There's Something About Honey

Honey West was one of the first female private eyes to grace the small screen, and she was one of my first celebrity heartthrobs. Looking back, it's difficult to say which made a bigger impression on my young mind, Honey West or the imported Emma Peel of The Avengers. Fortunately, since one is domestic and the other foreign, I can say it's a toss-up, just like I don't have to choose which car was cooler, Honey's Shelby Cobra Convertible or Emma's Lotus Elan. Since they were both black belts in Karate, either one could have been my bodyguard. On the other hand, Honey did have a pet Ocelot, and how cool was that? Honey West did have an advantage with me that Emma Peel did not, in that she was initially a literary character, and for a book person that is always something to consider. Also, Anne Francis, who played Honey West, also had an advantage (with me) that Diana Rigg did not--I was already smitten with her from Forbidden Planet (she almost upstaged Robby), and we shared a birthday...always go with a Virgo.

The television version of Honey West started on a second season episode of Burke's Law (another of my favorite mid-Sixties TV shows) entitled "Who Killed the Jackpot." There we met not only Honey, but her man-Friday Sam Bolt (played by John Ericson) and her pet Ocelot, Bruce. Honey must have made an impression with viewers and producers alike because two writers from Burke's Law were told to develop a stand-alone show for Honey, which premiered on ABC in September 1965. It's funny how some things can make an impression far beyond the reality of the situation. Seen through the prism of memory, Honey West had a long run, was a reason to tune in every Friday night at 9 PM, right after The Addams Family (yet another of my favorite mid-Sixties shows). Alas, such was not the case. Honey West endured but a single season, a mere 30 episodes, killed off by two factors--the cold equations of the Nielsen Ratings put it behind Gomer Pyle, USMC (of all things!) and ABC's moguls decided it was cheaper to import The Avengers and run it in the time-slot. (Philistines!) Well, if I couldn't have Honey, at least I could watch Emma karate chop the villains.

Fortunately, Honey West the literary character had a longer run than her television avatar, beginning in 1957, ending in 1972, at least for novels written by the original authors. I came a bit late to the party, not reading my first Honey West novel until the Eighties, and I started with This Girl for Hire, which was the first novel in the 11-book series. Here's a list, for the collector:

This Girl for Hire (1957)

Girl on the Loose (1958)

A Gun for Honey (1958)

Honey in the Flesh (1959)

Girl on the Prowl (1959)

Kiss for a Killer (1960)

Dig a Dead Doll (1960)

Blood and Honey (1961)

Bombshell (1964)

Honey on her Tail (1971)

Stiff as a Broad (1972)

I discovered that Honey West of the books was not only tougher than her TV counterpart, but sexier too. Somehow, she always managed to lose her swimsuit top or her blouse or her dress, and yet she always managed to retain her honor and her virtue. She was very much the equivalent of the shining knight of detective fiction, the private eye able to walk the mean streets without becoming mean. In that respect, Honey West reminds me of Philip Marlowe, but she also calls to mind Edgar Rice Burroughs' Martian Princess, Dejah Thoris, who never wore anything but a battle harness and weapons (illustrators are not allowed to get it right) and yet always remained clothed in virtue and righteousness. Pity the poor fool who ever mistook Honey for either an easy frail or a damsel in distress.

The books were written by Gloria and Forrest (Skip) Fickling. Technically, the byline of GG Fickling is not a pseudonym for they were Gloria's initials and surname, yet it is because they both wrote the books, especially the first two or three. According to Gloria, Skip did most of the writing starting with Honey in the Flesh, with her contributing plots and characters. Those readers coming to the series and expecting to find the television show might be disappointed. No Bruce the Ocelot and no high-tech 007-like gadgetry. There was also no man-Friday Sam Bolt; instead, we have Lt Storm from the Sheriff's Office, who was more antagonist, rival and frustrated rescuer than helpmate. Still, you have Honey, and that is quite enough. The books are well worth the effort to track down, at least the original ones...there are some modern books with the Honey West character brought back, but since I haven't read any, I can't say anything about them. By the way, if you like the mix of murder and breezy humor that was a hallmark of the Honey West books, then you'd probably also enjoy Richard Prather's Shell Scott series of novels, which have a similar approach to crime solving.

Ace Books' Lurid Heyday

It's sometime in the 1960s, I'm Downtown and I got money in my pocket for a change instead of lint -- I am a very happy boy. Happy not that I have money, or that I rode the bus without getting lost or mugged, or that I don't have parents peering over my shoulder. Nope. I'm happy because I have about thirty bookstores from which to choose, from the hole-in-the-wall shop where the magazines hold the faintly pleasant scent of LSMFT to the venerable three-story Wahrenbrock's to the vibrant Paperback Book Land. Well, maybe I was a little happy about being sans parents, for I could buy the kinds of books that Moms and Dads just don't get. Oh, no, not that kind of book, just a little...lurid:

Ace Books, founded in 1952 by publisher Aaron Wyn, could easily be credited with creating the specialty science fiction & fantasy paperback book market. While there had been small press publishers of speculative fiction for a few decades, they had all been hardback-oriented, chasing respectability; and though other pocket book publishers had issued sci-fi tomes, they were just part of a varied booklist. Even when other publishers, like Berkley, Monarch and Ballantine joined in on the bonanza, Ace still stood apart. Great stories (usually) by great writers (sometimes), but always great covers...wonderfully garish, even with a touch of grand guignol at times, but always delightfully lurid. Ace was bought up by Grosset & Dunlap in 1972, by G.P. Purnam's Sons in 1982, and by Penguin Books in 1996; while Ace retained its distinctive look for awhile, it eventually became a well-behaved corporate stepchild. Unfortunately, its lurid covers and low prices, are now, like everything else good, part of a world now long gone. Pity.

The Golden Age of Reading

The more I consider, the more strongly I tend to believe the Golden Age of Reading was 10. At that point in my life, I had all the mental tools needed to read any book, the inquisitiveness to search out the meaning of what I did not quite yet understand, and the quality of vision to be equally dazzled by the old and the new, for to me they were the same thing.

Of course, I write here of another time, another culture, when schools actually taught the reading skills needed to excel, when books and magazines of all sorts were easily available with even the most modest allowance (mine was very modest -- I haunted thrift stores where old comics were a nickel and pulps a dime), when parents could purchase a set of encyclopedias without having to sell the first-born (lucky for me, but selling the second-born would have been okay), and the youth of the time had so few other distractions -- just sports, trouble-making and that flickering silvery screen called television.

Now, don't get me wrong. Back when the dinosaurs ruled the earth (as my children and their children believe) was not an idyllic time for the prolific reader. No time has been -- hey, don't get your nose caught when you close that book; you have to forgive my son but he swallowed a dictionary when he was young; we have an odd number of people, so to make the teams even why don't you go read a book; you're book-smart, but dumb at everything else. As today, the reader has to persevere against all sorts of unkind remarks from friends, family and jackasses...some thing just don't change.

People do not change, and are just as good and evil as they have ever been, but society has changed around us. Some, like me, are not very good at adapting ("change is bad"), but most other people seem to the proof from which Darwin always searched. Nastiness, duplicity, mendacity, sloth, irresponsibility and brutality are now survival skills; so, also, are manual dexterity, multitasking, memorization of processes, and an ear for technical jargon. Me? I just read and write, and I'm not bad at arithmetic, problem solving, and connecting the dots -- not exactly the survival or advancement skills they used to be in business and civic life.

Not only has reading taken it on the chin due to social changes, but reading just for the sheer pleasure of reading has  been kicked in the jewels by all the distractions of the modern world -- television is now in color, hi-def, 3D and has 900 channels; computers and the internet can consume literally thousands of hours of your time and give very little in return; social networking can give you 5,000 BFF, all who want your attention; the death of faith and the rise of fear causes many people to engage in endless vapid social rituals; rather than read, people zone out with i-pods in their ears, like the ubiquitous shells in Fahrenheit 451; and  the would-be reader is not even safe from the government as Michelle Obama and other intrusive do-gooders urge you to get up and dance your fat away. 

As a kid and young person growing up when all the obstacles to having time enough at last to do all the reading I wanted, the ultimate wish-fulfillment episode of the original Twilight Zone was the one in which Burgess Meredith happened to be down in the bank vault (reading during lunch hour, of course) when The Bomb hit. No more boss, no more wife, no more co-workers, no one at all to keep bank clerk Henry Bemis from engaging in that one activity that made life bearable -- reading. Not even the death of civilization could stop the little man from rising to the top of the evolutionary heap; suddenly, when all else had been taken away, reading became the one activity which could keep Mr Bemis sane, keep him from putting a gun to his head. In a nuclear flash, Mr Bemis was transported to a golden age of reading and he had the enthusiasm and vigor of a ten year old. I was shocked speechless when he broke his glasses, and felt such pity for the abject little man such as I have for no other person, before or since. Now that I have big thick trifocals I think I identify with poor doomed Mr Bemis more than ever.

When I think about how the golden age of reading was 10, at least back in that age before others felt they knew best how to live my life, I wonder about the readings habits of the contemporary youngster. Is he reading? Possibly not, but if he is, it may be little more than required reading at school, the sort of didactic stories and essays chosen by committee, the "right" sort of reading designed to produce a more tolerant, more malleable child. Books are being yanked right and left from school libraries by officials who are as well-meaning as they are fearful of responsibility, and political action groups such as CAIR are seeking to remove books from private ownership. Take out A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes story, because it might offend Mormons; remove Little Black Sambo to keep from offending Jesse Jackson, never mind that tigers come from India, not Africa; destroy all the books by Joseph Conrad (colonialism), Edgar Poe (morbid!), and the writings of the Founding Fathers (dangerous). Instead, give that ten year old books like the execrable Skippyjon Jones series, the tolerant Bernstein Bears, and The King Who Wanted to be a Queen. Golden age? Not of reading or anything else it seems.

The Golden Age of Reading is no longer 10.

Today's youth do not read for pleasure, only by assignment, and only from approved books.

The encyclopedia has been supplanted by Wikipedia, dictionaries by Merriam-Webster.com, and big books by little screens.

By the way, folks, Kindle is evil.

And change is still bad.

(first posted on "The Hopeless Bookaholic")

Writing of the (original) Star Trek

The series Star Trek began in September 1966 and ended June 1969, and that should have been the end of it, but as everyone knows, it wasn't. The series, with its aging starts, returned for a series of theatrical films, followed by a second incarnation, Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was quickly joined by three television spinoffs: Star Trek: DS9, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise, along with theatrical films about the spin offs. Think of it: forty-five years have elapsed since it appeared, many of the actors have passed away, and yet we are still entranced by the characters and the actors of the original series.

Of all the people obsessed with Star Trek: The Original Series (ST:TOS), perhaps we should not be surprised that one of them is William Shatner. After all, it's been said, only half in jest, that William Shatner is Captain Kirk's biggest fan. He himself has written five books about...himself.

 In addition to his Star Trek writing, William Shatner has written an autobiography, at least up the moment he was writing his biography...I wonder if he included the writing of his biography in his biography since that was what he was working on, up to...now.  He's also written novels based in the Star Trek universe, in which he had the unique opportunity to write further adventures of the heroic Captain James Tiberius Kirk, which is, of course...himself. As much time as he has spent writing about his journey through the worlds of Star Trek, both as actor and character, I think William Shatner is last person in the world who should tell Trekkies, or Trekkers, as they call themselves, to let go of Star Trek and...get a life.

William Shatner is not alone in his fascination with himself. His life, on and off the set, was the subject of Dennis Hauck's book, Captain Quirk: The Unauthorized Biography of William Shatner; the same author also wrote the little known William Shatner: A Bio-Bibliography. Another paean to the godlike Shatner is Robert Schnakenberg's prestigiously entitled The Encyclopedia Shatnerica: A to Z.

Equally famous is Captain Kirk's first officer, Commander Spock, an inhabitant of the planet Vulcan, the son of a Vulcan ambassador and a Human mother. That "half-breed" nature was used to good effect in the original television series, as well as the later films, to examine the idea of a man as much at conflict with himself as he is with the universe around him. Because Spock is as much as outsider on Vulcan as he would be on Earth, Trekkers, especially the misfits of society, were quick to bond with this ultimate outsider. Oh, yes, and then there were the pointed ears...

Commander Spock gave fans the oft-quoted tag lines "fascinating" and "that is illogical." If I had a bar of gold-pressed latinum every time I heard (or said) those lines, especially with one eyebrow raised, I'd be richer than the Grand Nagus (if you don't know the Star Trek reference, you'll have to look it up; it's the only way you'll learn) or beyond the dreams of Quark.

As the late George Reeves (murder not suicide) came to be identified with the character Superman through his film Superman and the Mole People and the extremely popular television series, or Adam West with the character of Batman (West was passed up for a role in the racy Valley of the Dolls because he was deemed too wholesome), Leonard Nimoy became quite identified with his Star Trek character, one of the reasons he quickly accepted the role of Paris on the series Mission: Impossible, taking Martin Landau's place.

Leonard Nimoy insisted he was not a freak, that he was a real man with real ambitions, that he was a serious actor who could appear in serious roles; more than anything else, though, he wanted people to know, to admit, to believe I Am Not Spock. Well, we all knew better; we all knew who he was, and a favorite line of every fan was, "Say, isn't that Spock in that role?" The gibe came up in the cult favorite J-Men Forever!, when a character asks his partner about a Martian with a metallic hood: "Say, isn't that Leonard Nimoy?" and the partner replies "Don't know; can't see his ears." Yes, it was a clip cut from Republic's Zombies of the Stratosphere. Of course even Leonard could not deny the obvious forever, and eventually he admitted what his fans knew all along, entitling his next autobiographical effort, I Am Spock. Well, duh.

The other actors who weekly saved the universe aboard the USS Enterprise either wrote their autobiographies or were the subject of books by professional writers...though sometimes their characters took a more prominent role than the actors...

For example, James Doohan was respected as an actor, but his character, Commander Montgomery Scott, was beloved, even revered. Once, while touring NASA for the launch of the shuttlecraft Enterprise, he was approached by technicians, physicists, space scientists and other professional braniacs, who told him that they were inspired into their present position by his role as the miracle-worker of the Enterprise.

Unhura (Nichelle Nicols), the ship's communications officer, and the recipient of television's first interracial kiss; Sulu (George Takei), the helmsman and finest fencer in Star Fleet; Pavel Chekof (Walter Koenig), navigator of the Enterprise and youngster cast because creator Gene Roddenberry thought his haircut would attack young Beatles fans; Doctor Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelly) who was known as much for his medical prowess as his rifts ("I'm a doctor, dammit, not a brick layer); and even Yeoman Janice Rand (poor, ill-fated Grace Lee Whitney) who had an unrequited crush on Captain Kirk, had their moments in print:

But perhaps the greatest fame that can be claimed by the characters of Star Trek or any television show, and an indication of how infused they have become with the consciousness of American society, is when they appeared on the covers of that iconic magazine TV Guide, published in a single week, in honor of the show's 35th anniversary:

Note to fellow biblioholics: It was hell getting all these covers the week they were published, going from store to store, enduring the smirks of clerks who knew you were one of those people. Finding them now is not impossible, but you will have to seek them through a specialist, rather than a person who deals in regular back-issue magazines. Thank goodness for the internet.

Searching for the Dark

Spies were huge in the 1960s, and I read just about every spy novel I came across, from the books of Ian Fleming and Len Deighton to the tales of spymaster George Smiley to the serio-comic escapades of Matt Helm and those entertaining gentlemen from U.N.C.L.E. There were so many series written at the time that it was inevitable I would miss some; and with paperbacks priced at the outrageous sum of 35 cents there were books I just had to pass up -- I blame my unfair allowance and the pitiful minimum wage. It's always a pleasure, then, when I come across them later and can afford to make up for the oversight. Such was the case with the espionage novels written by James Dark, published by Signet. James Dark? Yeah, that's the problem -- who the heck is James Dark?

I admit I'm an obsessive reader, never quite satisfied with just the book. I always want to know more: skinny about the setting, reality of the spy agencies, workings of the gadgets. And I want to know the author. But James Dark is a pen name no clue to the real name. Exploits of Mark Hood, secret agent for INTERACT never rose to prominence, so there is no current following. The plots are engaging, the hero capable, and the sexcapades hot...for the times, but the thirteen books which comprise the series are potboilers. Still, they are darn good reads and I was able to snag all thirteen at once. But who was James Dark?

People make the mistake of thinking everything under the sun is to be found on the internet. That attitude has led students, as well as people who should know better, to marginalize printed resources. I get really annoyed when I read a magazine article and the references or suggestions are just a list of links -- that happened with several articles in The Writer, so I immediately cancelled my subscription. The truth is that the internet, vast and varied as it may be, contains less than 2% of the knowledge found on the printed page, and much of the information littering the internet is suspect, if not outright spurious. Any knucklehead with a computer can shout at the world -- I think I'm proof enough of that. Still, when looking for the personage behind an obscure pseudonym connected with a series of books that was all but lost among a flurry of bestsellers and a surging sea of spy fiction, the internet can be...handy. But it's still not the be-all, end-all that some technophiliacs insist.

After searching the book lists of several internet dealers I determined that the thirteen books that had come into my ownership was the entirety of the series. However, there were some books listed that had alternative titles, even though the plots were same as in the books I had. One of the titles listed, Assignment: Hong Kong, was similar to Hong Kong Incident, but others were vastly different: The Reluctant Assassin instead of Sea Scrape, and Black Napoleon instead of the lurid Throne of Satan. All the books with titles different from the Signet editions had been published by Horwitz Publications, an Australian  publisher that began in 1921, and continues today. That indicated my mystery writer was, in all probability, an Aussie, which narrows the search tremendously. The reason I believed it was not an American writer published Down Under was that, if it had been, the name would have been more recognizable.

Australia has a rich literary tradition, but few writers really become popular in America, and when they do, they are often taken for British, as with Nevile Shute, A. Bertram Chandler, and P.L. Travers. An Aussie writer currently making waves in the adventure and thriller field is Matthew Reilly, whose books are really exciting. But, back to the search for James Dark. So, a quick letter to Horowitz, followed by a long wait, and I received the answer I was looking for. James Dark was James Edmond Macdonnell (3 Nov 1917 - 13 Sept 2002), one of Australia's most prolific novelists, author of nearly 200 books, many of them having to do with the sea. The man who was described to me as "Australia's greatest writer of sea stories" was a 14-year veteran of the Royal Australian Navy, which would account for much of the verisimilitude when secret agent Mark Hood either pursues the bad guys into the watery realm, or prevents a world-destroying disaster that originate in the ocean, as he did in Operation Ice Cap.

Beginning in the mid-60's, Mr Macdonnell followed in the wake of other, perhaps better known, thriller writers of the time. While Mark Hood was no James Bond or Harry Palmer (to use the film name), he delivers the goods, saving the world from non-pc bad guys, with an automatic in one hand and a hot babe in the other. Ah, yes, the 60's...