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Post by pulphack on Sept 30, 2016 7:32:23 GMT
Give him a nice cold shower...
I never liked Mallarme, though.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 2, 2016 11:24:52 GMT
Violet A. Methley - The Milk Carts: ( Weird Tales, March 1932: Magazine Of Horror # 26, March 1969). Mr. Sefton Croft, golf course architect, is commissioned by landowner Gilbert Scales to build him a perfect freeway on the South Downs. It is the ideal site, though, obviously, the remnants of that Roman camp will have to go, and the cursed swine of villagers can quit using the green as a short cut, even if, as they patiently explain to him, they don't because it leads nowhere. According to old-timer Tom Hollins, who is known to be soft in the brain, there's no stopping "they plaguey milk carts" ruining the turf on account of those who drive 'em b'aint natural. What nonsense! Croft resolves to keep midnight vigil at the twelfth and catch the vandals red handed. Then, God help them! Turns out old Tom isn't as garrity as his reputation suggests. Includes minor Plus-fours action. Otherwise Violet's ghost story reads like a low-rent 13th Hole At Duncaster and is all too quiet for my liking.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 4, 2016 11:40:06 GMT
Christopher Tompkins - What Ball Players Do After Dark: ( All-American Sports Magazine #1, Dec. 1933). C. R. Schaare "All the while I had to keep reminding myself I was an American, and worth twenty of these high-binders and hatchet men." Defending "World" Series champs, Alderman, have hit a bad run of form. Star player Mike Carnochan blames the jinx on Ah Fung, the cross-eyed laundryman who attends all their home games, on the grounds that "whoever heard of a Chinese baseball fan anyway? He's never going to see another [game], not if I have to stand at the gate and hack his head off if he tries to enter the park!" The local newspaper pick up on the non-existent hoodoo with the result that the unfortunate Ah Fung is beaten to a pulp by moronic Alderman fans. The victim's response is uncompromising. He takes an oath on the tomb of his ancestors to bury a hatchet in Carnochan's thick skull, while his cut-throat Tong abduct Mike's gal, Lucille Hogan, for good measure. Confound it all - will the yellow fiends stop at nothing? At close of the big game, Carnochan and fellow Alderman meat-heads Jack McCloskey, Andy Neighbors, Ned Gabbler, and Poppy Sam, stock up on sawn off bats and cab it to Chinatown for a reckoning. The odds are stacked against 'em, but mag title suggests the *ahem* good guys will prevail. Not a horror story but ultra-violent, xenophobic, deeply unpleasant, etc.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 2, 2017 11:34:54 GMT
OK, so these likely fall into the 'Sport is Murder!' category - Fourth Down To Death may even qualify as a Sport is Sleazy - but they'll do for me. Terence Haile - The Sports Stars In Danger (Stanley Baker, 1952). Blurb: Terence Haile takes you behind the scenes with the glamour of sporting personalities. A murder mystery interwoven with love interest, and exciting descriptive scenes of sporting events brilliantly told by a modern young Author who keeps you in continuous suspense as he unfolds the story of the disappearance of a Famous Sports Star. Mysterious accidents, disagreements between the Sports Stars' Directors, a brutal attack and the discovery of a battered body, the Police on the track of the murderers, a crop of threatening letters, suicide and kidnapping which throws suspicion on many well known sports players. All these events make this a grand, vivid Thriller packed with action that will give lovers of sport the world over continuous enjoyment. Brett Halliday - Fourth Down to Death: Mike Shayne #61 (Dell, 1975) She was a locker room fantasy. She said she was a nurse and made more forward passes at her quarterback patient than either hospital or game rules allowed.
Her strategy was deadly, but Mike Shayne couldn't read her signals until the backfield came into motion with killers, one foul play followed another - and someone went out of bounds to score for murder!Snapped up Sport Stars In Peril at last October's pulp & paperback fair - still not read it, in part due to a tiny print job that makes the most challenging dtp fanzine seem like a Magnum Easy Eye. The Farraday is a scan downloaded from wherever - I just found it on a flash pen loaded with junk from 2009-11, so apologies for lack of a credit. Whoever uploaded it, I'm grateful to you. Blurb borrowed from Good Reads.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 24, 2017 20:13:12 GMT
Jack Ritchie - Kid Cardula: (Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, June 1976). The old count swaps the castle vault for the boxing ring to replenish his coffers. Kid Cardula bows out an undefeated champion, but, such is his gratitude to Manny the trainer that he provides him with a like for like replacement. A supernatural horror story for the timid.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 12, 2018 19:56:10 GMT
Horror Monsters #1, Charlton Publishing, 1961 Arthur Chapman - The Strange Case Of Southpaw Skaggs: ( The Black Cat, Aug. 1911). "What's this I hear about you comin' to life, Skaggs? Next thing they'll be saying that the mummy of Rameses the Second has crawled out of its grave clothes and is goin' to play ball." Bill Skaggs, star pitcher on the baseball team, tears an arm muscle mid-game, performs badly, costs his side the championship. It looks like he'll never hurl another ball until Doc Bings agrees to replace the mangled sinews with an ostrich tendon. The operation is successful - "in six months you ought to be able to throw a baseball through a two-inch pine plank from the pitcher's slab" - albeit with unfortunate side-effects. Not very horrific but Chapman's is possibly the only borderline were-ostrich story to mention a mummy.
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Post by dem bones on Feb 27, 2018 7:45:36 GMT
Robert E. Howard - Ye College Days: ( The Yellow Jacket Jan. 20 1927). An ancient graduate of Killem Kollege reflects on past glories including the bloody massacres of "football" teams from Slaughterem University and Lynchum and Burnum. Story reprinted in Glenn Lord's REH miscellany, The Howard Collector (Ace, 1979).
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Post by dem bones on Apr 29, 2018 10:12:53 GMT
Joan Aiken - Furry Night: ( Argosy, Nov. 1958: Peter Haining (ed.), Nightfrights, Gollancz, 1972). "There's two villages, ye see, Polgrue and Lostmid, and there's this ball, what they call the Furry ball. It's not furry. It's made of applewood with a silver band round the middle, and on the band is written:
Fro Lostmid Parish Iffe I goe Heddes will be broke and bloode will flowe
... The ball is kept in Lostmid and on the day of the race one of the Polgrue lads has to sneak in and take it and get it over the parish boundary before anybody stops him. Nobody has succeeded in doing it yet.I guess that qualifies as a sport. And imagine the fun if a werewolf were to join in. Anonymous - Final Blow: ( Tomb of Terror #8, March 1953). More horror comic filler. On the eve of his title fight with Bolo Grand, Ben Lewis, fearful of a pounding, demands his trainer call it off. That night Ben dreams of visiting Bolo at home and stabbing him to death. He wakes next morning with sticky red hands and a stream of blood oozing from the closet ... First of the issue's two mandatory text shorts, the other being a marginally better unattributed something called The Abominable Snowman.
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Post by dem bones on May 3, 2018 11:50:35 GMT
"The Old College Try" by Robert Bloch-A "science fiction" story that has an Earthman trying to teach an alien race to play football. I think you can guess what they end up using as a "ball". Finally got to read it. Robert Bloch - The Old College Try: ( Gamma #2, Nov. 1963). Philip, the new Administrator on Yorl, is determined to impose civilisation on the native population and rid them of a sick obsession for mounting heads on poles. Perhaps if he were to burn such trophies and teach them to play 'football' instead? Raymond, his outgoing predecessor, warns against this, but Philip won't be told and, in truth, the little blue-skinned guys seem up for a kick-about. Reads like a stylish take on John Rublowsky's Prison Ball ( Shock #3, Sept 1960) relocated to outer space.
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Post by dem bones on May 16, 2018 18:19:27 GMT
Terry Smith Robert Reed - Game Of The Century: ( Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1999). "The Wildman was wearing the entire State team when he crossed the line - except for a pure-human boy whose collarbone and various ribs had been shattered, and who lay on the field until the medical cart could come and claim him." The Hope Dome, 2060. The championship decider is a grudge match between Tech - star player Alan 'Wildman' Wilde, a gorilla-bison-elephant-human hybrid - and State, lead by Theresa Varner, the only semi-female, half-dog quarterback in pro "football." Game is much the same as now except vast majority of the players are the result of genetic engineering (the few steroid-enhanced pure-humans rarely survive the opening skirmish). Resultant gruelling contest is the inspirational stuff of pre-WWI Boys papers - the old coach's last game, one-sided first half, miraculous comeback, etc. - spiked with added sex, bloody mauling, bone-crunching challenges, crowd disorder and random obscenities. T. W. Kriner - Speed: (Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg & Martin H. Greenberg [eds.] Horrors! 365 Scary Stories, Barnes & Noble 1998). "The transplantation of four-inch sections of his humeri to his femura made him look like a thalidomide nightmare ...." . Reignbos defeats old rival Marasigan in the Boston marathon. Marasigan is so embittered at this latest loss he trades his soul - and any hope of passing unnoticed in a crowd - for the Devil's assurance that, come their next race, he will top Reignbos' best time to date.
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Post by dem bones on May 17, 2018 23:57:47 GMT
Jim Harter: Set Point & The Thirteenth Hole At Duncaster Jean M. Favors - Set Point: ( Twilight Zone, Oct. 1984). Mild terror on the tennis court (unless you happen to be the protagonist for whom the experience is horrific). Bill reluctantly accepts a challenge from perenial loser Joseph Blough, forgetting that the guy died six months ago. Issue also includes C. BrianKelly's baseball fantasy Casey's Next Time At The Bat, and a reprint of H. R. Wakefield's The 13th Hole At Duncaster
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Post by dem bones on Jul 13, 2018 11:54:54 GMT
Another from the Fiction on the Web Creepy Stories file. CD Carter - I Remembered How To Play Golf, And Then Something Happened: ( Fiction on the Web, 2012). Struck down by a miss-hit ball, the veteran golfer returns to the course ... a zombie.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 16, 2018 17:57:40 GMT
John Campbell Hayward - The Gray People: ( Pearsons, March, 1906: The Witch's Tales #1, Nov. 1936 (as Phantom of the Links) : Startling Mystery Stories #8, Spring 1968). Golfing ghosts. A woman in a grey cloak and her belligerent partner haunt the nine hole course on the Downs. The locals have it that to trouble their game is to invite death, but Professor Albion Thorne is determined to interview the pair for his forthcoming book on folklore. Thorne and colleague Harley trail the phantoms in thick fog. Steer clear of the pit! Watch out for the phantom balls! Nicholas Royle - The Big Game: (Stephen Jones & David A Sutton [eds], Anthology of Fantasy & Supernatural, 1994). Extreme future sports, skyscraper tennis being the more benign of the two - unless stray ball scores direct hit as you pass below in the street. Not seem either of these. Nicholas Royle - The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Crowd : (Peter Coleborn & Simon MacCulloch (eds.), Chills #7, BFS, 1993). Stanley G. Thompson - Sport for Ladies: ( Weird Tales, April 1924). Given the publication, the Nicholas Royle is a likely candidate, two-pager Sport For Ladies more of a long shot.
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Post by dem bones on Aug 24, 2018 4:37:42 GMT
Andrew Brosnatch Frank E. Walker - Phantom Billiards: ( Weird Tales, Feb. 1926). Real Old-fashioned Ghost Tale with a Thrill to it. Hadley Hall, Sussey village. Sir Michael and younger brother Bertram come to blows when the latter falls for Sybil of Hensdowne, daughter of the man who slew their father in a duel. Their fight ends in tragedy when Sir Michael accidentally slits his brother's throat with a razor. Distraught with grief, he turns the blade on himself. The pair are buried side by side. Their gory ghosts mark the anniversary by rising from the grave to contest a game of billiards. Hadley Hall has stood abandoned for twenty years when newly-weds Lord Allen and Lady Helen Aley move in. By the time the village sage has informed Lord Aley of the haunting, the young man has already disposed of the rotted table. How will the Hadley's react to having their one tiny comfort in eternal misery denied them? Andrew James - The Evergreen Gymnasium & Health Club: ( Udolpho #30, Autumn 1997). A luxurious torture chamber for affluent keep-fit masochists of suicidal persuasion. Deliciously sick and twisted. Also of interest. John Maclay - Over the Fence: ( Twilight Zone, Aug. 1988). The strange tale of a small-town ball club's uncanny luck. A brush with a ball-thieving geriatric and her dog transforms a hopeless team to champions. Tidy enough but way too upbeat for purposes of this dismal thread. Charles R. Saunders - The Last Round : ( Twilight Zone, June 1988). For some the fight goes on after the last bell rings. An ailing Mohammed Ali is on the receiving end of a punch so hard it smashes him back to the 1910's to fight the first black heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson - and every subsequent World heavyweight champion to present day. Ali rises to the challenge. Again, this story could've been a contender but, while the going gets very dark, it ends on an optimistic note.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 9, 2018 14:16:23 GMT
Edward D. Hoch - The Ring With The Velvet Ropes: (With Malice Toward All, 1968). Left alone at the table, Jim gazed out the window at the sea and suddenly realized the impossibility of the situation. Here, in the basement of a seaside mansion, he was going to fight a rich man’s deranged son for the secret championship of the world! And if he won, he would be killed!
By the terms of his late father's will, Mr. Roderick Blanco faces disinheritance should he follow his dream to become the greatest heavyweight boxer of all time. To defy the old fool, Blanco abducts a succession of greats at gunpoint, persuades them to fight him in secret at his home gymnasium. Blanco is a born pugilist. He has defeated every world champion for the past ten years, lucky for them as, rather than risk exposure in the press, he'll shoot dead the first to beat him. Jim Figg has hardly put down Big Dan Anger than he's seized by hoodlums, whisked away in a Limo to face the deranged Mr. Blanco.
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