The Psychopath Plague by Stephen G. Spruill

These guys look like Pez dispensers to you?

“Forty-Nine days to Doomsday—

The computer projections left no room for doubt- in seven weeks, so many of Earth's people would have gone murderously mad that civilization would collapse beyond any possibility of recovery. There was no known cause for the outbreak of insanity, and only dilettante Elias Kane had as much as a hunch about its origin. With his giant alien servant Pendrake, Kane was prepared to risk his life to solve the riddle of the plague of psychosis- but first he had to evade the madness of the planet he hoped to save!”

-The Back Cover

Copyright 1978, published by Dell SF. $1.75 cover price.252 pages. 

The Psychopath Plague kicks off in an underwater casino as the novel's protagonist Elias Kane gambles with a recently received inheritance. After a year of living in a shack and brewing his own beer, Kane has relocated to a lavish suite. Within the first ten pages, he wins the services of Pendrake, whom he frees outright, after which Kane loses his fortune by  playing what seemed to be a futuristic version of Risk.

Pendrake is a Cephantine, a race known for its honesty, servility, and for possessing incredible strength, bizarrely coupled with an extreme distaste for violence. The Chirpones, a race of penguin-like aliens that are so instinctually fearful of predators that they often die of fear if a human being so much as touches them, have recently begun trading entertainment technology with Earth and are introduced a few pages later. Pendrake informs Elias about the Psychopath Plague, a disease that makes even the most reasonable person murderously violent at the smallest frustration, after the ex-slave’s previous owner makes an attempt on their lives.

There are numerous galactic suspects, as most of the galaxy views humanity as a barbaric menace, but Kane focuses on two—the human colonies of the solar system detest ‘Earthies' and think of them as soft and frivolous, but rely upon the foodstuffs they create for survival. The Chirpones, although seemingly innocent and benign, came into the galactic scene immediately before the plague began. Elias Kane is tasked with discovering who is behind the Psychopath Plague, if anyone, and finding a way to stop it if possible, which involves a lot of planet hopping and galactic intrigue. 

The Psychopath Plague is a decent little story, but its attempts at fusing mystery and science fiction are clumsy and full of tropes. Inside this short novel you will find vague space travel technology, numerous humanoid aliens with very human habits and desires, a red herring suspect, and worst of the entire last chapter: a 'parlor-room' scene where Elias lays out exactly how he unraveled the mystery.

This book was entertaining at times, frustrating at others, and fluff throughout. Nothing spectacular here, bring on the next book!

Camp Concentration by Thomas Disch

Kris says thinks this look like a painting
created by a damaged 13 year old 

The back cover has no description.

Avon Books. 1972 (second printing of that year). $1.50 cover price. 175 pages. 

Camp Concentration is written in the style of a journal—inside it are the thoughts and feelings of Louis Sacchetti, an overweight, self-loathing, lapsed Catholic poet who has been sentenced to a prison term for objecting to a war in which the United States is using 'germ warfare.’ If that sounds pretentious as shit, well, that's because it is.

After a few set-up paragraphs in a standard prison environment, Louis is transferred to camp Archimedes, a military compound in which an experiment is being conducted on AWOL soldiers and conscientious objectors. Prisoners are injected with  Pallidum, an incurable form of syphilis that ravages the brain and is eventually fatal, but grants the infected with a profoundly higher intelligence for the last months of their lives. General Haast, the man in charge of this experiment, is using the collected genius of the test subjects not for the military matters required for his funding, but to discover the secret of immortality via alchemy. Yeah, you read that right. 

The plot itself wouldn't be all that terrible if it wasn't in Sacchetti's whiny, often incomprehensible diary. Disch goes out of his way to throw in every dark and dreary literary reference he can muster (lots of Faust), which does nothing to further the story and often bogs it down, especially when the last two paragraphs are in fucking Latin or French. I am not opposed to literary/sci-fi crossovers, but Camp Concentration ends up being little more than a pretentious mess. Especially towards the end of the book, the artistry nearly becomes gibberish-

“The sin of death spares the sons of David. Hope is a swampland under a glouting sky. A prehistoric wilderness of island-nights. Hinges of cell-mud. Hell grows, joylessly, out of the testes of the dying.” (page 116)

Yeah, I know this is supposed to portray Sacchetti's descent into Pallidum madness, but it’s absolute garbage and nearly incomprehensible. I think you can tell that I didn't like Camp Concentration much. Also—glouting isn't a word, since glout is already an action (actually glout can turn into glouting, just like swim can be swimming. It’s a gerund. But it’s insane that he even used the word, it’s so archaic!- Kris). There are dozens of made up words in Camp Concentration, all of them very annoying, none of them necessary.

Interestingly enough this novel was chosen by Philip K Dick as fuel for his constant letters to the FBI.  Check out these lunatic rants to the bureau involving Neo-Nazi's and Disch's supposed involvement with them:

Letter #1

October 28, 1972

Federal Bureau of Investigation
Washington, D.C.

Gentlemen:

I am a well-known author of science fiction novels, one of which dealt with Nazi Germany (called MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE, it described an "alternate world" in which the Germans and Japanese won World War Two and jointly occupied the United States). This novel, published in 1962 by Putnam & Co., won the Hugo Award for Best Novel of the Year and hence was widely read both here and abroad; for example, a Japanese edition printed in Tokio ran into several editions. I bring this to your attention because several months ago I was approached by an individual who I have reason to believe belonged to a covert organization involving politics, illegal weapons, etc., who put great pressure on me to place coded information in future novels "to be read by the right people here and there," as he phrased it. I refused to do this.

The reason why I am contacting you about this now is that it now appears that other science fiction writers may have been so approached by other members of this obviously anti-American organization and may have yielded to the threats and deceitful statements such as were used on me. Therefore I would like to give you any and all information and help I can regarding this, and I ask that your nearest office contact me as soon as possible. I stress the urgency of this because within the last three days I have come across a well-distributed science fiction novel which contains in essence the vital material which this individual confronted me with as the basis for encoding. That novel is CAMP CONCENTRATION by Thomas Disch, which was published by Doubleday & Co.

Cordially,

Philip K. Dick
3028 Quartz Lane Apt. #2
Fullerton,
Calif 92361.

P.S. I would like to add: what alarms me most is that this covert organization which approached me may be Neo-Nazi, although it did not identify itself as being such. My novels are extremely anti-Nazi. I heard only one code identification by this individual: Solarcon-6.

Letter #2

November 4, 1972

Inspector Shine
Marin County Sheriff's Office,
Marin County Civic Center,
San Rafael,
Calif 94903.

Dear Inspector Shine:

As you may recall, on or about November 17, 1971, my house at 707 Hacienda Way, Santa Venetia, was extensively robbed. The last time I talked to you, during February of this year, you informed me that you had broken the case; a man named Wade (Jerry Wade I believe) had been arrested with the Ruger .22 pistol of mine stolen during this robbery. I have been in Canada and now in Southern California and hence out of touch. Have any more of my possessions been recovered? Have there been any more arrests made? Do you have anything more you can tell me at this date?

While I was in Canada evidently my house was robbed again, during March of this year. I did not know this until what remained of my things arrived down here; my realtor, Mrs. Annie Reagan, had stored them, and at least one entire room of stuff is missing: the bedroom in which the control system of the burglar alarm was located, the one room not covered by the scanner. Obviously it was robbed by someone who intimately knew the layout of the alarm system and how to bypass it. I recall that Inspector Bridges thought that the November 17 robbery was an inside job, at least in part. I believe that this later robbery in March of this year proves it. Only two or three persons that I can recall knew the layout of the burglar alarm system. One was Harold Kinchen, who was under investigation by Airforce Intelligence at Hamilton Field at the time I left (Mr. Richard Bader was conducting the investigation; through Sergeant Keaton of Tiberon he asked me to come in and give testimony. It had to do with an attempt on the arsenal of the Airforce Intelligence people at Hamilton on I recall January first of this year). I have more reason to believe now than I did then that Kinchen and the secret extralegal organization to which he belonged were involved in both robberies of my house, although evidence seemed to point more toward Panthers such as Wade. I say this because this is Orange County where I live now, and I have come to know something about the rightwing paramilitary Minutemen illegal people here -- they tell me confidentially that from my description of events surrounding the November robbery of my house, the methods used, the activities of Harry Kinchen in particular, it sounds to them like their counterparts up there, and possibly even a neo-Nazi group. Recently I've obtained, by accident, new information about Kinchen's associates, and the neo-Nazi organization theory does seem reinforced. In this case, the November robbery was political in nature and more than a robbery. I have thought this for some time, but until now had less reason to be sure.

As to the motive of the assault I'm not sure at all. Possibly it had to do with my published novels, one of which dealt with Nazi Germany -- it was extremely anti-Nazi, and widely circulated. I know for a fact that Harry Kinchen and the Japanese relatives he had through his wife Susan had read it. Kinchen's Japanese-born mother-in-law, Mrs. Toni Adams, had read the novel in the Japanese edition. Beyond any doubt, Kinchen is an ardent Nazi trained in such skill as weapons-use, explosives, wire-tapping, chemistry, psychology, toxins and poisons, electronics, auto repair, sabotage, the manufacture of narcotics. Mr. Bader is of course aware of this. What I did not pass on to anyone, because I feared for my life, is the fact that Kinchen put coercive pressure, both physical and psychological, on me to put secret coded information into my future published writings, "to be read by the right people here and there," as he put it, meaning members of his subversive organization. As I told you in November, he accidently responded to a phonecall from me with a code signal. Later, he admitted belonging to a secret "worldwide" organization and told me some details.

The coded information which Kinchen wished placed in my novels (I of course refused, and fled to Canada) had to do with an alleged new strain of syphilis sweeping the U.S., kept topsecret by the U.S. authorities; it can't be cured, destroys the brain, and is swift-acting. The disease, Kinchen claimed, is being brought in deliberately from Asia by agents of the enemy (unspecified), and is in fact a weapon of World War Three, which has begun, being used against us.

In a recent confidential discussion which I had with my Paris editor, a close friend of mine, this editor ratified my conviction that to allow this coded "information," undoubtedly spurious, to get into print, would be a disaster for this country. These neo-nazis or whatever they are would "break" their own code and make public this phony information, thus creating mass hysteria and panic. There is, of course, no such new untreatable paresis, despite rumors we have been hearing from Servicemen returning from Viet Nam. I have contacted the F.B.I. on the advice of my editor-publisher friend, but I felt I should contact you, too. You may wish to pass this information about the coded information in novels onto Mr. Bader.

I will hope, then, to hear from you. Thank you.

Cordially,

Philip K. Dick
3028 Quartz Lane #3
Fullerton,
Calif 92361.

P.S. Harold Kinchen introduced me to only one individual, who asked me to write for his underground pornographic publications; I refused. By accident I recently learned that this man, "Doc" Stanley, of Corte Madera, "was a student of the speeches of Hitler during his college days at the University of Chicago, advocating their doctrines and reading them to people." Neither Stanley nor Kinchen mentioned this to me.

Demon In The Mirror by Andrew Offutt and Richard Lyon

Grainy picture of a chain mail bra

“Tiana crosses swords with demons, barbarians, vampire nuns!

On a quest to find her lost brother, Tiana of Reme, foster daughter of a pirate captain, ventures on a dangerous journey toward her greatest challenge- the Battle of the Wizards!”

–The back cover

“Tiana, warrior supreme, sails her pirate ship on a perilous quest through the mists of alien lands!”

–The front cover

Copyright 1978 by Pocket Books (this is a later publication but no date is given inside). $2.50 cover price. 189 pages. 

Demon in the Mirror packs a lot of sexy, sexy action in less than two hundred pages. This book is very reminiscent of Robert E. Howard's dark fantasy novels, which makes a lot of sense given that Offutt penned half a dozen or so Conan novels in the seventies and eighties. Plenty of detail is given when it comes to A) Tiara's heaving bosom,  B) visceral gore, and C) the combination of the two. Here are some examples:

“Bloodstains marred her garb now, but she smiled. The clothing had been calculated; Tiana knew well her looks, and she well knew men. She'd been much on display, and, if those fool Narokans had chosen to gape at her body when they should have been plying their swords, why then that was their problem.” (11)

“Maltar's opague black eyes roamed the lovely figure, but with the dispassionate interest of a farmer inspecting a pig on slaughter day. Those exquisitely formed features, the rounded thighs crowding her snug short breeks, the full perfect breasts so displayed—all, he knew comprised a death trap.” (90)

“The dressmaker was more than expert, and she commanded a small army of seamstresses. In a few hours, Tiana was arrayed in a lovely gown of scintillant green silk. She loved it, not merely because its beauty enhanced hers, but because it was intelligently made... She particularly admired the exhibition the gown afforded her fullformed breasts.” (160)

There you go: approximately 5% of the allusions to Tiana's “perfect body” made in Demon In the Mirror. Luckily, the novel isn't entirely romance fluff. Offutt and Lyon craft a well-executed and somewhat interesting plot behind all the breasts and dismemberment. Like many “low fantasy” novels, Demon In the Mirror features a group of plotting wizards who send Tiana and her crew on a series of dire quests that will require both cunning and swordplay to accomplish.

In order to find the whereabouts of her missing brother, Tiana must seek out the dismembered and scattered pieces of the immortal and pretty damn evil sorcerer Lamarred. After the initial few set-up chapters, the remainder of the novel is a violent scavenger hunt during which the reader gets to watch Tiana bounce and jiggle her way around a vivid fantasy world, outsmarting  (and usually killing) anyone or anything who gets in her way. At one point, a completely naked Tiana 'slays' a VAMPIRE NUN. Actually, she kills quite a few monsters and bandits while completely in the buff, typically after she has been captured and tied up…

I approve of this book. Bring on the rest of the scantily clad trilogy!

Black In Time By John Jakes

Cover of the year?

“Right On!

Into the time machine plunges Jomo, the black militant leader of BURN. "Revolution then" is his motto; he's going to rearrange history so the blacks get a fair shake- or, preferably, world dominance. 

But in another area of time, rabble-rousing white supremacist Billy Roy Whisk is also at work—fixing history so the slaves are never freed. 

Worlds spin in and out of existence, and through the paradoxes of time, one black man is pursuing Jomo and Whisk, trying to stop them before their experiments wipe out the world—forever”

-The Back Cover

'A black militant, a white supremacist, and a time travel device tangle in a fight to rewrite history and eternity!' -The Front Cover

1970 printing by Paperback Library. 60c cover price. 171 pages. 

It's fair to assume that Black in Time is a Blaxploitation novel, even though its 1970 printing predates that cinema craze, but this assumption does it a (slight) injustice. John Jakes' book, set in the (at the time) near future of 1977, focuses more on how historical events culminated in the racial tension of 1960's America's than the time paradoxes and constant action alluded to by the back cover.

Well, there are a few small paradoxes to be unraveled in the story, but they take backseat to a string of frenetic vignettes set in the distant past, plus loads and loads of dialogue. The characters in Black in Time love to prattle on about how justified their cause is in extremely ignorant but nonetheless entertaining and colorful rhetoric. At one point, Whisk declares he is going back in time to assassinate 'Martin Luther Coon' (Page 150), to give you an example of how outrageous the conversation can be. 

Black in Time, being a temporal yarn, is oftentimes not sequential, so a synopsis could be a spoiler-heavy mess. Nonetheless, here goes:

Harold is a young assistant professor who has been hand-picked by the Freylinghausen Foundation to utilize their vague time nexus in order to study, but never manipulate, certain eras of time. Doctor Freylinghausen had labored his whole life, keeping the knowledge of time travel to himself, until he could independently fund his foundation to keep it out of the hands of any government that would inevitably abuse it. Harold finds himself caught up in the racial struggle between Jomo, self appointed leader of BURN (Brothers United for Revolution Now), and Reverend Billy Roy Whisk of the All-American Apostolic Fellowship of the USA. These two groups have obvious real world counterparts, but in this story, both are more militant and set for immediate, all out war. Whisk and Jomo alike are looking to make their respective races completely dominant by using Harold and  the Freylinghausen Nexus. Oh yeah, and they each have very busty girlfriends who follow them around and back up their ideologies when needed, making it even more obvious that Jomo and Whisk are racial parallels.  

The story isn't all moral outrage and bluster, though, as it does attempt to tackle the often raised questions regarding race and time travel. Harold spends the first half of the book being blackmailed to help either one of these maniacs, and the second half using his knowledge of time travel and history to stop them from killing Ben Franklin, Mohammed, and baby Richard Pryor. (OK, I made that last one up.)

Unfortunately almost all of the plans devised by the two opposing racialists involve assassination, so this novel gets repetitive pretty quickly in its second half, the only exceptions being a few obscure historical references. Jakes' obviously did his research when looking for times and locales into which he could weave his story, foreshadowing his eventual jump into historical fiction in his subsequent work.

In the end, Black in Time is just trashy enough to kill mainstream appeal but not trashy enough to garner a weirdo cult following, leaving it in pulp novel limbo. 

Oh yeah, don’t read Black in Time if you cringe after reading a few N-bombs. Its usage is abundant, to say the least.

Under a Calculating Star by John Morressy

The little monster on the cover= half a paragraph
in the novel. 

“They had landed on the forbidden planet of Boroq-Thaddoi. They had made their way across the snow-covered desert and the vast graveyard of mangled spaceships. Now they stood gazing with awe at their destination, the Citadel.

The Citadel was unique in the galaxy. Some mad, brilliant architect might have dreamed this blending of the arts and materials of a hundred civilizations into a single monstrous edifice, but no known race could have erected such a thing. It dwarfed the nine walls of Skix, the great corridor on Clotho, the ageless pyramids of Xhanchos, even the legendary cities of Old Earth in the proud and violent centuries before the exodus. It was the monument of giants.

Somewhere in the perilous labyrinth behind these towering walls lay the secret that had eluded and destroyed all searchers for thousands of years... The secret that had to be found before the Great rebellion could begin...”

–The back cover

First published in the USA in 1975, this is a 1979 British edition by New English Library. Cover price 95p. 157 pages.

Under a Calculating Star is definitely not a book that can be judged by its cover, since the spiny bat monster depicted on the front (although cool) only appears in a page or two of the entire story. This is a really fun space actioneer that somehow, in less than 160 pages, crams three robust plots involving the two main characters. Part of the five-book Del Whitby series, Under a Calculating Star can be read on its own, as each book in the series runs concurrently and has a different main character, all weaving into the overall plot.

In Morressy's future, mankind has already spread throughout the galaxy, finding many humanoid aliens, and sometimes interbreeding with them, before moving on like interstellar gypsies. Having space travel thrust upon them by the “Old Earthers,” these diverse alien cultures—who were mostly at the technological equivalent of the iron age when the colonists arrived—still have not made many developmental strides in the following few centuries,  so many of their ships are aging relics left behind. Yes, this is a sci-fi story with sword fights and pistol duels rather than laser battles, a very golden era for a book published in 1975. 

The first third of this book, which involves the Citadel of Boroq-Thaddoi,  reminded me of the movie Krull quite a bit, mainly because the characters are killed in quick succession during their journey. Eight spacefarers, all with different skills and of different alien races, are systematically crushed, melted, or vaporized by the malevolent traps of the Citadel, until only a few survivors remain. In one scene, they shoot and chop a few dozen eyeless monsters, which also reminded me of the Mines of Moria in LOTR—certainly a good thing.

After escaping the grasp of the Citadel, the survivors divide up the spoils of their deadly journey (settling for a few jewels rather than the large sum they had hoped for) and take off for Xanchos, a trader world with an economy based upon gems and slaves. The word Xanchos made me go get some nachos and cheese that day, in case you were wondering. 

A true 'pocket book'

The second and third parts of the story rely on the dynamic differences between the races of two of the crew members. Kian Jorry, captain of the driveship Seraph, is a k'Tural'Pa (yep), a race nearly identical to humans and known for being manipulative, cunning, and mostly lacking in conscience. Axxal, Jorry's manservant, is a Quespodon with intelligence much higher than most of his race, who are often used as pack animals and slaves throughout the galaxy due to their musculature and subservient nature. Xanchos’ recent slave uprising led to a new ruling class in the months before the Seraph's arrival, and after touching down on the planet, each of the two shipmates react very differently to the power vacuum this has created. 

Jorry spends his days in the courts of the palace, weaving political intrigues and looking to dupe the newly anointed and power hungry nobility, who are all ex-slaves and of the near-human Skorat race. Axxal meets another Quespodon of similar intelligence to himself and they determine that their race's mental woes are an after-affect of their home world's atmosphere, since each of them are dozens of generations removed from their home world.

Predictably (but satisfying nonetheless), the captain spends the rest of the book chasing after avarice and power to his undoing, but the manservant looks to enlighten his people, which leads to a utopia.

This blog also has a very thorough breakdown of the Del Whitby series, which I used as a reference for the plethora of alien names in the book, and hopefully didn’t plagiarize.

Under a Calculating Star was a great find, and I plan to tear through the series (in order) as soon as I can find some more second-hand paperbacks by Morressy on some dusty shelves in some bookstore's basement.  Once again- Thanks to Kris Adamo for the edits, as I love the run on sentence. 

Beyond By Theodore Sturgeon

Tilted Kilt in the background makes the photo

“Ted Sturgeon has created a brand of science fiction all his own—a lifetime work of unique emotional power, beauty, and wonder.

Nobody else could have written these stories:

Need – A man burdened with the talent to see what those around him really wanted.

Nightmare Island – The hideous creatures he saw weren't vision of delirium... But his dearest friends.

Largo – Music has charms... and curses.

The Bones – The dead can't speak—but there are things they can show you.

This collection, including the famous "Abreaction" and "Like Young", shows Sturgeon at the peak of his mastery of mind—and heart-expanding storytelling.” –The Back Cover

Copyright 1960, this is a 1980 print. Six stories at 187 pages. $1.95 cover price.

 Having vowed to give Sturgeon another shot, it was a pretty easy decision to pick up this collection of short stories based solely on the “floating skull with headphones” cover. I did enjoy Beyond more than The Dreaming Jewels, but could not shake the “poor man's Ray Bradbury” label I had given Sturgeon in the past.

The stories here are creative, but often lack any serious punch or “emotional power” as the back cover described. The opening story “Need” is the worst of the bunch, with bland characters and a mediocre plot device: a man with the extrasensory ability to sense other's strongest desires. “Nightmare Island” is a vast improvement: a washed up sailor going through delirium tremens while stranded on an island with giant telepathic worms was at least a bit different, if meandering at times. “The Bones” is also pretty cool, but so horror-lite that it ended up being forgettable in the end. I don't even want to get into detail with “Largo”, as music-oriented stories in Sci-Fi and Fantasy are often cringe worthy to say the least. I skimmed that one, I admit. 

Beyond ended up being worth the $2.50 admission fee for its cover alone, and the two good stories in the bunch showed me a little of why Sturgeon is considered one of the “underrated greats,” but the package was weak as a whole and did little to assuage my doubts about Sturgeon's work.

Anyone have any recommendations that will change my opinions of Theodore Sturgeon, some hidden gem that I have yet to stumble upon? I have heard good things about More Than Human, but I am still skeptical.

The Sodom and Gomorrah Business By Barry N. Malzberg

LSD LSD LSD LSD LSD LSD

“Death and Disorder 104

Institute courses told a grim story about the Network—that savage world beyond the closely guarded Institute gates. But they wanted to see for themselves. They had to know. 

Were there really females there? Would their training as mercenaries prepare them for the wild bands of grisly subhumans?

They set out on a journey of discovery only to become the unwitting agents of forces that threatened to destroy the only world they'd ever known.”—The back cover

“Was there a world outside? Or only dust, despair, the void?”—The front cover

Copyright 1974, this is apparently a Pocket Books first edition. 95c cover price. 126 pages. 

"Hey, we need two heads sporting euro-mullets floating over a Cadillac while having some kind of seizure." –Art Director of Pocket Books

Malzberg was really cranking them out in the mid 70s: The Sodom and Gomorrah Business was one of six (!) novels that he had published in 1974. While I expected this to be a weird one after taking in the cover and back description, I still wasn't quite prepared for this story to involve as much vicious sadism as dystopian sci-fi.

The two main characters—the unnamed narrator and his pair-bonded friend Lawson—are two students at the "Institute for Urban Control.” The pair have become bored with the lectures presented by animatronic professors and the “homosex” that is the norm for the all-male student body.  As members of "Death and Destruction 104,” the narrator and Lawson are being groomed to be Enforcers: the pride of the institute and in charge of population control (murderous sweeps) of the Network.

Narrator and Lawson decide to go on a joyride into the New York City Network—a no man’s land full of society’s unwanted who have become lawless and tribal. The narrator and his fuck buddy pop some pills, requisition a car (a two-hundred-year-old Cadillac) and some pistols, then hit the road.

They cross the decaying barriers that circumscribe the Network, making sure to insult the guards because barrier duty is beneath them. The duo then stumble upon a family of Network denizens who beg Narrator and Lawson to help them escape into the "Landscape" outside.

Unfortunately for these innocent outcasts, the two young men have more murderous intentions—first, they shoot the pleading man to death, then, as the Narrator states, he “[sets] upon her like sainted Zapruder himself, and to prove the estimate of her humanity, my worth, my dismal need, I rape the shit out of her." (p. 38) (This Zapruder guy is the newly-sainted man who videotaped the JFK assassination, which the institute has students watch time and time again.)

After the worth-affirming rape, the narrator shoots his victim, and then her child, once it begin to cry, rationalizing it as a mercy killing since the child just witnessed the rape of his mother. Oh yeah, and he ejaculates again after riddling the kid with bullets.

Soon after this fun little chapter about family values, the two Institute students are captured by a band of Network toughs from "Westerly."  The Westerly gang kills Lawson, then attempts to "deprogram" the narrator, a process consisting of some light torture along with heterosexual sex in their harem, in the hopes that they can use the narrator for their revolutionary plot.

Malzberg only allows for two female characters in the whole story—one is raped and murdered, and the other is a submissive member of the westerly harem, a broken woman who does as she is told. I don't really know what point he’s trying to make with this novel, and it only gets murkier and harder to grasp from this point on.

At first I really enjoyed the promise of the Sodom and Gomorrah Business, with its dystopian-lite setting and staccato three page chapters, but in the end the story was a light stab at social commentary drenched in the sweat and blood of sado-masochism. The result is basically a not-nearly-as-fun precursor to Escape From New York.

I can't say that I recommend the Sodom and Gomorrah Business on any level. Probably the weirdest part of this book is that it is dedicated to Malzberg's daughter, which he also did in this little gem:

No thanks!