THE SURVIVALIST #36 OPERATION PHOENIX BY JERRY AHERN SHARON AHERN BOB ANDERSON

Copyright 2019.

The Globalist conspiracy to form a one world government is meeting with success. The alien KI and their Russian allies have attacked the minor governments of Britain and Spain effectively destroying their opposition. The major powers of the U.S., New Germany and Australia stand down and let them take over thanks to the puppet leaders of these nation. Yet the Rourke family is now ready to take the fight to the enemy. After faking their deaths they with their followers are now safely hidden in Retreat II in Missouri. Already an alliance is forming with a faction of the KI. Also they have the mysterious alien Keeper on their side. Yet they have to fight off a kooky religious group in Missouri. Rourke goes to search for a third Chinese city that survived the Night of the War. There he finds allies in the fight for freedom.

So there is some sad news to announce. Bob Anderson the main writer for the revived series has passed away. He died of heart complication on January 31 at 72. Without him I don’t know what the future for this series holds. I have enjoyed the new books. Sure they go off on some weird tangents and meander along in plot but they were always interesting and entertaining. He did get the characters of the Rourke family right and the stories still felt like Survivalist books because of that. It seems poignant that he ended with a tribute to his Air Force buddy that just recently died. He based the alien Keeper on him. He writes “Allen, I’ll see you when I see you, old friend.”

Rest in Peace.

SWAMPMASTER UNHOLY ALLIANCE BY JAKE SPENCER

Copyright 1992.

John Firecloud the leader of the resistance against the Neo-Nazis National Front are enjoying their recent victory. At night three men try to kill Firecloud a.k.a. Swampmaster. The three men are part of the Seminole tribe. Yet they are addicts to Livewire a drug manufactured in Cuba. The addicts were put up to betraying their people by a drug lord named Bootjack. Swampmaster and his people track the traitors to Bootjack’s hideout. What follows is a boring long chase. Automatic weapon fire is ineffective against a guy on a motorcycle so Swampmaster and his brother Coonan just decide to drive up next to the guy, drag him off the cycle and stick a knife in his throat. Bootjack gets away.

At Bootjack’s former hideout they discover an insidious alliance being formed. Bootjack the major drug dealer in Florida is uniting with Andonis Morfesis an organized kingpin from New York, The Cubans and the National Front. The NF will give these criminals free reign to sell their drugs in exchange for a cut and not to sell to NF personal. So the group finds out about the meeting at Disney World and with the help of a Free State Union operative they get an airplane and parachute in. Once there they find out all four groups were planning to double cross each other and a free for all ensues.

So this crime against literature ends with the third and final book in the “Mega-Mayhem Action Series.” Once again a convoluted plot involving various evil doers getting together and betraying each other. At Disney World no less. There seems to be something about Disney theme parks and post-apocalypse stories. There are several books that have either Disneyland or Disney World as major gathering points for the forces of evil. The story alternated between boring and batshit nuts. Everyone in it is just so over the top. We have Groll the head NF who continually drools ropey saliva out of his mouth. Apparently he has turned Disney into his personal playground naming the Castle after himself and putting his face on every character image including the princesses in the park. One character compared it to intruding on a mental patient in his padded cell playing with himself.

Then there is our main hero. A guy who wouldn’t ever be mistaken for a cigar store Indian because a cigar store Indian is less wooden and has more personality. He is always stoic and refuses to make light of anything. When he knifes a guy and his brother makes a humorous quip he replies, ” I don’t make light of the killing. It turns my stomach.” Geez come on. That’s a staple of the action genre to make pithy humorous statements after killing someone. Then there is the whole goofy crew including twin acrobatic dwarves and an obsessive compulsive.

This was one of the many attempts to start a new post-nuke series after the collapse of the Cold War. Many only lasted for a few books. I’m surprised this series lasted so long. It’s poorly written and has an absurd premise. I recommend for only hardcore case like me that love to read this stuff.

SWAMPMASTER HELL ON EARTH BY JAKE SPENCER

Copyright 1992.

Swampmaster after rescuing a scientist from the National Front, those Neo-Nazis that now rule Florida, decides to ambush a supply convoy. This is accomplished with ease except one of the guys Zeno the knife thrower gets wounded. Not to worry as Swampmaster after a minor tussle with the mutant White Trash gets him to treatment. They also deliver tons of uncontaminated food supplies to the regular people. Yet those evil NF under Commandant Groll and Lt. Varnum Slade continue to plan evil. They have established on an old oil rig out in the Gulf Project Life Harvest. They are conducting experiments on the White Trash to have them be mentally controlled by someone. This amuses Groll who can now control a fearsome giant that he names Jargal the Enforcer.

Well Swampmaster and his girlfriend are later captured while scouting this rig. So Groll now gets to have an exhibition where him controlling Jargal the Enforcer can fight Swampmaster in an arena. So anyway stuff happens. Swampmaster’s adopted white brother Bill Coonan was pretending to work for the NF and infiltrates the Marcus twins. They defeat Jargal and the NF while blowing up the oil rig.

So the crap train known as Swampmaster gets its second book in this exciting “Mega-Mayhem action series.” Once again it is just an atrocious piece of writing. So now Groll gets to drool all over the place with his salivatory gland disorder. We have another fun scene where he is playing a video game called Final Solution. He gets to play Dr. Joseph Mengele running a concentration camp. Of course his drooling wrecks the game and he takes it out on the scientist Yar Guderian. Because Guderian dared to point out he needs to use the keyboard protector or his drool will wreck the computer. So his punishment is to kneel in front of Groll and get his teeth kicked in. (Wow I hope the NF has a good dental plan. Sounds like you need it working for them.)

Then of course we get such quality writing as this passage from the mind of Varnum Slade as he observes a woman that turns him on.

Angela was in Slade’s estimate the paragon of femininity. A Nordic woman of substance. Her lushly fertile breasts would one day produce oceans of milk for an army of blue-eyed children. The lift and sway of her hard, thick legs and buttocks as she proceeded down the hall in her skintight warder’s uniform aroused his lust and made him want to let her dominate him entirely. Like the Valkyries of myth, she was transporting Slade to realms beyond.

Ah but it gets better in the chapter. As he confronts Saralyn the Swampmaster’s girlfriend she manages to bit off his middle finger.

Saralyn let her jaw slacken and Slade stumbled away, his right hand coming up covered in blood, his middle finger reduced to a shoot of naked white bone above the upper joint. Saralyn spat twice to expel the rest of it. His bloody fingernail ticked against the wall.

Yes this is the quality writing of the series. A mishmash of unlikable characters and rambling plot that alternates between boring and utterly ridiculous. This is just a rich reading experience.

SWAMPMASTER BY JAKE SPENCER

Copyright 1992.

Sometime in 1997 the white supremacist groups managed to take over twenty western and mid-western state. Then they succeeded and fought a civil war with nuclear weapons. What became known as Revolution II fragmented the country into four factions. The National Front the neo-Nazis faction later invaded Florida using nuclear weapons and now occupies it. From this arises John Firecloud a Seminole who is trained to be a shaman. With his compound bow he starts a resistance. His first act is to ambush a helicopter which he than hides. This is important later.

So the NF under Commandant Joseph Groll who heads the occupation of Florida has a plan. His operative has placed several bio-nukes, nukes that combine with the Black Plague to destroy Atlanta.(Yeah the science behind this goes over my head too.) Atlanta happens to be the capital of the Free State Union which controls the south. It is scheduled to host a Tri-territorial summit between the non-NF states of Texas and the Japanese controlled east coast.(I guess the early nineties Japan looked like they would take over everything.)

The plan to stop this. Firecloud needs to rescue the captive FSU scientist that developed the bio-nuke from a NF fortress. They need someone to fly the helicopter Firecloud has. Luckily a pilot is part of Groll’s carnival as a knife thrower. So together with his beautiful Chinese-American girlfriend and two acrobatic dwarf twins named Marcus One and Marcus Two the group infiltrates the train carrying the carnival and frees the pilot. Then they assault the fortress with it. Unfortunately the NF knows they are coming because of a traitor but that doesn’t matter because Firecloud is so awesome. He throws one of the elite NF ambushers out the window and the others flee taking the scientist. A helicopter chase later and the scientist is free and Free Atlanta is saved.

Wow this book is bad. It is gloriously bad. The Seminole John Firecloud is the perfect sensitive man. He doesn’t like using guns because they can kill so easily. Yet he knows how to use them and does. He also has feelings of guilt for everyone he kills but still kills them. Then there’s the bad guys. First you have mutants known as White Trash going around killing and raping. Apparently only white people are effected by the fallout. These guys make the ones in Deliverance look like Rhodes Scholars.

Then you have the National Front which is clearly evil Nazis. To emphasize this they use a swastika and their commandant has a picture of Heinrich Himmler in his office. The Commandant Groll has this salivatory gland disorder that makes him constantly drool buckets. He likes to sit in his office and play with his dioramas of carnivals. The second in command Lt. Varnum Slade (apparently the NF has a small officer pool to have a lieutenant as second in command) is your typical Aryan sadist. Then the whole elements were just obsurd. Like how does a country based in the west and mid-west have access to invade Florida. Let’s not forget the bio-nuke which we find out at the end isn’t real. The scientist faked it because the NF were determined to have this. I mean the bombs they planted were real nukes but couldn’t spread plague. Of course by this time the reader could care less. This was a rich reading experience. What’s more is two more books were written in this series and they were also winners as we will see in future posts.