Hawk & Fisher

I heard about Simon Green's Hawk & Fisher from someone years ago, but I never got around reading the book until last night. It's a fantasy novel about two cops, Hawk and Fisher, who are husband and wife and who carry an axe (Hawk) and a sword (Fisher). They inhabit a fantasy world where magic works and where crime is rampant. This book is about a locked-room murder in the home of a powerful sorcerer. It's also a riff on Christie's Ten Little Indians, as that after the murder occurs, no one can enter or leave the house. And of course people keep dying. I'd like to say this is an undiscovered classic, but I can't. That would be wrong. The writing is undistinguished and in some cases downright irritating. (So many people were saying things "dryly" that I thought I was sitting in the Sahara.) The plot resolutions are, in my opinion, sort of a cheat, but you might think differently. If you've read it, let me know. I have another book in this series, but I'm not eager to read it.

Rough Edges

Rough Edges: "Today while searching the Internet in an attempt to find out when and where the two stories in the book were originally published, I found a great site devoted to science fiction pulps and digests:

http://www.noosfere.com/showcase/pulps__magazines_americains.htm

It's in French, but it features cover scans and indexes for just about every SF magazine you can think of."

I can't resist reprinting this link from James Reasoner's site. I love those old covers, and even if the stories in the magazines don't hold up too well, the covers can still evoke that old sense of wonder for me every time I see them.

Ed's Place

Ed's Place: "Richard Wormser - Ed Gorman"

Ed says he found a couple of Wormser novels in a dime bin. That's what I'd call good luck. I like all Wormser's Gold Medal novels, but the ones I seem to recall best are Drive East on 66, A Nice Girl Like You, and Perfect Pigeon. Wormser won the "best paperback" Edgar for a later GM, possibly The Invader. All well worth seeking out.

DenverPost.com - LOCAL NEWS

DenverPost.com - LOCAL NEWS: "Resort goes to extreme heights
Tall Timber looks to live up to name with tree 'soaring'"

Ah, to be a rich guy and play Tarzan!

Jack London

When I was a kid, I read Call of the Wild at least twice, and when I got to high school, I (like every other kid in America, probably) read "To Build a Fire." Naturally, having read those two things, I associated Jack London with the Frozen North.

But London also wrote South Sea adventure stories about a man named David Grief. These were the basis for a pretty bad syndicated TV series in the 1950s, Captain David Grief. I vaguely remembered the series, but I'd never read any of the stories until the other day, when I picked up an old Popular Library reprint of a book called Son of the Sun. The reprint, because of the TV series, is titled Adventures of Captain David Grief.

The copyright info in front of the book mentions the Curtis Publishing Company, which I assume means The Saturday Evening Post published the stories originally. In a way, I wish London had been aiming at the pulp market. The stories might have been a little more exciting if he had.

Still, they have their moments. When you're dealing with headhunters, sharks, and hidden treasure, it's hard not to generate some thrills. But I get the impression that the thrills were toned down a bit, especially in a story like "The Jokers of New Gibbon," which would have been a lot better if the action had taken place on stage instead of between the lines of a page break.

Oddly enough, the first story in the book, "The Proud Goat of Aloysius Pankborn," reminded me of some of the SF stories I read in the 1950s about alien contact. It's also a little like Captain's Courageous, in which a wuss is transformed into a real man by hard work and sailing.

The collection is entertaining enough to hold my interest, but then I can't resist stories about the South Seas. And another thing I like about them is that I figure I'm the only person in the United States who's reading them.

Money Matters

Here's something that really burns me: Last Wednesday, we sent in a pretty big credit card payment. We figured the check couldn't possibly arrive before Friday, or maybe Saturday. When I checked my bank account yesterday, the money was already gone. So five days after I mailed the check, the money was transferred from my bank account to good old Mastercard.

Today I took a royalty check to the bank and deposited it. The nice teller said, "I have to remind you, Mr. Crider, that there's a hold on the check for five business days."

Why is it that when I deposit a check, there's a hold on it, but when Mastercard gets my check, the money disappears from my account instantly? Doesn't seem fair, somehow.

My Life as a Reader, Part 1

My Life as a Reader, Part 1:

I've always had low taste in literature. Naturally, I blame my parents.

One of my early memories of my mother is of her holding me up to the shelves in the public library in Mexia, Texas, and letting me pick a book to take home. The one I remember choosing was about Clementine, a flying pig. I liked it so much that I checked it out over and over. (I've looked for the book since, but I've never been able to find it. Maybe I made it up.) What kind of start is that for a young reader?

That library was phased out, and it's now an Episcopal Church. Which seems kind of appropriate to me.

When I started going alone to the new (air-conditioned!) Gibbs Memorial Library, riding my crummy secondhand bike, I checked out series books: the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Tarzan, Bomba the Jungle Boy, the Bobbsey Twins. My parents didn't care. They didn't say, "Why are you reading that crap? Doesn't the library have a copy of Crime and Punishment?" They just let me read whatever I wanted to.

My teachers didn't care, either, so maybe it's partially their fault. They let us go to the school library on certain days, and we could read whatever we wanted to and check out anything we liked. It was in the library at Ross Avenue Elementary School that I ran across Rocketship Galileo, a book that pretty much initiated my years'-long immersion in SF.

Come to think of it, I guess the librarians didn't care, either, or they wouldn't have ordered books by Robert A. Heinlein in the first place.

So I'd like to take this opportunity, though it's far too late, to thank my parents, my teachers, and those librarians. If I didn't have low taste in literature, I'd probably have no taste at all.

The 80's Movies Rewind @www.fast-rewind.com -- Home of 80s Movies

The 80's Movies Rewind @www.fast-rewind.com -- Home of 80s Movies

Here's a site I located though Pop Culture Junk Mail. Great stuff about '80s movies (plot summaries, trivia, etc.). I could probably spend the whole day browsing here, but I won't. I hope I won't.

Dirty Sally

This weekend I read Michael Simon's Dirty Sally. The best brief description of the book I can some up with is that it's like the 87th Precinct as written by James Crumley. Or maybe Boston Teran.

It's one of those books that begins over the top and builds from there. Everything is ramped up to the nth degree, and reading the book is sort of like watching a DVD at 2X. It's the kind of book where cars "roar" and "speed" and "zoom." By the end, the main character hasn't slept in weeks, he's been beaten to a pulp, drugged, beaten again, mauled by a bear (OK, I made that last one up), but he's still functioning and puts everything together for the big confrontation scene.

The plot, to put it politely, is preposterous. The uber-villain does any number of incredibly stupid things, but then there's not really a believeable character in the novel. The Chinatown-like resolution is just silly.

The narration is a Duke's mixture. Some of the scenes are first-person, some are third-person. I don't like the mix even when James Lee Burke does it, and I don't like it here. I don't even see the reason for it.

I gave up trying to count the bodies and the buckets of blood, but there's a sufficiency of both. Trust me.

Drugs? You bet. Grotesque scenes of corpses and autopsies? Absolutely.

There might have been a time when I was the target audience for a book like this. Not anymore. But it will probably sell well. As someone once said, if you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like.

Angry Alien Productions, Sase and Topsie

Angry Alien Productions, Sase and Topsie: "Jaws in 30 seconds, re-enacted by bunnies."

OK, I admit it. I think this is pretty funny.

LPs

In a comment down below, James Reasoner asks how I play those old LPs I buy at the DAV store. My turntable, like his, went south a couple of years ago. I could probably have found one at the DAV store, come to think of it, but what I did instead was buy one of those "retro" combo players that you see all over the place these days. It has a turntable, AM/FM radio, and CD player. The turntable plays only 33-1/3 and 45 rpm records, which is too bad, since I have some 78s. And of course the sound is nothing like many of you stereo buffs require. But it's good enough for me.

Something Old, Nothing New

Something Old, Nothing New: "Something Old, Nothing New"

If you need cheering up today, click on the link and check out the post on P. G. Wodehouse's Mr. Mulliner stories. It's going to make you want to re-read Wodehouse immediately. And if you haven't read him, you shouldn't be wasting your time here. You should be placing your book order.

Collateral

Judy and I went to see Collateral yesterday. If you haven't seen it, you might want to quit reading now, because I'll probably give away some supposed surprises.

Here's the deal. Jamie Foxx plays a taxi driver named Max. My theory about books and movies is that everybody is willing to forgive one big coincidence, but the fact that Max's first fare is an attorney (Jada Pinkett Smith) who's on the hit list of his second fare, Vincent (Tom Cruise) is a little hard to swallow. This isn't really giving anything away, however, since anybody who sees the movie is going to twig to it a lot quicker than Max does.

Since the attorney is #5 on a list of five, Vincent has to kill a lot of people before he gets to her, and he hires Max to drive him from victim to victim (there's a hint in the movie that this has happened at least once before, though not to Max). When Max finds out what's going on, Vincent forces him to participate.

You pretty much know how this is going to turn out. Max, the ordinary guy, will prove to be a little more heroic than Vincent expects, there will be a "suspenseful" chase, and yadda yadda yadda.

I thought the movie was pretty good, though. Cruise does a good villain, and has a nice last line. Foxx is a lot better than I thought he'd be. Really good, in fact. I'm looking forward to seeing how he does as Ray Charles in Ray later on this year.

One jarring note that took me out of the movie: Mark Ruffalo appears as a cop and seems to be playing the same guy he played in In the Cut. I kept expecting Meg Ryan to show up for some hot R-rated sex.

DAV

This morning I made a trip to the Disabled Veterans Thrift Store. I try to get by there every couple of weeks because you never know what books might turn up. (I got a run of The Lady from L.U.S.T., for example.) Today there wasn't much, but I picked up a hardback copy of the Gardner Dozois anthology The Year's Best Science Fiction. It's the 1999 edition, so I'll have a chance to catch up with some writers I'm no doubt unfamiliar with.

The DAV store also sells vinyl LPs for seventy cents or three for a buck-fifty. I bought Jethro Tull's Aqualung, something by Styx, and a double album by REO Speedwagon. What can I say? I can't resist a bargain.

FOX23 -- NEWS

FOX23 -- NEWS: "Kennedy Killing to Undergo Digital Review"

Too bad it's going to take at least a year. But then I figure they won't learn anything new anyway.

Working for the Man

When I was in high school, I worked at Red Arrow Freight Lines in the summers and on Saturdays. That probably explains why Algis Budrys' "The Distant Sound of Engines" hit me so hard when I read it in the March 1959 issue of F&SF. And why I've remembered it so well for 45 years. It's not a great story, but when I read it, I thought, "I know people just like the guy telling this story. I go to work with them every day of the summer." And it had some stuff about trucks in it, too.

Not too many years ago, Joe Lansdale and I were talking at AggieCon, and he said he'd like to do an anthology of trucking stories (but he never did). I said, "There's one by Algis Budrys you really should use." I couldn't remember the name of it, of course. So when I opened the Budrys anthology I picked up at Armadillocon, the first thing I looked at was the table of contents. When I saw "The Sound of Distant Engines," I said, "That's it." And it was. I read it immediately. It hasn't dated at all. And I still love it.

There's another story in the book that I also remembered, more for the great Kelly Freas cover illustration on a 1956 Astounding than for the story. It's "The Executioner," and it's a really good story. It's about faith and politics that's just as relevant (and just as true) today as it was nearly 50 years ago, which is pretty scary. Read it if you ever run across it.

Algis Budrys

When I attended the World Science Fiction Convention in San Antonio in 1997, Algis Budrys was one of the major guests. He's a writer I've always sort of kept up with, probably because he has an unusual name, but also because he wrote a story I'm really fond of. (More about that in another post.) And because I really liked the cover of the first paperback edition of Who?

At the WorldCon, one of the freebies was a copy of a Budrys short-story collection called Entertainment, published by the New England Science Fiction Association (NESFA). I didn't get a copy at the time because I didn't know about it. However, there were some copies left over, and they were given away at the recent Armadillocon. This time, I got one.

The stories in the book are from my Golden Age of Science Fiction, 1954-1958, and they originally appeared in the magazines I was devouring at the time: Astounding, Venture, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Infinity. So naturally I've been reading a few of them again. Ah, the nostalgic thrills.

DRUDGE REPORT 2004?

DRUDGE REPORT 2004?: "FLASH: The current version of the PARAMOUNT film TEAM AMERICA is a guaranteed NC-17, with surprisingly graphic scenes of puppet sex.."


Well, that does it. Now I know I'm going to see it.

Something Old, Nothing New

Something Old, Nothing New: "Grudge Matches I'd Like To See
To follow up on the previous post... a few years ago, I actually considered doing a sort of 'Indie Grudge Match' site that would do matches that were too obscure for the WWWF Grudge Match. Foolishly, I dropped the idea and wound up blogging instead. But I thought I'd post about some of the pop-culture grudge matches I'd like to see."

This is a pretty funny post. Or at least I thought so. Click on the link and see for yourself.

Mexican Movie Gallery

Mexican Movie Gallery: "Cinema Diabolico


Overlooked and under appreciated by most US movie poster collectors, marquee art from south of the border offers a no-holds-barred plethora of often shocking and bizarre images. From the super heroic exploits of El Santo, the masked wrestler, to the re-released, re-packaged, and regurgitated US drive-in fare of the 50's and 60's, Mexican cinema art is generally far superior to American theatre graphics of the same time period."

OK, I'll admit it. I find stuff like this irresistible. There are some great posters here. Every link has something cool. I was reminded of the time about 20 years ago when I was lucky enough to be able to see quite a few movies starring masked Mexican wrestlers.

Stark House Press

I've mentioned Stark House Press before, but it never hurts to remind people of a place that's doing a good job. The latest Stark House project is a reprint of two Douglas Sanderson novels in one volume. Sanderson was probably better-known in the U.S. as Malcolm Douglas because of the Gold Medal novels he did under that name. In fact, the Stark House volume reprints one of those books, Pure Sweet Hell. And it's a good one. It also reprints Catch a Fallen Starlet from Avon, and I know a guy who thinks this is one of Sanderson's best. There are introductions by Kevin Burton Smith and Sanderson's son. The book's not due until November, but I wanted to post this before I forgot. I highly recommend it. You can check out the whole line of Stark House books at http://starkhousepress.com/.

Short Stories

Like James Reasoner, I seem to be in the mood for reading short stories. The three I read yesterday are all in Asimov's Science Fiction for June 2003.

The lead story in the issue is John Varley's "The Bellman." I used to like Varley's stories a lot, and I really enjoyed his 2003 "comeback" novel, Red Thunder, which for me captured some of the feeling of Robert Heinlein's YA novels from another era. But I didn't much like "The Bellman." It went along fine until the end, when I suddenly felt as if I'd somehow skipped six pages or so. Maybe I'm supposed to be smart enough to fill in the blanks, and I guess I am, but I prefer to have things made a little more clear. Maybe I'll have another look to see what I missed. Or not.

Cory Doctorow has made a lot of noise in the SF field lately, but I'd never read anything by him. So I was glad to see that he had a story in the issue. It's "Nimby and the Dimension Hoppers," and while it has plenty of weird things in it (living houses, bicycle fields), at heart it's an old-fashioned story of the kind I like. I enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed Lawrence Person's "Morlock Chili." I've been acquainted with Lawrence for years, thanks to attending Armadillocon and Aggiecon, but I don't think I'd ever read his fiction before. This story could definitely have appeared in an issue of, say, Amazing Stories around 1958, and nobody would have been overly surprised. I mean that as a compliment. It's funny and well-written and very Texas, and I'll be looking for Person's name from now on.

Alvin, Texas

As some of you know (and some of you don't), I live in swampy Alvin, Texas, about halfway between Sugar Land and Galveston on Highway 6. NASA is about 12 miles away in a different direction. The weather here in the summer is usually just about what you'd expect in a place the early Spanish explorers deemed unfit for human habitation (and there are many who agree with them, even today). But the last few days have been great. We got a rare August cool front, and we've had record low temperatures for a couple of nights. Better yet, the humidity disappeared. Getting up and out for a little jog in the morning was a pleasure. Unfortunately, the humidity has started creeping back in. By tomorrow we'll be back to the usual August pattern: middle to upper 70s at night middle 90s during the day. With plenty of humidity. But the cool front was really great while it lasted.

Guardian Unlimited Books | Top 10s | Paul Murray: top 10 gothic novels

Guardian Unlimited Books | Top 10s | Paul Murray: top 10 gothic novels: " Paul Murray's top 10 gothic novels"

Well, as I said below, I can't resist a good list. Here's another one. What's really surprising (to me) is that I've read 9 of the 10 books on it. (The one I haven't read is #7.)

Something Old, Nothing New

Something Old, Nothing New: "A non-technical BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL post
One more post about The Bad and the Beautiful, but this time not blathering on about the length of shots. Having seen the movie again -- and if you haven't seen it, please buy or rent the DVD -- I thought I'd make a note of which character is based on which real-life Hollywood figure. Writer Charles Schnee, director Vincente Minnelli and producer John Houseman (aka Professor Kingsfield) drew on various Hollywood stories and legends to create the film, and part of the fun of the movie is guessing who these people are intended to represent. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes less so:"

This is the intro to an interesting post. I hadn't really read much about THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL, so I'd never thought about these correspondences. (You might have to scroll down to find the post.)

VinceKeenan.com

VinceKeenan.com
Book: The Killing of the Tinkers, by Ken Bruen (2004)
Reading this novel is like grabbing hold of a live wire while ripped to the gills on Guinness. You’re instantly swept up by the Gael force of Jack Taylor’s personality. I wouldn’t mind if Jack took a drop of Powers every now and then instead of Jameson’s, but otherwise I have no complaints. (Well, one. George Pelecanos’ name is misspelled. In two different ways.)

OK, here's my Ken Bruen comment, inspired by Vince's. When I read the three novels in The White Trilogy, I felt about them pretty much the way Vince feels about The Killing of the Tinkers. So when The Guardians came out and was nominated for the Edgar, among others, I sprang for the hardback edition. And I was disappointed. Sure, Jack Taylor's a great character, and I loved the references to the old paperbackers, but I thought the mystery element of the novel was negligible and the solution was perfunctory. To me, the book seemed more like a mainstream novel with a killing in it. I couldn't believe it had been nominated for an Edgar, because to my mind it wasn't a mystery novel at all. Not that it's not a good book. It's just not a mystery. So I haven't been eager to read The Killing of the Tinkers. I probably will, sooner or later, but I'm not springing for the hardback.

F&SF

I subscribed to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction for quite a few years. Then, sometime in the late '90s, I realized that not a single story in the magazine entertained me. And, even worse, I realized that I didn't understand about half of them. So I let my subscription lapse.

A while back, James Reasoner (http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/) mentioned that he'd been reading the latest issue and that he liked Brad Denton's story called "Sergeant Chip." OK, I thought, if James likes it, it must be OK. (And I like Denton's work a lot. His serial killer novel, Blackburn, is a classic. It's unlike any other serial killer novel you're ever likely to read.)

So while I was at Armadillocon, I bought a copy of the magazine, and last night I read "Sergeant Chip." I'm glad I did. It's a rip-snorting war adventure story that wouldn't have been out of place in the SF digests of the 1950s, though of course it has a modern sensibility. If the other stores in the magazine come up to this standard, I might even consider subscribing again.

I also picked up some copies of recent issues of Asimov's SF or whatever they're calling it these days. I'll be reading some stories in those mags, too, in the hopes . . . .

Introducing the Kalashnikov MP3 player | The Register

Introducing the Kalashnikov MP3 player | The Register : "Introducing the Kalashnikov MP3 player"

What a great idea. This is a must for my next plane trip.

The Enemy

I think I mentioned that I've been reading Lee Child's new one, The Enemy. I'd read all but about 90 pages before we left for Armadillocon, and I didn't bother taking the book with me to finish it while we were there. I'm not sure what that tells us. Probably this: That I didn't find the book so gripping that I was in a sweat to get to the end. Now that I've read it, here are a few random thoughts.

1. The book seems longer than the earlier Jack Reacher books. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I prefer shorter books. Not that the earlier books were short.

2. Child sure does know a lot about the U.S. military. The stuff about the Army, Army life, Army politics, Army this and Army that is almost overwhelming.

3. The book, like the first one Child published about Reacher, is in first person. Don't know why. Maybe because it's a "prequel," set before the third-person books. Some writers switch between first and third person in the same book. Child does it a bit differently.

4. The plot seems pretty complicated, but I'd figured out a lot of it by the time I stopped reading to go to the convention. Maybe that's why I wasn't in a hurry to finish.

5. This wasn't my favorite Jack Reacher book, but I'll probably read the next one.

Telegraph | News | 'Minority Report' police unit consults killers to spot potential murderers

Telegraph | News | 'Minority Report' police unit consults killers to spot potential murderers : "'Minority Report' police unit consults killers to spot potential murderers
By Charlotte Edwardes and Andrew Alderson
(Filed: 15/08/2004)

Detectives are to record and analyse interviews with Britain's most notorious killers in search of clues that will help them identify potential murderers - before they have committed their terrible crimes."

Well, I'd say that there's a mystery novel waiting to be written here. If you write it, I'll take 10%.

"100 Science Fiction Books You Just Have to Read"

Lists of Bests : Phobos Entertainment's "100 Science Fiction Books You Just Have to Read"

I can't resist lists like this. Check it out and see what you think. (There are some other interesting lists on the site, too.)

defective yeti

defective yeti: "There Can Be Only One

Apparently they are making an Alien vs. Predator movie, perhaps because of the success of last year's Jason vs. Freddy. That's cool, I guess, but there are so many other matchups I'd rather see."

If you were lucky enough to miss ALIEN VS. PREDATOR, click the link for the supervillain death-fight tournament bracket. You have to fill in the winners yourself.

Warp Factor

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/21443.html

The link above comes courtesy of Jayme Blaschke's Gibberish and leads to a great article by Alison Rowat. It's about the World SF Con. Key sentence: "Having an interest in sci-fi is akin to dabbling in drugs." The rest is equally hilarious.

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear “I did something wrong…once…”

Scroll down to Friday the 13th's entry for the commentary on THE KILLERS if you haven't read it yet. Some great stuff here. Even a photo.

Back Home Again

You constant readers must think I really liked that post about Armadillocon, but I swear it wasn't my fault that it was posted so many times. I blame (A) Blogger, (B) my computer, or (C) both. But now I've deleted all the extras and things are back to what passes for normal around here.

The 11-12 panel last night went better than I expected, so I didn't fall asleep. I can't remember much about it, but that doesn't prove anything.

Today's panel was on baseball novels, especially ones with a fantastic element. We mentioned a lot, including I Don't Care if I ever Come Back, The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant, Rhubarb, The Natural, The Universal Baseball Association, J. Henry Waugh, Prop., The Great American Novel, and Screwball. I'm sure there were a lot of others that I don't remember.

It's good to be home, especially after fighting the traffic on I-10 for a while. Now I can finish reading Lee Child's new one, The Enemy. And then I can start thinking about what to do with all the books I bought at the convention.

Armadillocon Again

So here I am at Armadillocon, sitting in my room, waiting for my 11:00 p.m panel. Why would anybody put an Old Guy on a panel at 11:00 p.m.? Who's going to keep me awake?

I was on a 7:00 p.m. panel on "SF Movies that Should be Remade." It was very lively, with lots of audience participation.

The panel at 11:00 is on "Writing in Multiple Genres." Now how likely is that likely to be? Which panel would you have scheduled at 11:00?

In case you're interested, by the way, I agreed with the others that LOGAN'S RUN and I AM LEGEND (THE OMEGA MAN, THE LAST MAN ON EARTH) certainly qualify for remakes, not that Hollywood would do them right even if they were remade.

OK, so Blogger isn't going to let me publish this. I'm going to save it and get it up sooner or later. Maybe later.

Armadillocon

So here we are in the Hilton, waiting for the Armadillocon to begin. Unfortunately, it starts late this afternoon, at which time I'll be heading across town to meet with my sister's reading group. I'm supposed to tell them how I became rich and famous in the writing game. That shouldn't take long.

Last night we went to Jovita's restaurant to hear the Cornell Hurd Band. Our son, Allen, does the sound for the band, and they sounded great. They play for two hours without a break, and the crowd seems to love them. Most of the crowd appeared to be regulars. The band plays for tips, so Allen's always hoping for a big crowd. He said last night was only about average.

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear “Don’t panic!”

"When I sent back the last three DVD’s I rented to Netflix last week, I got notification on Monday that they had received one…Tuesday that they had received a second…and Wednesday the final one. I don’t understand this at all, because I sent all three of them back at the same time. In short, this kind of put a crimp in my plans this week for a post that I had sketched out whereupon I would watch The Killers (1946) and then the 1964 remake. Only they sent me the remake first. Most untidy. I will, therefore, wait until the original arrives tomorrow before any further posting on that subject."

So Tune In Tomorrow! at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear, as they used to say on radio. Should be an interesting commentary.

As for me, it's time to put the suitcases in the car and hit the road.

Road Trip

Today Judy and I are hitting the road for Austin, where we'll be attending the annual Armadillocon, a regional science-fiction convention. We've been going to this one for eight or ten years now, and we always enjoy it. The fact that it's in Austin doesn't hurt.

Tonight, we'll go to Jovita's Mexican Restaurant to see the Cornell Hurd Band. Our son, Allen, works the soundboard for the band. He also produces their CDs, but you probably can't find those outside of Texas.

Tomorrow evening we'll visit my sister, and I'll talk to her book club about writing. Supposedly everyone will have actually read one of my books. It ain't Oprah, but I'll take what I can get.

I'll drag the ancient laptop to the convention, and if I get a chance, I might even do a little light blogging.

NEWS.com.au | Entertainment | Fonda voted best of the vest (August 11, 2004)

NEWS.com.au | Entertainment | Fonda voted best of the vest (August 11, 2004): "Fonda voted best of the vest
August 11, 2004


BARBARELLA has been named as the sexiest sci-fi character in the movies.

The 1968 film featured Jane Fonda as the scantily clad intergalactic hero.

'Getting dressed in zero gravity has never looked as good as in the opening sequence of this sci-fi classic,' Film Review magazine said.

Milla Jovovich was second for her role of Leeloo in The Fifth Element, while Kristinna Loken was third for playing killer robot T-X in Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines."

So my question is, what about Princess Leia? That bondage scene with Jabba the Hut was pretty hot.

USATODAY.com - DVDs change the shape of entertainment

USATODAY.com - DVDs change the shape of entertainment: "DVDs change the shape of entertainment
By Mike Snider, USA TODAY
Couch potatoes still prefer watching TV to other media pastimes, but more often, the TV is playing DVDs."

This whole article is kind of depressing, if you're a writer. Somewhere below I think I expressed my theory that people were watching DVDs instead of reading. Apparently they're doing it in preference to just about any other kind of entertainment. According to the article, people are spending less time going to theaters, listening to music CDs, and reading newspapers, magazines, and books. Sigh.

"The report last week from the small Tombstone Tumbleweed newspaper is jarring. A 'flood of middle-eastern males' has been caught entering the country illegally east of Douglas, Arizona, according to the paper, and this recent 'flood' is actually part of an increasing trend of 'OTMs' ('other than Mexicans') entering the country illegally somewhere east of the Chiricahua Mountains."

Reading the above report, some of us (well, OK, one of us) will no doubt recall the Nick Carter novel entitled THE COYOTE CONNECTION. Nostradamus doesn't have a thing on Nick Carter.

Coxeman

This is a response to a comment below, asking if Frank Frazetta's photo was used on any of the covers in the Coxeman series, and, if so, which ones.

I have to confess I'd never heard this story before. I'll bet Lynn Monroe would know. Anybody else?

Jack Kirkwood

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear (http://blogs.salon.com/0003139/) has some comments today about Jack Kirkwood, and the catch phrase associated with a character he played on the Bob Hope radio show. I hadn't thought of it, much less heard it, in years, but when I was a kid, you could hardly have a conversation without hearing it repeated: "Put something in the pot, boy." I can still hear exactly the way it sounded. The phrase was also part of a popular song, so maybe that's what I'm recalling. Anyway, it's a great memory, and it was glad to be reminded of it.

Ovid Demaris

In a comment on down the page, Steve Mertz mentions Gold Medal writer Ovid Demaris. I want to add a little here to my own comment to Steve.

First, for the curious, the title of one of Demaris' Avon books is The Gold-Plated Sewer, and it's a pretty good one. I've never read his Beacon book, Chip's Girls, but it went through a couple of printings, so someone must have liked it. Demaris wrote another for Avon, The Long Night, and I have one Tower book, The Organization Man, and one Signet Book, The Overlord.

Demaris' Gold Medal novels were generally about gangsters, the Mob, the Mafia. A couple of them became movies. Candyleg was filmed as Machine Gun McCain (which might be a better title) with John Cassavetes in 1968. The Hoods Take Over became Gang War in 1958 and starred Charles Bronson. Both are pretty entertaining, at least to me.

Demaris later hit it big with nonfiction books, including The Green Felt Jungle, the story of Las Vegas. I've never read any of the nonfiction, but I certainly recommend the novels, especially the ones from Gold Medal.

canadaeast.com - CP Entertainment News

canadaeast.com - CP Entertainment News: "LOS ANGELES (AP) - The DVD era is resurrecting the great colourization debate of the 1980s, and at the heart of the matter are Curly, Larry and Moe.

Sony's Columbia TriStar home-video unit is releasing two Three Stooges DVDs that allow viewers to watch the original black-and-white or digitally colourized versions. Purists consider it desecration, while Sony executives say the process can help introduce Hollywood classics to young audiences reluctant to watch anything in black and white. The Stooges discs coming out Tuesday also give die-hard fans better black-and-white versions, the studio insists."

Is NOTHING sacred?

Charles Williams: More Than A Slight Return by Ed Lynskey

Charles Williams: More Than A Slight Return by Ed Lynskey

Ed's other article on Williams, reprinted today on Ed Gorman's blog, is at the above link, where it's a little easier to read. Why Williams' novels don't command the attention of some of the other Gold Medal writers is a complete mystery to me. He was one of the best.

The High Seas of Charles Williams by Ed Lynskey

The High Seas of Charles Williams by Ed Lynskey

Speaking of Gold Medal books, as we have been, Ed Lynskey has a good essay on Charles Williams, one of the sadly negelected Gold Medal guys at the link above. The site itself, Al Guthrie's NOIR ORIGINALS, is well worth your attention.

Like Television

I saw a plug today for http://tesla.liketelevision.com/, which, for a price ($10 a month), gives you unlimited streaming video of all sorts of things: movies, cartoons, serials (Radar Men from the Moon!), and so on. I checked out one of the free samples, some Johnny Carson clips, and the quality's great. Too bad I don't have more time to waste. This would be a great place to waste it.

Gold Medal Books (again)

When I started reading Gold Medal Books, long, long ago, I had no more critical sense than a cricket. For that matter, I'm not sure that I've shown much development. My point, if I have one, is that about all I knew is whether I liked the books or not. And of course I knew that I liked some more than others.

One of the first Gold Medals I remember reading is I Am Legend. Now there was a book that knocked me out. I let a friend borrow my copy, and he told me, years later, that he couldn't believe anyone would let him borrow such a wonderful book. He was surprised that I would let it out of my possession. I think that over the years the book's taken plenty of critical hits, but I don't care. For me, it's still the book I read nearly 50 years ago.

I went on to amass quite a stack of Gold Medals, so I have most of the ones I'm interested in reading, and a lot that I'll probably never read. Sure is nice to have them around, though.

The Old Corral

Time to plug one of my favorite sites for western movies information, The Old Corral: http://www.surfnetinc.com/chuck/trio.htm. Today I was looking for something on Hal Taliaferro, who plays a baddie in the serial I'm watching, Zorro's Black Whip. Turns out that he started his career using the name "Wally Wales" and was a western star during the silent era. He was in over 190 movies during the sound era, but his starring days were over. If you're looking for information (not to mention photos, posters, lobby cards, etc.), The Old Corral has you covered. A great site.

Dan J. Marlowe

I've decided to do a little writing about Dan J. Marlowe for Steve Lewis's Mystery*File, so I've been re-reading some of Marlowe's books. Wow. I think he's a seriously under-rated Gold Medal writer. Everything I've been reading seems as fresh now as it did 35 or 40 years ago: Strongarm, The Name of the Game is Death, and One Endless Hour. The only thing wrong with Strongarm is the prologue, which seems unnecessary to me, especially since the novel has a terrific opening scene. Makes me wonder if the editors asked Marlowe to add the prologue. And when it comes to the other two books, you have to wonder if anybody ever wrote a better pair for Gold Medal. These were done before "Earl Drake" became a series character (probably another editorial suggestion), and he was as hard and as mean as they come. One Endless Hour also has a prologue, which sort of catches you up on who Drake is if you happened to miss The Name of the Game is Death. Which you shouldn't. One of the best Gold Medal books ever.

Rough Edges

Rough Edges: "By the way, while it was a great TV show, THE AVENGERS may hold the distinction of having the worst series of tie-in paperback novels. The ones published by Berkley and written by Norman Daniels (usually a fairly good writer), Keith Laumer (likewise), and John Garforth (whoever he was) are just terrible, even worse than the I SPY novels by John Tiger (who I think may have been Walter Wager)."

I've never read any of the novels based on THE AVENGERS, but I'm in agreement with James that the writers involved are usually pretty good. Keith Laumer wrote some hilarious SF novels about Retief of the CDT, as well as a pretty darned good Raymond Chandler pastiche, FAT CHANCE, which was made into a movie with Michael Caine. I like the book and the movie, but not everyone agrees with me. And then there's Norman Daniels. I remember with great affection a book called SPY HUNT, which I liked a lot. Later, the main character, John Keith starred in a series of novels for Pyramid Books, but I never liked any of them as much as the first. I believe Daniels got his start in the pulps and maybe was a writer for G-8 AND HIS BATTLE ACES. James would probably know for sure.

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear “Aw relax, Archie…relax…”

The comment above doesn't refer to yesterday's comment on the shocking nudity of Veronica Lodge. The link goes to a commentary on the Archie Andrews radio show, which we're told "has not worn well at all." Interesting stuff, and you may have to scroll down to find it.

Gold Medal Guys

The talk about Black Wings Has My Angel made me think about Gold Medal Books, a topic dear to my heart. What a great list of writers they had in the 1950s: John D. MacDonald, Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, David Goodis, Richard S. Prather, Charles Williams, Day Keene, Stephen Marlowe, Edward S. Aarons, Peter Rabe. Those guys were all regulars, and I'm probably leaving out a lot. In the 1960s, Donald Hamilton came along, as did Dan J. Marlowe. Richard Stark (Donald Westlake) switched over to GM from Pocket Books. And there were the lesser-known names like Richard Wormser and Walt Sheldon. Again, I'm sure I'm missing some, this being just off the top of my head. For a quarter (thirty-five cents, a little later on), you could get some great reading. Now a paperback costs seven or eight bucks, and while you get a lot more pages, but I'm pretty sure you don't get better writing, better plotting, or better characters.

Black Wings Has My Angel

I was thinking today about Elliot Chaze's Black Wings Has My Angel. I'm probably to blame, at least in part, for the high price that the book commands these days because I praised it in a fanzine article 35 or so years ago. Since then, others (Max Allan Collins, for one) have also expressed their admiration.

But what I was wondering about is why so few copies of it turn up for sale. There are two copies of the Gold Medal edition available right now at abebooks, one for a hundred bucks and one for $350. The book was later reprinted by Berkley, but those seem to be even harder to find than the Gold Medal.

Other Gold Medal Books from the same time period are a dime a dozen. They turn up on eBay, and nobody even bids on them. Everybody knows that GM had huge print runs, something like 250,000 to start. So what happened to all those copies of Black Wings? Did they all wind up in a warehouse by mistake and get pulped later on? I mean, there are seven copies of the Lion edition of Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me for sale at abebooks. Lion couldn't have had better distribution than GM, and I doubt that Lion's print run was as big as GM's.

All I can say is that I'm glad I got my copy long ago and don't have to try finding one now.

retroCRUSH: The World's Greatest Pop Culture Place

retroCRUSH: The World's Greatest Pop Culture Place: "VERONICA GOES TOPLESS!
ARCHIE'S GAL SHOCKS FANS IN LATEST COMIC BOOK!"

OK, I'll admit it. I had to check this out. It's been a long time (a loooooooooong time) since I looked at an Archie Comic. Things have changed

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : "Mandrake the Magician (1939) concludes with this twelfth and final chapter, as our heroes manage to stumble out of the rubble that was once stately Mandrake Manor."

I'm sorry that we've come to the end of MANDRAKE on the THRILLING DAYS OF YESTERYEAR site. Reading the daily chapter summary was almost as good as seeing the serial. In some ways, it was better, since the commentary is often quite funny.

When I jogged by Alvin High School this morning, the streets were jammed with cars parked along both sides, block after block. It's the annual Pre-School Workshop for the teachers. It reminded me that 41 years ago, I attended my first workshop in Corsicana, Texas, where I was going to begin teaching high school for the princely sum of $4050 a year. I have many vivid memories of that first year of teaching, and it's hard for me to believe that the kids who were in my classes are now nearly 60 years old. I wonder what they look like and what they did with their lives, but I doubt that I'll ever find out.

Dennis Lynds

Dennis Lynds, Michael Collins, Mark Sadler. All the same guy, a terribly underrated writer. I just re-read Circle of Fire (1973), which was published under the Mark Sadler name in 1973. Solid plotting, interesting characters drawn in varying shades of gray (including Paul Shaw the first-person narrator), and good writing. So why isn't Lynds better known? My guess would be that it's because his books aren't action-oriented. There's action, quite a bit, but it isn't ramped up the way it is in many current books. And there's a lot of introspection. It seems pretty clear to me that this is a Ross Macdonald-influenced book. While it's not as good as the best Macdonald (but that's a pretty high standard), it's a solid novel. The other day I found two Sadler books that Berkley reprinted the 1980s. I plan to read the other one Real Soon Now.

Author! Author!

I'm sure many of you know that Pamela Anderson has written a novel. It's called Star, and there's a a brief excerpt from it being reprinted in articles around the 'Net. Here it is:

"'You're not dying, you're just growing up,' her mother tells Star according to an excerpt. "'Looks like you're finally going to get some boobs. You're becoming a woman, honey. You're blooming!'"

"And bloom she did. Her breasts came on suddenly and tenaciously, as if trying to make up for lost time."

Now that's what I call writing! Pure poetry.

Something Old, Nothing New

Something Old, Nothing New : "Things That Suck: '50s Novelty Songs"

Maybe because I was a kid in the 1950s, I didn't think those songs sucked. In fact, "If I'd Known You Were Coming, I'd've Baked a Cake" was one of my favorites. I even liked "Mambo Italiano." I probably never even thought of it as a "novelty song." That designation was reserved (by me) for things that came along later, like Buchanan and Goodman's "Flying Saucer Parts 1 and 2," "The Witch Doctor," and "Purple People Eater," all of which I also liked, though I was older and probably should have known better. Anyway, it turns out that I liked a lot of songs that Bob Merrill wrote, and I still do. I didn't know about his suicide, and learning about it four or five months after the fact still makes me sad.

A few Websites

Through a site called Pop Culture Junk Mail (http://popculturejunkmail.com/), I learned about another one called Avacado Memories (http://wesclark.com/am/). You might want to have a look at both of them, but Avacado Memories is the one that anybody who grew up in the 1960s will enjoy. It's got tons of essays (and photos) that detail Wes Clark's life (I'm assuming that he's no relation to the general who ran for president). There are also a number of pages about the house he grew up in, and for some reason I found all of this stuff interesting. And I didn't even grow up in the 1960s.

For you spy fans, Clark's take on some of my favorite spies is here: http://wesclark.com/am/spy_game.html

BSP

Some of you might not be on DorothyL, the mystery listserv, so for your benefit (don't you feel special?), I'm reprinting a message I sent to the list today:

You remember Walter Satterthwait, don't you? What about Miss Lizzie? Which brings me to the point of this message. Walter has recently completed the sequel to Miss Lizzie, and he let me read the manuscript. So I've read it, and you haven't. Neener, neener, neener.

I'm sorry. That was rude, and I apologize. The tentative title is New York Nocturne, and all I can say is that it's great. New York in the roaring '20s, Amanda and Miss Lizzie on the trail of a killer, cameos by the famous and infamous, and prose that sings. What more could you ask? It's making the publishing rounds now, so if you have the ear of any influential editors, you might want to clue them in.

And Cavalcade, the third book in Walter's series that began with Escapade and Masquerade, is coming from St. Martin's in February.

Notice how I'm modestly not mentioning my own books.

Rough Edges

Rough Edges: "26 pages today finished the current book, which is #166 overall."

James Reasoner continues to amaze me. I knew him before he'd published a single novel, and now he's completed 166. Soon enough, he'll pass the 200 mark. How does he do it? If he were writing crap, I could understand. Maybe. But I don't think he's ever written a bad book. I particularly enjoyed his WWII trilogy and the Civil War series, but everything he's done is classy work.

Welcome to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine!

Welcome to Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine!

Here's a little of what Jon Breen has to say about Robert B. Parker's latest Spenser novel in his review for EQMM: "*** Robert B. Parker: Bad Business, Putnam, $24.95. Boston private eye Spenser, hired to get the goods on a wandering husband, encounters sexual and corporate malfeasance and, of course, murder. Parker’s minor classics God Save the Child (1974) and Mortal Stakes (1975) were followed by a series of socially significant, always well- written, but seriously underplotted sequels. More recent wisecrack-driven Spenser novels are pure entertainment, less reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald than of old radio shows like Blake Edwards’s Richard Diamond."

I hadn't thought about before, but Jon has a point. I've probably mentioned that I still read Parker, though a lot of people have simply given up on him because he no longer writes the kind of books he did earlier in his career. One reason may be that I grew up listening to radio shows like RICHARD DIAMOND, SAM SPADE (I knew him as Howard Duff on radio long before I saw THE MALTESE FALCON on film or read the novel), and BARRY CRAIG, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. My father was a particular fan of the latter show because Barry Craig got hit on the head and knocked out so often. He thought that was the sign of a good program. At any rate, the wisecracking on those shows, and on others, particularly Jack Webb's PAT NOVAK (I think that's right), was part of my growing up, and I still enjoy it when I read Parker's books or when I listen to one of the old radio programs on tape.

I also happen to think that even Parker's recent novels have a certain amount of social significance in them, but I could easily be wrong about that.

Steve Mertz

Gotta agree with much of what Steve Mertz says in his comment below about the James Bond movies and the actors who played Bond. And I even agree about George Lazenby. He coulda been a contender. Steve and I may be the only ones who believe that, however.

Which reminds me: Could there have been a worse choice to play Matt Helm than Dean Martin? Now I like Dean Martin. I liked him especially in Rio Bravo and in Some Came Running. And The Young Lions. But I didn't like the idea that he was playing Matt Helm. Those movies were awful, just awful. The TV series with Tony Franciosa ("Matt Helm? Gotta find us some Italian guy to play him") was pretty bad, too.

Cutthroat Island

Speaking of action movies, I've often wondered why I'm the only one who likes Cutthroat Island. It's true that I'm a big Geena Davis fan, but I might have liked the movie even if she hadn't been in it. I first saw the movie at a sneak preview in Houston, and as soon as the DVD came out, I got a copy. I've watched it a couple of times, and I like it even better now than I did the first time.

I mean, what's not to like? You have your pirates, your treasure map, your sword fights, your chase scenes on land and sea, your Geena Davis . . . oh, yeah, I've already mentioned Geena Davis. You also have Matthew Modine, and I'll admit that he's no Errol Flynn. But then who is? Orlando Bloom? Gimme a break.

Another thing I like is the color. It might not be Technicolor, but it's close. There are some beautiful shots.

And the action scenes are great. You can tell what's happening all the time, as you can't in so many movies these days. Gladiator is the one that comes to mind. My theory used to be that nobody knew how to film action these days. But my new theory is that the actors and stuntpersons just can't cut it, so they do all that quick cutting to make you think something's happening when it isn't. Basil Rathbone and Errol Flynn would be appalled.

Anyway, no matter what anybody else says, I like Cutthroat Island a lot. (I also like The Long Kiss Goodnight, and not just because it has Geena Davis in it. But she's really good.)

Something Old, Nothing New

Something Old, Nothing New : "
Bond, James... Ah, To Hell With It
I'm sure you've all heard, and become kind of sick of hearing about, the rumor that Pierce Brosnan might not be playing James Bond any more. Whenever a change in Bonds is made, the real question is, will this be a chance for the series to go in a new direction?"

Vince Keenan pointed me in the direction of this blog, so he has a lot to answer for. One thing I didn't need was another blog to read. Anyway, I was reading along and came to this comment about the James Bond series. I like the idea of doing a movie as a '60s nostalgia piece, but I also liked the direction the series took a long time back when Timothy Dalton took over as Bond for two movies. The old jokey Roger Moore style was dumped for a darker, more serious Bond. LICENSE TO KILL was probably the darkest in the whole series. I think it was also the one of the least popular. Maybe I'm the only one who liked these, which is why they replaced Dalton and lightened up again.

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : "Credit where credit is due"

I got a mention today on THRILLING DAYS OF YESTERYEAR, one of the blogs I read every day. Some great stuff on Old Time Radio, and right now a chapter-a-day synopsis of MANDRAKE THE MAGICIAN, a Republic serial. This is a well-written and entertaining blog that you should put on your list if you care at all about The Good Old Stuff. Click on the link above and take a visit.

The Bourne Supremacy

Judy and I went to see THE BOURNE SUPREMACY on Friday, and we both liked it. I've been told that the sound track irritated some people, but I didn't even notice it. Now I need to see the movie again and find out what I missed.

When I saw THE BOURNE IDENTITY, I wasn't entirely convinced that Matt Damon had what it takes to be an action star, but after seeing SUPREMACY, I think he just might. He didn't crack a smile during the entire movie. That takes acting chops, right?

The movie reminded me of why I read so many spy novels back in the early 1960s. Ian Fleming, Donald Hamilton, Len Deighton, John Le Carre, and a myriad lesser lights. I guess I liked the resourcefulness of the protagonists, the hairbreadth escapes, the shady half-world that they moved in. Interestingly enough, I read only one book by Robert Ludlum, and it wasn't in the Bourne series. I didn't much care for his writing; for me, the movie is much more fun than his book was.

What irritated me about the movie was the quick-cut action scenes. I have no idea why directors these days seem to think that the audience doesn't want to be able to tell what's going on. I like my action the old-fashioned way, but in BOURNE, as in so many movies these days, it's chopped into so many little pieces that (for me at least) it's incoherent.

Ludlum wrote the Bourne books as a trilogy, so I'm sure that a movie of THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM is in the planning stages. And I've read that Eric Van Lustbader is continuing the series with a new book called THE BOURNE LEGACY. (Lustbader has bestsellers of his own, so the money he's getting for taking Ludlum's place must really be good.)

Doris Piserchia

Doris Piserchia started publishing around 1972. She published 13 novels from 1973 to 1983. That was it. For some reason (from what I've found on the 'Net, a severe family illness might be the answer), she stopped writing in 1973. When she started again a few years ago, nobody would buy her stuff. She seems to have been pretty successful during her productive years, and her short fiction appeared in some prestigious publications. She was to have a story in LAST DANGEROUS VISIONS, but apparently we'll never see that one.

I got interested in Piserchia because of a review of MR. JUSTICE, which I included in an earlier post. I'd read only one book hers previously, BLOOD COUNTY, a DAW book that came out under the name "Curt Selby." (Piserchia says that the pen name was adopted because Donald Wollheim published four books by her in the year that BLOOD COUNTY appeared.) It's a very unusual vampire book in which, if I'm remembering correctly, the word "vampire" is never used.

But I wanted to talk about MR. JUSTICE. This was Piserchia's first novel, and Wollheim published it as half of an Ace Double. After reading it, I have to wonder what readers must have thought in 1973. Maybe the New Wave was in full flower (or whatever waves do) then. At any rate, it's a very strange book. I'm not sure I can describe the plot, but I'll give it a try.

Mr. Justice is a vigilante who can travel in time. He witnesses murders and other crimes, but he can't do anything to affect them. He can, however, take photos. Then he accosts the criminals in "real" time and doles out justice. Naturally something has to be done about this guy, but what can you do to stop a time traveller? The government singles out one kid and sends him to a special school. He's going to be their Mr. Justice hunter. Meanwhile the government agency that's running him is still hunting on its own.

At the same time there's another time traveller, Arthur Bingle, who's decided to use his power to take over the world. (You'd think he'd take a cool name for himself, like The Mastermind, but he doesn't.)

So far, so good, except that you don't get all this in a straightforward narrative, and there's also a lot more going on. A whole lot more, including a love story and some pretty weird family stuff, much of it undeveloped or cut short. It's almost as if Piserchia wrote 200,000 words and cut it to 60,000.

Some of the book is written in a semi-pulp style (the opening section, for example), while others are, well, less readable. It makes for an odd combination. If you go into this looking for something like an old Republic serial, you're going to be very disappointed. (But it might have worked better if it had been more like one of those serials.)

Some people think of this book as an undiscovered classic. I'm not convinced. But it's certainly different.

Jayme Lynn Blaschke's Gibberish

Jayme Lynn Blaschke's Gibberish: "Winston cover gallery
Lookie here what I found. I swear, there's something on the web devoted to everything. In this case, it's a cover gallery featuring the retro-cool illustrations from all 35 of those classic Winston Science Fiction series juveniles."

I checked this site out, and it's great. Those Schomburg endpapers (be sure to click and enlarge them) are for me the essence of SF art. Wow. Here's the link:
http://home.comcast.net/~ea4tr/wsb/html/view.cgi-home.html-.html

Donald A. Wollheim

Once upon a time, long, long ago, I actually met Donald A. Wollheim. It was at the World Fantasy Convention in 1979, the first fan convention I ever attended, and to my way of thinking one of the best. It was probably the last convention a lot of the great writers I loved when I was a kid ever attended, but there were plenty of others as well. Manley Wade Wellman was there. Frank Belknap Long. Evangeline Walton. Fritz Leiber, who gave the banquet speech (and that's another story). Lin Carter. Harlan Ellsion. Stephen King (this was just before he became so popular that he couldn't attend conventions without being mobbed; he was just another writer). Joe Lansdale was there, though I didn't actually meet him.

And of course Wollheim. He was a big influence on my life because he edited the Ace Double line, but I didn't know that when I was reading the Ace Doubles. The science fiction doubles were my favorites, and Wollheim published some interesting stuff. A lot of it was space opera, which I loved, but sometimes you'd turn the book over and there on the other side would be a novel by Philip K. Dick. Or, later on, Samuel R. Delaney or Ursula K. LeGuin. Wollheim gave them all their starts in long fiction.

I did a by-mail interview with Wollheim for Billy Lee's great little zine, PAPERBACK QUARTERLY, but I never thought to ask him how he came to be the publisher of such great works as DR. BLOODMONEY or THE EINSTEIN INTERSECTION (I know, it's not part of a double), but he was friendly and happy to respond to a request for an interview for a magazine with a circulation of maybe 200 copies.

And if you're wondering why I was thinking of Wollheim, it's because I've now read MR. JUSTICE by Doris Piserchia. (See the post on her below.) When I get a chance, I'll tell you some more about my reactions to the book.

I got a swell new Dell computer for my birthday, and it took me a little while to get it all hooked up and to get on-line.

OK, to tell the truth, I still haven't hooked everything up. But I am on-line. At least I am if this post appears in my blog. I need to hook up the scanner, printer, ZIP drive, and so on. Then I'll be all set. I'm not too thrilled by the Dell mouse, but maybe I'll continue to use it. I preferred my Logitech cordless, so I may go back to that one.

This new computer plays DVDs. Maybe I'll watch a few when I should be working. Steve Stilwell sent me one called Python, starring Casper Van Dien and Robert Englund. You can tell right that that it's a classy product. Steve got it from Walter Satterthwait. These are guys with way too much time on their hands.

OUT OF THE PAST

OUT OF THE PAST: "Film noir is known for its wise-guy dialogue, but the screenplay for 'Out of the Past' reads like an anthology of one-liners. It was based on the 1946 novel Build My Gallows High by 'Geoffrey Homes,' a pseudonym for the blacklisted Daniel Mainwaring, and the screenplay credit goes to Mainwaring, reportedly with extra dialogue by James M. Cain.

But the critic Jeff Schwager read all versions of the screenplay for a 1990 Film Comment article, and writes me: 'Mainwaring's script was not very good, and in one draft featured awful voice-over narration by the deaf-mute. Cain's script was a total rewrite and even worse; it was totally discarded. The great dialogue was actually the work of Frank Fenton, a B-movie writer whose best known credit was John Ford's 'Wings of Eagles.''"

I always enjoy reading what Roger Ebert has to say about movies, even if I don't agree with him. In the case of OUT OF THE PAST, I do agree, and I found the information quoted above really interesting. The whole review, in fact, is great reading, and I recomend it.

Jayme Lynn Blaschke's Gibberish

Jayme Lynn Blaschke's Gibberish: "BATTLE ON MERCURY, or, Victory is mine! "

I can't blame Jayme for celebrating his purchase of BATTLE ON MERCURY. I loved those Winston SF novels when I was a kid. I had several of them, including FIND THE FEATHERED SERPENT by Evan Hunter. Somehow that one disappeared, and the ones on eBay have been too pricey to tempt me. I also had MISTS OF DAWN by Chad Olilver. It's gone, too. But I still have my copy of SONS OF THE OCEAN DEEPS by Bryce Walton. My books by Evan Hunter and Chad Oliver disappear, but I still have the one by Bryce Walton. Story of my life.

The Coolest Sci-Fi

The Coolest Sci-Fi: "MISTER JUSTICE-Doris Piserchia (Ace, 1974, oop). Crammed into half of an Ace double and never reprinted, Mister Justice remains in a class by itself: hardboiled America, Sci-fi-style. Here the 2030s appear as a mutated 1930's, complete with an economic catastrophe that threatens evolution itself. The Shadow, the Green Hornet, the Untouchables-they never had what Mr. Justice has going for him. Sprung from humanity's threatened altruistic genes, this masked vigilante has the ability to travel into the past, where he can witness, but not prevent, murders. He then returns to the present, where he arranges 'an eye for an eye' treatment for the slayers, including full-scale gangland rub-outs. But he can't easily dispose of one Arthur Bingle, global crime archon' who has the same powers as Mr. J. and then some. Bingle feels about the human race in general what Mr. Justice feels about criminals, and he plans to thin us out and 'empty the world.' With the help of his powers, his syndicates of henchman and corrupt cops, and his dreadful lady friend Godiva-she of the constrictor thighs-Bingle gets the drop on humanity. But justice is just a matter of time. Piserchia relates this furious folktale with Chandler soul, Hammett snap, and not a trace of camp."

I ran across this review while surfing the 'Net the other day, and naturally it made me curious about the book. There are many bad things about having a house cluttered with thousands of books, but there's at least one good thing: When you run across a review like this, you can go to the Ace Double shelf and pull down the book. I'll have to read it and find out whether it's as good as the reviewer seems to think, and I'll give you a report. It does have a nice Freas cover, as does the other side, a novel by John Philliphent.

NON SOLO BLUES

NON SOLO BLUES

Now this is just scary: Steven Segal is a musician? Who would've guessed? And his first single is #1 in France? Where is Jerry Lewis when you need him?

HoustonChronicle.com - Raskin: Vanishing: 'Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us'

HoustonChronicle.com - Raskin: Vanishing: 'Go Greyhound and leave the driving to us'

When I entered The University of Texas at Austin back in 1959, freshmen weren't allowed to have cars. I went to school in the middle of the first week of September, and I wasn't able to get a ride home until the week before Thanksgiving. Because I met a girl named Judy Stutts during the Christmas break, I decided I wanted to go home more often than every two or three months, so I occasionally hopped the bus.

Couldn't do that now. I suppose the Greyhound station is still where it used to be in downtown Austin, on Congress Avenue a few blocks from the Capitol Building, the bus hasn't stopped in Mexia in many years. Maybe it doesn't matter, but 45 years ago, it would have mattered to me. When my grandfather died later my freshman year and I had to get home in a hurry, I took the bus. I remember walking with my suitcase all the way from the dorm on the UT campus to the station.

I always bought a book to read before I left Austin. Once it was something by Jack Douglas, maybe the classic MY BROTHER WAS AN ONLY CHILD. Once it was the Fawcett edition of THE WIZARD OF OZ. A little girl saw me reading it and told her mother, who gave me a suspicous look, as if she thought I might be some kind of child molestor.

I haven't ridden a bus in years, probably not since 1960. But it was always nice to know it was there.

A few days ago Ed Gorman gave an all-out no-reservations rave review to James Siegel's Derailed.  Naturally I figured I should read it, so I went directly to my local bookseller (Wal-Mart) and bought a copy.

I can see why Ed liked the book.  It's a juiced-up version of a Gold Medal original: ordinary guy gets into deep doo-doo.  He does everything wrong, and things keep piling up until it seems they just can't get any worse.  And then they get worse.  It's the sort of thing Harry Whittington excelled at, except hyped to the tenth power.

So I sort of enjoyed it, but I had some problems.  One is that if you've ever read more than a couple of Gold Medal books, the "big surprise" is going to come as no surprise at all.  Maybe that's OK.  Maybe Siegel doesn't really expect us to be surprised.  But another problem is that Siegel uses a deus ex machina that would make Euripides blush.  It's just too much.  Or maybe I'm just being picky.  You'll have to read the book and decide for yourself.

Ed said he thinks the book might well become a classic.  I don't.  To me it's just another disposable best seller.  Well executed, but not that memorable.

Plots With Guns - Boiled Harder Than Your Mother's Corned Beef

Plots With Guns - Boiled Harder Than Your Mother's Corned Beef

The new PLOTS WITH GUNS is up, and it's a Brit noir issue. If you've never experienced Ken Bruen, now's your chance, for free. And be sure to read Sara Weinman's introductory essay.

I'm told by those in the know that next to BLACK MASK the best of the mystery and crime pulps was DIME DETECTIVE.  For years I've had on my shelves a collection of stories from that magazine.  It's HARD-BOILED DETECTIVES, edited by Stefan R. Dziemanianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg.

The collection doesn't have a theme, but it has a plan.  The editors reprint one story from each year of the magazine's existence, from 1931 to 1953.  There are plenty of big names present, including some (C. M. Kornbluth, William Tenn, and Murray Leinster) likely to be more familiar to SF fans than to mystery readers.

I should have looked into this collection long ago, but it got stuck away on a shelf and covered with other books, and I more or less forgot about it.  I came across it yesterday while I was looking for something else.  I read a couple of stories in it last night, "The Crime Machine" by Carroll John Daly and "Ding Dong Belle" by Hugh B. Cave. 

I was interested in reading something by Cave because I'd seen James Reasoner's review of the new Cave bio (check it out at http://jamesreasoner.blogspot.com/) and because I hadn't read any of Cave's crime fiction.  This story features Peter Kane, a alcoholic p.i. who used to be a cop but who left the force because he couldn't control his drinking.  He's in love with a woman who also loves him but who refused to marry a drunk.  So she married his best friend, Captain of Detectives Moe Finch.  Moe's a good guy, but a little slow.  When he's faced with a tough case, his wife always calls in her old flame to solve it.  This time the case involves a woman who's shot dead while playing ping pong in a bathing suit.

"The Crime Machine," which I'd read before, is the first in Daly's series about Vee Brown, who's just as tough and ruthless as Race Williams, but not as burly.  He writes popular songs in his spare time.  Not long ago, Walter Satterthwait and I had an idea for a pulp detective who hums show tunes while he kicks the crap out of the malefactors.  I guess we were thinking of someone like Vee Brown, so we're about 70 years too late.

Ed's Place: "Letters; Mystery*File; Tuesday Weld
July 23, 2004"

Ed Gorman's blog is back, and he's writing about Tuesday Weld. Check it out.

As for me, I'm still in my nostalgic mode and reading some old SF magazines. Last night I had a look at AMAZING STORIES for July 1957. I was probably about to turn 16 when I read this issue for the first time. I'm sure I thought the stories in it were classices of world lit. This time I'm a little more skeptical.

Robert Silverberg's "The Blue Plague" is a story of the Venusian invasion of Earth, and it's as preposterous as anything I've read in years, even though I'm sure I loved it when I was 16. Apparently Venus and Earth have about the same kind of atmospheres, but Venusians don't look anything like us earthlings. They can, however, assume our forms. And they can be killed with very virus they're planning to use to destroy us.

"Brief Hunger" is by G. L. Vandengurg, which I believe is a Silverberg pseudonym. It's a humorous fantasy that might have been intended for AMAZING's companion magazine, FANTASTIC. When an actor in a play removes his dental bridge, his thoughts are broadcast aloud to the audience. This happens because his tongue is touching the sensitive nerve where his tooth used to be. Hey, I believe it. Or I'm sure I did when I was 16. Those were the days, my friends.

"The wrath of the King of Orion flamed across the void.  Out from the Hyades sped his hunters, and from Mintaka and Saiph and Aldebaran, grim ships of war sped headlong between the stars in vengeful search for the small and secret ship that had dared violate their domain."

That's the opening paragraph of Edmond Hamilton's "The Star Hunter" from SPACE TRAVEL for September 1958.  Either you like that kind of thing or you don't, and there was a time when I liked it very much indeed.  I was a teenager in a small Texas town, and in reality I'd  never been much farther away from home than the 90 miles to Dallas.  But in the pages of the SF digests that I read by the metric ton, I travelled all over the known universe and to galaxies far, far away, thanks to writers like Edmond Hamilton and magazines like SPACE TRAVEL, the descendant of IMAGINATION and IMAGINATIVE TALES.   Editor William Hamling tried to save his SF line by putting factual articles into SPACE TRAVEL, but it didn't work.  The magazine lasted only a few issues, more's the pity.

Re-reading stories like "The Star Hunter" now, 46 years (!) later, I don't get quite the same charge that I did when I was 17.  The old sense of wonder that I was fairly bristling with in those days has dwindled.  But it's still there, somewhere,  and now and then there's nothing for it but to get out one of those old digests and read a story by Hamilton or Dwight V. Swain or Calvin M. Knox or "Alexander Blade," "S. M. Tenneshaw," "Ivar Jorgenson."  I always wanted to write stories like those, but I never did.  Never could.  But boy did I love to read 'em.

And now for something completely different.  The other day a friend gave me a copy of Christopher Buckley's LITTLE GREEN MEN.  He said it was hilarious, and he was right.  This is the funniest book I've read in a good while.  It's not exactly political satire, but it's not exactly NOT political satire, either.  When a powerful TV talk-show host is abducted by aliens on the golf course of an exclusive D. C. country club, his life is turned around.  He starts a crusade to get the government to investigate the existence of extraterrestrials, and of course everyone who supported him before drops  him like a hot horseshoe.  Ironically, he becomes more powerful than ever, although with an entirely different audience.  Sometimes it's hard to tell who's more bizarre, the abductees or the denizens of congress and the White House.  I highly recommend this book if you ever feel the need of a good laugh.

Army rations rehydrated by urine New Scientist: "Would you eat food cooked in your own urine? Food scientists working for the US military have developed a dried food ration that troops can hydrate by adding the filthiest of muddy swamp water or even peeing on it."

I'm sure enlistment will be up by the thousands as soon as word about this wonderful breakthrough gets around. As David Letterman would say, "That's good eatin'!"

Blogger has been "interesting" again today.  I've tried posting once, and the post disappeared.  Then I couldn't get back on blogger.  So we'll see what happens this time.

One of my eBay purchases is a copy of DOUBLE-ACTION DETECTIVE, issue #6, from July 1957.  It's a  Columbia Publication, edited by Robert A. W. Lowndes, so it looks a lot like the SF digests I have from the same publisher.  And Lowndes has some of his usual writers here: Robert Silverberg, Margaret St. Clair, and Sam Merwin, Jr.

St. Clair's story is another one of those "this is the solution to the Jack the Ripper case" tales.  It's OK, but it doesn't offer a real historical personage as the Ripper.  He's "The Courier" of the title.  The hook is that he's working for Eleanor Marx, daughter of Karl, and a member of the party.  Except that he's working both sides.  An OK story, nothing more.

And then there's Silverberg.  His story is a competent police procedural in the DRAGNET vein.  I know he was writing  whole issues of some of the SF digests around the time of this issue's publication (sometimes in collaboration with Randall Garrett), but he was apparently also writing mysteries, sports stories, book reviews, and the occasional nonfiction article.  He must have been writing 18 hours a day.  I'm in awe of him.

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "Singing Japanese plants
Tue 20 July, 2004 11:44

TOKYO (Reuters) - People who like talking to their plants can now enjoy a musical accompaniment, thanks to a Japanese invention that turns petals and leaves into amplifiers.

Called the 'Flower Speaker Amplifiers', the gadget made by Let's Corp is hidden in a vase or a potted plant and sends music at just the right frequency to vibrate up the stems and then be converted into audible sound by the plant as a whole.

A device such as a CD player or radio can be connected to it."

I'm not sure what I think of this, but at the moment I'm thinking "scary." Do I really want a pot of begonias playind and singing "Stairway to Heaven"? Or even "Mystery Train"? Would plants grow better if they played the Beatles or Barry Manilow?

Rough Edges: PROGRESS

"Today was another pretty good work day, 23 pages, giving me a little over a hundred for the week. This is a pace I need to maintain."

My admiration for James Reasoner knows no bounds. I don't see how he maintains a blog, reads all kinds of books, visits Sam's Club, watches DVDs, and still manages to write 23 pages a day. What's even more amazing, as you know if you've ever read James's work, is that they're quality pages. Which reminds me that James's first novel, the legendary TEXAS WIND is back in print. If you haven't read this p.i. classic, you should order it right now from PointBlank:  http://www.oivas.com/pointblank/tw.html.  You can thank me later.
 

I mentioned down below that I did an article on Clifton Adams for Steve Lewis's Mystery*File.  After the article was published, Bill Pronzini told Steve that Adams had done a novel for Berkley Books under the name "Nick Hudson."  The title is THE VERY WICKED (1960), and since Bill said it was worth looking for, I naturally had to have a copy.  Back in the Olden Days, I'd have looked in vain in little out-of-the-way used-book stores for years before finding one.  In the Age of the Internet, all I had to do was go 0n-line, where I had several copies to choose from.
 
The book is very different from Adams's other crime novels.  It's a noirish Jack-the-Ripper riff, in which a vice cop named Bill Creel goes over the edge and starts killing prostitutes.  There's no gore, and no sensationalism, even though most of the book is told from the cop's point of view.  We find out a lot about the cop and his attitudes toward women, and a lot about his unhealthy state of mind.  We know, or suspect, that he's going to end badly, so the interest is in how long he can keep fooling people, and how many women he'll kill, before he slips up.
 
I didn't like this book quite as much as Adams's work for Gold Medal, but as an early entry in the serial killer category, it's worth a read.  And it has a great redhead on the cover.

My eBay habit recently brought me a gaggle of mystery-story digests, including THE EXECUTIONER MYSTERY MAGAZINE from August 1975.  The bookend stories in this issue are by Stephen Mertz and Margaret Maron, and I figure they must be among the first stories these two writers published.  I'm just guessing, though.
 
Steve's story is "The Busy Corpse," and if the title is a bow to Westlake's "The Busy Body," the story is more WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S.  And I'll bet the makers of that movie didn't pay Steve a penny in royalties, the swine.  The story is a clever "tables turned" or "biter bit" riff, with the Mafia, a private-eye, and a cop, all done in under 7 pages.
 
Maron's story is "When Daddy's Gone," a noirish story from the naive point of view, if you can imagine such a thing.  Or maybe the pov isn't so naive, after all.  Nice southern setting, the kind Maron has done so well in her novels. 
 
Turning up magazines like this, the kind you should have bought and kept the first time around, is what makes eBay so much fun.
 
UPDATE: I see by Steve's comment below that this was indeed his first national sale.  He must've been just a kid at the time.  I've also learned from a "reliable source" that this was the final issue for the magazine.  No fault of Steve's, of course!

IOL: Dunst vetos 'gigantic' boobs: "Dunst vetos 'gigantic' boobs"

Talk about integrity! What more can I say?

: RevolutionSF - Spider-Man 2 : Review: "Even with the movie's flaws (such as Kirsten Dunst's clunky acting and some of the inane dialog), Spider-Man ranks as one of the top two or three comic book films of all time. "

Rick Klaw's review of SPIDERMAN 2 is mostly on target. As to his remark about Kirsten Dunst, I have this response: "And your point is?"

Judy and I saw the movie yesterday, and I thought it was terrific. My only complaint is that it wasn't rated "R." So the theater was full of little kids who had no clue as to what was going on and spent the entire time running up and down the aisle, except for the one who was rolling down the aisle. He ran up it, though. Little wuss wasn't tough enough to roll up it, I guess. It's a good thing I'm not issued a sidearm.

And I know I'm not supposed to think about stuff like this, but when Doc Ock is building his tritium fusion generator in his secret undisclosed location, wouldn't someboy notice he was stealing a million mega-gigawatts of power? I know he robbed a bank to get money to fund his fiendish endeavors. And of course Peter Parker and Aunt May just happened to be in there when he did. Out of all the banks in New York City, he had to walk into that one. But I digress. My question is, where did he buy the equipment to build it with? I mean, even the clerks at Radio Shack might be a little suspicious of him. Sure, he had on those sunglasses. Maybe that threw them off. And he probably wore a raincoat, but in that disguise he'd make the Hunchback of Notre Dame look like a male model.

Yesterday I read MY FLESH IS SWEET (Lion, 1951) by Day Keene.   Maybe not one of Keene's best, but certainly not without interest.  For one thing, the main character is a pulp writer named Ad Connors.   Connors has been in Mexico writing his "breakthrough" book, and he's just found out that the SATURDAY EVENING POST has rejected it.  He's on his way to hock his typewriter for money to get home when he witnesses an auto accident.  One of the drivers is a beautiful American woman who can't speak Spanish.  Connors, however, is fluent, and so he steps in.  And once he does, we're off to the races: a lecherous Mexican general, a mysterious veiled women, a murdered Mexican lawyer, another murder buried 20 years in the past, and more.
 
Connors manages to get in a number of comments about the life of a pulp writer along the way, and in fact he has to write two 15,000 word stories in order to get enough money to get out of Mexico.  But when he escapes the country, he finds  his troubles are just beginning.   His agent sells the novel that the POST rejected to a hardcover publisher for big bucks, but Connors is now wanted for murder in Mexico.  To clear himself, he has to find the beautiful woman again.  Which is plenty complicated, since she's about to marry a millionaire and doesn't want to see Connors.  And then there's another murder.
 
Keene, like another of my favorites, Harry Whittington, wrote a lot of books.   Like Whittington, he wrote fast, and he worked cheap, for just about any publisher that would have him.  And like Whittington, his books rarely disappoint me.  They might not be great literature, but they're entertaining, fast moving, and fun.

Now that a request has poured in, I'm posting the subscription information for Steve Lewis's great print fanzine, MYSTERY*FILE.  It's published approximately every six weeks, and single issues can be had for $3.50.  A four-issue subscription is $13.00.  and well worth it, too, if you ask me.  Send your dough to Steve at 62 Chestnut Rd., Newington, CT  06111.
 
The current issue has a letter column, lots of reviews of mystery novels both old and new by people like Vince Keenan, Dan Stumpf, Walter Albert, Bob Briney, Gary Warren Neibuhr, Richard Moore, and many more.  Articles by Bill Pronzini (on Gardner), Marv Lachman, Bob Adey, Ed Lynskey, and others.   Try it.  You'll like it.

For a while now, I've been writing columns on Gold Medal Books for Steve Lewis's MYSTERY*FILE. I've done articles on Day Keene, Clifton Adams, Malcolm Douglas, and John McPartland. The one I've just turned in is on John Farris, who wrote for Gold Medal as "Steve Brackeen."

I've been interested in Farris almost as long as I've been interested in being a writer, having read HARRISON HIGH way back in 1950. I was really impressed that a guy not much older than I was had written a bestselling novel, and one that I really liked. (I read it again a couple of years ago, the same old Dell paperback first printing, and I still liked it.) If I'd known that Farris was writing cime novels under a pen name at the same time, I'd have been even more impressed, if that's possible.

I wasn't doing any writing in those days except for a little adolescent poetry. I never really dreamed I could actually write a book, which seems kind of silly now that I've published so many of them (though there are no doubt those who would argue that that still hasn't proved I can write one). It took me almost twenty more years to get really serious about writing, though there were a few attempts in the interim (see earlier posts for a few words on a couple of them). And then I did it only because Jack Davis talked me into collaborating on a Nick Carter book with him. Jack's been dead a good while now, but I still owe him. I'm pretty sure I'd never have published a book without his goading me into it.

Last night Judy and I went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science to hear a lecture by Dr. John W. Verano from Tulane. His topic was Machu Picchu, and we'd been led to expect that he'd be talking about the site, who built it, and what its purpose was. Which he did. But his perspective was different from what we'd expected. Dr. Verano, it turns out, is a forensic anthropologist, or, as he put it, "a bone man." He was called in by Yale University to examine the skeletons found by Hiram Bingham on his 1911 expedition. The skeletons were examined at that time, but no one had looked at them since. Dr. Verano's conclusions about them differed a little from the original ideas.

For one thing, the original examiner (I've forgotten his name, I'm sorry to say) concluded that the skeletons were mostly female (more than 75%). Dr. Verano says that it's more like 50/50. Why is that important? Because one of Bingham's main ideas about Machu Picchu is that the site was a holy place for the "virgins of the sun." The large number of female skeletons would support that idea. Verano doesn't agree. Also Verano pointed out that there are a number of skeletons of small children. These were explained away by earlier theorists as "accidents." Verano doesn't agree there, either. The skeletons also indicate a wide variety of ethnicity in Machu Picchu.

So what's Verano's conclusion? That Machu Picchu was another in a series of royal palaces or resorts built by the emperor Pachacuti. The skeletons are the remains of the servants and workers who kept up the resort. Sounds pretty reasonable when Verano goes over it. Sure, there were altars and other sacred places at Machu Picchu. The emperor was believed to be the "son of the sun." So naturally he would have kept up appearances. But worship wasn't the main purpose of the site.

Verano also pointed out a number of other interesting things he'd learned. For one, there was tuberculosis in Machu Picchu. But no syphillis. Tooth decay was rampant and somtimes even fatal.

All in all, a very interesting evening.

Yesterday's mail brought me a copy of a new Stark House double volume. This one reprints two of Vin Packer's Gold Medal novels, SOMETHING IN THE SHADOWS and INTIMATE VICTIMS. It's a nice package, and one I highly recommend. Packer (whose real name is Marijane Meaker) was one of the few women writing paperback originals in the 1950s, and she was right up there with the best. Anthony Boucher consistently praised her books in his NYTBR column, and with good reason.

Besides the two novels, this new volume has a short introduction by Packer that touches on her relationship with Patricia Highsmith and tells a little about the envy Highsmith had of Packer's income and reviews. Packer, the lowly paperback writer, was making a lot more money for her novels than Highsmith was with her prestigious hardcovers. And Packer was getting reviews in the New York papers just as Highsmith was. Highsmith didn't think it was fair for a paperback writer to get the same kind of attention that a hardcover author received.

There's also a reprint of Jon Breen's essay titled "The Novels of Vin Packer," also highly recommended reading.

Lately I've been browsing the capsule movie summaries in Arthur Lyons' book called DEATH ON THE CHEAP: THE LOST B-MOVIES OF FILM NOIR, and I find them highly entertaining.

But here's something that's really bothering me. It has nothing to do with the movies or the book itself. It's a sentence in the blurb from Robert Crais in the front of the book. Here it is: "Written with the sure hand of a gifted novelist, Arthur Lyons has opened an entertaining treasure chest that will have you racing to your local video rental joint." As a former English teacher, all I can say is, "Arrrgggghhhh!" And to think that Crais out-sells me about a million to one.

Since I'm far from a film noir geek, or even a film geek of any kind, I don't have too many nits to pick with Lyons himself. However (you knew there was going to be a "however," right?) there's this on page 122 in Lyons' comment on THE MYSTERIOUS MR. VALENTINE (1946): "This film was a new kind of role for Linda Stirling, who up to this time had spend most of her time at Republic dressed in a leopard cat suit and beating up bad guys in THE TIGER WOMAN serials (sic). Tristram Coffin, in contrast, was right at home, having been a staple minor villain in many a Republic feature. In 1951, he finally got a taste of what it was to play a good guy when he starred as Commando Cody in LOST PLANET AIRMEN, Republic's feature release of its serial KING OF THE ROCKETMEN."

As I said, I'm no expert, but this wrong on so many levels.

As far as I know, for example, there was only one TIGER WOMAN serial (Lyons is right about the leopard costume, though. Why they didn't call her the Leopard Woman is a still-unanswered question.) She certainly hadn't spent all her time at Republic in that one serial, either. How can one forget her sparkling performance in another serial, ZORRO'S BLACK WHIP? (Alas, I'm pretty sure it wasn't Linda wielding the whip in several scenes, which sort of takes away the fun of it if you know what I mean, and I think you do.) Or THE PURPLE MONSTER STRIKES, for that matter?

And if Tristam Coffin played Commando Cody in the feature release of KING OF THE ROCKETMEN, wouldn't he have played good-guy Cody in the serial itself? (You'd think so.) But wait. Since the title of the serial is KING OF THE ROCKETMEN, wouldn't Coffin have played a guy named "King"? (Darned right. Jeff King.) And wasn't Commando Cody in a completely different serial? (Darned right: RADAR MEN FROM THE MOON. He was played by George Wallace [not the Governor of Alabama]. And by some other guy in COMMANDO CODY: SKY MARSHAL OF THE UNIVERSE.)

Sort of makes a fella wonder about the rest of Lyons' commentary.