Goth Chick News: If I Could Buy One, I Too Would Be a (Sort Of) 2021 Bram Stoker Award Nominee

Goth Chick News: If I Could Buy One, I Too Would Be a (Sort Of) 2021 Bram Stoker Award Nominee

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Well, you can’t blame me for trying.

Every year around this time, The Horror Writers Association announces the nominees for the annual Bram Stoker Awards, which recognize superior achievement in horror and dark fiction. Also, every year, I go on an Internet search for one of these amazing awards for sale somewhere.

I mean come on, people have sold their Oscars, which admittedly are not this cool and are probably not this difficult to get. A general search got my heart racing a couple of times, only to discover the link sent me to a page where I could buy a Stoker award-winning book. eBay? Nope. Etsy? Someone has to have duplicated it on Etsy right? No joy, though I did find quite a lot of cool Dracula-related art, such as a bracelet with a quote from the book which reads, “I have crossed oceans of time to find you…”

Nice.

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Random Reviews: “BAXBR/DAXBR” by Evelyn E. Smith

Random Reviews: “BAXBR/DAXBR” by Evelyn E. Smith

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Time to Come, Edited by August Derleth
Time to Come, Edited by August Derleth, Cover artist unknown

Evelyn E. Smith was born in 1922 and in addition to her career as a science fiction author, which spanned from approximately 1952 until 1985, she also wrote romance novels using the name Delphine C. Lyons and also worked as a crossword puzzle writer. This latter job is very much evidenced in her 1954 story “BAXBR/DAXBR” (also “DAXBR/BAXBR,” its title should appear as two words that cross at the X).

The basic gist of the story is that George, Smith’s main character, often finds himself commuting in proximity to a man he doesn’t know, but things of as “the little man from the Planetarium,” since that is where their pathways often converge.  On rare occasions they greet each other and the man has a strange accent that George can’t place, but that is generally the extent of their interaction.

On the day the story takes place, fate and a crowded subway car throw the two men together. While the little man reads some letters, George tries to ignore him, playing mental games with words in which he ideates a crossword puzzle based on the words he sees. During this time, his eyes happen to fall on one of the man’s letters and he sees a word he is unfamiliar with, “BAXBR.” Rather than assume the word was gibberish, a private joke, or something in code, George obsesses over it.

As it happens, both men find their way to the main branch of the New York Public Library, where their paths diverge. George finds himself searching for the word in the dictionary and, when he can’t find it there, tries to find it in dictionaries for several foreign languages, trying to get a clue for the word’s origin from the man’s incomprehensible accent. Even the reference librarian who tried to help George was unable to find the word.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Timey-Wimey Swordy-Boardy

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Timey-Wimey Swordy-Boardy

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Highlander (UK, 1986)

Nowadays, so-called “Timeslip” stories are so popular it’s considered a genre unto itself, but in the Eighties that was not yet the case, particularly on the screen. However, inadvertent time travel is an appealing notion, with literary roots going at least as far back as Twain’ s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, giving the author the opportunity of juxtaposing past and present for the purpose of making a point or two about perceived failings of the modern era. Social criticism aside, it’s also a useful plot device for kicking off thrilling adventures, as this week’s timey-wimey trio demonstrates.

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New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Six edited by Neil Clarke

New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Six edited by Neil Clarke

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The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Six (Night Shade, January 25, 2022). Cover by Pascal Blanché

It’s here at last! The sixth volume of Neil Clarke’s Best Science Fiction of the Year, long-delayed by supply chain disruptions, pandemic publishing panic, and maybe Pacific pirates — I honestly have no idea. But it’s here. And packed full of stories from the long-ago era of 2020, when the pandemic was fresh and new, everyone was ordering their first masks, and looking forward to returning to work in two weeks. Ah, the good old days.

I’m glad to finally have this book in my hot little hands, anyway. Even if it did take so long to arrive that I ended up accidently ordering a second copy from the Science Fiction Book Club six months after I ordered the first one. If anyone out there is in the market for a copy, we should talk.

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Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: Stay at Home – Day 38

Nero Wolfe’s Brownstone: Stay at Home – Day 38

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So, in 2020, as the Pandemic settled in like an unwanted relative who just came for a week and is still tying up the bathroom, I did a series of posts for the FB Page of the Nero Wolfe fan club, The Wolfe Pack. I speculated on what Stay at Home would be like for Archie, living in the Brownstone with Nero Wolfe, Fritz Brenner, and Theodore Horstmann. I have already re-posted days one through thirty-seven. Here is thirty eight (April 28). It helps if you read the series in order, so I’ve included links to the earlier entries.

Day Thirty Eight – 2020 Stay at Home

If you read my accounts of some of the cases Wolfe and I have solved, you may recall the name Ron Seaver from one of them. I only mention that because he took his last name from my favorite pitcher: Tom Seaver. Today, while I was working on some germination records, I listened to the broadcast from my favorite Tom Seaver game. No, not the no-hitter – He was pitching for the Reds when he finally got one.

But in 1969, Seaver had a perfect game going against the Cubs. And with one out in the ninth, Jim Qualls, who had a whopping total of 31 hits in his three-year career (in which he didn’t even hit .230), singled to ruin things. I mentioned that the baseball gods should have let Willie Mays end his career with a World Series homer against the A’s in 1973. They were sleeping on Seaver that day at Wrigley Field, too.

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A Masterpiece of Old School Horror: The Cursed

A Masterpiece of Old School Horror: The Cursed

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My son Tim and I went to the movies yesterday, as we do most Saturday nights. I wanted to see Tom Holland’s Uncharted, but the crowds were a little daunting, so instead we opted for a low-budget horror film that neither of us knew anything about: The Cursed. We settled into a virtually empty theater with a bucket of popcorn and no expectations.

Turned out to be a splendid choice. I doubt The Cursed will get much attention, as it was released with a virtually non-existent marketing budget — and I don’t expect a larger one would have done much good anyway, as it’s a claustrophobic little tale with few of the things modern horror fans seem to care about.

But those who love classic horror? Ah, that’s a completely different story. The Cursed is positively packed with all the delicious ingredients of top-notch vintage horror: a terrifying monster, a torch-wielding mob, a gypsy curse, a village with ghastly secrets, mist-covered countryside, a (very) creepy scarecrow, a monster-hunter with a tortured past, sinister clergy, wide-eyed children who stumble on things they shouldn’t, and a whole lot more.

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Slapdash Slapstick: Ron Goulart, January 13, 1933 – January 14, 2022

Slapdash Slapstick: Ron Goulart, January 13, 1933 – January 14, 2022

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Ron Goulart in 2009

Contrary to popular opinion, comic science fiction didn’t start and end with Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The humorous mode has a long and honorable history, exemplified by writers like Stanislaw Lem, Harry Harrison, R.A. Lafferty, Frederic Brown, Robert Sheckley… and Ron Goulart.

Ron Goulart, who died on January 14th, a day after his eighty-ninth birthday, was an insanely prolific science fiction and mystery writer, especially in the 70’s and 80’s, when he wrote over one hundred novels, many of them pseudonymous entries in various “copyrighted character” series such as The Avenger, Flash Gordon, Vampirella, and The Phantom. These productions are about what you would expect — professional, work-for-hire potboilers written at high speed for the sole purpose of keeping the refrigerator stocked and the gas and electricity on. Hack work, in other words.

He was also William Shatner’s ghostwriter on the actor’s TekWar books; what would you give to have been a fly on the wall during their story conferences? “What do you think of this idea, Ron?” “It’s dead, Bill.”

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One From the Bucket List: The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Second Annual Collection edited by Allan Kaster

One From the Bucket List: The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Second Annual Collection edited by Allan Kaster

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The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Second Annual Collection (Infinivox, November 21, 2021). Cover by Maurizio Manzieri

I’ve been reading and writing about Year’s Best volumes for decades, and I’ve covered a lot of them, including anthologies by Terry Carr, Don Wollheim, Harry Harrison and Brian Aldiss, Gardner Dozois, Jonathan Strahan, Rich Horton, Neil Clarke, and many others.

So I hope you can appreciate what a pleasure it was to receive a copy of Allan Kaster’s The Year’s Top Robot and AI Stories: Second Annual Collection in the mail in December, a book that fulfilled a long-held dream. It’s the first Year’s Best to include a story of mine: “The Ambient Intelligence,” originally published in the October 2020 issue of John Joseph Adams’ Lightspeed magazine.

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Goth Chick News: A Year of Weird; Hitting the Road with Goth Chick News

Goth Chick News: A Year of Weird; Hitting the Road with Goth Chick News

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You’d think that, as we approach the 2-year anniversary of the division between “BC” (before Covid) and everything else, nothing would seem strange anymore. Yet here we are less than 8 weeks into the new year, and 2022 is shaping up to be a doozy. We’ve already experienced cars that can change colors, exercise bikes in McDonalds, French-fry-scented perfume, and a once-in-a-millennium palindrome day, and we’re not even through February yet.

In this brave new world where pillow-fighting has become a legit combat sport, it might be easy for Black Gate photog Chris Z and I to decide to remain in our subterranean offices until October. I mean, covering the horror industry might seem scary until you consider that this is the year that avatars of the group ABBA will be in concert in London for six months and the event is basically sold out.

Seriously. WTF?

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Random Reviews: “Final Report” by Richard Grey Sipes

Random Reviews: “Final Report” by Richard Grey Sipes

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Analog, January 1965, Cover by John Schoenherr
Analog, January 1965, Cover by John Schoenherr

Throughout 2022, I’ll be reviewing short stories. Some of these may be classics, others forgotten. The two things that all will have in common is that they are part of my personal collection and they will be selected through a randomization process.  What works and authors I look at will be entirely selected by a roll of the dice.

“Final Report” by Richard Grey Sipes appeared in the January 1965 edition of Analog Science Fiction – Science Fact, an issues more noted for including the first part of Frank Herbert’s serial The Prophet of Dune, which would eventually be published as the second part of the novel Dune. The issue also included stories by Christopher Anvil, Harry Harrison, John T. Phillifent, and James H. Schmitz.

Sipes was born in Altoona, Pennsylvania and in 1928 and died in Missouri on June 12, 1989. He worked as aan Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Long Island University and was a cross-cultural correlation methodologist who wrote several papers on the topic, including “War Sports and Aggression: An Empirical Test of Two Rival Theories” and “War, Combative Sports, and Aggression: a Preliminary Causal Model of Cultural Patterning.”

“Final Report” really doesn’t qualify as a short story. There are no characters and it has no plot. Instead, the piece is a written as an army evaluation of new communications equipment. Sipes’ language and format follow a very proscribed and technical manner and he commits fully to the piece. Unfortunately, this has the effect of making the essay dry. The reader keeps expecting Sipes to deviate and throw in something humorous or off kilter as the testing of the equipment enters the science fictional realm, however the entire article is written almost straight faced.

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