MARTIN H. GREENBERG, Editor – Deadly Doings. Ivy, paperback original; 1st printing, 1989.

   #1. IRA LEVIN “Sylvia.” Short story. First appeared in Manhunt, April 1955. Reprinted in Giant Manhunt #6, 1955 (variation #1). Adapted for TV: Alfred Hitchcock Presents, 19 January 1958 (Season 3, episode 16).

   The name Ira Levin probably needs no introduction to readers pf his blog, but just in case, I’ll jog your memory: A Kiss Before Dying, Rosemary’s Baby, The Boys from Brazil, and others. This was, however, the only story he had published for the crime fiction magazines.

   In it wealthy businessman Lewis Melton, being ultra-protective of his daughter’s well-being, has already broken up her marriage to a fortune hunter named Lyle Waterman. When he intercepts a letter from Waterman to his still despondent daughter, he realizes that the stakes have suddenly risen a whole lot higher.

   But when he finds a gun in his daughter’s bedroom, he realizes that Waterman has to be warned. But pf course the story doesn’t end here, making at a natural to be picked up a few years later by the Alfred Hitchcock TV show.

   The story’s a good one, but if I’ve read the synopsis of the TV version correctly, they made some changes and I think they messed it up. I will have to watch it some time before I can tell you for sure.

            —

   I’m currently working my way through three different SF magazines and best-of-year anthologies, story by story. Since this is nominally a mystery-oriented blog, I’ve decided to do the same with this particular anthology. There’s no theme behind the stories chosen, only that they are, acceding to the introduction, both “finely crafted and entertaining.”

  LESTER del REY, Editor – Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Second Annual Edition. E. P. Dutton, hardcover. 1973. Ace, paperback, December 1975.

   #8. DONALD NOAKES “The Long Silence.” First appeared in Analog SF, March 1972. Not reprinted elsewhere.

   This one’s a puzzler. Not only was this story never published anywhere else, but this is the only SF or fantasy story that the author ever had published. What’s worse is that I don’t think the story’s very good.

   The time is sometime in the near future (probably on Earth, but the locale is not entirely clear). The early 70s must have been still in the transistor radio era since this is one of the ideas transported to as I say, a very near future. A technique that protestors (to what is not entirely clear) have found effective to have everyone wear transistor radios around their necks and turn them up to the highest possible volume.

   The resulting din would deafen anyone. The solution found by the police? Use a newly invented machine that at the flip of a switch cuts off all sound altogether. The result? Quoting the last two lines [PLOT WARNING] “Without noise they have to think. If they are forced to think for too long they go mad.”

   In spite of this being a fairly minor effort, those last two lines do make you stop and think, though, don’t they?

          —

Previously from the del Rey anthology: ROBERT L. DAVIS “Teratohippus.”

JUDSON P. PHILIPS “Men About to Die.” Novella. Park Avenue Hunt Club #11. First published in Detective Fiction Weekly, February 2, 1935. Never reprinted. See comments #’s 1 and 2 for reprint information.

   Running in the pages of Detective Fiction Weekly, where it vied for readers’ attention with the likes of Erle Stanley Gardner’s Lester Leith, Richard Sale’s Daffy Dill, and Carroll John Daly’s Satan Hall, the popular Park Avenue Hunt Club was an American version of Edgar Wallace’s Just Men, a team of vigilantes battling crime in the age of the Depression, gangsters. John Dillinger, and Bonny and Clyde.

   The Club members were handsome former secret agent Geoffrey Saville; big game hunter and red haired giant John Jericho; and chess master and medical student Arthur Hallam, who, their identities known only to Inspector James Emory Doane NYPD, wage a violent and bloody war on the underworld of New York.

   Pretty standard pulp stuff it sounds and it was, but behind the name Judson P. Philips was Hugh Pentecost, one of the longest lived writers to emerge from the pulps and who, like relatively few others, had a healthy critically successful career as a mid-list author under his own name and as Philips, and whose many series included the popular hotel manager Pierre Chambrun and freelance journalist Peter Styles series as well as one featuring John Jericho, an artist who shares with the Hunt Club Jericho mostly only his size and red hair.

   Like most of the writers who survived the pulps and thrived, Pentecost not only outgrew his origins, he expanded his horizons so that the Peter Styles books had a serious social conscience tackling major issues of the day, while Jericho’s adventures featured a deeply humanitarian sleuth often rescuing victims of society. Save for retaining a gift for plot, suspense, and action they and Chambrun are a far cry from the bloodthirsty Park Avenue Hunt Club.

   The dangerous Dzamba brothers, Leonardo, Salvatore, and Vincente (no, they aren’t mutant ninja turtles) are on trial in a case brought by none other than Inspector Doane and prosecutor John Crowther, and a witness has warned Doane that the Dzambas plan a spectacular escape during the trial, so he calls on Saville, Jericho, and Hallam to be present when the bloodshed begins. The Club has a history with the Dzambas, Jericho himself having killed brother Angelo with his bare hands.

   And sure enough something goes wrong, the judge is murdered in chambers, four policeman are killed in a bloody shootoutmand the Dzambas are on the loose. The Park Avenue Hunt Club is on the prowl, turning to a crooked former cop who helped the Dzamba brothers in the past but Salvatore gets to him before the boys can.

   With the Dzambas out for revenge, and even their own lawyer murdered by them, the one target left is prosecutor Crowther, who lives in the country with his young wife. Local yokels can hardly be expected to protect him, so it looks like a job for the boys.

   No detection here, it’s mostly an action piece closer to the hero pulps and they’re figures of justice than sleuths, but it is satisfyingly fast paced, and despite a plethora of characters in a relatively short piece. it works well enough.

   This is a single contained story, though some of the Park Avenue tales were serials and likely a bit less rushed, if still as plot and action heavy. You can see why this series was popular and featured so often on covers of the magazine. It’s pure pulp, full of movement, setbacks, and a big finale with the three heroes once again emerging triumphant in their secret war against crime, and in a relatively few years Pentecost would be moving on to a long successful career.

  DONALD WOLLHEIM, Editor, with Arthur W. Saha – The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF. Daw #783, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1989. Cover art by Jim Burns.

#5. IAN WATSON – The Flies of Memory. Novella. First published in Asimov’s SF, September 1988. Expanded into the novel of the same title (Headline, UK, paperback, 1990).

   “The Flies of Memory” begins fine enough, a story told with many layers of meaning, or so it seems. The primary protagonist is Charles Spark, an expert in body language, a skill that places him in high demand by government agencies. And what better time to be called into service than when a mammoth ship from space lands in the Mediterranean, not far off shore from Alexandria.

   The ship is filled with large alien fly-like creatures (therefore immediately dubbed Flies) whose purpose on Earth is not known, but they act like tourists, visiting locales all around the world — the city of Rome most particularly — and committing what they see to memory. Why? No one knows.

   And by the end of the story I don’t think I still really know. It’s a long story, 55 pages in the paperback edition, and there is a quantum jump between the last 18 pages and what has come before, right about the time Spark and the nun who has been acting as the Flies’ guide are invited to enter the aliens’ spaceship.

   What had been an interesting collection of ideas and plot lines involving alien psychology, the mafia, the KGB and the inner workings of the Vatican turns in an instant into another story altogether, one with an ending that tosses away most of what came before, and produces instead … well, all I can say is that I was expecting more — a whole lot more. I’m sorry to say that I missed the boat altogether. You may do better with this one than I did.

       —

Previously from the Wollheim anthology: GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER “Schrödinger’s Kitten.”

  LOU SAHADI, Editor – An Argosy Special: Science Fiction. One-shot reprint magazine. Popular Publications, 1977.

    #1. ROGER DEE – First Life. Short story. First published in Super Science Stories, July 1950. Not reprinted elsewhere.

   This late 70s Argosy Special consists (at first glance) of nine random stories selected from a group of second-rank SF magazines published by Popular Publications in the early 1950s. Assuming you’ll allow me, I’m going to go through the magazine story by story over the next few weeks, and write up my comments on them in a series of individual posts.

   First up is “First Life” by Roger Dee, the working byline of Roger Dee Aycock, born in Georgia in 1914. You may never have heard of him unless you’re a collector-reader of SF magazines from the 50s, even those not in the top three (Astounding, Galaxy, F&SF). He was the author of several dozen short stories in that era, but only one novel, An Earth Gone Mad, half of an Ace Double in 1954.

   In this story a young boy has been in touch with far advanced beings from the stars, and on the fateful night that the story takes place, a small individual spaceship has come to pick him up to meet his future. Unfortunately he also has to say goodbye to his parents and dog, and it isn’t easy.

   The story isn’t told in the most elegant of prose, but it caught my attention anyway. It reminded me of seeing each of my children off to school for the first time, knowing that they wouldn’t ever be the same, once the bus brought them home again. The poignancy is even higher in “First Life,” though, as young Donnie will never be coming home again. You will have to read the story yourself to learn why.

RICHARD SALE “The House of Kaa.” The Cobra #2. Short story. First published in Ten Detective Aces, February 1934. Reprinted in The Black Lizard Big Book of Pulps, edited by Otto Penzler (Vintage Crime, softcover, November 2007). Collected in The Cobra: The King of Detectives (Altus Press, 2009).

   The pulp magazines were filled with all kinds of detective heroes, from cops to PIs and pure amateurs, but in their midst were numerous self-appointed vigilantes, long before Don Pendleton and Mack Bolan came along. Such a one is Dean Bradley, a common enough name, but in his guise as “The Cobra,” his penchant for killing the villains he meets is enough to instill the fear of sudden death into the minds of countless others.

   His favorite method of disposing of the various criminals he tracks down? Cobra venom, administered by poisoned darts propelled from a blowgun disguised as a cigarette holder. The miscreants in “The House of Kaa,” busily smuggling priceless jewels from India to England in the stomachs of royal pythons, are no different, and they are hardly a match for The Cobra.

   As for Richard Sale, the author, he later became well known as both a novelist (Lazarus #7) and screenwriter (Suddenly). Everyone has to start somewhere!

        The Dean Bradley aka “The Cobra” series —

Terror Towers (ss) Ten Detective Aces Jan 1934
The House of Kaa (ss) Ten Detective Aces Feb 1934
The Grinning Ghoul (ss) Ten Detective Aces Mar 1934

CLEVE F. ADAMS “Flowers for Violet.” Violet McDade #6. Novelette. Published in Clues Detective Stories, May 1936. Cover by Norman Saunders. Never reprinted. Included in Hard-Boiled Dames, edited by Bernard Drew (St. Martin’s Press, 1986). See Comment #1.

   With the exception of some tough newspaper women working alongside the likes of Daffy Dill or a female op helping Cardigan, there weren’t a lot of female driven series in the hard-boiled pulps so, like Theodore A. Tinsley’s Carrie Cashin, Violet McDade is a bit different than the usual pulp fare.

   I really don’t know if Violet came before or after Erle Stanley Gardner’s Bertha Cool, but she certainly owes more to Bertha than Rex Stout’s tough smart and attractive Dol Bonner. Violet is fat, rude, and tough as nails, and as “Flowers for Violet” opens she is being rude and pushy in a nice night club called the Green Kitten, where she is trying to dredge up clients for her and her chief operative, Nevada Alvarado, a slim, attractive girl who is getting sore feet dancing with all the stiffs Violet steers toward her.

   When Violet spies Assistant D. A. Stephen Wright in the Green Kitten, she smells trouble. Mike Donelli, who runs the club runs illegal gambling upstairs and has a backer in state Senator Hymes, and D.,A. Alvin Foss is no fan of either. Violet smells trouble and maybe money, and she is seldom wrong about either. Donelli is married to Rose, who does a routine clad “mostly in brilliants”, and Violet chides Mike for staying in the rackets.

   And with that, you know the stage is set for fists and bullets to fly as Violet and Nevada find Rose on their doorstep still clad in “mostly brilliants” and the news Mike Donelli just shot someone and is gunning for Rose and then their apartment gets fire bombed.

   True to the breed, Violet plays fast and loose with the law letting the fire department think she and Nevada (sometimes called Mex — political correctness was not one of Adams’ strengths) are trapped in the rubble while they get a head start on the case as she and Nevada and Violet’s little chauffeur Sweeny go gunning for Mike Donelli with a protesting Rose in tow.

   District Attorney Foss has been shot, and it adds up that Donelli probably did it, but nothing is ever that straight up in these things. A Violet and Nevada bull into the case, things and people prove to be more complicated than they expect, especially when Violet’s favorite cop, Lt. Belarski gets his skull clipped by a bullet and Sweeny ends up in jail.

   The detective work is pretty good, although it is less in the classic tradition than the hard-boiled one where every violent encounter leads to another step toward the truth, which involves high level shenanigans, political corruption and ambition, and not so honest fall guys.

   The Violet McDade stories are fun, a bit out of the screwball school as Adams’ Rex McBride stories also were: violent, fast moving, and reminiscent of what many of us started reading hard-boiled pulp fiction for in the first place.

   Adams was in the second rank of the classic hard-boiled school, and that isn’t a shot at his often entertaining tales, just a recognition that he perhaps didn’t work as hard at originality as he might have, and for all his word savagery, he just missed the first rank. That “elephant in the aquarium” is no “tarantula on a piece of angel food cake.”

   But second rank in that particular school wasn’t a bit shabby, and if you are looking for a fat lady to sing this particular aria, you could do worse than to accompany Adams and Violet McDade.

      The Violet McDade series —

Page Violet McDade! (nv) Clues Detective Stories Jan 1935
Shrinking Violet (nv) Clues Detective Stories Jul 1935
Mexican Bargain (ss) Clues Detective Stories Aug 1935
Framing the Picture (nv) Clues Detective Stories Nov 1935
Vision of Violet (nv) Clues Detective Stories Feb 1936
Flowers for Violet (nv) Clues Detective Stories May 1936
The Voice (nv) Clues Detective Stories Sep 1936
Compromising Violet (nv) Clues Detective Stories Oct 1936
Important Money (nv) Clues Detective Stories Dec 1936
Violet to Orchid (nv) Clues Detective Stories Feb 1937
Murder City (nv) Clues Detective Stories Apr 1937
The Black Door (ss) Clues Detective Stories Sep 1937
Bloody Bullets (nv) Clues Detective Stories Nov 1937

  LESTER del REY, Editor – Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Second Annual Edition. E. P. Dutton, hardcover. 1973. Ace, paperback, December 1975.

   #7. ROBERT L. DAVIS “Teratohippus.” Novelette. First appeared in Worlds of If, November-December 1972. Never reprinted elsewhere.

   If you looked to see who the author of this story was and couldn’t recognize his name, all is forgiven. No one else reading this review will have either — you can bet on that. This was the only SF story that Davis ever had published. The only other story that comes close was “Once Upon a Were-wolf,” which appeared in the November 1969 issue of an obscure horror magazine entitled Coven 13.

   A teratohippus is a gigantic slug-like creature the size of a football field which by means of several external layers of armored exo-skeleton is the only creature that can survive the now frigid climate of the once totally temperate planet of Betul.

   Not much is known about the creatures, but for some as yet unlearned reason they seem to take long migratory treks across some of the most inhospitable expanses of the planet. and of course when a skimmer filled with members of a scientific exploration from Earth is forced to come down in such an area, they do not know how lucky they are that a teratohippus is making such a journey nearby.

   Perhaps I am revealing more than I should, but I will tell you anyway. What they do is to find a refuge in a cavity inside the creature. What’s more, they discover they can change the direction the teratohippus is going from working inside it. This causes a huge dilemma, of course. Saving their lives will come at the expense of the creature’s, not to mention its soon to be born offspring.

   I can’t tell you that I believe all of the alien biology that’s involved, but that’s only the superficial trappings of a good, solidly-told story that happened to catch Lester de Rey’s eye, if no one else’s at the time. And now mine as well, even at this late date.

          —

Previously from the del Rey anthology: R. A. LAFFERTY “Eurema’s Dam.”

  DONALD WOLLHEIM, Editor, with Arthur W. Saha – The 1989 Annual World’s Best SF. Daw #783, paperback original; 1st printing, June 1989. Cover art by Jim Burns.

#4. GEORGE ALEC EFFINGER “Schrödinger’s Kitten.” Novelette. First published in Omni, September 1988. Published in a single volume by Pulphouse Publishing, hardcover/paperback, February 1992. First collected in Budayeen Nights, Golden Gryphon Press, hardcover, September 2003. Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards for Best Novelette of the Year.

   The story begins with a young twelve-year-old girl waiting in an alley at festival time in the Budayeen quarter of the same unnamed Middle-Eastern city where several other works by George Alec Effinger take place. Her purpose: to kill the boy she knows will rape her.

   She does not know the boy, who he is, or anything about him. She knows what will happen only through the visions she has been having, many times over. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he does not. Sometimes she dies, sometime she lives. When she lives, sometimes she dies alone, after a bitter life of prostitution, sometimes she is rescued.

   And these visions alternate in the telling of the story with futures in which she become a noted nuclear physicist, working alongside the likes of Werner Heisenberg and Erwin Schrödinger, in the era of Einstein, Max Born and Max Planck as they feverishly try to find the mathematics that correctly describe quantum physics.

   It’s quite a mixture. Jehan also has a hand in keeping the Nazis from succeeding in their experiments with the atom bomb. As it turns out, as experienced SFnal readers will quickly deduce, these not exactly visions that Jehan is having while she waits for her would-be rapist in the alley. I think most such readers will catch on very quickly, even before Effinger reveals their secrets, that these are glimpses of parallel worlds. Worlds that are created at every single fraction of a second, and have been since the beginning of time, branching out with the each of the billions of possibilities, continuing on now and the future.

   This is heady stuff, well told. It is no wonder the story won both a Hugo and a Nebula. It was well deserved.

       —

Previously from the Wollheim anthology:   JOHN SHIRLEY “Shaman.”

  LESTER del REY, Editor – Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year: Second Annual Edition. E. P. Dutton, hardcover. 1973. Ace, paperback, December 1975.

   #6. R. A. LAFFERTY “Eurema’s Dam.” Short story. First published in New Dimensions II, edited by Robert Silverberg (Doubleday, hardcover, 1972). First collected in Golden Gate and Other Stories (Corroboree, hardcover, 1982). Co-winner of the 1973 Hugo Award for Best Short Story.

   While he had written some short fiction before then, Lafferty is best known to me for his first three novels, which came out in 1968, almost all at the same: Past Master, Space Chantey, and The Reefs of Earth, and his exuberant and truly one-of-a-kind way of telling a tale.

   While his stories were nominated several times for various major awards, “Eurema’s Dam” was the only one to win one of the major ones. To me, at this much later date, the story is a mere trifle, but when it was first published, it garnered considerable acclaim from SF critics and fans alike.

   This is the life story of a unique individual named Albert, and let’s let Lafferty tell you what you need to know about him, starting from the very beginning of the story:

   How dumb was he? He was so dumb about arithmetic that he was forced to invent a pocket calculator. He could not tell his right hand from his left without noting the direction of whirlpools and which side a cow is milked on. He even invented a machine that would help him not be afraid of girls.

   When he had a hunch that he would never be good at hunches, he fabricated a machine to help him with that, and he called it Hunchy. Of all the machines and other devices he invented, and there many of them, all of them built on logic, this is the one that he discovers he needs the most.

   It may be that science fiction fans in 1972 could see a lot of themselves in Albert. If so, I can certainly understand that. There is one thing that is for certain. Only R. A. Lafferty could have written this story, and I’m glad he won a Hugo for it.

          —

Previously from the del Rey anthology: FREDERIK POHL & C. M. KORNBLUTH “The Meeting.”