"A Toad, a Wistful Toad, with Jewels in Its Head"

"The Witness."
By Eric Frank Russell (1905-78).
First appearance: Other Worlds, September 1951.
Reprinted multiple times (HERE).
Short story (20 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

"The eyes of the world were focused on the courtroom where the monster from space was on trial. The Prosecutor had an air-tight case built on the testimony of sixteen witnesses, while the Defense—well, they did manage to find one witness!"

Unexpected guests can be an unwelcome surprise, a strain on one's hospitality, but what if they're from another planet . . .

Typo: "an you detect"

Resources:
- Information about Eric Frank Russell isn't hard to come by on the Internet; see (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), and (HERE).

- You can read about Procyon (about 67 trillion miles from here) in fact (HERE) and fiction (HERE).
- In science fiction aliens come in all shapes, sizes, sexes, and psychologies; see Winchell Chung's plush Atomic Rockets webpage on "Aliens" (HERE). After reading the story, you can decide which type of alien, as defined below, that Russell has made Maeth, our protagonist:

"ALIENS. Intelligent races who are not EARTH HUMANS. The term as such is never used for non-intelligent species, however unearthly, though in TECH-JARGON these may be called Alien Life Forms. Nor is it used for Earth Humans who must register with the immigration service. In general, Aliens fall into two distinct groups, REALLY ALIENS and ALIENS WITH FOREHEAD RIDGES." — Rick Robinson, The Tough Guide to the Known Galaxy (HERE)

The bottom line: "My folks came to the U.S. as immigrants, aliens, and became citizens. I was born in Boston, a citizen, went to Hollywood and became an alien."
— Leonard Nimoy

"Does a Train Vanish into Thin Air in England in Broad Daylight?"

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS OF WRITTEN FICTION (i.e., radio, television, and motion pictures) are problematic at the best of times: You've probably experienced disappointment when a favor-ite story gets so mauled on TV or up on the silver screen as to be nearly unrecognizable because of major changes the producers have made to it; of course, usually these alterations can be justified due to the different presentation requirements resulting from the transition from the printed page to the dramatic environment—but, in our opinion, not always. To be fair, though, we must acknowledge that a few, a very few, stories which have been adapted to other media actually underwent improvement in the process.

We suggest that you first read (or re-read) Doyle's "The Lost Special" before listening to the two radio versions below, after which you can decide whether or not the adapters did justice to it.

"The Lost Special."
By Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930).
First appearance: The Strand Magazine, August 1898.
Collected in Round the Fire Stories (1908), Tales of Terror and Mystery (1922), and The Black Doctor and Other Tales of Terror and Mystery (1925).
Adapted in 1932 as a Western movie serial; see (HERE) and (HERE).
Adapted for radio in 1943 and 1949 (see below).
Short story (11 pages).
Online just about everywhere, including (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), and (HERE).

". . . one of the most inexplicable crimes of the century—an incident which is, I believe, absolutely unprecedented in the criminal annals of any country."

When "the powerful engine called Rochdale (No. 247 on the The London and West Coast Railway Company's register) attached to two carriages" and carrying five people seems to disappear off the surface of the earth, consternation and incredulity naturally ensue; but while everybody (including "an amateur reasoner" whom you might recognize) has a theory of what happened, it will be a long time before the truth (assuming it is the truth) emerges.

Characters of note:
~ Mr. James Bland:
   "The thing is preposterous. An engine, a tender, two carriages, a van, five human beings—and all lost on a straight line of railway!"

~ "An amateur reasoner of some celebrity at that date, attempted to deal with the matter in a critical and semi-scientific manner":
   "I should certainly advise the company to direct all their energies towards the observation of those three [railway] lines, and of the workmen at the end of them. A careful supervision of the pawnbrokers' shops of the district might possibly bring some suggestive facts to light."

~ Monsieur Louis Caratal and his companion Eduardo Gomez:
   ". . . they had both been struck silent by what they saw. And yet they could not withdraw their heads. The sight seemed to have paralysed them."

~ Mr. Horace Moore:
   ". . . a gentlemanly man of military appearance, who alleged that the sudden serious illness of his wife in London made it absolutely imperative that he should not lose an instant in starting upon the journey."

~ James McPherson:
   "The guard of the special train was James McPherson, who had been some years in the service of the company."

~ William Smith:
   "The stoker, William Smith, was a new hand."

~ John Slater:
   "Regret to report that the dead body of John Slater, driver of the special train, has just been found among the gorse bushes at a point two and a quarter miles from the Junction. Had fallen from his engine, pitched down the embankment, and rolled among the bushes. Injuries to his head, from the fall, appear to be cause of death. Ground has now been carefully exam-ined, and there is no trace of the missing train."

~ Herbert de Lernac:
   "They looked round for an agent who was capable of wielding this gigantic power. The man chosen must be inventive, resolute, adaptive—a man in a million. They chose Herbert de Lernac, and I admit that they were right."

Resource:
- In her review of Doyle's Round the Fire Stories (1908) on Mystery*File (HERE), Mary Reed pinpoints this story's weakness as a mystery that doesn't play fair when she writes:

"Louis Caratal and his companion, newly arrived in Liverpool from central America, must get to Paris without delay. Caratal charters a train to London but 'The Lost Special' disappears between St. Helens and Manchester, the only trace of its passage being the dead body of its driver, found at the foot of an embank-ment. The truth comes out some time later, and even then it’s as the result of a confession rather than an investigation."

~ ~ ~

"The Lost Special."
An episode of the Suspense radio program.
Based on a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930).
Original air date: September 30, 1943.
Online (HERE) and (HERE).
Run time: Approximately 30 minutes.
(Note: Sound quality is poor.)

Cast and crew:
   Announcer: Howard Duff
   Orson Welles: Herbert de Lernac (and others)
   Writer: Jack Finke
   Musical conductor: Bernard Herrmann
   . . . plus other unidentified cast members.

It's remarkable how Orson Welles has modified Doyle's original story, adding plot complex-ities that, had Doyle included them, would have resulted in a novel-length story; in this version, not surprisingly, Welles's over-the-top characterization of Lernac preponderates.

Resource:
- We recently encountered Conan Doyle and Orson Welles colluding with one another (HERE).

~ ~ ~

"The Lost Special."
An episode of the Suspense radio program.
Based on a story by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930).
Original airdate: February 12, 1949.
Online (HERE).
Run time: 29 minutes 10 seconds.

Cast and crew:
   Ben Wright (as Inspector Collins)
   Parley Baer
   Edgar Barrier
   John Dehner
   Lawrence Dobkin
   Paul Frees
   Music: Ivan Ditmars
   Adaptation: Les Crutchfield
   Editorial supervisor: John Dunkel
   Producer/director: Norman MacDonnell.

In contrast to Orson Welles's convoluted version, this is a different adaptation of the story; there have been important changes in the plot, and Inspector Collins, a minor character in both Doyle's and Welles's accounts, becomes the narrative focus here, behaving remarkably like Sherlock Holmes's smarter brother.

The bottom line: "Railway termini are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine; to them, alas! we return."
— E. M. Forster

"The X-Rays—There Was Something Inside That Chicken!"

WHILE HE IS BEST KNOWN as a major mystery author (with a minor in impossible crime fiction), Edward D. Hoch over the years also dabbled in science fiction (SF), fantasy, and that cross-dressing subgenre known as science fantasy; although he produced a few novels, it's generally agreed that his best work was always in the short form, with nearly a thousand stories as ample evidence of his prolificity. Below you'll find links to three of his excursions beyond detective fiction (although one does have a scientific detective).

"The Times We Had."
By Edward D. Hoch (1930-2008).
First appearance: Famous Science Fiction, Fall 1967.
Reprinted in The Future Is Ours (2015).
Short short story (5 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

"It was a great experience, spending a year on the Moon — one that would never be forgotten . . ."

Turkmen has fond memories of his time in space, so this journalist must be crazy when he says it's all a lie, right?

~ ~ ~

"The Maiden's Sacrifice."
By Edward D. Hoch (1930-2008).
First appearance: Famous Science Fiction, Fall 1968.
Reprinted in 100 Great Fantasy Short Short Stories (1984) and The Future Is Ours (2015).
Short short short story (3 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

"While we're not entirely convinced, this is a nice suggestion . . ."

Could it be that much of history as we know it is actually libel?

Typos: "calender"; "we must built against that day."

~ ~ ~

"The Homesick Chicken."
By Edward D. Hoch (1930-2008).
First appearance: Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Spring 1977.

Reprinted in The Future Is Ours (2015).
Short short story (5 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).
(Note: Text very faded.)

"Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side, you'd probably answer, echoing an old riddle that was popular in the early years of the last century. But my name is Barnabus Rex, and I have a different answer." 

Ordinarily unconfined chickens tend to wander just about anywhere at random, but when Professor Mintor's super-chicken goes for a walk there's nothing random about it . . .

Typo: "left acropss the road".

Resources:
- You should know a thing or two about Edward D. Hoch after consulting the following online sources: Wikipedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), and the ISFDb (HERE).

- A posthumous collection of Hoch's SF is The Future Is Ours: The Collected Science Fiction of Edward D. Hoch (2015), which is reviewed by Paul Di Filippo (HERE) and for sale at Amazon (HERE). The TOC (from the ISFDb HERE):

   Introduction (The Future Is Ours) • (2015) • Essay by Steve Steinbock
   Zoo • (1958)
   The Last Paradox • (1958)
   The Wolfram Hunters • (1964)
   The Times We Had • (1967)
   God of the Playback • (2015)
   Cassidy's Saucer • (1968)
   Unnatural Act • (1969)
   The Boy Who Brought Love • (1974)
   Co-Incidence • (1956)
   Versus • (1957)
   The Future is Ours • (2015)
   The Forbidden Word • (1972)
   Computer Cops • [Computer Investigation Bureau • 1] • (1969)
   Night of the Millennium • (1973)
   The Homesick Chicken • (1977)
   The Daltonic Fireman • (2015)
   The Maze and the Monster • (1963)
   The Faceless Thing • (1963)
   In the Straw • (1975)
   The Thing at the Lake • (2015)
   Exú • (1980)
   The Weekend Magus • (1980)
   Just One More • (1980)
   Bigfish • (1985)
   Remember My Name • (1990)
   The Last Unicorn • (2015)
   Who Rides with Santa Anna? • (1959)
   The Maiden's Sacrifice • (1968)
   The Other Phantom • (1989)
   Dracula 1944 • (1991).

The bottom line: "I don't know which is more discouraging, literature or chickens."
    — E. B. White

"Such Fiction Never Grows Stale"

THE PURPLE FLAME AND OTHER DETECTIVE STORIES.
By Frederick Irving Anderson (1877-1947).
Edited by Benjamin F. Fisher.
Crippen & Landru Publishers, 2016. Lost Classics Series No. 38 (HERE).
248 pages. Short story collection (15 stories).

During his writing career, Frederick Irving Anderson produced dozens of stories, the majority being mysteries, that proved very popular with readers, especially those of The Saturday Evening Post, where most of them appeared over a period of nearly twenty years.

In accordance with the era, some of Anderson's characters fit comfortably into the Rogue School of likeable criminals who more often than not work on the side of right, if only sometimes to avoid worse situations; with their help the cause of justice, and not just the legal system, is served. Two such rogues created by Anderson were the "Infallible" Godahl and Sophie Lang, with only the latter actually making it to the silver screen.

Equally memorable are his creations Oliver Armiston ("the extinct author"), who fits the Armchair Detective model very nicely, and his constant partner in crime solving, Deputy Inspector Parr ("the famous man hunter"). Their modus operandi ordinarily goes along these lines:

   ". . . Deputy Parr was wont to fetch [to Armiston] those few occasional crime puzzles that resisted his classic nutcracker methods. Mr. Parr was a man of infinite resource; Armiston was a phase of his amazing versatility—one of the most highly prized. Parr's usual device was to lay before his talented friend the mise en scène of what he was pleased to call a frozen plot, an insoluble crime, and leave it to the hectic imagination of the retired writer to bring to a finish, in the guise of fiction, what the man hunter himself had been unable to complete as fact. The results had been, to say the least, startling. Parr had come to hold his curiously endowed friend in some awe; but Oliver explained the phenomenon naively by pointing that though fact may outrage all the probabilities, fiction—to be salable—must be sound.
   "It was this faculty of logical connotation that had made Oliver Armiston so unexpectedly valuable to the police deputy. Parenthetically, it was this same virtuosity that had been Oliver's undoing in his career; when a clever thief dramatized one of his lurid tales, in real life, with murder as the sequel, the police stepped in and politely but firmly requested Oliver to cease, in the interests of society. Now the only outlet Armiston had for his fantastic powers of divination came through these occasional frozen plots, served up by his friend and admirer, Parr." — From "The Follansbee Imbroglio" (1922)

Which brings us to the present book; in it Doug Greene at Crippen & Landru has collected fifteen highly entertaining adventures in crime busting, eleven of them featuring the Armiston-Parr duo, with the first one ("The Purple Flame"), using different characters, presumably being the prototype for the series; one with Parr only; and two showcasing the short-lived character Judge Alan Ebbs.

With Anderson, readers get what you might call a "three-fer": a capable mystery author, a local colorist, and a sly social critic. The preface by Poe scholar Benjamin F. Fisher is a fine introduction to both Anderson and his series characters. In Fisher's estimation Anderson possessed that rarest of auctorial attributes, originality, and that without following the trend in American crime fiction towards the new hardboiled school which was gaining ascendancy at the beginning of the 20th century, the same period in which Anderson's popularity soared.

His ability to add dimension to his characters and their environments and his carefully modulated diction ("Anderson leavens his fiction with abundant colloquial language") all combined to make Frederick Irving Anderson not only a good detective fiction writer but also an important local color author and a chronicler of the American scene as it existed in the first third of the 20th century.

Contents:

INTRODUCTION (6 pages): "Frederick Irving Anderson" by Benjamin F. Fisher (HERE):
   "Such fiction never grows stale, and Anderson's offers repeated glimpses into American life during the first third of the twentieth century."

STORIES:
(1) "The Purple Flame" (1912):
   A murderer almost gets away with it—until a nosy newspaperman smells a rat. The problem is how death was apparently by natural causes while a witness, claiming his innocence, was with the victim when he died.
(2) "The Phantom Alibi" (1920):
   Parr entices a reluctant Armiston into investigating a murder case involving one of the latter's old college profs. The case features an anomalous gold tooth, eyeglasses dropped into a mailbox—on purpose, a deliberately provoked car wreck, and a dramatic courtroom finale.
(3) "Wild Honey" (1921):
   Backwoods skulduggery involving a stolen fortune and a simmering score to be settled have Parr and Armiston far from their usual home turf. A major element is a man whose sense of direction would be the envy of the Navy.
(4) "The Footstep" (1925):
   When priceless jewels go missing, the man the whole world believes to have stolen them asks Armiston for help. The situation involves an aging ingénue and her decades younger husband, a whispering gallery, and a vanishing one-ton safe.
(5) "The House of Many Mansions" (1928):
   That metaphorical den of thieves becomes to Parr's amazed delight a literal reality; the problem, though, of catching them all is immensely complicated by a sudden conflagration. In the mix are an ingenious diversion, a tenacious undercover cop, and a peripatetic fire engine manned by the wrong people.
(6) "Hangman's Truce" (1928):
   Parr believes there's no going back for hardened criminals, but Armiston has his doubts. A test case arises when a three-time loser who has apparently reformed dares to return to his old stamping grounds, which, unfortunately for him, are also Parr's own jealously guarded bailiwick.
(7) "Vivace-Ma Non Troppo" (1929):
   When a young music student who hobnobs with the haut monde disappears under very mysterious circumstances, Parr et al. suspect murder, but Armiston elects to treat it as a case of repossession.
(8) "Thumbs Down" (1930):
   To catch a murderer Parr sets a trap and lets Armiston spring it when he fingers the culprit.
(9) "The Two Martimos" (1930):
   Parr and Armiston head for the backwoods again after being alerted to a scheme that, if it succeeds, will net somebody a million dollars.
(10) "The Pandora Complex" (1932):
   As a blizzard envelops the city, in a phone booth a man's bullet-riddled body is found, stitched with forty perforations obviously woven by a Chicago piano. Parr enlists Armiston as Grand Inquisitor to sort out a case that, as far as the extinct author is concerned, is itself riddled with far too many unsatisfactory coincidences.
(11) "Unfinished Business" (1933):
   As they say in Western movies, it's quiet out there—too quiet. When Parr senses, more than consciously realizes, that a certain establishment is still in operation after all these years with no visible means of support, he doesn't suspect that his hunch will lead him to an attempt at extortion and, what's worse, a murder that he's never heard about.
(12) "At Early Candlelight" (1937):
   Confronted with compelling—and seemingly irrefutable—evidence of a murder, Judge Alan Ebbs nevertheless has his doubts about a young bridegroom killing his future father-in-law and proves how an entirely different scenario played out on that tragic evening.
(13) "What Is the Goat's Name?" (1937):
   With ten million dollars at stake in an inheritance trial, Judge Ebbs notices a discrepancy that everyone else has managed to overlook, bringing the case to a surprising ending that, except for His Honor, gets everybody's goat.
(14) "Murder in Triplicate" (1946):
   It's all too obvious what three floaters in the Harlem River have in common: They've all been shot with bullets of three different calibers, but they all died from drowning. What's not at all obvious to Parr is why; he knows that if he and Armiston can arrive at the why, it should be a much shorter trip to the who.
(15) "The Man from the Death House" (1951):
   The death of a shyster lawyer at an exclusive concert event, while not exactly a cause for mourning for the District Attorney, does have an unusual wrinkle to it: Less than an hour after the murder and despite a police information blackout, a detailed account of the crime appears in the newspaper, clearly impossible in those days. It will be Deputy Parr's duty to catch the killer and bring down the person who hired him, a man who has enjoyed the public's trust for years but has now betrayed it.

SOURCES

Resources:
- Both the GAD Wiki (HERE) and Mike Grost's page about Frederick Irving Anderson (HERE) discuss in a gratifyingly spoiler-free way many of his stories, including the ones in THE PURPLE FLAME.
- Anderson's 1914 collection of six stories about the Infallible Godahl in which Oliver Armiston appears is on Archive.org (HERE); another blind detective you might never have heard of is John Dyce (HERE).
- Anderson didn't exactly specialize in impossible crime stories; go to The Locked Room Mystery site (HERE).

- See also Ben Fisher's The Mystery Fancier article (all of it miraculously online HERE, pages 12-32), "Science and Technology in the Writings of Frederick Irving Anderson" (1992), the title of which pretty much explains itself.

"It Would Be an Easy and Natural Thing for a Man to Die on an Alien World, Even a Man Like Elmore . . ."

"Planet of the Duplicates."
By William Lawrence Hamling (born 1921).
First appearance: Amazing Stories, December 1945.
Short story (11 pages).
Online at Archive.org (HERE).

"It was going to be easy to murder Barton Elmore and get away with it. There he stood; but which of him to shoot?"

From The Killer's Handbook, Rule No. 1: "If you intend to murder somebody, for your own safety and convenience make sure there is only one of him . . ."

Characters:
~ Steve Mercer, pilot of the starship Voyager and assistant to Barton Elmore:
   "Money. All the money he would want. Power. All the power he would want."
~ Barton Elmore, Head Physicist at the Astrophysics Institute:
   "Steve, we've hit a world where simulacra is running wild!"

Resources:
- You can read all about our author William Lawrence Hamling and his works at Wikipedia (HERE), Fancyclopedia (HERE), the SFE (HERE), and the ISFDb (HERE); there's an interview with Hamling at eFanzines (HERE).

Sirius B is the smaller blue star on the right.

- Our characters get to Sirius B (HERE) using something called the "Inter-Spacial Drive"; see Atomic Rockets (HERE) for a comprehensive review of SFnal FTL spaceflight ("Space opera with no StarDrive is like chocolate cake without the chocolate")—and don't overlook Geoffrey Landis's definitive Canonical List of StarDrives.

William Lawrence Hamling (standing, left) and wife Frances (seated, right). That's Willy Ley (standing, right) and wife Olga (seated, left). At the 1951 World Science Fiction Convention in New Orleans. Photograph by Ben Jason, provided by John L. Coker III.

The bottom line:
   I have no spur  
   To prick the sides of my intent, but only  
   Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself  
   And falls . . .
   — Macbeth

"It Was One of Those Smiles That Seem to Go Clean Through You and Light Up All Your Inner Being As If with a Searchlight"

"The Smile That Wins."
(a.k.a. "Adrian Mulliner, Private Detective").
By P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975).
First appearance: The American Magazine, October 1931.
Reprinted in The Strand, February 1932; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, June 1952; Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (Australia), August 1952; The Saint Detective Magazine, September 1954 (today's text); and other places.
Collected in Mulliner Nights (1933).
Filmed for TV in 1978 (IMDb HERE).
Short story (15 pages).
Online at The Luminist Archives (HERE; go to text page 93.)

(Note: Text very faded but readable.)

"It was the Adventure of the Missing Sealyham that brought the young couple together." 

The course of true love, as some obscure writer once observed, never doth run smooth; in the case of Adrian Mulliner vis-à-vis Lady Millicent Shipton-Bellinger and the clearly insuperable obstacle of her father, however, thanks to "the mere exercise of the risible muscles," love's course doth run much more smooth than it really ought tooth.

Dramatis personae:
~ Millicent:
   "Oh, Adrian. The worst has happened. My father refuses to hear of our marrying. When I told him we were engaged, he said 'Pooh!' quite a number of times, and added that he had never heard such dashed nonsense in his life."
~ Adrian Mulliner:
   "What is all this about smiling? I never smile. I haven't smiled since the butler tripped over the spaniel and upset the melted butter on my Aunt Elizabeth, when I was a boy of twelve."
~ The specialist:
   "Happiness is the only cure. Be gay, Mr. Mulliner. Be cheerful. And, if you can't do that, at any rate smile. But I think it would be better if, for the present, you endeavoured not to smile at invalids or nervous persons. That will be five guineas, precisely."
~ Sir Sutton Hartley-Wesping, Bart:
   "At all costs, he felt, he must conciliate this leering man."
~ Lord Brangbolton, Millicent's father:
   "You imagine, do you, that I propose to welcome a blighted footprint-and-cigar-ash inspector into the family? It is your idea, is it, that I shall acquiesce in the union of my daughter to a dashed feller who goes about the place on his hands and knees with a magnifying-glass, picking up small objects and putting them carefully away in his pocket-book? I hate detectives. They give me the creeps."
~ Sir Jasper Addleton:
   "This is no time for doing the Astaire pom-pom dance. Tell me what you meant by that stuff you were talking about prison."

Resources:
- As Rudyard Kennedy observes at The Thrilling Detective website (HERE), Adrian Mulliner was . . .

. . . an astoundingly inept junior detective at a large detective agency who endeavoured to clean up his act in order to impress the girl of his dreams. Adrian appeared in "The Smile That Wins." Okay, it wasn't really a detective yarn but rather a comic romance in which the lead just happened to be a gumshoe. Still, it's pretty entertaining.

Adrian, incidentally, is just one of the innumerable nephews of Wodehouse's Mr. Mulliner character; he would return years later in a short Sherlock Holmes pastiche, "From a Detective's Notebook," wherein he discovers the "truth" about the great detective.

- The Wodehouse Playhouse version was once online but not anymore, it seems.

- We've communed with Plum a couple of times before, (HERE) and (HERE).

The bottom line: "As a sleuth you are poor. You couldn’t detect a bass-drum in a telephone-booth."
   — P.G.W.

"I Never Saw a More Pleasing Sight in My Life Than These Two Detectives—Dead"

"Some Do It With a Look."
By P. F. Costello (house pseudonym for William P. McGivern or Rog Phillips).
First appearance: Fantastic Adventures, April 1951.
Short story (10 pages).
Online at UNZ (HERE).
(Parental caution: Strong language and violence.)

"They knew he was a killer, and yet he carried no weapons. They didn't know that—SOME DO IT WITH A LOOK . . ."

When you jump to a conclusion, you never know where you'll land; in the case of three sadistic cops brutalizing a prisoner, it's on a slab in the morgue . . .

Resources:
- Atomic Rockets has a page all about psionics in science fiction (HERE); the SFE article about ESP is (HERE); and the Wikipedia entry on mind control in popular culture is (HERE).

The bottom line: "I used to wonder what it would be like to read other people's minds. Then I got a Facebook account and now I'm over it."
— Anonymous