George Henry Smith (1922–1996)

Our hero is a a private eye, an occult bookstore owner, a swordsman, a middle guard for the Green Bay packers, and a OLYMPIC GOLD MEDALIST IN DISCUS.

Oh, and the most powerful wizard in North America. Where magic doesn't work.

He wants to fight cars. With a sword.

Oh, boy.

Duffus January . . . henceforth known as Doofus . . . is introduced to us with what must surely rank amongst the great first lines in the fantasy genre, "Peggy O'Shea was my favorite manicurist." In short order, he

A) Admits he show more forgets his manicurist's hair color because he spends all his time looking down her cleavage.
B) Asks her out while also asking he to sweep up all his hair and nails into a bag for him.
C) Admits to her that he thinks airplanes are a conspiracy theory.

I wonder why she doesn't say "yes?"

Doofus is a man out of time. He wants to be Conan, but he's stuck in a world with his hated nemesis: cars. Yes, he hates and distrusts technology, and cars are the focus of all his hate, watching with "their hooded eyes" and waiting to pounce with "those fang-like teeth they call grills." Let's give some examples.

"It was a big ominous Cadillac, with spear-like protrusions at the rear. I could feel the malevolence in its glance.. Its teeth-like grill was grinning in hate and its tiger paws were gripping the pavement in preparation for a leap."

He dearly wishes he was born in another time, experimenting with magic even though it doesn't work and he knows it. He's dearly working on a Persian spell that "would render any woman incapable of saying no." He calls it a counter-virginity spell.

There's definitely 1969-era gender roles on display here.

As the inevitable dame walks into his office, he's totally ready for a trip to another reality. He confides to his new client that his fondest wish is to grab his family two-handed sword, don his mail-order helmet and chain, and stand on a street corner, fighting cars.

"There would be the scream of dying machinery, and [it] would be lying there with its hood, motor, and chassis cleaved open, it blood turning the street black, and . . ."

Soon, he is dispensing such wonderful advice as:

""There is no real magic," I said. "Trust in the Stone of Solomon."

Luckily enough for our planet, he is whipped into a fantasy world before the lunatic gives in to the urge. A quick trip to the Grand Central Station between dimensions, and Doofus in unleashed on the poor sword-and-sorcery realm.

He's a dumpster fire of a main character, but I can't help watch how he tramples things under his sardonic, sandaled feet. An admitted bully ("just like Fin MacCool," he claims), he viciously beats the crew of a small boat during a terrified mutiny before ordering the captain to full speed ahead.

"You've killed half my crew," the captain replies haplessly.

Doofus is a mess, yet it is a weirdly consistent mess. It's fun to watch the living trainwreck with a sense of fun play the hero, wooing both of two prospective witch-queen sisters as they hunt for their MacGuffin.

There's a sense of humor, lots of weirdly applied Celtic myth, and one genuinely great pulp deathtrap/jail cell escape. I was sure that I was going to hate Doofus for all his obvious flaws, but he kind of transforms into the fantasy equivalent of Evil Dead's Ash. I was smiling when I finished the book.

All right, Doofus. You get three stars at 159 pages. Any more and you would've overstayed your welcome.

Wait.

There isn't a trilogy of this somewhere, is there? show less

H. G. Wells’s 1898 classic has long served as fodder for other writers, from Garrett Putman Serviss’s [b:Edison's Conquest of Mars|37688173|Edison's Conquest of Mars|Garrett Putman Serviss|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1517438633s/37688173.jpg|59319656] to Alan Moore’s more recent [b:The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 2|107007|The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Vol. 2|Alan Moore|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1327904678s/107007.jpg|6156668]. George H. Smith’s show more novel is firmly in this tradition, albeit with an interesting twist: having failed in their invasion of Earth, the Martians now set their sights on Earth’s parallel world Annwn, a planet technologically similar to Earth but one in which magic enjoys a presence as well as science. Aided by a group of worshipers, the Martians inoculate themselves against the microorganisms that frustrated their previous attempt and prepare for an assault on a much larger scale. Alerted by a few figures from Earth, a small group of Annwnians mobilize to thwart this new effort, but it’s a race against time with a cool and calculated foe – and one determined to learn from their mistakes the first time around.

Smith’s novel benefits from both the novelty of its premise and the infusion of a number of interesting ideas, particularly his inspired concept of pro-Martian humans working for the destruction of their own species. The chapters describing the battles between the humans and the tripods are also excellent, conveying a sense of tension and excitement in many ways even better than Wells did in the original. Yet before readers can get to them they must wade through a considerable amount of tepid dialogue and poor characterization, particularly of the main female protagonist Clarinda McTague, whose jealousy-driven anger detracts from the story whenever she appears. The addition of the certain English detective and his medically-trained sidekick is even more questionable, especially as the conceit of disguising their identities wears thin quickly. Together these factors drag down this otherwise imaginative novel, one that squanders an otherwise interesting departure from Wells’s famous work. show less

I'm easy as a consumer of fiction. I quickly buy in to almost any premise an author cares to put forward. I find few faults with internal consistency. I ignore lapses in character and I permit cliched beginnings... and endings... and middles. In short, I like almost everything in read.

I was not a big fan of this book. I like books with a little bit of a saucy undertone. A little sex on the side never turned me off. But this book had an attitude embodied by Clarinda's blanking out of Tethys' show more body from Dylan's vision: the titillation is there, but off limits. I mean, if you introduce a character as a buxom redheaded witch that's a follower of a fertility goddess, you're definitely pointing down a particular path. When you then choose not to deliver on that promise, you've perpetrated a 'bait-and-switch'...

I thought the character of the Texan pilot was completely undeveloped. I was not a big fan of mixing of magic and technology. Even though I knew the book was short (only 189 pages), it seemed to have glossed over large swaths of the plot, environment and character.

So definitely one of the most disappointing books I've read recently. show less

This is a very short book of 125 pages. It takes place in the future...from guess work between 2020-2030. Man has landed on Mars and there is a small colony there but power is required to make the planet habitable. Earth is overpopulated and in dire need of power.

A company has built 2 fusion reactors of unlimited power. One in the USA and another on Mars. Suffice it to say the reactors are started to full power without proper testing. Though there are warning signs...both reactors are show more started...the one in the USA first with a major incident...A month later the one Mars is started and explodes, knocking Mars out of orbit and headed for Earth. The book also briefly talks about who should be saved and who should live

The book is really about power and glory for one man who refuses to stop the project. The brief description of the effects of Mars approaching Earth are reasonably good. There are some chuckles as you read the story though....they have visi-phones...yet the hero must type out a telegram on a typewriter. Also in a reactor emergency there is no fail-safe way of stopping the meltdown other that physically placing 6 sticks of dynamite in a strategic location and lighting a 5 minute fuse...really? :)

But that aside it is a pretty quick and enjoyable read...could have been fleshed out more for my taste though. show less