Guilty Pleasures: Escape from New York

The current decade may be the golden age of dystopian young-adult fiction, but the jaded, economically stagnant 1970s were the golden age of dystopian science fiction movies. They were cheap to make (plenty of abandoned factories and vacant lots to film in), and they reflected the American and European public's skepticism about the future. Examples include Silent Running (set in outer space but with an ecological catastrophe back on Earth), Soylent Green, Sleeper, Rollerball, Deathrace 2000, A Boy and His Dog, Logan's Run (both movie and TV series), the first television adaptation of Brave New World, the short-lived children's show Ark II, and, at the end of the decade, The Last Chase and Mad Max. While released in July 1981, Escape from New York should be included in this cohort, given that it grew out of four cultural and political developments of the 1970s: post-Watergate political disaffection, the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-81, rising crime rates, and the ongoing decay of what the opening voice-over calls “the once-great city of New York.”

The premise of the film is, I suspect, fairly well known. It is 1997, and a crime-ridden, embattled United States has become a police state, albeit a negligent one; to deal with its growing criminal population the U.S. government has turned Manhattan Island into a vast walled prison camp for undesirables. After the American president (Donald Pleasence) crash-lands in New York on his way to an important peace summit, condemned war hero Snake Plissken (Kurt Russell) is recruited to infiltrate Manhattan and rescue the prez. Mayhem, in the form of gun fights, car chases, an unexpected reunion with an old partner in crime (Harry Dean Stanton) and his squeeze (Adrienne Barbeau), and a climactic confrontation with the prison's capo, The Duke (Chef), ensues.

I became aware of EFNY in the summer of 1981, when my brother and I saw an ad for the board game version of the movie (produced by TSR Hobbies, the D&D people). We were thrilled to learn the game was based on a movie, and we nagged our mother until she took us to see it. I think she must have liked the film as well, because as I recall we went to see it twice in the theater, and many times on video thereafter. The movie did well in general release, making $25 million (four times its cost), creating a brief period of fame for director John Carpenter, turning former child-actor Kurt Russell into an action-movie hero, and even spawning a lousy sequel in 1996. The dystopian future it predicted did not, for the most part, come to pass. World War Three did not break out, the American violent crime rate dropped after 1990, and New York City recovered; even Manhattan's former crack houses are now high-rent apartments. (We do live in more of a police state than we did in 1981, thanks, curiously enough, to a plane crash or two in New York City.) It remains an appealing and entertaining movie nonetheless.

Part of Escape's lasting appeal comes from its memorable characters, each played by a first-rate actor or actress.*  It is great fun to watch Isaac Hayes take command of the stage without saying a word, Harry Dean Stanton connive and lie, Adrienne Barbeau flesh out her few lines with great facial expressions, Frank Doubleday camp it up as Romero, Donald Pleasence transform from a fearful wreck into a ball of murderous rage, and the disaffected anti-hero Kurt Russell develop a trace of conscience.  The movie also deftly blends three film genres, at least two of which remain popular: action movies, “Fall of New York” films – a discrete genre between 1970 and 1990 - and science fiction. The sci-fi trappings are restrained, limited to a few James-Bond gadgets and the prison warden's extensive surveillance computers**, and give the film an air of near-future realism, much like another 1981 sci-fi movie, Outland.  

It is as an action movie that Escape really shines. Carpenter took the existing conventions of action films and imparted his own brilliant, berserk twists to them. Most modern action films have running gunfights; EFNY has gunfights in which the protagonist uses his gun to perforate walls and then dive through the cut-outs.  Other action films have car chases; EFNY has a pimped-out town car chasing a taxi cab on a bridge covered in land mines. Some action films have a gladiatorial contest between the good guy and the bad guy; Escape has Snake fighting a seven-foot-tall professional wrestler with a nail-studded baseball bat. Many action films have comic relief; EFNY has a prisoners' drag show singing "Everyone's Coming to New York" and a lovable old cab driver (Ernest Borgnine) who flings molotov cocktails while listening to "Bandstand Boogie." All this in just an hour and forty minutes of run time. What's not to like?

Yes, I have heard that there is a remake in the works, and no, I don't plan to see it, unless it is directed by Edgar Wright or the Coen brothers.

Above image from Wikimedia Commons. Escape from New York is copyright (c) 1981 by Avco Embassy Pictures, Inc.

* With the exception of a few minor parts played by people of varying degrees of talent. Carpenter plays one of the helicopter pilots, and one of the Secret Service agents on Air Force One is played by Gerald Ford's son.

** Fun fact: computer animation was so expensive in the early 1980s that Carpenter “simulated” it with actual ink-drawn animation. To make the film's wire-frame "computer" animation of Manhattan, the FX technicians built a model of the city and lined the buildings' edges with glow-in-the-dark tape. Another fun fact: Escape's matte shots of Manhattan were painted by James Cameron.

Games That Don't Suck: 7 Wonders

(For a list of games in this series, click here and scroll down.)

Civilization-building games have been around since the publication of the Civilization board game in 1980, and they have been popular since Sid Meier developed the first Civilization computer game in the early 1990s. Such games, which require players to build resources, develop cities, make scientific breakthroughs, fight wars, and build monumental Wonders, can be very rewarding, but they generally also have complicated rules and take many hours to play. Game designers have been trying to develop a “Civilization lite” board game for some years, with limited success. With their 2010 game 7 Wonders, though, author Antoine Bauza and his marauding Belgian play-testers may have finally reached this goal, creating a game with the feel of a civ-builder but much less complexity and a much shorter play time.

In 7 Wonders players focus on developing a city associated with one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: Rhodes, Ephesus, or Babylon, for example. Game play takes place over three Ages of six turns each. During his/her turn, a player usually will focus on building up his/her city or constructing its wonder. A player may do one of three things on each turn:

Construct a building (the standard action),
Build a stage of his/her wonder, or
Cash in a card for 3 money, used to buy resources.

Wonders earn victory points, and each has a special ability associated with it that the player earns after building the middle stage – such as an extra resource, extra money, or a free science field (see below). The heart of the game, however, is the construction of city structures. Some of these produce raw materials, like wood or stone (sorry, Catan players: no sheep); some produce finished goods, like glass; some generate coins or give a commerce bonus; some generate military strength that helps earn military victory points; some (like temples and statues) simply give victory points; some give fields in a particular science (of which there are three, symbolized by a gear, a compass, and a tablet); and some, known as guilds, give victory points for certain sets of cards or other “criteria.”

On his/her turn, a player can build one structure or wonder stage provided s/he has sufficient resources for it. If the player's city doesn't have resource structures that produce some or all of the goods needed to buy the new building or stage, s/he can buy resources from a neighboring city for 2 coins per resource, provided that neighboring city actually produces that resource. One can only buy resources from the cities of one's immediate neighbors – the players to one's left and right. (This is one of the ways the designers have kept play time to an hour, even if there are more than 2-3 players.) There are also some structures that, once built, allow the player to build later Ages' structures for free – a workshop, for instance, allows a player to build a free laboratory.

The players' building choices are limited by the availability of resources and by the game's core playing mechanic: card-drafting. Each player starts each Age with seven cards, of which s/he selects one to build (or to use as a marker for a Wonder stage or to trade for three coins), passing the rest to the player sitting next to them. This gives players an opportunity to deny neighboring players the structures they might need to pursue a particular game strategy, like a military buildup or an accumulation of scientific buildings. On the next turn the player takes one card from her new hand, which she received from the player sitting next to her, and builds it (or uses it as a Wonder marker or for cash), and so on until they have only one card left, which they discard. This occurs after six turns and marks the end of an Age.

Before new Age cards are drawn and passed out, the players resolve military conflicts. Military structures generate from one to three crossed sword-and-shield symbols, representing each player's military power. Each player with military power will automatically fight a war at the end of each Age with their neighbors. Whoever has the most sword-and-shield symbols in these conflicts receives a military victory marker, ranging in value from 1 to 5 victory points (depending on the Age), for each battle they win. Each loser receives a defeat marker worth -1 points. Apparently these are fairly limited wars, which is just as well. Plenty of wargames on the market for those who prefer conflict simulations.

At the end of the game players earn victory points (VP) in seven ways:

1. for completing the stages of their Wonder
2. building civic structures that are worth a specified number of points
3. building certain mercantile structures that are worth victory points
4. building guilds and meeting the conditions on them
5. winning military conflicts
6. for their coins (1 VP per three coins, rounded down)
7. and for scientific fields, on an exponential scale. For each set of cards with the same scientific field (compass, tablet, or gear), the player receives a number of VP equal to the square of the number of cards. Players also receive another 7 VP for each set of three different fields. These points can really add up.

There are many different strategies for accumulating points, but in my experience a balanced approach works best. One can rack up a lot of points with a pure-science strategy, but someone who has been focusing instead on building civic structures, winning battles, and building their Wonder can usually accumulate more.

**

One of the nice features of the game is there are relatively few parts – just the seven “wonder boards” (the players' play mats), the cards representing structures (which can double as markers for stages of a wonder), coins, and military victory markers. There are no resource tokens because one cannot pile up resources from turn to turn, and because resources are automatically generated by everyone's resource structures. It is also a quick game to play, even with 6 or 7 players, because one can only interact (trade, fight) with one's immediate neighbors. And players need not merely focus on building up their own civilizations, because the drafting mechanic allows them to affect what cards their neighbors receive, and military conflicts can yield a lot of points for their winners toward the end of the game. The “screw-thy-neighbor” aspects of the game, however, do not dominate so much that they produce many hard feelings. The most common reaction I've heard from new players at the end of their first game is “Let's play again!”

Are there any shortcomings? 7 Wonders was designed for both American and European players, so some of the cards and Wonder boards use symbols whose meaning can be opaque to beginning players. Fortunately, these are decoded in the rule book. Also, some people might be deterred by the $49.99 price tag. As with Dominion, however, this game has at least $100 worth of replay value.

The Spiritual Emptiness We Seek

Hiero's Journey, Chapter Six:

(For the previous entry in this series, see here.)

Having been knocked unconscious again – I suspect Lanier has trouble knowing how to end a chapter – Our Hiero awakens in the hold of the Evil Unclean Mutants' lightning-gun boat. No good can come of this, we say to ourselves, and our suspicions are confirmed when Per Desteen is taken off-board, none too gently, by an EUM priest and a Hairy Howler heavy, “Chee-Chowk.”* The Evil Mutants have taken Hiero to a small fort on a lifeless black island, Manoon, located somewhere near present-day Mackinac. The EUM priest, “S'duna,” tells Hiero that the isle has “the spiritual emptiness we seek to encourage the growth of pure thought” (133). S'duna would be right at home in one of the Bond rip-off movies of the 1960s, perhaps even in Operation Double 007.

S'duna and Chee-Chowk fling Hiero into a locked cell, where the super-psychic gun-slinging priest-warrior springs into action, psychically speaking. After erecting a shield against the Evil Mutant priests' Psychic Bad Touches, Hiero manages to find a mental “wavelength” that lets him tap into the priests' thoughts and perceptions without compromising his own defenses. He finds that only one of the priests is monitoring him, while S'duna, his handler, is drugged out and dreaming of recreational pleasures “foul beyond belief” (137). This euphemism, incidentally, was already quaint when Lanier wrote Hiero's Journey. Today, saying “foul beyond belief” merely means one has never been on the Internet, nor seen a John Waters movie. It also leads me to wonder whether the Church in Hiero's time still practices the sacrament of absolution, and whether Hiero, as an ordained priest, has ever heard any confessions. Probably not, given his squeamishness about the Evil Mutants' “perversions.”

It does not take Hiero long to effect his escape. He uses his telepathy to find Gorm, who along with Luchare has escaped the mutant attack and is now a safe distance from Manoon, and promises to join him soon. The killah priest then plants a psychic command – go check on the prisoner, stat – in the monitoring priest's mind, and, when the unsuspecting Evil Mutant unlocks his cell, kills him with a Psychic Headbutt (unintentionally, but gladly). On the way out of the fortress Hiero runs into Chee-Chowk, who seems glad to have the opportunity to mash the escapee. Unfortunately for the Howler, Hiero had just found his sword in a nearby storeroom, and after a short fight he buries the blade in his assailant's head. “A pity, Chee-Chowk,” he mused aloud. “Perhaps if decent men had raised you, you'd have been just another kind of man, not a foul, night-haunting ogre” (145). This is as close as Lanier comes to the egalitarianism of Terry Pratchett, and one must give him credit for not casting all evil mutants as irreparably so.

Some evil mutants are apparently less competent than others. The Evil Unclean Mutant priests were apparently too overconfident to guard the harbor, and Hiero manages to steal a sailboat and head out into the lake. Shortly after Hiero's departure the Evil High Priest S'duna wakes up, finds his prize prisoner has escaped, and mentally commands giant lampreys to attack Hiero's boat! Eek! Is this the end for Our Hero? Probably not, because there are still nine chapters to go!

Though let's admit it: we're still mildly curious about what happens next.

**

Coming next: The reunited adventurers discover some radioactive ruins, like you do.

* Chee-Chowk is Hairy Howler slang for “It's Society's Fault.”

Hep Cats and Man-Rats

Hiero's Journey, Chapter Five:

(For the previous entry in this series, feast your eyes on this.)

After introducing the newest member of his motley group to Gorm the Bear, who startled Luchare when he unexpectedly rejoined his companions at the end of chapter four, Hiero condescends to hear the comely young princess's story. Luchare is at best a two-dimensional character, so rather than tell us anything about her, Lanier uses her introductory story to tell the reader about her homeland, D'alwah (presumably a post-apocalypse version of That Most Evil of States). Luchare confirms that, like her, everyone in D'alwah is black, as was the man, the “Elevener,” who rescued her from her initial captivity. The small kingdom is one of quasi-medieval walled cities, though its population is slightly more heterogeneous than that of Hiero's Metz Republic, including small resident communities of Muslims and “Davids” - presumably Jews, presumably also black. This is probably the only aspect of Lanier's 75th-century apocalyptic wasteland that Sammy Davis, Jr., would have found familiar.

The “Eleveners,” Hiero recalls, were followers of the so-called “Eleventh Commandment:” Thou Shalt Not Destroy the Earth or the Life Thereon. Lanier presents them as idealized secular Franciscans: they are itinerant, mendicant, deeply pacifistic, and work as veterinarians and teachers. The 11er who rescued Luchare took her on a long journey through various forests and small villages, heading northwest-ward from D'alwah, until the duo's luck ran out and they fell afoul of another Evil Mutant group, the “Man-Rats” (as Hiero prosaically calls them). The rat-men agree to let Luchare go on the condition that the Elevener surrenders peacefully to them; presumably they wish to eat him, or perhaps obtain from him instruction on how to solve common mazes. There is apparently honor among evil mutant man-rats, for they let Luchare go.  She is soon recaptured by another band of slavers.

These new captors took Luchare and other slaves to a busy “harbor town” on the Inland Sea, Neeyana, whose name apparently derives from the ancient province of Indiana. Like modern Hoosier cities, it is a place of “battered looking churches” and “sullen” people, suffused with a thin aura of evil (107). There the slavers took ship, intending to sell Luchare at another port as a concubine, but they were shipwrecked on the north shore of the Inland Sea. The blonde barbarians we met in Chapter Four rescued the slavers in exchange for Luchare, whom they intended to sacrifice to giant birds, like you do.

After telling her story and putting together a new traveling outfit, Luchare joins Mssr. Desteen and his increasingly motley group as they traveled along the north shore of the Inland Sea, a place of scrub and sandbars. Hiero is somewhat distracted by faint mental voices, and rather than ignoring them or trying to shield himself from them, our Hero instead exercises a bit of selective idiocy and tries to amplify the voices with the late S'nerg's psychic antenna. Immediately the Evil Mutant Operator on the other end tries to enslave Hiero, then, failing in the attempt, tries to stroke his ego by telling him how deadly he is and offering him membership in the Evil Unclean Mutant Conspiracy. Hiero, who considers this club a “sick, twisted” one (112), declines the Evil Mutant's kind offer, and instead breaks off contact and starts teaching Luchare how to build her own mental shield against the EUMC.

Lanier then has Hiero haul out that useful foreshadowing device, the seer stones. Per Desteen draws the Spear, the Fish, Clasped Hands, Lightning, and Boots, which indicate he will soon travel to Spearfish, South Dakota, to buy footwear and batteries and meet with his Allstate agent. Just kidding. He interprets the casting as “journey, battle, friendship, and storm,” which is only partially correct. At the very end of the chapter, Hiero and his companions are indeed attacked by an enemy force, specifically, a gang of 200-pound giant mutant monkeys, their minds full of “intelligence and malice” (127). The “Hairy Howlers,” as Hiero descriptively but reductively calls them, would normally be no match for Hiero and Klootz, but this time they have backup: a motorized boat operated by Evil Unclean Mutants, who knock down Per Desteen with some sort of deck-mounted lightning gun. Pow!

Coming next: Hiero finds “the spiritual emptiness we seek.” Plus, giant lampreys! Eek!

Games That Don't Suck: Ticket to Ride

(For a list of games in this series, click here and scroll down.)

Of the board games reviewed here thus far, Ticket to Ride (TTR, for short) has come closest to entering the mainstream, to the extent of having appeared on television. (Granted, the show in question was The IT Crowd). This does not surprise me. TTR is easy to learn, plays quickly, includes a bit of luck, allows both individual and player-vs.-player strategic decisions, and – unlike Monopoly and other "mainstream" games – is non-language-dependent. I have played many online games of TTR with European players, and have taught the game to Chinese and Korean students and scholars.

The premise of TTR is that the players are early-20^th-century travelers and tycoons, trying to claim railroad routes so that they may complete journeys ("tickets") from one city to another. Each player begins with two or three tickets to complete and may acquire more during the game. Routes between cities consist of between one and six colored or grey spaces; some cities, particularly major rail centers, have two parallel rail routes connecting them. To complete a route, a player must collect and play a number of train cards equal to the number of spaces in the route. The cards must all match the color of the route, unless the route is grey, in which case they need only be of one individual color (all red, all blue, etc.) Once a player claims a route, s/he marks it with his/her railroad-car pieces; thereafter, no other player may claim that route.* One of the strategic elements of the game is the ability of players to block one another's routes. Players must keep this in mind as they decide whether to wait and claim longer (and more valuable) routes, or seize shorter routes in order to complete their tickets before someone else blocks them.

On a player's turn, s/he may perform one of three actions: 1) draw up to two cards from the train card supply, 2) claim a route on the board, or 3) acquire new destination tickets.  Claiming a route is straightforward enough (see the previous paragraph), as long as one has acquired enough train cards of the appropriate color. The train card supply has two sections: an open layout where five cars are displayed for all players to see, and a face-down draw pile. Players may take two cars from either the open layout or the draw pile (or both). Some train cards are actually locomotives, and these are wild: each counts as one train card of any color. A locomotive costs two cards if it is in the face-up layout, but only one if a player blind-draws it from the face-down draw pile. 

As one takes train cards from the face-up layout, one replaces them from the draw pile. This may be very useful to a player trying to accumulate train cards of a particular color, but may be even more useful to that player's opponents!

A player may also, on his/her turn, acquire new destination tickets.  If s/he chooses to do so, the player draws three tickets from the ticket pile, and must keep at least one of them, though s/he can choose to keep two or all three. Tickets are worth between 4 and 22 points (depending on the distance between the cities on the ticket), but they are a liability until they are completed: each uncompleted ticket costs the player its face value in points at the end of the game.

Players earn points in two additional ways: 1) by claiming routes, and 2) by having the longest continuous route at the end of the game. Routes are worth an ascending number of points depending on their length, ranging from 1 point for a one-car route to 15 points for six-car routes. The longest-route bonus is worth 10 points; in my experience it is usually only important as a tie-breaker between two evenly-matched players. It does introduce another strategic decision into the game: should a player create a single long route to claim the bonus, and perhaps end the game before the other players can finish their tickets, or construct several web-like train routes in order to complete the most tickets?

Players begin the game with 45 train-car pieces with which to claim routes.  Once a player is down to two (or fewer) pieces, all players all are allowed one more turn, and then the game ends. Whoever has the most points wins the game, and all the honors that they may prudently claim.

While I occasionally grow tired of Ticket to Ride, it is usually only after I have played the game several dozen times. Half as many plays of Risk or Monopoly would leave me wanting to chew off my own leg to escape. I may safely say, therefore, that TTR is an easy-to-learn game with ample strategy and a high replay value – and, if you grow tired of playing with your friends and family, versions are available for play online, on your PC, or on your iOS device. (There are also several non-U.S. variants of Ticket to Ride, using new regional boards and new rules, for those tired of the 1900 U.S. map.)


* Unless it is a double-track route in a four-person game.

Games That Don't Suck: Alhambra

(For a list of games in this series, click here and scroll down.)

Alhambra, the name given to the 14th-century palace of the sultans of Grenada, is also one of the best tile-laying games available. It is additionally the name of a brand of beer, which is nearly enough to justify for it an entry in this series.

In Alhambra, each player constructs his or her own version of the famous Grenadan palace, using square tiles representing the complex's various features – gardens, arcades, towers, and so forth. Each tile has a purchase cost and a color that determines its value in victory points. Some also have thick black lines, or walls, that may increase the tile's final point value but also make it harder to place in one's palace. One acquires palace tiles by purchasing them from a small mat, the “market,” with four stalls, each identified with to a particular color (ostensibly the nationality of that tile's builders, but that isn't important). Each tile can only be purchased with currency of the color corresponding to its market stall. Players can overpay for a particular tile, but if they pay its exact value they get an extra action. Managing one's money, which all players obtain from a common pool, is one of several tasks players of Alhambra must undertake while playing.

On his or her turn, each player may draw money cards from the bank – at least one card, and more than one if their total value is 5 or less – buy a palace tile from the appropriate market stall, or redesign their palace. “Redesigning” sounds complicated, but isn't; when a player buys a tile, he or she must either add it immediately to their palace, or place it in their “reserve,” where it earns no points. Players with reserve tiles can then add them to their palace, or swap them for existing palace tiles, as a redesign action.

Adding tiles to one's palace is the most important part of the game, since it determines how many victory points one scores. Players must position their newly-added palace tiles orthogonally to existing palace tiles – that is, the new tile must share at least one side with an old tile. (Players each start with one 0-point tile, the Fountain of the Lions, already in play.) Some palace tiles have walls on one or more of their sides; these inhibit palace construction but can also score extra points for the player. In placing a tile with a wall, a player must be able to trace an orthogonal line from the new tile to an old tile that is not blocked by a wall. (The rulebook explains that a “visitor” to your Alhambra must be able to walk from tile to tile without going outside or running into a wall.) Walls make building more challenging, but players do earn points for their longest continuous wall at the end of the game.

The game begins with two scoring cards sorted into the money-card deck (the deck from which the bank is replenished); when each of them turns up, players initiate the first and second scoring rounds. The third scoring round occurs when there are insufficient unpurchased palace tiles to replenish the tile market – that's also the end of the game. In each scoring round players earn points determined by 1) the different colors of tiles they have in their palace, and, more importantly 2) whether they have more of that color in play than anyone else. In scoring round 1, the player with the most tiles of a particular color earns points for it; in round 2, both the player with the most and the player with the second-most tiles of a given color earn points (more for the first-place winner), and at game's end points are given to the top three tile-builders of each particular color. The players congratulate the person with the most overall points, drink a pint or two of Alhambra beer, and then wait for Ferdinand and Isabella to show up and demand their surrender.

Like Dominion, Alhambra is a simple game with a little luck (the money cards and tiles appear randomly, though in large enough groups to permit choice) and a lot of decision-making. There are money-management decisions: players need to choose which currency cards to take from the bank and whether to save up low-denomination money for exact purchases or spend what they have before other players buy the tiles they want. They must make design decisions: should they maximize the interior area of their palace or focus on building the longest walls? They must also keep track of the architectural “horse-race” between players, who are competing to have the most tiles of each particular color, particularly the more valuable colors, in their Alhambra. If the game has a flaw, it lies in the thinness of its “skin:” while Alhambra is allegedly set in 14th-century Spain, there is very little about the game's mechanics that is reminiscent of that setting (and the artwork, while pretty, is somewhat abstract). If you want a game to carry you away to a different time or place, like Middle Earth or the European Theater of World War Two (or the Middle-Earth Theater of WWII), this isn't the best choice. Otherwise, though, this is a quick, easy-to-learn game with a lot of depth, and a good introduction to a game mechanic (tile-building) with which most people are unfamiliar.

Illustrations, top to bottom: a sample game of Alhambra, courtesy of Martin Sommerfeld; extreme close-up of an 8-point green tile; recommended post-game refreshment.

Not a Disney Princess

Hiero's Journey, Chapter Four:

For a chapter-by-chapter index to this series, click here.
(For the previous installment in this series, look no further than here.)

Hiero and his companions finally reach the Inland Sea, whose waters are plied by merchants and pirates, and whose shores are adorned, here and there, with the radioactive ruins of old "First Strike targets" (75), still deadly 5,000 years after the final war. The sea is also, Hiero observes, home to a variety of mutant critters: huge four-footed amphibious grazers that resemble hippopotami; huge flying fish big enough to eat the grazers; and giant gulls with 30-foot wingspans, perhaps large enough to eat the flying fish.  The giant gulls may explain why the Unclean Evil Mutants don't use gliders in this area.  Or maybe Lanier thought we'd had enough of evil gliders for now.

Hiero is looking rather unheroic when he reaches the sea: matted hair and beard, "now stiff with filth" (76), and dirty clothes.  The party stops to wash; Gorm goes whuffling into the water, while Hiero helps Klootz clean his antlers.  In an aside, Lanier tells us the two have been together since "the great annual calf roundup six years ago" (81).  If there's ever a TV show called "Cute Overload: Post-Apocalyptic Mutant Edition," we know what's going to be on the first episode.

In addition to pirates and merchants, the Inland Sea is apparently also home to primitive screwheads (to borrow a term from Army of Darkness), for shortly after reaching the lakes Hiero foils the attempted sacrifice of a captive princess by barbarian savages.  The sacrificial victim was bound by a long cord to a stake, and was being savaged by the giant gulls (whom she was trying to fend off) while the barbarians and their kilted, drum-beating priests looked on.  We later discover that the woman's name is Luchare, and that she is in fact a teenage princess, a runaway from a far-off kingdom called D'alwah (likely near the old river or state) whose inhabitants live in walled cities, keep slaves of their own, and make war on one another.  Hiero finds this rather barbaric at the time, but he expresses no regrets about having rode in and rescued Luchare from the savages who have tied her up.

Did I mention that Luchare is African-American, and that the savages who were in the process of sacrificing her have white skin and blonde hair – an "archaic human stock," the biracial Hiero calls them (85)?  I suspect Lanier initially devised the rescue scene while recalling Conan stories or bad old movies, then decided to subvert the inherent racial stereotypes by inverting the captors' and captives' races.  It also appears that Hiero doesn't really care about racial differences, except to note that blonde white people are rare in his experience, and to indicate (by carefully describing Luchare's hair, skin, and facial features, rather than simply giving her a racial label) that he's never seen someone of African descent before but thinks that Luchare is more "normal"-looking than her captors.  I suppose, though, that if you've just been interacting with humanoid animal mutants and evil psychic specters who dissolve into putrid slime, human differences seem rather minor.

We might also note another authorial deviation from stereotype: Luchare, while very young, isn't a vaporous fainting damsel, but rather a fairly competent fighter, well-muscled and able to defend herself.  She takes a spear to help defend the party when then run into a canoe full of Blonde Barbarians some distance down the shore – apparently, the kilted priests had a mild case of telepathy and were able to summon reinforcements – though she doesn't get a chance to use it.  Instead, Hiero orders Klootz to submerge and swim under the canoe, then re-emerge from beneath and smash the vessel (and its passengers) to pieces.  Take that, honkies!

Coming next: Luchare recounts her own journey, from the walled medieval cities of future Delaware to the mutant-infested ports of future Indiana.