|
Post by dem bones on Nov 25, 2007 10:48:54 GMT
Leo Margulies (ed.) - The Unexpected (Pyramid, February 1961) Intoduction - Leo Margulies
Theodore Sturgeon - The Professor's Teddy Bear Isaac Asimov & Frederik Pohl - Legal Rites Robert Bloch - The Strange Island Of Dr. Nork Margaret St. Clair - Mrs. Hawk Fritz Leiber - The Automatic Pistol Mary E. Counselman - The Unwanted Manly Wade Wellman - The Valley Was Still Anthony Boucher - The Scrawney One Frederic Brown - Come And Go Mad E. F. Russell - The Big Shot Ray Bradbury - The HandlerMenace, anyone?
If you've ever wondered
what hobbies an undertaker has ... who answers the Lonely Hearts ads ... what it could cost to become the richest man in the world ... just what secrets a child and his teddy bear share ... what a mad scientist is really like ...
this collection has the unexpected answers - in eleven cheerful or chilling fantasies by masters of the supernatural shocker.Robert Bloch - The Strange Island Of Dr. Nork: ( Weird Tales, March 1949). The narrator, a journalist, is sent to a remote Caribbean island to interview the reclusive Erasmus Nork and find out the truth about his "experiments". He soon learns that Nork is the man behind the comic books - his staff (zombies, a talking gorilla, etc.) torture masochists to provide the inspiration for the panels and the authentic sounds to fill the balloons, while Nork creates super heroes - 'Waterboy' (raised from a tadpole), 'Two Dollar Rogers' (twice as good as Buck), 'Firebug, the human torch', 'Hammerhead', etc. Needless to say, 'Albino, Goddess of the Jungle', whose costume is a leopard skin bra and shorts, is the token beautiful daughter these mad-scientist types are forever siring. Even a genius can have an off day and Dr. Nork's failure is the evil renegade known as 'The Faceless Fiend'. One stormy night, the jouro is captured, taken to an underground cavern and strapped down for the featureless one to saw off his face. Meanwhile, the laboratory above is destroyed in a hurricane and all within perish - save one. Albino comes to the rescue, freeing the prisoner while her lion converts the Faceless Fiend into the Faceless, Bodiless Fiend. They escape - but not before the seemingly fearless Jungle Queen has been reduced to a shrieking, pleading wreck - by a mouse. Wedding bells, etc. Ray Bradbury - The Handler: ( Weird Tales, Jan. 1947). The simpering undertaker Mr. Benedict, bullied and belittled by the living, vents his spleen on the dead, playing malicious pranks on their unresistant corpses. Mr. Meriwell Blythe, afflicted by "spells and comas" which have several times almost caused him to be buried alive, awakens from his latest cataleptic trance to witness Mr. Benedict in action. Before he succumbs to a lethal injection, Blythe calls on the dead to rise up and give the undertaker his just desserts. That night, during a terrible storm, they come out of their graves and storm the mortuary. Mr. Benedict learns the hard way that you really shouldn't play with dead things ... Anthony Boucher - The Scrawny One: ( Weird Tales, May 1949). John Harker (!) convinces a magician to raise a demon on his behalf. The wizard obliges, Harker kills him, and trades the corpse to the hungry demon in return for a wish: he wants to exchange bodies with the world's richest man. Unfortunately, this turns out to be the Djatoon of Khot who is dying of a degenerate malignancy ... Manly Wade Wellman - The Valley Was Still: ( Weird Tales, Aug. 1939). Paradine, a Confederate, stumbles upon a valley littered with the undecayed corpses of Yankee soldiers. The black magician, Teague, has hypnotised them: he plans to rule the country, and offers Paradine the Generalship of his private army. The pious rebel will have none of it and smartly decapitates the wretch, destroys the talisman and frees the Union soldiers. In the ensuing conflict he and his comrades are all but routed but, reasons Paradine, if you can't win fair ...
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Oct 8, 2008 23:30:41 GMT
Theodore Sturgeon - The Professor's Teddy Bear: (Weird Tales, March 1948). Scary tale of four-year-old Jeremy and Fuzzy, his cute little blood-sucking teddy, which is beyond my minuscule talent for summary. Jeremy can vividly imagine himself as the middle-aged college lecturer he will become, trying to explain to a compassionate young student how, as an infant, he came to be a "catalyst of death", had only to imagine a dreadful misfortune befalling a person and it would happen. He confesses to finding it "funny" at the time, but not half as much as Fuzzy, ever goading him to inflict even greater cruelties.
Fritz Leiber - The Automatic Pistol: (Weird Tales, May 1940). Back to the Prohibition era and Inky Kozacs, bootlegger, won't allow any of his accomplices to handle his pride and joy, the firearm of the title. Fellow hood Larsen is intrigued by the weapon and stupid enough to murder Kozacs to get his hands on it. Only then does he discover that the gun was Inky's familiar.
Margaret St. Clair - Mrs. Hawk: (Weird Tales, July 1950). She lures would be suitors to her isolated farm by means of an advertisement in Wedding Bells magazine, but Mrs. Hawk is far from a lonely heart. When Andrew Fruness vanishes from the face of the earth after paying the dear woman a visit, his sister insists Sheriff Willets investigates. It doesn't take him long to establish in his own mind that she's a serial bachelor killer, but how is she disposing of the bodies? And how comes all the pigs she's fattening for slaughter have such human expressions? Despite the black comedy of the thing, this ends on a truly harrowing note. Like the few other stories I've read of St. Clairs' this is sheer class.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Sept 9, 2021 8:59:13 GMT
Bill Wayne: Isaac Asimov & Frederick Poll - Legal Rites: ( Weird Tales, Sept. 1950: as by Isaac Asimov & James MacCreagh). "Even a ghost who died by violence shouldn't lose his legal rights, should he?" The spectre of Hank Jenkins, a prospector shot dead in 1850, claims squatters rights on old Zeb Harley's place in Rebel Butte, having spent the past ninety years there, living and dead, this past thirty as a welcome companion to the late hermit. Hank takes out a case against Zeb's worthless, grasping nephew who has hired an exorcist to banish him from the property. To prove his presence, the plaintiff, unable to fully manifest for more than a few seconds at a time, gamely drips blood over the witness chair throughout his testimony. Eric Frank Russell - The Big Shot: ( Weird Tales, Jan. 1949). There was just One who did not yes-man to the big shot. So Bull Rafferty, gang leaders and killer, finally accepts he's dead, shot down in his office by a trigger-happy hop head. Doesn't mean he's in any mood to be pushed around. "He was mentally prepared to take on all comers, and that went for the judge, jury and the entire calendar of saints." Makes no difference. Hard man reputations count for nothing on judgement day.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Sept 10, 2021 8:25:59 GMT
Mary E. Counselman - The Unwanted: ( Weird Tales, Jan. 1951). Who cares for all the children nobody else gives a damn about? Sad ghost story, recently exhumed by Mike Ashley for Queens of the Abyss. Fredric Brown - Come and Go Mad: ( Weird Tales, July 1949). Who is to know with certainty the mad from the unmad in this turbulent world in which both play parts. George Vine. a reporter on the Blade, goes undercover to investigate unspecified dubious goings-on at the city asylum. To be admitted as a patient, he must convince a psychiatrist of his madness - shouldn't be too difficult, as George is in fact Napoleon Bonaparte. After retiring to his tent following the battle of Lodi, the emperor woke up in a US hospital bed, the staff insisting he has been badly injured in a car accident. Bonaparte/ 'Vine' fools the shrink, but gets to wondering; is he being set up by his editor and a concerned relative, or is that merely his paranoia? Chapters 1-6 are big on suspense, the concluding 7 and 8,sadly, less so. Brown builds to a reveal which, the insect business aside, I suspect, comes as no big news to many of us.
|
|