DESERVEDLY FORGOTTEN BOOK: MARTIAN SEXPOT

 Martian Sexpot by "Scott O'Neill" (Peg O'Neill Scott Fields)  (1963)

I threw myself under the bus on this one.  I took one for the team.  I read it so you don't have to.  Don't feel obligated to praise me for my sacrifice -- sometimes this happens when you review books.  (Although, if you are so inclined. send money.)

Here is the first draft of this review:

"Ptah!"

Then I decided a little more is needed.

Martian Sexpot is a collection of six purportedly science fiction stories published by Onsco Publications as a "Jade Book." We are informed that "The Jade Imprint is the sign of the unusual and bizarre in adult reading."  This is a soft-core sleaze book, the eleven to be released in the Jade line.  Others include Homo Hill, Lesbian Lane, Vegas Vice Queen, and Nude Ranch Nymphs.  The cover of this one features a spaceship, an alien landscape, and (prominently) a semi-nude woman with a vapid face and huge tat-tas, wearing only a bikini bottom.  The cover copy reads "Hilarious Adventures in Space and in the Future" and "When you go to Mars, be careful of those dried roots.  They can upset your schedule, affect your sex life, or almist anything!"

The book contains the following stories:

• "The Instant Maids of Mars"
• " 'I Tell You, Al!' "
• "The World's Greatest Salesman"
• "Dear Mavis"
• "And They're All Exactly Twenty-Six Years Old"
• "Speaking of Ganymede --"

Despite the author's efforts, there is no eroticism or sexiness in the stories.  Neither is there any originality, or plot, or original writing.  The entire book reads as though written by a very inexperienced teenager with sub-literate skills.  To call it sophomoric would be to rate it too high.

It is a torturous read, best avoided.

The book does have a brief entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, signed by DRL (presumably Daniel Robert Lewis), which calls it a collection of linked stories (it isn't) and reads, in part, "a mildly comic romp which as indicated by the title features Sex (or the lure of sex) on Mars."  Ahem.  This is not a comic romp, mild or otherwise; rather, it is an affront to the English language.  Also, please note that only one story takes place on Mars.  Not a bright and shining moment for The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

I was going to quote some random atrocities, but I decided to spare you.

The author (b. 1936) was married to Lynwood Paul Fields, aka Peter T. Fields (1941-2003), with whom she shared the house pseudonym "Barton Werper," the writer cribber typist who produced five unauthorized Tarzan books in 1964 and 1965. (Tarzan and the Silver Globe, ...and the Cave City, ...and the Snake People, ...and the Abominable Snowman, ...and the Winged Invaders -- I can't find any other books issued by the publisher.)  Although both writers have been credited with the joint pseudonym, evidently Fields wrote four of the books solo, with Scott writing the third book by herself.  The books had a short lifespan, a suit from the Burroughs estate (the ERB people being as fanatical about their money machine as the Disney people are) resulted in all copies being withdrawn.  But the story does not end there.  Tarzan and the Silver Globe was reissued in a tweaked version in 2014 Zamba and the Silver Globe  by ""John Raymond" by Fiction House Press (which also reissued ERB's Jungle Tales of Tarzan as New Tales of Tarzan, and a number of ERB's books (at least one issued under its magazine serial title), as well as The Son of Tarzan, an anonymous 1921 novelization of the silent movie serialization).  "John Raymond" had been the pseudonym of Leonard G. Fish, who published Zamba of the Jungle in 1951.  Confused?  Join the club.

A casual search of the internet showed no further writing by either Peg O'Neill Scott nor her husband.  Just as well.