From the August 1958 Fantastic Universe: de Camp, Harrison and Cooper

Let's look at another magazine sitting on the SF magazine shelves here at MPorcius HQ, one in such bad shape I will probably end up reading the scan of the issue at the internet archive for fear of my hard copy crumbling to dust in my hands, the August 1958 issue of Fantastic Universe, which features a cover by Virgil Finlay.  Now, we've already read one story that debuted in this issue, Harlan Ellison's "Back to the Drawing Boards," which I read in 2016 in the Belmont collection From the Land of Fear.  The other three stories in this magazine that are piquing my interest are those by L. Sprague de Camp, Harry Harrison, and Edmund Cooper; let's take a trip to the year Nikita Khruschev took over Communist Russia, Charles DeGaulle took over France, and Gigi took over the silver screen by checking them out!

"Ka the Appalling" by L. Sprague de Camp

I read a bunch of de Camp's Viagens Interplanetarias stories years before I started this blog, and found them mediocre, but I am still willing to read the guy--you know, every few years.  "Ka the Appalling," isfdb is telling me, is the seventh of nine stories in the Pusadian series, and would later be reprinted in a few anthologies and de Camp collections.

It seems the Pusadian series is set in one of those Conan-like prehistoric fantasy milieus in which civilizations now forgotten erected big cities and built empires inhabited by wizards and priests and the men who confronted them with swords; Pusadia is the native name for Poseidonis, which is a region of Atlantis.  The theme of this story is that religion is a scam, though told sort of metaphorically--in the world depicted magic and demons are truly real, but gods are merely the product of people's belief in them.  (Fritz Leiber uses the same idea, that gods rely on their worshipers' adherence to maintain their own strength, in his Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, in particular 1959's brilliant "Lean Times in Lankhmar.")  

Gezun is a young, tall, strong, good-looking Pusadian whose adventures have brought him to the city of Typhon.  He didn't realize Typhonians consider cats sacred, so when he sat down to eat at a tavern and a cat jumped up and stole his main course, he struck the felonious feline dead with his staff and retrieved his entrée.  So our story begins with Gezun being chased through the labyrinthine Typhonian streets by a murderous lynch mob.  He is rescued via a secret door in an alley by Ugaph; Ugaph is a minor wizard, a thief, and a skeptic who doubts the existence of the gods.  Ugaph blackmails Gezun into becoming his assistant.

Ugaph regularly summons a small demon that looks a little like a fox; the demon knows what goes on in all the temples in Typhon and gives Ugaph advice on what jewels and gold decorations and so forth in the local houses of worship are ripe for theft.  To summon the demon, Ugaph requires copious supplies of bats' blood, and Gezun's primary task is to hunt for bats in the neglected pyramidal tombs of forgotten Typhonian royal dynasties, a labor heretofore underttaken by Ugaph's attractive daughter Ro--Ugaph wants Ro spending her time hunting for a rich husband, not for bats.

Searching the tombs for bats is risky because the tombs are full of traps, and robbing temples obviously carries its own risks, so Gezun and Ugaph come up with a safer scheme for making money--starting their own bogus religion and taking in donations.  

The rest of the story is about how Gezun's lust for Ro, the demon's lust for bat's blood, and Ugaph's lust for money interact and lead to backstabbing, death, and the spectacular rise of the god Ugaph and Gezun make up out of whole cloth, Ka the Appalling.

In contrast to Edgar Rice Burroughs or Robert E. Howard, de Camp doesn't write his sword-swinging adventure stories in a romantic, epic, or poetic fashion, with larger than life heroes who can fight off a dozen enemies at once, are driven by powerful passions and shake the foundations of nations.  Instead de Camp strives to make his stories realistic and mildly comic, and maybe a little cynical.  For example, Gezun is not deeply in love with Ro, he is just at the mercy of his hormones, and Ro isn't deeply in love with Gezun--she resists Gezun's ardent advances and after he takes her virginity she cries; Gezun doesn't hear her weeping because he fell asleep after deflowering her.  De Camp describes people's decisions and actions in a rational, business-like manner which feels a little cold and emotionless.

Still, I enjoyed "Ka the Appalling" more than I expected to.  The plot is good and it runs smoothly, like a clock; everything makes sense and there is a minimum of unnecessary verbiage.  So, thumbs up for "Ka the Appalling."

"Arm of the Law" by Harry Harrison

It is the future, in which mankind has colonized the solar system.  Nineport is a tiny little mining town and spaceport on Mars with a corrupt government; organized crime runs the whole town, from the gambling dens and bars that cater to the miners and spaceship crews to the police station, which has a complement of four cops.  The chief and the two beat cops are basically incompetent, but our narrator, the serjeant, was a big city cop on Earth for ten years before he was sent to Mars as punishment and he more or less knows what he is doing.

One day a robot cop arrives and joins the little force.  Chaos and hilarity ensue when the robot insists on enforcing the law, enraging the local organized crime boss, who tries to destroy the robot with a shoulder-fired anti-tank weapon.  The robot and our narrator triumph over the criminals and make an honest town out of Nineport.

This story is perhaps a little slight, but it is entertaining and the jokes are actually amusing.  Thumbs up for "Arm of the Law."

"Arm of the Law" would reappear in Harrison's oft-reprinted collection War with the Robots and the 2001 career-spanning collection 50 in 50.

"The Lizard of Woz" by Edmund Cooper

"The Lizard of Woz" was reprinted in the 1963 collection Tomorrow Came and the 1968 collection News From Elsewhere, among other places.  I actually own a copy of the 1969 US edition of News From Elsewhere, and will read "The Lizard of Woz" from it in recognition of the possibility the story was revised for book publication.  "The Lizard of Woz" appears to have been considered a big selling point of the book, it being mentioned on the back cover and the very first page.  These come-ons make clear that "The Lizard of Woz" is a joke story, if the title hadn't already clued you in.

Despite its prominence in the advertising material for the collection, "Lizard of Woz" is a silly filler story.  Ynky (short for Ynkwysytyv) is a lone scout from a powerful intergalactic empire of lizard people that regularly exterminates or enslaves the intelligent species it encounters.  As punishment for trying to seduce a superior's daughter, Ynky has been sent to Earth to assess what should be done to the human race.  First he talks to an American who owns a lonely diner; this guy reads SF magazines and so is psychologically prepared to deal with an alien.  When Ynky lets this Yank know that he is all alone and is going to recommend that the human race be exterminated the Earthman tries to prevent the delivdery of this report by shooting Ynky with a shotgun; Ynky escapes with flesh wounds.

Yhnky proceeds to the USSR where he talks to a minor Communist functionary who manages a lonely train station.  Initially this Bolshie thinks Ynky is a commissar in disguise come to test his loyalty to the socialist project, and so is on his best behavior.  When he realizes Ynky is a real live alien from what he takes to be a capitalist society he cunningly sabotages the lizard's flying saucer.  Forced to crash land on an island in the South China Sea, Ynky meets a female Komodo dragon and falls madly in love, and the Earth lizard kills and eats him.     

"The Lizard of Woz" is not exactly bad, and of course I'm always happy to see somebody slag the Soviet Union and communism, but I consider this sort of story to be a waste of time unless it is very funny, and this piece is just barely entertaining.  The de Camp and Harrison stories we have read today are also meant to be funny, but they are also servicable adventure stories with plots that make sense, and their humor is based more on human personality and less on dumb puns.  Barely acceptable. 

Despite my dim view of this one, I am tentatively planning to read more stories from News From Elsewhere.  Until then, if you want more MPorcius coverage of Edmund Cooper, click these links for my blog posts on novels by Cooper that tackle such topics as race relations and relations between the sexes: 

Gender Genocide

A Far Sunset, Five to Twelve, and The Last Continent  

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Not a bad crop of stories.  Expect to see more discussion of stories by L. Sprague de Camp, Harry Harrison and Edmund Cooper in future installments of MPorcius Fiction Log.