Amazon Slaughter & Curse of the Ninja

by Piers Anthony

  So am I the Beast projected. Then a black hole opened up, as of a giant red star collapsing into nothingness, and its life expired. A great tree has fallen in the forest, Hiroshi thought sadly. What sound might it have made, had it stood?

  KIAI!

  HOW IT BEGAN

  Piers put his arm around Roberto's neck and slowly applied pressure. Roberto's breathing became harsh and his eyes bulged as the blood was cut off. It was the hadaka jime, or naked strangle. Then Roberto applied a crushing ude gatame armlock, a submission hold that can readily dislocate an elbow, making Piers yelp with pain...

  It all started almost five years ago with an irate post card. Things often get violent in science fiction fandom, where professionals and amateurs spar in a perpetual free-for-all. Novelist Piers Anthony had skirmishes with several fanzines, which are small-circulation amateur magazines published for personal satisfaction. One of these printed a letter by a critical reader, Roberto Fuentes: "Piers Anthony is not my favorite author..."

  Fighting words! But Piers, adept in his fashion at the principle of ju, or yielding to gain an advantage, sent Roberto a card: "Are you Spanish? I used to live in Spain..."

  No, Roberto was Cuban. And soon the two collaborated on a science fiction novel, Dead Morn, centered around the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. It was a major work, that should have made both authors famous.

  That was in 1970—and the novel remains on the market. Perhaps its 115,000 word length scares off publishers. Or the graphic sex and violence. Or the authentic detail exposing the manner Fidel Castro came to power. Or the new thinking in time travel. One publisher has taken a year considering the manuscript, and has not yet made a report. The editor says he is still reading it. Another publisher was interested—but then fired 200 employees and returned the novel. Publishing, actually, can be considered as a form of martial art; writers have to be tough.

  In 1971 Roberto brought his wife Graciela and seven year old son Robertico to visit Piers in Florida. Piers lives in an old Spanish-style house with his wife Cam and daughters Penny and Cheryl. Roberto took Piers to see a judo class in Tampa. Roberto was 2 Dan, a second degree black belt in judo; Piers had never seen judo in action. The instructor was Ed Maley, 5 Dan.

  Piers sat and watched—and started writing a story, "Kiai!" It featured a 5 Dan judo instructor who looked a bit like Ed Maley, but was called Caesar Kane: Kane as in Kano, the founder of judo. Roberto provided the judo action for the story, and the team was launched in a new field: martial arts fiction.

  "Kiai!" never sold. The world was not ready for competent martial arts fiction. Undaunted, we built it into a novel, Kiai!, incorporating a notion that intrigued us both: competition between different martial arts, to discover once and for all which was best. Naturally judo came out on top—but we feel this is more than empty vanity, for judo incorporates the strikes of karate and armlocks of aikido, making it the broadest barehand martial art in the world. We believe that judo should win such a tournament. Half a dozen publishers rejected the novel. Oh, it was well enough done—but they said there was no reader interest in martial arts. Who cared about judo or karate—and who had even heard of kung fu or Thai kick-boxing? Forget it!

  Then Kung Fu appeared on TV, a well-done martial art series, and suddenly publishers were scrambling for martial art. Kiai! was snapped up, and other publishers put their hack stables to work turning out kung fu imitations. Our hero's name had to be changed to Jason Striker; after all, who would believe we had "Kane" before Kung Fu had "Caine"? But a typical editorial foulup allowed a couple of references to Kane to slip through to confuse readers.

  Roberto started as the judoka, Piers the author. But this collaboration changed the lives of both. Roberto is becoming an author, doing reviews and articles for JUDO TIMES and collaborating with magazine editor Steranko on an atemi article and martial arts poster. Piers has taken up judo, making his yellow belt and having his first competition match at age 40. It was against a 14 year old boy, another yellow belt, and yes, Piers lost: waza ari, a half point decision.

  Who can say that the time will not come when Roberto is an individual novelist and Piers a black belt? We all have to start somewhere. At any rate, it was in this fashion that the two came to the friendly practice described in our opening scene. Roberto was showing Piers how to apply strangles and armlocks, and also what they felt like. That knowledge would in due course be translated into a scene in another book.

  We are not unduly modest. We'll stack our collaborative fiction up against anything else in the genre. In fact, much of the competition does not seem to be written with much literary or martial authority. You can't simply read a book on kung fu or karate, go to a few practice sessions, and be an instant black belt!

  We are prepared to defend that statement against the challenge of any rival authors either on the judo mat or in the literary arena. Roberto is the former black belt champion of Cuba, who retired undefeated. He was for many years a teacher of judo with his own dojo, and is the present Metropolitan Master champion. He recently made 3 Dan, third degree black belt or San Dan, as a competitor.

  Piers, a former English teacher, has sold 16 science fiction and fantasy novels, several of which have been in contention for best-of-year awards. His major novel Macroscope will have its sixth printing in 1975.

  Our four collaborative martial arts novels, Kiai!, Mistress of Death, The Bamboo Bloodbath and Ninja (the one-word titles are ours; the others are the publishers, so don't blame us) exploit our respective skills. We have also had one fantasy/martial art story published, "Ki," and are working on a factual history of judo. We do a great deal of research, so as to make our work authentic, and try to avoid formula plotting end stereotyped characterization.

  But we are limited. Most editors have little notion of the meaning of martial art. To them, it is just a current fad, a way to sell a few more books. We have to compromise with this attitude, or we will not be published. We were turned down by one publisher for not having an oriental hero. So there is some junk in Kiai!, and more in the sequels. Still, we feel that some of the other books in the genre are fantastic and unreal. Some are entertaining and decently written; some aren't. But the fact is, even the greatest fighter in the world can not go barehanded against five men armed with guns and come out alive. Even one armed novice is dangerous, and as for machine-guns in the open—frankly our martial artist would be cut to pieces. We do have group fights and gun scenes, but we have tried for some credibility. A couple of our characters have gone up against impossible odds—and died in the process. Jason Striker is extremely wary of guns and other weapons, though it makes him seem like a coward at times.

  We have incorporated as much genuine martial art as we could. We made our protagonist into a real man in today's world. He's 5 Dan in judo, 3 Dan in karate, with training in kung fu (actually that's a misnomer for the entire complex of Chinese physical exercise; it would make as much sense to talk about a black belt in American PhysEd) and aikido. This is not extreme; there are a number of 5 Dan judokas in America, such as our model Ed Maley, and any one of them could match Jason Striker in competition, if they are not too old. Many martial artists study several systems, and hold black belts in each. In one novel Striker has a friendly match with a lame Cuban judoka, and loses. That judoka, Luis Guardia, is real. So Striker is not superhuman. He fights well, but he gets tired, and he makes mistakes.

  Sometimes Striker "runs the line" contesting with every student in the class, one after the other. This can be devilishly difficult, because the instructor has no respite, while every student is fresh and eager to pull an upset victory. This is drawn from experience: Roberto visited the Gulfport, Florida Judo Club and ran the line. One of the eager students he casually threw was Piers. Fortunately Roberto made it through in good form: dead tired but victorious in every match. It can be done, even by a man of forty.

  Other episodes in the series are also drawn from real life, such as accidentally strangling a too-ambitious student
into unconsciousness, or getting an arm broken in competition. Roberto's arm never has mended completely.

  Striker is also uncertain in love. More than one woman has found him a bit naive, even stuffy. One kicked him in the crotch, putting him in the hospital. He encounters all kinds: white, yellow, black, Indian, slender, voluptuous, mild, murderous. Sometimes it is romance, sometimes combat, or both at once. Yet here too there is reality, for most of the women are drawn from life, as are the love scenes. Roberto had a varied education before settling down to marriage.

  Many of the characters, while fictional, are representations of real people. There is an American boxer modeled after Mohammed Ali, who we feel was wronged by the political deprivation of his world boxing title some years back; a karateka like Mas Oyama, and aikidoist like Morihei Uyeshiba. Striker's arch-enemy Kan-Sen in real life is Mockansen, no villain but a Cuban/Chinese master of Kung Fu who instructed Roberto more than twenty years ago, before that mode became popular here. The names of some real people, like Diago, are used with fictional identities. The leading fictional character, Fu Antos, lord of the ninjas, derives from the authors' names: FUenteS and ANThOny.

  The locales, too, are authentic. When Striker goes to Havana, the city is described as though by someone who lived there, as Roberto did. He also lived in others we use: Managua, Nicaragua; Miami, Florida; even New York City, in many ways the strangest of all. When Striker is in the jungle or Everglades, one of us has been there before him, and we have supplemented our observations by extensive research. Roberto was a Cuban exile commando in the same Central American jungles that are described in our novels. When there is a bomb, we know how to build it, for Roberto was active in the anti-Castro underground as an urban terrorist and guerrilla, and he did make bombs and set them off.

  But more important, we try to put something in our books that is worth having. Judo is more than a system of combat; it is a philosophy, even a way of life. Striker is hardly the perfect judoka; there is blood on his hands, thanks to the demands of the genre. But he believes in the ideals of judo, and tries to practice them, and when he falls short he suffers. In that aspiration and failure we try to show what judo is and should be.

  We tackle significant issues. We analyze the drug problem as it applies to martial arts, not as a plotting device (Superman come quick! There's a shipload of heroin docking in Miami!) but to show the harm drugs do, and what contemporary efforts are being made to rehabilitate addicts. No, we haven't been hooked on drugs in real life, but we have known those who were. Piers actually walked into a juvenile drug rehabilitation center, telling them frankly why he wanted information: that he was doing a book with an addict character, and that one recommended treatment for his own hyperactive daughter was to put her on speed. So he had both professional and personal motive to learn about drugs. The interview in which they refused to cooperate appears in The Bamboo Bloodbath, except that Striker does, after all, get in. We don't think much of outfits that preach love but operate in secrecy. Abuse is too easy, not only of drugs, but of human civil rights.

  We tackle racism: our criminal/heroine is a black karateka, raped by white men, with vengeance in her soul yet justice in her motive. While we can't claim to know what it is to be black, one of us has mixed ancestry and both of us are immigrants from foreign countries. One of us was raised in a society remarkably free from prejudice, especially in boy-girl relations; the other resides in the South. It does provide a hint.

  We tackle pollution, as our ninja sets out to rid the world of it.

  And history, with actual events adapted to our purpose.

  In short, under the veneer of physical and emotional violence and sex, we have a serious philosophy of creation. Roberto reads English, Spanish and French, so that he can do more varied research. (Piers knew Spanish as a child, but forgot it.) We have assembled a martial arts library including expensive books and backfiles of rare martial arts magazines, such as the French/English JUDO KODOKAN REVIEW, and we read them.

  It hasn't shown up much yet in the series—after all, there are only so many pages to a commercial novel—but both authors are in their separate fashions health nuts. Piers is a vegetarian who uses massive doses of vitamin C to abate colds. It works, though he spends about $100 a year on C. He stays clear of sugar and refined foods, preferring breakfasts of rolled oats with milk, spiked with wheat germ and nutritive yeast, and lunches of raisins, nuts and cheese, plus salads from his own garden. He has cleaned the debris from his neighborhood to make compost for the garden; the neighbors are trained to dump their brush on his lot. Even complete trees. There will soon be a natural foods and cheese connoisseur in the series.

  Roberto is a sun worshiper, frustrated by New Jersey climate. He has his poor wife cooking odd stuff like hearts, brains and kidneys all the time. He gives his son Robertico (who also appears in Ninja) so much milk to drink (instead of soft drinks, which are taboo) that some say the boy will one day urinate white.

  Neither author smokes, both are extremely moderate drinkers, and both go for high-protein, high vitamin and mineral diets. Both believe in exercise, much of which is provided by judo. It is hardly surprising that Jason Striker has similar attitudes. Despite all this agreement, at times we work at cross purposes. Roberto prefers big, hefty, hourglass-shaped women like the Cuban girl Dulce, while Piers tries to slim them down to more petite dimensions. Generally we compromise by including both types.

  Sometimes things get fouled up in the course of negotiations, and we find ourselves in print with a Chinese girl with a Japanese name, such as Striker's fiancée Chiyako. Alas, we were paying more attention to the size of her bust than to her locale. We'll have to make a rationale for that error in a later novel.

  In our actual writing, we discuss notions first in a general way, then hammer out a plot to carry the elements we want to include. There is always much more than we can use; both of us have fertile imaginations, and the problem is always to cut it down to manageable size. Sometimes we just split the idea into smaller segments; that's how Ninja spread into four ninja novels now being written. Generally Roberto dictates the story line; just about the whole of Mistress of Death was his notion, except for the moderate bosom of Chiyako, and the detail of what happened to that bosom in a broken-bottle fight.

  This preparation is slow by mail, and sometimes dangerous. We once lost two weeks work via the mails. (Fortunately there was a carbon. ALWAYS KEEP A CARBON COPY!) Since we meet every year or so, we enter into hours-long dialogue a bit like judo randori or free practice, bouncing ideas off each other, fitting them together, amplifying, integrating characters with action. In a few hours we can thrash out what might take months by letter. In August 1974, sitting on the beach (Roberto edging toward the sun, Piers toward the shade), we worked out four novels and the judo history book—one day apiece. Of course, much remained to be done, but the framework was set, so that we knew where we were going, and were assured that there would be no major snags. Not at our end, anyway; we are never assured that publishers will take a given novel.

  Roberto then goes to work on research, summarizing relevant material and mailing it to Florida. Often he sends whole books. Piers then does a first draft in pencil, integrating research notes, outline, and theme in a readable narrative. This is his special skill as a writer; lots of people have ideas and information, but few can translate these into readable prose. When he has a chapter or so, he types it in second draft, with parenthetical remarks set off by brackets. These brackets can be one word or several hundred, and they can trigger off pages of discussion by Roberto. [Hey, I'm stuck for a good illustrative example here. Any ideas?]

  "About the example: Do not forget mentioning my commando days in Nicaragua. I lived in Managua for 6 months. Amalita, the girl in the first two novels, was alive and well in Managua, at least up till the earthquake, she and I used to go to her house and—"

  [Roberto, I can't put that in print; they'd have to censor it out. Anyway, I've already typed past that pla
ce in this piece.]

  "Well, what about the time I was in jail, Cabanas Fortress in Cuba, paredon the death wall, etc.—we could tie that into the Brazilian prison scene we are working on. But we'll have to explain about political prison, so the readers don't think I was a criminal."

  And so it goes. When Piers hits a snag, he brackets it for Roberto to sweat and goes on. No doubt these letter/manuscripts will make fascinating reading for scholars at Syracuse University library, where Piers's papers are eventually collected. Perhaps in the twenty-second century A.D., when books are no longer written and the science of writing has become a lost art. This article was done the same way, so represents a capsule case-history of our system.

  Roberto goes over the manuscript and remarks on both the brackets and any other points that strike him. The result is a letter of comment about the same length as the manuscript itself. Piers plugs in all these corrections—a slow, tedious job, more like piecing together broken pottery than creating—then types the submission manuscript. After that the changes stop, for the publisher's deadline is upon us and the book must get there immediately.

  Unfortunately, some errors slip through. For example, in Mistress of Death Roberto typoed "crowd" as "crow." Piers didn't question it; he thought it was a nice touch. Thus we have crows clustering around the shops in Chinatown. May the Chinese Americans forgive us!

  The truth is that collaboration is hard work. Each of us puts about as much effort into a book as he would writing the whole thing alone, yet each gets only half the money. And the result is necessarily a compromise between our viewpoints. But we don't argue much, not even about bosoms. It will be a long time, if ever, before Piers can tell a judo black belt how to perform a given technique, and perhaps as long before Roberto educates any English teacher on the nuances of the subjunctive mood. In the vast majority of cases we see eye to eye. And why not? We are both college educated married males with a number of common interests.