a Short Story Wednesday lament:
- Blood Runs Cold Robert Bloch (Simon & Schuster, 1961, $3.50, 246pp, hc, cover by Tony Palladino)
- The Show Must Go On · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Jan 1960
- The Cure · ss Playboy Oct 1957
- Daybroke · ss Star Science Fiction Magazine Jan 1958
- Show Biz · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine May 1959
- The Masterpiece · ss Rogue Jun 1960
- I Like Blondes · ss Playboy Jan 1956
- Dig That Crazy Grave! · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Jun 1957
- Where the Buffalo Roam · ss Other Worlds Science Stories Jul 1955
- Is Betsy Blake Still Alive? · ss Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Apr 1958
- Word of Honor · ss Playboy Aug 1958
- The Final Performance · ss Shock—The Magazine of Terrifying Tales Sep 1960
- All on a Golden Afternoon · nv F&SF Jun 1956
- The Gloating Place · ss Rogue Jun 1959
- The Pin · ss Amazing Dec 1953/Jan ’54
- I Do Not Love Thee, Doctor Fell · ss F&SF Mar 1955
- The Big Kick · ss Rogue Jul 1959
- Sock Finish · nv Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine Nov 1957
Also in pb (Popular Library Oct ’62; 50c). [There seems to be some disagreement in various listings as to when the paperback edition was published; my soon-recycled ruined copy's edition lists only the S&S first publication dates, so no help, but paperbacks did usually appear the next year in those years, so '62 isn't unlikely. TM]
- Pleasant Dreams Robert Bloch (Jove 0-515-04743-0, Jun ’79, $1.75, 252pp, pb)
- 7 · Sweets to the Sweet · ss Weird Tales Mar 1947
- 17 · The Dream Makers · nv Beyond Fantasy Fiction Sep 1953
- 49 · The Sorcerer’s Apprentice · ss Weird Tales Jan 1949
- 63 · I Kiss Your Shadow · ss F&SF Apr 1956
- 85 · The Proper Spirit · ss F&SF Mar 1957
- 95 · The Cheaters · nv Weird Tales Nov 1947
- 117 · Hungarian Rhapsody · ss Fantastic Jun 1958, as by Wilson Kane
- 129 · The Light-House · Edgar Allan Poe & Robert Bloch · ss Fantastic Jan/Feb 1953; completed by Bloch from a Poe fragment.
- 147 · The Hungry House · ss Imagination Apr 1951
- 171 · Sleeping Beauty · ss Swank Mar 1958, as “The Sleeping Redheads”
- 187 · Sweet Sixteen · ss Fantastic May 1958, as “Spawn of the Dark One”
- 209 · The Mandarin’s Canaries · ss Weird Tales Sep 1938
- 223 · Return to the Sabbath · ss Weird Tales Jul 1938
- 241 · One Way to Mars · ss Weird Tales Jul 1945
Contents differ from Arkham 1960 edition, back cover lists teasers for four stories, three of which are not in this edition. [These "missing" stories are "Enoch", "Mr. Steinway" and "That Hell-Bound Train"--TM]
- Pleasant Dreams Robert Bloch (Arkham House, 1960, $4.00, 233pp, hc)
- Sweets to the Sweet · ss Weird Tales Mar 1947
- The Dream Makers · nv Beyond Fantasy Fiction Sep 1953
- The Sorcerer’s Apprentice · ss Weird Tales Jan 1949
- I Kiss Your Shadow · ss F&SF Apr 1956
- Mr. Steinway · ss Fantastic Apr 1954
- The Proper Spirit · ss F&SF Mar 1957
- Catnip · ss Weird Tales Mar 1948
- The Cheaters · nv Weird Tales Nov 1947
- Hungarian Rhapsody · ss Fantastic Jun 1958, as by Wilson Kane
- The Light-House · ss Fantastic Jan/Feb 1953; completed by Bloch from a Poe fragment.
- The Hungry House · ss Imagination Apr 1951
- Sleeping Beauty · ss Swank Mar 1958, as “The Sleeping Redheads”
- Sweet Sixteen · ss Fantastic May 1958, as “Spawn of the Dark One”
- That Hell-Bound Train · ss F&SF Sep 1958
- Enoch · ss Weird Tales Sep 1946
If you wanted a representative sampling of Robert Bloch's good to best work in short fiction in the latter 1940s through the earliest '60s, these are fine books to pick up, even if a few of his most notable stories of the latest '50s and turn of the '60s, such as "The Funnel of God" and "A Home Away from Home", are not included in them. The Jove edition of Pleasant Dreams, from 1979 and not too long after Harcourt Brace Jovanovich bought the paperback publisher Pyramid Books and redubbed it Jove, was reshaped, one suspects either by Bloch himself or in consultation with him, to omit the stories then-recently collected in The Best of Robert Bloch (Ballantine/Del Rey 1977) and Such Stuff as Screams Are Made Of (B/DR 1979), career retrospectives mostly mining the fantasy and sf short fiction work and the horror and suspense work respectively of Bloch to date at that time...and to add a few stories from Bloch's first hardcover collection, The Opener of the Way, a book which Bloch presumably wasn't too eager to bring back into print in toto. Some relevant confusion clearly led to the bad back-cover blurbing referred to above.
I remember my father, Robert Mason (1937-2020), buying me that Jove edition while we were on the 1979 road trip to visit our extended families on the East Coast just before the family's relocation from New Hampshire to Hawaii; he wasn't feeling too generous at the time, or was simply annoyed with me (can't imagine how that would happen), but made a weak objection to buying a paperback horror collection since the writers who wrote such things were simply delusional and believed in such things as ghosts and goblins, which I immediately, perhaps not quite gently but certainly deservedly, mocked. Perhaps in part in realizing what a nonsensical objection that was, as someone who'd read Bloch's work from time to time over the years, he relented. I'm not sure which secondhand store or library sale I'd picked up that (probably previously unread) copy of Blood Runs Cold from, sometime also in 1978 0r '79, in either New Hampshire or Hawaii, but I was glad to have it; also gathered about then by me, such contemporary collections by Bloch as Atoms and Evil (Fawcett Gold Medal 1963, and focusing on his then-recent science fiction and science-fantasy; from the Kailua Library sales-shelf in 1979 and in rough shape at time of purchase), while containing some good stories, lacked the heft of the work these two paperbacks offered ("Talent" is perhaps the best story in that volume, but it's not quite up to "The Final Performance" nor "Sweets to the Sweet") . So, it took forty-one or -two years for some small but demoralizing bad luck on my part to ruin my copies.
I think I'll replace them. They don't run too cheap these days.
Please see Patti Abbott's blog for today's more prompt and less self-involved SSW entries.
I like it when you are self-involved, sharing memories from your childhood. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteThanks, as often, you are too kind...adolescence, perhaps too much still in progress so many decades later.
ReplyDeleteI'm with AL. It's so interesting to read other people's stories about buying books and what happens to them! I have gotten rid of so many books over the years that the small handful I have kept from my teen years take on an outsized importance, like my hardcover copy of The Fleischer Story.
ReplyDeleteThank you, too, Jack. I've usually rid myself of books only when they are ruined by various misfortunes, accidentally when they disappeared in the mail or other moves over the years, or sold out of utter desperation (rarely) or (more often) nonchalance in the rare occasion it was something I'd picked up because it was free and a matter of passing curiosity, such as my copy of Jackie Susann's YARGO (her sf novel of sorts) or my folks' defaulted to me copy of Harold Robbins's THE BETSY (still some of the most ridiculous pillow talk I recall reading--the terrible film adaptation "cleans up" the book's narrative some, but is otherwise of a piece). Hope your FLEISCHER STORY volume is still in good shape! Some of my earliest books were defaced by my sister as an infant or simply worn out...but some from later elementary school years still travel with me.
ReplyDelete