Bernhardt J. Hurwood, We Hardly Knew Ye

[robotnik2004]

I just got a strange and terrific present from my old amigo Sean, who lives among the Ewoks on Vancouver Island. He was buying a trade paperback of The Invisibles at a used bookstore, and the guy there told him they had "the original novel the comic book was based on." And so Sean bought and sent me this groovy little pulp paperback, published in 1971 by one Bernhardt J. Hurwood, and called, yep, The Invisibles.

Now I think the bookstore guy was having Sean on. I've been an Invisibles fanboy since 1995 and I've never heard anything about this book. And frankly, if Grant Morrison had been inspired by a semi-smutty drugsploitation novel from the 1970s, I don't think he'd be shy about admitting it.

And yet... the novel is about a two-fisted psycho-pharmacologist, a kind of Indiana Jones meets Timothy Leary type, who acquires psychic powers from experiments with psychotropic drugs, and then uses those powers to fight a globe-spanning conspiracy of evil, and also to have a lot of uninhibited 1971-style sex. It doesn't strictly mirror the plot of the 1990s Invisibles, but the whole vibe just screams Morrison. So who can say?

(The vibe also screams The New Know Nothings, which adds another level of weird synchronicity to this. Sean was the original creator of that Mage campaign I just posted about, with its whole 1970s Gothic Funk gestalt. I only took up the reins when he traipsed off to Vanuatu. Yet he must have bought and mailed the book just days before I dragged that old game summary up into the light.)

A little googling informs me that the euphoniously-named Bernhardt J. Hurwood was a "sexologist, sometime film critic, coattail-jumper, and definitive Burt Reynolds biographer," who also wrote The Bisexuals, The Girl, The Massage, and Everything, and the long-running Man From T.O.M.C.A.T. series (from which you will surely remember The Ominous Orgy and The Dozen Deadly Dragons of Joy). See what I mean about the Morrison vibe?

My working theory now is that Hurwood—the name is clearly a pseudonym or maybe even an anagram for something—actually was Grant Morrison, who, while writing the comic in the 1990s, projected himself back in time to the 1970s and wrote the Invisibles novel just to play with my head.

Comments

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Hurwood better hope he hasn't received a call from Morrison's lawyer. Because you know, sex/drug conspiracy stories were invented by Morrison. Just ask him. Same way reality as illusion, clueless savior stories were.

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Oh, and I'll be expecting to read said novel when you are done.

[robotnik.livejournal.com]

Not if you keep dissing St. Grant, you won't! :)

[bryant]

Note also his book entitled Society And The Assassin: A Background Book on Political Murder. King Mob was here.

[(Anonymous)]

In the series, didn't Sir Miles write a book in the 1960s called "The Invisibles" that was a lot like that?

Chris, in line after Jere.

That was me.

[(Anonymous)]

I was not having Sean on. It's weird though eh. I sold him that book.. and was trying to remember the authors name for some friends of mine and came across your entry. Weird synchronicity no? What did you think of the book?

E-mail me at quixote@uvic.ca.

I can confirm the name of the bookstore if you think this is a joke..

cheers.

Adam.

ps. this is kind of Invisibles-ish is it not?

bernhardt j hurwood

[(Anonymous)]

Does anyone out there know about BJH"s book "In Days of Old When Knights Were Bold and Maidens were Deflowered" and if there's a copy available? Write me ar uncoknight@hotmail.com