BITS & PIECES

 Openers:  My name is Quinn Quicksilver -- or "Cue-Cue" to the mean kids when I was growing up -- but I can't blame my parents because I don't know who they are.  Soon after birth, I was abandoned on a lonely highway, seven miles outside of Peproe, Arizona, where 906 people pretended that the place where they lived was actually a town.  Swaddled in a blue blanket, nestled in a white bassinet made of plastic thatching, I had been placed on the centermost of three lanes of blacktop, where I was found shortly after dawn.

Although you might think this was as bad a start on life one could have, I assure you it could have been much worse.  For one thing, this was coyote country.  Had ne of those creatures found me, it wouldn't have suckled me as did the wolf that saved abandoned Romulus, the founder of Rome, but instead would have regarded me as a Grubhub delivery.  I could also have been run over by an eighteen-wheeler and turned into pate for vultures.

Fortunately, I was found by three men on their way to work.  The first, Hakeem Kaspar, was a lineman for the county, as in that Glen Campbell song I've always found lovely but weird, though at the time I was discovered on the highway, I hadn't yet herd it.  The second, Bailie Belshazzer, worked as head mechanic at one of the country's first wind farms.  The third Caesar Melchizadek, was a blackjack pit boss in an Indian casino.

According to the newspaper story at the time, Hakeem tucked me snugly in the passenger-side footwell of his electric-company truck and dove me to the county sheriff's office, with Bailie and Caesar following in their vehicles.  Why they felt it necessary that all three should turn me in to the law, the newspaper didn't say.  This was all I knew about those men until, year later and running for my life, I visited one of them with the hope of learning some small detail that might be a clue as to who and what I am.

-- Dean Koontz, Quicksilver, 2022

Thus begins the latest Dean Koontz extravaganza, which takes nineteen-year-old Quinn Quicksilver on a journey from innocence to something else as he develops strange powers and battles some really mean entities intent on destroying the world.   Quinn spent his youth in a Catholic orphanage and once he aged out he began working at a regional magazine writing articles of local interest.  (Remember, this is a kid of nineteen.)  Quinn is extremely self-aware and literate; his voice is strewn with a wry sense of humor most adults never attain.  (Remember, this is a kid of nineteen.)  A few months before, he had begun to experience something he call "psychic magnetism," where he would automatically go to any place that he "needed" to be; much like Koontz's Odd Thomas (another character who seemed far older than his years).  This get him into trouble.

This magnetism takes him to a remote location where a girl is being held captive.  She is Bridget Rainking, who, while not beautiful, is a pretty strong contender.  She is being held by a pair of agents from the ISA, a shadowy (and evil) government agency.  Its agents had tried to confront Quinn earlier and failed.  Anyway, Quinn rescues the girls and accidently kills the ISA agents.  He then finds Bridget's grandfather tied up in the trunk of a car and releases him.  The grandfather is Sparky Rainking, currently a best-selling romance novelist (as "Daphne Larkrise") and in a previous occupation he had done "something, then something else, and then another something we don't talk about."  

Sparky and his wife (now dead) had adopted a young girl, who later became pregnant with Bridget by a father she would not name of speak of.  Short after Bridget's birth, her mother left, never to be heard from again, and Sparky was left with Bridget to raise.  Bridget and Quinn where both curious about their origins and , independently, sent off DNA samples to Getting to Know Me Dot Com (think 23 and Me).  It turned out that both had some pretty strange DNA that was not quite human and Getting to Know Me sent the results to the ISA, setting the stage for this whole adventure.  It turns out that Bridget also has some strange powers -- psychic magnetism, to be sure, plus an affinity to calm animals; he powers began to manifest much earlier than Quinn's, since she was about five years old.

So the three of them are now on the run from the ISA.  They rob a drug gang of thousands of dollars and Bridget tames a junkyard guard dog.  They then hook up with another not-quite-human, Panthea, a native American woman of unknown parentage.  Panthea knows a bit more about what is happening.  There was a universe before ours -- one that was destroyed by the Nihilim, corrupted beings who live to destroy and undo.  Our universe was created as a sort of second chance.  The Nihilims have been able to penetrate our world and are working surreptitiously to corrupt ours.  They can disguise themselves but sometimes our heroes can see beyond their cloaking and see that they tentacles instead of fingers.

So this is the hodge-podge mess we are working with, and it eventually leads back to the orphanage where Quinn grew up.  To my mind the entire work is salvaged somewhat by Quinn's wisely naive narration and a wry sense of humor.

Things to remember:

• Dogs are good and kind.  More importantly, dogs want to be good and kind.
• Cosmology is not the author's strong suit.
• The universe, as well as our lives, have meaning -- something to do with truth, kindness, beauty, and whatnot.  Exactly what this meaning is is never explained.
• Bridget knew two years earlier that she was going to marry Quinn.  Both Quinn and Bridget will remain virgins until that time, if only to emphasize that they are innocents.
• For an innocent, Quinn sure learns how to kill pretty quickly.
• There's a lesson here about ants, but it appears that I am a bad student about ants.

Incoming:

• Martin H. Greenberg & Larry Segriff, editors, Guardsmen of Tomorrow.  Science fiction anthology of 13 original stories about "those valiant men and women who patrol the far-flung spaceways, keeping the universe safe for humankind."  Authors are "Nathan Archer" (Lawrence Watt-Evans). Robin Wayne Bailey, Paul Dellinger, William H. Keith, Jr., Paul Levinson, Jane Lindskold, Andre Norton, Jean Rabe, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Robert J. Sawyer, Josepha Sherman, Dean Wesley smith, and Michael A. Stackpole.
• Hans Holzer, True Ghost Stories.  A collection of bushwah -- including 38 "case histories" throughout the U.S. -- from everybody's favorite psychic investigator.  As you can tell, I'm not a believer although I find most of these books fascinating.  Holzer (1920-2009) was an Austrian-American who wrote over 120 books on the occult.  He was the one who inflicted the "Amityville Horror" on the world.  He was also falsely credited with coining the term "ghost hunter" some 27 years after the phrase entered the lexicon.  He was evidently intensely gullible and did not bother to provide verification for many of his claims.  Still, he was far less of a fraud than, say, Ed and Lorraine Warren, of whom the less said the better.
• Bryan Thomas Schmidt, editor, Infinite Stars.  Doorstop anthology of space opera and military science fiction, with fourteen original stories and ten reprints; many of the twenty-four tales take place in popular "universes" beloved by SF fans.  The authors:  Poul Anderson,  Catherine Ansaro (a Skolian Empire story), Dave Bara (a Lightship Chronicles story), Leigh Brackett & Edmond Hamilton (a mash-up story with Brackett's John Eric Stark and Hamilton's Star Kings), Lois McMaster Bujold (a Miles Vorkosigan story). Jack Campbell (a Lost Fleet story), Orson Scott Card (an Ender's universe story), Bennett R. Coles (a Virtues of War story), A. C. Crispin (a Starbridge story), William C. Dietz (a Legion of the Damned story), David Drake (a Lt. Leary story), Charles E. Gannon (a Caine Riordon story), Brian Herbert & Kevin J. Anderson (a Dune story), Jean Johnson (a Theirs Not a Reason Why universe story), Ann  McCaffrey (a Ship Who Sang story), Elizabeth Moon (a Vatta's War story), Linda Nagata (a Red story), Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle (A Codominium story), Jody Lynn Nye (an Imperium story), Nnedi Okorafor (a Binti story), Alastair Reynolds (a Revelation Space story), Robert Silverberg, Cordwainer Smith, and David Weber (an Honorverse story).
• Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, editor, Singapore Noir.  Crime anthology with fourteen stories, one of the Akashic Noir series.  Authors are Monica Bhude, Colin Cheong, Damon Chua, Dave Chua, Colin Goh, "Donald Tee Quee Ho" (Simon Tay), Philip Jeyaretnam, Johann S. Lee, Suchen Christine Lim, Lawrence Osborne, S. J. Rozan, Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan, Nury Vittachi, and Ovidia Yu.
• Harry Turtledove, editor, Alternate Generals, Alternate Generals II, and Alternate Generals III.  SF anthologies of alternate worlds.  The first book has sixteen tales by Janet Berliner, Lillian Stewart Carl, Bill Fawcett, William R. Forstchen, Esther Friesner, Brad Linaweaver, R. M. Meluch, John Mina, Elizabeth Moon, Jody Lynn Nye, William Sanders, S. M. Sterling, Brian M. Thomsen, Lois Tilton, Harry Turtledove, and David Weber; the second has thirteen stories by Chris Bunch, Noreen Doyle, James Fiscus, Michael F. Flynn, Esther M. Friesner, Roland J. Green, R. M. meluch, Joel Richards, William Sanders, Susan Shwartz, S. m. Stirling & Richard Foss, Judith Tarr, and Harry Turtledove; and the third volume has thirteen stories by Lee Allred, Chris Bunch, Lillian Stewart Carl, A. M. Dellamonica, Jim Fiscus, Esther M. Friesner. Roland J. Green, Brad Linaweaver, John Mina, Mike Resnick, William Sanders, Judith Tarr, and Harry Turtledove.  A lot of strange "what ifs" here.
• Jack Vance, Lurulu.  Science fiction novel, a sequel to Ports of Call, continuing 'the escapades of Myron Tany, rebellious heir of a wealthy family, who eschews the comforts of home to hobnob throughout space in a galactic freighter with a crew of fellow misfit.  During an apparantly routine cargo run, the gang disembarks on the planet Fluter, where the ship's captain, Malfoor, enlists Tany in a perilous mission to track down con artist Tremaine, who killed Malfoor's father and kidnapped his mother.  Fluter locals, however, have their own beef with Tremaine, and the sagacious Malfoor must adapt his political savvy to navigating the cultural and geographical idiosyncrasies of a planet that, apart from boasting the most beautiful landscapes in the galaxy, also harbors its most puritanical citizens."  Few people have depicted strange worlds and stranger customs than Vance.

Also, George the Tempter strikes again!  A much appreciated package of nifty stuff arrived from the Sage of North Tonawonda, including:

• Classic Tales of Mystery.  Anonymously edited anthology of three classic mystery novels (Murder on the Links by Agatha Christie, Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers, and The Thirty-nine Steps by John Buchan), along with stories by Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle, G. K. Chesterton, Ernest Bramah, and R. Austin Freeman.  The title says "Classic" and you'd better believe it.
• Bryan J. L. Glass & Michael Avon Oeming, The Mice Templar, Volume One:  The Prophecy.  Graphic novel.  "The young mouse Karic seeks to rescue his family from slavery and save his people from rat oppression by reuniting the legendary Mice Templar.  But the Templar knights have been sundered by a vicious civil war, distrustful of one another, and despised by the very people they failed to protect.  The fate of all creature now rests in the paws of one small mouse, if only he can find the courage to become a Knight of the Templar himself."  A very grown-up fable with some very neat artwork.
• Stanislays Lem, Tales of Pirx the Pilot.  Collection of five science fiction tales by the famous Polish writer.  "We follow Pirx through five adventures in a time when space travel has become routine.  Yet things go wrong, mysteriously and suspiciously, and Pirx is the one to investigate strange accidents -- either because his superiors trust is flair, or because they consider him expendable...[T]he tales of Pilot Pirx build up to a towering climax.  We first meet Pirx in school. embarking on a training mission that is to drive home to him, with devastating impact, the inadequacy of textbook knowledge in an astronaut's arsenal.  The final adventure finds Pirx deciphering a spaceship's sinister past with the help of a robot's retentive memory...Lem offers here a wonderful vision of the audacity, childlike curiosity, and intuition that may give humans the courage to confront the vastness of space."  Translated by Louis Iribarne.
• John Ringo, A Hymn Before Battle.  Military science fiction novel.  "With the Earth in the path of the rapacious Posteen, the peaceful and friendly races of the Galactic Federation offer their resources to help the backward Terrans -- for a price:  Humanity now has three worlds to defend.  As Earth's armies rush into battle and special operations units scout alien worlds, the humans begin to learn a valuable lesson:  You can protect yourself from your enemies, but may the Lord save you from your allies."  This is Ringo's first novel and set him on a career that has included over fifty books, many in collaboration.
• [The Week], 100 Best Books,  A series of pamphlets reprinting lists of recommended books from different authors, with each list covering a rather specific topic.  George sent me six of these pamphlets, titled "The New List," "To Read on a Desert Island," "Artists and Entertainers," "Writers and Poets," "Opinion Makers," and "All-time Favorites."  I must admit that this is one of first sections of the magazine I turn to (after the crossword puzzle, of course); I end up reading the entire magazine, which covers the week's news in a concise, even-handed approach.  I currently subscribe to only two magazine:  Locus and The Week.
• H. G. Wells, Six Novels.  Omnibus volume containing The Time Machine. The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon, and The Food of the Gods.  Looking at the book I realized that somehow I missed reading one of these novels.  Can you guess which one?

Thanks, George!

More To Come, Maybe:  It's been a long week and I need to find just a few more hours to complete this post.  Will he?  Won't he?  Time will tell.

ANIMAL COMICS #1 (DECEMBER 1942)

 In this issue:  "Albert Takes the Cake," the very first Pogo story by Walt Kelly, introducing everybody's favorite possum. as well as Albert the Alligator, Mrs. Jay, Beetle, and Bumbazine.  Bumbazine a little black child who name derived from bombazine, a cloth that was usually dyed black for mourning.  Luckily, Bumbazine as a character did not last long because Kelly felt that drawing people was not as adaptable as animals were.  Bumbazine, alas, was pretty much a stereotype (this issue had him famously eating watermelon) that could be found in much of the media today.  Pogo, himself, started out a 'spear carrier," but his innocent straight-man character soon moved him to the forefront/

Kelly went on to create the Pogo comic strip which was noted for its biting political and social satire as well as its gorgeous artwork.  (Bumbazine never appeared in the syndicated comic strip.)

Enjoy the rather shaky origins of a classic bit of Americana:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=16740

As a bonus, here's an animated Pogo short feature from 1970, We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us:

https://archive.org/details/Pogo_We_Have_Met_The_Enemy_And_He_Is_Us_1970

UNREAD SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE GREAT STEAM-DUCK

 "The Great Steam-Duck" by "A Member of the L.L.B.B." (first published in an unnamed Louisville newspaper, 1841; reprinted in Magazine of History with Notes and Queries, Tarrytown, NY: 1919, and in 'The Man in the Moone,' edited by Faith K. Pizor and T. Allan Comp, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1971)

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I was unable to read "The Great Steam-Duck" this week.  I had planned to post a review on the story today for my Short Story Wednesday post, but life (as is often the case) interfered.  But will that stop me?  Au contraire, mon frere!

For many ages, man has gazed upon the moon and wondered. "What the...?"  He made up many myths and legends about that orb and eventually decided that it was another world.  But what kind of world, and inhabited by whom?  And how can we get there to find out?  And so we had stories of men blown to that world by great winds, floating to it by a giant balloon, propelling to it by a large blast, and even journeying there attached to a flock of giant birds.

Pizor and Comp's 'The Man in the Moone' is subtitled "An Anthology of Antique Science Fiction and Fantasy" and contains the following stories and excepts:

• From The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo Gonsales The Speedy Messenger by Francis Godwin (1638)
• From The Discovery of a New World....with a Discourse Concerning the Possibility of a Passage Thither by John Wilkins (1640)
• From The Comical History of the States and Empires of the World of the Moon by Cyrano de Bergerac (1656)
• From A Voyage to Cacklogallinia by "Captain Samuel Brunt" (1727)
• From The Life and Astonishing Transactions of John Daniel by Ralph Morris (1751)
• "A journey lately performed through the Air, in an Aerostatic Globe...To the newly discovered Planet Georgium Sidus" by "Vivenair" (1784)
• "Hans Phaall -- A Tale" by Edgar Allan Poe (1835)
• From Great Astronomical Discoveries Lately Made by Sir John Herschel...at the Cape of Good Hope by Richard Adams Locke (1835)
• "The Great Steam-Duck" by "A Member of the L. L. B. B." (1841)

It's the last that interests me (and, perhaps you), although all the tales sound interesting and many of you have read the Poe, and perhaps the Godwin, the Cyrano, or even the Locke.  The Great Steam-Duck is just that -- a giant ship built to resemble a duck and powered by steam.  How cool is that?

From the editors' introduction to the story:

"The Great Steam-Duck:  or a Concise Description of a most useful and extraordinary invention for Aerial Navigation is a parody on the various wild ideas proposed to enable men to fly.  Its author is an anonymous "Member of the L. L. B. B." (Louisville Literary Brass Band), an informal group of convivial gentlemen who met irregularly in the back room of  local saloon.  Written in the form of a lecture and published in a Louisville paper in 1841, The Great Steam-Duck takes particular aim at a plan to build a flying machine shaped like an American eagle, advanced by one Richard Oglesby Davidson in a pamphlet published in 1840 (Disclosure of the Discovery and Invention, and a Description of the Plan of Construction and Mode of Operation of the Aerostat...)...

"The author of The Great Steam-Duck was well aware of the achievements of leading balloonists in England, France, and the United States; in fact the 'lecture' opens with a survey of their accomplishments [...]  He was, however, skeptical about the usefulness of the balloon as air travel and regarded most of the proposals as laughable.  His description of a 'flying duck' heaps ridicule on at least two of these proposals -- a winged balloon suggested by H, Strait and Davidson's American eagle -- by carrying them to their logical extreme of foolishness.  No further information is available on either Strait or Davidson, but it is apparent that the suggestion of neither man was acted on, perhaps in part of this anonymous attack...

"The Great Steam-Duck, published in 1841, has been reprinted only once before now, in 1919 in the Magazine of History with Notes and Queries (Tarrytown, New York).  The text followed in this book is from the only copy of the original edition known to exist..."

Sounds like fun.  Check it out at:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qzalEuuXlXW7LMcOck4CJZLuC7QLg45V/view

You may even get to read this story before I do.

ATTACK ON PLANET MARS (1951)

Raymond King Cummings (1887-1957) began his pulp career with science fiction stories in All-Story Weekly  in 1919, marking the start of a long career in science fiction and mystery pulps which included over 600 identified stories (out of a presumed 750 stories) under at least eight names.  A former personal assistant to Thomas Edison and a technical writer, King was an early favorite in the new genre of scientifiction, writing such "classic" early SF stories as The Girl in the Golden Atom, The Princess of the Golden Atom, The Man Who Mastered Time, Brigands of the Moon, and Tama of the Light Country.  In July 1925 -- almost a year before Hugo Gernsback founded the "first" science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories -- Gernsback began publishing Cummings' Tarrano the Conqueror as a 14-part serial in his magazine Science and Invention.  The story was published in book form in 1930 by McClure. and has been reprinted many ties since then.

In 1951 Avon published an unacknowledged comic book version under the title Attack on Planet Mars.  It is not known who wrote this adaptation but Cummings did begin to write for comics books beginning in the 1940s, though  much of his work was for Timely Comics (the predecessor to Marvel) and not for Avon.  (Cummings' daughter Betty also wrote for Timely.)

"Tarrano the Conqueror!  Man of Destiny!  Imperious, Cruel, Murderous!  He throws all civilized worlds into terror and chaos, as he rises to become...'Warlord of the Planets!' "

Enjoy this bit of old-timey space opera.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=82115&comicpage=&b=i

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ERIN!

 Time has a sneaky way of passing by and Erin, our youngest granddaughter, turned 20 today.  I am truly torn about this.  I miss the young, energetic, giggling, curious little girl of yore, but I really love the mature, kind woman she has become.  I also take solace in the fact that she is still young, energetic, and curious -- and she can still giggle up a storm.

Erin is

      Beautiful

          Whip Smart

                Caring

                     Determined

                            Talented

                                  Ever Curious

                                        A Lover of Animals (especially Good Boy Duncan)

                                               Funny

                                                      One With a Smile That Could Light Up a City Block

                                                             One Who Definitely Does Not Like Onions

                                                                     Friendly

Perhaps the most important thing about Erin is that she has a kind heart, the one quality above all that we tried to impart on our children; they, in turn, are doing it with our grandchildren.

Erin is now rounding her junior year in college, having clepped her freshman year while still in high school.  She wants to become a veterinarian.  She's make a good one.

She can also be a bit of spoiler.  She should have been born on 02-02-02, if only because that would have been cute and easy to remember.  She decided -- on purpose, I think -- to hold out until 02-03-02.  We have forgiven her for this.

I look at Erin and wonder where the little girl who adored The Wonder Pets children's show.  Then I realize that she's an adult now, still filled with wonder and awe.  Still sweet and kind.  Still determined and imaginative.  Still the same little girl I loved.  Still the wonderful person I still love.

Happy birthday, Sweetie.

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE DANCING IMPS OF THE WINE

"The Dancing Imps of the Wine" by "Angelo"  (Shang Andrews), from his collection The Dancing Imps of the Wine, 1880

I have been interested in checking out The Dancing Imps of the Wine for a number of years but it is a fairly rare book and, until recently, had not been available online.  I really knew nothing about the book except for its title and the fact that it contained eight short stories and fourteen "fables."  Now that I've read the book I can give it an overwhelming "meh."  The book is geared to younger readers. with a heavy interest in kindly fairies and kindly personifications of nature.  The most promising part of the book is the title story.

"The Dancing Imps of the Wine" is an anti-alcoholic screed where little of import happens.  We open with the narrator drinking wine out of a bottle and then feeling drowsy.  Then there was the sound of little feet pattering on the table.  Opening his eyes, he sees a number of little imps dancing all around them.  They are -- go figure --  the dancing imps of the wine, released from the bottle once the narrator had uncorked it.

These are not polite imps.  They pester and plague the narrator, getting in his hair, his clothes, his ears, and his nose.  They point to pictures on the wall and the pictures come alive stepping down from their frames into the room.  The chairs and tables grew legs and feet and heads, dancing around the room.   The room was filled with feathers.  The flowers on the carpet sprouted and grew.  The stripes on the wallpaper came down and wrapped themselves around his legs.  Chickens, ducks, geese, snakes, bees, horses, and other animals crowded to room and tormented the narrator.  A young girl pulled on his nose, a dog bit him, a horse kicked his shin, a bee stung him in the eye, a snake bit his lip, a tree fell on him and broke his leg, and the imps kept on kicking him.  Things were not looking good for our poor narrator.

Then, as expected, he was woken by a neighbor who had been aroused by the noises made while the narrator dreamed.  So...meh.

The last two paragraphs read:

"I tell you I can hardly believe my deliverance was real; and the dream so impressed me, that, from that hour, I foreswore wine and all its dancing imps.

"From that day I have never tasted it; and, my children, it would be well for you to follow my example; or else the imps may get into your head, and torture you as they did me; -- perhaps lead you into crime, even into murder, and so doom you forever."  [Emphasis mine.]

This is the type of story, and the type of book, that seems not to be written for children, but for an idealized depiction of what is felt children should be.  Even with a hundred forty-plus year gap between publication and today, I find it hard to imagine a kid over the age of four swallowing this sugar-coated guff.  Or, perhaps, I'm just a crank long out of touch with children.

"Angelo" was evidently a pseudonym for Shang Andrews, whom I gather was a writer and reporter in Chicago during the 1880s.  In addition to The Dancing Imps of the Wine, "Angelo" published at least one other fantasy, The Adventures of an Atom:  Its Autobiography by Itself.  Under his own name he published several books of more mature nature:  Cranky Ann, a Streetwalker:  A Story of Chicago in Chunks, The Queen of the Demi Monde:  Gay Life in Chicago, Wicked Nell:  A Gay Girl of the Town, Irish Molly, or, A Gambler's Fate:  The True Story of  Famous Chicago Tragedy, Sin in Silk and Chicago Underground, and Chicago After Dark.  It is also possible that he was a source for one of the songs in folklorist Vance Randolph's collection of erotic folk songs from the Nineteenth century, Blow the Man Down.  There is very little verifiable information on "Angelo"/Shang Andrews on the internet, so take this entire paragraph with a grain of salt.