HERE'S ANOTHER ATTEMPT that works to combine the hardboiled motif with SFF, and it succeeds very well, with more characterization than usual; our protagonist has no inkling that very shortly he will have to undergo a life-changing . . .
"Shock Treatment."
By Stanley Mullen (1911-74).
Illustration by Wilson (?-?; HERE).
First appearance: Worlds of IF, September 1952.
First appearance: Worlds of IF, September 1952.
"One of us is nuts. It's a toss-up."
When a knockout femme comes to a down-on-his-luck bartender for help ("the task," she says, "should be simple"), trouble—and plenty of it—is only just beginning . . . .
Main characters:
~ Newlin:
"To him all men were enemies. As a spacebum, he had explored the raw expanding frontiers as Man surged from planet to planet."
~ Songeen:
"Then she came in—and he was no longer bored."
~ Careld:
". . . swept up the corpses into neat piles of ash . . ."
~ Genarion:
"His alien form was a bridge between two worlds . . ."
Comment: Just when you think it's going one way, this story takes the reader in totally unexpected directions; and while Mullen employs copious amounts of descriptive prose, he does it without being boring.
Typo: "sanity as its furthest riples".
References and resources:
- "cloud-shrouded Venus": Up until the 1960s, science fiction writers made the most of mankind's collective ignorance of Venus: "The impenetrable Venusian cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface; all the more so when early observations showed that not only was it similar in size to Earth, it possessed a substantial atmosphere. Closer to the Sun than Earth, the planet was frequently depicted as warmer, but still habitable by humans." (Wikipedia HERE and HERE).
- "elder brothers to the human race": The SFFnal trope of an elder race (a.k.a. forerunners or precursors) pops up in our story; see Wikipedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), and TV Tropes (HERE) for more details.
- "like Aeolian harps": "The Aeolian harp has a long history of being associated with the numinous, perhaps for its vibrant timbres that produce an ethereal sound. Homer relates that Hermes invented the lyre from dried sinews stretched over a tortoise shell. It was able to be played by the wind. The same is said of the lyre of King David, which was played by a wind sent from God." (Wikipedia HERE).
- "Chinese windbells": "Wind chimes started to become modernized around 1100 B.C. after the Chinese began to cast bells." (Wikipedia HERE).
- "as far beyond Einstein's as his were beyond Euclid's": If you're going very fast, then Einstein's your man; otherwise, you live in Euclid's universe. (Wikipedia HERE and HERE).
- There's more about our author on Wikipedia (HERE) and the SFE (HERE).
- We recently highlighted Stanley Mullen's crime/SFF hybrid "S.O.S. Aphrodite!" (HERE).
- "like Aeolian harps": "The Aeolian harp has a long history of being associated with the numinous, perhaps for its vibrant timbres that produce an ethereal sound. Homer relates that Hermes invented the lyre from dried sinews stretched over a tortoise shell. It was able to be played by the wind. The same is said of the lyre of King David, which was played by a wind sent from God." (Wikipedia HERE).
- "Chinese windbells": "Wind chimes started to become modernized around 1100 B.C. after the Chinese began to cast bells." (Wikipedia HERE).
- "as far beyond Einstein's as his were beyond Euclid's": If you're going very fast, then Einstein's your man; otherwise, you live in Euclid's universe. (Wikipedia HERE and HERE).
- There's more about our author on Wikipedia (HERE) and the SFE (HERE).
- We recently highlighted Stanley Mullen's crime/SFF hybrid "S.O.S. Aphrodite!" (HERE).
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The combination of hardboiled crime and science fiction is something I'm really starting to like. I thought Paul W. Fairman did a pretty good job of it in his short novel The Girl Who Loved Death.
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