The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Fergus O'Breen Mysteries #4

by Anthony Boucher

Ten otherworldly "diabolical delights" from the author of Rocket to the Morgue and "The Quest for Saint Aquin" (Kirkus Reviews).

Anthony Boucher was a literary renaissance man: an Edgar Award-winning mystery reviewer, an esteemed editor of the Hugo Award-winning Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a prolific scriptwriter of radio mystery programs, and an accomplished writer of mystery, science fiction, fantasy, and horror. With a particular fondness for the locked room mystery, Boucher created such iconic sleuths as Los Angeles PI Fergus O'Breen, amateur sleuth Sister Ursula, and alcoholic ex-cop Nick Noble.

"A fine volume of inventive entertainment" (The Times, London), this collection features ten of Boucher's greatest stories of science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and horror.

A down on his luck college professor chats with a magician over cocktails, and a hairy situation ensues in "The Compleat Werewolf." Private detective Fergus O'Breen visits Mexico to investigate a peculiar case of a man with a skeleton in "The Pink Caterpillar." Meet androids and aliens in "Q.U.R." and "Robinc." A terrifying--but tiny--demon is summoned in "Snulbug." And a man discovers true terror lingering in the corner of his eye in the California desert in "They Bite."

Genres: Horror, Fantasy, Short Stories, Science Fiction, Fiction, Werewolves, Anthologies

256 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

William Anthony Parker White, better known by his pen name Anthony Boucher, was an American author, critic, and editor who wrote several classic mystery novels, short stories, science fiction, and radio dramas. Between 1942 and 1947, he acted as reviewer of mostly mystery fiction for the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition to "Anthony Boucher", White also employed the pseudonym "H. H. Holmes", which was the pseudonym of a late-19th-century American serial killer; Boucher would also write light verse and sign it " Herman W. Mudgett" (the murderer's real name).
In a 1981 poll of 17 detective story writers and reviewers, his novel Nine Times Nine was voted as the ninth best locked room mystery of all time.

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

May 2019 Review: I'm not rereading the entire book, just a couple of the short stories focusing on robots.

Q.U.R. is closely named to the classic R.U.R. which gave us the word 'robot', but were actually artificially created biologic machines that looked like humans. In this story, Boucher explores why we make robots look like humans when other shapes would probably be more efficient. The idea of the uncanny valley is not apparent, but he has some other ideas that are just as interesting.

Robinc is a continuation of the prior story. Now that they've managed to get non-android robots made legal, they still have to get the public to accept them. Like its predecessor, a bit madcap & fun. Not as many good ideas in this one.

I read several others & was impressed by the whole thing no matter the genre. Good author. It's a shame he seems to have been forgotten.
---------------
March 2010 Review: This is a collection of short stories. The first is the title story & was amusing, an interesting take on lycanthropy. Kind of hoaky, but fun & full of older references from the McCarthy era. Well worth reading. 4 stars.

The second story is a different sort of horror story, "The Pink Caterpillar". It is told by Fergus, the detective from the first story. Interesting, but I wouldn't rush out to read it again. 3 stars.

I continued to read this collection & was more & more amazed by the number of stories & genres it covered. They were all good stories, somewhat dated in most cases, but not badly. Some stories were SF, others a blend of SF & Fantasy or even the paranormal - time travel mixed with a demon or a newspaper that always prints the truth. Some were horror, without gore, but pretty terrifying. Again, I'll use the truthful newspaper as an example or a man who chats with his own ghost.

All were well worth reading.

[Craig · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very enjoyable collection of ten stories of fantasy, with a little bit of horror and science fiction thrown in. Boucher is best remembered for his editing (The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction) and for his mysteries, but he wrote some excellent short fantasy stories. Most of the works here are lighthearted romps, but they're quite clever with memorable characters. I especially enjoyed Q.U.R., the title story, and Snulbug, all from Unknown Worlds magazine. All of the stories were written during the second World War, when the demand for escapist fiction was high.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The Compleat Werewolf" gathers together 10 short stories and novellas from the pen of Anthony Boucher, all of which originally appeared in various pulp magazines (such as "Unknown Worlds," "Adventure Magazine," "Astounding Science Fiction," "Weird Tales" and "Thrilling Wonder Stories") from 1941-'45. Boucher, whose real name was William Anthony Parker White, was a man of many talents, and during his career, which lasted from the early '40s to the late '50s, he worked as a magazine editor, a book reviewer (for "The New York Times" and "New York Herald Tribune") and an author of science fiction, horror and mystery. I initially learned of this "Compleat Werewolf" collection of 1969 from the excellent overview volume "Horror: 100 Best Books," in which author Neil Gaiman sings the book's praises. But even Gaiman is compelled to admit that the Boucher collection is an unlikely pick for a Top 100 Horror list, as only about five of the book's tales are even vaguely horrific, and all but a couple are leavened by a goodly dose of humor. Still, he tells us "it contains at least two stories worth their weight in chilled blood," and indeed, all 10 stories are perfectly produced little gems of either horror, fantasy or flat-out sci-fi. A recent rereading of the collection, after a period of around 12 years, has served to remind me of what a wonderful and amusing writer Boucher could be.

As for the stories themselves: The collection opens neatly with the novella-length title work, "The Compleat Werewolf," in which a German-language professor, Wolfe Wolf, learns--thanks to his new drinking buddy, the magician Ozymandias--that he is a full-fledged werewolf, capable of change at will. Much of the situations are played for laffs, but this longish tale ultimately manages to conflate devil worshippers, G-men, Nazi spies, a Hollywood starlet and a talking cat, culminating with one extremely suspenseful action siege indeed. The tale wraps up in a manner that could have easily led to an entire series of tales about our werewolf hero working for the FBI; I wonder if Robert McCammon was influenced by this classic story when he wrote his 1989 novel "The Wolf's Hour." Next up is "The Pink Caterpillar," a story of pure horror that is told by one of the G-men characters of "The Compleat Werewolf." Here, a "doctor" residing in the Mexican countryside learns that pacts with rural medicine men don't always come off as planned. This little chiller is one of the more grisly tales in the bunch. An example of Boucher's skill as a sci-fi writer, "Q.U.R." tells the story of a trio of men who come up with the strictly utilitarian, "usuform" robot to replace the humanoid androids then in use. This is a charming story, filled with likable characters, both human and alien. Written in 1942, the tale features a black president (here, actually, as Council Head, more of a world president) 66 years before the Obama fact. In a really right-on passage, Boucher writes "...ten centuries ago people would have snorted just like that at the idea of a black as Head on this planet. Such narrow stupidity seems fantastic to us now. Our own prejudices will seem just as comical to our great-great-grandchildren." Let us hope! "Robinc," up next, is a direct sequel to "Q.U.R.," and just as entertaining, as our trio of inventors gets into major-league trouble after their new robots become a success. Really wonderful Golden Age sci-fi, this. In "Snulbug," the first story that Boucher ever sold, a research scientist uses the inch-tall titular demon, raised by necromantic means, to assist him in amassing a small fortune. But naturally, things go consistently awry, in this highly clever, time-paradox tale.

"Mr. Lupescu," the shortest story of the bunch, finds a child's imaginary playmate to be not so imaginary as it first appears. Boucher skillfully manages to cram two major surprises into this five-page affair! Up next is "They Bite," easily the most horrifying and grisliest tale in the collection. Here, a louse of a human being, a seller of wartime Army secrets, discovers that the legend of the Carker clan--cannibalistic desert dwellers in the American Southwest--may not be a legend after all. The denouement of this horrific tale--an inspiration for Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes," perhaps?--should linger long in the reader's memory. "Expedition," a humorous tale of the first Martian voyage to Earth, told in the form of radio transmissions, comes next. This straightforward sci-fi story features some interesting protagonists (the Martians are described as being hexagonlike bugs) and a rather clever conclusion. The story that follows, the 70-page novella "We Print the Truth," is the longest tale of the bunch, and a real winner. In a setup that Rod Serling might well have approved of, a small-town newspaper editor is granted a wish by his mysterious typesetter (who may or may not be a fairy of the Oberon variety). He wishes that his paper, in the future, will tell nothing but the truth, and soon enough, anything that is printed therein has the power to alter reality. What an opportunity for effecting change, for ending wars and bettering lives! But our harried editor soon finds that this godlike ability comes with some serious problems, in this extremely ingratiating tale. Filled with loads of interesting characters and conversations, convincing details of small-town Americana, and endless invention, this might be my personal favorite story of the bunch. The collection wraps up with "The Ghost of Me," another clever, short tale. Here, a man's ghost comes back to haunt his house...even though the man is not quite dead yet! The ghost has made a slight miscalculation as regards timing, in this decidedly loopy story...one that yet still manages to pull off a rather suspenseful ending. So there you have it: 10 stories of varied subject matter in varied genres, all with only one thing in common...the ability to mightily entertain the reader. As far as making the case for Anthony Boucher being a writer of great and manifold talents, I would have to say that the collection is a complete--or, rather, compleat--success. More than highly recommended!

[David Agranoff · Rating 5 out of 5]

A couple of years ago I heard a couple of writers talking about their experience at Bouchercon. It was a crime fiction convention. It never crossed my mind to ask how or why the con had that name and years passed before I learned about Anthony Boucher, he was the Boucher the con was named after. In fairness, I think plenty of people who attend the Con don’t know him either. I would later learn that he was a foundational writer in the mystery genre. So, I didn’t even think it was possible when his name kept coming up as an editor and friend of Philip K Dick in the sci-fi community that it was the same dude.

Most writers can write for their whole careers and never make an impact that defines a single genre. William Anthony Parker White wrote books and edited magazines that defined both Mystery and Science Fiction. It is one thing to have had such an impact in one genre that awards and conventions are named after you, but amazing to have impacted multiple genres. Boucher is known for being a godfather of American mystery novels but it was his impact on Science Fiction goes well beyond the amazing stories he left behind personally.

As a magazine founder, he published many of the debut stories from titans such as Philip K Dick and Richard Matheson. He was an active member of the community who socialized and worked with writers like Dick, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Ray Nelson during his time in the Bay Area From the 50s until his death) and in the early forties when most of these stories were written he was hanging out in a writers group in LA. That group had several sci-fi giants in it. From Heinlein, Hubbard, and the Kuttners his world was influenced by these major voices that were his friends. He wrote about them in a classic mystery novel Rocket to the Morgue that I reviewed here last year.

All the stories in the Compleat Werewolf were written during this period Boucher was publishing stories in both fields and hanging in LA with the Heinlein gang. They were not collected until the '60s but this book represents his wartime Science Fiction and Horror. The stories appeared in pulp magazines such as Unknown Worlds, "Astounding Science Fiction," "Weird Tales" and a few others from 1941-45. Think about it this way most of these stories were written when Hitler was still alive just to put the stories age in perspective.

For that reason, they have a certain surreal feel as speculation from a time so long ago. Of Course, the sci-fi stories have some silly robots and private tubes going directly to spaceports but if you don’t find that charming I don’t know what to tell you. Out of date Science Fiction is special for the window into the mind of the speculator – in this case, Tony Boucher.

It is almost impossible for me to not see this book through my Dickhead lens because Boucher was an important personal influence on Dick. It wasn’t just that he bought Dick’s first story but it was Boucher being a cool dude that helped Phil eject his notions that Sci-fi was just kids stuff. So his style of writing has some similar tones should not have surprised me.

From the opening title Novella with its sarcastic tone to the last story Ghost of Me that has a narrator questioning their sanity you can see the influence Boucher had on the guy who sold him Opera records. Let us start with that first Novella.

The Compleat Werewolf is a funny tale. The story of Professor Wolfe Wolf, an academic who is surprised when a mystic tells him that he has always been a werewolf and he knows just the spell to unlock his power. Published one year after Universal’s Wolf-Man. It presents the idea that a werewolf is automatically evil and the story more than any other in the collection has elements of Boucher’s detective stories.

I knew I was in for an amusing experience as soon as I read this scene early on…

“But a werewolf is a man that changes into a wolf. I’ve never done that. Honest, I haven’t.”
“A mammal,” Said Ozymandias, “is an animal that bears its young and suckles them. A virgin is nonetheless a mammal. Because you have never changed doesn’t make you less of a werewolf.”
“But a werewolf-“Suddenly Wolfe’s eyes lit up. “A werewolf is better than a G-man!”

There is some hilarious stuff relating to the professor trying to get closer to his crush as a dog, which as you can imagine doesn’t go well. Perhaps the funniest scene in the entire book is a part where Ozymandias talks about the word that unlocked his “were” skills.

“There is no telling what would happen if I taught her The Word.”
“Not the least. Of course, there’s some werethings that just aren’t much use being. Take a wereant. You change and somebody steps on you and that’s that. Or like a fella I knew in Madagascar. Taught him the Word and know what? He turned wereiplodicus. Shattered the whole house into pieces when he changed and damned near trampled me under hoof before I could say Absarka!”

The second story the Pink Caterpillar is an interesting story as it is very weird, almost hard to explain. Set in a small town in Mexico It opens with a time travel discussion where the characters talk about traveling 100 years into the future. Being 80 years in the storyteller’s future as I read I found that striking. It is the story of a supernatural pact with a rural medicine man.

The next two stories are robot stories that were published under the name H.H. Holmes without the internet Boucher got away with the in-joke of using the first American Serial Killer’s title as a pen name. These stories Q.U.R. and Roboinc are basically one long novelette. This is a very forward-thinking Sci-fi stories about the inventors who decide to stop wasting time making androids futuristic. While the story has forced sterilizations and travel tubes it also has black world leaders. Speaking to his audience in 1942 decades before the civil rights act Boucher said this…

"...ten centuries ago people would have snorted just like that at the idea of a black as Head on this planet. Such narrow stupidity seems fantastic to us now. Our own prejudices will seem just as comical to our great-great-grandchildren."

Snullbug was Boucher’s first short story as such it is important, containing magic and time travel it is a funny one. OK Gennie my wish is that you go to the future one day in the future and bring me back a newspaper. Fun one.

The Expedition is the best and weirdest sci-fi story in the collection. This story is bonkers and entirely built on a reversal. This is a story about the first contact between Martian and earthers during a Martian Expedition. This first contact is hilarious.

“…We have not fully deciphered his language but I have, as instructed, been keeping full phonetic transcriptions of his every remark. Trubaz has calculated psychologically that the meaning of this remark to be:
“Ministers of the Great one, be gracious to me.”
The phonetic transcription is as follows:
AND THEY TALK ABOUT PINK ELEPHANTS!

However, don’t leave this review that Boucher was only capable of humor. There is one truly great horror stories. For me the best of the collection is one F.Paul Wilson pointed out in our Tony Boucher panel (see links below). This story is a frightening horror story set in the sun-soaked California desert – They Bite. The set-up of this story in many ways reminded me of the classic Doctor Who story Blink. The set-up is great. Two characters are talking about the monsters that just barely stay out of sight.

“Optical fatigue-“ Tallant Began.
“Sure. I know every man to his own legend. There isn’t a tribe of Indians hasn’t some accounting for it. You’ve heard of the Watchers? And the twentieth-century white-man comes along and it is optical fatigue. Only in the nineteenth-century things weren’t quite the same and there were the Carkers.”
“You got a special localized legend?”
“Call it that. You glimpse things out of the corner of your mind, like you glimpse lean, dry things out of the corner of your eye. You encase them in solid circumstance and thy’re not so bad. That is the growth of the legend. The Folk Mind in Action. You take Carkers and the things you don’t see and you put them together. And they bite."

Are they monsters or just a cannibal family Like the Hills Have Eyes? Not a product of nuclear testing but being left alone away from civilization and growing in legend and isolation. This is a fantastic horror story on every level, every world. To me the best thing I have read by Boucher.
As a whole, The Compleat Werewolf should be essential history for fans of Horror and Science Fiction. It should be essential for serious Dickheads who want to understand Boucher or the development of the genre. A must-read.


Check out the panel I hosted about the author of this book on Dickheads... Featuring Gary K Wolfe, F.Paul Wilson, Gordan Van Geldermand myself.

https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodca...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsz67...

[Kris Sellgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title story is a delight. Possibly this is a novella rather than a short story: it is 56 pages long. A professor of German at UC Berkeley meets a real magician, who tells him that he is a werewolf and teaches him the magic word for transformation. The professor is delighted and has much fun loping around the hills as a wolf. The problem: he can’t say the magic word to return him to a human when he is a wolf. Much hilarity ensues as the professor finds ways to get other humans to say the magic word (he always reappears as a naked human), is pursued by the police for not having a dog license, auditions for a role as a wolf dog in a movie, etc. Throw in a gorgeous ex-student turned Hollywood starlet and Nazi spies (this story is from 1942) to make a great screwball comedy. Someone should make a movie of this.

The rest of the stories are not as good as The Compleat Werewolf. They tend to end sadly. In one of them, the bad Martians scouting Earth for an invasion kill a kitten, which proved how evil they were, but nevertheless I was bothered by it.

[Andy Weston · Rating 3 out of 5]

Boucher’s stories first appeared in Pulp magazines in the early 1940s. I came across his work from Neil Gaiman’s praise in the book Horror: The 100 Best Books.

By some way, the best two stories in this collection and the novella length first story, ‘The Compleat Werewolf’ and a shorter piece much later in the book, ‘They Bite’.

In The Compleat Werewolf, a German-language professor, Wolfe Wolf, learns from his new drinking pal, a magician called Ozymandias, that he is a werewolf and capable of change at will. Most of the episodes are played for humour, it’s far more of a comedy than a piece of horror, but this twist to the tale (not a spoiler) is that he manages to unite devil worshippers with the secret service, Nazi spies, a Hollywood actress and a talking cat. The climax is a really well done action siege scene.

They Bite is something quite different, and certainly the most horrifying and gruesome tale in the collection. Here, a particularly evil individual, who trades wartime Army secrets, seeks to exploit the legend of the Carker clan, who are cannibalistic desert dwellers in the Arizona desert. It culminates in a wonderful piece of horror, and one which has no doubt influenced many screenwriters and authors ever since.

[Jon]

1943 Retro Hugo Finalist for Best Novella

“The Compleat Werewolf” by Anthony Boucher (Unknown Worlds, April 1942)

Read 4/20/2018; really liked it. Great characterization and a better, kinder view of the werewolf myth. 4 stars

Also skimmed through the other stories published by Boucher in 1941 and read the last story of the anthology - "The Ghost of Me" - which was also quite good.

[Cheryl]

For QUR and the sequel...

[Jodi · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not really scary (with the exception of They Bite), but well-written and fun to read, anyway.

[Morgan Dhu · Rating 4 out of 5]

I acquired Anthony Boucher’s collection, The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories because I was reading novellas recommended by various folks about the Internet as possible nominations for the 1943 Retro Hugos, and The Compleat Werewolf was one of them. I don’t remember reading much of Boucher’s work back in my early years of sf reading, but I enjoyed The Compleat Werewolf enough to go on and read the other stories in the collection.

Boucher tends to write with a light, even comical touch, incorporating elements of the ridiculous into his fiction, but in such a way as to make them seem quite appropriate at the time. Not that all of his stories are comedies. Several of the ones in this collection deal with very serious matters, from German spy rings in WWII, to murder. But Boucher unfolds even these dark plots with wit and just the right amount of detachment.

In the title novella, The Compleat Werewolf, a man rejected by the woman he loves because he isn’t someone special like an actor or a G-man discovers he’s a werewolf. He gets a gig as a dog in a major motion picture, and is then hired by the FBI when he exposes a major spy ring. He also discovers that the girl of his dreams isn’t worth it. But he makes friends with a talking cat.

The Pink Caterpillar, Mr. Lupescu and They Bite are all about the lengths someone will go to, to get rid of someone in their way. And how their actions carry the seeds of their own destruction.

Boucher tried his hand at some stories about a company that made robots, much as Asimov did. Two of them, Q.U.R and Robinc, are included in the collection. I actually found them more interesting and funnier than Asimov’ early robot stories. And Dugg Quimby is much more intriguing a character than Susan Calvin.

The novelette We Print the Truth is a thoughtful modern-day variation on the fairy tale of the fateful wish - the wish granted by a magical being that ultimately dies far more harm than good - that examines issues of free will, consent, a d the value of something earned over something taken.

Many of the stories in this collection depend on the unexpected plot twist - The Ghost of Me being one if the clearest examples. A steady diet of Boucher might make this structural preference feel a bit overused, but it’s generally well handled.

One thing I quite enjoyed about these stories was the way that Boucher works philosophical considerations into so many of them. Fate, karma, the meaning of free will the theological problem of the existence of evil - there’s generally something to reflect on after reading.

Boucher also tends to toss in casual notes of social criticism. In one story, he has a character comment that once it would have been unthinkable for the head of the government to be a black person. In another, during a discussion of horror tales about ogres from around the world in reference to an abandoned pioneer home in the Arizona desert, a character mentions an Indian tribe that vanished after the pioneers arrived, and adds “That’s not so surprising. The white race is a sort of super-ogre, anyway.”

I’ve been doing a lot of reading of classic sf recently, and I must report that finding Boucher’s works has been an unexpected plus.

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a well written and unexpected short story collection of high quality writing, interesting story concepts and overall very enjoyable.

What it was NOT was horror, which I expected it to be from the title. There are a couple of kinda' horror stories, a lot of speculative fiction and some compelling myth and supernatural stories. It is not fast to read; the stories take a leisurely pace through the subject matter, stopping and every little intersection they can find, but if you can get your hear around the pacing of it all it is a lot of reading enjoyment.

1) THE COMPLEAT WEREWOLF
The titular story is about a university professor, a lecturer in German, who gets his marriage proposal to an ex-student turned down with the one line "Don't be silly'.

He goes on a bender and in a bar meets up with a genuine, professional magician who tells him he is a hereditary werewolf and can trigger and end the change with certain words. Of course, as a werewolf he is unable to SAY the end word which is a bit of a problem. The story then takes an odd and extravagant turn into WWII spies and a whole heap of deering-do

I did not realise at the time of purchase there would be humorous stories, I don't always love the comic ones, but this one was a lot of fun. 4*

2) THE PINK CATERPILLER
Starts during WWII with a few guys discussing the supernatural and witch doctor stuff in the Pacific. We then divert into the main story which was about a man living in a remote village in South America, generally believed to be a doctor because he had a whole skeleton in his study.

The skeleton had nothing to do with medicine however as the story slowly reveals, when the local kids run off with the skeleton and lose a finger. Enjoyable idea and pacing. 3*

3) QUR
Starts out with the protagonist telling the reader that they probably don't even remember when robots used to look like 'men' and that he is going to tell the story of why robots now look as they do.

And it is a good story; the redundancies and the inefficiencies of making robots look like people was making then break down when someone has a brilliant idea to shape them for their task instead of aesthetic value. This, of course, if blocked by Robotics Incorporated, the company with the monopoly on making robots.

It is science fiction, one of the most SF in this collection, and the world building in based in a future where humanity have spread to both Mars and Venus both of which have indigenous races which are part of this story. In many ways this is a very good story, but it drags on a LOT in places and could have used a lot of editing to make it less repetitive. 3*

4) ROBINC
This story barely even sound like another one; it is practically a continuation of the last one only from the POV of ROBINC the Robots Incorporated of the last story - or maybe this should have been the first story. It is about the process of convincing people that robots shaped for their job are superior to ones modeled after people. As such it is mostly psychological. I found it very dull indeed, I even skim-read in places. 2*

5)SNULBUG
This was a fun little comic story about an unemployed biochemist who decides to summon a demon in order to make his fortune so he can equip a lab and afford to do the research of his dreams. The only demon he is strong enough to summon is tiny, geriatric and petulant. He finds out that accessing the immediate future has no guarantees of wealth because of time contradictions. The ending is a lot of fun. 3*

6) MR LUPESCU
Is a strange little story about a boy with an imaginary friend - or is he an imaginary friend? Maybe he is a real person with a completely non-magical presence and malign intent? Oh WHAT wait, maybe there is supernatural after all...

This story had lots of elegant contortions and it was pretty good 3*

7) THE BITE
Now here was the horror story I had expected this compilation to be! The protagonist is living in some desert area (In the Rocky mountains? Are those desert?) and building a shake because the original adobe building on the land is uninhabitable. Down the pub he hears weird and scary urban mythology/ supernatural cautionary tales about the Carker's the family who used to own the property.

He sees this as an opportunity to get rid of someone who is blackmailing him, but things do not in any way turn out as he expected. 5*

8)EXPEDITION
This is another very decent little science fiction story told in a series of dispatches between the First Interplanetary Exploratory Expedition and their Central Receiving Station. The hook is that the Expedition is exploring the third planet from the sun for intelligent life, starting at their moon.

The Martians on the expedition are an odd collections of individuals including specialists in various sciences but also a 'specialist in the art' which we come to realise has something to do with the Martian's obsession with death. It is a pretty good story, including first contact with an individual who first thinks they are a result of excessive drinking. I felt bad about the kitten. 3*

9) WE PRINT THE TRUTH
Is a long story about a newspaper in a small American town during WWII. It starts with another bunch of guys sitting around and talking (the second time Boucher did this, and it was honestly not the best way of introducing characters - it made them hard to remember or tell apart).

Anyway, one of them runs the paper in town, a small one that publishes twice a week and when a murder occurs he is all set to print a special edition when a relative of the victim, the most wealthy man in town, starts leaning on him to print a certain version of the story.
The reporter is full of righteous indignation and when he is offered a wish, by a fairy character he wishes that the paper may always print the truth. Well, this is granted, but the question becomes WAS it the truth before it was printed? Is it always the truth...

It is a good story, overall. I loved the mythological elements, the presence of an old fairy tale character seemed so random and is really such a minor part of the story. Then he reappears, in a similarly minor way later on. Secretary in love with the boss trope occurs, for the second time.
Not a bad story at all, the concept is good, but it went on a bit too long and seemed to have way too many random elements.

And the punchline was intensely annoying since I have no IDEA what it is meant to be about! Some guy playing with a Scottie dog? Is that seriously meant to convey anything important to anyone? It is as annoying as incomprehensible punchlines always are. 3*

10) THE GOHST OF ME
Is a quite fascinating time travel/supernatural concept. A doctor who is working in a clinic trialing a treatment for people who have inhaled concrete dust from the local plant, is in his office one night when he sees a ghost.

The ghost in question however is actually himself who has come back in time to haunt his murderer and just happened to get the timeline wrong. This is a really fun and funny little story without any of the redundancies and long writing that plague some of the other stories in the collection. 4*

So, overall a good collection despite the dates writing style. The writing itself is excellent, even if not contemporary and it was well worth slowing down for a while and matching pack with it.
I would be more than happy to read more by the author, should I happen upon any of his books.

[Werner]

All of the stories included in this anthology are included in the comprehensive collection of Boucher's speculative fiction, The Compleat Boucher (see my review of that title).

[Bill Chance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Classic stuff from the good old days, when men were men, women were women, and the FBI recruit was a were wolf.

My blog entry:

http://billchance.org/2011/06/30/the-...

[Ron Kerrigan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plots and my reviews, with rating of one to five stars. (Note all the stories were originally published in the early 1940's, so the specter of WWII is evident in some of them.)

The Compleat Werewolf PLOT: during the early days of WWII a werewolf and a magician team up to both make the werewolf's life better and thwart an anti-government plot. REVIEW: Nicely written tale that is as flippant as some of Boucher's full length novels (like The Case of the Baker Street Irregulars.) ****

The Pink Caterpillar PLOT: Detective Fergus O'Breen is sent to Mexico to confirm the death of a man for an insurance company. The man died of natural causes, but why he died is the astonishing part. REVIEW: Quickly told tale that's different and fun. ****

Q.U.R. PLOT: In a distant future, a man recounts how he was instrumental in replacing androids that did most of the work on the planet. REVIEW: another quirky view of the future as seen from the 1940's (where, it seems, it will take a thousand years for a black man to become head of an Interplanetary Government). ****

Robinc PLOT: written a year after Q.U.R., this is a continuation, as the men who invent robots that surplant androids battle the man in charge of the android industry. REVIEW: not as interesting as the previous story; maybe reading them a year apart would have been better. ***

Snulbug PLOT: a man concocts a spell that summons a demon, but one without too much power. The man demands the demon to help him raise money for a medical device to save lives, but the demon warns him that his plans for raising the money have a fatal flaw. REVIEW: nicely told and fun, with a hint of time-travel paradox theme thrown in. *****

Mr. Lupescu PLOT: a young boy claims he has a real fairy godfather; of course his mother believes it is just his imagination. REVIEW: shortest entry in the book is fun, in a dark sort of way. *****

They Bite PLOT: A man spying on desert military operations plans to use the legend of local man-eating ogres to cover his plan to stop a blackmailer. REVIEW: sort of a "you-saw-it-coming plot, but still well told and disturbing. ****

Expedition PLOT: explorers from Mars intent on colonizing Earth land in a remote desert where a hermit realizes their plans and fools them into leaving (or does he?) REVIEW: Fun story. ****

We Print the Truth PLOT: a newspaper editor in a small town uses magic and his weekly paper to change the town's future using magic (but as he is told, with magic "there's always a catch.") REVIEW: one of those stories that makes you imagine what you would do in someone else's place. *****

The Ghost of Me PLOT: a doctor is confronted by his doppelganger who claims he is soon to be murdered. REVIEW: okay story with some mind-bending thoughts (and since it's 1942 the doctor thinks nothing of smoking in his consultation room.) ***

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ohh, a lot of fun. The first of the books Jeremy Dauber impelled me to go back and read, this is WWII-era weird fiction (there are a number of topical references and some implicit reflection on the merits of escapism at such a time) that is fun, inventive, and surprisingly modern.

Also, range is impressive: we've got stories featuring a good werewolf, some proto-cyberpunk doubling as a meditation on robots and humanity and theology and economics (honestly, its vision of specialized robots engineered to do only and precisely their one job, which brings the robots joy in a way that generalization doesn't, feels like a premonitory horror story about the gig economy), imaginary friend that turns out to be real, tall tale that recalls Gerald Kersh or Dunsany's clubbable tales, western folk horror that could have come out any time in the past 60 years (could be by Laird Barron, or John Langan, or King), being haunted by your own ghost, and another long quasi-theological one, with a bit of historical wish-fulfillment at the end (which makes a lot of sense, knowing that it was published in 1943), about free will and a newspaper that just prints the truth. (Surprised that one was never made into a movie.) Asides that reflect his day job as mystery critic, as well as his other day job as a mystery writer.

I wanted more literal werewolf stories, but this is a treat from start to finish--and also an interesting sidelight on the fantasy side of WWII. Kind of wonder if there's a book in that--the mystic/theological version of WWI has been covered thoroughly and quite well, but considering this for WWII and the Cold War (both during the period and now, when weird-Cold-War fiction feels like a developed subgenre) to Vietnam to the 200os wars (there's multiple stories by Lucius Shepard, and Langan and Jamil Jan Kochai and The Militia House, off the top of my head) might be worth considering.

[Joe Santoro · Rating 5 out of 5]

This has been sitting in the to-read pile for a long time...only only vague know the name, and that cover didn't do it any favors, but in my ongoing efforts to make said pile smaller sometimes I just pick at random.

And I was very pleasantly surprised. Only one real stinker in the bunch, and the good ones are very good. All these stories were written while WWII was going, and it provides the backdrop. There's quite a range of stuff. The title story is actually hilarious, about a college professor that finds out he's a werewolf from a passing magician and tries to use that to impress his lady love. it features Fergus O'Breen as a sort of investigator, who apparently is Boucher's detective in a few straight detective stories. He makes a 2nd appearance in the Pink Catepillar, which is a bit less funny, and focuses on a theme a love, which is time travel is impossible and breaks things.

That theme is also found in Snulbug (which I definitely had read before but didn't know the name of the author of) and Expedition. Snulbug is pretty classic, about a man that summons a demon to fetch him tomorrow's paper from the future to make his fortune, but it doesn't go as planned.

My favorite was We print the Truth, where a small town newspaper man catches the attention of a fairie and anything he prints becomes truth, just a great story with lots to make you think about.

Lastly, there are two robot stories (really one story in two parts) about a 'straight thinker' who is out to revolutionize the industry. It's unusual to see so many different stories handled all really well by one author... definitely worth the read.

[D J Rout · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of short stories by the former editor of 'The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'. The two standout stories are the title story and 'We Print The Truth', but all the others have their merits. One of the best things about them is that they all have the certainties of 1940's fiction in them. Love conquers all, there was a war on, and fantasy elements impinge on ordinary life. There's no self-conscious modelling of a story to match a learnt template as you see with so many modern stories - this is 'fiction to entertain' if I can borrow a quote from A World Out of Time

I gave it the extra star for re-readability.

[Norman Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the title story as a finalist for the Retro Hugo Awards (1942). I did not read the other stories.

This is a lighthearted tale of a man, Wolfe Wolf, who accidentally discovers he is a werewolf from a mysterious magician. Wolf wants to use his newfound power to help him woo a beautiful young actress. But complications ensue, most with varying degrees of comedic results. As such, this is a nice take on what is usually a subject for horror. But I'm not sure it really reaches the level of a Hugo winner, as it's pretty much just a romantic comedy without a lot of subtlety. It's a fun, entertaining story, but Boucher's other 1942 novella, "Barrier," would probably have been a better choice as a Retro Hugo finalist.

[JW · Rating 3 out of 5]

These stories from the 1940’s exemplify an optimism that reminds me of Robert Heinlein. Sure, there’s a war on and we’ve got to beat the Nazis, but we’ll pull through. We just have to buckle down and get to work. Boucher adds a strong dose of whimsy to the can do spirit. “The Compleat Werewolf” could have been filmed as a screwball comedy, while “We Print the Truth” has more than a trace of Frank Capra. Nick and Nora Charles would have been right at home in the well-lubricated atmosphere of most of the stories.
Most, but not all. The three tales of horror, ���The Pink Caterpillar”, “Mr. Lupescu” and “They Bite” are told straight, and are quite effective.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mixed bag, as per usual with short story collections. None of the stories are bad by any means, but they all have an antiquated sense of humor that make me think of a slightly more adult version of those old live action Disney movies like “The Absent-Minded Professor”. It was broad and corny humor back then and it’s certainly not any better in 2020.
Some of the stories, especially “We Print the Truth” are conceptually interesting but lack the flair that somebody like Ray Bradbury could bring to it. The best story overall is “The Pink Caterpillar”. It’s strange and to the point and has the least amount of lame 1940s humor.

[DJ Babb · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book as a child sitting under a big tree in our front yard. I had walked a few blocks to our local library, clutching it in excited and it did not disappoint. I am in my 50s now and I still remember the names of the stories and how they made me feel. The “Pink worm” was silly and frightening all at the same time. Even today I think about one of the story’s as I’m driving down a dark road and see a dead animal. The fear stayed with me and it will you too.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

Still shocked that Hollywood never adapted Boucher's Compleat Werewolf into the Incredible Mr. Limpet of werewolf flicks (think Frank Capra + werewolf) - esp. considering that Boucher wrote screenplays.

[Paul McNamee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mostly whimsical tales of fantasy & science fiction. I'd only classify a few as 'horror' (and "The Compleat Werewolf" is not one of them.) Fun stories from classic 1940s magazines (Unknown Worlds, Astounding Science Fiction, et al) if you're in the mood for such tales.

[salvator · Rating 3 out of 5]

only rating this for the compleat werewolf. cute little story with a charming cast and writing style. i solely read it to fulfil my own transformation related fetishes. pretty good for that it’s decently descriptive.

[Frederic Van Laere · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't judge this book by its cover. Or by its title, for that matter.

[Kathryn Baron · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Compleat Werewolf *** So much fun

[EM3 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mixed bag

Like any collection, a mix of stories, some good. What was frustrating as a reader was all the typos. This text needs better proofreading.

[J.A. Webb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great stories.

Will keep you up at night :)

CONTENT WARNING- horror not suitable for young readers, of for adults who have issues sleeping when there are monsters hiding in the closet.

[Lauren Donis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I expected this to be much more dry and bland so was surprised at how light and humourous and kind of silly it was (the first story about a werewolf called Wolf Wolfe?). Not every story was super interesting but overall it was a decently entertaining short story collection.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

"What happens after death to a man whose ghost has already been murdered?"

These are a collection of pulp stories, so expect the twist endings, snarky, cheap dialog and all the rest. It was a fun read, warts and all and gives a nice perspective of the era.