It’s been almost a year since I started The RollerBlog, and I finally own my first book about the 1970s. The book is called The Collectible ’70s: A Price Guide to the Polyester Decade by Michael Jay Goldberg, and it is a veritable compendium to the entire decade. The Collectible ’70s is especially geared towards collectors, and includes details on what one would expect to pay for various seventies treasures from Tupperware catalogs and mushroom-shaped wall hangings to bongs and leisure suits.

Even though I am not much of a collector (yet… anyways), I have enjoyed browsing through the book and learning more about my favorite decade (sorry eighties - you are a close second!). The first chapter of the book, Around the ’70s House, describes the high tech and earthy/natural styles that were both popular around the seventies home. Molded resin wall clock with mushrooms and ladybugs? Check. Lava lamp? Check. Shag carpet rug rake? Check. Hi tech plastic 8 track player? Check.

The Collectible ’70s continues with a chapter on nostalgia for the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s that was commonplace during the 1970s, as well as counterculture (underground comix, Monster T-shirts, pinback buttons) to pop culture items influenced by the sexual revolution and drug culture. The book also includes chapters on the handicrafts craze (embroidered wall hangings of daisies and owls, anyone?) to fads such as kung fu, CB Radios, mood rings, smiley faces, and Sillisculpts.

One of my favorite sections focuses on TV collectibles. Apparently I have only scratched the surface of seventies television so far on The RollerBlog - I haven’t even thought about All in the Family, Laverne & Shirley, Three’s Company, The Bionic Woman, Love Boat, Mork and Mindy… the list goes on. To my delight, the book also includes an entire chapter on Sid & Marty Krofft’s shows (Land of the Lost plastic dinosaurs) and another one on The Muppet Show (Fozzie the Bear hand puppet). Not to mention midnight movies (Rocky Horror Picture Show poster), music (a memorial Elvis bust), punk & new wave (a 1978 Patti Smith Group record)… and an obligatory chapter on disco (collectible Saturday Night Fever trash can!).

So, all in all a good read. I expect I’ll be referring to The Collectible ’70s in the future whenever I need some seventiespiration.

A big thank you to Jim Sutherland introducing me to this book and for providing me with a copy.

This weekend, I travelled to the other side of Washington state to visit my Aunt and Uncle. They live on a farm out in the country, and have three chickens, two dachshunds, and a lovely view of the rolling countryside. For a city girl like me accustomed to cars and noise, I always find a visit to their farm to be a relaxing and enjoyable experience.  Plus they are wonderful people

As I drove across the state, I noticed the addition of wind farms in especially windy areas along the I-90 corridor. With the price of gas at $4 per gallon, renewable energy has particularly been on my mind lately.   

When I found a copy of Producing Your Own Power: How to Make Nature’s Energy Sources Work for You (1974) in the guest bedroom, I couldn’t help but pick it up and thumb through it.  Edited by Carol Hupping Stoner, the book has chapters on wind power, water power, wood power, methane power, and solar power.

With the renewed focus on natural energy sources, scientists and businesses are scrambling to find new renewable sources of energy for our ever-increasing energy needs.  But these ideas are not new ones.  The technology has been around for years, as it is easy to see by perusing a book such as this one published in the mid-seventies.

I suppose it takes $4 per gallon gas prices to get folks to finally sit up get serious about finding alternative forms of energy.

It is Wednesday once again.

Arthur Dent from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy may have had a difficult time getting the hang of Thursdays, but I find Wednesday to be the most annoying day of the week.

Being as it is no closer to the beginning of the week then it is to the end, Wednesday is caught in a kind of distressing limbo. Thursday is traditionally my busiest work day of the week, but I always seem to feel a bit relieved once Thursday rolls around. Thursday is *almost* Friday, which means the weekend is that much closer.

And so, I shall endeavor to bring a bit of joy to this otherwise dull and soulless day of the week. And I can think of no better way than with a bit of disco.

Happy Wednesday, everyone.

I picked up the book Half Past Human for free a few weeks ago at a bookstore. That’s right; they were giving the book away. I couldn’t resist the tagline on the front “Awakening to manhood is deadly when your whole world is watching,” or the back cover which read:

Get Yourself a Female! It was a direct order. Tinker was a Good Citizen of the hive, he had no choice. The time had come to give up his neuter status and become polarized. The Big Earth Society wanted Tinker to mate. But no one had prepared Tinker for sexual activation, nor for a woman like Mu Ren. From that moment on, Tinker was no longer a Good Citizen of the hive. Suddenly Tinker knew he wanted more. He wanted out. Tinker had become a man…

Wow. This book promised to be the cheesiest book ever. I couldn’t wait to get it home and start reading.

Half Past Human by T.J. Bass, c. 1971

The year is 2349. The Earth’s citizens have evolved into a species with four toes called the Nebish. Over three trillion Nebish live underground in crowded shaft cities, subsisting on tasteless protein bars and the occasional flavored food. Few Nebish will risk going aboveground to be baked alive by the sun’s rays. The Hunters, armed with protective gear and drugged into a blood-thirsty frenzy, are the only ones who travel Outside to hunt the five-toeds and to protect the crops tended by machines.

Buckeyes, coweyes, and jungle bunnies are the hunted. This species has five toes on each foot and ekes out an existence on the Earth’s surface. These aborigines live primitively and use stone tools to avoid the metal detectors of the Huntercraft. There are only one million five-toeds left on Earth, and their numbers are slowly being depleted by the Hunters who bring their lifeless bodies back to the shaft cities as trophies.

To control the population and to suppress the bad five-toed gene, the Nebish are not allowed to mate without authorization. When Tinker, a mechanic who maintains the Huntercraft, and his wife have a son with five toes, they decide to flee Outside rather than face the anguish of losing their son to the garbage chute. Once Outside, they join a band of buckeyes who are determined to flee from the Hunters and to journey to the paradise promised by Olga, a mysterious deity. Unbeknownst to Tinker and the members of his new tribe, buckeyes around the world and even some Nebishes are rallying as if an unseen force is guiding their actions…

—

So… my take on this book is that it is not nearly as terrible as I first thought it would be. It was actually fairly engaging… once I got past the first 100 pages or so. As noted in this review in the SF Signal, the book’s writing style is extremely difficult to follow. Between the obscure medical terminology (T.J. Bass is a physician) and the terms invented by Bass to describe aspects of life in the future, I had a difficult time following the narrative in the beginning. Even more frustrating is Bass’s penchant for frequently switching perspectives between characters and even inanimate objects without adequate warning - especially with the introduction of new characters. I kept finding myself re-reading pages, trying to determine who was doing what.

However, once I got into the rhythm of the book, I was interested enough in the plot to keep reading. The book raises some intriguing themes - population control, ecology, intervention of technology in the gene pool, artificial intelligence, and utopian/dystopian societies to name a few. I am interested enough that I will probably read the book’s sequel The Godwhale. As attested to by this blog post and this review on the Strange Words web site, Half Past Human certainly has a rabid fan base, and the book even was nominated for the Nebula Award in 1971.

So, go figure. Although I still think that no book should take 100 pages to get into, in this case I’m not sorry that I read it. I guess in this case the lesson is “don’t judge a book by its cover,” as the cover really has nothing to do with the actual book. But the cover does take the cake for being one of the cheesiest covers of all time…

Tags Half Past Human . T. J. Bass