X-Files - The Calusari

Garth Nix was born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. He was a sales rep and publicist before becoming a senior editor at HarperCollins. He later became a literary agent for Curtis Brown Pty Ltd before becoming a full-time author. He created and wrote the fantasy series Old Kingdom, consisting of six novels, as well as young-adult fantasy titles like The Seventh Tower, The Keys to the Kingdom, and two series co-written with Sean Williams, Have Sword, Will Travel and Troubletwisters. 

Nix kicked off the young adult line of X-Files novelizations in 1997 with the first installment, The Calusari, published by Scholastic. There were 16 of these books from 1997 through 2000, all of which were written by different authors and adapted from the television show episodes. “The Calusari” was the show's twenty-first episode of the second season, originally airing April 14, 1995. 

I always enjoyed the show's monster-of-the-week episodes the most. While I love X-Files, I found the through-story arc with alien invasion and cover-ups way too convoluted. These unconnected, stand-alone episodes are really where the show shines, and this episode is one of the most frightening of the franchise. 

The book, at 116 pages, features an exorcist sort of take on a child's death. In the opener (pre-theme music), Maggie and her husband Steve are at a small amusement park in Virginia. They have their two small sons with them, Teddy and Charlie. In a freak occurrence, Teddy is struck by a train while pursuing a balloon that appears to be floating against the wind. The X-Files become involved after evidence shows the balloon's trajectory and the possibility of a ghost that led Teddy to his death.

Mulder and Scully become involved in the investigation, which takes some unusual turns with Romanian customs, Charlie's bizarre grandmother, Maggie's unwillingness to succumb to the family's odd traditions, and marital woes in the wake of Teddy's death. There is a disturbing plot element introduced that suggests Charlie's dead twin may be an evil force bent on destroying the family. The Calusari emerge as the family's mysterious religious sect pitted against evil.

Novelizations are tricky. One of the most alluring aspects of these novels is the possibility of introducing a different perspective, more depth to certain film or episode scenes, different takes on the source material, or something else. The Calusari doesn't offer much to supplement the episode. This is nearly word-for-word a transcription of the episode, with a few perspective pieces coming from the train driver and Maggie's relationship with her mother-in-law. Aside from that, this is literally an episode on paper. It was brisk, enjoyable, and I don't regret reading it. But it adds nothing to the episode.

Get The Calusari HERE.

Men's Adventure Quarterly #11

Believe it or not, Robert Deis and Bill Cunningham are all the way up to issue 11 now of their Men's Adventure Quarterly Magazine. They just keep churning these books out and each one of them is just a real masterpiece of vintage fiction from the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. This new issue is available now and I thankfully have my copy. I love the whole UFO and alien thing. I've been following that stuff since I was a little kid watching Unsolved Mysteries on NBC each week and from watching the Sightings show on Fox. Of course, I love the X-Files as well. So, I was happy to see that this new publication is the UFO Issue. 

In the book's introduction, Bob Deis explains the connection between UFO pop-culture and the Men's Adventure-Magazines, which honestly I didn't even realize until I saw this issue was coming out. Deis explains how he grew up in Dayton, Ohio, home of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where the Project Blue Book was headquartered (the U.S. government's official investigation into UFO sightings). Deis traces the public's interest, and awareness, of UFOs to magazine format in the Spring 1948 issue of Fate.  Later, the 1950 issue of True contains one of the most significant stories on UFOs, authored by Major Donald E. Keyhoe, which Deis examines in detail. This issue contains that article in its entirety, which is just fascinating. Deis goes on to outline UFO articles that appeared in Real, Man's Magazine, Saga, and Argosy among others. 

There are amazing magazine covers of various issues of True Strange, an odd men's adventure magazine, with an introduction by Deis for the article "Are They Hiding the Truth About Flying Saucers?" by Frank Edwards. 

Gary Lovisi, who's an amazing voice of vintage fiction, has an article titled "Space Sploitation", which examines the Flying Saucer phenomena as it relates to paperbacks published by the likes of Popular Library, Panther, and Fawcett Gold Medal. 

"The Way-Out World of Mr. Adamski" is an article by W. Douglas Lansford. It first appeared in Climax in October 1961. That article is in its entirety in this issue with an introduction by Deis explaining the history of George Adamski, a man who released a photo of a cigar-shaped UFO to the press in 1947. He claimed he saw 184 UFOs fly over California's Palomar Observatory. 

This book is chock-full of UFO articles, including "UFO Agents of Terror" from an October 1967 issue of Saga which discusses the government's attempts at silencing people that speak out about UFO phenomenon. Another interesting one is "The New Menace of U.S.O.'s" in the November 1974 issue of Male. This talks about the frequent sightings of UFOs being seen underwater. 

Popular British paperback collector Jules Burt has an article in this issue about Gerry Anderson's UFO TV series. He goes into the history of the show and the extension into paperback fiction, comics, and movies. There's also a gallery of actresses from the show. Plus this issue's gallery pages captures a lot of beautiful women that have performed in science-fiction movies like Forbidden Planet, Devil Girl from Mars, and Tarantula.

There is just so much to enjoy in this issue even if you aren't a UFO fan or believer. The vintage artwork, magazine covers, movie posters, actress pin-ups. I mean what's not to like? This is another solid issue and I highly recommend it. 

Get the issue HERE

X-Files - Goblins

I'm an X-Files fan, one of those weird X-Phile nuts. To prove it, I have an old trunk filled with show toys, coffee mugs, calendars, books, action-figures, autographs, and various magazines like TV Guide. I even have VHS recordings of various episodes as they originally aired on Friday nights. I've read the graphic novels, fan-fiction, and some of the books. I've had Goblins for a long time and recently decided to listen to the audio version while earning my keep performing honey do chores. It was originally published in paperback by Harper in 1994 and authored by Charles Grant, a prolific writer that specialized in horror.

In a small town in Louisiana, two retired U.S. Military officers are slashed to death. However, eyewitnesses claim a hand came from out of nowhere, as if it was nearly invisible when making the killing stroke. One of the men was to marry the cousin of a sportswriter that Mulder knows. The sportswriter comes to Mulder with the murder mystery, but he's already on it. The F.B.I. has already been called to perform the investigation quietly, thus Scully and Mulder are brought up from the basement to handle what may, or may not be, a legitimate X-Files case.

The problem that the F.B.I. agents face (and readers for that matter), is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen. Grant doesn't leave well enough alone and partners two rookie agents to accompany Scully and Mulder on the case. Thus, there's multiple investigations with different pairings of the agents. Also, the sportswriter comes to town as well to conduct his own investigation, which just complicates the narrative more.

I'm not sure if Grant had actually watched an X-Files episode when he was hired to write this sort of television tie-in literature. Mulder's characterization is off, behaving in ways that doesn't really match his television persona. In this book, Mulder isn't as sarcastic with his responses or as serious as the TV character, and does the investigation in ways that has no real purpose or flow. I also didn't sense any of the guilt ridden emotion that wrecks Mulder on screen, although Grant does include a flashback scene of Samantha disappearing (Mulder's sister and major series story arc). He's also overly happy about things beyond the paranormal, which is unusual. The idea is that Mulder only becomes enthusiastic when researching X-Files-type cases. 

My main issue with Goblins is that it's just boring. Nothing really happens, the agents spin their wheels, and I figured out the whole “goblin” mystery in the book's first few chapters. The bumpy narrative was a struggle to get through and I was left thoroughly disappointed that I've hung on to this paperback for nearly 30 years only to find out it isn't very good. 

There are numerous paperbacks available, including a couple that retcon Scully and Mulder's teen years. I'll continue reading X-Files related stories and books, but there's no reason for you to read Goblins. 

Get the ebook HERE.

Spenser #01 - The Godwulf Manuscript

The beloved 'Spenser' series of private eye novels originated in 1973 with “The Godwulf Manuscript.” Parker wrote 40 entries in the series until his death in 2010. His last Spenser was “Sixkill”, published posthumously, and an unfinished manuscript entitled “Silent Night”, later completed by literary agent Helen Brann in 2013.

Spenser is often cited as Parker's take on the Southern California private eyes of the 1930s and 40s, modernized for the 70s audience and positioned in Boston. The series is hardboiled, with an intense, fast-moving pace that eventually caught the eye of the television lens in 1985. ABC's “Spenser: For Hire” starred Robert Ulrich as the Boston gumshoe, and gained some footing with audiences for three seasons, 66 episodes and four films for Lifetime. Joe Mantegna would later capture the role for three television movies on the A&E network. Parker once described the impact of the television show on his work as “no more effect on my writing than Monday Night Football.” (TV Guide June 20, 1987)

Very little is revealed in terms of Spenser's backstory. In this debut novel, we learn that he was a former cop who was fired for insubordination. The first name is never revealed for the length of the series, but questions about the last name are quickly erased as Spenser introduces himself to a college dean; “It's with an S, not a C. Like the English poet, S-p-e-n-s-e-r.” There's mention of an estranged lover and that he was in the military in Korea. His office is in Boston, he drives a rag-top convertible, works out, has a penchant for cooking and loves beer. You now know just as much as the next Spenser fan.

The first assignment has Spenser hired by a Boston university to locate stolen property referred to as The Godwulf Manuscript. The culprit is suspected as SCACE, a far-left fringe group just looking for a cause in the form of the Student Committee Against Capitalist Exploitation. Spenser gets a lead on a young student named Terry Orchard, who is later found drugged with a smoking gun beside her dead boyfriend. The Boston PD, who really hate Spenser, finger Orchard for the crime but Spenser has reason to believe that the person who stole the manuscript is behind the murder. The investigation leads our main character through the bowels of the university, from a drug dealing professor to a local mobster, while carefully traipsing through the posh neighborhoods of Boston tracking Orchard's family and friends.

This is a speed-read at 180 pages, high on action and intensity, fueled by Parker's remarkable writing style. The author writes Spenser in the first person, but the truly incredible part of his technique is relaying to the reader everything Spenser sees in these characters and places. It's almost a left to right visualization that easily placed me in the sticky gumshoes of this captivating man named Spenser. The masters can do this well and Parker proves he's easily in that elite company.

Further, Spenser's witty and sarcastic dialogue is priceless. Whenever he faces stiff superiors (although he boldly dismisses any hierarchy), he throws out delightful one-liners like, “Can I feel your muscle?” or his own profession's ridicule like, “The ones with phones are in the yellow pages under SLEUTH”. In some ways I can't help but think Spenser had an impact on Max Allan Collins' creation of the equally sarcastic 'Quarry' or maybe how “X-Files” creator Chris Carter developed FBI agent Fox Mulder (who, in his own right, had some great dialogue with superiors).

Based on my limited experience of reading just this one lone Spenser novel, I could foresee easily reading 10-12 of these in quick succession over a short period of time. I have 40ish novels to enjoy, so I'm going to pace myself. “The Godwulf Manuscript” is one of the best of the best.

Buy a copy of this book HERE