Forgotten Books: Bill Crider

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 210th in my series of Forgotten Books.

It’s Bill Crider Appreciation Day at Friday Forgotten Books, and I will not be doing anything on a particular book but on the man himself.  I’ve reviewed a couple of Bill’s books over the years, read many more and received books from him that I later reviewed.

Before I get started, I know people have a lot of questions. Here’s what I know: 1) Bill is at home with both his children on hand. 2) He can still do a phone call. 3) He can have short visits. 4) He is not in major pain and is doing as well as you can expect. 5) He is not able to read. He has read his last book, the new Lee Child novel. I think he misses that more than anything. I personally am still in denial and making that call was very tough.

It is hard to know where to start. I have known Bill for more than 40 years. I got to know him, Joe Lansdale, James Reasoner, Lewis Shiner and Neal Barrett, Jr. all about the same time in the mid 1970’s – generally between 1974 and 1978. That was a magical time to be a science fiction and mystery fan in Texas!

I met Bill at an AggieCon, one of the longest student run conventions in the country. My first AggieCon was in 1973. By the next year, I was selling paperbacks there to cover the cost of going and to bring me some funds to buy new things. I had a lot of paperbacks.

There was this guy going through my books, looking for Jim Thompson paperbacks. I think I had one – The Transgressors, maybe, and I think it was about $2. This old guy, who turned out to be Bill Crider, and his friend, Billy Lee, were having fun looking at the books and we talked some. It was a while before I found out they were working on Paperback Quarterly, an early paperback-centric magazine. They knew their stuff.

I ended up running into Bill at more conventions; we talked more. I found out he was from Brownwood and was a professor at Howard Payne University. AggieCon was in College Station, which is a long way from Brownwood, so he stayed a night or two at the college hotels. AggieCon ran Thursday to Sunday in those days and while there was some film programming, the nights were for things such as bridge, parties and talking. Somehow, in the early ’80s, Bill, Lansdale, Barrett and I would always end up on couches in Phred, the name the Aggies gave to the Serpentine Lounge of the Memorial Student Center. Nobody paid us any mind because we weren’t generally talking about science fiction; we were talking mysteries, particularly Gold Medal, noir and the immortal John D. These conversations would frequently go until 2, 3 or 4 in the morning.

Our talks were glorious. With Barrett and Lansdale along, it was easy to be a wallflower (my early role) while those two ran with the conversation. But Bill – sweet, quiet Bill — read a lot and knew everyone. He had a real job and could go to BoucherCons and meet up with folks. And he had read everything… not just mysteries, but science fiction and literature. He could talk J.D. Salinger with the best of them, particularly the short stories. And he knew Frank Norris inside out.

The discussions at the convention are among the most fun things I have participated in. They wandered all over the place. We would start with whatever anyone was reading and then veer off into John D. and noir movies. One time we ended the evening with Barrett telling us all “Mars needs chickens!”

I visited Bill and Judy in Brownwood in the early ’80s when work took me that way. It was a magical evening. I saw his collection and we discussed current stories. Over the years I met up with Bill and Judy about once every two years in Alvin, a suburb of Houston when work sent me there. We had some great dinners.

One of the last times I saw them both we were at a Mexican place we all loved. Judy was fighting cancer. She decided to have a margarita. Apparently it was a potent one. The waitress came by and asked if she wanted another one. “No! One was enough,” she said. “I can’t feel my nose.”

Many of you have followed the events with the VBKs, Bill’s cats. I was there one night when they acquired Geraldine, or Jerry. I had been visiting the Criders, and as I was leaving, we heard a sound from a drainage ditch. It was a small kitten. Bill took her in, to the annoyance of Speedo, the resident big cat. Jerry had a nice, long stay with the Criders.

Last year, I wrote an alternate history story for an anthology Tales of the Otherverse. I had done a rock-and-roll story that I was very proud of. Bill loved it. It led off the book. But, at the last minute, the editor needed one more story and Bill wrote “It Doesn’t Matter Anymore.” I had thought I had a chance at a Sideways Award for Best Alternate History short form. But, when I read Bill’s story, I knew that was not going to happen for me. He won it. And totally deserved it.

I love Bill like the older, cooler brother who knew all the neat stuff. And I cannot do any more on this tonight. It still hurts.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

Forgotten Book: The Continental Op: The Complete Case Files by Dashiell Hammett, 1923 – 1930, Edited by Richard Laymon and Julie M. Rivette

Hammett’s Continental Op stories aren’t as well known as his novels, but they still pack a punch.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 202nd in my series of Forgotten Books.

Like John D. MacDonald in last week’s Forgotten Book, it would be hard to imagine a world where Dashiell Hammett is a “forgotten writer.” The five novels ranging from Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, The Glass Key, The Maltese Falcon and The Thin Man have been printed and reprinted over and over. In fact, The Maltese Falcon is one of the greatest novels in the English language. Together with Raymond Chandler and Carroll John Daly, Hammett led the charge to take murder and mayhem out of the English drawing room and pit it back on the mean streets.

I have read each of those books, multiple times, over the past 50 years, and I watch the films whenever they are on. I cannot count the number of times of time I have heard Sam Spade say “the stuff dreams are made of.”

But it is easy to forget that those novels did not spring fully realized from the head of Hammett. He had an apprenticeship period, generally in the Black Mask magazine. And he told many of these tales through the eyes of a short, fat unnamed detective who worked for the Continental Detective Agency in San Francisco. There are a number of Hammett short story collections that have been published throughout the years, some with great titles like Dead Yellow Women, The Creeping Siamese and The Big Knockover. But, until this volume, there has never been a complete accounting of the Continental Op stories.

The three title stories listed in the previous paragraph are all among the best of the stories contained in The Continental Op: The Complete Case Files, this week’s book. But, again, these stories did not just leap from Hammett’s fingertips. Editors Laymon and Rivette group the stories into three groups – The Early Years (1923-1924) with 10 stories beginning with “Arson Plus”; The Middle Years (1924-1926) with 11 stories, beginning with “The House in Turk Street” (one of my favorites) through “The Gutting of Couffignal” (another amazing story); and The Later Years (1927-1930) with 8 stories beginning with “The Creeping Siamese” and including the near novel The Big Knockover,” its sequel “$106,000 Blood Money” and “Death and Company.” That period also includes one unfinished story, “Three Dimes.” All but two of the published stories appeared in Black Mask.

The Early Years stories are all okay. None of them particularly leapt out to me as an Oh-My-God! moment. But with the advent of Hammett’s middle period and “The House in Turk Street” and its sequel “The Girl With the Silver Eyes,” there was a difference in the writing, a leanness that moved the stories along, even though they were longer pieces. In this period we get the stories previously noted as well as “The Whosis Kid,” “Who Killed Bob Teal” and “Dead Yellow Women.” If he had stopped writing at this point, he would still be revered today.

The later years bring it all home, though. “The Big Knockover” and “$106,000 Blood Money” were issued together as a short novel by Dell Paperbacks and as a hardcover from World Publishing. They are a little short to be considered a complete novel, but they are very, very good. During this period, I also liked “The Creeping Siamese” and “Fly Paper.” There were one or two contrived pieces, especially “The King Business” (one of the two non-Black Mask stories), which takes the Op away from San Francisco and into Europe with a young man being maneuvered into funding a political revolution.

Read in one or two sittings, these stories will get old. Spread over a week or month, however, they retain their wonderful flavor. If, like me, you have not read all of these or only know Hammett through his novels, this is where you want to be. If you are interested in the history of the mystery field in the 20th Century, this is where you need to be. The introductory essays before each section are worth the price of admission alone. If character names like The Whosis Kid, Paddy the Mex, Bluepoint Vance, Wop Healy, Tom-Tom Carey, and the Did-and-Dat Kid strike your fancy, this is the book for you. (I should mention that Hammett was definitely a product of his time, and there are some ethnic slurs that were common in the period and which reflect the character of the Operative. Just a word to not be surprised when you run into those words. There are not a lot of them, but they could be jarring to some readers.)

Looking again this evening, this particular version does not appear to be available on Amazon. Which is a crying shame. There are multiple volumes which reprint all the stories, but it talks some work and money. I got this in September 2016 for $14.99, the most I ever have paid for an e-book. And it was worth every penny.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

Forgotten Book: “Black Magic Holiday” by Robert Bloch

Bloch’s “Black Magic Holiday,” as it first appeared.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 193rd in my series of Forgotten Books.

Wow! Has it really been since last July that I did a Forgotten Book column? Amazing! In that time, I have moved from San Antonio to the wilds of West Texas. When I did the last columns, the movers were coming. I honestly thought it would be a few weeks and I would be back.

But 250 boxes of books and 30+ bookcases require a little bit of time to get organized. Not that I would know what organization is. My books are now generally on the shelves, though their order is still ruled by serendipity. I have some organization on a few cases. My Joe Lansdale books are generally where I can find them. The small group of books and magazines where I have appeared are in one area, A few writers are organized but most are not. But, as my wife says, “I have the rest of my life to get organized.” Because I’m not doing the boxing and moving thing again.

I would probably still be working on that massive undertaking, but this week represents the 100th anniversary of Robert Bloch’s birth. I reviewed a Bloch book (the paperback of The Opener of the Way) last June as my 186th in this series. Normally I do not review two books by a writer within a year, but how often does a 100th birthday come along? Not to mention, technically that review was 2016, and this is 2017.

I picked this title for a couple of reasons. One, I could find it because I had my set of Imaginative Tales in order on the bookcase with digests, and two, it is a funny work — something Bloch excelled at.

When Imaginative Tales debuted in 1954 as a companion to Imagination, they produced some truly wonderful covers for their lead novellas. Issue 3 (January 1955) featured “Black Magic Holiday” as the cover piece. It was their first featuring Bloch, though he would soon appear on several more. The cover was by Harold McCauley and I liked it.

The story was originally published in Fantastic Adventures in 1950 under the title “The Devil With You.” I didn’t realize it when I started reading it, but what the heck? It’s still a good story. And funny. I had read “Lost in Time and Space With Lefty Feep,” which featured the humorous adventures of the title character, about 30 years ago and I laughed quite a bit. I don’t have that title anymore, due to the big book sale of 2007, but it made me kindly disposed toward this title.

So, on to the story. Bill Dawson was a salesman who is touched by the finger of Fate. Deciding to take a vacation from his furniture sales job in Davenport, Iowa in New York City, Bill takes a room in the Hotel Flopmoor. That evening he finds two strangers in his room, Marmaduke Hicks and Tubby XXXXX. They have been residing in the hotel for quite a while, evading the manager Mr. Bipple, in scenes reminiscent of the Marx Brothers in Room Service. When they are discovered in Bill’s room, they play double-or-nothing with Bipple over their bill. They win and before anyone knows anything, they have parlayed Bill’s stay into him owning the hotel. Bipple is deliriously happy. Bill is now the hotel manager on the eve of a convention of magicians checking in for a stay.

One particular room is haunted with talking furniture and it has been requested by Mr. L. Dritch. Dritch had stayed there the year before and it has been haunted ever since.

The magicians are noted for causing chaos, with rabbits and birds running loose and illusions popping up all over the place. But other weirdness plays in as well, because not all the magicians are prestidigitators. Some are true magicians — and they have sinister plans for the convention and the hotel.

There is much drinking and innuendo, a la Thorne Smith, who was an obvious influence. There’s a fun bit involving a woman cut literally in two, whose halves do not function together, creating chaos. And more fun involving a werewolf and wax figures on a dance floor. Naturally, all of this happens as Hell is about to break loose.

I had fun with this story, and it reminded me that Bloch was excellent whether he was doing horror, science fiction, or fantasy. This one can also be found in The Lost Bloch, Volume One: The Devil With You (Subterranean Press, 1999). Check it out! Or get some Bloch for yourself.

I hope to keep doing these reviews as well as the Forgotten Films. They might possibly not be every week, but I will try.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

 

 

 

Forgotten Book: Jack of Eagles by James Blish (1952)

How much you enjoy James Blish's "Jack of Eagles" depends on how much scientific jargon you're willing to wade through.

How much you enjoy James Blish’s “Jack of Eagles” depends on how much scientific jargon you’re willing to wade through.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 191st in my series of Forgotten Books.

This week we look at a writer I have read a fair bit of, some I enjoyed, some I did not. James Blish is considered a fairly major writer of science fiction between WWII and the beginning of the New Wave in 1967. He was nominated for a Hugo Award twice during his lifetime, winning Best Novel for A Case of Conscience. He was nominated for the Nebula Award three times, not winning in all tries. He has since been nominated for three Retro-Hugo Awards which he won twice for early shorter versions of A Case of Conscience and Earthman, Come Home. Still an impressive list.

I really enjoyed the four Cities in Flight novels, of which Earthman, Come Home was a portion. His After Such Knowledge series featuring A Case of Conscience, Doctor Mirabilis, Black Easter and The Day After Judgment was not a sequence I particularly liked, though. Case of Conscience was okay but overlong. The rest, I finished but had no desire ever to re-read.

Other novels I liked included VOR, A Torrent of Faces (with Norman L. Knight) and the novella “There Shall Be No Darkness,” which was an early werewolf novel.

When I selected Jack of Eagles, I did so thinking I had read it before. Very quickly, though, I became aware that this was the first time. I think I initially had it confused with VOR. But I read it and it was OK. Again, not anything great, but I did not begrudge myself the time.

The novel tells the story of Danny Caidan, a journalist at a food service magazine in New York City. He has the amazing ability to tell people where they have lost items. Other than that, he’s pretty normal. Until the one day he is called on the carpet for writing an article that says a wheat company is about to get in trouble with the Feds for insider trading. When asked for a source, he cannot provide one and is summarily fired.

Gathering his things, he begins to wonder about his situation. He visits a stock broker and wants to buy some futures in the wheat company. If what he wrote was true, he could make a killing, ironically on “insider trading.” He visits his bank and finds he has a tidy sum, so he goes to a bookie and makes some bets on horse races. His bets all come in. Since he bet modestly, he won modestly.

He also visits a fortune teller and meets her niece, Marla, who wants to know what tricks he is using to scam the rubes. He also visits a group of psychic believers.

Suddenly, everyone wants a piece of Danny Caiden. The FBI and SEC want to know about insider trading and how he was able to break the news on a very secret investigation. The gangsters running the bookie outfit want to know how he gets the winners correct. The psychics want to know the true extent of his power. He seems to be a precog who has some telekinesis and the ability to teleport and they are not sure what else. He could be a danger to them, since he does not want to follow their party line.

There is a lot of scientific jargon in this novel. In his introduction, Robert A. W. Lowndes talks about Blish’s fascination with science and trying to be scrupulous in how he described things. Blish was not one for a hand-wavy explanation and that may be what I dislike in his work. I am not an engineer; I don’t need to know how something works to appreciate it. When Blish comments on a scientific text, it is after reading it thoroughly, rather than getting the Cliff Notes version,

Anyway, Danny has to work out his problems with some help from a friend and save the girl while avoiding jail or death.

It was an OK read, as I said. Your mileage may vary. I will probably not revisit another Blish title in the immediate future though.

Series organizer Patti Abbott usually hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs. This week the lovely talented and vivacious Todd Mason is doing those honors.

 

 

 

Forgotten Book: The Opener of the Way by Robert Block (1945 and 1976)

Many options, some very pricey, exist for purchasing Robert Bloch's The Opener of the Way

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 186th in my series of Forgotten Books.

Like most readers, I go through phases where I binge on certain types of books and try to collect them in various editions. One of my longer manias involved Arkham House books. I went through several stages where I wanted the words to all their titles or I wanted nice collectible copies of all their volumes. That path, I can assure, you will lead to destitution and madness. That would particularly be true now if you are starting your collection now and do not have really deep, deep pockets.

Back when I was looking at the Arkham House titles, they were expensive. And, while I work with accounting and money and the like, I have never been one to let my better judgment stand in the way of something I want. Well, not quite true. In 1973, I was offered a presentation copy of Lewis Carroll’s Phantasmagoria for a mere $150. At the time, I was working maybe 20 hours a week, for less than $2 per hour while attending school. That $150 price tag represented close to two months take-home pay for me. I was barely able to stay in school and feed myself at the time, so I had to let it go. But that potential purchase always remains back in my thoughts. What might have happened? What might have happened was that I would have lost my apartment, been unable to pay my bills and I would have had to sell the book, along with many other nice things, in order to keep a roof over my head, my car running and food on the table.

That book was THE ONE that got away.

I have had many fine things over the years, but Arkhams were always one thing I loved. I once convinced a bookstore to order the entire available Arkham catalog and tried to buy them one at a time for a while. They were only $4 or $5 each at the time, but even then, I had trouble getting them paid for. It caused some stress in my relationship with the bookstore.

Arkham, for those who have made it this far and don’t really know what I am talking about, is a specialty publisher, that started as a venue for August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to publish a memorial volume for H. P. Lovecraft, since no commercial publisher was interested. They launched the enterprise with The Outsider and Others in 1939. They soon also published more Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, along with Robert E. Howard’s amazing Skullface and Others. They did the first books of many fine writers of the weird, fantastic and horrible. People like Ray Bradbury, Fritz Leiber, Seabury Quinn, William Hope Hodgson and Robert Bloch. Their volumes are wonderful, filled with stories only available to those with a fantastic pulp magazine collection and deep pockets. My first Arkham book was The House on the Borderland and Other Stories by Hodgson, which reprinted the title novel and three others. I ran across Hodgson through Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy Series and loved his work.

Over the years, I acquired several Arkham House books, some like the Hodgson expensive, others like Lord Kelvin’s Machine by James P. Blaylock not nearly so much. But I never had The Opener of the Way by Robert Bloch, which was published in 1945. It was Bloch’s first book.

For several titles, such as the massive Clark Ashton Smith volumes, I got the British publisher Neville Spearman’s 1970’s reprints. Sure, you had to order them from England and it took forever and the postage was expensive, but CAS was worth it. Spearman did The Opener of the Way in 1974 but I missed it. Again, funds were a big reason.

In 1976, British publisher Panther released the massive collection in two paperback volumes, The Opener of the Way and The House of the Hatchet. Last year, I got the first of those volumes, not realizing it did not contain all of the hardcover title. And that is what I read this week.

This volume contains ten stories from the hardcover edition, including the title story, “Beetles,” “Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” and “The Fiddler’s Fee,” all stories I really liked. They suffer slightly from being together, as many of the stories contain that final line that serves as a “Gotcha!” with the Ripper story being a superb example. Others you could see coming.

I like Robert Bloch’s work. About 6 months ago I reviewed his novel The Will to Kill here and it was great. This volume holds up reasonably well. It does represent early work by Bloch who matured as he wrote more.

Those who want the whole volume can get the Arkham House volume (starting in the $400 + range on up to a price with a comma in it), the Neville Spearman edition ($30 to $750), the two paperbacks (between $10 and $20 each) or The Early Fears by Bloch (Fedogan and Bremer, 1993), which reprints all of Opener (except the introduction) and Pleasant Dreams, another early collection.

Go forth and collect.

Series organizer Patti Abbott usually hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

Forgotten Book: Amazon Planet by Mack Reynolds (1966 – 1967 magazine, 1975 book form)

Mack Reynolds' Amazon Planet seems to have lost some of its political punch.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 183rd in my series of Forgotten Books.

Popular taste in science fiction is a pretty fluid thing. The field is so broad and encompasses lots of sub-genres. It’s pretty easy to be focused on a single area or author and not see whole fields that exist. As a teenager in the ’60s, I found it was still possible to read most of the important books in the field each year. Within a few years that was no longer possible.

I remember when fantasy titles were very, very scarce. This year represents the 50th anniversary of the first Lancer Conan title with a Frank Frazetta cover. At that time you had to look. Michael Moorcock was coming and Ballantine had published Tolkien and some E. R. Eddison but not much else. Ace was thinking of printing the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser books.

So all this is in prelude to talking about Mack Reynolds. A very prolific writer, Reynolds published something like 75 books between the 1950s and 1980s, of which I have read four. That’s not much based on his output and huge presence in the marketplace. I don’t know why I never read much. He was in a lot of ace Doubles, and I certainly read many of those by lesser writers. But I did read Amazon Planet back then, and now, some 48 years later, I decided to revisit him and one of his novels.

Amazon Planet was serialized in Analog in 1966 and 1967, which is where I originally read it. God only knows why, because I didn’t read many of the serialized novels at that time. The fact that I had all three parts at the time is pretty amazing, at least to me.

Guy Thomas is a United Planets Federation negotiator who has been sent to Amazonia on a freighter. The only other passenger is a young woman, Patricia “Pat” O’Gara, who is going from her home planet of Victoria to Amazonia.

The crew is fascinated that Guy plans to go to Amazonia. The planet is run by women, and men have little to no rights. Pat is trying to escape the repressive Victorian mores of her planet to the more enlightened government of Amazonia. There are several early political discussions about matriarchies and female warriors, a subject which Reynolds obviously knew much about.

But there are difficulties. Pat has no landing visa to go there. And Guy is a man. When the Amazonians show up, there is a problem with Guy’s visa also, since it shows his name as Gay. He tries to convince them that it is no big deal. The Amazonians warn him that since he is a man, any Amazonian warrior with fewer than three husbands can come up, clasp him on the shoulder and say, “I take thee.” At that point, he would become part of the warrior’s harem.

But things are never quite what they seem. Guy is not a sales negotiator. He is a spy hoping to help a male underground rise up from the female tyranny.

It becomes an action adventure story stuck in the idle of a political discussion (not quite a diatribe) and something approaching Women’s Rights. And even that does not begin to cover the whole of the book.

I mostly enjoyed the novel, but it does seem a bit dated. And according to Wikipedia, this was one of the books caught up in a period of declining sales on Reynolds’ part and a takeover of Ace Books that prevented several novels from being published between 1969 and 1975. By 1975 the ERA was old hat and much of the punch of this book seemed to have been lost.

I do have another Reynolds book that I intend to read sometime, Code Duello. I am not sure when I will get to it. My experience with Amazon Planet has not moved that one in up in my reading list, nor caused it to disappear.

The Ace Books thing is interesting as it notes that his sales had declined. Yet on the paperback copy I read, he is noted in a big label, “Voted the most popular science fiction author by the readers of Galaxy and If.” Go figure.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: The Everness Series by Ian McDonald (2011 – present)

Planesrunner kicks off Ian McDonald's dizzying Everness series.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 180th in my series of Forgotten Books.

I have been a fan of Ian McDonald ever since his first book Desolation Road was published by Bantam Books in 1988. It was an amazing book about a future Mars. Soon other novels followed, including Out on Blue Six and King of Morning, Queen of Day and the short story collection Empire Dreams. I knew from the beginning that I would be buying all his works and enjoying them for years to come.

In late 2011, Pyr Books published Planesrunner. I became aware of it because of the wonderful John Picacio cover, and I got my copy from John himself. It followed closely with the second in the series, Be My Enemy, and in 2014, Empress of the Sun continued the tale. The two subsequent books also sported Picacio covers.

The series is a wild conglomeration of steam punk and space opera and young adult coming of age. The hero of the series is a young Punjabi boy living in London named Everett Singh. His father is a quantum physicist who has been working on some very odd ideas when he is suddenly kidnapped right in front of Everett. The kidnappers seem to have vanished but Everett receives an odd email that leads to the discovery of the Infundibulum, a device that allows him to hop worlds. The kidnappers are members of the Plenipotentiary of the Ten Worlds, the ten alternate Earths which run things. Charlotte Villiers is the villain of the piece, a Plenipotentiary of one of the Earth’s. Everett’s earth is Earth 10.

When Everett operates the Infundibulum he finds himself on an Earth with no fossil fuels, where airships rule the skies. He eventually finds himself aboard the airship Everness, commanded by Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, her adoptive daughter Sen and a wild crew.

But Everett soon finds out that with the Infundibulum he is not limited to the 10 Earths. The whole of the Multiverse is available to him.

While Everett searches for his father, Charlotte searches for Everett and the Infundibulum. Each of the Earths contains variations of the inhabitants of the other Earths. So there is an alter of Everett Singh on each of the ten worlds, as well as of his father and friends and Charlotte. Sometimes these alters are of the opposite sex.

There are weird alien races which react like computer viruses (the Nahn) or create highly modified versions, like Everett M. Singh in Empress of the Sun and Be My Enemy, who comes to our Earth bringing the Nahn.

And there are the Jiju, dinosaurs that did not die out in the comet disaster and therefore have a 65 million year evolutionary advance on humans in their universe. They live on a diskworld with a captive sun. The construction of this world makes Niven’s Ringworld look like a kiddie park. All the Jiju want is to get the Infundibulum and obliterate their competitors on their world and throughout the Multiverse. Cold blooded dinosaur space killers! What more could you want?

McDonald has developed the culture of the airships along gypsy terms and created the Palari language which combines terms and ideas from many other societies. A glossary is included in each volume.

Everyone in the books is pursuing something. Everett wants his father. Charlotte wants the Infundibulum and Power (with the capital P). Sen wants Everett and to work on the Everness and to please her mom. Captain Anastasia wants to take care of her ship and crew and to see whatever it is Everett can do to get to his father, pretty much in that order.

These are fun books with lots of action and adventure. The story through the three published volumes is not complete, which I disliked, but that’s pretty much the only thing I disliked about them. There does not seem to be any information about a fourth volume, but we can hope.

Check out the first one, then settle in for all three. Super advanced dinosaurs are quite a bit of fun — and nastiness.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Films: The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything (1980)

The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything: Not a very good movie then and not a very good movie now.

This is the 156th in my series of Forgotten, Obscure or Neglected Films

One of my favorite writers of all time is John D. McDonald. I’ve read a lot of his books; at some point I will read many more. I read all the Travis McGee novels, but my all time favorite John D. McDonald novel is The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything. I’ve read it several times and I reviewed it as one of my Forgotten Books at some point in the past. I’m not sure when, because several of my reviews were lost when the Missions Unknown site succumbed to whatever evil it was that killed it. Some reviews had not been backed up (my very bad) and there are several which are not available in archived versions of the site.

So, when this book was announced as a made-for-TV movie in 1980, I was there waiting. I watched it. I was appalled. Kirby Winter was being played by Robert Hays, a TV actor who had not yet made his big splash in Airplane!, the film which was his next role. Pam Dawber, late of Mork and Mindy, was Bonnie Lee Beaumont, sporting a horrendous South Carolina accent.  My beloved book was being sanitized and bastardized into pabulum for the masses.

I still remember that paperback book cover which claimed “One day with Bonnie Lee was like a three-year lease on a harem.” Not in this version. “Throne Smith meets Mickey Spillane.” Not in this version.

So, for 35 years I have hated this film as the epitome of bad made-for-TV movies. And I was happy with that.

This week, I was going to watch Svengali with John Barrymore, a silent film that I had on VHS. I put the tape in and while the tape was moving, I was not getting the picture. I tried several times but it was just not tracking correctly…

So, suddenly I am looking for something to watch and review. I was sitting in the floor with the DVDs and was trying to decide. Should I do The Point with its wonderful soundtrack and hippy-dippy story? What about Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings? Or Roger Corman’s Forbidden World, an amazing Alien rip-off? All these were on the tapes in front of me. And I remembered that they were not going to last too much longer, as VHS tapes have a half life of 25 years or so (or at least that’s what I have been told). Anyway, The Girl, the Gold Watch and Everything popped up and the next thing I knew I was shoving it into the player and watching it.

The movie’s protagonist, Kirby Winter, is a lovable loser, who worked for his uncle Omar Krebs. His uncle, worth $220 million dollars has died and Kirby is anxious as the will is read. Turns out Kirby’s inheritance is a gold-plated watch. And that’s it.

Suddenly the Board of the Krebs Foundation is noting that Omar moved $75 million into a side venture OK Enterprises, which Kirby worked for. The only other employee, the sexually-repressed-and-not-loving-it Miss Wilma Farnham (Zohra Lampert), has burned all the company records according to Omar’s instructions.

As a result, Kirby and Wilma are being hunted for embezzlement. Omar’s competitors Joseph Locordolos (Ed Nelson) and Charla O’Rourke (Jill Ireland!) are trying to unearth Omar’s secrets and are using Kirby to try and find out anything.

This leads Kirby to find a new place to stay. His hotel manager, Hoover (Burton Gilliam, notable in Blazing Saddles, not so much here), finds him a friend’s apartment. While there, Kirby is visited by Bonnie Lee Beaumont, who mistakes him for her boyfriend. This mistake leads to anger and then strangely to attraction. While having a hot dog, Kirby accidentally sets the watch and finds that he can stop time around him. He is able to act while everyone remains frozen in the moment.

So far, the film is OK – not good but OK. But from here, it goes bad. The way to fix things seems to be to undress people or leave them in awkward situations. Dressing hired guns up as Las Vegas showgirls is TV-risqué but not particularly effective.

The film was not as bad as I remembered, but it is still not good. I saw this so you do not have to. Nor do you want to see the sequel, The Girl, the Gold Watch and Dynamite (1981), which thankfully does not feature Hays or Dawber but does not replace them with anyone better.

Series organizer Todd Mason hosts more Tuesday Forgotten Film reviews at his own blog and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron (1954)

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet sets the wayback machine to 1954.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 174th in my series of Forgotten Books.

This week we have a book that shares some similarities with last week’s Shell Scott adventures. No, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet is not a humorous detective novel. But like the Prather novel, I missed Eleanor Cameron’s Mushroom Planet novels when I was much younger.

This first novel in the series should have been in my school libraries when I was in grade school and, had they been, I would have found them. But, in those formative years, I was in Alaska and then in small-town Texas. The libraries were small – heavy on reference books and some fiction. In several, there was not a formal library, just collections of books in each teacher’s room and whatever was there was what you got. It was not until junior high in Iowa Park, Texas, that I really found out about libraries and what wonders they held.

The Iowa Park town library was small and featured many older titles. I got to read my first Edgar Rice Burroughs books there and Tom Swift (not the Tom Swift Jr. titles that were coming out when I was at that age; these were the older things). And, since the junior high was in the same building as the high school, we had a more formal library at the school, and there I found Heinlein, Wells and Verne. Those were exciting days of discovery.

But, the Mushroom Planet was never in the galaxies I roamed. I don’t believe I ever heard of those books until I got to college and took a course in children’s literature (kiddy litter, as we called it). And I was not about to read them then.

Somewhere along the way, I acquired the first volume of the series and it has been on my shelves for a while. The other day I decided to pick it up and read it.

It’s a fast read and definitely a kid’s book. There are some attempts at science-y things but not much. And that is deliberate. The first chapter tells you what you need to know with the strange green ad in the paper

WANTED

A small space ship about eight feet long, built by one or two kids. The ship should be sturdy and well made and should be of materials found at hand. Nothing need be bought. No adult should be consulted as to its plan or method of construction. An adventure and a chance to do a good deed await the boys who build the best space ship.

Yep, you’ve got to be imaginative and a risk taker and your own person. David and his buddy Chuck are the boys who meet up with Mr. Tyco M. Bass, a peculiarly odd person who wants the boys to travel to Basidium X, a small planetoid located 50,000 miles above Earth that only he can see because he has a special filter. He can make a fuel to power this ship and send two boys to it in two hours, and there they can help out the residents of the tiny mushroom planet. They need to bring some food, capture some Basidium air and bring a mascot, for which Mrs. Pennyfeather, David’s chicken serves the role.

They travel to the planet and meet two wise men, Mebe and Oru, and the great King Ta help them solve a problem and return home, all in one night. Of course, no one believes them because they are kids and things happen to their proof.

It was a fun enough book. If I had preteen kids or grandkids, I might have subjected them to this. I think they would have enjoyed it. But I find that for myself, the one book will do. I don’t really care to return to the Mushroom Planet.

What about you readers out there? Someone have a fond spot for these books, or some other ones. As a kid I read a lot of Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew and Tom Swift. Then I found ERB. I was lost from that point on. And at 14, Conan began to appear and Elric the following year or so. And Philip K. Dick. I was doomed.

I hope your new year is going well. I’ll be back with another book next week, certainly one more age appropriate, I think.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.

 

Forgotten Book: Everybody Had a Gun by Richard Prather (1951)

Everybody Had a gun features Richard Prather's private eye Shell Scott.

By Scott A. Cupp

This is the 173rd in my series of Forgotten Books.

This week is special across the various blogs that constitute the Forgotten Books group. Check out the listing at Patti Abbott’s blog by clicking the link at the end of the column. Friday, January 15, has been designated Richard Prather Day, when as many of the bloggers as are inclined will discuss the work of this quintessential ’50s paperback writer.

I will confess up front that I have not read much Prather. I didn’t discover his works when I was at the impressionable age where I would have read everything multiple times. By the time I had found Prather’s work, I was already reading Hammett, Chandler, both McDonalds, Charles Williams and more. Prather was entertaining, but the others were more representative of what I wanted to read. Still, I thought I would give one a try this week.

Prather is best known for his Shell Scott series of detective novels. Scott is a California private eye, tall with blond close cropped hair, a veteran of WWII and able to get into some truly interesting situations.

This novel begins with action on the first page. Shell is walking down the street when someone starts shooting at him. He almost doesn’t even notice it since he is reading the paper about a local hood named Lobo who had contracted a fatal dose of lead the previous night. But when he does, he has no idea who or why is after him.

He cautiously approaches his office and begins running down the list of people who might have a grudge. It might be Marty Sader, who runs a local nightclub and who had hired Shell to check out a horse betting parlor and to get an idea of the take. Shell takes the job but finds out very little, as Lobo approaches him and tells him to stop. This is something he would normally ignore, so he continues his research, but Lobo is a little more insistent the next time. And Lobo is a right hand guy for a bigger fish named Collier Breed with whom Shell does not want to tangle.

When he gets to his office, Shell sees an attractive redhead tentatively approaching the building. When she sees Shell at his window, she crosses over the street headed toward his office. Meanwhile, a short skinny guy with a gun enters the office and attempts to take Shell away. There is a fight and he knocks the hood out. The redhead shows up and recognizes him as one of Sader’s guys.  She says Sader wants to kill them both and that she has just escaped from him. She won’t talk until Shell gets rid of the hood, so he sends her down to the bar below his office and takes the hood to a nearby cop.

When he gets back to the bar, he discovers the girl never made it there. He finds her purse and learns her name is Iris Gordon. He tracks down her address. He meets her barely clothed roommate, Mia, and finds that they both work for Sader. Figuring that if she escaped from Sader earlier, perhaps she has been taken back there. He tries Sader’s house first and finds a drunken Mrs. Sader shooting a big gun at bales of hay.

Soon he is involved with two gangs, lots of people with guns, some fast talking and quick thinking — and lots of dead bodies. It’s a fast-moving, quick read about attempted takeovers, murder and more.

Overall, I enjoyed it. I would have probably loved it when I was a teenager, but it wasn’t bad. It had a fair bit of skewed humor, which was OK, but a little can go a long way. If you’ve not read Prather, this isn’t a bad one to start with. Chronologically, it was the third Shell Scott adventure and the series was starting to get its quirky feel.

Check out the other Prather reviews on Friday and give him a try. As always, your mileage may vary.

Series organizer Patti Abbott hosts more Friday Forgotten Book reviews at her own blog, and posts a complete list of participating blogs.