Thursday, June 18, 2009
AHMM
The latest issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine has Fritz Leiber's classic "Space-Time for Springers" as it's "classic" this time around (September issue). I remember reading the story in Star Science Fiction #4 way back in 1958 and loving it. The story has a fine introduction by James Lincoln Warren, and it's great to read about Gummitch again. If you've never read the story, the issue's worth it for this one alone.
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12 comments:
One of my favorite stories. Ever.
Warren says it's his favorite story by his favorite writer.
That's because it is.
It's a great one, all right.
Should have given a "geezer alert" on that post, Bill.
Now I'll read the story.
Jeff
"Yeah, you do that...punk." James, you came up recently on FictionMags for an early appearance in FANTASTIC, and your subsequent career as primarily a cf writer cited to place you. Good for you for making this fine choice, if only a little eccentric, for the AHMM crowd ("Space Time" and THE BIG TIME being in part mysteries that are better than more blatant fantasticated cf such as "I'm Looking for Jeff" (yeah...young'n) in FANTASTIC in its earliest years, or the less fantasticated "Schizo Jimmie" in THE SAINT in '60. (I was gratified that Charles Sheffield was able to place an Erasmus Darwin story with AHMM back in my first subscription years after FANTASTIC, where he started the series, folded.
And there I go, thinking of "Ship of Shadows," more of a mystery, rather than "Space Time for Springers," more of a suspense story as well as the first Gummitch story. Middle aged geezer, indeed.
How the story came to be chosen is a story in itself. During Edgar Week in 2007, after attending the book signing for MWA's collection The Blue Religion at Otto Penzler's Mysterious Bookshop in TriBeCa, I went to dinner with Linda Landrigan, her husband John, and her assistant editor Laurel Fantauzzo. Much wine was consumed.
Linda innocently asks me to tell her about one of my all-time favorite stories, and I then spill out the entire plot of "Space-Time", and then actually started to weep copiously for poor Gummitch's sake. (Did I mention there was a lot of wine consumed?)
Sometime later, Linda called me at home and told me she wanted to reprint it and asked me to write the intro.
Oops, I meant 2008, not 2007. There wasn't that much wine.
Thanks for the story!
Honestly, Bill, do you remember the title, number, and year you read that story or did you have to look it up? Today I read about someone in my platoon in the Army and I can't for the life of me remember him.
The intro to the story tells where it was originally published, and I bought all the STAR collections back in those days. And this isn't a story anybody would forget.
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