Cora Buhlert's Blog, page 61

Retro Review: “The Dear Departed” by Alice-Mary Schnirring

[image error]“The Dear Departed” is a ghost short story by Alice-Mary Schnirring, which was first published in the May 1944 issue of Weird Tales and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The story may be found online here. This review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following.

“The Dear Departed” opens with a séance in progress. Six people are seated around the table, including the medium Radha Ramavi. During the séance, the voice of a child can be heard calling “Mommie, Mommie”. One of the people at the table, a woman named Mrs. Harcourt, recognises the voice as that of her late daughter Dorrie. Clearly upset, she gropes about in the dark and breaks the circle, ending the séance early. When the lights go on again, Mrs. Harcourt is holding a stuffed toy elephant that used to belong to Dorrie, but has been missing since her death.

Radha Ramavi declares that once the circle has been broken, there is no use in going further today. But they can try again tomorrow. Then his assistant, described as a small man in Eastern clothes, sees the guests out, but not before Mrs. Harcourt slips him an envelope containing one hundred dollars, which was a lot of money in the 1940s.

Once the guests are gone, Radha Ramavi and his assistant take off their pseudo-Indian outfits and share a smoke. We learn that Radha Ramavi is really called Joe and that his assistant is called Mark. Neither of them has ever even been to India and Radha a.k.a. Joe cannot really talk to the spirits of the dear departed either. Instead, Joe and Mark are frauds, preying on the despair of the recently bereaved. They acquired the toy elephant from a nurse and used it to fleece Mrs. Harcourt and the others for money.

Joe and Mark head out for dinner and we learn a little more about how their scam works. Mark researches the customers and their dead relatives. He’s also a ventriloquist and produces the voices, while Joe plays the medium. Occasionally, Mark also organises the materialisation of a spirit, using props such as an old Air Force uniform. Since the story was written in the middle of WWII, there would have been a great demand for spirits in uniform and as well as a lot of bereaved parents and widows and therefore a great demand for mediums to talk to the dead. However, Joe and Mark decide to lay off the materialisations for now, because they suspect that one of their customers, a man called Henderson, might be an undercover cop.

By now it’s pretty clear that Joe and Mark are despicable people. But just in case there was any doubt, Mark decides to use his ventriloquist skills to harass a black truck driver waiting at a traffic light, while he and Joe are crossing. And so Mark produces a disembodied voice that whispers “Black boy, debbil’s waitin’ fo’ you,” to the truck driver. As a result, the terrified truck driver slips off the brake, the truck lurches forward and runs over Mark. Poetic justice, I’d say.

Schnirring’s decision to make the truck driver black not just shows that New York City, where “The Dear Departed” is set, was a highly diverse place, it also adds racism to the already long list of Mark’s sins and proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that Mark is or rather was a horrible person. I could have done without a awful accent Schnirring gave the black truck driver, though.

Now that Mark has gotten his comeuppance, Joe is distraught. For starters, he needs Mark or someone with his skills to run his fake medium scam. And besides, Joe was fond of Mark, because Mark worshipped him and would have done everything for him. Like a mongrel who’d do everything for a bone, a pat on the back or a kick. Just in case there was any lingering doubt, Joe comparing his faithful friend and business partner to a dog shows that he is a horrible person, too. Not to mention that we wonder why Mark put up with Joe, especially since Mark was the one who did all the work. Joe just pretended to be a fake medium.

However, Joe still has a séance scheduled for the next day and his customers arrive on cue. Joe has no idea what to do now, cause with Mark gone there is no one to do the voices of the spirits and arrange all the other little tricks. But since he can hardly send his customers home again, Joe decides to go through with the séance and just pretend that the spirits are not in the mood to answer that day. And so he sits at the table with the others, eyes closed, and wonders just how long he will have to pretend that he’s trying to contact the spirits before he can send everybody home.

Suddenly Joe smells cigar smoke and wonders about that. After all, he told Mark not to smoke in the séance room, because the smell of smoke gets stuck in the draperies. Then Mrs. Harcourt screams and faints. Joe opens his eyes and there is Mark or rather his ghost, his body still mangled from the accident. “You wanted me, Joe, so I came,” Mark’s ghost says.

[image error]“The Dear Departed” is short, only three and a half pages long, but a certainly manages to pack a lot of punch into its short length. In many ways, this story is similar to “The Gothic Window” by Dorothy Quick, which ran in the same issue. For both stories feature a character faking a supernatural occurrence – though for very different reasons – only for the supernatural to really happen and make sure that a loathsome character gets their comeuppance. Though in “The Gothic Window” there is a plausible natural explanation for the supposedly supernatural occurrences. In “The Dear Departed”, the ghost of Mark really does appear at the end, witnessed not just by Joe but by Mrs. Harcourt and the rest of the circle as well.

Apart from Mark’s sudden death by truck, there are very few surprises in “The Dear Departed” and a savvy reader can quickly tell where the story is going. Nonetheless, the story is well written and highly effective. And while fake mediums are as common in fiction as they probably are in the real world, I nonetheless found the explanations how Joe and Mark conduct their scam fascinating.

Alice-Mary Schnirring is another forgotten woman writer of the golden age, except that she is even more obscure than Allison V. Harding and Dorothy Quick, if that’s possible. According to ISFDB, she was born in Brooklyn in 1912 and died in 1978. Her byline is very likely her real name, if only because no one in their right mind would choose a surname like Schnirring, which is almost impossible for Americans to pronounce and spell (and not exactly great for Germans either), as a pen name. And indeed, in my quest to learn more about Alice-Mary Schnirring I found the obituary of her son, William Schnirring who was born in 1938 and died in 2003 and also worked in publishing, though in very different fields than his mother.

[image error]Alice-Mary Schnirring was less prolific than Harding or Quick. ISFDB lists only six stories by her, all published in Weird Tales between 1942 and 1944. However, she also seems to have been active in other genres. A 1975 Alfred Hitchcock anthology contained a story by her and crime fiction writer and Edgar Award winner Robert L. Fish dedicated a novel to her. All this points to a writer who left SFF for friendlier and more lucrative pastures (Weird Tales was notoriously slow to pay its writers). Alas, there is no crime and mystery equivalent to ISFDB, therefore it is impossible to tell how active she was in that genre.

Considering that every scrap of paper left behind by H.P. Lovecraft or Robert E. Howard has been scrutinised to death, it’s telling how very little is known about the women who wrote for Weird Tales, even though Weird Tales had more female contributors on all levels (writers, editors, artists) than any other SFF magazine of the pulp era. We clearly need a comprehensive study about the women of Weird Tales.

[image error]

A screenshot from the Night Gallery adaptation of “The Dear Departed”

With regard to reprints, Schnirring seems to have done a little better than Harding or Quick and several of her stories, including “The Dear Departed” have been reprinted in anthologies over the decades. Furthermore, “The Dear Departed” was also adapted for an episode of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery in 1971, which David Juhl reviews here. The Night Gallery episode sticks to the basic plot of the story, but adds in a love triangle between Joe, Mark and his wife. I suspect that the adultery subplot was added to dispel any suspicions that Joe and Mark are a couple on a personal as well as professional level. Because the story certainly contains hints in that direction.

An effective and genuinely spooky ghost story by yet another underrated woman writer of the golden age.

Send to Kindle

Masks and Magic 2020 – A Round-up of Indie Mardi Gras Speculative Fiction

Our monthly round-ups of new speculative fiction and new crime fiction releases by indie authors are a perennially popular feature. Therefore, we now offer you a round-up of our favourite Mardi Gras speculative fiction by indie authors.

These Mardi Gras stories cover the broad spectrum of speculative fiction. We have a lot of urban fantasy, horror and paranormal mysteries, but also historical fantasy, dark fantasy, religious fantasy, fairy tales and even science fiction. There are angels, demons, Lucifer himself, dragons, ghosts, ghost whisperers, vampires, werewolves, witches, monsters, zombies, voodoo, ancient legends, family curses, cursed doubloons, human sacrifices, voodoo gods, kidnapped nuns, evil twin sisters, space cruises, precognition and much more. But one thing unites all of those very different books. They’re all set on or around Mardi Gras.

As always with my round-up posts, this round-up of the best indie holiday speculative fiction is also crossposted to the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things speculative fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Southern Monsters by Cora Buhlert

Three tales of monsters and terror in the Louisiana bayous.

When a young bride goes missing on her wedding day in Acadiana, the locals blame the Terror, the legendary monster that stalks the Crimson Bayou.

Remy Theriault does not believe in the Terror and he’s pretty sure the bride has done a runner. But the groom is his cousin and family is family. So Remy goes out to look for the runaway bride, only to find that sometimes, the old legends are true…

When their car crashes into the bayou on a dark Louisiana night, the swamp creature known only as Big Puffball might just be one family’s salvation…

When fishing boats go missing on the Mississippi River Delta, few people link these disappearances to the mysterious light that lit up the Louisiana sky only weeks before. But an astronomer from Tulane University makes the connection and discovers the horror that is the sphere that ate the Mississippi delta.

This is a collection of three short horror stories of 7700 words or approximately 27 print pages altogether.

Krewe of Souls by Elaine Calloway:

Mardi Gras, Mayhem, and Murder…

Tristan Pleasance is a ghost whisperer extraordinaire, but talking to his living father is another story. Family conflict prompts Tristan to bolt from his lifelong home in St. Francisville, Louisiana, to make a new life in New Orleans. But six months later, a family tragedy forces him to return home and he is thrust into a murder investigation where his past and future will collide.

Grace Lansing is a New Orleans columnist who yearns to write feature articles rather than puff pieces. To prove herself to her editor, she travels to the quaint town of St. Francisville to research their big Mardi Gras Krewe competition. But what seems an innocent cultural practice quickly turns into a web of intrigue—and getting too close to the handsome Tristan puts her in danger of becoming collateral damage.

Together, Tristan and Grace must find out who is responsible for the murders—before the Krewe of Souls is trapped forever.

Mardi Gras Maiden by Michael Dreysher Sr.

New Orleans 1854: A young woman, driven by curiosity sneaks into a brothel and stumbles into a Mardi Gras masquerade. She discovers that the ball is in reality an erotic ritual paying homage to Lucifer, the Great Prince of Evil and she is the guest of honor. The Archangel Gabriel sends four warriors from a dying world to rescue her but they arrive too late; the cult has slaughtered the girl, offering her as a sacrifice to Lucifer.

Rural Pennsylvania 1954: The same cult takes control of an entire town when their High Priestess seduces the land baron who owns it. They engineer a series of extramarital affairs among the residents which culminates in ritual debauchery. Gabriel has his avengers return to Earth with orders to wipe out the cult but Heaven has a dark side. A rogue spirit with an agenda of its own plans to kill these out-world warriors and the archangel’s champions find themselves defenseless in the center of a titanic struggle between two opposing forces from the Kingdom of Heaven.

Carnival in Sorgenbach by Raymund Eich:

Hans returned from the Great War, haunted. Not only by the horrors of the trenches, but haunted by visions of a more terrifying war to come. Would the parties and parades of Carnival 1919 offer him love and hope? Or doom him and his country to the devastation he foresaw?

 

 

 

Trapt by Rene Folsom:

Mardi Gras is coming, and no one is more excited than Jolie—The Big Easy’s resident good witch. Amidst the festivities, darkness creeps under the blissful veil of love she is entangled with. Her twin sister, the evil witch Melanie, is out to destroy Jolie before her powers can usurp her own, willing to stop at nothing to do so. Jolie, aided by Asher and his seven-man wolf pack, are set to keep New Orleans safe from Melanie’s sorcery, or die trying.

Enjoy the story of Jolie and Asher, a modern-day retelling of the classic tale Snow White.

Death Dealer by Graylin Fox:

My name is Cimmerian. I’m a dragon shifter living in New Orleans. Someone is screwing up my pre-Mardi Gras plans by leaving mutilated human bodies all over town. I have to find out whether or not a demon is behind this. If so, are they building a human to animate with demon magic? If not, we have a human serial killer just in time for the town to flood with tourists.

Things were so much quieter on vacation.

Damn, I’m glad to be back at work.

Creole Moon: Book of Roots by S.T. Holmes:

Mardi Gras in New Orleans is the perfect locale for a treasure hunt. When it coincides in the year of the Luperci festival, the magic world is turned upside down, and the feast of forgiveness turns into a fight of wickedness. This Mardi Gras festival is like non ever seen before or will ever see in the future.

Experience sibling rivalry at its finest as two sisters square off against each other for control of the book of roots. Unite with our hero, George Genois, as he is drawn deeper into the realm of magic and the forces of good and evil. If he thought his adventures with Mamuska and Ophelia were harsh before, then he is in for an even wilder time with these sisters. Each sister wants him as an ally, but George is interested in righting a wrong done only to him. Does George get his revenge?

A Rose at Midnight by Sylvie Kurtz:

He abandoned her to save her life. Now he must convince her he still loves her before the stroke of midnight on Mardi Gras . . . or condemn her to her death.

Nine years ago, Christiane Lawrence fell hard for a mysterious young music student. Even after he left her without a goodbye, the memory of Daniel Moreau haunts Christi every day when she looks at their daughter’s face.

Whenever Christi asked about her mother’s family, she was warned to stay away from the birthplace her mother fled. Now, grieving her parents’ death in a car accident, an invitation from Gabriel Langelier, a cousin she’d never met arrives, promising answers. This is her chance to give her daughter a taste of the family roots she never had.

What Christiane doesn’t know is that her mother’s warning sprang from real fear. Gabriel is obsessed with the legend of Rose Latulippe. He’s sure only someone from Christiane’s bloodline can fulfill his quest for eternal life. He must have her heart at midnight on Mardi Gras.

To save the woman he loved, Daniel made a bargain with the devil and abandoned her without explanation. And now she’s back in the middle of danger, bringing their daughter with her.

To have a second chance and earn Christiane’s forgiveness, Daniel has to convince Christi he still loves her before the stroke of midnight on Mardi Gras . . . or send her to her death.

Voodoo Dreams by Alana Lorens:

When her big trial goes bad, corporate attorney Brianna Ward can’t wait to get out of Pittsburgh. The Big Easy seems like the perfect place to rest, relax, and forget about the legal business. Too bad an obnoxious–but handsome–lawyer from a rival firm is checking into the same bed and breakfast.

Attorney Evan Farrell has Mardi Gras vacation plans too. When he encounters fiery and attractive Brianna, however, he puts the Bourbon Street party on hold. He’d much rather devote himself to her–especially when a mysterious riddle appears in her bag, seeming to threaten danger.

Strangely compelled to follow the riddle’s clues, Brianna is pulled deeper into the twisted schemes of a voodoo priest bent on revenge. To escape his poisonous web, she must work with Evan to solve the curse. But is the growing love they feel for each other real? Or just a voodoo dream?

Battlefield Z: Mardi Gras Zombies by Chris Lowry:

He found them!

Two of his three children are alive and now that he’s found them he won’t let them out of his sight.

It’s time to find his youngest daughter.

The last he knew she was heading to a refugee camp with her Mom and step-dad. He’s got a map of the camps back at Fort Jasper waiting.

All he has to do is keep his kids safe as they search for answers and a trip back to Alabama. The safest route floats them down the river. It keeps the Z at bay, but delivers them straight into a fortress that feels like paradise.

He has a choice. Hide behind the walls with two thirds of his heart and let the world burn or take a chance and continue the hunt.

An easy job if it weren’t for all the damn zombies.

The Outer-Universe Cruise Ship Mardi Gras by E. Miguel:

Space, there is a lot of it. Like really, a lot. As much space as there is though, it also happens to be very crowded. It is for this exact reason the Outer-Universe Cruise Ship Mardis Gras was created. While other cruises throughout the universe offer excitement and adventure, the Mardis Gras offers the mundane for those vacationers that are allergic to such excitement and adventure. The ship’s only constant inconstant is a Mardis Gras party held every other day.

Unfortunately for two passengers on the ship, this week’s cruise offers more than they signed up for. Escape pods, a slumbering Old God, and a Voodoo priestess robot all happen to show up on the unplanned itinerary this week.

Nocturne by Irene Preston and Liv Rancourt

It’s Mardi Gras, cher, but this year le bon temps kick off with murder…

For generations, the White Monks have treated the vampire Thaddeus Dupont as a weapon in their battle against demons. However, when a prominent matron drops dead at a party, Thaddeus and his lover Sarasija are asked to find her killer. Their investigation leads them to an old southern family with connections everywhere: Louisiana politics, big business, the Church, and an organization just as secret as the White Monks.

Meanwhile, an esoteric text containing spells for demon-summoning has disappeared, Thaddeus is losing control of le monstre, and Sara is troubled by disturbing dreams. These nightmares could be a side-effect of dating a vampire, or they could be a remnant of his brush with evil. As the nights wear on, Sara fears they are a manifestation of something darker – a secret that could destroy his relationship with Thaddeus.

Krewe of Hecate by Sim Shattuck:

A group of Mardi Gras wizards descend to the Underworld and capture the goddess Hecate so that they can display her during Carnival. But they didn’t understand that having the goddess of the Uncanny upon the face of the Earth would do to three unlucky New Orleans residents.

 

 

 

Burgundy Doubloons by T.J. Spencer Jacques:

You caught a doubloon at a Mardi Gras Parade – that was a bad thing.

Trent McGowan is going home. Home to his ailing mother. Home to the city of his childhood. Home to New Orleans. As Trent deals with the peculiar circumstances surrounding his mother’s illness, his family gets swept up in the excitement of Mardi Gras and all of the festivities of that intoxicating day. The jubilant crowds, breathtaking carnival floats, and oh yes, the throws! His youngest daughter Zoe catches one of those throws, a sparkling red doubloon, and that is where the story ends and begins.

Burgundy Doubloons is more than just a suspense thriller, it is everything that makes New Orleans the party capital of the world: only bloodier and darker.

For those who love a parade, Burgundy Doubloon answers a terrifying question: What if your child simultaneously caught a bead, and a murderous spirit? In this heart-palpating novel, you will meet the entire McGowan family, and the people determined to destroy them.

Finally, a paranormal thriller that takes place in New Orleans – as told by a native son who knows where the bodies are buried.

Poison and Wine by C.H. Valentino and Eldon Hughes:

Welcome to the Crescent City

Danni Toussaint has a nail in her chest as a mark of her debt to The Baron Samedi – a debt she can only repay with the souls he forces her to steal.

Michael Belew is desperate. Someone is kidnapping nuns in the Ninth Ward where he was raised an orphan, and he suspects a powerful enemy armed with voodoo magic.

When Michael asks for Danni’s help to find the kidnapper – or killer – they become pawns in a vicious game between The Baron Samedi and his brother, Lacroix.

The prize? Control of the most powerful source of magic in New Orleans.

Now, to protect the people of his city and save Danni from Samedi, Michael may have to sacrifice his soul.

Razor Valentine by Roland Yeomans:

MARDI GRAS … MAGIC … MURDER

In 1947 New Orleans THREE KINGS DAY marks the start of the official Carnival Season. Carnival, coming from the Latin words, carne vale, meaning “farewell to the flesh.”

Nuestra Señora de la Santa Muerte, Our Lady of Holy Death, is stalking the French Quarter streets killing apparently at random. What does the psychotic actress, Irene Dupré, know of this entity and what lies behind the murders? She remains silent, only smiling. Santa Muerte’s strange acolyte lurks in the shadows watching, waiting. Waiting for what?

Frank Capra is filming a historical fantasy in the city with Jimmy Stewart, Cesar Romero, and the enigmatic Irene Dupré. Former O.S.S. operative, now the film’s Prop Master, Lucas, finds himself in the middle of the mystery with more questions than answers.

His lost love back from the dead, Ingrid Durtz, and his best friend, Mitchell Mack, are at a loss on how to stay alive, much less catch a supernatural killer.

Then, there is Lucas’ former O.S.S. team mate, Father Darael, whose gift of a Seraph Blade is literally a two-edged blessing. You see, Darael is a Seraphim Provocateur. And Lucas is unsure whose side he is really on, the Celestial or the Fallen?

Send to Kindle

Retro Review: “The Veil of Astellar” by Leigh Brackett

[image error]

There are space vampires, but no space walrusses in this story.

“The Veil of Astellar” by Leigh Brackett is a space opera novelette, which appeared in the spring 1944 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found here. This review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following!

Uncommon for Leigh Brackett, “The Veil of Astellar” begins with a framing story about a manuscript found inside a message rocket sent to the Interworld Space Authority headquarters on Mars. This manuscript offers an explanation of the space phenomenon called “the Veil” which comes out of nowhere and swallows spaceships in the asteroid belt. The space police officers are initially sceptical about the account, but eventually manage to determine that it is authentic. Furthermore, the much feared Veil has vanished and the message inside the rocket explains why.

Once the framing story is out of the way, Leigh Brackett takes us to one of her favourite locales, the low-canal town of Jekkara on Mars, a wretched hive of scum and villainy to quote Obi-Wan Kenobi. Here we meet the first person narrator – unnamed for now, though we will eventually learn that his name is Steve Vance – stumbling over a corpse that has been thrown out of a Martian brothel. The corpse clearly bothers the narrator, though he did not kill the man, and so he closes the dead man’s eyes.

Once he’s done, he meets a young couple – Virgie, a redhead who reminds the narrator of his dead wife Missy, and her husband Brad. Brad and Virgie are passengers aboard a space liner called the Queen of Jupiter, which is carrying immigrants to the Jovian colonies. Vance serves aboard the same ship – quell coincidence. We also learn that Vance is telepathic, that he has a glowing aura, which responds to his emotions, as well as white hair, even though he does not look old.

Virgie is troubled by the dead body in the street and also by Vance, who she claims looks familiar. Vance says that they probably met aboard the Queen of Jupiter and tells Brad and Virgie to return to the ship where it’s safe. Then, after a tastefully described pit stop at a Martian brothel, he heads back to the ship himself and has another encounter, this time with a man called Gallery, a fellow crewmember aboard the Queen of Jupiter. Gallery is yet another of the Irish stereotypes I’ve encountered several times before in the course of the Retro Reviews project. And so Gallery is a big quick-tempered brawler who smells of whiskey. Though unlike the redheads Mike Donovan from Isaac Asimov’s “Catch That Rabbit” and Steve “Irish” Marnagan from Ray Bradbury’s “The Monster Maker”, Gallery has black hair, which must count for something. I already knew before I embarked on the Retro Reviews project that Irish stereotypes were a thing during the pulp era and well beyond (Star Trek: The Next Generation featured several in the late 1980s/early 1990s), but it was still a surprise to encounter three of them in such a short span of time.

Though Gallery adds a new item to the list of pulp era stereotypes about the Irish, for he also happens to have extra-sensory perception, which – so Vance informs us – you occasionally find, particularly among humans of Celtic and Romani origin. Yeah, more stereotypes, but at least Brackett uses the term “Romani” rather than the more common slur. Gallery’s touch of ESP is a problem for Vance, because Gallery has perceived that something is off about him. “You ain’t human,” Gallery confronts Vance who replies, “No, not anymore. Not for a very long time.”

Gallery is planning to kill Vance. To make sure, he has even brought two silver crucifixes, one for each hand. Vance informs Gallery that the crucifixes won’t help, because he’s not that kind of vampire, but Gallery is undeterred. So Vance kills him by telepathically stopping his heart. He hides the corpse in a ruined tower (there are a lot of those on Leigh Brackett’s dying Mars) and returns to the Queen of Jupiter.

Now anybody who knows anything at all about astronomy knows that in order to get from Mars to Jupiter, you must first pass through the asteroid belt. And from the framing story, we know that spaceships have been vanishing in the asteroid belt. So we don’t really need a chapter title like “Voyage of Doom” to know where the story is going.

And indeed, as the Queen of Jupiter hits the asteroid belt, Vance is on watch, while the passengers crowd around the portholes. Rumours are traded about the Veil and how it snatches ships and how it’s all absolutely true, because one passenger’s brother saw it from a distance once, while it took the spaceship upon which the son of another was serving.

Virgie and Brad reappear as well and Vance is mesmerised not just by Virgie’s resemblance to his dead wife, but also by her locket. Noticing his interest, Virgie opens the locket which contains an photo of a man who looks uncannily like Vance. The locket is more than three hundred years old, Virgie tells him, a family heirloom and was a present by an ancestor of hers, a crewman aboard the first spaceship to Jupiter, to his wife Missy. Unbeknownst to her husband, Missy was pregnant, when he left for Jupiter, never to return. The locket has been in the family ever since.

Vance is stunned, for not only does he wear an identical locket under his uniform, he is also Virgie’s long lost ancestor, who vanished during that first flight to Jupiter. But before Vance can say anything, the feared Veil appears and everybody aboard the Queen of Jupiter falls unconscious. That is, everybody except for Vance.

The Queen of Jupiter finally reaches her destination, a world called Astellar that looks outwardly like just another asteroid, is half the size of Vesta and can travel not just through space, but between dimensions as well, all powered by telepathy and something called X-crystals. In fact, Astellar and its people were expelled from their home dimension for reasons which will soon become apparent.

On Astellar, the passengers and crew of the Queen of Jupiter disembark as if in a trance, drawn by a telepathic signal. Vance disembarks as well and meets first Flak, a man of colour who also was a crewman aboard a snatched spaceship, and then his alien lover Shirina.

Gradually, we learn what happened to Vance. His ship was taken by the Veil and brought to Astellar. Shirina and her people normally drain the lifeforce out of the crew and passengers of the ships they snatch to rejuvenate themselves – which is why they were expelled from their home dimension, because no one likes space vampires. However, they decided to keep Vance, Flak and three other humans alive and changed them into beings like themselves, immortal as long as they regularly rejuvenate themselves with the stolen lifeforce of others. Then Shirina and her people used Vance, Flak and the others to lure more spaceships to Astellar and more humans to the slaughter. And Vance and the others went along with it.

Vance has clearly been feeling guilty of what he’s been doing for Shirina and her people for a long time now, but he is too afraid of dying because of the many sins he committed and the many deaths he caused in his long life. But something is different now. Now Vance knows that he had a daughter, a family, and that Virgie is his descendant. And even though Shirina assures him that Virgie’s death will be painless, that they will all die painlessly, Vance cannot take it anymore. He takes off, determined to save his several times great-granddaughter and the other humans.

Flak and the other altered humans block his way, but Vance kills all of them. He reprograms the X-crystals to send the hypnotised humans back aboard the Queen of Jupiter. Then he kills Shirina and destroys the crystals, which causes Astellar to break apart. Vance manoeuvres the Queen of Jupiter out of the docking bay, before the asteroid is completely destroyed. Finally, he activates the autopilot, sets a course for Jupiter, boards a lifeboat and leaves. At last, he sends the message mentioned in the framing story, a message which ends with Vance cursing himself for betraying both humanity as well as Shirina’s people and causing the deaths of his friends and his lover. And he’s not even sure if humanity is worth saving or if it was worth killing the people of Astellar for.

“Why did I give Missy that locket?” he writes, “Why did I have to meet Virgie, with her red hair? Why did I remember? Why did I care? Why did I do what I did? Why was I ever born?” Neither we nor Vance ever get answers to those questions, unless an ad for Star Razorblades counts as an answer. If so, it’s a depressing one.

[image error]During her lifetime, Leigh Brackett was known as the Queen of Space Opera, even though most of what she wrote was actually planetary romance. “The Veil of Astellar”, however, is pure space opera. It’s also a fine example of the noir side of Brackett’s work and the guilt-ridden and self-loathing Steve Vance is a classic noir protagonist, even if he is a vampire. Even the first person narration, uncommon for Brackett, recalls the hardboiled crime novels of the era. In his review of this story, Adventures Fantastic says that Leigh Brackett’s husband Edmond Hamilton believed that Humphrey Bogart was the inspiration for Steve Vance. And indeed, there is something Bogartesque about the voice Brackett gives Vance.

Steve Vance is another outlaw protagonist with a kernel of goodness buried somewhere deep inside his hard shell. This was a character type Brackett obviously liked and frequently wrote about, both in her science fiction and her filmic work. But while Leigh Brackett’s other outlaw protagonists are thieves, small-time criminals, mercenaries or revolutionaries, Vance is a literal space vampire. With his guilt, world-weariness and self-loathing, Vance is also a protagonist who would never have found a home in John W. Campbell’s Astounding, even if his residual humanity is what allows him to triumph over the alien space vampires in the end.

In my review of Leigh Brackett’s “Terror Out of Space” I wrote that it was a comparatively rare example of the horror side of Leigh Brackett’s work. However, “The Veil of Astellar”, which was published in the same year, is another science fiction horror story by Leigh Brackett. But while “Terror Out of Space” was clearly inspired by Lovecraft, “The Veil of Astellar” is a classic vampire story transposed into outer space.

As far as I know, “The Veil of Astellar” is the first space vampire story, published thirty-two years before Colin Wilson’s novel The Space Vampires and forty-one years before its film adaptation Lifeforce. And indeed, “The Veil of Astellar” bears certain similarities to The Space Vampires. In both stories, the space vampires lurk in the asteroid belt, where a hapless spaceship stumbles upon them, both vampire races have been expelled from their original homes, both Wilson’s and Brackett’s space vampires drain the lifeforce rather than the blood of their victims and both are eventually defeated by a human who has learned their powers. I don’t know if Colin Wilson ever read “The Veil of Astellar”, but the parallels are certainly striking. Though Wilson has admitted that The Space Vampires was strongly influenced by the works of H.P, Lovecraft, who was of course also an influence on Leigh Brackett.

There also are some similarities to another Leigh Brackett story from the same year that I reviewed, “The Jewel of Bas”. Both stories feature world-weary and depressed immortals who eventually turn on their own comrades, though Steve Vance is the protagonist of “The Veil of Astrellar”, while Bas from “The Jewel of Bas” is merely a supporting character. Furthermore, both stories contain a tense scene of hypnotised humans going unknowingly to their doom and in both, the protagonist tries to save a woman he cares for. Though Ciaran tries to save his newlywed wife Mouse, while Steve Vance tries to save his descendant Virgie who looks uncannily like his dead wife.

“The Veil of Astellar” also contains something else one rarely finds in the US pulp science fiction of the golden age, namely explicit references to Christianity, whether it’s Gallery and his two crucifixes or Vance introducing himself as J. Goat – J for Judas – or Vance fearing God’s wrath and hoping that someone somewhere will pray for him.

Contrary to what certain Sad and Rabid Puppy offshoots claim, there is very little religion, let alone Christian religion, to be found in the American pulp science fiction of the golden age, probably because many of the writers were secular Jews or equally secular Christians. Explicitly Christian works of the era, such as the Space trilogy by C.S. Lewis, come from outside the pulp science fiction scene. But in American science fiction magazines of the golden age, religion – if it is mentioned at all – is either a) a sham, b) for aliens or c) both and you are far more likely to find a reference to Cthulhu than to the Judeo-Christian God.

And so, religion usually plays no role in Leigh Brackett’s science fiction of the 1940s (religion does play a role in her 1955 post-apocalyptic novel The Long Tomorrow, though not a positive one). There are the occasional ancient Martian and Venusian cults, which sometimes turn out to be a sham and sometimes not, but Brackett’s protagonists are normally not religious. However, Christianity is baked into the western vampire mythos on which Leigh Brackett is drawing for this story and so religion does figure into “The Veil of Astellar”.

[image error]Like any story by Leigh Brackett, “The Veil of Astellar” is well written and dripping with atmosphere. The scenes in Jekkara and aboard the spaceship carry a heavy noir vibe, while the descriptions of the interior of Astellar are positively psychedelic, even though the story was written before the term “psychedelic” was even coined.

Leigh Brackett is undoubtedly one of the finest authors of the golden age and was also highly influential on anything from Star Wars (and not just because she wrote an early draft of the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back either) via Indiana Jones (there are several Leigh Brackett stories from the 1940s, which are basically Indiana Jones in space) to Guardians of the Galaxy. In fact, Shirina from “The Veil of Astellar” is pretty much a femme fatale version of Mantis from Guardians of the Galaxy down to the antennae.

Nonetheless, Leigh Brackett is not always as appreciated as she should be, maybe because she fits in nobody’s pigeon hole. She did publish a few stories in Astounding, but she never wrote Campbellian science fiction. Instead, Leigh Brackett’s stories are unabashed pulp science fiction, filled with adventure, intrigue and morally grey outlaw protagonists who are a lot more interesting than the competent cardboard cut-outs of Astounding.

Leigh Brackett is also one of the two female SFF writers of the golden age (the other is C.L. Moore) who are always held up as an example that women were always part of the genre, even as other women writers of the period such as Allison V. Harding, Clare Winger-Harris, Leslie F. Stone or Dorothy Quick are forgotten. But while Leigh Brackett is one of the poster girls for women writing SFF during the golden age, there is nothing particularly feminine about her stories. Her heroes were usually macho types, who often engage in hate-love relationships with sword, axe or whip-wielding women who want to kill them. And while there always are notable female characters in her stories, a lot of them are femme fatales. Besides, very few of Leigh Brackett’s stories pass the Bechdel test.

Politically, she’s all over the map as well. The Sad and Rabid Puppies, particularly the Pulp Revolution offshoot thereof, have tried to claim her for their own, but a lot of Brackett’s stories from the 1940s are highly critical of capitalism and colonialism and occasionally read like the very social justice warrior fiction they Puppies claim to dislike. On the other hand, her late period Skaith trilogy features evil hippy and evil space socialists trying to keep honest, hardworking barbarians from escaping their doomed planet.

But even though Leigh Brackett doesn’t really fit into anybody’s pigeon hole, one thing you can always be sure of is when reading one of her stories is that you’ll be having a good time. There are Leigh Brackett stories I like more than others, but I’ve never yet read a Leigh Brackett story I didn’t like. And while Leigh Brackett is mainly associated with her Martian adventures and Eric John Stark these days, the breadth and scope of what she wrote is much bigger. In 1944 alone, we have Lovecraftian space horror (Terror Out of Space), lyrical planetary romance (“The Jewel of Bas”), noirish gothic horror space opera (“The Veil of Astellar”) and social justice warriors of Mars (“Shadow Over Mars” a.k.a. “Nemesis from Terra”), which will be the subject of an upcoming review.

“The Veil of Astellar” feels very much as if Weird Tales and Black Mask (home of many classic noir and hardboiled tales) had a baby and decided to foster it at Thrilling Wonder Stories. It’s also a fine example of how the speculative fiction of the golden age was so much more varied, weirder and stranger than just the competent engineers of Astounding. Highly recommended.

Send to Kindle

Masks and Murder 2020 – A Round-up of Indie Mardi Gras Mysteries

Our monthly round-ups of new speculative fiction and new crime fiction releases by indie authors are a perennially popular feature. Therefore, we now offer you a round-up of our favourite Mardi Gras mysteries, crime novels and thrillers by indie and small press authors.

The holiday mysteries cover the broad spectrum of crime fiction. We have cozy mysteries, hardboiled mysteries, small town mysteries, big city mysteries, paranormal mysteries, historical mysteries, crime thrillers, legal thrillers, psychological thrillers, medical thrillers, paranormal thrillers, YA thrillers, private investigators, amateur sleuths, ghost whisperers, crime-busting nuns, crime-busting beauty queens, lawyers, serial killers, missing children, murdered fathers, missing mothers, missing masks, faked suicides, cursed doubloons, poisoned king cakes and much more. But one thing unites all of those very different books. They’re all set on or around Mardi Gras.

As always with my round-up posts, this round-up of the best indie holiday mysteries is also crossposted to the Indie Crime Scene, a group blog which features new release spotlights, guest posts, interviews and link round-ups regarding all things crime fiction several times per week.

As always, I know the authors at least vaguely, but I haven’t read all of the books, so Caveat emptor.

And now on to the books without further ado:

Krewe of Souls by Elaine Calloway:

Mardi Gras, Mayhem, and Murder…

Tristan Pleasance is a ghost whisperer extraordinaire, but talking to his living father is another story. Family conflict prompts Tristan to bolt from his lifelong home in St. Francisville, Louisiana, to make a new life in New Orleans. But six months later, a family tragedy forces him to return home and he is thrust into a murder investigation where his past and future will collide.

Grace Lansing is a New Orleans columnist who yearns to write feature articles rather than puff pieces. To prove herself to her editor, she travels to the quaint town of St. Francisville to research their big Mardi Gras Krewe competition. But what seems an innocent cultural practice quickly turns into a web of intrigue—and getting too close to the handsome Tristan puts her in danger of becoming collateral damage.

Together, Tristan and Grace must find out who is responsible for the murders—before the Krewe of Souls is trapped forever.

The Secret of the Other Mother by Laura Cayouette:

It’s late 2009 and the Saints are undefeated on their way to the Super Bowl. Fresh off the Los Angeles red carpet of the movie she produced and starred in, vivacious Charlotte Reade heads to her family home in New Orleans for the funeral of Sassy, the woman who helped raise her mother.

When Sassy’s “adopted” twin daughters ask brainy and tenacious Charlotte to help them find their birth mother, she heads down a path that starts in a laundromat in the 1950’s and winds through costume experts and a burlesque tour before landing her on the infamous Bourbon Street.

Along the way, Charlotte reconnects to her own family history, uncovering clues to a family secret and the ghost who’s said to protect it. As her funeral trip extends through the Super Bowl and Mardi Gras, Charlotte struggles with her dedication to the career she worked so hard for and the intoxicating draw of the culture, romance and soul of the city she’s always wanted to call home.

Izzy Rio’s Wild and Pretty by Stacey L. Cooley:

When I was five years old, my father was murdered on Lundi Gras Day in New Orleans, Louisiana. That moment in time began a journey that changed my life forever. After that devastating day, my mother could not bear to live in New Orleans anymore. Against my grandfather’s wishes, she took me away with her to live in Rio de Janeiro with my father’s family. For ten years, we traveled together around the Caribbean, Central and South America visiting the Carnival People and trying to forget what we lost. My mother was looking for clues and a reason for my father’s unexpected death.

Just when you thought you knew New Orleans, I am back!

They say Mardi Gras Day is a time to forget all of your troubles.

Here is what happened on my Mardi Gras Day:

I lost the person that was closer to me than anyone else.

I was supposed to mask for the first time as a Mardi Gras Indian Princess . . .

But, I ended up on the run and fighting for my life.

I learned more about the Backstreet Carnival Culture than I ever wanted to know.

In order to survive, I must train and learn the art of being a Mardi Gras Indian.

Welcome to Carnival Time.

You will never be young again!

I AM IZZY RIO.

Sinister by Jana DeLeon:

Street kids are disappearing, but how do you report that to the police when, from their standpoint, the missing people didn’t exist to begin with? Hustle is certain that something bad has happened to his friend Jinx, and the only person he can turn to for help is private investigator Shaye Archer. Because Hustle helped the young PI while she was investigating her first case, Shaye has already formed an opinion as to his character and believes he’s telling the truth. As she digs deeper into Jinx’s disappearance, she discovers that Hustle’s friend isn’t the only one missing. As a frightening pattern emerges, Shaye wonders if she can find the missing kids…before it’s too late.

Ms. America and the Naughtiness in New Orleans by Diane Dempsey:

Who better than Ms. America Happy Pennington to grace Mardi Gras festivities in never-say-die New Orleans? She packs good looks, party moves, and sleuthing smarts—which come in handy when the king for an elite old-line krewe is bumped off during a Carnival parade.

All too soon Happy learns the centuries-old French Quarter is not all jazz, Creole cuisine, and cocktails: evil lurks there, too, even amid the pageantry of the Big Easy’s most gleeful season. Yet no ghost, vampire or even voodoo spirit will keep our scrappy beauty queen from nabbing the killer—not when the stakes are sky-high for someone near and dear to her heart.

Find out why readers call the Beauty Queen Mysteries “super-fun reads” they can’t put down until the last page is turned …

Mardi Gras Murder, edited by Sarah E. Glenn:

Thirteen tales of crime set during the bacchanalia that is Mardi Gras. Featuring stories from Harriette Sackler, Marian Allen, Debra H. Goldstein and Nathan Pettigrew. The mayhem of Mardi Gras is served with a healthy dose of Cajun dishes and an unhealthy number of deaths. Dig into Bourbon Street Lucifer, Voodoo Honeymoon, a dish of Red Beans and Ricin, and other deadly treats.

 

 

Mardi Gras Madness by Alison Golden and Honey Broussard:

A timid traveler. A New Orleans adventure. A Mardi Gras murder…

Roxy believed that life never gives you more than you can handle. But when she’s fired from her wage-slave job, bullied by her co-workers, and her boyfriend abandons her, she decides she’s handled quite enough. Eager for a change of scene, Roxy with her white Persian cat Nefertiti head off to New Orleans.

The exotic sights, smells, and food of Mardi Gras coax the shy young woman out of her shell. Booking a room at a rundown guesthouse, Roxy is surrounded by a colorful cast of local characters. From tattooed waitresses to mystical tarot card readers, she quickly makes new friends and leaves her old life behind.

But she soon discovers that the Big Easy isn’t all beignets and jambalaya. A wealthy developer is eager to buy the guesthouse where Roxy lives and tear it down… until he turns up dead as a doornail! Before she can say ‘Mon Dieu!’, Roxy is caught up in a diabolical murder mystery… and her new friends are the prime suspects!

Roxy is determined to protect her pals, and save her new home. But is this anxious adventurer up to the challenge of solving a murder? Or will she become the killer’s next victim…

The Mardi Gras Murder by Jackie Griffey:

Like bananas, Sheriff Cas Larkin’s troubles are ripening in bunches.

A fully dressed woman is found drowned in the lake. He has a citizen no one can find, but hasn’t been reported as missing and all of her known acquaintances are standing in the way of Cas’s investigation. Then Judge Carpenter’s fiancée lands in jail, accused of a bloody murder way down yonder in New Orleans!

Now Cas must pick up the pace and connect the dots… before he goes bananas himself.

Murder at the Mardi Gras by V. Hurst:

The Bryans and the Flannerys from ‘Murder at the JC’ and ‘Murder on the Cruise Ship’ take a vacation in New Orleans during Mardi Gras Season. They are soon recruited by their old friend FBI Special Agent Don Hobbs to search for a serial killer who murders a young woman each Mardi Gras for her kidneys. Clues lead the foursome to the killer and to a huge twist at the end of the story.

 

 

Murder at the Mardi Gras by Linda P. Kozar:

When an esteemed professor of Louisiana history is found face down in a King Cake, young detective Annie Fournier suspects foul play and begins an investigation to find the person responsible. Her partner has little patience for Annie’s inexperience or gender and seems to enjoy mocking her at every opportunity. And to top that off, the crazy melee of Mardi Gras seems to hamper their progress at every turn. Will they weigh in on the identity of the murderer before Fat Tuesday ends, and will Annie prove that she has what it takes to be a detective?

Krewe by Jayson Livingston:

My name is Eugene Doyle Babineaux, Krewe to my friends. I’m a private investigator in Sacramento, California. My life is unassuming, and I like it that way. Things changed when I received a call from my brother. My mom was dead–suicide, he says. I didn’t believe it for a minute. So, I returned home to New Iberia, a small town in southern Louisiana, to look into Mom’s death. Once there, I reunited with old friends and foes alike. It seemed there were nefarious forces who did not want me poking around into Mom’s death. Rich people who keep company with bad people and who would stop at nothing to keep their plans hidden. What do Mardi Gras krewes, sugarcane production, and mob enforcers have to do with my mom’s death? I was about to find out, and things would never be the same.

Voodoo Dreams by Alana Lorens:

When her big trial goes bad, corporate attorney Brianna Ward can’t wait to get out of Pittsburgh. The Big Easy seems like the perfect place to rest, relax, and forget about the legal business. Too bad an obnoxious–but handsome–lawyer from a rival firm is checking into the same bed and breakfast.

Attorney Evan Farrell has Mardi Gras vacation plans too. When he encounters fiery and attractive Brianna, however, he puts the Bourbon Street party on hold. He’d much rather devote himself to her–especially when a mysterious riddle appears in her bag, seeming to threaten danger.

Strangely compelled to follow the riddle’s clues, Brianna is pulled deeper into the twisted schemes of a voodoo priest bent on revenge. To escape his poisonous web, she must work with Evan to solve the curse. But is the growing love they feel for each other real? Or just a voodoo dream?

A Masquerade of Saints by Nicole Loughan:

In the third installment in the best-selling Saints Mystery Series small town Cajun, Fanchon, finds herself in some hot water, along with a few nasty crayfish. The heat gets turned up when she receives an invitation to join New Orleans high society. She’s ready to party until she receives a puzzling message from her favorite psychic to stay alert and wash her hands all night. When the warning seems all but forgotten the phone rings and Fanchon learns she should have been more careful. This adventure takes Fanchon from the bayou to the top of the floats at Mardi Gras with new characters and old friends to help along the way.

Chaos at Crescent City Medical Center by Judith Lucci:

A New Orleans Attorney’s Mardi Gras Takes A Bloody Turn

Alex wanted a new life, but that often seemed out of reach as long as she was still tied to the same hospital as her ex-husband. Mardi Gras Season brought a welcome change in pace, and her upcoming date to the Mardi Gras Ball with art historian, Mitch Landry, was a step in the right direction. However, when she is called to a grisly scene at the hospital her plans are upended.

A Chilling Scene That Leads Deep Into New Orleans’ Underworld

The Wife of Louisiana’s Governor is discovered unconscious and covered with blood. This shocking scene leads Alex deep into unexpected circles of New Orleans, such as the local criminal underworld and the Voodoo culture.

Chaos at Crescent City Medical Center is a gripping Medical Thriller that will chill and surprise at every turn. You won’t want to put it down!

The Gay Mardi Gras Murders by Sylvia Massara:

Mia Ferrari, smartarse, older chick, super sleuth, is back in her 2nd murder mystery and this time, she is up to her neck in drag queens, a rare diamond with a curse and murder most foul against the backdrop of Sydney’s world famous Gay Mardi Gras.

A female impersonator is found dead in her hotel suite bathtub and a rare diamond worth twenty million dollars is gone. The Gay Mardi Gras is fast approaching and Mia Ferrari, senior duty manager of the exclusive Rourke International Hotel Sydney, has to juggle a bunch of drag queens, a number of fabulously handsome gay men, a transsexual with a dark mystery, a young cop with sex on his mind, a close friend from the UK who is having marital problems and a mounting body count.

As Mia pits her investigative skills against her archenemy, Detective Sergeant Phil Smythe to solve the case, she not only becomes embroiled in the life of the people around her, but it looks like she is the next target for a serial killer with a grudge against gay men.

Mardi Gras Madness by Ken Mask:

While trying to free a lawyer friend convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, New Orleans private investigator Luke Jacobs is drawn into an international web of real estate fraud, pharmaceutical corporation misdealing and murder. Mardi Gras may have to be put on hold.

 

 

 

Mardi Gras Gris Gris by A.C. Mason:

Susan Foret is thrust into a murder scene when one of the town’s wealthiest citizens dies near her as the local Krewe’s parade is ending. A gris-gris bag containing tarot cards and several other fetish items is left dangling from the knife in his chest.

 

 

 

Rescued by a Kiss by Colleen Mooney:

All the fun of Mardi Gras—without the hangover!

New Orleans is a big, small town where everybody knows someone you know. They will see what you do and talk about it. It’s hard to steal a kiss at Mardi Gras and not be the topic of local gossip, especially if the man you kissed got shot at the end of the parade…

Colleen Mooney’s humorous, romantic, delightfully meandering cozy mysteries gua-ran-tee you gon’ have a authentic N’ Awlins experience, dawlin’! And a wild ride into the bargain.

Brandy Alexander’s the real deal–yes, that’s her real name and she’s not even a stripper, she’s an amateur sleuth, although her best friend Julia is.

Quirky characters are the norm in a town like New Orleans where anything can happen.

The Krewe by Seth Pevey:

Living up to the family name comes with a price.

When Felix is told his big brother committed suicide by throwing himself under a train, his gut screams foul play. But as the Mardi Gras season descends on the Big Easy, no one is interested in the conspiracy theories of a drug-addled rich kid.

Except, perhaps, one Carnival organization in particular…

A krewe that hasn’t been heard from in decades.

Felix will need the help of a police detective long past his prime, the family’s honor-obsessed butler, and a massive pork fortune, all in order to find justice for his big brother.

His name, his family, and his very life may hang in the balance.

Burgundy Doubloons by T.J. Spencer Jacques:

You caught a doubloon at a Mardi Gras Parade – that was a bad thing.

Trent McGowan is going home. Home to his ailing mother. Home to the city of his childhood. Home to New Orleans. As Trent deals with the peculiar circumstances surrounding his mother’s illness, his family gets swept up in the excitement of Mardi Gras and all of the festivities of that intoxicating day. The jubilant crowds, breathtaking carnival floats, and oh yes, the throws! His youngest daughter Zoe catches one of those throws, a sparkling red doubloon, and that is where the story ends and begins.

Burgundy Doubloons is more than just a suspense thriller, it is everything that makes New Orleans the party capital of the world: only bloodier and darker.

For those who love a parade, Burgundy Doubloon answers a terrifying question: What if your child simultaneously caught a bead, and a murderous spirit? In this heart-palpating novel, you will meet the entire McGowan family, and the people determined to destroy them.

Finally, a paranormal thriller that takes place in New Orleans – as told by a native son who knows where the bodies are buried.

The Mysterious Masks of Mardi Gras by Connie Trapp:

A 2.5 million dollar Harlequin Mask has been stolen right under everyone’s noses!

It was never out of sight—how could this have happened? The auction was invitation-only, which means only one thing: the thief is among them.

The New Orleans police are on the case, the room where the auction was being held is in lockdown, and no one can leave—not even the Mayor and his wife. Everyone there is a high roller and everyone there is a suspect.

Yet before the police can even begin their investigation, they already have their sights set on a prime suspect…the insider responsible for the distraction that allowed the thief to steal the mask without anyone even noticing. One Jane Dough, of Little Rock…

How in the world did JD get herself into this mess? Follow along as JD struggles to prove her innocence and uncover the real thief…

Mardi Gras Marathon Murders by Diane L. Twilley:

Mardi Gras has come to Galveston Texas, and with it the excitement of a new event, the first ever Mardi Gras Marathon. Gina Malloy, a young journalist, is very involved in the planning of the event. When she enlists the help of her aunt, Sister Catherine Malloy, she is delighted to discover that Sister Catherine’s friend, Martin Iberson, is the agent of one of the big stars of marathon events, Billy Champion. Gina is eager to meet Martin Iberson and his family, and perhaps get a chance to meet and interview Billy Champion.

All goes well, until evil shows its face, and two of the marathon runners are killed. With the help of their friend, police lieutenant Richard Tierney, the nun and her niece embark on the task of finding out who murdered the runners, and as things progress, they find their lives in danger as well. But from whom? And why?

Things become even more somber as they realize that the culprit could be someone they know. Eventually Sister Catherine deduces that to solve the murders she must understand the character of the killer, and she finally comes up with the shocking solution to the Mardi Gras murders.

The Mardi Gras Two Step by Barry M. Vass:

A series of young girls, strippers, are found mutilated and abandoned in the streets and byways of the French Quarter in early 1972. As more bodies turn up, at first in the Mississippi River, and then across the river in Algiers, the detectives assigned to the case are baffled: what sort of deviant could be responsible for such horrific behavior? And then, as the chaos of Mardi Gras crashes in like a wave around them, they begin to suspect that the killer they’re looking for might not even be human…

Send to Kindle

Retro Review: “Double-Cross” by James MacCreigh a.k.a. Fredrik Pohl

[image error]“Double-Cross” by James MacCreigh is a science fiction short story, which appeared in the winter 1944 issue of Planet Stories and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found here. This review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

And in case you’re wondering about the author, James MacCreigh was a pen name Frederik Pohl used several times in the 1940s for his solo stories.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following!

“Double-Cross” takes us once more to the fog-shrouded. swampy and permanently cloudy Venus that never was that is a familiar setting in pulp science fiction published in Planet Stories, Startling Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories and similar magazines.

The story starts with some exposition heavy dialogue between Lowrey, Officer of the Deck aboard an Earth spaceship, and the Executive Officer who never gets a name. Lowrey remarks that everything is quiet and that he cannot even note anything in his logbook, because nothing is happening.

The Executive Officer is more sceptical, because he doesn’t trust the “natives”. When Lowrey points out that those “natives” are human just like them, descendants of the crew of the first starship to Venus, the Executive Officer declares that they might have been human once, four or five generations ago, but that Venus has changed them into something else. And so the Venusians have pallid white skin due to lack of sunshine and they have no hair either. That’s not how evolution works, at least not that quickly, but then the Executive Officer is something of a bigot.

Lowrey, on the other hand, thinks that the natives are friendly enough. Some of them are hostile, worried that now humans know that Venus is habitable, the planet will be overrun with immigrants from Earth who will displace the original settlers. There is an underground movement as well, which Lowrey dismisses as paltry and unimportant. Though he is not bothered that settlers from Earth will displace the Venusians. After all, survival of the fittest is the basic law of evolution. We suspect that Lowrey doesn’t know how evolution works either. Lowrey’s musings are interrupted, when the sensors detect that a spy ray is aimed at the Earth ship.

If there was a ranking of “As you know, Bob…” scenes in golden age science fiction, Frederik Pohl’s version in “Double-Cross” would rank higher than Isaac Asimov’s various attempts, if only because Pohl’s dialogue is less clumsy than Asimov’s. On the other hand, Asimov gets points for cleverly using an “As you know, Bob…” scene as a vital clue in a mystery in “The Big and the Little” and just making fun of the convention in “Catch That Rabbit”.

It’s also interesting that Pohl’s “As you know, Bob…” scene takes the form of a conversation between two ship officers. Idle conversations about the plot between random guards, soldiers, crewmembers, etc…, who often will never appear in the story again, are a common convention in space opera and military science fiction (and elsewhere) that predates the pulp era by centuries (you can find variations of this scene in Shakespeare plays) and one that still persists to this day. A recent example, played for laughs, was the scene with the two idiotic Stormtroopers who punched Baby Yoda (Boo, hiss) in The Mandalorian.

At any rate, the scene between Lowrey and the Executive Officer does its job of setting up the central conflict between the original settlers of Venus and the newcomers from Earth neatly enough. Any parallels to historical events are entirely coincidental, I’m sure.

The scene then switches to what is going on at the other end of the spy ray, where the Venusian underground has been listening in on the two Earth officers and are now convinced that the worries about immigrants from Earth displacing the Venusians are justified. We meet Svan, leader of the underground, and also learn that the underground has the support of the Venusian council.

Svan is a militant and wants to make sure that the spaceship never returns to Earth. And in order to ensure that the Earth ship never makes it home, Svan has a handy Atomite bomb. He also has a plan how to plant it aboard the ship. Svan and his co-conspirators will go to see the Earth ship like the rest of the town. On the way back, they will feign a car accident to draw away the ship guards, giving one of the conspirators the chance to get close enough to the ship to plant the bomb.

Svan’s followers are a lot less militant than he is. An old man named Toller has issues with the fact that planting a bomb aboard the Earth vessel is essentially murder. And a young woman named Ingra remarks that their ancestors came from Earth, too, and therefore Venusians and Earthpeople are of one blood. Svan rightly points out that according to the Executive Officer aboard the Earth ship, the Venusians aren’t even human anymore.

Because none of Svan’s followers are volunteering to plant the bomb, Svan has them draw lots. Svan draws a blank, but when he looks around, none of his followers announce that they have drawn the lot that makes them the bomber. Therefore, Svan assumes that one of his followers is a coward or worse, a traitor. But if he accuses his followers of treason an cowardice, the traitor will be warned. So Svan quickly marks his own piece of paper, while the others aren’t watching, and announces that he will plant the bomb. Why Svan didn’t volunteer in the first place, especially since it was his plan and he is the most militant of the bunch anyway, remains a mystery.

Svan’s plan hits a not entirely unexpected snag, when he and his party are stopped by a Venusian guard who announces that no one is allowed near the Earth ship anymore, because Svan’s spy ray warned the Earthpeople that there was something afoot. Svan signals to the guard that he is on Council business. But the guard refuses to budge and is not a fan of the Council (which we learn is not an official administrative body, but the name of Svan’s underground group) either, so Svan attacks and kills the man to the shock of his co-conspirators.

The conspirators go forth with their plan. They drop off Svan at some distance from the ship and drive onwards, unaware that Svan has planted a second bomb in the car. Since he can’t trust his followers anymore, he has decided to blow them up, because an explosion will make a much better diversion than a car accident. He does briefly waver, when Ingra kisses him good-bye and wishes him good luck. But then Svan decides that even if she isn’t a traitor, Ingra is weak, so she must die for the cause with the others. This confirms that Svan is a murderous arsehole, in case there was any doubt.

Svan makes his way to the ship and waits for the explosion to draw the guards away, while fingering the lot he has drawn and wondering once again who the traitor might be. As terrorists go, Svan is certainly unlucky. For once more, his grand plan goes awry, when the car unexpectedly returns, driven by the loyal Ingra. Ingra tells Svan to jump into the car, because the dead Venusian guard has been found and both Earthpeople and Venusians are now after them. Svan just screams, “Go away!”, and Ingra and the car and tries to leg it, because he knows that the bomb is about to go off. But he never makes it.

After the explosion, Lowrey and the ship surgeon find the dying Svan. They also find the second bomb and realise that the Venusians were trying to bomb them.

“Poetic justice if I ever saw it,” Lowrey says. Then he notices the piece of paper that Svan is still clutching in death and frowns.

The surgeon asks him what’s the matter, whereupon Svan shows him the piece of paper and notes that it is marked with a cross on both sides. So there never was a traitor – Svan was just too stupid to turn over the paper.

[image error]“Double-Cross” is a neat science fiction thriller with a surprising, if somewhat contrived conclusion. The title (a good title, which I have used a for science fiction story myself) is also doubly relevant, both the in metaphorical (Svan double-crossing his own followers) and literal (there are two crosses on the piece of paper) sense. It also a good example of the twist ending stories that were so popular during the golden age.

Not a lot of stories surprise me these days – I can usually tell where they’re going in a few pages. “Double-Cross”, however, did surprise me. Initially, I was expecting something along the lines of a Leigh Brackett story about a revolt of native people against the invading Earth capitalists similar to the 1944 Retro Hugo finalist “Citadel of Lost Ships” or the later Eric John Stark stories. Never mind that forty years of Star Wars and its imitators have primed us to inevitably assume that the plucky rebels fighting against overwhelming forces are the good guys. But sometimes, the plucky rebels are just terrorists. And sometimes, those terrorists become paranoid and turn on their own.

Though Lowrey and the unnamed other members of the spaceship crew don’t come across all that well either. And indeed, various remarks made by Lowrey and the unnamed Executive Officer suggest that the Venusians were right to worry about the influx of Earthpeople. “Double-Cross” is a story, where there are no good guys, which shows again that morality was not always black and white during the golden age and that there were shades of grey. Furthermore, “Double-Cross” also belies claims from certain quarters that golden age science fiction was just apolitical fun.

Of the named characters in the story, Svan is the only one who has a personality, though it’s not a very pleasant one. He is domineering, militant and paranoid to boot. Even if the cause of the Venusian underground is justified (and Pohl hints that it might be), Svan’s zeal goes beyond any reasonable boundaries. Svan only lives for the cause and is willing to sacrifice anything and anybody to achieve his aims, whether it’s the innocent crew of the Earth spaceship (and while Lowrey and company might not be the most pleasant people, they haven’t harmed any Venusians), the Venusians guard who gets in his way or his own followers. In short, Svan is a murderous arsehole. His character also rings true, because revolutionary movements tend to attract people who just want to cause mayhem and will turn on their own comrades at the slightest provocation. In many ways, Svan is an interplanetary Andreas Baader (de facto leader of the West German terrorist group Red Army Fraction) or Charles Manson, even though Baader was only one year old and Manson ten, when “Double-Cross” was published.

Frederik Pohl’s left political leanings are well known and he was a member and even chapter president of the Young Communist League for a few years in the 1930s. I wonder whether Pohl encountered types like Svan during his time with the League, especially since Communist groups during the Stalin era were often riddled with paranoia.

The solution with the piece of paper marked on both sides may seem a bit contrived, though it’s not entirely unrealistic, because thankfully, quite a lot of terrorists are stupid and tend to blow up themselves rather than their targets. The ideological bent doesn’t matter, stupid terrorists come in all political and ideological flavours. Here is an article listing some exceptionally stupid Al Qaeda terrorists and here is one about their equivalents in the IRA.

“Double-Cross is short, only six pages long, including an illustration that takes up three quarters of a page. Most of those six pages are dialogue. We get little in the way of description, unlike what you’d find in a Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Clifford D. Simak or C.L. Moore story. But if you’ve read enough golden age science fiction, you know what Venus looked like during the golden age and don’t really need it. And while Pohl may not have been a particularly poetic writer, his prose is less clunky than Asimov’s.

Like several of the stories I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project, particularly those originally published in Planet Stories, “Double-Cross” has only been reprinted once, in a 1976 collection entitled fittingly enough The Early Pohl. It consistently surprises me how many of the stories that have rarely or never been reprinted are pretty good, sometimes better than the stuff that was reprinted.

A short and punchy science fiction thriller, that offers no heroes to root for, but some genuine surprises.

Send to Kindle

Some Comments on the 2019 Nebula Award Finalists

The finalists for the 2019 Nebula Awards have been announced today. And thankfully – because I’m tired and not feeling at all well today – this year’s Nebula finalists seem to be largely uncontroversial, unlike last year.

All in all, it’s a very good shortlist. So let’s take a look at the individual categories:

Best novel:

2019 was an extremely strong year for SFF novels and the Nebula shortlist certainly reflects this. I don’t think anybody will be surprised to see A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and The Ten Thousand Doors of January by Alix E. Harrow on the Nebula ballot, since those were some of the most discussed SFF books of the year. A Song for a New Day by Sarah Pinsker also got a lot of buzz as well and besides, Sarah Pinsker’s short fiction is popular with Nebula and Hugo voters. I am pleased to see Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia on the Nebula ballot, for while it is a very good novel, it generated less discussion than the previous four. The only surprising finalist in this category is Marque of Caine by Charles E. Gannon, because I at least haven’t heard any discussion about this book at all. However, Gannon’s Caine series is popular with Nebula voters and he has been a finalist in this category several times before.

Diversity count: Five women, one man, one writer of colour, two international writers

Best novella:

The shortlist in this category is a little bit more surprising. That said, This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone was certainly one of the most discussed (and best) novellas of 2019. The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark and The Deep by Rivers Solomon with Daveed Diggs, William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes got a lot of positive buzz as well. Besides, the video to the clipping song on which The Deep is based was a Hugo finalist in 2018. And Ted Chiang is a perennial awards favourite anyway. I am also really happy to see Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water by Vylar Kaftan on the shortlist, because it’s an excellent novella which got comparatively little attention. Coincidentally, Her Silhouette, Drawn in Water is also on my personal Hugo ballot. Catfish Lullaby by A.C. Wise is the only finalist in this category I hadn’t heard of before. It’s a small press horror novella about weirdness in the Lousiana swamps, which sounds right down my alley, so I’ll definitely check it out, hopefully in time for the Hugo nominations.

Those who worry about such things will also be pleased that Tor.com Publishing’s dominance in the novella category seems to have been broken, as more publishers enter the standalone novella market. And so Tor.com Publishing only has two finalists in the novella category this year, the fewest they’ve had since Tor.com Publishing started its novella line and revitalised the form. Saga also has two finalists. The remaining two hail from a collection published by Alfred A. Knopf and horror small press.

Diversity count (including the clipping members, since they are credited): Three women, six men, one non-binary, five writers of colour, one international writer

Best novelette:

Again, we have a strong ballot in this category. G.V. Anderson is certainly one of the best short fiction writers to have emerged in recent years. Her novelette “A Strange Uncertain Light” is also the only Nebula finalist to have originated in the print magazines. “For He Can Creep” by Siobhan Carroll is a lovely little story and I’m happy that it made the ballot. Sarah Pinsker and Caroline M. Yoachim are both excellent writers of short fiction, though I haven’t read these particular stories. I also must have missed “His Footsteps, Through Darkness and Light” by Mimi Mondal, even though I usually read the Tor.com stories. However, I have enjoyed other stories by Mimi Mondal that I read. Finally, I’m very happy to see Carpe Glitter by Cat Rambo on the Nebula ballot and not just because we featured it at the Speculative Fiction Showcase last year. This is the first Nebula finalist we’ve featured at the Speculative Fiction Showcase, by the way, though we have featured finalists and even winners of the Bram Stoker and Sir Julius Vogel Awards.

Diversity count: Six women, two international writers, two writers of colour

Best short story:

In this category, many of the finalists are stories that are new to me and there is very little overlap with my personal Hugo ballot. “Give the Family My Love” by A.T. Greenblatt got a lot of buzz, though I didn’t get around to reading it yet. “Ten Excerpts from an Annotated Bibliography on the Cannibal Women of Ratnabar Island” by Nibedita Sen is a story I have read and enjoyed. I’m also glad to see fiction from Nightmare Magazine get some love, because it is often ignored. “And Now His Lordship Is Laughing” by Shiv Ramdas is completely new to me, but then I only read Strange Horizons on occasion, so I may have missed it. Oddly enough, the three finalists from Uncanny, “The Dead, In Their Uncontrollable Power” by Karen Osborne, “A Catalog of Storms” by Fran Wilde and “How the Trick Is Done” by A.C. Wise don’t ring a bell, even though I normally read Uncanny regularly. But between being sick last year, doing the July short story challenge, attending WorldCon and dealing with ill parents, I read less short fiction than usual.

Uncanny published a whopping four out of twelve finalists in the novelette and short story categories. Tor.com published two, Lightspeed, Clarkesworld, F&SF, Nightmare Magazine, Strange Horizons and Meerkat Press published one each. That’s still a healthy spread, though Uncanny‘s dominance in the novelette and short story categories is notable. And yes, Uncanny is a great magazine, but there are other fine magazines out there as well.

Diversity count: Five women, one man, two writers of colour, two international writers.

Andre Norton Award for Outstanding YA Book:

Another very strong shortlist here. Catfishing on CatNet by Naomi Kritzer is a great novel and also on my personal Hugo ballot. Sal and Gabi Break the Universe by Carlos Hernandez and Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee both got a lot of buzz. Peasprout Chen: Battle of Champions by Henry Lien is the sequel to a popular previous finalist. I don’t know anything about Cog by Greg van Eekhout and Riverland by Fran Wilde, but both authors are popular and well-liked.

Diversity count: Two women, four men, four writers of colour.

It’s quite remarkable that we have four male writers nominated in this category, since YA is very female dominated.

Best Game Writing:

I can’t say much about this category, because I’m not a gamer. Though I spot several familiar names on the ballot.

Diversity count: Five women, three men, at least two international writers

Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation:

I am normally completely out of step with the dramatic presentation categories at the Hugos. Very few of my nominees in those categories ever make it and I am often completely puzzled by what gets nominated (The Good Place – cough). However, the Ray Bradbury Award shortlist very much overlaps with my personal tastes this year. There is only one finalist I don’t care for and another I haven’t seen, but would probably like. Avengers: Endgame and Captain Marvel are of course the heavy hitters in this category. Though I am a bit surprised that The Rise of Skywalker did not make it, but then the script was something of a mess. Also conspicuous by its absence are the horror movies Us and Midsommar, because both got a lot of positive buzz last year and Jordan Peele, writer/director of Us, is a previous finalist in this category (though both are present on the Stoker ballot). It’s also telling that while the Ray Bradbury Award is normally dominated by movies, this year we only have two film finalists and four TV/streaming finalists, which shows how very good SFF TV has gotten in the past few years.

Though Star Wars isn’t completely absent from the Nebula ballot this year, because everybody’s favourite bounty hunter daddy The Mandalorian is nominated for the episode “The Child”. No huge surprise, because pretty much everybody loves The Mandalorian and Baby Yoda. And am I the only one who’s wondering what Baby Yoda would do with a Nebula and/or Hugo Award? The nomination for Good Omens is no surprise, because this was another greatly beloved and good series. I didn’t get around to watching Russian Doll yet, but the series got a lot of positive buzz and seems to be well written. Finally, the nomination for the Watchmen episode “A God Walked into Abar” is no great surprise either, because the Watchmen TV series was popular and much discussed and this particular episode got a lot of attention.

Now I have to admit that I don’t like Watchmen, the comic, and never have. I first read Watchmen at a friend’s house in highschool. The friend was called away and I was left sitting alone in his room, waiting for him to come back. He had the Watchmen trade paperback and because I was bored, I picked it up and started to read. And as I opened the book, literally the first page I saw was the Comedian and Silver Spectre rape scene, which utterly disgusted me. I never warmed to Watchmen after that and am still not sure why it is so much more beloved than other mature readers comics from the same era, which often were much better. So I didn’t bother with the show, because there is so much good stuff to watch that I don’t have to bother with the adaptation/continuation of a story I intensely dislike. And yes, I know that’s not the fault of the TV show and the Comedian doesn’t even appear, as far as I know, though Silk Spectre does. But even though I don’t care for Watchmen, I’m not at all surprised that it was nominated.

No diversity count, it takes too many people to make a film or TV episode.

All in all, the 2019 Nebula shortlist is a strong, if not particularly surprising ballot. Lots of excellent finalists and very few I don’t care for. After last year’s uproar, this is a very pleasant change.

Those who are worried about Tor’s supposed dominance in the fiction categories will be pleased that Tor is not particularly dominant this year (and they only ever dominated the novella category anyway). Those who are worried about the poor widdle menz being shut out of SFF Awards will be pleased that male writers are pretty well represented on the Nebula ballot and that two categories are majority male. Though I foresee wailing and complaining anyway. Those who are worried about former and current SFWA officers getting nominated for Nebula Awards will just have to go on worrying, I guess.

That said, it is notable that while there are small press finalists, no self-published work was nominated this year in any of the fiction categories, unlike previous years. Is this backlash from last year’s 20Booksto50K debacle? Or just that 2019 was an extremely strong year for traditionally published works, so self-published works simply did not have a chance due to their lower average reach?

The final ballot for the 2019 Bram Stoker Awards has been announced as well. No detailed dissection, because horror isn’t really my genre. Though as far as I can tell, the ballot looks good. I’m also pleased that another book we featured at the Speculative Fiction Showcase, Into Bones Like Oil by Kaaron Warren, made the Stoker ballot.

Send to Kindle

Retro Review: “The Gothic Window” by Dorothy Quick

[image error]“The Gothic Window” is a short story by Dorothy Quick, which was first published in the May 1944 issue of Weird Tales and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The story may be found online here. This review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following.

“The Gothic Window” starts off, like so many horror stories and murder mysteries, with four couples or prospective couples spending a rainy weekend at a secluded country mansion. Anne, the protagonist and POV character, has arranged the house party to further her romance with Sheridan “Sherry” Crawford and to fix up her friends Bob and Nancy. However, another friend of Anne’s, Claire Rowley, throws a spanner into the works, when she invites herself and her husband Jim along. Anne isn’t happy about this, for not only does Jim cheat at bridge, he’s also a cad and potential abuser and Claire is clearly afraid of her husband. To make matters even more complicated, Nancy is infatuated with Jim, which endangers her budding romance with Bob. And though Jim is married to Claire, he pursues Nancy as well. There is another couple as well, Lou and Gib Silvers, who are not involved in the romantic polygon developing at the country manor and are only there, because bridge requires four players in two pairs, so they need eight people.

During yet another round of bridge, Jim suddenly becomes fascinated by a stained glass gothic window that doesn’t match any of the other windows in the house. He says that the window makes it difficult for him to concentrate, whereupon Anne offers to tell the story behind the window.

Anne explains that she first saw window during the requisite grand tour of Europe with her parents. Anne and her family stayed at a monastery in Spain, where they admired the gothic architecture and the beautiful stained glass windows. All of the windows are regularly opened except for one. And when Anne or her parents ask about that window, the normally so jolly monks fall silent.

One day, when Anne and her mother are walking along the cloister, they notice that the always closed window stands wide open and that a monk is lying on the floor in front of the window. Initially Anne and her mother assume that the monk is just unconscious, but upon closer examination, he turns out to be dead, an expression of unearthly bliss frozen on his face.

Now the monks finally do spill the beans about what is going on. For when the monastery was first built, a man was immured alive in its walls according to medieval custom. The unfortunate fellow had been sentenced to death for sorcery. Soon after he was immured, he started to haunt the monastery and who can blame him? The focus point of the hauntings was the window closest to the spot where he had been immured.

Soon mysterious accidents began to happen near the window. Furthermore, the monks discovered that passing through the window gave them wonderful visions. By now we realise that this particular window appears to be a French window, which also doubles as a door. Never mind that this makes no sense, because there were no French windows during gothic times. Nor can gothic windows be opened – they are fixed.

Because the visions bestowed by the window were so amazing, the monks kept passing through it, until one by one they were found dead, an expression of unearthly bliss frozen onto their faces.

The abbot did everything he could to keep the monks from using the window, but the monks kept findings ways around his measures and they kept dying. So in the end, the abbot walked through the window himself and promptly died, only that the expression on his face was not one of bliss, but of unbelievable horror.

You’re think that this story, plus the physical evidence in the form of a dead monk lying on the ground in front of the window, would be enough to warn anybody with any shred of sense to keep the hell away from the haunted window. However, Anne’s mother apparently does not possess a shred of sense and so she offers to buy the window from the monks who are only too glad to be rid of it. They also kindly offer to exorcise the window, before it is shipped to its new home.

Once the window has been installed in the house, strange accidents start to happen there as well. Anne sprains her ankle, her mother breaks her arm and her father breaks his leg, all after passing through the window. So Anne’s family locks the window, but they stupidly leave the key in the lock and so it eventually kills a friend of the family. A sudden heart attack, the doctor says, but Anne and her family know better and finally keep the bloody window locked, though they still don’t have enough sense to just tear it out.

After Anne has told her story, everybody gradually retires to their rooms, while the romantic drama continues. Claire confesses to Anne that Jim abuses her, that she knows he is stalking Nancy and that she is afraid of her husband, but that she cannot leave him, because Jim knows certain dark secrets about her. Nancy chances to overhear all this and confesses that she is terrified of Jim, too, but also feels inexorably drawn to him and there is absolutely nothing she can do about it.

Once Nancy and Claire have finally gone to bed, Sheridan finally proposes to Anne and they discuss their future life together until the wee hours. When they finally retire – to separate rooms, of course – they once more pass the haunted window and Anne realises that the key is still in the lock.

“But I thought you said that your father kept it in his desk,” Sheridan points out, whereupon Anne confesses that she made the whole story up to interrupt the bridge game and keep Jim away from Nancy. Anne’s mother really did buy the window in Spain, that much is true, but everything else was pure fiction.

Sheridan praises Anne’s imagination, but he also worries about the psychological effects of Anne’s tale. After all, what if one of the guests accidentally hurts themselves near the window? So Anne promises that she will clear up the whole ruse in the morning. But it never comes to that, for the next morning they find Jim Rowley dead in front of the open window, his face a mix of horror and bliss.

“The Gothic Window” is yet another example of the tale within a tale, usually told in appropriately spooky surroundings, that was very common in Weird Tales. “The Man Who Wouldn’t Hang” by Stanton A. Coblentz from the same year is another example of the type.

Nonetheless, “The Gothic Window” isn’t a typical Weird Tales horror story. In many ways, it is reminiscent of the gothic romance genre that was only just beginning to take off with the great success of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca six year prior. All the elements of the gothic romance are here. We have the secluded country house, we have the Byronic hero who may or may not want to harm the heroine, we have the innocent ingenue he is pursuing, we have the good guy love interest and we have a malicious ghost, seeking revenge for an evil done to him centuries ago.

The romantic entanglements at the house are quite complicated and it took me some effort to remember who was in love with whom, who was married to whom and who was cheating on whom. The fact that all the characters have bland, if period appropriate names like Anne, Nancy, Claire, Bob and Jim doesn’t help either. There also are more characters in the story than are necessary. Okay, so the number of bridge players must be dividable by four, but isn’t there anything else they could have done over the weekend rather than play bridge?

That said, even if “The Gothic Window” has more characters than are strictly necessary, it is also the story with the highest number of named female characters, four in all, I have reviewed so far. Furthermore, “The Gothic Window” is also one of only two stories I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project so far which passes the Bechdel test, the other being Ray Bradbury’s “Undersea Guardians”. Finally, “The Gothic Window” is also one of only two stories with a female POV character, the other being once again “Undersea Guardians”.

As soon as Anne tells the story about the murderous haunted window, it’s pretty obvious that someone will succumb to its spell and that that someone will be Jim, the villain of the piece. Nonetheless, Dorothy Quick did manage to surprise me, when Anne confessed that the entire story of the haunted window was fake. Coincidentally, this also explains why neither the monks nor Anne and her family ever did the sensible thing and just tore out the window and/or smashed it.

Anne’s revelation also casts some doubt on whether “The Gothic Window” really is SFF. After all, there is no malicious ghost of an executed sorcerer haunting the window – Anne just made the whole story up. As for what killed Jim, that was most likely the power of psychological suggestion rather than a vengeful ghost.

There is some historical evidence that humans were immured as a method of execution throughout history and occasionally, the remains of immured humans have been found. There are also plenty of legends about people – often young women or children – being immured in the walls of new buildings as a sacrifice found all over Europe. On the Balkan, there is a legend about a young bride being immured. And in Theodor Storm’s famous novella Der Schimmelreiter (The Rider on the White Horse, 1888), protagonist Hauke Haien not only has some unacceptably modern ideas about flood protection and the proper way to build dykes, he also refuses to immure a living being (a dog in this case, because there is no child handy) into the new dyke. As a result, the superstitious locals believe the dyke to be cursed and when it breaks during a particularly vicious winter storm, Hauke’s wife and daughter drown and Hauke sacrifices himself to save the village. Come to think of it, The Rider on the White Horse would not have felt out of place in an issue of Weird Tales.

There is no concrete evidence that human beings were ever immured as sacrifices during the Middle Ages or in modern times in Europe, but there is plenty of evidence of animals being immured or buried inside old buildings and yes, dykes. In the 1960s, my parents and some of their friends restored a 17th century farmhouse as a weekend getaway. During the restoration work, they found the remains of an animal, probably a cat or dog, buried under the threshold. A historian carted the remains away and told them it was a building sacrifice and an important find.

I have no idea if Dorothy Quick has ever read The Rider on the White Horse, though it’s not impossible, since the novella was first translated into English in 1914. And she was certainly familiar with the various legends about people immured as sacrifices. Though the choice of Spain as the origin of the haunted window is a bit strange, since Spain is one of the places in Europe, which does not have such legends.

[image error]Dorothy Quick is another woman SFF author who was clearly popular in her time, but is nearly forgotten these days. She published a science fiction novel entitled Strange Awakening in 1938, though she mainly seems to have specialised in horror fiction. She published twenty-three stories and twenty-seven poems between 1932 and 1954, mostly in Weird Tales, but also in Unknown, Oriental Stories, Strange Stories and Fantastic Adventures. Dorothy Quick was clearly popular and even contributed the cover story to the March 1937 issue of Weird Tales, illustrated by one of Margaret Brundage’s striking covers.

However, Dorothy Quick rapidly fell into obscurity. As with her fellow Weird Tales contributor Allison V. Harding, very little of her work has ever been reprinted. Nowadays, she is remembered not so much for her writing but for striking up a friendship with Samuel Clements a.k.a. Mark Twain in 1907, when Quick was eleven and Twain was seventy-two and both were passengers aboard the SS Minnetonka. Dorothy Quick frequently talked about her youthful friendship with Mark Twain, who encouraged her to write, and even penned a memoir entitled Mark Twain and Me.

The only place where I found some biographical information about Dorothy Quick was Sisters of Tomorrow – The First Women of Science Fiction, edited by Lisa Yaszek and Patrick B. Sharp, which reprints Dorothy Quick’s 1937 story “Strange Orchids”. In their introduction to the story, Yaszek and Sharp note that Dorothy Quick was strongly influenced by domestic fiction and the gothic romance and that her stories frequently have female POV characters at a time when this was exceedingly rare in SFF. These observations certainly fit “The Gothic Window”.

[image error]

Mark Twain and Dorothy Quick in 1907

“The Gothic Window” is well written and Dorothy Quick was clearly a talented writer, but then she did impress the great Mark Twain himself as a precocious girl of eleven. The question is why has she been almost completely forgotten in spite of a twenty-two year career of writing SFF. Is it because her brand of domestic gothics fell out of fashion? But then, Dorothy Quick’s work wasn’t even reprinted when the domestic gothic romance was at the height of its popularity in the 1960s. Is it because Weird Tales is mainly associated with Lovecraftian horror and sword and sorcery these days, even though the magazine’s bread and butter were far more traditional tales of gothic horror as well as proto urban fantasy?

Nonetheless, it is notable that even though Weird Tales was clearly a good market for women (the May 1944 issue alone contains stories by three women writers and both the cover artist and the editor were female as well), the male authors who penned more traditional horror stories for the magazine, writers like Seabury Quinn, Robert Bloch and Manly Wade Wellman, are still much better remembered than their female counterparts like Dorothy Quick, Allison V. Harding, Greye La Spina, Alice-Mary Schnirring or Mary Elizabeth Counselman, who penned “The Three Marked Pennies”, one of the most popular stories in Weird Tales history and kept writing and publishing horror right up to her death in 1995.

An effective gothic horror story by an unjustly forgotten woman writer of the golden age. Well worth checking out.

Send to Kindle

Star Trek Picard goes forth with “Absolute Candor”

It’s time for my episode by episode reviews of Star Trek Picard again. Previous installments may be found here.

In my review of episode 3 of Star Trek Picard, I said that it seems as if the set-up period was finally over and the show could get going with Picard and friends finally aboard a spaceship. However, episode 4 showed that the set-up wasn’t yet finished, as Picard makes one more pitstop to pick up the last member of the regular cast.

Warning. Spoilers behind the cut!

“Absolute Candor” starts off with yet another flashback to fourteen years prior. In the comments on Camestros Felapton’s review, Peer Sylvester says that the constant flashbacks remind him of Lost, which isn’t wrong. I’m also not sure that we need all those flashbacks, since the first two episodes already made pretty clear what happened.

This latest flashback sees Picard arriving on Vashti, a planet that serves as a hub for the Romulan relocation program. For what is essentially a refugee camp in space, Vashti looks remarkably idyllic. Picard is welcomed warmly and visits yet another never-before-seen Romulan secret society, an order of warrior nuns called Qowat Milat. The Qowat Milat follow the way of Absolute Candor, which means they are always absolutely and painfully honest, putting them at odds both with the more secretive elements of Romulan society such as the Tal Shiar and Zhat Vash as well as with the Romulans’ cousins once removed, the Vulcans with their insistence on logic and emotional suppression. The Qowat Milat are also really cool – after all, who wouldn’t love an order of bad arse warrior nuns?

In his review of this episode, Keith R.A. DeCandido says that Star Trek Picard has done more to flesh out Romulan culture than the previous 53 years of Star Trek series taken together. I certainly agree, because while the Vulcans, Klingons, Bajorans, Cardassians, Ferengi and even the Borg were fleshed out over the decades, the Romulans always remained one-dimensional bad guys. Hell, we’ve learned more about Kelpians in 26 episodes of Star Trek Discovery than we learned about the Romulans in 53 years.

The Qowat Milat have helped with the evacuation of refugees. They have also taken in Elnor, a young boy who was apparently orphaned during the evacuation. Elnor, who is clearly missing a father figure in his life, has taken to Picard. Picard is also quite fond of young Elnor. He reads The Three Musketeers to him (in an edition that’s clearly older than Patrick Stewart himself and by the 25th century is as old as the 16th century magazine that I once held in my hands in the Bremen university library) and also practices fencing with sticks. Those scenes are sweet and the Three Musketeers reference is a bit of an Easter egg, since Santiago Cabrera, who plays Captain Cristobal Rios in Picard, also played Aramis in the BBC Three Musketeers series of a few years ago.

Nonetheless, my initial reaction when I saw Picard interacting with young Elnor and clearly enjoying himself, was, “But Picard doesn’t even like kids. He never did.” In fact, “Picard doesn’t like kids” was one of his defining bits characterisation throughout The Next Generation and something which set him apart, because very few TV or film characters, particularly not positive characters, are allowed to dislike kids, even though there are plenty of people in the real world who don’t particularly like children and nonetheless manage not to be villains. Of course, Picard did interact with children aboard the Enterprise at several points and he did come to like at least Wesley Crusher, but he prefers to avoid contact with children and that’s fine. And indeed, one of the nuns even mentions that Picard does not like children. Which makes Picard’s obvious fondness of young Elnor an even more puzzling piece of inconsistent characterisation. Maybe Picard mellowed with age. Or maybe Elnor is the new Wesley, one of the few kids Picard does like.

At any rate, his sojourn with the Romulan warrior nuns and their young charge is cut short, when Picard receives a call informing him about the android attack on Mars. “But what will this mean for the evacuation?” several Romulans ask him. Picard assures them that nothing will change and gives them his word. We all know how that turned out.

And now, fourteen years later, Picard returns to Vashti, because he believes that a Romulan warrior nun will be an excellent addition to his little adventuring party. His former aide and disgraced Starfleet officer Raffi Musiker is not at all pleased that Picard wants to go to Vashti and accuses him that the boy is the true reason he wants to go back. Raffi also berates Cristobal Rios for taking Picard to Vashti by reminding Rios that he still is the captain of the ship (which gains a name, La Sirena, in this episode) and that he also isn’t a member of Starfleet anymore and doesn’t have to take orders from Picard. And indeed, it is a recurring motif throughout this episode that even though Rios is nominally the captain of the La Sirena, he still follows the orders Picard can’t resist giving, though he usually apologises afterwards.

Picard beams down to Vashti alone, which is clearly not a good idea, and finds the place changed. For starters, what was supposed to be a temporary settlement is now the permanent home of the Romulans who have been left hanging when the Federation cancelled the evacuation program. Vashti is also run down and beset by bandits and neither Starfleet nor a group calling itself the Fenris Rangers can do much about it. Furthermore, the Romulans have been infected by the same xenophobia and isolationism virus that also infested the Federation. And so the café, where Picard was once welcomed so warmly, now bears a sign saying “Romulans Only” in English. I’m not quite sure why they need it, since we don’t see any humans or other races on Vashti.

Picard pays a visit to the Qowat Milat who are actually pleased to see him for a change. He also meets Elnor again, who is all grown up now (and now played by Evan Evagora) and looks as if he’s auditioning for a part in Lord of the Rings (and indeed, I keep typing his name as Elrond). Unlike the rest of the Qowat Milat, Elnor is not happy to see Picard, understandably so, because Picard promised he’d come back and then never did. The question is, just why did Picard never return to Vashti until now? Even after he quit Starfleet, Picard could have gotten on a ship (we hardly ever seen human civilian space travel in Star Trek, but it must exist) and travelled to Vashti to explain what happened. And in fact, many of the problems in this episode could have been avoided, if Picard had gone back to Vashti to explain. As for Elnor, Picard could have taken him to Earth. Chateau Picard is a nice place for a kid to grow up, Elnor could have had a kitten of his own (he laments at one point, that he has never seen a cat), Lharis and Zaban (who sadly don’t appear in this episode) certainly wouldn’t have minded having someone else to fuss over and Picard himself probably would have been happier with more company as well. Last episode, we learned that Picard pretty much abandoned and ignored Raffi, after he left Starfleet, and now we learn that he did the same to Elnor. It almost seems as if Picard buried himself in his vineyard and waited to die, until Dahj showed up and woke him up. Okay, so he did take in Lharis and Zaban, but then I suspect that Lharis and Zaban were simply too stubborn to leave, when Picard ignored them. Nonetheless, Picard burying himself is at odds with the person we watched over seven seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In the other hand, Jean-Luc Picard has always been chronically unable to be happy, so maybe his behavious after he was forced out of Starfleet, the only thing that ever mattered to him, does fit.

The head nun, meanwhile, has the splendid idea to pair up Picard and Elnor, because a) they already know and like each other, b) Elnor doesn’t belong with the Qowat Milat anyway and c) Elnor has had Qowat Milat training and should be more than sufficient for what Picard needs. I also have the sneaking suspicion that the nun planned to persuade Picard to take in Elnor all along, only that she had to wait fourteen years to implement that plan. So Picard approaches Elnor and tells his story, only to be rebuffed, when Elnor tells him quite rightly that Picard abandoned him and only came back when he needs help.

So Picard leaves the Qowat Milat and decides to pick a fight with some Romulans by deliberately pulling down the sign outside the café that says “Romulans only”, stepping on the sign and then walking into the café asking for something to drink. A Romulan confronts him and tells him that he and Picard met before, when he was a Romulan senator and listened to Picard promising that Starfleet would help the Romulans. The Romulan ex-senator is also understandably pissed that none of that ever came to pass and he isn’t interested in Picard’s apologies either, thank you very much. Instead, he wants to fight and tosses Picard a sabre.

Picard’s behaviour in this scene doesn’t really fit the Jean-Luc Picard we know either, because he doesn’t normally go around deliberately provoking people who have good reason to want to see him dead. That’s more Kirk’s style and even Kirk usually has more sense than that. Okay, so Picard did deliberately provoke some aliens who stabbed him in the heart as a young cadet, but I’d hope that 80-year-old Picard would be more mature than 18-year-old Picard. Of course, Picard’s erratic behaviour might be an early symptom of the dementia he was warned about two episodes ago. And since Sir Patrick Stewart, the person who knows the character better than anybody else, had the right to veto anything he felt did not ring true, we assume that there is a reason for his flat out strange behaviour. Never mind that Picard quite often behaved like a jerk back in the Next Generation days, as Ani Bundel points out at SyFy Wire. However, most of us have banished the bad early episodes (and bad later episodes) of The Next Generation from our collective consciousness, so we only remember the Picard who always did the right thing.

Or maybe the swordfight with the Romulan ex-senator only exists to give Sir Patrick Stewart the chance to show off his swordfighting skills for the second time in this episode. But while Picard may be a fine swordsman, the Romulan is younger, stronger and angrier, so Picard is outmatched. But then Elnor shows up, rescues Picard, gives the Romulan ex-senator a chance to surrender and when the ex-senator refuses, Elnor chops his head off. This royally pisses off the other Romulans, but before they can attack, Picard and Elnor are beamed back aboard the La Sirena. Picard berates Elnor that chopping off heads is absolutely not acceptable, but the crew of the La Sirena have bigger problems than a headchopping happy Romulan warrior monk (who, it turns out, joined the quest for Soji, because the Qowat Milat only pledge their sword to lost causes, which bodes well for the future).

Because one of the bandits harrassing the people of Vashti has dropped by complete with an ancient Romulan Bird of Prey (nice seeing one of those again still looking like they always did) and is firing on the La Sirena. And so we get treated to a nice space battle, complete with everybody shaking and tossing about in their seats just like in the old days. We also meet another of Captain Rios’ holograms. This one is his gunner who looks like the tattooed bad boy hero of a motorcycle club romance and speaks only Spanish. Santiago Cabrera clearly has a lot of fun playing all these different versions of the same character, complete with different languages and accents. Camestros Felapton points out in his review that we’ve never seen Rios Prime outside his ship either, so maybe he is a hologram as well. It would certainly be an interesting twist.

The Bird of Prey may be ancient, but it still has the La Sirena outgunned, until a mystery ship shows up to blast the Bird of Prey out of orbit. However, the mystery ship is fatally damaged in the process, so the La Sirena crew beam the pilot aboard, only to realise that it’s none other than Seven of Nine. Cue end credits. Of course, what would have been an absolutely brilliant cliffhanger was somewhat spoiled by listing Jeri Ryan as a guest star in the title credits, but it’s still nice to see Seven of Nine back.

Meanwhile, back at the Borg cube, Soji is still somewhat shaken from her encounter with deborgified Romulan anthropologist Ramda and decides to find out more about the term Ramda called her, the Destroyer. What she finds is an old interview with a pre-Borg Ramda who explains that the Destroyer is a pivotal figure in some kind of Romulan End of the Universe myth. So now poor Soji is not just an illegal android, she’ll also bring about the end of everything.

Narek shows up and tells Soji that Ramda was never quite right, even before she was turned into a Borg. He then tries (and succeeds) to distract Soji by sliding across the particularly smooth floor in a specific section of the Borg cube. It’s a genuinely sweet moment and once again, we wonder whether Narek is just playacting or whether he is beginning to develop genuine feelings for Soji. Meanwhile, Soji has been wondering about Narek as well. He wears no uniform and no insignia and yet he can go wherever he pleases aboard the Borg cube. “Are you Tal Shiar?” she asks him point blank. “No”, Narek replied and while we know that he’s telling the truth, because he is not Tal Shiar but Zhat Vash, Soji does not. And so she asks him if he can get her some classified information about Ramda and how she was assimilated. Narek says that he doesn’t have that information, but might know someone who does.

That someone is obviously is sister Narissa, who pays Narek a visit, once Soji has stormed off after a quarrel. Once again, Narissa displays some seriously creepy incest vibes, though Narek does try to push her away. He also assures her that he is working to get Soji to tell him where “the others” are (so there are more organic androids?), but he’s doing it his own way. Narissa, meanwhile, is doubtful how committed Narek still is to the cause and chokes him until he calls Soji “the Destroyer”.

In Anglo-American pop culture, incest seems to have become something of a shorthand for “seriously twisted villain”. Come to think of it, incest has been used in that way for a long time now – the central mystery in the 1974 neo-noir movie Chinatown is John Huston committing incest with Faye Dunaway and then there is the incest in the 1979 gothic thriller Flowers in the Attic and its sequels by V.C Andrews. But in recent years, the use of incest as a shorthand for villain has really exploded in Anglo-American pop culture. Meanwhile, “incest” shows up comparatively rarely in German pop culture, probably many of us have had dreadfully dull literary treatments of incest such as Wälsungenblut by Thomas Mann and Homo Faber by Max Frisch (or, if you were unlucky like me, both) shoved down out throats in German class. That said, using incest as a way to characterise a character/characters as evil annoys me, because in the real world, incest is almost always a tragedy and either involves sexual abuse or – when happening between consenting adults – it’s usually a case of blood relatives being separated early and meeting only as adults and connecting to each other in the wrong way.

Also, the incestous vibes between Narek and Narissa are entirely unnecessary, because the story would have worked just as well, if she were simply his Romulan ex, who also happens to be a fellow Zhat Vash agent. There was absolutely no need to make them siblings. Never mind that we’re not even sure if incest is as strong a taboo among Romulans as it is among humans.

One thing that all reviewers agree upon is that Star Trek Picard moves very slowly. We’re almost at the halfpoint of the ten-episode season now and Picard has only just assembled his crew. In fact, “Absolute Candor” could have been eliminated entirely, if Elnor had been introduced as living at Chateau Picard either as a refugee kid adopted by or a biological kid of Lharis and Zaban or maybe a nephew they call in to help. He could still be a martial arts bad arse – after all, Lharis and Zaban are both pretty formidable themselves. Never mind that it’s pretty obvious that the Romulans will be pissed at Picard and Starfleet’s failure to help them. We didn’t need a swordfight with a disgruntled ex-senator to prove it. And while I like Soji and Narek, considering how long their subplot has been going on now, I question the decision to have them fall into bed between the first and second episode. Sometimes, a slow-burn romance can work much better and it’s not as if they didn’t have time to develop the relationship. In fact, as things are now, I strongly suspect that Picard will pull a Witcher and only have Picard and Soji meet up in the final episode, maybe even only the final scene.

But even though Star Trek Picard moves at glacial speed, the series is entertaining and I have been enjoying every episode so far. It’s only when I sit down to write these reviews that I realise that very little actually happened in the episode I just watched. Still, hopefully the actual plot will start next episode.

Send to Kindle

Retro Review: “Undersea Guardians” by Ray Bradbury

[image error]“Undersea Guardians” by Ray Bradbury is a horror short story, which appeared in the December 1944 issue of Amazing Stories and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found here. This review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following!

“Undersea Guardians” starts with the atmospheric description of the wreck of a sunken ship, the U.S.S. Atlantic, lying on the ocean floor. Soon thereafter we meet a group of what initially seems to be merpeople, led by a man called Conda. The group of merpeople also includes several woman, a brunette called Alita and a blonde called Helene as well as an old woman who never gets a name and clearly has maternal feelings towards Alita.

The swarm of merpeople is scattered, when “a shadow crosses the ocean surface, quick, like a gigantic sea-gull.” The shadow is an airplane and it drops a depth charge, which is our first hint that this is a contemporary set story, taking place during World War II.

Alita is stunned by the explosion and just wants to sit on the ocean floor, but the others urge her onwards, because they have sighted a German submarine and they have work to do. After all, a US Navy convoy will soon pass by and the German submarine is lying in wait for them.

Gradually, it emerges that Conda, Alita and the other merpeople were aboard the U.S.S. Atlantic, when she was torpedoed and sank. But they had unfinished business, so they did not die, but instead lived on as merpeople. In Alita’s case, that unfinished business is her love for a Navy seaman named Richard Jameson, of whom she sometimes catches a glimpse, when his ship passes the spot where the U.S.S. Atlantic sank.

Conda, who in life was the captain of the U.S.S. Atlantic, and his squad of undead have made it their mission to take out German submarines. They use Alita and Helene, two young, attractive and most importantly naked women, as bait to seduce the crew of the submarine. Though at least in Alita’s case, Schmidt (of course, he’s called Schmidt, being a crewman aboard a German submarine), the poor crewman who happens to see, her believes he’s gone mad from weeks underwater and runs screaming through the submarine and tries to climb out of the hatch. The rest of the crew valiantly try to stop him but fail, since their aim is about as bad as a Stormtrooper’s. But then this is a WWII story written by an American author, so you cannot have competent German sailors.

Now Helene, Conda and the rest get into the submarine via the open hatch and proceed to wreak havoc. Alita doesn’t participate – she clearly dislikes violence. Unlike Helene, who is clearly a mermaid femme fatale driven by hatred, because her lover died inside the U.S.S. Atlantic, while Helene did not. The old woman tells a distraught Alita that yes, they did to the submarine crew what was done to them, but they had to do it, because they saved hundreds of lives. Apparently, the lives of American sailors are the only lives that count.

They are guardians, the old woman says, guardians protecting American ships and convoys. That is why they survive as undead and murderous merpeople, while everybody else aboard the Atlantic died. Because they all have loved ones – husbands, lovers, father, brothers, sons – who are sailors aboard US Navy ships and therefore targets.

The convoy passes by and the destroyer aboard which Richard serves is part of it. Alita flits around the destroyer, trying to catch a glimpse of her lover, when another German submarine appears. But the convoy and Conda and his band of murderous merpeople get lucky, because the crew of this German submarine are crap shots, too, and so their torpedoes keep missing the convoy that is right in front of them.

But the submarine crew finally get their act together and the last torpedo is going to hit the destroyer with Richard on board. But Alita heroically throws herself in the way of the torpedo, sacrificing her not-life to save Richard and the destroyer.

On the bridge of the destroyer, Richard briefly thinks that he saw something just before the torpedo exploded harmlessly. A large fish or maybe a log.

[image error]Of the four Ray Bradbury stories I reviewed for the Retro Reviews project so far, I liked “Undersea Guardians” the least. It’s an effective little story and – like all Ray Bradbury stories – well written and atmospheric. But I prefer my speculative fiction without a side order of WWII propaganda, thank you very much.

Though to be fair, Alita has her doubts about what she and the other merpeople are doing and is clearly aware of the hypocrisy of condemning others to a fate she so clearly loathes. And indeed, Alita repeatedly has to be coaxed into participating in the raids by the old woman, who never even gets a name. Furthermore, Helene, the mermaid femme fatale, is clearly insane. And Schmidt, the hapless German sailor who happens to spot Alita, is not a xenophobic caricature, just a young man driven nigh crazy from months of isolation. Compared to some of the truly grisly propaganda stuff we’ve seen in the dramatic presentation and graphic story categories at the Retro Hugos in recent years, “Undersea Guardians” is pretty nuanced.

There are also moments where it seems as if Bradbury is aware of the implications of his premise. For if the crews of allied ships survive as murderous undead merpeople bent on revenge, then so should the crews of German ships, which would soon lead to groups of merpeople waging war on each other under the sea. The ambivalence of the story almost suggests that the editor of Amazing Stories, Raymond F. Palmer, pushed Bradbury to make it more patriotic.

And while it’s never explicitly stated, the U.S.S. Atlantic was not a civilian ship, but a US Navy vessel, which makes her a legitimate target in wartime. Alita apparently was on board, because she wanted to work as a nurse in England and see her Richard again. We never learn what Helene and the old woman were doing aboard. Most probably, they were planning to become nurses, too. So what happened to Alita and the others was not some kind of Lusitania, let alone Wilhelm Gustloff incident.

That said, I was pleased that “Undersea Guardians” has three female characters, two of them named, and all of them different from each other. In fact, “Undersea Guardians” is the only story I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project so far that passes the Bechdel test.

This is the third 1944 Ray Bradbury story I’ve read where a non-combatant saves the day and wins the battle, if not the war. Sam Burnett from “Morgue Ship” is a medic collecting dead bodies after the battle, Click Hathaway from “The Monster Maker” is a news photographer who only tagged along with an Interplanetary Patrolman to shoot the action and Alita from “Undersea Guardians” is a wartime nurse turned undead mermaid. Methinks Bradbury was trying to make a point about the heroic potential of non-combatants.

Ray Bradbury would revisit the concept of drowned sailors turned into a vengeful undead army two years later in “Lorelei of the Red Mist”, his sole collaboration with lifelong friend Leigh Brackett. Only that in “Lorelei of the Red Mist”, the undead army consists of sailors from both sides of a local conflict on Venus and that they turn on their own side as well as the enemy, led by a sinister pied piper figure. And the undersea army of the undead only shows up towards the end of “Lorelei of the Red Mist” and is therefore definitely Bradbury’s work, who finished the novella, when Leigh Brackett was called away to Hollywood to write the screenplay for The Big Sleep.

Soldiers continuing to fight the war they were in even after death also shows up in Richard Lester’s 1967 anti-war film How I Won the War, the climactic scene of which with the undead soldiers marching on to war was filmed near where I live with the Uesen Weser bridge standing in for a Rhine bridge, even though anybody who has ever seen either the Weser in Uesen or the Rhine knows that both don’t look even remotely the same.

Even though Amazing Stories was America’s first science fiction magazine, there is not a hint of science fiction in “Undersea Guardians”. Instead, the story is pure horror and would feel more at home in Weird Tales than in Amazing Stories. Maybe Weird Tales rejected it and since there were no other fantasy and horror magazines on the market in 1944, “Undersea Guardians” ended up in Amazing Stories and even was the cover story of the December 1944 issue with a striking (and accurate) cover courtesy of James B. Settles.

Unlike the much better “Morgue Ship”, “Undersea Guardians” has been reprinted a handful of times over the years, usually in anthologies of maritime horror. And the story is certainly a fitting addition to an anthology like that.

“Undersea Guardians” is an effective horror story somewhat marred by its WWII context. But considering how prolific Ray Bradbury was (he published thirteen speculative stories in 1944 alone plus several mysteries), they can’t all be winners. And even a weaker Bradbury is still better than most of the other SFF stories out there.

 

 

 

 

 

Send to Kindle

Retro Review: “Desertion” by Clifford D. Simak

[image error]

Not Fowler and Towser, but still Killdozer by Theodore Sturgeon.

“Desertion” is a hard science fiction short story by Clifford D. Simak, which was first published in the November 1944 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here. “Desertion” is part of Simak’s City cycle and has been widely reprinted.

This review will also be crossposted to Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

“Desertion” is something of the odd one out in the City cycle, because unlike the other City stories, “Desertion” doesn’t take place on Earth, but on a human research station on Jupiter. Kent Fowler is head of the Dome No. 3 Jovian Survey Project and has a problem. For none of the four intrepid explorers that he sent out into the wilds of Jupiter, their bodies altered to suit the atmospheric conditions, have ever returned. And now Fowler is about to send out the fifth explorer, one Harold Allen, who most likely won’t come back either.

Fowler is not happy about this, but he feels that he has no choice but to send people out into the deadly Jovian atmosphere, because otherwise the human colonists on Jupiter will be stuck in enclosed domes that are almost impossible to maintain considered the atmospheric conditions as well as the high pressure and gravity of Jupiter. This being a hard science fiction story published in Astounding, we get a detailed description of the conditions on Jupiter with its high pressure and gravity and its corrosive ammonia rains. This being a Clifford D. Simak story, these descriptions are much better written than usual.

Miss Stanley, who is in charge of converting the explorers into their Jupiter-adapted form, is even less happy about the whole mission than Fowler and flat out accuses Fowler of sending young men to their death, while he himself sits safe in his office inside the dome, all so Fowler can become a great man, the one who opened Jupiter to human colonisation.

Miss Stanley is the rare example of an older woman character in a golden age science fiction story who is not someone’s mother, aunt or grandmother, but a highly skilled specialist (the best conversion operator in the solar system) in her own right. Miss Stanley also takes absolutely no shit from anybody, least of all Fowler. She knows a man who’s chasing glory and doesn’t care whom he sacrifices along the way when she sees one. And yes, I’m certain that it is total coincidence that the argument between Fowler and Miss Stanley about the ethics of sacrificing young men for some nebulous greater good was written towards the end of WWII, when the Fowlers of our world were sending young soldiers out to die by the thousands.

To no one’s surprise, Harold Allen does not come back, but vanishes without a trace. Fowler tries to deflect the blame onto the conversion machine and the biologists who programmed it, based on a Jovian lifeform the humans call “Loper”. But Miss Stanley declares that nothing is wrong with her machine and the biologists offer an undoubtedly lengthy explanation why their data is correct that Simak thankfully spares us.

Unlike some of the more bloodthirsty and ruthless WWII generals of the era, Fowler does have a conscience. As a result, Miss Stanley’s accusation that he is sitting there high and dry, while he is sending young men to their deaths has clearly gotten to him. Therefore, Fowler decides that the next person to go out into the Jovian atmosphere will be Fowler himself. Though he won’t be going alone. Instead, he’ll take his faithful dog Towser with him, because Fowler would feel bad about leaving him behind.

[image error]

The dog may be Towser, but the robot is definitely not Fowles on this 1971 cover of City.

And so Fowler and Towser step onto the Jovian surface in their new bodies. Fowler realises that unlike the hell world his human mind had envisioned, Jupiter is a pleasant and beautiful place, when experienced in the body of a Loper. The massive gales are a light breeze, the corrosive ammonia downpour is a light and gentle rain, the toxic atmosphere smells of lavender.

When Fowler tries to call for Towser, he realises that he’s telepathic and that he can talk to Towser now. And Towser, who’s very happy with his new body, because it is so much better than his aging dog body, can answer him.

“You’re… talking to me”, a stunned Fowler exclaims, whereupon Towser replies that he always talked to Fowler, only that Fowler could never understand him.

Fowler and Towser engage in a friendly race to an ammonia waterfall that crashes over a cliff of frozen oxygen and realise that their minds are changing as well and that they know things they never knew before about Jovian colours and how to make metal withstand the Jovian atmosphere better. “Maybe…” Fowler muses, “…humans are the morons of the universe, naturally slow and foggy.”

Fowler also realises why none of the people he sent out ever came back. Because life is simply so much better as a Loper, the surface of Jupiter is beautiful and there are so many mysteries to explore.

Towser declares that he won’t go back, because they would only turn him into a dog again. Fowler pities the people in the dome who have no idea how wonderful life as a Loper really is. But he also realises that he couldn’t live in his old human body anymore, not even for a short while, because its limitations would simply be too much to bear, now he knows how much better life can be.

And so Fowler and Towser head off into the sunset (or the Jovian equivalent thereof) to have amazing adventures on Jupiter, while back at the dome, Miss Stanley and the others wonder what happened to them.

[image error]

This might be Fowles and Towser on the cover of the 1952 Gnome Press edition of “City”.

For some reason, I haven’t read much of Clifford D. Simak. At least based on “Desertion”, I should probably remedy that, because “Desertion” is a wonderful story. It’s also that rare beast, a hard science fiction story published in Astounding that manages not to be clunky and filled with infodumps and exposition, but beautifully written. And “Desertion” absolutely is hard science fiction based on what was known about Jupiter at the time, even if the conversion machine is very much handwavium.

In fact, I was stunned that “Desertion” (and the other City stories, for that matter) was published in Astounding, because even though it is hard science fiction, “Desertion” is not at all what you’d expect to find in Astounding and not just because it is better written than approximately ninety percent of the other stories in the magazine. No, “Desertion” also violates John W. Campbell’s famous dictum that humans must always triumph. Because the humans in “Desertion” are not superior at all. Instead, they are small-minded, blinkered and – to quote Fowler – “the morons of the solar system”. Even a random Jovian critter the Earth scientists are not even sure is intelligent is superior to humans.

Add to that Miss Stanley (who’s awesome, by the way, and who I hope gets a Loper body and great and glorious adventures of her own) blatantly criticising men (and they almost always are men) sending out others to die, just so they can make their mark in the world, and I honestly wonder how on Earth this story came to be published by John W. Campbell in Astounding? Was Campbell too busy writing manuals for sonar systems or annoying the FBI that month, so that his assistant Kay Tarrant (who according to contemporary accounts had more than a little of Miss Stanley in her) took over and picked this one out of the slush pile? On the other hand, as I’ve noted before, John W. Campbell published quite a lot of stories that were a far cry from what we now consider Campbellian science fiction.

Stylistically, Simak is much closer to Ray Bradbury as well as Leigh Brackett and C.L. Moore’s solo works than to Isaac Asimov, George O. Smith, A.E. van Vogt and the other mainstays in Campbell’s stable during the war years. And like the Bradbury stories I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project, “Desertion” feels very timeless and with a few tweaks wouldn’t seem out of place in a contemporary issue of Lightspeed, Clarkesworld or Tor.com. But unlike the various Bradbury stories, “Desertion” is hard science fiction, which usually dates much worse than softer science fiction or outright fantasy.

A beautiful story about friendship, dogs and what it feels like to be alive. Highly recommended.

Send to Kindle