Wednesday, July 26, 2023

SSW: Dale, or William Dale, Jennings: "The Gingerbread Man" (THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY AND SCIENCE FICTION, May 1954); "Children of the Cemetery" (ESQUIRE, April 1945)

William Dale Jennings, who was born in 1917 to Charlotte Sophia Knebel Jennings and William Arthur Jennings, thus usually went by Dale Jennings in daily life throughout most of his years, was a young dancer who became enamored of performing arts generally at a young age, and began scripting as well as performing them; enlisted in the US Army in 1942, honorably discharged in 1946, and a closeted gay man in those years, he helped found the Mattachine Society after he and his then boyfriend joined the discussion meetings that formed around Harry Hay and others in San Francisco; Jennings had his Rosa Parks moment a bit earlier than she did, in 1950, when (as he testified) he was followed home from a public restroom by an undercover cop who was trying to solicit him (Jennings wondered if the man was actually trying to rob him), and who in turn charged Jennings with illegal (because homosexual) solicitation. What made this case extremely unusual for the time was Jennings's willingness to not simply pay the fine and keep everything anonymous, but (with support from fellow Mattachine Society members and others) to go to trial; apparently his jury was hung, eleven jurors voting to acquit and a diehard holdout refusing to countenance anything but a guilty verdict, and the prosecution unwilling to refile the charges. Jennings, not long after, left Mattachine (where, apparently, the tendency was toward promoting homosexual men as the inherently culturally gifted as well as persecuted minority) and helped cofound ONE, Incorporated, which took a more egalitarian approach toward equal rights for gay men and lesbians (among others); Jennings edited their magazine, One, from founding in 1952 until 1954, when the business manager of ONE, Inc., and others, objecting to Jennings's combative tone, forced him from the editorship. 

Throughout his long life, he was often involved in one sort of narrative art or another, ranging from working for the Ice Capades organization through working with West Coast regional editions of TV Guide, producing short films (including the intentionally goofy 1963 bicycle-safety film for kids, "One Got Fat", which he wrote and directed, narrated by Edward Everett Horton; kind of an absurdist take on the Ohio State Highway Patrol automobile-safety/bloodbath short films), and among his writings were his three published novels, The Ronin (1968), which he wrote while working for the Ice Capades, The Cowboys (1971, and the basis of the 1972 John Wayne film and subsequent short-lived 1974 television series), and The Sinking of the Sarah Diamond (1974). And only two of his short stories have been published, as far as I can tell, "Children of the Cemetery" in Esquire, while he was still in the service in 1945, and "The Gingerbread Man" in 1954 in F&SF. (How many of his short stories might've been published in various magazines under "undiscovered" pseudonyms is a good question.)

I read "The Gingerbread Man" in one of the first older issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science fiction I collected, in 1978, and it has stuck in my mind as a good example of an undeservedly "forgotten" story ever since...a deft, offhanded short that, as I had no way of knowing at first encounter, nor until rereading just now, seems pretty clearly inspired by Jennings's experience with the undercover vice cop who framed him in 1950, transmuted into the kind of suspense story which verges on horror fiction without quite crossing the line, though "Anthony Boucher" and J. Francis McComas's blurb for the story, which suggests it resembles, like certain Edward Lucas White stories, "the direct transcription of a nightmare", is a fair one. (The editors also mistook the story for the first published one by Jennings, perhaps by Jennings being less than enthusiastic about his earlier published work, under his full name.) It can be read here and here...aside from these arguable exceptions (and similar online archiving), to the best of my knowledge it has never been reprinted.

Having just read "Children of the Cemetery" for the first time this afternoon, I have to wonder if this slightly longer first story by Jennings was published in part to have a story from a serviceman in the issue; while it's not a terrible piece, it's rather painfully the work of a not altogether unsophisticated beginning writer, mixing some rather telling critique of the US GIs' attitude toward the Polynesian natives they are observing and interacting with (condescending and racist at best), as well as their surprise at how they deal with some hapless remnants of the Japanese attempted occupation forces who make the mistake of attempting resistance; but everything is ladled on so langorously that even in relatively few pages, it's stilted, and feels not altogether free of the chauvinism it is simultaneously trying to mock. Amusing, if also overgenerous, are the detailed descriptions of the anatomy of the entirely male cast of the story (the natives "hide their women away carefully"), where the gay subtext is no longer altogether subtext, even if no one is described completely flatteringly, whether white, Polynesian or Japanese. Nine years more as a writer tells, in the contrast between these two short stories. This one can be read here. (At least one cartoon in the issue has a[n even] less enlightened "gag" view of US-Polynesian wartime interaction...though even the slight Chester Himes vignette is, unsurprisingly, better reading than the Jennings debut story.)

For more of today's Short Story Wednesdays reviews,                          please see Patti Abbott's blog.

From the FictionMags Index:






Posted by at 6 comments:
Labels: , ,

Wednesday, July 19, 2023

SSW: MIKE SHAYNE'S TORRID TWELVE edited by Leo Margulies? (and/or Cylvia Kleinman Margulies? Samuel Merwin, Jr.?), Dell Books 1961...a best-of the first four years of MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE, 1956-59; and MINK IS FOR A MINX, of similar possibly ghosted editorial responsibility, the only volume of a would-be annual series, 1964 (and taking stories from 1963 issues): Short Story Wednesday

These are the two, and only two that I'm aware of, volumes drawing expressly from Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine (in its first issues more formally, and with more pages, Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine), founded in 1956, the same year as its longtime "competitor" on newsstands,  Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine; by the folding of a much-diminished Manhunt and the similarly struggling US edition of The Saint Mystery Magazine in 1967, while other, short-lived crime-fiction magazines would arise, the US trio of Ellery Queen's, Hitchcock's and Shayne were the reliable (and always monthly, surprisingly--founded on a 12 issues/year basis, Shayne never dropped to bimonthly nor less-frequent) doses of their various flavors of fiction till Shayne folded with the August 1985 issue (of course, the other two continue to be published at this time, and have long been stablemates). 

If EQMM was the magazine, particularly under founding editor Frederic Dannay, devoted to attempts to encourage literary sophistication in cf (and otherwise to be a wide-spectrum magazine within that field, and a bit beyond, often running some mild horror fiction and other related fiction), and AHMM was the magazine (particularly during its independent existence, before sale to then-EQMM publisher Davis Publications in 1975) devoted, not exclusively but frequently, to twist endings and irony, and was a bit more hardboiled on average and less interested in classic detection than Queen's, MSMM was unabashedly in the hardboiled (and "medium-boiled") detective and cf mode, with (particularly in its last years, as edited by Charles Fritch) an openness to a bit of horror and related fiction as well, throughout its run. But, sadly, Shayne was also invariably the lowest-paying of the trio of US newsstand monthlies...but this meant that it both had to, and was glad to, deal with a lot of younger writers, and some such as Livia J. Washburn, James Reasoner, Joe R. Lansdale, Richard Moore, and, earlier on, Bill Pronzini (who placed a lot of his work with AHMM, but would publish another considerable lot with MSMM and its stablemates, often as "Jack Foxx"), either made a notable amount of their earliest sales (James Reasoner is not alone in remembering Sam Merwin, in the first issues and for a longer term again in the '70s, as a particularly helpful editor to James as a young professional writer), or, as in the case of writers such as Talmage Powell, found their primary later market in the magazine. 

Also notable, how little the "original" "Brett Halliday", Davis Dresser, wrote for the magazine...the new "Mike Shayne" fiction in the magazine was regularly ghosted from the beginning.

Cover painting by Robert ("Bob") McGinnis, who contributed covers to the magazine, as well.

The only story I know I'd read previously to looking at these volumes is Robert Bloch's "Water's Edge" (a very good story, as I remember it), from the first issue. 


6 * Foreword * "Brett Halliday" (Davis Dresser) * fw (probably ghosted?)

7 * Death Dives Deep [Mike Shayne], "Brett Halliday" (ghost written by Robert Arthur) * ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine January 1959

62 * The Toy-Head Man · Franklin Gregory · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine August 1959

80 * The Fifth One · D. E. Forbes (DeLoris [Florine] Stanton Forbes) · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine December 1957

91 * The Rites of Death · Hal Ellson · ss Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine October 1956

108 * The Patsy [Johnny Liddell] · Frank Kane · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine August 1957

124 * Water's Edge * Robert Bloch * ss Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 1 No. 1, September 1956] ed. Sam Merwin, Jr. 

145 * Moonflower · Hope Field · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 3 No. 1, April 1958] (35¢, digest)

157 * A Hood Is Born · Richard Deming · nv Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 4 No. 4, March 1959] ed. Cylvia Kleinman (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 128pp+, digest)

191 * The Right Kind of a House · Henry Slesar · ss Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 1 No. 6, February 1957] ed. Leo Margulies (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 160pp+, digest)

200 * Three Wives Too Many · Kenneth Fearing · nv Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 1 No. 1, September 1956] ed. Sam Merwin, Jr. (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 160pp+, digest)

225 * Sunday’s Slaughter · "Jonathan Craig" (Frank E. Smith) · ss Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 1 No. 5, January 1957] ed. Sam Merwin, Jr. (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 160pp+, digest)

242 * The Musical Doll · Helen [nee Weinbaum] Kasson · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 5 No. 2, July 1959] ed. Cylvia Kleinman (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 128pp+, digest)


Can be read here.


Mink is for a Minx: The Best from Mike Shayne's Mystery Magazine, 1st Annual Edition [and, apparently, last] Dell Books, 1964, cover by Robert McGinnis.


9 * Death of a Dead Man [Mike Shayne] · Brett Halliday (ghost written by Dennis Lynds) · nv Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 13 No. 1, June 1963]

47 * Partners of the Dark [Phil Egan] · Alson J. Smith · nv Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 12 No. 6, May 1963] 

61 * Truck Drivers Like Girls · Dorothy Madle · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 13 No. 5, October 1963] ed. Cylvia Kleinman (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, 128pp+, digest)

93 * Murder Slick as a Whistle · Arthur Porges · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 13 No. 4, September 1963]

100 * The Marrow of Justice [Victor Fiala] · Hal Ellson · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 12 No. 6, May 1963]

105 * Man on the Run · Dennis Lynds · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 12 No. 4, March 1963]

123 * Death, My Love · "John Douglas" (Dennis Lynds) (as Phil Stephensen-Payne notes, and Terry Zobeck reminds me to mention)  · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 12 No. 3, February 1963]

137 * Mink Is for a Minx [Chip Stack] · Tighe Jarratt · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 12 No. 4, March 1963]

152 * Murder of an Unknown Man · James Holding · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 13 No. 3, August 1963] ed. Cylvia Kleinman (Renown Publications, Inc., 35¢, digest, cover by Robert Maguire

162 * Corpus Delicti · Talmage Powell · ss Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine [Vol. 13 No. 3, August 1963] ed. Cylvia Kleinman 




The April 1963 issue of MSMM can be read here (though none of the collected stories in this volume were taken from that issue); the May issue here; the June '63 issue here.

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

SSW: early stories, by Theodore Sturgeon and Don DeLillo, and stories by Dennis Lynds and Lord Dunsany; from ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE, February 1964, edited by Frederic Dannay (Clayton Rawson, Managing Editor) and EPOCH, Winter 1960, edited by Baxter Hathaway, Neil Brennan and others (with Assistant Editors Abigail Carson, Sandra Leff, C. Michael Curtis et al.): Short Story Wednesday

Epoch, v. X, #2, Winter 1960, edited by Baxter Hathaway, Morris Bishop, Walter Slatoff, James McConkey, Neil Brennan, Forrest Read; assistant editors Leigh Buchanan, Robert Gillespie, C. Michael Curtis, Abigail Carson, S. David Schacker, Sandra Leff (Epoch Associates, 75c. 64pp, + covers, tall digest, saddle-stapled)

* 66 * Contributors * uncredited * editorial/biographical blurbs
* 66 * The Stoic * Richard McDougall * pm (reprinted from previous issue due to erratum)
* 67 * At the Crossing * Jan Wahl * ss
* 78 * Wasingham * M. Travis Lane * pm
* 80 * The Laughing Picnic * Janice Vos * ss
* 93 * Two Poems * Parm Meyer * gp
    * 93 * City Rooster * pm
    * 94 * Sermon with a Purled Ending * pm
* 96 * How to Make Love * Neil Weiss * pm
* 97 * A Young Man Sat in Central Park * Dennis Lynds * ss
* 104 * To a Lady * Ralph J. Salisbury * pm
* 105 * The River Jordan * Donald R. DeLillo * ss
* 121 * Two Poems * Charles Gullans * gp
   * 121 * St. John's Hampstead * pm
   * 122 * O Saisons, O Chateaux * pm
* 123 * The Slow Harvest * David Ray * pm
* 124 * Notes, Reviews, Speculations * column
   * 124 * The Mansion by William Faulkner (Random House, 1959)                          *  Walter J. Slatoff * br
   * 125 * New Campus Writing No. 3 edited by Nolan Miller and                                    Judson  Jerome (Grove Press, 1959) 
                * Leigh M. Buchanan * br
   * 126 * Mexico City Blues by Jack Kerouac (Grove Press, 1959) *                       Baxter Hathaway * br
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine [v43 #2, Whole No. 243, February 1964] ed. "Ellery Queen" (Frederic Dannay); Clayton Rawson, Managing Editor (Davis Publications, Inc., 50¢, 164pp, digest) 
Details supplied by Douglas Greene.
Unfortunately, as far as I see, neither of these have been archived online, though at least one enterprising dealer will sell you a copy of the Epoch issue for $288, presumably excluding postage.

The early stories cited in the column header today are Don DeLillo's more formally-bylined first published story, "The Jordan River", which he has not had reprinted, and a story by Theodore Sturgeon which Frederic Dannay's blurb suggests was found mixed in with the manuscript of a very old story that Sturgeon had sold in the '40s, as he hadn't this one--which is gathered in The Sturgeon Project Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon as a 1964 story, but I can't put my hands on my copy at the moment to see if there is further explication as to its probable date of composition...John Boston has informed me that, in checking his copy of the proper Complete Stories volume, there is no documentation of this story's origin beyond quoting an edited form of the Dannay blurb)...it definitely reads like a very young Sturgeon's work, which in his first years as a selling pro writer did tend to focus on short crime-fiction stories, often with nautical background, as he was in the Merchant Marine and selling much of his work to the McClure newspaper syndicate, which David Pringle has noted (from information provided to him by Patrick Nielsen Hayden) was (cozily) owned and run, by that time, by Sturgeon's uncle Richard Waldo (though McClure would've been looking for mostly shorter stories than this one). Dannay in his blurb suggests it reminds him of the stories of the '20s, when such series as the Ellery Queen stories were first published; I'd suggest he's more accurate in suggesting it also feels like a story from the heyday of Street and Smith's Detective Story Magazine, perhaps a decade later, given the non-explicit sense of this story being set during the Great Depression. The exploration of the anxieties of its protagonist, a young waitress named Gladys McGonnigle but always called "Happy" or "Hap" by her doting boss, as she takes care of a lonely nightshift at his cafe while he's away at a local neighborhood watch meeting (a rash of robberies at small eateries of late...leaving one to wonder why she might be best left alone for a night shift); leaving that gaping plot-hole barely papered over, her cleverness in handling the eventual skullduggery is amusing enough...and the focus on her indomitability in the face of bad odds feels like the more assured Sturgeon stories to come by the early '40s and throughout his career. 

While DeLillo's first published story, "The River Jordan", is a bit more like what one might expect from its author, if not quite up to his later work (probably why he's never sought to reprint the story); the rather (to various degrees) obsessed small bunch of constituents of the Psychic Church of the Crucified Christ, essentially a quartet: Burke, the would-be prophet and chiefest advocate of the new faith, McAndrew, increasingly grudgingly willing to foot the bill for their activities; and two more or less supportive hangers-on and assistants (a woman and a man), along with Burke's rather passive wife. None of their activities manages to inspire too many converts, so much as inspiring hecklers at their impromptu attempts at outreach and pitying mild hostility on the part of those they manage to offend. As with many young writers at the turn of the '60s, DeLillo's day job was with an advertising agency; one can see how that plays into this story in few ways.

Dennis Lynds was already a few years into his remarkably productive career (mostly as "Michael Collins", but also writing under house names and publishing early fantasy, sf and cf as "Jack Douglas"--not to be confused with comedy/humor writer and memoirist Jack Douglas, most active in the '50s and '60s as well--among other personal pseudonyms as well as placing stories under his legal name) when "A Young Man Sat in Central Park" was published, and it shows a writer more fully in control of his work already than the earliest Sturgeon or DeLillo, as it slowly fills in the details of a married couple, discussing as they walk through the park the trip to Europe the husband is about to take, while the wife, taking some time to recuperate from a stress-induced breakdown, hopes to join him in a few months' time (he intends to continue his work as a studio-artist painter while on his own Over There). Among the people and things that catch their eye is the titular young man, and they speculate together about whether his outfit suggests he's a writer or simply a would-be bohemian, etc., till they briefly engage him in conversation, get what they can from that, and move on, getting down to brass tacks about what they want from each other. It's a graceful story, though not one his website features (at least not too clearly, unless the 1986 story "In the Park" is an update/revisitation of this relatively early work). 

Another crossover writer between EQMM and Epoch might be Janice Vos, whom in the Contributors' notes in the issue of the latter under discussion here is cited as reporting she had sold a story to Queen's before placing her story with Epoch, but I haven't yet found a late '50s Janice Vos story in EQMM...inasmuch as her fuller name was Janice L. Vos, I wondered idly if she might be Janice Law, but Law seems a rather younger writer than Vos, who retired from the Chicago Public School system, in the only other datum I've found so far, in 1969. 

Meanwhile, in the EQMM issue, Dannay and the Lady Dunsany between them couldn't find a previous publication credit for the fine and amusing Lord Dunsany fantasy vignette, retitled after, as Douglas Greene notes above, it appeared in the The Smart Set in 1915...a particularly ironic omission, given that to help defray the expenses of H. L. Mencken's and George Jean Nathan's The Smart Set ("the magazine of cleverness" didn't draw newsstand browsers as readily as hoped), they launched a pulp magazine called (originally) The Black Mask (after the domin0-mask in The Smart Set logo), which narrowed its focus from various adventure fiction to crime fiction (and dropped "The" from the title) and reached its greatest influence and audience with contributions from such Smart Set veterans as Dashiell Hammett and Cornell Woolrich (writing in different and pathbreaking modes)...and when Mencken, initially with Nathan's help, established a new magazine, The American Mercury, a 1941 addition to its publishers' stable was another cf magazine, EQMM...which in '64 was, as it would, off and on, throughout a number of years, make the table-of-contents claim that it Incorporated Black Mask).  The Dunsany story is a deft but not altogether surprising fable, about a shop where one can...eventually...find someone to trade one's least desired traits with...


For more of today's Short Story reviews, please see Patti Abbott's blog...

Posted by at 4 comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Saturday, July 8, 2023

FFB: WFC: WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION 2007 souvenir book: convention guests of honor and special guests Carol Emshwiller, Lisa Tuttle, Kim Newman, "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud, Joseph Bruchac, Barbara & Christopher Roden, George Scithers, Betty Ballantine, Diana Wynne Jones, and more; edited by Lorna Carlson & Chris Logan Edwards



Index slightly amended from the ISFDB listing:

  • 4 • The Committee (World Fantasy Convention 2007) • essay by uncredited
  • about Carol Emshwiller:
  • 7 • Dancing with Carol • essay by Gavin J. Grant
  • 7 • A Conversation with Carol Emshwiller • interview of Carol Emshwiller • interview by Liz Holliday
  • 11 • Carol Emshwiller Bibliography • essay by uncredited
  • about Lisa Tuttle:
  • 13 • Looking for Lisa • essay by George R. R. Martin
  • 16 • Lisa Tuttle Bibliography • essay by uncredited
  • about Kim Newman:
  • 19 • 20 Years Ago • essay by Paul J. McAuley
  • 21 • Kim Newman Bibliography • essay by uncredited
  • about "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud:
  • 23 • Moebius: The Art of the Numinous • essay by Stephen Hickman
  • 25 • Moebius & Gir • essay by Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.
  • 25 •  Moebius & Gir • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
  • 27 •  From the Book "Le Chasseur Déprime" • (2007) • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
  • 28 •  "Manipulation" • (2003) • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
  • 29 •  "Arzach" • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
  • 30 •  From the Book "Inside Moebius Tome 3" • (2007) • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
  • 31 •  Study form the Animated Film "Little Nemo" • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
  • 32 •  "Les Maîtres Du Temps" • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
  • 33 •  From the Book "40 Days Dans Le Désert B" • (1999) • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
  • 34 •  "L'Homme À L'Étoile D'Argent" • (1967) • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud
  • about Joseph Bruchac:
  • 37 • Joseph Bruchac — Storyteller • essay by uncredited
  • 38 • Joseph Bruchac Bibliography • essay by uncredited
  • about Barbara and Christopher Roden, of Ash-Tree Press (among other work):
  • 41 • Dig Us No Grave • (1986) • essay by Ramsey Campbell • Fantasy Review, March 1986
  • 44 • Ash-Tree Press Titles • essay by uncredited
  • 44 •  The World, the Flesh, & the Devil (cover) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for The World, the Flesh, & the Devil 2006)
  • 44 •  Shadows and Silence (cover) • (2000) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for Shadows and Silence)
  • 44 •  The Attic Express and Other Macabre Stories (cover) • (2007) • interior artwork by Keith Minnion (variant of cover art for The Attic Express and Other Macabre Stories)
  • 44 •  The Captain of the 'Pole-Star': Weird and Imaginative Fiction (cover) • (2004) • interior artwork by Paul Lowe (variant of cover art for The Captain of the 'Pole-Star': Weird and Imaginative Fiction)
  • 45 •  The Undying Monster (cover) • (2006) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for The Undying Monster)
  • 45 •  Nightmare Jack and Other Stories (cover) • interior artwork by Douglas Walters (variant of cover art for Nightmare Jack and Other Stories 1998)
  • 45 •  The Passion Play and Other Ghost Stories (cover) • (2006) • interior artwork by Keith Minnion (variant of cover art for The Passion Play and Other Ghost Stories)
  • 45 •  A Pleasing Terror: The Complete Supernatural Writings (cover) • interior artwork by Paul Lowe (variant of cover art for A Pleasing Terror: The Complete Supernatural Writings 2001)
  • 46 •  Hauntings: The Supernatural Stories (cover) • (2002) • interior artwork by John Singer Sargent (variant of cover art for Portrait of Vernon Lee 1881)
  • 46 •  The Executor And Other Ghost Stories (cover) • (1996) • interior artwork by Douglas Walters (variant of cover art for The Executor And Other Ghost Stories)
  • 46 •  Mr Justice Harbottle and Others: Ghost Stories 1870–73 (cover) • (2005) • interior artwork by Douglas Walters (variant of cover art for Mr Justice Harbottle and Others: Ghost Stories 1870–73)
  • 46 •  Conference with the Dead (cover) • (2000) • interior artwork by Douglas Walters (variant of cover art for Conference with the Dead 1996)
  • 47 •  Acquainted with the Night (cover) • (2004) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for Acquainted with the Night)
  • 47 •  The Five Jars (cover) • (1995) • interior artwork by Antony Maitland (variant of cover art for The Five Jars)
  • 47 •  At Ease with the Dead (cover) • (2007) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for At Ease with the Dead)
  • 47 •  Cold Harbour (cover) • (2007) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for Cold Harbour)
  • about George Scithers (editor/publisher of Amra and Owlslick Press, founding editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine [now Asimov's Science Fiction], later editor of Amazing Stories and the revived Weird Tales magazine, among other work):
  • 49 • Even More About George Scithers (Beyond His Innate Wickedness) • essay by Darrell Schweitzer
  • 53 • Profile • essay by Holly Ordway
  • 54 • Bibliography • essay by Guy Gavriel Kay
  • about Betty Ballantine (cofounder of Ballantine Books, among other work): 
  • 57 • Tribute to Betty • essay by Frederik Pohl
  • 57 • Profile • essay by Charles N. Brown
  • 58 •  Starchild (cover) • (1965) • interior artwork by Bill Edwards (variant of cover art for Starchild)
  • 59 •  The Secret Oceans (cover) • interior artwork by Jeffrey Mangiat (variant of cover art for The Secret Oceans 1994)
  • about Diana Wynne Jones:
  • 61 • On Discovering Diana Wynne Jones • essay by Neil Gaiman (slightly revised from its appearance in the Boskone 32 Program Book, 1995)
  • 64 • Gone ... But Not Forgotten: 2005—2007 • short obituaries by Stephen Jones
  • 67 •  A Wrinkle in Time (cover) • (1983) • interior artwork by Diane Dillon and Leo Dillon (variant of cover art for A Wrinkle in Time)--see below.
  • 78 • World Fantasy Award Nominees: 2007 • essay by uncredited
  • 80 • International Horror Guild Award Nominees: 2007 • essay by uncredited
  • 82 • Past World Fantasy Convention Award Winners & Nominees (World Fantasy Convention 2007) • essay by uncredited
  • 105 • History of the World Fantasy Conventions (World Fantasy Convention 2007) • essay by uncredited
  • 109 • Membership List (World Fantasy Convention 2007) • essay by uncredited
  • back cover •  "Arzach" [2] • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud     
  • the Diane and Leo Dillon new-edition cover for the L'Engle: 
  • The Awards and Shortlists (courtesy SFADB): Where and When: World Fantasy Convention, Saratoga Springs, NY : November 4, 2007
  • Eligibility Year: 2006
    Judges: Gavin J. Grant, Ed Greenwood, Jeremy Lassen, Jeff Mariotte, Carsten Polzin
    Life Achievement
    Novel
    Novella
    • Winner: “Botch Town”, Jeffrey Ford (The Empire of Ice Cream)
    • Dark Harvest, Norman Partridge (Cemetery Dance)
    • “The Lineaments of Gratified Desire”, Ysabeau S. Wilce (F&SF Jul 2006)
    • “The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train”, Kim Newman (The Man from the Diogenes Club MonkeyBrain)
    • “Map of Dreams”, M. Rickert (Map of Dreams Golden Gryphon)
    Short Fiction
    • Winner: “Journey Into the Kingdom”, M. Rickert (F&SF May 2006)
    • “Another Word for Map is Faith”, Christopher Rowe (F&SF Aug 2006)
    • “Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)”, Geoff Ryman (F&SF Oct/Nov 2006)
    • “A Siege of Cranes”, Benjamin Rosenbaum (Twenty Epics All-Star Stories)
    • “The Way He Does It”, Jeffrey Ford (Electric Velocipede #10, Spr 2006)
    Anthology
    Collection
    Artist
    Special Award, Professional
    Special Award, Non-professional
    • Winner: Gary K. Wolfe, for reviews and criticism in Locus and elsewhere
    • Leslie Howle, for her work at Clarion West
    • Leo Grin, for The Cimmerian
    • Susan Marie Groppi, for Strange Horizons
    • John Klima, for Electric Velocipede
    •  below, a 1990 World Fantasy Award trophy, for Jack Vance, in the Gahan Wilson-designed H. P. Lovecraft statue format in use from 1975 till 2015:The purpose of a convention souvenir book is more a matter of a token of appreciation, usually, rather than a lasting monument. Even one, such as this one, with some full-color panels of Moebius's comics work, on heavy, slick paper (as opposed to the rather good if stiff non-clay-coated pages of the rest of the large-format booklet)...something to read while, if waiting alone for a panel or ceremony or speech or reading to start, one sits in audience chairs or otherwise has a downtime moment. Also, to give those who don't know why this person or that one might be speaking or performing, some information...even if the good Ramsey Campbell essay, from his long-running "Ramsey Campbell, Probably" column, barely mentions the Rodens' Ash-Tree Press, at the very end of a survey of 20th Century, including then-recent, attempts to praise the ghost-story tradition, while prematurely burying it...Ash-Tree and the Rodens being singled out as a shining example of those not doing so (though illustrated, as noted above by ISFDB, with a number of Ash-Tree edition covers, in black and white photos). The Campbell column is the best piece of prose in the book, but this doesn't make the heartfelt, if at times insufficiently copy-edited, other short essays and interviews unworthy nor inutile, but someone certainly should've corrected Carol Emshwiller's memory-slip, in a valuable late interview with her, that had her most supportive early editor Robert A. W. Lowndes taking her stories for Thrilling Wonder Stories, a science-fiction magazine with a pulp-legacy title that was also featuring rather sophisticated fiction in the early 1950s...as then edited by Samuel Merwin, then Samuel Mines, while Lowndes was editing rather lower-budget magazines for Louis Silberkleit's Columbia Publications, such as Science Fiction Stories and Double-Action Detective and several western titles. The interviewer overconfidently refers to them as pulps, when the vast majority of her early sales were to digest-sized magazines, which proliferated in the '50s as the pulp format was being phased out.
      A not-unique example of an issue with a Carol Emshwiller story within, and with a cover by Edmund Emshwiller (for the Scortia story) with the married couple as the models.
    • Carol Emshwiller, unsurprisingly, is proud of her offspring who are writers, not least that her son Peter writes egalitarian portraits of female as well as male characters, given how she was raised as a "defective boy" in her family of brothers...and recalls the various frustrations and impediments that dogged her even as she would manage to publish distinctive and acclaimed work, as consistently as life would allow. 

    The other essays in the booklet tend to be more or less good brief introductions to the works of the convention guests highlighted, including Neil Gaiman's slightly updated appreciation of Diana Wynne Jones (originally written for her 1995 appearance at the Boston annual convention Boskone), and certainly Darrell Schweitzer's, about his long-term work colleague and friend George Scithers, is easily among the most fully-informed about its subject, though several others (such as Stephen Hickman on "Moebius"/Giraud and Locus co-founder Charles Brown on the hugely innovative and accomplished Betty Ballantine) provide some data-points that were new to me (I've never been the biggest fan of Heavy Metal magazine, the US version of Moebius's most prominent market, Metal Hurlant, but he has been among the most influential artists of theirs, if not the single most influential comics artist of his generation). George R. R. Martin on Lisa Tuttle was more in the nostalgic, jokey mode of much fannish writing; Paul J. McAuley just a bit more formal, not too much, in his piece on Kim Newman; the anonymous profile on Joseph Bruchac more briskly professional, though touching rather well on the variegated nature of his career. 

    As a further reminder of how ephemeral this was meant to be, the glue holding the cover onto the spine completely gave way as I finished reading it this morning, though I think it can be reapplied carefully. I didn't attend this convention (I managed to drop in on one earlier WFC), but was kindly given this volume. along with others, some years back by Kate Laity, who was lightening her load.
    Posted by at No comments:
    Labels: , , , , , , , , , , ,
    Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)