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US newsstand science fiction and fantasy magazines at the time of the debut of GALAXY: part 1

July 20, 2015, 5:01 pm
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Galaxy: debut issue, October 1950: World Editions: H.L. Gold, editor
***Galaxy magazine starts off with an issue drawing some of the most impressive writers already established in Astounding Science Fiction...with the exception of new writer Richard Matheson, whose second adult professional sale this was (after "Born of Man and Woman" in F&SF, and a bit of juvenilia in The Brooklyn Eagle some years. earlier)...and Fredric Brown, who was less a John W. Campbell "discovery" than the others, even more likely than they to publish his best work in a variety of magazines.

Robert Silverberg on Galaxy's first years:
It is impossible to overestimate the impact that Galaxy had on us in its first twelve or fifteen issues. There had never been such a succession of brilliant stories in an s-f magazine, not even in the Campbell Astounding of 1941, which had plenty of future classics but also a high percentage of pulp filler.
That first year of Galaxy left us all gasping, and I still look at those early issues with reverence and awe. It was as if Campbell’s whole stable had been holding in its best work, which Gold now was able to set free. Alas, by 1954 much of the magic was gone, and from 1955 on Galaxy was a good magazine indeed but no longer, well, astounding.

Contents 


Popular Publications:  Mary Gnaedinger and Ejler Jakobsson, editors (and typos waiting to happen)

Mary Gnaedinger had been quietly mining back issues of Argosy and its stablemates since 1939 for her eventually, briefly three-magazine stable, and occasionally supplementing this reprints with fine original stories, such as Robert Bloch's "The Man Who Collected Poe" and Donald Wollheim's "Mimic" (which is reprinted in FN from an earlier FFM issue). But by the end of her magazines' run, she was able to spread her net farther, and draw in some impressive fiction from far beyond the back issues of the early pulps, including, in this issue, a novella by the author of Man's Fate, Andre Maurois. (The last issue of FFMwas to feature reprints of Kafka's "Metamorphosis" and Ayn Rand's goofy Anthem...)


  • Contents 


    • Contents:
     
    Super Science Stories had been founded in 1939 as one of the first two magazines (along with Astonishing Stories) edited by then 19yo Frederik Pohl, and the first two professional magazines to be edited by a member of the Futurian Society of New York, a highly productive and influential group of sf and fantasy writers, editors, artists and agents already showing great promise in their larval stages. As I've noted recently on the blog, they were trying to take the literary advances of the Tremaine and then Campbell Astounding further along, to the best of their abilities and within the budget restraints that their magazines allowed. But Pohl's magazines had been folded in 1943, in part due to WW2 paper shortages (which also led to the closure of Campbell's beloved fantasy magazine Unknown/Unknown Worlds). Popular Publications, seeing the postwar market as more friendly, relaunched SSS with staffer Ejler Jakobsson at the editor's desk, and it offered a fair amount of decent fiction by notable writers for its three years+ before folding again in 1951. Pohl was later amused that when he gave up his editorial position at the Galaxy magazine group in 1969, Jakobsson would be his successor at those magazines, as well.

    The October 1950 Roll Call of US sf and fantasy fiction magazine titles:

    A. MERRITT
    AMAZING
    ASTOUNDING SF
    AVON FANTASY READER
    THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION
    FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES
    FANTASTIC ADVENTURES
    FANTASTIC NOVELS
    FANTASY BOOK
    FANTASY FICTION
    FUTURE
    GALAXY
    IMAGINATION
    OTHER WORLDS
    STARTLING STORIES
    SUPER-SCIENCE STORIES
    THRILLING WONDER
    WEIRD TALES
    WORLDS BEYOND

    ...more to come...

    Indices courtesy of ISFDB.org
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    Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links to the reviews, profiles and interviews

    July 21, 2015, 2:05 pm
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    Agent Carter
    This week, we welcome back Scott Cupp, who has found a new forum for what he hope is a continuing series of reviews. The selections (reviews and citations at the links below) of undeservedly (and a few deservedly) under-appreciated audio/visual experiences...as always, thanks to all the contributors and you readers...

    Anne Billson: How to Make a Bad Woody Allen Film

    Anonymous: An Affair to Remember

    Bill Crider:  Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow  [trailer]

    Brian Arnold: 2014-15 US Television Season

    Brian Greene: The Money Trap

    BV Lawson: Media Murder

    Colin: The Badlanders

    Comedy Film Nerds: Gary Brightwell

    Cynthia Fuchs: Court;  Frontline: "Escaping ISIS"

    Dan Stumpf: High Lonesome

    David Vineyard: The Green Man

    Dean Treadway: Ponette

    Elgin Bleecker: Too Late for Tears

    Elizabeth Foxwell: The Unseen

    Evan Lewis: Mysteries and Scandals: "Raymond Chandler"

    You Never Can Tell
    Gary Deane: The Scarlet Hour

    George Kelley: You Never Can Tell; Romeo + Juliet

    Iba Dawson: Star Wars and I

    Ivan G. Dixon, Jr.: Boris Karloff

    J. Kingston Pierce: James Garner

    Jackie Kashian: Casa de mi Padre; Petey Gibson on Vaudeville, Burlesque and Circuses

    Jacqueline T. Lynch: Deep Valley

    Jake Hinkson: Robert Ryan

    James Reasoner: Flaming Star

    Jeff Flugel: Underrated Detectives

    Jerry House: The Hall of Fantasy: "The Judge's House"; Interview with Haelan Ellison

    John Grant: Heartaches; Isle of Missing Men

    Jonathan Lewis; Sign of the Pagan

    Kate Laity: The Bed-Sitting Room

    Kliph Nesteroff: Dick Curtis

    Kristina Dijan: The Case Against Brooklyn; 1947 Blogathon; Trail Street

    Laura: Lucky Star; Calling Dr. Gillespie; The Clay Pigeon

    Lucy Brown: Flower Drum Song
    Flower Drum Song












    Martin Edwards: Oldboy (US remake)

    Marty McKee: The Hunter; On Her Majesty's Secret Service

    Mystery Dave: Outlaw's Son

    Patrick Murtha: Counterspy (1958 television pilot)

    Patti Abbott: Cash McCall

    Pearce Duncan: The Hamiltons

    Pop My Culture: Dan Van Kirk

    Randy Johnson: Blood Calls to Blood

    Rick: Ron Harper;Savage Season

    Rod Lott: Roar; Zero In and Scream

    Sam Juliano: Sounder

    Scott Cupp: Invisible Invaders

    Stacia Jones: Creep; Tangerine

    Stephen Bowie: David E. Kelley

    Steve Lewis: A Perfect Murder

    Todd Mason: Readercon: Joanna Russ;Mildred Clingerman

    Victoria Loomes: Lady from Shanghai

    Yvette Banek: 7 Posters
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    US newsstand fantasy and sf magazines at the time of the debut of GALAXY: part 2

    July 22, 2015, 8:27 am
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    Part 1
    Cover by George Salter, genius at Mercury Press
    and elsewhere (notably did the two original covers
     for Kafka's The Trial for both German and
     English publication, among much else).
    Mercury Press/Fantasy House; 
    Anthony Boucher and
    J. Francis McComas, editors

    F&SF's fourth quarterly issue arrived at about the same time as Galaxy's first (monthly) issue; as one can tell, Edizioni Mondiali/World Editions was both more flush and more brash than the publishers of American Mercury. The latter had been subsidizing their politics and culture magazine in part with the rather cultured but also more successful Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and its books in digest-sized-magazine-format lines Mercury Mystery, Bestseller Mystery and Jonathan Press Mystery. (The Mercury had been co-founded by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan, veterans of the legendary magazine The Smart Set, which had been supported by a magazine they founded as a potential cash cow, Black Mask. Thus the duo, no great lovers of crime fiction, had helped spawn the two most important crime-fiction magazines so far--though others have come close).  Discussions at Mercury Press as to possibly launching a fantasy magazine that would, like EQMM, mix literate new fiction and reprints from a wide variety of sources, began in 1946, but perhaps an excess of caution led to the first issue not being published till 1949. Since magazines tagged as fantasy magazines hadn't sold, on balance, as well as magazines tagged sf (in part because the fantasy audience was less aware they were a fantasy audience, something that would continue till the Tolkien and some extent Robert Howard, et al., explosion in the 1970s), the first issue was to be the only one to be known as The Magazine of Fantasy...that first issue included Theodore Sturgeon's notable sf story, "The Hurkle is a Happy Beast"; F&SF was also budgeted cautiously, so that throughout the 1950s (and later) it never paid as well as the highest-paying markets in the fields. But the acumen, graciousness and connections of the founding editors Boucher and McComas helped overcome that, as did their openness to women writers, literary sophistication (within certain limits; Boucher, the first to translate and publish Jorge Luis Borges in English--in EQMM, often referred to fantasy fiction that might be too subtle for his magazine's general audience, rather a self-defeating sort of crotchet), and relative lack (compared to John W. Campbell, Jr. at Astounding Science Fiction and H. L. Gold at Galaxy) of editorial taboos and somewhat narrow notions of what they were interested in seeing from contributors. F&SF would go bimonthly, then monthly, over the next several years.
    Contents:


    Bok-esque cover by Paul Callé
    Hillman Periodicals: 
    Damon Knight, editor
    If Mercury Press was perhaps overly cautious in their launch of F&SF, Hillman was perhaps pessimistic to a fault. Damon Knight had been working as an editorial assistant  at Popular Publications for several years when he was able to convince Hillman to let him edit a new fiction magazine for them, which they launched alongside publishing Jack Vance's The Dying Earth in their paperback line (stories from that linked collection would appear in each issue of the magazine). At his fellow ex-Futurian Frederik Pohl's advice, he asked for a budget that would allow payment of 3c/word for fiction, which Pohl notes he was able to take around to both Gold and Campbell to get them to push for an increase in budget to allow for 3c/word as their magazines' base rate, as well. And that was the last measure of support given the magazine by its publisher...when sales figures came in for the rather impressive first issue, as the second issue was out on the stands, the magazine was folded, effective after the third/last issue was published. 
    Contents

    Cover by a young Jack Gaughan, for "Scanners"
    Fantasy Publishing Co., Inc. (FCPI): "Garret Ford", editor(s)
    If August Derleth and Donald Wandrei's Atkham House has been the most important small press to devote itself to fantasy, horror and to some extent sf and crime-fiction publishing in the 1940s (among some less durable contenders), there was no one more dogged in his attempts to make a go of small-press publishing than William Crawford, who produced two of the first semi-professional or little magazines in the newsstand speculative fiction tradition, Marvel Tales and Uncanny Tales, and would later publish two runs of the minor Spaceway Science Fiction magazine...but whose book publishing line FPCI and particularly his late '40s/early '50s magazine Fantasy Book (which he edited as "Ford" with wife Margaret Crawford) will probably be his most important legacy...particularly with the first issue from 1950, which featured the most impressive lineup the magazine would produce (as essentially a last-stop salvage market for most of its contributors), and publish what is easily its most important piece of fiction, the "first" story by Paul Linebarger which the espionage and psychological warfare expert would publish under his "Cordwainer Smith" pseudonym. I've just realized that "Ford"'s mildly famous anthology for FPCI, Science and Sorcery, is essentially a Best of Fantasy Book, with additionally a few new stories (probably originally purchased for Fantasy Book) and a couple of pulp reprints (one a Ray Bradbury story from Thrilling Wonder Stories in 1948). Frederik Pohl having a story in this issue (a collaboration with fellow ex-Futurian Isaac Asimov) probably was most of the reason Pohl saw the "Smith" story and became one of CS's great editorial champions.
    Contents

    Cover by Bill Stone, who shot both covers for
    Fantasy and the first cover for F&SF (pre &SF).
    Magabook, Inc.: 
    Curtis Mitchell, editor
    If Hillman was rather hasty in canceling Worlds Beyond, Magabook clearly didn't know what they were doing with the two issues they published of their fantasy and sf magazine, of which this is the second (the first was titled Fantasy Magazine, not to be confused with the several other magazines of that title over the years). The first issue's cover was a bit less awkward (no blabbing, no vaguely mummy-like creature); the contents, at least the reprints of Robert Arthur and Irvin Cobb stories (and Arthur, Cornell Woolrich, and possibly the Richard Sale and Max Brand stories in the first issue) are not the worst ever presented...but clearly this was not a project embarked upon with confidence nor a good sense of artistic or commercial potential.
    Contents
    --And, in fairness, I could be said to be "cheating" in citing the latter three issues, as they might barely have overlapped with Galaxy's first issue on newsstands, though they all three probably did on at least a few. Certainly, the first issue of Worlds Beyond is important in relation to Galaxy as noted, and the other two are simply the more interesting cases of the two issues browsers might've seen in late September into late October of 1950....

    More to come...
    Indices and cover images courtesy of ISFDB and Galactic Central.
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    US newsstand speculative fiction magazines at the time of the debut of GALAXY: part 3

    July 23, 2015, 9:45 am
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    Part 1
    Part 2
    Cover by Edd Cartier
    Street and Smith Publications; 
    John W. Campbell, Jr., editor
    As Robert Silverberg's note in Part 1 suggests, readers and aspiring writers like himself were flabbergasted by the first year or so of Galaxy, not least by the new work by many of the writers who had written for Astounding SF who were able to take up new modes and topics unwelcome at the older magazine, as Campbell began to show signs of restlessness as editor of his magazine, in the lucky 13th year...he'd begun to start pushing fringe-science (at best) ideas on his more receptive writers, despite the "hard science" reputation and theoretical hard-sf aspirations of ASF. Writers such as Isaac Asimov and Alfred Bester wrote far less for Campbell in the 1950s, Bester particularly put off by JWC's advocacy for Dianetics, which gets its second ASF article in this issue. Theodore Sturgeon and Fritz Leiber, stars of both ASF and Campbell's long-folded fantasy magazine Unknown, also found other markets more receptive, not least Galaxy, F&SF, Weird Tales and Howard Browne at Fantastic Adventures and the other Ziff-Davis magazines. Barry Malzberg and Bill Pronzini, with their anthology The End of Summer, made a case that ASF was still a potent force in sf in the '50s (not least because of contributors such as Hal Clement, Mark Clifton, Poul Anderson and Campbell protege Algis Budrys, one of whose stories provided the title for the anthology, but even receptive writers such as former Futurian James Blish started to feel the strain of keeping Campbell happy through indulging his fascination with "psi" powers (telepathy, telekinesis, etc.--eventually even dowsing) and perpetual-motion machines and the like. Campbell had really loved his fantasy magazine, and there was an increasing amount of science fantasy running through ASF about that time, and reaching perhaps its most blatant expression in Randall Garrett's often excellent Lord D'Arcy stories in later years.  Meanwhile, stalwart ASF writers such as L. Sprague de Camp were also finding other markets as well in the '50s, but were still regular contributors to JWC's magazine...particularly if they didn't run afoul of another of Campbell's crotchets, that in any encounter, humans had to be played up as the most intelligent or otherwise superior species; this along with JWC's increasingly right-wing views...which didn't stop him from publishing radical leftists such as Mack Reynolds, but such classic ASF stories as Clifford Simak's "Desertion" and T. L. Sherred's "E for Effort" apparently started sticking in his craw after publication (and Reynolds would often publish his most explicitly political and economics-related stories in F&SF and elsewhere).
    Contents


    Cover by Milton Luros
    Columbia Publications; 
    Robert W. Lowndes, editor
    Of all the former Futurian editors to take the desk at fiction magazines up through 1950 (including Frederik Pohl, Donald Wollheim, Damon Knight and, at romance magazines, "Leslie Perri"), Robert Lowndes was the only one to have his magazines last more than a handful of years, albeit publisher Louis Silberkleit, aka Louie the Lug in Futurian "in-house" fanzines, would suspend or combine titles readily, then spin them off again or revive them when circumstances looked more promising. Co-founder of Archie Comics (which made him a lot more money than the Columbia fiction magazines did), Silberkleit never wanted to pay more than a cent per word for the fiction and features in the sf/fantasy, crime-fiction, western, sports-fiction and other pulps and eventually digests Lowndes and a very few others would edit for him; Lowndes had become Science Fiction Stories and Future editor in 1941, when founding editor Charles Hornig was imprisoned for conscientious objection during WW2, and Lowndes would soon be editing most of the titles at Columbia, till the chain's folding altogether in 1960. In fact, I suspect that Lowndes might've eventually edited more fiction magazine titles than nearly anyone else, as he began to edit another slew of titles in the 1960s, beginning with the Magazine of Horror in 1963. In 1950, Columbia had just revived their sole sf title (they would have four by 1952, including the revived Science Fiction and Science Fiction Quarterly), and even with a paltry budget, Lowndes was receiving at least good stories from de Camp (the previous issue of Future includes another story from the same series as the October ASF cover story), along with stories from other ASF regulars. The time-honored tradition of tapping the other ex-Futurians for (at least) good (enough) copy continues here, with stories from Damon Knight and James Blish, Isaac Asimov, Walter Kubilius; future skin-magazine publisher Milton Luros does much of the illustration, including the cover, while former Astounding star George O. Smith contributes a novella; Smith and Campbell's first wife had fallen for each other,  and a divorce and marriage soon followed, putting serious strain on relations between Smith and JWC. Blish's commonly quoted metaphor about Lowndes's editorial work is that he was a master at "making bricks without straw." Lowndes's magazines were often home to experimental work, or stories that were problematic for other magazines (Lowndes published Philip "William Tenn" Klass's "The Liberation of Earth" after Galaxy had rejected it, fearing McCarthyite Red-baiting might follow its publication); Lowndes "discovered" at least two major writers in his 1950s magazines: Edward D. Hoch and Carol Emshwiller. 
    Contents:


    Stadium Publishing Co.; 
    Robert O. Erisman, editor 
    (Daniel Keyes, assistant editor)
    It would probably be too much to say that publisher Martin Goodman was a protege of Louis Silberkleit (of Columbia, above), but Silberkleit did hire Goodman for his first job in the magazine industry, and with his help Goodman went on to found his own pulp and comics lines. 1938 saw the first issue of Marvel Science Stories, edited throughout its long-gap-ridden history by Erisman, with the assistance of the future author of "Flowers for Algernon" in the 1950 revival, which began almost simultaneously with Galaxy's appearance (possibly not a coincidence). Back in 1939, Goodman tried his first comic, which borrowed the pulp's title and was issued as Marvel Comics, the first expression of an eventual line of books now utterly obscure and totally forgotten, except when one contemplates a notable fraction of current US television drama and a rather larger proportion of the most popular films of the last decade. Given its graphic cousin's rather remarkable career, Marvel Science Stories had a rather marginal run in comparison, although it was notable as the first sf magazine to try to be mildly "spicy" (Henry Kuttner wrote a number of the contributions for those issues), and slightly later went full-bore "shudder pulp" for two issues, the only newsstand sf magazine to do so, so far (with the arguable exception of devolution of the late 1950s digest Saturn, with founding editor Donald Wollheim leaving when the publisher changed its title and nature into a minor hardboiled crime-fiction magazine, [briefly Saturn] Web Detective Stories, and then onto a revival of s&m "shudder" as Web Terror Stories). The 1950s revival didn't have quite so colorful a history; good contributors, usually, but not too much in the way of memorable fiction.
    Contents

    Cover by "R. Crowl"
    Avon Publications; 
    Donald A. Wollheim, editor 
    And now back to Donald Wollheim, my review of whose collection of short stories led (along with my finally citing theGalaxy: 30 Yearsanthology) to this little survey series. Among Wollheim's tendencies as a book editor (the Avon Fantasy Reader and the eventual SF Reader companion were arguably digest-sized paperbacks) was his utter delight in coming up with lurid "commercial" titles, hence the name change on the Robert Howard story in this issue. The Fantasy Reader was in many ways Wollheim's attempt to continue (as well as reprint from) Weird Tales as it had been edited by Farnsworth Wright, rather than by his more modernizing successor Dorothy McIlwraith, and it was Wollheim's first (arguable) magazine with a fully professional budget. The Bradbury story was seeing its first US magazine/anthology appearance here, though it had already been published in Bradbury's collection The Martian Chronicles earlier that year (its first appearance, also earlier that year, had been in the Canadian magazine Maclean's). As this magazine (or book) was mostly but not entirely a reprint title, somewhat less ex-Futurian material appeared here than in most of the old gang's magazines, though some certainly did in other issues/volumes. 
    Contents:

    This one, conversely, was not only a no-bones-about-it magazine, it was also the first (among English-language newsstand fantasy/sf magazines, in any case) to try incorporating full-color comics into a pulp magazine format. This was the first of only two issues; despite the heavy overlap between the pulp and comics publishers, apparently there wasn't quite as much overlap between the various kinds of magazines' readers, or at least not enough to make this title a success. (You can read this issue online at Archive.org.) The notable ex-Futurian contribution here is the comics script by John Michel, who had a relatively short and troubled life and career; that the comics center-section had at least been planned as a standalone comic book is indicated by the presence of a prose vignette by Wollheim himself in its center, placed there as in most comics of its time and for many years after so as to get periodical mailing rates that comics without such text-only features were denied, for some reason. 
    Contents
    Indices and cover images courtesy of ISFDB and Galactic Central

    ...More to come...
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    FFM: ca. October 1950: WEIRD TALES, FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, AMAZING STORIES, IMAGINATION, OTHER WORLDS: the US newsstand peers of the new GALAXY, Part 4 of 5

    July 24, 2015, 9:41 am
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    Cover by Frank Kelly Freas

    Part 1
    Part 2
    Part 3
    This is the fourth in a series of quick looks at the newsstand magazines devoted to fantasy and science fiction, published in the US, which shared retail space and artistic community with the first issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, which became almost inarguably the most influential and was inarguably the best-selling sf magazine for a period of a year or sos in the early 1950s...though the conventional wisdom, that it was in its own league (or in a league composed only of three elite magazines) when compared to the often impressive existing magazines, and a few (mostly revived) to appear along with it, is, I'd say, unwarranted...1950 was a very good year for the rather large number of such fiction magazines in the US alone, with even the weakest titles having something worth reading about them, and the commercial success of Galaxy (and Startling Stories, and some others)
    Cover by Bill Wayne
    was often well-deserved...it's probably a pity it inspired such a glut of several less-distinguished, and several short-lived excellent, competitors...a pity in the latter case only in     that they were short-lived and helped create a glut that exceeded the available audience market...though the writers at the time were certainly happy to have the markets...

    And all that said, this installment, once we're past Weird Tales, is probably the weakest set of the magazines we'll deal with, as editor Howard Browne had been part of editor and now publisher Raymond A. Palmer's fiction-factory approach to the Ziff-Davis magazines, an approach Palmer carried over to his new Clark Publications magazines...while continuing, much like John W. Campbell, to pursue some interests beyond sf or fantasy (Browne, for his part, often found it hard to care when his magazines were not budgeted to do much more than continue the bad old methods, and like his old boss Palmer and his assistant Hamling, would leave ZD, in his case for Hollywood, in the mid 1950s).

    Weird Tales, Inc.; Dorothy McIlwraith, editor
    Weird Tales, founded in 1923, is the oldest of the magazines we consider in this series (and the one, at least till the founding of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, probably the most respected in at least the more adventurous corners of the larger literary world) and the first US magazine, at very least, to be established as an all-fantasy remit (with an obvious emphasis on horror). The second editor, Farnsworth Wright, had been separated from the magazine for health reasons by early 1940, and his approach to the magazine, very Gothic and devoted to, or at least very tolerant of, the most discursive sort of prose, had drawn a devoted audience, and fostered the careers of H. P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Carl Jacobi, Manly Wade Wellman,  Frank Belknap Long and Seabury Quinn, and drawn contributions from writers such as August Derleth, H. Russell Wakefield and Algernon Blackwood who had established themselves elsewhere and sometimes in utterly different modes; as did Long (and, in many ways, Lovecraft), Edmond Hamilton wrote a fair amount of "weird-scientific" science fiction and science-fantasy for the magazine (and they would be joined in that by the young C[atherine]. L. Moore). Meanwhile, (sometimes only slightly) younger writers, some of them corresponding friends with Lovecraft and the other members of his Circle, such as Robert Bloch, Fritz Leiber, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Ray Bradbury, Alison V. Harding, Theodore Sturgeon and Margaret St. Clair often got their eldritch start writing for Wright's WT, with others first contributing to McIlwraith's version of the magazine; most of the second group (and some of the veterans, such as Wellman) really found their own voices in pages of the more consciously modern magazine under the new regime. McIlwraith was simultaneously editing Short Stories, the general interest pulp slanted toward men (so her editorial credit there was as "D. McIlwraith").

    Since there was no October issue (a strange bit of scheduling for such a magazine), I'm cheating by featuring two issues, the September with the even more impressive set of contributors than the November, which in its turn is led off by Fritz Leiber's important early story "The Dead Man"...and has a better cover painting.
    Contents:
    September:

    November:
    (Calvin Thos. Beck, letter-writer cited above, would become most famous in his own right as editor and publisher of Castle of Frankenstein, a fairly sophisticated if utterly fannish magazine about horror film and related matter, but would become even more famous backhandedly, as the model, in his physical appearance and in his relation with his utterly unpleasant and domineering mother, for Robert Bloch's character Norman Bates, in the novel Psycho.)

    Cover by Robert Gibson Jones

    Ziff-Davis Publishing Co.; 
    editor: Howard Browne 
    (assistant editor: 
    William Hamling)
    Fantastic Adventures, and its stablemate, the oldest theoretically all-sf magazine, Amazing Stories, had been going through quite a lively, jarring time at the turn of the 1950s. Ray Palmer, who had been editor of Amazing since it was purchased by Ziff-Davis in 1938 and founding editor of FA in 1939, had a love for sf and fantasy, but also an itch to challenge authority and otherwise prove he could do nearly anything he set out to do (perhaps in part due to an early accident that left him a very short, hunchbacked man at maturity); he'd taken his mostly adventure-oriented, youth-slanted magazines to the next level in sales by publishing a series of the supposed revelations of aliens among us, Deros who lived  in the Earth under the surface and tried to control us, as somewhat rewritten from submissions by one Richard Shaver; the "Shaver Mystery" had particularly annoyed staffer Howard Browne, primarily a mystery writer but also fond of fantasy fiction but not so much of such "fringe" paranoia. Thus, when Palmer left, in 1949, to devote his time to his own magazine company (founded while still working for Ziff-Davis, Palmer's ownership hidden by pseudonyms), Browne was kicked "upstairs" to the editorial desk. ZD toyed with the notion of a bigger-budgeted, more sophisticated "slick" magazine version of Amazing, but little came of that; Browne had begun buying some rather better material for the project, but instead it was parceled out in FA and Amazing issues, along with "filler" stories and even more trivial short articles in the magazines, business as usual...except, and particularly in what FA published in 1950, there was some good to brilliant material. Even with a sequel to L. Ron Hubbard's well-received fantasy Slaves of Sleep and a contribution from the young Mack Reynolds, this was one of the weaker issues of a year that had seen the magazine offer, in previous months, The Dreaming Jewels by Theodore Sturgeon, You're All Alone by Fritz Leiber, "The Devil with You!" and "The Girl from Mars" by Robert Bloch, Reynolds's "Isolationist" and, in the September issue, Leiber's impressive "The Ship Sails at Midnight" and good stories by August Derleth, "William Tenn" and Lester Del Rey.  And even the staff writers on the magazine, usually churning out the more ephemeral pulp stories, included at times Bloch and such other talented writers as William P. McGivern and Rog Phillips (who both also contributed some more ambitious stories) and Browne himself; Walt Sheldon and Clifford Simak had stories in these issues that rose above the level of most stories published under such "house names" as "Alexander Blade". Charles Myers offered Thorne Smith-lite fantasy in his "Toffee" stories, to FA and several other magazines in the 1950s. 
    Contents:
    Cover by Robert Gibson Jones
    Browne never did like science fiction as well as fantasy, and didn't attempt to hide that fact; he was very vocal about how much he liked the work of Theodore Sturgeon, among a few others, but Sturgeon, like most of his contributors, wrote in both modes with aplomb (if Sturgeon usually better than most others). Browne's Amazing was rarely as impressive as his Fantastic Adventures, when he was trying at all, and when Ziff-Davis finally decided to try a semi-slick, well-budgeted Fantastic in 1953, Browne was almost as happy as if they'd let him revive one of the crime-fiction titles ZD had published in the latter '40s, or start a new one. Amazing in 1950 nonetheless did have several stories from Fredric Brown, Clifford Simak, Rog Phillips, Mack Reynolds and other notable writers.
    Contents:
    Cover by Hannes Bok
    Clark Publishing Co.; 
    Raymond J. Palmer, editor

    Imagination also launched with its October 1950 issue, with a gorgeous Hannes Bok cover (one of his best, in a too-short, brilliant career), if perhaps in more of a Maxfield Parrish mode than usual for Bok. The fiction content of the first issue is less well-known, and I've not yet read anything from this issue, so don't know if the often very good Kris Neville's story rises above the typical Ziff-Davis competent hackery that seems to dominate this table of contents, or if among the relatively few stories Willard Hawkins contributed to the fantastic-fiction magazines over the decades, this one is in any way notable.  There is some question as to whether this magazine was published briefly by Palmer solely as a favor to William Hamling, who might've been the real editor and publisher but not quite yet ready to leave his job at Ziff-Davis, as Palmer had the year before after a stealth campaign in founding Clark Publishing and introducing his magazine Other Worlds, and the rather more enduring "nonfiction" title, Fate magazine. In any case, Palmer formally turned "Madge" over to  Hamling in 1951, who published it for several years before getting much more focused on the rather sophisticated Playboy imitator Rogue and from there, as the '60s progressed, onto more-explicit pornography publishing.
    Contents:
    Cover by Malcolm Smith

    Other Worlds, on the other hand, was definitely Ray Palmer's magazine. The fiction wasn't too likely to impress the reader too much from issue to issue but the personality behind the editorials and blurbs was all RAP, as Palmer often signed himself, and it's notable how much of this issue was written by Rog Phillips (with apparently minor Fredric Brown and Randall Garrett stories among the others). Palmer had a partner in publishing Fate magazine, and eventually took on a partner in editing OW, Bea Mahaffey. After a couple of years, Other Worlds was actually "split" into two magazines, with a general understanding that perhaps Universe Science Fiction (going Galaxy one better) was mostly Mahaffey's project, and Science Stories (again with some impressive Bok cover illustration) was more Palmer's, but I have no idea to what degree that's accurate. It is well-known that probably the most important story Universe published, in its first issue under that title, was Theodore Sturgeon's "The World Well Lost," which is the first story in newsstand sf magazines to present a positive portrayal of a homosexual couple (of aliens in this case) and make the case against homophobic discrimination.  Eventually, the two titles were reincorporated into one, and a year or so after Palmer sold his interest in Fate, he changed the title of Other Worlds to Flying Saucers from Other Worlds and continued that title as a "non-fiction" UFOlogy title for some years. 
    Contents:
    Concluding installment tomorrow, if the crick don't rise...dealing with some of the best magazines in the field, though unfortunately for them pulp magazines and thus doomed to fold in 1955 as that form of publishing was dying: Planet Stories, Startling Stories and their stablemates.

    Images and indices from ISFDB and Galactic Central. 

    For more of today's more typical Friday Books entries, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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    ca. October 1950: PLANET STORIES, STARTLING STORIES, THRILLING WONDER STORIES and their companions as GALAXY debuts, conclusion/part 5

    July 25, 2015, 12:01 pm
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    Cover by Allen Anderson?
    Part 1
    Part 2 
    Part 3 
    Part 4
    So, as readers of the previous installments might know, Galaxy Science Fiction magazine made a big splash in sf circles and beyond with its October 1950 first issue, as part of an effort by a very successful European magazine publisher trying establish some lucrative US projects, after their international hit in various languages, the all-ages romance comics title released here as Fascination, flopped. Galaxy, however, was an immediate success, if not the kind of huge moneymaker World Editions was hoping for...and it was widely hailed in the sf community, with good reason, as the best new sf magazine to arrive in at least a year, when heavily fantasy-oriented The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction launched, and possibly ever (see Robert Silverberg's brief testimonial in Part 1).  But the tendency to discount the contribution and quality of many of the magazines already in place at Galaxy's foundation (and at least one just after, Damon Knight's Worlds Beyond) are, by me, unfortunate at best, and for this last installment, we deal with three of the best extant rivals of Galaxy at its birth, and their certainly not-bad reprint companions. 
    Love Romances Publishing Co./Fiction House; 
    Jerome Bixby, editor
    If any sf magazine was more loved and more mocked, with only some justice, than Planet Stories, I'm not sure which title that might be.  Planet was the epitome of adventure sf magazines, despite its title for today's literary taxonomists in sf circles, it was the unabashed home of space opera as well as planetary romance (is your adventure in free space or on a planetary or other gravitational body?), and also would publish rather more sedate pieces, not least as one of the first regular markets for Ray Bradbury. In fact, among Bradbury's first professional publications was his collaboration with the single greatest writer as well as the heart and soul of Planet throughout its 1939-1955 run, Leigh Brackett. While most of Planet's editors throughout the 1940s apparently showed little evidence of knowing how to properly hold a red pencil, they were fortunate in having Brackett as a passionate and prolific contributor of some of the best and most heartfelt adventure sf yet published. And she wasn't alone...actually, throughout the history of the magazine, it published no little good or better work from a range of the best writers in the field, including many who were also stars over at the much more widely respected Astounding Science Fiction, where Robert Heinlein served as the primary example of what that magazine could produce...but, unfortunately, the 1940s Planet editors seemed just as happy to take in the writing of the likes of Stanley Mullen, some of the clumsiest bits of prose you don't want to read. But with the appointment of Jerome Bixby to the editorship, officially under the found and magazine group editor Malcolm Reiss,  the old crew of writers, such as Brackett, Bradbury, Fredric Brown and the wildly uneven Ross Rocklynne, were supplemented by Poul Anderson, Charles L. Harness, Margaret St. Clair, Allen Kim Lang, John D. MacDonald and others (including Bixby himself) who were just coming into their own, and writing often brilliant fiction by any standard. (Unfortunately, Bixby also published a Mullen or two, whether because he inherited the clunking stories in inventory or not, I don't know.)  Like Columbia's magazines and Marvel Tales, Planet and its stablemates at Fiction House were also cousins to a flourishing line of comic books; Bixby was also editing Jungle Stories, the original home of Tarzan clone Ki-Gor, who with his pal Sheena, Queen of the Jungle were major figures in the likes of Jungle Comics, which had as a stablemate Planet Comics. I don't know if Bixby was also editing Detective Book or any of their other crime-fiction magazines, which would also run Bradbury's fiction...or if Brackett sold much to their cf titles, as she was beginning to establish her crime-fiction writing career in the early '40s, which led directly to being hired by Howard Hawks to work on the script for the Bogart & Bacall-starring film adaptation of The Big Sleep from the Raymond Chandler novel...and her subsequent Hollywood career, which included adapting The Long Goodbye for the 1970s film, and, just before her death, writing the first treatment and version for the Star Wars sequel, The Empire Strikes Back. Brackett's non-adventure sf novel The Long Tomorrow was recently issued in a new edition by the Library of America. For that matter, Jerome Bixby's writing career was also starting to pick up speed in the early '50s, when he would write and see published his most famous story, "It's a Good Life"...perhaps, like Damon Knight's "To Serve Man" or Lyn Venable's "Time Enough at Last", one of those sf magazine stories much better known for their Twilight Zone adaptations (and The Simpsons parody riffs) than in their original form. Bixby had some Hollywood work as well, including the original treatment for the 1960s film hit Fantastic Voyage.
    Planet Comics #38 (1945) art: Joe Doolin


    Major comics icons such as Will Eisner and Jack Kirby had important career turning points with the Fiction House graphic line, and the art on both sides of the product line were improving throughout the '40s and into the '50s...the garishness of some of the early Planet covers helped turn off some perhaps overly serious fans, who were embarrassed enough by the small-print "Astounding" over the large-lettered SCIENCE FICTION on that more subtly covered magazine. Nonetheless, the elegance of the exotic art on Planet Stories certainly improved at the turn of the 1950s (as see above), and no one had a good reason to take a snobbish attitude toward the magazine for its last six years or so, before being one of if not the last Fiction House title to fold in the wake of distribution troubles, comics censorship and loss of audience, and the general slumping sales and retail exposure given the pulps in the mid-1950s onward. 
    Cover by Allen Anderson



    Under Bixby, the magazine went from quarterly to bimonthly publication with the issue out at about the same time as the first Galaxy.

    To read this issue online at Archive.org
    Contents:
    Cover by Allen Anderson
    Also launching just after the Galaxy debut, the worst-titled magazine (at least among the fully professional ones), at least until L. Ron Hubbard's To the Stars Science Fiction Magazine, was launched as a reprint title, with also a rather awkward cover format. You know a writer of Bixby's skill could've come up with a better title for the magazine, which was presumably forced upon the 'zine by the publishing brass. Note also the first issue's rather interesting mix of still-reasonably-famous writers, both remembered today in some part for their religious work...the atheist Asimov for his presidency and staunch support of the American Humanist Association, Hubbard, of course, for the Church of Scientology...Dianetics, its core, had such a vogue in sf circles that even the skeptical Christian James Blish writes an article about it and sees it published in Planet (see above).
    Contents:

    Standard Magazines/Better Publications, Inc.; 
    Sam Merwin, Jr., editor
    And the last of our magazines from the US newsstand set in the last months of 1950 are the Thrilling group sf magazines, stablemates over the years of such titles as Thrilling Mystery and Thrilling Adventure, and which bought Hugo Gernsback's second major sf magazine, Wonder Stories, and augmented its title slightly in 1936; the first editor after the takeover was Mort Weisinger, who, even before Ray Palmer would at Ziff-Davis's magazines, aimed TWS and its eventual companions Startling Stories and Captain Future magazine squarely at a young audience (Weisinger's fantasy magazine, Strange Stories, was slightly more adult), and in doing so had the letter columns theoretically conducted by a Colorful old space-hoot named Sergeant Saturn, who had an irritating alien companion he called Wart Ears. Weisinger left the magazine to become the editor at Superman and other National Periodicals comics in 1941, and the less acute Oscar J. Friend continued most of the bad policies at the magazines (Strange was folded with Weisinger's departure; the Captain would lose his own magazine as Friend was about to leave, in 1944). But in 1945, Sam Merwin
    1952 Bergey cover, a mix of the GGG
    and the tragic for the first monthly issue.
    was placed at the editor's desk, and announced an immediate desire to make his magazines better, including getting rid of  "Sarge" and starting to publish as much rather sophisticated sf as he could gather, trying to lean toward adventure fiction but not to the same degree as Planet (though TWS and Startling would also run a number of stories by the likes of Eric Frank Russell, Ray Bradbury, Henry Kuttner and Frederic Brown that pulled in other directions), and Astounding-style technologically rigorous work was welcome (from the likes of James Blish or Charles Harness), but it wouldn't be the hallmark of the magazine, either.  Sadly, perhaps, the Captain Future novellas were retained for inclusion in Startling Stories (not the best work Edmond Hamilton or, sometimes, Manly Wade Wellman among others were doing, but who better?), but the magazines did markedly improve. The packaging was often still similar to what it had been earlier, including covers by Earle K. Bergey much loved by nany readers of this blog (and its writer, and not without reason), but the fiction was much more engaging and diverse. Merlin's 1952 successor, Samuel Mines, got to reap even more reward with this, as his version of Startling became briefly the bestselling magazine in the field...and Startling absorbed its stablemates for the last few issu    es in 1955. Merwin would go onto assistant editing at Galaxy (as did Jerome Bixby), editing early issues of Fantastic Universe, and eventually editing Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine.

    Thrilling Wonder Stories had perhaps the best lineup for the late 1950 issue:
    Contents:
    But it's certainly close...Jack Vance head to head with John D. MacDonald and Eric Frank Russell
    Cover by Earle Berger
    Contents:
    And the Thrilling Group added their own reprint magazine to the mix, beginning in early 1950, with a new story or two in each issue (with one by Merwin, in this issue):
    Contents:
    And, so, thanks for all the kind notes, folks...no more of this particular project to come, for now, but even a cursory glance over this blog will suggest this kind of post happens rather frequently...

    And thanks for all the fine work done by the folks at ISFDB and Galactic Central, from which most of the images and all the indices have been borrowed. Thanks to ComicVine for information on and image of Planet Comics.

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    Covers gallery: some short-lived fantasy and horror fiction magazines: the brilliant, the poorly designed, and the ridiculous

    July 26, 2015, 2:45 pm
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    Fantasy Magazine/Fantasy Fiction (1953):
    The first fantasy fiction magazine edited by Lester Del Rey, who would later edit the first short run of Worlds of Fantasy, then have a sustained run as the fantasy-fiction editor at Ballantine, then officially Del Rey Books. All four covers are by HannesBok.























































































































































    Fear! (1960)
    The horror title from Great American Publications, also including The Saint Magazine and FantasticUniverse, newly acquired (and the latter soon folded). Only two issues were published.













































































    Shock Tales,  Suspense (both 1959); Thriller (1962)
    Myron Fass, one of the more prolific publishers of exploitation magazines over the latter half of the 20th Century (and perhaps best remembered as the producer of some of the more durable imitators of Warren Publishing's Creepy and Eerie with his Eerie Tales line of black & white horror comics magazines in the latter '60s and early '70s), apparently is responsible for these magazines, the first two more or less the same magazine (and perhaps the only issues published, even though Suspense is labeled #4), and the last having three known issues...all with similar amateurish photography as the interior illustration for what can be called "confessions-style" attempts at horror fiction, perhaps masquerading clumsily as true accounts. Note model recurrence.














































































    All images courtesy Galactic Central
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    BEST FROM STARTLING STORIES, THE SHAPE OF THINGS, WONDER STORIES 1957 and other reprints from the Thrilling Group science fiction titles

    July 26, 2015, 9:43 pm
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    After Standard Magazines/Better Publications shut down their Thrilling Group pulp magazines in 1955, they concentrated their activities mostly in the Paperback Library division of the Ned Pines organization...but James Hendryx, Jr. was given the task over the next decade to edit reprint magazines (with a couple of stories reprinted from the slicks rather than pulp back issues) two almost identical issues of Wonder Stories (the first in digest format, the second in pulp size) and eventually three issues of Treasury of Great Science Fiction Stories (with the last cutting the title down), also in pulp format. 
    Cover painting by Richard Powers
    Contents:
    Contents:










































































    Contents:
    Contents:








































































    Contents:
    And the anthologies drawn from the Thrilling Group magazines:
    cover painting by Alex Schomberg







































    The Best from Startling Stories ed. Samuel Mines (Henry Holt LCC# 53-8980, 1953, $3.50, 301pp, hc) Also as Startling Stories and Moment Without Time
      • vii · Foreword: Blueprint for Tomorrow · Samuel Mines · in
      • ix · Introduction · Robert A. Heinlein · in
      • 1 · The Wages of Synergy · Theodore Sturgeon · nv Startling Stories Aug 1953
      • 61 · The Perfect Gentleman · R. J. McGregor · ss Startling Stories Sep 1952
      • 81 · Moment Without Time · Joel Townsley Rogers · nv Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr 1952
      • 113 · The Naming of Names · Ray Bradbury · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Aug 1949
      • 135 · No Land of Nod · Sherwood Springer · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec 1952
      • 163 · Who’s Cribbing? · Jack Lewis · ss Startling Stories Jan 1953
      • 173 · Thirty Seconds — Thirty Days · Arthur C. Clarke · nv Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec 1949
      • 207 · Noise · Jack Vance · ss Startling Stories Aug 1952
      • 225 · What’s It Like Out There? · Edmond Hamilton · nv Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec 1952
      • 255 · Dormant · A. E. van Vogt · ss Startling Stories Nov 1948
      • 279 · Dark Nuptial · Robert Donald Locke · ss Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb 1953
    Cover painting by Eugene Berman





































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    EVERYBODY, one of the odder and more potentially disturbing puppet shows you're likely to see...

    July 29, 2015, 5:34 pm
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    Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links to the reviews, profiles and interviews: new links

    July 29, 2015, 5:36 pm
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    The selections (reviews and citations at the links below) of undeservedly (and a few deservedly) under-appreciated audio/visual experiences...as always, thanks to all the contributors and you readers...

    Allan Fish: From What is Before

    Anne Billson: JFK assassination films

    Anonymous: They Were Expendable

    Bill Crider:  The Librarian: Quest for the Spear [trailer]

    Brandie Ashe: Pan's Labyrinth

    Brian Arnold: "The Wild Hare"

    Brian Greene: Two-Lane Blacktop

    BV Lawson: Media Murder

    Colin: The Moonlighter

    Comedy Film Nerds: Emily Gordon

    Cynthia Fuchs: (POV:) Tea Time (aka La Once)

    Elgin Bleecker: La bête humaine

    Elizabeth Foxwell: The Violent Enemy;Sax Rohmer on US v. UK crime

    Evan Lewis: The Adventures of Sir Lancelot 

    The Big Caper
    Gary Deane: The Big Caper

    George Kelley: Police Squad!

    How Did This Get Made?: Sharknado 3

    Iba Dawson: Gun Crazy

    Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: The Lineup (radio, television, film)

    J. Kingston Pierce: Jeff Rice and The Night Stalker

    Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents:"Don't Come Back Alive"

    Jackie Kashian: It's Complicated; Liz Miele, comedian and animator


    Jacqueline T. Lynch: Tension

    James Reasoner: The Winning Season

    Jeff Flugel: Four Frightened People

    Jerry House: Western Heroes

    Jessica Amanda Salmonson: Everybody
    A Matter of WHO

    John Grant: A Matter of WHO; Midnight Intruder

    Jonathan Lewis; Moving Violation; Romulus and the Sabines

    Kate Laity: Canongate Kirk; It's Not Repetition, It's Discipline

    Kliph Nesteroff: Paul Krassner

    Kristina Dijan: World Without End;The Black Raven;The Penalty;Invisible Invaders[Scott Cupp last week]

    Laura: The Adventures of Mark Twain;The Proud Rebel; Woman They Almost  Lynched

    Lucy Brown: Party Girl (1958 film)










    Marilyn Ferdinand: A Bright Summer Day

    Martin Edwards: Partners in Crime: "The Secret Adversary" (pilot)

    Marty McKee: Street Crimes;The Death Squad;The Private Eyes

    Mystery Dave: Cool World

    Nick Jones: Love Supreme Festival

    Patrick Murtha: The Violators

    Patti Abbott: Jim Jeffries

    Pearce Duncan: Kill List

    Pop My Culture: Laura Dreyfuss

    Prashant Trikannad: Chef (2014 film)

    Randy Johnson: Dead Men Don't Make Shadows

    Rick: The Slipper and the Rose

    Rod Lott: Spring;Student Bodies

    Sam Juliano: Careful, He Might Hear You

    Sergio Angelini: The Strange World of Planet X aka...

    Scott Cupp: Zombies on Broadway

    Stacia Jones: Wolfen; Wicked, Wicked

    Stephen Bowie: The Bold Ones: The Senator

    Victoria Loomes: Audrey Hepburn at the National Portrait Gallery

    Walker Martin: adventures in painting collection

    Walter Albert: Henri-Georges Clouzot

    Yvette Banek: Dangerous Crossing


    Dangerous Crossing



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    July's Underappreciated Music: the links

    July 30, 2015, 11:32 am
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    The monthly assembly of undervalued and often nearly "lost" music, or simply music the blogger in question wants to remind you reader/listeners of...and the last entry in this series from the late Randy Johnson. (There are still a few of his film reviews that will appear in the Tuesday's Overlooked roundups.)

    Patti Abbott: Bryan Adams; bland modern albums; Western television opening themes; Jason Isbell; soundtrack: Under the Skin

    Jayme Lynn Blaschke: Friday Night Videos

    Elgin Bleecker: Doris Day/Tony Bennett: "Close Your Eyes"

    Paul Brazil: A Song for Saturday

    Miriam Makeba: "Erev Shel Shoshanim"


    Jim C.: Summertime with Blossom Dearie

    Sean Coleman: Weird Al Yankovic

    Bill Crider: British Invasion: Forgotten Music; Song of the Day; Forgotten Hits: Local Charts

    Cullen Gallagher: rediscovering vinyl

    Jeff Gemmill: First Aid Kit @ XPoNential Music Festival, 7/25/15;
    Jill Johnson; Top 5s

    King Pleasure, Annie Ross, Jon Hendricks: "Don't Get Scared"

    Jerry House: Daily Music+; Hymn Time

    Randy Johnson: Mac Sabbath: "Frying Pan"

    George Kelley: Miles Davis: Live at Newport 1955-1975

    Kate Laity: things after The Fall

    The Way It Is: "Joni Mitchell" (CBC 1968)

    At 20 minutes, the 1965 debut episode JM recording of the theme song, in better fidelity. (And apparently you'll have to scroll back the full show above, since it doesn't seem to like the proximity of the skip-ahead 20-minute link under it...for me, it jumps into the 1968 version of the theme at show's end, with unfortunate static.)

    Todd Mason: "Eight Miles High";  9 Songs (more or less); musics brought together when Gil Scott-Heron and the Last Poets invented modern rap ca. 1969 

    Patrick Murtha: Junior Brown

    Rainbow Quest: Pete Seeger hosts Elizabeth Cotten, Rosa Valentin & Rafael Martinez (NYC local, then syndicated, 1965)

    1. Pete Seeger opening medley
    2. Valentin & Martinez: The Soldier Went to War
    3. Valentin & Martinez: May, The Month of Flowers
    4. Valentin & Martinez: Aguinaldo
    5. All: Guantanamera
    6. Pete Seeger: My Home's Across the Smoky Mountains
    7. Pete Seeger: 'Way Out There
    8. Elizabeth Cotten: Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad
    9. Elizabeth Cotten: Mama Your Papa Loves You
    10. Elizabeth Cotten: Wilson Rag
    11. Elizabeth Cotten: Freight Train

    Lawrence Person: Shoegazer Sunday

    Charlie Ricci: The Supremes: "When the Lovelight Starts..."

    Soundstage: "Sing Me a Jazz Song"; Jon Hendricks, Annie Ross, Eddie Jefferson, Leon Thomas (PBS 1975)
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    FFM: KEYHOLE MYSTERY MAGAZINE and SHOCK in 1960 (edited by Dan Roberts and anonymously, from Winston Publications)

    July 31, 2015, 8:59 am
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    Second issue; cover by Ed Emshwiller
    1960 was an odd year in fiction-magazine publishing, and a tough one. A number of interesting projects were launched--too often only to stumble and fall, or fold, after only a few issues; a number of venerable titles and publishing groups changed hands, settled in with new owners, or went out of business, or all three.  Three was often a magic number for the good new magazines of 1960, though Saul Bellow and partners'The Noble Savage got as far as five issues in two years, while New World Writing got a new publisher and slightly different format; Pocket Books' adventure in magazine publishing Ed McBain's Mystery Book was among the three-issue titles, while one of the new TV-related fiction titles offered by Great American Publishing, Tightrope, saw four, with another, 77 Sunset Strip,  getting out a single issue and their horror companion, Fear!, two. Most of Great American's fiction magazines, including their newly-purchased Fantastic Universe (with a last issue featuring Robert Bloch, Fredric Brown and Jorge Luis Borges), were folded by the end of 1960, as were Columbia Publications' last titles: Double Action Western, Future Science Fiction, Double Action Detective (which had at the end featured a Edward Hoch "Simon Ark" story in every issue) and Science Fiction Stories (the last issue offering new work by Kate Wilhelm, Murray Leinster, Donald Westlake, A. Bertram Chandler and Donald Wollheim). And two interesting new magazines from a small publisher, Keyhole Mystery Magazine and Shock: The Magazine of Terrifying Tales, had their three-issue runs.
    A battered copy of the first issue; cover by Emsh
    Keyhole was a literate crime-fiction magazine in a period when the flood of cf titles, inspired in large part by the mid-1950s success of Mickey Spillane-flavored Manhunt, had started to recede; Manhunt itself had lost much of its audience (though claiming on its increasingly cheap-looking covers to still be the most popular cf magazine in the world, almost certainly fraudulently); aside from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, recently purchased to help found Davis Publications, and Mercury Mystery had just folded but Bestseller Mystery Magazine continued (back at EQMM's original home, Mercury Press), the magazines mentioned above, and the then relatively new Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, most of the US cf titles were leaning cheap and sleazy, often having as much in common with "men's sweat""true story" adventure magazines as they did with the better crime-fiction titles.  Keyhole was doing a lot better than the likes of Web Detectiveor even the somewhat more professional Trapped: 
    Rather good choices in reprints, mixed with some solid, if not groundbreaking, original fiction, and a bit of attempted pop-culture hipness in invoking Elvis in the cover story--coauthored by Robert Bloch as "Will Folke"...
    If anything, an even better issue...at least in adding Bloch, Sturgeon and Collier originals along with another Davidson in the mix. 

    And with the third and final Winston issue, deFord's back, and she and Bloch and Collier are joined by Roald Dahl and then new writer R. A. Lafferty--one has to wonder how new a George Kauffman item could be. A four year old Ellin reprint from EQMM seems a bit recent, but EQMM would do similar things...and it was Ellin (today is the anniversary of his death, oddly enough). Note also, still pinning hopes to a pop-music crossover appeal, with Fabian Forte of all people, as a detective. 

    Meanwhile, and for no obvious reason edited anonymously (with radio/comics-style "editorial hosts" who are a Beast and a spider), Shock showed some signs of being aimed a bit younger, while still offering a lot of first-rate work...albeit even more of it reprinted and not a little of that set chestnuts from the horror and suspense literature.  EC Comics legend Jack Davis did all three covers, much in the style of their horror comics or Mad...while some of the fiction was a bit grim even for the more receptive kids:

    But, then again, there are worse things for young minds to be warped by than "Bianca's Hands"...the Davidson story was reprinted in F&SF a decade later, and a decade+ after that in Dennis Etchison's anthology Masters of Darkness III.  Originals by Richard Matheson, Jim Thompson, Reginald Rose (12 Angry Men), and Davidson are nothing to dismiss out of hand, even if the Davidson is probably the closest to major work by its author. A young Lenny Kaye, a decade+ before starting to play with Patti Smith Group and putting together the Nuggets anthology albums of garage-rock and protopunk, wrote a published fan letter about this issue.



























    Originals by Davidson again, deFord, and Bloch again as "Will Folke"...one does get the sense that Dan Roberts, whoever he? was, definitely edited both Winston titles.
    And the third and last Winston issue features originals by Edward Hoch, Lafferty, Westlake, and journeyman John Anthony West, among others...including one of the best stories of Bloch's career, "Final Performance," a story that is in more ways than one a hardboiled punch in the gut. 

    It's a real pity that these magazines didn't do better in the suddenly crowded, then thinned out, marketplace of 1960...and even more a pity that Winston apparently sold the title rights and unpublished inventory, if any, to Pontiac Publishing, already responsible for some of the bottom of the barrel sleaze titles, of which their 1961/62 continuations of Keyhole and particularly Shock were prime examples.  Don't confuse the originals with these decomposing revenants...

    And see the indices at Phil Stephenson-Payne's The Crime, Mystery, & Gangster Fiction Magazine Index, the source of the indices above and several of the cover images.  For a sense of how these magazines went, try Peter Enfantino's reviews of the archetypal Web Detective.

    For more of today's titles, please see Evan Lewis's blog (filling in this week for Patti Abbott, on assignment in Traverse City). 

    And given that I've posted about Shock (this one rather than the several other magazines of that title, not even counting its shudder-magazine continuation) and Fear!and the Magazine of Horror and its stablemates, (and the various revivals of Weird Talesstarting after the turn of the next decade),  I suppose doing a take on the Other horror magazines of note in the 1960s, such as Macabre, The Arkham Collector, Bizarre! Mystery, and even the all-reprint Strange Fantasy might well follow...along with such early '70s colleagues as Coven 13/Witchcraft and Sorcery, The Haunt of Horror (the fiction magazine from Marvel, before they turned it into a large-format comic), Weirdbook and others...
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    Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: new links to reviews, interviews, etc.

    August 5, 2015, 4:22 pm
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    Ginger Gonzaga in Mixology




    The selections (reviews and citations at the links below) of undeservedly (and a few deservedly) under-appreciated audio/visual experiences...as always, thanks to all the contributors and you readers...  

    Aaron West: Where Is My Friend's House? (aka...)

    Allan Fish: The Grandmaster

    Anne Billson: Paul Rudd

    Anonymous: People on Sunday

    Bill Crider:  Dirty Little Billy  [trailer]


    Brent McKee: NBC Upfront

    BV Lawson: Media Murder

    Colin: Guns of Darkness

    Comedy Film Nerds: Andy Wood

    Cynthia Fuchs: The End of the Tour; Listen to Me Marlon 

    Elgin Bleecker: Keeper of the Flame

    Elizabeth Foxwell: The Assignment (aka...); The Invention of Murder

    Evan Lewis: Philip Marlowe, Private Eye: "Spanish Blood"

    Gary Deane: They Made Me a Criminal

    George Kelley: The Wrecking Crew!

    How Did This Get Made?: Tiptoes

    Iba Dawson: TCM Summer of Darkness

    Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: George Grizzard

    Sunday in New York  (1963 film excerpt)


    J. Kingston Pierce: US TV season 1974-75

    Jackie Kashian: The World's End; Matt Saxe on the US vice presidency

    Jacqueline T. Lynch: Teresa Wright: television

    Craig Rice's cover (in
    Home Sweet Homicide)
    James Reasoner: Home Sweet Homicide

    Jeff Flugel: 1963 in film

    Jerry House: The Other Guys

    John Grant: Whistle Down the Wind;Nightmare 

    Karen Hannsberry: Sadie McKee

    Kliph Nesteroff: Will Jordan

    Kristina Dijan: Shanghai Express;The Damned; August on TCM

    Lance Charnes: City Homicide

    Laura: Callaway Went Thataway; Where Are Your Children? 

    Lucy Brown: Higher and Higher

    Mark Evanier: US Late Night Television(courtesy Ed Gorman)

    Martin Edwards: Harrogate
    The Avengers

    Michael Shonk: The Avengers before Diana Rigg: Part 1;Part 2

    Mike Tooney: Mr. and Mrs. Murder

    Mystery Dave: Sabotage





    Randy Johnson: The Monster of Piedras Blancas




    Steve Lewis: Personal Report, Inc.; King of Diamonds: "The Wizard of Ice"

    Victoria Loomes: Lizzie

    Yvette Banek: Penny and the Pownall Case (John Grant a while back)
    Penny and the Pownall Case

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    Saturday Music Club on Thursday: Sinister

    August 6, 2015, 6:59 am
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    The Roches: "Missing"


    Annie Humphrey: "They Found Her"


    Trusty: "Honey Mustard" (hit this text link to go directly to the song)


    X: "Johnny Hit and Run Paulene"


    Smart Went Crazy: "Sugar in Your Gas Tank"


    Combustible Edison: "Pink Victim"


    Billie Holiday: "Gloomy Sunday"


    The Staple Singers: "Wish I Had Answered"


    The Weavers: "Sinner Man"


    The Jaynetts: "Sally Go 'Round the Roses"


    Joan Armatrading: "Call Me Names"
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    FFB redux: ENOUGH by Donald Westlake (Evans, 1977)...and some Westlake films, etc.

    August 7, 2015, 4:29 am
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    Donald Westlake is one of those writers I've been reading all my literate life...my first experience of his work was almost certainly in reading "The Winner," his heavily metaphorical sf story (first published in Harry Harrison's anthology of new science fiction, Nova 1 [Delacorte, 1970]), in which a dissident poet named Revell refuses to knuckle under to his imprisonment, to the mild befuddlement of his prison warden, Wordman. (Even at a young age, I noted that Westlake could get a bit cute with character names.) It's the kind of story that has a wide appeal, and it's well-done, and it kept popping up in odd places, including classroom-use magazines, over the next decade. I'd find Westlake stories in Alfred Hitchcock Presents: anthologies, in the old back issues of Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and newer issues of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and I'd come across the likes of "Curt Clark"'s "Nackles" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1964) a story about an anti-Santa Clause who is not quite but not dissimilar to Krampus, in anthologies such as Terry Carr's New Worlds of Fantasy..."Curt Clark," as in "rude clerk" (perhaps one who'd Prefer Not To) being the name Westlake signed to some of his sf and fantasy after making a big noisy deal about quitting the fantastic-fiction field, in favor of crime fiction, in the early '60s. Of course, he did no such thing, but did publish his worst work I've read, by far, in Anarchaos (1967) as by Clark, a rather routine sf adventure novel that takes as its premise that a bunch of cutthroats supposedly inspired by a range of anarchists and not quite anarchists including among unlikely others Pyotr Kropotkin, the pacifist (very influential on Gandhi and MLK, Jr.) and biologist who was among the first to trace the importance of symbiosis and mutual aid in human and non-human matters, and who died under house arrest under Lenin, have set up a society on a planet they've dubbed Anarchaos, and engage in behaviors the most berserk of Ayn Rand's followers might find a bit sociopathic. Westlake could be snotty.

    But he was also, almost invariably, acute and clever and inventive. In 1989, having just read in quick succession Elmore Leonard's Freaky Deaky, Westlake's Trust Me on This, and an Algis Budrys critique which in passing noted that Leonard's fiction was a bit less cartoonish than Westlake's, this last struck me on the fresh evidence to be exactly reversed (though Leonard's work was as charming and engaging), that Westlake's work could incorporate satiric elements without having to employ so "colorful" a cast of characters as Leonard seemed to prefer at all times; Westlake's work could offer more nuanced characterization, but perhaps was less consistently popular than Leonard's and some other writers of similar industry and talent because relatively few of Westlake's characters were sympathetically-drawn in the usual manner...they tended to be coolly-observed and deeply flawed, self-centered or -deluded, corruptible. And without much if any redemption from these flaws by the end of their stories, and sometimes without comeuppance, and frequently without becoming cartoons of evil ("Hello, Clarice"). This not the usual means of entering the bestseller lists.

    By the '70s, though, Westlake was actively engaged in film work, with several adaptations of his novels by others already released and his own film work proceeding apace, and sometimes a treatment still being shopped or a script in turnaround would apparently find its way, transmogrified, into prose fiction, as apparently was his "Call Me a Cab," and "Ordo," the shorter of the two fictions in the 1977 book I've read for this week's FFB, Enough (M. Evans, paperbacked as above by Fawcett). "Ordo" the novella (83pp), along with A Travesty the short novel (184pp) collected in this volume, both deal with the periphery of the film industry: A Travesty, more of a conventional if "open" mystery than Westlake usually wrote, involves a self-centered, but not altogether unlikable, film reviewer who accidentally kills one of his girlfriends just before page one, and spends the rest of the novel dancing as fast as he can (and not always in self-preserving ways) to avoid, once cleared in the early going, becoming the obvious suspect again, in part through buddying up with one of the investigating detectives and helping him and his partner with several other murder cases, as a vaguely Holmesian consultant (albeit at least one of the critic's observations in that regard will almost certainly occur to most readers, and should've to any competent detective). In the course of this, critic Thorpe has plenty of time to share acidic observation not only of film culture but of our lives generally, engage in a bit of Dortmundering, and to anticipate such later Westlake sociopaths as those who inhabit The Ax or The Hook or such brilliant screenplays as the original of The Stepfather; the novel might eventually put you in mind of the O. J. Simpson/Brown and Goldberg matter, as well, some years before those ridiculously horrible events, the LAPD's actions as well as Simpson's.

    "Ordo" is a somewhat more subdued effort, involving a Greek-named poly-ethnic American sailor, Ordo Tupikos, who learns from his shipmates that the teen bride he knew as a very young groom, their several-months marriage successfully annulled through the eventual intercession of his mother-in-law because the runaway girl was not yet at age of consent (she had lied to Ordo and the authorities), has now become, under another name and looking much different in full adulthood, a major Hollywood actress. Ordo has some difficulty reconciling the latter-day sex-symbol with his doting, insecure wife of sixteen years previously, as he's had no contact with her since the annulment (and shipping out to avoid legal complications) and decides to take leave and see if his ex will meet with him for a reunion. As it turns out, she will, but Ordo, a rather uncomplicated man, finds unsurprisingly that although they are, if anything, more sexually compatible (and, obviously, more experienced) than they were during their marriage, they are not as suited to each other...much is made of how little Ordo has changed, and how much Estelle Anlic has sought to reinvent herself, from bullied and insecure teen who found a refuge from her unpleasant family life with Ordo, only to have that taken from her, and then to make her current life for herself. After an utterly unpleasant reunion with Mother Anlic which takes its toll particularly on his ex-wife, Ordo realizes that their interrupted life together is now a thing of the past, even as the former Estelle realizes that she is still not over the early damage, and her new persona is too fragile for Ordo to be her mate again.

    That this was a story aimed at filming is all but proven by the extremely faithful film adaptation, released in 2004, of Ordo, only (since it is a Canadian/French/Portuguese co-production) with the story relocated to France, and Estelle Anlic now a star of Francophone cinema, Ordo a French marine rather than a US sailor (the ethnicity of various characters adjusted to close analogs, accordingly). Ordo in the film (Roschdy Zem) is a bit more dense and impulsive than Ordo in the story, but only very slightly so; Marie-Josée Croze is excellent as the affectionate but brittle and moody Estelle/now "Louise Sandoli" (in the novella, "Dawn Devayne"). The script was adapted by (Ms.) Laurence Ferreira Barbosa and Nathalie Najem (I suspect Westlake provided a treatment or a draft, or could've, along with the novella), the film directed by Barbosa, and the home video release is from the Canadian titan Alliance Atlantis (CSI, etc.)...and yet this remains an even more overlooked film than I realized, with almost no theatrical arthouse play in the US and that dvd apparently out of print and with highish to ridiculous asking prices on Amazon (at least), and only one review on IMDb, where one Brit? "rowmorg" seems ready to go out of his? way to dismiss this film, noting it "suffers from having a phony story contrived from a Yankee pulp novel" (thus making, to paraphrase James Blish, four major errors in twelve words, and only two of those matters of subjectivity), but, then, he? also cleverly notes "There's plenty of Marie Josee Croze in the buff, if you like chilly 30-something blondes, swimming around her millionaire swim-pool and making out with hunky Ordo for old times' sake." Heaven forfend, that a 30-something should be engaging in such behavior, so old and all...and the Canadian Croze, lost to shame, going on to swim nude yet again in Tell No One. All in all, a film that is quiet and engaging, and worth the effort to see it, if not Too strenuous.

    As noted, Westlake has been responsible for a number of excellent scripts during his career, most famously the adaptation of Jim Thompson's The Grifters, but his original script for The Stepfather, very deftly filmed and very poorly sequeled and remade with no input from Westlake, was even better yet. Another film, reviewed by Paul Brazill some time back for the weekly Overlooked Films exercise many FFBers also do, Grace of My Heart, the engaging fictionalized biopic not quite about the life and career of Carole King, carries a Thanks credit to Westlake...whether because he provided script assistance or advice or production funds or some combination is not spelled out. But an unexpected grace note to pop up after finally seeing that film in its entirety the other month.

    For more of this week's Westlake and other books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.



    Overlooked Films and A/V: CRACKERS (1984) and...


    Crackers (1984) is a decidedly odd film, less for its intrinsic content, a not completely humorous heist film, as for its obvious relation to the fiction of the late Donald Westlake, particularly the Dortmunder stories, the relatively lighthearted series Westlake spun off from the relentlessly grim Parker series, when a Parker plot he was developing kept wanting to be written about reasonably sensible, professional crooks who kept being foiled by circumstance, rather than ruthlessly and efficiently succeeding (as Parker does in his stories). The novel that introduced Dortmunder and his crew, The Hot Rock, was famously filmed featuring Robert Redford as Dortmunder.

    Crackers, written by Jeffrey Alan Fiskin and directed by the hardly obscure Louis Malle, features the even less obscure Donald Sutherland as the Dortmunder-like character who can't seem to catch a break, named, cheekily, "Westlake." The crew of safecrackers and supporting staff is masterminded by "Westlake," who has a Dortmunderesquely complicated plan to steal a thug's safe with some inside help. Nothing goes completely right.


    The film has a pretty impressive cast, many of whom had and/or would again work with Malle, such as Sean Penn (not good, but not the hambone he has since become), Jack Warren, Wallace Shawn, and Christine Baranski, and introduced Tasia Valenza, who has mostly done animation voice-actor work in the last couple of decades (though a lot of it), and was an early credit for Trinidad Silva, who would make more of name for himself with his recurring role on Hill Street Blues. As a semi-comedic heist film, it almost succeeds, with a lot of failed jokes mixed in with decent ones, and some dramatic gambits which simply don't pay off (such as the young woman who wants to become a prostitute persuaded not to by the goodnatured pimp, koff, who has grown fond of her).

    But what's strange is just how much this film echoes an already-established literary and to some extent cinematic franchise, with a wink and a nod and no claims of parody, just attempts at pastiche. As one writer put it, having heard the description of the film, "sounds actionable."

    This film is not currently available on dvd, and I don't think it was ever issued on disc, though a VHS release some time back was available. Amazon and perhaps others will stream it for you...Hulu was offering it for free at one time, but no longer. I caught it, rather randomly, on a pay movie channel some months ago.
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    Cele Goldsmith Lalli

    August 7, 2015, 3:54 pm
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    Michael and Cele Goldsmith Lalli at a 1980s LunaCon.
    Photo by and Copyright © Andrew Porter; all rights reserved.
    And here's the obit I wrote for the April 2002 issue of Science Fiction Chronicle:

    Cele Goldsmith Lalli, 68, former editor of Amazing and Fantastic and later editor-in-chief of Modern Bride, died January 14th [2002] in a car crash near her Newtown, Conn., home when she apparently lost control of her car and hit a tree. She is survived by her husband Michael Lalli, daughters Francesca Morrissey of New Milford, Conn. and Erica L. Sullivan of Stamford, and five grandchildren. 

    Four decades ago, Cele Goldsmith took Amazing and Fantastic, two digest-size magazines which were practically moribund during the 1950’s, into the forefront of SF and fantasy publishing. Her reign lasted from Amazing and Fantastic’s December 1958 to their June 1965 issues. To honor her, she received a Special Hugo Award for her efforts, at the 1962 World SF Convention. During her tenure, and working with a shoestring budget, Amazing and Fantastic published stories by a pantheon of SF’s greats: J.G. Ballard, James Blish, John Brunner, Avram Davidson, Philip K. Dick, Thomas Disch, Harlan Ellison, Philip Jose Farmer, Frank Herbert, Keith Laumer, Ursula K. Le Guin, Fritz Leiber, Michael Moorcock, Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, James White, Roger Zelazny and many others. She bought the first stories of a number of authors, including Zelazny and Le Guin. In Amazing, under her editorship Sam Moskowitz reprinted numerous long-forgotten stories, with background material, and Lester del Rey and Ben Bova ran nonfiction articles. 

    Faced with falling sales, in 1965 owner Ziff-Davis, publisher since 1938, sold them to Sol Cohen, ending this intensely creative period. Goldsmith, now Cele Lalli following her marriage to Z-D assistant controller Michael Lalli, moved to Z-D’s Modern Bride, where she remained for another 33 years, retiring as editor-in-chief in 1998. Her years at Modern Bride made her one of the longest tenured editors of any major consumer magazine. She had converted to Catholicism upon her marriage to Lalli, which, according to associates, gave her insights into the wedding traditions of both Jewish and Catholic brides. Ironically, she died within a few hours of Modern Bride’s sale to Conde Nast for $52 million. 

    The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction stated, “Under Cele Goldsmith’s editorship Amazing improved dramatically, publishing good work by many leading authors... Zelazny was one of several writers whose careers were aided in their early stages by Goldsmith; others include Ben Bova, David R. Bunch, Thomas M. Disch, Ursula K. Le Guin and Robert F. Young”.  And The Encyclopedia of Fantasy noted, “In the period 1960-65 Fantastic was the premier fantasy magazine”.

    Todd Mason: That last judgement isn't wrong, but I'd suggest that Mike Ashley, who made it, is more sweeping in putting Fantastic ahead of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Science Fantasy than he might be...all three together, with some not insignificant contributions from the Magazine of Horror and others mentioned recently and over the years on this blog, made the early 1960s a good time for fantasy short fiction in magazines. Among her other discoveries: Keith Laumer (see the interview, link below).

    Previous Cele Goldsmith Lalli posts:
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    Saturday Music Club: some orchestral third stream music: John Lewis, Gil Evans, Toshiko Akiyoshi, McCoy Tyner, Randy Weston, Gary McFarland, Brubeck Quartet with NY Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein

    August 8, 2015, 11:42 am
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    Orchestra U.S.A.: "Duke Bey"


    McCoy Tyner Orchestra: "Fly with the Wind"

    Live performance

    Gary McFarland Orchestra featuring Bill Evans: "Misplaced Cowpoke"


    John Lewis Orchestra: "Two Degrees East, Three Degrees West"


    Gil Evans Orchestra featuring Miles Davis: "The Duke"; "Blues for Pablo"; "New Rhumba"


    Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band: "Children in the Temple Ground"


    Orchestra U.S.A. featuring Coleman Hawkins: "A Portrait of Coleman Hawkins"


    Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra featuring Randy Weston: "African Sunrise Suite"


    John Lewis Orchestra: "Afternoon in Paris"


    The Brubeck Quartet and the New York Philharmonic Orchestra: Dialogues (for Jazz Combo and Orchestra) followed by DBQ recordings of Leonard Bernstein showtunes
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    Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links to the reviews, interviews, etc.

    August 11, 2015, 6:37 pm
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    Picnic
    The selections (reviews and citations at the links below) of undeservedly (and a few deservedly) under-appreciated audio/visual experiences...as always, thanks to all the contributors and you readers... 

    Allan Fish: Valerie and Her Week of Wonders (aka: Valerie A Tyden Divu); Lilika; Happiness

    Anne Billson: The Road

    Anonymous: The Miracle of Morgan's Creek

    Bill Crider: Barbarossa [trailer]

    BV Lawson: Media Murder 

    Colin: Edge of Eternity

    The Gift
    Comedy Film Nerds: Gilbert Gottfried

    Cynthia Fuchs: The Gift;Angry Sky; Toe-Tag Parole: To Live and Die in Yard A

    Dan Stumpf: The Law and Jake Wade; The House of Fear

    David Cramner: Get Smart at 50

    David Schmidt recommends: Seance on a Wet Afternoon


    David Vineyard: Diamonds Are Forever (BBC Radio 4)

    Dean Treadway: The Innocents

    Ed Gorman: Eric Lichtenfeld on vigilante films

    Elgin Bleecker: The Dam Busters

    Elizabeth Foxwell: Home at Seven (aka Murder on Monday);The Lodger

    Evan Lewis: The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939 film)

    Valerie and Her Week of Wonders
    Gary Deane: Lure of the Swamp

    George Kelley: Snatch;Mr. Holmes

    How Did This Get Made?:Top Dog 

    Iba Dawson: the un-marketing of Fantastic Four

    Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: Hands Up! and silent-film comedy

    Gilligan Newton-John: TV Guide, Salt Lake City edition, February 12th 1977

    J. Kingston Pierce: A/V notes

    Jack Seabrook: Alfred Hitchcock Presents:"Our Cook's a Treasure" (Robert C. Dennis adapting Dorothy L. Sayers)

    Jackie Kashian: The Great Gatsby;Zach Sherwin on word puzzles, rap, and Neil Gaiman 

    Jacqueline T. Lynch: Lady in the Lake

    James Clark: Manhunter

    James Reasoner: Little Manhattan

    Jeff Flugel: films this year, so far 

    Jerry House: The Expendables

    Oral Fixation
    John Grant: Noose for a Lady; Oral Fixation

    Jonathan Lewis: The Haunted Palace; The Karate Killers (a Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode repackage) 

    Karen Hannsberry: The Devil Thumbs a Ride 

    Kliph Nesteroff: Murray Roman on Mason Williams 

    Kristina Dijan: The Gorgon; The Mystery of the 13th Guest; Never a Dull Moment; around the classic horror cinema

    Lance Charnes: intelligence vs. spies 

    Laura: Sombrero; Dr. Gillespie's New Assistant; Eight Below

    Lucy Brown: Picnic

    Mark Evanier: The Tonight Show: Muppets (1974)

    Martin Edwards: Inspector Morse and Oxford

    Marty McKee: The Candy Snatchers; The Midnight Man

    Mystery Dave: Move Over, Darling

    Patrick Murtha: Bourbon Street Beat: "Wall of Silence"

    Patti Abbott: Lake Mungo

    Paul Bishop: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

    Pearce Duncan: Eyes without a Face (aka Les yeux san visage)

    Pedro Silva: Amarcord

    Pop My Culture: voice actor Jess Harnell 

    Randy Johnson: Ringo and Gringo Against All (aka Ringo e Gringo contra tutti)

    Rick: Hitchcock, Lubitsch, Capra, Griffith; Pamelyn Ferdin

    Rod Lott: Inseminoid

    Sam Juliano: My Childhood 

    Sergio Angelini: Scott Turow's Innocent

    Scott Cupp: The Day Mars Invaded Earth

    Stacia Jones: The Outrageous Sophie Tucker; King of the Gypsies

    Stephen Bowie: 1960s A/V supercomputers

    Steve Lewis: Front Page Detective: "Galahad";Gemini Man (pilot telefilm); Brenner: "Charlie Paradise"

    Victoria Loomes: Wardrobe in Double Indemnity 

    Vienna: Portia on Trial

    Yvette Banek: most memorable film scenes
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    FFB: YESTERDAY'S TOMORROWS edited by Frederik Pohl (Berkley, 1982) and, essentially, EDITORS edited by Saul Bellow and Keith Botsford (Toby Press, 2001)

    August 14, 2015, 8:27 am
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    This wasn't the book I was going to review this week, but it kind of shouldered its way in...it arrived the same day as what was supposed to be Editors, edited by Saul Bellow and Keith Botsford, which was a similar volume with a similar remit...both were meant to cover the previous forty years in their editors' editorial careers at various magazines and periodical book series. But, instead, the inventory sticker for Editors had been slapped onto a back issue of Granta (and not the cleanest copy I've ever seen), #99, one highlighted by an interview with Richard Ford (I have one of his books hanging fire, waiting for me to read it for this exercise as well). Bellow and Botsford, in their fat volume, pulled items from their various collaborative projects beginning with The Noble Savage (and I have a book in the queue that was mostly invented there) and wrapping up with their last such effort, News From the Republic of Letters; the rather fat Pohl volume begins with selections from the magazines Pohl began editing while 19 years old, Astonishing Stories and Super Science Stories; from there, the book draws on items from Pohl's first reprint anthologies, then the new-story anthology series (and for one issue a magazine) Star Science Fiction; then onto taking over Galaxy and its sibling magazines (most notably If), at first while officially helping out the ailing H. L. Gold, and then in the clear, for more than a decade (ca. 1958 to leaving with the magazines' sale in 1969), editing for several months at the collapsing Ace Books of the early '70s and moving on from there to rather less chaotic times at Bantam Books for most of the 1970s; the last years are represented by novel excerpts, as Pohl didn't have an anthology series at Bantam: one each from Samuel Delany's Dhalgren, fellow former Futurian Society member David Kyle's completion of the planned but unfinished "Lensman" adventure novels by the late E.E. Smith, and Gustav Hasford's The Short-Timers, which, after this anthology was published, would be adapted for film as Full Metal Jacket, the script a collaboration between Hasford, Michael Kerr and Stanley Kubrick that won them an Oscar. 
    Bantam let Arbor House do the hardcover edition (left), which they packaged atrociously as well.

    In the prefatory material in this utterly functional (and no more than that) physical package, Pohl spells out, in more detail than I've seen elsewhere, the nature of his working life at each of his editorial desks, even if the reprint-anthology selections are a bit out of any sort of chronological or other apparent order. He can be cagy about certain matters (he mentions in passing that he met his second wife as a colleague at Popular Publications, the artist and writer Dorothy Les Tina, but doesn't mention her name here, even as he never mentioned meeting her at his first editorial jobs in his book-length memoir The Way the Future Was), but nonetheless is engaging and informative about the day-to-day production and business practices as well as the editorial work itself in each of his gigs.  (It's notable that the Bellow/Botsford is similarly a no-frills physical presentation, featuring memoirs by its editors that include such bits as Bellow's boyhood acquaintance with the first professional writer he knew, a 1930s contributor to Popular's Argosy magazine and Street and Smith's Doc Savage; even as Pohl includes stories he'd gathered for his reprint anthologies, the B men include some of reprinted items they'd run in their magazines, particularly The Noble Savage's front pages, and the editorial offices of their magazines were not free of the odd romantic/emotional entanglement, such as the affair that inspired Bellow's Herzog.)  The Pohl (courtesy the Homeville/William Contento indices):

    EDITORS  [their introductory memoirs]
    Keith Botsford: On the Facts
    Saul Bellow: Great and Not so Great Expectations, Noble Savage 3
    Saul Bellow: Hidden Within Technology’s Empire, A Republic of Letters, The New York Times
    Saul Bellow & Keith Botsford: Dialogue: As seen from the ground, ANON

    ARIAS [essentially, editorials from the four magazines, including ANON and Bostonia]
    Saul Bellow: Pains and Gains, Noble Savage 1
    Stephen Spender: Doctor of Science, Patient of Poetry, Noble Savage 4
    Saul Bellow: The 11:59 News, Noble Savage 4
    Keith Botsford: Obit on a Witness, Noble Savage 4
    Saul Bellow: Mr. Wollix gets an Honorary Degree, ANON
    Mark Harris: Nixon and Hayakawa, ANON
    Saul Bellow: White House and Artists, Noble Savage 5
    Felix Pollak: The Poor Man’s Civil Defense Manual, Noble Savage 5
    Philip O’Connor: A few Notes on the Changing World, Noble Savage 5
    Saul Bellow: View from Intensive Care, The Republic of Letters 1
    Saul Bellow: Graven Images, The Republic of Letters 2
    Philip O’Connor: Last Journal, The Republic of Letters 2
    James Wood: Real Life, The Republic of Letters 2
    Martin Amis: Cars and the Man, The Republic of Letters 3
    Julia Copeland: Objective Correlative, The Republic of Letters 7

    ARCHIVES [reprints from what they reprinted in their magazines]
    Samuel Butler: Ramblings in Cheapside, Noble Savage 1
    DH Lawrence: Portrait of Maurice Magnus, Noble Savage 2
    Joseph de Maistre: The Executioner, ANON
    Victor Hugo: The Interment of Napoleon, The Republic of Letters 4

    INVESTIGATIONS
    George A Elliott: Critic and Common Reader, Noble Savage 2
    Harold Rosenberg: Seven Numbered Notes, Noble Savage 3
    Louis Simpson: On Being a Poet in America, Noble Savage 5
    Herbert Blau: The Public Art of Crisis in the Suburbs of Hell, Noble Savage 5
    Marjorie Farber: The Romantic Method, Noble Savage 5
    Raymond Tallis: A Dark Mirror, The Republic of Letters 2

    LIVES
    Josephine Herbst: A Year of Disgrace, Noble Savage 3
    Antoni Slonimski: Memories of Warsaw, Noble Savage 4
    G V Desani: With Malice Aforethought, Noble Savage 5
    Rudolf Kassner: Sulla and the Satyr, ANON
    Saul Bellow: Mozart, Bostonia, Spring 1992
    Saul Bellow: Ralph Ellison in Tivoli, The Republic of Letters 3
    Alan Govenar and Leonard St. Clair: Life as a Tattoo Artist, The Republic of Letters 6
    Saul Bellow: Saul Steinberg, The Republic of Letters 7

    POEMS
    Howard Nemerov: Life Cycle of Common Man, Noble Savage 1
    Oonagh Lahr: The Advance on the Retreat, Noble Savage 4
    Alexander Pushkin: Count Nulin, Noble Savage 4
    Anthony Hecht: Message from the City, Noble Savage 5
    Cesare Pavese: What an Old Man has Left, ANON
    Michael Hulse: Winterreise, The Republic of Letters 7

    TEXTS 
    Edward Hoagland: Cowboys, Noble Savage 1
    Harold Rosenberg: Notes from the Ground Up, Noble Savage 1
    Josephine Herbst: The Starched Blue Sky of Spain, Noble Savage 1
    Arthur Miller: Please Don’t Kill Anything, Noble Savage 1
    Wright Morris: The Scene, Noble Savage 1
    Mark Harris: The Self-Made Brain Surgeon, Noble Savage 1
    Louis Guilloux: Friendship, Noble Savage 2
    Sol Yurick: The Annealing, Noble Savage 2
    Dan Wakefield: An American Fiesta, Noble Savage 2
    Jara Ribnikar: Copperskin, Noble Savage 3
    John Berryman: Thursday Out, Noble Savage 3
    Seymour Krim: What’s This Cat’s Story? Noble Savage 3
    Thomas Pynchon: Under the Rose, Noble Savage 3
    Herbert Gold: Death in Miami Beach, Noble Savage 3
    G V Desani: Mephisto’s Daughter, Noble Savage 4
    Louis Guilloux: Palante, Noble Savage 4
    Louis Gallo: Oedipus-Schmoedipus, Noble Savage 4
    Elémire Zolla: An Angelic Visit on Via dei Martiri, Noble Savage 4
    Robert [Chapin] Coover: Blackdamp, Noble Savage 4
    John Hawkes: A Little Bit of the Old Slap and Tickle, Noble Savage 5
    Nelson Algren: Dad among the Troglodytes, or Show Me a Gypsy and I’ll show you a Nut, Noble Savage 5
    Bette Howland: Aronesti, Noble Savage 5
    Anthony Kerrigan: Don Alonso Quixano, Lineal Descendants, Noble Savage 5
    Arthur Miller: Glimpse at a Jockey, Noble Savage 5
    Sydor Rey: Hitler’s Mother, Noble Savage 5
    Leon Rooke: The Line of Fire, Noble Savage 5
    Meyer Schapiro: Lichtenberg, Diderot, Galiani , ANON
    Christopher Middleton & Cristoph Meckel: Pocket Elephants, ANON
    Umberto Saba: A Jewish Savant, Bostonia, November 1989
    John Auerbach: Distortions, Bostonia, March 1990
    Bette Howland: A Little Learning, Bostonia, May 1990
    S H Perelman: Strictly from Hunger, Bostonia, June 1990
    Conall Ryan: Grace Notes, Bostonia, September 1990
    Keith Botsford: The Second Life of Gioacchino Rossini, Bostonia, February 1992
    Silvio d’Arzo: Two Old People, Bostonia, September 1993
    G T de Lampedusa: Lighea, or the Siren, Bostonia, September 1994
    Karl Logher: My Father in the Mirror, The Republic of Letters 3
    Saul Bellow: All Marbles Accounted for, The Republic of Letters 4
    Murray Bail: The Seduction of my Sister, The Republic of Letters 5
    S Scibona: Prairie, The Republic of Letters 6 

    So, basically, books you can swim around in. A lot of work to be proud of for all three men, and yet also it would've helped had Berkley taken (and perhaps Toby Press to have had the resources to have taken) more care in packaging these bug-crushers so that they might be more pleasing to the eye.  Though whether you're basking in the casual brilliance of R. A. Lafferty ("Slow Tuesday Night" is almost the template of what's best of his short work) or of Thomas Pynchon ("Under the Rose" isn't too far from his correspondent to the Lafferty), or we enjoy the work editorially particularly solicited from Josephine Herbst and Alice Sheldon (aka "James Tiptree, Jr.") in these largely boys' clubs, you do get a good helping of why the editorial efforts of these writers mattered, of what kept drawing them back to the editorial chair.  (Certainly, I was pleased in small, petty part to be appointed editor-in-chief of Hawaii Review when 18, beating Pohl's appointment to his first professional magazines by some months, but more because I hoped to do a fraction of what he'd done in the decades since...and have done rather a smaller fraction than I'd hoped.) Bellow, too, if more distantly, had also been a spur...I was perhaps a bit too much like Herzog even as a teen, and his "Seize the Day" if anything moved me more profoundly. 

    But in considering these books for today (while I'm still awaiting the delivery of Editors, I did read another copy some years ago), it occurred to me how much the complex of the former Futurians (including Pohl, Merril, Kyle, Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight and other geniuses) had an outsized influence on my literary life...not only the anthologies edited by Donald Wollheim (including the first story I read by ex-Futurian Richard Wilson, "A Man Spekith", being one of the first adult and rather grimly satirical sf stories I read, in my father's copy of the Wollheim and Terry Carr's World's Best Science Fiction 1970) but also in my wider reading, as the first edition of Dracula I picked up, about age 9, was the Airmont Classic paperback, a series edited and with introductions from ex-Futurian Robert A. W. Lowndes (he was already editing the Magazine of Horror by then, and would publish the first stories by Stephen King and F. Paul Wilson in Startling Mystery Stories not long after publishing his edition of the Stoker); even more importantly, I was collected as many of the Lancer Books Magnum "Easy-Eye" classics paperbacks, going for a quarter apiece at the local W.T. Grant's discount department store, a series edited and with brief introductions by ex-Futurian Larry
    Shaw (who was briefly married to Lee Hoffman, and had done a lot of interesting if usually underfunded editorial work as well...Lancer's 1960s reprints of Conan stories had done nothing to hurt the popularity of Robert Howard nor sword & sorcery fiction generally)...not solely Poe collections (the first I'd bought of the Magnum Classics line) or sf such as Wells's The Time Machine and Edward Bellamy's socialist utopian Looking Backward, but also Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, Helen Keller's autobiography (no lack of socialists!), and Benjamin Franklin's, O. Henry, Bret Harte, Edward Everett Hale, Henry James and such other fantasists as Lewis Carroll and Kenneth Grahame. Signet Classics and others were important as well to my early reading, but these editions, which I could obtain by the handful through parental largesse on every trip to that store, had a profound effect.  It wasn't too many years later that I was reading Pohl's and Knight's memoirs, and even given the tough times they faced, decided that even more than a writer what I wanted to be was an editor.  It was through Knight's The Futurians that I first read excerpts from and about Doris Baumgardt, one of the first female members of the Futurians and, in the 1940s photos in the Knight, devastatingly pretty; she and Pohl married, albeit briefly, and she took her first editorial job with the same low-rent entrepreneurs, the Albings, who gave Donald Wollheim his first (barely) professional gig; Pohl and Wollheim
    recall that Baumgardt, known to her friends as Doë and professionally and in fandom in those years mostly as "Leslie Perri", wrote most of the content of her no-budget stablemate, Movie Love Stories, to Wollheim's no-budget Cosmic Stories and Stirring Science Stories. I finally read, last night, one of only three short stories Perri apparently published in the sf magazines, and sadly it's probably the least of them, a vignette written in the kind of overstated prose Lovecraft favored, perhaps as an experiment; it and the longest Perri story were both published in magazines Shaw edited at the time, this one in If for September 1953 (which is highlighted by ex-Futurian James Blish's important "A Case of Conscience" as well as stories by Philip Dick and eventual hardboiled crime-fiction specialist James McKimmey), the longer one in an issue of the later Infinity Science Fiction I'm going to need to pick up, given how much interesting unreprinted fiction is contained there. Baumgardt and Richard Wilson eventually were married, a period when they were both primarily employed as newspaper journalists, before their divorce in 1965, and her death from cancer in 1970...not too long after the publication of "A Man Spekith" in 1969, and republication in the 1970 book where I would read it ca. 1973. Life is full of almost closed circles and gossamer connections such as that...for more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog (and her novel and those of several other friends and acquaintances await me in the TBR/Re-Read stack as well).
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    the six (at least) horror and related fantasy annuals in English this year

    August 15, 2015, 4:01 pm
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    To be released this fall by Undertow Books and ChiZine Publications: final contents might include one further story:

    “The Atlas of Hell” by Nathan Ballingrud (Fearful Symmetries, ed. Ellen Datlow, ChiZine Publications)
     “Wendigo Nights” by Siobhan Carroll (Fearful Symmetries, ed. Ellen Datlow, ChiZine Publications)
     “Headache” by Julio Cortázar. English-language translation by Michael Cisco (Tor.com, September 2014)
     “Loving Armageddon” by Amanda C. Davis (Crossed Genres Magazine #19, July 2014)
     “The Earth and Everything Under” by K.M. Ferebee (Shimmer Magazine #19, May 2014) 
    “Nanny Anne and the Christmas Story” by Karen Joy Fowler (Subterranean Press Magazine, Winter 2014)
    “The Girls Who Go Below” by Cat Hellisen (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July/August 2014)
    “Nine” by Kima Jones (Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction From the Margins of History, eds. Rose Fox & Daniel José Older, Crossed Genres Publications)
    “Bus Fare” by Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean Press Magazine, Spring 2014)
    “The Air We Breathe Is Stormy, Stormy” by Rich Larson (Strange Horizons Magazine, August 2014)
    “The Husband Stitch” by Carmen Maria Machado (Granta Magazine, October 2014)
    “Observations About Eggs From the Man Sitting Next to Me on a Flight from Chicago, Illinois to Cedar Rapids, Iowa” by Carmen Maria Machado (Lightspeed Magazine #47, April 2014)
    “Resurrection Points” by Usman T. Malik (Strange Horizons Magazine, August 2014)
    “Exit Through the Gift Shop” by Nick Mamatas (Searchers After Horror: New Tales of the Weird and Fantastic, ed. S.T. Joshi, Fedogan & Bremer)
    “So Sharp That Blood Must Flow” by Sunny Moraine (Lightspeed Magazine #45, February 2014)
    “The Ghoul” by Jean Muno, English-language translation by Edward Gauvin (Weirdfictionreview.com, June2014)
    “A Stretch of Highway Two Lanes Wide” by Sarah Pinsker (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March/April 2014)
    “Migration” by Karin Tidbeck (Fearsome Magics: The New Solaris Book of Fantasy, ed. Jonathan Strahan, Solaris)
    “Hidden in the Alphabet” by Charles Wilkinson (Shadows & Tall Trees 2014, ed. Michael Kelly, Undertow Publications)
    “A Cup of Salt Tears” by Isabel Yap (Tor.com, August 2014)

    • Publication: Best British Horror 2015
    • Editors: Johnny Mains
    • Year: 2015-05-25
    • ISBN: 978-1-78463-028-7 [1-78463-028-4]
    • Publisher: Salt Publishing
    • Price: £9.99
    • Pages: 384
    “Shaddertown” by Conrad Williams (Shadows & Tall Trees, Volume 6)
    “Quarry Hogs” by Jane Jakeman (Supernatural Tales 27, Autumn 2014)
    “Random Flight” by Rosalie Parker (Terror Tales of Yorkshire, edited by Paul Finch, Gray Friar Press)
    “A Spider Remember” by Sara Pascoe (Dead Funny, edited by Robin Ince and Johnny Mains, Salt Publishing)
    “Eastmouth” by Alison Moore (The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mark Morris, Spectral Press)
    “Learning the Language” by John Llewellyn Probert (Terror Tales of Wales, edited by Paul Finch, Gray Friar Press)
    “Reunion” by Rebecca Lloyd (Mercy and Other Stories, Tartarus Press)
    “The Third Time” by Helen Grant (Ghosts and Scholars Book of Shadows, Volume 2, edited by Rosemary Pardoe, Sarob Press)
    “Drowning in Air” by Andrew Hook (Strange Tales, Volume IV, edited by Rosalie Parker, Tartarus Press)
    “Alistair” by Mark Samuels (Written in Darkness, Egaeus Press)
    “In the Year of Omens” by Helen Marshall (Gifts for the One Who Comes After, ChiZine Publications)
    “Apple Pie and Sulphur” by Christopher Harman (Shadows & Tall Trees, Volume 6)
    “On Ilkley Moore” by Alison Littlewood (Terror Tales of Yorkshire, edited by Paul Finch, Gray Friar Press)
    “The Broken and the Unmade” by Stephen J Dines (Black Static, Issue 39)
    “Only Bleeding” by Gary McMahon (Horror Uncut, edited by Joel Lane and Tom Johnstone, Gray Friar Press)
    “The Night Porter” by Ray Russell (Shadows & Tall Trees, Volume 6)
    “Something Sinister in Sunlight” by Lisa Tuttle (The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mark Morris, Spectral Press)
    “Summerside” by Alison Moore (Shadows & Tall Trees, Volume 6)
    “Private Ambulance” by Simon Kurt Unsworth (Noir, edited by Ian Whates, NewCon Press)
    “The Rising Tide” by Priya Sharma (Terror Tales of Wales, edited by Paul Finch, Gray Friar Press)
    “The Slista” by Stephen Laws (The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mark Morris, Spectral Press)
    “Dog” by Reece Shearsmith (Dead Funny, edited by Robin Ince and Johnny Mains, Salt Publishing)

    • Publication: The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2015
    • Editors: Paula Guran
    • Year: 2015-06-24
    • ISBN: 978-1-60701-454-6 [1-60701-454-8]
    • Publisher: Prime Books
    • Price: $19.95
    • Pages: 576
    Content (in alphabetical order by author)
    • Kelley Armstrong, “The Screams of Dragons” (Subterranean Press Magazine, Spring 2014) 
    • Dale Bailey, “The End of the End of Everything” (Tor.com, 23 Apr 2014) 
    • Laird Barron, “(Little Miss) Queen of Darkness” (Dark Discoveries #29)
    • Elizabeth Bear “Madam Damnable’s Sewing Circle” (Dead Man’s Hand, ed. John Joseph Adams) 
    • Richard Bowes, “Sleep Walking Now and Then” (Tor.com, 9 July 2014)
    • Nadia Bulkin, “Only Unity Saves the Damned” (Letters to Lovecraft, ed. Jesse Bullington)
    • Gemma Files, “A Wish From a Bone” (Fearful Symmetries, ed. Ellen Datlow) 
    • S. L. Gilbow, “Mr Hill’s Death” (The Dark #4)
    • Lisa L. Hannett & Angela Slatter, “The Female Factory” (The Female Factory)
    • Maria Dahvana Headley “Who Is Your Executioner?” (Nightmare Magazine, Nov 2014)
    • Stephen Graham Jones, “The Elvis Room” (The Elvis Room)
    • Caitlín R. Kiernan, “The Cats of River Street (1925)” (Sirenia Digest #102)
    • Alice Sola Kim, “Mothers, Lock Up Your Daughters Because They Are Terrifying” (Monstrous Affections, eds. Kelly Link & Gavin Grant/Tin House #61) 
    • John Langan, “Children of the Fang” (Lovecraft’s Monsters, ed. Ellen Datlow) 
    • Yoon Ha Lee, “Combustion Hour” (Tor.com, 10 Apr 2014)
    • V. H. Leslie, “The Quiet Room” (Shadows & Tall Trees: 2014, ed. Michael Kelly)
    • Ken Liu, “Running Shoes” (SQ Mag, Issue 16, Sept 2014)
    • Usman T. Malik, “Resurrection Points” (Strange Horizons, 4 August 2014) 
    • Helen Marshall, “Death and the Girl from Pi Delta Zeta” (Lackington’s, Issue 1, Winter 2014)
    • Brandon Sanderson, “Dreamer” (Games Creatures Play, eds. Charlaine Harris & Toni L. P. Kelner)
    • Simon Strantzas, “Emotional Dues” (Burnt Black Suns)
    • Steve Rasnic Tem, “The Still, Cold Air” (Here with the Shadows)
    • Lavie Tidhar, “Kur-A-Len” (Black Gods Kiss)
    • Jeff VanderMeer, “Fragments from the Notes of a Dead Mycologist” (Shimmer #18)
    • Kali Wallace, “Water in Springtime” (Clarkesworld, Issue 91, Apr 2014)
    • Damien Angelica Walters, “The Floating Girls: A Documentary” (Jamais Vu Issue Three, Sept 2014)
    • Kaaron Warren, “The Nursery Corner” (Fearsome Magics, ed. Jonathan Strahan) 
    • A. C. Wise, “And the Carnival Leaves Town” (Nightmare Carnival, ed. Ellen Datlow)
    • Publication: The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Seven
    • Editors: Ellen Datlow
    • Year: 2015-08-11
    • ISBN: 978-1-59780-829-3 [1-59780-829-6]
    • Publisher: Night Shade Books
    • Price: $15.99
    • Pages: 416
    “The Atlas of Hell” by Nathan Ballingrud (Fearful Symmetries, edited by Ellen Datlow, ChiZine Publications)
    “Winter Children” by Angela Slatter (Postscripts #32/33 Far Voyager, edited by Nick Gevers, PS Publishing)
    “A Dweller in Amenty” by Genevieve Valentine (Nightmare Magazine, March 2014)
    “Outside Heavenly” by Rio Youers (The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mark Morris, Spectral Press)
    “Shay Corsham Worsted” by Garth Nix (Fearful Symmetries, edited by Ellen Datlow, ChiZine Publications)
    “Allocthon” by Livia Llewellyn (Letters to Lovecraft, edited by Jesse Bullington, Stone Skin Press)
    “Chapter Six” by Stephen Graham Jones (Tor.com, June 2014)
    “This is Not for You” by Gemma Files (Nightmare Magazine, September 2014)
    “Interstate Love Song (Murder Ballad No. 8)” by Caitlín R. Kiernan (Sirenia Digest #100, May 2014)
    “The Culvert” by Dale Bailey (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, September/October 2014)
    “Past Reno” by Brian Evenson (Letters to Lovecraft, edited by Jesse Bullington, Stone Skin Press)
    “The Coat Off His Back” by Keris McDonald (Terror Tales of Yorkshire, edited by Paul Finch, Gray Friar Press)
    “the worms crawl in” by Laird Barron (Fearful Symmetries, edited by Ellen Datlow, ChiZine Publications)
    “The Dog’s Home” by Alison Littlewood (The Spectral Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mark Morris, Spectral Press)
    “Tread Upon the Brittle Shell” by Rhoads Brazos (SQ Magazine, Edition 14, May 2014)
    “Persistence of Vision” by Orrin Grey (Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Exile Editions)
    “It Flows From the Mouth” by Robert Shearman (Shadows & Tall Trees, Volume 6)
    “Wingless Beasts” by Lucy Taylor (Fatal Journeys, Overlook Connection Press)
    “Departures” by Carole Johnstone (The Bright Day is Done, Gray Friar Press)
    “Ymir” by John Langan (The Children of the Old Leech, edited by Ross E. Lockhart & Justin Steele, Word Horde)
    “Plink” by Kurt Dinan (Postscripts #32/33 Far Voyager, edited by Nick Gevers, PS Publishing)
    “Nigredo” by Cody Goodfellow (In the Court of the Yellow King, edited by Glynn Owen Barras, Celaeno Press)

    itle: The Year's Best Australian Fantasy & Horror 2014 
    Editors: Liz Grzyb and Talie Helene 
    Year: 2015
    Type: ANTHOLOGY 
    Series: Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror 
    Series Number: 5


    BEST NEW HORROR #26  Edited by Stephen Jones: contents tba

    ...though PS Publishing is reprinting some past volumes of the series, including last year's, with EC Comics-esque covers:

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