Bought: Memory

I have a frequent and fervent desire to go back in time and slap my younger self around.

I hated DAW Books when I was a teenager. I bought the Elric books because of the Michael Whelan covers and because my God it was Elric, the doomed, drug-taking albino sorcerer whose black blade demanded souls! (If Tolkien was beer and D&D was pot, Elric was basically crack.) But I didn't buy any other DAWs until much later. It was the spines that did it. The thought of all those identical yellow spines with the author's name in red and the title in black just rubbed me the wrong way. Book covers should be as varied as their contents, I thought. Didn't these DAW people understand that? Were they just too cheap to spend the money? Too lazy to make the effort? Didn't they care?

Now that I'm older and a bit wiser I realize that the yellow spines were an example of cheap and effective branding. DAW was hoping to foster brand awareness and, if at all possible, loyalty. Books are products, after all. Especially genre books. That bare fact is at odds with the reverence I had (and have) for books, my conviction that they aren't just products to be consumed, like bananas or beer. Books are special. Books are the collective memory of our species. Etc., etc. A publisher that makes their books visually indistinguishable is tacitly saying that they are interchangeable. Etc., etc.

Cue fantasy:

Idiot! *SLAP* You pompous, ridiculous snob! *Suh-LAP* Do you know how much Morlock Night is going to sell for in 30 years?!!

*EPIC SLAP*

The books I could have read! The worlds I might have explored! Back in my prime exploring years when my heart was a bonfire and my imagination was unbounded and I could swallow seven different kinds of horseshit, each more absurd than the last, as if it was the word of God made flesh and dipped in pure milk chocolate!

*Sigh*

Now I own more of those old yellow spine DAWs than I can easily count (I counted them anyway: 274). I seek out the yellowest copies, the ones that haven't faded from exposure to sunlight. Oh the irony. I toy with the idea of trying to complete a set. Only 580 of them were published, give or take. I'm almost half way there.

DAW was a cool and quirky publisher in many ways. They were the first mass market publisher devoted to sf and fantasy. They published a lot of foreign language sf in translation - Gerard Klein, Pierre Barbet, Herbert Franke, Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. They published very good, long-running "year's best" anthology series for sf, fantasy and horror. In a field dominated by men many of their best and most prolific writers were women: Marion Zimmer Bradley, Andre Norton, Tanith Lee, C. J. Cherryh.

And the covers! Whelan. Josh Kirby. George Barr. Kelly Freas. Bob Pepper. Vincent Di Fate. Don Maitz. A lot of the books had some interior art as well. And as far as I know DAW always credited their artists on the copyright page. You might think that would just be common courtesy, to reader and artist both, but until quite recently it was all too rare and it still isn't universal.

So Viva DAW! Long may they publish, though the yellow is long gone and most of the quirks have been worn away by the years. And all due praise to their late founder Don A. Wollheim. According to their website they are still privately owned, though apparently they have some kind of distribution deal with Penguin.

And Viva Hard Case Crime! Of course I noticed the line of retro hard-boiled paperbacks when they started showing up on retail shelves, but the similarity to DAW didn't occur to me until I began actively looking for them at my local used book shop. The white Hard Case spines - author in black, title in red - are almost like a negative image (evil twin?) of those old DAWs. They're not quite as distinctive, but they stand out enough that you can scan the shelves at speed and count on spotting them.

I've only got five Hard Case books so far, with four more on the way from Amazon where, at the moment, they qualify for a 4-for-the-price-of-3 promotion. Collecting crime fiction is only a sideline with me. Most of the crime paperbacks I own were bought for the covers, though I read John Dickson Carr voraciously for a while, and I'm a fan of John le Carré (spy fiction is technically crime fiction, right?) and Gregory Mcdonald.

And Donald Westlake. Which brings us, finally, to Memory, and this fantastic cover. There's a good review of the novel on this excellent blog, which includes a link to an article on this other excellent blog that explains how this almost fifty year old story ended up being published now, posthumously.

I just want to draw attention to the cover. The design of the Hard Case books is meant to evoke the golden age of paperbacks. The breathless blurbery. The yellow ribbon with crown and gun logo. And especially the cover art. They commission new paintings from old masters like Robert McGinnis (whose site seems to be in limbo - a sampling of his paperback work is here and other commercial work can be found here) and young turks like Glen Orbik. All of it defiantly old fashioned.

And then there's this sucker, with Orbik art but otherwise like nothing else Hard Case has published. Holy Hannah. What do I love about this cover?

Everything. That slab of solid black is an attention-grabber, of course. But it's also the black of death and of mourning. Westlake died on the last day of 2008. With his name centered near the top and the word memory directly below, the cover effectively becomes a cenotaph, the title perhaps short for In memory of.

It's the black of noir fiction, naturally. The shadows that loom over the characters, and in which they are lost. Sin. Night. Blindness. Despair. Above all the existential blank against which the noir story is set, where God is absent and Fate is an amalgam of character and perversely bad luck.

And specific to this novel is the black of broken memory. On page one actor Paul Cole is caught in flagrante by an enraged husband, who grabs a chair, lifts it over his head and... It is the last thing Cole remembers seeing before he wakes in a hospital with gaping holes in his existing memories and his ability to form and hold new ones damaged.

That's a lot of heavy lifting for 30 square inches of glossy paper!

The only downside to the cover design is that the figures are, necessarily, reduced to postage stamp size. Hopefully Orbik will post a good scan of the original art on his site soon. I wrote to him, asking about the initial inspiration for the cover. He graciously took the time to reply (Thank you, sir!) and says:

The concept was Hard Case Crime's from the beginning. They said they wanted something which felt "like this is some sort of existentialist drama we're seeing play out" of the scene from the very beginning of the book. A bare-stage set-up (perhaps alluding to the actor in the story...?) --- something like a James Bama cover 40+ years back of fully rendered mini-figures on a solid black background.

So bravo to Hard Case for concept and to Orbik for execution. Buy their books! Look for his glossy yet gritty art! Do it!

While I'm at it I can't help giving a quick nod to another Hard Case title featuring Orbik. Once again Sarah Weinman has the story on how this one came about. I'll just say that anyone who would publish a Sherlock Holmes novel with this beautiful and deliriously inappropriate cover and the tagline "They All Answered to... The BODYMASTER!" does not lack for chutzpah or a sense of humor. And yes the book does include a character with that rather evocative title. In some fraternal organizations and secret societies the chief officer of a lodge was (and presumably is, though it's hard to imagine anyone saying it with a straight face now) the Body Master. In Doyle's novel Black Jack McGinty is a Bodymaster in the Eminent Order of Freemen, a (fictional) mutual aid society among Irish immigrants working the Pennsylvania coal mines circa 1870. Valley is very loosely based on real events, or alleged events anyway. The Wikipedia page has an excellent plot summary which also touches upon the novel's connection to the Molly Maguires, but if you are curious about the "Mollies" be warned: their story is a quagmire of controversy, ideology and partisan bullshit, and no matter what version of events you decide is most likely, it sure won't give you that "proud to be an American" feeling. Caveat Lector.

Recently read: The Sword of Rhiannon

I'm not sure this tale has ever had a cover worthy of it. The recent edition under the Planet Stories imprint probably comes closest, with fiery art by Daren Bader, who has a blog and is selling a book.

I digress for a minor quibble. Crediting Leigh Brackett as the "author" of The Empire Strikes Back is... interesting. By which I mean not strictly true. No movie ever had a single "author" because film is an inescapably collaborative art. Brackett is credited (along with Lawrence Kasdan) with writing the screenplay of Empire, based on a story by George Lucas, but (1) a screenplay is not a movie, and (2) writing credits are subject to negotiation and arbitration and don't necessarily reflect the real origin of what ends up on screen. But "Credited co-writer of the screenplay of" doesn't roll trippingly off the tongue, and the lawyers must have decided it would fly as is. Cool with me. Whatever. I'm just saying, is all.

The Ace paperback I own is undated, as far as I can tell. The $1.25 price and the "lowercase a" logo place it in the early 70s. The cover art is uncredited (of course) and it's not ringing any bells at the moment. The cloaked figure is supposed to be a humanoid lizard, but his pointy snout makes him look like a green poodle. He also has a rather forlorn air (for a poodle), whereas Brackett makes her serpent-like "Dhuvians" very effective figures of revulsion and primal fear. Fifi stands amidst a cracked and barren landscape that evokes the somber desert Mars of the story's beginning rather than the lush, vibrant Mars-of-a-million-years-ago where the real action takes place. The symbol rather arbitrarily placed on the figure's cloak is a misinterpretation (I believe) of an image on the eponymous sword:

The corridor ended in a vast chamber. ... There was a dais at one end with an altar of marble, upon which was carved the same symbol that appeared on the hilt of the sword - the ouroboros in the shape of a winged serpent. But the circle was broken, the head of the serpent lifted as though looking into some new infinity.

The symbol's significance is pretty clear by the book's end, though to her credit Brackett never beats you over the head with it.

The vast chamber described above is the antechamber of (dum-dum-DUM!) the Tomb of Rhiannon, called the Cursed One, a rebel godling of Martian legend. His rest (or imprisonment) has been disturbed by Penkawr, a rat-like native thief who can be thrown considerably further than he can be trusted, and Matt Carse, an Earth-born archaeologist who has gone native and joined the "aristocracy of thieves" of the Low Canal towns of Mars. Carse is a bit like Indiana Jones by way of the Gray Mouser, or Conan with a PhD and a proton-gun.

Forget Penkawr, who disappears after his inevitable act of betrayal, and doesn't even rate the eventual comeuppance usually due his kind. Carse emerges from Rhiannon's tomb a million years before he entered it, wanders in a daze down to the now-living city nearby, is promptly arrested as a spy and, sans trial, condemned to a short miserable life chained to an oar in the war-galley of Lady Ywain of Sark, whose father plots to rule all of Mars.

Our hero is now the lowest of the low. Of course by story's end he will hold the fate of a planet in his hands. There's a great deal of swashbuckling adventure in between (the novel was originally titled The Sea-Kings of Mars); Carse finds companions, allies, enemies, etc. in various city-states and among several races (sky-people, sea-people, lizard-people and just plain people-people) He learns the nature of Rhiannon's sin, and discovers to his horror that he carried a lot more than that sword out of Rhiannon's tomb.

It has literally been decades since I've read any Edgar Rice Burroughs. Nevertheless I do not hesitate to rate Brackett higher than her model and inspiration in at least one area - psychological realism. When Carse steps out of the tomb to find himself in Mars' distant past his first reaction is shock, then denial.

Carse's numbed gaze swept along the great coast of the distant shoreline. And down on that far sunlit coast he saw the glitter of a white city and knew that it was Jekkara.

Jekkara, bright and strong between the verdant hills and the mighty ocean, that ocean that had not been seen upon Mars for nearly a million years.

Matthew Carse knew then that it was no mirage. He sat and hid his face in his hands. His body was shaken by deep tremors and his nails bit into his own flesh until blood trickled down his cheeks.
...
Blindly, still gripping the jewelled sword, he leaped up and turned to re-enter the buried Tomb of Rhiannon.
...
He stopped, a convulsive shudder running through his frame. He could not make himself face again that bubble of glittering gloom, that dreadful plunge through interdimensional infinity.

Impossible to imagine John Carter or David Innes reacting so violently to anything. The typical Burroughs protagonist possesses a few simple, exemplary traits - honor, courage, loyalty - and precious little else. Nothing that would get in the way of that most basic form of reader identification: I wish such adventures would happen to me; I wish I were equal to such adventures.

And there's a lot to be said for that. But there's also a lot to be said for this:

Between his feet Carse saw dimly the red streams that trickled down into the bilges and stained the water. The rage that had burned in him chilled and altered as iron tempers under the hammer.

At last they stopped. Carse raised his head. It was the greatest effort he had ever made, but stiffly, stubbornly, he raised it. He looked directly at Ywain.

"Have you learned your lesson, slave?" she asked.

It was a long time before he could form the words to answer. He was beyond caring now whether he lived or died. His whole universe was centered on the woman who stood arrogant and untouchable above him.

"Come down yourself and teach me if you can," he answered hoarsely and called her a name in the lowest vernacular of the streets - a name that said there was nothing she could teach a man.

For a moment no one moved or spoke. Carse saw her face go white and he laughed, a hoarse terrible sound in the silence. Then Scyld drew his sword and vaulted over the rail into the oar pit.

The blade flashed high and bright in the torchlight. It occurred to Carse that he had traveled a long way to die...