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Post by dem bones on Apr 1, 2020 8:12:37 GMT
Ray Bradbury - Bright Phoenix (MF&SF, May 1963). Written in 1947, offered to, and rejected by the quality magazines. A micro blueprint for what would eventually become Fahrenheit 451.
In April 2022, Jonathan Barnes, chief censor of Green Town, Illinois, marches into the Grand Library and demands Sam step aside while his storm-troopers remove and burn a vast quantity of books. Sam has little option but to stand aside. All he insists upon is that they abide by the rules and perform their duty in silence. As the 'Trash Men' fire up the furnace, Sam and friends attempt to smug Barnes to death with their supposed wit and superior intellect, goading him to a furious "How can you be sure I won't burn people as well as books?"
Closing time. Sam and the book lovers have defied the censor as best they can, but the Trash Men will return tomorrow to continue where they left off.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 24, 2020 17:17:50 GMT
John Beynon (John Wyndham) - Vengeance by Proxy: ( Strange Stories, Feb. 1940). "He seems seriously to believe that there are personalities of such hypnotic and domineering power that they can in certain circumstances project themselves into others minds - can actually drive out the former occupant of the body, so to speak." Walter and Elaine Frisson touring Europe. On the outskirts of Valejo, they hit a pedestrian lying in the road. The man, Kristor Vlanec, has been shot. Walter raises the alarm, his wife comforts Vlanec, who expires in her arms. Whereupon Elaine undergoes an alarming transformation. She no longer speaks English, but fluent Serb-Croat. Vlanec - or the parasite that controlled him - has passed to Elaine, who is powerless but to fulfil his designs. until she is arrested, tried and sentenced to death for the murders of Vlanja's enemies, the Zanja brothers. As Elaine awaits her doom, Vlanec transfers to her husband. Upton Sinclair - The Overman: ( Harper’s Monthly, May 1906). A shipwrecked crew wash up on the shores of an uninhabited island. With no prospect of rescue, they set back out to sea on an improvised raft, all save Daniel Livingstone, a gifted violinist, who prefers to remain behind. Ten years into his solitude, Livingstone briefly transcends to a higher plane, inhabited by beings who communicate by "immediate spiritual union," where he experiences the ultimate music. Our latter-day Robinson Crusoe spends the following decade flitting to and fro between two worlds until the prospect of a return to "civilisation" disgusts him. The Wyndham would be a good fit Weird Vampire Stories
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