"There Was No Paradox at All"

"Two Timer."

Comprised of "Experiment" and "Sentry."

By Fredric Brown (1906-72; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; and the SFE HERE).

First appearance: Galaxy, February 1954.

Illustrated by (David K.) Stone (1922-2001; ISFDb HERE).

Reprints pages:

 "Experiment" (ISFDb HERE)

 "Sentry" (ISFDb HERE).

Short short short stories (2 pages each).

Online at SFFAudio (HERE).

   "The aliens, the only other intelligent race in the Galaxy . . . cruel, hideous and repulsive monsters."

Principal characters:

~ "Experiment": Professor Johnson and his two colleagues.

~ "Sentry": The sentry and the alien.

Resources:

- "Arena" (1944), another, longer, Fredric Brown story, was adapted for television in the sixties (WARNING! SPOILERS! Wikipedia HERE and HERE). The original story is (HERE; SFFAudio).

- Our latest contact with Fredric Brown's oeuvre was "The Last Martian" (HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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"Before He Could Rise, I Whirled, Seized a Heavy Rustic Chair and Whanged Him Over the Head with It. That Did It."

"Oh Gargie!"

By Ray Cummings (1887-1957; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; and the SFE HERE).

First appearance: Crack Detective Stories, April 1947.

Short short story (7 pages).

Online at Fadedpage (HERE).

   "A stack of dishes on the lunch counter crashed; an iron saucepan on the stove was drilled so that it let out a clang like a bell."

IT doesn't happen often, but once in a long while somebody comes along to save the day who had no intention of saving anything . . .

Main characters:

~ Alan Trimble, Mary Trimble, Pete and Sandy, Johnny Peters, the burly thug, and Gargie.

References (all from Wikipedia):

- "he ain't exactly Gargantua, is he?":

  Before it became the name of a famous circus animal, which our author probably has in mind (HERE), "Gargantua" was an outsized character in the works of François Rabelais (HERE and HERE).

- "a rhesus monkey":

  "The rhesus macaque is well known to science. Due to its relatively easy upkeep in captivity, wide availability, and closeness to humans anatomically and physiologically, it has been used extensively in medical and biological research on human and animal health-related topics. It has given its name to the Rh factor, one of the elements of a person's blood group, by the discoverers of the factor, Karl Landsteiner and Alexander Wiener." (HERE).

Resource:

- Our latest regular appointment with Raymond King Cummings's fiction was "Death Trail" (HERE).

The bottom line:

The three wise monkeys over the Tōshō-gū shrine in Nikkō, Japan

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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"A Policeman Always Keeps His Eyes Open"

IT'S not that easy to commit . . .

"Crime on Mars."

(a.k.a. "Trouble with Time").

By Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; and the SFE HERE).

Reprints page as "Crime on Mars" (ISFDb HERE).

Reprints page as "Trouble with Time" (ISFDb HERE).

First appearance: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 1960.

Short short short story (5 pages).

Online at SFFAudio (HERE) and (HERE).

   "No wonder the Goddess is the Solar System's Number One mystery."

HOW do you get away with stealing something when you're 140 million miles from Earth and there's only one way out? A pretty problem for our would-be thief . . .

Principal characters:

~ Detective-Inspector Rawlings, Mr. Maccar, Danny Weaver, and the unnamed narrator.

Typo: "near vaccum".

References (all are from Wikipedia):

- "Phobos" (HERE)

- "Meridian" (HERE); "International Date Line" (HERE)

- "you might as well steal the Mona Lisa" (HERE); "That's happened too" (HERE)

- "Late Canal Period" (HERE)

Sorry. No canals here.

- "a man will die in seconds without protection" (HERE)

- "the Syrtis Major" (HERE)

- "Mars Years" (HERE)

- "the Yard" (HERE).

Resources:

- Here is FictionMags's list of reprints for "Crime on Mars"/"Trouble with Time":

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (Australia) #159, September 1960

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (U.K.) #92, September 1960

  Ellery Queen’s 16th Mystery Annual, 1961

  The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1961

  The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (U.K.), October 1961

  Tales of Ten Worlds, 1962, as "Trouble with Time"

  Introducing SF: A Science Fiction Anthology, 1964, as "Trouble with Time"

  The Nine Billion Names of God, 1967, as "Trouble with Time"

  Ellery Queen’s Minimysteries, 1969

  Quickie Thrillers, 1975

  The Gourmet Crook Book, 1976

  Masterpieces of Mystery: The Sixties, 1978

  The Evening News Collection (2), 1991, as "Trouble with Time"

  More Than One Universe, 1991, as "Trouble with Time"

  Cyber-Killers, 1997

  Cyber-Killers, 1998

  The Collected Stories, 2001, as "Trouble with Time"

  Fourth Planet from the Sun, 2005.

- One of Arthur C. Clarke's stories was, mirabile dictu, performed on live TV, no less, back in the fifties; see Mystery*File (HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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"You Can't Prove Anything from a Score Card or the Fingerprints on a Golf Club."

"Tee Shot."

By Tom Robertson (?-?).

First appearance: Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, July 1960.

Short short short story (3 pages).

Online at SFFAudio (HERE).

   "Only now every move he made to finish this game took me that much nearer to disaster."

"GOLF," Winston Churchill once observed, "is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into an ever smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose." "Weapons," he says. Hmmm . . .

Main characters:

~ Graybow, Harry Jackson, Johnny Taliferro, Lorene, and Abe Joseph.

References (all are from Wikipedia):

- "the long fairway" (HERE)

- "Embezzlement" (HERE).

Resources:

- "Tee Shot" is Tom Robertson's only story on the FictionMags list.

- There's one particular Agatha Christie Hercule Poirot short story that also involves factors which figure into today's tale (WARNING! SPOILERS! The IMDb HERE) and (Archive.org HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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"Mind You, There Was a Slight Technical Glitch"

"A Matter of Antimatter."

By Ron Friedman (the ISFDb HERE and Webpage HERE).

First appearance: Polar Borealis, July-August 2016.

Short short short story (2 pages).

Online (HERE; go to pages 13-14).

   "That wasn't in the contract I signed."

WHEN you agree to a contract, try as you might, it's virtually impossible to anticipate all of the ramifications. Just ask Jeff . . .

Principal characters:

~ Jeff, Tim, and Commander Peterson.

References (all from Wikipedia):

- "antimatter" (HERE)

- "EVA" (HERE)

- "hologram" (HERE)

- "A.I." (HERE)

- "Houston" (HERE)

- "microgravity" (HERE)

- "Titan" (HERE)

- "multiverse" (HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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"That Doesn’t Look Much Like Self-defense. It Looks Like Murder."

WHAT HAPPENS when an accomplished musician turns to writing classic detective fiction? You get little gems like . . .

(1) "Death and Aunt Fancy."

By Edmund Crispin (Robert Bruce Montgomery, 1921-78; Wikipedia HERE and the GAD Wiki HERE).

Gervase Fen No. 16.

First appearance: The Evening Standard, February 26, 1953.

Reprinted in Collier's, April 25, 1953 (today's text).

Illustration by Anthony Saris (1924-2011).

Collected in Fen Country, 1979.

Other reprints:

  John Creasey’s Mystery Bedside Book, 1969

  Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, December 1974

  “We Know You’re Busy Writing . . .”: The Collected Short Stories of Edmund Crispin, 2023.

Short short short story (1 page).

Online at UNZ (HERE).

   "I don't know what she wants, you see. I don't know why she's doing this."

Main characters:

~ George Gotobed, Miss Preedy, Aunt Fancy, and Dawkins (in absentia).

(2) "The Unloaded Gun."

(a.k.a. "Humbleby Agonistes.")

By Edmund Crispin (1921-78).

Gervase Fen No. 4.

First appearance: The Evening Standard, October 16, 1950.

Reprinted in The Saint Detective Magazine, September 1955 (today's text).

Collected in Beware of the Trains, 1953, as "Humbleby Agonistes."

Short short story (7 pages).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

   "Everything about the affair fits and is quite innocent, excepting just one thing."

Main characters:

~ Detective-Inspector Humbleby, Gervase Fen, Garstin-Walsh, Jourdain, Saul Brebner, and Weems.

References:

- "like pneumoconiosis in coalmining" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the first war" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "batman" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "there’s no such thing as attempted manslaughter" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "delayed shock, or post-traumatic automatism" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "John Wilkes Booth, who assassinated Lincoln" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "Gross (Wikipedia HERE) and Taylor and Sydney Smith (Wikipedia HERE)."

Resources:

- Wikipedia has an article about Gervase Fen (HERE).

- TV's mildest-mannered detective also encountered a case involving an incriminating bullet hole in the wall (WARNING! SPOILERS! The Columbophile Blog HERE).

- We've visited rather extensively with Edmund Crispin several times: The Moving Toyshop (HERE), Fen Country (HERE), and Beware of the Trains (HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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"Disaster Was Indiscriminate. And It Had Taken Murder Out of My Hands."

(1) "The Shock."

By C. K. M. Scanlon.

First appearance: Popular Detective, October 1936.

Short short short story (1 page).

Online at The Pulpgen Archive (HERE).

   "Perfect crime? Far from it!"

YOUR mama probably never said there'd be days like this:

  "Without warning the floor beneath me cracked open like a coconut rind. A savage, rending sound, magnified into distance, pressed about my eardrums. The walls cavorted and split, and shattering glass exploded like doom opening for the cohorts of hell. Screams rose up all around me. A weight dropped loose from the suddenly cobwebbed ceiling, and my head took the full impact. I lost consciousness at once...."

Principal characters:

~ Inspector Shelting, Randolph, Tess, the head physician, and the unnamed narrator.

References:

- "Long Beach, California" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "Catalina Island" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "the strength of a Samson among the Philistines" (Wikipedia HERE).

- "March 11th, 1933" (Wikipedia HERE).

(2) "Filed in Person."

By C. K. M. Scanlon.

First appearance: Popular Detective, February 1939.

Short short short story (1 page).

Online at The Pulpgen Archive (HERE).

(Parental note: Mild profanity.)

   "There was the scrape of a match and a soft gasp from the girl. It was now or never."

THE D.A. gets conked, a material witness gets menaced, and a desperado gets buzzed. Case closed . . .

Principal characters:

~ John Barstow, Diana Wayne, and Gunner Overholt.

Resource:

- "C. K. M. Scanlon" didn't just write fiction but was "himself" a fiction. A story with the Scanlon byline could have been by any of the following, as FictionMags informs us:

  Scanlon, C. K. M. (fl. 1930s-1950s); house pseudonym used by Joe Archibald (1898-1986), W. T. Ballard (1903-1980), Robert Sidney Bowen (1900-1977), D. L. Champion (1902-1968), Edward Churchill (1902-1960), Ray Cummings (1887-1957), Tom Curry (1900-1976), Norman A. Daniels (1905-1995), Lester Dent (1904-1959), Laurence Donovan (1885-1948), George Fielding Eliot (1894-1971), Whitney Ellsworth (1908-1980), G. T. Fleming-Roberts (1910-1968), Charles Greenberg (fl. 1920s-1960s), Frank Gruber (1904-1969), Donald Bayne Hobart (1898-1970), Henry Kuttner (1915-1958), Johnston McCulley (1883-1958), George A. McDonald (fl. 1920s-1940s), Sam Merwin, Jr. (1910-1996), Frank Philipp (fl. 1990s), Jean Francis Webb (1910-1991) & Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986).

- Previous Scanlon stories that caught ONTOS's attention: "Footprints" and "Blood for Breakfast" (both HERE) and "Page the Murderer" (HERE).

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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