Quick Observation on Guns in Fiction

I just read The Executioner #20, New Orleans Knockout, in about 24 hours. Very fast read and pretty entertaining novel. Bolan's "Attack Winnebago" was especially hilarious.

The observation I wanted to bring up, however, is this: while there is a modicum of what I like to call "gun talk" in the book, as there is in most of the Pendleton Executioners, it is not overdone. Yes, we know what sorts of guns Mack Bolan totes around; .44 Automag, Beretta 9mm automatic with silencer, Uzi, etc., but Pendleton is careful to never let the "gun talk" stray into the realm of "gun porn".

Just like the shift in movie "vibe" from the 70's to the 80's moves from "thriller" or "crime drama" to "action movie", the Post-Modern Pulp of the 70's moves from discussing weapons and action in a modicum of detail to, in the 80's, being in many respects simple vehicles for showing off the size of the author's firearms reference works collection.

I will freely admit to being a bit of a gun nut. I like guns, I like shooting guns, I like talking about guns and reading about guns and in general I think that while what they do is regrettable, the firearm is a fascinating technological and socio-political story for the last five hundred years or so.

On the other hand, reading through some of these early Executioners, you can see that Pendleton wasn't writing the saga of Mack Bolan just to talk about the .44 Automag any more than the Dirty Harry movies were about the Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 magnum.

And that's perfectly fine with me.

The Dirty Harry Series

I've recently watched the Dirty Harry series over again with an eye to how it changes between 1971 and 1988. Over that period of time, Not only does Hollywood change, but American sensibilities change, and our tastes in heroes (and anti-heroes) change.

At the time the original Dirty Harry came out in 1971, America was hip-deep in Vietnam, and the socio-political changes that were evolving us into a society ready for "post-modern pulp" type themes was well under way. Civil rights strife, drugs, violent crime, political unrest, and a nation that has recently had it's post WW2 innocent, noble glow roughly stripped away; this mix opened the door wide for a crime-fighting anti-hero cop, carrying a weapon no real-world cop could possibly get away with, doing things that no real-world cop could possibly do and keep his job. Although it is 14 years before Rambo First Blood Part II, Dirty Harry is to winning the war on crime that we knew we could never win the same way Rambo "wins" the war we couldn't win 10 years after the fact.

And like Rambo, Harry Callahan is a good person who is forced to bend, and even crack - but not break - the rules in order to get the job done. Callahan is given the offer in Magnum Force to join up with the very post-Vietnam-esque "kill squad" of young rookie cops who, having no doubt all come out of Vietnam (at least one of them was an Airborne Ranger), and have decided that the "war against crime" needs to be fought in the same unorthodox, unconventional, and utterly ruthless manner that they fought overseas ("We're the first generation that's learned how to fight." one of them tells Callahan). But Callahan, although a SFPD pariah in his own right, still has defined lines for himself that he won't cross, and true vigilante justice is one of them.

The Enforcer is, sadly, where the series begins to tip over. Pairing Callahan with a female partner is just somewhat groan-worthy, since while she is obviously a competent police officer, the sort of shit that Callahan swims in becomes inevitably too much for her (as it is every other partner he ever has). My problem with the pairing is that, along with the hippie / counter-culture revolutionary dorks Callahan goes up against, the movie isn't "Dirty Harry, rogue crimefighter" but "Dirty Harry, stuffy misogynist hippie-hater".

Then we have Sudden Impact. I actually think this is a pretty good Dirty Harry movie on some levels, and a terrible movie on others. I actually very much like it's slower pace after the 'splosions and such in The Enforcer; Sudden Impact is a "smaller" story and gets handled as such. I also like that the main character isn't really Callahan, but actually Sandra Locke's character, with Callahan as more of an observer / PoV character. On the other hand, by this point in the series, Dirty Harry is becoming almost a caricature of himself; the idea that he needs to have a "punchline" every movie that gets used once in the beginning and once at the end is now so engraved that it's actually becoming annoying. Also, various 80's-isms are beginning to worm their way into the movie, meaning what used to be a pretty bleak, 70's feeling character has become, to one degree or another, an almost Terminator-esque figure who can get the living crap utterly kicked out of him, and yet be right back on his feet and busting ass mere minutes later.

"Go ahead, make my day..."

And finally, we have The Dead Pool. I'm sorry, but this movie is pretty much crap. Not awful, unwatchable crap, but by this point, the series has really just become another "rogue cop takes on bad guys the rest of the force can't handle", no different than Lethal Weapon or Die Hard or any other 80's cop movie. The subtext of the ouroboros formed by real world violence -- glorification in the media -- fascination in fiction -- stimulus for real world violence is just wearying by 1988. And while using Welcome to the Jungle is always appreciated, Jim Carrey flailing around lip-syncing to it just kinda makes me want to cry. This movie is a picture-perfect specimen of what happened to violent films in the twenty years-ish that the series has been around; "crime dramas" or "violent thrillers" have become "action movies", with all the baggage that entails.

At the end of the day, I love the Dirty Harry movies. I think they are very much a cinematic overview of the path post-modern pulp fiction has taken over the years, warts and all. Although there are ups and downs and pros and cons in every film, any fan of the post-modern pulp genre should do themselves a favor and make sure they've seen all these films, and seen them together recently enough that the others can be kept in mind (Netflix users; all but The Enforcer are available via Netflix Instant).

Whoring Myself on Twitter

I won't bother going through posting the same article here verbatim as I posted on T&B, so I'll just state that I have now caved, and as of the end of October, I've created a Twitter account. In all honestly although I mentioned it first on my gaming blog, I really don't see myself tweeting about gaming that much - the content will probably be much more attuned to the PMP crowd (guns, booze, Harry Callahan, etc.).

Anyhow, here's the link to the T&B post.

And you can find me on Twitter here.

Calling all N.Y.M.P.H.O. Lovers

I was recently reminded of a little known (?) series of sex/action pulp novels written under the pseudonym of Glen Chase, which represented several authors (apparently among them Gardner F. Fox, who wrote several campy Sword & Sorcery novels that I own and love).

Here's the Fantastic Fiction entry for the "Cherry Delight: the Sexecutioner" series:

http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/c/glen-chase/

Cherry Delight is (apparently...) the top agent of N.Y.M.P.H.O., the New York Mafia Persecution and Harassment Organization. Although she is a full-blooded "secret agent", her methods of "getting her man" are a little different than some of the other crimefighters out there like Mack Bolan, the Death Merchant, or Nick Carter (well, maybe not Carter...).

Is there anyone out there who has read any of the Cherry Delight books and can give an account of them? I'm sure they are utterly ridiculous, but I'm curious if the overall impression is "fun and entertaining" or "offensive and crappy".

Review of Death Merchant 15: The Iron Swastika Plot

I had read this Death Merchant novel quite a while ago, back when I first started collecting them, but the details became fuzzy over time (sharks, ships, Nazis, etc.) so I gave it a re-read. Overall, this is a pretty interesting Death Merchant novel as almost all the action takes place at sea - there's ship to ship fighting, boarding actions, and even underwater fighting in shark-infested waters.

Long story short, a neo-Nazi organization known as Die Spinne (The Spider) has finally located the handful of survivors from a German U-boat that sank off the coast of the Falkland Islands near the end of World War Two. The submarine was carrying a fortune in Nazi gold, jewels, and other precious commodities, as well as a great many secret Nazi files that could reveal many of Germany's still-murky wartime secrets; something of even greater value than the treasure to the right organizations (remember that this takes place in 1974, only 29 years after WW2; many of the idealistic young Nazi officers in their 20's during the war would only be in their mid to late 50's, successful older men still vital enough to want to see their precious Reich rise up again).

Richard Camellion is brought in to find and "recruit" one of these survivors, and while he fails in getting one man out of Europe alive, he succeeds with another who knows where the submarine sank. Unfortunately, the Die Spinne agents also captured one of the survivors and got the location as well, so the rest of the novel is a race to see who can beat who to the treasure. Each side has at their disposal a yacht as a floating base of operations, and each side battles the other on the seas and below the waves, as well as ashore. Rosenberger did a fair amount of research into the capabilities of deep-sea divers during the 70's, including cutting-edge advances and discoveries into the sorts of exotic breathing gases (the 'diver's cocktails') needed to survive down hundreds of feet below the surface. This great attention to detail is one of the most positive hallmarks of the Death Merchant series, and goes to show that despite some of his other faults and quirks as a writer, Rosenberger has a great mind for detail and a knack for research.

I will also point out that this is the only Death Merchant novel I've read where Camellion gets laid. In order to provide a reasonable cover with regards to their pleasure yacht, several female CIA staff members are recruited and assigned to "lounge about" on the deck of the yacht, to give the impression to anyone who sails past that the ship is simply enjoying the sun and waters of the south Atlantic. Camellion beds one of the women, but the way in which he interacts with her is almost sociopathic; he seems to have little regard for her as a "real person", but not necessarily because she is a woman; more because Camellion has, in a sense, an almost autistic inability to relate to other people, and while he shares his bed with the female agent, in terms or real human closeness, the Death Merchant might as well be on Pluto.

Overall, this was a fun novel. Nazis, especially post-war neo-Nazis, are great villains to drop into any kind of PMP-style storyline, and Rosenberger makes good use of them in this adventure, particularly the ties between South America and Nazi Germany. True fact: I had a college roommate my freshman year for half a semester who was one-quarter German, three-quarters Argentinian. He as much as came right out to say his grandfather was a Nazi. Kinda creepy, actually, but cool in that surreal, pulpy, that-just-happened kinda way.

My New RPG Project

Although this blog isn't about role-playing games, it is one of my interests and there is, I feel, a strong tie between the sort of casual escapism that most PMP-style fiction gives the reader and the act of playing a fun adventure-style pen-and-paper RPG. Because of this, I think the two interests are more linked than many people might realize.

So without further ado, I present the "teaser" for an RPG project I'm currently developing:

Zombie Apocalypse Phone

Ok, so I have my doubts that we're all going to get overrun by the walking dead some day. But having a phone that can last a couple of weeks on a charge, that's light and simple to use and can be unlocked to work on multiple carriers, is a great idea to put in your "bug-out kit".

Here's the CNN Article on the Zombie Apocalypse Phone.

I'd actually seriously consider getting a phone like this, with a well paid-up prepaid SIM card and one of those emergency battery-powered phone chargers. I've got a small "bug-out kit" that I keep at home, something mostly for natural disaster type emergencies where I know all the important stuff will be in case I need to get a flashlight / first aid gear / emergency knife / etc. in a hurry.

Any other readers out there keep something like this handy, and if so, what do you typically keep in it? What would your "fantasy bug-out kit" look like?