PHILIP K. DICK – The Man Who Japed. Ace Double D-193, paperback original; 1st printing, December 1956. Cover art by Ed Emshwiller. Published back to back with The Space-Born, by E, C. Tubb. Reprinted several times.
The society of the future that Dick pictures in The Man Who Japed is often depressing, a world where life is simple, yet complicated, and out of touch with the common man, who doesn’t really seem to realize it.
There is a lack of individuality, and incapability for making decisions, that permeates their lives. And it may very well happen that in the days following the next war, a program such as Moral Reclamation will come to power: sole power.
With morality in the hands of the state, neighbors pry on neighbors, and attend weekly block meetings to hear the lurid details of friends having gone astray. Purcell’s agency is one of several that prepare packets for Telemedia, which has control of all communications industries.
As guardian of the public’s morality and ethics, the position of Director of T-M is of considerable importance, but when Purcell is offered the position, he does not what is answer should be. For Purcell himself is guilty of immoral behavior which he cannot control, of pranks violating the statue of Morec’s founder, of japing Morec itself.
A society without a sense of humor can be toppled by a man who does. And this one is, or at least the foundation of moral righteousness, is weakened by the program aired by Purcell before he can be ousted from the position he decides to accept.
Dick’s plots require involvement on the part of the reader; as a master stroke of genius, Dick provides for that involvement himself with the inner excitement of the stories themselves. This is one well worth reprinting, with a promise of the future resting in the hands of youth, questioning the present.
SEPTEMBER 5. Republic Pictures, 2024. Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, Leonie Benesch. Director: Tim Fehlbaum.
September 5 is a different kind of movie. First of all, it’s a new drama/thriller with a running time of around ninety minutes or so – a rarity these days. Second, it’s a fully immersive experience, with the viewer plunged into the action as if he were there, standing on the side and watching everything transpire.
Finally, it’s different because it tells a familiar story – that of the 1972 Munich Olympics kidnapping and massacre of Israeli athletes by the Palestinian group, Black September – from the vantage point of the ABC Sports crew covering the events live and as they unfolded.
As the film recounts, this was the first time in television history that a terrorist attack was broadcast live to the world, with some 800 million people watching.
Peter Sarsgaard portrays ABC Sports President Roone Arledge who, along with colleagues Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) and Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), are forced to make split second decisions on if, and how, to broadcast the ongoing terrorist attack in real time without being exploitative.
Realizing that this is a huge story, Arledge plays hardball with CBS to ensure that ABC Sports has access to the shared satellite feed. Mason, for his part, has to run the control room in a manner that gets the story out quickly without sacrificing accuracy. There’s a lot of interoffice drama, intrigue, and tension among the crew, all of whom seem to be wrestling with uncomfortable questions without easy answers.
Overall, September 5is quite an achievement and it’s no surprise that the original screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award.
One complaint however: a good portion of the movie seems (deliberately) poorly lit. I get that the filmmakers were trying to recreate as close as possible what it looked like in the ABC Sports control room, but a little more illumination would have helped immensely and wouldn’t have detracted from the claustrophobic atmosphere.
A 1001 MIDNIGHTS Review
by Thomas Baird & George Kelley
NICOLAS FREELING – The Back of the North Wind. Viking, hardcover, 1983. Penguin, paperback, 1984.
The crime novels of Nicolas Freeling follow the giant footsteps of Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret. But the more you read of Freeling, the more you realize that they follow not in but alongside those footsteps, sometimes wandering to explore at greater depth character and social relevance.
Freeling writes of ordinary, unexciting policemen — Dutch police inspector Piet Van der Valk, and Inspector Henri Castang of the French National Police — who have a private eye’s conscience. He presents sympathetic character studies of all the players in each of his dramas, and his detectives examine all aspects of the various crimes they are investigating, whether broad or narrow in scope.
Freeling, who was born in London and presently lives in France, began writing romans policiers in 1962 with Love in Amsterdam and followed it with nine more books featuring Van der Valk; then, in Aupres de ma Blonde ( 1972), he committed the rather shocking act of doing away with his series detective because he had grown tired of him and wanted to experiment with other types of stories and protagonists.
Van der Valk’s widow, Arlette, finds his murderer and concludes that particular case, among much social commentary and existential thought. She appears in two other books of her own (The Widow, 1979; Arlette, 1981) — perhaps not so successfully: at least one critic felt that widows should “wear black and smoke cigars … instead of solving crimes.”
In 1974 Frceling published the first of his novels about Henri Castang, Dressing of Diamond. In contrast to Van der Valk, the veteran Castang (thirty years with the French police) possesses a sense of humor and a more dynamic wife, Vera, who is fond of quoting Conrad. Castang’s relationship with his wife is a nice counterpoint to the grim realities of the murder cases he is confronted with especially the central case in The Back of the North Wind.
Returning from vacation, Castang investigates the particularly heinous murder of a young woman. In a boggy part of a nature reserve in the French countryside, a forester discovers a plastic carrier bag containing a rotting mass of human flesh. A search is organized and six other plastic carrier bags are found, each containing a part of a human body.
Lab analysis reveals the murder victim to have been a female of North European origin, approximately twenty years old. The dismembered parts also show human bite marks: Castang is evidently faced with a murderer who is also a cannibal.
His investigation is complicated by other pressing matters: a series of killings of ordinary citizens beaten over the head with a heavy weapon; a very strange and sinister prostitute; and political corruption within Castang’s own department. Each of the interwoven plot lines is untangled neatly through procedural and psychological methods, and the result is a grim but absorbing novel packed with Gallic atmosphere.
The Henri Castang series ranks with Freeling’s Van der Valk novels and with the Martin Beck series written by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo as the best of the European police procedurals. Other recommended titles are The Bugles Blowing (1976) and Castang’s City (1980).
PICKUP ALLEY. Columbia Pictures, 1957. Victor Mature, Anita Ekberg, Trevor Howard, Bonar Colleano. Directed by John Gilling.
Victor Mature portrays Charles Sturgis, a federal narcotics agent tasked with bringing down the enigmatic Frank McNally (Trevor Howard), a man also responsible for the death of his sister. Sturgis travels widely – there are a lot of shots of planes taking off and landing – in order to bring McNally to heel.
There are a couple of subplots, but essentially the gist of the film is about a federal agent seeking to bring a devious international criminal to justice. Sounds compelling enough, right?
Let me be blunt. For an international thriller, Pickup Alley aka Interpolis remarkably unadventurous. Dull, even. Part of this is Mature’s fault. But the script doesn’t help, either. Sure, you have the on location shots of Lisbon, Rome, Athens, and other cities.
And then you’ve also got Anita Ekberg as a drug courier tasked with moving heroin from city to city. That must count for something too, right? Sadly, no.
When all is said and done, this British crime film punches well below its weight and remains a case of ‘what might have been’ had the producers used the locations more to their benefit.
Overall assessment: a structurally sound film with a not particularly captivating story about the international narcotics trade.
ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE October 1967. [Special international issue.] Overall rating: **½.
MICHAEL GILBERT “The Terrorists.” Behrens & Calder. Novelette. First published in Argosy (UK) April 1967, as “Double, Double.” A plot to assassinate an Arabian ruler in London fails, thanks to the work of Behrens and Calder. (3)
JOHN D. MacDONALD “No Business for an Amateur.” Novelette. First published in Dime Detective, February 1947 as “Dead to the World.” Roadhouse protection racket, told in pulp style so strong you can smell the yellow pages. One great line, on page 36. (3)
HEINRICH BOLL “Like a Bad Dream.” First published in Harper’s Magazine, October 1965. Translated by Leila Vennewitz. A wife has to show her husband how to have an excavation bid accepted. Distinctly German. (5)
NOEL BOSKER “Best Laid Schemes.” A murder plan is ruined when someone beats him to it. (3)
JUNICHIRO TANIZAKI “The Thief.” First appeared in Seven Japanese Tales by Junichiro Tanizaki, Knopf, hardcover, 1963. The story of a highly moral thief’s college days. (4)
ALBERTO MORAVIA “Only the Death of a Man.” First appeared in The Atlantic Monthly December 1958, as “The Secret.” Translated by Helene Cantarella. Hit-and-run bothers a truck driver’s conscience, but not his girl friend’s. (2)
LEO TOLSTOY “The Man of God.” Reprint. Comparatively clumsy treatment of a man wrongly sentenced to Siberia. (3)
JOSEF SKVORECKY “The Classic Sererak Case.” First appeared in Smutek Porucika Boruvky, Prague, 1966. Young sergeant’s efforts to show suicide was murder are unnecessary: Lieutenant Vorovka needs to ask only two questions. The humor depends on an obvious situation, except for clue withheld until the end. (3)
HERNANDO TELLEZ “Enemy in His Hands” First appeared in Great Spanish Tales, Dell, 1962, as “Just Lather, That’s All. ” Translated by Donald A. Yates. A barber has an enemy captain in his chair. (3)
GEORGES SIMENON “Inspector Maigret Pursues.” First appeared in English in Argosy (UK) January 1962, as “The Man on the Run.” Maigret spends five days following man who does not dare go home. Ending misfires. (3)
M. PATRICIA DOBLE “The Quest Gest.” The ghost of Shakespeare returns. Pointless? (1)
JAMES POWELL “The Beddoes Scheme.” Acting Sergeant Maynard Bullock. Novelette. An advertising campaign on the behalf of peace and brotherhood. Wild, gets wilder, then stupid, finally boring. (0)
LAWRENCE TREAT “C As in Crime.” Mitch Taylor & Bill Decker. Mitch Taylor thinks he has solved a murder case, but he doesn’t have it quite right. Last line doesn’t make sense. (3)
ANDREW GARVE “Line of Communication.” A kite is used by a boy to escape from kidnappers. Nothing more. (3)
PROFESSIONAL SOLDIER. 20th Century Fox, 1935. Victor McLaglen, Freddie Bartholomew, Gloria Stuart, Michael Whalen, C. Henry Gordon Based on the story “Gentlemen, the King,” by Damon Runyon. Directed by Tay Garnett.
Well done mix of adventure, sentiment, and comedy finds ex-Marine Colonel Michael Donovan (Victor McLaglen) at the nadir of his career as a soldier of fortune around the world, from Siam to Nicaragua, playing bodyguard to American playboy George Foster (Michael Whalen) in Paris. After rescuing Foster from his own profligate ways in a comic Paris night club brawl, Donovan dumps the unconscious playboy at their hotel room, where two men show up with a proposition.
It seems one of those comic opera kingdoms so popular in the era in the Ruritania/Graustark mode need Donovan to kidnap their popular king so they can carry off their revolution (“We are not Bolsheviks or National Socialists…”) and then return the king to his throne once the crooks who have control of the country are gone. Donovan is a little disappointed he won’t be leading the army in the revolution, or at least assassinating the king, but the money offered is $50,000 and even covers hospitalization.
So we are off to the comic opera land of castles and intrigue where Donovan and Foster kidnap the monarch only to discover his majesty King Peter II is a child (Freddie Bartholomew). Forced to also kidnap Countess Sonia (Gloria Stuart), who Foster flirted with at a costume ball they attended to get the lay of the land, they successfully make off with the King while Gino (C. Henry Gordon), leader of the military junta that holds power, desperately seeks them.
As you might guess from Damon Runyon’s name in the credits Donovan and Foster were originally a pair of Chicago gangsters in the story, and the screenplay refers to that with King Peter initially thinks they are just that, and that Donovan might be Dillinger. Peter is absolutely thrilled at the idea of being kidnapped and having an adventure rather than the dull old life of a king, even a young one.
This would make an interesting double feature with My Pal The King, in which cowboy Tom Mix and his traveling Wild West show help King Mickey Rooney stay in power in yet another Ruriatanian setting.
There are no surprises here. Donovan is crazy about the kid who proves game (he calls the boy “Campaigner” and the boy calls him “Soldier”) and Foster and Countess Sonia fall in love. The bloodless revolution succeeds, and everything seems to be going fine until a camp of Romany peoples camped near the place they are hiding Peter inform Gino of their whereabouts, and in short order McLaglen and Foster are captured, imprisoned and ordered to be executed despite the King proclaiming they are to be freed.
Before being captured Donovan and Peter make a cross country escape trying to reach the palace and the leaders of the Revolution.
It seems the King recognizes that the revolution was right and should be in power and plans to support it, and Gino can’t have that so he plans to execute the King by firing squad and blame the two Americans for his death.
Luckily Sonia learns of the plan in time to free Donovan, but can he take on two hundred and fifty armed men with just Foster’s help until help can arrive?
Well, maybe, because all along he has been telling some pretty tall tales about doing something just like that wielding an 88 pound Maxim machine gun in his arms (“You have to understand Irish-Americans can do some pretty uncanny things when they’re riled…”), and while no one quite believes him, including Peter, it’s the only chance King Peter has.
Fast-paced and running under eighty minutes the film is handsomely decked out with costume balls, castles, and chalets in the mountains, while Tay Garnett keeps a tight hand on the reigns and McLaglen, the screenplay by Gene Fowler is snappy and finds a nice balance between the disparate elements of action, comedy, and sentiment, and McLaglen and Bartholomew have real chemistry together. Whether that was real or forced it works and is enough that the scenes between them are funny and charming rather than grating and annoying, and that is the difference between a film like this working or not.
It plays like Adventure, Argosy, Blue Book, and Popular (one half expects Hope’s Rudolf Rassendayl, Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barney Custer, and Joseph Louis Vance’s Terence O’Rourke to show up).
Granted it also has about as much logic and realism as those too, but it makes up for that by never pretending for a minute to be anything than a rousing story well told, a tall tale for grown-ups.
Tears are kept to a minimum and while there are a few misty eyes before the ending, they are appropriate to the rousing finale which ends as all good Ruritanian romances should. amid trumpets, fanfare, and in this case the Marine Hymn.
CLIFFORD D. SIMAK “Huddling Place.” First appeared in Astounding SF, July 1944. Collected in City (Gnome Press, hardcover, 1952) and in Skirmish: The Great Short Fiction of Clifford D.Simak (Putnam’s, hardcover, 1977; Berkley, paperback, 1978). Reprinted in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, edited by Robert Silverberg (Doubleday, hardcover, 1970), among others.
Modern readers of SF and fantasy won’t remember Clifford Simak all that well, or even at all, but in his time, he was one of the lesser giants of the field. In my case, he was always one of my favorites, right up there with Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Other authors came and went, but the stories of Mr. Simak have always stayed with me.
A lot of fans and critics have described his work as “pastoral,” and so it was, and it still is. It is so true that Simak himself uses the word to talk about his work at least twice in the foreword to his collection Skirmish (1977), of which “Huddling Place” is the lead story. (Don’t make too much about this statement: the stories are arranged in chronological order.)
But for example, the opening scene takes place in one of the most physically detailed settings for a funeral I can remember reader. It is of Jerome A. Webster’s father, who has recently died, leaving only Jerome, of a certain age himself, his son Thomas, now in his 20s, and his mother. These are the only remaining members of the Webster family, attended to only my robots, having moved a number of years ago from the city to this country estate where they now live.
And from which Jerome has come to realize he cannot leave. There is no need to. The story was written long before the Internet came along, but the equivalent exists when the tale takes place, and there is no need for him to leave. Not even to perform a life-saving operation on an old friend from Mars, which is where he lived for five years in his younger days.
He tries, and he is ready to, but as chance would have it, in a sad ending well worth waiting for, he cannot. And he probably won’t. Ever. Leave.
Interpretations I will leave for you. What I will say that this is a beautiful story, well deserving of its SF Hall of Fame status. Science fiction was growing up when this was published.
GATTACA. Columbia, 1997. Ethan Hawke, Uma Thurman, Gore Vidal, Jude Law, Xander Berkeley, Jayne Brook, Alan Arkin. Screenwriter/director: Andrew Niccol.
In the not too distant future, societal advancement won’t be determined by one’s resume or skill set, as much as by one’s blood. That’s the underlying premise of Gattaca, an intelligent science fiction thriller that showcases a fictional world officially devoted to the ideology of eugenics. If one happens to have had a natural birth or, worse still, a genetic defect, one’s opportunities in life are severely limited.
Enter Vincent Freeman (Ethan Hawke), a janitor born of natural birth with a heart problem. His only dream is to be an astronaut and see the stars. These things are simply impossible in the society he was born into. With the help of a shadowy underworld figure named German (Tony Shalhoub), Freeman takes on the identity of the genetically superior Jerome Eugene Morrow (Jude Law) and starts work at Gattaca, an aerospace corporation helmed by Director Josef (Gore Vidal), in his quest to beat society’s rules.
When a top ranking executive at Gattaca is murdered, Vincent fears his cover will be blown. Especially with the intrepid Detective Hugo (Alan Arkin) on the case. Complicating matters further is Morrow’s growing affection for co-worker Irene (Uma Thurman).
There’s something rather operatic about Gattaca, a movie that relies heavily on intricate set design, exotic interiors, and orchestral music to tell the story of one man’s quest to escape his predetermined fate.
It’s intelligent sci-fi that also has the capacity to entertain. True, it takes the suspension of disbelief to really get into the story. But once you do, you’ll find a compelling lead in Ethan Hawke’s character. Don’t expect a lot of action, however. This is a far more cerebral exercise than a physical one.
Final assessment: with a great cast that takes the downbeat subject material seriously, Gattaca might not be something you’d watch again and again, but it’s solid, mature science fiction that is increasingly difficult to come by. Occasionally slow, but never boring.
STEVE FRAZEE – The Sky Block. Rinehart & Co., hardcover, 1953. Lion, paperback, 1954. Pyramid, paperback, 1958.
While fishing his old vacation stream high in the Colorado Rockies, Platt Vencel is pressed into urgent service by both the U.S. Army (in the person of Colonel Julius Catron) and the FBI (agent Clement Raven).
Something has gone wrong with the weather throughout the country: an unprecedented state of drought that has gone on for some months. The authorities are convinced that the cause is a hidden meteorological “doomsday device” built by an unspecified foreign power. Vencel, because of his intimate knowledge of the wilderness area, soon finds himself at the forefront of a desperate and deadly hunt for the location of the “Weather-Wrecker” and the identity of the men behind it.
Despite the novel’s fantastic premise and its overtones of the anti-Communist extremism of the McCarthy era, Frazee’s handling of the theme minimizes the melodramatic aspects and makes this an exciting and suspenseful chase/adventure story in the mode of Geoffrey Household and John Buchan.
Its strong points are several: deft characterization, nicely choreographed action scenes, and superb evocation of the rugged mountain terrain. Frazee’s prose style is also a plus; always terse and smoothly crafted, it takes on at times a kind of dark, rough-edged lyricism that gives the story a sense of stark reality.
Frazee was primarily a writer of first-rate western fiction. His only other criminous novels are Running Target, expanded from the distinguished short story “My Brother Down There,” which won first prize in Ellery Queen’s annual contest for 1953, and Flight 409 (1969), a tale of survival and adventure about the search for the survivors of a plane crash in which three members of the president’s cabinet were killed.
CALLAN “Where Else Could I Go?” Thames TV, UK, 6 April 1970. Edward Woodward (Callan), William Squire, Patrick Mower, Russell Hunter. Creator/teleplay: James Mitchell. Director: Jim Goddard. Streaming on Amazon Prime; also available on YouTube (see below).
I’m not as familiar with this series as I probably should be, so starting from the first episode of season three (the earliest to be found on Amazon), means that’s a lot of back story I need to fill in on my own. But it’s clear from the start of this episode that Callan was shot and seriously wounded as the end of season two.
He’s an assassin for one of those British semi-secret government organizations, or at least he was. While he’s healing physically, his superiors are worried that he’s no longer up to doing the job he used to be number one at. Callan takes to worrying about that, the same as you or I would, am I right?
Complicating matters is that his former comrade in arms, a lonely and rather meek gent w know only as “Lonely” is now in jail. It is up to Callan to get him out, supposing of course that he can. Resolving the situation is all that this episode is comprised of. Note the title of the episode. This is all I am going to tell you, but the title may tell you more.
If I had the opportunity to know what had happened before (and YouTube may have episodes available from the first two seasons), I probably would have found myself a lot less at unease while watching this one, but both the cast and the writing are top notch. Callan is a complicated character, and a very young Edward Woodward plays him well.
With hardly a single additional reservation to add, I’ll just go ahead and recommend this one highly.
