Robert Silverberg: Gilgamesh the King

I seem to have some difficulties with my reading. The two earlier books (and some others I haven't mentioned here in the blog) I almost slogged through. This one was more fascinating, but it didn't grab me the way I hoped it would. No way I would call Gilgamesh the King a bad book, though.

Even though I have only admiration for Robert Silverberg (and have published his works in Finnish!), I have read only few novels or short stories by him. I bought the Finnish translation of Gilgamesh the King when it came out some ten years ago (and I also have the English paperback version of it, with Silverbob's signature!), but I got to read it only now. I didn't really know what goes on in the original epic, but I believe Silverberg has it nailed. This is a realistic version of Gilgamesh's story, told in an archaic, but believable manner. There are some great adventures along the way, but I found that I couldn't really concentrate, and it took my over a week to finish the book. Maybe it's the stress, the feeling I should be reading something totally different, or at least something work-related. The book got more interesting in the end, when Gilgamesh goes on a journey to find out how he could keep himself alive as long as he wants to, only to find himself. The ending has misogynous undertones, which I felt were a bit distracting. 

Nevertheless, highly recommended, not only because it's by one of the great masters of his generation. It's too bad I missed seeing him during the last year's WorldCon in Helsinki, Finland.

P.S. I can't but laugh at the joke someone (I think Denny Lien at the Fictionmags discussion group) that Gilgamesh the King beats the contest where you have to find the longest time between the original work and the sequel. (Gilgamesh the King isn't actually a sequel, though, it's more like a retelling of the original epic, but the joke is too funny not to use.)

Review of Weasels Ripped My Flesh

Or actually a review of half of it. I wrote a review of this collection of stories from vintage men's magazines for a Finnish cultural magazine and I asked the published if I could see a PDF of the book in advance, since I wouldn't have had time to buy the book via web and wait for the copy to arrive. And I haven't had time since to read the rest of the book, but I definitely will when I've got some extra money to order the print book.

Okay, to the book. I posted the table of contents earlier, now I read the first half of the book and some extra stories. My reaction to the stories was somewhat mixed: the concept of the stories is often better than the execution. (Well, who didn't know that already..?) The idea of half-crazed Nazis torturing gorgeous and half-naked women in the castles of Germany is always good fun, but as far as the stories go, I'm not sure whether I'd care to read lots of them. One here and there is passable, but dozens of these...?

There are some good writers and good stories in the bunch, make no mistake about that. Robert Silverberg's crazy "Trapped by Mau Mau" (Exotic Adventures 1959) is a very good hardboiled adventure story, even though it's racist as hell. Robert F. Dorr's "Bayonet Killer of Heartbreak Ridge" (Man's Magazine 1964) is very well told, a snappy true-war story set in the Korean War. Harlan Ellison's "Death Climb" (True Men Stories 1957) is just a crime story, there's nothing about it to claim it's a true story, but it's pretty good - noir set on a mountain!

There were some disappointments: Lawrence Block's "She Doesn't Want You" (Real Men 1958), which is a rather bland account of prostitutes who are really lesbians. This wouldn't do as journalism anymore, even though I'm willing to admit that today's journalism at times resembles the vintage men's magazines very much. They might only do it better today. Same goes for Walter Wager's "Please God, Help Me Break Out" (Male 1958), which just tells what happened to a famous soldier (forgot the name already, sorry!) during the WWII. Jim McDonald's (real identity unknown) story has a great title: "Grisly Rites of Hitler's Monster Flesh Stripper" (Man's Story 1965), but it's actually a quite bland "re"-telling of odd incidents. You would think a writer would want to pepper these stories with some narrative hooks, but that clearly wasn't the case. And it has not enough sadism! By 2013, the teasing element has somewhat worn out. (Someone might say of course that's sad, but that's the way it goes.)

There were also stories by Bruce Jay Friedman (oddly humorous piece about a tiger in a zoo trying to eat another tiger in another cage) and Walter Kaylin (weird story about an exotic dancer acting as a tribal chief in the darkest Africa) that were of interest. The book is also spiced up by interviews with Wager and Mario Puzo, but unfortunately no story by Puzo. Wager's interview is more interesting (albeit too short!) than his story.

There are more books coming out from New Texture and I'm all for it, though I was a bit critical on this. I'll be reading the rest of the book one of these days and I'll also blog about it. Meanwhile you can take a look here.

Weasels Ripped My Flesh out soon!

The long-awaited collection of vintage stories from the Golden Age of men's adventure magazines called Weasels Ripped My Flesh is out soon! I received the table of contents in PDF form last week and I can tell the book looks dandy! The editor of the book, Bob Deis (who maintains the great Men's Pulp Mags blog), has done good work with his colleagues, Josh Friedman and Wyatt Doyle (who's also the mastermind behind the New Texture publishing house that's putting this out).

Here are the table of contents, posted with Bob's and Wyatt's permission. It's too bad they didn't get a permission to reprint any of Mario Puzo's men's magazine stories, but there's an interview with him about him hacking away for the mags. I believe the last piece in the ToC is an essay on men's mag (and the writer, Bruce Friedman, is I believe the father of Josh Alan Friedman). 

I think this looks cool.

Mike Kamens: Weasels Ripped My Flesh [MAN’S LIFE, September 1956]
Gilbert Nash: "Beat" Girls: Worshippers of Zen and Sin? [UNTAMED, February 1959]
Walter Kaylin: Bar Room Girl Who Touched Off a Tribal War [MALE, June 1966]
Lawrence Block (as Sheldon Lord): She Doesn’t Want You [REAL MEN, June 1958]
Harlan Ellison: Death Climb [TRUE MEN STORIES, February 1957]
Robert F. Dorr: Bayonet Killer of Heartbreak Ridge [MAN’S MAGAZINE, October 1964]
Bruce Jay Friedman: Eat Her... Bones and All [MALE, December 1954]
Robert Silverberg (as Norman Reynolds): Trapped by Mau Mau Terror [EXOTIC ADVENTURES, 1959]
Josh Alan Friedman: Walter Wager Interview
Walter Wager: Please God, Help Me Break Out [MALE, November 1958]
Vic Pate: Chewed to Bits by Giant Turtles [MAN’S LIFE, May 1957]
Jim McDonald: Grisly Rites of Hitler’s Monster Flesh Stripper [MAN’S STORY, March 1965]
George Majari: Calypso: Is It Pornography in Hi-Fi? [GUSTO, October 1957]
Robert Silverberg (as David Challon): 50 Days as an Amazon Love Slave [SIR!, November 1959]
Josh Alan Friedman: Mario Puzo Interview
Walter Kaylin: The Stewardess ‘Call Girl Slave’ Ring [FOR MEN ONLY, December 1971]
Jane Dolinger: Girl Crusoe [ESCAPE TO ADVENTURE, March 1959]
Ken Krippene: I Married a Jungle Savage [SIR!, November 1959]
Dr. Robert H.: I Went Insane for Science [MAN’S MAGAZINE, August 1956]
Robert F. Dorr: "Ghost Bear" That Terrorized a Town [MALE, February 1975]
Lawrence Block (as Sheldon Lord): Just Window Shopping [MAN’S MAGAZINE, December 1962]
E. C. Schurmacher: I Was a Slave of the Savage Blonde [HUNTING ADVENTURES, 1956]
Joanne Beardon: I Went to a Lesbian Party [ALL MAN, May 1964]
Carl Evans: Monkey Madness [MALE, August 1953]
Bruce Jay Friedman: Even the Rhinos Were Nymphos

Peter Rozovsky on hardboiled

In his blog I too rarely read Peter Rozovsky has started a new series of posts: he looks into the classic American hardboiled crime fiction. Here are his posts on Lionel White, Edward Anderson (Thieves Like Us), James M. Cain, Dan J. Marlowe and Robert Silverberg (admittedly a small one) and finally Dan J. Marlowe (again!), Paul Cain and Jim Thompson. He has also some other fascinating posts on different subjects, go read them all!

Robert Silverberg's sleaze novels

Old smut paperbacks have been seeing quite of a renaissance in the last couple years: there have been lots of blog posts about them, there are Facebook groups for them and associated stuff (try this) and what's the most important thing, there have been quite a few reprints. One of the most interesting of them has been the collection of Robert Silverberg's two sleaze paperbacks, called Gang Girl/Sex Bum. It's a very good book which I recommend highly, if you're into noirish and nasty little crime stories.

Gang Girl was first published as a Nightstand book in 1959 and it was one of the first of Silverberg's many sleaze novels. It's a juvie book, about a 16-year old (!) girl trying to break into a new gang and making her way up to the top. Some of the sex scenes are downright nasty, especially the gang rape scene that goes on and on. The ending is very noiry and fits the bill. Sex Bum, from four years later, is a better book in my opinion, though Gang Girl is not bad in any sense of the word. Sex Bum, this time a Bedtime book, tells about a young guy living in a hicksville wanting bad to make it into the mob. There are lots of sex scenes, but coupled with the crupulousness of Johnny Price they make a chilling read - this guy feels like he's stepped out from the pages of Jim Thompson of Jason Starr. The ending is very chilling.

These books were written fast to make fast money (and money Silverberg made: he bought a big house in Greenwich Village with the money he got writing these books!), and it shows somewhat. There are some meaningless characters in Sex Bum, and Gang Girl suffers somewhat from being too episodic, but I don't mind, as both books are also immensely readable. As there's also a foreword by Silverberg himself and an afterword by Michael Hemmingson, plus a 3-page bibliography of Silverberg's smut books, this books comes very highly recommended. Can't wait for this to arrive.

More stuff about Silverberg's sleaze books here.

Silverbob's crime stories

I compiled a bibliography of sorts of Silverberg's early crime stories and put it up on my bibliographic blog here. It's not complete and it doesn't even have those stories that I published in the Tapaamme tuonelassa book (I'll try to add them when I get a chance to pick the book up from the library (sic)). Plus there are also at least dozen western stories and some sport stories. That man was a fast writer!

Petri Salin on Silverberg

A friend of mine, Petri Salin, well known for his short stories in the science fiction fandom here in Finland, wrote this to me in e-mail about Silverberg:

Olen hiukan eri mieltä Silverbergin rikosnovellien tasosta. Minusta ne ovat hämmästyttävän päteviä. Ja mitä tulee siihen että oikeastaan niissä (ainakin kolmessa) on ihan sama tarina on vain osoitus siitä ammattitaidosta jolla Silverberg operoi. Vaikka kuvio on sama niin jokainen novelli on omaperäinen ja toimii erittäin hyvin omilla ehdoillaan. Juuri se teki minuun vaikutuksen - se on ammattilaisen merkki jos mikä.

I'll try to translate:

I beg to differ about the quality of Silverberg's crime stories. I thought they were astonishingly competent. And as for the fact that they (at least in three of them) have basically the same story over and over, it is only the indication of the craftsmanship with which Silverberg works. Even though the pattern is the same in each story, every story is also original and works very well in its own conditions. That's what impressed me most - that's the sign of a true professional.

Well said and thanks, Petri! The Silverberg book received only two reviews that I know of - one negative (actually very negative), one so-so, but more enthusiastic and knowledgeable than the other one. Maybe there would be enough demand for a collection in English, too. I'm sure there would be enough buyers - this could be something for a published like Bleak House Books or Busted Flush Press.

The Silverberg cover by Jukka Murtosaari

Okay, this is really embarrassing. I publish a book that's the first of its kind, then I forget to promote it, then I run out of copies (I really don't have one of my own), then I lose all the files related to the book, and when I want to post a cover scan here in my blog, I'll have to ask for it from a friend.

Thanks to Tapani Bagge (who's a great crime novelist) I was able to get my hands on the cover of Robert Silverberg's Tapaamme tuonelassa / We'll Meet in Hell that I published as a smallish booklet three years ago. I wrote more about it couple of messages back. So here it is, in all its black-and-white glory. The cover is, as I already mentioned, by Jukka Murtosaari.

There's also a blurb in the cover. It's James Reasoner saying: "It's always pleasure to read Silverberg." It's from his blog - he reviewed one of Silverberg's early pseudonymous nudie novels.

As you can see, there's "No. 1" in the cover. There was never a second issue - of anything. I did one of my Joe Novak stories in a similar format with a very small print run under the Verikoirakirjat / Blood Hound Press imprint a year back, but that's about it. One of these days...

Robert Silverberg's crime stories

Many bloggers I'm following have been commenting favourably on A Little Intelligence, a collection of old science-fictional crime stories published recently by Crippen & Landru. The writers are Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett, who both have had a good career in science fiction. Here's Bill Crider, and here's Ed Gorman.

No one mentions it, but I think this is the first time Silverberg's and Garrett's early crime stories have been published in a book form. Their science fiction stories have been published, some many times, but their crime stories haven't been.

If I'm not correct about this, please tell me. Because I'm about to boast a little bit. Because I actually published the first collection of Silverberg's early crime stories. I made a small booklet called Tapaamme tuonelassa / We'll Meet in Hell in 2006, under the (fictional) imprint, Verikoirakirjat / Blood Hound Press. The booklet has four stories whose Finnish translations I found in the Finnish pulp, Seikkailujen Maailma, from the early sixties. All the stories were from one issue of the Guilty Detective Magazine. I don't remember the details at the moment and I can't seem to the digital file of the booklet (I've long since run out of copies), so I can't check. I may have forgotten to post about the book here, which doesn't make me a good promoter of my own work. (But hey, I still managed to sell all the copies I printed, and I think there were as many as 200!)

The black-and-white cover was by Jukka Murtosaari and my friend Jukka Halme wrote the introduction. The crime fiction circles in Finland didn't seem to understand what the fuss was about, but the science fiction fandom was much more interested in the book. The stories are not great - they are more run-of-the-mill noir that was published a lot in the late fifties and early sixties, and from the four stories in the book three were too identical to each other. But it was still the first collection of Silverberg's early crime stories ever published!

Aw man, this sucks! I can't find the book, I can't find any of the files and I can't post Jukka's cover here in Pulpetti! This is utterly unforgivable - first I forget to promote the book when it's new, and then when it could be a collector's item and of interest to people reading this blog, I fail to find anything relating to it. You'll just have to trust me on this.

Edit: I managed to dig up a mention of the book. The issue of the Guilty Detective magazine all the stories were originally published in June, 1960.