Lo!

Charles Fort Lo! (1931)
I never really considered the possibility of this having been published as a paperback, and never expected to see a copy, or to ever be in the position of reading the thing. My knowledge of Fort is sketchy beyond that the term Fortean - referring to mysteries which seemingly defy science and rational understanding - derives from his name, because he seems to have been one of the first to attempt to quantify paranormal phenomena as a legitimate area of investigation. Despite having regularly read Fortean Times for at least a couple of years back there, I'd fostered an image of Fort as a late Victorian iconoclast taking a sort of proto-Dadaist delight in that which made no sense and which pissed off scientists. This, it turns out, is only part of the story.

For starters, I have my dates wrong, and Fort's Book of the Damned was published in 1919 so he's more recent than I had realised. Nevertheless, he writes like a late Victorian, and his understanding of the sciences seems mostly pre-Copernicus in so much as that he doesn't seem to be entirely convinced of the Earth moving around the sun. The case for the defence, at least on this score, holds that Fort was throwing stuff out there for the sake of argument without even necessarily believing it himself, just to keep us on our toes. This may well be true, but it doesn't really help anyone engaged in the act of trying to read the fucking thing.

Fort's testimony is both absorbing and infuriating, and probably absorbing because it's infuriating. He digresses, breaks off and switches track half way through a sentence as one might in spoken conversation, talks to himself, speaks in riddles, forms new words, and cloaks half of whatever he's trying to say in the most ludicrous - if admittedly vivid - allegories or similes, requiring a certain degree of translation on the part of the reader. His narrative voice has something of the carnival barker about it with touches of a Victorian William Shatner, and certain passages are accordingly both exhausting and impenetrable.

March 23, 24, 25—a watery sky sat on the Adirondack Mountains. It began to slide. It ripped its slants on a peak, and the tops of lamp posts disappeared in the streets of Troy and Albany. Literary event, at Paterson, N.J.—something that was called "a great cloudburst" grabbed a factory chimney, and on a ruled page of streets scrawled a messy message. With the guts of horses and other obscenities, it put in popularising touches. The list of dead, in Colombus, Ohio, would probably reach a thousand. Connecticut River rising rapidly. Delaware River, at Trenton, N.J., 14 feet above normal.

That which he writes about is intriguing - showers of fish or frogs, mysterious lights in the sky, strange noises in the night, missing persons, or persons such as Kasper Hauser who seemingly appear from nowhere; and Fort takes obvious and infectious delight in relating incidences of this sort of thing, noting common patterns, and refuting what explanations may have been given. He even attempts his own explanations, invoking supposedly spontaneous instances of teleportation as a sort of common cause, which works for the sake of argument but places the author on an increasingly shoddy footing as the book squirms towards its profoundly unsatisfying conclusion.

In his favour, Fort presents a sturdy argument against science as dogma, and takes communicable pleasure in doing so.

Our data have been bullied by two tyrannies. On one side, the spiritualists have arbitrarily taken over strange occurrences, as manifestations of "the departed". On the other side, conventional science has pronounced against everything that does not harmonise with its systematisation. The scientist goes investigating, about as, to match ribbons, a woman goes shopping. The spiritualist stuffs the maws of his emotions. One is too dainty, and the other is gross. Perhaps, between these two, we shall some day be considered models of well-bred behaviour.

This works fine until the reader notices what he's actually been saying with all those colourful metaphors. What, he asks, if the stars are not so far away as we have been told, but are actually more like heavenly volcanoes studding the inside of a vast sphere? It would explain a lot, he suggests, and certainly it would explain the phenomena he has described, but for the fact that it's obviously bollocks and here we've been sat all this time, labouring under the illusion of dealing with a man who knows what the fuck he's talking about, or even one who knows what is meant by the term evidence. Mysterious clouds of volcanic ash may prove such and such a point in the absence of actual terrestrial volcanic activity, but possibly not when your evidence of the absence of actual terrestrial volcanic activity is simply being unable to find any newspaper article referring to the same for that particular month. Likewise, the last few chapters of the book border on embarrassing, muttering and mumbling over how that Mr. Einstein probably made most of it up whilst affecting a display of laughter at the occasional errors of astronomers, yet apparently missing the point that if astronomers are even able to make errors calculating the movement of celestial objects, then maybe it's because those celestial objects are actually moving rather than being stationary upside down space volcanoes, you fucking tit.

It's entertaining up to a point, but I'm reminded that Lo! belongs to the era of the Nazis with their similarly nutty ideas regarding the possibilities of a hollow earth, world ice, and racial supremacy, in which context, Fort's baroque bullshit seems less charming. As Willy Ley wrote from his own experience in Pseudoscience in Naziland, as published in Astounding back in 1947:

When things get so tough that there seems to be no way out, the Russian embraces the vodka bottle, the Frenchman a woman and the American the Bible.

The German tends to resort to magic, to some nonsensical belief which he tries to validate by way of hysterics and physical force. Not every German, of course. Not even a majority, but it seems to me that the percentage of people so inclined is higher in Germany than in other countries. It was the willingness of a noticeable proportion of the Germans to rate rhetoric above research and intuition above knowledge, that brought to power a political party which was frankly and loudly anti-intellectual. The Nazis not only burned books they disliked, they also classified theoretical physicists with Jews and Marxists.

Small wonder the pseudoscientists experienced a heyday under such a regime — but it would be a mistake to believe that these pseudosciences which I am going to describe, originated with the Nazis. They existed, and to some extent even flourished, before Hitler. But then they were hemmed in by the authority of the scientists—after Hitler had become Führer it was almost the other way round.

I'm not trying to suggest, that pseudoscience is necessarily dangerous in itself, but it can be symptomatic of a certain strain of fuckwittery which has proven itself historically conducive to the rise of dangerous mad cunts; and Fort's crowing whilst stood on such thin ice was never a good look. Nor, I might argue, was it particularly helpful in shedding any light upon that which he purports to investigate, and which seems deserving of better than either sneering dismissal or Fort's own fevered patronage.

King of the Fourth Planet

Robert Moore Williams King of the Fourth Planet (1962)
Here's another one of those forgotten science-fiction authors who dominated book stands for the first half of the last century - a million novels to his name and yet remembered at best as typically adequate by The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. The description seems to square with a boggle-eyed cover promising the god-king, the man-wolf, and the I-machine, a cover I encountered only when I flipped over an Ace Double partially inhabited by the wonderful Katherine MacLean. Had it not been for her, this probably wouldn't have found its way into my collection, which would have been a shame.

The promised man-wolf is actually just some bloke with a bit of a shitty attitude rather than actual lupine characteristics, and the pop-eyed cover star turns out to be the hero, contrary to expectation; and contrary to everything else suggested by both the cover painting and The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, whilst this one may fall short of masterpiece status, it's a long way from being the work of a hack churning out one space opera after another for the sake of paying a bill.

King of the Fourth Planet has some of the functional hard-boiled cadence of its supposed type whilst reading like a more coherent van Vogt - all of the surrealism forced to stand in a straight line and act like a proper narrative. The story occurs on Mars amongst native Martians and deals with John Rolf, the main character, having created a machine which allows the user to read the minds of others. So far so Flash Gordon you might think, but as the narrative progresses it begins to feel increasingly allegorical, and allegorical in the sense of A Voyage to Arcturus and related novels of the Symbolist era rather than William Shatner noticing how the really ugly aliens are actually polite and fairly helpful. The setting is Suzusilmar, described as a Martian holy mountain comprising seven distinct levels. I don't know enough of Dante's Divine Comedy to say whether there are any intentional parallels with Mount Purgatorio, but I imagine Williams had something of the sort in mind given that each level is associated with the advance of technology, culture, and spiritual thought, with the peak of the mountain representing the pinnacle of each. Moving from one level to another is the King of the Fourth Planet, a Messianic figure whom we initially fail to recognise because he appears only as a blind beggar on the lower slopes of the mountain. The key to John Rolf's machine is that it allows one to see into the minds of others and to understand their true motives; so for the sake of the story it is regarded as an innovation which will put an end to all the shitty stuff - wars and what have you - and is thus much sought after. Those doing the seeking represent companies from Earth fearful that Rolf's I-machine will bring about the end of marketing, greed, consumerism, capitalism, and even materialism.

Of course, one might read all of this as no more than an episode of Star Trek wearing a kaftan, but the emphasis on spiritual journeys and the like, couched as they are in terms which pay very few concessions to either space opera conventions or alien biology, suggests that Williams' intention was more ambitious. Whether he succeeded or not is debatable, but this is a weird little book, very engaging, and anything but average.

I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream

Harlan Ellison I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream (1967)
For most of my life I've been only vaguely aware of Harlan Ellison as some bloke who penned an episode of Star Trek and edited an apparently amazing collection of short stories called Dangerous Visions. Beyond that I've had only the impression of an argumentative fucker who makes people angry; so not really a lot to go on, and not really enough to inspire a frenzied hunt for his novels or written material on my part; but then I now have a new Simak collection waiting to be read, specifically one including something called I Had No Head and My Eyes Were Floating Way Up in the Air which was written for an as yet unpublished volume of Dangerous Visions edited by Ellison and is accordingly a riff on his I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream; and I just happened across this collection so it seemed like I should probably buy it and read it before I get to the Simak.

...and woah!

He writes nothing like I anticipated. This is unlike anything I would have expected of someone who also turned in scripts for The Outer Limits and The Man from UNCLE. It's like being trapped inside William Shatner's acting. He writes in a sort of bebop middle ground between pulp and beatnik, something which would foreshadow Will Self if it made a bit more sense; and it isn't that it doesn't make sense so much as that the imagery is so dense and unrelenting that it's difficult to keep a handle on things. The ideas are often great, or at least suggestive of greatness whilst forever balanced precariously on the edge of a hallucinogenic precipice affording the occasional glimpse of details which may potentially leave a bit of an unpleasant taste. Scraping away the layers of Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes, for one example, we find a beautiful woman transformed into a Las Vegas slot machine, thus combining two of the four things which men like - the other two being golf and cars - and by beautiful I think Harlan probably means great ass and a decent pair of knockers, someone with whom any self-respecting red blooded male would really like to have it off etc. etc. It's a decent story, but I hope Harlan's analyst hadn't made any plans that weekend; plus whilst the assumption of an exclusively male readership is probably forgiveable given at least a few of these stories having been commissioned by wanking periodicals, the fact of the female characters tending to be of the kind who get raped and either deserve it or secretly enjoy it makes it a bit of an intermittently uncomfortable read if you're not something of a tosser.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers

Arnold Drake, Steve Gerber, Gene Colan & others
Guardians of the Galaxy: Tomorrow's Avengers (1977)
Neither talking raccoon nor pugilist tree anywhere to be seen, this collection being a reprint of the original version of the Guardians, as previously reprinted in the English Star Wars Weekly back when I was a boy of the age group for which these strips were written and drawn. I liked the film a lot, but for me the Guardians of the Galaxy will always be these guys - Charlie-27, Martinex, Vance Astro, and the others.

Naturally I sought this out during a fit of nostalgia not entirely unlike that which recently inspired me to shell out on collections of old Captain America and Warlock comics. Happily it too seems to have stood the test of time in so much as that whilst the strips are very clearly aimed at boys of about twelve and not much older, at least psychologically, they work well within such limitations and with no obvious pandering involved. In fact, given that this is essentially a really fat kid's comic book, I'm surprised at how many days it has taken me to read the thing. This is because Guardians of the Galaxy was first published when Marvel was at its most wordy, each panel surmounted by loquacious captionage describing the contents of said panel in a voice combining Williams Shatner and Shakespeare or thereabouts; but the writing is of such standard as to resist the quality of parody even thirty or more years later. It's not Tale of Two Cities by a long shot, and one should keep in mind that Marvel's understanding of science-fiction was essentially capes, superpowers, and men frowning and saying behold! against a Kirby inspired backdrop of planets and cosmic forces, but there's nevertheless sufficient scope for plenty of pleasantly weird ideas - not the full on acid trip of Jim Starlin's Warlock, but coming fairly close in places.

Furthermore, Arnold Drake and Gene Colan's Earth Shall Overcome!, as reprinted from a 1969 issue of Marvel Super-Heroes - the first appearance of the Guardians - probably ranks amongst the strangest comics Marvel has ever produced - van Vogt-style evolved supermen inhabiting a harshly lit expressionist world of angles and half-seen horrors. It seems significant that Arnold Drake is probably better remembered as the creator of the similarly freakish Doom Patrol. Despite the promising start, the Guardians, so it would seem, lay more or less fallow for almost another decade barring uninspiring appearances alongside the Thing in Marvel Two-in-One and later The Defenders - all gathered here - before really finding their feet with the material which was eventually reprinted in Star Wars Weekly; and for a kid's comic which still reads like a kid's comic - aside from it being difficult to process issues of The Defenders without being reminded of Daniel Clowes taking the piss out of that sort of thing - it has generally aged very well.

Spock Must Die!

James Blish Spock Must Die! (1970)
I'm pretty sure I had this book when I was a kid, one of those acquired through swapping stuff because it was Star Trek and I liked the cover, then swapped for something else because I never got around to reading it on account of there being no pictures inside. Years later, I was startled to realise that not only was James Blish an author of something other than television tie-in material, but was actually a science-fiction author of some standing, easily amongst the best of his generation.

I've never been a massive fan of Star Trek, but on the other hand neither have I ever had any particular dislike for any of its incarnations, and Deep Space Nine was pretty damn good, I thought - Babylon 5 with a sense of humour. I recall some theory knocking around regarding the supposed superiority of Doctor Who - seeing as we're talking television for the moment - presumably on the grounds of it having a British passport and being therefore intrinsically superior, what with Mighty Britain being the Earth's one true source of culture. Actually, I think the argument ran that Doctor Who is weird and quirky with our boy as an inherently anti-establishment figure, whilst the accursed Star Trek is about a spaceship full of Republican squares going around telling aliens what to do. It's a pretty stupid argument really, one that has little bearing on any of the actual stories involved, and you might just as well point out that Star Trek was often the weirder of the two, took more narrative risks, bothered to treat its audience as adults, and wasn't racially comparable to a 1979 Skrewdriver gig in Burnley.

Anyway, having been impressed by James Blish on several occasions, I tracked this down once again through simple curiosity. I had high hopes and have actually been surprised by how good it is. I'm not necessarily saying the earth moved, but Spock Must Die! is simply top quality science-fiction utilising established characters rather than the hackwork which tends to be unfortunately synonymous with this sort of thing. Blish doesn't hold back, giving the hard-science spigot the full turn with a liberal deluge of quarks, gravity waves, and the quantum mechanics of a transporter accident to Asimov levels of detail. Even more impressive is that whilst all this blinding science is a world away from what we saw on the magic telly box, there's nothing here that wouldn't have sounded absolutely natural spoken by William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy or James Doohan.

Good, inspired stuff.