Alexei Tolstoy’s Aelita

Alexei Tolstoy’s celebrated Soviet science fiction novel Aelita was published in 1923.

Alexei Tolstoy (1883-1945) was a distant relative of the more famous Count Leo Tolstoy, writer of War and Peace. Alexei Tolstoy was quite an interesting character. He was born In Russia and lived for a time in Germany and in France. He returned to Russia in 1909.

He opposed the Bolshevik Revolution and went into exile. By 1923 he was back in Russia. Under the Soviet regime Tolstoy was lionised and lived like a millionaire. Reading between the lines of Aelita one gets the impression that he regarded revolutionaries with a certain amount of scepticism.

Aelita opens with an eccentric amateur scientist named Los who has constructed an egg-shaped spacecraft. He believes it can reach Mars. He persuades a soldier named Gusev to accompany him.

Mars turns out to be inhabited, by people who seem rather human. Mars has been home to a number of civilisations. The histories of Mars and Earth were at one time intimately linked, thanks to an event that occurred when the terrestrial civilisation of Atlantis was destroyed. There is a good reason that the Martians are so human-like.

Martian civilisation is fairly advanced. They have airships (which are always cool) and they have televisual communication. They also have what appears to be a kind of anticipation of nuclear power.

The Martians are reasonably friendly towards their two visitors from Earth, on the surface at least. In fact they’re suspicious. Mars has seen disastrous wars in the past. Once again Martian civilisation seems to have entered an era of instability. The two Earth men will be caught up in the turmoil, and Gusev will contribute to that turmoil. Gusev dreams of leading a socialist revolution on Mars. Like so many revolutions it will end in slaughter and widespread destruction.

One of the factors impelling Los to build his spacecraft was his loneliness and despair after his beloved wife’s death. On Mars he thinks he has once again found love, in the person of Aelita. She is the daughter of the Chief Engineer (the effective ruler of the Martian civilisation).

Los has a slightly mystical and rather pessimistic outlook on life. Gusev thinks the revolution will usher in a golden age.

There are plots and counter-plots, revolutions and counter-revolutions.

You might be put off reading this book, assuming that it’s going to be heavy on Soviet propaganda (Tolstoy was later to be very much in favour with Stalin) or that there’s going to be a lot of socialist utopianism. That isn’t really the case. There’s a certain degree of cynicism in this novel on the subject of political solutions. Revolutions just lead to chaos and suffering.

The novel also does not reflect a view of history as an inevitable progression towards a socialist promised land. In fact it reflects a very dark and pessimistic view of history as an endless cycle of violence and destruction.

Gusev has political enthusiasms but Los just wants to find love. Love is the only thing that ever brought him happiness. There is very definitely a love story at the heart of this book.

There’s some wild and intriguing alternative history going back 20,000 years or so into the pasts of both Earth and Mars. We get a detailed history of Atlantis.

It’s fast-moving and action-packed.

Aelita is a must-read for anyone with an interest in the history of science fiction, and it’s rather entertaining as well. Recommended.

The 1924 film adaptation is also regarded as a classic, although in my view t's a flawed classic.

Glenn Canary’s Trailer Park Girls

Glenn Canary’s Trailer Park Girls was published by Monarch Books 1962. It has more recently been reprinted by Black Gat Books. It appears that it may also been published as Trailer Park Trash.

I know very little about Glenn Canary (1934-2008) other than the fact that he started as a newspaperman and he wrote a handful of novels and short stories.

The title obviously suggests that this is going to be sleaze fiction but that needs to be qualified. In the 50s and early 60s there was a lot of crossover between sleaze fiction and hardboiled/noir crime fiction, both of which were popular pulp genres. There were a lot of sleaze novels that had crime fiction plots and there were crime novels that were quite sleazy. Many authors wrote in both genres.

There was in the late 50s and early 60s a curious craze for trailer park sleaze. For a lot of people the American Dream wasn’t quite the world of TV series like Leave It to Beaver and Ozzie and Harriet. Home ownership was hopelessly out of the reach of many people, either permanently or temporarily. The best they could aspire to was life in a trailer park. There was much clucking of tongues over the immorality that supposedly flourished in trailer parks. This was mostly media hysteria but there was some truth to it. They did attract transients and drifters and undoubtedly there was a fair amount of illicit sex.

Not surprisingly this made trailer parks a splendid setting for sleaze novels.

Trailer Park Girls fall into the category of hardboiled crime/noir spiced up with sex. This is the tale of three guys who live in a trailer camp, and three girls who live in the same camp.

Three young guys who met in the army share a trailer. Burt Stone is the one who comes up with the idea for the robbery. He was all set to be a doctor. He’s finished his undergraduate studies and now he’s ready for medical school. That won’t be a problem. He has ten thousand dollars set aside, enough to support him until he qualifies as a doctor. Only he doesn’t have that money after all. His brother stole it. But has a plan to rob a department store with his two buddies. That should net him the ten grand he needs.

Al Needs is a tough guy with a nasty streak. Jack Cannon is a huge good-natured bear of a man. They could both use some money. These three guys are not really hopeless losers, they’re just not as smart or as hard as they think they are and they’ve convinced themselves the robbery will be child’s play and they haven’t considered the possibility that it could all go wrong.

They get mixed up with the three girls. Sally pairs off with Al. Fran pairs off with Jack. Burt doesn’t want any emotional entanglements but he just drifts into an affair with Marianne and before he knows what’s happening they’re in love.

Of course one of the girls finds out about the robbery and she wants in. The other two girls don’t want to be mixed up in it but they are whether they like it or not.

The robbery does not take place until very late in the story but this is not a classic heist story in which the focus is on the preparations for the robbery and the detailed mechanics of pulling it off. This is a character-driven story rather than a plot-driven story. Canary is much more concerned with the character motivations and interactions, especially the growing tension between Burt and Al and the complicated relationship between Burt and Marianne.

Right from the start Burt wanted the trio of robbers to have nothing to do with women until after the robbery. He was sure that any involvement with women would sow dissension and and pose dangers. He was right. But he couldn’t stop it from happening and he couldn’t stop himself from getting deeply involved with Marianne. She presents him with a choice - back out of the robbery or lose her. But he doesn’t see any way that he can back out.

The main focus is on Burt and Marianne. Especially Burt. He’s a typical noir protagonist. He’s basically a very decent guy. In the normal course of events he’d have become a doctor and led a blameless life. But having that money stolen by his brother has distorted his thinking and embittered him. And now events are moving out of his control. This is all classic noir fiction stuff.

There is a femme fatale of sorts but it’s not Burt’s girlfriend, it’s Sally. She’s the most reckless of the three girls.

There are no real villains here, just people who make mistakes. Maybe some will lean from their mistakes and maybe some of them won’t.

There’s some violence and a lot of sex. The sex isn’t very graphic but it does have an edge of noir desperation to it. People who need love but don’t realise it and sometimes don’t recognise it when it’s there.

As to how noir this novel is, that depends on how you read the ending but it does have a noirish atmosphere.

I enjoyed this one. Highly recommended.

The Dozen Deadly Dragons Of Joy by Mallory T. Knight

The Dozen Deadly Dragons Of Joy was the first of Mallory T. Knight’s The Man From T.O.M.C.A.T. sexy spy thrillers. It was published in 1967.

Bernhardt J. Hurwood (1926-1987) wrote a number of spy thrillers in the late 60s and on into the early 70s under the name Mallory T. Knight.

This being the first book in the series we start with a very very brief rundown of the hero’s backstory. Tim O’Shane was a Marine Corps captain just happily having an affair with a marred woman in Paris. During one of their bedroom romps he discovers an odd capsule-shaped objected secreted about her person. The hiding place was unlikely to be found, except perhaps by a randy Marine Corps captain. Tim figures he should pass this discovery on to the intelligence guys.

The next thing he knows Tim has been recruited by T.O.M.C.A.T. (Tactical Operations Master Counterintelligence Assault Team), an international espionage and counter-espionage group. It’s run by an 83-year-old Scotsman with a prodigious appetite for tobacco, good whisky and beautiful women.

Tim’s latest case begins with another bedroom romp, with a Polish cryptographer. On this assignment he’ll be working for the Russians. Actually working for them, in their interests. He’ll be working for Soviet spymaster Pletnikov. In this story the Russians are the good guys. So are the Americans. This was 1967 and the fashionable enemy in spy fiction was no longer the Soviet Union but Red China. Tim has to prevent a Chinese plot involving stolen Soviet nukes but it involves something else as well - unleashing the Joy Dragons on an unsuspecting America.

The Joy Dragons are specially selected nymphomaniacs. Their mission is to sleep with as many American men as possible. The men will certainly get plenty of joy (these girls will make sure of that) but they’ll get an unexpected bonus - a virus. Not a killer virus, but maybe more devastating.

He’ll have to shake off the CIA agent tailing him. This mission will be difficult enough without those guys getting mixed up in it. One advantage Tim has is a diplomatic passport - he’s a special envoy for Satyria, a tiny independent state run by a crazy Greek billionaire who also happens to bankroll T.O.M.C.A.T. among other assorted business and political ventures.

Pletnikov has had a break. The Russians have located one of the Joy Dragons. She might lead Tim to Alexander Wang, the mysterious Chinese agent who cooked up the whole nefarious scheme. She does indirectly lead him to the glamorous but deadly Mona Kee.

This was 1967 so there is of course an attempt to inject some Swinging 60s flavour into the proceedings.

There are, naturally, lots of gadgets including a tricked-out Lamborghini 350GT. And a helicopter with a balloon attachment.

There’s a fair amount of action, including both martial arts fights and gunplay, some explosions and a fight with a tiger.

The trick with the sexy spy thriller genre is to get the balance right. There has to be enough sexiness to provide decent titillation without derailing the spy thriller plot. This book strikes just the right balance. Tim beds a whole succession of gorgeous women, there are naked women wandering about all over the place, but there is a genuine and quite decent spy thriller plot.

For this sub-genre the tone also has to be right. It needs to be amusing and lighthearted and the plot needs to be fairly outlandish and crazy but without becoming an out-and-out spoof.

A sexy spy thriller has to work equally well as sleaze fiction and spy fiction.

In this case the author manages these balancing acts pretty well. The result is a lightweight but very entertaining read. Highly recommended.

Other sexy spy thriller series worth checking out are Gardner Francis Fox’s Lady from L.U.S.T. books beginning with Lust, Be a Lady Tonight and Lay Me Odds, and James Eastwood’s Anna Zordan thrillers such as Seduce and Destroy. Clyde Allison’s Agent 0008 books such as Gamefinger are much more out-and-out spoofs and much sleazier but fun if you like that sort of thing. But the best of the sexy spy thriller genre is probably Jimmy Sangster's Touchfeather.

Theodore Roscoe’s Tarantula Tower

Tarantula Tower is the fourth collection of Theodore Roscoe’s stories of the adventures of curio hunter Peter Scarlet and his friend the naturalist Bradshaw. It’s been issued by Steeger Books in their Argosy Library series. The stories were originally published in various pulp magazines between 1933 and 1935.

The stories take place in a variety of exotic settings - central Asia, the Red Sea coast of Africa, the Dutch East Indies (as Indonesia then was) and British India. These are tales of adventure with touches of horror and weird fiction, although without any supernatural elements. There are monsters, but they are human monsters.

The stories generally have a nasty but clever sting in the tail and an atmosphere of the weird and the mysterious.

Although referred to as the Scarlet and Bradshaw stories the two men only occasionally appear in the same story.

Tarantula Tower appeared in Argosy in September 1933. Bradshaw explains where his horror of spiders originated. It started in central Asia, with a broken-down Russian officer who claimed to know where the Russian Crown Jewels had been concealed. They were hidden in a tower on a tiny island in the middle of a lake. He will take Bradshaw there. All he wants in return is a modest cash payment. The jewels are of no use to the Russian officer. He is being trailed by Bolshevik spies who would not let him get away with them.

The island is there. So is the tower. So are the jewels. But it’s not that simple as devious plot twists start to kick in. There’s something very strange, in fact quite impossible, about that tower.

Plenty of menace and creepiness in this clever story in which the mystery is never quite resolved.

Octopus appeared in the January-February 1934 issue of Action Stories. Peter Scarlet is in Somaliland. He doesn’t want to be there but he received a letter from an old buddy. Two old buddies were searching for treasure. Peter Scarlet is experienced enough not to get himself involved in such follies but when a friend needs urgent help that’s a different matter.

Scarlet will encounter the Green God of Sheba which is no god but it’s pretty formidable and dangerous just the same. It seems like the little American curio hunter might meet his doom in a sinister pool at the bottom of a ravine, a pool concealing some unknown horror. Plenty of action and excitement in this story.

Blood of the Beast was published in the March-April issue of Action Stories. Peter Scarlet faces a deadly stand-off with a madman bent on revenge. And the madman possesses the ultimate weapon- a bloodthirsty murderous pet orang-utan! A solid tense little story.

The Evil Eye appeared in Action Stories in June 1934. The setting is the Moluccas in the Dutch East Indies. A Prussian officer who is also a racketeer and a killer served a long prison sentence (which he thoroughly deserved) and died soon after his release.

Three years after his death the five men responsible for sending him to prison receive letters from the dead man. They are told that if they go to his castle and look his portrait straight in the eye they will find the key to a vast treasure.

Peter Scarlet tracks down the Dutchman, Schneider, who painted that portrait. By this time Scarlet is the only one of the five left - the others have all mysteriously disappeared. Scarlet and the Dutchman set out to solve the mystery, and a nasty little mystery it it. A fine story.

Port of Missing Heads was published in Argosy in 1935. The setting is Bhutan. It’s the most outrageous story in this collection. Bradshaw was acting as guide to a rich American on a hunting expedition. The American wanders off from the camp and is never seen again - until his head turns up in the river near the local police outpost. It’s the latest in a long series of decapitated heads found in the river. Apart from the obvious mystery surrounding these men’s fates there seems to be no rational way the heads could have ended up in that particular river.

It has something to do with the popular local superstition regarding the Little Dog. The Little Dog is actually a giant dog, with a tongue of diamond. Many have sought to find Little Dog. It has always ended badly for the seekers. Bradshaw has no choice - he must find the golden dog to clear himself of suspicion of murder. A nicely strange and creepy story.

Final Thoughts

Roscoe was one of the greats of pulp fiction, a solid prose stylist with a deliciously twisted imagination. This collection is huge amounts of fun. Highly recommended.

I’ve reviewed several of the Scarlet and Bradshaw collections - The Tower of Death, The Ruby of Suratan Singh and Blood Ritual - as well as the miscellaneous story collection The Emperor of Doom and his excellent mystery/adventure/horror novel Z Is For Zombie.

Robert Silverberg's The Hot Beat

The Hot Beat is a 1960 noir-inflected sleazy hardboiled crime thriller by Robert Silverberg.

Robert Silverberg (born 1935) is best-known as one of the grandmasters of science fiction. He had just started to establish himself in the genre when the science fiction market to which he was selling temporarily collapsed. He turned to other genres such as men’s adventure fiction, sleaze fiction and crime fiction and became a very prolific and very successful writer of pulp paperback originals. The Hot Beat was written (using the pseudonym Stan Vincent) for a short-lived paperback original publisher, Magnet Books.

Bob McKay is a band leader. He’s young and he has the world at his feet. He’s the toast of the town. And then he hits the skids. He’s been pushing himself too hard and when you make a living in nightclubs it’s all too easy to reach for the bottle when you need to relax. McKay reaches for that bottle way too often. He loses everything, including his girl Terry. Terry is a starlet whose career has so far gone nowhere but she’s a swell kid. She just can’t put up with McKay’s drunken unpredictability any longer.

McKay has reached rock bottom. And then things get worse. He’s arrested for the murder of B-girl Doris Blair. He knew Doris but he didn’t kill her. The cops, who in this novel behave like moronic thugs, don’t care. He’s a convenient suspect. They’re happy to railroad him all the way to the gas chamber. They intimidate witnesses into identifying McKay.

Newspaper columnist Ned Lowry covers the seamy side of life but he can’t stand thuggish cops and he can’t ignore such an obvious miscarriage of justice. He gets a hotshot lawyer interested in the case.

And along with Terry, the aforementioned starlet, he starts playing amateur private detective. They really are amateurs but they’re motivated and gradually they start to see a picture emerging that is sharply at variance with the cops’ version.

Silverberg’s knack for pulp fiction is much in evidence - an understanding of the necessity for breakneck pacing, the ability to sketch characters quickly and economically, the ability to capture the right atmosphere of seedy corrupted glamour. He also makes sure to have all the right ingredients - some action, some romance, some suspense, some sleaze.

McKay is a typical noir fiction loser. He’s not such a terrible guy but he has a genius for self-destruction. In most novels of this type he would have to set out to prove his own innocence. In this story McKay does practically nothing. The focus is entirely on the two amateur sleuths.

Terry is the most interesting character here. She’s no Girl Scout, she knows that making it in Hollywood will mean doing a certain amount of wallowing in the gutter, but she has limits. She has tried very hard not to be corrupted. She’s not sure how well she has succeeded. She hasn’t learned to hate herself but she’s also aware that at times she has behaved badly. She’s not a femme fatale, but also not quite a stock-standard Good Girl. To achieve stardom she is prepared to sleep her way to the top but at least she feels bad about it. She’s not a villainess in need of redemption, but she does need to take stock of her life.

There’s a solid enough mystery plot here and I always enjoy mysteries or thrillers with a seedy-glamorous showbiz background.

Hard Case Crime rescued this novel from obscurity in 2022. One thing I have to say about Hard Case Crime - they’re one of the very very few modern publishers who understand the importance of great stylish sexy book covers. The original painting by Claudia Caranfa for the cover of this one gets the tone just right.

To make this paperback edition even more enticing it also includes three late 50s crime short stories by Silverberg.

Drunken Sailor is rather a nothing story about a naïve young sailor on shore leave. It appeared in Trapped Detective Story Magazine in October 1958.

Naked in the Lake was published in Trapped Detective Story Magazine in February 1958. A married man decides it’s time to get rid of his inconvenient mistress but there are some nasty surprises in store for him. It’s an OK story.

Jailbait Girl appeared in Guilty Detective Story Magazine in September 1959. Now this is a terrific little story about a con artist and it has a delicious sting in the tail.

Having now read a couple of Silverberg’s noir novels I’m inclined to think that this genre was not quite his forte. He was better suited to sleaze fiction since he was good at dealing with human relationships and human motivations. He was one of the very best sleaze fiction writers. He doesn’t quite have the gift of a making a more straightforward crime novel come to life. The Hot Beat is still worth a look.

The inclusion of the three short stories, and especially Jailbait Girl, is enough to bump this Hard Case Crime paperback up into the recommended category.

Jack Bechdolt’s The Torch

Jack Bechdolt’s novel The Torch was serialised in Argosy in 1920. The Torch has some claims to being a post-apocalyptic novel.

Jack Bechdolt (1884-1954) was an American who wrote a handful of science fiction novels and short stories.

The novel is purportedly written in the 32nd century and tells of the Dark Ages that followed the Great Disaster of the 1980s. Civilisation collapsed completely and the world sank into barbarism. The story takes place in the late 21st century.

The setting is Manhattan, Manhattan being a feudal kingdom surrounded by the hostile and savage Wild Folk. Manhattan is ruled by a ruthless elite served by a slave class. Traces of a once great civilisation still survive on the island but the current level of technology is distinctly mediæval. There is no electricity. There are no cars or railways. There do not even seem to be firearms.

Captain Fortune is an ambitious young officer in the service of the Towerman of Manhattan. The current Towerman is Wolff, well-meaning but weak. On his death his daughter Alda will succeed him but of course it is a certainty that the real power will be in the hands of her husband. She does not yet have a husband but there are powerful men anxious to step into that role.

There is much intrigue and treachery afoot.

Fortune is very ambitious indeed and his ethics are decidedly flexible. He is aiming for power. It seems likely that Alda will be the key to that power. He might perhaps aspire to be the power behind the throne. He might even aspire to be her husband and consort and effective ruler. There are no limits to the dreams of a man who is both ambitious and young. And Alda certainly seems to be taking a close interest in him.

In the meantime he has another woman on his mind. A young woman he met just once, on a tiny island. It’s the island where the half-ruined statue of the Great Woman stands. The young woman is Mary and Fortune soon discovers some disturbing things but her. The most disturbing is that she is one of the leaders of a dangerous bands of revolutionaries aiming to overthrow the Towerman’s regime.

Fortune is soon deeply enmeshed in intrigue and dealing with all manner of divided loyalties. Whichever way he jumps he will be guilty of betrayal. He has become quite skilled in the art of treachery but he has also made the disquieting discovery that he has a conscience. He becomes increasingly troubled and confused.

Much of the action takes place in the mysterious network of tunnels underneath Manhattan. No-one knows what mysterious purpose they once served.They are of course the remains of the subways.

There’s lots of symbolic significance to that statue of the Great Woman. Her arm has long since gone. It is believed she once held something in that arm. Some say it was a sword but most people think it was a torch. The torch serves throughout the book as a heavy-handed symbol of freedom and revolution.

There’s a reasonable allowance of action scenes.

The plot is fairly standard - a ruthless elite lording it over the oppressed masses who are planning rebellion and a hero faced with difficult choices. It’s perhaps just too standard and therefore too predictable.

Do you have to remember that this novel was written in 1920. Some of the things in this tale that now seem like clichés had not yet become clichés. The idea of an elite class and a slave under-class does go back to at least 1895, to the H.G. Wells novel The Time Machine.

Fortune is at least a moderately interesting hero with a very definite dark side. The leaders of the revolution, Mary and Zorn, are a bit too idealised. Alda is a reasonable beautiful but evil queen type of figure.

The Torch is mostly interesting as an early example of the post-apocalyptic genre that was just starting to become popular. It’s reasonable entertainment and it’s worth a look if that genre interests you.

I’ve reviewed several other early post-apocalyptic and end-of-the-world novels, such as The Sixth Glacier by Marius from 1929 and J. J. Connington’s provocative Nordenholt’s Million from 1923.

M.G. Braun’s That Girl from Istanbul

That Girl from Istanbul is the fourteenth in M.G. Braun’s long-running and extremely popular series of Al Glenne spy novels. In was originally published in French, as Pas de bonheur pour Spyros, in 1959. The English translation dates from 1966.

M.G. Braun (1912-1984) was an amazingly prolific French writer of pulp fiction.

The French police stumble upon something big when they shoot a top Soviet spymaster by accident. It’s a plot to kidnap a Turkish girl. She seems like a very pleasant very ordinary girl and there’s no reason why the KGB would want to kidnap her.

Eventually the French begin to suspect that the kidnapping could have unexpected international repercussion. They send their ace counter-espionage agent Al Glenne to Istanbul.

Al runs into his old buddy Jeff Cavassa. Jeff is a CIA agent. He’s in Istanbul on another mission but their respective missions seem highly likely to be connected.

As so often they will be working together, but not quite as a team. The Americans don’t trust the French and the French are certainly not silly enough to trust the CIA. Al can never be sure that Jeff is telling him everything he knows, and Al likes to tell the CIA only what he absolutely has to tell them. The CIA wants the mission to be a coup for them. The French very naturally want it to be a coup for themselves.

They find the girl, and then lose her. There’s something very odd about her behaviour. She seems like she’s been drugged but she hasn’t been. Or maybe it’s some new drug.

The plot provides various twists and turns and becomes a chase across Turkey. Al and Jeff have to find that girl but of course they can’t let the Turkish counter-intelligence people know what they’re up to.

Much mayhem ensues.

There are double agents and there’s one guy who might be a triple agent. You can never be sure where a spy’s loyalties lie. The ones who are ideologically dedicated can be more untrustworthy than the ones whose motivations are purely mercenary.

I’ve been reading quite a bit of French spy fiction recently. They tend to be very cynical and quite open about the brutality of the world of espionage. How do spies deal with inconvenient witnesses, such as some poor schmuck of a truck driver who isn’t really involved in espionage and isn’t really involved in any serious crime? Jeff has the answer to that. You shoot the guy in the back of the head. OK, he’s unarmed and he’s promised to keep quiet and he’s running away but witnesses are always a worry. Al isn’t bothered by this. He’d have done the same thing himself.

French spy fiction also tends to be very good. They don’t take a simplistic good guys vs bad guys approach.

I’ve reviewed a couple of other M.G. Braun Al Glenne thrillers including Apostles of Violence (which is extremely good) and Operation Atlantis (also excellent). I have to be honest and say that That Girl from Istanbul isn’t quite as good as those two titles. 

But That Girl from Istanbul is still a fine spy thriller and it’s highly recommended.

I’ve also reviewed several of Gérard de Villiers’ Malko spy thrillers - West of Jerusalem, Man from Kabul and Operation New York. They’re also interesting and very very good.