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defrogWell, fast enough for jazz. Whatever that means.
Anyway …
Black Amazon of Mars by Leigh Brackett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Continuing my dive into the works of Leigh Brackett, this pulp novella from 1951 is her third story featuring Eric John Stark, the Tarzan/John Carter hybrid who makes a living on Mars as a mercenary. This time, the story opens with Stark accompanying a dying native Martian named Camar to his home in Kushat, which is up around Mars’ polar ice cap. Camar wants to die in his homeland – which is awkward because the reason he left in the first place was that he stole a sacred talisman designed to protect Kushat from evil – namely, the evil beyond the Gates Of Death that Kushat is supposed to protect the rest of Mars from.
According to legend, a million years ago, Ban Cruach created the talisman – and embedded his own memories into it – so that people would not forget the evil lurking beyond the Gates of Death, and how to defeat it should it ever come back. Stark reluctantly promises Camar he will return the talisman to Kushat, and is promptly captured by barbarian soldiers of Lord Ciaran, who knows the talisman has been stolen and plans to take control of the unprotected Kushat – or better yet, recover the talisman to make the task easier. Suspecting Stark knows where it is, Ciaran decides to torture the information out of him. Big mistake!
And so on and so on. As before, it’s fairly standard pulp stuff that’s more fantasy than science, and yet Brackett writes it well. And while she sticks to the usual he-man tropes expected for the genre at the time, she also quietly subverts it with stronger-than-usual female characters that you generally don’t find in the works of her Golden Age contemporaries, let alone writers like E.R. Burroughs.
Michaelmas by Algis Budrys
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve tried reading Algis Budrys once before with Rogue Moon, regarded as a classic of the SF genre. I was so unimpressed I actually quit about halfway through. Which I mention because when I came across this 1977 novel in a second-hand bookstore a couple of years ago, I’d forgotten this was the same guy who wrote Rogue Moon – and I didn’t remember that until after I’d already bought it. So it goes. Anyway, the premise is interesting: in the year 2000, Laurent Michaelmas is a world-famous TV journalist with his own secret sentient AI assistant, Domino, that has access to every computer network on Earth. Together, they secretly run the world by spinning big news events to keep conflict to a minimum, particularly between the US and the USSR, who are now cooperating to explore the solar system under the United Nations Astronautics Commission (UNAC).
However, all of that is put in jeopardy after Reuters reports that Walter Norwood – the US astronaut in charge of a planned UNAC mission to Jupiter who was killed in an accidental shuttle explosion before the novel starts – has turned up alive in a sanatorium run by the famously brilliant Dr Limberg, who claims to have healed him. Michaelmas and Domino don’t believe it’s the real Norwood, but if it’s not, then who is he, where did he come from and how? With a Russian astronaut slotted to take Norwood’s place, Michaelmas must find out fast before Norwood’s reappearance wrecks the UNAC alliance.
It sounds like a straightforward techno-thriller, but it’s not. The book relies heavily on expositional dialogue between Michaelmas and Domino, interspersed with inner monologues and ruminations about the power of news and how it is presented to us – and yet Budrys manages to be so subtle about what’s actually happening that you really have to pay attention (or re-read earlier chapters) to keep up with what’s going on, which slows things down considerably. That said, the pace picks up about halfway through, and while Budrys doesn’t exactly stick the landing, the eventual explanation is mind-bending enough that I’ll give him credit for swinging for the fences. I don’t think I’ll be reading Budrys again (except by accident, maybe), but this was better than I expected, and at least I finished it, so there’s that.
The Canceled Czech by Lawrence Block
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Continuing my re-read of Lawrence Block’s Evan Tanner pseudo-spy series, this is the second instalment that sees Tanner – permanent insomniac and joiner of every lost cause on earth – accepting his first official assignment for the super-secret govt agency that mistakenly deduced in the first book that he is one of their agents. His mission, should he choose to accept it (which of course he eventually does), is to spring a Nazi out of prison in Prague.
Why would anyone want to do such a thing? It turns out the Nazi in question – Janos Kotacek – is a Slovak who was high-up in the Nazi regime and hiding in Portugal running an underground neo-Nazi network until he was captured and brought back to Prague to be tried and executed. The Agency believes Kotacek has a hidden cache of records detailing his neo-Nazi activities and contacts, which makes him more useful alive than dead – at least until the records archive is found. Tanner is assigned to find those records by breaking Kotacek out of prison and back to Portugal – all by himself.
This time around, I notice that the plot relies more on coincidence than the first one, although it doesn’t push the limits of believability (mostly). Possibly more problematic is the fact that Tanner has to hobnob with Nazis by pretending he is one, and sometimes is a little too good at it. Block makes clear Tanner is no Nazi, and at some point Tanner does start to realise he’s getting a little too in character for the mission, and yes, it was different in the 60s, but by 2025 standards it’s … awkward, to say the least. The character of Greta – a Nazi nymphomaniac with a circumcision fetish who helps Tanner – hasn’t aged so well either. It’s still a good Bond sendup and all, and I like it, but fair warning: some modern readers may cringe a little at the Nazi stuff (though they may find the ending satisfying, if they make it that far).
View all my reviews
Nazi rock,
This is dF
Anyway …
Black Amazon of Mars by Leigh BrackettMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Continuing my dive into the works of Leigh Brackett, this pulp novella from 1951 is her third story featuring Eric John Stark, the Tarzan/John Carter hybrid who makes a living on Mars as a mercenary. This time, the story opens with Stark accompanying a dying native Martian named Camar to his home in Kushat, which is up around Mars’ polar ice cap. Camar wants to die in his homeland – which is awkward because the reason he left in the first place was that he stole a sacred talisman designed to protect Kushat from evil – namely, the evil beyond the Gates Of Death that Kushat is supposed to protect the rest of Mars from.
According to legend, a million years ago, Ban Cruach created the talisman – and embedded his own memories into it – so that people would not forget the evil lurking beyond the Gates of Death, and how to defeat it should it ever come back. Stark reluctantly promises Camar he will return the talisman to Kushat, and is promptly captured by barbarian soldiers of Lord Ciaran, who knows the talisman has been stolen and plans to take control of the unprotected Kushat – or better yet, recover the talisman to make the task easier. Suspecting Stark knows where it is, Ciaran decides to torture the information out of him. Big mistake!
And so on and so on. As before, it’s fairly standard pulp stuff that’s more fantasy than science, and yet Brackett writes it well. And while she sticks to the usual he-man tropes expected for the genre at the time, she also quietly subverts it with stronger-than-usual female characters that you generally don’t find in the works of her Golden Age contemporaries, let alone writers like E.R. Burroughs.
Michaelmas by Algis BudrysMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I’ve tried reading Algis Budrys once before with Rogue Moon, regarded as a classic of the SF genre. I was so unimpressed I actually quit about halfway through. Which I mention because when I came across this 1977 novel in a second-hand bookstore a couple of years ago, I’d forgotten this was the same guy who wrote Rogue Moon – and I didn’t remember that until after I’d already bought it. So it goes. Anyway, the premise is interesting: in the year 2000, Laurent Michaelmas is a world-famous TV journalist with his own secret sentient AI assistant, Domino, that has access to every computer network on Earth. Together, they secretly run the world by spinning big news events to keep conflict to a minimum, particularly between the US and the USSR, who are now cooperating to explore the solar system under the United Nations Astronautics Commission (UNAC).
However, all of that is put in jeopardy after Reuters reports that Walter Norwood – the US astronaut in charge of a planned UNAC mission to Jupiter who was killed in an accidental shuttle explosion before the novel starts – has turned up alive in a sanatorium run by the famously brilliant Dr Limberg, who claims to have healed him. Michaelmas and Domino don’t believe it’s the real Norwood, but if it’s not, then who is he, where did he come from and how? With a Russian astronaut slotted to take Norwood’s place, Michaelmas must find out fast before Norwood’s reappearance wrecks the UNAC alliance.
It sounds like a straightforward techno-thriller, but it’s not. The book relies heavily on expositional dialogue between Michaelmas and Domino, interspersed with inner monologues and ruminations about the power of news and how it is presented to us – and yet Budrys manages to be so subtle about what’s actually happening that you really have to pay attention (or re-read earlier chapters) to keep up with what’s going on, which slows things down considerably. That said, the pace picks up about halfway through, and while Budrys doesn’t exactly stick the landing, the eventual explanation is mind-bending enough that I’ll give him credit for swinging for the fences. I don’t think I’ll be reading Budrys again (except by accident, maybe), but this was better than I expected, and at least I finished it, so there’s that.
The Canceled Czech by Lawrence BlockMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Continuing my re-read of Lawrence Block’s Evan Tanner pseudo-spy series, this is the second instalment that sees Tanner – permanent insomniac and joiner of every lost cause on earth – accepting his first official assignment for the super-secret govt agency that mistakenly deduced in the first book that he is one of their agents. His mission, should he choose to accept it (which of course he eventually does), is to spring a Nazi out of prison in Prague.
Why would anyone want to do such a thing? It turns out the Nazi in question – Janos Kotacek – is a Slovak who was high-up in the Nazi regime and hiding in Portugal running an underground neo-Nazi network until he was captured and brought back to Prague to be tried and executed. The Agency believes Kotacek has a hidden cache of records detailing his neo-Nazi activities and contacts, which makes him more useful alive than dead – at least until the records archive is found. Tanner is assigned to find those records by breaking Kotacek out of prison and back to Portugal – all by himself.
This time around, I notice that the plot relies more on coincidence than the first one, although it doesn’t push the limits of believability (mostly). Possibly more problematic is the fact that Tanner has to hobnob with Nazis by pretending he is one, and sometimes is a little too good at it. Block makes clear Tanner is no Nazi, and at some point Tanner does start to realise he’s getting a little too in character for the mission, and yes, it was different in the 60s, but by 2025 standards it’s … awkward, to say the least. The character of Greta – a Nazi nymphomaniac with a circumcision fetish who helps Tanner – hasn’t aged so well either. It’s still a good Bond sendup and all, and I like it, but fair warning: some modern readers may cringe a little at the Nazi stuff (though they may find the ending satisfying, if they make it that far).
View all my reviews
Nazi rock,
This is dF
