FFM: STREET & SMITH'S DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE, September 1946, edited by Daisy Bacon; ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, September 1945, edited by Frederic Dannay...redux for a very black Friday

Evan Lewis has the reviews links this week...I hope all the readers here have had a good Thanksgiving, and sparing a thought for those who have not.

As I've noted elsewhere, yesterday:

In a US Thanksgiving that has been particularly hard on the crime-fiction community, including yesterday's death of Stu Shiffman, a loss this morning hits close to home here...Judy Crider, Bill Crider's wife.

http://billcrider.blogspot.com/2014/11/judy-crider-r-i-p.html

http://billcrider.blogspot.com/2014/11/thanks-to-all.html

and further condolence to family, friends and fans of Janet LaPierre and P. D. James.

***Todd Mason:--from the FictionMags discussion list, 14 May 2000:


STREET & SMITH'S DETECTIVE STORY MAGAZINE, September 1946 (Volume 172, Number 5). Legendary editor: Daisy Bacon. Monthly. 15c ($1.50/year in US/$1.75 Pan American Union/$2.25 elsewhere; no Canadian subscriptions accepted [Can edition?]). 

Ads for Calvert Whiskey, Listerine Antiseptic mouthwash, Pepsi-Cola, Ray-o-Vac batteries, Olin Bond flashlights and batteries, Gillette razor blades, Ballco Vacutex blackhead extractor. 

Digest, 130 pp. Cover photograph by Ardean Miller, III.

from one of my contributions to the FictionMags Index, or FMI:

Street & Smith’s Detective Story Magazine [v172 #5, September 1946] ed. Daisy Bacon (Street & Smith, 15¢, 130pp, digest, cover by Ardean Miller, III, photo) [TM] They’d Die for Linda · William Campbell Gault · ss You’ll Be the Death of Me · Roy Lopez · na The Screaming Rock · John H. Knox · ss Murder Is Where You Dig It · William Honest · ss A Photo Finish · Dorothy Dunn · ss; cover story. Oswald Has His Night · Ronald Henderson · ss Blood Red Rubies · Roland Phillips · ss

ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, September 1945 (Volume 6, issue number 24). Legendary editor: Frederic Dannay; Mildred Falk, Mng. Ed.; Charlotte Spivak, Ass. Ed. Bimonthly. 25c ($1.50/year US and Pan American Union/$1.75 Canada/$2 elsewhere).


Ads for the Detective Book Club and an Inner Sanctum Mystery/Simon & Schuster (LAY THAT PISTOL DOWN by Richard Powell). 

Digest, 128 pp. Cover painting by George Salter.

one of Douglas Greene's FMI contributions:  

Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [v 6 #24, September 1945] ed. Ellery Queen (American Mercury, 25¢, 128pp, digest s/s, cover by George Salter)  managing editor Mildred Falk. [DG] 4 · The White Pillars Murder · G. K. Chesterton · ss English Life Jan 1925, as “Dr. Hyde, Detective, and the White Pillars Murder” 17 · Pastorale · James M. Cain · ss The American Mercury Mar 1928 24 · The Labors of Hercules: The Stymphalian Birds, or The Cases of the Vulture Women [Hercule Poirot] · Agatha Christie · ss This Week Sep 17 1939, as “The Vulture Women”; The title on the cover is “The Vulture Women” and on the TOC “The Case of the Vulture Women”. 36 · The Wax-Work Cadaver [Dr. Sam: Johnson] · Lillian de la Torre · ss 50 · Two Sharp Knives · Dashiell Hammett · ss Collier’s Jan 13 1934 74 · What, No Butler? · Damon Runyon · ss Collier’s Aug 5 1933; in collection Blue Plate Special, 1944. 84 · The Whistling Corpse · Ben Hecht · ss 88 · The Problem of the Emperor’s Mushrooms [Paul Dawn] · James Yaffe · ss 98 · The Adventure of Mr. Montalba, Obsequist [Mr. Mycroft] · H. F. Heard · nv 115 · Perkins’ “First Case” [Willis Perkins] · Philip Wylie · ss

While published about a year apart, unlike the last two fiction-magazine issues I've
reviewed here [on the discussion list], a few of my beloved parallels obtain, even when
in reverse. Aside from both issues being very pleasant reading
experiences overall (and neither being much sought after on the
collectors market--purchase of the DETECTIVE STORY cost me more in
postage than in eBay bid price of $2, the EQMM was a buck in a comics
store; while both are no better than good reading copies, try getting
a merely complete PLANET STORIES for that price), one of the most
striking things about them was how forgotten the DSM writers mostly
are, and how many familiar names (perhaps some more remembered than
read) are in the EQ. The only definitely familiar name to me in the
S&S item is William Campbell Gault, and perhaps unsurprisingly his
"They'd Die for Linda" is the best story in that issue; possibly I'd
heard of Roy Lopez before, whose "You'll Be the Death of Me" is, like
most of the other DETECTIVE stories, what could be called "fake
hardboiled": wisecracking 'tecs of various sorts in stories with
the trappings of classic BLACK MASK and post-diaspora DIME DETECTIVE
fiction, without the bracing sense of hard living or worldly
cynicism of Hammett or Chandler. Odder is the issue's 33-page
"complete novel," "The Screaming Rock" by John H. Knox (whether a
close relation to Calvin M. Knox [Robert Silverberg's most famous pseudonym]
 in spirit, I'm not sure), which is nothing so much as a weird-menace/shudder pulp story with most of the torture taken out, more wisecracks and politics inserted. The McGuffin
is a series of experiments in cryogenics, not so named, that serve as 
obfuscation for murders at a remote psychiatric clinic, one not too
different from the one in FAREWELL, MY LOVELY. William Honest (good
old Honest Bill?) offers a reasonably affecting frame for his
impossible murder story, "Murder Is Where You Dig It"; Dorothy Dunn's
"A Photo Finish" (the cover story) reads like a slightly more
wholesome and ultimately upbeat version of a Jim Thompson desperate
loser story (before Thompson, at least, was publishing them); "Oswald
Has His Night" by Ronald Henderson is an interesting twist on a theme
AHMM (to say nothing of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS the tv series) would
eventually beat to death; in this case the henpecked husband is
framed for a murder he didn't commit by a third party and has to solve the
mystery before his wife returns from a visit as well as before being
collared by the police; "Blood Red Rubies" by Roland Phillips is
imitation THE THIN MAN, but not too shabby an example. What the
magazine reads like, in its mostly noirish feel but not quite
full-fledged hopeless existentialism (or MANHUNT brutality), is AHMM
in its first decades, even down to the mediocre uncredited line-drawing illustrations.
Gault's use of multiple viewpoints/narrators is the major deviation
from basically serious plain tales wisecrackingly told, and his and
perhaps Dunn's are the stories that most deserve to survive this
issue's shelf life, but one common feature here is in fine pulp
tradition: attention-getting, even when cliched, opening lines:

Lopez: "He was a little guy, wearing a checked suit. He was
bald-headed. And he was scared green."

Honest: "You felt like front table at El Morocco when Marie came in.
Nobody expected her to sing, but it wouldn't have been surprising.
Tycoons like Roger Tillman could afford such a wife."

Dunn: "Tommy Murphy tore up his losing ticket after the eighth race
and left the grandstand. His hopes fluttered down to the cold cement
flooring with the pieces of cardboard. And he felt cold and grey
inside, drained of his laughter and his luck."

Knox: "Plain Sid Wilson felt the sickening pause as the wheels of
his coupe lost their grip on the icy slope."

Unlike [fellow Street & Smith fiction magazines] ASTOUNDING or UNKNOWN, but like WILD WEST, DETECTIVE STORY here restricts Ms. Bacon's editorial comment to teaser blurbs, and offers a couple of examples of rather sentimental doggerel as space-filling
tags (the better one by Edgar Daniel Kramer, the other by L[ight?]. Breeze).

No such restriction applies to Fred Dannay, of course, whose
introductory essays several times threaten to exceed the length of
the stories blurbed. Fully half the contributions to this issue of EQMM
are reprints, and only one of the originals is bylined unfamiliarly
(as far as I can recall): James Yaffe's "The Problem of the
Emperor's Mushrooms," aside from being a short, decent alternate-to-Graves
modern retelling of the intrigues in the Roman court of Claudius, is
a piss-poor example of a crime story, albeit with another draft it
could've been a better one; Dannay flagellates himself in the intro
over Yaffe's previous EQMM story, because it never occurred to either
author nor editor that a toy balloon blown up by a person wouldn't
levitate in normal atmosphere, apparently a crucial plot point (the
flaw in the story at hand is more in telegraphing and awkwardness in
dialog, but, as Dannay notes, it was rushed into print to prove Yaffe
not an idiot).

More experienced hands than Yaffe's are tapping in Morse in this
issue. Agatha Christie's "The Case of the Vulture Women" (a reprint
from a 1939 THIS WEEK magazine [wasn't this a PARADE-like newspaper
insert?][yes, it was--the later me]), is a Hercule Poirot puzzle that probably could've been
solved in a few minutes cogitation by Dr. Watson or even Mike Hammer;
it was certainly pretty obvious to me, albeit AC's digs at the
English's depredations upon other languages ring true with anyone
who's ever heard what too many Britons do to Spanish words. The other puzzle
stories in this issue are less straightforward, if too often too
easily soluble: John Dickson Carr's quasi-impossible crime tale,
"Will You Walk into My Parlor?", is actually a radio script, previously
broadcast as part of the SUSPENSE series; G. K. Chesterton's "Dr.
Hyde, Detective, and The White Pillars Murder" (ENGLISH LIFE, January
1925) is not atypically as much philosophical rumination as puzzle,
and somewhat guessable in its "surprise"; Lillian de la Torre's
original Samuel Johnson/James Boswell historical mystery, "The
Wax-Work Cadaver," gets only slightly bogged in its attempts at
period color. James M. Cain's non-puzzle, "Pastorale" (AMERICAN MERCURY,
1928), is a minor murder tale with a not particularly deft use of
vaudeville "countrified" dialect (but a cheap inhouse reprint from a
name, and certainly hardboiled enough; inadvertantly Tuckerizing
opening lines: "Well, it looks like Burbie was going to get hung.
And if he does, what he can lay it on is, he always figured he was so dam
smart."). Things look up with Ben Hecht's brief parody, "The
Whistling Corpse," an original (intentionally) as turgid as the "had I but
known" (as Dannay calls them) once and future Gothics (as I tag them)
within the cf tradition, and worth a chuckle; far funnier and more
devastating is H. F. Heard's original Mr. Mycroft (as in Holmes
pastiche) tale, "Adventure of Mr. Montalba, Obsequist," which, in
addition to goosing Doyle a bit, prefigures Waugh's THE LOVED ONE in
most of the latter's best dimensions (this one's use of cutting-edge taxidermy/undertaking
practices and arguable positing of long-term self-induced suspended
animation sparks an argument--fantasy or no?--between Heard and
Dannay which is dutifully detailed in an endnote, and makes for a weak
parallel with Knox's proto-cryogenics story in DSM). Philip Wylie's
original "Perkins' 'First Case'" is an amiable mix of NYC
slice-of-life and offbeat detection, far less sententious (as I guess
it would have to be) than what SF by him I've tried (WHEN WORLDS
COLLIDE with Balmer and THE DISAPPEARANCE); anyone read his Crunch
and Des stories? Vying with the Heard for second-best in the issue is
Damon Runyon's "What, No Butler?" (from COLLIER'S in 1933 and  the 1944 collection BLUE

PLATE SPECIAL), like most of theDETECTIVE STORY offerings a basically serious story dressed up with humor, this time from the master of present-tense slang. The best story is unsurprisingly Dashiell Hammett's "Two Sharp Knives" (COLLIER'S MAGAZINE, 1942), which more
than any of the other stories in either issue (the Gault and the
Runyon come the closest, but it's not that close) gives the sense of life as it is actually lived by adults. And tells a fine, understated story.

(And one wonders if Daisy Bacon and Dannay, both on his own ticket and because he seemed to frequently work with women editors, had for obvious reasons less truck with the misogyny several here have mentioned as impediments to reprinting MANHUNT and at least some BLACK MASK stories....)

FFB: QUARK/4 edited by Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker (Popular Library 1971); THE SATURDAY EVENING POST for January 25, 1969

Forty-five years ago, more or less...The Saturday Evening Post hadn't quite collapsed, though it would soon (to be reborn as an infrequent nostalgia magazine, rather than the Last truly general-interest magazine that wasn't a collection of reprints). Over at Paperback Library, not the most prominent house in the well-established field, a young married couple who had already made serious literary reputations for themselves (and who were utterly open about being bisexual well before the Bowies were to make it futuristically chic for masses a half-decade later) were preparing the first volume of a new anthology series devoted to speculative fiction, mostly sf and fantasy but in the same wheelhouse as such avant garde publications as Evergreen Review, New Directions Quarterly and, in fantastic fiction, New Worlds, Orbit, and Dangerous Visions.  Quark would produce four quarterly volumes in a year.  This last is led off by a brief, interesting editorial, and one of the more free-form, quasi-autobiographical (writer in Greenwich Village) stories that Avram Davidson was writing in those years, such as "Selectra Six-Ten" (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October 1970) and, toward the end of this run, "Hark! Was That the Squeal of an Angry Thoat?" (Fantastic, December 1977), discursive asides and wordplay run rampant (a minor if notable example is that a James Baldwin analog becomes Jacobo Gaintestes here)...this particular story is more pleasant than major, and has yet to be reprinted (unlike those better examples), but was more than enough to compell me to read this part of the book first, even given all the tumult in progress around me at the moment.  The Charles Platt choose your own adventures in the counterculture cartoon is amusing enough, as well...I will return to this book for the other work soon.

Quark/4 ed. Samuel R. Delany & Marilyn Hacker (Paperback Library 66-658, Aug ’71, $1.25, 240pp, pb, cover by Martin Last)

• 7 · On Speculative Fiction · Samuel R. Delany & Marilyn Hacker · in
• 11 · Basileikon: Summer · Avram Davidson · ss *
• 20 · Voortrekker [Jerry Cornelius] · Michael Moorcock · nv Frendz #3 ’71 (+2)
• 49 · Brass and Gold, or Horse and Zeppelin in Beverly Hills · Philip José Farmer · ss *
• 63 · The Song of Passing · Marco Cacchioni · pm *
• 65 · Norman Vs. America · Charles Platt · ct *
• 86 · The True Reason for the Dreadful Death of Mr. Rex Arundel · Helen Adam · nv *
• 110 · Acid Soap Opera · Gail Madonia · ss *
• 121 · Bodies · Thomas M. Disch · nv *
• 162 · Nightsong · Marilyn Hacker · pm *
• 163 · Cages · Vonda N. McIntyre · ss *
• 175 · A Man of Letters · Marek Obtulowicz · ss *
• 186 · The Fourth Profession · Larry Niven · nv *
• · Twelve Drawings · Olivier Olivier · il *
• · from The Day · Stan Persky · ex *

Meanwhile, that issue of the SEP referred to above features not only a cover story on Barney Rosset, he of the aforementioned Evergreen Review and Grove Press and its offshoots, then in full flower, but also Joan Didion mulling over the student strikes and Hayakawa/Reagan/Unruh response at San Francisco State and related campuses, Gary Wills on the private Richard Nixon (about to be inaugurated), Tom Wicker on the outgoing LBJ, Arthur Miller hanging with more upfront criminals, and assorted other items of continued pertinence. One does see why Lewis Lapham was striving to make his Harper's as much as possible a slightly less demotic echo of the SEP of this era.

For today's more thorough reviews, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

This (inadvertently) biweekly (so far this month) roundup will be in place today, if at all possible.

Sorry for the delays, folks...life is utterly uncooperative of late.

FFMagazines: AMERICAN APHRODITE #19 (1955); EROS #4 Winter 1962

The attempts to produce a literate erotica magazine in the US in the latter 1950s and early 1960s were met with considerable resistance at times (Ralph Ginzburg, the editor and publisher of Eros, courted trouble; Samuel Roth and company, of the earlier American Aphrodite, seemed to fly a little more under the radar). And, of course, while they were aimed at being liberatory and intelligently bohemian, featuring imagery of bare backsides didn't keep them from feeling a bit half-assed.

While the likes of Esquire, Playboy and Evergreen Review had all been lightning rods for scrutiny and condemnation (and their imitators as well), none of them (certainly not even Playboy) was solely about sex...even if aids to masturbation (for the audience that enjoyed women's aspect) were the most obvious selling point of a given issue. And, certainly, the majority of women and not a few men were left out of the target-audience equation for these magazines, and the less ambitious skin-magazine digests that flourished at mid-century.  Even if Evergreen Review didn't promote itself (overtly) as a men's stroke-book, the mix certainly leaned that way...these two publications were making, to what degree of success is another matter, an effort to reach out simultaneously to those of several persuasions, at a time when the presumed default assumptions ran to the sickness of all homosexuality, the baseness of male heterosexual lust, the odd mix of dainty and guilty that was assumed to be female heterosexuality. 

So, the advent of the occasional attempt such as these book-a-zines...and it's probably notable that both of these were published in hardcover format even though they were periodicals, and could be sold either way...with a mix of materials new and old, the old having the advantages of usually being out of copyright protection as well as giving a certain classic or at least (very) arguably tony flavor to the enterprise in question.

Among the more interesting new items in either issue here is the Ray Bradbury story "The Long After Midnight Girl", which deals in part with homophobia and sexual violence in a fairly straightforward way, if going about it somewhat cutely (Bradbury could preach). It's notable (to me, at least) that Anthony Boucher makes a point of mentioning how unsettling he found the story, in not including it but shortlisting it in the appropriate volume of The Year's Best Detective Stories.

These remain interesting for what they suggest about the times, what was and wasn't possible in this kind of publishing, and how they are and are not too much different from similar attempts today, and in recent years. 

Please see Patti Abbott's blog for more of today's books (and perhaps a few other magazines...).

Eros #4:
Contents: 
Love in the Bible / Rufus Mott -- 
The Jewel Box Revue : A Photographic Essay / Raymond Jacobs -- 
A Letter From Allan Ginsberg -- 
Was Shakespeare a Homosexual? / John Erno Russell -- 
I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl -- 
The Long After Midnight Girl : A Short, Short Story / Ray Bradbury -- 
The Sexual Side of Anti-Semitism / Shepherd Raymond -- 
My Life and Loves / Frank Harris, introduction by Warren Boroson -- 
New Twists on 3 Great Trysts / Dan Greenburg -- 
President Harding's Second Lady / John Hejno -- 
Bawdy Limericks : The Folklore of the Intellectual -- 
The Natural Superiority of Women as Eroticists / Eberhard W and Phyllis C Kronhausen -- 
Memoirs of a Male Chaperon / John Sack -- 
Black and White in Color : A Photographic Tone Poem / Ralph M Hattersley Jr. -- 
Lysistrata / Aristophanes, a free adaptation by Ivan Grazni; 
artwork, Albrecht Durer, Rembrandt, Heindrik Goltzius, Jost De Negker, Geller, Jerome Snyder, John Alcom, Charles B Slackman, Milton Glaser; Norman Lindsay, photos, C. White, Raymond Jacobs 


American Aphrodite: A Quarterly for the Fancy Free [v 5 #19, 1955] ed. Samuel Roth & Hal Zucker ( )
Details supplied by Ned Brooks.
• 3 · Why Celine · Hal Zucker · es
• 5 · Hobohemians · Philip Owens · nv
• 43 · The Tongue of Spring and other poems · Beatrice Baron · pm; illus. Picasso
• 56 · Five Poems · Shearman Ray · pm
• 59 · The Labyrinth · Anais Nin · ss
• 63 · Was It Will Be · John Lee Weldon · pl
• 74 · Tennis Anyone? · Anon. · pt; [photographic study]
• 81 · Married Misery · Harry Roskolenko · ss
• 88 · Edge of the Nest · Eugene Armfield · ss Pagany Apr-Jun 1931; illus. Roy Krenkel
• 97 · London Aphrodite · Denys Val Baker, ed. · mg; [separate pagination, 1-160]
• 7 · Introduction · Denys Val Baker · ed
• 9 · The Wanderers · Alun Lewis · ss The Welsh Review Oct 1939
• 25 · The Kimono · H. E. Bates · nv Missing from Their Homes, ed. Anon., Hutchinson 1936
• 43 · A Pearl of Great Price · Rhys Davies · ss
• 53 · The Bridal Night · Frank O’Connor · ss Magpie Nov 1951
• 61 · The Lady and the Tramp · L. J. Daventry · ss
• 80 · The Trap · Dorothy K. Haynes · ss Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Witch, London: Methuen 1949
• 86 · The Touch · Liam O’Flaherty · ss
• 95 · The Bishop Who Was Never Lonely · Norman Nicholson · ss
• 104 · The Saviour · Glyn Jones · ss
• 116 · The Girl at the Fair · Denys Val Baker · ss
• 126 · A Prospect of the Sea · Dylan Thomas · ss
• 134 · The Vindication · James Thurlby · ss The Face in the Mirror, ed. Anon., London: Opus Press 1946
• 141 · The Imprisoned · Rearden Conner · ss
• 149 · Lost · Patrick Shone · ss

FFB: Robert Bloch: THE BEST OF ROBERT BLOCH (Ballantine 1977); SUCH STUFF AS SCREAMS ARE MADE OF (Ballantine/Del Rey 1979), among other collections

Robert Bloch and Fritz Leiber were the two most important writers to be mentored by H. P. Lovecraft, and were younger members of the group of corresponding friends known as the Lovecraft Circle, which also included Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth and a small slew of others; while Derleth would not only be Lovecraft's primary publisher after his early death but would write endless pastiches of HPL's work, often based however tenuously on unpublished fragments among Lovecraft's papers, it was Bloch and Leiber who really picked up the ball with Lovecraft's primary innovation, an emphasis on existential horror in a supernatural context...humanity wasn't in trouble so much (or at least not so primarily) because of being the prize in a struggle between good and evil gods and demons, so much as because we were just another incidental item in the environment of entities and forces that took note of us, if they could at at all, only when it suited them...and our welfare was never much of their concern, when they had concerns.  Of course, both Bloch and Leiber also wrote more traditional horror and fantasy fiction, and hybrids as well...but both also went on to explore new implications of their most Lovecraftian work, and find their own voices...Bloch particularly fascinated by psychopathia and Leiber with the evolution of myth...as might well be demonstrated by their most influential early stories: Bloch's "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" and Leiber's "Smoke Ghost"...and, of course, Bloch would eventually become most famous for creating Norman Bates and his family motel, as the author of Psycho, and Leiber perhaps dually as the chronicler of the picaresque fantasy adventurers Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser and for his most famous and durable horror novel, Conjure Wife. And then there were the best of succeeding generations of Lovecraftian-influenced writers: Ramsey Campbell and Fred Chappell, Thomas Ligotti and T.E.D. Klein, and others. All diverse talents, and none moreso than Bloch...as his two late 1970s career retrospective collections of short fiction, both selected by Bloch himself, helped demonstrate...even given that they pointedly only took from certain areas of Bloch's writing. The Best of slightly overrepresented  Bloch's science-fictional work (while also including fantasy and horror fiction), in part because much of it was close to his heart and in part because it was being published in Ballantine's sf/fantasy line, so a year and change later, a second collection focused more thoroughly on his horror and including no little of his more outre suspense fiction, was issued as a natural companion.

The Best of Robert Bloch Robert Bloch  (Ballantine 0-345-25757-X, Nov ’77, $1.95, 397pp, pb)

• xi · Robert Bloch: The Man Who Wrote Psycho · Lester del Rey · in
• 1 · Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper · ss Weird Tales Jul ’43
• 21 · Enoch · ss Weird Tales Sep ’46
• 39 · Catnip · ss Weird Tales Mar ’48
• 55 · The Hungry House · ss Imagination Apr ’51
• 79 · The Man Who Collected Poe · ss Famous Fantastic Mysteries Oct ’51
• 97 · Mr. Steinway · ss Fantastic Apr ’54
• 113 · The Past Master · nv Bluebook Jan ’55
• 141 · I Like Blondes · ss Playboy Jan ’56
• 153 · All on a Golden Afternoon · nv F&SF Jun ’56
• 185 · Broomstick Ride · ss Super Science Fiction Dec ’57
• 197 · Daybroke · ss Star Science Fiction Magazine Jan ’58
• 209 · Sleeping Beauty [“The Sleeping Redheads”] · ss Swank Mar ’58
• 225 · Word of Honor · ss Playboy Aug ’58
• 237 · The World-Timer · nv Fantastic Aug ’60
• 271 · That Hell-Bound Train · ss F&SF Sep ’58
• 289 · The Funnel of God · nv Fantastic Jan ’60
• 319 · Beelzebub · ss Playboy Dec ’63
• 329 · The Plot Is the Thing · ss F&SF Jul ’66
• 337 · How Like a God · ss Galaxy Apr ’69
• 355 · The Movie People · ss F&SF Oct ’69
• 269 · The Oracle · ss Penthouse May ’71
• 377 · The Learning Maze · ss The Learning Maze, ed. Roger Elwood, Messner, 1974
• 393 · Author’s Afterword: “Will the Real Robert Bloch Please Stand Up?” · aw

Such Stuff As Screams Are Made Of  Robert Bloch  (Ballantine 0-345-27996-4, Feb ’79, $1.95, 287pp, pb)

• ix · Introduction · Gahan Wilson · in
• 1 · The Tunnel of Love [“Hell Is My Legacy”] · ss New Detective Magazine Jul ’48
• 11 · The Unspeakable Betrothal · ss Avon Fantasy Reader 9, ed. Donald A. Wollheim, Avon Publishing Co., 1949
• 26 · The Girl from Mars · ss Fantastic Adventures Mar ’50
• 34 · The Head Hunter [“Head Man”] · ss 15 Mystery Stories Jun ’50
• 52 · The Weird Tailor · nv Weird Tales Jul ’50
• 74 · Lucy Comes to Stay · ss Weird Tales Jan ’52
• 81 · The Pin · ss Amazing Dec ’53/Jan ’54
• 96 · I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell · ss F&SF Mar ’55
• 107 · Luck Is No Lady · ss AHMM Aug ’57
• 124 · The Cure · ss Playboy Oct ’57
• 132 · The Screaming People · nv Fantastic Jan ’59
• 171 · The Big Kick · ss Rogue Jul ’59
• 181 · The Masterpiece · ss Rogue Jun ’60
• 186 · Talent · ss If Jul ’60
• 200 · The Final Performance · ss Shock Sep ’60
• 214 · Life in Our Time · ss EQMM Oct ’66
• 223 · Underground [“The Living Dead”] · ss EQMM Apr ’67
• 230 · A Case of the Stubborns · ss F&SF Oct ’76
• 248 · The Head · ss The Ides of Tomorrow, ed. Terry Carr, Little & Brown, 1976
• 257 · What You See Is What You Get · ss F&SF Oct ’77
• 273 · Nina · ss F&SF Jun ’77
• 284 · Author’s Afterword · aw

Everything in these books ranges from good to brilliant (from the surreal South African psychodrama "The Funnel of God" to the gentle nostalgic fantasy of "The Movie People", the key run-ups to Psycho "Lucy Comes to Stay" and "I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell") and while Bloch would go onto further good short (and long) work in the decade and half after the publication of the latter book, reading such later collections as Midnight Pleasures and Cold Chills will give you a better sense of his late career than you'll get from, for example, The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch, which was reprinted in paperback in a typo-ridden edition with the utterly fraudulent title The Complete Stories of Robert Bloch. (As I mentioned to Sergio Angelini not too long ago, the complete short Bloch fiction would run more to thirty volumes than this set's three.) Looking at the contents of the three-volume set again, I see that while it does include some rather minor Bloch stories, and while overlapping heavily with these two volumes above for some reason omits such obvious stories as "That Hell-Bound Train", it, too, is a decent representation of Bloch's shorter work...but the awful packaging and error-riddled text of the paperback edition makes it a poor choice for first reading. You should read "Water's Edge", though...and won't suffer with "Talent" nor "The Animal Fair"...but "Freak Show" was a very poor choice to end with. Bloch's humorous fantasies, the Damon Runyonesque Lefty Feep stories and his Thorne Smith pastiches and others, are mostly missing from these volumes as well...among much else. And then there are the novels, and the occasional nonfiction...The Lost Bloch collections are utterly recommended...

Final Reckonings Robert Bloch (Underwood-Miller 0-88733-055-X (Vol.1), Mar ’88, $80.00 set, 371pp, hc) The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch, Vol. I

• 1 · Mannikins of Horror · ss Weird Tales Dec ’39
• 11 · Almost Human [as by Tarleton Fiske] · ss Fantastic Adventures Jun ’43
• 27 · The Beasts of Barsac · ss Weird Tales Jul ’44
• 45 · The Skull of the Marquis de Sade · ss Weird Tales Sep ’45
• 61 · The Bogey Man Will Get You · ss Weird Tales Mar ’46
• 71 · Frozen Fear · ss Weird Tales May ’46
• 79 · The Tunnel of Love [“Hell Is My Legacy”] · ss New Detective Magazine Jul ’48
• 87 · The Unspeakable Betrothal · ss Avon Fantasy Reader 9, ed. Donald A. Wollheim, Avon Publishing Co., 1949
• 99 · Tell Your Fortune · nv Weird Tales May ’50
• 121 · Head Man · ss 15 Mystery Stories Jun ’50
• 135 · The Shadow from the Steeple · nv Weird Tales Sep ’50
• 153 · The Man Who Collected Poe · ss Famous Fantastic Mysteries Oct ’51
• 165 · Lucy Comes to Stay · ss Weird Tales Jan ’52
• 171 · The Thinking Cap · nv Other Worlds Science Stories Jun ’53
• 195 · Constant Reader · ss Universe Jun ’53
• 207 · The Pin · ss Amazing Dec ’53/Jan ’54
• 219 · The Goddess of Wisdom · ss Fantastic Universe May ’54
• 233 · The Past Master · nv Bluebook Jan ’55
• 253 · Where the Buffalo Roam · ss Other Worlds Science Stories Jul ’55
• 267 · I Like Blondes · ss Playboy Jan ’56
• 277 · You Got to Have Brains · ss Fantastic Universe Jan ’56
• 287 · A Good Imagination · ss Suspect Detective Stories Jan ’56
• 301 · Dead-End Doctor · ss Galaxy Feb ’56
• 313 · Terror in the Night · ss Manhunt Feb ’56
• 321 · All on a Golden Afternoon · nv F&SF Jun ’56
• 343 · Founding Fathers · ss Fantastic Universe Jul ’56
• 359 · String of Pearls · ss The Saint Detective Magazine Aug ’56

Bitter Ends Robert Bloch (Underwood-Miller 0-88733-055-X (Vol.2), Mar ’88, $80.00 set, 368pp, hc) The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch, Vol. II

• 1 · Water’s Edge · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Sep ’56
• 15 · The Real Bad Friend · nv Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Feb ’57
• 35 · Man with a Hobby · ss AHMM Mar ’57
• 41 · Welcome, Stranger · ss Satellite Apr ’57
• 49 · Terror Over Hollywood · nv Fantastic Universe Jun ’57
• 69 · Luck Is No Lady · ss AHMM Aug ’57
• 83 · Crime in Rhyme · ss EQMM Oct ’57
• 91 · The Cure · ss Playboy Oct ’57
• 97 · Sock Finish · nv EQMM Nov ’57
• 113 · Broomstick Ride · ss Super Science Fiction Dec ’57
• 121 · Daybroke · ss Star Science Fiction Magazine Jan ’58
• 129 · Betsy Blake Will Live Forever [“Is Betsy Blake Still Alive?”] · ss EQMM Apr ’58
• 143 · Terror in Cut-Throat Cove · nv Fantastic Jun ’58
• 175 · Word of Honor · ss Playboy Aug ’58
• 183 · That Old Black Magic · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Sep ’58
• 197 · The Deadliest Art [“The Ungallant Hunter”] · ss Bestseller Mystery Magazine Nov ’58; ; as “The Living Bracelet”, EQMM Jun ’59
• 203 · The Screaming People · nv Fantastic Jan ’59
• 233 · The Hungry Eye · nv Fantastic May ’59
• 251 · Show Biz · ss EQMM May ’59
• 257 · The Gloating Place · ss Rogue Jun ’59
• 265 · The Man Who Knew Women · nv The Saint Mystery Magazine Jul ’59
• 285 · The Big Kick · ss Rogue Jul ’59
• 293 · Night School · ss Rogue Aug ’59
• 303 · Sabbatical · ss Galaxy Dec ’59
• 311 · The Funnel of God · nv Fantastic Jan ’60
• 331 · ’Til Death Do Us Part · ss Bestseller Mystery Magazine Jan ’60
• 335 · The Show Must Go On · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Jan ’60
• 339 · A Matter of Life · ss Keyhole Mystery Magazine Jun ’60
• 345 · Pin-Up Girl [as by Will Folke] · ss Shock Jul ’60
• 351 · The Baldheaded Mirage · ss Amazing Jun ’60
• 363 · The Masterpiece · ss Rogue Jun ’60

Last Rites Robert Bloch (Underwood-Miller 0-88733-055-X (Vol.3), Mar ’88, $80.00 set, 398pp, hc) The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch, Vol. III

• 1 · Talent · ss If Jul ’60
• 11 · The World-Timer · nv Fantastic Aug ’60
• 35 · Fat Chance · ss Keyhole Mystery Magazine Aug ’60
• 45 · The Final Performance · ss Shock Sep ’60
• 55 · Hobo · ss Ed McBain’s Mystery Book #2 ’60
• 59 · A Home Away from Home · ss AHMM Jun ’61
• 67 · The Unpardonable Crime · ss Swank Sep ’61
• 73 · Crime Machine · ss Galaxy Oct ’61
• 79 · Untouchable · ss The Saint Mystery Magazine (UK) Nov ’61
• 85 · Method for Murder · ss Fury Jul ’62
• 91 · The Living End · ss The Saint Detective Magazine May ’63
• 95 · Impractical Joker [“Deadly Joker”] · ss The Saint Detective Magazine Aug ’63
• 109 · Beelzebub · ss Playboy Dec ’63
• 117 · The Old College Try · ss Gamma #2 ’63
• 133 · A Quiet Funeral · ss The Skull of the Marquis de Sade, Pyramid, 1965
• 139 · The Plot Is the Thing · ss F&SF Jul ’66
• 145 · Life in Our Time · ss EQMM Oct ’66
• 153 · Underground [“The Living Dead”] · ss EQMM Apr ’67
• 159 · A Toy for Juliette · ss Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967
• 165 · The Gods Are Not Mocked · ss EQMM Aug ’68
• 171 · How Like a God · ss Galaxy Apr ’69
• 185 · The Movie People · ss F&SF Oct ’69
• 195 · The Double Whammy · ss Fantastic Feb ’70
• 205 · In the Cards · ss Worlds of Fantasy Win ’70
• 217 · The Warm Farewell · ss Frights, ed. Kirby McCauley, St. Martins, 1976
• 227 · The Play’s the Thing · ss AHMM May ’71
• 235 · The Animal Fair · ss Playboy May ’71
• 247 · The Oracle · ss Penthouse May ’71
• 253 · Ego Trip · ss Penthouse Mar ’72
• 269 · His and Hearse [“I Never Had a Christmas Tree”] · nv Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Jun ’72
• 291 · Space-Born · nv Children of Infinity, ed. Roger Elwood, Watts, 1973
• 305 · Forever and Amen · ss And Walk Now Gently Through the Fire, ed. Roger Elwood, Chilton, 1972
• 321 · See How They Run · ss EQMM Apr ’73
• 331 · The Learning Maze · ss The Learning Maze, ed. Roger Elwood, Messner, 1974
• 343 · The Model · ss Gallery Nov ’75
• 351 · A Case of the Stubborns · ss F&SF Oct ’76
• 365 · Crook of the Month · ss AHMM Nov ’76
• 379 · Nina · ss F&SF Jun ’77
• 389 · Freak Show · ss F&SF May ’79

For more of this week's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the links

The Haunting (1963)

Below, the first set of links to this week's reviews and citations As always, please let me know in comments when I've missed yours or someone else's (more will be added over the course of the day)...and, as always, thanks to all our contributors and to you readers...

The Phantom (1996 film)

Anne Billson: How to Film a Ghost Story

Bill Crider: The Phantom [trailer]

Brian Arnold: Thursday's Game, Jaws 2, Standing in the Shadows of Motown et al.

B.V. Lawson: Media Murder

Comedy Film Nerds: Jackie Kashian and Jimmy Pardo

David Vineyard: The Uninvited (1944 film)

Ed Gorman and Vince Keenan: The Money Trap

Ed Lynskey: Shock Corridor

Elizabeth Foxwell: A Life at Stake (1954 film); The Holmes Service and the gothic on BBC Radio 4

Evan Lewis: Mike Hammer: "The High Cost of Dying" (1950s tv pilot)

George Kelley: Six Dance Lessons in Six Weeks

How Did This Get Made?: Monkey Shines

Iba Dawson: While We're Young; Mr. Turner

Ivan G. Shreve, Jr.: The Best and Worst of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear; the Inner Sanctum film series; The Freshman

Jack Seabrook: The Alfred Hitchcock Hour: "House Guest" (and Moment of Fear: "The Golden Deed")

Jackie Kashian: Jesse Case

Jacqueline T. Lynch: The Twilight Zone: "The Queen of the Nile"

James Reasoner: Veronica Mars (the film)

Jerry House: The Haunted Bedroom

John Charles: She-Freak

John Grant: The Hideout; Femme Fatale (2013 film); Who Killed Aunt Maggie?; The Girl Who Dared

Jonathan Lewis: Flame of Araby; Dr. Renault's Secret; The Master Plan of Dr. Fu Manchu 

Juri Nummelin: Godzilla vs. MechaGodzilla

Bell, Book and Candle

Kate Laity: Sexy Witch movies

Kliph Nesteroff: Dino's Lodge

Laura: Terror on a Train aka Time 
Bomb; Turner Classic Movies, February: 21 Days of Oscar

Lucy Brown: Lip Service

Martin Edwards: "Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination"

Marty McKee: Don't Go Near the Park

Mystery Dave: Strippers vs. Werewolves

Patti Abbott: Night Nurse

Peter Rosovsky: NoirCon; and here and here

The Reader

Prashant Trikkanad: The Reader (2008 film)

Randy Johnson: Beyond the Time Barrier; $1000 on the Black aka 1000 dollars sui negro

Rick: The Leopard Man; Ross Martin; Ghost Breakers; Night of the Demon

Sergio Angelini: Magic;  The Spiral Staircase

Stacia Jones: The Mosquito Coast

Stephen Bowie: Thriller (1960-62 tv)

Steve Lewis (et al.): Pulp AdventureCon

Yvette Banek: Action in the Afternoon