End Of The Line (The Demu Trilogy #3)

The Demu Trilogy, by F.M. Busby

March, 1980  Pocket Books

The Demu Trilogy wraps up with this final installment, which was only published in this Pocket Books anthology. The book was published seven years after Cage A Man, and whereas originally I wondered if F.M. Busby wrote this trilogy all at once, now I’d say it’s pretty clear that he did not. Indeed, it would seem that he struggled greatly with making this a trilogy in the first place. 

As it turns out, The Proud Enemy would have made for a fine ending for the story that began in Cage A Man. And indeed in many ways it was the ending of the trilogy, as End Of The Line has jack shit to do with the previous two books. Basically it’s a one-off that Busby has shoehorned into the Demu storyline. Except for the fact that there are no Demu in the book…except for the final few pages. Otherwise the only recurring character here is hero Barton, who has become more gabby and emotional as the series has gone on. 

I mean, Barton is the only recurring main character. There’s still Lumila, the alien gal Barton fell in love with back in Cage A Man. She came on strong (so to speak) in that first volume, throwing herself on Barton moments after meeting him in their communal Demu cell…then she disappeared from the narrative, and when she returned she had been Demu-ized. Then the rest of the book was focused on making her look human again, with a nigh-endless subplot on her plastic surgery. 

This is stuff that only continued in The Proud Enemy, which went into another nigh-endless subplot about Limila getting yet more plastic surgery, this time on her homeworld Tilara, to make her look like her true self – ie, the low-hanging breasts (much is made of these, btw), the double rows of teeth, the extra fingers and toes. Like I said before, she sounds real lovely. Well anyway, now that Limila’s plastic surgery has finally been completed in this final volume…Busby pretty much just brushes her under the narrative carpet! She exits in End Of The Line mostly to just be a sounding board for Barton, or to give him advice he doesn’t heed. 

But then, F.M. Busby doesn’t heed his own advice as author. So the novel opens moments after The Proud Enemy; Barton is lifting off the Demu homeworld in his spaceship, having successfully ended the war with the Demu without really even firing a shot – instead, it was more of a blackmail thing, in that he shamed the Demu with the revelation that all their technology was taken from an earlier, more advanced race. So Barton is flying off, when he’s hailed by a new group of ships from the Earth, and they’re offering to escort him. Only, thanks to a call from a surprise return character who was last seen in Cage A Man, Barton learns that these new Earth ships are really out to get him, and Barton’s in trouble with the military elite. 

It's all backlash from yet another subplot in the previous book: Barton as we’ll recall had a fight with a lowlife scum named ap Fenn, who later met a grisly fate at the hands (or should I say claws) of an incensed Tilaran woman. Now ap Fenn’s dad, an admiral or somesuch in the space force, is here to interrogate Barton and hold him accountable for his kid’s fate. Plus ap Fenn and crew are all in nifty new spaceships that are much faster and more powerful than Barton’s; Busby is never too clear how much time has passed back on Earth since Barton and crew left on their intersteller voyage at the end of Cage A Man. 

Here's where Barton doesn’t heed Limila’s advice – which would’ve made for a better novel than what we get. Limila, who has just revealed she’s 80 in Earth years and has a grown child who lives with her own family on some other planet, says that they have just enough fuel on their ship to ditch ap Fenn and get to her daughter’s planet, where they can hide. But Barton doesn’t listen to her. Oh and I forgot to mention, but we learn here too that Limila is pregnant. Tilaran biology allows her to only become pregnant when she wants to, and since she wants a kid with Barton she is – but this is another subplot that is abruptly canceled, somewhat suprisingly. More is made out of Limila’s age, which is thanks to Tilaran biological technology, and Barton gets his own “surgery” subplot in which this technology is applied to him so he too can become immortal. 

There follows some goofy stuff where Barton tries to get the better of app Fenn…by hosting the first-ever Tilaran beauty pageant. Folks I kid you not. But in the melee that follows the hoodwinkery there is some as mentioned surprising losses, but also it’s all rendered moot because it turns out all Barton needs is the deus ex machina that is the Demu “Sleep Gun,” which has all kinds of uses. Speaking of the Demu, they aren’t even in End Of The Line, at least not until the very end. So anyway, Barton’s back on his ship with Limila and crew, sort of wondering what to do…and then Busby spends thirty pages on the first-person account of some character on the Earth spacefleet, totally new to the series, talking about some troubles he’s having on his ship. 

Here's where one gets the impression End Of The Line was a story idea forced into the Demu Trilogy. Barton flies over to this new ship, where we learn of this whole new alien race, the Others, who are impregnating the human Earth women on this ship…by having them drink a glass of water with some concoction in it. The goal is for the women to breed a new race of Others, and these are highly-gifted super-smart kids with extra arms and legs and whatnot. The strangest thing here is the complacency the victim females have with becoming pregnant…even a few times over. So now the plot’s all about Barton trying to one up the highly advanced Others…actually he doesn’t so much do that as he tries to make it so that everyone is happy. 

At this point, I was ready to chuck the book. I mean it had nothing to do with anything that came before. At least Busby somewhat wraps up the actual storyline in the final pages, with a brief return of Demu boss Hishtoo and Hishtoo’s daughter Eeshta. The trilogy itself wraps up with Barton and Limila ready to search the stars together…and maybe have a kid…who knows. I still prefer my theory, presented in the previous review, that all this is just a “hallucination” of Barton, still trapped in his Demu cage. 

F.M. Busby was nothing if not prolific, so I’m sure I’ll get around to another of his sci-fi novels one of these days. But I would not give The Demu Trilogy much of a recommendation at all.

The Proud Enemy (The Demu Trilogy #2)

The Proud Enemy, by F.M. Busby

June, 1975  Berkley Medallion

The Demu Trilogy continues with this second installment, which was published as a paperback original two years after Cage A Man.  Once again, though, I read the complete reprint of the novel as found in the 1980 Pocket Books paperback The Demu Trilogy.  Before The Proud Enemy, this anthology also features a mostly-forgettable short story titled “The Learning Of Eeshta,” focused on the young “female” Demu introduced in the first novel, and how she goes about learning of mankind; it originally appeared in If Magazine, and takes place in the final quarter of Cage A Man.

As for The Proud Enemy, it opens right at the ending of Cage A Man, thus giving the impression that this trilogy is indeed one long book.  As we’ll recall, that novel ended with hero Barton commanding the Demu starship he escaped from captivity, in, and now part of a fleet of 40 Earth starships that was about to set off on an assault upon the Demu homeworld.  However, more focus was placed in that novel on Barton's alien girlfriend, Limila, getting a bunch of plastic surgery to look human again, rather than this interstellar war plot.

Ultimately this will prove true for The Proud Enemy as well, but initially Busby does follow on with the space combat stuff. But it’s goofy and continues the juvenile tone of Cage A Man (ie, where Barton took over a Demu spacecraft and managed to fly it back to Earth and land unscathed). For, moments after the fleet launches into space, they all sort of hover there for a bit and Barton and Space Agency rep Tarleton get on the viewscreen and brief the other 39 ships on the objectives of the mission, complete with a rundown of Barton’s captivity and who the Demu are – and also the fact that there are a few aliens with Barton on his ship. 

This all made me laugh out loud. I mean folks, don’t you think such a briefing should’ve taken place before the armada took off from Earth? I mean clearly it’s all here for the readers who bought The Proud Enemy but hadn’t read the previous book; catchup material that just comes off as doubly ridiculous when collected here in The Demu Trilogy. But man it really is ridiculous, complete with Barton calling little Eeshta over to the viewscreen and having her pull up her robe so he can show the viewers her lobster-like exterior shell and talk about the sexual apparati of the Demu race! 

Actually, around this point something occurred to me about The Demu Trilogy. This juvenile tone, where a “regular” guy can escape alien captivity, steal one of their ships, hook up with another alien babe, and then fly back to Earth where he ultimately becomes the boss of a space armada – all this, really, could be seen as coming from Barton’s own imagination. In Cage A Man Busby stressed that Barton was able to survive his eight years of captivity via his skills with “hallucination,” where Barton would create a reality in his mind and escape there. So who’s to say the events of the trilogy itself aren’t just the product of Barton’s imagination, still trapped there in his Demu cell? But then again, as Alan Moore once said (no doubt while stroking his beard in deep thought): “Aren’t all stories imaginary?” 

I could press my theory without much effort. I mean, even though Barton et al are on a spaceship headed off into another galaxy to kick some alien ass, the plot soon becomes focused on…who sleeps in what bed. Barton’s ship, Tarleton explains, is special because it’s equally made up of men and women…so Barton can sleep with Limila and the other men and women can sleep with each other. Seriously, a whole bunch of narrative space is focused on this, and little details like description of the ship’s interior and etc are pushed to the side. And once again F.M. Busby is a “cut to black” author when any of the sexual material arises; there is absolutely nothing in the way of explicit material. 

Since the voyage lasts a long time, we also get material on how the bedmates are free to, uh, swap, though Barton doesn’t partake because as we’ll recall he’s in love with Limila, she of the 60 teeth, six fingers and toes, half-bald head, and boobs that hang low on her rib cage. Busby goes to great pains to show Barton’s complaceny with Limila’s alien nature, totally devoted to her and all, and it just seems strange to me because I must’ve missed the part where he fell in love with her in the first place. As stated in my review of Cage A Man, Barton and Limila’s star-crossed romance was forced into the narrative with little setup or explanation. 

Not that this stops Barton from some action on the side. Limila’s people, the Tilarans, are kind of reserved and overly formal, yet casual sex is the rule. Male and female Tilarans will openly fondle a person, moments after meeting them, if they find them attractive. Kids, don’t try this at home! My impression was Busby was taking the ‘70s swinger vibe into a sci-fi setting, and Limila takes off with an old boyfriend to spend the night with him the night they land on Tilara, and Barton meanwhile scores (off-page, naturally) with some Tilaran gal who starts fondling him. 

Busby’s powers of description are pretty weak throughout. Tilara is hardly described, and again, what we do learn is filtered through the rudimentary prism that is Barton’s mind – he can’t make “much sense” out of Tilaran traffic and architecture and whatnot, so Busby just leaves it at that. Again, one can easily argue that such topical details are limited because Barton’s imagination is limited, and he’s the one creating this entire scenario in his mind. But it is really lame; like a part where Barton goes to a Tilaran hospital and Busby notes that a Tilaran is sitting there, “reading,” and you’re left wondering, “Reading what?” I mean, do they have lurid-cover paperbacks on Tilara? Is the guy reading a notepad? Have they advanced to display screens? It’s just all so vague as to be maddening. 

Oh but I forgot: that bedswapping scenario on the ship leads to some confrontations. A young hothead named app Fenn, son of a Space Agency bigshot, bullies his way from one gal to the next, wanting to get all the sex possible. This frustrates the woman who was previously rooming with app Fenn, and Barton goes to soothe the guy, instead getting in a fight with him – Barton smashing app Fenn in the face with a chair. Later Limila goes to app Fenn to offer herself to him, explaining to Barton later that this is a time-honored Tilaran custom in which women call off the blood feud between two men. But when app Fenn sees that Limila does not have breasts (which we’ll recall were lopped off by the Demu in the previous book), he sends her back to Barton with the message that Barton can keep his “plastic woman.” 

Whereas this would lead to a violent confrontation in a typical novel, Barton instead seethes for a bit…and then Busby drops the ball entirely, with app Fenn getting in some other trouble when the crew lands on Tilara. Barton and app Fenn never even have a proper squaring off. As for Limila’s boobs, we get a repeat of the plastic surgery onslaught of the previous book, as Tilaran doctors graft on a new pair for her and put in teeth buds to regrow her second set of teeth, and yada yada yada. So much of this stuff is just retread of Cage A Man, I mean two volumes of this “trilogy” are devoted to Limila being turned into a Demu, then into a human, then finally back into a Tilaran. 

Things pick up when Hishtoo, the surly Demu captive, steals a ship, along with a few Tilaran hostages. Here Hishtoo gets his revenge, messaging back that he, too, will eat his captives, same as Barton did in Cage A Man. Barton gives chase in his own ship – and here we learn that space travel doesn’t make for the most thrilling action. Like when they spot Hishtoo’s ship, eventually, and to decelerate so they can come abreast him will take…approximately thirty-some days. It’s sort of like that throughout; Busby spends more time on characters sitting around in undescribed rooms on the ship, drinking stale coffee and eating various alien cuisines. 

Even crazier, The Proud Enemy doesn’t even lead to a thrilling conclusion. Instead, it sees Barton and comrades disguised as Demu and walking around on the Demu homeworld of Sisshain, where they come upon a massive spaceship that clearly was not made by the Demu. Instead, some ancient race preceded them and the Demu stole their tech from them; something that was alluded to by Tarleton in the previous book, but apparently a secret so devastating that the Demu are willing to sue for peace to keep it all a secret. 

So this second installment of the trilogy was pretty lame. Not much in it really happened, and what did happen mostly came off as a replay of stuff in Cage A Man. The trilogy concluded with End Of The Line, which appeared five years later in The Demu Trilogy. Since I’ve gotten this far I’ll be reviewing that one soon, too.

Cage A Man (The Demu Trilogy #1)

Cage A Man, by F.M. Busby

May, 1974  Signet Books

(Original hardcover edition 1973)

First off, an admission: I didn’t read this actual paperback, but the reprint included in full in the 1980 Pocket Books collection The Demu Trilogy. On a recent visit to the nearby Half Price Books this thick paperback grabbed my attention, and they only wanted two bucks for it. I’d been in the mood for some late ‘60s/early ‘70s sci-fi, so I figured what the hell. 

This first volume of the trilogy was initially published in hardcover, but the next two novels were paperback only. Actually, the last volume of the trilogy can only be found in The Demu Trilogy. Cage A Man was the first novel published by F.M. Busby, and it’s my understanding he was 50 or so when he started writing; before that he ran a well-regarded sci-fi fanzine or somesuch. So he was clearly a sci-fi fan, and he went on to be a pretty prolific author, passing away in 2005. He’s certainly got a handle on pulp sci-fi; Cage A Man is a fast-moving 144-page novel that features a macho hero fighting (and eating!) lobster-like aliens. 

But then, Busby throws a helluva curveball with this book, as Cage A Man starts off in one direction and ultimately veers in another. It very much reads like the first half of a story, so you have to figure there were some frustrated readers back in the day; the story wouldn’t continue until 1975’s The Proud Enemy (which came out in paperback only, and courtesy a different publisher to boot), and then the final volume, End Of The Line, didn’t show up until 1980’s The Demu Trilogy (itself courtesy a different publisher!). I wonder though if Busby wrote the whole thing at once…whether or not, he clearly knows this is just the start of a bigger story, as he doesn’t even finish anything by this novel’s end, despite the fact that the novel keeps building and building…to a resolution that never comes! 

I mentioned “macho” above, but an interesting thing about the hero of Cage A Man, the thirty-something Barton (no other name provided), is that he’s kind of a dick. Indeed, F.M. Busby almost goes out of his way to make Barton unlikable at times. Initially though I thought we had a hero in the mold of Leigh Brackett: a resourceful individualist willing to get savage when necessary. And this is the Barton we get for the first half of the novel. After that, though…actually to tell the truth, the books I kept flashing back to when reading Cage A Man were the spy-fy novels John Quirk wrote a decade earlier: Busby has a very similar narrative style, and the similarity of a self-centered “masculine” hero flying around on his own private spaceship while dealing with humdrum “business stuff” was very reminiscent of that earlier series’ self-centered “masculine” hero flying around on his own private jet fighter while dealing with humdrum “business stuff.” 

When I picked up The Demu Trilogy I checked out some reviews online, and I have to say that most of the reviews out there are very misleading in that there’s a ton of sex and whatnot in Cage A Man. Maybe it you read nothing but Star Trek tie-ins or Harry Potter or whatever the hell, this book might seem to have a bit more of a focus on sex. But folks, all the sex happens off-page! All of it!! And the exploitation is minimal at best. Even the violence is minimal, and pretty sparse. 

Indeed, another parallel to those John Q. books is that not much really happens in Cage A Man. A lot of the novel is given over to the preparation to do stuff. But the first half of the novel is a different story, because it’s all about the mystery and the buildup. It starts cold, with Barton waking up to find himself naked and stuck in a room with a bunch of other naked men and women. Gradually he will discover that some of them are aliens. Busby gives no background or setup, so that the mystery is just as puzzling to as as it is to Barton: how did he get here, and who has taken him? 

So yes, it’s an alien abduction story, but it sure isn’t Whitley Streiber. Busby will dole out little details, like that Barton is a ‘Nam vet and is 32 years old at the time of abduction, which happens in the early 1980s. So it’s a “near future” sort of thing, given that the novel was published a decade before. There’s no real futuristic stuff in the first half, though…just a lot of stuff about Barton pissing and shitting. Seriously, there is a focus on feces here that’s on the level of your average William Crawford novel. Barton, in this room with others and later alone in his own cell, will find that he must piss or defecate directly onto the floor and the waste, even the “solid waste,” will slowly just slip through the floor, even though Barton himself can’t go through the floor. 

So yeah, there’s more scat-sleaze than real sleaze in this one, so if you’ve ever hankered to read about a guy who is kept nude in a cage for eight years and must always piss and shit on the floor, you’re definitelly gonna want to run out and get a copy of Cage A Man. And yeah, late spoiler alert, but Barton’s here for years and years…but the years are almost casually dispensed in the narrative. Barton’s caught, confused in his cell, then a page or so later we’re told that he figures, by the length of his beard and hair and such, that he’s been here for a few years. 

But first we do have some of that hanky-panky; soon after awakening at the beginning of the novel, Barton encounters fellow captive Limila, a nude alien beauty who looks like an Earth girl, save for having only six fingers and toes, and double rows sharklike rows of teeth…and also her breasts are lower on her ribcage. She wants some sex with Barton posthaste – she has limited English because she’s been a captive for longer and has met more Earthlings – and Barton gives her the goods, though as mentioned it’s off page. And that’s it for Limila until later in the novel, which makes it quite odd that Busby will ultimately spend so much time developing this soap opera romance between she and Barton. In fact the entire second half of Cage A Man concerns Barton’s realization that he’s in love with Limila. 

After this boffery Barton is placed in his own special cell, which is nothing but an empty room with a floor that you can relieve yourself through, and he’ll stay there for years and years. Oh and also occasionally food – a sort of mush – will pour through the also-pourable walls, and Barton will have to put his face up to it to eat. There is quite an off-putting vibe about Cage A Man, what with this nude and dirty guy crapping and pissing in a cell and lapping mush-like food off the wall. In a way the novel practically captures the entire gross, burned-out bummer vibe of the post-Altamont early ‘70s era, or maybe that’s just me. 

This goes on for a long time and Barton develops “hallucination” skills, in which he sits in a corner and visualizes things in his mind, thus making the years pass by quickly. The never-seen aliens keep screwing with him, though, like at one point sending a Tilaran woman into his cage – not Limila, but of the same alien species, with the low-hanging jugs and six fingers and whatnot. This whole bit is weird with the two engaging prompty in (mostly undescribed) sex and eventually the alien gal becomes…pregnant! And Barton, unable to deliver the ensuing baby, has to break the girl’s neck to end her misery and pain! After which she vanishes, the aliens clearly having watched all this from their hidden place but never interfering to help. 

It goes on…like eventually the aliens start trying to teach Barton their language, via some sort of projection on the wall. He also gets a glimpse of them: humanoid lobsters, basically. And their whole schtick is, they consider themselves the only true thinking creatures, and all other aliens they encounter are “animals.” But, if these lobster creatures, ie the Demu, find an “animal” that can learn their language, then that alien becomes Demu – complete with forced surgery to remove/add various bodyparts so that they look like Demu. Now that’s some freaky and weird stuff, which basically sums up the whole vibe of Cage A Man. 

The Leigh Brackett similarities are in how Barton is a hero who refuses to bend his knee; he fights the Demu relentlessly. The similarities become even more pronounced when Barton manages to escape and runs roughshod over the planet – plus even more Brackett similarities here, as there’s no real concern over “science” in this part, ie how Barton can even breathe on this alien planet. But Barton gets hold of a few of the Demu, learning to his satisfaction that their hard exterior shells are very breakable, and he starts breaking arms and limbs and – most memorably – eating some of the “lobster meat” within. 

But this hard edge is lost when Barton gets in a Demu spaceship, and it all just becomes rather juvenile in tone; Barton’s able to take off and fly this thing with rudimentary instructions, and also manages to free Limila and two of Barton’s fellow Earthling captives. But all three of them have been surgically changed by the Demu, so there’s a lot of body horror stuff afoot. Barton also makes off with the apparent leader of this research facility, and the leader’s “egg child,” a little Demu that Barton eventually takes a liking to – despite breaking “her” arm on first meeting and later threatening to eat her. 

At this point the second half of Cage A Man gets underway, and we’re grounded on Earth – and grounded in very humdrum, mundane things. All the tension and payoff of the first half is lost. It’s also very juvenile in tone; Barton flies his spaceship to Earth, figures out how to use the radio to communicate with the (undescribed) Earth space vessels that try to shoot him down, and manages to land the craft unscathed. I mean it’s all on the level of Tom Swift. It gets even goofier, with Barton lording it over the “Space Agency” rep, Tarleton, who serves as the official government contact for Barton for the remainder of the book. 

And meanwhile Barton’s brought along his alien prizes: Histhtoo, the leader; Eeshta, the little girl; Limila, the lobsertized Tilaran. And also there are the two humans who have been Demu-ized. And also meanwhile F.M. Busby decides to turn the whole thing into a melodrama, with Barton slowly realizing he’s in love with Limila, but he can’t bring himself to touch her, because she’s a friggin’ lobster and all, with all her bodyparts hacked off. So off she’s sent to a plastic surgeon to try to get some semblance of human form back; I mean folks seriously, this takes up a huge chunk of the plot. Talks with the surgeon, Limila’s refusal to get human breasts (ie higher up on the chest than the low-hangin’ Tilaran ones), and also lots of talk on how fake ears will be necessary because real ears would be impossible. And also how Limila won’t be able to have her sixty sharkteeth. 

And through it all Barton hops on his commandeered Demu spaceship and flies around, helping Tarleton create a fleet of similar ships to launch an attack on the Demu planet – an attack of vengeance, given that those damn Demu have been abducting humans right and left these past eight years Barton’s been gone. And speaking of which, Busby’s powers of description are minimal at best, so there’s no attempt at bringing this “future” Earth to life…only mentions that there’s a lunar colony now, and also three-dimensional TV, or Tri-V. More focus is placed on the “slop” Barton eats via ready-made packets, complete with Barton bitching over the constant commercials for said slop on Tri-V. 

It was with a crushing sensation that I realized Cage A Man wasn’t building up to anything – the entire second half of the novel is nothing more than the preparation for the next volume. Barton and Tarleton putting a fleet together, comprised of forty ships of various nationalities, to attack the Demu home planet. And Eeshta learning to speak in English while Limila tries to become human again so Barton will screw her. And in that regard we get a lot of stuff about how she insists on only wearing a padded bra, plus she wants a wig made up to look like her real Tilaran hair – an “Elizabethan” style in which her forehead is bald and the hair, which runs down her back, starts in the middle of her forehead, which sounds real friggin’ lovely – and when it finally gets down to the long-awaited conjugation between the two, Busby again leaves the act entirely off-page. Vey curious, then, how so many reviews of Cage A Man go on about the rampant sex. 

Things limp to a close on the act that should’ve happened like a hundred pages before: the Earth fleet launches into space for the voyage to the Demu planet. But before that Busby must grind more gears: we have this super lame, nonsensical subplot in which Barton keeps avoiding this government psychiatrist who is trying to figure out if Barton’s mind has been scrambled by his eight-year abduction. Well, duh! So he keeps “hallucinating” in the tests to throw them off, and finally the “climax” of the novel features Barton being ordered into a last test before they’ll let him fly on one of the spaceships, and he goes berserk when they replicate the cell he was imprisoned in…but it was all a test, you see! Just a test! 

I didn’t much enjoy Cage A Man. But since the novel ends on a cliffhanger I’m already halfway through the next volume, The Proud Enemy, and will be reviewing it anon. Finally, special mention on the cover (credited to someone by the handle FMA, per the signature), which is great, and almost looks like it could be on a prog or krautrock LP.  Or the cover of a direct-to-VHS sci-fi flick: “Starring Lance Henriksen!”