The Panchronicon Plot / by Ron Goulart. New York, DAW Books, 1977, 126 pp. ISBN 0-87997-283-1. $1.25.

A while back I came across a rare bonanza of old SF and fantasy paperbacks at a thrift store. Titles I wasn’t acquainted with, but from authors I was (at least sort of), and from what I consider the golden paperback era, when I was still in the first bloom of my genre reading. Roughly the late 60s to mid 80s.

Ron Goulart was a familiar name back then. You always saw his stuff on the bookstore shelves, even if you didn’t buy it. Not a major author, but a known one, in the class of, say, Keith Laumer and Michael Kurland as a writer of lightly amusing if ultimately insubstantial works. One might think of him as a less prominent Lin Carter, grinding ’em out in the SF ghetto the way Lin did in the fantasy one.

I remember Goulart mainly for a pastiche novel about DC Comics’ Challengers of the Unknown that came out contemporaneously with this one, which I bought and read because, whoa, who the hell writes a Challengers novel? I liked it well enough, though all I can recall of it now is the the warm fuzzy feeling it left me about Goulart. A man who dared—DARED!—write a book only the rare comic book fan would appreciate, and even get it published. His heart was obviously in the right place.

He did stuff like that. Pastiches. He did a Captain America, a Hulk, three Flash Gordons, three Battlestar Galacticas, six Vampirellas, a dozen of the “Kenneth Robeson” Avenger. He ghosted William Shatner’s Tekwar novels. But he wrote plenty of non-derivative stuff as well, mostly a boatload of books in his own magnum opus series, in a setting called the “Barnum System.” He also did the “Star Hawks” comic with Gil Kane. (It was connected to the Barnums.) All in all, a regular Alan Dean Foster wannabe.

I’ve read exactly none of these. But the point is, Goulart was there, lurking in the cultural background, waiting to be rediscovered. Say, in a thrift store amid a rare bonanza of old SF and fantasy paperbacks.

The Panchronicon Plot is a Goulart original, not pastiche. It’s not a classic; if it’s new to you, welcome to the club. It’s a feather-light novel, quickly read and very much of its time, meaning it doesn’t really cut it in the present day. It came out at probably the last possible moment one could get away with lifting stock characters right out of Central Casting. The stereotypes are wince-inducing. Goulart’s Germans have screamingly awful accents. His American Indians spout Tonto-speak. Women skew towards titillating eye-candy, and gays are swishy jokes. And yet it’s all somehow ... innocent. Like he’s not being cruel, just ... doing what everyone else is. Even if everyone else really wasn’t, even back then. Evolved he ain’t.

The characters go about their roles like average Joes just doing their jobs. Like the two washed-up rock stars he has moonlighting as hired goons. They’re bad guys, but more by circumstance than inclination. It’s a paycheck. We don’t see them clock in and out like Ralph Wolf and Sam Sheepdog in the old Warner cartoons, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they did.

We soon realize the book’s a sequel. We open to find dauntless hero Jake Conger retired and married for no plot-important reason, and wordage is expended wheedling him back into service. A quick check of the invaluable Internet Speculative Fiction Database reveals the volume as the middle entry in a trilogy. It’s preceded by A Talent for the Invisible, wherein the hero presumably met his present wife, and followed by Hello, Lemuria Hello, in which, so the cover blurb tells us, “the Invisible Man spotlights the Lost Continent.” (Give yourself a star if you conclude Conger can turn invisible.)

All three books were published by DAW in the 1970s, and none were ever reprinted, which tells us something right there. Though books two and three did rate Italian and German translations, and the Italians did reissue the specimen under review here. So perhaps not wholly weightless. Still, the series came, went, and vanished into the aether, is if it had never been, leaving only a flashy Josh Kirby cover or two behind.

Our novel’s sequelity thus need not detain us long. It merely accounts for a bit of otherwise pointless continuity involving Conger’s wife Angelica, who comes across as competent and canny—she’s not there as eye candy. But she has little role in the proceedings except to be checked in with every so often and serve as a plausible reason for Conger not to fall into bed with every willing lass he meets. As he otherwise doubtlessly would. This was the late 1970s, when sex in fiction was casual. And it shows, even if the action’s set in 2021.

She is involved in a couple memorable lines on page 115, when Conger calls in after a particularly complicated jaunt through time to reassure Angelica he is still among the living. He signs off with “I love you.” Her response? “I know.” In 1977, folks! Three years before Leia Organa and Han Solo made the same exchange immortal in The Empire Strikes Back. Could it be that this book had more impact than I think? Or is this, possibly, mere coincidence?

Well, yeah, probably coincidence. Even though Empire was scripted by Leigh Brackett, who as an SF author herself might be more familiar with Goulart’s work than, say, George Lucas, Solo’s response was notoriously ad-libbed. Besides, in Goulart the bit’s a grace note betokening a comfortable and stable relationship, while in Empire it’s just Han Solo being Han Solo. Cool to speculate on, though.

Anyway, The Panchronicon Plot is definitely a book of its time, even if set out of its time. For instance, Goulart was writing close enough to Watergate that he could expect to strike a familiar chord by making his future President Bisbiglia criminally corrupt, even if inept. In fact, Bisbiglia’s conspiracy so obviously drives the novel that the Italian translation retitled it Watergate 2021.

Aside from presidential chicanery, Goulart’s is a future already falsified by events, even if we’re still a bit short of 2021. Indeed, it had been even at the time of publication. As an example, his Earth has diplomatic relations with an alien race of transvestite lizard men from Venus, which even then was known to be a hellish hothouse of a planet incapable of supporting life (transvestite or not). The lizard men (we don’t really hear of any lizard women) aren’t important to the action, though their existence has started a fad for transvestitism on Earth.

Still, little elements like this demonstrate Goulart isn’t completely phoning stuff in. He cares enough, even in a complete potboiler, to have fun with things. Like the vice president’s bimbo girlfriend, adult performer Dynamo Daisy, “the girl with the electric tits.” (It’s an unfortunate enhancement. Besides lighting up, they tend to glitch spectacularly near anything else electrical.) Goulart obviously found this sort of thing amusing.

More innocent are the occasional in-jokes. Like when Conger goes back to the Old West and is told his quarry is holed up on the “Flying DAW Ranch.” (DAW was Goulart’s publisher.) Or the presence there of a Marshal Stamm. (Stamm was rumored to be the real name of Lester Del Rey before old Les was outed as Leonard Knapp).

Incidentally, The Panchronicon Plot actually does have a plot. (With a title like that, it had better.) Why don’t I spoil it for you? As there is little chance you will ever encounter this book, let alone be moved to read it, it shouldn’t matter.

Jake Conger (pronounced “conjure”) is an ex-member of the Wild Talents Division of the U.S. government’s Remedial Functions Agency, basically a spook outfit. His own wild talent is the ability to become invisible, which was useful in his work, and effective against all but those with the wild talent to see the invisible, like his sometime nemesis Ripley, another invisible man, formerly a colleague, but now a henchman of President Bisbiglia. Ripley’s added advantage lets him get the drop on Conger more than once. Later Conger gets this upgrade himself, spies his foe, sneaks up on him and conks him out—only to learn that Ripley isn’t invisible on this occasion, so all the prep-work was completely unnecessary!

But I digress. As previously noted, Conger is now retired, happily married, and running a little grocery store with his wife Angelica. He’s recalled to service by his old boss, a crotchety, pseudo-profanity spouting functionary named Geer. “Pseudo” because it’s of the dad-gummit variety—but futuristic! Other characters share this quirk, but Geer’s first out of the gate and most prone to it. It’s amusing but contrived, contributing to the impression all players in this farce are just here for the paycheck. Geer has other verbal quirks as well. In his lexicon, those without sense are “yoohoos” and those who are actually crazy, like President Bisbiglia, are “goofy.”

It’s Bisbiglia who worries him. Geer has observed with alarm that opponents of the president have lately been getting disappeared. (That is, not turning invisible, but going missing.) It is learned that the evil prez has been scrambling their brains and stranding them in former time periods by means of the titular Panchronicon, a new kind of time machine under his personal control. “New” because other time machines already exist in this future, under the control of the Time Travel Overseeing Committee, another government agency that monitors their use to prevent exactly this kind of abuse. Which leads me to think that it’s happened before.

Among the disappeared are Wardell Toomey, Secretary of Mental Health, who might otherwise have gotten the president declared goofy, Dr. Stewart Peralta, the reputed inventor of the Panchronicon, and various other luminaries who stand in the way of the president achieving absolute power—about thirty, all told. Conger’s mission, should he decide to accept it (or give in to strenuous if metaphorical arm-twisting to the same end), is to recover the time-napped so their brains can be unscrambled and the president’s nefariousness brought to light. Simple!

Conger spends the rest of the book doing just that. It involves a lot of being invisible and overhearing people spill to cronies (like the vice president with his electrified squeeze) and waiting for other people to open doors so he can slip through them undetected. Vice-President Runningwater, by the way, represents sub-corruption in the book’s corrupt regime—he’s a conspirator against the conspiring Bisbiglia, whom he hopes to supplant. He’s by no means a good guy, or even an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” guy, but his scheming goes nowhere, and he serves mainly as comic relief.

Worse, he’s an ethnic stereotype, one of those Tonto-speaking Indians previously alluded to, and addicted to firewater to boot. His pidgin becomes more marked the more drunk he is, which is a feature, not a bug. He’s vastly proud of his role as the first Native American Veep, and feels, and at least while under the influence, that as a real Indian, he should talk like a real Indian. He (or Goulart) is here confusing real-real with film-reel, I suspect. Parenthetically, this is one of the places where the book’s envisioned future rings false from the start. Goulart may not have known it, but we’ve already had a Native American vice president. It was Charles Curtis, who was actually in office when Goulart was born. Our author should hide his head in shame. For this and many, many things...

Resuming my summary, Conger’s first quarry is a certain Buford True, an independent wild talent sought by both sides, for the simple reason that his wild talent is unaided time travel, which with all the garden variety time machines under lock and key and the Panchronicon under the control of the enemy, will be a plus in recovering timenapped brigade of MacGuffins. True is disinclined to sign on until Conger saves him from the ex-rock stars set to watch him by the bad guys. After that, he’s good.

So it’s off to Old Vienna and an eatery called The Enormous Strudel, where the duo learns Wardell Toomey has been stashed and is plying the trade of a brainwashed pub singer. Lots of horrid faux-German and faux-profanity later, the man is freed, enlisted, and sent home with True while Conger wraps up some loose ends. On True’s return, he and Conger are to set about collecting the remaining MacGuffins. Trouble is, True fails to come back.

No prob. Conger’s a big boy, and with the aid of a liberated time machine, he heads off to the American Southwest of 1879 to find Mental Health Secretary Stewart Peralta. There he falls in with the aforementioned Marshal Stamm (a Lone Ranger knockoff) and his sidekicks Burt the Indian (another Tonto-speaker, perhaps appropriately in this instance), and Tex the dog. Tex seems to be a full partner in the operation, participating in the dialog with lots of ruffs and woofs. They soon learn they’re all after the same guy, as Peralta in his brainwashed persona is now the Fresco Kid, a dangerous hombre and wisecracking bandito chief wielding the deadly weapon of pointed satire.

Stamm, who fancies himself smarter than he really is, insists all his collaborators (like Conger) don ridiculous disguises to fool the enemy. Burt, patently the real brain of the operation, demurs, providing a running commentary on Stamm’s idiocy, which surprisingly really does amuse, even in Burt’s deadpan, pidgin delivery. I say so in full knowledge that a real Native American would loudly, and rightly, take exception. We can’t all be enlightened all the time. Or perhaps we can, while acknowledging we aren’t as advanced as we think we are.

Lots of horrid faux-cowpoke, faux-Indian, and more faux-profanity later, Peralta/Fresco too is freed, enlisted, and returned to the present. Oh, and True finally shows up again as well, with the revelation that the reason he’s late is the bad guys ambushed him because They Are On to the Good Guys’ Operation, and moreover have timenapped Conger’s boss Geer. So now Conger has to track down his boss too, who is marooned in eighteenth century England. This blessedly speeds up the action, as it prompts him to deputize True into hunting down most of the remaining MacGuffins. True does so off-stage, while we stick with Conger.

In antique England, Conger finds that the baddies didn’t have time to wipe Geer’s mind, but it’s all the same; he’s been reduced to playing the fool in a tragedy enacted by a company of players, and as such screws up the play by calling everyone goofy yoohoos and getting tomatoes thrown at him. While there, Conger also teems up with Mr. Windershins, a local proto-detective, to save innocent young lass Elizabeth Salter from the gallows, to which she has been condemned by the evil machinations of the lascivious Squire Bridewell. Because eighteenth century England.

Somewhere in all of this there are additional time-hops to 1852 San Francisco and Crusade-era Europe, to pick up Post Office chairman Friedman and Secretary of Religion Felix Pastore, respectively. In the later instance a local named Felix the Hermit is mistaken for Pastore and brought back instead, necessitating a quick do-over.

Along the way some concern is expressed about accidentally messing up history, but not much. Basically just lip-service bantered about among folks with more immediate fish to fry. The only evident change is that in one return to the present a building is yellow that was some other color before.

Anyway, the MacGuffins are all recovered, the jig is up, and President Bisbiglia, having presciently provided himself with a money belt stuffed with gold nuggets against just such an eventuality, lights out for the Panchronicon to hide himself in the past until the heat blows over. Which Panchronicon the very drunk Veep Runningwater is just about to use in order to visit 1650 for a taste of a time when Indians were on top and no white men need apply. So that’s where (or rather when) the Prez, dashing in and hijacking the ride, ends up. Right before Conger, invisibly present, sabotages the machine to strand him there.

The end. Upshot? A short, sweet and breezy read, with no more substance than it has to have. Substance like “Say, what’s so special about this Panchronicon, anyway?” I mean, we never even see it until the final scene. Well, we’re told in passing that unlike most time machines, it is precisely programmable and can return you to the same moment in the present from which you left. Standard models, evidently, dump you only approximately into the time period you were trying to reach, and however much time you spend in the past will elapse also in the present before the machine can return you to it. Ho hum, big deal. Really, the true significance of the machine is that President Bisbiglia financed Dr. Peralta, its inventor, who had a running feud with the time agency, under False Pretenses so he could Obtain a Machine He and He Alone Could Use. After conveniently brainwashing and time-napping Peralta, naturally.

So, is this book as goofy as I’ve made it out to be? YES! And that’s its glory. It’s not actually bad-bad, not bad in the sense that it’s unreadable or unpleasurable. It is effortlessly readable, just … slight. And, given the passage of time and ongoing enlightenment of the reading public, offensive. But if you can get past all that, it’s also quite fun. You won’t remember the details a month later—heck, I had to go back and crib after just a few days to keep this review halfway accurate—but it’s likely to leave a benign, if bigoted, aftertaste. If you can philosophically remind yourself that people were like that then, and sometimes didn’t mean any harm by it, and that, really, people are still like that, and that while they more often do mean harm by it, until recently they at least hid it better … you may enjoy this book. For the nostalgia, if nothing else. I did. Even if I feel no need whatsoever to look up the remaining adventures of Jake Conger.

Does that mean I recommend The Panchronicon Plot? Um, no. Not really. Just that, like the Earth of Douglas Adams, it’s mostly harmless. And there may be a few chuckles along the way.

What about the author? Whatever became of old Ron Goulart, anyway? Well, he is, amazingly for someone of my dad’s generation, still around, and, at least until lately, still writing. His most recent work is a series of period whodunits with Groucho Marx as the detective. I’ve sampled a few of these through Amazon ebook snippets. Old Julius Marx seems always to be in-character as Groucho, which one might think would get old fast, but apparently didn’t, since Goulart cranked out half a dozen of them. As far as I can tell, all the gleeful 1970s badness has been left behind. But they still strike me as “lightly amusing but ultimately insubstantial,” to quote myself from earlier—the eternal Ron, consistent and unchanging. But certainly a pleasant and inoffensive enough retirement pastime.

You know, I might even just give them a try sometime.

—Brian.