PHILIP K. DICK – Galactic Pot-Healer. Berkley X1705, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1969. Cover art: Sandy Kossin. Reprinted a number of times.

   Joe Farnwright, pot-healer, living a spider’s existence in a garish, nightmarish world on Earth, afraid of failure, lacking in self-knowledge, is hired by Glimmung, of Plawman’s Planet, to help in the raiding of the ancient cathedral Holdscalla.

   Glimmung corresponds to Faust, never satisfied, willing to sacrifice himself to learn the extent of his abilities. Glimmung also contends with the continuing Book of the Kalneds, which tells of the past, the present, and of the future. The book says he will fail. (See page 102 for a discussion of probability.)

   Much wit, much for discussion, but the book does not succeed as a story. The plot is overblown, with too many wild concepts to be taken completely seriously, The last line is a winner.

Rating: ****

J. HARVEY BOND – Murder Isn’t Funny. Mike Lanson #3. Ace Double D-301, paperback original, 1959. Published back-to-back with The Deadly Combo, by John Farr (to be reviewed here on this blog soon).

   J. Harvey Bond was the pen name of Russ Winterbotham (1904-1971), who was probably better known as a writer of science fiction, both novels and short stories, starting as far back as 1935 and “The Star That Would Not Behave” as R. R. Winterbotham in the August issue of Astounding SF for that year.

   All of Winterbotham’s detective novels were written as by J. Harvey Bond, and all four were mysteries tackled by a newspaper reporter by the name of Mike Lanson. Murder Isn’t Funny is the second of the four.

   Thus were the opening three paragraphs of my review of Kill Me with Kindness , which was the third of the four. You can find it reviewed here. What follows is the original review I wrote for Murder Isn’t Funny.

   Newspaper reporter Mike Lanson gets involved with murder again – he was the hero of all four of Bond’s ,mystery novels — this time of the artist-creator of the “Dream Man” comic strip. It’s science fiction, high adventure stuff, and it sounds pretty bad.

   And so’s the book. But maybe it’s not all the author’s fault, What it reads like is like watching a movie edited for TV, with chunks cut out here and there to make it fit the time slot. When Lanson breaks the killer’s alibi, I didn’t even know he/she had one.

BADMAN’S TERRITORY. RKO Radio Pictures, 1946. Randolph Scott, Ann Richards, George ‘Gabby’ Hayes, Ray Collins, Chief Thundercloud, Lawrence Tierney, Tom Tyler, Steve Brodie, Isabel Jewell. Director: Tim Whelan.

   Back in the late 1800s, or so, as the narrator of this film tells us, the Oklahoma panhandle was a land of without law, where gangs of gunslingers congregated and ruled the towns they lived in. Enter Randolph Scott, a lawman in search of his brother, facing every outlaw in the West.

   I messed up on this one. I watched a 98-minute movie crammed into a 90-minute time slot, less commercials. The plot is there. Little things like motivations are not. Maybe there weren’t any, but who could tell? A full report some other time, perhaps.

C. P. DONNEL, JR. “The Fourth Degree.” Duc Rennie #2, First appeared in Black Mask, February 1941. Reprinted in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1953.

   I don’t know very much about C, P. Donnel, Jr., the teller of this tale, nor his hero Doc Rennie. I believe in fact that this is my first time reading anything by the author. In a post on his Pulpflakes blog, Sai Shankar tells us that Donnel (1906-1977) was “a crime reporter on the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot for a decade before switching to writing fiction.” He wrote several dozen stories for the better detective pulp magazines in the 40s, of which 14 or 15 were Doc Rennie yarns.

   We don’t learn much about Rennie in “The Fourth Degree,” but elsewhere on the Internet, I discovered a short squib (since lost) describing him as a psychiatrist, perhaps retired or perhaps working for the government. He lives now is a small rural town where he helps he local sheriff solve the cases he comes across. (It is the latter who tells the stories.)

   In this story the two protagonists are convinced they know who one of the culprits in a local kidnapping case is. The problem is that they can’t get him to talk. Not a word out of him, no matter how hard they try, and as always, time has a way of running out. It may have been a new idea in 40s, but the scheme they come up with is that of “continuous catastrophic noise” (my phrasing), and it saves the day.

   The plot is minor, and keeping one of the players off the page for much of story was not the best idea, either. Donnel is a good writer, though, based on this story, but if his name was on the cover of the issue he next appeared in, it wouldn’t induce me to come up with the fifteen cents to obtain it, not even a small notch in the right direction.

VENTURE SCIENCE FICTION – August 1969. Editor: Edward L. Ferman. Cover art: Bert Tanner. Overall rating: ****

JULIUS FAST “The League of Grey-Eyed Women.” Novel. Published separately later by Lippincott (hardcover, 1970) and Pyramid (paperback, 1971).

   This is science fiction, with a subject of top interest in research today – namely the study of the formation of life, chromosomes, RNA, DNA and so on. Searching for a cure for his cancer, Jack Freeman seeks out a doctor at McGill University, but it is the latter’s female assistant who injects him with an experimental formula.

   The assistant has her own goals in mind, however, namely to change Jack into the only male capable of helping an organized group of telepathic women carry out what should prove to be a new human race, but one with alienation between individuals eliminated. Very well plotted, the tale includes Jack’s experiences as a wolf, then as a shark. It reminded me of Jack Williamson’s Darker Than You Think.

       Rating: ****½

EDWARD WELLEN “With Ah! Bright Wings.” An uninspired story explaining Earth’s pollution problem. (2)

DEAN R. KOONTZ “Demon in the Land.” Germ warfare has backfired in China, and it is up to the US to save them. New wave (I think) stuff that does not succeed. (3)

LARRY EISENBERG “Project Amnion.” Womb training. Story has no point to make. (1)

ROBERT F. YOUNG “Pithecanthropus Astralis.” Cave man and the stars. Is this a warning to us about priorities? (3)

RUSSELL H. GREENAN – The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton. Random House, hardcover, 1973. Fawcett Crest, paperback, 1973, Bantam, paperback, 1988.

   Algernon Pendleton hears voices from unexpected sources — from philodendrons, for example. But his favorite voice source is Eulalia. a Worcester porcelain pitcher, and it is only with Eulalia that he carries on long conversations. In fact, this is pretty much the essence of Algernon’s existence — chatting with his pitcher and leading a quiet, contemplative life in his large old house in Brookline, Massachusetts.

   Of course he has to earn money occasionally. and this he does by selling, one by one. his late grandfather’s collection of Egyptian artifacts (his grandfather was a famed and eccentric Egyptologist). Still, Algernon is falling farther and farther into debt, and Eulalia fears the day may come when she, too, will be sold.

   Then one summer, outsiders begin to force their way into Algernon’s normally quiet and isolated fife. First comes an old navy friend who has left his wife, has a suitcase full of money, and has seriously considered suicide. Well, anything for a friend. At Eulalia’s urging, Algernon fulfills the suicide wish by blowing his friend’s brains out, helping himself to the money, and burying the body in a graveyard behind the house.

   Alas, two other people discover this secret and attempt to blackmail Algernon. A Turkish antique dealer wants money; and a beautiful, but pushy, female archaeologist wants access to all the treasures and secrets of Algernon’s late grandfather. The antique dealer is killed in a struggle (and also buried in the graveyard). And the beautiful archaeologist? Well, that would be telling. Suffice it to say that her fate fits in perfectly with Algernon’s voices, with her obsession for Egyptian lore, and with the whole ambience of the strange old house in Brookline.

   Like Russell Greenan’s other novels- — the highly acclaimed It Happened in Boston? (1968), Nightmare (1970), The Queen of America (1972), Heart of Gold (1975), The Bric-a-Brac Man (1976), and Keepers (1979) -this is a most unusual book with elements of black humor and underplayed horror. There is nothing else quite like a Greenan novel of suspense, as you’ll sec if you read this one or any of the others.

         ———
   Reprinted with permission from 1001 Midnights, edited by Bill Pronzini & Marcia Muller and published by The Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, 2007.   Copyright © 1986, 2007 by the Pronzini-Muller Family Trust.

JOHN GREGORY BETANCOURT “Pit and the Princess.” First appeared in Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, December 2014, Not reprinted or collected.

   Peter (Pit) Geller is what;s called a fixer, and he works primarily for a mob boss in Philadelphia. One distinguishing feature is that he has a photographic memory, but while it’s mentioned a couple of times, it really doesn’t come into play in this case, which involves his being sent to Vegas to look for his boss’s niece who has gone missing.

   The case nearly solves itself. When he;s dropped off at a guest house once he arrives, the niece and her boy friend are already camped out there. Case over? Not so fast. So is a dead body. The kids didn’t do it. But who did?

   Being only a short story, there aren’t many suspects, and Pit makes short work of the rest of the case. Betancourt is head honcho at Wildside Press (editor and publisher), but he’s a decent writer as well, although being perhaps better known in SF and fantasy circles. This is no more than a medium-boiled tale hovering around the middle of ranking from 0 to 5, You can do better. Or– very easily — a whole lot worse.

       The Peter “Pit” Geller series –

Pit and the Pendulum, (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine July/August 2005
A Christmas Pit, (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine January/February 2006
Pit on the Road to Hell, (nv) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine July/August 2006
Horse Pit, (na) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine July/August 2008
Pit and the Princess, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine December 2014

TED KOSMATKA “The Art of Alchemy.” First appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 2008. Reprinted in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Three, edited by Jonathan Strahan (Night Shade Books, 2009) and The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, 2009 Edition, edited by Rich Horton (Prime Books, 2010).

   There is a recurring th4eme to a certain number of similar stories, perhaps not as many as there used to be, in which an inventor of an improved means of propelling automobiles goes to a gigantic company which produces and sells gasoline worldwide, and he ends up in all kinds of trouble. You man consider this as one of them, although the invention is rather a material stranger than steel, which someone brings a thread of to research scientists at a steel company.

   Which is all I tell you, as what’s the fun in that, just in case you run across a copy of the story which you can read for yourself. It is of course embellished with several other major factors, and in fact it is also a romance, although it is absolutely not a necessary part of the story.

   This is the first story I’ve ever read by the author, and between you and me, I confess that I had never even noticed his name before. He is, however, the author of three novels and several dozen short stories, starting in 2000, so he’s been around for a while. While this story may not be an award-winner, it is very very good. It is also nice to be confirmed in this statement by being able to point out that it also appeared r in two different “Best SF of Year” collections later on.

WILLIAM F. NOLAN & GEORGE CLAYTON JOHNSON: Logan’s Run. The Dial Press, hardcover, 1967. Dell, paperback; 1st printing thus, March 1969. Bantam, paperback, 1976. Film: 1976, wih Michael York, Jenny Agutter. TV series: CBS, September 16, 1977, to February 6, 1978.

   In the year 2116, youth has taken over the Earth. The maximum age allowed in 21, with death mandatory after that date, enforced by the Sandman police force. Logan is a Sandman, and his problems begin just as he is turning 21. There are rumors of a Sanctuary, and while he is tracking it down [on behalf of his job] through the worldwide underground railway, designed to show off Earth’s hellspots, he discovers that he wants it for himself.

   His motivations lose significance in the chase, and we have nothing more than a picturesque adventure story, extremely suitable for a large budget motion picture, while much better science fiction stays confined to its own pages. The plot jumps, the characters are too often emotionless. Why does it seem all too typical of SF with major promotion behind it?

Overall rating: **½