“Rustle of Wings”
Fredric Brown
First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, August 1953
Fredric Brown was born on this date, October 29, 1906. He passed away in 1972.
Brown was probably the only writer to be equally regarded in both the science fiction & fantasy and mystery fields. He’s experiencing something of a renaissance in the mystery field right now. He deserves to be rediscovered as a writer of science fiction and fantasy. His only science fiction in print that I’m aware of are the two Fredric Brown megapacks from Wildside Press.
Fredric Brown
In the area of the fantastic, Brown was known for his short-shorts, stories of about a page. “Rustle of Wings” isn’t one of these, but it is a short tale. Told from the point of view of a thirteen year old boy, it’s about a poker game he watches his grandfather play with a traveling salesman who may just be the devil. I’ll not give away too many details. Brown does a good job of fleshing out the characters in the brief space he uses to tell his tale.
The strength of the story is at the end, which is when the boy, now a man, finds out that his grandmother knew about the game and what her reaction would be. It isn’t what Brown leads us to expect.
I normally focus on birthdays in these posts, but I want to point out some deaths that occurred on this date as well. Lloyd Arthur Eschbach (1910-2003), Ross Rocklynne (1913-1988), Hal Clement (1922-2003), and Dave Duncan (1933-2018). All are writers whose work I’ve enjoyed. I met Dave Duncan once, and Hal Clement was a regular at Conestoga for the last few years of his life.
Brown was probably the only writer to be equally regarded in both the science fiction & fantasy and mystery fields.
An interesting comment considering the editor of the magazine cover you show was another candidate for the “equally regarded” title, Anthony Boucher. Remember that the Crime/Mystery world con is called Bouchercon.
Good point, although Bouchercon is a bit of a sore spot at the moment. It’s this weekend. I was going to go but had to cancel last week due to a variety of things.
But I digress. Boucher wrote some good science fiction and fantasy, which I highly recommend, in the early 40s into the early 50s with a few stories in the late 50s to the early 70s. He wrote no sf novels, while Brown wrote several including What Mad Universe and Martians, Go Home, which are considered to be near-classics, especially Martians, go Home. Boucher’s most significant contribution to the genres of the fantastic, I would argue, was as an editor, not a writer, since he was one of the founders of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. I am not knowledgeable enough about the mystery field and its history to comment much on he is regarded there beyond what you’ve pointed out.
There’s Avram Davidson who wrote both mystery and speculative fiction.
A number of writers wrote both. Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson, Jack Vance. And while they may have incorporated mystery elements in their sf/f, they wrote primarily in one field, which is where they built their reputations. But were they(and Davidson) equally regarded in the mystery field as they were in the sf/f field?
‘Course, you did not say, “highly regarded as a writer” 🙂 When I was a lad, the big-three stf editors were Boucher, Campbell, and Gold. They were as highly regarded as all be the very elite writers.
Rocket To the Morgue is not itself stf, but it is highly associational for those of us who remember the big name pros of the 1940s.
Peace.
I’ve been wanting to read Rocket to the Morgue for a while. Boucher, Campbell, and Gold were some of the best editors the field has seen. While I’ve read and enjoyed their fiction, I think they were better editors than writers, and I think they were very good writers.