law and the Anaheim horror show; right now, the only person in the wide wobbling world that Eve wanted to talk with was an enigmatic and ominously silent young woman named Kennedy.

Imagine reading something like that on every page, for 200+ pages. What’s most unfortunate is that the story itself is lost in the barrage of newfangled words and “check this out!” navel-gazing. If you thought Grant Morrison was annoying, you should read Howard Rheingold’s work in The Savage Report. Like Morrison, he has a tendency to constantly remind the reader how cool and trendsetting he is, not to mention how in touch he is with the changing forces of the future.

Well anyway, Smoky successfully talks Jack into going undercover with her – he poses as someone into the New World Organ and she goes undercover as a “neophyte priestess” (aka “groupie priestess”) with the followers of Ha-Marani. But shortly thereafter Smoky is abducted by the Entropid Order, who Illuminatus! style go around in a massive submarine, subverting authority. Here on the opulent ship she gets real friendly real quick with Maxwell Damion, one of the captains of the sub, Worldbringer.

After a psychedelic brainwash session with ComCent, the computer software that trains other computer software and is apparently behind the Entropids, Smoky deduces that E. Luther Worldbringer, their leader, is in fact a hologram and upon defeating the computer she is hailed as the new leader of the Entropids. Meanwhile Jack Anderson totally blows his cover when he discovers Smoky is missing, just outright taking off from a woman, Shiva von Toten, who is supposed to be his “in” with the NWO.

Gradually, amid more breathless futurespeak and occasional cutovers to Eve Savage, sometimes meeting with her “tripletrank moodchanger”-inhaling boss, tycoon Lance Wilmott, the plot unfolds and the “surprise” villain is revealed – none other than Dok Tek, returning from the previous volume. That Tek is the villain is spoiled by the back cover, which clearly states he has returned to cause more misfortune, even though he doesn’t show up until nearly the end of the novel itself, and his reveal is intended as a surprise.

Another thing missing this volume is the heated relationship between Jack and Eve Savage, not to mention the liberal approach to drugs of the first volume. Jack does pop some “neurostims” in the final pages, though, amping him up to take on gigantic clones of Dok Tek. This finale by the way takes place in the high-tech underworld beneath New Jersey; we’re informed that the state itself is now a massive computer center. (Also Denver has been destroyed by some plague, and now people there live in the Logan's Run style “Denver Dome.”)

But it all just becomes mired in so much technobabble and New Age mumbo-jumbo. Even the sporadic action that livened up the previous book is gone. As mentioned though, Rheingold certainly knew at least one direction the future was pointing; for example, he adds “cyber” to a bunch of words, though unfortunately none of them are “punk.” But he clearly foresees how central computers and entertainment are going to be to the world of the future.

War Of The Gurus is ultimately wearying, not to mention confusing, but one has to at least appreciate the author’s enthusiasm. It clearly seems to be a finale for the series itself, despite the back cover’s promise of a monthly series, with Jack and Smoky faking their deaths – even Eve believes they’re really dead – and taking off together for a life out of the limelight. Given that no future volumes were ever published, one must assume that is where they remained.

The Savage Report: 1994 (aka The Savage Report #1)

The Savage Report: 1994, by Howard Rheingold
No month stated, 1974  Freeway Press

I’ve been meaning to read this one for a while – I love retro sci-fi, particularly of the psychedelic variety, and Howard Rheingold’s Savage Report: 1994 seemed to offer everything I could want when I first spotted it 6-7 years ago in the sci-fi section of a Dallas Half Price Bookstore. Rheingold’s name might be familiar to those into dream research and/or New Age-y nonfiction pieces; in the early ‘90s, for example, he co-wrote Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming (the book on lucid dreaming, for all those who might be interested in experimenting with it).

The Savage Report: 1994 is the first volume of what is promised on the back cover as a monthly series by Rheingold, published by Freeway Press. In reality though, the “series” lasted all of two volumes. No idea if this was due to low sales, problems with the publisher, or simply because Rheingold couldn’t keep up with the accelerated publishing schedule. And it’s not like there’s much info on the book out there; Rheingold, who has his own website, leaves the Savage Report books strangely unmentioned in his bibliography. But given the novel’s predilection for New Age mindsets and psychedelia, there’s no question it’s the same man’s work.

It also seems like this series was an obvious attempt to meld men’s adventure with sci-fi. The only problem is, Rheingold’s leanings toward inner exploration, yoga, and the like don’t really jibe well with gung-ho men’s adventure action, to the effect that the few genuine action scenes here are rendered a bit…clunky. But then, the entire book is kind of clunky, with a goofy far-flung future world of 1994 populated moreso by caricatures than actual characters. What makes the clunkiness odd is Rheingold’s gift for wordspinning; he doles out a brace of ten-dollar words, many of them concantenations of his own devising, which only serves to heighten the psychedelic/Future Shock feeling of the book.

Anyway. The series details the adventures of the three-person “Savage Squad,” movers and shakers in the very-different United States of Rheingold’s 1994. Rheingold pulls a neat trick here in that he shows more than tells for the duration of the novel; with intimations and references from the many characters, you only get a glimpse of what happened to make this 1994 as it is. Only toward the end, during a televised debate (which is the friggin’ climax, by the way), does Rheingold get into a bit more depth – namely, after the hippies ushered in a new mindset in the ‘60s, the public went into an eco-awareness sort of thing in the ‘70s, to such a degree that capitalism itself was abolished in the ‘80s.

Now, the United States, which we’re told is no longer a world power nor is interested in being one, is a nation of inward-journeying post-hippies, more interested in self-potentializing than in making big bucks or messing in world affairs. Yet for all that, somehow this doesn’t stop them from creating ultra-advanced technology, well beyond what we even have today. But then, science fiction is always more about the time it’s written than the time it takes place, and The Savage Report: 1994 comes off more like a hyper-accelerated 1974. Despite the advanced technology, the changed national mindset, it all still comes off like a mid-‘70s book, with an appropriately-macho hero and a refreshingly-liberal attitude toward sex and drugs.

Eve Savage is the gorgeous blonde host of “The Savage Report,” what we’re told is the most popular “holo-program” in the entire world. Eve I guess is like a female version of Norman Spinrad’s Jack Barron; with a mere word she can make or break entire organizations. But even with such power and influence she only has a small, two-person team at her disposal: Jack Anderson, the aforementioned macho hero who, wouldn’t you know it, used to work for some shadowy intelligence agency as a covert operative, and Smoky Kennedy, also-gorgeous combat master and tech wiz, who has a casual sex thing going with Jack…who himself has a casual sex thing going with Eve. (Unfortunately, Eve and Smoky don’t have a casual sex thing going.)

So the way this all works is, Eve hosts her globally-popular show while Jack and Smoky go out in the field and perform research and investigations, even setting up shots in dangerous locations for location footage and the like. It’s just a goofy concept, a reporting team that’s also a group of commandos, especially with Jack packing a “radar-jamming” .357 Magnum and Smoky backing him up with a host of weaponry. (The weapons throughout are positively sci-fi goofy, like Smoky’s “lase-knives.”) The storyline of this first novel has the team uncovering a plot among the military elite – a plot to put the US back into the world arena as a verifiable military presence.

Jack Anderson is really the star of the piece, though Rheingold often trades off to scenes from Eve’s point of view. (Smoky gets relatively little screentime.) Jack is actually the impetus for the Savage Squad’s latest piece; while enjoying a drink at a “shuttle port” bar (a drink served up by a “lesbian bartender,” we’re told…and Rheingold just leaves it at that), Jack meets up with a former covert ops pal who, mere seconds after saying “so long,” is killed in a shuttle-bombing. The guy left behind clues, and pretty soon Eve’s team has stumbled onto an elaborate plot, one that has Jack and Smoky fighting off a variety of assassins, infiltrating a secret base in the jungles of Mexico, and even being psychically tortured by the infamous Dr. Tek, aka the villain of the piece, a cyborg evil genius who is behind the governmental conspiracy.

Back in the US, Eve’s narrative concerns her trying to figure out who is behind this military plot, the goal of which appears to be the ousting of the president and the restoration of America’s military roots. This culminates as mentioned in a live debate on Eve’s show, with Eve up against one of the generals behind the plot; Rheingold makes the general yet another caricature, spouting out all sorts of right-wing blowhardy, ranting against the hippie-fied mindset of the world; of course, it all comes down to Vietnam, which, according to the general and his cronies, is when America truly lost itself, because it left the war unfinished. Ironically, the stuff the general says throughout this scene seemed to me more “realistic” insofar as what an American of today would say, if debating with a Brave New World-type of character like Eve Savage, whose reality is impossible…it’s hard to imagine this America of Rheingold’s ever happening, especially in just twenty short years from publication.

So if Rheingold’s future world comes off as a bit too rushed, so does the novel itself. The book is a little breathless, which adds to the clunkiness. Well, breathless so far as the scenes with Jack Anderson go. The scenes with Eve come off a bit as wheel-spinning, with Rheingold using her parts to sort of recap what has happened thus far. In fact there’s quite a bit of repetition in the narrative, not to mention a ton of grammatical and spelling errors – which, again, just adds to that breathless pace, I guess. But as mentioned, it is admirable how Rheingold shows his weird future world in effect, instead of spending pages and pages telling us about it.

Another admirable thing about The Savage Report: 1994 is the focus on self-potentializing, which itself was a mainstay of ‘70s sci-fi. Jack and his colleagues spend a goodly portion of the narrative boosting their reaction times and whatnot via popping pills; “stims,” as Rheingold calls them – neurostims to help them think more clearly, a muscle stim that Smoky takes that makes her run so fast that she plows through a rock wall, and etc. Heavy focus is also placed on meditation and yoga, but then this comes off a bit goofy when a captured Jack assumes a yoga position when faced with his captors, in an effort to protect his thoughts from the expected mental probing. It’s a bit hard to imagine say James Bond settling into a lotus position when confronted by Blofeld.

Again though, this is just another example of how the two thrusts of the novel don’t work together, the action stuff and the New Age/better tomorrow stuff. Another problem with the book is the characters. In short, none of them are likable. Jack is the typical men’s adventure protagonist, so nothing surprising there. But Eve comes off as shallow and manipulative, not to mention arrogant. We’re constantly told how popular and respected she is, but she does nothing really to make us understand why she’s so esteemed. And Smoky doesn’t do much other than save Jack, have sex with him (usually right after saving him), or trade banter with Eve – the two have a bit of hostility toward one another, and Rheingold intimates this is because they both like Jack.

In addition to the stim-popping, yoga-practicing, and politicking, Rheingold also adds a little sex and violence. There are just a few action scenes, the most memorable being where Jack and Smoky defend themselves against black-garbed assassins, killing the lot of them…and then having sex right there amid the carnage. Rheingold combines sex and violence again later in the tale, when Smoky frees Jack from a cell deep within a cave; Smoky informs Jack that the muscle-boosting stim she used to run through the rock wall has some rather unexpected side-effects. Rheingold gets a bit purple in the sex scenes, which makes it all the more enjoyable.

Because in the end, that’s the one word to describe this goofy book: “enjoyable.” I mean, you could bash Rheingold for concocting such an impossible 1994, mock him in retrospect. But I respect it when an author just gets out there, and in its own way The Savage Report: 1994 is like a more action-focused, pulpy take on Shea and Wilson’s Illuminatus! trilogy. Not as good, but similar, even with a bit of an occult/metaphysical streak. (No fnords, though. At least, none that I could see…)

So yeah, it’s rough and it’s wild, and at around 220 or so pages it’s a bit too long for its own good. And yet, it’s also too bad that the next volume, The War of the Gurus, was the last one. But I’ve got it, and I look forward to reading it for another blast of retro-futuristic, stim-popping sci-fi.