J.J. Allerton’s Moon of Battle

J.J. Allerton’s science fiction novel Moon of Battle originally appeared in Amazing Stories in December 1949. Allerton is a very obscure writer about whom I know nothing.

There are many ways in which the heroes of fiction novels travel to other planets. Pratt, the hero of this book, travels to the Moon in a truck. A big 18-wheeler.

Well actually he’s driving to Phoenix and then the transmission fails and he almost crashes rounding a steep curve, and suddenly he’s on the Moon.

Even given the limited knowledge of the Moon in 1949 this story is pretty fanciful. The Moon is inhabited. Some of the inhabitants are rather strange, some are so big that they’re almost giants and some seem to be essentially human.

One thing the author does know about the Moon is that it has very low gravity, and he makes good and frequent use of this.

The giant he encounters first tries to kill him but they soon become fast friends.

And then there’s the girl. There has to be a girl. Her name is Maeri. She isn’t wearing much in the way of clothing. Pratt thinks she’s a swell girl.

Of course her father is some of tribal chieftain. There are many lunar societies, all of them at very primitive technological levels. And it seems like a major war on conquest my be about to get under way. Pratt has to get involved because, as I said, Maeri is a swell girl. He can’t let anything bad happen to her. Maeri’s brother and other members of the tribe are preparing to face the threat on invasion by the Hammers.

Of course Pratt and his pals are captured and they have to face the horrors of the pot. Which is not a cooking pot. Well, not exactly.

There’s lots of crazy stuff to come. Allerton throws everything but the kitchen sink into the mix and maybe it doesn’t all make sense but it keeps the reader on his toes.

The odds are stacked against Pratt except for one thing - he still has his truck. And the gas tank is full. A truck-driving man is never beaten as long as he still has his truck. And even the boldest space aliens get nervous when faced by a huge 18-wheeler. The truck is no gimmick. It’s an absolutely essential ingredient in the story.

The pacing is brisk and there are betrayals and things are not necessarily what they seem. These are pretty basic ingredients for a science fiction tale but Allerton handles them competently enough.

This book’s biggest flaw is its biggest strength. The idea of a guy suddenly appearing on the surface of the Moon at the wheel of a big ole semi-trailer is definitely goofy and dumb. And at the same time it’s pretty darn cool.

Pratt is a cool unflappable tough guy hero. He’s not taking any nonsense from a bunch of weird space aliens.

Of course he and Maeri will fall for each other. This romance angle could have been fleshed out a bit more.

There’s nothing startling here but it’s reasonably enjoyable in a very pulpy way and one can’t help thinking that there should have been more truckers in space science fiction stories. Recommended as long as you’re not setting your expectations too high.

Armchair Fiction have paired this title with Murray Leinster’s The Mutant Weapon in a two-novel paperback edition.

Georgette Heyer’s Regency Buck

Georgette Heyer’s Regency Buck was published in 1935 and is of course a romance novel. What am I doing reading, and reviewing, a romance novel? Men don’t read romance novels. The fact is though that if one is interested in vintage pop fiction one can hardly ignore such a notable and popular genre altogether. And Regency Buck has considerable historical importance to students of genre fiction. It marked the beginning of an entire genre, the Regency Romance. 

It is also interesting in that it actually combines two genres, the romance novel and the mystery novel. Heyer wrote many romance novels and many mystery novels and on occasions combined the two.

I have to say that this novel is not at all what I expected. Which of course probably reflects that not having read any romance fiction I had all kinds of prejudices and preconceived notions about the genre.

Not one bodice gets ripped. There are no heaving bosoms. This is more like Jane Austen, but (interestingly) with a lot less actual romance. This is a tale of a young woman’s adventures and misadventures in London in 1812 (we can date it precisely because the first two cantos of Byron’a Childe Harold had just been published).

Miss Judith Taverner and her brother Sir Peregrine Taverner have just inherited vast fortunes and have decided to leave Yorkshire and set out for the bright lights of the big city. They hope to make a splash in the world of fashionable society in London.

Initially it appears that Judith’s hopes will be dashed. She is hopelessly provincial. She does not understand the niceties and subtleties of the world of fashion. She makes one social faux pas after another. It seems hopeless until Beau Brummell (who was of course in real life the ultimate arbiter of taste in Regency England) takes her in hand. He realises that there is no hope of persuading her to follow the rules. Instead he encourages her to behave even more eccentrically. Maybe she cannot follow fashion but she can instead lead fashion. It works. She is a sensation. Of course it helps that she is a statuesque blonde beauty possessed of a vast fortune. Soon she is inundated with offers of marriage.

There is the problem of Lord Worth, her guardian (and Peregrine’s guardian). Judith thinks he is the most odious disagreeable provoking man she has ever met. He is also domineering and it is obvious that he intends to assert his authority over her. No man has ever done that. At the same she is excited by the challenge and also fascinated by Lord Worth.

Peregrine on the other hand spends his time losing a fortune at the gaming tables. He is a likeable but foolish young man.

Judith has to deal with irritatingly determined suitors. She has an encounter with the Prince Regent and escapes with her virtue intact (which is quite an achievement).

And something else is going on, something that would horrify Judith if she knew about. Since it is intended to come as a surprise to the reader I am going going to offer any hints about it.l

The problem with any kind of historical fiction is that it always reflects the outlook and the preoccupations, and the psychology, of the period in which the book was written rather than the period in which the book is set. It is almost impossible (indeed it may be completely impossible) for the characters not to be to some extent contemporary characters wearing period costume. 

But unlike today’s writers of historical fiction, who deliberately give their characters 21st century social attitudes, Heyer does try very hard to make her characters representative of their period.

What can also be said of Heyer is that she made an extraordinary effort to get the minor details right. She did immense quantities of research on the social customs, the fashions and the way of life of her chosen periods. Of course an actual writer of that era would simply have taken it for granted that her readers know all the minutiae of everyday life and would have omitted many such details. Heyer, realising that her readers would not have an obsessively complete knowledge of such things, makes a point of telling us all those details. What’s impressive is her ability to do this without ever seeming to be offering the reader clumsy infodumps. She seamlessly integrates the background details into the story. She also demonstrates her knowledge of some surprising subjects, such as prize-fighting and cock-fighting.

I think most women will enjoy Regency Buck although if you’re looking for wild steamy passion you might be disappointed. But there is a love story here and it’s a good one. I can’t speak for all male readers but I enjoyed the book. Heyer’s prose is lively and witty and she has the ability to bring the world of Regency England vividly to life. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Heyer’s clever amusing detective novel Death in the Stocks.

The Ring-A-Ding UFOs by Robert Tralin

The Ring-A-Ding UFOs, published in 1967, is the third of the Miss from S.I.S. spy thrillers by Robert Tralins. It fits roughly into the “sexy lady spy” sub-genre (a sub-genre I adore) although the sexiness here is very very restrained indeed. The emphasis is on fast-paced goofy fun.

Lee Crossley is ostensibly a travel writer but she’s actually a secret agent, working for S.I.S., an all-female international counter-intelligence agency. With her sidekick David Dudley she’s investigating an old Spanish fortress in Florida. S.I.S. has no idea what is going on in this fortress but they suspect it’s something sinister. Lee and David will have to get inside but first they’ll need to dodge the crocodiles. Crocodiles, not alligators, which puzzles Lee.

Our two daring spies are disabled by a barrage of unearthly noise and Lee finds herself sliding down a long damp fleshy tube (yes there could be a bit of symbolism here).

Of course there’s a mad scientist. In fact something more sinister and terrifying than a mere mad scientist - a mad evil psychiatrist. The old fortress is now a mental hospital but the patients aren’t being cured. It’s possible they’re subjects of a hideous experiment and there may be aliens behind it. And yes, there may be UFOs.

There’s definitely something nasty in the swimming pool.

Luckily Lee has plenty of gadgetry with her. Deadly lipsticks, hairbrush communicators, that sort of thing. And a life-saving bra. One of the things I’ve learnt from reading so many sexy lady spy thrillers is that lady spies always have something interesting concealed in their bras. And in the case of some fictional lady spies, in their panties as well.

Apart from aliens and UFOs this story also involves brainwashing. Brainwashing intended to be on a very large scale.

Lee and Dudley get captured repeatedly but they’re not easy to keep hold of when you’ve caught them.

There’s quite a bit of exciting action but no graphic violence.

There’s no nudity or sex at all.

This book is obviously not taking itself too seriously. The plot has plenty of wild craziness. It’s a spoof, but there is a reasonable spy thriller plot here. And there will definitely be plot twists.

There’s a suitably insane mad scientist chief villain but he has a few weaknesses. He’s rather attracted to pretty young ladies and his judgment is a bit touch and go in that area.

Tralins keeps things moving along at a breakneck pace.

The Ring-A-Ding UFOs is pure entertainment and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the second book in this series, The Chic Chick Spy (which I enthusiastically recommend), as well as a fairly interesting SF novel by Tralins, The Cosmozoids.

Fans of sexy lady spies might like to check out some more of my reviews. James Eastwood’s The Chinese Visitor is the first of his enjoyable Anna Zordan spy novels. Lust, Be a Lady Tonight kicks off the very sexy but very entertaining The Lady from L.U.S.T. series. And Jimmy Sangster's Touchfeather is a total delight. And for fans of sexy spy thrillers in general there’s Clyde Allison's outrageous Gamefinger (Man From Sadisto 6).

Robert E. Howard's The Lost Valley of Iskander

Robert E. Howard created numerous series characters besides Conan. One of the more interesting was a 19th century gunslinger from Texas named Francis Xavier Gordon who becomes a renowned swordsman and adventurer in central Asia. He becomes known as El Borak. Five El Borak stories were published during Howard’s lifetime with several others appearing posthumously. The Ace paperback The Lost Valley of Iskander collects three of the El Borak stories.

These are adventure stories with exotic settings rather than sword-and-sorcery. There are no actual supernatural elements.

The novel The Daughter of Erlik Khan was published in the pulp Top Notch in 1934. El Borak has been hired by two Englishmen, Pembroke and Ormond, to find a friend of theirs who has disappeared. El Borak soon discovers that he has been tricked. He has also been given a reason to seek revenge.

His pursuit of the treacherous Englishmen will take him into the country of fierce Kirghiz tribesmen who tend to kill outsiders on sight. They are devil-worshippers. Along the way El Borak encounters a troop of Turcoman bandits and he soon assumes their leadership. His quest will take him to a mysterious forbidden city where he will, quite unexpectedly, find the beautiful and formidable Jasmeena. They are old friends. She needs his help. She’s in a very awkward situation indeed. Being worshipped as a goddess is not all it’s cracked up to be.

This is a fine adventure story anyway but it’s Jasmeena who makes it really interesting. She’s not a good girl and she’s not a bad girl. She’s ambitious and she’s out for what she can get but she isn’t a scheming spider woman. You wouldn’t want to trust her too far but she’s not malicious or cruel. Perhaps El Borak doesn’t entirely approve of her but he rather Iikes her. She’s feisty and sexy and she’s just what a rollicking tale of adventure needs.

This is an action-packed tale of betrayal and revenge. Fine stuff.

In the short story The Lost Valley of Iskander El Borak has to deliver a package of vital documents that prove that a master criminal named Hunyadi is plotting to embroil the whole of central Asia in a religious war. And El Borak discovers a lost civilisation in a hidden valley - descendants of the soldiers of Alexander the Great.

The lost civilisation angle is cool and Hunyadi is a suitably menacing villain. A fairly good story.

The novella Hawk of the Hills was published in Top Notch in June 1935. An Englishman named Willoughby, a sort of unofficial agent of the British Government, is trying to negotiate an end to a feud between two bandit armies. One of which is led by none other than El Borak.

Willoughby is well-meaning and his theoretical understanding of diplomacy is sound but he just doesn’t understand the psychology of the wild tribesmen of the North-West Frontier. He doesn’t understand the complicated loyalties and he can’t comprehend the intricate webs of treachery, ambition and greed that motivate the bandit chieftains. El Borak thinks Willoughby is a nice guy but a man out of his depth. El Borak knows that the way to end his blood feud with the perfidious Afdal Khan is to kill him. That deeply shocks Willoughby.

There are plenty of battles and sieges and narrow escapes, there’s an impregnable castle and there are running fights in cave systems. This is Robert E. Howard in top form.

The North-West Frontier is an ideal setting for stirring violent tales of adventure. It’s a world apart from the civilised world.

El Borak is a fine hero. He has a code of honour but he’s no Boy Scout. He’s a realist. He is at heart as much of a barbarian as Conan.

The El Borak stories are terrific. Highly recommended.

Boileau-Narcejac’s She Who Was No More

Pierre Boileau and Thomas Narcejac’s novel Celle qui n'était plus (translated into English as She Who Was No More) was published in 1952. It has also appeared with the title Les Diaboliques.

The ingeniously-plotted psychological crime novels of the writing team of Pierre Boileau (1906-1989) and Thomas Narcejac (1908-1998) had a huge impact on French crime fiction.

She Who Was No More was the basis for one of the masterpieces of French cinema, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955). This was much to the disappointment of Alfred Hitchcock who had been after the film rights. A few years later Hitchcock adapted another Boileau-Narcejac novel, D'entre les morts, as Vertigo.

In his film Clouzot made major changes to the plot.

It was filmed again, much less successfully, as Diabolique (1996) with this American production making further changes to the plot.

The novel begins with traveling salesman Fernand Ravinel planning to murder his wife Mireille, with help from his mistress Lucienne. The money from Mireille’s life insurance will set them up in Antibes. They have chosen an ingenious murder method - they will sedate her and then drown her in the bathtub. The body will then be dumped in a lavoir (a kind of open-air laundry with a large pool). A few days later Fernand, having established an alibi, will discover the body. It will appear to be a clear case of suicide and he and Lucienne will claim the insurance money.

A few days later Fernand makes a disturbing and impossible discovery. He comes up with all sorts of wild theories to explain it. Some of the theories are quite bizarre. Or perhaps he is going mad? He is sure that Lucienne can explain it.

I can’t tell you any more details about the plot, but there are some nasty little twists coming up.

While the plot is very clever this is primarily a psychological crime novel with the focus on Fernand. Right from the start he is puzzled his motivations. He doesn’t really wish Mireille any harm. Perhaps he still loves her. Perhaps he loves Lucienne. It has occurred to him that Lucienne is mostly interested in the insurance money. He is not sure how far Lucienne has manipulated him.

He feels guilty and comes up with unlikely rationalisations. He tells himself that he is not really a criminal.

All of these ideas are going through his mind right at the beginning so I’m not revealing any spoilers here.

This novel takes us on a deep dive into the chaotic and disturbed mind of Fernand. He was probably always unstable but now, under extreme stress and guilt, his fevered imagination has gone into overdrive. He even starts to believe that something uncanny or supernatural is going on. His grip on reality, always tenuous, is slipping badly.

This could at a stretch be thought of as noir fiction. The influence of James M. Cain’s Double Indemnity is fairly obvious. The difference is that She Who Was No More has hints of horror fiction as well.

The English translation is available in paperback from Pushkin Vertigo.

I’ve also reviewed Clouzot's film adaptation Les Diaboliques (1955) and Boileau-Narcejac’s Vertigo (the English-language title of D'entre les morts).

C. L. Moore’s Judgment Night (SF Masterworks collection)

Catherine L. Moore (1911-1987) is best remembered for her Jirel of Joiry sword-and-sorcery stories and her Northwest Smith sword-and-planet tales published in pulp magazines in the 1930s. As a pulp writer she was certainly in the same league as Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard and Clark Ashton Smith. After the death of her husband Henry Kuttner in 1958 she retired from fiction writing. Judgment Night in the SF Masterworks series includes five of her longer works from her later career in the 1940s and 50s.

Her novella Paradise Street (published in Astounding Science Fiction in September 1950) is a western set in space, or at least it’s a frontier story. This is a future in which humans have colonised distant planets but have encountered no other intelligent species. The setting is the planet Loki, once the domain of fiercely independent trappers and prospectors. The story’s hero, Jaime Morgan, is one of the last of that breed. Now the settlers have come, much to Morgan’s disgust. Loki is becoming a civilised planet. Morgan wants nothing to do with civilisation. Civilisation is for those who care nothing for freedom.

Morgan has arrived in his spaceship with a cargo to sell - a very valuable perfectly legal substance but now it’s become valueless. Or maybe it hasn’t. Either way it’s now impossible for Morgan to sell it on Loki, and he’s broke and he has no fuel for his rocket. Then he gets an offer. He doesn’t like the offer but he has no choice. It means working for people he neither likes nor trust. It means taking orders.

Morgan is a frontiersman. He knows how to survive in the wilderness. In the civilised world he is helpless. His world will soon no longer exist, so this is very much a story of the vanishing of the frontier, and the consequences of that. Civilisation is all well and good, but it comes at a price.

Morgan knows he is being lied to but he doesn’t know just how many lies he is being told and just how vast the web of deception in which he is entangled really is. What he thinks is going on is not at all what is really going on. There are various factions and alliances and conspiracies. And Morgan just isn’t equipped to deal with this new world of complex machinations and manipulations. He is however well equipped to deal with action and he gets plenty of that.

Morgan is a likeable flawed hero. Most of his problems are of his own creation but he can’t help being the man he is, and that man is in many ways rather admirable. He refuses to face the future, but we admire him for that. Nothing matters more to him than his freedom and he is willing to pay the price to remain a free man. His judgment is often poor, but he cherishes the right to make his own mistakes. He drinks too much and he gambles too much. Paradise Street is excellent.

Promised Land is a novelette published in Astounding Science Fiction in February 1950. It deals with posthumanism. The solar system is being colonised but survival on the other planets and the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn is near impossible. Two solutions have been tried - altering people to suit the conditions on those planets and altering the conditions on those planets to suit people.

The incompatibility of these approaches is now evident on Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon. The present population is composed of humans heavily modified for local conditions (know as Ganymedans) but as the terraforming of the planet advances it will become habitable for normal humans but no longer habitable for the Ganymedans. That is likely to set off a power struggle. Another story with a flawed hero, and an ambiguous villain. Moore had a knack for taking ideas that were around at the time but taking them in unexpected and provocative directions. Fascinating story.

The 1945 novelette The Code appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in July 1945. Again she takes a straightforward idea, scientists trying to reverse the ageing process. Then she veers off into wild crazy directions involving the nature of time, parallel universes, evolution, alchemy, the nature of personality, the nature of memory and Faust’s bargain with Mephistopheles! And she makes it work. Bizarre but brilliant story.

Heir Apparent appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in July 1950. It’s set in the same universe as Promised Land. Earth’s empire is controlled by Integrator Teams - seven humans and a computer linked together functioning as one mind. Two outcasts from such a Team are at the centre of a vast power struggle. They may be the prime overs or they may be pawns. These two men hate each other but there is still a weird link between them, the legacy of having been on the same Integrator Team. A superb story.

C. L. Moore’s 1940s and 1950s SF was very cutting edge indeed. She mixes philosophical and even spiritual themes with SF and in a couple of these tales she is playing around with proto-cyberpunk concepts - group minds, man-machine interfaces, virtual reality, posthumanism. She was ahead of her time. These stories also display her ability to write cerebral SF with emotional depth.

Catherine L. Moore was one of the giant of science fiction, a dazzling talent with a formidably varies output. This collection is very highly recommended.

I reviewed the lead story in the collection, the novel Judgment Night, separately a couple of years ago. And I've reviewed her Jirel of Joiry sword-and-sorcery stories and her Northwest Smith stories.

Paul Tabori’s The Doomsday Brain

The Doomsday Brain, published in 1967, was the first volume in Paul Tabori’s Hunters trilogy.

Hungarian-born Paul Tabori (1908-1974) wrote in various genres and his work tends to be wild and imaginative, rather eccentric and often brilliant.

The Doomsday Brain is a spy thriller with some science fiction elements.

An eccentric tycoon has established an international crime-fighting and counter-intelligence network known as The Hunters. They insist that they’re not in the business of revenge and they’re not vigilantes but since they track down criminals who have not been brought to justice by the proper authorities they certainly seem to have some vigilante tendencies.

Computers are malfunctioning all over the world. These do not appear to be random malfunctions, It’s beginning to look like there’s a conspiracy afoot.

It may have something to do with a German war criminal on the run. He now calls himself Master Brug. His mad scientist inclinations have led him to an interest in computers and their potential for mind control.

This mad scientist is fascinated by the idea that the human brain is a kind of organic computer (a delusion that still has its adherents today).

The trail leads the three Hunter field operatives to eastern Europe - to Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria.

There are various shady characters involved as well as an assortment of Eastern Bloc government and secret police officials some of whom may be thinking of defecting, some of whom may be double agents, some may be sympathetic to the Hunters and some may be in league that that German mad scientist. 

There is limitless potential for double-crosses. And a great deal of paranoia.

Naturally there are women involved, who may be dangerous or treacherous but they’re definitely willing to employ the arts of seduction.

Mind control in various forms was a major obsession in 1960s spy and sci-fi novels, TV series and movies. This novel is interesting because it deals with computers as a tool for world domination. This was 1967. Nobody really knew just how many things computer might potentially be used for. The idea that computers might be used for sinister purposes, for gaining power through the control of information, was beginning to gain traction. This is a novel about the use of computers to achieve world domination which was still a fairly exciting new idea for writers to explore.

Exactly how the computer mind control works does get glossed over a bit. But this is a spy thriller, not a textbook.

It’s a reasonably action-packed story, the Hunters make use of some cool and offbeat gadgets, there’s 1960s cutting-edge tchnology and it builds to a fairly wild climax (as Tabori’s novels tend to do).

The Doomsday Brain is decent entertainment and it’s recommended.

I’ve reviewed some of Tabori’s other books. His Demons of Sandorra is a superb provocative nicely crazy dystopian science fiction novel. The Green Rain is an intriguing sci-fi satire. The Wild White Witch (written using the pseudonym Peter Stafford) is hugely entertaining historical sleaze with admixtures of voodoo and witchcraft.