Month: July 2007

Wow, you know, I never thought to myself, “Why isn’t there any Objectivist pulp fiction?” Even if I had asked that or thought perhaps maybe I should write some, I probably would not equal the achievement of Andrew Sugar’s THE ENFORCER series.

I mean, imagine Atlas Shrugged if, instead of a cipher for Ayn Rand’s fantasies of the perfect man, John Galt was an author who died somehow and was now living in a series of cloned bodies that deteriorate in 90 days while he works for the John Anryn Institute using his wits, his special power over his own life force (ki), and judo to take on all the Tooheys of the world (sorry, wrong book). But it’s pulp fiction with a definite Objectivist theme.

In between bursts of violent action, we have Penthouse letters sex scenes, the most graphic I’ve seen depicted in any paperbacks I assume were sold at drug stores. I mean, in some pulp, you get the “they’re going to have sex” paragraph, “they’re having sex” paragraph, and then the “it was good” paragraph. In this book, you get the he did that and she did this to his that and it was good thing. It starts graphic to the N-degree and then goes into the metaphorical several paragraphs later. Conforming with Ayn Rand’s theory of sex, I reckon.

Also, we get the speechifying, but in small doses, where the protagonist and his Institute compatriots go on about the power mongers who would rule over men. Nothing comparable to Galt’s Speech, though, so the narrative is not impaired too badly.

It’s cheap, it’s tawdry, and it’s definitely a suspense/science fiction pot boiler worthy of its tawdry cover. However, the Objectivist slant adds a touch of camp to it. Maybe real Objectivists wouldn’t think so, but they have no sense of humor.

I might have to go find the rest of the series.

In 2004, I read Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future, a Buck Rogers recasting that hyped TSR’s new roleplaying game of that name. It reprinted the first part of the two short stories that led to the Buck Rogers comic strip, which led to the film serials, which led to the Gil Gerard television series, and so on, and so on.

This book collects the first two short stories that led to the whole shebang in their almost pure 1928/1929 glory (Spider Robinson “updated” this edition, which explains why characters written before the Great Depression talk directly about nuclear weapons and television). As such, World War I veteran Anthony (not William or “Buck” in the stories themselves) Rogers falls into a cavern with suspension gases in them, and he’s awakened in 2419, when the wars involving Europe and America have left them spent and let the Asians, particularly the Mongolian Chinese known as the Han, take over the planet and send the natives running for cover. Five hundred years later, about the time Rogers wakes up, the Americans are rising up in clan-like units to stand up to the evil Hans, as they are known in this book.

Americans live in the woods, close to the land, and have communal property. The Hans rule the skies and use technologies to keep the natives scattered, but are decadent and cushy. So you could really read into it different sorts of characterizations and messages depending upon whether you think America works best when America says, “Communism, yes!” or whatnot.

Regardless, the book is a simple romp typical of magazine-based pulp fiction of the era and perhaps even of today. A quick read that was fun. Probably better than Buck Rogers: A Life in the Future.

Also, those Hans? Not really Chinese. Instead, an epilogue informs us that they were actually aliens who landed in China and adapted themselves to look like the Chinese. I have to wonder if this is more of Spider Robinson’s “updating,” since in 1928 it was still cool to publicly fear and malign the Other.

Okay, it’s a gimmick book; the first half is written by Evan Hunter in a more literary, explore the character style, and the second half is a police procedural in the Ed McBain style. That’s the most notable thing about this book’s universe; the second most notable thing is that the book is set in New York in late July, 1999 (the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., places the dates exactly), so the book makes no reference to the events of two years later (and books set since make reference surely). Thirdly, the book is told in the present tense, a bit of a departure. There, the gimmicks and unusual things are noted duly early.

Of course, I don’t have to explain the first gimmick to you, gentle reader, because you know that Evan Hunter and Ed McBain are the same fellow. Regardless of the authors’ photograph on the back that depicts the two fellows standing side by side.

The first half of the book depicts a rather randy architect in New York who’s scheduled to return to a drab, sexless life with his long-term wife in Los Angeles in the morning. On his last night in New York, the, hem, gentleman tries to call an architecture student with whom he’s dallied and has had phone sex, tries to pick up a woman (an attempted recovering rape victim) in the hotel bar, tries to call a phone sex line, and then tries to achieve satisfaction at a “massage parlor” to ill results. Brothers and sisters, although certain people (my mother-in-law particularly, whom I impressed upon first meeting by reciting Eliot and not McBain) have called this author “smutty,” but I’ve disagreed–but after reading the Evan Hunter part of the book, I felt like I needed a shower. The only other Evan Hunter book I’ve read is Last Summer, which had me feeling for the protagonist until such time as I said, “Ew.”

But then the second half of the book starts with detectives in NYC investigating the homicide of a hooker, and I hoped it wouldn’t be the sad sack from the first half of the book. The second half follows a trio of detectives from Homicide, Vice, and the Special Victims unit looking into the murder. The main character is a woman on the Special Victims unit (the Rape squad), and the section follows her one day crusade to find this perp while she handles her divorce and relates to her co-workers. McBain takes a leap in using a female point-of-view, but he does well as far as I can tell (after all, I’m a male).

An interesting exercise; of course, we all bought it because it’s McBain. And not a bad departure from his norm (like Another Part of the City). McBain is like John D. MacDonald on my pantheon of writers; regardless of what they wrote, I will read it, for I expect it to be good.