Category: Miscellaneous

‘Clonan’ Books

  • November 16, 2017

I’ve always been a Conan The Barbarian fan. Back in my youth I read most (all?) of the original stories by Howard and loved the unique stories and evocative setting.

In recent years I’ve been reading a lot of 1960s/70s pulp novels, and in doing so have discovered and appreciated several notable Conan clone series. Here’s my impressions on a few of these.

Brak The Barbarian

This series of five books, written by John Jakes between 1968 and 1980 are perhaps the most directly Conanesque of this lot, with a very similar protagonist, setting and adventures. Brak himself, a barbarian from the north, is on a series-spanning quest to a fantastic ‘golden’ city in the south and he has many adventures on his way, usually involving crazed sorcerers, evil – occasionally Lovecraftian – monsters and the occasional (though less often than Conan) beautiful maiden. While I’ve only yet read half the series (but own them all) I enjoy them quite a lot.

Thongor

During the 60s and 70s Lin Carter wrote seven books featuring his barbarian warrior Thongor. His adventures occur in a fantastic ruined world of lost wizardry, ancient ‘dragon kings’ and many exotic but distinct civilizations. These books are unsophisticated but fast-paced and rich in imagination, and on the whole contain less barbarian violence and womanizing than most on this list. Good, quick reads, these also inspired a (good!) marvel comics series also penned by Carter.

Kothar

Gardner Fox was a writer for DC Comics in the early years who turned his efforts to novels in the 1960s. This spawned two notable fantasy series, the first of which were the five Kothar books. Kothar himself could be Conans younger, blonder brother who decided he wanted to have the same adventures as his more famous sibling. Interesting differences (a magic cursed sword, an immortal sorceress) combined with a pacing obviously learned from a career in comics result in very readable books. Probably my favourites in this list.

Kyrik

This is Fox’s second series, written (for a different publisher, hence the original hero) in the mid 1970s. Mostly identical to the previous (another hero having wild adventures in a ruined world) this one features the usual – and expected – assortment of magic and monsters and near-naked women to save. While perhaps not quite as readable as Kothar, this is still a recommended series.

Richard Blade

This remarkable series of 37 (!) books was written over 15 years (starting in 1969) by three writers under the pen name Jeffrey Lord. After reading one book that I bought in Australia last year I was so impressed/insane that I purchased thirty-five more for the low, low price of $100!

The premise of this mad series is that MI6 sends super-agent Richard Blade (a fitter, handsomer, stronger and smarter James Bond) through a dimensional transporter into exotic new worlds where he performs reconnaissance for queen and country. Since the transporter can’t send clothes, he’s naked when he arrives and since many of the worlds are stereotypical fantasy realms, there’s more than a hint of Conan inspiration here. I’ve only read two, but those books alone had enough lunacy for a dozen other books, and I look forward to reading more.

Raven

‘Richard Kirk’ was the pseudonym of famed fantasy author Robert Holdstock who in the 1980s created an eventual five-book fantasy series about a female warrior named Raven. The books are slightly infamous for the Royo cover art (in the USA) and (nuder) Achilleos art in the UK – all I am sure crafted carefully to attract teenage male readers…

The books themselves are much more sophisticated than the covers suggest and the heroine in particular is more reflective and has a richer backstory than any other mentioned on this page. The setting is satisfyingly exotic and once again features barbaric civilization in a world scattered with evidence of a lost civilization. The quality of the books is not consistent, but overall these were worth the read.

  • Posted in Books
  • Robert

Review: Game Poke

  • October 7, 2017

If you visit Japan, eventually you’ll see gashapon vending machines. They’re virtually everywhere, and a mind-boggling array of items can be obtained from them.

On our recent trip, one thing I got out of one such machine – for the princely sum of ¥500 – was this:

The ‘prizes’ are random, but this particular machine only had one thing inside. Here’s the contents:

And a detail of the device itself:

It’s a handheld video game called ‘Game Poke’! As you can see above, the instructions are in Japanese. But this is the Space Age and that’s hardly an obstacle any more:

Basic stuff really. The Rotate button allows us to ‘Bray the game’ (although it actually doesn’t), and the S/P button allows us to ‘game of the start or stop temporary’ (in actuality it does neither).

But who needs instructions?!? Batteries were included, so lets fire this thing up:

What’s this? This little Poke contains 99 games? The buttons allow you to select the different games, and there appears to be (up to?) 26 in total. However each game has variants as well, not to mention 99 (!) difficulties and a wide range of speeds. How much of these are actually different is difficult to tell, but there’s certainly an impressive amount of variety.

You can see it ‘fakes’ a larger display via a 10×20 pixel LCD display with status bar on the right. The LCD contrast is poor, with ‘off’ elements too visible, but there’s no way to reduce it.

The games themselves are, of course, abysmal. Consisting mostly of execrable pseudo clones of Atari 2600 Combat, unplayable ‘driving’ games and others that seem like pixels just randomly flickering on and off there’s just no way anyone would ever enjoy actually playing this thing.

But it does have (19 versions of) Tetris, and I’ll be generous and say they at least work. The device is speedy and the buttons are responsive and it even has a beeper for sound, but it’s extremely tiny and as a result very hard to control.

That’s a closeup of the status bar, which strangely features an awful caricature of a small Asian child (man?) who flaps his hands up and down endlessly while the unit is on. The scores themselves are virtually meaningless since it always and only increments by 100 regardless of game or what you do. I doubt anyone has ever cared about a score they achieved on this device.

Overall, to no-ones surprise – this is a terrible game machine. ‘One for the collection’, as they say, this will be stashed inside a box never to see daylight ever again 🙂

(Intriguingly I ended up seeing ‘Game Poke’ gashapon in a few places in Japan. On one of them a note was attached to the front explaining in English and Japanese that only one in five of the devices actually worked. The others apparently were fakes with stickers on their screens and intended solely as keychains. It seems therefore I got lucky?)

  • Posted in Games
  • Robert

The Contest

  • September 29, 2017

“Let’s have a contest to see who can put the most stickers on a postcard!” I texted out of the blue last Saturday.

“Sure”, replied Bernard almost instantly. He was never a man to run from a challenge.

Some rules were set: the postcards had to be standard sized, a 2 x 6 cm left clear for the address and the stickers had to be unique and not overlap. We would mail simultaneously on Monday, so there would be no chance we could see the others entry first.

The same afternoon I selected the postcard I would use. This itself was an exercise; I have an expansive collection of unused cards and it had to be ‘just right’. I decided on the above since the jovial front would provide effective contrast to the nightmare on the back.

And then I crafted it. It took patience and tweezers and maniacal attention to detail. During those few hours my soul soared with pride and sunk to the lowest depths of shame. I was creating my magnum opus, but driving myself to the very edge of madness in the process.

At the same time over 2500 miles away Bernard was hard at work as well. We exchanged light jabs via text – this was a contest after all. But deep down we knew the battle would be hard fought.

And then, on Monday, we bequeathed the cards to the mercy of the post…

Today, three short days later… this was in my mailbox:

I’ve censored the above to protect the children, but you can imagine my reaction. The jocular grin. The vacant eyes. The devil-may-care message. All carefully chosen to lower the defenses of the recipient. To ease one into a false sense of security. To make one think “Oh look at this cute card. I bet it’s got a nice message on the back…”

At this point I’ll add that during the past few days we had boasted about our entries. Neither of us had taken this lightly. Both of us were sure of a win.

“(Mine is) good”, Bernard had texted just after mailing his, “but I made silly mistakes.”

I wasn’t fooled. This was the bluff of an expert. “Mine is superb”, I replied. “My next one will be perfect.”

It went further. A mythology was born via texts. We predicted each would be slackjawed upon receipt, and the passage of the cards through the postal service may bring carriers to their knees.

So now it was time. I had the card in my hand, and the unknown was about to be revealed. I slowly turned it over, and this is what I saw:

These words I texted him: “Jesus H Christ”

A veritable myriad of stickers in all shapes and sizes! The colours shone from the card like a rainbow, and the birds and the butterflies and the girls and the stars beckon the viewer to another more beautiful realm. The effect was sublime; for even as I feared the front of the card was the red carpet to hell I discovered instead it was the rose-petal strewn entrance to The Pure Land.

Everything about this card was exultant! This was no nightmare… this was glorious!

But this was a contest…

Later the next day, after he returned from work, Bernard also found a card in his mailbox. He chuckled at the front, no doubt muttering words like “That rogue!” under his breath as he did. Tossing his keys on the table he idly turned the card over, unsure of what he’d see but quite confident in his victory.

And then he saw this:

His only comment: “Goddamnit!” 

I will leave it to the reader to actually count the stickers to determine who actually won this contest. But really does it matter?

For we have learned that this contest was as much about the journey as the destination. The act of creation alone has made us both victorious, and in sharing this art with all of you today, I think you’ll agree that everyone wins!