Thu 9 Feb 2023
Pulp SF Stories I’m Reading: JOHN D. MacDONALD “Ring Around the Redhead.â€
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Reviews , Science Fiction & Fantasy , Stories I'm Reading[4] Comments
JOHN D. MacDONALD “Ring Around the Redhead.†First published in Startling Stories, November 1948. First reprinted in Science-Fiction Adventures in Dimension, edited by Groff Conklin (Vanguard Press, hardcover, 1953). First collected in Other Times, Other Worlds (Fawcett Gold Medal, paperback original, October 1978).
I don’t imagine that any young SF reader coming across this story in the (at the time) most recent issue of Startling Stories had any idea that the author would become rich and famous a few years later as the John D. MacDonald you and I know today as, for example, the author of the series of mystery novels for which he is most remembered, thous about “salvage expert†Travis McGee.
Nor did, I suppose, those fans of the Travis McGee books happen to know that he started out writing SF stories — as well as mysteries — for the pulp magazines of the late 1940s. I don’t know if all of his early SF work were later collected in Other Times, Other Worlds (1978), but there are sixteen of them, and ones MacDonald much have felt worth reprinting at the time.
“Ring Around the Redhead†is, well, one of them, and it begins with a defendant in court having been accused of murdering his next door neighbor, and in a most vicious fashion: the dead man had been decapitated as if by a mammoth pair of tin snips. When the defendant, an amateur tinkerer, gets to tell his story to the jury, it really is quite a story. Having strangely discovered a mysterious ring in his workshop in the basement, he learns by trial and error that by reaching through it, he can bring back, among other items, valuable jewels, for example. (This is why he is seen arguing with the neighbor, who has discovered this.)
One day, then, he brings a beautiful girl back through the ring, a redhead, who is wearing next to nothing but strangely still something.
Hence the title of the story, which has no other objective than to be fun and amusing. No deep scientific principles are discussed in this tale. What this tale reminded me of, more than anything else, are the SF stories very common back in the early 30s, based on speculation but not a whole lot of down-to-earth physics – but, in this case, a tale that’s a whole lot better written.
Nonetheless, without a solid background in science, JDM must have decided that science fiction was not a field where he had much of a future. Considering how things worked out for him, this was a wise choice.
February 9th, 2023 at 6:30 am
Crime and mystery fiction were far more suitable to MacDonald’s sensibilities than science fiction or fantasy, but needs must, and at a time when he was trying to be published anywhere, there was a huge market for science fiction short stories. (He also published a number of tales in the sports pulps and a few in the western mags, as well as in the slicks.) Most of his SF work is readable, competent (it would have to be; this is JDM, after all), and slight. His SF novels — BALLROOM OF THE SKIESD, WINE OF THE DREAMERS; THE GIRL, THE GOLD WATCH, AND EVERYTHING — have been reprinted more perhaps because they were part of his oeuvre than on their own merits — although TGTGW&E can be entertaining and amusing, it is also derivative. And, as much as I love Travis McGee, those adventures do not appear to wear well with time. In future years, MacDonald will probably be best remembered for his brilliant portrayals of mid-century American life, and perhaps more as a “serious” writer who happened to write about crime and human failings.
February 9th, 2023 at 10:10 am
Jerry,
I agree 100% re: the standalones standing a lot higher than the McGees. It’s like the difference between Ricky Gervais in the Office vs. Ricky Gervais doing standup. In Ricky Gervais’s Office, he’s playing a historically situated character. Incisively and hilariously. But when Ricky Gervais does stand up, Ricky isn’t playing a character. He’s saying what he thinks. And it can come off with an air of hubris, as strident and abrasive with a lack of self-awareness or tact.
The fact is that we are all historically situated. And in time we’re all going to look like dinosaurs. But when you view the action thru a picture window, thru a story, a still-life (eg the McDonald standalones or The Office), you can view it as just that: a depiction of a time and place. Neither true nor false. Just a drama. A thing. That happened. Or didn’t.
But listening to the diatribes of McGee (a fairly nude stand-in for McDonald) or Gervais, added to the lascivious ogling and objectification of the beach girls, it’s a bit hard to view it as ‘just a story’. It’s a philosophy.
Stories cannot be true or false (they are simply well told or poorly told)–and thus are not subject to age the way that philosophy is. Philosophies change with the times. And those that don’t change with them are condemned to the dustbin of history.
February 9th, 2023 at 7:11 pm
MacDonald would be writing quite a bit of slick fiction soon after this and these are the kind of stories that sold to those markets, amusing, with a visual grab for the illustrator, and good but not spectacular writing.
Paperback originals called for something of his old pulp voice, and nothing by JDM is really badly written, but that slicker more sophisticated style paid off in the highly lucrative slick market which paid considerably more than hardcover or paperback book sales.
February 15th, 2023 at 4:34 pm
Well, the big slicks of the ’50s paid better than most book markets…but not Fawcett Gold Medal in those years…and its notable that he continued to place novels and fragments of novels as well as short stories longer than most writers in both the slick magazines of the ’60s and ’70s while continuing to build his audience, with standalones and McGees (who was it who first called McGee a “Rotarian hippie”?). I think McGee was a bit of a self-parody and fan-service, when you consider the rather greater sexual egalitarianism of novels ranging from THE EXECUTIONERS on out. Or perhaps I hope so.