Lionel Fanthorpe has an extensive biography and resume, and I suspect a lot of my research sources were written by the man himself. He is and was a priest, dental technician, and teacher. He belongs to a wide variety of prestigious organizations, including Mensa and the Ghost Club. He has a successful press that prints his current efforts, a series of books on UFOs and the secrets of the Freemasons and such. But that's not why I've brought him into the spotlight today. From the late 1950s through the 1960s, Fanthorpe wrote 150-odd sci-fi novels, producing nearly 90 of them in a three year period--that comes out to about one novel every two weeks. In a desperate and impoverished market his books were endlessly published under increasingly preposterous pseudonyms, including John E. Muller, Leo Brett, and Karl Ziegfried. As if this wasn't incredible enough, Fanthorpe's method of composition also defies belief. He would curl up underneath an old rug with a dictaphone and ramble for several hours before transcribing the ensuing mess to the written page. The result is stream-of-consciousness gold, a string of contrivances and padding built to an art form. For indeed, the cherry at the top of the cake is the fact that Fanthorpe's books are just as amazing as his life and methods.
Frozen Planet opens in the 23rd Century, at the base of a mysterious group called the Teep, led by the sadistic Lew Kefler. Kefler is torturing Mel Decca, apparently for information concerning "the Sleepers." Slowly, we learn that Decca wants to protect the Sleepers while Kefler strives to kill them--the secret of who the Sleepers are remains a mystery for most of the book. Decca is freed by the ghostly image of his lady-love Delia, apparently astrally projecting from...elsewhere. He escapes, boarding a passenger starship in the process. Here, he meets psychiatrist and general ass-kicker Randall Rogers (presumably a relative of Buck?), to whom he reveals he is not a human being, but rather an immortal alien. In fact, he is one of the Sleepers, and Kefler's people are the Sleepers' ancient foes. They will spread evil across the universe if the Sleepers are destroyed before they can awake. If this plot sounds relatively straightforward, don't worry. Every time you get a handle on things, there's another absurd addition to the story, and whether that takes the form of pirates with eye infections or the sudden appearance of Atlantis, it's all great.
That having been said--Fanthorpe is not nearly as crazy as Harry Stephen Keeler. While I would love for another Keeler to exist, the man created enough in his own life that imitators may oversaturate the world in wonder. Fanthorpe doesn't go terribly far outside of the familiar tropes of the era he wrote in. Frozen Planet's concepts were what Ray Bradbury or Poul Anderson came up with on lazy days. It will entertain casual fans of the Golden Age of Sci-Fi even if it stands a chance of infuriating more hardcore followers of that era. Generally, however, Fanthorpe's concepts don't matter. It's how they're employed. Much like Keeler, the unlikely twist is one of Fanthorpe's motifs--a side-effect of his writing style. And ultimately, what makes Fanthorpe as fun as Keeler is his particular set of idiosyncracies that just happen to include unlikely twists.
Throughout Frozen Planet we see that Fanthorpe does not trust the audience to understand his similes and metaphors. So, he not only repeats them in two or three different ways, but he mutates them so that they go back to not making sense. Oftentimes, these metaphors are bound up his other tools, such as melodrama. Take this, for instance:
"'Brogan is evil,' [said Decca,] 'But Kefler is the essence of it! Brogan is very dark grey--Kefler is so black, he is almost our laboratory friend, the hypothetical black body, the character who radiates pure heat and reflects no light. I mean that he's black metaphorically speaking. He's rather a handsome-looking devil in his way, but that white skin of his is like a mask. He's like a whitewashed tomb that's full of corruption inside. Kefler!' He spat the name over his short wave space-suit radio. 'Kefler!'"
I rest my case!
Saying nothing of the racism in that paragraph, I would like to point out that they have to specify that Kefler is a Handsome CaucasianTM because Fanthrope doesn't really bother with physically describing his characters. That's fine, I like literary mysteries. However despite establishing Mel Decca to be an immortal, he is an immortal without a real backstory. No one else in the book has a past, why should he? There are a few limp attempts at pulling one of those, "Ah, yes, I knew da Vinci!" moments a la Mr. Flint from Star Trek, but by and large we are lead to believe that Decca walked the Earth for thousands of years with almost nothing happening to him. The present is what matters in this book--the present, and the action happening in it. It's pure self-indulgence, a nonstop rush of images and battles, with no darlings having been killed. It smells like freedom.
It's not just that the book ignores the past, either--it also ignores the future. The world Decca and Rogers live in is almost completely sans description. Humanity has settled on Mars and Venus, and has a large space program of some kind, but that's basically it. What's worse is that it's heavily implied that culture never progress past 1967, as all famous artists, scientists, and philosophers who are name-dropped are from the 19th and 20th Centuries. H.P. Lovecraft and H. Rider Haggard are still household names, and in fact are the household names. 2243 never saw the publication of the great ode of George Klontarf, Space Poet Laureate, I guess. It would not be absurd for something to be compared to a "20th Century Dodge Caravan" or "20th Century electric microwave" in Frozen Planet, which never ceases to be amusing. In the world of sci-fi writing, tricks like that are one of the unforgivable sins, and seeing it repeated so many times made me laugh--a sad laugh, maybe, but a laugh all the same. Truly, you must turn off your sensibilities of great literature when reading this. Have fun or you will drown.
I have been so lucky. The first two authors I've featured in this column were exceptionally prolific, and thus I have as much material as I could ever hope for twice over. And I haven't even started yet.
Frozen Planet could maybe serve as primer material for The Riddle of the Traveling Skull. It will sing you a lullaby, numbing your senses and preparing you for true madness. Frozen Planet is just as fun as Riddle but the author takes himself significantly less seriously. And that makes degrees of difference. I wish more writers would throw parties for their readers in the way Lionel Fanthorpe does.
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