eBay item 2492392403 (Ends Oct-11-04 10:46:05 PDT) - DOUGLAS CLEGG Lmtd Edtn HC Publishing Rights for Novel

eBay item 2492392403 (Ends Oct-11-04 10:46:05 PDT) - DOUGLAS CLEGG Lmtd Edtn HC Publishing Rights for Novel: " DOUGLAS CLEGG Lmtd Edtn HC Publishing Rights for Novel
Limited Edition Hardcover Rights Novel 'The Abandoned'"

I found out about this from Rick Klaw. Maybe I should give it a try. But then Clegg claims that he sold 250,000 copies of an e-book. Zowie. I never had sales like that!

Bouchercon

Judy and I will be taking off for the Bouchercon in Toronto on Wednesday. Toronto isn't all that far, but it will take a full day's traveling for us to get there. Naturally all my usual travel anxieties are setting in. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if I thought the new airport security measures actually made me safer, but I don't. They seem to me to be the equivalent of busy-work, and some of them seem ridiculous. From what I can see, they've made air travel highly unpleasant, if not impossible, prolonged the agony of the trip, and done nothing at all that's practical. But what do I know? I'm sure that after we arrive in Toronto and clear customs, we'll have a great time, and I might even enjoy a day or two of the convention before I start to worry about the trip home. My panel is at 2:00 on Saturday, and it's on "being prolific" or something like that. I'm not worried about that part of things. I can always find something to say if called on. And I have no trouble keeping quiet if not called on.

It's been 24 years since we first attended a Bouchercon. That one was in Washington, D.C. It was very small. I doubt that more than 250 people attended. Maybe not that many. One-track programming, and only a few programs at that. But we had a wonderful time, which is why we've been to so many Bouchercons since then. We've missed only three, I believe. The best one was in Austin, because I could just get in the car and drive to it. What a pleasure that was!

Janet Leigh, bathing beauty.

Yahoo! News - 'Psycho' Star Janet Leigh Dies at 77

Yahoo! News - 'Psycho' Star Janet Leigh Dies at 77: "'Psycho' Star Janet Leigh Dies at 77"

I really hate that headline. Makes it seem that Janet Leigh was a psycho, which I certainly hope wasn't true. I suspect that there's hardly a guy of my generation (Old Guys, again) who wasn't struck by her beauty now and then in movies like Houdini, Prince Valiant, The Black Shield of Falworth, The Manchurian Candidate, Bye Bye Birdie and plenty of others. She never did much cheesecake, and a lifelong dream of mine was fulfilled (sort of) when her daughter, Jamie Lee Curtis, whipped that sweater over her head in Tradiing Places. I always thought of Janet Leigh as a class act. RIP.

The Old Hometown

I spent some time in my hometown of Mexia, Texas, this weekend, and, as usual, I left feeing about a million years old.

This time I did a couple of things. I stopped in at the site of the former Eubanks Hardware Store (which is now a sort of antiques mini-mall) to buy something to read (more about that later, maybe). Standing on the sidewalk out front, I noticed how oddly quiet it was. When I was a kid, the whole downtown was alive on Saturday afternoons. Now, there wasn't a sound. Nothing. There were no cars parked along the street, and the buildings on the other side have long since been knocked down. It was an eerie feeling, standing there in all that quiet.

After I left there, I drove down the block and stopped in front of the lot where the Farrar Lumber Company once stood. My grandfather worked a the lumber yard for many years, and I used to walk there from our house to visit him or just play around in the lumber. I could still draw you a pretty good floor plan of the main office, with its high counter on one side, the stairs at the back leading up to the second floor, the bench and the big pot-bellied stove opposite the counter. There's nothing there now.

Across the street is the building that once housed the town's Buick dealership, where my father bought our baby-blue Buick Special four-door hardtop in 1956. I can't even begin to describe what a thrill it was to drive around in a car like that. (It drove like a tank, by the way, since it didn't have power steering; but who cared?) The building became a pawn shop at one time after the Buick dealership closed, but even that sign is pretty much faded away now. There are bushes and trees growing all around the building, right up against the brick wall. A big portion of the roof has fallen in, and you can see the sky through the second story windows.

The back of the second floor used to be some sort of residential hotel. The roof is still over those rooms, but the windows are completely missing. You can look through them at see how small the rooms were. You can see the transoms over the doors. There appears to have been one light in each room, a bulb screwed into a socket that hangs down from the ceiling on a braided electrical cord. The odd thing is that in all three rooms I could see into, the light bulbs are still there, right where they've been for who knows how long. I never knew who lived in those rooms or what their lives must have been like. I probably couldn't even guess.

Weep for Me

You learn something every day, and on a recent digest from the fictionmags group, I found out that John D. MacDonald's son gave his permission to British publisher Robert Hale to reprint Weep for Me. From what I understand, there was a small first printing and then a second printing. I checked out abebooks.com and saw several copies listed for prices that are fairly reasonable. I should probably buy one, but I won't, since I have copies of both paperback printings. Since JDM wasn't happy with the book and didn't want it to be reprinted, I'm surprised his son gave permission. I'm even more surprised that this news slipped past me.

Ed's PlaceTh

Ed's Place: "THE REAL DEAL--THE REAL ENNIS WILLIE
September 30, 2004"

The big news over at Ed's Place today is that thanks to Ed's blog, Ennis Willie has come out of lurkdom. I'm hoping that there'll be plenty of follow-up to this story.

This is the book I mention below. Well worth your time, and it even has a CD with some "air checks" by famous DJs. 

Top 40, News, Weather, and Sports

If that title doesn't ring a bell with you, you must not be an Old Guy. Top 40 Radio was a big part of my teenage years, and in fact its boom coincided with my adolescence. I turned 13 the month that "Sh-Boom" hit #1 on the charts, a fact that I 've always considered significant, even if it was only the Crew Cuts version.

I was lucky enough to live in Central Texas, where my radio picked up KLIF during the day. When atmospheric conditions were right, I could get KTSA and KILT, too. For those of you who don't know, those were the three McClendon stations, the property of Gordon McClendon, The Old Scotchman, one of the true pioneers and great innovators of Top 40 radio.

When I got a little older and entered the American Graffiti stage of my life, the car radio was always on. At night in Central Texas, you could pick up John R. (The Old Hoss Man) and Gene Nobles, both on WLAC in Nashville. They advertised Silky Strate and Randy's Record Shop (which I believe was in Gallatin). In New Oleans, there was Jack the Cat on WNOE. We could even get Dick Biondi in WLS in Chicago. When I went to college in Austin, I listened to Ricky Ware on KTSA during the daytime. Those were great days for DJs and for Top 40 radio.

And for me. I must have ridden a million miles with Bob Tyus in his 1940 Chevrolet, Fred Williams in his black '50 Ford, Richard Perkins in his '54 Cevy, Mike Leary in his '53 Ford, Geoff Gore in his '51 Studebaker. Always with the radio on, always with the great music coming through those crummy little speakers.

The Top 40 format might have been rigid, but the song selection was plenty eclectic. Every station played pop, country, rock, doo wop, rhythm and blues. You might hear Johnny Cash one minute and Percy Faith's orchestra the next, followed by Clyde McPhatter.

I know it's just an Old Guy's fantasy that the music was better in those days than it is now, but it's still the music I prefer to listen to. I should try to improve my tastes, but I know I never will.

All this was brought on, by the way, by my reading of The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The Rise of Top 40 Radio by Ben Fong-Torres. Highly recommended if you like that sort of thing, which I do.

Charles Williams (Again)

Because I'm doing that Gold Medal Corner article about Charles Williams for Steve Lewis' next Mystery*File, I've been re-reading some more of the books. The more I read, the more convinced I am that Williams was one of Gold Medal's best.

Nothing in her Way is about con games, and there are a couple of elaborate ones in the book, along with some minor ones. The way Williams handles these, and the way his plot keeps coming up with one suprise after another, shows you his technical mastery. And even though you might know how the story is going to end, you don't. Not really. Because another thing I've noticed about Williams is that he writes terrific endings. I'm not talking about the climactic events. I'm talking about the final sentences.

A Touch of Death is a noir thriller, one of those where a guy gets mixed up with a dame in a scheme to make some money. It seems simple at first, the way it always does, but then things start to get complicated. The narrator, Lee Scarborough, thinks he's ahead of the game all the way until the end, when he finds out that he didn't even know the rules. A devastating ending, almost as good as the one for River Girl.

If you're not acquainted with Charles Williams' books, you're really missing some great reading.

: RevolutionSF - Boppin' at the High School Hop : Fiction

: RevolutionSF - Boppin' at the High School Hop : Fiction

In honor of the opening of Shaun of the Dead, I'm posting this link to my very own zombie story, which appeared in the excellent webzine revolutionsf (and I'd give 'em a plug even if they hadn't published my story).

Robert B. Parker's DOUBLE PLAY

I've admitted it before, and I'll admit it again: I'm Robert B. Parker's target audience. Whatever it is that he does, I like it. So naturally I read his nonseries novel Double Play. I have a feeling that this book fits into my previous comments about the generation gap in the mystery-reading public. It seems to me that this is definitely an Old Guy's book.

Why?

Number one, it's about baseball. How many young baseball fans do you know? Don't young people all like some cooler, faster-moving sport?

Number two, it was written by Robert B. Parker, who's even older than I am. (Maybe that's why I like his work.)

Number three, it's set in the 1940's. I don't remember much about the time Jackie Robinson came up to the major leagues, but soon after that I became an avid baseball fan and baseball card collector (check out some of my cards here if you'd like to see them). Parker really nails the time period, especially in the autobiographical chapters interspersed throughout the narrative. In fact, the short chapter on Life magazine is worth the price of admission all by itself. The autobiographical chapters are, for me, the most interesting part of the book, since they make the setting personal for Parker and in a way for me.

Number four, it has plenty of that male bonding stuff that's in all the other Parker books you ever read. And all that stuff about a code, too. This time, the main character is a guy named Burke. I didn't catch the first name; maybe it's Edmund. I mean, that would fit, right? Edmund Burke, Edmund Spenser. That Parker is a real cutie, slipping in those English major jokes the way he does.

So what? you're saying. What about the plot? Well, that's about Burke, who gets a job as Jackie Robinson's bodyguard for Robinson's first year in the major leagues. Burke is what we Old Guys used to call a burned-out case, thanks to WWII (The Big One) and his ex-wife. He's going to find a kind of redemption, though, thanks to Robinson and a woman named Lauren. You know that from the start, probably, so I'm not spoiling anything. How it happens is what you'll have to read the book to find out.

Hard Case Crime

The Houston Chronicle has a nice spread on Hard Case Crime today. Front page of the Zest magazine, and two pages inside. As a sidebar on another page, there's a little article on me. Here it is.

The man with a taste for the hard-boiled

By LOUIS B. PARKS
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

ALVIN -- Mystery writer and vintage paperback collector Bill Crider has a recurring dream.

"I'm driving in some small town, and there's this little out-of-the-way bookstore. I go in, and there it is, full of these old books."

Carlos Javier Sanchez : Chronicle Alvin resident Bill Crider has written more than fifty books about different detectives.

But anyone who reads noir crime thrillers knows that dreams usually become nightmares in the final chapter.

"The bad part is," Crider says, "I can't read the titles."

Crider's suburban home is like the dream bookstore -- floor-to-ceiling with thousands of vintage paperback books.

"My wife Judy is a saint, believe me," he says.

Crider, 63, has a definite taste for the era of bad blondes, big guns and tough guys.

"I got interested in the writers who wrote (crime) paperback originals, like Jim Thompson, Harry Whittington, Gil Brewer, Charles Williams, Donald Hamilton -- particularly the (Fawcett) Gold Medal books, the Ace Double books. I have all of those."

Since the mid-1980s, the retired English professor has published more than 50 novels (see www.billcrider.com). Many are mysteries -- though not the hard-boiled style he collects -- under his own name, including a dozen about modern Texas sheriff Dan Rhodes. This summer brought Dead Soldiers featuring Carl Burns, an English professor at a small Texas college.

Crider also writes under pen and house names and does Willard Scott's weatherman mysteries, as the TV star freely admits. Crider's wife is his copy reader and occasional collaborator.

But book collecting is his passion. His essay on his first love, paperback originals, is at www.allanguthrie.co.uk/bcpbo.htm.

"There are a lot of reasons I like them," Crider says. "They're short. Most writers in this vein are really good storytellers. They get in, tell the story; it moves fast. They do a good job with the characters in a short space."

Crider used to haunt used bookstores looking for rare paperbacks. Now he buys most over the Internet, especially at eBay.com and abebooks.com.

"It's gotten so easy," he says. "And the books have gotten much more expensive. The Jim Thompson books I got for a dime are worth a couple of hundred bucks now."

Not that he'd ever sell them.

The STAR WARS Trilogy

OK, so I bought the set of "original" trilogy on DVD this week. I may never watch the movies, but I figured no house should be without the set.

I hear that there's a lot of whining about George Lucas having made some minor changes in the movies. I may not approve, but so what? They're his movies. Stuff like that happens all the time.

You English majors probably thought immediately of Henry James, whose thrilling novels you first came to know and love in their serial form. Or maybe their first book form. And then old Henry rewrote nearly every single one of them for the "New York" edition. He didn't make just minor changes. He went through and completely rewrote them. So now we have different thrilling versions to enjoy, and what's wrong with that? Works the same way with the Star Wars movies, right? We still have our old VHS tapes of the originals, and we can copy them to DVD if we want to.

I'll be the first to admit that I didn't approve when John D. MacDonald updated his pulp stories for inclusion on The Good Old Stuff and More Good Old Stuff, but they were his stories. If he wanted to rewrite them, he had a perfect right to do it.

I don't approve of colorizing movies, either. Seems to me that's most often done by someone other than the original director, so it's clearly different, and clearly evil.

Cellular

Vince Keenan and I don't agree on Sky Captain, but we do on Cellular. (Vince's review is here. You may have to scroll down to find it.) Judy and I went this afternoon, and we both enjoyed it. I must admit that you have to be willing to say to yourself, "It's only a movie" and not ask for logic and/or common sense, but after you do that, you should have a great time. Chris Evans is appealing in the lead, Kim Basinger is, well, Kim Basinger, and William H. Macy plays the cop who's about to retire a little bit differently from everyone else who's done it before him. Jason Statham makes an effective villain.

Maverick

I watched Maverick on GoodLife TV last night and noticed that this show was written by R. Wright Campbell. Later on in his career, Campbell turned to writing mystery novels, some under that name, but most as Robert Campbell. I particularly liked his series about a Chicago ward heeler named Jimmy Flannery. When I won the Anthony for "best first novel" at the Bouchercon in 1987, Campbell won for "best paperback." Somehow the awards got mixed up, and I got the one intended for him. I met him after the banquet, and when we exchanged awards, I told him how much I enjoyed his books. He seemed like a nice guy.

Cheyenne comes on after Maverick, and last night's show featured James Garner in a small role. He appeared in a number of episodes of Cheyenne before he got his own series, usually as a cavalry officer.

Las Vegas Mercury: Goldberg: Dear Young Hollywood

Las Vegas Mercury: Goldberg: Dear Young Hollywood: "I just read that Paris Hilton has signed on to play Daisy Buchanan in a remake of The Great Gatsby and that Mr. Gatsby himself will be played by Chris Carmack--purportedly a 'star' on the TV show 'The O.C.'--and that former N'Sync heartthrob/astronaut Lance Bass is set to produce the movie"

Tod Goldberg is kidding us, right? Right? Please let him be kidding us. It's a funny column, unless he's teeling the truth. In that case, it's more like . . . scary.

Rory Calhoun

Ever see any movies with Rory Calhoun? If you're my age (which so few of you are), you probably did. But did you know he was also a novelist? I've had The Man from Padera (Major Books 1978) on my shelves for probably 25 years, but I'm just now getting around to reading it.
The main character's name is Domino, which seemed a little suspicious to me since Calhoun starred in a movie titled The Domino Kid back in 1957. I looked the movie up on the IMDb and discovered that the plot is identical to the plot of The Man from Padera, not that there's anything wrong with that, since Calhoun is credited with the screenplay of the movie.

It's the old story of the guy who's out to find the man who killed his paw. Or in this case (to up the ante a little) the seven men who killed his whole family. The book consists mainly of a series of gunfights, leading up, of course, the the big shootout at the end, after Domino finally discovers who the mysterious seventh man was. (No prize for you if you figure it out long before Domino does.)

In spite of the publisher's name, Major Books wasn't exactly a major force in the paperback market, so you might be wondering why a movie star like Calhoun didn't find a better publisher. Calhoun, after all, did star with Marilyn Monroe in How to Marry a Millionaire, not to mention his appearance in the unforgettable Motel Hell. He was also in one of my personal faves, Hell Comes to Frogtown, though Hell was played not by Calhoun by by Rowdy Roddy Piper. Calhoun played a character named "Looney Tunes. But I digress.

One possible reason Calhoun didn't find a bigger publisher is that the book really isn't all that good (this, in spite of the fact that my book has "Real Good" printed on the cover by someone whose initials are J. W. G.). There are a few problems with the writing that a good editor could have taken care of, and in fact just a good copyeditor would have made a difference. But there are other problems, too, like characterization. It's a little on the thin side, not to say the cliched side, though that would also be fair. Some of the descriptions are quite good, though. It's almost as if Calhoun was watching the movie as he wrote them. Maybe he was.

There's some graphic violence in the book, and at least one sex scene that would have been impossible to film for the regular markets in 1957.

As far as I know, this is the only book Calhoun ever published, which is OK by me. It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good enough to send me looking for another one.

The Immoral Mr. Teas dreams while visiting the dentist. 

'Skin flick' pioneer Russ Meyer dies at 82

'Skin flick' pioneer Russ Meyer dies at 82: "'Skin flick' pioneer Russ Meyer dies at 82
Associated Press
September 22, 2004 MEYER0923

LOS ANGELES -- Russ Meyer, producer-director who helped spawn the ``skin flick'' with such films as ``Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!'' and later gained a measure of critical respect, has died. He was 82.

Meyer died Saturday at his home in the Hollywood Hills, according to his company, RM Films International Inc. Spokeswoman Janice Cowart said Meyer had suffered from dementia and died of complications of pneumonia.

Meyer's films were considered pornographic in their time but are less shocking by today's standards, with their focus on violence and large-busted women but little graphic sex.

Altogether he produced, directed, financed, wrote, edited and shot at least 23 films, including his debut, ``The Immoral Mr. Teas,'' in 1959 and the 1968 film ``Vixen,'' whose success earned him notice from major studios."

What can I say? I'll certainly never forget seeing The Immoral Mr. Teas. When I was a freshman in college, a friend (Bob Tyus) and I were determined that we would not only see it but that we would take our friend Mike Leary as well. Mike resisted. He refused to give in to our evil influence. So we carried him. In those days, freshmen at The University of Texas at Austin weren't allowed to have cars. It was well over a mile to the movie theater, down Congress Avenue, at that time the busiest street in town. And there we were, carrying this skinny kid. Well, we carried him only about half way before he gave up and agreed to walk. He later told me that he wished we'd forced him to do more things like that. RIP, Russ Meyer.

Peter and the Starcatchers II

Here's my favorite sentence from the book. It's the first sentence in Chapter 49:

"Quiet," Slank hissed.

Peter and the Starcatchers

So you're probably asking yourselves, why did a grown man read Peter and the Starcatchers? I could say that I read it so you wouldn't have to, but that would be Wrong. That would be A Lie. I read it because it was written by Ridley Pearson and Dave Barry and because I had high hopes for it. Unfortunately, those hopes were pretty much dashed.

I thought the book was sort of OK at the beginning, but the more I read, the less impressed I was. For one thing, since Barry had a hand in it, I thought it would be hilarious. I was wrong. There are a few laughs and some mild amusements. That's it. And, let's face it, the writing is, well, . . . pedestrian. It doesn't have any sparkle.

Then there's the plot. Ridley Pearson came up with the idea to write a "prequel" to Peter Pan, which wasn't necessarily a bad thing. But then he decided to explain everything that James Barrie left unexplained: why Peter can fly, why there are mermaids in Neverland, where Tinkerbelle came from, and so on. The bottom line here is that some things are best left unexplained, at least as far as I'm concerned. Like magician's tricks. They astound me when I see them performed, and I don't want to know how they're done. When you know that, the fun is gone. Especially when the explanation is as long-winded as it is here.

Reading this book made me realize again that not just anyone, even if he's Ridley Pearson or Dave Barry or a combination of the two, can sit down and write a magical children's book. It made me appreciate even more what J. K. Rowling has done with Harry Potter.

Peter and the Starcatchers will probably sell a gazillion copies. Pearson and Barry have at least that many fans between them. Maybe I'm wrong about the book. Maybe kids will love it. Anything that gets them to read is fine by me.

More On Marlowe (and Laymon)

If you haven't checked the comments on my Dan J. Marlowe post below, take a look. James Reasoner tells us a little something about the Fastback books, and Pete Enfantino fills in a lot of the details on those and some other things.

Chicklit Forums: Books--a drinking game

Chicklit Forums: Books--a drinking game

Via Jayme Lynn Blaschke's blog, here's a thread on chicklit that's got some pretty funny author drinking games. There's even one for Anthony Trollope.

Here's a shot of a couple of the books, more like booklets, that I mention below. 

Dan J. Marlowe

Ed Gorman has some more questions and comments about Dan J. Marlowe. I've sent him a note about Al Nausbaum's relationship with Marlowe, but I'd like to take off from Ed's remark about the support Marlowe received after his stroke from So. Cal. writers like Richard Laymon. I have three odd little items called "Fastback Sports Books" by Marlowe and one by Laymon. These were published in 1985, and they're 25-30 pages long. I have no idea where they were sold or who the intended audience was. I just couldn't resist picking them up when I saw them. I wonder how much Marlowe and Laymon got paid for these.

Something Old, Nothing New

Something Old, Nothing New: "Clark Redfield on Book Reviewing
I keep planning to write something about Elmer Rice's play Dream Girl, and then putting it off. Meanwhile, here are some more quotes from the play's wisecracking and frankly not very likable male lead, Clark Redfield, a book reviewer who -- to the surprise of the heroine, Georgina Allerton -- wants to get out of book reviewing and into the more rewarding field of sportswriting."

Highly recommended reading. Check it out.

Charlie Chan in Cyberspace

Charlie Chan in Cyberspace

A blog devoted to Charlie Chan. Pretty cool.

I went into a store yesterday and discovered that WE'LL ALWAYS HAVE MURDER is out in paperback. The publisher didn't tell me, but then publishers rarely seem to care about telling me anything. I think it's a pretty good book, and I had a great time writing it. And you have to admit that it has a great cover. 

When It comes to old serials, I'm a sucker for the ones with Rocketman. You put a guy in a rocket suit, and I'm there. In one serial, the Rocketman was known as Commander Cody, Sky Marshal of the Universe. I always wondered how a guy attained that office. Is it elected or appointed? I think it was made clear in SKY CAPTAIN that Joe was a mercenary, so maybe Sky Marshal of the Universe is, like Sky Captain, a self-appointed rank. 

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

I grew up during the 1940s and 1950s. The world was a different place then. One way it was different, at least in Mexia, Texas, is that on Saturday afternoon all the kids I knew, and plenty of others besides, went to the double feature at the Palace Theater. The Palace, in spite of the name, was a pretty ratty place, but that didn't matter to its clientele. For about a dime, we got to see two cowboy movies (Johnny Mack Brown, Charles Starrett, Rex Allen, Roy Rogers, Gene Autry, Allan Rocky Lane, Whip Wilson, Lash LaRue, Monte Hale, Tex Ritter, and you know all the rest). We also got a cartoon, previews of coming attractions, and a serial. Probably my favorite part of the whole afternoon was the serial. Why? I don't really know. I do know that my earliest movie memory is going to the Palace with my grandfather. I have no idea what the movie was, but the serial was The Phantom. At the end of the chapter we saw, The Phantom was sinking into a bed of quicksand. I remembered that scene vividly for well over 50 years, and finally, a few years ago when The Phantom was released on DVD, I got to see how he escaped.

So what does all this have to do with anything? Well, yesterday I went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. And I loved it. It was the next best thing to being six years old, back at the Palace Theater. I just sat there with a silly grin on my face for the entire running time and enjoyed the heck out of it.

Yesterday I posted a link to Roger Ebert's review of the movie and recommended it highly, especially the second paragraph. After I posted that, I read James Reasoner's blog, where he comments on a book by Milton Lesser. I highly commend James's comments to you because he echoes Ebert's remarks. And like both of them, I have no problem overlooking the ridiculous plotting and the pseudo-science of something like Sky Captain or Secret of the Black Planet. Those things aren't the point. Having a good time is the point, and at Sky Captain I certainly did that.

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW / **** (PG)

SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW / **** (PG): "SKY CAPTAIN AND THE WORLD OF TOMORROW / **** (PG)"

I recommend that you check out Roger Ebert's review of Sky Captain, especially the second paragraph.

The SF Site Featured Review: Phases of the Moon: Stories of Six Decades

The SF Site Featured Review: Phases of the Moon: Stories of Six Decades: "Phases of the Moon: Stories of Six Decades
Robert Silverberg, Subterranean Press, 630 pages" A review by Jayme Lynn Blaschke

I've talked about Robert Silverberg here before, and this is an excellent review of the book Ed Gorman mentioned in his blog last month. I just gotta buy a copy of this, even though I'm sure I have most of the stories in anthologies already.

Hand Shadows by Henry Bursill

Hand Shadows by Henry Bursill: "Project Gutenberg's Hand Shadows To Be Thrown Upon The Wall, by Henry Bursill"

Some of you might even be old enough to remember amusing yourselves this way when you were kids.

The first two Hard Case Crime books are on the stands around here, and I like the way they look. The first one, GRIFTER'S GAME, is a reprint of Lawrence Block's first Gold Medal Book, MONA. The one pictured above is the line's first paperback original. I started reading it last night, and from the very first paragraph I knew I was going to like it. It's set in the 1950s, with a tough-talking narrator and an untrustworthy blonde. Right there you've got something. And of course the throwback cover is a nice touch. One of the next books, LITTLE GIRL LOST by Richard Aleas (get it?) has a new McGuinniss cover. I'll probably wind up buying these books just to collect them. 

Me Gotta Go Now

Me Gotta Go Now: "Me Gotta Go Now"

Check out the new stamps on Dave Lewis's blog today.

Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind

Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind: "Generation Gaps"

Sarah has a good post on the generation thing, and there are a lot of thoughtful comments from her readers, too.

Ed's Place

Ed's Place: "Richard Matheson

I can't think of any writer of our time who has written as many acknowledged masterpieces as Richard Matheson. Combine I Am Legend, The Shrinking Man, Hell House, What Dreams May Come, Bid Time Return, A Stir of Echoes, Journal of The Gun Years, and a few others--and who else comes close?"

Ed Gorman's comments about Richard Matheson are as good an occasion as any for me to repeat one of my favorite stories about the power of books. When I Am Legend appeared in paperback, I bought it off the spinning rack in DeGuire's Bookstore in Mexia, Texas. I thought it was about the best thing I'd ever read, so I read it again about a week later. I still thought it was great (I was only 13 or so at the time, but fifty years later, I still think so). A couple of years later, I let a friend borrow it. He told me once, a long time afterward, that he couldn't believe that anyone would let him borrow such a wonderful book. He bought his own copy and became an avid SF reader after that, and a collector as well. He let another friend of ours borrow his copy, and a month or so ago I saw that friend for the first time in many years. One of the things he mentioned was how much he'd enjoyed reading SF when we were in high school, and the first book he mentioned was I Am Legend.

Just finished reading this one. Very different from Williams' crime novels. The narrator is 7-year-old Billy Noonan. His father and his Uncle Sagamore are direct descendants of the King and the Duke from HUCKLEBERRY FINN. (I could prove this by sophisticated literary analysis, but I'll spare you.) I think the book was also influenced by John Faulkner's CABIN ROAD series.  

eBay Udate

For those of you who've been on tenterhooks waiting to hear about my eBay woes (see below if you missed the post), I've finally (after another e-mail or two) received a response from the dealer who sent the wrong magazine. He tells me that he'll send out the correct magazine on Tuesday and that I can keep the one I already have. If he comes though, then I'll have to give him positive feedback. After all, it's not every day I get a free magazine.

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." -- Peter DeVries

Thrilling Days of Yesteryear : "Nostalgia isn't what it used to be." -- Peter DeVries Some enterprising soul discovered that on this site one could locate copies of the scripts from those old-time radio programs sponsored by the likes of Camel and Lucky Strike; for example, you can download (in .pdf form) scripts from The Jack Benny Program, The Abbott & Costello Show, Blondie, Richard Diamond, etc. (A few of the scripts won’t download properly due to missing pages, but I worked around that problem.) To me, the most interesting find was a cache of scripts of The Jimmy Durante Show from 1948-50; there are only three shows available from that period so the scripts are an amazing discovery (there are also a handful of scripts from The Durante-Moore Show as well).

This is a pretty interesting discovery, all right!

Hardluck Stories

Hardluck Stories: "Over There" by Gary Warren Niebuhr

The new issue of hardluckstories is on-line and it's well worth your time. I'm happy to say that a friend name Gary Warren Niebuhr has a good story in this issue, which was edited by Al Guthrie, author of Two-Way Split.

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion

New York Post Online Edition: postopinion: "September 13, 2004 -- FOR me, it's a sign of summer's end as cer tain as leaves chang ing colors: Teary-eyed freshmen turning up at my office to complain about their English placement-test results. How is it possible, they want to know, that they got A's in English classes throughout high school, took honors English courses as seniors . . . and still managed to fail an entry-level college exam that requires them only to analyze a few short reading passages and write a rudimentary narrative essay?"

Sounds like I wrote it myself. I remember all too well hearing exactly the same story many, many times.

Armadillo

Armadillo: "At this point, I knocked off for a quick dinner, and rejoined the con at 7:00 for a panel on 'Movies That Should be Remade'. In addition to the aforementioned Klaw and Finn (sounds like an animal act), Bill Crider, one of the elder statesmen, and Howard Waldrop joined in this panel. This panel was probably more serious than you might have thought, because the participants were very knowledgeable and had very good assessment of what worked (and couldn't work again) and what didn't work (and could never be made to work) in some classic and not-so-classic movies."

Someone sent me this review of Armadillocon, which confirms my worst fears. "Elder statesman," indeed. Well, at least he didn't say, "Old fart."

New Template

I decided to update my template, and this is how it came out. I like it well enough to go with it. Besides, I'm afraid to try to change it again.

Here's the book by Charles Williams mentioned in a post below. Great stuff! 

94Country WKKJ - The Best Country Around - Chillicothe, Ohio

94Country WKKJ - The Best Country Around - Chillicothe, Ohio: "Smash hit 1970s American TV show Happy Days is set to return for a one-off special later this year.

The two hour reunion Happy Days 30, which will feature original cast members including Henry Winkler and Ron Howard, is being filmed to mark the 30th anniversary of the program's first episode in 1974."

Being an old geezer, I think of Happy Days as a fairly recent TV series.

DAW Books

Did you ever buy a book just for the introduction? Let me tell you how pathetic I am. I bought DAW Books' 30th Anniversary Fantasy for the ten pages of introductory material by Elizabeth Wollheim and Sheila Gilbert. Sure, I could have stood at the dealer's table and read the intro, because it's almost a certainty that I won't read any of the stories, but I wanted to have it in case I felt the need to read it again.

DAW books in the 1970s were as important to me as Donald A. Wollheim's line of Ace Doubles was in the 1950s. The distinctive DAW spines and cover artwork made them stand out, and I could almost always depend on them to provide just the kind of reading I was looking for. I didn't buy the first one or two. In fact, the first one I remember buying is Dinosaur Beach by Keith Laumer (and, yes, I still have it; surely you aren't surprised).

In a way this leads me back to that generational thing I was talking about the other day. I've come to the conclusion that I don't much like change. There aren't any Ace Doubles anymore, and I've pretty much managed to accept that. But even DAW Books have changed. It's not just the spines and the logo. The books themselves are different. They look different, and they have different content. Don Wollheim is long dead, and the line is slanted toward a generation of readers who are not the same at all as the ones in the 1970s, except for the few of us old dinosaurs who are still hanging around, waiting for extinction.

And another thing I don't like is being a dinosaur, especially that extinction thing. The secret of all old men, I suppose, is that on the inside we don't feel old at all. We think we haven't changed, but we can see that the world is changing all around us. I go out to the college these days and see the kids walking around, and I don't think I'm much different from them. Meanwhile they're looking at me and thinking, Isn't it nice that the old gentleman can get around without a walker. I wonder if he was able to drive himself to the campus. Getting old sucks, folks, in more ways than one.

deathbeeper.com

deathbeeper.com What the...?
Emails you when a celebrity or sports figure dies. Free. Simple. Easy. Fun. No bull.

I haven't signed up for the service, but I was interested in seeing some of the obits listed. For example, I didn't know Joe Barry had died. I remember his 1961 hit version of "I'm a Fool to Care" quite well. A fine song.

National Museum of Funeral History

National Museum of Funeral History

Great stuff. Check out the fantasy coffins and the Hall of Fame. And I think it's great that they sponsor a golf tournament.

Me Gotta Go Now

Me Gotta Go Now
Cap'n Bob's Army

These three icons of the TV West stopped by with a message for Cap’n Bob Napier. The message is: “Hey! How about blogging some of your toy soldiers for the rest of the world to enjoy?”

Dave Lewis over at Megottagonow is trying to encourage Cap'n Bob Napier to start blogging about his toy soldier collection. You can visit Dave's blog by clicking the link above and find out just what "toy soldiers" means. You can also comment if you'd like to get the Cap'n invovled in blogging.

Scotsman.com News - Latest News - Ancient Gold Penny 'Could Sell for ?150,000'

Scotsman.com News - Latest News - Ancient Gold Penny 'Could Sell for ?150,000': "Ancient Gold Penny 'Could Sell for ?150,000'

A pure gold English penny, hailed as the most important find of its type for a century, could fetch up to ?150,000 at auction, it emerged today.

The coin, which dates back around 1,200 years, was stumbled upon by a man walking along the banks of the River Ivel in Bedfordshire."

What I want to know is, why don't I ever stumble across something like that?

Shakespeare in quarto: view the British Library's digital copies online

Shakespeare in quarto: view the British Library's digital copies online On this site you will find the British Library’s 93 copies of the 21 plays by Shakespeare printed in quarto before the theatres were closed in 1642.

For the English majors among you. I was one once.

Ed's Place

Ed's Place: "A good number of the over-fifty writers--my peer group--will tell you in whispers that they don't like much of today's crime fiction. Some of this is said jealously, of course, but most of it I think is simply the changing of generations. The things writers my age venerate are not to be found in the young writers of today. And why should they be? They think differently from us, write diferently, market differently and are more attractive to publishers and booksellers alike because they're going to be around a lot longer than we are--and are thus worth investing money and time in."

What Ed Gorman is saying here is that he (and I and guys like us) have become old farts. And I guess he's right. It's certainly true enough that I don't care for any of the contemporary music I hear these days, not even country music. When I listen to Internet radio or buy a CD, it's something from an era long past, something from a time when the contemporary singers weren't even born. Give me some George Jones tunes from the old days, like "She Thinks I Still Care" or "The Window Up Above." Give me Elvis singing "Mystery Train." Or the Clovers, the Drifters, the Cadillacs.

And when it comes to crime novels, give me Gold Medal. It's not that I don't like some of today's books. I read a good many of them, actually. But I don't admire them the way younger people do. I prefer the Good Old Stuff. Like the one I mentioned yesterday, River Girl. I think it's terrific, but the fact is that probably no editor today would buy it. It lacks the amped-up action, the "social siginificance," the outrageous premise that readers these days seem to crave. It's just good writing, smooth pacing, and masterful storytelling.

So you can grab the latest bestseller if you want to. Me, I'll put on a Slim Whitman CD and read another book by Charles Williams.

eBay Woes

I have this eBay habit. I buy and sell (buying more than selling of course), and over the last several years I've had pretty good luck all around.

But not long ago I bought an old SF magazine from one of those dealers who has a long list of "rules" for buyers. If you win an auction and he hasn't heard from you in three days, he's going to turn you in as a deadbeat. And if you haven't paid in ten days, you're scum, and he's going to turn you in. And so on.

Well, I responded as soon as I got notification that I'd won. But I never heard from the dealer.

So I wrote him daily for about a week. Finally he responded and told me the amount of postage due. I paid him by PayPal as soon as I got his e-mail.

More time passed. A lot more. But today I got a magazine in the mail.

It's the wrong magazine.

So I e-mailed him immediately. Guess what? No response so far. Why am I not surprised?

Charles Williams

Last night I was thinking about which Gold Medal writer to talk about for the next issue of MysteryFile, and I settled on Charles Williams. Just a few minutes with River Girl reminded me of why I like Williams' writing so much. It's not fancy, but it's smooth as the surface of one of those swampy lakes he describes so well, and he can really tell a story. He's right up there with the best of the Gold Medal writers. In fact, didn't John D. MacDonald say that Williams was "the best of us all"? I seem to remember having read something like that. But, as the old song says, I don't remember where or when.

Mystery*File Again

For those of you who don't read the comments or who prefer a clickable link, you can find out all about Steve Lewis's Mystery*File right here.

OK, some of you are snickering about what a moron I am. "Can't even make a link," you're saying between snickers. Well, it's not my fault. Steve assures me that it's his server and that the link will be working Real Soon Now.

UPDATE: The link seems to be working now. Give it a click.

From Blogger

I've made several posts today, but not a one of them has shown up on the blog. Here's what blogger has to say:

Hi there,

We apologize for the problems you have been experiencing with Blogger. We
had a simultaneous failure across multiple machines responsible for the
publishing of Blog*Spot blogs, but this issue has now been fixed. To
prevent this type of outage in the future, we are performing a full system
audit to ensure that proper redundancies are in place.

Sincerely,
Blogger Support

Now I'll try posting this to see if the issue really has been fixed.

Me Gotta Go Now

Me Gotta Go Now

Dave Lewis has started a blog, and today he has some comments on Zatoichi. Check him out.

Mystery*File

The latest issue of Steve Lewis's Mystery*File is available now, and it's probably the best one yet. Reviews and articles by Vince Keenan, Ed Gorman, me, Ed Lynskey, and many others. Great stuff, and if you're not a subscriber, you should be. You can get in touch with Steve via e-mail at stevelewis62@cox.net.

The Quick

Blogger is uncommonly wonky these days. I've made several posts that have never shown up, but I'm a persistent cuss. I keep right on trying.

Last night I read The Quick by Dan Vining. This is one of those books that seemed to be about one thing and then turned into something else entirely. At first it appeared to be a Ross Macdonald-ish SoCal p.i. novel. Then it got murky. (Warning: From this point on I reveal things you don't want to know if you plan to read the book.) It seems that Los Angeles is full of "Sailors." These are people who are dead. They're not zombies. They eat and drink and do everything living people do. But their dead bodies have been buried. Somehow they have new bodies that don't age. Jimmy Miles, the p.i., is a Sailor. So the mystery element of the book becomes less important as the story unfolds, and in fact by the end, the book has devolved into what I thought of as a bunch of New Age nonsense. I felt cheated, and I felt as if I'd wasted my time reading the book. There are some other problems, too. The POV isn't handled well, for one thing. For another there are some inconsistencies in the stuff about the Sailors. One new Sailor notices that his hair has stopped growing. But Jimmy Miles has to shave. Why should that worry me, though, when the book is so disappointing? I don't think I'll be reading any more books in this series (assuming it becomes a series).

How to write a best selling fantasy novel.

How to write a best selling fantasy novel.

Some of you reading this blog (I know you're out there; I can hear you breathing) might be wondering how to get rich in the writing game. Well, the link above provides the answer.

The Lovely Bones

I'm probably the last person in America to read Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones. But that may be because nobody told me it was a serial killer novel. It's an odd serial killer novel, sure, but to me that's exactly what it is. The POV's different, I'll admit, since the book is narrated by one of the victims after her death, but aside from that it's just another riff on Red Dragon. OK, so I'm exaggerating, but not as much as you might think if you haven't read the book. You've read it, thugh, since everyone in the country has, now that I have.

My Way News

My Way News: "LONDON (AP) - Archaeologists in northwestern England have found a burial site of six Viking men and women, complete with swords, spears, jewelry, fire-making materials and riding equipment, officials said Monday."

More cool news. I'd love to see this stuff.

Hard Case Crime

Hard Case Crime: "Hard Case Crime brings you the best in hardboiled crime fiction, ranging from lost noir masterpieces to new novels by today's most powerful writers, featuring stunning original cover art in the grand pulp style."

The first two books from Hard Case Crime are available today. What a great line of books and covers, and what a great idea! I hope everyone's going to support them.

1st Space Elevator Competition Set for Mid-2005

1st Space Elevator Competition Set for Mid-2005: "The new race to space is emerging that may be an even more exciting and challenging than that of the Ansari X Prize and may hold the promise of low cost Earth-to-orbit and beyond launches that would make SpaceShip One technology appear to be from yesteryear."

I love this stuff. I hope I live long enough to see it work.

Weekend

I realized this morning that I've failed to report on my weekend in Thornton, Texas. That's mainly because when you spend a weekend in a town with a population of around 600 people, there's not a whole lot to report. I did get some reading done (see previous post), and I saw most of two movies: The Princess Bride and The Breakfast Club. I'd seen both of those before, but it had been a while.

I like The Princess Bride well enough, but I read the book when it first came out, and I like that a lot better. A wonderful book.

The Breakfast Club surprised me. I liked it better than I did when I saw it nearly 20 years ago. A really good ensemble cast and some terrific moments. Molly Ringwald, Judd Nelson, Emilio Estivez, Ally Sheedy, and Anthony Michael Hall never did better than this, which is kind of sad when you think about it. To do something this good as a teenager and then never to live up to it must be a huge disappointment, not that they don't still have time to do something great.

And then there's the song. "Don't You Forget about Me" by Simple Minds is a classic. Perfect for the movie, too. I need to find an MP3 of that one Real Soon Now.

News

News: "A Leonardo da Vinci for the twenty-first century
It may look like a combine-harvester but a plane designed in a Tuscan farmhouse is being hailed as one of the great breakthroughs in aeronautical history. Peter Popham meets its inventor"

This is pretty cool. If you want to see a picture of the plane, it has its own homepage here.

The Lecturer's Tale

Now and then I can't resist reading an academic novel, so this weekend I read James Hynes' The Lecturer's Tale. I'd read one of Hynes' books earlier, one called Publish and Perish, which I enjoyed quite a bit, so I was pretty sure I'd like this one, too.

I did, especially for the first 200 or so pages, but after that its delights began to pall a little. And why is it that so many novels by "literary" guys like this have to end in some version of the apocalypse? I can think of a lot of other instances, but I'm not going into them here.

But, as usual, I digress. The novel is about Nelson Humbolt, an adjunct lecturer in the English Department at the University of the Midwest. It's a perilous life, and Nelson is fired. His publications aren't up to par, and his mentor in the department has deserted him.

Minutes later, while the tower clock is striking thirteen, Nelson loses his middle finger in a freak accident. When it's reattached, he discovers that he can make people do whatever he wants by touching them with it. He sets out to do good. Well, we all know where that leads.

Part of my problem with the latter part of this book is that I found myself in sympathy with some of Nelson's goals, and with the goals of his mentor, whose name is Weissmann, in the batte of the theorists vs. the people who just love literature and support "the canon." But neither Nelson nor Weissmann is a particularly admirable character, especially not by this point in the book. Nelson has let his rage nearly overcome his original good intentions. Or maybe entirely overcome them.

Lots of good names in the book, including my favorite, Lester Antilles. And lots of wonderful satire of academic types. Antilles is a good example. He "refused on principle to participate in the marginalization of indigenous voices or to be come complicit with the hegemonic discourse of Western postcolonial cultural imperialism. In practice, this meant that for six years he refused to take classes, attend seminars, or write a dissertation. As a result of this ideologically engaged nonparticipation, he was offered tenured positions even before he had his Ph.D. . . ."

The book is full of great stuff like that, and I found myself laughing out loud more than once because it's all too familiar.

So I'm willing to forgive the apocalypse. This is a funny, well-written book. Any English major will love it.

I have Hynes' first novel, The Wild Colonial Boy on hand to read, along with his most recent, Kings of Infinite Space. I'm sure I need to space them out a good bit, but I'll get to them eventually.

The Weekend

This afternoon, Judy and I are going to drive up to the metropolis of Thornton, Texas, and visit with her mother for a couple of days. There's no Internet in Thornton, or at least there's not at my mother-in-law's house. I'm not even sure she really knows that the Internet exists. She's about to turn 92 years old, and while she can operate her VCR and tape her soap operas every day, she's not into computers. What she's into is yard work. She still mows her own lawn every week of the summer, and it's a huge lawn. She uses a power mower, but it's not self-propelled. She has to push it every step of the way. And she cleans her house, including mopping her floors, every single day. She's pretty amazing when you get right down to it, and an inspiration to us all.

Who's Had Who

Another book I bought is Who's Had Who, which purports to be a carefully researched tome on the subject of, well, you read the title. If half the stuff I've read is true, then people have been a lot busier than I thought. How did Elvis ever have time to record any songs?

The book's copyright date is 1990, and I can't begin to imagine what's been going on between then and now. It's probably best not to think about it.

Elvis

As I anticipated, I didn't find many books worth mentioning on my little expedition yesterday. Fewer even than I'd hoped.

One thing I picked up was The Ultimate Elvis by Patricial Jobe Pierce. Hey, it was only two bucks. I couldn't resist.

And what, you might well be asking, is the ultimate when it comes to Elvis? Well, in this case it's a "Day-by-day clandear of Elvis Presley's life, from birth to death and beyond." And that's just for starters. It also has "Lists galore, from the men and women in his life to his phone numbers, home addresses, pets, nicknames, codenames, personal statistics, and awards."

And there's even more!

You're not gonna tell me you could have passed this up.

Judy is having a gaggle of friends over this afternoon, which means it's time for me to vacate the premises. I'll spend the rest of the day cruising some bookstores, seeing what treasures I can find. Probably not many. The pickings are slim these days. Most stores don't even bother with the kinds of books I'm interested in. If the book doesn't have a cover price of more than five dollars, they don't want it. The ones that do have a few old books always seem to stick some random price on them, hoping for a sucker to come along. That's why you can see a copy of, say, a tenth printing of a Perry Mason book with a $10 price tag.

So why do I keep going out and looking? Well, you know that old saying about hope springing eternal. But then Emily Dickinson said that hope is the thing with feathers. Whatever that means. You'd think that if it had feathers, it could stop springing around and take off in full flight.

But I digress. If I find anything worth mentioning, I'll do it here tomorrow. My inner pessimist tells me there won't be anything. But the feathery springer keeps whispering, "Just maybe . . . just maybe. . . ."

G-Strings

I forgot to mention (and you're probably sorry that I've remembered) that last week The Fabulous G-Strings performed at the Alvin Community College pre-school workshop. (For more about the Fab Five go here.) We did our versions of "Memories are Made of This," "Da Doo Run Run," and "Cool Water." These versions would most likely not be recognized by the original singers. They are, in fact, often not recognized by anyone except us, but at least we amuse ourselves.

Old Paperbacks

This afternoon I got a call from a reporter for the Houston Chronicle. He's working on a story on Hard Case Crime, the new paperback imprint that's doing some classic reprints (Lawrence Block, etc.) and some new books (Al Guthrie has one of them). The reporter wanted to talk to someone about the old paperbacks because he collects them himself, and he was given my name. We talked for a while, and I told him a little about my accumulation. An hour or so later, he called back to say he wanted to pay me a visit and bring a photographer from the paper with him. Fine by me. Maybe I'll get a little free publicity out of the deal.

Andrew Klavan

I've been reading Andrew Klavan's books since the days when he was Keith Peterson. I don't think I've missed more than a couple of them. My favorite is one called The Uncanny. In fact, I should read that one again, one of these days.

But today's topic is Dynamite Road, just out in paperback. It's the first book in a new series about a private-detective agency run by a man named Weiss. His top investigator is named Bishop. And this time, among other things, they're after a serial killer called "The Shadowman." As you'd expect if you've read much Klavan, this is a wild and wolly ride, totally unbelieveable, but fun (at least for me). The Shadowman makes Hannibal Lecter seem like one of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women. Bishop is tough as whet leather and almost soulless. Weiss can instinctively put together nearly any crime puzzle, albeit a bit slowly. And there's plenty of action for the movie version.

You might recall (or you might not) that in a recent post I complained about books that mix first- and third-person narration. Well, this one does it, too, but for some reason I don't mind. It's an entirely different kind of narration, for one thing, with the first-person tale-teller sort of drifting in and out of the narrative and not being a really major character. He's a young guy who's just out of college, and his first job is with the Agency. He wants to be a writer, so he's observing things and then (apparently after some years have passed) writing this novelistic account of what he experienced. Since most of it wasn't first-hand experience, he uses his writerly skills and imagination to tell the story. It shouldn't work, but it does.

Something Old, Nothing New

Something Old, Nothing New: "Bob McKimson
Of the directors of Warner Brothers cartoons, Robert McKimson is the forgotten man."

Check out this whole post if you're interested in WB cartoons. And who's not?

Boston.com / A&E / Celebrity news / Actors turned singers

Boston.com / A&E / Celebrity news / Actors turned singers: "Steven Seagal
In the late 80s and early 90s, Steven Seagal was above the law, marked for death, hard to kill, and out for justice. The perennial badass, Seagal not only plays a master of martial arts on film...he actually is one. So giving advice to stay clear of a music career could be tough ('Sure, Steve...this sounds great!'), but I dare you to keep a straight face while looking at this album cover. "

And there's even an audio clip! Nuff said.

School

School started without me at Alvin Community College last week. It's been two years since I left teaching, and people still ask me if I miss it. The truth is that I do, especially in the fall when the school year's beginning and classes are about to start. Every fall I'd walk into the classroom and think, "This is the year they're really going to learn something. This is the year I'll make a difference." Maybe it never happened, but it was a good feeling nevertheless. And I do miss it.

What I don't miss is the endless meetings, the hassle of dealing with complaints, the stress of registration.

All in all, I have no regrets. I was lucky to find a career that I enjoyed so much. Most of the time, it wasn't even like working. It was like having fun.

Ed's Place

Ed's Place: "I ordered The Martian Chronicles, Groff Conklin's Thinking Machines and an Ace Double that I believe had an Eric Frank Russell short novel on one side."

A great post over at Ed's Place today, and one that a lot of writers will identify with. I certainly do. I'm just going to comment on one part of it here because it ties in with an earlier post of mine, and a comment of James Reasoner's attached to that same post. It's funny how science fiction grabbed all three of us when we were young.

After I discovered Heinlein, I went on to read several novels in the Winston SF series, and in keeping with my visual orientation, I can still look at the endpapers of those books and feel some of the old thrill. Wonderful stuff. I've mentioned the ones I owned in an earlier post, I'm sure.

And then there was Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter series. You'd be surprised how hard it was to get a copy of one of those books back in the middle 1950s. Not a one was in print in paperback. I found out about them by reading the comic books that were based on them, and then a friend of mine whose parents had more money than I did, and whose parents were more indulgent, started ordering the hardbacks from book dealers. He was kind enough to let me read them, but he owed me for having introduced him to SF in the first place.

The book that sealed my fate, however, was one of those fat anthologies by Groff Conklin. I'm not sure which one it was, but it was either The Science Fiction Omnibus or The Big Book of Science Fiction. The one with T. L. Sherred's "E for Effort" in it. What a great story! I read it two or three times in a row.

But I digress. It was by looking at the copyright page of the Conklin anthology that I learned that there were magazines publishing stories like the ones in the book. I went to the bookstore (and how great was it that in Mexia, Texas, in the 1950s, there was a real bookstore?) and found a copy of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Another life-changing experience, because on the two spinning racks of paperbacks near the magazines I found the wonderful Ace Doubles, the Gold Medal novels, and many more. Great days, indeed.

Bestseller Lists 1950-1995

Bestseller Lists 1950-1995: "BESTSELLER LISTS"

OK, what with the errors in the list below, I thought I'd check out the 'Net. This link goes to the PW bestsellers by decade. I suspect these lists are much more reliable than the one abebooks put together.

Abebooks: Bestselling Books for the Twentieth Century

Abebooks: Bestselling Books for the Twentieth Century: "Bestselling Books for the Twentieth Century"

Another list. I'm surprised at only one: how did The Virginian get to be the bestselling book of 1952? I'm sure there's a logical reason. OK, I lied. Here's another surprise. I don't remember having even heard of The Broad Highway, the bestselling novel of 1961. I must have been asleep that year.

Hero

Judy and I went to see Hero yesterday. It's a beautiful movie, with some terrific martial arts battles, and it moves from one amazing scene to the next. I'm pretty sure I don't agree with its message, however.

Aside from the message, though, I liked it a lot. Judy, on the other hand, was not impressed. She generally has two reviews of movies I drag her to: "Better than I expected" and "About what I expected." This one got the latter comment.

And other people in the theater were even less impressed than Judy.

Someone sitting behind us had brought along a little kid. It didn't take him long to catch on to the fact that things weren't as they should be. A couple of minutes into the film, he shouted, "Those people don't talk right!"

And two people just walked out through the exit near the screen when the movie was about halfway over. I don't know what they'd been expecting, but Hero clearly didn't measure up.

Lost Pages | Found Pages: Crossgenre noir: 50 favourites

Lost Pages | Found Pages: Crossgenre noir: 50 favourites: "Crossgenre noir: 50 favourites"

Picked this link 1up from Ed Gorman's site. It was mentioned to Ed by Jack O'Connell. I've read a surprising number of the books on the list, including one of the French ones (but when I read it, it was called The Lady in the Car with Glasses and a Gun. Boy, that was a long time ago. Anyway, it's an interesting list. Check it out.

Ed's Place

Ed's Place: "John K. Butler

One of the many great pulp collections published by Adventure House is the John K Butler stories from Dime Detective featuring cabbie Steve Midnight. This is my third time through the book that comes complete with ads from the time and promises of great lurid stories in the very next issue."

As I've said before, one of the advantages of having a lot of books is that when you read about something interesting, you can often just go to your shelves and pull down the book. Which is what I did when I read Ed Gorman's post about John K. Butler a few days ago. I've read the first two stories in the book, and while I'm not quite as enthusiastic about them as Ed is, I certainly plan to read more of them over the weekend.

DallasCowboys.com - The Official Site of the Dallas Cowboys

DallasCowboys.com - The Official Site of the Dallas Cowboys: "Cowboys, Comcast to Launch Dallas Cowboys Channel
No longer will Cowboys fans have to wait for highlights of their favorite team on the evening news. The Dallas Cowboys and Comcast Cable announced Thursday an all-new digital channel - Dallas Cowboys Channel - featuring an all-access look at America's Team. The 24/7 channel, which launches Sept. 8, will have a daily news update, Bill Parcells' daily press conference live, rebroadcast of preseason games, cheerleader specials, highlights of memorable Cowboys moments and fan interactive shows. "

All Cowboys, all the time. Another idea whose time has come! Anybody want to bet that the cheerleader specials will be the highest-rated shows?

TXRD.com ::: Texas Roller Derby ::: Lonestar Rollergirls

TXRD.com ::: Texas Roller Derby ::: Lonestar Rollergirls

Roller Derby's back, and Texas has it. An idea whose time has come?

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "Scientists vote 'Blade Runner' best ever sci-fi film"

An interesting list, not that I agree with all their choices. But they're scientists. What do they know?

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.