I’m a fan.
That doesn’t necessarily mean what you think it does.
Most people, when they hear the word “fan,” automatically visualize a person who really likes a particular thing. Sometimes this implies insanity – don’t we all remember the crazed Carinthian ski waxer who climbed the Eiffel Tower in an ibex costume to prove his love for the immortal Bvuga Breen, thrice named “Hottest Styrian Soap Star” in a Viennese poll? – but usually it means a more benign regard for a particular sports team or movie or restaurant. Fans may wear their favorite player’s jersey or up rate their neighborhood bistro on Yelp.com, but most of the time that’s as far as it goes.
I’m not that kind of fan.
I’m a science fiction and fantasy fan.
SF fans (or “fen,” if one wants to be completely accurate and completely fannish) are a tribe unto themselves. We read our favorite series until we half believe we’re in Minas Tirith or ShiKahr or Port Chicago or Rhiminee. We go to conventions to discuss our favorite authors and TV series or movies. We make costumes based on what we read or watch, sing filk songs about Muad’dib’s love life, and decorate our houses with prints of the cover art from the books we love. Some of us learn Quenya or Vulcan. We make jokes that no one else will get because no one but us has read Skylark of Space three times, or has Thunderbirds on DVD with bonus Easter Eggs of the concept art for Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons. We’re the only person in town who has Krull on laserdisc (or wants it, for that matter). We read other genres of course (usually mysteries, although Victorian horror is running a close second these days), but the average fan will head straight to the SF and fantasy racks at Barnes & Noble before checking out anything else.
And because American science fiction arose from the pulp ghetto in the 1940s and hasn’t yet shaken the stigma despite the mainstream success of Neil Gaiman and Ursula K. LeGuin and Harlan Ellison, and because well known SF and fantasy books tend to stay in print a long, long time, Joe and Josephine Trufan have read a lot of revered but questionable space operas and brawny barbarian sagas over the years.
I’m no exception to this. My house isn’t decorated in early Klingon, thank God and the angels, but I have several nice prints by a fan artist my college roommate used to date. I also have a complete autographed set of Walter Hunt's Dark Wing quartet, a bunch of Isaac Asimov paperbacks in the basement, a waterlogged set of Lynn Flewelling’s Tamir Triad that should have been cremated with fully military honors before I loaned it to two friends, a laminated first edition of The Starfleet Technical Manual, and a cat named Malfoy.
I’ve read some stunning books in the thirty-plus years since my parents left several Robert Heinlein juveniles for me to discover in the dining room, and a lot that were just plain fun. I’ve also read my share of stinkers, from Victorian dreck to fannish blech. Some of them I now find unreadable, others are still gloriously awful, but I cherish the worst of the worst as Books So Bad They’re Good.
Next weekend I’m going to attend Conbust, the annual SF and fantasy convention at Smith, my alma mater, so it only seems appropriate this week to discuss three memorably awful SF books:
A Honeymoon in Space, by George Chetwynd Griffith - this early 20th century book is what they used to call an interplanetary romance. It follows a pair of attractive young newlyweds, one American, one British, as they spend their early married life traveling the Solar System in a modified airship that seems like a steampunk wet dream. Such superscientific tales were surprisingly popular at the turn of the last century, with good examples ranging from H.G. Wells’ classic tales of invisible men and time travelers to Conan Doyle’s Professor Challenger stories.
What sets Honeymoon in Space apart is the gloriously out-and-proud belief in the superiority of Imperial Britain that drips from every page, infused with the sort of casual, unquestioned racism that has modern readers spitting liquid all over the nearest computer monitor.
Think I’m joking? Here are the two main characters. Behold the hero:
Hundreds of anxious, curious eyes looked upon the tall athletic figure and the regular-featured, bronzed, honest English face as Rollo Lenox
Smeaton Aubrey, Earl of Redgrave, Baron Smeaton in the Peerage of
England, and Viscount Aubrey in the Peerage of Ireland, followed the
Captain to his room through the parting crowd of passengers. He nodded
to one or two familiar faces in the crowd, for he was an old Atlantic
ferryman, and had crossed five times with Captain Hawkins in the St.
Louis.
And his lovely bride:
Then he caught sight of a well and fondly remembered face which he had not seen for over two years. It was a face which possessed at once the
fair Anglo-Saxon skin, the firm and yet delicate Anglo-Saxon features,
and the wavy wealth of the old Saxon gold-brown hair; but a pair of big,
soft, pansy eyes, fringed with long, curling, black lashes, looked out
from under dark and perhaps just a trifle heavy eyebrows. Moreover,
there was that indescribable expression in the curve of her lips and the
pose of her head; to say nothing of a lissome, vivacious grace in her
whole carriage which proclaimed her a daughter of the younger branch of
the Race that Rules.
Yes, you read that right: the Race that Rules. Even for 1901 that's a bit thick. But it's there, on page 7, for all to read and gag at savor.
To return to this charming story, since the Race that Rules needs to breed strong sons to bear the White Earthling’s Burden, Rollo Lenox Smeaton Aubrey etc. etc. etc. invites the lissome Zaidie Rennick (that's really her name) onto his spaceship, the Astronef, and whisks her away from an arranged marriage to a wealthy jerk. After intervening in the American election, Rollo and Zaidie of course get married and set off on the title journey. They're accompanied by the loyal, lower class Murgatroyd (who all but worships the Astronef's engines), the latest steam powered conveniences, and a whole lot of guns. They encounter dangers and wonders galore, including a sex-crazed alien who tries to abduct Zaidie when she and Rollo debark on Mars. Said Martian is promptly shot by the Daughter of the Race That Rules for being lustful (and Martian).
It’s incredibly ridiculous, and much closer to the average Boys’ Own adventure tale than anything we’d call science fiction today. But I’ll write a drabble slashing two Republican politicians of your choice if anyone can find and quote me an SF story more blatantly, proudly bigoted from the same time period. Grab your air distress bags, fellow Kossacks, and remember that I warned you.
Galaxy 666, by Pel Torro – Pel Torro is the best known pseudonym of Rev. Lionel Fanthorpe. A teacher, priest, and martial arts instructor, Fanthorpe supplemented his income in the late 1950s through the 1960s by writing.
Fanthorpe's writing methods were, to say the least, unusual. He would reportedly crawl under a rug, accompanied only by a thesaurus and a Dictaphone, and start narrating his latest masterpiece. Much of his early output was produced this way, including approximately 180 short paperbacks for Badger Press, 89 of them in a single three year period.
That’s right. 89 books in only three years. That translates to a complete book every TWELVE DAYS, all written while the author held down a full time job as a teacher. Even better, Fanthorpe, who also wrote under names like Karl Ziegfried, Bron Fane, John E.Muller, and Leo Brett, was paid by the word…and it shows. Oh, does it show. Among the delights one will find in this inexplicably popular book:
Mind-numbing dialogue. Names like Korzaak and Ischklah. “Galaxy” used as a synonym for “planet.” Characters that make cardboard cut-outs look like Dostoevsky. A plot that would shame a twelve year old writing Harry/Draco slash. Even the cover art is ridiculous; it seems to be a slightly altered plastic model of the USS Enterprise turned upside and shot through a blue lens to give it an otherworldly look. Galaxy 666 is widely believed to be one of the worst SF books ever written, if not the worst.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a sample of the wit, the wisdom, the craftsmanship and certain something that makes Pel Torro a legend:
The things were odd, weird, grotesque. There was something horribly uncustomary and unwonted about them. They were completely unfamiliar. Their appearance was outlandish and extraordinary. here was something quite phenomenal about them. They were supernormal; they were unparalleled; they were unexampled. The shape of the aliens was singular in every sense. They were curious, odd, queer, peculiar and fantastic, and yet when every adjective had been used on them, when every preternatural epithet had been applied to their aberrant and freakish appearance, when everything that could be said about such eccentric, exceptional, anomalous creatures had been said, they still remained indescribable in any concrete terms.
To paraphrase SF writer Shariann Lewitt, the only thing these aliens aren’t is kosher for Passover, and they probably would have been if Fanthorpe hadn’t already reached his word count.
Best of all, Lionel Fanthorpe is still alive, and still active. He's a ghost hunter, a UFOlogist, a teacher (of writing, believe it or not), a martial artist, and an ordained Anglican priest. And he rides big honkin' motorcycles in his copious free time.
What a stud!
The Gor Series, by John Norman – Gor, the Counter-Earth, is a word identical to our own at the exact opposite of Earth’s orbit. Certain lucky Terrans, like series hero Tarl Cabot, are whisked away to Gor by the insectoid Priest-Kings to fight evil, romance beautiful women, and generally have the sort of rollicking, red blooded adventures pioneered by Edgar Rice Burroughs in A Princess of Mars. It sounds like good old fashioned mindless fun, and for the first couple of books, that’s exactly what the Gor series is.
Then something went terribly, terribly wrong. First Tarl Cabot lost his woman. Then the author seemed to have lost the ability to write, as what had been stiff but serviceable prose became clumsier and clumsier. And then the whole series lost its focus.
The result? The adventures of Tarl Cabot morphed from blood and thunder to soft core bondage porn.
Really.
Beginning around the sixth or seventh book, the emphasis shifted from heroic adventure to female taming that would have made Petrucchio blush. Woman after woman, including six Earthlings who narrate their own startlingly similar stories, is captured, enslaved, and raped until she falls violently in love with the mighty-thewed warrior who broke through her pride (and her hymen) and mistreated her until she realized that the way to happiness, inner peace, and mindblowing orgasms was to be dominated and abused. One “heroine,” a self-described “poetess,” describes how terrified she is by the sights and sounds of the men sparring, and how happy she is that she’s given up her ideas of equality in favor of being a “red silk” sex slave in a Gorean camp.
All this would be extremely disturbing except that the writing and dialogue are so jaw droppingly bad that it’s difficult to believe that these books got into print at all. “Rape me swiftly, master, for I must be about my business,” is a typical bit of dialogue, and the ever more explicit sex scenes are so repetitive, and so obsessed with bondage and rape, that eventually even the randiest misogynist will either fall asleep in the middle of a chapter or turn to something more exciting, like the entry on the amphioxus in the 1978 Encyclopedia Britannica.
As boring, tasteless, and sexist as the Gor series became, enough people kept buying them that the series ran to over twenty books with its original publisher, DAW. Norman later wrote one of the first mainstream bondage manuals, Imaginative Sex, which offered lovers such inventive scenarios as "The Aphrodisiac Fantasy; The Rites-of-Submission Fantasy; The Lady Fantasy; The I-Am-His-Slave-Girl Fantasy (surprise!); The Safari Fantasy and The Blindfolded-Lovers Fantasy." Pat Califia wrote an afterword to a new addition, which is not only still in print but is available for the Kindle, much to the bewilderment of most people who read Norman's fiction.
DAW eventually dropped the Gor books from its list, allegedly for low sales, although Norman was convinced it was because of feminist pressure. Never fear - Gor books still appear on a regular basis, albeit from small presses, and there are several web sites where the curious may learn more about Tarl Cabot’s adopted home than s/he thought was possible. There were even several informal fan networks that attempt to live a Gorean lifestyle, down to “white silk” (virgin) and “red silk” slaves, most notably the Tuchux.
One would think that the author of such glories would be just like Tarl Cabot and his fellows: strong, sinewy, and masterful. It is a shock to learn that John Norman, true name John Lange, is the furthest thing from a brawny, grunting barbarian warrior. Slightly built and highly educated, Norman/Lange is a college professor in New York city, happily married, and the father of three children, one a daughter. According to an interview I saw with him many years ago, he was bewildered by feminist criticism of his books, as he saw the Gor books not as a working out of his own kinks, or as a form of violence against women, but as an exploration of “depth psychology” with a distinctly Freudian bent. To his mind, people who didn’t like Gor were either afraid of their sexuality, in need of old-fashioned analysis, or just plain clueless. That anyone would find the endless descriptions of uppity women learning that all they needed was some non-consensual sex and a red silk tunic offensive bewildered him.
That anyone would find the above boring, pointless, and juvenile never seems to have crossed his mind.
What do you think, fellow Kossacks? What are your favorite bad SF books? Barsoom, anyone? Maybe a few Earl Dumarest books, or that near-future thing about the virtuous motorcycle gangs? FIAWOL or FIJAGH? America wants to know!