The Sea Lord Unsheathes His Sword

Sea Lord [The Swordsman]
William C. Heine
Don Mills: ON: PaperJacks, 1984

William C. Heine's The Last Canadian is one of the worst novels I've ever read; its ending stands as the stupidest.

God, it's awful.

You'll understand then why I so much wanted to read Sea Lord, the author's only other work of fiction. I hunted for years, scouring used book stores, thrift shops and garage sales, but never saw a single copy. It shouldn't have been such a challenge. A former editor of the London Free Press, Heine was a local author, and the novel had enjoyed a couple of good mass market paperback runs. The first, published as The Swordsman (Toronto: Seal, 1980), had the better cover, but I wasn't picky.

In the end, I resorted to one of those "weedy companies" that sell books for a penny.

A bargain at twice the price.

Sea Lord – the Swordsman, if you prefer – is Mirand, slave of Tehemil, born of a fallen Greek noblewoman in ancient Tyre. The first page is nearly his last as he suffers a near-fatal knife attack at the hands of a hired assassin. In the first page of The Last Canadian, hero Gene Arnprior stays up late watching TV in his suburban Montreal home.

On the surface, Heine's two novels seem very different, but they're not. Both adolescent fantasies, in the first, Gene Arnprior wanders a post-Apocalyptic world, beds some babes, and is remembered as one of the greatest figures in history; in the second, Mirand wanders the ancient world, beds babes, and is remembered as one of the greatest figures in history. In his own time he's considered a god.

Mirand is very much mortal. The slave owes his life to ironworker and renowned swordmaker Elisha, who hides the injured slave in his house. Beautiful daughter Naomi slowly nurses Mirand back from near-death as he stares at "the swelling lines of her dress, straining to hold her full breasts":

He amused himself as he sipped the broth with the thought that on [sic] day he would possess her. As a spasm of pain burned across his torn body, he choked on a half-laugh of self-pity and amusement. "If I live," he amended his promise to himself, "if I live I will lie with her one day."

Ah, classic Heine.

When the spasms subside and hearty laughter returns, Mirand becomes Elisha's apprentice, all the while fantasizing about his saviour's beautiful daughter:

Now he indulged himself in his daydream while his arms and hands methodically shaped hot iron under a hammer. "She is beautiful, and she is strong, too. I saw her practicing on the beach with bow and arrow and she could split a plank better than her father. Those arms are strong but her breasts are soft and someday I'll lie in her perfumed bed, with linen cloths like Tehemil had, and cool wine waiting in a flagon, while I kiss the ironworker's daughter and stroke her breasts and slide into her. I'll rouse her out of her coolness... she will beg for more..." and he gave the rod he was hammering a blow that snapped it in two. 

Not only do Mirand and Naomi lie together, they marry and have children. With papa Elisha and a mother-in-law who barely exists, he amasses immense wealth trading goods throughout the Mediterranean. A mistress, a kidnapping and an attack by pirates bring excitement to what would otherwise be a rather mundane existence. The biggest and longest of Mirand's adventures begins with a voyage to the western coast of Africa made without Naomi and the in-laws. The ship is caught in a violent storm and, a couple of months later, he and his crew wash ashore in South America.

There Mirand finds favour and more with an Aztec king known as Iximhunti. Owing to Mirand's blond locks, the monarch determines that the newcomer is a god, showers him with gifts and insists he sleep with his beautiful daughter.

And yet, Mirand longs for home.

Using all they've managed to salvage from the Minnow, he and his crew construct a ship unlike any the world has ever seen, and set off in the expectation that they will find a current that will take them home.

Will they make it?

Did I care?

Heine learned something working on The Last Canadian. The writing on this sophomore effort is better, and yet I was bored to tears. All has to do with the fact that The Last Canadian takes place during Cold War, a time I remember well. Heine's take on the geopolitical world of Pierre Trudeau, Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev is so absurd as to be entertaining, but I have no idea what to make of his depiction of ancient Tyre. Accurate? Astute? Silly? He didn't make me care enough to find out.

The only thing that kept me going was the hope of another stupid ending.

I wasn't disappointed.

Favourite passage:

It was as pretty a fight as Carthage had seen for many moons. It lasted as long as it takes a man to make a woman desperately anxious, which depends greatly on the skill of the man and the experience of the woman, but is measured by each in different terms.

Object: An entirely unattractive 256-page mass market paperback with cover art by Martin Visser. At first glance it looked to be one of PaperJacks' more competent productions, then I noticed this:

The Swordsman? But, um, we're calling it Sea Lord now, right? Remind me again why we're keeping the title of his book on historic sailing ships a secret.

Access: Library and Archives Canada has the novel in its collection, as do four of our universities. C'est tout.

As The Swordsman, used copies of the Seal first edition range in price from US$1.50 ("Very Good") to US$78.54 ("Good"). PaperJacks' butt ugly Sea Lord edition is far less common. As of this writing, just two are being offered online: US$6.25 ("Fair/Good") and US$12.00 ("VG+").

In 1984, Robert Hale published the first and only British edition (right). A hardcover, the only copy I've ever seen – indeed, the only copy listed online – is offered by Attic Books, mere blocks from Heine's old newspaper office. A Near Fine signed copy, it's being offered at US$100.

Just the thing for the Heine collector.

Related post:

At Long Last Lunacy

Return to Miss Moneypenny's Fishing Lodge; or, Billy's Bad Trip

Return to Rainbow Country

William Davidson

Don Mills, ON: PaperJacks, 1975

186 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

Related posts:

About Those Awful PaperJacks Covers
Ontario, Opium and Cocaine

Hugh Garner: Article Lost, Article Found

Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1962

Toronto: Ryerson, 1968

Markhan, ON: PaperJacks, 1983

Toronto: Dundurn, 2011

A Bonus:

Regarding the sales of "The Silence On The Shore" [sic] I think it has done remarkably well, considering that its publisher didn't want to sell any copies of it at all. I think, however, that had I not wanted to sell it I would have kept its sales down below 1,400, even if I would have to burn the books. 

     My personal feelings to you are friendly, but from a business and professional point of view I think it better that we do not involve each other with the other any more. 

– Hugh Garner, letter to Jack McClelland, 28 August 1963

Richard Rohmer Recycles (Again)

Starmageddon
Richard Rohmer
Toronto: Irwin, 1986

Starmageddon takes place in a future past. We know this because the Office of the Vice-President of the United States is held by a woman. The president calls her a bitch, primarily because she never supported Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. It's the year 2000, seventeen years have passed since The Gipper initiated the program and – glory be – the thing works! Doesn't the VP have mud on her face!

Time, 4 April 1983

When an American general insults the South Koreans, the lady vice-president is sent off to do damage control. Air Force One has been booked by the Secretary of State, meaning she and her staff have to travel on a commercial airliner. Seats are booked on a 747 that will follow the very same route taken in 1983 by doomed Korean Air Lines Flight 007.

What could go wrong?

Plenty.

The captain is distracted by the vice-president, another pilot is distracted by the hot purser, and the first officer is legally blind. As a result, the wrong coordinates are entered into the navigation system and the 747 flies over a site where the Soviet Union is at that very moment testing its own strategic defence system.

Well, you can imagine.

Starmageddon is the twelfth book tackled as part of the Reading Richard Rohmer project. By now, I've come to expect a fair amount of self-plagiarism in the author's books. For the most part, this takes the form of passages, speeches, chapters and fictitious documents lifted from previous novels. Separation Two, the most egregious act of self-plagiarism in Canadian literature, is the most extreme example.

Starmageddon is something else altogether. Here Rohmer lifts and tweaks page after page from Massacre 747, his 1984 book on the Korean Air Lines disaster. Behold, fiction born of non-fiction:

Like a lumbering elephant, Flight 315 began to move down runway fourteen, accelerating rapidly toward the computer-precalculated speed of 196 miles per hour. When the speed was reached, the co-pilot called out "rotation"and the captain, both hands now on the wheel of the control column, hauled back smoothly and strongly. Instantly, the nose rotated up into the climb position, and the enormous aircraft, 196 feet between its blinking wingtip lights and 232 feet between nose and tail, leapt gracefully up into the black night. It was 2:02 on the morning of August 29.

— Starmageddon 

Like a lumbering elephant, Flight 007 began to move down runway 31L, accelerating rapidly toward the computer-precalculated speed at which the co-pilot would call for rotation. When the rotation came, the captain, both hands now on the wheel on the control column, hauled back smoothly and strongly. Instantly, the nose came up into the climb position, and the enormous aircraft, 196 feet between its blinking wingtip lights and 232 feet between nose and tail, leapt gracefully up into the black night. It was 12:24 on the morning of September 1.

— Massacre 747

August 29, not September 1. The flight and runway numbers are different, too. Again, Starmageddon is set in the future; albeit a future in which the lessons of Flight 007 are forgotten. Oh, people still remember the disaster, its a real topic of conversation, but that doesn't prevent this from happening:

At 5:53 the Soviet pilot reported: "804. I have executed the launch."
       In one second the lights of the rockets, as burning propellants thrust the missiles ever faster toward the target, had become mere pinpoints in the distance. The rockets headed unerringly for the brilliant navigation lights and the red rotating beacons of the target.
       Pilot 804 knew this his heart-seeking missile, if functioning properly, would have locked onto one go the river of intense heat that the target's huge engines pouring out into the frigid high-altitude air.

— Starmageddon 

At 18:26:20 the Soviet pilot reported: "805. I have executed the launch."
     In one second the lights of the rockets, as burning propellants thrust the missiles ever supersonically faster toward the target, had become mere pinpoints in the distance. The rockets headed unerringly for the brilliant navigation lights and the red rotating beacons of the target.
       The fighter pilot knew this his heart-seeking missile, if functioning properly, would have "locked on" to one go the target's huge engines pouring out a river of intense heat into the frigid high-altitude air.

— Massacre 747

One can understand Rohmer's temptation; Massacre 747 is one hell of a book, and it contains some of his very best writing:

The mortally wounded 747 cut through the night sky, illuminating it for miles around. With only one wing it slowly began to roll. It was like a comet. Its long, distinctive humplike cockpit and nose thrust ahead and clear of the ball of flame as if trying to run away, to avoid being consumed. Inside the roiling fire all was being engulfed or spit out by the explosion into the icy air. Bodies were torn apart. Blankets, luggage, seats, toys – everything movable or ripped away from floors and ceilings at the rear of the massive aircraft – were spewed out the hole where the tail had been.

— Massacre 747 

The flaming and mortally wounded 747 cut through the night sky, illuminating it for miles around. With only one wing, it slowly began to roll. Its long, distinctive humplike cockpit and nose thrust ahead and clear of the ball of flame, as if trying to avoid being consumed. Inside, the roiling fire engulfed all that was not spit out into the icy air by the explosion. Bodies were torn apart. Blankets, luggage, seats, toys – everything that was movable or had been ripped away from floors and ceilings at the rear of the massive fuselage – were spewed out the hole where the tail had been.

— Starmageddon

Who wouldn't want to revisit those images. Besides, it gave opportunity to fix that awkward sentence about the roiling fire.

Did anyone notice?

Books in Canada, May 1986

John Gellner, who wrote glowing reviews of both books for the Globe & Mail, didn't mention the self-plagiarism; as editor of the Canadian Defence Quarterly, you'd think he'd have noticed. But what interests me more is Irwin, which was then in its death throes. Did anyone there know that large portions of their big fiction offering where copied from a book being sold by a rival publisher?

Best sentence:

Pieces of the shattered engine blade penetrated the thin fuselage skin like a knife through gossamer.

— Starmageddon 

Pieces of the shattered engine blade penetrated the thin fuselage skin like a knife through gossamer.

— Massacre 747

Object: A 241-page hardcover in blue binding. The cover art by Peter Mossman reminds me of the very worst albums sold during my time at Sam the Record Man (1983-85).

Access: At eight, I count more copies in public libraries than academic libraries.

The hardcover first edition – there was no second printing – is more common than the mass market paperback. The only cover image I can find (right) comes courtesy of Toronto bookseller David Harris, who offers his copy for all of two dollars.

Worth every penny.

Related posts:

Recycling Richard Rohmer

Richard Rohmer's Retaliation: The Chairmen Rave

Retaliation

Richard Rohmer

Toronto: PaperJacks, 1983

298 pages

This review now appears, revised and rewritten, in my new book:

The Dusty Bookcase:

A Journey Through Canada's

Forgotten, Neglected, and Suppressed Writing

Available at the very best bookstores and through

Biblioasis, Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, and McNally-Robinson.

The Globe & Mail, 6 November 1982

Of Thucydides, Themistocles and Richard Rohmer

Thucydides wrote that Themistocles' greatness lay in the fact that he realized Athens was not immortal. I think we have to realize that Canada is not immortal; but, if it is going to go, let it go with a bang rather than a whimper. 

— Pierre Elliott Trudeau, 30 March 1988

Week fifteen of Reading Richard Rohmer and I admit that we've stalled. Events have conspired, travel has intruded, but more than anything the fun has gone. Seven novels in – PaperJacks would have had me believe it's eight – Rohmer nears something approaching competency. Talk of scheduling, formatting and rescheduling cabinet meetings no longer fill his pages. Where old inconsequential subplots were dropped, the new reach weak conclusion. Facts and figures are few, have relevance, and are repeated less frequently.

Rohmer's first four novels stuck together from being soaked in a sticky syrup of nationalism. They were led by the likes of Colonel Pierre Thomas de Gaspé, an übermensch who might thwart American invasion one month, then launch a hostile takeover of Exxon the next. Indeed, Colonel de Gaspé did these very things in Exxoneration.

And yes, Exxoneration is the title. It was all silly fun… but no more.

Triad follows Balls! and Periscope Red as part of a trilogy that is clearly designed to appeal to the American market. Time was Rohmer risked Canada ending in a bang, but Balls! produces not so much as a whimper (ignore that exclamation mark). The country disintegrates after Quebec votes to succeed, and Prime Minister Peter Lockhard pretty much hands over the keys to the American president. Canada is mentioned twice in Periscope Red,  but only in passing. In Triad, cancon rests with boozer Bud Black, a former Canadian Forces fighter pilot who prostitutes himself as a mercenary. He's no Colonel Pierre Thomas de Gaspé.

I'm stuck at page 130 in Triad, all of which was tackled three weeks ago during a two-hour train trip from Toronto.

Lest you be impressed:

Triad reprints twenty-three pages from Periscope Red. I didn't bother to so much as skim. Rohmer can't be trusted when "attempting to condense and summarize", but is very adept when using safety scissors and paste. His "Note to the Reader"acknowledges an unenviable habit. Separation begins by reprinting the final chapter of Exodus/UK. The very same words appear for a third time in  Separation Two, which is in itself little more than a reprint of Separation. Again, PaperJacks would have had me believe otherwise… so as to grab $3.50 earned through my minimum wage summer job at Consumer's Distributing.

I correct:

In fact, neither province decided to secede from Canada. Quebec does hold a referendum. The "No" side wins.

America is indeed sent reeling by a disastrous natural gas shortage, but it has to do with corporate incompetence and weak government regulation. The Soviets and NATO do not figure.

Rohmer's stab at the American market amounted to nothing. As sales figures slumped north of the border, PaperJacks took pains to remind Canadians of the titles that had once sold so well:

In fact, Richard Rohmer never enjoyed eight straight years of best sellers – and even if he had, it had been done before. All I can claim is two weeks on the Australian non-fiction bestseller list.

Oh, Canada.

Oh, Canada. Remember when we had a prime minister who could speak to Thucydides on Themistocles?

Related posts:

Recycling Richard Rohmer

Richard Rohmer Recycles (Again)

Recycling Richard Rohmer

Separation Two
Richard Rohmer
Markham, ON: PaperJacks, 1981

March has come in like a lion, but those of us committed to reading Richard Rohmer in '14 continue unfazed. We're now six books into the man's oeuvre. Quite an achievement, I think you'll agree, but not nearly so impressive as it sounds. Rohmer has a habit of repeating himself, going over the same facts and past events as if aware that the reader wasn't paying much attention the first time around. Sometimes it's figures about natural gas reserves, pipeline capacity or technical details about the C-130 Hercules, but mostly it's an just a summary of his previous novel.

The first fifth of Exxoneration is a revisionist retelling of Ultimatum. Rohmer does something similar in Separation, before tacking on the final chapter of Exodus/UK.

More lifted filler follows.

With Separation Two, however, Rohmer takes repetition and recycling to a level not seen since the days of Thomas P. Kelley.

This is no sequel to Separation, Rohmer's 1976 bestseller, but a reissue sandwiched between four short chapters about Alberta separatism and an oil man's attempt to assassinate the prime minister. It's a shaky union, made all the more so by haphazard editing.

In the original, a severe economic crisis prompts the UK to ask whether Canada will accept millions of British immigrants. Quebec threatens to separate if Ottawa agrees; Alberta and BC threaten to separate if it does not. There's also lots of superfluous stuff about North Sea oil reserves, off-shore platforms, pipelines, along with an entirely irrelevant four-page UK/US energy agreement copied from Exodus/UK.

In Separation Two, Alberta is “prepared to take the British immigrants”, but doesn't really care much either way. The prospect of several hundred thousand economic refugees flooding into the province? Please. What  concerns Albertans are oil profits and "the budget that asshole in Ottawa threw at us".

The thing about that asshole, Prime Minister Joe Roussel (read: Pierre Trudeau), is that he's stuck repeating everything he said in Separation, things that simply don't fit Separation Two, like when he tells a crowd amassed on Parliament Hill: “British Columbia and Alberta have notified the federal government that if we do not take the British immigrants those provinces will succeed.”

What?

When?

Why in the original book, of course. The threat comes in a fleeting scene with the BC premier, a minor character that does not appear in Separation Two.

See, it's not the asshole's fault, it's the author and editor.

It seems that Separation Two was born out of disappointing mass market sales of Separation. As is so often the case in his fiction, the Americans are at fault. Sandra Martin got a reluctant Rohmer to discuss his rewrite in the 13 June 1981 Globe & Mail:

According to Rohmer, someone at Bantam in New York who knew nothing about Canada and less about art, designed the cover and wrote the copy on the back. Then the book was launched in Canada "without promotion" even though a television film of the book was in the works. The paperback was "a disaster." "It died and when it went out of print about a year ago, the rights reverted to me." In the meantime, Rohmer had moved to General Publishing, which wanted to re-release Separation in their PaperJacks line. Rohmer agreed, but suggested the book should be updated. And that's how Separation II [sic], which Rohmer suggests is "the same book yet different," came about.

Okay, a few quick observations:

• As a  teenager I owned that Bantam (Bantam/Seal, actually) copy of Separation. I remember it as being far superior to previous Rohmer covers in that it was something more than 72-point type against a grey or white background.
• I very much doubt the unnamed New York-based artist who designed the cover also wrote the back copy.
• Rohmer dodged a bullet in not having a tie-in edition to that gawdawful made-for-TV flick.
• Oh, for the days in which a three-year mass market run was considered "a disaster."

What I really want to address is the idea that Separation Two is "the same book yet different". No argument there, but why give it a different title? A novelist revisiting a work is not without precedent – hell, Dickens changed the ending to Great Expectations – but I can't help but think that PaperJacks was trying to pull a fast one. It really does stink. Nowhere in the cover copy is there so much as a hint that Separation Two is just Separation with a few dozen pages added. In fact, both bibliography and copyright page labour to give the impression that Separation is something altogether different.

Whatever does this mean for Ultimatum 2?

Update: Turns out my memory of the Bantam/Seal edition was spot on. The cover is by Paul Lehr, an American artist remembered primarily for his work on science fiction titles. I see no evidence that he wrote cover copy.  

Note: Much of this post is consists of observations I first made on the Reading Richard Rohmer blog. I've learned from the master.

Object and Access: A cheaply produced mass market paperback, most public library copies fell apart long ago. There are plenty of used copies listed for sale online. I've yet to find evidence of a second printing, so all are first editions, right?

Related posts:

Richard Rohmer Recycles (Again)
Kelley Pulls a Fast One

Still Reading Richard Rohmer. Is Alice Munro?

More than a month into the New Year and I'm still at it. So are my pals Chris Kelly and Stanley Whyte.

The books themselves have been a breeze; the last, Exxoneration, was really just a novella made to look like a novel through maps, technical drawings, clip art and appendices.

More padding than Craig Russell.

The real challenge has come in hunting down the darn things.

Time was Rohmer could be found in every bookstore and library in the land. Ultimatum, his 1973 debut novel, topped Canadian bestseller lists for nearly six months in hardcover, and did even better in paperback. Such was its success that the Americans noticed, publishing this edition:

The scene isn't in the novel. Never mind, the adventures of a no nonsense President piloting Air Force One around the arctic and ordering an invasion of Canada could not have failed to excite. New York publishers were much less interested in Exxoneration, the 1974 sequel, in which the invasion party retreats, leaving two hundred burning Yankee corpses on the tarmac outside arrivals at Toronto International Airport. There has never been an American edition.

North of the border, it seemed Richard Rohmer could do no wrong. Each fall a new novel, each novel a bestseller. His success was limited to Canada, and his success puzzled. In the 2 October 1976 Globe & Mail, no less a mind than the great Stephen Lewis searched for an explanation:

Perhaps it's all the hype and determined salesmanship of McClelland and Stewart. Perhaps, more likely, it's that Rohmer neatly touches Canadian themes in a country starving for Canadian themes. Perhaps the very superficiality engages interest without emotion, so that there's no investment of the mind and spirit, and the reading is easy. Or perhaps we're just a not very discriminating public…

Perhaps it's all four, but I think the second is key. My pre-teen self was starved for Canadian fiction, and the wire racks of Kane's Super Drug Mart in Kirkland, Quebec, provided what the Lakeshore School Board did not. Rohmer's talent lay in an uncanny ability to tap into his fellow citizens' fantasies and fears. Separation, about the threatened succession of Quebec, was published the month before the surprise victory of the Parti Québécois in the 1976 provincial election.

Separation proved to be the end of the Rohmer's rapid-fire round. When he returned with his fifth novel, four years later, the momentum was gone. Balls! was another bestseller, sure, but nothing like the others; most of the publicity focussed on the ribald title. Its 1980 publication marked the beginning of a long slow decline.

Just five Rohmer novels are in print today, three of which are bound up in an omnibus edition. How different are the days when we were not only reading Rohmer but passing him around. My copy of Ultimatum had once been given as a gift by Eric Kierans.

Our local library doesn't have one of Rohmer's thirty-one books, nor does its much larger sister in Stratford. The copy of Exodus/UK pictured at the top of this post had to be brought in from Huron County through an interlibrary loan. Starting in on it late last night I noticed this:

Time was we all read Richard Rohmer.

Related post:

Resolved to Reading Richard Rohmer

Selling From a Sea She'll Only Drag You Down

From a Seaside Town
Norman Levine
London: Macmillan, 1970

Challenge: Draw attention to a neglected, critically acclaimed novel by a neglected, critically acclaimed writer.

Solution: Title change. Bare breasts. 

Don Mills, ON: Paperjacks, 1975

Did it work? The copy pictured above is the only one I've ever come across. 

Subsequent editions – much more common – follow Macmillan's example.

Ottawa: Deneau & Greenberg, 1980

Erin, ON: Porcupine's Quill, 1993

The alternate title explained:

Related posts:

Selling The Strange One

Selling The Nymph and the Lamp
Selling The Unfulfilled
The American Version: The N Word
The American Version: No Colours, Fewer Colors

The Year of Grade School Readers, Cute Kittens and Dead Anglos Hanging in the Streets of Montreal

That would be 1968, the very same year in which Canadian Notes & Queries made its debut. It was my honour to become the first contributor to 'CNQ Timeline', a new feature in which writers reflect on a specific year in Canadian literature.

Nineteen-sixty-eight just happens to be the year in which I learned to read. This was my first book:

Surprises and Mr. Whiskers, its sequel, seem of a different world. This illustration captures Jack, the protagonist, travelling in the family car without seatbelt!

But then 1968 was a different world, wasn't it. Those too young to remember should consider this headline from the Vancouver Sun:

That 'B.C. Mother of Three' would be Alice Munro, who took home the 1968 Governor General's Award for Dance of the Happy Shades, her first book. In the 'CNQ Timeline' piece I refer to that years's GGs as the most disastrous in the awards' history. I'll happily take on anyone who thinks otherwise.

Takers?

The first book I ever read from 1968 was Bruce Powe's Killing Gound. The cover to that edition, published in 1977 by PaperJacks...

...was much more tame than the original, pseudonymous Peter Martin Associates edition.

Not my 1968. Not the Canada I knew then. Not the Canada I know now.

I'm being polite here. My less than polite writing on Killing Ground can be found in magazine itself.

Subscriptions – a mere $20 – can be had here.

Related post:

Tan Ming's Disappointing Post-Apocalyptic World