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Birthday Reviews: Martha Soukup’s “Sweet Bells Jangled”

Birthday Reviews: Martha Soukup’s “Sweet Bells Jangled”

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Cover by George H. Krauter
Cover by George H. Krauter

Martha Soukup was born on July 20, 1959.

Martha Soukup received the Nebula Award in 1995 for her short story “A Defense of the Social Contracts.” She had been nominated for the Nebula Award four previous times. Soukup has also been nominated for the Hugo Award, the World Fantasy Award, The James Tiptree Memorial Award, and the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. In 1988, she was a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

“Sweet Bells Jangled” was published in the September 1995 issue of Science Fiction Age, edited by Scott Edelman. It has never been reprinted.

One of the most famous science fiction novels of all time is built around the concept of an earworm. In Martha Soukup’s “Sweet Bells Jangled,” earworms are paired with the concept of memes (which have evolved in meaning considerably since the story was published) in Laurie’s mind after a shoot-the-breeze conversation with her friend Chuck, who suggests without evidence that the unintentional ability to remember song lyrics could eventually fill up a person’s memory.

Although Chuck is making a joke, Laurie took the idea to heart and throughout the story, filled with random lines of song lyrics she hears each day, Laurie’s ability to hear anything other than the music or, indeed, to function on any level, becomes stunted. Because she isn’t able to articulate what is happening to her, and Chuck shrugs it off as part of a harmless joke, nobody is able to help her when the eventual shutdown of her brain occurs.

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Birthday Reviews: T.E.D. Klein’s “The Events at Poroth Farm”

Birthday Reviews: T.E.D. Klein’s “The Events at Poroth Farm”

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Cover by Oscar Grand
Cover by Oscar Grand

T.E.D. (Theodore Eibon Donald) Klein was born on July 15, 1947.

In 1986, Klein won the World Fantasy Award for his Novella “Nadelman’s God” and also won the August Derleth Fantasy Award for his novel The Ceremonies. In 2012, World Horror Con named Klein a Grand Master. He was a two-time nominee for the coveted Balrog Award and was nominated for the World Fantasy Award seven times.

Klein’s first story was “The Events at Poroth Farm,” originally published in the fanzine From Beyond the Dark, edited by Edward P. Berglund in December 1972. Despite its fannish origins, the story was picked up by Richard Davis for The Year’s Best Horror Stories No. 3 and was translated into German for publication in that anthology. The story was also nominated for the World Fantasy Award and Gahan Wilson included it in First World Fantasy Awards. In 1984, Klein expanded the story to novel length and published it as The Ceremonies. The novella was published as a chap book in 1990. David Drake and Martin H. Greenberg reprinted it in A Century of Horror: 1970-1979 and Scott David Aniolowski included it in Return to Lovecraft Country. The story was also included in Eternal Lovecraft : The Persistence of H. P. Lovecraft in Popular Culture, edited by Jim Turner. Klein used it in his collection Reassuring Tales and S.T. Joshi used it in the anthology American Supernatural Tales. Peter Straub used it in American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now. Klein revised the story in 2012 for inclusion in the e-book The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack.

“The Events at Poroth Farm” is a Lovecraftian tale told as a series of diary entries bookended by a prologue and epilogue by the diary’s author, who has managed to survive the horror on the isolated farm where he rented a room for three months.

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In 500 Words or Less: A Short Fiction Roundup!

In 500 Words or Less: A Short Fiction Roundup!

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oie_11175654znBnLB0voie_11175745eAgDEx2yFocusing a review into less than five hundred words is tough sometimes, but I feel like I’ve got the hang of it. The obvious next step? Talk about multiple books in one review!

This week I’m doing a roundup of some excellent short fiction I’ve read in the last few weeks. It covers a breadth of genres and styles, so hopefully some (if not all) of what I mention below appeals to you.

First off, I had the pleasure of receiving an ARC of the second issue of Reckoning, edited by Michael J. DeLuca, who I co-hosted the first #solarpunkchat with on Twitter in April. Reckoning focuses specifically on environmental justice, and Issue 2 is packed with a ton of experimental and forward-thinking work about sustainability, culture and the environment. Michael’s introduction concerning how to raise a child knowing their world will be fundamentally different than your own echoed a lot of my concerns about teaching, but the piece that blew me away was Marissa Lingen’s “The Shale Giants,” giving voice to the earth beneath us, which might not be patient and benevolent forever.

If you’re a fan of themed anthologies, get a copy of Alice Unbound from Canada’s Exile Editions, which riffs off Alice in Wonderland with SFF twists. There are too many great stories to mention here. Kate Heartfield, whose debut novel I reviewed recently, creates a tragic narrative around Carroll’s Gentleman in the Paper Suit in “Dressed in White Paper.” Geoff Gander and Fiona Plunkett turn Alice and her friends into Firefly­-esque freelancers, complete with a caterpillar alien, in “Full House.” Though the final reveal in Pat Flewwelling’s story of madness spreading through an airport is a little too on-the-nose for me, “Cyphoid Mary” is still the most terrifying piece in the anthology. But my absolute favorite is “The River Street Witch” by Dominik Parisien, told from the perspective of a young girl who believes she’s a witch with no control over her magic, but if you read between there’s much more at play — this is a story that will stay with you long after you’ve finished.

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Birthday Reviews: Stephen Robinett’s “A Penny’s Worth”

Birthday Reviews: Stephen Robinett’s “A Penny’s Worth”

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Cover by Vincent di Fate
Cover by Vincent di Fate

Stephen Robinett was born on July 13, 1941 and died on February 16, 2004.

Until 1975, Robinette published using the name Tak Hallus. Although he has mostly used his own name since then, in 1976, he published the novel Mindwipe! using the pseudonym Steve Hahn.

“A Penny’s Worth” appeared in the March 1976 issue of Analog, edited by Ben Bova. It was the story’s only appearance.

Robinett created the lawyer Harry Penny for the story “A Penny’s Worth,” and Penny finds himself hired by a graduate student, Marshal Pierce, to defend Pierce against assault and battery charges. Although Pierce claims no recollection of assaulting Dr. Charles Morrow, there are two witnesses, Morrow’s wife and a neighbor, who saw the attack. The story follows Penny as he interviews witnesses and others with ties to Pierce and Morrow, to figure out what happened. The story is engaging, although the solution is telegraphed rather early on.

While Morrow and Pierce don’t know each other, there are several links between the two. Pierce worked as a graduate student for Ray Winslow, Morrow’s former, and now dead, partner. At one time Harry dated Nora, who went on to marry Winslow before leaving him for Morrow. Vernon Vernon, Pierce’s boss who fired him for stealing something after Winslow died, although Pierce claims he had Winslow’s permission to take it, also has ties to Morrow. What is clear to the reader from early on is that the medication Winslow had Pierce take somehow makes Pierce seek out Morrow to get vengeance for what Morrow did to Winslow.

Sometimes, however, plot isn’t the most important thing and so knowing the solution, rather than spoiling the story, provides a sense of foreshadowing. What caused the attack in this case is less important than Penny’s way of finding out what the reader has already figured out. His interviews with Nora, Morrow, and Vernon and his instructions to Pierce to help the boy avoid prison time for assault or worse, are the keys to the story and make it a very entertaining piece of fiction. Penny and his world seem as if they were developed to be an ongoing series, and Robinett would return to the character the following year in the novella “The Man Responsible.”

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Birthday Reviews: James Gunn’s “The Day the Magic Came Back”

Birthday Reviews: James Gunn’s “The Day the Magic Came Back”

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Cover by Chris Moore
Cover by Chris Moore

James E. Gunn was born on July 12, 1923.

In 1976, Gunn received a Worldcon Special Convention Award at MidAmeriCon for his book Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction. The same year the Science Fiction Research Association presented him with the Pilgrim Award. He was recognized with an Eaton Award in 1982. In 1983, his book Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction won the Hugo Award for Best Nonfiction Book. He received the Clareson Award from the SFRA in 1997. He received the Moskowitz Award in 2000 and was named a SFWA Grand Master in 2007. In 2009, he was inducted into the First Fandom Hall of Fame. Gunn was one of the Guests of Honor at LoneStarCon 3, the 71st World Science Fiction Convention held in San Antonio, Texas in 2013. Two years later, Gunn was inducted into the Science Fiction Fall of Fame in Seattle.

“The Day the Magic Came Back” was purchased by Scott Edelman for Science Fiction Age and appeared in the January 1996 issue. Gunn later included the story in his collection Human Voices, originally published in 2002.

When world class physician Dr. Knowland is unable to cure 9-year-old Linda Constant’s disease, her family brought in their preacher, Mr. Alma, to the hospital to pray for her. As she slowly became better, Knowland had to admit that she was cured more by Alma’s prayer than by Knowland’s medicine, and Knowland went in search of the faith healer to learn his methods.

Although what Knowland learned was a conflict between belief and science, he approached Alma’s technique with an open mind, coming to the conclusion that Alma was influencing people’s health through an unknown, and not provable or necessarily reproducible, means. The realization produces a fear in Knowland not because he frets for his job, he admits that science needs something to fall back on, but rather because it destroys his understanding of the fundamental way the universe works. Even if his science and medicine continue to work, his universe has suddenly become too unpredictable for his tastes.

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Birthday Reviews: Cordwainer Smith’s “No, No, Not Rogov!”

Birthday Reviews: Cordwainer Smith’s “No, No, Not Rogov!”

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Cover by Kelly Freas
Cover by Kelly Freas

Cordwainer Smith was born Paul Linebarger on July 11, 1913 and died on August 6, 1966. As Linebarger, his most famous work was Psychological Warfare. Frederik Pohl revealed that Smith was really Linebarger in an editorial that ran in the December 1966 issue of Galaxy

Smith was nominated for two Hugo Awards, first for the short story “The Game of Rat and Dragon” in 1955 and later for the novel The Planet Buyer in 1965. His novella “On the Storm Planet” was also nominated for the first Nebula Award. He posthumously won the Seiun Award three times, for his short fiction “Think Blue, Count Two” and “A Planet Named Shayol.” His third win was for the novel Norstilia, which was also a nominee for the Jupiter Award.

“No, No, Not Rogov!,” was originally purchased by Damon Knight and published in the February, 1959 issue of If. Judith Merril included the story in The 5th Annual of the Year’s Best S.-F. and Smith used it in his collection You Will Never Be the Same. Knight reprinted the story in the anthology Science Fiction Inventions and it was one of Smith’s stories in his collection The Instrumentality of Mankind. When Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg were selecting stories of The Great SF Stories 21 (1959), “No, No, Not Rogov!” made their cut. Jim Mann opened the NESFA Press collection The Rediscovery of Man: The Complete Short Science Fiction of Cordwainer Smith with the story. David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer used it in The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF. It most recently appeared in the Baen Books collection of Smith’s work, When the People Fell. “No, No, Not Rogov!” has been translated into French, German, Italian, and Spanish.

“No, No, Not Rogov!” is an indictment of the Soviet system. Smith tells about Soviet scientists N. Rogov and Anastasia Cherpas, whose professional competitiveness turns into respect and eventually a scientifically collaborative marriage. Whether or not they actually have any affection for each other can’t be determined from the story, although Cherpas does resent the crush that the scientist Gausgofer, who was sent to spy on them, develops on Rogov.

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July Short Story Roundup

July Short Story Roundup

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oie_1083736EA4SAq7NIt’s that time again, folks. I’m taking a break from my ongoing reread of Glen Cook’s Black Company (6 books down, 4 to go!) to give you an update on the latest heroic fantasy short fiction. First, as usual, there’re the monthly two stories from Curtis Ellett’s Swords and Sorcery Magazine. The other source of stories this July is a collection from Howie Bentley. Most of the stories are reprints I’ve reviewed before, but there are some new things I’ll tell you about.

Issue 77 of Swords and Sorcery Magazine kicks off with “Gina,” the fiery (and bloody) story of a deadly young woman with the ability to control elementals. It’s by Gustavo Bondoni, an author whose work I’ve reviewed in the past. The story kicks off just as Gina is about to be “sacrificed to the fire-demons of Hell’s Gate.” Unfortunately for her captors, just as she steps off the precipice into the volcano’s mouth, they realize she is not the naked and defenseless slave they believe her to be.

Gina looked down again and smiled. She said a few words under her breath. Out loud she said: “Haggan,” and took that final step forward.

She did not fall.

The guard’s footsteps rang out behind her as the man realized that something had gone wrong and rushed towards her to correct it. Not only was he much too late, but he was also running in the wrong direction. Any intelligent person living in a city as infested with magicians as Hell’s Gate would have taken one look at the floating woman and run the other way.

Sadly, dungeon-keepers were not selected for their intelligence. The man kept coming as Gina turned back the way she’d come. A contemptuous flick of her arm brought a tongue of fire from the depths. A gesture sent it towards the rushing defender, who could do nothing but look down at his chest in horror as a searing lance thicker than his arm penetrated his sternum and emerged from his back.

Bondoni packs a lot of back story into this short work, as well as some solid, if not altogether surprising, character development. It successfully walks the line between feeling like something ripped from a longer work and a standalone effort. It manages to feel like an important incident from the larger story of Gina’s life, yet still work as a completely discrete story; something that makes me, as a reader, very happy.

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Birthday Reviews: Fran Wilde’s “How to Walk through Historic Graveyards in the Post-Digital Age”

Birthday Reviews: Fran Wilde’s “How to Walk through Historic Graveyards in the Post-Digital Age”

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Cover by Gary Freeman
Cover by Gary Freeman

Fran Wilde was born on July 10, 1972.

Wilde won the Andre Norton Award in 2016 for her debut novel, Updraft, which was also a Nebula Nominee and a winner of the Compton Crook Stephen Tall Memorial Award. She has also been nominated for the Nebula for her novella The Jewel and Her Lapidary and the short story “Clearly Lettered in a Mostly Steady Hand,” both of which were also nominated for the Hugo Award. Her story “Only Their Shining Beauty Was Left” was a nominee for the WSFA Small Press Award.

Wilde published “How to Walk Through Historic Graveyards in the Post-Digital Age” in the April 2015 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction, edited by Sheila Williams. The story has not been reprinted.

Eleanor Reed is an embedded journalist, covering a war using implants which allowed her to submit her reports directly and her viewers to see what she saw, although the feed is censored in realtime by the army. Unfortunately, she is caught in an attack and injured. While recuperating at home, she spends time walking in St. Paul’s Kent Churchyard cemetery near her home in Chestertown, Maryland, with her rig seems to have developed a glitch. In addition to seeing what is there, she can apparently also see ghosts, particularly the ghost of the actress Tallulah Bankhead, who is buried in the cemetery.

However, the glitch in Eleanor’s implants began long before she arrived at the cemetery. When she was in country, she saw several of the members of the company she was embedded in when they died, and saw them leave their bodies. Although she is aware of the issue and trying to figure out exactly what is happening, using the ghost of Tallulah Bankhead as a test subject, she is also concerned that her handler, Ben, will learn about the images and try to use them for his own purposes, which she never really trusts.

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Dime Detective – August, 1939

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Dime Detective – August, 1939

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Gat_DimeDetectiveAugust1939

“You’re the second guy I’ve met within hours who seems to think a gat in the hand means a world by the tail.” – Phillip Marlowe in Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep

(Gat — Prohibition Era term for a gun. Shortened version of Gatling Gun)

Dime Detective hit newsstands in November of 1931. The pulp would become Black Mask’s most enduring competition. In fact, Black Mask would be bought by Dime Detective’s publisher and the latter would outlast the legendary magazine. I’m a big fan of Dime Detective and I’m working on a post about the magazine for Todd Vick’s excellent pulp blog, On An Underwood #5 (I’m sure you deduced that it’s Robert E. Howard-centric!).

Editor Kenneth S. White was given marching orders to lure as many Black Mask writers as he could, offering an extra penny a word – a palpable pulp inducement! Most pulps paid one (or even less!) cent per word. Two cents was a desirable wage, which is why so many of the successful pulpsters turned out such prodigious word counts. They needed to just to make a living. Black Mask paid three cents a word, indicative of its status and quality. Dime Detective offering an extra penny a word was significant bait.

Many of Black Mask’s writers jumped ship: Erle Stanley Gardner, Frederick Nebel, Carroll John Daly, T.T. Flynn and Frederick C. Davis among them. Norbert Davis, whose hardboiled humor wasn’t to editor Cap Shaw’s taste, flourished at Dime Detective. Davis is one of my favorites, which you surely know because you read this A (Black) Gat in the Hand post a few weeks ago!

When Shaw was relieved of duties in 1936, Raymond Chandler would quit Black Mask and write for Dime Detective.

Billing itself as “twice as good for half the price” (Black Mask cost twenty cents), Dime Detective lasted until August, 1953, by which time the paperback revolution had killed the pulps. Black Mask had packed it in after the March, 1950 issue.

The August, 1939 issue of Dime Detective screams out ‘Quality!’ It included Raymond Chandler’s “Trouble is My Business,” featuring his Philip Marlowe-ish John Dalmas. It effectively marked the end of his writing detective stories for the pulps. There would be one more mystery in Detective Story, but with The Big Sleep coming out in 1939, followed by Farwell My Lovely in 1940, he worked the detective novel going forward. In the lexicon of hardboiled, it’s Hammett, Chandler and everyone else (Some are inclined to make it a threesome with Ross MacDonald, but I’m not in that camp). Chandler wanted to write literary hardboiled stories. He succeeded. Sometimes, his prose is beautiful. Other times, it is overly pretentious. His plotting is…complex. I used to dislike Chandler’s works, but I’m warming up to him.

Carroll John Daly’s Race Williams (present here in “Gangman’s Gallows”) was massively popular in the pages of Black Mask in the twenties and early thirties – even though editor Joseph Shaw did not like Daly’s writing. Williams came to Dime Detective with Daly and appeared in 21 stories; three more the author’s rather ridiculous Vee Brown  (I’m not a big fan of crusading employees of the District Attorney who write Brill Building-type smash hits in their off time, making them wealthy).

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Birthday Reviews: Thomas Ligotti’s “The Last Feast of Harlequin”

Birthday Reviews: Thomas Ligotti’s “The Last Feast of Harlequin”

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Cover by Stephen Gervais
Cover by Stephen Gervais

Thomas Ligotti was born on July 9, 1953.

Ligotti’s collection The Nightmare Factory won the British Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award. He won additional Bram Stoker Awards for his novelette “The Red Tower” and his story “My Work Is Not Yet Done.” The latter work also earned Ligotti his first International Horror Guild Award. He won a second IHG for The Nightmare Factory. A translation of his collection Grimscribe: His Lives and Works won the Italia Award for International Novel.

“The Last Feast of Harlequin” was originally published in the April 1990 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, edited by Edward L. Ferman. Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow picked it up for the fourth annual edition of The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror and Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell picked it for Best New Horror 2. Ligotti included the story in his collections Grimscribe: His Lives and Works. The Nightmare Factory, The Shadow at the Bottom of the World, and Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe. Ferman and Kristine Kathryn Rusch used the story in The Best from Fantasy & Science Fiction: A 45th Anniversary Anthology. Jim Turner selected it for Cthulhu 2000: A Lovecraftian Anthology and Scott David Aniolowski selected it for Return to Lovecraft Country. Joyce Carol Oates used it in American Gothic Tales and Peter Straub included it in American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now. S.T. Joshi used the story in the anthology A Mountain Walked. The story has been translated into German twice as well as Italian and Finnish. It was nominated for the World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story.

Ligotti presents the research of an anthropologist into clowns in folk culture in “The Last Feast of Harlequin.” An anonymous source sends the professor a note about a strange festival in the town of Mirocaw that features people dressing as clowns. Unable to learn anything about the festival through normal sources, including exchanging letters with the state’s Department of Tourism, the professor forgets about the festival until chance brings him to the town and he learns that the festival is held during the Winter solstice, bringing it in conflict with the more traditional Christmas celebrations.

Returning for the actual festival, with very little knowledge of what to expect, the anthropologist tries to learn from the townfolk why they do what they do, only to find that every avenue of inquiry is a dead end. The villagers don’t know why they have the traditions, they just know that they follow them. In the process, he does realize that one of his old professors is living there, apparently a derelict in a part of the town, which at first doesn’t appear to participate in the festival, but later he learns does with different rules.

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