John Murray Reynolds’ Golden Amazons of Venus

John Murray Reynolds’ science fiction short novel Golden Amazons of Venus was published in the Winter 1939 issue of Planet Stories.

John Murray Reynolds (1900-1993) was born in New York. In between serving as a naval officer and working as a ship broker he wrote a great deal of pulp fiction, including science fiction.

This was 1939, a time when very little was actually known about the other planets of the Solar System. The idea that Mars and Venus might not only be habitable but already inhabited was still quite plausible.

The setting is the far future. Some of the planets of the Solar System, including Mars, have been colonised. But not Venus. The first manned mission to Venus ended in disaster, The spaceship Stardust reached Venus and was never heard from again.

Now, a few years later, another attempt is being made. Perhaps the voyage of the spacecraft Viking will be more successful. Technology has improved and hopes are high. The Viking is more powerful and more sophisticated than the ill-fated Stardust.

Venus turns out to be very Earth-like and it’s inhabited, by several human-like species. The first encounter of the Viking’s crew with the scaly reptile-men (known as the Scaly Ones) is disconcerting but they also encounter a gorgeous blonde amazon warrior wearing a loin-cloth and a golden bra. She gets their attention. Her name is Closana. Inevitably she’s a kind of princess.

Her people are in a state of perpetual war with the Scaly Ones. Her people are mostly female since for some mysterious reason for many generations very few male babies have been born to them.

There’s another Venusian species as well, the Green Men. They’re slaves of the Scaly Ones.

The Viking’s crew get drawn into these struggles and they’re naturally on the side of the amazons. After all if you’re going to take sides you’re going to be on the side of the gorgeous blonde babes in the golden bras.

All these Venusian cultures are somewhat technologically backward, but they do have some technology. They don’t have cars or aircraft or radios or space travel but they do have guns. Not just projectile weapons but ray guns of some kind. They’re capable of building a submarine. They’re an interesting mix of vaguely medieval and 19th century technology with some more advanced tech. Which makes this fictional Venus a reasonably interesting world.

There will of course be battles, the Scaly Ones will lay siege to the city of the amazons and the good guys will get captured and threatened with torture. There’s an evil king. And there are important secrets that our heroes have not yet discovered.

As so often in science fiction there’s one culture oppressed by another and there’s the idea that the oppressed masses are just awaiting the signal to rebel. It’s the kind of wishful thinking that science fiction writers were prone to.

Golden Amazons of Venus is very much pulp science fiction but it moves along quickly, there’s danger and noble deeds, the heroes are brave and the heroine is beautiful and virtuous and there will be hints of romance. It’s enjoyable and it’s worth a look.

Golden Amazons of Venus is paired with Dwight D. Swain’s short science fiction novel Giant Killer in a double-header paperback edition from Armchair Fiction.

Michael Crichton’s Congo

Michael Crichton’s novel Congo was published in 1980. Like so many of his books it’s basically a techno-thriller. It has a contemporary setting. The technology is not futuristic - it’s the cutting-edge technology of the time. The science is not futuristic either although it would perhaps have been seen as being almost fringe science. Science that is not quite yet accepted as mainstream, or is slightly controversial.

As he did in other novels he goes to great lengths to give the impression that this is a sober factual account, almost an official report.

It begins with a high-tech company, ERTS, sending a mineral survey team to the Congo (or Zaire as it had become but Congo sounds more romantic). Whereas mineral surveys used to take months this company uses the very latest technologies and can do the job in a few days. These technologies include satellite imaging and sophisticated computer data analysis. They are set up so that they can assemble a team within hours and have them onsite within 24 hours.

They have competitors with equal capabilities. In this case it’s a German-Japanese consortium. The objective is diamonds. The key to finding the diamonds is to find the lost city of Zinj. And these are special diamonds, vital in computer technology and there is no other source for them.

ERTS’s team gets wiped out in mysterious circumstances. There is one puzzling piece of evidence - three seconds of footage on videotape. The footage shows what looks a bit like a gorilla. Which is crazy. Gorillas don’t kill people, and they certainly don’t kill people the way the members of the ERTS team were killed.

A new team will be detached, led by the ambitious and very driven 24-year-old Karen Ross. She figures she needs to bring along a primate expert. Dr Peter Elliott is on retainer to ERTS and he’s done controversial but brilliant work on trying to teach language to primates. He insists on bringing Amy along on the expedition. Amy is a seven-year-old gorilla very adept at sign language. It sounds like a crazy idea but Karen Ross suspects that Amy might indeed be a useful member of the team. The new team will be led by ex-mercenary Munro.

The expedition proves to be quite an adventure. Having missiles fired at you, being stalked by cannibals, finding a lost city, being and forced to withstand a siege and getting caught up in a civil war certainly qualify as adventures.

Crichton gets to deal with two science/technology areas that fascinated him. Firstly there’s the computer stuff which he deals with in exhaustive detail. Given that this is the computer technology of 1980 you might think that this would date the book but in fact (in my view at least) it makes it more interesting.

The other area is primate communication, which was a big thing at the time. Quite a few apes had been taught to communicate, usually by sign language, and the results seemed impressive. The animals seemed to be at the very least on the verge of mastering actual language. This will become a major plot point. There’s also some speculative stuff about animal intelligence.

Crichton was very good at using a race-against-time factor to build insane amounts of tension, and in his novels it’s always survival itself that is at stake.

The key ingredients are that lost city built by a long-vanished civilisation, gorilla language, gorillas apparently going on murderous rampages and diamonds and Crichton weaves them altogether with great skill.

There are also interestingly flawed heroes - Elliott, Karen Ross and Munro. They have conflicting agendas, they don’t know what each other’s agendas are and maybe they don’t understand their own motives completely.

A wildly entertaining novel. Very highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Crichton’s equally excellent The Andromeda Strain, The Terminal Man, Sphere and Binary.

Bryan Edgar Wallace's The Device

The Device is a 1962 Bryan Edgar Wallace spy thriller.

Bryan Edgar Wallace was the son of Edgar Wallace and was a moderately successful thriller writer in his own right. A lot of his books have been adapted in Germany as krimi films although the films bear little resemblance to the novels.

Cockston is a very successful crook, so successful that he has never been caught and although he has come to the attention of various European police forces no-one is certain of his real identity.

The Device begins with Cockston making a lucky discovery. He runs across a crazy old scientist doing bizarre experiments with mice. Cockston sees the potential for the device the scientist has invented. It could be the key to unlimited wealth and power. There are a number of organisation in various countries that might be very very interested in this device.

I’m not going to reveal the secrets of the Device but Cockston is very impressed by its effects on those mice.

Bill Tern (who also featured in Bryan Edgar Wallace’s previous novel) is a British counter-spy, presumably working for MI5. All he has to go on is a series of curious murders. Four people thrown from cars at high speed in circumstances that suggest that one person on his own could not have committed the crimes. The curious thing is that the murder method is identical in each case but there is absolutely no apparent link between the victims. On this case Tern has a partner - Inspector Quil of Scotland Yard.

And while there are suspects linked to each murder there are no obvious connections between the suspects. The only other clue is a pair of cuff-links but this clue makes the case more confused.

There are two women involved either of whom might turn out to be dangerous (you can’t have a spy thriller without dangerous women).

The bad guys test the Device and it exceeds all their expectations. Unlimited power is within their grasp.

It is now a race against time for Bill Tern and Inspector Quil. The British Government is keen to use the Army to solve the problem, against the strong advice of Tern and Quil. They fear that this could backfire very very badly. 

There’s definitely an assumption that if it’s possible to handle a crisis with cynicism and ineptitude the government will handle it that way.

If Bill Tern has a weakness it is women. He finds it difficult to think the worst of a woman once he has become emotionally entangled and he gets emotionally entangled rather easily.

The only gadget in this spy story is the Device itself but it is a pretty formidable one.

The bad guys are a mix of straightforward crooks, home-grown political agitators and agents of a foreign power. This is certainly a Cold War spy thriller.

Bryan Edgar Wallace might not have been quite the writer his father was but The Device is a solid entertaining spy novel. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Bryan Edgar Wallace’s Death Packs a Suitcase.

George Henry Smith's Witch Queen of Lochlann

Witch Queen of Lochlann by George Henry Smith was published in 1969. It’s an occult thriller that becomes a sword-and-sorcery adventure.

George Henry Smith (1922-1996) was an incredibly prolific author. He used many pseudonyms and to really muddy the waters there were at least two other George H. Smiths writing pulp fiction at the same time.

Duffus January runs an occult-themed bookshop and works as an occasional private eye focusing on cases with occult aspects. His latest case is typical. A girl named Morgan Lacy thinks she has been cursed by a witch. January’s job is to convince her that spells can only harm people if they believe in them. January does not believe that magic actually works.

But January is actually an odd complicated guy. He is terrified of all mechanical things. Especially cars. Cars will watch you and stalk you. January believes that he is an incredibly powerful wizard. It’s just that his spells don’t work on Earth. Magic does not work on Earth. But January is from Earth. He doesn’t believe in other worlds. On the other hand he does have a vague sense of being different. And when he gets his nails manicured he is careful to save the nail clippings. If they fell into the hands of a witch then the witch would have great power over him. Even though magic doesn’t work it pays to take no chances.

January has a magic sword. Except of course that its magic doesn’t work on Earth.

So you might be thinking that January is some kind of nut but the story will soon take a major turn and we will discover why he believes so many contradictory things.

Morgan Lacy is kidnaped by a rather odd couple. And then January meets Annis. She is Morgan’s half-sister. He discovers what is going on. Both Morgan and Annis claim to be the rightful Witch Queen of Lochlann, or at least such claims have been made on behalf of both girls. Lochlann is a kingdom in another realm totally separate from our world. It’s a kingdom beneath the seas, but not the seas of our world. It’s a world of Celtic goddesses and magic and witches. Of course January knows that this is all nonsense.

But of course it isn’t. And now he’s grateful for that magic sword.

He and Annis will have to get some help from the goddess Branwen. This involves a ritual. The ritual comes a pleasant surprise to January since it requires him to have sex with Annis. Living in a world of magic has its compensations.

Of course there are countless dangers to be faced. There’s a long sea voyage. There are monsters, some of them semi-human. There are fish-men. There’s another goddess to deal with. A bad goddess. Branwen is a good goddess.

The kingdom of Lochlann must be saved. Only the rightful witch queen can save it. It would be helpful to know which sister is in fact the the rightful witch queen. Duffus January knows the answer to that question. Or at least he thinks he knows.

The fact that Annis and Morgan are very beautiful rather charming young women complicates things. Whichever beautiful charming young woman he last spoke to tends to be the one that January trusts.

January does find out something. He had always had the feeling that he was really destined to be a mighty and noble warrior rather than a bookshop proprietor. In this new world he really is a mighty and noble warrior. And that magic sword now really is magical.

The way magic is handled is quite interesting. There are limits to what it can do. And even the most powerful sorcerer (or sorceress) can find his magical powers drained by overuse. So magic is not a plot device that allows the hero to solve every problem he encounters without effort.

The alternative world or magical realm in which the hero finds himself is heavily based on Celtic mythology and it’s brought vividly to life.

This is not a book that wants to be taken over-seriously. It’s a lighthearted sword-and-sorcery romp, but there’s a good story here, plenty of action, some romance and it’s all very enjoyable. Highly recommended.

This book reminds me a little of The Druid Stone which Gardner Francis Fox wrote under the name Simon Majors in 1967. I recommend The Druid Stone highly.

Mickey Spillane’s The Erection Set

Mickey Spillane’s The Erection Set was published in 1972. It’s one of his non-Mike Hammer crime thrillers.

It certainly has a memorable protagonist. Dogeron Kelly (always known simply as Dog) would have been heir to the vast Barrin industrial fortune but for one minor detail - he was born on the wrong side of the blanket. Instead of inheriting millions he stands to inherit a mere $10,000. And the family is going to make sure he doesn’t get even that - his grandfather’s will contains a morals cause. If he cannot prove that his life has been morally untainted he doesn’t get a dime. And Dog’s life has been far from morally spotless.

Dog served in the U.S. Air Force during the Second World War, as a fighter pilot in Europe. He took his discharge and remained in Europe and then vanished. There have been rumours of his colourful and varied activities but nothing concrete.

Now he’s back stateside, in Manhattan, staying with his old flying buddy Lee. And Dog wants his ten grand. Now we, the readers, know from the start that he doesn’t need a lousy ten grand. We knew that when Lee took a peak into Dog’s suitcase. Lots of money. Lots and lots of money. Lee is in a panic - where is Dog going to stash millions of dollars safely? Dog tells him not to worry. He’ll put it in the bank. Amazingly this is clean money.

We know that Dog is confident he’ll get his ten thousand. What we don’t know is why he wants it. We assume he has plans to revenge himself on his family but it soon becomes apparent that Dog’s motivations are much more complex and his plans much more devious.

Then he meets Sharon. She works for a media tycoon. Her job is to persuade men to make deals. She’s a kind of professional seductress. Oddly enough although she definitely likes men and seduces them for a living at 32 she is still a virgin. This is regarded by those who know her as evidence that the age of miracles is not yet past. Sharon has a link with Dog - years earlier her father had worked for his grandfather. That link buried in the past will be important.

Dog’s arrival in New York is the result of a decision he made which is going to lead to multiple murders and general mayhem. It’s a decision that is not related to his family or his inheritance.

Dog soon has people trying to kill him. Lots of people. Professionals. Dog isn’t too worried and we soon find out why. He is one very tough hombre.

If you’re going to have an anti-hero (and Dog certainly qualifies for that status) you have to make him interesting and Spillane does that effectively. He’s a very enigmatic individual. He’s a tough guy who kills when he has to and does so without remorse, and with considerable savagery. But he doesn’t want to kill.

And with women, in his own individualistic way he’s a gentleman. There are three important female characters and they’re all complicated but sympathetic. Sheila is dangerous because of her husband and she has a problem. Dog knows what it is and how to fix it, if she’ll let him. Lee’s friend Rose isn’t quite a Whore With a Heart of Gold but she’s a good-natured cheerful hooker and Dog thinks she’s a sweet kid.

Sharon is really complicated. Dog has never met a girl quite like her and he’s intrigued. She’s never met a man like Dog and she’s not sure if she’s horrified by him or crazy about him.

There’s a major twist at the end but it does make sense.

The Erection Set is top-tier Spillane and it’s plenty tough and it's highly recommended.

I enjoy Spillane’s surprisingly varied non-Mike Hammer output, ranging from the exuberance of The Delta Factor to the high-octane thrills of Day of the Guns to the brooding darkness of The Erection Set.

Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time

Fritz Leiber’s novel The Big Time was published in 1958. It’s the beginning of his Change War series which comprises this novel and and seven short stories.

This is a wild complex unconventional time travel story. Two warring factions, the Spiders and the Snakes, are trying to change the past in order to further their agendas. Those agendas are unknown.

Changing the past is possible, but extremely difficult. The Spiders might prevent the First World War by preventing the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand only to find that the war breaks out anyway six months later over some totally different issue. So then you have to change something else. And that might lead to other changes that you didn’t want. So you have to keep endlessly tinkering, and the other side (the Snakes) are tinkering as well to produce outcomes that you don’t want.

Soldiers are recruited from both the past and the future to make these changes happen. Mostly (but not always) they are recruited at the moment of their deaths and they undergo a kind of resurrection.

The novel takes place entirely in the Place. This is a kind of rest and recuperation centre that is outside of the cosmos (space-time). The Entertainers, including the narrator Greta, help the Soldiers to recover from their physical and emotional wounds. The Soldiers are provided with the things that Soldiers like when they’re on leave - basically booze and women.

Soldiers and Entertainers are Doublegangers (they can operate in the cosmos and outside of it) and Demons (they are more or less alive in both the cosmos and outside it). At least it’s better than being a Zombie (those whose timelines are entirely in the past) or an Unborn (those whose timelines are entirely in the future).

The staff of the Place comprises three men and three women, plus a vast supply of Ghostgirls. Three Soldiers arrive. Pairing off takes place and then things start to get weird and exciting. Finding an atomic bomb on the premises can do that. And they lose the machine that allows them to pass back and forth from the cosmos to the Place. That means they’re trapped. Everyone blames everybody else.

Leiber had a theatrical background and The Big Time is like a play that takes place entirely on a single set. Momentous things are happening, but they’re all happening offstage. Leiber focuses on the effects those events have on this small group of people.

Leiber is interested in what happens to the personality when somebody is totally unmoored from his own time. In this case of these people comes from a billion years in the past, from a long-lost lunar civilisation. Knowing that you entire civilisation disappeared into oblivion a billion years ago is not exactly easy to deal with. Another is from a billion years in the future - his civilisation his not yet even evolved to the point of qualifying as intelligent life.

And these characters are constantly shuttling back and forth between countless different historical eras, and when they revisit an historical era with which they are familiar it has changed anyway. Some of them have died several times.

All of this gives Leiber the chance to play around with some philosophical themes, something he was fond of doing.

This is not quite like any other science fiction novel. It’s not just the subject matter (which other authors have tackled) but the unique and unsettling tone. But then Fritz Leiber was not quite like any other science fiction writer. He had a very distinctive authorial voice.

The Big Time will play with your head, but in a good way. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Fritz Leiber’s novel You're All Alone which is also pretty wild stuff.

James Leasor’s Passport to Oblivion

Passport to Oblivion, published in 1964, is the first of James Leasor’s Dr Jason Love spy thrillers.

James Leasor (1923-2007) was a reasonably prolific British writer of thrillers whose output included ten Dr Jason Love novels.

It begins with a British agent (code-named K) in Tehran being hunted down and killed.

K’s superior at MI6, MacGillivray, has no idea what has happened to K. He just knows that he has suddenly disappeared and that he was trying to get a message back to London. But he doesn’t know what the message was.

Someone will have to be sent to find out what happened but that’s a problem. This is 1964. Most of MI6’s agents are in fact KGB agents. The only way to be sure that an agent can be trusted is to employ someone who is more or less an amateur. An obscure country doctor, Dr Jason Love, seems like a possibility. MacGillivray used him once before on a very small job, many year earlier. Love proved to be fairly sensible and capable of exercising some initiative. Love has no spy training but he’s an ex-soldier and a judo instructor. The fact that he’s a doctor might be useful as a cover.


And there’s something else. Love is obsessed with Cord motor cars (the Cord being a highly advanced American luxury car of the 1930s). And it just happens that a very very rare Cord indeed, a Le Baron limousine, is rumoured to have recently turned up in Tehran of all places. That would give Love an excuse to be poking about the back streets of the city.

Something odd has also happened in Canada and there is a possibly very tenuous link to K’s disappearance.

Love’s first stop is Rome where he meets British agent Simone. She is very annoyed when he refuses to sleep with her.

In Tehran Love does eventually find out what happened to K. He also finds out something else. It’s not a certainty, but it seems likely that his cover has been blown. Which would mean there’s a leak somewhere.

He also finds out what K had uncovered. It’s a major conspiracy that could have serious consequences for Britain.

The reluctant spy was a popular trope in British spy fiction in the 30s and 40s. It was out of fashion by the 60s but Leasor has come up with a convincing reason for reviving it. And Dr Love isn’t so much a reluctant spy as a somewhat bewildered moderately keen amateur. He’s bewildered but he’s not unintelligent. And he is resourceful. And given that he’s a former soldier and teaches judo he’s also quite capable of handling himself in unarmed combat.

This was 1964 and Bond Fever was approaching its height. The trick if you were a spy writer at this time was to capture some of the Bond glamour without making your spy a mere Bond clone. Passport to Oblivion does have some glamour and exotic settings and some action. Jason Love doesn’t have the fancy gadgets that feature in the Bond movies but he has a few simple nifty little devices. There’s some sex, but oddly not for Dr Love. The novel does however acknowledge the importance of sex as a motivation for spies.

Jason Love is a likeable hero and he gradually learns that spies have to be ruthless at times. He’s not fond of violence but having been through the war it doesn’t scare him and if it’s kill or be killed he’d prefer to be the one doing the killing. He treats it as an extension of his wartime military service. Sometimes soldiers have to kill, and sometimes spies have to kill. One thing in his favour is that he’s not excessively trusting.

The plot is solid enough, the conspiracy has some pleasingly wild elements and there’s some fine suspense towards the end. Thoroughly enjoyable and highly recommended.

Passport to Oblivion was filmed as Where the Spies Are in 1966. The movie has a slightly more lighthearted approach which doesn’t quite come off.