The Unicorn Girl

Greenwich Village Trilogy #2

by Michael Kurland

Michael Kurland's 'The Unicorn Girl' is a novel about a magical world, half-mystical, half-historic, half-imaginary. Three halves, you ask, isn't that impossible? Of course it it. That's why it's magical. It is a lost world, too, a lost world called The Sixties. You hold in your hands the one, the only, the original Unicorn Girl. It's time to slip an old Harper's Bizarre or Strawberry Alarm Clock LP onto the turntable, pour yourself a glass of cheap wine, take off your shoes, and put up your feet. Then set fire to a little Maui wowee (if you're so inclined -- don't tell anybody I encouraged you to break the law) and settle in for a trip to a wonderful half-real, half-imaginary era with Michael Kurland and the Unicorn Girl. -- Richard A. Lupoff, from the Introduction

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy

172 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1969

About the author

aka Jennifer Plum

Michael Kurland has written many non-fiction books on a vast array of topics, including How to Solve a Murder, as well as many novels. Twice a finalist for the Edgar Award (once for The Infernal Device) given by the Mystery Writers of America, Kurland is perhaps best known for his novels about Professor Moriarty. He lives in Petaluma, California.

Reviews

[Glenn Russell]

The Unicorn Girl- Michael Kurland's 1969 hippy, dippy, trippy novel featuring beautiful girls, a unicorn,, a magic hash pipe, Michael Kurland himself, Michael's friend Chester Anderson (author of The Butterfly Kid) and enough time between time and outer outer space travel to blow your mind, blow your mind again and blow your mind some more.

The Unicorn Girl - Book Two of the Greenwich Village Trilogy, bookended by Book One: Chester Anderson's The Butterfly Kid and Book Three: T. A. Waters' The Probability Pad. For those reader who might not be familiar with Chester's The Butterfly Kid, we have none other than Chester who wrote himself and Michael Kurland into the novel as leaders of a gaggle of horny hippies who save the world from giant blue alien lobsters by the use of psychedelics and mass hallucination. Ah, acid to the rescue! Not exactly Theodore Dreiser or Sinclair Lewis but it makes for one funky, fun story.



Turning to The Unicorn Girl here's the setup: A year following those phenomenal Greenwich Village butterfly events, narrator Michael Kurland is sitting at a table in the San Francisco Bay Area listening to Chester the Barefoot Anderson on stage playing his electric harpsichord with his new rock group when he spots her just inside the doorway - THE GIRL OF HIS DREAMS! Feeling like the knight in shinning armor from his boyhood days, Michael walks up to the dark haired beauty and introduces himself; to which, the fair damsel in distress asks Michael if he would help find her unicorn.

Cut to the parking lot outside where Michael aka Michael the Teddybear and his fair damsel Sylvia are joined by first Chester the Barefoot and then by a tall, slender knockout by the name of Dorothy and then finally by Ronald the centaur (no kidding, a real centaur!) and Giganto the cyclops (dido - a real cyclops!). Turns out these two beauties and two physical oddballs are from the circus and they are all looking for their lost unicorn Adolphus.



Two search parties are formed: Ronald and Giganto gallop off in one direction and Michael, Chester, Sylvia and Dorothy dawdle off in the other. No sooner does the quartet dawdle down the lane then Michael hears a weird meep meep along with spotting a blinking red light coming from what looks like one of those B-movie flying saucers. Than all of a sudden, as if from out of nowhere, there's an earthquakelike shaking BLIP and our four unicorn hunters are in a different space time continuum (big word I remember from high school physics class).

If Dorothy had a little doggie with her, she might have said the Bay Area version of: "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." So, Michael and the trio are in a post-BLIP land next to a yellow brick road where all sorts of In the Hall of the Mountain King happenings start to happen.

And this isn't the only BLIP - the story features four more - BLIP, BLIP, BLIP, BLIP - sprinkled throughout, BLIP-ing off at the hippest moments. Three soundtracks kept spinning in my mind's ear while reading: Love the One You're With, Puff, the Magic Dragon, and, of course, Here Comes the Sun. Dig it, baby.



Plot? Did I hear you say you wanted some words on plot? Impossible! No more on plot. Rather, let me share a few of my favorite HI points, if you know what I mean. Here they are:

Michael, Chester, Sylvia and Dorothy are ridding in a horse drawn carriage with a Victorian lady and gentleman - top hat, mustache, mutton chops, the whole get up. After ridding for a couple of hours with this prim and proper Vic couple, out in a grassy field, six buck naked couples frolic and romp in joyful abandon, laughing, squealing, running and tickling and hugging each other. Michael enjoys the sight but then it strikes him - the Victorian couple obviously fail to see the least itty-bitty bit of all that gleaming gorgeous flesh. Parallel universes, maybe? Turns out, nakedness means invisible to the denizens of this world they've entered. Comes in handy when Teddybear, Sylvia, Dorothy and the Barefoot One are chased through town by the Victorian townsfolk. Hey, as readers we get to picture Michael, Chester and those two curvaceous lovelies strip down to their birthday suits.

Walking along on a path in the woods, our four hippie adventurers (oh, yes, Sylvia and Dorothy have learned to toke with the best of them) are confronted by a gang of Spanish Conquistadors armed with swords and lances. Oh, no! Those brutes in armor want at the two beautiful ladies. A fight ensues. And who proves to be the most skilled warriors? Dorothy and Sylvia! Maybe those lovelies acquired their martial arts skills from the circus, but whatever it was, they are a sight to behold. When one Conquistador brings his sword up to defend himself, like a combination of lightning flash and jaguar leap, Sylvia swings into action, snapping her leg and fists out in rapid succession, hitting his belly, chest and finally his head with such force it instantly brakes his neck. More swirls, stabs and kicks (too fast to count) and those conquering Conquistadors are turned into corpses soon to be carrion for the turkey vultures. I hear Santana's Soul Sacrifice thumping away as background music.

Toward the end of their adventures, after the gang catches up with Tom aka T. A. Waters, author of The Probability Pad, we read one of Michael the Teddybear's last reflections: "The four days went fast. I don't remember much except getting yelled at a lot and not sleeping. When it was over, we had learned certain spells and methods that would be of most use to us. How to disappear. How to blip from one place to another (excuse the word blip). How to create and use a simulacrum if we got the chance. Things like that. Sylvia turned out to be the most apt pupil, Tom next, Dorothy next, then Chester and me."

What I want to know is: Why isn't this classic sixties novel reprinted so as to be made more available? Is anybody in the publishing world listening?

[Cheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm. Silly fun at the beginning. I can actually follow along, though usually I have lots of trouble with fiction created by fans of hallucinogens.

I am disturbed by the 'male gaze' stuff... this is the kind of treatment of women that some men thought was enlightened but is actually more chauvinistic than the depictions that are more obviously offensive. Hard to explain, but one thing to bear in mind is that 'girls' who are friends with unicorns have a certain particular innocence....

I'll read further but may dnf. I only continue because some reviewers have such high praise.
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Hmm. After reading further, I'm admiring the wit and the insights. Kurland is no Oscar Wilde but there is a bit of spirit in common.
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Also satire. Also reminding me somewhat of To Say Nothing of the Dog.
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Ok done.
Not too bad, esp. if you can overlook the unintentional sexism and don't mind the drug references.
"Pretty girls have a corner on the earnest vagueness market."

[Neil M · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book when I was 15 and have reread it approximately every ten years since then. It's basically one of my favourite things in the whole world.

Replete with dialogue and situations that live forever in the imagination, if you read it when you are young, I suspect it will never leave you.

[Orinoco Womble (tidy bag and all) · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a lot funnier when I was fourteen. I admit that. It was also funnier the first time I read it (as compared to when I already knew what was coming). I admit that, too. But hey, having read it for the first time in about 1976, it's amazing how much of the dialogue and storyline remained easily accessible in my memory nearly 40 years later--obviously it made an impression.

The plot is sketchy, but then so is the "save the world" plot of any action film, from Godzilla to Bond to the latest blockbuster. I have to say, though, that Kurland obviously got tired of writing about halfway through. The first half is much funnier, with the dialogue between Chester and Michael, or Tom and Michael, or any of the girls and Michael. After they actually get to the Angevin Empire and start to "do" instead of talk, things start to drag just a bit, as if he lost direction. A lot of the plot threads (like the Tolkienite hippy tribe, or the dragonlady teaching school) get started and just peter out. Well, a blip in time saves nine...nine pages of transitional writing, I guess. And there really isn't much of an end. After all that buildup--just like a Bond film--everybody just seems to turn off the lights and go home.

I've always wondered if Kurland and Anderson might possibly be the same person IRL. Having never been able to find "The Probability Pad" by Tom Waters (or whoever), the jury's still out on that one.

[David "Thorne" Luckhardt · Rating 5 out of 5]

60's F&SF Psychedelia at its best, this book is (sorta) a part of a (sorta) trilogy. "The Butterfly Kid" by Chester Anderson starts the fun, "The Unicorn Girl" comes next, and "The Probability Pad" by T. A. Waters finishes it.

Anderson's book in particular is a brilliant romp, with the long Victorian sentence game being outrageously funny. Unfortunately prices are steep for Anderson's and Water's books.

[Natalie · Rating 5 out of 5]

i did the unthinkable: i judged a book by its cover (not the cover shown here). i was in a little used book shop that no longer exists and i was just browsing the science fiction section when i stumbled upon this little gem. read a few pages and decided to get it. what a surprise! it was so funny and ridiculous, i couldn't help but love it.

[Andrea]

Trippy hippy fantasy.

[Sarah Melissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sequel to “The Butterfly Kid,” at one point reissued by Dover Thrift Books and now certainly available at a reasonable price from ThriftBooks. Told by Michael the Theodore Bear as he switches place in narration with his friend Chester (both people existed in real life, and put themselves into the books as characters and narrators as a spoof). A fast-paced hurtling between times and alternate timelines initiated by a young woman, Sylvia’s, search for her lost unicorn; she is a circus performer in her alternate reality as well as a member of the nobility.
Timelines are being twisted and disrupted by bad actors, who are, in the end defeated. The book is engaging.

[Normandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have loved this book for so long

I just discovered the Unicorn Girl all over again. Lines from it have been in my head for so many decades. And now, now, I remember where they come from. Still, so wonderfully whimsical.

[Kris · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange but delightful hippy trip across the multiverse.

[Hugo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm comfortably sure that my accidentally reading the second book in a trilogy, written by three different California-resident authors, all of them—I think I'd be safe in saying—stoned out of their gourds in the arse end of the 1960s, is less to do with my lack of due diligence than with the works themselves.

This is a fun, scattershot little adventure into psychedelic wonderland, clearly made up as it went along, but the author has the occasional way with wordplay, approaching, in its rarest instances, a level of Wildean aphorism.

[Kevin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this decades ago when it came out in paperback. A trilogy by three authors, and three decent books.

Now this one is available as an e-book. And grandly worth (re-)reading, as your case may be.

Strongly recommended.

[Jonathan Palfrey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This rather delightful book was first published in 1969, and you can tell.

It stars the author, his friends, and others, and one of its various parts is set in the world of Lord Darcy: a fictional world created by Randall Garrett, another friend of Kurland’s.

It’s technically science fiction although it feels more like fantasy, and consists of a madcap adventure story in which the characters (who have their own touches of eccentricity) are pulled from one world to another by something outside their control.

It’s not so much a novel as a magical mystery tour, but it’s amusing and good fun and I’m fond of it. It does actually have a plot of sorts, and a genuine ending.

Being a fan of Lord Darcy, I have a few quibbles about that part of the book.

1. The representatives of the Angevin Empire should have been speaking Anglo-French, a language that evolved differently from our English over the course of centuries, so there should have been considerable communication problems with Americans from our world. But, OK, that would have been no fun and would have slowed down the story.

2. Sir Thomas Leseaux is well documented as having no Talent, so he shouldn’t be capable of doing magic. He should have summoned a sorcerer to do it for him, which would have been easy enough. Kurland later wrote a couple of full-blown Lord Darcy novels himself, by which time he’d studied the scenario better and didn’t make that kind of mistake.

3. Sir Thomas’s little demonstration of magic seems oddly like something out of Harry Potter, although of course the Potter books were written much later. In the Lord Darcy stories, the words of spells are never quoted.

But these are just minor quibbles. Overall, this is a nice book about nice people, and I find it both entertaining and comforting. The sort of book I can read to cheer me up when I’m feeling low. Thank you, Michael Kurland.

[Annarella · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the first book in this series and I loved it, I liked this one that is a bit less engrossing and entertaining than the first one.
I'm really thankful to the publisher that gave me the opportunity to read this less known psychedelic sci-fi classics.
It was a fun read, well written and entertaining even if a bit more confused than the first one in this series.
It's recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine.

[Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sequel to The Butterfly Kid.^^^^Not as good as The Butterfly Kid, felt like he tried too hard to get Chester into character... and tried too hard overall, but really did like the concept."

[Xenophon Hendrix · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've at least heard of most classic fantasies, but this one was new to me until shortly before I began reading it. It's an artifact from the 1960s and has a slightly deranged vibe but not enough to be annoying. The tale is fast moving and often humorous. The writing is clean and clever.

[Luís Baixinho · Rating 3 out of 5]

Livro com algum humor e uma história estranha mas ao mesmo tempo fácil de seguir. Fiquei curioso com os outros dois livros da trilogia (de outros autores), mas penso que não existam traduzidos em português. :(
Pergunto-me se a parte final é mesmo assim (rápida) ou se é um "defeito" da tradução.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memorable (+50 year old) tale told with excellent imagination. Excellent dialog and completely unpredictable plot, among other things, make this an easily recommended read.

I really appreciate the copy for review!

[Nicole · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book written in sequel to Chester Anderson's tale of alien invasion called Butterfly Kid. However it is much better writing.

[Scott Nieradka · Rating 2 out of 5]

BLIP!

[le-trombone]

Part of a trio of books, with The Butterfly Kid by Chester Anderson, and The Probability Pad by T A Waters.