John Lymington - The Night Spiders

[dem bones]

John Lymington - The Night Spiders: 28 Tales Of Terror From The Imaginative mind of John Lymington (Corgi, 1964)

Josh Kirby

The Night Spiders
Battle Of Wills
Easy With Music
Moving House
The Waking Ghost
The Hole In The World
The Forger's Gloves
The Long Caretaker
No Sale
Head Under Arm
Noises Off
Scratch In Time
Threepenny To Mars
Second Time Round
The Time Stopper
Mourning Train
Pie In The Sky
Then I Woke Up
The Televisitor
The Thief
The Space Traveller
The Locked Room
The Shy Ghost
Buttons In The Night
Going Aft Agley
The Bad Thought
The Man On The Beam
The Man Behind Me

The night the madness came, the Professor was in his laboratory as usual. He told me, calmly and deliberately, that a number of men from outer space had started landing just over to the south. "Of course," he said, "they're not quite the sort of creatures we're used to: they are still in the fourth dimension ..." Then I could see them too: giant, transparent, spider-like creatures moving about and winding what looked like cocoons ...

I've had a copy of this book hanging around for ages without ever feeling enthused to venture past the title story - until now! Learning that Mr. 'Lymington' (John Newton Chance) was among that august body who contributed to the Sexton Blake library finally decided me to explore further and see what i've been missing, which is - well, twenty eight stories in 132 pages for a start. Also, bear in mind, during the early 'sixties - "the Michael Avallone years", if you will - there was a vogue for supremely unchilling terror tales.

The Night Spiders: Can such things be? Prof. Lockeston buys the old manor house because it has an observatory and he needs somewhere to set up his big telescope. Lockeston arranges with the narrator to collect his mortgage repayments monthly as he'll be so busy studying the stars he's likely to forget to pay! His vigilance is rewarded almost immediately: "Most fortunately, the edge of the lens of my telescope has performed an optical trick. By a certain angle of light it has split the time belt and this has enabled me to see those creatures moving in the park". Our man takes a look for himself and, sure enough, the green is alive with giant arachnids from outer space! Prof. Lockeston joins them shortly afterward as they head off to galaxies new, but he makes sure his payments are settled for the several years he plans to be away so no harm done.

Battle Of Wills: When the Rev. Julian Mulcaster dies, his grieving relatives promptly sell off the rectory and throw his life's work - a manuscript entitled A Critical Study - on the bonfire. His ghost takes up rewriting it from scratch having taken possession of Gregg, the illiterate farmer who bought the old place. Gregg soon finds himself scribbling page upon page of impenetrable gibberish but has the last laugh by adding a few words to the working title. This one's so inoffensive it makes E. G. Swain's spooky tales of Mr. Blatchel read like something out of Lawrence James.

Easy With Music: More not very demonic possession. This time, when Boyo Patterson, stage Irishman, gifted telepath and pianist at The Crown dies, his spirit passes into the narrator who inherits his keyboard talents and habit of referring to everyone as "boyo" and "me darlin's". Possibly humorous in intent.

Moving House: Know-it-all Inigo has an explanation for everything so, obviously, he's unimpressed by the local haunted house. Even when it rebuilds itself on the opposite side of the road leaving a solitary brick suspended in mid-air at the original site. Even when the narrator, exasperated at Inigo's ludicrous "rational explanation" for the phenomena, wishes said brick would fall on his head and brain him ....

[pulphack]

Lymington aka John Newton Chance a Blake writer? That had passed me by! So I got out my Library index and couldn't find him - then, thanks to Steve Holland's "Desmond Reid" index I discovered he wrote one novel - Anger At World's End - that was published under the Reid name. It's near the end of the 4th series, and was probably untouched for half money, hence it being the only one!

I've never read any of his crime novels as Chance, but Vault regulars will recall a fondness I have for his sci-fi novels which are in that Wyndhamesque stiff upper lip vein, and are always obsessed with HEAT.

Dug out my copy of Anger..., and guess what: it's sci-fi oriented and looks like it may contain HEAT. Hopefully read it soon and then report back.

Any of those short stories particuarly HOT, then? I can't see him doing shorts, as his forte is the gradual build up of tension. Doesn't sound like they work too well.

[dem bones]

Hope they won't mind me quoting the relevant passage here, but the person who contributed the entry on Lymington to Wikipedia writes:

As John Drummond, he wrote a number of additions to the Sexton Blake series: Note that 'Desmond Reid' appears to have been used as a catch-all pseudonym for this series, so it is possible that certain pieces credited to this name actually originated with him. This list includes only those pieces credited to John Drummond.

1. The Essex Road Crime (May 1944), 3rd Series, Issue 71 (illustrated by Eric Parker)
2. The Manor House Menace (Jul 1944), 3rd series, Issue 75 (illustrated by Eric Parker)
3. The Tragic Case of the Station-Master's Legacy (Sep 1944), 3rd series, Issue 80 (illustrator unknown)
4. The Riddle of the Leather Bottle (Oct 1944), 3rd series, Issue 82 (illustrator unknown)
5. The Painted Dagger (Dec 1944), 3rd series, Issue 86 (illustrated by Eric Parker)
6. The House on the Hill (Mar 1945), 3rd series, Issue 91 (illustrated by Eric Parker)
7. At Sixty Miles per Hour (Apr 1945), 3rd series, Issue 94 (illustrator unknown)
8. The Riddle of the Mummy Case (Jul 1945), 3rd series, Issue 100 (illustrated by Eric Parker)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lymington

Maybe you could clear that up for us, pulps?

As to The Night Spiders, you can be sure I'll be on heat-watch from now on. The few i've read to date certainly don't lack charm (I'd love to see them adapted as comic strips for a Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors-style anthology job), it's just that even Badger books would probably have been rejected them out of hand as too undemanding for a Supernatural Stories audience.

[pulphack]

Good heavens! The man was far more prolific than I realised! Thanks for the wiki link, Dem! So he was John Drummond, eh? I shall have to check and see which of those are in the SBL archive, then work my way through them... eventually!

I picked up the Desmond Reid title a couple of miuntes ago when on a break, and the first bloody page... not only is it hot, we have a heavily sweating bobby commenting on such! Lymington signatures from the off!

[dem bones]

Well, something to bear in mind .... i'm not casting aspersions on anybody's research - no smiley: really i'm not - but from my small experience the 'facts' as given on Wikipedia are not always deadly accurate. I tend to think of it as an epic scale Vault in that respect: we both pass on information to the best of our ability and leave it open to correction should someone with more reliable information come along. So it comes with an 'approach with extreme caution' warning.

[pulphack]

a fair point about wiki - i'm very dubious about the whole concept as regards accuracy, to be honest, but in this instance i'm inclined to take them at face value as whoever compiled the entry seems to have everything else right as far we know it.

anyway, my lunch hour stretched to two today...


ANGER AT WORLDS END (Fleetway, Jan 1963) Desmond Reid (aka John Lymington)

Right from the first page it has all the Lymington riffs you'd expect. Heat, oppressive atmopshere reflected by and reflective of this factor, and rising heat as a metaphor for growing tension. One man stands against the mass, knowing what's really going on (in this case Blake), and the alien influence echoes the ways of old religions and the occult while remaining steadfastly unknown and unknowable - a thing mr L shares with Nigel Kneale, giving the expositionary text in this a feel of '...The Pit'.

Apart from a few brief appearances of Craille the secret service chief (the deus ex machina who propels Blake into this) and some of Blake's staff (Tinker pops up in the action at the end but is almost immediately sidelined, paving the way for a typical Lymington ending - anti-climactic, yet strangely beleiveable because of that), this is about Blake alone. And as sole protagonist, you get the idea that Lymington had written this, needed a quick cheque, and then changed the hero's name before inserting a couple of incongruous chapters.

Sounds like I didn't like it? No, I loved it. It has the slow build of tension and atmosphere that explodes into a frenziedly paced final third that is typical of Lymington's sci-fi. Very much in Night of the Big Heat mould, this concerns a scientist who has trapped the malignant energy of a distant star, sending powerful magnetic and radioactive waves that turn men to savages. It takes over and warps minds, and is compared to satanic energies (prefiguring Kneal again, for the fourth Quatermass). Only Blake's strength of will keeps him relatively sane, and even he has problems. Freewill is all that saves mankind (...The Pit again), which is strangely downbeat about humanity in the way that most of his sci-fi is...

Located in the Bredon Hills, it has lots of atmospheric forest pursuit, lots of darkness and night to contrast with the heat (which of course we associate with the sun), and some nice set pieces where ther villagers run amok. Some sexual undercurrents that are not the usual pulp bodice ripper, either.

A fine and enjoyable piece of work that sits well with Lymington's other sci-fi books - more so than with the Blake canon for this era, in truth.

Having said that, he shows enough empathy with the Blake characters and traditions to be John Drummond in a previous life, and Baker was often keen to bring back old hands, as his welcoming of Rex Hardinge (a pre-war Blake feted writer) a few years prior to this show. Worth exploring when there's more time.

[dem bones]

A mad scientist, deadly rays, reversion to savagery and those all-important "sexual undercurrents."Anger At World's End is a damn sight better than The Night Spiders, then!

I've certainly no wish to come over as negative as I doubtless did about Wikipedia because it is a wonderful concept and there's tons of useful info to be had. I got wary when it became glaringly apparent that certain of the people I'd looked up were contributing their own copy (or their agent's were), hence fulsome tributes to themselves and a supposed encyclopedia entry that's merely a glorified advertisement for their PRODUCT. The powers at W are doing their best to clamp down on this unsporting behaviour but, well, they have their work cut out. Anyhow, back to the article and the bulk of it was contributed by 'Arivne' who describes him or herself as "Bit of a fan of John Lymington". So well done Arivne!

[carolinec]

You're right to be cautious about Wikipedia, Dem. I was at a Doctor Who convention a few months ago (no, don't laugh! ) where they had a quiz on stage - Peter Davison answering questions about Colin Baker's career, and Colin answering questions about Peter's (no, really, stop that laughing! ). Anyway, they both kept contradicting the question-master and saying his answers were wrong. Seems he'd got them on Wikipedia, and many of them were quite inaccurate!

[dem bones]

It's the same with many reference books, notably The Penguin Book Of Horror and the Supernatural, seemingly ruined by slap-dash editing. Fantastic Fiction have gone on to repeat some of the errors which originated in that otherwise beautiful encyclopedia, sending people off on wild goose chases for books that don't exist.

Back to those pesky night spiders. Still nothing by way of extreme heat, pulps, but a definite fondness for collapsing buildings. The stories ain't really long enough to make that much impression, but, like Tales Of The Frightened, they're a fun read.

Buttons In The Night: Willimore is an incorrigible practical joker of the most tedious type, so when he requests the narrator spend a night with him at his new North Devon home as he fears it's haunted by a poltergeist, our man steels himself for another "hilarious" prank. That night, something strictly non-spine-tingling occurs ....

The Long Caretaker: The estate agent is surprised to find a caretaker awaiting his arrival at Mantor House as it's remained unoccupied this past decade since the death of the Croyde brothers. Also, this lugubrious fellow clearly isn't as diligent about his duties as one might expect: the miserable old mausoleum of a house is liberally coated in dust. Bemusement turns to mild terror as the phantom caretaker confesses his guilty secret ....

The Televisitor: Each night the spectral figure joins George and unnamed wife as they sit before the television until she can no longer concentrate on her knitting. Calling in the vicar to perform the rite of exorcism banishes the original phantom, but now it is the Holy man who replaces him in the armchair, and after him, a steady stream of tradesmen until it drives the pair to distraction.

[dem bones]

... and one for pulphack. haven't strayed beyond the blurb yet as my books-on-the-go situation is now way beyondsanity, but if this is half as entertaining as the cover ....

John Lymington - the Star Witches (Hodder & Stoughton, 1965)

Blurb
. . . She put her hands over her ears and stared at the silent man on the camp bed. They had not touched him. He was breathing, but very slowly, so slowly that they had not noticed it at first. There were wires attached to his head by a structure like earphones. They ran under the bed and disappeared into the darkness beneath."

A man has been experimenting to make contact with the outer world. One night he disappears — to become the master of the forces he has unleashed, or their first victim?

[pulphack]

Nice cover - I like the design of the Hodder paperbacks from that time, with the picture framed in a white mega-border (eh?) that had the text. Lots of Creasey Baron's from that era resde in the bookcase, and they are lovely.

But to Lymington - I haven't read this one, and would be interested to lay bets on when it gets HOT! Probably page 10 (which would be the fourth page of text in?)...

[dem bones]

Aug 3, 2012 5:55:46 GMT pulphack said:

But to Lymington - I haven't read this one, and would be interested to lay bets on when it gets HOT! Probably page 10 (which would be the fourth page of text in?)...

Mr. Hack. If you're after a copy, this is yours next time I see you (pulp fair, April 30th?).

John Lymington - The Star Witches (McFadden-Bartell, 1970)

Jack Faragasso

Blurb:
Just before the HORROR he Reverend David James discovered that a coven of witches was using his church for worshiping Satan and alling up the dead.
Alone in his mansion, scientist Harry Royce was employing electronic devices to reach the outer limits of the Universe.
When the invasion began, it was not known whether the invaders were aliens from a contaminated star or lost souls erupting out of Limbo. Two things became clear: It could not be stopped, and once it was completed, there would he no sane person left on Earth.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Are those sperm cells? And perhaps ovaries?

[pulphack]

Dem, I haven't read that one, so yes please - and the book fair is a must after my missing the last one.

Jojo - having read Lymington's 'Starseed On Eye Moor' a year or so back, I would say that yours was a highly likely hypothesis!