Short Story Wednesday: the links to 5 March and further reviews

Douglas Anderson: J. R. R. Tolkien on Swords and Sorcery edited by L. Sprague de Camp; Jorge Luis Borges on Tolkien's fantasies

Joachim Boaz: "Explorers We" by Philip K. Dick, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF), January 1959, edited by Robert P. Mills; "Painwise" by "James Tiptree, Jr."/Alice Sheldon, F&SF, February 1972, edited by Edward L. Ferman

Brian Busby: The Contrast and Other Stories by Elinor Glyn

Brian Collins: Nova 1, edited by Harry Harrison (and most memorable from my early youth for being the first publication site of Donald Westlake's 'The Winner"-TM)

Jose Ignacio Escribano García-Bosque: "Too Many Motives" by James Ronald, 20-Story Magazine, April 1930, edited by F. C. Mackenzie

Aubrey Nye Hamilton: Blackout and Other Tales of Suspense by Ethel Lina White

Rich Horton: 4 novellas (considering for Hugo Award nominations): "A Mourning Coat" by Alex Jeffers; "The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain" by Sofia Samatar; "The Tusks of Extinction" by Ray Nayler; Haunt Sweet Home by Sarah Pinsker

Jerry House: "Wanderers in Time" by John Benyon Harris (John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, best known for his later work signed John Wyndham), Wonder Stories, March 1933, edited by David Lasser (this issue online)

Kate Jackson: 12 Collections and Anthologies: The Animal-Lover’s Book of Beastly Murder (1975) by Patricia Highsmith; Inspector Colbeck’s Casebook (2014) by Edward Marston; The Problemist: The Complete Adventures of Thornley Colton, Blind Detective (1915-1916; 2010) by Clinton H. Stagg; Guilty Creatures: A Menagerie of Mysteries (2021) ed. by Martin Edwards; Golden Age Locked Room Mysteries (2022) ed. by Otto Penzler; Byomkesh Bakshi: Stories by Saradindu Bandopadhyay (2003) (Trans. Monimala Dhar); Crimes of Cymru: Classic Mystery Tales of Wales (2023) ed. by Martin Edwards; Bodies from the Library 5 (2022) ed. by Tony Medawar; Final Acts: Theatrical Mysteries (2022) ed. by Martin Edwards; Who Killed Father Christmas? And Other Seasonal Mysteries (2023) ed. by Martin Edwards; Golden Age Bibliomysteries (2023) ed. by Otto Penzler; The Edinburgh Mystery and Other Tales of Scottish Crime (2022) ed. by Martin Edwards

Tracy K: Not to Be Taken at Bed-Time and Other Strange Stories by Rosa Mulholland; Bending to Earth: Strange Stories by Irish Women, edited by Maria Giakaniki and Brian J. Showers; Ghosts of the Chit-Chat, edited by Robert Lloyd Parry

George Kelley: The Wild Adventures of Cthulhu, Volume 3, by Will Murray

David Levinson: Worlds of If: Science Fiction April 1970, edited by Ejler Jakobsson

S. E. Lindberg: New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, edited by Oliver Brackenbury

Todd Mason: new stories by Bill Pronzini: "The Back End of Nowhere" Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, March/April 2025, edited by Linda Landrigan; "Tangled Web" Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, edited by Janet Hutchings and Jackie Sherbow; citations of the revivals of Worlds of If and Galaxy sf magazines, and the fantasist-in-chief

Jessica Dylan Miele: Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet, edited by Gavin Grant and Kelly Link; Joyland Magazine, edited by Devin Kawailani Barricklow and Walker Caplan (et al.); The Ekphrastic Review, edited by Kare Copeland, Lorette C. Luzajic and Sandi Stromberg; Black Fox Literary Magazine, edited by Racquel  Henry, Elizabeth Sheets, et al.; Weird Lit Magazine, edited by September Herrin, et al.; Baffling Magazine, edited by dave ring and Aun-Juli Riddle, et al.; CALYX, edited by Brenna Crotty, et al.; Del Soul Review, edited by Kara De Folo, et al.; NewMyths.com edited by Scott T. Barnes and Susan Shell Winston, et al.

MWA: Ballots for Edgar and other Awards

J. F. Norris: The Half-Pint Flask by DuBose Heyward

Jim Noy: Banner Deadlines: The Impossible Files of Senator Brooks U. Banner by Joseph Commings [ed. Robert Adey]

John O'Neill: Space Ships! Ray Guns! Martian Octopoids!: Interviews with Science Fiction Legends, conducted by Richard A. Lupoff and Richard Wolinsky

James Reasoner: West, January 1949, edited by ?Morris Ogden Jones; Variety Detective, August 1938, edited by ?A. A. Wyn

Christopher Rowe: Sword and sorcery short fiction published/reprinted in English in 1963-65

Jack Seabrook: "The Children of Alda Nuova" by Robert Wallsten, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, edited by Frederic Dannay, August 1961; adapted by Wallsten for Alfred Hitchcock Presents: (first broadcast 5 June 1961)  the episode (free with ads) on Roku

Victoria Silverwolf: High Sorcery (a collection) by (Ms.) Andre Norton

Kevin Tipple: Shaken: Stories for Japan edited by Timothy Hallinan

TomCat:"The Problem of the Pink Post Office" by Edward D. Hoch, Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, June 1981, edited by Frederic Dannay

Morgan Wallace: Short Stories, 25 April 1933, edited by ?Harry Maule (featuring a world map indicating where each story in the issue is set).

SSW: Bill Pronzini: new HITCHCOCK'S and QUEEN'S mystery magazine contributions: Short Story Wednesday

Today, after hearing last night the high whine and self-congratulation of our highest elected fictioneer go on at tedious, mendacious length and manage to alienate even his closest counterpart in Canada, Ontario Premier Doug Ford, while as ever trying to fanboyishly, even slavishly, Present Himself for Putin, now we can turn to one of his unelected bureaucrats for helpful hints https://www.rawstory.com/egg-prices/:

US Sec. of Agriculture Brooke Rollins suggests "beating" egg prices by raising backyard chickens...

But we know Rollins is in for a chewing-out, at least, for not floating the notion that we should all be buying Trump Eggs, always wholesome, spray-painted for your convenience either gold or pre-cancerous burnt umber. And with easy credit terms.

And, with luck, we won't die of avian flu as a result, nor as a result of it infecting our neighbors' cows...but this can be thwarted with New Trump Coops! They come with restrictive covenants that don't allow any viruses at all to move in within a thousand yards of your beautiful, sexy Trump Chickens (also available spray-painted gold or burnt umber). Should cover neighboring cattle. If that doesn't work, RFK, Jr. will be hosting (blue-jeans-required) raves on the White House lawn, with mandatory ingestion of steroids and Vitamin K in irresponsible doses, and carrion BBQ to follow.

(Conservative Charlie Sykes, who's left the GOP for the Libertarian Party in the wake of MAGA, put it this way.)

But on to more artful short stories:

"The Back End of Nowhere" by Bill Pronzini, AHMM March/April 2025, the current issue, edited by Linda Landrigan

"Tangled Web" by Bill Pronzini, EQMM March/April 2025, edited by Janet Hutchings and Jackie Sherbow (a Jake Runyon story)

I've been reading Bill Pronzini's fiction for half a century-plus at this point, and consistently enjoying it. Unsurprisingly, he's a Mystery Writers of America Grandmaster, and has been, along with his solo work, the most assiduous fiction-writing collaborator with his similarly talented wife, Marcia Muller, and with the recently late Barry N. Malzberg. His stories in the current Hitchcock's and Queen's are both worth reading, and not atypically of his work, both take a somewhat de-mythologizing approach to, in the AHMM story, a stand-alone revenge tale, and in the EQMM insurance detective series entry...both stories are good, if the Runyon series story a bit better, in part because of more complexity and detail and a bit more heft as result. 

I first read Pronzini's work in back issues of Hitchcock's my local public library kept in the kids' wing of the collection, perhaps because there were digest-sized spinner racks for YA paperbacks there, and perhaps because of the line-drawing illustrations in early-mid '70s issues of AHMM (and for a couple/few decades going forward) misled an unwary librarian or two about their nature...or she (usually the case at Enfield Central Library in the '70s) thought the magazine might hook some young minds. It was my first exposure to it, and in it Pronzini's series of stories about the "Nameless" private eye (eventually "outed" as named Bill), "The Scales of Justice"...in the July 1973 issue. And as I quickly exhausted Robert Arthur's YA-targeted "Alfred Hitchcock" anthologies from Random House, and moved on to his and, after his death, Harold Q. Masur's Alfred Hitchcock Presents: anthos, in hardcover from the library or the Doubleday Book Club, or in oddly-reconfigured Dell paperback editions (usually two paperbound editions drawn from every fat volume in boards0. And nearly all featuing a Pronzini story or so.

One aspect of Pronzini's work, throughout his career, I 've noted above--de-mythologizing crime-fiction tropes...Pronzini characters often realize grand fantasies of revenge are more satisfying to their bearers as fantasies when the realities of revenge become apparent, and the day-to-details of even the more dangerous aspects of private detection work are, very often, indeed quotidian rather than heroic fantasy...necessary work done, and it can take its toll, but that's what we're here for, to help others and get the work done. An early short story title for Pronzini was "Sometimes There is Justice"...sometimes. And often because people did what they needed to do, rather than flashily Set Everything Aright with a well-timed punch to a villain's jaw, or pulling and firing a crack shot through the villain's eye. 

Two good examples here, and you'll find a number of even better ones in his collections, but you probably won't begrudge the 10-spot you'll lay down for each of these issues, perhaps the last or penultimate ones published by Penny Press, as their fiction magazines, and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, as noted here (and a Lot of places) recently have been purchased by a new firm, 1 Paragraph. Interesting that Pronzini gets the cover on the AHMM, and he isn't mentioned (nor is Lia Matera) on the EQMM's cover...feels almost random at times, with the Penny Press titles...

Also, a grandson of the second editor (after Hugo Gernsback) of Amazing Stories, Justin T. O'Connor Sloane, is attempting to make a go of revived Worlds of If and Galaxy Science Fiction magazines in hybrid online/paper format. Robert Silverberg gives guarded if  still interesting responses in an interview conducted by Sloane, and a few familiar names are among the contributors to the first issue of the attempted revival of Galaxy (November 2024), online for free, and the Worlds of If revival, slightly older, has a sample free issue up as well.

I might gather up the Short Story Wednesday entries again this week, as organizer Patti Abbott is probably still enjoying (we hope) her Florida vacation...