Ova Hamlet: The Sound of Distant Memory

Ova Hamlet

The Ova Hamlet stories of Richard A. Lupoff appeared in Ted White’s Fantastic (1969-1975). There were nine stories, each a strange milestone on the late 1960s and early 70s. The New Wave controversy raged at the beginning of the series and pretty much burned out by the end. The Ova Hamlet stories were a vehicle for parody of fiction that did and did not appeal to a fan of action and adventure, plot and heroism.

Richard A. Lupoff

Lupoff, who began his career with a Hugo-winning fanzine, edited Edgar Rice Burroughs books for Canaveral Press. He penned the wonderful biography, Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure (1965). Later in his career he wrote Hugo-nominated SF, space opera novels, proto-steampunk comics for Heavy Metal and even Cthulhu Mythos fiction. As Addison E. Steele, he wrote Buck Rogers novels. Dick Lupoff was a fan of Pulp fiction as well as an innovator of Science Fiction.

The New Wave

“Man Swings SF” (Fantastic, October 1969) begins the Ova Hamlet series with what must have felt like a one-off. The story is a parody of the brand of SF coming out of England known as The New Wave. News of this new British Invasion came when Judith Merrill, an important editor of the Old Wave, published England Swings SF (1968). It contained Michael Moorcock, J. G. Ballard, Keith Roberts, Thomas M. Disch, Brian W. Aldiss (names to become famous in the US) as well as many who were not. Many of the stories have funky paragraphs that alternate side-to-side, are numbered and other poetry style gimmicks. Lupoff adopts this same mode of presentation. The story begins with a composition written by Ova Hamlet about a man filled with angst and described like an over-blown version of Henry James. The story has no ending. This is followed by pointless bits of trivia about Ova. That’s it. It is a pointless exercise in a seemingly pointless style of writing. As a parody it is as boring as what it parodies.

Jerry Cornelius

“Music in the Air” (Fantastic, August 1970) is a bit more fun, with something of a plot. The protagonist, an anti-hero, is Cornelius Jerry. Probably the least disguised character in a parody ever! Michael Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius was popular as a hero of The Final Programme (1968), a novel in the New Wave style. It promoted an anti-establishment, drug-induced, rock-and-roll James Bondian existence. Being of that totally mod culture, Cornelius hijacks an airplane using a plastic machine gun (not so far-fetched today).

He kicks everyone off except the members of the rock group The Sacred Locomotive, the air hostess (who is completely nude) and the pilot who is actually a World War I veteran who only thinks he flies the plane. Cornelius has the band play some of their songs, some we actually know. I am not sure how many of the players are based on real musicians but my favorite is Jethro Anderson, flute-player who likes to stand on one leg. As a Jethro Tull fan, the Ian Anderson parody is the best thing in the whole story. (Up there with Will Farrell’s reference in Anchorman.) The piece ends with Cornelius being knocked out and arrested.

Harlan Ellison Shattered

With the next entry, Lupoff started giving hints in his story intros like this one:

“Ova was over the other evening, and during the course of that evening, she chanced upon a book which contained Harlan Ellison’s ‘Shattered Like a Glass Goblin’. Inevitably, she read the story, and erupted into a cacaphony of sounds, the meaning of which I found impossible to decipher. The next day the following story arrived in my mailbox.”

“Battered Like a Brass Bippy” (Fantastic, December 1970) surprised me. I thought Lupoff would go after Ellison’s writing style, which is literary in a way that the New wave would have applauded. (I know M. D. Jackson won’t agree, being a huge Harlan fan, but I find him overblown.)  Instead, he simply tells Harlan’s plot again but reverses the social groups. In Ellison’ tale Rudy is searching for Kris, his fiancee, who has gone off to live with the Hippies on The Hill. He finds her but is transformed into a glass goblin as Kris becomes a werewolf. She shatters him into a million pieces.

The Ova Hamlet Version

Lupoff goes the other way. Pascal is looking for Ali, who has gone to live in Suburbia with the Farnsworths. Instead of far-out drugs and sex, the Farnworths are stereotypical suburbanites, with dad being a porno-hungry Nazi, mom a frazzled housewife who only wants to watch her shows, and two girls who listen to all the new records. Pasky falls under their evil spell and becomes a straight-laced, working guy at the computer factory with a short haircut. At the end he sees his reflection has become a brass Bippy, which leaps out of the mirror and kills him.

The title of this story includes a cultural reference that is one of those sounds of distant times. Bippy. The term was a joke from the popular Rollin and Martin and Laugh-In. Lupoff uses it here knowing the current reader will get the reference. How quickly things date!

The Coming of Upchuck

“War of the Doom Zombies” (Fantastic, June 1971) has one of those introductory clues but who really needs it with “Upchuck the Barbarian”? The Lancer Conan explosion was well underway in 1971, as was the Marvel Comics version of the Cimmerian. The illustration for the story was done by a Marvel Bull Pen member, Billy Graham.

This story is more what I think of when someone says “parody” or in this case heavy-handed parody. The title of the story has nothing to do with what will take place. The tale is narrated by Upchuck himself, who as an immature teenager tells a glamorous version of his poor life. He meets a wizard, Mus Domesticus, gets robbed, follows the wizard to an inn where he tries to bed the bar maid, Blodwen. He drinks too much, passes out and is arrested the next morning.

The plot is not the most important thing here. It is the jokes. Some are even funny. Lupoff has Upchuck name all of his stuff, from sword, Hoodsticker, to his horse, Heroine, down to his boots, Fred and Ed. Better, his use of the Necromancers of Euclid is followed by several good Math jokes. Perhaps the most pointed jest comes in the form of a song that specifically names the Conan clones Lupoff dislikes: Brak, Jongor, Thongor, Kothar, Kandar, and the rest of the yuks. (He does not include Robert E. Howard’s creations among these also-rans.) It ends with:

The stuff is bunk though I guess the author needs it

    But what kind of cretin is the idiot who reads it?

Like Harlan Ellison’s attack in “Delusion For a Dragonslayer”, Sword & Sorcery fans are portrayed as immature males with personality problems. As one of those fourteen year-olds of yore (now over 50), I think the portrayal is unkind and unwarranted. I think we were quite able to enjoy a hero tale without being inept, emotionally stunted, or rapists-to-be. If enjoying a heroic tale is a crime, why do fans of The Lord of the Rings not get the same treatment?

Having written an S&S parody myself, I understand the desire to poke fun at the bad stuff while still loving the good. Lupoff’s ribbing of Sword & Sorcery couldn’t have been too heart-felt since he wrote the heroic fantasy novel, The Sword of the Demon in 1977. Lupoff sets his story in ancient Japan, no mere pastiche of Conan.

The Parody Out of Arkham

“The Horror South of Red Hook” (Fantastic, February 1972) appeared in an issue with Michael Moorcock’s Elric, so I guess no hard feelings. This time he takes on H. P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos, another old classic that was having a revival in the 1970s.

This tale has a simply plot written in over-blown Lovecraftian prose. A young man, a resident of an asylum, recounts how he went to a factory to get a job. The plot again is slight while the wordage is the whole point. An example:

So filled was I with horrified disgust that I permitted myself to mouth pewling inanities in response to my host’s questions and remarks during that horrid meal, after which he led me through long and terrible corridors until we exited from that building of torment and walked painfully across a field covered with rank vegetation until we reached a second edifice of even more gigantic and unnatural proportions than that we had just exited.

Lovecraft Lampooned

I have to guess that the attitude of the young narrator finding a job horrific a poke at Lovecraft’s own gentility and lack of obvious employment. The whole thing takes far too long to read for the few laughs. According to Ted White, a 35-minute radio version was done at San Francisco radio station, KPFA. Imagine listening to such a thing on the radio! It might have been funnier when read aloud.

Again, Lupoff is a fan of the Mythos at the same time he is a satirist and critic. He would write “Discovery of the Ghooric Zone” in 1977 for Roy Torgeson’s Chrysalis. For Arkham House, he also wrote Lovecraft’s Book (1985) that looks at HPL’s racism through fiction.

Man In a Low Humor

“Agony and Remorse on Rhesus IX” (Fantastic, August 1972) appeared in the same issue as a de Camp & Carter Conan pastiche, so I guess still no hard feelings, Upchuck? This time Lupoff is after the angsty novels of Philip K. Dick. C. M. Peck wakes to another day of his girlfriend poking him in the ribs. His life is the usual suburban drab of work and home. His relationships with women are always confrontational. Loris berates him for working too much and not satisfying her sexual needs. Peck wishes often if he could only have a drink of some funny-named alcoholic beverage.

The trip to work is a painful voyage on Rheusus IX. He gets bit by a sand-bonker, misses his bus, pays his last eight cents for a cab and the driver slams his fingers in the door when he doesn’t get a tip. Peck works at the Bureau of Vital Statsistics (sic). He thinks about the misspelled name on the building and creates an elaborate cosmic plot to cover up that mistake, including the very existence of the colony on Rhesus IX.

Dickian Downbeat

Inside, he is shunned by his fellow workers, then sees his boss, his former wife, Olivia Sampson Thompson. The two have a child together, Paulie Peck. Olivia reminds him he is two months behind on his child support and he will go to jail if he doesn’t cough up. Peck whines he has no money and isn’t likely to get any if he doesn’t get a raise. He is sent on to Olivia’s boss (and current lover), L. Bartlett Bailey. The boss cuts Peck’s pay because he won’t shut up about the sharp rise in unexplained deaths (from less than two percent to fifteen!). Bailey gives him a shot of plum wine.

Suddenly Peck’s life is in complete reverse. His girlfriend loves him, the bus waits for him, the co-workers adore him, Olivia wants him back and… as suddenly things switch back with Bailey’s teeth now metal and full of scrambled eggs. Peck shrieks, “It’s not real!” Bailey agrees. Peck asks “Is this where it ends?” Bailey answers, “Doesn’t it always?”

Lupoff does a good job of creating a Dickian smuck with the crappy job and aggravating social life. He works in conspiracy theories and questioning the very fabric of existence. The only thing he leaves out are robots. (Or does he? Is Bailey a robot?) I enjoyed this one more than the Robert E. Howard story because the humor isn’t so far from the real deal. Being more like Dick’s actual fiction, the parody seems more clever, less heavy-handed.

Malzbergian Mischief

Lupoff took 1973 off but returned with “Grebzlam’s Game” (Fantastic, November 1974). The name Grebzlam is Malzberg backwards, of course. In his intro White also drops a hint calling it “Malzbergian Enlightment”. Barry N. Malzberg was a former editor of Fantastic.  His work has been compared to Kafka. It is known for its angst-filled themes and lengthy sentences. The story describes a game played on a cosmic level as well as in a spaceship. As with most games, someone win and someone loses. The last line has the players switch sides and begins again, signifying the pointlessness of the universe. The entire thing is written in a style that must be Malzbergian, but I am not familiar enough with his work to comment.

L. Ron Hubbard

“Young Nurse Nebuchednezzar” (Fantastic, April 1975) has the wonder-medic, Young Nurse Nebuchadnezzar, go to Farnum II to cure a plague and do some bowling. She lands, bosses everyone around, then solves the problem by killing all the men and women of power. He appoints a foolish young man to be king and gives him the supposed ability to cure the illness. She flies around in a spaceship called the Autoclave, and has a companion/slave named Florencenightingale who has eleven hands. Whenever the Nurse needs something, Florence has it miraculously on-hand.

This is Lupoff’s rather unkind poke at L. Ron Hubbard’s seven Ole Doc Methuselah stories from Astounding Science-Fiction (October 1947-January 1950). Instead of the super-doctor, one of the Soldiers-of-Light, and a man, Ova delivers a female version, Young Nurse Nebuchadnezzar, once a prostitute named Rene Lafayette (Hubbard’s nom-de-plum). Hubbard’s Solders-of-Light are replaced by the Cherubs of Chimes from an organization called AINT, The Association of Interstellar Nurses and Tarts. She is young but looks old. Here Lupoff takes a shot at John W. Campbell, Hubbard’s editor:

Nurse Nebuchadnezzar, for example, had graduated from MIT (Milford Institute of Terminology) back on earth in the year 1936…She’d had to masquerade as a boy, wearing a crewcut, smoking through a cigarette holder and developing a pot belly into the bargain.

Campbell Critiqued

That is a pretty good description of JWC who went to MIT and all the rest. The uncomplimentary description of Nebuchadnezzar and her attitudes is a mirror of that which Hubbard gave us and Campbell promoted widely through his magazine. The sub-genre or style of SF that has earthmen (almost always men) pulling one over on alien races wasn’t all that much different than the racist stories found in adventure magazines. There white Englishman did the same to primitive Africans or tribes in Northern Canada and Alaska. (See the Sanders of the River series by Edgar Wallace for a prime example.)

I have to admit I was expecting some kind of a shot at Dianetics, but nope….

The Saga Ends

“The Marriage of Ova Hamlet” (Fantastic, October 1975) Lupoff returns to the madcap silliness of “Music in the Air” for this last tale of Ova. The author is supposedly “Addison Steele II, making this Ova’s tale told to Steele who ran it by Lupoff. The plot centers around the Science Fiction writer, Killy T. Once Killy had tried to unionize the writers against SFPA, the Science Fiction Publishers of America. The union was called USFARTS, the United Science Fiction Authors, Readers and Teachers Society. The SFPA blacklisted him, so he had to sell all his stories to porno mags.

Rupert Linwood comes to Canton, Ohio in search of Ova Hamlet. He has heard she has a complete Killy T. collection. He has a publisher who will pay him for the collection. He looks for Ova in the Jim Thorpe Grille, the place the over-weight and aging Ova drinks at. She breaks Rupert’s glasses, then gets him on a steam-roller to kill Killy T. (The collected works are worth more if the author is dead.) Unfortunately, he kills Ova’s husband instead.

Killy T. shows up looking for the collection, too. Ova gets him to marry her in exchange for the magazines. When she takes him to her room where the collection is, she admits she has never read any of his work. She wants to keep the collection because she likes the porn. Killy grabs a few magazines and tries to escape. Ova jumps into the car to get them back and Rupert chases them in the steamroller. Since Killy can’t change the gears, his shifting arm stuck out the window, holding the magazines away from Ova, he has to flee in first gear. Some drunken revelers think this is all part of the wedding and follow. The lot end up at the swimming pool. Since Rupert can’t see, he drives the steamroller into the pool, getting trapped under it. He dies. Don’t that tread on your corns?

Vonnegut Viscerated

This final tale is a parody of Kurt Vonnegut and his work. It is an old story that Vonnegut and traditional SF fell out over his work and he went into the mainstream. And became rich and famous much to SF’s loss. The name Killy T. refers to the Vonnegut creation, Kilgore Trout. The story mentions Venus on the Half-Shell, originally a fictional book  mentioned in “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater”.  Philip Jose Farmer later wrote the book in 1975. The SFPA can only be SWFA, the Science Fiction Writers of America. The fact that Killy T. wrote for porn magazines reflects many SF writers who wrote for Playboy, Rogue or smutty novels.

It is a fine end for Ova Hamlet, that shadowy character from “Man Swings SF” to naughty porn collector. She deserved at least one story of her own. I could not help but think of Judith Merrill in this last tale. She started everything with her New Wave anthology back in 1968. Was Ova Hamlet a version of Judy Merrill? She was a prominent writer and anthologist, who left the field after signing an open letter against the Viet Name War, and moved to Canada. She donated her library of SF books to the Toronto Public Library in 1970. (I doubt any of it was porn magazines.)

The Ova Hamlet Papers

In his introductions Lupoff joked about trying to work all these stories into his up-coming novel, Sacred Locomotive Flies (1971). In the end, that book only uses “Music in the Air” and in a version that doesn’t include Cornelius Jerry. Ironically, the novel strikes me as a massive New Wave piece, the kind Lupoff pokes fun at. Lupoff would collect the Ova Hamlet stories separately in The Ova Hamlet Papers. This small press book arranges the stories in a different order and includes an introduction by William Tenn.

L. Sprague Continues the Tradition

Shortly after Lupoff’s series ended, L. Sprague de Camp began his stories of W. Wilson Newbury , some of which appeared in Fantastic  (collected in The Purple Pterodactyls, 1980). This series does a similar job of commenting on old SF and Fantasy but in a much more reserved fashion. I’m not suggesting de Camp copied Lupoff, since the earmarks of de Camp’s earlier Gavagan’s Bar and Harold Shea can be seen in these stories. I wonder though, if Richard Lupoff retired Ova Hamlet for good when the Newbury tales showed up. (He might have just been sick of writing them too.)

Conclusion

Either way, 1975 marked the end of Ova Hamlet ‘s saga. The distant sounds of things poorly remembered from childhood lurk in these tales for me. Like ghosts of a memory, they form a part of my mental landscape that is shrouded in foggy distance. Reading Dick Lupoff’s funny (and sometimes not-so-funny) stories, bring them back into focus, at least for a short time.

Well, it turns out these weren’t the last of the Ova Hamlet stories. Dick wrote six more. So next time… the further adventures of Ova Hamlet. Don’t that tread on your corns?