Galaxy 666 By Pel Torro

Galaxy 666
By Pel Torro
1968 Tower
Paperback, 138 pages

    It all started when my friend (and Midnight contributor) Kris Gilpin asked on his Facebook page: “Back in the 70s, a paperback original came out and it was infamous for about 10-15 years for being ‘the worst novel ever written!’” The title turned out to be Galaxy 666 and based on readers’ reviews and a few snippets of prose, I needed to experience it for myself. I landed one from Amazon for about $5.

    What is it all about? A group of four individuals, two scientists and two spacemen, who explore Galaxy 666, a place where all manner of weird shit happens. That’s it, really. They encounter odd lifeforms on the planet, along with all kinds of chaos and a broken spaceship.

     Is it really bad? Yes. Yes, it is, but not unenjoyable. One can picture the author (in reality, Lionel Fanthorpe, prolific hack/ pulp writer) charging to his typewriter with a bottle of booze in one hand and a thesaurus in the other, eager to vomit up space-age verbiage. Every noun in the book gets at least three adjectives, every point gets repeated ad nauseam, and the characters all wax poetic, even at the most inappropriate of times. “Pel Torro” was obviously padding the word count against a tight deadline, and the results are hilarious.

     While reading the book, I was comparing it to an Andy Milligan script, with unending passages of inane dialog, but without the bad acting to sell it. With a film, I can look over at my wife and we can shake our heads together. With the book, I would read her unbelievable passages and she’d tell me to shut up so she could enjoy her own, more respectable book. By the end, it became a chore to finish, even at 138 pages. Not that it wasn’t fun, but I had endured it long enough and was ready to just move the fuck on.

The first printing of Galaxy 666 was from Badger Books (SF-86) in 1963 with a Henry Fox cover.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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Doomflight By Guy N. Smith

Doomflight

By Guy N. Smith
1981 Hamlyn
Paperback, 221 pages

It is well known that I adore Guy N. Smith’s nature-strikes-back books, but when he digs deeper than crabs, ‘gators or bats and their destruction of the human race, it can be hit or miss for me. Doomflight is an ambitious piece of writing and it’s fairly good, but not entirely satisfying.

A huge, international airport is being constructed on the site of a previously failed aerodrome. That one had failed because of countless mishaps. Y’see, the land it’s built upon is the site of a Druid circle, the ritual stones buried deep under the cement of the runways. Naturally, all hell breaks loose, with Druids, sacrifices, ghostly, old-timey airmen and a massive loss of human lives. It’s huge, I tell ya.

Smith tells an intricate tale, and the story builds and builds to a fiery climax. It would make a hell of a movie. Sadly, I got a little impatient waiting to get to that climax. It might be that I had some kick-ass books in my “To Be Read” pile or it was a story that just wasn’t engaging me, but the last third became a bit of a slog. Eh, it happens. Maybe if he threw just one giant crab into the mix…

Still, it’s hard to not recommend any books by the master. Especially with Smith’s recent passing, we have to savor every word he has written.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #9, March, 2022.

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The Snake by John Godey

The Snake
by John Godey
Berkley 1978
Paperback, 280 pages

 

This book is great.

 

An eleven-foot-long, highly venomous Black Mamba is loose in Central Park in New York. That is the premise. The story itself is more about what goes on in New York City while this animal is at large than the animal itself. The different factions of citizens and their different wants and needs and proposed solutions to the problem are what drive the narrative.

 

Suspenseful, humorous, and dripping with cynical social commentary, The Snake works on many levels. The science is top-notch here; Godey’s research was impeccable. No bullshit, made-up anti-snake propaganda here, just facts that the characters (and the reader, for that matter) choose how they want to take it. Oh yes, snake-hating is on display here. It wouldn’t be realistic if there wasn’t, but there are also people who want to save the innocent animal who is, after all, just trying to survive in a foreign and unknown habitat. The Snake is more of a thriller than a horror novel, but don’t let that deter you.

 

Godey nails it, speaking from every angle. The cops who want to end the search, the mayor who makes impossible demands, the herpetologist who wants to save the snake, the religious group who claim it’s the devil incarnate and the reporters looking for a scoop… everyone gets a believable voice. John Godey (which is the penname of Morton Freedgood) also wrote The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 and since I’ve only seen (and loved) the film, I really want to read the novel after finishing this. His writing in The Snake is consistently engaging and entertaining. I even laughed out loud a couple of times. That doesn’t happen often. Read this mofo.

This review originally appeared in Midnight Magazine #8, July 2021.

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