Robert Sheckley's Untouched by Human Hands

Untouched by Human Hands is an early collection of short stories by American science fiction writer Robert Sheckley (1928-2005).

It’s immediately apparent that Sheckley has a knack for creating truly bizarre alien races. Races that are physically incredibly alien, and socially and culturally incredibly alien. And alien in really interesting ways.

What really interests Sheckley is that if truly alien races encounter each other any meaningful communication will almost certainly be impossible. And actions will be misinterpreted in totally unpredictable ways.

He also has a taste for humorous or semi-humorous science fiction. Not an easy thing to pull off but he does it reasonably well. Some stories have a sting in the tail, some don’t.

And he has an extraordinary imagination.

The Monsters appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953. It’s a first contact story. The trick is always to make aliens seem truly aliens. In this case Sheckley offers us two species (one of them obviously our own) that are almost unimaginably different physically. And even more unimaginably different culturally. Even when they learn each other’s languages they cannot communicate. Which predictably leads to serious problems. A clever story with some nice black humour.

Cost of Living was published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1952. It’s a satire on consumerism and the cost of endless debt and it remains relevant today. This is a future in which people not only get themselves but also their children into perpetual debt.

The Altar appeared in Fantastic in 1953. A very ordinary inhabitant of the very ordinary town of North Ambrose, New Jersey, suspects that he has stumbled up the existence of strange cults in the town. He might be right.

Shape was published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953. The Glom are making another attempt to invade Earth. The Glom can take on any shape they choose, and yet at the same they have no freedom or individuality at all.

The Impacted Man appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in 1952. It concerns the galaxy in which we live as a vast artificial creation. A rip occurs in the fabric of this artificially manufactured space-time continuum and some poor schmuck gets caught in it.

Untouched by Human Hands was published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953. A couple of rather amateurish spacefarers are in trouble. Their food supplies are gone. They find a building. The construction of buildings implies a reasonably advanced civilisation so surely it should be possible to find food. Unfortunately these aliens are so different from ourselves that although our spacefarers find plenty of food they cannot eat any of it.

The King’s Wishes was published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1953. This is a wild story. A couple who run an appliance store have a problem with a burglar. But he’s not an ordinary burglar. He’s a ferra. A sort of djinn. He’s very friendly but he insists that he has to steal appliances to take back to his king. It turns out that this kingdom is very distant, in more ways than one. A very clever very playful story.

Warm was published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953. A young man, Anders, starts hearing a voice. The voice can’t tell him where it’s from but it will tell him when he’s getting warm. Anders starts to see things in a new and disturbing way. He starts to see reality as it really is.

The Demons was published in Fantasy magazine in 1953. A hideous red-scaled monster named Neelsebub has tried to conjure a demon but instead he’s ended up with a mild-mannered insurance salesman from New York, by the name of Arthur Gammett. Neelsebub wants Arthur to produce a vast hoard of gold for him. Arthur of course cannot do this but he decides to do some demon-conjuring of his own. This is a fun story that is like a farce, but with demons and pentagrams.

Specialist was published in Galaxy Science Fiction in 1953. It’s a variation on the living spaceship idea which would become popular many decades later but this spaceship is entirely made up of an assortment of living creatures, each serving a very specialised purpose. Of course if a member of the crew is killed then that component of the spaceship no longer exists, which can be a very serious problem.

Ritual appeared in Climax in 1953. The inhabitants of a planet have been waiting 5,000 years for the gods from the stars to return. Then finally two gods land in a spaceship. The gods are strange - they have two legs and two arms and, bizarrely, no tails. But the planet’s spiritual leader, Elder Singer, is prepared. The rituals must be followed. There must be four days and four nights of ritual dances before the gods can be offered food or water. The gods seem to be begging for food and water but Elder Singer knows that that is part of the ritual. Everything is ritual. Another excellent story of disastrous mutual incomprehension between alien races who have nothing but friendly intentions.

Beside Still Waters appeared in Amazing Stories in 1953. It’s a low-key tale of the friendship, of sorts, between an old man and a robot one a tiny asteroid.

Seventh Victim was later expanded into a novel The 10th Victim. Both the story and novel are reviewed here. And I've reviewed the superb movie adaptation, The 10th Victim (1965).

A collection of truly offbeat eccentric but delightfully clever tales. Highly recommended.

Jimmy Sangster's private i (Spy Killer)

Jimmy Sangster was much better known as a screenwriter but he wrote a lot of novels. In the late 60s he wrote four spy thrillers, two featuring glamorous lady spy Katy Touchfeather and two featuring a spy named John Smith. A man whose real name really is John Smith. The first of the John Smith spy novels, private i, was published in 1967. It was later reissued with the much less interesting title Spy Killer.

The novel opens with John Smith in a lunatic asylum. He isn’t mad, but there seems no escape. We then flash back to the events that led him to such an unpleasant place.

John Smith works as a private enquiry agent (the British name for a private detective). He’s broke so he’s pleased to have a new client, a Mrs Dunning. The case should be straightforward. It’s a routine divorce case. The one very slight complication is that Mrs Dunning is John Smith’s ex-wife Danielle. Perhaps he should have realised that with Danielle involved the case probably wasn’t going to be straightforward after all.

Finding himself suspected of a murder is rather disturbing.

Smith gets really worried when Max shows up. Max had been his boss when he was in the Secret Service. The last thing Smith wants is to get mixed up in the sleazy world of espionage again. But that’s what’s happened.

And if Max is involved then Smith really wants nothing to do with any of it. He doesn’t have a choice. There is that murder charge hanging over his head.

Max wants the notebook. Smith doesn’t know anything about a notebook. But now he figures that if he doesn’t find the notebook Max will throw him to the wolves.

This was a time when spy fiction, and especially British spy fiction, was becoming very dark and cynical. This novel dials the cynicism up to the max. Smith quit the Secret Service after being ordered to take part in a massacre of poor dumb deluded young people who had been manipulated by various intelligence agencies. Smith particularly disliked having to blow a young girl’s face off with a shotgun. That’s when Smith decided he wasn’t cut out to be a spy.

And he knows Max’s methods. If someone is even a minor threat, or even just a minor inconvenience, Max has that person killed. They don’t have to be enemy agents. The British Secret Service is like a more amoral version of Murder Inc.

Smith wants to get rid of that notebook but he knows that as soon as he does he can look forward to a bullet in the back of the head.

Max wants the notebook. A foreign power wants the notebook. Smith has to hand it over or they’ll kill him. But he can’t hand it over because it’s his insurance policy. If he no longer has the notebook they’ll definitely kill him. It’s a tricky problem.

You expect double-crosses in a spy thriller but in this one it’s not just the bad guys but the good guys and even the hero planning double-crosses. And double-crosses piled on top of double-crosses.

The notebook seems to be a kind of McGuffin but the contents gradually become more significant. The contents also present Smith with more of a moral problem. He doesn’t have much in the way of ethics (his days as a British agent knocked all the idealism out of his system) but he does have some morals. He may however have to choose between mortality and survival.

This is a novel that relies more on paranoia and atmosphere than on action but there are some good action moments.

Smith is a fascinating character - he’s overweight and balding but that doesn’t mean that he’s not dangerous. Max is one of the nastiest villains in spy fiction and he’s one of the good guys. Although whether the British Secret Service in this novel can be described as good guys is very very debatable.

There are two women involved and at least one could turn out to be a femme fatale figure. Sangster is however a very fine writer and his plotting is very solid so jumping to conclusions can be a mistake.

An excellent story. Very dark, very cynical, very paranoid. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed Touchfeather, the first of Sangster’s Katy Touchfeather novels, and it’s excellent.

Masamune Shirow's Black Magic

Black Magic is a very early manga by Masamune Shirow. It dates from 1983 so he was in his early twenties at the time. He hadn’t yet developed his mature style but he was already playing around with lots of cool ideas.

This is cyberpunk but very early cyberpunk. The genre was only starting to emerge at this time. Black Magic predates William Gibson’s novel Neuromancer, the novel that really established a firm framework for the genre. The Japanese could be described as early adopters of cyberpunk.

There are seven sections to the book, some described as chapters and some as prologues. This is a world of AIs, bioroids and combat robots. The dividing line between computers, humans, bioroids and robots can be very blurred.

The setting is Venus, the only planet in the solar system in which intelligent life is to be found. The Venusians have built an artificial sun on Earth’s Moon. There is life on Earth but it hasn’t amounted to much. The Venusians have started to establish colonies on some of the other planets.

While it lacks the depth and complexity of his later mangas such as Ghost in the Shell this is very much a Masamune Shirow manga. His trademark interests and obsessions are all here. And he gives us lots of fast-moving violent mayhem.

The first prologue, Black Magic, introduces us to a cute girl who has magical powers. Very heavy-duty magical powers. There’s a super-computer than has created other super-computer. Some of these computers are mere machines, some appear to have consciousness. They’re all named after figures in Greek mythology. The cute magical girl, Duna Typhon, was created by one of these artificial intelligences. To what extent is she human? Are her powers magical or super high tech? These entities are not exactly gods. They are not worshipped as gods. But they are god-like and they do behave like goods.

The first chapter Bowman deals with interplanetary colonisation by the Venusians. The story takes place on one their colonies. A young female investigator named Pandora takes control of a new nuclear submarine. But why would anyone have constructed a ballistic missile submarine on a colony planet?

There’s a second prologue and then we move on to the second chapter, Booby Trap. The MA-66 is an advanced combat robot. Four of them are out of control. They will need to be destroyed. The MA-77 is even more formidable. It has advanced decision-making capabilities. An MA-77 has gone rogue as well. There’s lots of high-octane action in this chapter.

City Light moves the action to Saturn’s moon Titan, or at least to a spaceship on its way there and finding itself in trouble. There are people aboard the spaceship who should not be there. Sabotage may be afoot.

The Epilogue is perhaps unexpected although there have been plenty of clues pointing in this direction.

I always love Masamune Shirow’s footnotes. We don’t get many of those where but we do get some cool endnotes explaining the tech stuff. I love the guy’s playful tongue-in-cheek approach to these. You can tell he has fun doing these mangas.

Masamune Shirow was later slightly embarrassed by the old-fashioned graphic style of this early work. It is a bit old-fashioned but it’s lively.

If there’s a fault here it might be that the author is throwing a few too many ideas into the mix. It’s never quite clear where the magic fits in. He would later move to a more pure cyberpunk style with Appleseed and with Ghost in the Shell he produced one of the towering cyberpunk classics. And he was still in his twenties.

Black Magic’s flaws are actually its strengths. It’s wild and offbeat and surprising. And it’s great fun. Highly recommended.

The Booby Trap chapter was the basis for the 1987 anime OVA Black Magic M-66.

A.S. Fleischman’s Venetian Blonde

A.S. Fleischman’s thriller Venetian Blonde was published in 1963. You couldn’t really come up with a cooler title for a thriller.

A.S. Fleischman (1920-2010) had been a professional magician. He wrote some excellent spy thrillers in the early 50s. Venetian Blonde came later and it’s a crime thriller rather than a spy thriller. Fleischman later had a hugely successful career as a writer of children’s books.

Venetian Blonde is moderately hardboiled with perhaps some hints of noir.

Skelly has just arrived in Venice California. He is a professional cardsharp. He is very good at it. Or at least he was. Now he’s lost his nerve. The skill is still there but to be successful as a cardsharp you need nerve as well. His big problem is that he owes 125 grand to a guy who can get quite unpleasant about such things. If Skelly is really lucky he’ll just have both his legs broken but it’s more likely he’ll be found floating face down in a canal. He can avoid all this unpleasantness by paying back the 125 grand. The trouble is that his personal fortune at this amount amounts to $31.45.

He meets two women. One is the psychic and mystic Evangeline Darrow. Her real name is Maggie. She’s married to a con artist buddy of Skelly’s. Maggie is working on a long con and the payoff could be huge. She needs Skelly. Skelly isn’t interested but then he thinks about the prospect of being found floating face down in that canal and figures maybe he will join Maggie in the con.

The other woman is Viola. She’s a cute blonde and she’s a crazy beatnik chick and she keeps following Skelly around like a puppy. This annoys Skelly, until he realises he’s fallen in love with her.

The con Maggie is working on involves a very very rich old lady, Mrs Marenbach. Maggie figures that if she can put the old dame in touch with her deceased nephew Jamie it could be good for a cool million. Mrs Marenbach is no fool and she’s very suspicious but Maggie has an angle that she’s confident will work.

Skelly gradually starts to suspect that something doesn’t add up. There’s something Maggie hasn’t told him. He isn’t even sure who else is on this deal. Maggie claims her husband is in Mexico, but maybe he’s much closer to hand. He’s also a bit concerned by Porter, the sleazy private eye.

The con itself is clever enough and Fleischman throws in some neat plot twists.

Fleischman’s background in stage magic and vaudeville and his obvious familiarity with the mindset of carnies gives the book an authentic flavour. Fleischman clearly understood the tricks used by phoney mediums.

And there’s nothing better than noir fiction that involves phoney spiritualists, illusionism and con artists.

Skelly isn’t a bad guy. He’s dishonest but there are limits to his dishonesty. He’s a crook with ethics, of a sort. He’s not as cynical as he thinks he is.

Maggie is every bit as cynical as she thinks she is. She’s beautiful and sexy and that makes her dangerous. Skelly’s problem is that he’s not sure just how cynical and dangerous she might be.

There’s some nice hardboiled dialogue liberally sprinkled with carnival and criminal argot.

There’s not much violence but the threat of murder hovers in the background.

And there’s a quirky love story as well.

Venetian Blonde is a very enjoyable read. Highly recommended. It’s been reissued by Stark House in a double-header edition paired with Fleischman’s Look Behind You, Lady.

I’ve reviewed quite a few of Fleischman’s spy thrillers. They’re all set in exotic locations and they’re all excellent - Malay Woman, Danger in Paradise, Counterspy Express and Shanghai Flame.

Paul Tabori's The Green Rain

The Green Rain is a 1951 science fiction novel by Paul Tabori.

Paul Tabori (1908- 1974) was a prolific Hungarian-born British writer who also occasionally wrote under the pseudonym Peter Stafford.

The Green Rain is a wild ride. This is humorous science fiction with a definite satirical edge.

Everything goes wrong when the first C-Rocket is launched. The destination is the Moon. The C-Rocket is the brainchild of a brilliant but seriously eccentric scientist. It carries a kind of proto-chlorophyll with rather extraordinary properties. Within a few months the Moon will be a living planet, with an atmosphere and abundant life.

The only problem is that the C-Rocket malfunctions and deposits its cargo on Earth. With unexpected results. When mixed with rainwater it turns people green. Permanently green, all over. Anyone caught out in the rain at the time of the disaster is now green. They don’t suffer any other ill-effects but the political and social consequences are profound. The newly green people are considered by some to be a superior race. Others regard them as inferior mutants.

As you might expect the author indulges in a lot of political satire. That’s usually a bad thing but this book’s saving grace is that Tabori makes fun of absolutely everybody. Whites, blacks and Asians. Christians, Jews and Muslims. Communists and capitalists. Republicans and Democrats. The Americans, the Russians, the British, the French, Africans, the Irish, even Norwegians and Poles. Everybody is fair game. By being offensive to everybody the books ends up being, in my view, offensive to nobody. It’s just totally nuts and fun.

A crazy crooked communist and a crazy crooked anti-communist get together to take advantage of the situation by establishing a new religion. They make use of middle-aged lady evangelist Gloriana and glamorous movie star Madge McMamie. They come up with a cool stunt - Gloriana will die and be reborn.

The objective is not just to start a new religion but to gain political power as well. The reborn Gloriana will run for President.

And then the book changes gears in an interesting way. It suddenly becomes a whole lot darker. The world becomes green, but in a different way. A nightmarish way.

The ending is not what you might be expecting.

I’ve now read three of Tabori’s novels and he really is an intriguing writer. Wildly original and crazy and definitely full of surprises. None of the books of his that I’ve read can be easily slotted into a particular genre. He’s also inclined to mix humour and darkness in interesting ways.

The Green Rain is a fun ride and it’s best to just allow yourself to be swept along with it. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed his bizarre but brilliant and lurid Demons of Sandorra and his sexy horror witchcraft romp The Wild White Witch (written as Peter Stafford).

Jimmy Sangster’s Touchfeather, Too

Touchfeather, Too dates from 1968 and was the second of Jimmy Sangster’s two spy thrillers featuring sexy lady spy Katy Touchfeather. And I do so love spy thrillers featuring glamorous sexy lady spies.

Jimmy Sangster (1927-2011) had an immensely successful career as a screenwriter. He wrote a lot of movies for Hammer, including most of their best early movies. Unfortunately his career as a novelist tends to get overlooked. He wrote a number of fine spy novels.

Katy Touchfeather is an airline stewardess. She’s beautiful, sexy and charming so that definitely makes her an airline stewardess rather than a flight attendant. This is however merely her cover. She is actually a British counter-espionage agent.

Her latest mission involves a Greek shipping tycoon named Galipolodopolo. He doesn’t make his real money from shipping but from gold. Katy understands just enough about international finance to understand that Mr Galipolodopolo’s dealings in gold are highly illegal. The British Government wants to put an end to his gold dealings.

Katy’s immediate target is handsome young bullfighter Antonio. She discovers that his athletic prowess in the bedroom is as impressive as his prowess in the bullring. Antonio appears to be working as a courier for Mr Galipolodopolo. Katy has to find out how Antonio is involved and if necessary to kill him. Katy doesn’t particularly like killing people, but sometimes murder is part of the job. Although it does seem a pity to have to kill such an impressive bedroom athlete.

Katy has managed to get herself invited as a guest on Galipolodopolo’s luxury yacht. That’s where her trysts with Antonio take place. The mission does not go according to plan. It does end with a corpse but Katy didn’t do the killing. And she didn’t get the evidence. Mr Blaser is very annoyed with her. But he gives her another chance.

As a result Katy ends up in the African nation of Borami. She ends up on board Borami’s presidential jet. And she also finds herself in a Dakota desperately short of fuel trying to find somewhere to land in the middle of a desert.

More disturbingly, she ends up back on Galipolodopolo’s yacht but as a prisoner rather than a guest. She she gets to meet Lucia. Lucia is very beautiful and very glamorous, and very evil. She is Galipolodopolo’s chief torturer. Katy does not like Lucia. The odds are heavily stacked against her but Katy is resourceful and deadly.

Katy’s employers do not supply her with any gadgets. Sangster was clearly trying to avoid the obsession with gadgetry in 60s spy fiction and spy movies. Katy doesn’t really need gadgets. You can leave Katy alone in a room and within five minutes she will have collected an assortment of small inoffensive household items and turned them into a small but deadly armoury. Very low-tech, but Katy is a great improviser and she knows an astonishing number of methods for killing people.

There is a certain amount of 60s Deighton-esque cynicism here. Mr Blaser tells Katy that the British Government plans to confiscate Galipolodopolo’s gold. When Katy suggests that it sounds like the British Government intends to steal the gold Mr Blaser has to admit that this is indeed the intention. But of course when governments steal things they don’t call it stealing.

The government of Borami is corrupt. The Americans, Chinese, Soviets and British are all heavily involved in Borami and their motives are entirely cynical. International politics is a dirty game.

Katy is fairly ruthless. She doesn’t like having to kill people in the line of duty. If she has to do so it can keep her awake at nights. For a couple of nights. Then she forgets about it. No point crying over spilt milk.

This is a sexy spy thriller but the sexiness is very mild. The plot is solid.

The book’s main asset is Katy Touchfeather. She’s not infallible. She makes mistakes but she has an amazing ability to get herself out of the messes she gets herself into. And she does so in very clever very entertaining ways. She’s a very cool action heroine even if her ethics are just the tiniest bit dubious.

This is a hugely enjoyable spy thriller. Highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed the first book in the series, Touchfeather, and it’s very good indeed.

Charles Williams' The Sailcloth Shroud

The Sailcloth Shroud is a 1959 crime novel by Charles Williams.

Charles Williams (1909-1975) was an American crime writer whose work could be described as hardboiled or noir or suspense fiction, in varying degrees in different books.

The Sailcloth Shroud is a nautical thriller and I am personally very fond of nautical thrillers.

Stuart Rogers (the narrator of the tale) has just arrived back in the U.S. on the Topaz, a ketch he bought cheap in Panama on the assumption that he could sell it at a substantial profit in the States. It was not the happiest of cruises. He had taken on two men, both experienced seamen, as crew. One of them, Baxter, died of a heart attack on the voyage and as a result of unfavourable winds there was no way of getting the body back to an American port in time. Baxter had to be buried at sea.

Then the other crewman, Keefer, turns up dead. Murdered. Brutally beaten to death. There’s some mystery about the money Keefer was carrying. He was supposed to be broke but several thousand dollars were found on the body. For some reason the F.B.I. is interested and curiously enough they’re more interested in Baxter’s fate.

There’s no evidence against Rogers but the Feds think that he knows more than he’s saying. Some other people, very unpleasant people (in fact they’re the guys who killed Keefer), also think Rogers knows something. Which is distressing because Rogers really has told the complete truth and he really doesn’t know anything else.

His problem is that although his story is true, although Baxter really did die of a heart attack, Rogers can’t prove it. Baxter’s body is at the bottom of the Caribbean. Rogers really is telling the truth when he says that there was no alternative to a burial at sea, but he can’t actually prove that either.

Rogers figures that it might be a good idea to do a bit of investigating himself. If he can turn up anything that will clear up the mystery he’ll be able to get the Feds off his back, and, those goons as well.

He knows there are two women involved. Both women were connected in some way with Baxter. And there’s clearly a mystery attached to Baxter.

Stuart Rogers is a regular guy who is not equipped to deal with murderous hoodlums. He briefly considers buying a gun but dismisses the idea. He’s an amateur. These heavies are pros. A gun would just get him into more trouble. Rogers is not a tough guy but he’s not totally soft either. He might not be an experienced brawler but it’s amazing what you can do when you’re scared enough and desperate enough and you’re fighting for your life.

He’s also very much an amateur investigator but he does stumble across a couple of leads.

This is a tale of a pretty ordinary guy suddenly caught up in a nightmare that he doesn’t really understand.

It’s somewhat hardboiled but it's not really noir fiction even if it does have its darker moments. It doesn’t contain the key ingredients that distinguish noir fiction.

It is however a gripping and extremely well-written thriller with plenty of atmosphere and the nautical aspects of the tale add plenty of interest. Top-notch stuff. Highly recommended.

Stark House have paired this with another Charles Williams thriller, All the Way, in a double-header paperback edition with is pretty much a must-buy.