Browsed by
Category: Blog Entry

Fresh Blood: Todd Grimson’s Stainless

Fresh Blood: Todd Grimson’s Stainless

Comments 4 comments

Vampires, of all the residents of the Kingdom of Fright, are uniquely vulnerable to the revisionist impulses of writers and filmmakers. People just don’t turn the same tricks with mummies or werewolves or ghosts that they do with the Nosferatu. I’m not sure why this should be so, but I do think it’s true.

This is a problem for me, though, because with monsters, I’m a traditionalist. (I want a ghoul just like the ghoul that buried dear old dad, as we used to say on the playground.) My stodginess is especially firm when it comes to the undead. When the sun goes down over the Carpathians, give me Bela Lugosi or Christopher Lee any day (or should I say, night); I want none of this Near Dark, Lost Boys or True Blood nonsense, and as for Twilight, please – Black Gate is a family-friendly site, and we’re not allowed to use words like that. This is why Salem’s Lot is my favorite Stephen King novel; its steadfast old-fashionedness warms the cockles of my heart, right where the stake would go through. (By the way, what the hell are cockles?)

The only exception to my reactionary streak is Charlie Huston’s Joe Pitt novels. Beginning with 2005’s Already Dead, these books depict a modern-day Manhattan overrun with warring vampire clans, and they’re done with such violent verve that I can’t help loving them. Actually, Huston’s series is the only exception until now, because this year, for my October scary season reading, I took a chance on Todd Grimson’s vampire novel Stainless. It’s about as revisionist as you can get, and it absolutely blew me away.

…

Read More Read More

Forgotten Authors: Wilbur Scott Peacock

Forgotten Authors: Wilbur Scott Peacock

Comments 0 Comment
Jungle Stories, Fall 1940

Wilbur Scott Peacock was born in Wichita, Kansas on June 27, 1915 to Walter Winfield Peacock and Vera (nee France).

Peacock married Eva Lucille Studer in 1940, although their marriage only last a couple of years and she remarried in 1943. Peacock married Gladys Lucille Malagen in 1958. Peacock and Gladys had a daughter, Sharon, and a son, Wynn.

Peacock began publishing fiction in the Fall 1940 issue of Jungle Stories with “The Ju Ju Kiss.” His story “Life Cycle” appeared in the October 1940 issue of Science Fiction and “Uranian Justice” appeared that same month in Captain Future. Over the next fourteen years, hs fiction would appear in numerous magazines, including Terror Tales, Planet Stories, Future Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Blue Book, Super Science Stories, The Phantom Detective, and Startling Stories. Although they usually appeared under bylines reflective of his real name, the story “The Silver Witch” appeared as by John Peter Drummond, a house name used for Ki-Gor stories in Jungle Stories, and shared with Jerome Bixby, Robert Turner, Stanley Mullen, and others. Peacock’s final story, Martians Twitter,” appeared in the July 1954 issue of Fantastic Story

…

Read More Read More

Prometheus Undone – Or, Cohen Meets the Gods (Terry Pratchett)

Prometheus Undone – Or, Cohen Meets the Gods (Terry Pratchett)

Comments 7 comments

I have written a half-dozen essays on the late, great, Terry Pratchett. As with Robert E. Howard, Rex Stout, and some other authors, I discovered him late in my reading life. I was a fan of Good Omens (I STILL find the streaming series unwatchable. David Tenant is nothing like Azrael to me), but I had never read a single Discworld novel.

Being a huge Douglas Adams fan, I gave Guards, Guards! a try, and I was hooked. I’ve since called him a ‘modern-day fantasy Voltaire.’ Do the kids still read Candide? We did in high school. I liked it.

The Last Hero is a 2001 illustrated novella, and is a rather unique work. This is sized between a coffee table book and an over-sized hardback, and it is LAVISHLY illustrated by Paul Kidby. There’s barely a page that doesn’t have some kind of background, or at least a block letter. And it’s literally filled with drawings of all sizes; Including full two-page spreads. If you like Kidby’s art, this will be one of your favorite Pratchetts. I’m not overestimating the sheer volume of terrific art in this. I cannot give enough praise and credit to this labor of love. I have the illustrated Eric, and this is a whole other level.

The story itself is a Pratchett-esque take on the Greek myth of Prometheus. Since we don’t teach the classics anymore, a quick recap: Prometheus was a Titan who sided with Zeus in the big rebellion against an overbearing father.

Later, seeing the suffering of man, he steals fire and brings it down from Mt. Olympus, giving mankind its greatest gift. That doesn’t fly well with the god crowd, so he’s captured and chained to a rock. Every day an eagle comes and eats his liver: Which then grows back for tomorrow’s snack. Man. Zeus could really be a vindictive SOB. Prometheus, Sisyphus: it’s not just punishment. It’s a repeatable action, for an eternity of torment. Eventually, Prometheus is freed by Hercules.

…

Read More Read More

Weird Times 7: Labour and the Economy

Weird Times 7: Labour and the Economy

Comments 1 comment


The J.P Morgan Bank at 23 Wall Street, New York, built in 1914.
This is the sixth post in a series reflecting on the world of the 1920s as a background to early issues of Weird Tales. Imagine that you’re an American in a big city in 1923, and you’re taking a walk to the newsstand to buy the first issue of a new pulp fiction magazine. What sort of things might you see? What do those things suggest about ways people think? Or about the stories they tell?

Perhaps you’ll see a bank. Bank architecture in the 1920s typically follows traditions going back to the 18th century, in terms of what the architecture is supposed to convey and how. Neo-classical buildings speak of power and security. You can leave your money in one of these temple-like structures, and feel safe. The bank will not disappear, it will not collapse, it will not fall before the bombs of a robber or a revolutionary. That matters; in an age before the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation the collapse of a bank can wipe out a depositor’s savings. And certainly this is an age that has recently seen many panics and controversies revolving around money and the economy; therefore often also revolving around politics, and around labour.

…

Read More Read More

Forgotten Authors: Howard Schoenfeld

Forgotten Authors: Howard Schoenfeld

Comments 0 Comment
Howard Schoenfeld

Howard Schoenfeld was born on January 2, 1915 in Hot Springs, Arkansas. He attended the University of Syracuse. For Christmas in 1933, he visited Manhattan for the first time and a year later moved to Greenwich Village, where he got a job an editor for See magazine, a photo magazine and as deputy editor-in-chief for Uncensored. He also worked as a public relations officer for the Workers’ Defense League.

Schoenfeld refused to register for the draft in 1940, stating that he was a pacifist and that peacetime conscription was unlawful. He wound up spending 11 months in prison before being paroled to serve an additional seven months at a Quaker work camp for conscientious objectors. Schoenfeld wrote about his experiences in “The Danbury Story,” and went on to write a political column for The Conscientious Objector.

…

Read More Read More

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone – 3 Good Reasons: Murder is No Joke

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone – 3 Good Reasons: Murder is No Joke

Comments 1 comment

I haven’t written about Nero Wolfe in a year and-a-half? Flummery! Most NOT satisfactory. So…

Welcome to another installment of 3 Good Reasons. With a goal of eventually tackling every tale of the Corpus, I’ll give three reasons why the particular story at hand is the best Nero Wolfe of them all. Since I’m writing over seventy ‘Best Story’ essays, the point isn’t actually to pick one – just to point out some of what is good in every adventure featuring Wolfe and Archie. And I’ll toss in one reason it’s not the best story. Now – These essays will contain SPOILERS. You have been warned!

The Story

Today’s story is “Murder is No Joke” from And Four To Go. It’s the fourth and final story, and a bit of a ‘debutante at the wrong ball.’ Each of the first three has a holiday theme.

Flora Gallant is worried about the influence which the mysterious Bianca Voss has over her brother Alec; an internationally acclaimed fashion designer. A call to Bianca, from Wolfe’s office, goes awry when Voss is apparently murdered while on the other end of the line. Inspector Cramer finds it awfully convenient, and Wolfe sets out to identify the miscreant.

…

Read More Read More

Peter Pan by JM Barrie

Peter Pan by JM Barrie

Comments 18 comments

Hitherto he had thought it was some fiend fighting him, but darker suspicions assailed him now.
‘Pan, who and what art thou?’ he cried huskily.
‘I’m youth, I’m joy,’ Peter answered at a venture, ‘I’m a little bird that has broken out of the egg.’
This, of course, was nonsense; but it was proof to the unhappy Hook that Peter did not know in the least who or what he was, which is the very pinnacle of good form.
‘To ‘t again,’ he cried despairingly.

from CHAPTER XV ‘HOOK OR ME THIS TIME’

Leaving work yesterday, a friend expressed surprise when he saw my copy of JM Barrie’s 1911 novel, Peter Pan, in my hand. “You’re reading Peter Pan, the kids’ book?” he asked. To which I answered, “Yes. But it’s not a kids’ book, because it’s about a sociopathic twelve-year-old.” An exaggeration, perhaps, but not much of one.

I think most people, if they think of Peter Pan at all, it’s either because of the 1953 Disney movie or the long-running stage productions with first Sandy Duncan and later Cathy Rigby. For them he’s merely the boy who never grows up and spends his time fighting the Captain Hook and his crew of blackguards. Now, those are important elements of the book, but they barely hint at the depths contained between its covers. It is a much weirder, darker book than the Disney version.

…

Read More Read More

Forgotten Authors: Hal K. Wells

Forgotten Authors: Hal K. Wells

Comments 1 comment
Hal K.Wells

Harold  Kerton Wells, who wrote as Hal K. Wells, was born on September 2, 1899 in Little Hocking, Ohio and grew up there and in the nearby town of Belpre, both along the Ohio River border with West Virginia.

He enlisted in the Ohio National Guard of May 18, 1917 and served in the infantry and field artillery during World War I, eventually being discharged on July 27, 1918 with a certificate of disability. He returned to Ohio and settled in Athens, about 35 miles away from where he grew up, and took a job working as a clerk for a dry goods store.

By 1930, he had left Ohio to move to Los Angeles and was publishing articles in Motion Picture Magazine, beginning in 1927. He also wrote the film A Moony Mariner, which was made in 1927 starring Billy Dooley, Vera Steadman, and Billy Engle. The film is the story of a sailor who is sent to the moon, but instead his rocket lands in a nearby Turkish bath, which he takes to be the moon.

…

Read More Read More

Into the Weird: Weird Tales, June 1923 (Volume 1, Number 4), Part 1

Into the Weird: Weird Tales, June 1923 (Volume 1, Number 4), Part 1

Comments 4 comments


Weird Tales, June 1923, front and back covers
The fourth issue of Weird Tales, dated June 1923, keeps the same format as the issue previous — starting with the large bedsheet size, about 9 inches by 12. The trade dress of the cover is the same, with the same logo. The design of the cover, with a splash of red in which one story is advertised in black writing, is the same. Unfortunately, the actual cover art, by regular Weird Tales artist William Heitman, isn’t very good.

There’s a lady, there’s an ape, and the latter seems to have surprised the former in her room. The majority of Weird Tales readers were likely able to place the image at once as a scene from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Murders In the Rue Morgue,” which is reprinted this issue. The problem is that it’s not a particularly evocative image, and the poses of the characters seem odd at first glance and make less sense the more you look at them.

…

Read More Read More

Forgotten Authors: Richard Tooker

Forgotten Authors: Richard Tooker

Comments 0 Comment
Richard Tooker

Richard Tooker was born in Farina, Illinois on July 3, 1902 to George Lattimer Tooker and Laura J. (nee Switzer) Tooker. His family eventually left the small town of 600 people to move to North Dakota and also lived in Minneapolis.

After graduating from prep school, he took a job as an editor of Westerns before serving for two years as a private in the U.S. Marine Corps during the 1920s. As with many authors he worked a variety of jobs, including as a musician, journalist, cowboy, railroad clerk, bank clerk, and a farmer. By the 1930s, he had settled in Phoenix, which would be his permanent home.

His first short story was “Planet Paradise,” published as by Dick Presley Tooker was written when he was only fifteen, but did not appear until the February 1924 issue of Weird Tales. His only other publication in the 1920s was the novel The Day of the Brown Horde, published by Payson & Clarke in 1929. It would be reviewed in both Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories and later an excerpt would be reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries.

…

Read More Read More