Sweet Freedom: March 2013

Sunday, March 31, 2013

current crime fiction magazines in English, dead tree division, updated:

It looks like we might be down to six of them, currently, with the hardy but infrequent little Hardboiled perhaps cracked by editor/publisher Gary Lovisi's losses in the NYC-area flooding...with a few that have crime fiction as a secondary or partial focus, such as Cemetery Dance or Witness...and one other which is devoted to hybrid sf/crime fiction...

A new issue is promised soon. Witness's next issue will be "Ghosts," too.

A new issue is promised soon.

This one might or might not have an issue out soon...

Current issue...a little sf/cf hybrid.

Curent issue. More than any other recent cf magazine, The Strand makes
nearly every issue look too much like every other issue, at least in terms of covers.

The current, annual humor, issue.

The current isssue. I don't know why their covers are so bland of late.

Unclear if HB is still in business...

And, it fact, Hardboiled is in business...

Sandra Seamans noted I'd been overlooking their print edition...

B.V. Lawson notes in comments that the following little magazines, emphasizing horror like Cemetery Dance, have enough suspense and other cf content to be worth mentioning in this context:
Shock Totem
Bete Noire
Shroud
and the folding Pear Noir!

While Sandra Seamans also draws our attention to the eclectic little Big Pulp (with a more colorful, but possibly NSFW, page here).

...and, among the eclectic littles, the next most cf-laden that come to my mind are
Boulevard
and Manoa (multiple Best American Mystery Stories citation source) (across campus from the magazine I briefly edited, Hawaii Review).

Saturday, March 30, 2013

Saturday Music Club: let's dance...

Music to which I have danced...in public. This is saying something.

The Art Blakey Percussion Ensemble (an augmented Jazz Messengers): Oscalypso

Angelique Kidjo: We We

The Rolling Stones: Around & Around

The Bus Boys: American Worker

The Zombies: What More Can I Do?

Jawbox: Peel Session 1994

The complete session recorded by Jawbox on 15 May 1994 for The John Peel Show on BBC Radio 1 and broadcast on 1 July 1994.
Tracklist (songs begin at:):
1. Static (0:07)
2. Tongues (4:17)
3. Chinese Fork Tie (8:15)
4. Cooling Card (10:53)
5. 68 (13:39)

Hüsker Dü: Eight Miles High

The Dillards: Old Man at the Mill

A slower but fine Sam Bush Band reading.

Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, et al.: Oye como va

Mingus Band: Hora Decubitus

Friday, March 29, 2013

Friday's Forgotten Books: the links

A fiction-magazine-heavy set today, and for once not just because of me...if I've missed yours, or someone else's, "forgotten" book for today, please let me know in comments, below...and thanks, to all of you who read these and to all who contribute. Patti Abbott is scheduled to desist popping culture and pick up hosting the links again, next week.

Sergio Angelini: Eighty Million Eyes by "Ed McBain"

Joe Barone: The Dance of the Seagull by Andrea Camilleri (translated by Stephen Sartarelli)

Les Blatt: The Case of the Gilded Fly by Edmund Crispin

Brian Busby: Why Shoot the Teacher by Max Braithwaite (as "condensed," and compared to original text)

By Cyrl Kornbluth writing as Jordan Park

Bill Crider: Overkill by Norman Daniels

Scott Cupp: The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard

William F. Deeck: Death Traps by Kay Cleaver Strahan

Martin Edwards: The Cask by Freeman Wills Crofts

Curt Evans: Murder Ends the Song by Alfred Meyers

Ed Gorman: The Dead Beat by Robert Bloch

Gerard Saylor: Bad Debts by Peter Temple

Josef Hoffman: The Man of Cold Rages, Sorority House, and The Naked Storm by C. M. Kornbluth

Jerry House: Dogs, Devils and Demons: Lore and Legend of the Dog by Louis L. Vine; Christmas with Mother Goose by Walt Kelly

Randy Johnson: Dolls are Murder edited by Harold Q. Masur

Nick Jones: My Enemy's Enemy by Kingsley Amis; The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, November 1961 (UK edition) edited by Robert P. Mills

George Kelley: [Doc Savage (and King Kong):] Skull Island by Will Murray; three novels by John Welcome: Run for Cover; Stop at Nothing; Go for Broke

B.V. Lawson: Four and Twenty Bloodhounds edited by Anthony Boucher

Evan Lewis: Yellowleg by A. S. Fleischman

Todd Mason: March 1965: Fantastic: Stories of Imagination edited by Cele G. Lalli; the Magazine of Horror edited by Robert A. W. Lowndes; The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction edited by Edward Ferman; Science Fantasy edited by Kyril Bonfiglioli; and Gamma edited by Charles Fritch and Jack Matcha

Gloria Maxwell: The Perfect Murder by H.R.F. Keating

John F. Norris: The Starkenden Quest by Gilbert Collins (and Famous Fantastic Mysteries, October 1949, edited by Mary Gnaedinger); Murder in Blue by Clifford Witting

Juri Nummelin: The Courier by Stanley Morgan

Patrick Ohl: Six Shooter Showdown by William Colt Macdonald

James Reasoner: Monsters: A Celebration of the Classics from Universal Studios by Roy Milano, et al.

Karyn Reeves: Famous Trials 7: Oscar Wilde by H. Montgomery Hyde

Richard Robinson: The Chinese Parrot by Earl Derr Biggers

Ron Scheer: Out of the Depths: A Romance of Reclamation by Robert Ames Bennet

Michael Slind: He Who Whispers by John Dickson Carr

Kerrie Smith: Poison in the Pen by Patricia Wentworth

Dan Stumpf: The House of the Seven Flies by Victor Canning

"TomCat": Beyond the Grave by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini and other "crossover" novels

Yvette Banek: The Roman Hat Mystery by "Ellery Queen"

"Zybahn": Re-Vamp edited by Die Booth and L. C. Hu

Thursday, March 28, 2013

March's Underappreciated Music: the links

Patti Abbott: Next to Normal; Linda Ronstadt and Emmylou Harris: "1917"; George Gershwin Alone; opening themes

Sean Coleman: Jellyfish: Spilt Milk

Bill Crider: Robin Luke; Songs of the Day

Lee Hartsfeld: The Fake Hits of the 'Sixties

James Reasoner: Music 'Til Dawn; Music I Like

Jerry House: Steve Gillette; hymns

Randy Johnson: flashmob Beethoven

George Kelley: Stephen Stills: Carry On

Todd Mason: Miriam Makeba; Bust magazine suggestions; music on television (1960s mostly); Hawaiian pop/rock; Hawaiian folk/related; ragtime; after Lambert, Hendricks and Ross

Lawrence Person: Shoegazer Sunday

Charie Ricci: Jonathan Edwards

Ron Scheer: Saturday Music

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

fantasy magazines, late March, 1965

The first set is comprised of what could've been found on a theoretical Very well-stocked newsstand (as some were) in late March, 1965...the English-language professional magazines specializing in publishing fantasy fiction (though all of the science fiction and mystery magazines were not averse to publishing some fantasy or horror or at least material running up to the very edges, nor the eclectic fiction magazines, of which there were a few non-littles still extant at that time...). For some reason, the March issues, or the earlier issues in each case, have somewhat better covers...either better-executed, or better subjects, or perhaps just a touch less blatantly sleazy in Gamma's case. Some of he second set might just have been on the stands instead, given the vagaries of magazine distribution...and certainly the undercapitalized Gamma (which folded with the issued dated September) and the microbudgeted Magazine of Horror had erratic schedules (Gamma had announced a stablemate, crime-fiction magazine Chase, which was published by MOH's publisher instead...and was much less handsome for it).

Cover by Agosta Morol

Cover by Fred Wolters

Cover by Edmund Emshwiller ("Emsh")

Cover by Gray Morrow

Cover by John Healey

Cover by Bert Tanner

The notable facts of these issues are several, not least that John Brunner appears in the April issue of the Magazine of Horror, and any number of other fantastic-fiction issues at about this time (as the always-prolific Brunner was working up to some of the best work in his career); the March F&SF features one of Roger Zelazny's most important early stories, while the April issue is perhaps most significant as the first issue that Edward Ferman edited on his own (even though his father, publisher Joseph Ferman, still had the formal title of "editor" as he had since Davidson's resignation the previous year), not "using up" the inventory that Avram Davidson had purchased for the magazine, and introducing Gahan Wilson's first monthly cartoon (Wilson had contributed cartoons to Fantastic in the 1950s, as well as having already made a career for himself in Playboy, The New Yorker and other slick magazines by 1965)...Southern Illinois University Press published a facsimile of this issue in hardcover, with added memoirs by several of the contributors including Ferman, in 1981. Meanwhile, these were almost the last issues edited by the similarly important Cele Lalli, who had begun editorship of Fantastic and its stablemate Amazing as Cele Goldsmith; when the magazines were sold at mid-year to independent publisher Sol Cohen, as Cele G. Lalli she would stay with Ziff-Davis as a notable editor of bridal magazines. Here's a decent appreciation for some of the early issues of the Magazine of Horror, which Robert A. W. Lowndes was able to keep afloat from 1963-1971, and a more comprehensive one here...and not long after these issues, edited by Kyril Bonfiglioli with the help of fellow writer and artist Keith Roberts, the British institution Science Fantasy would change title to SF Impulse...while its elder sibling, New Worlds, underwent similar changes and eventually even greater ones...
Indices courtesy ISFDb:

Science Fantasy, March 1965