Wednesday, December 18, 2024

Short Story Wednesday: Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Pronzini: FINAL WAR AND OTHER FANTASIES (Ace 1969) and IN THE POCKET AND OTHER SCIENCE FICTION STORIES (Ace 1971) by Barry N. Malzberg: newly offered together; THE HANGING MAN AND OTHER WESTERN STORIES by Bill Pronzini, including one in collaboration with Marcia Muller; Stark House 2024

Barry N. Malzberg,  July 24, 1939-December 19, 2024.

Two sorts of retrospective, the kind of fine work Stark House continues to do...from two writers whose work I've been reading for nearly my whole literate life, Malzberg because my father had anthologies including his work when I was very young (and I would eventually inherit them), Pronzini whose work I would discover only a bit later via Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and the essentially unrelated (except by paying license fees) Alfred Hitchcock Presents: volumes edited by Harold Q. Masur for Random House (reprinted in Dell paperbacks) in the '70s. As we face our Final Wars and try to avoid joining  the Hanging Man in his fate, this is a propitious time to take in these books, for me those stories I have read are usually decades ago, and those I haven't deserve to have my neglect remedied. 

Barry has also contributed to this blog, and very graciously indeed. Bill Pronzini and Marcia Muller have helped with a few projects of mine (and in her case, a very badly-handled project of one of my bookstore colleagues decades ago). I am glad to have been able to make the acquaintance of both.

Barry N. Malzberg's own writing on this blog:

Quoting Barry Malzberg

Guest FFB: Barry Malzberg and Charles Ardai on the last published Cornell Woolrich novel, as completed by Lawrence Block: INTO THE NIGHT

Cele Goldsmith Lalli, interviewed by Barry Malzberg


guest essay by Barry Malzberg: NEW AMERICAN REVIEW (later AMERICAN REVIEW), edited by Theodore Solotaroff: the best American literary magazine  (for some reason, Blogger has tagged this as featuring sensitive content...I'd say yes, but  not the way they mean it.)

Barry Malzberg's first two collections of his short fantastica stories were published as halves of Ace Doubles (and under his fantastic-fiction pseudonym "K. M. O'Donnell"--a tribute to writers, and married couple, Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore, who among their collaborations signed some of their best as Lawrence O'Donnell), in 1969 paired with a John Rackham novel, and in 1971 with his own novella Gather in the Hall of the Planets. "Final War" has reminded at least two Richards, the late Richard Geis (of Science Fiction Review fame) and Rich Horton (of  Locus, his anthologies and his blog) strongly of Joseph Heller's  Catch-22, and was probably the most widely-admired of Malzberg's early fantastica stories, coming a close second in the balloting for the Nebula Award  in its contest. When asked what he'd like to be remembered for, he told his interlocutor that the latter might note just how funny he could be (since his work is shot through with wit, even at its most anguished). Particularly in the vignettes in these collections, he demonstrates this frequently.

Novella cover illustration by Jack Gaughan;
second cover by Karel Thole

Here are the two tables of contents (from ISFDB):  

[2] Final War and Other Fantasies (frontispiece) • interior artwork by Gray Morrow

In the Pocket and Other S-F Stories • (1971) • collection by Barry N. Malzberg [as by K. M. O'Donnell]
The Stark House edition has only one (new) cover, and Barry has decided to write a single new brief introduction, as he looks back less than fondly at either collection's original introduction; a decent bibliography of his books rounds out the book.
 
Malzberg cover by Jeff Jordan

Pronzini cover by Mark Shepard

The Hanging Man and Other Western Stories by Bill Pronzini
Stark House, December 2024, 204 pp.

Indexed by TM using links from the FictionMags Index.

7 * Preface * Bill Pronzini * in
11 * The Hanging Man, (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine August 12 1981
22 * Markers, (ss) Roundup ed. Stephen Overholser, Doubleday, 1982
28 * Hero, (ss) Small Felonies by Bill Pronzini, St. Martin's, 1988
33 * McIntosh’s Chute, (ss) New Frontiers, Volume I ed. Martin H. Greenberg & Bill Pronzini, Tor, 1990, as by Jack Foxx
43 * Decision, (ss) The Arizonans ed. Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg, Fawcett Gold Medal, 1989; originally published as 
“I’ll See to Your Horse”, (ss) Zane Grey Western Magazine February 1972; rewritten as opening of The Gallows Land; this is a composite of both.
49 * All the Long Years, (ss) Westeryear ed. Ed Gorman, M. Evans, 1988
57 * Burglarproof, (ss) Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine February 2010
71 * The Gunny, (ss) The Gunfighters ed. Bill Pronzini & Martin H. Greenberg, Fawcett Gold Medal, 1988
76 * Fyfe and the Drummers, (ss) New Frontiers, Volume II ed. Martin H. Greenberg & Bill Pronzini, Tor, 1990
82 * Wooden Indian, (ss) Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine March 1989
93 * The Gambler, (ss) New Frontiers, Volume I ed. Martin H. Greenberg & Bill Pronzini, Tor, 1990
101 * Fear, (ss) Louis L’Amour Western Magazine March 1995
109 * The Cruel and Deadly Winter, (ss) (2024 original publication in this volume)
113 * "Give-a-Damn” Jones, (ss) The First Five Star Western Series Corral ed. Vicki Piekarski, Five Star US, 2000
126 * Righteous Guns, (ss) The Best Western Stories of Bill Pronzini, Swallow Press, 1990
130 * Doc Christmas, Painless Dentist, (ss) Louis L’Amour Western Magazine May 1994
141 *Not a Lick of Sense, (ss) The Fatal Frontier ed. Ed Gorman & Martin H. Greenberg, Carroll & Graf, 1997
147 * "Crucifixion River" by Marcia Muller and Bill Pronzini; apparently first published in the collection Crucifixion River: Western Stories  (Five Star, 2007; ISBN-13: 978-1594145568)  by Muller and Pronzini (this story won the WWA Spur Award)
202 * Pronzini Bibliography * bi





As the acute scanner might note, there is an overlap with, though not complete duplication of, The Best Western Stories of Bill Pronzini, Swallow Press, 1990...I picked that one up when it was new--at first thought, hard to realize it's been almost 35 years:

The FictionMags Index (FMI) listing:

For more of today's short stories, please see Patti Abbott's blog.






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3 comments:

  1. pattinase (abbott)December 18, 2024 at 3:52 PM

    Perhaps the greatest marital writing team of all time.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Todd MasonDecember 18, 2024 at 4:29 PM

    Ha! Trying to do several things at once and lost my own comment. I assume you refer to Muller and Pronzini, and they rank high...at first glance I thought you might refer to Moore and Kuttner, where the argument could be made as well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Diane KelleyDecember 26, 2024 at 7:24 AM

    I'm currently reading THE HANGING MAN AND OTHER WESTERN STORIES. I read Bill Pronzini stories starting in the 1960s and he's as good with Westerns as he is with crime novels.

    ReplyDelete

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