Today, April 7, is the birthday of Henry Kuttner (1915-1958). Kuttner is one of my favorites. I’ve been doing birthday posts on his work for years. As long as this blog is active, I’ll keep doing them.
For today’s post, I want to look briefly at some of his time travel stories. He wrote a number of them, the best in collaboration with his wife C. L. Moore.
I haven’t read all of his time travel, but these three are some of his best and among my favorites of all his work. Continue reading
Today, April 5, is the birthday of Robert Bloch (1917-1994). Valancourt Books has begun reprinting a number of titles by Robert Bloch. Today’s story is from Pleasant Dreams. This was one of Bloch’s first collections that moved away from Lovecraft pastiche.
This is a great collection and one that is worth checking out. If you’ve read much Bloch, you’ll frecognize a number of the tales therein, but Bloch is always worth rereading.
“Hungarian Rhapsody” was originally published in the June 1958 issue of Fantastic. It’s about a retired gangster who is liviing in an isolated house on a lake when a gorgeous woman moves in next door. She paid for the house in antique gold coins.
The gangster desires both the cons and the woman. As the story goes on, he moves from being a sympathetic character to a total creep. When he gets his comeuppance, What happens to him isn’t a huge surprise, but Bloch handles it well.
It has a twist, and that’s in the last line. I won’t spoil it for you. Bloch was well-known for his sense of humor and his love of puns. That tenddency is on full display at the end of the story.
One thing I want to note. Pleasant dreams was originally published by Arkham House in 1960. There was a mass market paperback of the same title published 1979.
That book was a different book, although there was a great deal fo overlap. That’s the cover there on the left. Four stories were removed from the Arkham House edition (“Mr.Steinway”, “Catnip”, “that Hell-Bound Train,” and “Enoch”) and three were added (“TheMandarin’s canaries”, “Return tot he Sabbath”, and “One Way to mars”).
Why these substitutions were made, I don’t know. I have always found it annoying that the paperback lists three of the deleted stories on the back cover.
So Robert Bloch is being brought back into print thanks to Valancourt Books. They are available in electronic editions as well. Reading (or rereading) some of his stories is a great way to celebrate bloch’s birthday.
Finally a big thank you to John Bullard who picked up for me a couple of older Bloch books at Windy City yesterday that I didn’t have. Another great way to celebrate bloch’s birthday.
In a stunning move that surprised almost everyone, earlier today the Trump administration declassified all files relating to the autopsy of Isaac Asimov.
Asimov, whom most of the world believed died in 1992, was a prominent writer of science and science fiction in the Twentieth Century.
Shock waves rippled through the scientific and science fiction communities as interested parties combed thtough the documents. Autopsy photos clearly show that Asimov wasn’t human.
He was a type of robot built to resemble a human known as a humaniforom robot. Video footage shows the removal of his positronic brain, which was transported to a government controlled laboratory in the basement of one of the buildings at Coumbia University under the direction of a Dr. S. Calvin.
Dr. Calvin could not be reached for comment. Her assistant, R. D. Olivaw released the following statement:
Now that the cat is out of the bag, I can say that examinatnion of Dr. Asimov’s positronic brain has allowed us to make great strides forward in robotics, cybernetics, and computer science. Facebook, Tik-Tok, and Angry Birds all owe their development to our study of Asimov’s positronic brain. The advances in artificial intelligence alone have allowed us to leap forwards decades sooner than we would have otherwise. We here at the lab are working on developing an AI known as Seldon, which will aid humanity in expanding out into the galaxy.
Certain details in the documents indicated that while Dr. Asimov’s humaniform body may have failed, his positronic brain is still alive. Skeptics claimed that if this were really the case, then it would probably still be writing books. No such books have been published, at least not under Asimov’s name. Unfortunately, these hints refer to other files which have not been declassified.
This is a developing story. Further details will be provided as they become available.
I recently posted about the sale of the five major digest fiction magazines: Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Analog Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Locus Online has posted an update with comments from the science fiction editors.
Here are the key points:
…have been acquired by Must Read Magazines, a division of a new publishing company, Must Read Books Publishing. All editorial staff from the magazines have been retained in the acquisitions. Jackie Sherbow has been promoted to editor of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. P.L. Stevens joins the group as publisher.
Must Read Magazines is financially backed by a small group of genre fiction fans. A major investor and board advisor is Michael Khandelwal, the founder of a writing nonprofit and Virginia’s Mars Con toastmaster. Macmillan Learning Ebook consultant and developer Franco A. Alvarado has joined the group as director, design & operations. Leading the executive board is former Curtis Brown literary agent Steven Salpeter, who will manage the distribution, translation, and Film/TV rights for the company, as he does for other companies at his new firm 2 Arms Media.
The link above will take you tot he complete post, which includes further details and statements from the editors of Analog and Asimov’s and Gordan Van Gelder, who was the publisher of F&SF.
My (not necessarily well-thought out) thoughts.
I think the fact that the people behind the purchase are a group of readers and fans iwth real-world business and publishing experience is a potentially good sign. It implies that they aren’t using the magazines as some corporate financial maneuver that won’t be in the best interests of the magazines or the readers. I hope they realize their goals of expanding the readership of all the magazines.
I agree 80% with keeping the same editorial staff for now. I’m sure there will be changes over the next few months or more, but for now everything, at least with the four Penny Press/Dell magaziines will continue with little interruption.
I do wish t hey would do something about the Alfred Hitchcock’s response time to submissions, thought. A year or more is too long a response time for a professional magazine.
Maybe now F&SF will begin publishing on a regular schedule again. I’m glad things seem to be looking up for this particular publication. I’ve had a subscription for nearly 40 years, and I’ve got a complete running going back nearly 50 years. I don’t want to see it die.
What do you think, will this revialtize the genre digests? Or am I being overly optimistic?
Today, March 9, is the birthday of Novalyne Price Ellis (1908-1999). Novalyne dated Robert E. Howard during the last two years of his life.
She kept a diary while they were dating, and it was published under the title One Who Walked Alone. It was filmed in the nineties as The Whole Wide World. The movie starred Vincent D’Onofrio as Robert E. Howard and Renee Zelwegger as Novalyne.
Without Novalyne’s diary/book, our understanding of Howard’s final years would be must less complete than it is now.
I think she was in some ways a stabilizing influence on his life, especially as Hester Howard’s health declined. Sadly, their relationship wasn’t stable enough for her to be there for him when his mother died.
I don’t mean that last sentence to be a form of blame for his suicide. I’m not sure that could have been avoided. And that sort of speculation isn’t a game I’m interested in playing tonight. So, raise a glass to Novalyne Price Ellis tonight if you’re so inclined.
Today is March 6, and that means 1) it’s the anniversary of the fall of the Alamo, and 2) it’s the birthday of William F. Nolan (1928-2021).
Nolan was a member of the California school, which included such luminaries as Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, and Charles Beaumont. There were others who drifted in and out, either because of geographic relocation, such as Chad Oliver, or who simply didn’t write as much, like chrles E. Fritch.
Nolan’s best known works isn’t dark fantasy. It’s dystopian science fiction, Logan’s Run, which he wrote in collaboration with George Clayton Johnson. Nolan wrote two sequels alone. I heard somewhere that Johnson had written his own sequel, but the ISFDB doesn’t list it. I saw the movie on television when I was a kid, although I suspect it had been edited for content a little. I also watched the television series that followed. I won’t say how many years ago that was.
There was a short-lived Twilight Zone type anthology show in the early eighthies called Darkroom. I remember an adaptation of one of Nolan’s stories, “the Partnership”. It was a good story, and a good episode.
Nolan’s strengths were at shorter lenghts, though. (None of the Logan novels are very long. They might be considred novellas today.) It’s been a while since I read any of his short fiction. I will try to work a few stories in here and there over the next few month.
I’ve looked at some of Nolan’s short fiction here before. He was part of a group that excelled at shorter lengths. Bradbury. Matheson. Beaumont. Harlan Ellison came into that group as ti was beginning to splinter and the members go their separate ways. I’m not aware of any group today that is writing short fiction as consistently as the California school did.
I’ll raise a glass in their honor tonight, especially Nolan’s.
All five of the major print digest magazines have been sold, according to Amazing Stories. Amaziing Stories is only reporting on Asimov’s, Analog, and F&SF, but the sale also appears to include Hitchcock’s and Ellery Queen.
To quote Amazing Stories:
There’s been a change on the websites for Asimov’s Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. The bottom of the page used to list “© 2024 PENNY PUBLICATIONS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.”.
That same line now reads, “© 2025 1 PARAGRAPH, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED”.
This same change can be seen on the webpages for the two mystery magazines.
I’ll post further details when I learn them.
Today, February 26, is the birthday of two of the best practitioners of the short story, one in sicence fiction and fantasy and the other in mystery. I’m talking about Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) and Jack Ritchie (1922-1983). Continue reading
Today, as I’m writing this, is February 24. It’s the brithday of August Derleth (1909-1971).
Derleth, along with Donald Wandrei, founded the small press Arkham House, to keep the works of H. P. Lovecrzft in print. Arkham House went on to publish a number of other weird fiction writers, many of whom published in Weird Tales.
Derleth went on to write some “posthumous collaborations” with Lovecraft by finishing or revising unpublished stories by Lovecraft. He also wrote Lovecraftian pastiche.
These works are controversial among Lovecraft fans, and I’m not going to venture an opinion on them.
Derleth also wrote a number of original short works of macabre and weird fiction. Tot he best fo my knowledge, most of it is out of print. Derleth also wrote historical novels set in Wisconsin. I’ve never read one of them. My understanding is that the are better than average in that genre. Anyone who has read them, pleast share your thoughts in the comments.
Despite the controversies he caused, I think it is safe to say that the face of weird fiction would look very different today if it had not been for Arkham House.
Today is February 20, and it’s the birthday of two writers, Richard Matheson (1926-2013) and Ardath Mayhar (1930-2012). It’s been a full day, and it’s late. I’m going to keep this short, but I did want to acknowledge these two writers. Continue reading