"It Was a Rainy Night, and I Heard a Fog-horn Out in the River"

"Extra! Extra!"
By Robert E. Sherwood (1896-1955).
First appearance: Scribner's, July 1926.
Reprinted in EQMM, January 1950.
Online HERE.

A sad story about why you can't go home again . . .

. . . Over the crib hung a colored photograph of the Taj Mahal, a lovely, white building that Mr. Whidden had always wanted to see. He also wanted to see Singapore, and the Straits Settlements, and the west coast of Africa, places that he had read about in books.

He was thinking about these places, and wondering, whether little Conrad would ever see them, when his wife's voice rasped at him from the next room.  . . .

Robert Sherwood, a towering presence at 6 feet 8 inches, had many of his works adapted for movies and TV as well as producing screenplays, among them being The Petrified Forest (Bogart), Rebecca (Olivier), The Best Years of Our Lives (March), and The Bishop's Wife (Grant), some of which won Major Awards.

Resources:
- The Wikipedia article about Sherwood is HERE, and his film credits are linked HERE.

Category: Mainstream fiction with no criminous content that we can discern

"There Was an Absolute Minimum of Motivation for Crime"

"Murder, 1990."
By C. B. Gilford (1920-2010).
Short story.
First appearance: Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine (AHMM), October 1960.
Reprinted in Best Detective Stories of the Year, 16th Series (1961), Alfred Hitchcock's Tales to Keep You Spellbound (1976), The Best of Mystery (1980), Alfred Hitchcock's Book of Horror Stories: Book 9 (1989), and as "Murder 2090" in Dark Sins, Dark Dreams (1978).
Online HERE (pages 61-78).

Usually a name like "C. B. Gilford" conceals a female author, but in this case the "C. B." stands for "Charles Bernard," characterized as an "academic"; while he enjoyed a fruitful association with both Alfred Hitchcock's magazine and TV series (see the links below), Gilford also rates a listing in the Internet Science Fiction Database for his SF efforts, of which "Murder, 1990" is one.

In his introduction to the story in Best Detective Stories of the Year, Brett Halliday says:

Want a look into the future? Here it is, presented with such absolute conviction and realism that we feel the author is there, and that his manuscript must have come back to us by some weird manipulation of a Time Machine or some such.

My feeling after finishing this story was that the present isn't so bad after all.

You might feel that way, too.

Passages:

It was small, light, and seemed ready to fall apart at his touch.

Trembling, but overwhelmed by curiosity, he lifted the cover and glanced at the fly leaf. The Logic of Murder he read. For a moment he experienced a dismal disappointment. The word "logic" had some meaning for him, though vague. The last word, "murder," was completely and totally mysterious. The book was useless if he knew absolutely nothing of its subject matter. But as he pondered it, he was not so sure. The book might teach him what "murder" was. And "murder" might be something vastly entertaining.

* * *

It would be very nice to share a double cubicle with someone, to have someone to talk to, really talk to, someone to whisper to, out of the reach of the microphones, someone with whom to discuss strange and fascinating and bizarre ideas such as murder, and what civilization must have been like when individuals dared to murder one another.

* * *

Paul realized that he lived in an ideal civilization, where there was an absolute minimum of motivation for crime. Except the one that he had found . . .

* * *

Possibly she imagined he was going to caress her, despite the fact that such things were strictly forbidden during working hours. Her chubby shoulders trembled expectantly, awaiting his touch. He plunged the knife in quickly.

Resources:
- Gilford's TV contributions (6 times for Hitchcock) are listed and linked HERE, while his science fiction in notated HERE.

Category: Science fiction (future crime division)

"But You Have Had No Data To Go On"

"The Recrudescence of Sherlock Holmes."
By Frank Marshall White (?-?).
First appearance: Life, October 18, 1894.
Online HERE (2 pages, PDF).

Baker Street Blog caricature

A story proving that there really is a difference between being smart and being a smart aleck:

“What have I told you,” asked Holmes somewhat impatiently, “about deduction and analysis?”

Category: Sherlock Holmes spoofs (mildly amusing division)

European Pulp Science Fiction

That indefatigable researcher Jess Nevins has published two complementary essays about pulp fiction from overseas ("overseas" of the United States and Great Britain, that is).

We tend to forget (or, more likely, we never knew) that pulp was a world-wide publishing phenomenon not confined to an Anglophone readership.

In his first essay, Nevins chronicles European SF pulps prior to 1914:

THE HISTORY of science fiction in America and Great Britain has been the subject of a number of popular and academic studies, and in general is well known, at least among science fiction fans. But the history of European science fiction, defined in this case as the countries of continental Europe, the Scandinavian countries, Russia, and Turkey, is less well-known. Less coverage still has been given to the science fiction pulps of Europe.

In Europe, pulps were called everything from "dime novels" to "story papers" to "gialli" to "heftromane." They can be distinguished from magazines by the quality of paper (poor), the level of pay for writers (worse), the number of articles or stories (fewer), and literary aspirations (none). Proto-pulps, in the form of pamphlets and chapbooks, were common by the 1550s, and the most popular printed matter in Britain, France, and Germany in the 17th and 18th centuries was pamphlet fiction, whether the penny novelettes of Britain, the Bibliothèque Bleue canards of France, or the Volksbüchlein of Germany. Long before magazines became common reading matter, proto-pulps were wide-spread and enjoyed.

There were numerous European science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels published in the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century, but the fantastic was never as popular in the proto-pulps as adventure and romance stories were. This did not change until the 1860s and 1870s, when writers like Jules Verne, the Frenchman Camille Flammarion, and the Hungarian Mór Jókai wrote best-selling works of science fiction. During these decades European readers began to read science fiction in pamphlet form thanks to imports and translations of American dime novels and British story papers. This influx of science fiction slowly began to create, in the public's mind, the idea that science fiction was a discrete genre of fiction. Of course, this conception was still vague, as the idea of literary genres at all was still only nebulously understood.  . . .

In his second essay, Nevins continues his history of European SF pulps through the end of World War Two. Political turmoil on the Continent inevitably shaped the course of fiction:

. . . [T]he rise in fascism in the German pulps made them less acceptable to foreign publishers. As the decade progressed German pulps became increasingly pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, and anti-foreigner. Jörn Farrow changed from a straightforward science fiction pulp to one in which Germany's involvement in World War One was repeatedly justified and Jews were routinely blamed for German's defeat. By 1934 the most popular science fiction pulp in Germany was Paul Alfred Müller-Murnau's Sun Koh, Die Erbe von Atlantis (150 issues, 1933-1936), about a superhuman Aryan descendant of the Mayan kings and his involvement in the genocide of the lesser races.  . . .

It might surprise you to learn that a major producer of pulp fiction was Spain:

. . . It was Spain and not Germany which was the foremost producer of science fiction pulps during the 1930s. Even the caesura caused by the Spanish Civil War was only a three-year interruption. Few of the Spanish science fiction pulps had the longevity of their German counterparts; the longest-lasting of these Spanish science fiction pulps was José Canellas Casals and Francisco Darnis' Los Vampiros del Aire #1-45 (1933-1934), about the brothers Carlos and Marcos Bon, who put on costumes with mechanical wings and fight a gang of criminals with similar flying suits, as well as witches, ghosts, and werewolves. However, the most popular and longest-lasting Spanish pulp series of the 1930s, though a Western, had huge amounts of fantastic material.  . . .

Even after the war Spanish pulps didn't suffer:

. . . World War Two put an end to the pulp industry in most European countries and depressed it in the rest. The only exception was Spain, which as a non-combatant suffered the least of any European country. Correspondingly, the pulp industry in Spain flourished. While adventure, detective, and Western pulps remained roughly as popular as they were before the war, science fiction became more popular, with a larger number of science fiction pulps appearing than at any time since the start of the Spanish pulp industry in 1921.  . . .

Resources:
- Essay 1: "An Introduction to Pulp Fiction in Europe Before 1914" is HERE.

- Essay 2: "Planetary Romance, Zombie Mentors, and The Rise of Fascism: European Pulp Fiction 1914-1945" is HERE.

- A Wikipedia article about Nevins is HERE.

Category: Science fiction with a pulpy European flavor

A Perfectly Realized Nightmare

"It's a Good Life."
The Twilight Zone (156 episodes, 1959-64).
Season 3, Episode 8. First broadcast: 3 November 1961.
Online HERE (24 minutes 55 seconds).
IMDb listing HERE. For sale HERE.

Director: James Sheldon. Writers: Rod Serling (1924-75), based on a story (online HERE) by Jerome Bixby (1923-98).

Cast: Billy Mumy (Anthony Fremont), John Larch (Anthony's father), Cloris Leachman (Anthony's mother), Don Keefer (Dan Hollis), Max Showalter (Pat Riley), Alice Frost (Aunt Amy), Jeanne Bates (Ethel Hollis), Lenore Kingston (Thelma Dunn), Tom Hatcher (Bill Soames), Rod Serling (host and narrator).

Tonight's story on The Twilight Zone is somewhat unique and calls for a different kind of introduction. This, as you may recognize, is a map of the United States, and there's a little town there called Peaksville. On a given morning not too long ago, the rest of the world disappeared and Peaksville was left all alone. Its inhabitants were never sure whether the world was destroyed and only Peaksville left untouched or whether the village had somehow been taken away. They were, on the other hand, sure of one thing: the cause. A monster had arrived in the village. Just by using his mind, he took away the automobiles, the electricity, the machines — because they displeased him — and he moved an entire community back into the dark ages — just by using his mind.

Now I'd like to introduce you to some of the people in Peaksville, Ohio. This is Mr. Fremont. It's in his farmhouse that The Monster resides. This is Mrs. Fremont. And this is Aunt Amy, who probably had more control over The Monster in the beginning than almost anyone. But one day she forgot. She began to sing aloud. Now, The Monster doesn't like singing, so his mind snapped at her, turned her into the smiling, vacant thing you're looking at now. She sings no more. And you'll note that the people in Peaksville, Ohio, have to smile. They have to think happy thoughts and say happy things because once displeased, The Monster can wish them into a cornfield or change them into a grotesque, walking horror. This particular monster can read minds, you see. He knows every thought, he can feel every emotion.

Oh yes, I did forget something, didn't I? I forgot to introduce you to The Monster. This is The Monster [we see a little boy swinging on a gate]. His name is Anthony Fremont. He's six years old, with a cute little-boy face and blue, guileless eyes. But when those eyes look at you, you'd better start thinking happy thoughts, because the mind behind them is absolutely in charge. This is the Twilight Zone.

We used to think Rod Serling's introduction to "It's a Good Life" is too long and gives away too much from the start, but now we're not so sure. (During the long run of his series, Serling had a tendency, which he sometimes indulged, to be verbose and preachy—but he was also capable of affecting poetry.) It's hard to think how Serling's "set up" could be done differently or better. To start in medias res without this necessary information could have proved disorienting to the audience of that era.

Anyhow, for our money "It's a Good Life" just might be the finest horror story ever produced for television. There isn't a wasted word or gesture, the pacing is perfect, and the tension generated by all the actors is palpable. Everyone except the little monster conveys the smothered fear they're experiencing, the overwhelming need to run away from this living hell they're trapped in. Yes, TENSION and DREAD encapsulate the emotional states of the grownups, as they tiptoe around a living bomb with the full knowledge of what happens to anyone who crosses him: being wished away into the cornfield (it sounds so innocuous, doesn't it?).

Seeing adults who should be in charge abasing themselves before a child, feigning cheerfulness with as much earnestness as they can muster, being complaisant when their impulse is to take a stick or a bottle or something and beat this kid to death—the whole situation is a complete inversion of the normal order of things, and we're sure Bixby and Serling—being writers who strove to wring out of their characters as many emotional variances as possible—loved it.

For example:

The Monster: No kids came over to play today, not a single one, and I wanted someone to play with!

His Father: Well, Anthony, you remember what happened the last time some kids came over to play? The little Fredricks boy and his sister.

The Monster: I had a real good time.

Father: Oh, sure you did, you had a real good time, and it's good that you had a good time, it's real good. It's just that . . .

The Monster: It's just that what?

Father: Well, Anthony, you, uh . . . you wished them away into the cornfield, and their mommy and daddy got real upset.

The dreadful irony of what the father is saying — "it's good that you had a good time, it's real good" — isn't lost on the audience or the father, who must make murder seem like a good thing. GOOD—count how many times that word is used in the script, and think how often it's employed as a euphemism for EVIL.

Another instance: When the father, a farmer who makes his living off the land, looks out the window he almost loses his cool:

Father: It's snowing outside! Anthony, are you making it snow?

The Monster [nonchalantly]: Yes, I'm making it snow.

Father: Why, that'll ruin half the crops! You know that, don't you, half the crops! That's what that . . . [His wife hurries to his side and through small, barely perceptible gestures urges him to calm down, which he does] But it's good you're making it snow. It's real good. And tomorrow's going to be a good day too.

Only it isn't.

Just 25 minutes long, "It's a Good Life" will have you as tied up in knots as the characters on the screen. This show proves that Hollywood is—or at least was—capable of producing engrossing entertainment without bludgeoning the viewer with a message.

But Hollywood is also capable of producing gross "entertainment." A feature-length film, Twilight Zone: The Movie, was released (or maybe it escaped) in 1983, in which they unsuccessfully attempted to remake "It's a Good Life" with major annoying changes in the plot—and in color. They shouldn't have bothered.

And they shouldn't have bothered with a "sequel" of sorts, either, in the reprised Twilight Zone episode "It's Still a Good Life" (2003), in which The Monster has a daughter.

Rod Serling said that when he looked back over his series (156 shows in all), about one third of the stories were bad, a third were only fair—but a third of them were something to be proud of. In our estimation, "It's a Good Life" is definitely one of those he should have been proud of.

Category: Science fiction (tales of terror department)

"When the Magic Goes Away, What Can Replace It?"

TROLL VALLEY.
By Lars Walker (b. 1950).
Amazon Kindle Edition.
2012. 264 pages.
For sale HERE.

In all of his novels, Lars Walker has managed to combine realism with wild fantasy, producing a fascinating hybrid genre that makes for compelling reading. As an artist, he has arrived, and he just keeps getting better and better.

In Troll Valley, as in all of his books, Walker delves into the darker recesses of the human condition, yet manages to be entertaining—even humorous—without being depressing, ranging from hilarity to pathos, which is no small feat for any writer.

His main character and narrator, Christian Anderson, is a boy struggling to become a man who was born with a major birth defect—a withered arm—but is profoundly crippled more in spirit than body.

Another sure thing about a Lars Walker book: its unpredictability. Just when you think it will go one way, Walker surprises you with unexpected developments.

For instance, consider the faltering grip of the fairy folk indigenous to Christian's ancestral homeland, Norway, on the imaginations and spiritual lives of the settlers in the New World.

For Christian, the spirits just beyond man's ken are a day-to-day reality embodied—if that's the right word—in his fairy godmother. Yes, an honest-to-goodness fairy godmother (and you might as well forget everything you think you know about fairy godmothers), as well as the "red caps" who materialize when he is frightened or angry; their job is to exact a terrifying penalty on humans who would harm him.

As well-protected as he is from others, however, Christian has a greater enemy: himself. Before Troll Valley ends, he will say and do things that threaten to destroy him and the love he craves.

It might be inadvisable to call Troll Valley a roman à clef, but there certainly is a wealth of background to life on the Great Plains of the early 20th century in the grand tradition of Laura Ingalls Wilder and Willa Cather. Toss in hints of "The Ransom of Red Chief," The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and It's a Wonderful Life and you'll have an idea of how diverse Troll Valley is. At the risk of sounding trite, it would make a great movie.

And the embedded bedtime story of Snow-White-Rose-Red is laugh-out-loud hilarious; all by itself it makes the book worth reading.

You'll love your stay in Troll Valley.

Exceptional passages:

. . . It was bone-aching cold, cold out of a sky clear as a dead man’s mind, black with the infinite blackness of space, so that the stars and the moon stung your eyes looking at them, just as the wind stung your cheeks and clawed at the space between mitten and sleeve-end. It was a wind to knock you over, out of the arctic itself, whipping great white snakes off the shoulders of the snowdrifts to curl around the farmyard.  . . .

. . . “If only you could eat beauty. My home was a rocky little island, not much to speak of, but most of Norway is so beautiful you could cry. Fjords a thousand feet deep and smooth as a mirror, and the mountains walling them in a thousand feet high, with ribbons of bridal veil waterfalls plunging down their sides, and their tops hidden in the clouds. I think Heaven will be like that—but in Heaven we will not want bread.”

Resources:
- Lars Walker's webpage is HERE, while a weblog he contributes to is HERE.

Category: Historical fantasy

"You Must Conform!" - From "The Beautiful People" to "Number 12 Looks Just Like You"

"Once dispirited, the individual can be molded by the state with endless social experiments and lifestyle calibrations." — Mark Levin

The theme of "man against society" is an ancient one. Countless works of fiction, many of them in the science fiction genre, have explored it (e.g., A Clockwork Orange, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World).

A woman or a man finds himself at odds with his society. She doesn't "fit in." Or perhaps society wants to "mold" him into its image. The sources of conflict are as varied as life itself, but one common problem in these stories is when the State threatens to become "god"—essentially, man has come to exist for the sake of society rather than the opposite.

Such an inversion of the natural order inevitably leads to conflict—and conflict is the beating heart of any story.

(Note: It's best if you read the story first and then view the video.)

FROM THE PAGE . . .

"The Beautiful People."
By Charles Beaumont (1929-67).
First appearance: Worlds of If Science Fiction, September 1952.
Online HERE.

Major characters:
Mary Cuberle — Reluctant
Mrs. Zena Cuberle — Perfect
Doctor Hortel — Baffled
Daddy and Grandpa — Wise
Mr. Willmes — Sympathetic

The story's opening plants us firmly in the future (or what was assumed to be the future in the early '50s):

MARY sat quietly and watched the handsome man's legs blown off; watched further as the great ship began to crumple and break into small pieces in the middle of the blazing night. She fidgeted slightly as the men and the parts of the men came floating dreamily through the wreckage out into the awful silence. And when the meteorite shower came upon the men, gouging holes through everything, tearing flesh and ripping bones, Mary closed her eyes.

"Mother."

Mrs. Cuberle glanced up from her magazine.

"Hmm?"

"Do we have to wait much longer?"

"I don't think so. Why?"

Mary said nothing but looked at the moving wall.

"Oh, that." Mrs. Cuberle laughed and shook her head. "That tired old thing. Read a magazine, Mary, like I'm doing. We've all seen that a million times."

"Does it have to be on, Mother?"

"Well, nobody seems to be watching. I don't think the doctor would mind if I switched it off."

Mrs. Cuberle rose from the couch and walked to the wall. She depressed a little button and the life went from the wall, flickering and glowing.

Mrs. Cuberle is very worried about her daughter and has brought her to a psychiatrist.

Mary has started doing things her society has long since "outgrown": reading books instead of tapes; sleeping, which has been abolished by this time; eating and chewing food; and most worrisome of all, refusing to undergo the Transformation.  . . .

The Transformation promises perfection and contentment:

A picture of Mother sat upon the dresser and Mary considered this now. Looked for a long time at the slender, feminine neck. The golden skin, smooth and without blemish, without wrinkles and without age. The dark brown eyes and the thin tapers of eyebrows, the long black lashes, set evenly, so that each half of the face corresponded precisely. The half-parted-mouth, a violet tint against the gold, the white, white teeth, even, sparkling.

Mother. Beautiful. Transformed Mother.

And then un-Transformed Mary regards herself in a mirror:

The image of a rather chubby girl, without lines of rhythm or grace, without perfection. Splotchy skin full of little holes, puffs in the cheeks, red eruptions on the forehead. Perspiration, shapeless hair flowing onto shapeless shoulders down a shapeless body. Like all of them, before the Transformation.

Mrs. Cuberle, in a revealing outburst that confirms her essential narcissism, is horrified that everyone might think she's "the mother of an idiot." It's clear she doesn't really love her daughter.

For Mary, refusing to go along will prove costly and disruptive. Since no one else has ever refused the Transformation, the rigid society into which Mary has been born is unprepared for her individuality, precipitating a social crisis. Without intending to, she has become a threat to the status quo.

And there seems to be no hope of finding anyone who will help her.

. . . TO THE SCREEN

"Number 12 Looks Just Like You."
The Twilight Zone (156 episodes, 1959-64).
Season 5, Episode 17. First broadcast: 24 January 1964.
IMDb listing HERE.
Video: 25 minutes 7 seconds.
Online (we hope) HERE.

Director — Abner Biberman.
Writers — Charles Beaumont and John Tomerlin.
Rod Serling — Series creator.

Episode cast:
Collin Wilcox Paxton — Marilyn Cuberle (as Collin Wilcox).
Richard Long — Uncle Rick / Dr. Rex / Professor Sigmund Friend.
Pamela Austin — Valerie / Marilyn (as Pam Austin).
Suzy Parker — Lana Cuberle / Simmons / Grace / Doe / Jane / #12.
Rod Serling — Narrator / Himself - Host.

The Twilight Zone adaptation of "The Beautiful People" keeps the basic theme of the non-conformist individual striving against an all-powerful, hive-mind society but makes substantial changes in characterization and, especially, the serious tone of the short story.

Into the plotline a satirical tone has insinuated itself, one that threatens to undermine the theme. (A glance at the expanded character list by itself should give you an inkling.) You can decide if it does.

As a result of these changes, you might be reminded more of Brave New World than Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Consequently, there's a danger in this version that the viewer might lose sight of how monstrous the Transformation is, since it's used to secure the smothering grip the State exerts on its subjects (not "citizens"); but the producers seem to be hoping that percipient viewers would nevertheless "get it."

Rod Serling's opening narration—slyly sidestepping the story's actual theme—sets it up:

Given the chance, what young girl wouldn't happily exchange a plain face for a lovely one? What girl could refuse the opportunity to be beautiful? For want of a better estimate, let's call it the year 2000. At any rate, imagine a time in the future where science has developed a means of giving everyone the face and body he dreams of. It may not happen tomorrow, but it happens now in the Twilight Zone.

Only for Marilyn, it's not something she dreams of—it's a nightmare.

Category: Science fiction (sociological variety)