DASHIELL HAMMETT “Fly Paper.” First published in Black Mask, August 1929. Collected in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).

   “It was a wandering daughter job.” Sue Hambledon had disappeared with hoodlum Babe McCloor. The Continental op finds her dead, poisoned by the arsenic from fly paper, the mere thought of which is enough for memories of cheap desolation. (4)

DASHIELL HAMMETT “The Gutting of Coufignal.” First published in Black Mask, First published in The Black Mask, December 1925. Collected in The Big Nightmare (Random House, 1966).

   An island in San Pablo Bay, the home of wealthy retired businessmen, is attacked by bandits with machine guns and grenades, The Continental OP is on hand, guarding wedding presents. It is not difficult for him to suspect an inside job at once. The observant reader will also. (4)

DASHIELL HAMMETT – The Big Knockover [edited by Lillian Hellman]. Random House, hardcover, 1966.

   Nine adventures of the anonymous Continental Op, plus an unfinished portion of a novel titled “Tulip.” The Op was [among the first] hard-boiled detectives in fiction, so the effectiveness of the writing may have become diluted by the appearance of all those who followed. The confused younger generation of characters in the stories this collection contains has a great role in the stories, as well as the usual underworld population at the time.

Rating: *****

         ____

Note: I reviewed the stories separately, and these will be posted here on this blog individually over the next few days and weeks ahead. Also, in my original review of the collection itself, I referred to the Continental Op as the first hard-boiled fictional detective. The actual very first may  have been Carroll John Daly’s Terry Mack, or if not him, then certainly the same writer’s Race Williams, neither of whom I may have heard of at the time I wrote this review.

ANALOG SF – September 1967. Editor: John W. Campbell. Cover artist: Kelly Freas. Overall rating: **½

CHRISTOPHER ANVIL “The King’s Legion.” Novelette. Federation of Humanity #19. Continuation and perhaps final episode of Anvil’s Paradise series. (*) Roberts, Hammell, and Morrissey take on pirates, the Planetary Authority, and the Space Force before realizing that have been recruited into the famed Interstellar Patrol. The series is getting tiresome. (2)

(*) Footnote Added: I do not know whether what I then called Anvil’s “Paradise” series coincides with what was his larger “Federation of Humanity” series, which did continue on for another couple of dozen more stories.

JACK WODHAMS “The Pearly Gates of Hell.” A deadly comic story of suicide in a world where suicide is definitely forbidden. (5)

MACK REYNOLDS “Fiesta Brava.” Short novel. A United Planets story. Section G sends out four unlikely looking agents to help in the overthrow of a reactionary planetary government similar to that of Spain’s. The big feature is their choice of leader through bullfight competition. Part of Reynolds’ thesis is that people get the government they deserve. Only moderately entertaining. **

E. G. VonWALD “Important Difference.” Contact Scouts discover that the monster aliens have human form. (2)

VERGE FORAY “Lost Calling.”After 20 years of schooling by alien teachers, Mirni does not know what he has been trained for, but he is successful at it. (3)

E. C. TUBB – Derai. Dumarest #2, Ace Double H-77; paperback original. 1st printing, September 1968. Cover artist: Jeff Jones. Published back-to-back with The Singing Stones, by Juanita Coulson (reviewed here).

   Dumarest is a wanderer, looking for legends of lost Earth. [This is the second in a series of his adventures.] In this one he takes on the job of returning the strange young girl named Derai to her home planet of Hive, not knowing she has telepathic powers that will involve him in a struggle for control of the planet,

   More importantly, however, is the the interest that the cybernetic brain Cyclan has in the girl, leading to a deadly competition in the mazes of Folgone, and to Derai’s death.

   These are interesting worlds, well described, with all the perversions, customs, and other necessities of life these worlds entail. Tubb displays an ability to write between the lines: or is he just unable to explain everything well? It does come off quite effectively.

Rating: ***½

JUANITA COULSON – The Singing Stones. Ace Double H-77; paperback original; 1st printing, 1968. Cover art by Kelly Freas. Published back-to-back with Derai, by E. C. Tubb (a review of which will be posted here soon).

   Strange stones that entrance those who touch them with their mysterious essence of music appear on the black market, and Geoff Latimer is sent by the Federation to the protected planet of Pa-Liina to discover their source. Also part of his assignment is the task of stopping slave trade carried on through “protecting” planet of Deliyas. To be done, of course, without requiring official intervention.

   A mutated goddess has developed the stones for the benefit of her fellow Pa-liinians, and Geoff must decide which side he will back in the struggle for rule of the planet.

   Things are not made clear at once, in a decidedly casual approach to the plot, but everything does finally get explained. Latimer works like the CIA is supposed to. He doesn’t much like it, but in this case, his manipulations work out fine. A strange way of doing business, after all that time.

Rating: ***½

EMIL PETAJA – Doom of the Green Planet. Ace Double H-70. Paperback original; 1st printing, 1968. Published back-to-back with Star Quest, by Dean R. Koontz (reviewed here). Never reprinted. Cover artist: Jerome Podwil.

   Evidently a sequel to Lord of the Green Planet (Ace, 1967), and a continuation of the adventures of Diarnid Patrick O’Dowd, ex-starman, on the planet Eu-Tarah, protected from the outside by an impenetrable green barrier. Diarmid is now High Lord of the Islanders, having defeated their god-king and creator.

   But this very act is leading to the gradual destruction of the green barrier, leading to the challenging appearance of a new renegade starman.

   A collection of cultural conflicts has an isolationist theme: the Green must continue to protect the people of Eu-Tarah from the exploitation of space-faring man. Too much scientific achievement is compulsively driving the rest of the universe, without reason or conscience. A similar theme of conflict between opposing societies is carried out by the Islanders and the barbaric Nords.

   And then there are the original inhabitants of the planet, who have a part in saying what their world shall become. As a style, Petaja’s SF reads strangely like fantasy.

Rating:   **½

DEAN R. KOONTZ – Star Quest. Ace Double H-70; paperback original, 1968. Cover by Gray Morrow. Published back-to-back with Doom of the Green Planet, by Emil Petaja (to be reviewed here soon).

   The universe has been the scene of a centuries-long war between the Romaghins and Setessins. On a restricted primitive planet Tohm is forcibly separated from his love, Tarnilee, by invading Romaghins. His search for her leads him to the slave planet Basa II, where he joins a group of hunted Muties, mutants caused by the effects of nuclear warfare. They have learned the power of shifting between divided universes, and have successfully rid their own of warring worlds.

   Shallow on first reading, but Koontz says there are allegorical points. The warring enemies are descendants of the radical right and the radical left, the mutants are “soulbrothers” – the victims of the attempted cleansing of guilt – who succeed in ending war.

   Tohm is the catalyst, anyone in particular? But who are the mutants with white eyes, tangible lust creatures, that periodically appear and disappear? This will probably not rate well with others, sorry to say. Koontz does have a good picturesque style.

Rating: ***

JOHN D. MacDONALD – A Deadly Shade of Gold. Gold Medal paperback original; 1st printing, 1965. Lippincott, hardcover, 1974. Reprinted many times.

   Sam Taggart, an old friend of Travis McGee, returns to Fort Lauderdale to pick up the pieces of his broken romance with Nora Gardino. Before that can happen, a deal falls through, and Sam ends up witha sliced throat. The trail takes McGee and Nora to a small Mexican fishing village, and to Nora’s unpleasant death.

   McGee continues, and he goes on to California  and takes his revenge upon a rich pornographic blackmailer whose desires precipitated the entire chain of events, centered around two unfriendly groups of Cuban refugees.

   A long book, perhaps too long. MacDonald’s comments of current American culture, religion and sex are still pertinent, but life in Mexico is too quiet. It takes Nora’s wealth for the story to get back on track, and a particularly dirty trick it is, too. McGee himself has no answers for the frustrations of ordinary life but excellently represents the Nobility of the Individual Human Spirit.

   Especially noted was a view of the University’s role in subduing spirit (page 46). MacDonald’s background in SF is clearly revealed (page 37): a galactic concept of what is ours on Earth.

Rating: ****

POUL ANDERSON -To Outlive Eternity. Serialized in Galaxy SF, June & August 1967. Collected in To Outlive Eternity and Other Stories (Baen, trade paperback, 2007). An expanded version was published by Doubleday in hardcover in 1970 as the novel Tau Zero. (See Comment #3.)

   The spaceship Lenore Christine, traveling at nearly the speed of light toward Beta Virginis, runs into a small cosmic cloud that disables the deceleration unit. Since by relativity time within the ship is not not so much a factor, the expedition can continue until the empty spaces between galaxies are reached; only then would it be safe to turn off the accelerator force-screens,

   But the velocity keeps increasing, making it difficult to find a region of space empty enough, and the rate if deceleration must be considered in finding a likely galactic cluster in which they could stop.

   And then the universe begins to die. The only possible answer is to continue until its rebirth.

   The captain is not the protagonist, but rather the officer in charge of discipline and morale – what he has to do is keep discouragement and frustration from leading to madness. Sexual relationships are dwelt with, almost frankly, but still not deeply. The stress on the physical situation the expedition finds itself in seems greater than the force [and the] effect has on them.

   Anderson does not seem capable of getting beyond physics, and his enthusiasm for physical ideas does not carry over to his readers. For example, the rebirth of a universe cannot really be told in two paragraphs, but it is, and it does, sad to say, seem dull.

Rating: ***