DOME by Lawrence Huff

Mary Wolford, Ph.D., assistant to Professor Nichols, explained candidly and coolly to the mayor her understanding of the Slayer equations.

"Slayer's mathematics are rigorous. Absolutely foolproof. We've already established that on the computer. What we don't know and are trying to establish by this test run is how well his equations fit the physical conditions and characteristics of the Sodium Cooled Type Eight. If they fit we're in serious trouble.

This is author Lawrence Huff's only credited novel, and I'm not sure if he's a one-off writer or a pseudonym lost in the shuffle. A certain roughness around the edges points to a one shot author - Huff certainly lays it on thick with hero Dr. George Slayer's predictions of doom and gloom, and everyone's dialogue has a certain expository cant that reminds us over and over again that this is a DISASTER novel, all caps. Huff has some fun with it, anyways, and isn't afraid to take things to the limit ... eventually. 

In the meantime, we have to be satisfied with building premonitions of looming disaster: a missing plant worker, missing children on the causeway, a Howard Johnson's blown half sky high by a steam explosion, bugs in the system and false alarms out the wazoo. Things escalate quickly around the halfway point though, and soon enough we're all gonna be nuclear experts one way or another, the most unfortunate through personal experience ...

I said Huff has some fun with things - his hero is named Slayer, after all! He handles the coverup narrative with some appreciated subtlety, however, with General Power's minions scrambling to tell themselves it's all for the greater good even as we learn bit by bloody bit all the new and exciting ways a nuclear plant can lash out in destruction, long before we ever get to the dreaded supercritical tipping point. Who would have dreamed that a jetliner would be in danger 4,000 feet above the dome? Huff also, thankfully, gets everyone on board with the threat quickly enough once it's undeniable - there's not too much slogging through the Sturm und Drang of career worries and boardroom sniping that drag down so many mid-tier disaster stories.

At times, however, the scale is shabby and small, like a community theatre play with Huff's characters tripping over themselves on a cramped stage. At other times, Huff is successful at drawing the global stakes and invoking the awesome forces barely contained by General Power's Type 8 reactor. His character work can be clunky but his humanistic lens softens a lot of the rough craft. 

Too, Dome is a relic of a certain time, the era of The China Syndrome and Three Mile Island, when nuclear power was a visceral, immediate threat. Nowadays, in the thick of the plague years of police state terrorism, genocide, and climate apocalypse, what's an old fashioned meltdown? It's almost quaint ... until we get to the very end and realize how high the stakes truly have been. Slayer's been playing for keeps while the rest of us were rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic, as it were.

As stated, Huff ties things up well enough by the climax, with some exciting derring do and dutiful philosophizing. In the end, his nuclear powered downer earns a 2/4 rating. As far as disasters go, this is an also-ran with some grody highlights ... but not grody enough!

One final note: it's funny that the moody cover art portrays a more recognizable cooling tower front and center, with the titular containment dome hidden in the back right of the image.

Pocket Books, 1979

FIREWIND by Hank Searls

He'd spent too long sniffing like a bloodhound in the toyon bush, had isolated himself on the landward side by a ring of fire around the city. He was sure that the wild, howling gusts would prevent helicopter rescue, even if he called for one.

He'd violated the rule of firemen and burglars: never close a door behind you.

He had a sinking sensation in his belly. It was not fear of the encircling fire. He knew back-country topography, roads, and fire trails crisscrossing the Santa Ynez and San Rafael mountains as well as any man alive, and had lived all his life in Santa Ana winds. It was from fear of the firebug trapped somewhere with him, in the brush-covered hills to the north.

Fear of the firebug - he's on everyone's minds, from Nisei fire spotter Hash Ono lost in the toyon, to Chicano cop Shawn Ortega torn between two lovers, to every firefighter white, black, and brown from up and down the state brought in to battle the encroaching blaze. He may walk among the firefighters with stolen valor, like a criminal obsessed with the police, laughing and boasting in their favored watering holes, picking up chicks with tales stolen from another life ... or he may actually be two or three or more perpetrators. Ortega's got a profile on him, but it may be worth less than the paper it's printed on. Everyone's sure that he's a he, at least.

And if they don't find him fast, the 70,000+ souls in Santa Barbara are doomed.

Son, you're playing with fire 

The kid will live and learn

As he watches his bridges burn

To the point of no return

Author Hank Searls delivers an overstuffed would-be epic disaster story that, sadly, gets bogged down in its own unfolding minutiae. Race hate, domestic strife, office politicking, and the requisite crash course on wildfire fighting all compete for oxygen, along with some unconvincing psych work on the firebug - would you believe he's got the voice of an old shrink in his head that he keeps up a dialogue with, complete with dated counterculture and psych jargon about society and the man, maaaaan?

Author Hank Searls (1922-2017)

If I, a humble blogger, were to try to fix up this novel, I'd trim it down by about 100 pages, probably by axing some minor character arcs (but NOT Hash Ono's, as he's aces), and either make the firebug more of a cipher, or more of a grounded personality. Either way, I'd ditch the Shrink, as these sections are the least convincing of Searls' otherwise very well written story, to the point where the otherwise exciting climax is slightly deflated by some cheesy dialogue from the firebug.

The detective work chasing after the firebug also drags on, with the cops and firefighters one step behind him maybe one too many times. As it is, we're busy enough with the domestic drama: married Ortega is mixed up with a white woman up on the hill, who's mixed up with Ortega's best white friend, whose ranch is right in the path of the wildfire. There's almost not enough room for the fire itself!

Searls cheekily references his own Jaws 2 near the end, which is a rookie move for such a veteran writer: never remind the audience of another, better book they could be reading. His Jaws 2 novelization is rightfully held as an excellent work of adaption, I would say better than Benchley's original even. That Searls could construct such a killer novel out of such a lamented sequel makes it all the more disappointing that he whiffs it with Firewind.

Here come those Santa Ana winds again ... Searls is (mostly) more than capable, but his Firewind smolders for too long, earning a truly disappointing 2/4 rating.

Berkley Books, 1982 (original pub. 1981)

MYSTERIES OF OUR WORLD by Peter Briggs

Not a mystery mongering text, but a solid pop-sci volume covering the cutting edge in earth science c.1969. Author Peter Briggs lays out the debates and scientific developments leading to our new knowledge of the world around us, from the ocean depths to the mountain tops, atmospheric heights, and beyond! There's a healthy dose of natural disasters, with volcanos and earthquakes making for engaging reading. Oceanic investigation is another exciting subject, with plenty of ships dredging and scanning and netting all around the seven seas - the Glomar Challenger is here, a few years before the Explorer would launch its now infamous secret mission. 

Reading on through Briggs' explorations, dense but smoothly flowing, it makes me think. We only just saw the announcement of the phasing out of "pocket" paperbacks, and here's a relic of that soon-to-be-bygone age: a portable, dependable, entertaining science primer, readable by anyone, anytime, anywhere, packed with references and sources - put out by a relatively sleazy/lowbrow publisher, even. Nowadays google is just as likely to give you a completely hallucinated "AI summary" for your search terms as a straightforward URL ... maybe I'm just being cranky, I don't know! Google also doesn't offer as many cigarette ads as vintage paperbacks:

Briggs appears to have been a prolific nonfiction writer - here's a spread of titles including Water, The Vital Essence, which Briggs references in this current text, and a title on the Glomar Challenger.

"And if California falls into the ocean/
Like the mystics and statistics say it will"

 

True to their rough and tumble image, Belmont Tower included a two page spread of mafia books as part of their nonfiction advertising. "You liked reading about volcanos, Billy? Well how about Lucky Luciano?"

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

Belmont Tower Books, 1969

SHAWN ROBBINS - THE AMAZING WOMAN WHO PREDICTS DISASTER by Ian Anderson

At last! The origin story as to why Shawn Robbins was the doom and gloom leader of ESP prognostication, especially where air travel was concerned! As noted before, part of it involves dream premonitions and a malfunction on a flight to Greenland that, Robbins believes, could have been fatal.

Here's how the article should look in the original magazine spread:

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

Courtesy Tim Beckley's Front Page Disasters magazine, Vol. 1 - Issue 1, October 1977.

BOMB SQUAD by Mark Andrews

Goldman, obviously no longer the star of the show, just smiled at Jake and walked away. As he crossed the studio he heard a muffled gunshot in an adjoining room. And he knew that Dr. Daniel Rubenstein had been taken care of - permanently.

It was a pity, in a way. In his day, Rubenstein had been a genius, probably the world's top authority on nuclear weapons.

But nuclear experts were a dime a dozen now. These days, practically anyone could make a bomb.

It started with letter bombs: some were duds, and some were disarmed in time. Some killed and maimed. Then the church in Harlem blew sky high from a basement packed with high explosives. Then a group calling themselves the American People's Liberation Army made their demands known. And now, the working men of the NYPD's Bomb Squad, pushed to their limits by the panic gripping the city, have 24 hours to find and disarm the last bomb.

The Hell Bomb.

Author Mark Andrews mixes the best classic disaster genre tradition of specialized workplace action - the Bomb Squad! - with some classic '70s domestic strife and a heartless, unflinching perspective of the lives and limbs shattered when time runs out.

Bomb Squaddie Tom Gilbert thought things were going pretty great with his mistress Mary Jo, until she opened up a letter bomb while at her secretary job for a big Madison Avenue ad agency. Now Mary Jo is atomized, and Gilbert's in danger of cracking up - his wife almost killed their newborn baby in a benzo'd out haze, to boot! But the bombs keep coming, and then the letters too, and the Bomb Squad realize that this isn't your average crank mad bomber, no way. The APLA have got big plans for NYC, and America afterwards, and it might have something to do with that mysterious Danny Lee - Is he a student? A man about town? - who Mary Jo was catting around with while Gilbert dreamed of remarried bliss.

Danny has some friends from China. And from Congress. And some friends who know how to build a basement nuke ...

At times things get a little too loose, and Andrews jukes us around a little too much dropping threads and switching gears. Bomb Squad really has only the barest skeleton of a story per se, and every time we think we might be settling in to some traditional plotting ... well, we ain't! The mystery of the bombers' identities is resolved pretty damn quickly, for us readers anyways, and characters mostly walk into fait accompli like clockwork automatons winding down to detonation. But the dark, crackling energy of Andrews' writing holds it together.

Andrews (if that is his real name) also penned two horror novels for Leisure Books the same year of 1977:

The two fisted Paperback Warrior blog reviewed Bomb Squad a few years back, and let's just say our opinions differ:

I have a suspicion that Andrews wrote this in a particularly bad part of his life – like a child dying or a downward spiral into financial ruin. That is my hope. If not, then this guy has a hard-on for destroying people and property and channeled his maniacal depression through some sort of how-to guide masquerading as a men's action-adventure novel. Make no mistake, Bomb Squad is the nuttiest thing I've ever read. And extremely dangerous. Consider yourself warned.

I'll agree on one point though: Bomb Squad is nuttier than all hell, and reads as coming from a very dark place indeed from Andrews! This being Leisure Books, typos abound, and we don't even get any juicy back page ads.

Mark Andrews' wild and wooly writing carries Bomb Squad to a 3/4 rating. No foolin', this stuff'll kill ya!

Leisure Books, 1977