Radioactive Review: 'Carnosaur' (1984)

 

Going through more of my own personal stash of Paperbacks From Hell.

Read it as a wee one circa 1985-ish, and thought I'd give it another gander.

(Y'all know by now I loves me some dinosaurs, so will spare the usual navel-gazish rambling.  And OF COURSE y'all are aware Jurassic Park hit the stands in 1990.)

—

Like Thomas Hobbes' "State Of Nature" and Billy Barty on a bender, Carnosaur is nasty, brutish, and short.  It's a lean 214 pages, and the exploitative pulp is exploitatively pulpy enough (despite a nigh-dinosaur-less middle slog).

Starts promisingly, as a "scythe-like middle claw opened up [him] from neck to groin before he even realized what was happening" by Page 4.  (The him in question is an unpleasant, misogynistic farmer who catches a critter in his chicken coop.)

On Page 5, his aggrieved wife sees "something out of a nightmare.  It was all teeth and claws and it was eating him... the monster pushed its snout into her husband's open stomach and tore out a length of intestine."  She dies via heart attack.

Later on Page 5, there's some backseat statutory rape; by Pages 7-8, there's a headless, unpleasant lothario and an unpleasant head-crashed-into-a-tree jailbait.

Whew!  And that mayhem was all inflicted by the same beastie!

—

Flip the page, and we meet the ostensible protagonist, one David Pascal: an unpleasant, misogynistic reporter yearning for His One Big Break to escape the sleepy English hamlet of Warchester, England.

He gets to investigatin' the mysterious deaths, presumably caused by a rogue tiger from unpleasant local aristocrat-slash-captain of industry-slash big game hunter Sir Darren Penward's manor menagerie.

Cue some stuffy politics and corrupt-ish law enforcement, which is blessedly interrupted by more mysterious monster mayhem on Pages 31-33:  a dead little girl ("[She] died instantly, her skull completely crushed."), a dead pony, and a dead mom ("The cruel, razor-sharp middle claw slashed through [her] neck and deep into her chest.  She was already dead by the time her body fell backwards onto the bload-soaked hay.")

Again, all the same critter!  Thang gets around.

Now onto the slog.

There's more politicking.

There's Jenny, Pascal's fetching ex who is both a better journalist and, unpleasantly, a doormat for his nonsense.

There's a scummy plan for Our Hero to seduce Lady Jane (Penward's unpleasant, nymphomaniacal-in-a-judgey-way wife) to gain access to the menagerie.  The graphic fellatio makes it more unseemly.

There's Pascal's break-in to the compound zoo.

And finally, on Page 94, action resumes.  Those are a lonnnnngggg dinosaur-less sixty-something pages.

—

Pascal gets captured.

Penward, a lifelong dino-fanatic, monologues on Pages 109-110 about his demented Master Plan that involves cloning dinos via extracted-from-fossils-DNA merged with chicken embryos.

Crichton Knew A Good Idea When He Heard It...

Going to put it here in its entirety, because it's GLORIOUS.

"I intend to re-establish the dinosaur on earth, Mr Pascal.  I intend to release dinosaurs into the wild in [remote properties in Africa, Australia, Canada, New Zealand].  I am giving the greatest animals that ever lived a second chance.  And then we will see who is the rightful victor in the struggle between mammals and dinosaurs."

[insert Pascal's protestations here]

"People don't interest me, Mr Pascal.  There are too many of them on this planet as it is.  They... are like some awful vermin that has spread out over the world leaving filth and pollution everywhere.  As far as I'm concerned, they are one of nature's failed experiments.  It is time they went."

[insert Pascal's confidence that Man's technology, like "cannons and guided missiles", will defeat dinos here]

"Man's technology is about to run amok, Mr Pascal.  I predict an atomic war, either by accident or design, within a few years.  It is inevitable.  And when the pieces settle, my dinosaurs, by then well established in the remote areas of the world, will be free to thrive and multiply.  What remains of the human race will be helpless against them."

—

By Page 125, the book turns into pretty much into the second half of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom.

Yes, Penward Manor Even Has A Fossil Museum!

The jilted Lady Jane releases all the dinos and they rampage throughout the mansion and into the countryside.

The Dilophosaurus and Deinonychus eat unpleasant security guards and butlers.

The Tarbosaurus wrecks a vacant shopping mall.

The Megalosaurus [which I need to mention suffers from madness-inducing horniness] fights an eighteen-wheeler, ultimately losing but taking out an unpleasant, rapey trucker in the process.

The Scolosaurus demolishes an army tank.  (It's off-handedly described as carnivorous early on, and then detailed to be herbivorous later.)

Add That Editorial Goof To A Few Typos And
An Annoying Mis-Count Of The Actual Number Of Dinos In The Book

The Plesiosaur eats a bunch of unpleasant party-boaters, fishermen, and navymen.

The Altispinax eats a cow.

The baby Brachiosaurus gets adopted by a kid.

The military ultimately wraps everything up.  The book's in the final pages...

...but then out pounces the secret double-Deinonychus that devours Jenny's family and baby sister!

Pascal pitchforks it.

And then the extra-secret ending happens, where two Tyrannosaurus rex hatchlings eat Lady Jane and the already-dead-from-bloodloss Sir Penward.

The end.

—

I feel the need to reiterate how much David Pascal sucks.

He's a mopey sad-sack that, at the onset, broke things off with Jenny outta both professional jealousy and she'll-just-hold-me-back-and-keep-me-stuck-here-in-Shitburgh-itis.

He later walks in on Jenny having secret office sexytimes with her new beau and has the gall to make her a villain, using that incident as fuel for his seduction of Lady Jane.

But Lady Jane is both a codependent and a fragile abuse victim, and Pascal grossly exploits her by manipulating her affections.  Like so:

"It is true!  If only i could prove [my love] to you!  I promise!  I promise I'll stay with you forever!" — p. 114

Then, mere pages later, Jenny has launched her own covert attempt to rescue Pascal from the compound.  Cue this exchange:

"I love you!  Of course I do.  I finally realized how much this afternoon when I was locked up downstairs.  I knew I only had hours to live... and the most painful thing was the thought I'd never see you again." — p. 128

It's not long before Lady Jane realizes his deception and true feelings for Jenny, so she unleashes dinosaur hell...

Substitute 'Heiress' For 'Barbarian'

...leading Pascal to confess his scumbaggitude:

"Jenny, I knew she was mentally unstable, but what I did to her tonight has pushed her over the edge.  Don't you see?  She was pinning all her hopes on me--she saw me as her last chance--and I more or less kicked her in the teeth!" — p. 140

Later, after some dumb (in the "this is terrible timing" sense) office sex, Pascal and Jenny encounter the mall-crawling Tarbosaurus.  Because she's competent, she daringly tries to get photos of it for a big news scoop.

Pascal's reaction:

"You stupid bitch!  Don't ever do that again!" — p. 193

Romance lives, eh?

—

Despite being chock full o' unpleasant, awful people, Carnosaur goes by quickly and has, in the style of the time, plenty of satisfying British creature carnage.

Also deserves points for using atypical dinosaurs.  I mean, John Q Civilian had never heard of a Scolosaurus or an Altispinax before, and the pint-sized T-rexes aren't even a plot point until the end.

Carnosaur also definitely deserves credit for throwing the pass that Jurassic Park turned into a touchdown.  [Editor's Note:  That's the only sports analogy Yours Truly has made in his life.  Hope I did it right!]

And it got a Roger Corman flick outta the deal (with some some primo blog-fodder, too!), so can't be all terrible.

—

RPG Relevance:  "Doomsday dinosaurs bio-engineered to become dominant post-apocalyptic lifeforms" is a ready-made campaign.  Just pick yer game engine and let 'er rip!

—

Final Review Score:  Three Dinosaurs Attack! Wax Packs Outta Five

"U-G" Is For "Urban Gargoyle"

XCrawl Classics is the new hotness 'round these parts, so here's the newest beastie from my table!

—

Like their backwoods cathedral-dwelling cousins, urban gargoyles are winged, craggy, man-sized, wicked creatures that don’t require food, water, or oxygen. And they, too, cannot be distinguished from inanimate statuary when resting completely still.

Yet instead of rock, urban gargoyles are made of spongy, metamorphic “foam” that mimics the colors and textures of nearby materials (brick, concrete, marble, etc), meaning they can be quite stealthy [as represented by their Initiative modifier] even if not truly “invisible”. Furthermore, when attacked by weapons (standard and magical alike), hits striking an AC 17-20 do ½ damage, while those reaching 21+ do full damage. Urban gargoyles are wholly immune to firearms, as bullets zip through their bodies and the wounds seal instantly.

Nefarious mages, politicians, and captains of industry often employ urban gargoyles as spies, leg-breakers, and assassins.

Gargoyle, Urban: Init +5; Atk bite +2 melee (1d6) or claw +4 melee (1d4); Crit M/d8; AC 17* / 21*; HD 2d8; MV 25’ or fly 35’; Act 1d20; SP chameleonic, damage resistances, stillness; SV Fort +5, Ref +0, Will +0; AL C.

— by Justin S. Davis

A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY....

My groups have been dabbling in the Borg-verse (particularly Pirate Borg), and it's been a hoot.

But another has tickled my fancy:  Kyle Latino's and JP Coovert's delightful Star Borg.

David Okum has expanded on it...

...and inspired me to make my own species!

I hereby present.. THE TUSKED WALRISH!

—

TUSKED WALRISH  —by Justin S. Davis

The fanged, flippered Walrish inhabit oceanic and swampy worlds.  Burly and surly, blubbery and clumsy, they lack conventional social graces and (usually over-) compensate with aggression and brawn.  They find baseline humans repugnant, and dislike them on sight.

Abilities:  -1 Agility (AGI), +1 Strength (STR)

Aquatic: Walrish breathe and move in water as if on land, and all STR tests are -2 DR when submerged.

Brutish: With Presence (PRS) tests involving tact and charm, Walrish suffer +2 DR, but make aggression-based PRS tests at -2 DR.

Radioactive Review: 'Bats' (1993)

  

Haven't done one of these in a while, and as I'm clearing out the shelves, figgered what the hell.

—

Bats is terrible.  And gets worse the more ya think about it.

The novel doesn't deserve further explanation.

—

Sighhh, fine.

In the swampy wilds of Podunk, Louisiana, our ostensible hero–one Johnny McBride [not his real name, because he's a retired super-spook who "worked for ASA, CIA, DIA, NSA, and a dozen other intelligence-gathering organizations all over the world" and in hiding from All The Planet's Bad Guys]–hears the titular bats on Page 2, and finds desiccated, bloodless livestock less than ten pages later.

Potentially interesting, as the hero knows about the furry threat from the get-go; usually, with these Animals Amok™ books, the beastie menaces lurk on the periphery until rampaging about two-thirds through the story.  But, nope!  Vampire bats are namechecked in the last sentence of the first chapter.

About Johnny McBride:  He's hunky.  He's wealthy.  He drives a cool car.  He built a bayou Wayne Manor equipped with secret hatches and an arsenal that puts militaries to shame.  Best of all, he's COMPETENT, with the sort of calm, cool, collected, confident, always-right mojo that makes all Good Government Officials kowtow in reverence and all Bad Government Officials scoff to their inevitable exsanguinary comeuppance.

Now Crank That Sentiment To 11

Chapter Two introduces us to Dr. Blair Perkins, the female McBride (gorgeous; financially sound; armed; COMPETENT) who, upon investigating the aforementioned livestock, intones, "We're in trouble.  I think we're in a lot of trouble."

Spoiler:  He Does.

Chapter Three has the leads capture footage of the bats, discovering they are enormous (four-foot wingspans!), active 24/7 (being diurnal, nocturnal, crepuscular, and everything in between), number in the tens-of-thousands, slobberily rabid, and intelligent enough to circumvent electric fences and detect / bypass boobytraps.

"'Well, I'll be goddamned!' Johnny said.  'The bastards can think and reason!'" (p. 38)

Thanks to our heroes and the discovery of some draculized human corpses, by the end of Chapter Four, anybody and everybody knows about the bats.  Knows they're smart.  Knows they're carnivorous.  Knows they're Deadly-with-a-capital-D.  Knows they probably number in the millions.  Knows that potentially apocalyptic events are about to transpire.

Oh, what further genre-bending thrills-n-chills await us over the remaining three-hundred pages?!!!

And, whoa!  Chapter Six amps up the weirdness!

Some rando mentions decades-old, unsolved vampiric murders where everyone involved moved away, was sworn to silence, and / or deceasified (killed or suicided), introducing the threat might be supernatural!  Ooh, a twist!

A mysterious NSA Agent, one "Mr. Smith"–yes, really–shows up, alluding to secret government experiments and bioweapons and Top Secret toxic waste dumps causing mutations.  Ooh, another twist!

There's also a cult of 1970s-Satanist-voodoo-hippies-as-written-by-a-1990s-Dittohead who love drugs, orgies, and the blackest of masses.  Ooh, a third twist!

THIS IS GONNA BE AWESOME!!!1111!!!!!

"No, no it's not."

—

That's about as far as the book goes in the first fifty pages before turning into a joyless, repetitive slog [before that, it was just a slog-adjacent].  The text is perfunctory and boring, making humdrum scenes agonizing and the (theoretically rollicking) setpieces perfunctory text blocks, and the next two-hundred-fifty pages play out essentially the same.

McBride fortifies his home / base of operations.

McB issues grave warnings to all the surrounding city and county governments about The Bats (with frequent author's-true-feelings, Dale Gribblean lamentations about liberal judges, liberal newsmedia, liberal gun-control activists, liberal welfare recipients, and all the other liberal soft folks Who Can't Do What He Does™).

Perkins agrees.

Everyone scoffs, and goes barhopping / mall-crawling / Friday Night Light-ing without care.

The Bats attack, blinding, eating, and / or infecting everyone.  (There are sooooooo many mentions of plucked eyeballs and ripped-out tongues and throats, but they're just... there.)  And the winged menaces intentionally leave power / phone lines undamaged (yes, they could destroy 'em if wanted) to lure in more victims.

There Are Indeed Passages About
The Bats' Thought Processes... EVIL Thought Processes!

Rabies-zombies [the devil-hippies got bitten on purpose, and spread the contagion] attack the uneaten civilians.

Law enforcement kills the rabies-zombies but dies via The Bats.

Medical personnel rush in to save law enforcement but die via The Bats.

So heroic duo re-fortifies their homes / bases of operation.

Then warn the next batch of towns.

Repeat ad nauseum.

—

Everything above should create a bonkers, gonzo, crazy-go-nuts blood-romp, but it's so tragically, brutally boring.  Absolutely no panache nor suspense.  Even all the nausuems are dry and flavorless.

Remember all the weirdness introduced in Chapters Five and Six?  It's all pointless and useless.

Mr. Smith is never seen or mentioned again.

Total.  Waste.

Speaking of waste, the other NPCs (mostly police) are all but identical and interchangeable, with only told-not-shown one-line quirks to distinguish them (like, the sheriff resenting a deputy because the latter "eats too much on meal tabs" and the deputy resenting the sheriff because "it was only one instance of eating too much on a meal tab".  Every time the two are on the same page at the same time (which is blessedly rare), they bicker about the food incident.

Says It All

(McB and P also adopt some bat-induced orphans, and only mentioned because it's perhaps the most hand-wavingly preposterous part of the book.)

Regarding those unsolved vampire-murders?  Turns out the Satanist leader did 'em.  Just a throwaway line about it, too.

Oh!  Same about The Bats being atomic mutants.  Again, in one line, it's revealed that they're not hybrids resulting from Forbidden Science / Mother Earth Seeking Revenge, but seeeeecret bats that have been around since The Dawn Of Time and show up every century or so to cause mayhem.

All of the above are reasons to loathe Bats, but it's the unmitigatedly galling idiocy that really gets me.

Let me count The Dumb.

1)  The Bats, about halfway through the book, get even more dangerous by figuring out how to open any and all doors–residential knobs, shopping center push / pull handles, and even car door latches–so there's no way to escape 'em.

But that info is conveyed exactly like this:  "The Bats learned to open doors."

There's no discussion of the physiology involved, nor the reasoning process.  Just—BOOM!—they can.

2)  Turns out The Bats have intentionally picked their civilian targets (which now encompass almost all of The South, all the way up to Washington, DC and out to Texas and Florida) to create, when connected on a map, a goofy picture because–I kid you not–THEY HAVE A SENSE OF HUMOR.

I'm Not Even Joking

3) And then there's the last fifty pages.  Krishna H. Vishnu, the ending.

A wizened, mysterious, inscrutable South American professor–who happens to be The World's Foremost Chiroptera Expert–flies to Louisiana to join our heroes.  He has some theories, see, that will save Humanity if he's right or doom it if he's wrong.

What are his theories, you ask?  Don't bother–he won't tell, because he doesn't want to offer false hope!

"Helpful, I Am Not.  Useless, I Am."

And he really doesn't have to say a word, because the solution becomes apparent in the literal last ten pages of the novel when MILLIONS OF REGULAR, GARDEN VARIETY BATS OF ALL SPECIES FLY IN OUTTA NOWHERE TO CHOMP HOLES IN THE SWARMING BATS' WINGS, CAUSING THE BAD BATS TO CRASH INTO THE EARTH AND DIE.

Yes, that's the ending.  Deus Ex Flappina saves the planet.  This ritual, too, has seemingly been going on since The Dawn Of Time, so the heroes ultimately do jack and squat to stop the bat invasion.

And as the genre demands, some last-page Evil Bats escape to breed again....

In conclusion, Bats fucking sucks.

—

RPG Relevance:  Doesn't get much more Dungeons And / Or Dragons than giant, diseased bats slavering for the blood of the living, but making them cunning geniuses definitely amps the threat.

—

Final Review Score:  One-and-a-half Jerry Dandriges outta five.

DON'T MESS WITH WREXUS — A NEON LORDS OF THE TOXIC WASTELAND JOINT

 

In addition to that Umerica Masters Of The Universe game, got shanghaied into running Neon Lords Of The Toxic Wasteland on Tuesday nights!

We're four seshes in... take a gander here!!!

DON'T MESS WITH WREXUS -- FOUR HOSTESS OF THE APOCALYPSE

 

"And, LO!  The ocean turned to cream filling,
as from a Ho-Ho." — Desolation 16:3

"BY THE POWERTOOLS OF GORESKULL!!!"

 Here's some more DCC / Umerica / Aetherian dungeons (that also work perfectly for Neon Lords Of The Toxic Wasteland, Planet Motherfucker, and any other gonzocalypse).

Each has "toyetic playset features" and "accessories" to torment players.  And shoddiness is part of their charm!

THE CONQUERORS OF THE COSMOS™!!!

In recent years, I've switched from my beloved Mutant Future to Dungeon Crawl Classics.

And my favorite published setting / expansion is Umerica.  It's my kinda gonzocalypse.  Been playing steadily for over four years now.

I'm about to take the GM reins in my DCC group, and I'm using Aetheria as a setting.  (That's what those recent posts have been about, where silly brainstorms really took root.)

What's Aetheria, you ask?  It's serial-numbers-filed-off Masters Of The Universe via the Umerican apocalypse, with a dandy twist... that I'm going to completely bypass by starting after it's happened.

First Appearance Of All Thangs Aetheria!

I'm cranking up the jankiness of Aetheria even further, and really leaning into the "dollar store He-Man aesthetic".  Things are gonna get silly, y'all.

Cue 21^st-Century Filmation fanfare and symphonic soundtrack...

--

Planet Aetheria is rent asunder.

Rival nations of Nirvara of Mausolea lie in ruin.

THE CONQUERORS OF THE COSMOS™—iconic noble heroes and dastardly villains—are missing, obliterated... or worse.

And The Forces Of Good are primarily to blame.

--

Yes, the combined might of She-Ro (Vindicatrix Of Virtue and Daughter Of Blacksun The Liberator), Skulletox (Seventh Corpse-Born Son Of Skull-Or The Deceaseless), and interplanetary despot Lord Vespero Necronox (Evil Overlord Of Evil) revealed Aetheria's darkest secret:

Castle Oldskull, renowned bastion of all that is moral and decent, was in actuality a parasitic entity leeching the magical lifeforces of the populace to maintain an unrighteous status quo.

And, LO!!!  A mighty battle between Light, Darkness, and Everything In-Between raged...

...wreaking techno-sorcerous havoc and freakishly bending Reality As Was Known.

Now you—​perhaps the last remaining Aetherians (and lowly ones, at that)—find ​yourselves amongst the warpwastes to forge your own paths.

Where once stood only Castle Oldskull, bizarre new structures loom, resplendent with artifacts magical and mechanical guarded by robo-witches, spookborgs, all manner of abominations... and worse.

The worldwreck awaits.

Long live Aetheria!

LONG LIVE THE CONQUERORS OF THE COSMOS™!!!