Category Archives: Forgotten Book

Forgotten Book: The Caves of Karst by Lee Hoffman (1969)

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The Caves of Karst is a science fiction adventure that delivers on what it aspires to do: entertain.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 181st in my series of Forgotten Books.

This week I decided to take a chance on a book published nearly 50 years ago by a well known science fiction fan who was also a highly respected writer of western novels. Lee Hoffman was the name used by Shirley Bell Hoffman for her writings and there were plenty of them. She did 17 western novels (she won a Western Writers of America Spur Award in 1967 for The Valdez Horses, which was later filmed as Chino starring Charles Bronson and Jill Ireland) and four science fiction novels, of which The Caves of Karst was the second.

I first became acquainted with Lee Hoffman through her novel Always the Black Knight, which was serialized in Ted White’s Fantastic Stories in 1970. I read that serialization then and was always intrigued by the cover to The Caves of Karst. Somehow, though, I never got around to reading it. Somewhere along the way my copy disappeared, but I found a British SF Book Club copy in 2013 at Half Price Books and I purchased the copy I read for this week’s column. (As an aside, over Christmas I was asked if I really read all the books I discuss in the Forgotten Books. The simple answer is “yes,” and I do it just before doing the review. My feeble brain finds it far too easy to mix and match story ideas among the thousands of novels I have read — and I try to adequately present the book as I see it.)

So, let’s get to the story. The novel takes place on the planet Karst, a remote colony that is part of the Earth Empire. Earlier, a rebellion in the Centauri sector had led to Earth giving less attention to their remote colonies and a deep rooted revulsion on the part of colonists.

Karst is covered with a lot of water and has many deep caves rich in gems and minerals. Divers who work for the Divers Guild are a very powerful force on the planet. Griffith (or Griff), one of those divers, is our protagonist. He’s also gone in for adaptive surgery and had gills installed to enable him to swim into the deep without scuba gear during his searches. This type of surgery is taboo in Earth and prevents Griffith from having the ability to leave Karst and see other worlds. Not that he wants to.

One day, he runs across the dead body of another diver during his search of a cave. Divers protect their claims jealously, so Griff gets his ID tag to report to the Guild anonymously. While exploring the cave he runs across some valuable gems and the incredibly rare thelemite.

Divers have legitimate sources for selling their finds and some not-quite-as-legitimate. Griffith sells some gems for the credits he needs to leave, but then he meets with merchant Captain Rotsler of the space ship Teick. Rotsler is hanging with Griff’s old girlfriend Sheryl, which irritates Griffith immensely. Rotsler is interested in the gems but goes nuts over the thelemite. He wants any and all that Griff can provide.

Griff also has an encounter with some folks who are expressing very anti-Earth Empire opinions and eventually end up in a fight. He gets rousingly drunk. When he sobers up two days later, he finds that the Teick has been destroyed and the Authority (the local, Earth-backed cops) see him as a likely suspect for the deed.

Suddenly, life is not quite so good. Illegal interrogations begin, he has a fight with his Guild lawyer who does not believe his alibi, and he gets busted out of jail by folks with homicide on their mind.

There is some pretty fun action and dodging the police in the final third of the book as Griff tries to figure out who is on his side and what the heck is really going on.

I enjoyed the book quite a bit. It does not try to be much more than a diverting science fiction adventure tale with murder. There are good guys and bad guys, moral ambiguities, dilemmas of the soul. Griff is an interesting character, and so are several others, including Irma, who wants to be the girl that Sheryl never was, and Czolgosz, the attorney who has to play within the system he is representing.

If I find my copy of Always the Black Knight (a title I really like), I will probably read it and cover it here. Lee Hoffman is worth seeking out. Not a brilliant writer, but a good, entertaining one — and that is always a worthwhile thing.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: The Everness Series by Ian McDonald (2011 – present)

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Planesrunner kicks off Ian McDonald's dizzying Everness series.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 180th in my series of Forgotten Books.

I have been a fan of Ian McDonald ever since his first book Desolation Road was published by Bantam Books in 1988. It was an amazing book about a future Mars. Soon other novels followed, including Out on Blue Six and King of Morning, Queen of Day and the short story collection Empire Dreams. I knew from the beginning that I would be buying all his works and enjoying them for years to come.

In late 2011, Pyr Books published Planesrunner. I became aware of it because of the wonderful John Picacio cover, and I got my copy from John himself. It followed closely with the second in the series, Be My Enemy, and in 2014, Empress of the Sun continued the tale. The two subsequent books also sported Picacio covers.

The series is a wild conglomeration of steam punk and space opera and young adult coming of age. The hero of the series is a young Punjabi boy living in London named Everett Singh. His father is a quantum physicist who has been working on some very odd ideas when he is suddenly kidnapped right in front of Everett. The kidnappers seem to have vanished but Everett receives an odd email that leads to the discovery of the Infundibulum, a device that allows him to hop worlds. The kidnappers are members of the Plenipotentiary of the Ten Worlds, the ten alternate Earths which run things. Charlotte Villiers is the villain of the piece, a Plenipotentiary of one of the Earth’s. Everett’s earth is Earth 10.

When Everett operates the Infundibulum he finds himself on an Earth with no fossil fuels, where airships rule the skies. He eventually finds himself aboard the airship Everness, commanded by Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, her adoptive daughter Sen and a wild crew.

But Everett soon finds out that with the Infundibulum he is not limited to the 10 Earths. The whole of the Multiverse is available to him.

While Everett searches for his father, Charlotte searches for Everett and the Infundibulum. Each of the Earths contains variations of the inhabitants of the other Earths. So there is an alter of Everett Singh on each of the ten worlds, as well as of his father and friends and Charlotte. Sometimes these alters are of the opposite sex.

There are weird alien races which react like computer viruses (the Nahn) or create highly modified versions, like Everett M. Singh in Empress of the Sun and Be My Enemy, who comes to our Earth bringing the Nahn.

And there are the Jiju, dinosaurs that did not die out in the comet disaster and therefore have a 65 million year evolutionary advance on humans in their universe. They live on a diskworld with a captive sun. The construction of this world makes Niven’s Ringworld look like a kiddie park. All the Jiju want is to get the Infundibulum and obliterate their competitors on their world and throughout the Multiverse. Cold blooded dinosaur space killers! What more could you want?

McDonald has developed the culture of the airships along gypsy terms and created the Palari language which combines terms and ideas from many other societies. A glossary is included in each volume.

Everyone in the books is pursuing something. Everett wants his father. Charlotte wants the Infundibulum and Power (with the capital P). Sen wants Everett and to work on the Everness and to please her mom. Captain Anastasia wants to take care of her ship and crew and to see whatever it is Everett can do to get to his father, pretty much in that order.

These are fun books with lots of action and adventure. The story through the three published volumes is not complete, which I disliked, but that’s pretty much the only thing I disliked about them. There does not seem to be any information about a fourth volume, but we can hope.

Check out the first one, then settle in for all three. Super advanced dinosaurs are quite a bit of fun — and nastiness.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: West Texas by Al Sarrantonio (1990)

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The paperback cover of Al Sarrantonio's West Texas.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 179th in my series of Forgotten Books.

This week I decided to write about a book that really is forgotten and undeservedly so.

I have known Al Sarrantonio for something close to 30 years. We were introduced by Pat LoBrutto, who was the editor at Doubleday at the time. Over the years, I would periodically run into Al at conventions, generally the World Fantasy Convention. I know it has been at least 10 years since we last met at a convention.

He’s written in a lot of genres including science fiction, fantasy and horror. But, for me, he is best seen in his Westerns. West Texas is the first of Sarrantonio’s Western novels featuring Thomas Mullin, a former buffalo soldier working in west Texas. Mullin had been a lieutenant at Fort Davis, a rarity for a black soldier in the 1890’s. He has been retired by Captain Seavers, who looks and acts like his idol, General George Custer. Seavers desperately wants to have military glory against the Mescalero Apaches and, through that, get out of Fort Davis and rise to the rank of general. He actively hates Mullin but finds himself between the rock and hard place when a Senator’s son goes missing. Mullin is the only one capable of finding the young man, and Seavers has been told to use Mullin and give him whatever he might need or want to do it.

To assist in the search, four Pinkerton agents have been sent from St. Louis. They are to be met by another buffalo soldier, Trooper Lincoln Reeves. Pinkertons from this period had a reputation for being thugs and strike breakers and these men certainly fill that bill.

Mullins needs no help from them, though. He is an educated man who is quite familiar with his environment. His favorite activity is reading the adventures of Sherlock Holmes from issues of The Strand magazine. Using the detection techniques displayed in those stories and adapting them to his environment bring Mullin to the conclusion that there is a serial killer working in the area. The killer’s targets are young men under the age of 17.

Trooper Reeves has to deal with the Pinkertons, who are intent on drinking themselves to death. Their leader Captain Murphy succeeds in doing just that, leaving three detectives. The leader of this group, Porter, has actually been calling the shots all along and is a racist who plans to blame Murphy’s death on Reeves and attempts to lynch the young trooper. Fortunately there are no trees, so the group, afraid of Porter, assists. But they are drunk and do a poor job of tying Reeves. They attach the noose to his horse and send it out to the desert dragging Reeves.

Reeves extricates himself and finds his way to Mullin where he becomes Watson to Mullins’ Holmes. He wants to learn more but cannot read so Mullins promises to teach him once the killer is found. Meanwhile, the Mescaleros are planning on attacking the fort and Seavers seems intent on emulating his chosen hero.

This was a fun book. I read this nearly 25 years ago, so I remembered very little, other than recalling that I had really liked it. The book did not disappoint on re-reading. It is a good combination of Holmesian mystery, serial killer thriller and Western, falling easily into each category.

Unfortunately the hardback was published by M. Evans and Co. who did a few Westerns in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I have westerns that they did by Bill Pronzini, Richard Matheson, Bill Crider, Livia Washburn and Ed Gorman, among others. I don’t think their print runs were very big and their distribution was spotty. So I was glad to get this one when it came out and to get its sequel, Kitt Peak, a few years later.

So, if you think you might like this, give it a shot. There are copies available from the usual sources for reasonable prices.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: Carter & Lovecraft by Jonathan L. Howard (2015)

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With the name Carter & Lovecraft, you know this book has got to be weird.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 178th in my series of Forgotten Books.

Late last year I began to hear some chatter about this book. I liked the title Carter & Lovecraft but I wasn’t sure what it was about. Did it deal with Lin Carter and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series? I wasn’t sure. And I never saw the book. Until Valentine’s weekend when I was attending ConDFW in Dallas.

ConDFW was celebrating its 15th anniversary and I believe I have been to all of them. Over the last 43 years, I have attended a large number of conventions, mostly in Texas, but I have gotten little afield from there. Anyway, ConDFW has a primarily literary focus and I have a good time there seeing old friends and trying to make some new ones.

Anyway, Adventures in Crime and Space had Carter & Lovecraft for me. I loved the cover by Ervin Serrano. Tentacle-lee things are always interesting on covers, don’t you think? When I saw it, I was pretty sure it was going home with me.

I opened up the book to read the flaps and discovered that I had other books by the writer, Jonathan L. Howard. Now I had three names to conjure with – Howard (a favorite of mine since 1967), Lovecraft (since 1968) and Carter (never a real fan of his writing but his period as editor of the adult Fantasy Series was wonderful). And then I see that Jonathan L. Howard was the author of the Johannes Cabal series of novels – Johannes Cabal the Necromancer, Johannes Cabal the Detective, Johannes Cabal: The Fear Institute, and The Brothers Cabal. I have the first two volumes (which also had great covers) but I had not read them. There was a quirky quality to them that appealed to me. I will now have to investigate the other two volumes and give them all a read.

Carter & Lovecraft (to get back to the book) deals with former policeman Dan Carter who has been involved in tracking down a serial killer called the Child-Catcher. While he and his partner are securing the scene, his partner talks to the killer and soon ends up killing himself. This is totally unexpected and bothers Dan a lot. He decides to retire from the force and become a private investigator.

The PI world is not Marlowe and Spade. It’s more divorce cases and skip tracing. Until the day a lawyer shows up and tells him that he is the sole heir to the estate of one Alfred Hill of Providence. Hill has been missing for seven years and has been declared dead. Carter has never heard of Hill and has no idea why he has gotten this legacy. But it involves a house. So he decides to check out the house and drives to Providence and finds that it’s not just a house. It is an antiquarian bookstore, Hill’s Books.

Inside the bookstore is a young African American woman, Emily Lovecraft. She is the last blood relation of H. P. Lovecraft, who was a great uncle of some sort. She’s heard all the stuff about him – his weird writings, his racism, and his misogyny, all of it. She is surprised to see Carter and to hear that Alfred Hill has been declared dead. Hill was her employer and had not been seen for a while, but she just thought he was eccentric.

Carter mentions the lawyer and brings out his paperwork, which appears to be legitimate to Lovecraft’s high powered boyfriend. Carter and Lovecraft reach an easy truce and Carter suddenly finds himself in a partnership with the woman.

Then the murders start. Not just any murders, but truly odd ones. A math professor drowns inside his car. Except that there is not any water in the car or in the lungs. And a casino pit boss in Atlantic City throws a young man out because he is defying the laws of probability at a roulette wheel. As he is escorted out, the man plays four slot machines side-by-side, hitting the maximum jackpots on each. Astronomical odds against that happening. And, soon after, the pit boss is killed when, while eating his dinner, he suddenly gains about 700 pounds and literally explodes within his office, just like Mr. Creosote in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life.

Oddly enough, someone called Dan Carter on the math professor’s phone just after the murder and he finds himself deep in the investigation. This leads him to William Colt, an odd graduate student who has a cube of aluminum that isn’t quite right.

From here, the story gets wonderfully weird. Insane non-Euclidian geometry was always one of my favorite parts of the Lovecraft stories. And while it plays a part here, I was surprised that this novel does not draw on the Cthulhu Mythos stuff but rather on the Dunsanian fantasies Lovecraft wrote featuring the fictional dreamer Randolph Carter. Only, perhaps not quite fictional as Dan Carter appears to be a descendant who also suffers from odd dreams.

This was a very fun and very odd novel with lots of Lovecraftian lore in it. The ending is truly wild. I think it’s perhaps the best of this type of novel since T. E. D. Klein’s The Ceremonies so many years ago. I may still like the Klein book slightly better but they are both in good company.

If this sounds like your sort of insanity, I’d say, give it a try. As always, your dream journey may have different mileage than mine, but be sure to get green stamps along the way.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: Walking Wolf by Nancy Collins (1995)

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Walking Wolf is a short novel but one full of wonders and magic.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 177th in my series of Forgotten Books.

It is no secret that I am a fan of the weird western. I’ve written a couple of weird western short stories over the years. I am also a fan of Nancy Collins. I first met her at a convention in New Orleans when Sunglasses After Dark had just come out. It was a wonderful inventive vampire novel featuring Sonja Blue, who would later star in several more novels.

Later we were both nominees for the John W. Campbell Award at the World Science Fiction Convention in Chicago in 1991 which was won by Julia Ecklar. Other nominees that year included John Cramer and Michael Kandel.

That’s pretty much were our similarities end. Nancy went on to write a bunch of novels and comic books and stuff. I occasionally produce a short story.

Walking Wolf is a werewolf novel set in the old west and is also the name of the main character. Walking Wolf, the character, is found as an orphan by the Comanche Indians and raised as one of them. At first he has no idea of his identity and abilities. Through his eyes, we get a view of the plains Indians in the mid 19th century. He is raised as an Indian brave and finds himself a friend in Quanah Parker who would later become a fierce chief even though he was half white.

He becomes apprenticed to Medicine Dog, the shaman of the tribe who recognizes Walking Wolf as a skin walker or shape shifter. Walking Wolf does not even know what he is or what he is. One day when hunting buffalo he shifts into wolf mode and astounds the tribe, especially Flood Moon, the girl he intends to marry. Where she had been friendly before, she has no desire to be a shape shifter and she attempts to kill him which results in her death.

Walking Wolf is ashamed of his action and feels he must learn more about himself, So he decides his name is Billy Skillet and he sets out to see the West. He teams up with a Reverend Near in the small town of Vermillion. The Reverend is not a nice person and he attempts to have Billy be his slave while he kidnaps and rapes young girls which he blames on Billy. Billy escapes and the town in destroyed. Billy next meets Professor Praetorius, a charlatan selling snake oil in his medicine show. He has a pinhead which he brings out when sales are tough to show for a nickel. Billy and Praetorius get along well until some folks who tried the snake oil with bad results. Everyone gets lynched which does not work well for the Professor or the pinhead. Billy, however, cannot be killed in this way, but it does hurt.

He soon finds himself in the company of The Sundown Kid, a vampire gunslinger who tells Billy information about the werewolves who had immigrated from the Europe. Unfortunately he is being hunted by a supernatural bounty hunter named Witchfinder Jones, who wears a wolf pelt that Billy instinctively knows is the pelt of his father. Jones also has a wallet made from a woman’s teat that is from Billy’s mother. Jones travels with silver bullets and other paraphernalia. Jones is to become Billy’s nemesis and to be a constant antagonist.

Billy reverts back to the Indian ways and becomes Walking Wolf again. He meets the famous from the period, including Custer, Sitting Bull (whom he regards as an uncle), and more. As an outcast in either world, Walking Wolf offers a differing view of the world around him. He does not age in the same manner as normal people.

This is a good novel, rather short but filled with lots of wonder and magic. I enjoyed pretty much everything about it. Think Lawrence Talbot (theWolfman) as Little Big Man and you have an idea of what this one was like.

Originally published by Mark Ziesing in a nice hardcover edition with a wonderful J. K. Potter cover, It is currently available in e-book form or as a trade paperback. So, if you find this intriguing, it’s available. I think it’s well worth a try.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

FORGOTTEN BOOK: Run from the Hunter by Keith Grantland (Charles Beaumont and John Tomerlin), 1957

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The "wrong man" suspense novel Run from the Hunter takes place around Mardi Gras in Mobile, Alabama, which makes it a fun, fast read for this time of year.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 176th in my series of Forgotten Books.

As I write this, Mardi Gras is being celebrated across the country and in New Orleans with fine gusto. I have never been to the various parades and such since I dislike large crowds and drunken revelries as a general rule. But I have friends who are there right now collecting beads, listening to blues and jazz and eating some mighty fine food.

So I decided to celebrate Mardi Gras in a different way by reading a mystery set during Mardi Gras, though in Mobile, Alabama. In Run from the Hunter, Chris Adams is a former columnist for the Mobile Messenger who has been convicted of killing his former girlfriend Steffany Fontaine. There seems to be a motive, since she was running around on him. Adams is innocent and a bartender should have provided the alibi, but, for some reason, the bartender lied and now Adams is on his way to prison via railroad.

Mobster Frank Giogio is on the same train with the same destination intended. But he confides in Adams that the train will be derailed in four minutes. Adams tries to alert the police who do not believe anything he says. They should have listened.

Giorgio is killed when the bridge over the swamp is blown up, as are several policemen. But Adams survives and manages to get the handcuff key and escape into the dark and the bayou. The police are definitely going to be following him.

In the darkness, he manages to find a run-down house and takes shelter. But he is soon surprised by a young woman with a rifle. His case is now well known and the young woman, Loni Gaillard, recognizes him. And so does her mother. Adams tells his story and Mrs. Gaillard believes him. Besides, the rifle has no bullets.

Adams is allowed to sleep the night before he’s sent to see Jericho, an old man who agrees to help him. Jericho has an old Deusenberg that they use to go back to Mobile. Meanwhile, tracking Adams is Lieutenant Carr, the police homicide detective who built the case against him. Turns out, Carr was also one of Steffany’s suitors. He took her death pretty badly and has vowed to track Adams down.

Since it’s Mardi Gras and Adams is afraid of being recognized, he and Jericho stop for costumes, a pirate costume for Adams and a skeleton for Jericho. Adams contacts his former boss, Sheridan “Sherry” Paige, for help. They track down the bartender to question him about his perjury, only to find him dead. Things seem to be progressing poorly for Adams as the police keep getting closer and closer.

Run from the Hunter is a pretty nice suspense and mystery novel, which Beaumont began but turned over to his friend Tomerlin to finish. The duo worked together on the final draft and polish. The original edition was published by Gold Medal under the Keith Grantland name, which Tomerlin says in his introduction to the Centipede Press edition was from the middle names of each of their sons. There were two printings from Gold Medal and a hardback edition in the UK from Boardman. I’ve had both the Gold Medal printings, which had different covers, and I recently acquired the Centipede Press edition, which is very nice and contains a decent short story, “Moon in Gemini,” by the pair.

I have read a lot of Beaumont’s short fiction. I’ve got his solo novel The Intruder, which was filmed in the early 60’s with William Shatner in the lead. I haven’t read it yet, though it has a good reputation. The quality of Beaumont’s short work gives me hope for it. The film version was made by Roger Corman and is one of the few Corman films to not make a profit. IMDB shows a 7.8 out of ten rating for the film. Apparently Beaumont, William F. Nolan and George Clayton Johnson all have bit parts in it.

Centipede Press also did a recent edition of that novel, which is the edition I have. They make very nice books. They are expensive but the quality that goes into the finished product is always worthwhile.

So enjoy your Mardi Gras and have a wonderful weekend. Check out Run from the Hunter if you get the chance. It’s a worthy novel that deserves a larger audience.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: Between the Living and the Dead by Bill Crider (2015)

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In addition to solving crimes, you can depend on Sheriff Dan Rhodes to do some bull wrestling in a Walmart parking lot.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 176th in my series of Forgotten Books.

I don’t know how many people click the link at the end of the column to see the listing of the other Forgotten Books each of these installments. Patti Abbott, a very fine writer in her own right, compiles a listing each week (and when she’s not available, some other very fine folks make it).

I have found some wonderful titles from the various listings. The listing for last week contained two that someone felt compelled to write about. I had read three of those titles and was aware of six others. The remainder were new to me or had never been on my radar. I will be checking out several more of them as the year moves forward.

Among the people who write the various Forgotten Book and Forgotten Film columns each week, Bill Crider is a prominent force. To the general reading public, I’m not so sure. He has written a lot of books over the years but he has not achieved household name status. And that is the shame.

I have posted about other Crider titles over the past five years, including A Vampire Named Fred and Mike Gonzo and the Sewer Monster. These were young adult books I really enjoyed. In addition to them, Crider has written mystery novels in five different series, men’s adventure novels, horror novels, western novels, a Nick Carter-Killmaster novel and some pseudonymous things he is very tight lipped about.

The Sheriff Dan Rhodes series is the biggie among his mystery novels. The series currently stands at 23 books (there is another being prepped for publication). Rhodes was his first series character, beginning with Too Late to Die (1986). Rhodes, the sheriff of Blacklin County, Texas, works out of Clearview, a smallish town with its share of wonderful characters.

Between the Living and the Dead begins with the death of Neil Foshee, a local meth dealer, at the local haunted house. Everyone knows the house is haunted. It has been empty for years. The last owner died alone there. So, over the years the stories about the death have grown and expanded. Sheriff Rhodes knows the facts, but locals don’t want facts to get in the way of their stories.

Local math professor/singer/amateur PI/character C. P. “Seepy” Benton provides some fun comic relief to the proceedings, as he has set up Clearview Paranormal Investigations (CPI) and offers his “expertise” to the county for a potential law enforcement endorsement.

Foshee’s two cousins have just gotten out of jail on bail, so they are potential suspects. But then so are Neil’s former girlfriend and her current boss/boyfriend, the mayor, the mayor’s wife and the mayor’s nephew. And when the skeleton shows up, the whole thing changes.

In addition to looking for murderers, a small town sheriff has to deal with lots of things like chasing suspects on foot through the woods and then avoiding the rampaging hogs or wresting a bull in the Walmart parking lot after it charges a small child. He has to deal with the his bickering employees and their relationships. And, of course, he has to deal with the dangerous drivers in Clearview who do not use their turn signals!

Crider captures that small town feeling and atmosphere superbly. Over the course of these books, you get to see the wondrous nature of that small town and come to care about many of the folks.

I’ve known Crider for about 40 years. I’ve read many of the books in this and the other series. They are great go-to books when you need a good solid read that puts a smile on your face and happiness into your heart. I don’t think I tell him enough how much I love his books, so hopefully he gets the idea now. Thank you, Bill, for these books.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: The Deep Range by Arthur C. Clarke (1957)

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If you're interested in undersea adventure, Clarke's The Deep Range may hold some appeal.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 175th in my series of Forgotten Books.

Over the last 50 years I have read a lot of science fiction and, early on, I tried to concentrate on some of the classics of the field. I got hold of a list of the greatest science fiction as determined by the readers of Astounding/Analog in 1957 and 1967 (if I remember correctly). This list included such things as A Canticle for Leibowitz, Last and First Men, Childhood’s End, The Demolished Man and many more. (I made a very quick look online and did not see it. That’s not to say that it isn’t out there, but my patience was small).

I found that I really did not like the works of Arthur C. Clarke. And I did give him a try. I read The City and the Stars, Childhood’s End, The Other Side of the Sky, A Fall of Moondust, Against the Fall of Night, 2001: A Space Odyssey and more. I enjoyed Childhood’s End and A Fall of Moondust. But I just didn’t love them the way I loved a lot of other books by other writers.  His award winners Rendezvous with Rama and The Fountains of Paradise never appealed to me. I find his characters wooden and his plots pretty contrived.

I know many of you love these books, and maybe someday they will leap into my hands and I might come to love them, but that has not happened yet. And that is one of the things I love about the field. I can see what some people love in books and while they may not appeal to me, we are still part of the same geeky family.

That said, why did I pick up this Clarke book this week? Beats me. But I really enjoyed A Fall of Moondust and the subject of The Deep Range was something I had interest in. I have had a copy for a while, and since I’ve been addressing some classic writers recently, I thought this might be the time. And I’m glad I did.

The Deep Range is set some discrete period in the future when the population and overcrowding have outstripped the ability of land farms to supply the food and nutrition necessary for life. The single world government has established the World Health Organization’s Bureau of Whales. Whales are a major portion of this world’s food supply. Plankton farming provides protein for humans and whales. The Bureau of Whales’ wardens provide protection for this resource – protecting them from the orca killer whales and keeping them safe and sheltered during calving time.

Walter Franklin is a former spacer who has been grounded and is now on an escalated training course to become a whale warden. His six-month training is accelerated from the normal multi-year training. Walter is trained by First Warden Don Burley who is given no background on Walter’s situation. He is reluctant at first but soon finds himself growing to like the man. They both find themselves attracted to scientist Indra Langenburg, who is working up a master’s thesis on sharks, but it is Walter that eventually wins her.

The novel covers around 20 years of Walter’s time with the Bureau and his adventures, which include a near death experience in very deep water, encounters with a giant squid and a giant sea serpent, bureaucracy, activists and a rescue of a fallen submarine.

Walter Franklin is a likable character and I really enjoyed reading his adventures. Clarke was a diving enthusiast and spent a great deal of time underwater, exploring the ocean floor and fauna. You get a lot of that information in various info dumps as Walter learns about his environment, but I like the subject and actually enjoyed those bits.

So, I give this one a thumbs up. It may not be in most people’s list Clarke’s best, but it’s on mine. And, as I repeatedly say, my taste is in my mouth and your mileage may vary. If you like Clarke, the seas, whales or adventure stories, you could do much worse than The Deep Range.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron (1954)

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The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet sets the wayback machine to 1954.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 174th in my series of Forgotten Books.

This week we have a book that shares some similarities with last week’s Shell Scott adventures. No, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet is not a humorous detective novel. But like the Prather novel, I missed Eleanor Cameron’s Mushroom Planet novels when I was much younger.

This first novel in the series should have been in my school libraries when I was in grade school and, had they been, I would have found them. But, in those formative years, I was in Alaska and then in small-town Texas. The libraries were small – heavy on reference books and some fiction. In several, there was not a formal library, just collections of books in each teacher’s room and whatever was there was what you got. It was not until junior high in Iowa Park, Texas, that I really found out about libraries and what wonders they held.

The Iowa Park town library was small and featured many older titles. I got to read my first Edgar Rice Burroughs books there and Tom Swift (not the Tom Swift Jr. titles that were coming out when I was at that age; these were the older things). And, since the junior high was in the same building as the high school, we had a more formal library at the school, and there I found Heinlein, Wells and Verne. Those were exciting days of discovery.

But, the Mushroom Planet was never in the galaxies I roamed. I don’t believe I ever heard of those books until I got to college and took a course in children’s literature (kiddy litter, as we called it). And I was not about to read them then.

Somewhere along the way, I acquired the first volume of the series and it has been on my shelves for a while. The other day I decided to pick it up and read it.

It’s a fast read and definitely a kid’s book. There are some attempts at science-y things but not much. And that is deliberate. The first chapter tells you what you need to know with the strange green ad in the paper

WANTED

A small space ship about eight feet long, built by one or two kids. The ship should be sturdy and well made and should be of materials found at hand. Nothing need be bought. No adult should be consulted as to its plan or method of construction. An adventure and a chance to do a good deed await the boys who build the best space ship.

Yep, you’ve got to be imaginative and a risk taker and your own person. David and his buddy Chuck are the boys who meet up with Mr. Tyco M. Bass, a peculiarly odd person who wants the boys to travel to Basidium X, a small planetoid located 50,000 miles above Earth that only he can see because he has a special filter. He can make a fuel to power this ship and send two boys to it in two hours, and there they can help out the residents of the tiny mushroom planet. They need to bring some food, capture some Basidium air and bring a mascot, for which Mrs. Pennyfeather, David’s chicken serves the role.

They travel to the planet and meet two wise men, Mebe and Oru, and the great King Ta help them solve a problem and return home, all in one night. Of course, no one believes them because they are kids and things happen to their proof.

It was a fun enough book. If I had preteen kids or grandkids, I might have subjected them to this. I think they would have enjoyed it. But I find that for myself, the one book will do. I don’t really care to return to the Mushroom Planet.

What about you readers out there? Someone have a fond spot for these books, or some other ones. As a kid I read a lot of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Tom Swift. Then I found ERB. I was lost from that point on. And at 14, Conan began to appear and Elric the following year or so. And Philip K. Dick. I was doomed.

I hope your new year is going well. I’ll be back with another book next week, certainly one more age appropriate, I think.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: Everybody Had a Gun by Richard Prather (1951)

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Everybody Had a gun features Richard Prather's private eye Shell Scott.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 173rd in my series of Forgotten Books.

This week is special across the various blogs that constitute the Forgotten Books group. Check out the listing at Patti Abbott’s blog by clicking the link at the end of the column. Friday, January 15, has been designated Richard Prather Day, when as many of the bloggers as are inclined will discuss the work of this quintessential ’50s paperback writer.

I will confess up front that I have not read much Prather. I didn’t discover his works when I was at the impressionable age where I would have read everything multiple times. By the time I had found Prather’s work, I was already reading Hammett, Chandler, both McDonalds, Charles Williams and more. Prather was entertaining, but the others were more representative of what I wanted to read. Still, I thought I would give one a try this week.

Prather is best known for his Shell Scott series of detective novels. Scott is a California private eye, tall with blond close cropped hair, a veteran of WWII and able to get into some truly interesting situations.

This novel begins with action on the first page. Shell is walking down the street when someone starts shooting at him. He almost doesn’t even notice it since he is reading the paper about a local hood named Lobo who had contracted a fatal dose of lead the previous night. But when he does, he has no idea who or why is after him.

He cautiously approaches his office and begins running down the list of people who might have a grudge. It might be Marty Sader, who runs a local nightclub and who had hired Shell to check out a horse betting parlor and to get an idea of the take. Shell takes the job but finds out very little, as Lobo approaches him and tells him to stop. This is something he would normally ignore, so he continues his research, but Lobo is a little more insistent the next time. And Lobo is a right hand guy for a bigger fish named Collier Breed with whom Shell does not want to tangle.

When he gets to his office, Shell sees an attractive redhead tentatively approaching the building. When she sees Shell at his window, she crosses over the street headed toward his office. Meanwhile, a short skinny guy with a gun enters the office and attempts to take Shell away. There is a fight and he knocks the hood out. The redhead shows up and recognizes him as one of Sader’s guys.  She says Sader wants to kill them both and that she has just escaped from him. She won’t talk until Shell gets rid of the hood, so he sends her down to the bar below his office and takes the hood to a nearby cop.

When he gets back to the bar, he discovers the girl never made it there. He finds her purse and learns her name is Iris Gordon. He tracks down her address. He meets her barely clothed roommate, Mia, and finds that they both work for Sader. Figuring that if she escaped from Sader earlier, perhaps she has been taken back there. He tries Sader’s house first and finds a drunken Mrs. Sader shooting a big gun at bales of hay.

Soon he is involved with two gangs, lots of people with guns, some fast talking and quick thinking — and lots of dead bodies. It’s a fast-moving, quick read about attempted takeovers, murder and more.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I would have probably loved it when I was a teenager, but it wasn’t bad. It had a fair bit of skewed humor, which was OK, but a little can go a long way. If you’ve not read Prather, this isn’t a bad one to start with. Chronologically, it was the third Shell Scott adventure and the series was starting to get its quirky feel.

Check out the other Prather reviews on Friday and give him a try. As always, your mileage may vary.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.