Eric Frank Russell - Dark Tides

[nightreader]

Dark Tides by Eric Frank Russell (Panther - November 1963)

"...this is a book about the dark tides in human affairs. It will thrill and chill the blood of those among us whose curiosity knows no restraint; and the others who are magnetically drawn by the dreadful..."

The Sin of Hyacinth Peutch
With a Blunt Instrument
A Matter of Instinct
I’m a Stranger Here Myself
This One’s On Me
I Hear You Calling
Wisel
The Ponderer
Sole Solution
Rhythm of the Rats
Me and My Shadow
Bitter End

'With a Blunt Instrument'

Mrs. Bunstead wants to bump off hubby for the insurance money. Her sister got away with it, so why can’t she? She visits Digger Kelly who is running a profitable little operation - he gets rid of unwanted spouses using an Australian killing bone then enjoys half the insurance. To actually do the dirty deed Kelly employs a black dwarf:

“The dwarf was squat, pot-bellied, black-skinned, and he wore a suit of sloppy clothes as if reluctantly conforming to an insane custom...”

All is going well until Dan Fletcher from the insurance company starts to look at the statistics and becomes suspicious of so many apparently natural deaths...

'A Matter of Instinct'

This appears as ‘Impulse’ in Groff Conklin’s “Twisted” anthology. Wonder why he changed the title...

A good pulpy story about Dr. Blaine, alone in his surgery one evening when a man arrives. The man turns out to be an animated corpse, possessed by sub microscopic thought reading aliens who crashed to Earth the night before. Their purpose is to find a new host body, the one they are using was already dead when they stole it, they want a living one. They need Dr. Blaine’s help because if they take over a conscious person they become instantly insane, they want the doctor to drug someone to make the possession smoother. Then into the surgery walks a young girl...

Just as enjoyable the second time around. It’s got a ‘Quatermass’ feel to it I thought.


'I'm A Stranger Here Myself'

Mrs. Enderby visits Dr. Wilson with worries about her 15 year old son John - she says his personality is changing, he’s making strange and enigmatic remarks about his origin.

When he talks to John it seems the boy and some of his friends have become ‘cosmos-conscious’, claims he has no memory prior to being 4 years old. He believes himself to be non-human and the victim of a conspiracy to keep the truth hidden...

'This One's On Me'

Pushy newspaperman Jensen gets more than he bargained for when he visits a shop advertising ‘Mutants For Sale’. The shop owner is polite, even when Jensen is rude and threatening to expose him to the police. He demands to see a mutant. He will do…

'I Hear you Calling'

Poor Widgey Bullock. He’s a sailor on shore leave, all he wants to do is get drunk and get laid, without attracting any unwanted official attention. The bar he goes to is empty, the nervous barman tells him people don’t come out at night. He also tells him about the bodies emptied dry of blood, mostly the bodies of strangers to the town. Scornful and a little intoxicated the sailor heads back to his hotel. From his room window he sees a likely looking woman and calls to her to come up to him…

'Wisel'

The passengers in the old train compartment are fascinated by Mr. Wisel – even more so by his bag with it’s unusual and brightly coloured sticker. He’s happy to tell them it’s from the Red Range Hotel on Mars, knowing that no-one believes him. An ideal situation for a visitor…

'Dark Tides' seems to fall within that grey area between sci fi and the 'weird tale'. My sci fi threshold is quite low but I'm enjoying these stories and Russell is an entertaining writer, there seems to be a bit of a noir detective thing going on in some of the stories, particularly in the dialogue between characters, laced with a few shots of humour. I've a feeling I've explained that really badly... thats why I'm a reader and not a writer

He describes the shop keeper in 'This One's On Me' as:
He had a white mane, watery eyes, a crimson nose and a perpetual sniffle. If he had any brothers they were hanging around Snow White"

[Calenture]

Possibly Justin will know who painted the cover for this 1964 Panther edition?

This is a lovely collection, Andy. Other collections that I have include Somewhere a Voice (Penguin, 1968), and Far Stars (Panther, 1964). Interestingly Panther list Dark Tides as horror rather than SF. I was about to start waffling about how this writer probably did more than any other to mix up my ideas of horror and SF. But I found a site where it was put more knowledgeably. This is about a later collection, Darker Tides:

"The name of Eric Frank Russell is synonymous with the "Golden Age of Science Fiction". From his first published tale in 1937 to the middle of the 1960s, Eric Frank Russell was one of the most highly-acclaimed authors in the genre. As such, much of his best science fiction remains in print today. However, there was another side to the great writer, that of being one of the modern masters of the weird tale. As an admirer of the work of Charles Fort, Eric Frank Russell was also keenly interested in the supernatural or unexplainable. His novel Sinister Barrier was credited with inspiring John W. Campbell to launch Unknown so that stories of this type would have a home. Over the next two decades, Eric Frank Russell wrote more stories that are more in the realm of the "weird tale" than the more logical world of science fiction. Several of these tales were collected over thirty years ago in a fabulously rare volume entitled Dark Tides. This new collection contains all of these elusive tales and doubles their number with a selection of similar stories from sources such as Weird Tales, Fantastic, Strange Stories, and Science Fantasy. Whether you come to this book as an Eric Frank Russell fan seeking out his rare stories or come as a devotee of the weird tale, we are certain that you'll find much here to enjoy!

With introductions by the late author and a new preface by John Pelan and a striking cover by Allen Koszowski this edition is limited to just 500 copies.

Considering that Mr. Russell's collection from NESFA is now in a third printing, we strongly suggest advance orders to avoid possible disappointment.

Contents:
The Sin of Hyacinth Peuch
The Ponderer
Me and My Shadow
Vampire from the Void
The Big Shot
Take a Seat
Down, Rover, Down (The Case for Earth)
A Divvil with the Women (Heart's Desire)
I Hear You Calling
Matter of Instinct (Impulse)
Poor Dead Fool
Sole Solution
With a Blunt Instrument
The Rhythm of the Rats
Displaced Person
Hell's Bells
Appointment at Noon
Bitter End
I'm A Stranger Here Myself
It's in the Blood
Seat of Oblivion
Storm Warning
This One's on Me
Wisel"

Darker Tides at Bloodletting Books

Craig Herbertson wrote:

The great thing about the Vault is seeing stuff like this. I have been a bit of a fan of Russell's SF and despite collecting books for years I have seen neither of these editions.
Something to look forward to .

[Craig Herbertson]

Oh no, I've got about forty pence in my account. I had to buy a violin for my daughter (mean old git but she really needed it) I would absolutely love to have this collection. What am I going to do??? I need that book bad

[Calenture]

billbunter said:

Oh no, I've got about forty pence in my account. I had to buy a violin for my daughter (mean old git but she really needed it) I would absolutely love to have this collection. What am I going to do??? I need that book bad

We only posted this to torment you, Craig.

[Craig Herbertson]

That really is torture. I loved his 'wasp' and thought I'd read most of his stuff. I've been mulling over that wonderful short story collection and now you come up with the full anthology. Can't imagine getting hold of all that at once. porbably won't unless I can think of some lies to tell the missus

[cromagnonman]

You know, twenty five pages or so into this book and I was all set to nominate Russell as a neglected master of the macabre. But now having finished it I find myself not half so certain that he was. Don't get me wrong, there are two stories here which are cast iron ghastly classics and if Russell had another dozen or so of equal calibre to his name then the argument would be hard to refute. But I'm not convinced that the majority of stories collected in this book have weathered the passing years as successfully as the best ones have. A couple were probably always too cute for their own good anyway.



What isn't open to dispute is the fact that Russell had a wonderful writing style set several notches above the pulp standard. There is a wonderful facility displayed here for establishing characters effectively with a couple of deft descriptive phrases. Many of my favourites are concentrated in one of those aforementioned classics, the sumptuously funny "Sin of Hyacinth Peuch":

"Girandole the Elder - whose wild oats once had been sown so fast that he had seldom been seen perpendicular...."

"Roger Corbeau, a tousle-haired youngster of twelve - ...so unappreciative of danger, even when it breathed down his neck, that already he had broken four bones, been stitched seven times, and had his life despaired of twice......Among connoisseurs of disaster, it was generally agreed that Roger was not long for this world because Jesus wanted him for a sunbeam."

"[Josephine Rimbaud] was young, buxom, interestingly rounded and far from overburdened with intellectual capacity....[being] a trifle lacking in one respect while obviously possessing more than a sufficiency in others was a matter requiring correction at somebody's hands."

As I say, not all the stories sadly are on a level with this one or that of the magisterial "Rhythm of the Rats" which has a valid claim to be considered a macabre masterpiece. Stuff like "Me and My Shadow", "A Matter of Instinct" and "I Hear You Calling" read like graduates from the Robert Bloch school of corn. But "With a Blunt Instrument" is really good and left me wishing it had been developed over a longer length. The method of murder at work in this one is just great.

This can be a hard book to track down these days, and the updated edition published by Midnight House in 2006 remains no easier. Fortunately "The Sin of Hyacinth Peuch" can be found handily enough in Moskowitz and Elwood's OTHER WORLDS, OTHER TIMES and "Rhythm of the Rats" in Haining's THE BLACK MAGIC OMNIBUS VOL 1. 

Well whattaya waiting for? Go check 'em out.

 

[helrunar]

Thanks for those amusing, diverting notes. Not an author known to me...sounds interesting! Wishing you a great holiday.

Cheers,, Hel

[cromagnonman]

Thank you Steve, and the same to you. And while I'm in a giving mood may I wish all and sundry here a very merry Christmas, or a riotous Saturnalia if that's your preference.