Disposable Lit Reviews

Ace Books, 1966
159 pp.
No ISBN

Out of Print
Find it used at eBay

It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, in the mid-’60’s. Playboy secret agents like James Bond were hot; science-fiction series heroes like Perry Rhodan were hot. It doesn’t take much of a leap to give us a playboy science-fiction secret agent.

On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that something that sucks so badly in the final execution could ever have looked like a good idea.

Premise: In the far-flung future, the benevolent Federation is beset upon by Empire (not “the Empire,” just “Empire”), a insurgent organization much smaller than its grandiose title. Headed by the villainous Gregor Malik (can’t you just see the moustache-twirling from the name alone?), Empire has gotten its hands on time-travel technology and continuously tries to alter the past so that the Federation of the future will never come to be. And all that stands between Malik and his nefarious intentions is T.E.R.R.A. — Temporal Entropy Restructure and Repair Agency — and its agents like Hannibal Fortune.

We’re so screwed…

The plot of the novel at hand centers around an Empire stratagem set in the waaay-back year of 1966 (coincidental, given the publication date, don’t you think?), in which Empire agents plan to use a new weapon that will destroy all rational thought on Earth, leaving the future open for their exploitation. Despite the novel’s protests to the contrary, I can’t help but wonder if such a thing really DID happen in the late ’60’s. It sure would explain a lot.

And who does the Federation send when their resident agent during that time period manages to get a fragmentary message off to T.E.R.R.A. Control before being vaporized by Empire lackeys? At least Hannibal Fortune, handsome and action-oriented agent supreme, isn’t sent off on his own. His sidekick, Webley, is a fifteen-pound lump of intelligent telepathic protoplasm that can morph into just about anything of appropriate size. Given that Webley is fully as intelligent as Hannibal, can go out in public thanks to an android body, and doesn’t spend time following his gonads, I can’t for the life of me understand why Hannibal’s along in the first place, much less in charge of things.

It’s got all of the weaknesses of James Bond-style adventure and none of the strengths. Hannibal, characterized as an Earth historian nonpareil, neverthelesss shows up in mid-20th century America expecting to blend in seamlessly while being ignorant of such things as what a “car” is and what manner of law enforcement to expect. The story never builds to any sort of real climax; it just meanders from flying saucer sightings (they’re Empire skimmers, don’tcha know) to single cat-loving women to Apache tribes in Arizona. Plot threads are set up and then abandoned with such regularity that one can’t help but conclude that Maddock was pretty much making it up as he typed, with only a vague idea of where it would all end.

Oh, and taking our complete bunkum award, this declaration from the 20th-century scientist who invented the Mind Muddler — or, as he calls it, the “Happiness Machine”:

“As I told you before, I started out by trying to build a device that would increase Man’s mentality, but it can’t be done. This is the next best thing — it will reduce them all to a mental level where they’ll be content. There’ll be no more unrealistic ambitions, there’ll be no more power struggles, no wars, no murders, no divorce, no violence in the world. Violence always comes about when Man’s intellect is not quite big enough to cope with the problems created by his ambition. By reducing his intellect we destroy his ambition and bring about Peace on Earth for the first time in human history.”

Yeah, that’s exactly the problem in the world; there just aren’t enough idiots.

The Agent of T.E.R.R.A. series stumbled through two more volumes in the next year before someone mercifully pulled the plug on it. It’s good to know that, even in the ’60’s, readers knew that this definitely wasn’t a good idea.

Nathan Shumate