"I’d Done the Job I Was Hired To Do, and I Wasn’t Being Paid Enough To Go Inject Myself into Somebody Else’s Gunfight"

"Trouble Is My Business."

By Mike Kupari (ISFDb HERE and the SFE HERE).

First appearance: Baen Free Library 2022.

Novelette (15 pages).

Online at the Baen Free Library (HERE).

(Parental caution: Some strong language.)

   "I’m a detective, a professional snoop, and a city like the Big D gives me plenty of opportunity for work. I was born here, I grew up here, and it’s my home."

SAM SPADE had the elusive Maltese Falcon to deal with, but at least it was a thing you could relate to. For private eye Easy Novak, however, this particular missing item is something else:

   It was a perfect sphere of some dark gray metal, maybe six inches in diameter. It was completely covered in incredibly intricate engravings and runes. Sliding his thumb across the screen, he rotated the image of the object. It appeared damaged on one side; gouges and scoring marred its surface and the markings had been rendered illegible. “It’s made of a hard metal alloy, the exact composition of which is unknown, and weighs ten pounds. It emits a strong magnetic field.”

   “What . . . uh . . . what is it?”

   “That is an excellent question, Detective, but truth be told I don’t know."

Despite that, or maybe because of it, the owner wants it back, and the only way to do that is to track down not one but two missing persons, individuals who have their own special reasons for staying missing . . .

Principal characters:

~ Lily ("Bless her heart, I couldn’t run the agency without her"), Cyrus Vermillion ("He’s an attorney, the personal consigliere of Felix Konrad, and has worked for him for many years"), Felix Konrad ("I need your help"), Miguel Konrad ("had gotten addicted to neural-linked virtual reality and abused it so badly that it caused long-term neurological damage"), Maya ("She was good for him, or so I thought"), Iggy ("Ignatius P. Sanchez was a disaffected COFfer turned informant, provided you had the cash to make it worth his while"), and Ezekiel Novak ("There was no time to do anything else—I fired").

Typos: "I you were right"; "from the an associate chapter"; "the pursuers heads’ down"; "how he planning on combining it". 

References:

- "the only habitable planet in the 18 Scorpii system":

  Our author has done his homework, unlike other SFFictioneers we've seen. The prospects for moving to 18 Scorpii are looking brighter all the time. The Lowell Observatory has called it a "Solar Twin":

  "The result of this study demonstrates that 18 Scorpii, the one star that seems to best meet all the criteria of a solar twin, is practically a solar clone in its brightness variations over the past 10 years. Though over 270 trillion miles away, 18 Scorpii is providing key insights into the long-term variability of our own star – and the magnitude of its influence on terrestrial climate change." (Lowell Observatory Press Release HERE.) (Also see Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

From Freestarcharts.com. Click on image to enlarge.

- "the terraformed zones":

  We've encountered the concept of terraforming before. (Wikipedia HERE and Universe Today HERE.) (Also see ONTOS HERE, under Resources.)

M-G-M image.

- "My car’s auto-navigation function was on the fritz again, so I was driving it manually":

  A nice idea, but, oh man, the liabilities! (See Wikipedia HERE, HERE, and HERE.)

- "To protect against data theft, none of my agency’s records or private client data was kept on a computer connected to the planetary network":

  Why doesn't everybody do that? (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "The ship was last seen departing the Zeta Leporis system":

  It's about 71 light-years from Earth. (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "addicted to neural-linked virtual reality":

  Larry Niven's first Gil Hamilton story dealt with the same problem. (Wikipedia HERE and Technovelgy HERE.)

- "its precise function has never been ascertained. It’s a relic of the First Antecessor Race":

  A relic of alien high-tech also figured significantly in Isaac Asimov's "The Key" (HERE). (Also see cinepicker.com HERE and Rachel Sherlock HERE.)

- "it’s something tangible, something real, something ancient and mysterious":

  Relics seem to exercise extraordinary powers over some people's thinking. (Wikipedia HERE.)

Resources:

- As the postscript tells us, the setting of Mike Kupari's "Trouble Is My Business" is "the world of his upcoming hardboiled detective science fiction novel, Trouble Walked In, featuring detective Ezekiel 'Easy' Novak," several chapters of which are online (HERE).

The author in Afghanistan in 2011.

- Hardboiled science fiction detectives seem to crop up when and where you least expect them:

  . . . William C. Bailey's "'X' for Expendable" (HERE)

  . . . John Kessel's "The Miracle of Ivar Avenue" (HERE)

  . . . Mike Resnick's "The Long and Short of It" (HERE)

  . . . Henry Slesar's "The Invisible Man Murder Case" (HERE)

  . . . Robert W. Lowndes's "The Futuristic Detective" (HERE)

  . . . Stanley Mullen's "S.O.S. Aphrodite!" (HERE)

  . . . Stanley Mullen's "Shock Treatment" (HERE)

  . . . Larry Niven's "A Kind of Murder" (HERE)

  . . . and Kacey Ezell's "Ophir Chasma" (HERE).

The bottom line:

(Click on image to enlarge.)

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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UPDATE: Murray Leinster's "Grooves" and "Evidence"

Added and updated Pulgen Archive links to both stories (HERE).

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UPDATE: Richard B. Sale's "The Will" and John L. Benton's "No Blood"

Added an illo and a Luminist Archives link and replaced the cover image for Richard B. Sale's "The Will." Also added a Pulpgen Archive link to John L. Benton's "No Blood" (HERE).

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2K and Counting

OUR computer says this is the 1,999th posting on ONTOS, but our Blogger editor says it's Number 2,000. Who are we to argue with Blogger? We started this weblog back in September 2013 and haven't regretted it yet. (Some of you Dear Readers out there might disagree.) 

  At any rate, we try for quality over quantity. None of this: "You gotta read it, man! It's way cool."  We always let YOU decide whether it's worth the trip or not, which is why we very rarely let you know our opinion. (The piece under scrutiny might be terrible; if it is, just remember that there's some value even in a bad example.) 

  We don't take advertising (and any self-serving plugs in Comments are always firmly deleted as soon as they're detected). If we happen to link to some pay site, it's only because we couldn't find the story or book anywhere else on the World Wide Blabbie. (We get paid for none of this, not even kickbacks from the big distributors; it's all out of pocket—our pocket—so while we appreciate any offers of assistance, we must gratefully decline.)

It's great that ONTOS has an international audience. Here are the numbers for the last 12 years:

United States . . . . . . 359K

Singapore . . . . . . . . 152K

Russia . . . . . . . . 53.3K

Hong Kong . . . . . . 41.6K

Israel . . . . . . . 30.2K

Canada . . . . . . 23.3K

Sweden . . . . . . 22.6K

Brazil . . . . . . 22.1K

Germany . . . . . 19.3K

France . . . . . 18.9K

United Kingdom . . . 16.5K

Ukraine . . . . 14.7K

Indonesia . . . 9.48K

Netherlands . . 8.64K

India . . . . . 6.93K

Vietnam . . . . 6.38K

Austria . . . . 4.19K

China . . . . . 4.09K

Japan . . . . . 3.99K

Other . . . . . . . . 115K.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

. . . and here are the views stats:

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Thank you for visiting ONTOS. We really appreciate it when you drop by. Come back any time.

— The Editor

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"Proof, Absolute and Complete and As Neat As We Could Wish!"

"The Vertical Line."

By Freeman Willis Crofts (1879-1957; Wikipedia HERE and HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the GAD Wiki HERE; and FadedPage HERE).

Illustrations by W. R. S. Stott (1878-1939; HERE).

First appearance: The Illustrated London News, November 20, 1935.

Reprinted in:

  Detective Fiction Weekly, May 23, 1936.

  Fifty Masterpieces of Mystery, 1937.

  Murder for the Millions, 1946.

  Rex Stout’s Mystery Monthly #9, 1947.

  Horror and Homicide, 1949.

  The 9.50 Up Express and Other Mysteries, 2020.

Short short short story (4 pages; 4 illos).

Online at Archive.org (HERE).

(Note: Illos poorly reproduced but the text is legible.)

   "His scheme was without a flaw, and he had carried it out with absolute precision."

YET another attempt at a perfect murder. Motives: Cherchez la femme (as always), blackmail (as always), and a depleted bank account (as always). Means: "a toy, in a sense; scarcely a serious weapon." Opportunity: It's all in the timing. Alibi: A broken glass beaker and a telephone off the hook. As for that police inspector, he shouldn't be a problem . . .

Main characters:

~ Arnold Wilde ("had been too clever for any detective who could be put on the job"), Alys Deane ("He could not take Alys Deane to theatres and on week-end excursions, nor give her the continuous presents she so obviously considered her due"), Hubbard ("knew the truth"), Hamilton ("The top of the desk bore a heterogeneous collection of personal treasures, which Hamilton guarded as the apple of his eye"), Sergeant Carter ("The beaker, the thread, the telephone," Carter murmured. "Something fishy about all three"), and Chief Inspector French ("The position of the body showed that it hit the desk in falling").

References:

- "it is a signal to the exchange":

  "When a subscriber's phone is off-hook, it presents an electrical resistance across the line which causes current to flow through the telephone and wires to the central office. In a manually operated switchboard, this current flowed through a relay coil and actuated a buzzer or a lamp on the operator's switchboard, signaling the operator to perform service." (Wikipedia HERE.)

  Perry Mason, Murder: She Wrote, Columbo, and other TV show villains also used telephones to support an alibi.

- "The pen of the barograph vibrated":

  "A barograph is a barometer that records the barometric pressure over time in graphical form. This instrument is also used to make a continuous recording of atmospheric pressure. The pressure-sensitive element, a partially evacuated metal cylinder, is linked to a pen arm in such a way that the vertical displacement of the pen is proportional to the changes in the atmospheric pressure." (Wikipedia HERE.)

Resources:

- When he was at his best, Freeman Wills Crofts got favorable notices. Here's a very short review of Antidote to Venom (1938), an inverted mystery, in The Illustrated London News, January 21, 1939:

  Also see J. F. Norris's review at Pretty Sinister Books (HERE); the book is online at FadedPage (HERE).

- We were wondering where Crofts's series character, Inspector French, got his name when we came across this from The Illustrated London News, January 22, 1881:

- We've encountered Freeman Wills Crofts a few times, his novels Many a Slip (HERE) and The Groote Park Murder (HERE), and his short stories "Unbreakable Alibi" (HERE), "The Greuze Girl" (HERE), and "The Mystery of the Sleeping-Car Express" (HERE).

The bottom line:

From The Illustrated London News, April 27, 1957.

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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Miscellaneous Monday—Number Forty-two

"What Is the Appeal of Detective Fiction?"

By Gavin Holman.

1981 Dissertation.

7 pages.

Online at Academia.edu (HERE).

  "The genre of detective fiction has so many aspects that it is impossible to evaluate a general reason for its popularity."

NOTE! The solutions to several mysteries—Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Murder on the Orient Express, and Ten Little Niggers—are revealed here. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Some excerpts:

Our author starts, like Rex Stout, by being careful to differentiate between mystery fiction and detective fiction:

  . . . with the detective story, the requirement is not a fast-moving piece of descriptive writing or an unresolved mystery. The interest is an intellectual one. The mystery exists, the crime or event has taken place and it is the detective's job to unravel the mixture of threads surrounding the truth to solve the mystery. In providing the initial mystery the author is challenging the reader to use his own powers of deduction, logic and reason to establish the true sequence of events and thence the ultimate solution, before his own detective does. If the reader fails, a case which is hoped for by the author or his sales would soon drop, the reader does not lose anything. The revelation he receives as the detective lays bare the facts of the case can often be more satisfying than solving it himself.

  . . . There are three basic elements to detective fiction: The crime or event which forms the mystery basis for the story. The detective. A series of observations and events, trivial, commonplace and apparently unconnected.

  . . . If the detective did not solve the mystery, the story would no longer be classified as a detective story, it would then be a crime novel or a mystery novel depending on conditions. However, I feel that the appeal of detective fiction lies mainly in the fact that it is essentially an intellectual challenge or an admiration of the prowess of the detective.

  . . . The conclusions reached by the great detectives, based on their phenomenal powers and years of research, are today reached by painstaking scientific analysis using modern technology. Consequently the modern detective uses his talents to investigate the immaterial clues, those of the situation, alibis, motives, contradictions and opportunities.

   . . . In these days of mass communication and information at one's fingertips, the amateur detective is in decline, and the emphasis is on the professional, whether official in the case of the police, or unofficial in the case of the private investigator, and retired examples of both.

  . . . I think that a proving of the improbable is perhaps the essence of detective fiction.

Resources:

- Somerset Maugham's essay, "The Decline and Fall of the Detective Story," is online at Archive.org (HERE; borrow only).

- Rex Stout's comments about mystery and detective fiction can be found (HERE).

- Our last Miscellaneous Monday was about how the media have treated Jack the Ripper (HERE).

The bottom line:

By John Longstaff. Click on image to enlarge.

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It Pays To Advertise

ACCORDING to Tim Suddeth at Opening a Mystery, we have the creator of Lord Peter Wimsey to thank for our title:

  After college, Dorothy L. Sayers went to work with Blackwell Publishing, where she had two books of poetry published. Then in 1922, she went to work as a copywriter at S. H. Benson’s advertising agency in London. They credit her with coining the slogan, “It pays to advertise.”

HERE'S a potpourri of advertisements that we've stumbled across in the last twelve years while working on this weblog. We apologize in advance for any that lack clarity or might need enlargement. Clicking on the image might help:

 - This one is from the December 1950 Crime-Fighting Detective comic:

 - . . . and this is from a 1953 comic for The Dollar Mystery Guild:

  - Speaking of Sayers:

  - Here's one about a new book from The Outlook, July 25, 1896:

  - The Illustrated London News for August 3, 1901, celebrates the return of You-Know-Who:

  - The next one, from The Illustrated London News for October 12, 1901, not only capitalizes on the Great Detective's resurgence but also plays a trick on the reader:

  - A latter-day problem solver gets noticed (January 15, 1974):

  - There was a time when you could find handgun ads everywhere:

  - Here's another one from Collier's, September 25, 1909. Bat Masterson, featured here, was a legend in his own time:

  - . . . and even machine guns:

  - It's a little recognized fact that women can make the best detectives:

  - If you're just aching to go into space, this might be the way to get there:

  - For a while the Jetsonmobile seemed just around the corner (1959 ad):

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"Apparently, It Could Somehow Be Made To Twist the Human Mind"

"The Key."

By Isaac Asimov (1920-92; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the SFE HERE; the IMDb HERE; complete bibliography HERE; and Asimov Online HERE).

Wendell Urth No. 4 (ISFDb HERE).

First appearance: The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1966.

Reprints (numerous) page (ISFDb HERE).

Reprints covers (ISFDb HERE).

Novelette (original: 27 pages; reprint: 30 pages).

Online at Archive.org (HERE) and (HERE). (The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction Special also includes a 4-page article by L. Sprague de Camp and a 5-page bibliography up to 1974).

   "This instrument is a key, as you see, but not just a key to a bit more knowledge. It is a key to the final solution of men’s problems."

SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY (SFF) absolutely bulges with stories of encounters by ordinary folks with extraordinary artifacts left behind by some advanced civilization (e.g., Tolkien's Ring of Power, the TMA-1 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and so on almost ad infinitum).

Today's story centers on just such a device but also has the added attraction of one of Ellery Queen's (the author) favorite plot devices, the dying clue. Since its solution seems to lie in the vast expanses of outer space, it's obvious, isn't it, that the only person equipped to unravel it must be a reclusive agoraphobe with bad eyesight . . .

Principal characters:

~ Karl Jennings ("knew he was going to die"), James Strauss ("what Strauss wanted was something far more; something Jennings would fight to prevent"), H. Seton Davenport ("considering something as a wish-fulfillment idea is one thing, but planning it as a practical scheme of action to be Hitlerized through is something else"), M. T. Ashley ("Have you considered what’s been happening to the Earth in the last two centuries?"), Ferrant ("He's not the only one in the Bureau under suspicion"), Gorbansky ("swears the Device did not turn up anywhere"), and Wendell Urth ("That oddball, What’s-his-name — Wendell Urth").

Typos: "started [stared] for a moment"; "astonomers".

References:

- "The particles dropped with the slowness characteristic of the Moon":

  Are we the only one who noticed how fast the people below the Moon's surface moved in Kubrick's 2001?

- "The Earth was low on the eastern horizon almost full in phase, bright and blue-streaked":

Artwork by Chesley Bonestell.

- "Lately there had been the slow rise of a distant rumble which wanted not only a population drop but a selected drop — the survival of the fittest, with the self-declared fit choosing the criteria of fitness"; "I want the Earth to be inherited by the elite, which means by men like ourselves." See Wikipedia (HERE), (HERE), and (HERE), and TV Tropes (HERE) and (HERE).

- "an area glowing with the tiny phosphorescence of Lunar bacteria":

  It's almost certain that bacteria have been found on the Moon, but exactly how they got there is still an unsettled matter. (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "A telepathic amplifier":

  "It's worth noting that for the above reasons telepathy is one of the most potentially pervertable powers, since it's basically an invasion of privacy of the worst kind. The telepath is the sighted man in the kingdom of the blind, and, provided he's discreet, he can know everyone down to their most intimate detail and can use them accordingly." (See TV Tropes HERE.) The world's richest man (at the moment) is taking a different approach. (See Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the western rim of Mare Imbrium":

  "In 1971, the crewed Apollo 15 mission landed in the southeastern region of Mare Imbrium, between Hadley Rille and the Apennine Mountains. Commander David Scott and Lunar Module Pilot James Irwin spent three days on the surface of the Moon, including 18½ hours outside the spacecraft on lunar extra-vehicular activity." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "Euclid's fifth postulate?":

  "If a line segment intersects two straight lines forming two interior angles on the same side that are less than two right angles, then the two lines, if extended indefinitely, meet on that side on which the angles sum to less than two right angles." (Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

- "Newton’s second law of motion":

  "The change of motion of an object is proportional to the force impressed; and is made in the direction of the straight line in which the force is impressed." (Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

- "Herschel" (HERE) and "Uranus" (HERE).

- "a spot exactly between Ptolemaeus" (HERE) "and Copernicus" (HERE).

- "the crater Tycho is the most conspicuous feature on the Moon’s surface." (Wikipedia HERE and HERE.)

- "named for an American astronomer, W. C. Bond." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "The crater Alphonsus." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "Tsiolkovsky, for instance." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "the Sinus Medii—the Middle Bay—over which the Earth is perpetually at Zenith":

  "Sinus Medii (Latin, sinus mediī, 'Middle Bay') is a small lunar mare. It takes its name from its location at the intersection of the Moon's equator and prime meridian; as seen from the Earth, this feature is located in the central part of the Moon's near side, and it is the point closest to the Earth. From this spot, the Earth would always appear directly overhead, although the planet's position would vary slightly due to libration." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- Other craters: "Lomonosov" (HERE), "Jules Verne" (HERE), "Joliot-Curie" (HERE), "Atlas" (HERE), "the Straight Wall" (HERE), "Fabricius" (HERE), "Archimedes" (HERE), and "Clavius" (HERE).

- "A rebus that couldn’t mean more clearly 'Go to Urth'":

  "A rebus is a puzzle device that combines the use of illustrated pictures with individual letters to depict words or phrases." (Wikipedia HERE.)

- "a Galactic lens in soft three-dimensionality." (Wikipedia HERE.)

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Resources:

- A few of ONTOS's previous encounters with science fictional treatments of telepathy include, but are not limited to, these: Daniel F. Galouye's "Kangaroo Court" (HERE), George Chailey's "Death of a Telepath" (HERE), Anne McCaffrey's "Apple" (HERE), and Charles D. Cunningham, Jr.'s "The Man Who Flew" (HERE).

- Our extraterrologist has characteristics very much like another ratiocinator that we've met with many times here, and that's no coincidence. See what we mean by consulting Jack D. Wages's "Isaac Asimov’s Debt to Edgar Allan Poe" (HERE and scroll down) at the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore:

  "It is, however, in a collection of short stories, Asimov’s Mysteries, that his debt to Poe is most obvious. In 'The Singing Bell' the mental gymnastics of Asimov’s version of C. Auguste Dupin, the ironically named extraterrologist Dr. Wendell Urth [Like Poe, Asimov is sensitive to names, often using them humorously — the agent from TBI (Terrestrial Bureau of Investigation) who repeatedly requests Urth’s aid is H. Seton Davenport.], are convincing testimony to the eccentric amateur detective’s origin. In addition to his ability to perform astounding feats of analysis, Urth’s love of music and books, his cloistered existence — invariably he is enclosed in his cocoon-like habitat — and his chiding of obtuse policemen are only a few traits that remind one of Poe’s chevalier."

- Isaac Asimov and Wendell Urth are no strangers to ONTOS; see (HERE) and (HERE). We don't think it's necessary to read the stories in any particular order, but you might want to start with "The Singing Bell," since it introduces the character.

The bottom line:

By Gary Larson.

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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