Tag Archives: book reviews

ANCIENT SCIENCE FICTION: TRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR (1887)

Travels in the InteriorTRAVELS IN THE INTERIOR (1887) – Nearly eighty years before the movie Fantastic Voyage, this work of “ancient” science fiction detailed a party of shrunken heroes on an odyssey through a human being’s body. This cleverly-titled tale was written by Alfred Taylor Schofield under the name Luke T Courteney.

London medical student Luke Theophilus Courteney passes his examinations to be admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons. His uncle, Captain Goodchild, helps the young man celebrate by taking Luke (nicknamed Pill from his middle name) and his younger sister Belinda to Trebizond, Turkey for a brief holiday.

Goodchild kindly takes along Pill’s friend Sutton, who failed the examinations and needs some moral support. Pill’s mastery of anatomy will enable him, Belinda and Sutton to survive their upcoming microscopic adventure.
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CAPTAIN MORS THE AIR PIRATE (1908-1911) STORIES FIFTY-ONE TO FIFTY-FIVE

For Balladeer’s Blog’s overview of the entire Kapitan Mors der Luftpirat series click HERE.

CAPTAIN MORS VS HIS MORTAL ENEMY – The brilliant and deadly Ned Gully, Kapitan Mors’ archenemy, at last returns! Along with his female associate Nelly he is in the Rocky Mountains overseeing the construction of his newest airship – one capable of vertical take-off and landing.

Inevitably the latest discovery of precious metals in the region lures Kapitan Mors and the crew of his Luftschiff to the area for our Air Pirate’s latest round of robbing from the rich to give to the poor. Gully is ready for him and pits his new vessel against our heroes in their deadliest clash yet.

Ned unleashes an experimental gas on Mors and company, a gas that kills swiftly and leaves its victims dead with blackened skin. He also wears new suction cup boots that enable him to walk unencumbered on the outside of his own vessel plus Kapitan Mors’. Few are left alive at story’s end. Continue reading

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1940s MARVEL SUPERHEROINES

This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the neglected superheroines of Marvel Comics, known in the 1940s as Timely Comics.

SILVER SCORPION 

Secret Identity: Betty Barstow

First Appearance:  Daring Mystery Comics #7 (April 1941) Her final Golden Age appearance came in 1942.

Origin: Betty Barstow, a feisty secretary for private investigator Dan Hurley, donned a costume and investigated a case her boss was refusing to look into, a case involving unusual activity at a graveyard. She wound up capturing a ring of counterfeiters and resolved to continue fighting crime as the Silver Scorpion.

Powers: The Silver Scorpion was in peak physical condition and excelled at jiu-jitsu and other martial arts. In addition, she was as agile as an acrobat. 

Comment: Since the only things “silver” on the Silver Scorpion’s costume were her wristlets, boots and the scorpion logo on her cape, I think they should have made her wristlets into revolving bracelets which fired long silver needles coated in scorpion venom. Non-fatal scorpion venom, of course, but painful and inducing temporary paralysis. Continue reading

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FRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH (1907)

friday-the-thirteenth-novelFRIDAY THE THIRTEENTH (1907) – Written by Thomas William Lawson, a writer and stock manipulator who made a fortune from shady stock deals … in between advocating for cleaning up Wall Street to shut down those fleece jobs. The reforms Lawson campaigned for were taken up decades later when Franklin Roosevelt appointed future Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas to head the Securities Exchange Commission.

Coincidentally enough the overall feel of Friday the Thirteenth put me in mind of FDR’s cousin, Theodore Roosevelt. The novel did that with its New York setting, with the way the story takes place late in T.R.’s presidency and most especially with the way it dealt with ethics in the marketplace.  

lawson-cartoon-betterJim Randolph, one of the novel’s main characters, is in the T.R. mold: he may be a bloated rich pig but at least he’s a bloated rich pig with a sense of noblesse oblige. Jim shares Teddy Roosevelt’s disdain for the Trusts and for con men who use the stock market to rip off their clients.

It’s not as if Jim Randolph is as fiery as Teddy Forstmann was in his opposition to Leveraged Buy Outs during the 1980s, but like Forstmann he has a sense of what makes for a healthy economy and frowns upon the fly-by-night operators who thrive on irresponsible “frenzied finance” as Randolph calls it.   Continue reading

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CAPTAIN MORS THE AIR PIRATE (1908-1911) STORIES FORTY-SIX TO FIFTY

For Balladeer’s Blog’s overview of the entire Kapitan Mors der Luftpirat series click HERE.

SECRETS OF THE METEORITE – Once again Kapitan Mors and his crew take off from their secret island base on a space exploration mission. Among the crew of Mors’ spaceship the Meteor are the regulars – Executive Officer Lindo of India, Engineers Stern and Schrecken, Ship’s Astronomer Van Halen, plus Science Officers Anita and Lucy Long.

Van Halen has discovered a previously unknown meteor but when our heroes approach it they become snared by a tractor beam. They soon realize the seeming meteor is the camouflaged spaceship of a “race” of crystalline robots – and not all of them are friendly. Continue reading

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MARVEL CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS (1982)

This weekend’s escapist, light-hearted superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog takes a look at Marvel’s pre-Secret Wars miniseries collecting a huge assembly of their heroes in a competition for the fate of the Earth.

CONTEST OF CHAMPIONS Vol 1 #1 (June 1982)

Title: Gathering of Heroes (No matter what the cover says.)

Villains: The Grandmaster and Death

Synopsis: The Grandmaster (Jeff Goldblum in the movies), one of the Elders of the Universe, the very first intelligent species to evolve after the Big Bang, challenges Death’s female incarnation, the same being wooed by Thanos during his attempts to wipe out all life in the universe.   

They both agree that since Earth has the greatest concentration of superbeings it will be the site of their mysterious contest. The two villains abduct every single superhero in Marvel Comics at the time, plus several new ones from around the world who were just introduced in this story.

The Grandmaster and Death address the captive heroes and explain the circumstances. The duo have placed the entire Earth in a state of stasis in which it will remain unless the figures agree to participate in a contest of champions between the two villains. Continue reading

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CAPTAIN MORS THE AIR PIRATE (1908-1911) STORIES FORTY-ONE TO FORTY-FIVE

For Balladeer’s Blog’s overview of the entire Kapitan Mors der Luftpirat series click HERE.

A BATTLE BETWEEN AIRSHIPS – Word reaches our Air Pirate Kapitan Mors about French efforts to duplicate his Luftschiff in anticipation of the global conflict that many fear is inevitable. Still considering himself outside international law, Mors determines to nip in the bud any challenge to his aircraft.

It turns out he is too late since the French have just completed their own flying vessel. Our masked hero and his crew fly to Belle Isle near France, where the experimental craft is based. Soon Kapitan Mors’ ship and its French imitator are fighting it out in the skies over Europe. Continue reading

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BATTLE BRICK ROAD (2020 – ?)

This weekend’s escapist and light-hearted superhero post here at Balladeer’s Blog looks at the independent comic book series Battle Brick Road from Eric Weathers, Farah Nurmaliza and Zeb Hatfield.   

BATTLE BRICK ROAD IS NOT TO BE MISSED.

This ongoing series is an exciting work from some of the most daring and visionary creators in sequential art today.

Battle Brick Road presents a post-apocalyptic take on Frank Baum’s Oz stories twisted through the ingenious prism of artist ERIC WEATHERS and writer ZEB HATFIELD with lettering by FARAH NURMALIZA.

Get ready for Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion like you’ve never seen them before – as technologically and biologically enhanced warriors in a dystopian world that not even Mad Max could survive. 

Battle-hardened, survival savvy Dorothea Gale – Thea for short – searches for her father through the futuristic technological wasteland called O.Z. (Operation Zephyr).

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APOCALYPSE CULTURE (1987) BEFORE THE INTERNET, THERE WERE BOOKS LIKE THIS

This is an extraordinary collection unlike anything I have ever encountered – a remarkable compilation of powerfully disturbing statements. These are the terminal documents of the twentieth century.” – J.G. Ballard 

APOCALYPSE CULTURE (1987) – Call me a purist, but the only Apocalypse Culture book I like is the very first one from 1987, not the later editions nor the sequel from the year 2000. By 2000 the book was pointless and unnecessary since the internet was already replacing such publications as Apocalypse Culture, Answer Me! and much of the Loompanics catalogue. 

The late Adam Palfrey edited this book, collecting the kind of transgressive, fringe, daring, paranoid, insane and sometimes just plain sophomorically shocking writings that when taken as a whole reinforce the importance of freedom of expression against both left-wing AND right-wing censorship.

Apocalypse Culture seems almost wimpy here in 2025 but it’s an interesting reminder to those of us who remember the pre-internet days, when you had to devote a lot of energy to finding such wild reading material.

WARNING! The subjects and opinions covered in Apocalypse Culture are not for people who are easily (or not so easily) offended or who cannot tolerate reading viewpoints contrary to their own. What follows is similar to the fringe horror movies I sometimes review. Mature minds only.  Continue reading

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CAPTAIN MORS THE AIR PIRATE (1908-1911) STORIES THIRTY-SIX TO FORTY

For Balladeer’s Blog’s overview of the entire Kapitan Mors der Luftpirat series click HERE.

JOURNEY WITH DEATH – Talimbo, one of the Indian members of the Luftschiff’s crew, has died. His widow Siva is devastated and asks to travel on the spaceship Meteor‘s next journey. Kapitan Mors okays the request little dreaming that the widow blames Machinist Mate Schrecken for stopping her from immolating herself in mourning and wants to kill him for revenge.

Mors pilots the Meteor toward the Northern Lights to observe them from space. Siva makes her move, endangering the entire crew and forcing desperate maneuvering of the spaceship to avoid being sucked through a gauntlet of vortices and destruction at the hands of what may be living organisms in space. Continue reading

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