PHILIP MacDONALD – The List of Adrian Messenger. Col. Anthony Gethryn #12. Doubleday, US, hardcover, 1959. Bantam A2186, US, paperback, 1961; #F2643, 1963. Herbert Jenkins, UK, hardcover, 1960.

THE LIST OF ADRIAN MESSENGER. Universal-International, 1963. Kirk Douglas, George C. Scott, Dana Wynter, Jacques Roux, Herbert Marshall, Clive Brook, Gladys Cooper Guest Stars: Tony Curtis, Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Robert Mitchum. Screenplay by Anthony Veiller. Directed by John Huston. Available on DVD.

   
   When writer Adrian Messenger asks a friend to use his influence to look into a disparate list of men from all walks of life and all parts of the United Kingdom it seems like nothing but a whim, but shortly after, when Messenger is killed in a plane crash the friend in question turns to Anthony Gethryn to look into the list, almost immediately one fact arises, all ten men died of untimely accidents, including Adrian Messenger, making for a strangely coincidental eleven accidental deaths seemingly unrelated deaths.

   Semi-amateur sleuth Col.Anthony Gethryn (The Rasp, Warrant for X) suspects something, and with the help of one of the survivors, a Frenchman, Raoul St. Denis, who coincidentally was once a member of the French Resistance run by Gethryn anonymously in the war, it soon becomes apparent Adrian Messenger was onto something sinister and deadly.

   At first Gethryn’s friend at the Yard, Lucas, and his old ally Inspector Pike, think Anthony is jumping at conclusions, but between a dying message left by Messenger in the lifeboat with St. Denis, and an expanding investigation it becomes clear there is a killer on the loose, one who has carefully over the years eliminated anyone who might know him for an as yet unknown reason.

   A series, if not serial, killer who eventually tallies sixty seven murders over much of the globe, all disguised as accidents, a criminal genius who only has two more deaths to go, an old man and a fourteen year old boy, the Marquis of Gleneyre and his grandson, heirs to a considerable fortune.

   Worse, there may be nothing the law can do to stop him.

   The List of Adrian Messenger is the final novel in the Anthony Gethryn series that began at the height of the Golden Age of the Detective Novel from a writer whose books such as The Rasp, Warrant for X, Escape, Mystery of the Dead Police (X vs Rex), and Patrol led him to Hollywood and a long career as a screenwriter penning everything from Charlie Chan and Mr. Moto to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca.

   It is not the end of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction; writers such as Agatha Christie, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh, John Dickson Carr, and John Rhode, not to mention Ellery Queen and Rex Stout in this country, continued to write for sometime after MacDonald’s death. Still it is coda to the era, and works both as a fair play mystery novel, and not unusual for MacDonald, as a suspense novel and a thriller, making it a compellingly readable mix of the old and the new.

   Series killers, even serial killers, weren’t new to the Classical Detective story. Christie’s The Alphabet Murders, Conan Doyle’s Sign of the Four and A Study in Scarlet, MacDonald’s own Mystery of the Dead Police and Murder Gone Mad and the plot here has some interesting ties to MacDonald’s plot for his original screenplay for Circle of Danger in the motive for the killer.

   What interests me here is where the 1959 novel and the fine 1963 film by John Huston vary, because while the Huston film uses large chunks of dialogue directly from the novel it varies importantly from the book on one key point, one that puts Anthony Gethryn in the mainstream of the high handed Great Detective model and ironically sets him against the entire genre.

   So at this point:

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   One of the key personality traits of the Great Detective has always been his high handed behavior, hiding key facts from his Watson, playing God (almost all the Ellery Queen novels after The Door Between are concerned with Ellery’s unease playing God in his role as Great Detective), and acting as a figure of justice and vengeance and not merely law. When Sherlock Holmes at the end of “The Speckled Band” mused he wasn’t much bothered by the fact his actions led to the death of the brutal doctor Conan Doyle could hardly have imagined how many writers would take it to heart.

   Philo Vance practically encouraged the murderers he caught to commit suicide. Even Charlie Chan saw quite a few of his killers dying by their own hand rather than waiting for a messy trial and even Agatha Christie’s seemingly cozy Miss Jane Marple defined herself as Nemesis and not merely a puzzle solver. John Dickson Carr’s Dr. Gideon Fell burns down a house to keep the police from charging a murderer in The Man Who Could Not Shudder to avoid a miscarriage of justice.

   But few act as decisively as Anthony Gethryn does here.

   In the film, as in the book, the killer, George Brougham (Kirk Douglas), is known about half way through the book, but he has left no trail. The police have nothing but suspicions, and short of catching him in the act, and nothing suggests he will be that stupid, he only needs to wait patiently to kill the fourteen year old heir who simply cannot be watched for the rest of his life.

   Knowing that Anthony Gethryn (George C. Scott) deliberately lets Brougham know that he is close to uncovering his secrets and forces him to try to kill Gethryn, the attempt, and Brougham’s fate sealed at a fox hunt (which plays a large part in film and book though more so in the film because director Huston was devoted to riding to the hounds on his Irish estate) Brougham meeting a satisfyingly grim justice impaled on a farm implement he meant to use to kill Gethryn.

   At which point the film pauses to show us the clever make up disguises used by Douglas and his four major guest stars.

   And this is where the movie lets down fans of the book somewhat, because the ending of the book is considerably more stunning, Gethryn telling Lucas after he has seemingly walked away from the case.

   
   Gethryn doesn’t just set a trap to capture Brougham, though he does use the young Marquis as bait to catch Brougham in the act, he knows that short of allowing Brougham to kill the boy in front of witnesses the law has almost no case, so Gethryn, St. Denis, members of the French resistance, Hispanic allies and friends of Gethryn, and the Marquis and Adrian Messenger’s cousin Jocelyn (Dana Wynter in the film) lure George Brougham to California and arrange for him to be hoist on his own petard, to die in an accident while fleeing a foiled attempt to kill the boy.

   In short they conspire to and successfully execute George Brougham, by “accident,” or as St. Denis notes in the books final line, “What you would call, I think, a justice poetic…”

   I think it is that ending that gives the novel a unique place in the history of the Golden Age of the Fair Play Detective novel. The world has changed, and murder is no longer committed by gentlemen who can be expected to conveniently put a bullet in their own brain rather than face trial, imprisonment, and shame.

   George Brougham has no shame. He is a modern killer, amoral, a sociopath, a cunning murderer willing to kill dozens to achieve his goal. He is evil, but a more mundane and frightening kind of evil than a Fu Manchu or a Moriarty. He is a human monster born out of WW II, ruthless, clever, and above the ability of the law to stop him.

   The oh so civilized rules of the Golden Age Detective Novel have broken down and no longer apply, it is no longer just a game. The victims are ordinary men and potentially a boy who has harmed no one. The killer is as amoral and efficient as the monsters who marched millions into ovens to die in death camps, and his motive isn’t political, it’s money and power.

   To defeat him, Anthony Gethryn has to forgo the academic and cool analytic of the Great Detective he becomes an avenger as much as a Bulldog Drummond, James Bond, or Mike Hammer, an agent of chaos and not order, the classical role of the Great Detective.

   Hercule Poirot will find himself in the same role in his final adventure, Curtain. It is a concession of the Golden Age to the modern world. The brain and the intellect is not enough in the face of evil, the dragon must be met on his own level. Which at least, for me, makes The List of Adrian Messenger a fairly revolutionary statement from one of the masters of the Golden Age puzzle.

   Murder is no longer a game and its victims no longer pawns. That idea that real people are dying and murderers walk among us is almost more than the fragile conceit of the Golden Age can bear.

   I think a fairly good argument can be made MacDonald was putting the audience and his fellow writers on notice that the cozy comfortable world they created was no longer enough for readers and no longer sustainable as mystery fiction. You have to wonder whether he would have carried Gethryn beyond this point if he had lived longer, or if he had said all that could be said about the Great Detective from his point of view.

AGATHA CHRISTIE – The ABC Murders. Hercule Poirot #13. Dodd Mead, US, 1936. First published in the UK by Collins, hardcover, 1936. Reprinted many time, in both hardcover and paperback. Film: MGM, 1966, as The Alphabet Murders, with Tony Randall as Hercule Poirot. TV adaptations: (1) As an episode of ITV’s Agatha Christie’s Poirot (1992) with David Suchet as Poirot. (2) BBC, three part mini-series, 2018, with John Malkovich as Hercule Poirot

   Agatha Christie has long been acknowledged as the grande dame of the Golden Age detective-story writers. Beginning with her moderately successful The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), Christie built a huge following both in her native England and abroad, and eventually became a household name throughout the literate world. When a reader – be he in London or Buenos Aires – picks up a Christie novel, he knows exactly what he is getting and has full confidence that he is sitting down to a tricky, entertaining, and satisfying mystery.

   This enormous reader confidence stems from an effective combination of intricate, ingenious plots and typical, familiar characters and settings. Christie’s plots always follow the rules of detective fiction; she plays completely fair with the reader. But Christie was a master at planting clues in unlikely places, dragging red herrings thither and yon, and, like a magician, misdirecting the reader’s attention at the exact crucial moment. Her murderers – for all the Christie novels deal with nothing less important than this cardinal sin – are the Least Likely Suspect, the Second Least Likely Suspect, the Person with the Perfect Alibi, the Person with No Apparent Motive. And they are unmasked in marvelous gathering-of-all-suspects scenes where each clue is explained, all loose ends are tied up.

   As a counterpoint to these plots, Christie’s style is simple (even undistinguished). She relies heavily upon dialogue, and has a good ear for it when dealing with the “upstairs” people who are generally the main characters in her stories: the “downstairs” people fare less well at her hands, and their speech is often stilted or stereotyped.

   Christie, however, seldom ventures into the “downstairs” world. Her milieu is the drawing room, the country manor house, the book-lined study, the cozy parlor with a log blazing on the hearth. Like these settings, her characters are refined and tame, comfortable as the slippers in front of the fire – until violent passion rears its ugly head. Not that violence is ever messy or repugnant, though; when murder intrudes, it does so in as bloodless a manner as possible, and its investigation is always conducted as coolly and rationally as circumstances permit. One reason that Christie’s works are so immensely satisfying is that we know we will be confronted by nothing really disturbing, frightening, or grim. In short, her books are the ultimate escape reading with a guaranteed surprise at the end.

   Christie’s best-known sleuths are Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective who relies on his “little grey cells” to solve the most intricate of crimes; and Miss Jane Marple, the old lady who receives her greatest inspiration while knitting. However, she created a number of other notable characters, among them Tuppence and Tommy Beresford, an amusing pair of detective-agency owners, who appear in such titles as The Secret Adversary (1922) and Postrn of Fate (1973); Superintendent Battle of Scotland Yard, who is featured. in The Secret of Chimneys (1925), The Seven Dials Murder (1929), and others; and the mysterious Harley Quin.

   The member of this distinguished cast who stars in The ABC Murders is Hercule Poirot. Poirot is considered by many to be Christie’s most versatile and appealing detective. The dapper Belgian confesses gleefully to dying his hair, but sees no humor in banter about his prized “pair of moustaches.” And yet he has the ability to see himself as others see him and use their misconceptions to make them reveal themselves and their crimes.

   A series of alphabetically linked letters are sent to Poirot, taunting him with information about where and when murders will be committed unless he is clever enough to stop them. The aging detective comes out of retirement, he admits, “like a prima donna who makes positively the farewell performance … an infinite number of times.” Is the murderer a madman who randomly chooses the victim’s town by the letter of the alphabet, or is he an extremely clever killer with a master plan? And why has he chosen to force Poirot out of retirement?

   These questions plague Poirot’s “little grey cells” as the plot thrusts forward and then winds back on itself time and time again. Well into the novel, Christie teases the horrified reader by introducing a coincidence that looks as if it will solve the cases, then snatches it back, dangles another possibility, snatches that one back, too. And so on, until the innovative and surprising conclusion is reached. Poirot is al his most appealing here, and Christie’s plotting is at its finest.

     ———
   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.

   
            Quiquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.

EARL DERR BIGGERS – The Chinese Parrot. Charlie Chan #2. Bobbs Merrill, hardcover, 1926. Pocket #168, paperback; 1st printing, July 1942. Reprinted many times since, in both hardcover and paperback.

   The Charlie Chan stories are classics of detective fiction. However, classics of the past are not always to be read with enjoyment in the present. I reread The Chinese Parrot to see how well it holds its own with modern mysteries. My verdict is that it does so very well. The many details which are of its own time add to the interest rather than detracting from it: the use of the telegraph, the “flivvers,” the ubiquitous Chinese “boys” as servants.

   The story is one of murder surmised rather than known, an atmosphere of something wrong rather than a crime to be unraveled. It progresses as theory after theory put forth by young Bob Eden is proven wrong by Charlie Chan’s detective work.

   It is most unbelievable when Bob continues to bend to Charlie’s plea not to hand over the pearl necklace which he is supposed to deliver. Evidence of anything wrong at the Madden ranch is slim indeed; I have trouble believing that any impatient young man would procrastinate so on only the word of a Hawaiian detective he has never known before. However, it is necessary to the story that he delay, so delay he does.

   And delay at last brings the story to a smashing conclusion. Dated? Yes, of course, Outdated? Never.

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR: It has been a while since one of Maryell’s reviews has appeared on this blog. Since that is so, let me reprint the following, which I wrote as a followup note to the first of her reviews here. This is from November 19, 2009:

   Maryell Cleary, who died in 2003, was an ordained minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church as well a voluminous reader and collector of detective fiction. I met her once while she was taking a trip by car through New England. She stopped here to look at my collection and to go through my duplicates, and of course we spent a long, wonderful afternoon talking about each of our favorite characters and authors.

   Maryell was especially fond of mysteries in the Golden Age tradition. In fact, she had a letter in the same issue of The Poisoned Pen as the one above in which she protested mildly that fans of private eye novels had taken over the pages of recent issues! More coverage, she requested, of authors like Martha Grimes, Ruth Rendell, Patricia Moyes, Charlotte MacLeod, Robert Barnard, Marian Babson, Dorothy Simpson and P. D. James.

   To that end she also wrote many reviews and articles herself for the mystery fanzines of 20 and 30 years ago, including the still late lamented Poisoned Pen, published for many years by Jeff Meyerson. I’ve conferred with Jeff, and we both agree that she would have liked her reviews to go on after her. They will appear here on a regular basis for some time to come — she wrote a lot of them!

MORIS FARHI – The Pleasure of Your Death. Omar James Baxter #1. Constable, UK, hardcover, 1972. No US edition.

   Meet Omar James Baxter, Turkish-Scottish-American stunt man and private detective. His client, Van Loon, received a threatening crossword (yes, that’s right), but is shot down despite Baxter’s presence.

   More killings follow, connected with a wartime resistance group, “The Crossword Veterans,” and somewhere there’s something for everyone (the ex-resistance, the ex-Nazis, British Intelligence, Baxter’s sexy girl friend Charity) is trying to find.

   The action is fast and furious, the sex scenes strangely impressive (maybe it’s me), and the twists in the plot sufficient to retain your interest. Distinctly offbeat, it fails by a short head to be really top class.

Bio-Bibliographic Update: An online seller of this books says: “Farhi is a Turkish-born author who has been vice president of International PEN and has campaigned for writers persecuted or imprisoned by repressive regimes throughout the world.”

   Farhi has one other book in Hubin, that being The Last of Days (Bodley Head, UK, hardcover, 1983). It does not appear to be a second adventure of Omar Baxter. There are less than a dozen copies of this book offered for sale on line, almost all of them with asking prices of $50 and up.

CHANDLER & CO. “On the Job.” BBC1, UK. 12 July 1994 (Series 1, Episode 1). Catherine Russell as Elly Chandler, Barbara Flynn as Dee Tate, Peter Capaldi as Larry Blakeson. Written by Paula Milne. Director: Renny Rye. Available in the UK on Region Two DVDs. This episode can be seen online here.

   Over the course of two seasons Chandler & Co. tells the story of a two-woman detective agency in London, starting of course at the beginning, with “On the Job” being the first episode. There is a little bit of back story that needs to be told ahead of time, though, and while it’s complicated, here it is: Elly Chandler is now divorced from her ex-husband, while Dee Tate is the man’s sister, who suggests to Elly (there are still close) that starting their own agency might help her through the breakup of her marriage.

   They realize that they are rather new at the game, however, so they call on Larry Blakeson to mentor them through the rough patches as they get started. Larry is the PI who Elly hired to get the goods on her now ex-husband. We’ve all been in situations such as this before, haven’t we, so we can relate.

   Their first two cases in “On the Job,” as they test their wings, involve marital infidelities – the kinds of cases that male PI’s always say they don’t take, and after watching this first episode, you can see why. The two ladies decided to take up the PI business because they like helping people, but after getting themselves involved in other people’s lives as much as they do in these two case, they are not so sure how much help they provided. In fact, there is a rift between them at the end of the show that is so severe that it makes the viewer wonder if there will be an episode two.

   But of course there was.

   All three of the main characters were extremely well chosen for their roles, and their roles were extremely well defined — an excellent show all around. It makes you wish that more episodes were available, just to be able to see the three of them in action more often. (In fact Peter Capaldi is not on often enough in this one.)

   It is also an interesting episode in another regard, which is to say that it starts out in semi-comedic fashion. The two women are klutzy at first, and getting some assistance from a real PI is obviously sorely needed. But as the episode goes along, the comedy aspects gradually disappear, as their choices of a new career start to look as though it were a big big mistake.

   Or in other words, very very interesting.

THE CASE OF THE CURIOUS BRIDE. Warner Brothers.  Warren William, Margaret Lindsay, Donald Woods, Claire Dodd, Allen Jenkins, Barton MacLane, Warren Hymer, Olin Howland, Errol Flynn, and Mayo Methot. Screenplay by Tom Reed and Brown Holmes, from the novel by Erle Stanley Gardner. Directed by Michael Curtiz.

   A B-movie plot given A-movie class by Warners and Curtiz.

   If you only know Perry Mason from the TV show, prepare yourself for an enjoyable shock. Warren William plays Mason as a shyster par excellence, the kind of lawyer not above suborning perjury, manufacturing evidence, or hiding a witness when called for. In short, the kind of slimy-but-likeable rogue that was William’s stock in trade during his brief stardom. Just how brief we shall see shortly.

   The plot involves a lady-friend of Mason’s involved with a blackmailing bigamist who is promptly murdered, the lady’s milksop husband, his domineering dad, assorted minions of the law and the lawless, and Perry’s perennial friends and foes. And as plots go, this one is forgettable to the point of inducing amnesia.

   Fortunately, Bride is more than redeemed by the talents involved. Warners sprang for a top-notch supporting cast, location shooting in San Francisco, and the genius of director Michael Curtiz, who fills the screen with smooth camerawork, artsy dissolves, and a real sense of pace.

   More than this, though, Curtiz achieves a real sense of fellow-feeling and interaction among the players. When Perry trades quips with the coroner (Olin Howland) and Della Street (Claire Dodd) the affection between them comes right across the screen. And when moviedom’s arch-pugs Allen Jenkins and Warren Hymer meet, the atmosphere of imminent combat is so real you can feel the punches before they land.

   And there’s an interesting sidelight: When Bride was released, Warners was seriously considering Warren William for the lead in their upcoming Captain Blood. Instead, the part went to newcomer Errol Flynn, who spends most of his screen time here under a sheet, playing the murder victim. Flynn, of course, shot to stardom, while Warren William’s career began a slow spiral downward, a decline in the quality of his films that he handled with the grace he never failed to show on screen.
   

FRITZ LEIBER “The Sadness of the Executioner.” Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. First published in Flashing Swords #1, edited by Lin Carter (Dell, paperback original, July 1973). Collected in Swords and Ice Magic (Ace, paperback, 1977).

   Although this is nominally a Fahfrd and the Gray Mouser story, they don’t appear the ninth page of this 15 page tale, which is basically little more than long vignette. No, the main protagonist before then is Death, and in particular the death that services the World of Nehwon, and he has fallen behind on his duties. So far, as the story begins, he has to choose 200 of those now living to pass through to the other side.

   To that end, 196 have done so. He has four remaining, and two of them are our duly fated heroes, neither of who are aware of their upcoming destiny. Nonetheless destiny, or fate, has a way of stepping in, and Death being a sportsman, in spite of his inevitable cheating, decides to let it have its way.

   It was Leiber who is said to have coined the phrase “swords and sorcery” as a subgenre of the larger world of fantasy, and while a minor tale, “The Sadness of the Executioner” is a prime example.

   And as Lin Carter so states in his introduction to the story, Leiber’s finely tuned fantasy resembles in no way that of Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian, among other similar and inimitably ruthless characters, and the other major author in the field. Which is why I still read Leiber’s work, while tales of Conan lie today with their pages unopened, at least by me.

   
JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. 20th Century Fox, 1959. Pat Boone, James Mason, Arlene Dahl, Diane Baker, Thayer David. Screenplay by Walter Reisch and Charles Brackett, based on the novel by Jules Verne. Director: Henry Levin.

   At the heart of Journey to the Center of the Earth is a sense of childhood wonder. It’s a film that works best for those with a passion for exploration and a ripe imagination. After all, for a movie based on a Jules Verne work to be effective, it must stimulate those parts of the brain responsible for one’s imaginative faculties. One also has to suspend disbelief. Of course, there are no giant lizard creatures lurking about in the center of the planet. But imagine if only there were!

   The plot of this 20th Century Fox live action feature is simple enough. Professor Sir Oliver Lindenbrook (James Mason) of Edinburgh is a geologist by training. Ill-mannered and more than a little sexist, Lindenbrook is seemingly more passionate about rocks than his fellow man.

   When one of his star pupils, Alec McEwan (Pat Boone) brings him a curious geological specimen, Lindenbrook becomes obsessed as to its origins. As it turns out, the rock seems to point toward something much more profound than McEwan could have imagined; namely, that there is – somewhere in Iceland – a passageway deep into the center of the earth.

   Lindenbrook and McEwan, along with the widow of Lindenbrook’s rival, an Icelandic helper, and an adorable duck named Gertrude, set course on exploring the depths of the planet. Of course, such a story could not work unless there was an antagonist who is equally determined to stop the professor.

   Here comes the Icelandic nobleman Count Saknussemm (Thayer David). He is the typical Disney villain. Ready to kill when necessary, but not overtly evil – at least not the end of the film. The conflict between these two forces provides the necessary plot tension needed to make the movie work.

   That said, what makes Journey to the Center of the Earth such an enjoyable feature is not the plot per se. It’s rather the eclectic combination of myriad factors, each of individual import, that coalesce into a coherent whole. Film scenes involving people climbing through caves can only work if there is enough clever dialogue and witty banter.

   And let me assure you, of that there is plenty. Mason, with his distinctive accent and intonation, is pitch perfect. It’s sheer joy to listen to his portrayal of an arrogant professor, one gradually begins to change his tune once he realizes that he may not be as omniscient as he thought he was.

   Adding to the mystique of the movie are three other strong factors. First, the movie has an eerie score by Bernard Herrmann which can be heard here:

   In addition, the movie has great art direction and set design. Even at the beginning of the movie – the nominally boring part – you can clearly see the attention to detail that pervades this work. Be it in Lindenbrook’s home or laboratory.

   Similarly, there are numerous great set pieces throughout the movie, including a giant subterranean mushroom forest (with shades of psychedelia) and the sunken lost city of Atlantis which the exploration party happens upon at the very end.

   But don’t mistake my high praises for a lack of clarity as to the film’s weaknesses. There are quite a few, not the least of which was the decision to kill off the duck. Such a moment must have been quite shocking for young children who went to see a fun film.

   Equally disappointing – this time for adults – is the film’s refusal to depict any sign of sadness or grief on the part of the characters. They are all a little too staid, a little too bourgeois (it’s a term used in the film for a very specific reason).

   A little more passion, a little more anger on the part of the characters would have gone a long way in heightening the proceedings. Perhaps it would have removed some of the movie’s charm. But perhaps it would have given it a little more bite.

ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION. December 1966. [Cover by Kelly Freas.]   Overall rating: 2½ stars.

MACK REYNOLDS “Amazon Planet.” Serial, Part 1 of 3. See report following Feb 1967 issue.

BEN BOVA “The Weathermakers.” [Kinsman series] Novelette. A hurricane forces Project THUNDERBIRD to begin complete weather control in the East. Smooth, almost documentary style, but reasons for abandoning ship during storm are not clear. (3)

Update: Excerpt from the novel of the same name (Signet, paperback original, 1967). Included in many collections of Bova’s short fiction.

L. EDEY. The Blue-Penciled Throop. Twelve letter from Oswald Lempe, editor of a technical journal. (2)

Update: This was the author’s only work of science fiction.

KRIS NEVILLE “The Price of Simeryl.” Novelette. A Federation investigator considers a planetary government’s request for credit and guns. An interesting picture o what appears to be an entrenched bureaucracy, but the ending is dumb. (2)

Update: Collected in The Science Fiction of Kris Neville (Southern University Press, hardcover, 1984).

PHILIP LATHAM “Under the Dragon’s Tail.” An astronomer goes mad with the approach of the asteroid Icarus. (1)

Update: Reprinted in On Our Way to the Future, edited by Terry Carr (Ace, paperback, 1970).