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Baphomets Meteor

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`Baphomet's Meteor' is an English translation of the novel `The Empire of Baphomet' (1972) by Pierre Barbet (the pseudonym used by the French SF writer Claude Avice, 1925 - 1975).

This slim, parallel world novel is one of the first titles published by DAW books. It is reasonably well-translated, always a tricky undertaking when going from French to English (I still can't finish the tortuous English-language version of Jean Raspail's novel `The Camp of the Saints').

The Knights Templar were a medieval organization founded in the late 11th century to assist Catholic pilgrims to the Middle East and Palestine. Over time the order became very wealthy and politically powerful, and began to earn the enmity of the French King Phillip IV, who had borrowed considerable sums of money from the Templars. In 1307 Phillip, with the `blessing' of Pope Clement V, carried out a brutal persecution of the Order; one of the charges leveled at the Knights was their worship of a demonic entity referred to as `Baphomet' (see: www.templarhistory.com/enigma.html). The Templars more or less disintegrated following Phillip's actions. Since that time the Templars have become something of a fetish among conspiracy devotees, and the order has become a staple of pop culture allusions to secret societies and their occult rituals.

In `Meteor', a 12th century French knight out hunting for wild boar stumbles upon a crashed spacecraft of alien origin. The ship's pilot bears close resemblance to the Baphomet recorded in `our' world. It turns out the alien is telepathic and, in exchange for food and raw materials, agrees to provide the awestruck knight with all manner of wealth and high-tech weaponry, as well as a blueprint for world domination based on the founding and maintenance of a Templar organization. The Templars, equipped with their alien patron's weapons, set off on a violent campaign to regain the Holy Land from the Moslems, and after that, to entertain designs on the conquest of much of the Eastern hemisphere.

The book derives some of its suspense from fact that the Templars have a limited supply of the superweapons, and thus not every battle is necessarily a foregone conclusion. Also, in the latter half of the book, the Templars (properly) begin to wonder about the ultimate ambitions of Baphomet. Is his sponsorship of the Order a simple machination to groom the Earth for a takeover by fellow ETs ? Is there any way for this medieval society to understand and manipulate its few alien artifacts in order to prevent an invasion and enslavement ?

`Meteor' is a reasonably fast-moving, well-written historical novel with some interesting SF elements. Author Barbet refrains from imbuing his story with heavy overtones of politically correctness (this book was written in 1972, after all) and the conflict between European and Arab is presented in a straightforward manner.

The book's main weakness is the ending; it comes across as perfunctory and rushed, as if Barbet had grown tired of the storyline, or had abruptly realized he was reaching his Word Limit.

Fans of alt history / parallel world stories may want to keep an eye out for a copy of `Meteor' on the used book shelves.