Michael Crichton’s Binary

Binary, published in 1972, was Michael Crichton’s eleventh novel and the last that he wrote using the John Lange pseudonym. By this time Crichton was already a bestselling author following the huge success of The Andromeda Strain in 1969.

This is very much a techno-thriller. Technology plays a significant role but it’s all technology that actually existed in 1972. There’s a lot of fascinating stuff about the computer technology of that time. It deals with hacking. Hacking certainly went on at that time but it was a concept that had not yet entered public consciousness in a major way. Crichton always loved dealing with cutting-edge current technology rather than futuristic tech. He liked to be just a little ahead of the curve.

A State Department intelligence officer named John Graves has been in charge of a major surveillance operation. The target is John Wright. Wright is very wealthy and he’s a brilliant man but he does not appear to have broken any laws. This is something that makes Graves uncomfortable - he is not at ease with the idea of the American Government spying on its own citizens especially when they appear to be law-abiding citizens. Wright is under suspicion merely because he is the kind of man who might conceivably be a threat.

Wright is a political activist but like so many political activists his ideas are muddled and inconsistent. He seems to see himself as a political messiah. And while he has been careful to stay within the law there is now reason to suspect that he has now been involved at least indirectly in something illegal and genuinely worrying. Wright has a close associate, a man named Drew, who has been engaging in computer hacking. What’s worrying is that he has been hacking Defence Department computers. More worrying is that nobody can say for sure exactly what files he has been accessing, or why. When Graves figures that out it’s obvious that there is a very big problem indeed - Wright may be in possession of huge quantities of a terrifyingly potent nerve gas.

This is a political thriller but mostly it’s a psychological thriller. One of the files that has been hacked is Graves’ personal file. Graves realises that Wright’s primary motivation is game-playing. He is challenging Graves to a deadly game. Wright has been looking for a worthy opponent and Graves, a brilliant intelligence agent, qualifies on that count.

It’s possible that Wright doesn’t actually have any coherent political motive at all. He’s like a megalomaniac without a cause. What matters to Wright is winning the game and proving his towering genius to the world. He is probably quite insane. That could make Graves’ job extremely difficult except for the fortunate fact that Graves understands Wright’s madness. Graves is not insane, but in many ways his mind works the same way.

Wright has conceived a grandiose plan which consists of endless layers of complexity. Graves can never be sure how many further levels of fiendish complexity remain to be unraveled. And he can never be sure whether Wright is simply leading him on.

It’s a tense exciting story with plenty of fear but it’s Crichton’s handling of the psychological game-playing that makes it a great thriller. Graves and Wright are both great characters.

The nerve gas stuff is fascinating but it’s the 1972 computer tech that is most fun.

And there’s plenty of focus on bureaucratic madness, inter-agency rivalries and the catastrophic effects of the politicisation of every aspect of law enforcement and security.

Binary is superb entertainment. Very highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of Crichton’s novels - The Andromeda Strain, Scratch One and The Terminal Man. I recommend these books very highly.

Eric Stanton's The Return of Gwendoline

The Return of Gwendoline and Other Bizarre Art published by Vintage Fetish Classics and edited by Richard Pérez Seves includes two comic strip stories by Eric Stanton, The Return of Gwendoline (dating from 1965) and Deborah (dating from 1957), plus some of Stanton’s other drawings.

Eric Stanton (1926-1999) was an American fetish artist. His early work was heavily influenced by John Willie. His later work became seriously weird and disturbing, much much too much so for my tastes. But The Return of Gwendoline is still in the John Willie mould and in fact it’s a tale featuring WiIlie’s most famous creation, Sweet Gwendoline.

What made John Willie’s The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline so great is that it’s so good-natured. Poor Gwendoline gets herself into all kinds of scrapes (which invariably involve her being tied up) but nothing really bad ever happens to her. The chief villain Sir Dystic d’Arcy is more of a bungler than anything else, a figure out of melodrama or even farce, than a truly menacing figure. The emphasis is on cheerfully naughty fun.

Stanton captures at least some of that innocent feel in The Return of Gwendoline but it doesn’t quite have the same charm. And Stanton lacks Willie’s ability to come up with goofy outrageous storylines. There isn’t really much of a story here at all, whereas with Willie there was always an actual story.

There’s nothing wrong with Stanton’s drawings but again they don’t quite have the charm of Willie’s work. They’re more overtly erotic, but they lack just a little of the necessary spark.

Deborah on the other hand has an actual plot of sorts, about a young woman who is kidnapped because she is in possession of a key in the form of a pendant. It’s more engaging than The Return of Gwendoline. In fact it’s quite entertaining. I enjoyed it quite a bit.

This is fairly innocuous stuff. Unless you’re really sensitive to this kind of material you’re more likely to be amused than offended. It is supposed to be fun, and it is.

While I don’t think Stanton is as good an artist as John Willie I don’t want to sound like I’m judging him harshly. On the whole I like his artwork here.

This publisher has issued a lot of this sort of fairly mild S&M-tinged erotica (including other work by Eric Stanton) in very nicely presented editions.

Richard Pérez Seves has also written an excellent an exhaustively detailed biography of John Willie which I recommend very highly.

The work of people such as John Willie and Eric Stanton has had a considerable influence on pop culture in fields such as comics and especially underground comics. They’ve also has a certain influence on movies, notably Just Jaeckin’s delightful kinky adventure romp Gwendoline. And they’ve had a definite influence within the world of fashion.

The Return of Gwendoline is reasonably good fun. Recommended.

I’ve reviewed John Willie’s The Adventures of Sweet Gwendoline which I recommend very highly even if you don’t share his erotic interests.

Death’s Lovely Mask by John Flagg

Death’s Lovely Mask is a 1958 John Flagg thriller. Between 1950 and 1961 American writer John Gearon wrote eight espionage/crime thrillers, most of them published under the pseudonym John Flagg. All were published as Fawcett Gold Medal editions.

Quite a few, including Death’s Lovely Mask, feature private eye Hart Muldoon. Muldoon is a former CIA agent who still does occasional jobs for the Agency. Some of the Hart Muldoon books are spy thrillers and some are crime thrillers but the latter always have some suggestion of international intrigue. All have exotic European locations and all have a similar feel. And all of them are excellent.

Muldoon is a bit on the cynical side. Mostly he just wants to get enough money to retire to a cabin in Maine. He’s tired of being mixed up with spies and crooks.

In this book he’s roped into doing a job for the US Government but it’s the sort of job that needs to be handled discreetly. It doesn’t take too long for Muldoon to wonder if there are important things he hasn’t been told about.

A young Arab prince wants to marry a pretty young Israeli girl. That’s obviously going to create tension in the prince’s tiny but oil-rich desert state. It’s that oil that concerns the State Department. Lots of groups including the intelligence agencies of several countries and at least one international corporation are interested in this proposed wedding. Some want the marriage to go ahead while others want it stopped at all costs. Some of these groups would like to eliminate the young prince altogether.

The US Government just wants the oil to keep flowing and they don’t want the whole situation to explode into a major international crisis.

Muldoon has been in Naples having a rather pleasant sexual dalliance with a married woman, Linda Pawlings. He might even be in danger of falling in love with her. Linda is mixed up in the plots concerned the prince’s wedding but Muldoon can’t figure out why and how she’s involved. What he has to do is to follow her to Venice which seems likely to be the setting for whatever dramas might unfold.

There are some very unsavoury characters involved. Rich elderly American widows, Italian movie starlets, whores, gigolos and men with exotic erotic tastes. There’s an overwhelming atmosphere of corruption, decadence and sleaze. This is something that John Flagg did extremely well.

Muldoon is no prude and he’s no Boy Scout but even he is a bit shocked. On the other hand there are some luscious very available women and Muldoon is fond of the ladies.

Things get complicated when the Egyptian falls into the canal and drowns. No-one is sure where he came from. He probably wasn’t who he claimed to be. And maybe he didn’t fall. Maybe he was pushed.

Things get really exciting at the Masked Ball. Masked balls are always fun in thrillers and Flagg knew how to use such plot devices.

Muldoon wants to keep the prince and his intended bride alive. He also wants to keep Linda alive even if she now hates him and he wants to keep Nina alive even if he can’t trust her.

The plot has plenty of nice twists but the author is equally concerned with creating an atmosphere of decadence, danger and treachery (which he does expertly) and with the effects of treachery on the people who embrace lives of deception and violence.

Death’s Lovely Mask is a superior thriller by a rather neglected master of the genre. Highly recommended.

I’ve read lots of John Flagg’s thrillers and they have all been thoroughly enjoyable. The good news is that all the John Flagg thrillers are currently in print from Stark House.

His two earlier Hart Muldoon books, Woman of Cairo and Dear, Deadly Beloved, are both excellent. I also very much liked his non-Hart Muldoon thrillers The Persian Cat, Death and the Naked Lady and The Lady and the Cheetah.

Sax Rohmer's She Who Sleeps

There was much much more to Sax Rohmer than the Fu Manchu stories.

Stark House have issued two Sax Rohmer novels written at almost exactly the same time (the late 1920s) in a two-novel paperback. They give an idea of his ability to jump from genre to genre. Moon of Madness (published in 1927) is a straightforward spy thriller and I have to say that conventional spy tales were not his forte. She Who Sleeps (dating from 1928) is much more interesting and much more successful. He’s in more congenial territory here - this is both weird fiction and an occult thriller.

A rich young man named Barry Cumberland, lost in a storm, crashes his car after catching a glimpse of an Egyptian princess on a balcony. Of course she can’t be a real Egyptian princess, not in 1920s New York. He tries to find her but can’t. He can’t even find the place where his car accident occurred.

His fabulously wealthy father John Cumberland is a keen Egyptologist who has come into possession of a papyrus that concerns an Egyptian princess, Zalithea. It contains a formula and a ritual. Zalithea is She Who Sleeps. In fact she is She Who Sleeps and Will Awaken. She lies in a tomb in the Valley of the Kings but with the formula and the ritual she can be revived, after sleeping for 3,200 years.

John Cumberland is convinced that the papyrus is genuine. He was has consulted various experts. They agree that it really is 3,200 years old. Is it possible that Zalithea still lives?

John Cumberland naturally organises an expedition, with assistance from several Egyptologists including the slightly mysterious Danbazzar. The real purpose of the expedition will have to be kept secret. If all goes as planned they will have in their possession a living, breathing 3,200-year-old Egyptian princess which could cause all manner of complications with the authorities in Egypt.

Barry Cumberland has another obsession - that girl he saw on the balcony. He suspects that she is Zalithea’s double, or a vision of Zalithea, or Zalithea’s ghost. His ideas on this subject are muddled but he is sure there is a connection.

And of course when the sarcophagus is finally opened Barry does find himself gazing into the face of the same girl.

The tomb had escaped the notice of tomb robbers and had lain untouched and undiscovered for more than three millennia. Zalithea cannot possibly be awakened. Or can she?

Compared to Moon of Madness this is not only subject matter much more ideally suited for Rohmer it’s also the sort of strange mysterious uncanny story that seemed to make Rohmer’s writing suddenly become a lot more lively. And the sense of breathless excitement that Rohmer tried to aim for works more successfully.

This is an occult thriller but it’s also a love story, a love story with its roots in the distant past.

These are things that appeal to me and I love anything to do with ancient Egypt so this novel really is right up my alley. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed many of Sax Rohmer’s books. The Bride of Fu Manchu and The Mask of Fu Manchu are fine Fu Manchu books. The Dream Detective is a splendid collection of occult detective stories. The Leopard Couch and Brood of the Witch-Queen are typical of his excellent gothic horror fiction/weird fiction. The Sins of Sumuru introduces his final creation, the glamorous sexy female diabolical criminal mastermind Sumuru. Sumuru wants to eliminate violence from the world. She accepts that to do so will involve killing a lot of people.

Marty Holland’s Fallen Angel

Marty Holland’s Fallen Angel is a 1945 hardboiled murder mystery. It has definite noir overtones but as is always the case whether or not a novel is true noir depends a great deal on the ending.

Marty Holland was a pseudonym used by Mary Hauenstein (1919-1971). This was her first novel. She enjoyed some modest success and had two of her stories filmed but her career soon seemed to run out of steam.

The protagonist of Fallen Angel, Eric Stanton, had been an insurance investigator but not an honest one, which was why he had to leave L.A. in a hurry. He’s headed for Frisco but his money has run out. He’s sitting in a diner in a nondescript small town named Walton. There’s where he notices the waitress, Stella. She’s really something. She gives him the brush-off but he’s persistent. She goes out with him. Things are going well between them but they need money.

Stella drags him along to a spook show where a very incompetent phoney medium is fleecing the punters. That’s when Eric gets his bright idea. A woman in the audience, by the name of Emmie, wants advice from her dead father on investing the very large inheritance he left her. Eric has figured a fool-proof angle which will allow him to get his hands on Emmie’s money. Then he and Stella will be set. They can get married.

The murder throws a spanner into the works. At first Eric is not a serious suspect. There are two other much more obvious suspects, but when it becomes clear that those other two guys could not have committed the murder the cops start to figure Eric as the prime suspect.

Eric’s instinct all through his life has been to cut and run whenever the going gets tough and that’s what he does now. He has now acquired a wife and she insists on running with him.

Eric knows the cops have a net spread for him and he’s getting increasingly panicky.

The worst thing is that he knows he is innocent but he can’t prove it. Of course if he could prove the guilt of the actual killer he’d be off the hook but he genuinely does not have the slightest idea of the killer’s identity, or why the murder took place.

Eric is a bit of a louse but he’s not really evil. He would never kill anyone. He’s just a chronic loser without the discipline to succeed in an honest line of business. He’s not short of self-pity. He lies because his instinct is always to lie. But he’s not beyond hope. Whether he can learn to accept responsibility and make a proper life for himself remains to be seen. And while he’s committed various criminal acts in the past he really is innocent of this murder. It’s just that he can’t see a way out.

For all his faults he’s a reasonably sympathetic protagonist.

This is a pretty decent murder mystery which looks like it might turn out to be full-blown noir, or it might not. It’s still quite entertaining and it’s recommended.

Stark House have issued Marty Holland’s second novel The Glass Heart and her novella The Sleeping City in a double-header paperback edition. The Glass Heart is flawed but interesting. The Sleeping City on the other hand is absolutely superb erotic noir.

Otto Preminger’s film adaptation Fallen Angel (1945) is top-notch film noir.

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s Roadside Picnic

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s 1972 novel Roadside Picnic is one of the most important works of Soviet science fiction.

It’s a first contact story, but a very unconventional one.

The Visit only lasted a very short time. Aliens visited six sites on Earth and then departed as mysteriously as they had appeared. Those sites are known as the Zones. There was no communication whatsoever between humans and the aliens. There were casualties among the human populations but it was never clear that the aliens actually had hostile intentions.

The Zones are littered with alien artefacts. Visiting the Zones is very very dangerous. No-one understands the nature of the dangers but they are very real. Governments have successfully suppressed all knowledge of what went on in the Zones and of what the Zones contain. The truth is that scientists do not have the remotest idea of what the Visit meant or why it took place.

Uses have been found for some of the alien artefacts (such as batteries providing limitless energy) but nobody knows the real purposes for which these devices were intended.

Entering the Zones might be incredibly hazardous but where there’s a profit to be made there will be people wiling to take the risks. Such people are known as Stalkers. The scientists do not care to take such risks but they are willing to buy artefacts from Stalkers. And there is a thriving black market.

Redrick Schuhart is a Stalker. Redrick is an ambiguous hero with complex motivations. Money is one of his motivations, but not the most important.

One of his Redrick’s forays into the Zone almost ended in disaster. He managed to save his companion, Burbridge. Burbridge claims to know the location of the Holy Grail of artefacts, the Golden Sphere. Maybe he will tell Redrick how to find it. The rumour is that the Golden Sphere can grant wishes. That might be mere rumour, but some of these artefacts really can do impossible things.

Close contact with the Zones can have unexpected consequences. Children who are not quite normal. Even more frightening and puzzling, when people who were in the vicinity of the Visit movie away to other cities very strange things happen. Strange inexplicable impossible things.

There are some wild, bizarre and very imaginative ideas in this novel. It’s a novel that exists on the fringes of conventional science fiction.

There is also a certain amount of excitement and suspense. Death can come quickly and unexpectedly in the Zone. And maybe worse things.

You find yourself hoping that the authors will be able to come up with an ending worthy of all the cool ideas that they’ve thrown into the story. Sadly they do not do so. I found the ending to be bitterly disappointing.

The authors ran into considerable censorship proems in the Soviet Union even though they had gone to great lengths to avoid taking any ideological positions. There is a rather cynical tone to the novel, which might explain the censors’ hostility. The Visit is after all the subject of government cover-ups throughout the world.

Roadside Picnic was filmed in 1979 by Andrei Tarkovsky, as Stalker.

Roadside Picnic is extremely interesting and imaginative but the feeble ending robs it of true greatness. Still worth a read. Recommended.

Henry James' Daisy Miller

American-born Henry James (1843-1916) was one of the true literary giants.

His 1878 novella Daisy Miller brought him his first taste of commercial success and critical acclaim.

James spent a large part of his life in Europe and in Britain. He was fascinated by the experience of Americans in Europe.

This is the theme of the novella. Daisy Miller is the daughter of a nouveau riche American. Her father has sent her, along with her mother and her kid brother, to Switzerland to absorb some culture and some polish. Daisy is beautiful and charming. Her problem is not that she’s American but that she does not not know any of the rules that govern respectable fashionable society. Even worse, she does not know that she does not know these rules. She has no idea why she is continually snubbed.

She makes the acquaintance of Winterbourne. He is a young American but he has spent most of his life in Europe. He does know the rules. Unfortunately he does not comprehend that he is dealing with a girl who is entirely unaware of her social mistakes. She is entirely unaware that her forwardness will be misinterpreted as an indication of loose morals.

Winterbourne is charmed by her but also shocked.

That’s what will cause the heartache. He is delighted when he first encounters her and is able to engage her in conversation, but shocked that he allows it. It is most improper for a young lady to speak to a young man to whom she has not been formally introduced. He is delighted that she agrees to accompany him to a picturesque nearby chateau but shocked that she does so. Again, it is not proper behaviour for a young lady.

Winterbourne just cannot reconcile his attraction to Daisy’s beauty, vivacity and charm with his growing fear that perhaps she really is not respectable. He is worried about her familiarity with Eugenio the courier. The seeds of mistrust and suspicion have been sown. And Daisy does nothing to allay his concerns because she has no inkling that she has done anything wrong.

Later, in Rome, Daisy’s behaviour becomes increasingly socially reckless but she remains oblivious. She spends a lot of time with an Italian who may be a fortune-hunter. That’s Winterbourne’s assumption. But is Daisy just flirting?

Winterbourne and Daisy just cannot understand each other. It’s not a cultural difference. They’re both Americans. It’s not even quite a class difference. It’s a social difference. The inhabit different mental universes. Daisy does not realise her danger. Winterbourne cannot get through to her.

The communication difficulty has other consequences. Winterbourne genuinely doesn’t know what feelings, if any, Daisy has for him. And increasingly he is unsure about his own feelings.

Daisy is trapped by her inability to comprehend the social rules. Winterbourne is trapped because he understands them too well.

Winterbourne and Daisy are both rather nice young people. We care about them although we share Winterbourne’s exasperation with Daisy and to an extent we share her exasperation with him.

Wonderful book. Read it.

I very much enjoyed Peter Bogdanovich’s film adaptation, Daisy Miller (1974). I recommend it. It follows the novella very closely and I think it captures its spirit.