STAR TREK 4 Art by Lou Feck

As a sci-fi fan in the 1970s, the Bantam Books Star Trek paperbacks by James Blish were a steady part of my reading diet. These volumes each contained a half-dozen or so short story adaptations of the original television episodes, and, as the series was inconsistently aired in my central Maine TV market, my first exposure to many of the classic Original Series stories was through Blish's adaptations.

For some reason, almost all of the Bantam editions featured paintings of the Enterprise rather than the characters. I don't know if, this early in the Trek merchandising phenomenon, likeness rights were still a tricky issue, or if someone just thought that the iconic starship was a stronger way to attract the eyes of both Trekkies and science fiction readers in general. Either way, there was quite a variety in styles and artists, and that was cool.

A number of striking starship images graced those covers, but even as a kid, something about Lou Feck's rendition on Star Trek 4 (first published in 1971, and endlessly reprinted throughout the decade) really struck a chord with me. Perhaps it was the cool, blue palette, or the simple, effective composition, with the graceful Enterprise orbiting between a dying planet and its jagged-surfaced moon... I dunno. But I love it.

Someone else liked this painting too  - Bantam re-used it a few years later, sans obscuring cover type, on a collection of puzzles for kids, the Star Trek Puzzle Manual.

Artist Lou Feck is something of a fascinating mystery to me. He was one of the first paperback cover illustrators whose style and signature I recognized as a voracious, adolescent reader, and was one of my favorites.

His work seemed to mostly appear on books from Bantam in the 70s, including many of the early Clive Cussler adventure novels. I even actually own one of his originals (not this Star Trek one, though). Unfortunately, there's virtually no info about this talented artist on the Internet, except that he died in '81.

Anyway, when I stumbled upon this beautiful scan of Feck's painting, it sparked a powerful wave of nostalgia, and I wanted to share it here. The Bantam Star Trek paperbacks were a huge part of my childhood sci-fi fandom and this particular cover holds a prominent place in those memories. Enjoy.

Captain's bLog 1118.10

•  I've been gradually doing some maintenance on the blog over the last couple months, going back and updating a lot of the older YouTube embeds with larger/better quality versions and replacing the dead ones when possible. I've also replaced a few photos here and there with better scans, including this Space Babes entry.

•  We're closing in at warp speed on 200 posts, 200 Blogger "Followers" and 400 Facebook "Fans." Wow.

•  I did manage to track down inexpensive used copies of the first two 1980 Flash Gordon novels by David Hagberg online. I actually gave up on the Buck Rogers novel, That Man on Beta, because it was just so awful - I don't know whether most of the blame falls on Richard Lupoff (a/k/a "Addison Steele") for his abysmal, fanfic-quality prose or the writer of the original teleplay for the crappy story.

Either way, I've set it aside indefinitely and started reading Massacre In the 22nd Century. I'm only a couple of chapters in, so I can't really speak as to the quality of the story, but Hagberg's prose is vastly better than Lupoff's. The characterizations and backstory aren't in line with the Alex Raymond comic strips (or the serials/movie/Filmation cartoon), but are very reminiscent of the 50's television series starring Steve Holland. So far, I'm okay with it.

•  Sometime next month, I'm planning my first Space: 1970 "theme week," The End of The World As We Knew It. Every day for seven days, I'll be posting a review of a different 70s post-Apocalyptic movie or TV show. Titles will most likely include The Omega Man, The Ultimate Warrior, A Boy & His Dog, and maybe the Gene Roddenberry Genesis II/Planet Earth pilots. Too bad Damnation Alley isn't available on DVD yet.

• I am continuing to ponder a Space: 1970 podcast. I'm trying to work out an entertaining and informative format, and I'd like to get a better microphone. I'm also still concerned about music issues. I would like to include a handful of rare tracks in each 'cast, but I want to do it right.

• Finally, I want to remind folks that I'm still looking for photos of Jean Marie Hon from Ark II and Man From Atlantis, and Maggie Cooper from Space Academy. I'm also looking for a videotape or DVD of The Questor Tapes. Additionally, there's a Paypal donation button over there in the sidebar if anyone wants to contribute to the Space: 1970 fund - I'm still trying to scrape up money for the Message From Space DVD and some other material for the site.

Dirty Books: Flash & Buck Tie-Ins

Not too long ago, I read Arthur Byron Cover's novelization of the 1980 Flash Gordon movie for the first time, and found myself entertained - and occasionally appalled - by Cover's frequently lurid embellishments to the Lorenzo Semple screenplay.

For example, while Cover (a well-regarded science fiction writer) goes to great lengths to try and explain the unique nature of the improbable planetary system encompassing Mongo and its plethora of inhabited, bowl-shaped satellites, his adaptation also establishes that Dale Arden had a penchant for 70's New York swingers clubs and group sex before being shanghaied to Mongo. He further strongly implies that Emperor Ming's relationship with his daughter Aura is incestuous and ongoing.

I'm not a prude - far from it, in fact - but, man, I wonder how many junior high school-aged fans of the film picked up the paperback and had their adolescent minds blown by those lascivious revelations?

I'm currently reading the 1979 Buck Rogers tie-in novel, That Man on Beta, by Richard Lupoff (writing as "Addison Steele") and based on an unfilmed teleplay by Bob Shayne. Clearly written before the weekly television show premiered (and its bible established, apparently), the book explores various elements from the pilot film that were never really followed up on once it went to a series. It is also riddled with inconsistencies that suggest that at the time it was written, the author hadn't even seen the finished pilot movie yet.

Twiki can't speak in this book, for instance, communicating solely in beeps and squeaks that only Doctor Theopolis can interpret (very much like R2-D2 and C3PO). Additionally, Theopolis himself is described as a square box, rather than the plastic alarm clock that the film prop resembled. And Doctor Huer is described as wearing glasses!

I'm only about a third of the way through it, but so far, all of the action takes place in "Anarchia," the post-holocaust wastelands outside New Chicago (here called the Inner City, as in the pilot film). This is an element from the pilot that was never followed up on once it sold; in the original movie, it's pretty clear that there is only one, domed city on Earth, and that the rest of the planet is a barren wasteland, inhabited by mutants and savages. I suspect that Glen Larson and Leslie Stevens - neither of whom actually had much to do with the subsequent TV show - may have originally intended for Buck to have occasional Earthbound adventures encountering various post-Apocalyptic survivors, in the vein of Roddenberry's Genesis II or Planet Earth. but, once Buck actually went to series, that idea was abandoned in favor of pure Star Wars-styled space opera, and we even saw other cities on occasion. This book also makes big deal of the computer council that runs the Inner City, but aside from Theopolis, we never saw any of those "guys" again on the show.

One thing the book does do, however, is remind me of just how much Gil Gerard brought to the character. On TV, with Gerard's charm and easygoing approach to the role, Buck came across as a likable wiseass. In cold print, though, he just seems like a dick. Of course, the story has him doing a lot of dickish things, like lying to Huer and Wilma about his unauthorized ventures outside the city and actually trading Theopolis to an Anarchian "gypsy" (who speaks in CB jargon - groan) for a minor bit of information. It's not a trick or ploy, either - Buck simply sees the artificial intelligence (one of Earth's ruling council!) as just a piece of disposable machinery.

Anyway, while the story and characters don't jibe with the show, it's still kind of a fascinating book. I'm curious how it turns out....

Captain's bLog 1028.10

Hey, Star Kids.Yeah, I know. It's been a while. All I can say is that I've been occupied elsewhere, and will get back to regular posting here as soon as possible.

•  Right now, I'm looking for some information. I know that there was a series of Flash Gordon paperback novels published in the 80s with cover paintings by Boris Vallejo (such as the one on the left, which, as Space: 1970 reader Jason Shepherd pointed out when he sent me the scan, has Flash in virtually the exact same pose as Buck Rogers in the Vallejo piece I posted a couple weeks ago). I would like to track these books down, but I don't know any of the titles, nor the author(s).

Can anyone provide or direct me to that information? For that matter, anyone know if they're any good?

• I've just received a copy of the new Dark Star: Hyperdrive Edition DVD from VCI Home Entertainment, and while I'll be posting a detailed review over on my DVD Late Show website in the next few days, I can say here that this new two-disc release is a marked improvement over the company's previous edition in almost every way, with a notably better transfer and a slew of supplemental materials.

It's not perfect - the lack of participation by director John Carpenter is disappointing - but it's pretty damned good. If you're a fan of the film, the new DVD is highly recommended.

You can order it here: Dark Star - The Hyper-Drive Edition

• Although the show doesn't really fall under the chronological purview of this blog, U.S. Gerry Anderson fans who may not have already heard, may be interested to know that his 1994-95 series Space Precinct, starring Ted Shackleford, is due out on Region 1 DVD from Image Entertainment on November 23rd.

I only saw two episodes of this when it aired late at night in my South Florida market, and I also read a novelization of the pilot episode, but I thought it was pretty interesting. I can understand why U.S. broadcasters were confused by it, though. It kinda looked like a kid's show, but the stories (at least the ones I saw) were rather serious and adult.

Anyway, I hope to review it for my Late Show site before it comes out, but if you're an Anderson completist and would like to pre-order the 5-disc set, you can do so here: Space Precinct: The Complete Series

The Han Solo Adventures (1979)

I've recently re-read author Brian Daley's "Han Solo Adventures" novels, originally published in 1979, and have started on A.C. Crsipin's "Han Solo Trilogy," published almost 20 years later.

Daley's novels are set in the Star Wars universe just two years before the events of Star Wars (1977 - I refuse to call it "A New Hope"). The trilogy follows the smuggling days of Han Solo and Chewbacca as they ply their trade in an area of the Empire known as the Corporate Sector, accompanied by a droid named Bollux. The books were released April, June and August 1979 respectively. They also were published as an omnibus edition in 1992.

When these came out, licensed Star Wars continuations were still a rarity outside of the Marvel comic book, and it was almost as big a deal as Alan Dean Foster's Splinter Of the Mind's Eye. I bought all three books as soon as I could - the first in paperback and the other two in hardcover through the Science fiction Book Club - and read and re-read them dozens of times. Han Solo was pretty much my favorite character in the movie - still is - and although I wasn't a big fan of Bollux (or his companion Blue Max), and didn't quite grasp the concept of the "Corporate Sector," I was just thrilled to have new Solo adventures to read.

In Han Solo At Star's End, our favorite Corellian smuggler has to break Chewbacca and some other allies out of the Corporate Sector Authority's covert prison facility, the titular "Star's End." In Han Solo's Revenge, Han and Chewie break up a slavery operation, and in Han Solo And The Lost Legacy, they go off in search of a legendary lost treasure ship, Queen of Ranroon.

These books were a big part of my adolescence, so I was pleased (and surprised) to discover from Wikipedia that events of these books have been incorporated into the official timeline of the Star Wars universe by "being contextualized in interludes in Rebel Dawn, the final book of Ann C. Crispin's Han Solo Trilogy."

Which is a book I haven't yet read, although I expect to shortly. I did buy a copy of Crispin's first Han Solo novel, The Paradise Snare, back when it first came out in '98, but never got around to reading it until about a week or so ago, when I finished re-reading the Daley trilogy. I actually rather enjoyed it - The Paradise Snare is a chronicle of Solo's early years up until he enrolls in the Imperial Academy - and ordered the other two books through an online dealer who had used copies for a penny apiece. I expect them to show up any day now.

After that, I'll probably try and get my hands on the "The Adventures of Lando Calrissian" novels by L. Neil Smith, which were published way back in the early 80s. I've always been curious about Lando's adventures as master of the Millennium Falcon... although I doubt they'll be as much fun as THIS.

Space: 1970 Super-Scribe: ALAN DEAN FOSTER

If you go by sheer volume, then Alan Dean Foster was probably my favorite author when I was growing up (from say, ages 11 to 17). Sure, I read the works of Heinlein, Clarke, Bradbury, Burroughs (Edgar Rice, not William) and dozens of other science fiction scribes, but it was Foster - and his novelizations of the movies and television shows that I loved - that I probably read the most. In those ancient, pre-cable, pre-home video days, novelizations were the only way to re-experience those adventures, and Foster was the novelization man.

Oh, I had all the James Blish Star Trek adaptations, and dug 'em, but Foster's volumes based on the animated version of the show were more rewarding. Instead of taking hour-long scripts and turning them into short stories, as Blish was doing, Foster took half-hour scripts and expanded them into novellas... and eventually, full-length novels. And he nailed those characters and their voices, too, bringing them to life on the printed page more vividly than the talented but workmanlike (at least on Trek) Blish.

And then there was Star Wars. The book was credited to George Lucas, but we all know now that Foster also penned the Star Wars novelization, and maybe that's why it was so compulsively re-readable.

I wore out at least three paperback copies of that thing (the photo section in the middle kept falling out), and when Foster's original Star Wars novel, Splinter of the Mind's Eye - the first authorized continuation outside of the Marvel comics - was released, it was a huge deal. I bought that book as soon as it was available, and friggin' devoured it. I don't know how many times I read that story as a kid, marveling at the very existence of a new Luke Skywalker adventure (remember when the franchise was "The Adventures of Luke Skywalker?").

I was too young for the R-rated movie, but his novel of Alien gripped my teenage mind and squeezed it in a sharp-clawed grip. I didn't actually see Ridley Scott's film until a few years later on VHS, and I thought then that the book was scarier - though I've come to appreciate the movie since. I remember when Aliens was released in '86 how college-aged me - and several of my geekier friends - were actually almost more excited about getting Foster's tie-in novel than we were about seeing the movie!

The Black Hole, Dark Star, Outland... great adaptations all, and these books eventually led me to his original science fiction works, like the Humanx Commonwealth stories and the Icerigger trilogy. I haven't read everything he's written in the past thirty years (the man's been too damned prolific), but I do take some pride in the fact that I introduced my nephew to Foster's Flinx & Pip series several years ago, and he's still a rabid fan of the author.

Hmmm... I think I need to dig through some boxes and pull out some of these books. I'm thinking it'll be a lot of fun to re-read some of those old classics on these hot Summer weekend afternoons....

(By the way, this is Space: 1970's 100th post.)