Showing posts with label Commander Craig. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commander Craig. Show all posts

Monday, November 5, 2018

Abandon Galaxy! (Commander Craig #2)


Abandon Galaxy!, by Bart Somers
March, 1967  Paperback Library

The second and final volume of the short-lived Commander Craig series is much better than the first one. It seems that Gardner Fox (aka “Bart Somers”) spent the time between volumes actually figuring out what his publisher wanted; whereas in the first book he turned in a juvenile snoozefest with a too-amorphous threat and a lackluster hero, this time he delivers just what Paperback Library no doubt wanted from the beginning: James Bond in space.

And this is the movie Bond for sure; like Connery’s take on the character, Commander John Craig now sexually harrasses all the hot women he meets (playfully, of course), likes to indulge in the occasional bit of gambling, and goes up against oily, despicable villains straight out of SPECTRE. The exploitative elements have been greatly expanded – nothing too explicit, though – with copious mentions of nude women at the various space-dives Craig frequents, waitresses in “transparent boleros,” man-hungry cougar types, etc. The lead female character is even a super high-class courtesan from a planet named Veneria in which all the women are trained love-artists, boasting that they’ve discovered a hundred and some ways to have sex.

There is only infrequent reference to that previous volume; it’s a short time later, and we are informed that Craig has broken up with his girlfriend, Eva Marlowe. No doubt because Fox has learned the last thing you want to give your swinging intergalactic spy is a steady girl. He’s gotta be stone free, baby! Fox has also learned to truly make the series “intergalactic,” too; no more constant mentions of Earth cities. Instead, Fox has gone overboard in the opposite direction; Abandon Galaxy is stuffed with arbitrary mentions of far-off planets, places, and people, not to mention bizarre alien oaths and curses. My favorite would definitely have to be, “By the nine births of Lamarkaan!”

When we reconnect with Craig he’s already on his latest assignment, which sees him watching over a lovely young museum curator on one of those far-flung worlds. Her name is Irla, and she’s become a target of LOOT – the League Of Outer-space Thieves. (Pretty sure that would actually be “LOOST,” wouldn’t it?) Ultimately we’ll learn it’s because the bastards intend to bump her off, replace her with an android, and use the android to steal a priceless artifact belonging to the Rim Worlds and thus start a war between the Empire (aka the US) and the Rim Worlds (aka the USSR). We see from the outset that there will be more action this time, as Craig takes on the LOOT thugs, even engaging them in an air car chase.

Also, Craig is more brutal this time; he melts sundry faces with his “rayer” gun; the novel is by no means gory, but Fox does often mention exploding blood and flesh, which is a far cry from the juvenile tones of the previous book. And also he appropriately exploits his female characters a bit more; we’re often reminded that hot redhead Irla has one helluva nice body, and she’s often getting nude for various reasons. However Fox does not dwell on the juicy details when the bumping and grinding finally happens – all of Craig’s sexual encounters happen off-page.

After all this, Craig looks forward to a nice vacation on Pleasure Planet, a sort of global resort where vacationers can let it all hang out. But on his way to the planet, riding with other vacationers in a massive cruise spaceship, he’s contacted by his boss, Dan Ingalls. This is one of Fox’s more interesting creations: a gadget that rides over the cosmic waves and allows you not only to hear the person you are talking to, but to feel their emotions as well. At least Craig has updgraded from that stupid “sack” he put everything in, last volume. Ingalls informs Craig that LOOT is up to more trouble; they are planning to plant a megapowerful bomb on – you guessed it – Pleasure Planet itself. Once again the hope is to spawn a war between the Empre and the Rim Worlds.

It's all very much on the Bond tip. Craig figures out that one of his passengers is the secret LOOT agent, and sure enough it’s a smokin’ hot babe who is posing as a sexually insatiable “tigress” headed for Pleasure Planet for some illicit fun. Her name is Kla’a Foster, and she’s met at the Pleasure Planet landing site by an oily, creepy-looking obese man named Alfred Bottom, who will soon be revealed as the main villain. True to the template, Bottom and Craig are soon challenging each other in high-stakes gambling matches, and Bottom is wining and dining Craig in his luxurious villa while a half-nude Kla’a sits at his side, tempting Craig. However the two never get it on, and Kla’a is sort of a dropped ball on Fox’s part, only returning to meet her hasty demise – not at Craig’s hand – in the finale.

The main setpiece of the novel is just as depicted on the cover; Craig takes up Bottom on his challenge to Schiamachy, an ancient, rarely-indulged Pleasure Planet feature in which two contestants vie against one other on a sort of elevated chessboard. Each level has a different challenge, and if the contestants survive to the top they have to fight each other to the death. Only Bottom at the last minute reveals he doesn’t plan to compete himself; the rules allow a stand-in, and Bottom will retain the services of his “bruitor” henchman, a massive alien creature with three eyes and tentacles, giving him four arms to bash his human prey.

It's a cool, pulpy scene, with Craig up against a giant spider, an android, and even an invisible killer plant. The battle with the bruitor is also nicely done. The only problem is it’s over too quickly and the novel sort of pads around for the last half. There are some cool pieces here and there, though, like Craig swimming through a monster-infested ocean to spy on Bottom’s beachfront villa. Craig throughout though is able to spend some quality time with his new lead female character: Mylitta, a “dusky” skinned, “slant eyed” ultra babe from the planet Veneria, which isn’t a planet of nasty diseases but one of high-class whores, of which Mylitta is the best of them all. Craig wins her as part of that Schiamachy duel.

Mylitta proves herself to be a memorable character; initially she’s only concerned with her courtesan reputation and is put off by Craig’s constant refusal to bed her(!). This is because Craig’s more concerned with the attempts on his life he’s sure Bottom is about to make, and his concerns of course are quickly validated. But once they finally get all that out of the way (off-page of course), Mylitta becomes more active in the action scenes, even using her disguise skills to make the two of them look completely different so as to elude Bottom and his men. That being said, there’s actually a part where Craig disguises himself as a janitor, folks, complete with a mop and pail. The future!!

The climax plays out in Lewdity City, to which Bottom, Kla’a, and the other LOOT villains have retreated after Craig, with some governmental help, prevents their ship from leaving the planet. Here upper-class citizens come to indulge in their lower-class tastes, posing as bawdy villagers and the like. It’s all very goofy, as is an arbitrary plot point Fox quickly introduces that allows Craig to rally the villagers to his cause and assault Bottom’s fortress. The climax is unexpectedly brutal, though, with eyeballs getting scratched out, people falling to their deaths, and a knock-down, drag-out fight between Craig and Bottom. Also more exploding flesh and blood thanks to Craig’s rayer.

It’s kind of a pity that this wasn’t the first installment of the series; if it had been, perhaps there would’ve been more than two volumes. I feel that Beyond The Black Enigma did little to engender the interest of sci-fi readers of the day, what with its general suckiness and all. In fact I wonder if this is why that first book was reprinted in 1968, to see if there was any interest in further Commander Craig adventures. Clearly there was not, and that was it for the adventures of Commander John Craig.

Thursday, September 28, 2017

Beyond The Black Enigma (Commander Craig #1)


Beyond The Black Enigma, by Bart Somers
August, 1965  Paperback Library

Clearly intended to be James Bond in space, Beyond The Black Enigma was the first of two novels to feature Commander John Craig; Bart Somers was prolific sci-fi author Gardner Fox. The story could easily have appeared a few decades earlier in one of the pulps Fox once wrote for; even the date in which the story occurs, the friggin’ 75th Century(!), gives it the feel of a vintage pulp.

And of course, despite taking place so far into the future, the world Fox gives us feels like the 1960s (or actually the 1940s); it is humorously quaint, with people still smoking cigarettes, writing on paper, even having “writing desks.” Square-jawed men stand around in offices smoking and drinking and discussing “girls.” The “science” throughout is preposterous and the characters have all the depth of Captain Future. None of this really could be seen as a criticism – I mean the only sci-fi I’ll read these days is pulp sci-fi – but the main issue is that Beyond The Black Enigma just isn’t very good. One suspects this is because Fox perhaps retconned some other manuscript into this James Bond-esque template; for in truth, he takes his gadget-wielding, superspy hero, sends him to a boring planet…and has him spelunking through ancient crypts and deciphering the “truth” in various stories from mythology.

Craig is a big blond-haired brawler who works as an agent for Alert Command, part of “the elite Investigation Corps, United Worlds Space Fleets.” He’s just got back from nearly a year of jungle warfare on some planet, and just wants to spend time with Elva Marlowe, his hoststuff main babe who makes her living as a fashion designer around the cosmos (despite which, and despite it being the 75th friggin’ century, Paris and New York are still the fashion meccas of the universe; as I say, this future is very quaint). But he’s summoned by his boss, Commander Ingalls, for a new mission – one that will have Craig fighting a menace “five light years away.”

As you’ll note, both Craig and Ingalls are commanders. This is because Craig apparently received a promotion sometime between the manuscript and publication stages. Craig is sometimes referred to as “the major” throughout, which implies that’s how he started before the publisher (perhaps) decided he should be “Commander Craig.” But for that matter, the novel is rife with typos and grammatical errors; “slowly turning slowly,” and “Craig felt his heart swell in his rib case,” and etc. Indeed, the novel is profoundly stupid, and these typos are really just the icing on the cake.

Craig’s assignment is to take his new ship, made of “densatron” metal and with “nucleatronic engines,” on a five light-year journey to confront the mysterious “black enigma” which has been known about for a thousand years but is only just now being seen as a threat(!). Two splace fleets have been lost in the massive black blob which eclipses an entire solar system, so far away; it’s like the Bermuda Triangle of outer space. For this impossible mission, Edmunds, “chief of Ordinance,” has whipped up a trio of gadgets for Craig.

First there’s the Imp, a metal rod that shoots a ray that causes people to implode. Next there’s a black box that “warps time,” so that if someone fires at Craig and he activates the box in time, it will shoot out a ray that will capture the bullet or ray or whatever’s been fired at him – and thrust it a hundred years into the future (or past; Edmunds isn’t really certain). In keeping with the moronic vibe of the novel, Edmunds fires at Craig point-blank, the shot captured in the box’s rays and thrust into the future, and Ingalls chuckles that someone standing there a century from now might catch a bullet in the face! But it gets dumber: Edmunds next produces “the halo,” a crown-like gizmo that unlocks the full potential of the brain. Slip it on your head and concentrate and you can make something from nothing; Edmunds jokes that the “boys in the lab” have been using it to make eggs, which pop right out of the thin air…tasteless, but edible.

These three items Craig tosses in a “sack” (it’s the 75th friggin’ century, folks, and all the guy has is a damn sack), hops in his ship, and heads on for his encounter with the black enigma. Already we realize the problem, here – our James Bond-esque hero is up against an enigma. Not a SPECTRE-like force or an enemy agent or something tangible that he can handle in his ruggedly virile two-fisted way. Nope, it’s a cloudy mass of nothingness that no one knows anthing about. And talk about underkill…Craig gets there, has a moment of foreboding, and then flies into it…and then takes a nap!!

I don’t know the first thing about Gardner Fox, but I’ve gotta hope that Beyond The Black Enigma isn’t a typical example of the dude’s work, cause this book sucks in a major way. Craig takes his little nap and then gets around to exploring the solar system which has been swallowed by the enigma…he finally settles on the third planet from the sun, figuring it will have life. From here the novel becomes a tiresome, repetitive trawl. Long story short, a vaguely-described alien race called the Toparrs have taken over this planet, Rhythane, enslaving the native folk.

That time-warp stuff isn’t limited to Craig’s box. The Toparrs wear belts which can take them past, present, and future. Craig is shocked when he lands and his ship promptly disappears; it’s because it’s been sent to the future, which is where it develops the two missing spacefleets are. Meanwhile he hooks up with a native gal, named Fiona, a “little pagan” with “faintly slanted eyes.” She’s one of the few native survivors of the Toparrs, and of course falls quick for the rugged Earthman, though it takes a while for Fox to get to the expected sex scene – and even then it’s relegated to nothing more than, “In the quiet night, [Fiona’s] sigh was loud.” Whether that’s a sigh of satisfaction or frustration is something Fox doesn’t elaborate on.

As mentioned, after imploding a few Toparrs with the Imp, which is still in that damn “sack,” Craig spends most of his time studying the mythology of the native peoples, as well as exploring the crypts beneath their fallen and deserted old city. It’s preposterous in how stupid it is…here our hero is, “five light years away,” ostensibly to stop a “black enigma” from swallowing the known universe but also to find out what happened to the missing space fleets sent to research the place, and all he does is basically rob a few graves and then sit around and listen to myths, trying to discern the “truth” in them.

Eventually he’ll get hold of a Toparr belt and send himself (and Fiona) to the future, where he finds the missing few thousand spacemen. They’re being used as slaves by the Toparrs, who worship a computer-god that looks like a “surrealist mobile.” Gradually Craig will learn that the enigma was created by this computer eons ago, and somehow it took on its own life, swallowing planets, even causing the Toparrs to leave their ancestral homeland to come to this one. Craig, armed with a sword he finds when the Toparr computer-god sends him into a sort of promised paradise to sway him over to its side, ends up smashing all the controls and destroying the enigma.

Fox has finally hit his word count; Craig, who had been falling in love with Fiona, basically shrugs her off in the final sentences, figuring his fling with her was just one of those things(!) and that she’ll eventually marry some member of her tribe and have lots of kids…indeed, it’s a “good thing” that Fiona likely thinks Craig is dead(!). Fox doesn’t even give us a reunion between Craig and Elva Marlowe; Craig just plops on his ass and begins waiting for the Alert Command ships which will no doubt soon be on their way, given that their monitors will have detected that the enigma no longer exists.

This book was really a wearying read, so dispirited and juvenile that it became a chore to get through. A cursory glance through the second (and final) installment, Abdandon Galaxy!, would indicate that it’s a more entertaining bit of pulp sci-fi. Surprisingly though, Beyond The Black Enigma actually received a second printing, in 1968. Here’s the cover: