BITS & PIECES

Openers:  "It's all too exasperating,"  Carolynne Deveraux poured out her story into the sympathetic ears of Zelda Troyer, her new and closest college chum, as they sped down Spofford Boulevard on a Saturday shopping tour in Carolynne's fleet Cadillac convertible.  "I never was so humiliated in all my life -- their packing me home from the de Puster's party like that right in the middle of the evening, just because I was smoking a cigarette!"

"I don't blame you for being sore," Zelda's contralto voice shined in.  "I'd be mad as a hornet under similar circumstances.  Nobody's ever objected to my smoking, but then my whole family smokes.  Some parents are just too old fashioned, I guess."

"Old fashioned is putting it mildly!" Carolynne jabbed her arm out the open car window for a left-hand turn signal.  "Do you realize they kept me confined to my room for to whole days as punishment, suspended my allowance, and even threatened to rake away this car they gave me for a graduation present?  Of course it was about the dozenth time they've caught me smoking after they made me promise not to, but you'd think they'd understand I'm not a child any more.  After all, I'm seventeen!  And the lectures I've had to listen to.  Oh, brother!"

Carolynne's voice burlesqued the tone of a fuddy-duddy giving a morality lecture.  "Nice girls don't smoke.  It isn't moral.  It isn't Christian.  It's bad for your health.  It lowers one's resistance to worldly wickedness."  Carolynne's voice became normal again as she shot forth a stream of invective currently in vogue amongst the students at the supposedly elite Finishing School for Gentlewomen, from which she had just graduated."

-- "Up in Smoke" by "Tigrina" (Edythe Eyde) (first -- and only -- known publication is in Rainbow Fantasia:  35 Spectrumatic Tales of Wonder, edited by Forrest J Ackerman, 2001)

[In the copyright acknowledgements for Rainbow Fantasia, this story is copyrighted 2001 by Tigrina; at the end of that line, in the spot that listed the original publication information for all the other stories in the book, is the note "(July 1946)."  I took that to mean that the story was originally written then, and the the story had never been published, or, perhaps*, published in some amateur and unknown journal.  The International Science Fiction Database (ISFDb) gives the title of the story as "Up in Smoke (July 1946)."  So you pays yer money and you takes yer choice.]

At first glance, the story -- written in a very callow style and featuring a very callow Carolynne Deveraux -- could be a screed against women smoking, or, perhaps*, a tale that would vindicate the modern younger generation of 1947.  Either way, it would be not very interesting; a curiosity, perhaps*, along the lines of the 1927 Blind Alfred Reed song, "Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls?"

Zelda is smoking cigarettes with crimson paper, not the typical white cigarette papers the Carolynne is used to.  Carolynne thinks they are heavily perfumed.  Zelda says she has them especially made by a queer chap called Morloq, who makes cigarettes colored to match girls' outfits.  He also blends individual perfumes.  The two go to Morloq's shop, filled with curious scents and compounds and somewhat dazzling with its various colors.  A small. grotesque, emerald-eyed statuette attracts Carolynne's attention; it is "Og Amankh, little-known Egyptian devil, called 'the Imprisoner of Souls,' and he is notoriously antagonistic toward those who do not show him proper respect."  Carolynne decides to order some of Marloq's blended perfume.  When Carolynne returned to the shop, Morloq severed her ka from her body, imprisoning it in a small vial.  Carolynne was found wandering downtown, completely void of any intelligence.  Her parents wondered how this could have happened to their little girl -- she didn't even smoke!

A terribly written and overblown story, perhaps** better suited for a 1947 horror comic book.

Tigrina was the name Edythe Eyde (1921-2015) used in science fiction fandom of the 1940s and 50s.  She was active in the L.A. Science fiction community and was a good friend of Forrest Ackerman.  (She caused a bit of controversy in sf circles when she said she was interested in satanism.)  She is better known for her pioneering activities in the LGBT community as "Lisa Ben" (Look. ma!  An anagram!).  She produced the first known lesbian publication in North America, Vice Versa, and then wrote for The Ladder, the first nationally-distributed lesbian magazine. and was a member of the Daughters of Bilitis.  As Lisa Ben, she was known as an early pioneer in the LGBT movement.  As a folk singer in lesbian clubs, she wrote and performed gay-themed parodies of popular songs -- songs that were never profane or demeaning to gay people.  The Daughter's of Bilitis issues a recording of her songs, calling her the "first gay folk singer." When she died at age 94, "her death went unnoticed and no obituaries were published."

As a science fiction personality, her contributions were very few and very minor.  But her courage and forthrightness in the LGBT movement is something that I -- as a straight, white, male -- admittedly have a hard time processing, but I cannot help but feel proud that someone of her caliber once walked among us.  The National Lesbian and Gay Journalist Association created the Lisa Ben Award for Achievement in Features Coverage -- something that, perhaps*, greatly bothers the current governmental apparatus in Florida.

* How many times am I going to set the word "perhaps" off in commas.  I don't know and I don't care, because, perhaps*, I can't be bothered to count.

**Aha!  it's not set off in commas this time!

Incoming:

• Forrest J Ackerman & Jean Stine, editors, Reel Future.  Sixteen stories that inspired classic science fiction movies.  For me, at least this was pretty familiar ground.  Auithoirs include Well, Lovecraft, Nowlan, Campbell, Bates, Jones, Bradbury, Clarke, Sheckley, Melchior, Langelaan, Nelson, Dick, Zelazny, Longyear, and Varley.  Movies covered are The Empire of the Ants, Reanimator, Buck Rogers in the 21st Century, The Thing from Another World, The Day the Earth Stood Still, This Island Earth, The Illustrated Man, 2001:  A Space Odyssey, The Tenth Victim, Death Race 2000, The Fly, They Live, Total Recall, Damnation Alley, Enemy Mine, and Millennium.  As expected, some good stuff and some dreck.
• Mike Ashley, editor, The Ghost Slayers:  Thrilling Tales of Occult Detection.  Nine stories, a fairly good representation of the occult detective over the past century and a quarter, some more familiar than others.  Featured detectives are Flaxman Low, John Silence, Carnacki, Alymer Vance, Mesmer Milann, Dr. Taverner, Cosmo Thor, Cranshawe, and Lucius Leffing.  Many notables, such as Morris Klaw and Semi-Duel, have been omitted, but you can't have everything, but there's something here for just about every occult detection fan.
• James Lee Burke, Feast Day of Fools.  A Hackberry Holland novel.  "Sheriff Hackberry Holland patrols a small Southwestern Texas border town with a deep and abiding respect for the citizens in his care.  Still mourning the loss of his cherished wife and locked in a perilous almost-romance with his deputy, Pam Tibbs, a woman many decades his junior, Hackberry fends off the deeds of evil men to keep his own demons at bay.  When alcoholic ex-boxer Danny Boy Lorca witnesses a man tortured to death in the desert and reports it, Hack's investigation leads to the home of Anton Ling, a regal, mysterious Chinese woman whom the locals refer to as La Magdalena and who is known for sheltering illegals.  Ling denies having seen the victim or the perpetrators, but the is something in her steely demeanor and aristocratic beauty that compels Hackberry to return to her home again and again as the investigation unfolds.  Could it be that the sheriff is so taken in by this creature who reminds him of his deceased wife that he would ignore the possibility that she is just as dangerous a the men she harbors?  The danger in the desert increases tenfold with the return of serial murderer Preacher Jack Collins, whom The New York Times called 'one of Burke's most inspired villains.'  Presumed dead at the close of Rain Gods, Preacher Jack has reemerged with a calm, single-minded zeal for killing that is more terrifying than the muzzle flash of his signature machine gun.  But this time he and Sheriff Holland have a common enemy."  Also, The Lost Get-Back Boogie.  "The novel's title is also the name of the song that Iry Paret -- a honky-tonk musician. Korean vet, and ex-con -- wants to write to hold his memories of a 'more uncomplicated time,' before the war, before prison.  The novel opens the day thirty-year-old Iry leaves Louisiana's Angola state penitentiary, after serving two years for manslaughter, and follows him to Montana, where he hopes to stay cool and out of trouble by working hard on a ranch owned by the father of  his prison pal, Buddy Riordan.  Iry finds the fresh start he seeks, joins a weekend band, and even falls in love.  But the Riordan family's problems deal Iry a new sort of trouble with some ultimately tragic consequences."  This was Burke's fifth novel, which had an amazing 111 rejections (!), and was eventually nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. 
• Leonard Carpenter, Conan of the Red Brotherhood.  Heroic fantasy/sword and sorcery, the eighth of eleven Conan pastiches from this author.  "Sailing under the grim skull-flag of the Red Brotherhood, Conan is the most feared pirate to prowl the Vilayet Sea, claiming as his booty even Philiope, the beautiful black-haired daughter of a powerful nobleman.  But in the doomed imperial palace of Aghrapur, the decadent emperor Vildiz and his corrupt allies plot the destruction of the powerful barbarian they know only as Amra the Lion.  As Conan carves a pirate empire with cutlass and dagger, the Turanian navy takes to the seas, aided by hellish sorcery of the darkest sort.  Mighty ships manned by undead zombies, and a titanic monster summoned from the nether depths, are pitted against the deadly sword of one man...Conan of the Red Brotherhood."  Over the past few weeks, Dave Lewis has been posting about "Conan of Pastichia" on his Davy Crockett's Almanack blog.  Since we all know how easily influenced I am, is it no wonder that I picked this one up, along with three others by Robert Jordan (q.v.)?
• Jonathan Carroll, Outside the Dog Museum.  "A novel of love, death, & architecture," the fourth novel in the author's Answered Prayers sequence.  This one won the August Derleth Fantasy Award for Best Novel in 1992.  "Meet Harry Radcliffe, a prize-winning architect and self-serving opportunist, ready to take advantage of whatever situations and women cross his path.  After all, Harry is fond of saying, 'Geniuses are allowed to do anything.'  Two desirable, strong-willed women are vying tor his attention, clients everywhere are offering him blank checks to create their buildings...What's life like at the end of the rainbow?  don't ask harry.  He went mad. But with the help of Venasque, an elderly shaman dressed in overalls and running shoes, he begins to pickup the pieces of his former life.  However, sanity offers little of interest to Harry until he is approached by the Sultan of Saru, the benevolent and wealthy ruler of a Middle Eastern country.  The Sultan wants him to build a billion-dollar dog museum.  Just like that."
• Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins (or maybe Barbara Collins and Max Allan Collins), Cutout.   Crime novella.  "A young woman from the Midwest, recipient of an unexpected college scholarship, is recruited into a lucrative courier job that shuttles her from Manhattan to Washington, D.C.  There's a slight drawback:  the previous two 'cutouts' died by violence."  Preordered; publication date is tomorrow.  Also, Max Allan Collins Collection Volume 5:  Twist in the Tale.  E-Book compilation five books by Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins:  two novels (Reincarnal and Bombshell) and three short story collections (Murder -- His and Hers, Suspense -- His and Hers, and Too Many Tomcats and Other Feline Tales of Suspense).  A superb bargain.
• Robert Crais, Hostage. A stand-alone thriller.  "Three young men gunning for action rob a minimart in a sleepy suburb north of Los Angeles.  When things get out of control, and with police on their tail, they flee the scene and invade a home in an exclusive gated community, taking a panicked family hostage.  Police chief Jeff Talley finds an all-too-familiar scene in front of the house where the criminals are holed up with a father and his two children.  A former hostage negotiator with the LSPD's SWAT unit, Tally is quickly thrown back into the high-pressure world that he has so desperately tried to leave behind.  But Talley' nightmare had barely begun, because this isn't just any house; it holds the dirty secrets of L.A.'s biggest crime lord.  And the people inside aren't the only ones held hostage..."
• John Creasey, Hang the Little Man. A Roger West mystery.  "Robbery with much violence.  They were nasty, 'small' crimes to begin with -- a series of robberies in small shops, distressing to the victims, but only of routine concern to the harassed, overworked police.  Except for Scotland Yard Superintendent Roger West, who thought them related, organized and extremely sinister.  The violence became murder, and that led to the launching of an all-stops-out investigation..."  I'm nearing the end of my Roger West spree.  Of the 43 novels, I have only seven unread -- and six of them are lurking on my bedside table.  (According to my records, I also own the seventh, but I'm damned if I can find where I put it.  **sigh**) 
• "Peter Field" (house name, this time used by Davis Dresser, a.k.a. "Brett Halliday"), Guns from Powder Valley.  Western, the first book in the Powder Valley series.  "The Stevens' peaceful and quiet life on the Lazy Mare Ranch in Powder Valley came to an abrupt and violent end when they learned why the Sutton's couldn't come for dinner.  First, Pat Stevens' disreputable but good- hearted cronies, Sam and Ezra, showed up with a terrifying letter from Dusty Canyon.  Next, without warning, a black-hooded rider thundered into the Lazy Mare and thrust a crudely scrawled note into Pat's hand.  The two notes dynamited Pat and his pals into a deadly battle against a gang of hooded robbers, a battle which turned out to be a fight for their own lives as well as for those of their friends."   The Powder Valley novels first appeared in Blue Ribbon Western and other pulps; Dresser wrote 13 of the 17 novels.
• 'Rae Foley" Elinore Denniston), Wild Night.  Romantic suspense.  "Heiress Mary Quarles had not seen her disinherited cousin in years, but she was not surprised to find the beautiful Sonia in trouble.  For Sonia's past was marked with heartbreak and scandal.  And now, as always, she had turned to Mary for help...Mary soon found herself caught in a mystifying web of terror.  Why did strangers claim to know her?  Who was the man whose kiss thrilled her while his eyes terrified her?  And why was someone stalking her in the night -- waiting to move in for the kill?  Was Sonia a born victim of evil?  Or was it that she, Mary, had really been the victim all along?"  Interesting fact, apropos of nothing, the author was once an assistant to Eleanor Roosevelt."
• Andrew Garve" (Paul Winterton), No Tears for Hilda.  Mystery.  "George Lambert's horrid wife Hilda takes a nap -- with her head in the oven.  He thinks she killed herself.  Inspector Haines of Scotland Yard believes George killed her.  George's best friend Max Easterbrook knows someone else was responsible, but can he prove it?"
• David Lynn Goleman, Ancients.  An Event Group thriller, the third (of fourteen) in the series.  "Eons before the birth of the Roman Empire, there was a civilization dedicated to the sciences of the earth, sea, and sky.  In the City of Light lived people who made dark plans to lay waste to their uncivilized neighbors using the very power of the planet itself.  As the great science of their time was brought to bear on the invading hordes, hell was set loose on Earth.  And the civilization of Atlantis disappeared in a suicidal storm of fire and water.  Now history threatens to repeat itself.  the great weapon of the Ancients has been discovered in the South Pacific, and it is being deciphered by men of hatred who want to unleash hell on Earth once again.  This time, it's up to Colonel Jack Collins and the Event Group -- comprised of the nation's most brilliant minds in the fields of science, philosophy, and the military to find the truth behind the world's greatest unsolved myth -- to end the cycle of destruction.  Meanwhile, the seas rise, the earth cracks, and entire cities crumble to dust as the evil plan mapped out thousands of years before begins to take shape."
• H. Rider Haggard, She and Allan.  An Allan Quatermain/Ayesha (She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed) mash-up.  Yeah, this one is readily available online, but when I came across this Longmans, Green and Co. 1921 hardback (first American edition?  possibly; also possibly a first world edition) for a buck, how could I resist?  No dust jacket on this one, but the cover painting by Enos B. Cornstock of the title characters is repeated inside as a frontispiece.  Adventure of the highest order.
• Harry Harrison, Stars & Stripes Forever.  Alternate history novel, the first in a trilogy.  "On November 8, 1861, a U.S. navy warship stopped a British packet and seized two Confederate emissaries on their way to England to seek backing for their cause.  England responded with rage, calling for a war of vengeance.  The looming crisis was defused by the peace-minded Prince Albert.  But imagine how Albert's absence during this critical moment night have changed everything.  For lacking Albert's calm voice of reason, Britain now seizes the opportunity to attack and conquer a crippled, war-torn America.  Ulysses S. Grant is poised for an attack that could smash open the South's defenses.  In Washington, Abraham Lincoln sees a first glimmer of hope that this bloody war might soon end.  But then  disaster strikes.  English troops have invaded from Canada.  With most of the Northern troops withdrawn to fight the new enemy, General William Tecumseh Sherman and his weakened army stand alone against the Confederates.  Can a divided, bloodied America defeat England, or will the United States cease to exist for all time?"  Harrison has never been less than interesting.
• Geoffrey Household, Hostage:  London:  The Diary of Julian Despard.  Thriller.  "Magma International:  ruthless anarchists...Their aim:  revolution through fear...Their weapon:  an atom bomb hidden somewhere in the heart of London...Operating under the guise of a publisher's salesman, Julian Despard is a loyal member of Magma -- until he discovers the mass-murder plot threatening London.  Breaking with his former comrades, he sets out to prevent the catastrophe even as the terrorist blackmail of Downing Street begins.  But will he be able to locate and defuse the bomb before Scotland Yard arrests him...before Magma itself finds and kills him?"
• Maxim Jakubowski, editor, The Best British Mysteries 2005.  Anthology with 28 short stories from Colin Dexter, Reginald Hill, Peter Robinson, H. R. F. Keating, Val McDermid, Peter Lovesey John Mortimer, Ian Rankin, Robert Bernard, Christopher Fowler, and more.  Looks like there's some pretty good stuff here.
• Robert Jordan, Conan the Defender, Conan the Magnificent, and Conan the Unconquered,  Pastiche novels based on the Robert E. Hoard character.  Jordan penned seven of these years before he wrote the best-selling The Wheel of Time doorstop fantasy series.  In these three, our mighty-thewed warrior faces the diabolical Simulacrum of Albanus, the unslayable Beast of Fire, and a sorcerer who rules the unspeakably corrupt, respectively.  For the gosh-wow kid in me.
• John Kessel, Good News from Outer Space.  Science fiction, first published in 1989.  "The year is 1999,.  The millennium is approaching fast, and America is ready to believe that the World is indeed about to End.  The economy is a disaster, despite a complete restructuring of the money supply.  Nuclear war in the Middle East has created a new, permanent gasoline shortage.  Gene-splicing technology has given political terrorists almost undetectable weapons.  Poverty, drugs, disease are rampant in the cities, while the new Christian Fundamentalism has taken almost total control of the countryside.  The church is even running the prison system.  The most popular on-line news service in America is the Hemisphere Confidential Report, a computer network descendant of today's supermarket tabloids.  George Eberhart is HCR's top reporter and writer -- once a legitimate newsman, the crumbling economy has forced him into writing 'news' that is little more than fiction.  But now George is onto something really real.  He has perceived a pattern in the sensational stories he reports, a pattern that has led him to believe that the stories of alien invasion may be something more than hysteria."
• Jim Kjelgaard, Fire-Hunter.  Young adult prehistoric novel.  "Hawk grasped the pup by the scruff of its neck and reached for his club.  This was why he had brought the animal home -- no let him serve as food for a hungry man.  Swiftly, Willow snatched the pup from his hands.  Hawk got to his feet with a growl of rage -- a woman had defied him!  'Do not kill it!  We have food!' Willow cried.  She rose and faced the enraged man.  But as she stared over his shoulders, her eyes widened in fear.  Hawk turned and saw the sabertooth tiger between them and the safety of their fire."  Kjelgaard was a go-to author when I was a kid.
• John L. Lansdale, Broken Moon.  Western.  "Billie Jo rode up on the top of a knoll, watching the Snyders riding hell-bent for leather toward her.  After dismounting, she plucked a sunflower from the ground and blew the petals, taking note of the wind speed and direction.  The Snyder brothers were making up ground to her fast.  She turned the paint sideways, took her Winchester from the saddle scabbard and laid it across the saddle.  The sun struck the gun barrel, sending a ray of ight down the dell.  She pulled her hat down to shade her eyes, aimed and fired.  The lead rider fell from his horse about a hundred yards away.  The other one stopped, dismounted and scrambled into a small depression.  The two going up Sunset Mountain heard the shot, stopped, held their hats  between them and the sun, looking back down the mountain to where brothers were riding to see if the one she shot would get up.  He didn't.  Billie Jo stuck the rifle back in the scabbard and rode as hard as her mare could go, heading for Rainbow Park..."  Signed.  The author's brother is Joe R. Lansdale.
• Joe R. Lansdale, The Events Concerning.  A collection of two novellas:  "The Events Concerning a Nude Fold-Out Found in a Harlequin Romance" (1992, a Stoker Award winner)) and "The Events Concerning Two Stabbed Clowns in a Bloody Bathtub" (original).  Also, The Senior Girls Bayonet Drill Team and Other Stories.  A collection of 26 sui generis Lansdale stories.  And, Shooting Star.  Young adult science fiction.  "John Shaw just wanted to go fishing and live off the land -- and now he is only one of a few survivors involved in a horrific crash between a locomotive and a flying saucer.  Stranded in an unforgiving environment, desperate to survive, he and the remaining passengers must outrun, and outsmart, the the alien life forms that are picking off one by one."  Whatever is in the water in East Texas, they should bottle it up and ship it as many other writers as possible.
• "Emma Lathen" (Mary Jane Latsis & Martha Henissart), Pock Up Sticks.  A John Putnam Thatcher mystery.  "...when Wall Street's John Putnam Thatcher and his Down East crony, Henry Morland, started hiking the Appalachian Trail, they hardly expected to stumble over a dead body...nor did real estate promoters Eddie Quinlan and Ralph Valenti plan to play hosts to a murderer at their luxurious new vacation development...but then, neither did Steve Lester anticipate bumping into his ex-wife or being hammered to death.  The head of the Sloan Guaranty Trust Department again combines his financial skills and unbounded curiosity to solve the murder of a man nobody seemed to dislike enough to kill."
• Laurie Mantell, Murder in Fancy Dress.  The first Detective Sergeant Steve Arrow mystery.  "The boy claimed he had killed a 'baddie' -- but had he the wit to know?  It would be easy for Detective Sergeant Steven Arrow to take the word of Tommy White and close the case right there.  But Arrow is too good a cop to credit the confession of a mentally retarded teenage.  His dogged investigation of the death of a local policeman, bizarrely costumed for Wild West  day in their New Zealand town, leads him to the 'brains' behind Tommy's statement -- and to peril for himself."  Kiwi author Mantell, who died in 2010 at aged 93, published six crime novels, five of which were in this series.
• Ian Rankin, Knots & Crosses.  The first John Rebus mystery.  " 'And in Edinburgh of all places.  I mean, you never think of that sort of thing happening in Edinburg, do you...?'  That sort of thing is the brutal abduction and murder of two young girls.  And now a third is missing, presumably gone to the same sad end.  Detective Sergeant John Rebus, smoking and drinking too much, his own young daughter spirited away south by his disenchanted wife, is one of the many policemen hunting the killer.  And then the messages begin to arrive:  knotted string and matchbook crosses -- taunting Rebus with pieces of a puzzle only he can solve."  Also, Resurrection Men.  Another Rebus mystery, the 13th in the series and winner of the Edgar Award.  "Rebus is off the case -- literally.  A few days into a murder inquiry following the brutal death of an Edinburg art dealer, Rebus blows up at DCS Gill Templer.  He is sent to the Scottish Police College for 'retraining' -- in other words, he's in the Last Chance Saloon.  Rebus is given an old, unsolved case to work on, in order to teach him and others the merits of teamwork.  But there are those on the team who have their own secrets -- and they'll stop at nothing to protect them.  Then Rebus is asked to act as a go-between for gangster 'Big Ger' Cafferty.  And as newly promoted DS Siobhan Clarke works the case of the murdered art dealer, she is brought closer to Cafferty than she ever expected..."
• Ken Shufeldt, Tribulations.  Science fiction, sequel to Genesis.  "An asteroid storm has obliterated Earth.  Billy and Linda West have built enough space-going arks to save a small number of people who now roam the void in search of a new home.  Desperate to find a safe haven, Billy makes a dangerous attempt to exceed the speed of light.  When his plans go terribly wrong, their severely damaged ship is separated from the fleet and left drifting near a mysterious planet.  This world's conditions are hospitable -- but its inhabitants are not.  Suddenly the Wests and their fellow survivors are caught in the middle of an ancient war between two brutal nations.  Faced with horrific dangers, they are forced to choose a side just to survive."  I know nothing about this book or its author, but there was a cover blurb from Ed Gorman, so I said, what the hell, Ed's tastes were always much better than mine.
• "Nevil Shute" (Nevil Shute Norway), In the Wet.  Published in 1953, a futuristic novel of 1983, that "contains many of the typical elements of a hearty and adventurous Shute yarn such as flying, the future, mystic states, and ordinary people doing extraordinary things."  There's also a lot of social and political commentary in this tale of a future Australia during the rainy season, called "the wet."
• Neal Stephenson, Reamde.  (Doorstop (1000+ pages) science fiction novel.  "The black sheep of an Iowa farming clan, former draft dodger and successful marijuana smuggler Richard Forthrast amasses a small fortune over the years -- and then increased it a thousandfold when he created T'Rain, a massive multibillion dollar multiplayer online role-playing game.  T'Rain now has millions of obsessed fans from the U.S. to China.  but a small group of ingenious Asian hackers has just unleashed REAMDE -- a virus that encrypts  all of a player's electronic files and holds them for ransom -- which has unwittingly triggered a war that is creating chaos not only in the virtual world but in the real one as well.  Its repercussions will be felt all around the globe -- setting in motion a devastating series of events involving Russian mobsters, computer geeks, secret agents, and Islamic Terrorists -- with Forthrast standing at ground zero and his loved one caught in the crossfire."
• "John Taine" (Eric Temple Bell), The Forbidden Garden.  Science fiction.  This was the third book published by Arthur Lloyd Eshbach's pioneering publishing house Fantasy Press, following novels by E.E. Smith and Jack Williamson.  and it never proved to be as popular as most of the other titles the company published.  As "Taine," the author published 16 science fiction novels from 1924 through 1954; a number of his stories in the 20s and early 30s remain classics of early science fiction.  As Bell, he was a well-regarded mathematician and author of 14 books on mathematics and the sciences.  The Forbidden Garden (1947) is a proto-feminist scientific romance about a search for a rare flower in the Gobi desert and for a soil sample that could be worth a million dollars.  "...[Q]ueer delphinium, hereditary insanity, black ice, radioactivity, a visitant from cosmic distances and remote ages, seeds of madness, and the strangest garden ever imagined"...it's all here in a wild roller-coaster ride of fantastic adventure.
• Joan Vatsek, This Fiery Night.  Novel, published in 1959, about the events that led to Nassar.  "There is a magnificent range and excitement in this novel of modern Egypt in crisis -- of Englishmen and Englishwomen, Americans and the flower of Egypt itself swept by ambition, intrigue and corruption toward outrage and a blazing holocaust."  This was another what-the-heck purchase, bought because she was the wife of Robert Arthur, the radio scriptwriter (Suspense), creator of The Three Investigators, and one of the best Alfred Hitchcock anthologists.
• Walter Wager, Viper Three.  Suspense thriller, filmed as Twilight's Last Gleaming, with Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark   "It was impossible.  there were too many safeguards.  Not even Fort Knox had security as tight as that surrounding the underground control center of an ICBM launch site.  Yet five condemned murderers had penetrated into the very heart of the Minuteman site code named Viper Three."  Wage was noted for his crime and espionage thrillers.  As "John Tiger," he wrote seven tie-in novels for I Spy and two for Mission:  Impossible.  Other books filmed were Telefon (the 1977 film starred Charles Bronson), and 58 Minutes (filmed as Die Hard 2, Yippee-ki-yay, motherlover!) 
• David Wilson, McCloud #4:  The Corpse Maker.  Television tie-in novel, based on the fourth season episode "The Solid Gold Swingers" (December 2, 1973).  "each murder was the same -- strangulation with a silk scarf.  Each victim was the same -- a beautiful young woman, employed by an expensive rent-a-girl setup.  McCloud smelled a phony from the start.  The similarities were too carefully arranged.  This was a hell of lot more than a psycho-killer with a twisted hunger for beautiful corpses.   Bur half-way to the truth Marshal McCloud was taken off the case.  He was coming too close to someone with too much to lose.  Someone powerful enough to get a tough New York City cop kicked off the detective beat.  But that someone wasn't counting on McCloud's never-quit stubborn streak.  He continued to hunt the killer on his own -- pulling the noose tighter around the most explosive sex and blackmail scheme the city had ever seen!"  I have read that Wilson might be a pseudonym for one or more authors; I don't know.  If anyone does, please comment.  I should also note that two of the McCloud tie-ins were penned by Colin Wilcox, while at least three were by Wilson.
• Stuart Woods and Parnell Hall, Barely Legal.  A Herbie fisher novel, featuring Stone Barrington.  "Stone Barrington has successfully transformed his protege, Herbie Fisher, into the youngest partner in the law firm Woodman & Weld. Now Herbie must get used to being the name on everyone's lips.  But with new prestige comes new enemies...and darker schemes.  If Herbie's going to hold onto his hard-won status, he'll need to use every last lesson Stone has taught him."  Why is it that with many best selling authors who use co-authors to boost their production, I am much more interested in the co-authors than I am in the guy who gets the biggest credit on the cover?  Yeah, I bought this one because of Parnell Hall.  Wager's 1954 book, The Pentagon's Favorite Magicians (as by "John Tiger") was not published until 2014 (ten years after the author's death) at the request of the United /states Department of Defense --wow!

Chickenman:  Since the late Sixties, I have been the fan of the radio adventures of the greatest crime-fighter the world has ever know:  Chickenman.  As we all know, Chickenman was the weekend secret identity of Midland City shoe salesman Benton Harbor.  He was created by Chicago radio announcer Dick Orkin and appeared almost daily from 1966 to 1969 in episodes lasting only a minute or two.  The Chickenman series was revived in 1973 with Chickenman vs the Earth Polluters, and again in 1977 in Chickenman Returns for the Last Time Again.  Ira Glass of NPR's This American Life has been a big Chickenman fan from the days when his program first aired (under the title Your Radio Playhouse) on WBEZ Radio.

Here's a brief clip from This American Life, in which Glass spotlights two of the Chickenman episodes.

Enjpy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDDoSb73rA8

Postscript:  Strangely, my love for Chickenman is not universal.  When I married Kitty in 1970, I was shocked to find that she did not care for Chickenman, calling it stupid.  That was the single sore point in our 52-year marriage.  **sigh**

Tax Day:  Have you filed?

Back in 1942, Tax Day was the Ides of March, March 15.  During the first yer of federal income tax -- 1913 -- taxes were due on March 1.  The date was changed to March 15 in 1918, and then again to April 15 in 1955.

To celebrate Tax Day, here's a patriotic song from 1942 from Dick Robertson and his orchestra.  The song was written by Irving Berlin.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIT3xnYbmzQ

And here's a version from Gene Autry, with Jimmy Wakely's Trio and Lou Bring's Orchestra:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoUpAuk8DSU

Ombra mai fu:  286 years ago, Handel's opera Sirse was first performed at the King's Theatre in Haymarket.  Sadly, the innovative nature of the work doomed it to failure and it disappeared from the stage for almost 200 years until it was revived in 1924.  Its popularity then grew and it became Handle's second most popular opera (after Guilio Cesare).  It tells of the Persian king Xerxes, who desires his brother's love Romilda, and of the complications it brings.  

The opening aria, Ombra mai fu, has Xerxes singing praises to a plane tree for providing him shade.  It utilizes one of Handle's best known melodies and it often referred to as Handel's "Largo."

Here's the aria, as performed by Cecilia Bartoli:

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

Definition:  A short description of a thing by its properties; a decision:  Today is the 269th anniversary of Samuel Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language.  A typically overconfident Johnson claimed he could complete the work in three years; it took him eight.  Here are some of his definitions of words you may or may not be familiar with:

• Abb:  the yarn on a weaver's warp.
• Bolter:  a sieve to separate meal from bran.
• Crocodile:  a large, voracious, amphibious animal, in a shape resembling a lizard.
• Deglutition:  the act of swallowing.
• Emulge:  to milk out; drain.
• Formidible:  terrible, dreadful, terrifick.
• Fornication:  concubinage, unchastity between single persons; the crime of idolatry.
• Goat.: a ruminant animal, that seems to be a middle species between deer and sheep.
• Hardmouthed:  disobedient to the rein.
• Harslet, Haslet:  the heart, liver, and lights of a hog.
• Ipicacuanha:  an emetick Indian plant.
• Jehovah:  the appropriate name of God in the Hebrew language.
• Jejune:  hungry; unaffecting; trifling.
• Kam:  crooked, thwart, awry.
• Laconism:  a concise, pithy style.
• Metonomy:  a figure in rhetorick, , when one word is used for another.
• Nuncheon:  food eaten between meals.
• Oaf:  a changeling; an idiot.
• Omelet:  a pancake made with eggs.
• Paddock:  a toad or frog; small enclosure.
• Quincunx:  a plantation; a measure.
• Ragamuffin:  a paltry, mean fellow.
• Reason: a faculty, or power of the soul, whereby it deduces one proposition from another; cause, principle, motive.
• Scammony:  a concreted, resinous juice.
• Scrofula:  the disease commonly called the king's evil.
• Tarantula:  a venomous insect, whose bite is cured only by musick.
• Uncircumcision:  a want of circumcision.
• Usquebaugh:  an Irish compound distilled spirit; the Highland sort, by corruption, is called whiskey.
• Vampire:  a pretended demon, said to delight in sucking the blood from dead human bodies, and to animate the bodies of dead persons.
• Vaticide:  the murderer of poets.
• Walleyed:  having white eyes.
• Whortleberry:  bilberry, a plant.
• X is a numeral for ten; but, though found in Saxon words, begins no word in the English language.
• Youngster, Yunker:  a young person.
• Zeugma:  a figure in grammar, when a verb agreeing with divers nouns, or an adjective with divers substantives, is referred to one expressly and to the other by supplement; as lust overcame shame, boldness fear, and madness reason. 
• Zocle:  a small sort of stand or pedestal, being a low, square piece or member, used to support a busto, statue, &c.

If you use any of these words five time in a sentence, they are yours to keep!

The Real Thing:  Today is the birthday of Henry James (1843-1916), author of The Turn of the Screw.

To celebrate here's the LibravVox recording of his classic short story "The Real Thing" ("The Right Real Thing"), a tale that blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy.  Read by Nichoplas Clifford, this story clocks in at just under an hour and five minutes:

https://archive.org/details/real_thing_1011_librivox

St. Louis Blues:  It's also the birthday of the great Bessie Smith (1894-1937)  Here's a short film from 1929 with Bessie singing the W. C. Handy title song, St. Louis Blues:

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

And here's a 1925 recording (without the annoying commercial interruption), with Louis Armstrong on the cornet:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rd9IaA_uJI

May There Always Be Sunshine:  Today is also National ALS (American Sign Language) Day.  Here's a kindergarten class singing one of my favorite songs in English Russian, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Cantonese...and American Sign Language.  The words are universal.  Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgHdTch-4YQ

Florida Man:

• Florida Man Luis Ancieto Herrada, 64, of Monroe County, has been arrested and charged with aggravated battery with  deadly weapon and elderly abuse for allegedly repeatedly striking a 78-year-old man with a 2x4.  According to witness, the act was committed "for unknown reasons."  Hey, this is Florida.  Do we really need a reason?
• If you bring a loaded gun with fourteen rounds of ammunition into an airport and TSA catches it, how can you hide it?  If you are Florida Man Abraham Othman Yacoub, 26, of Lakeland, you grab the bag that contains the gun and run into the bathroom, where you wrap it in toilet paper and try to hide it in the trash.  The toilet paper ploy did not work and Yacoub is facing a potential twenty years in federal prison.  The toilet paper, thankfully, was new and not used.
• Florida Man Francel Parker believes his 20-year-old son, Levion Parker, is alive.  Levion Parker leapt from the eleventh floor of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship while 57 miles from Fort Lauderdale.  Francel Parker said his son, who worked on a commercial fishing boat, was a "master diver" and had numerous flotation devices thrown to him after his leap.  From the bottom of my heart, I pray that this father is right.
• Florida Man Careem Griffith, 46, of Jacksonville, was arrested for stealing "nine succulent lobster tails, four premium ribeye steaks, two packages of snow crab legs, and a rotisserie chicken" from a Walmart in Yulee.  Sometimes you can't control the hunger, I guess.  In related news, South Florida Man Alberto Betancourt, 36, was caught on camera stealing met from grocery stores at knifepoint.  His crime spree includes robberies at Publix, Tropical Supermarkets, and Marshalls in the Miami-Dade area.  Jail records show Betancourt has a "long history of petit theft."
• An unnamed Florida Man man was shot and killed while in the pick-up line at an elementary school in Port St. John.  According to police, the gun was fired accidentally.  No further details were available.  What the H!@# was a loaded gun doing in a car an elementary school pickup line? 

Good News:

• Teen with an incredibly rare condition is cured in a world first.      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/teen-with-incredibly-rare-genetic-condition-is-cured-in-world-first-by-british-doctors/
• In 1978 a teacher junior high school science teacher promised his class an eclipse party in 2024 -- he just hosted it.      https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/a-teacher-promised-his-1978-class-an-eclipse-party-he-just-hosted-it/
• Florida police officers arrested a delivery driver on felony charges, then delivered the grocery order themselves.  Sometimes Florida Men can be cool.     https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/florida-police-officers-complete-grocery-delivery-after-arresting-delivery-driver-watch/
• 60% of Europe's electricity was produced by clean energy in the first two months of 2024          https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/incredible-60-of-europes-electricity-was-powered-by-clean-energy-in-the-first-two-months-of-2024/
• New York City coffee shop hires and trains people with autism and down syndrome to work there           https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/joyous-nyc-coffee-shop-hires-and-trains-people-with-autism-and-down-syndrome-to-work-there/
• Bank teller saves customer from losing millions on a scam    https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/hero-bank-teller-saves-customer-from-losing-millions-on-a-scam/

Today's Poem:

Spring

To what purpose, April, do you return again?

Beauty is not enough.

You can no longer quiet me with the redness

Of little leaves opening stickily.

I know what I know.

The sun is hot on my neck as I observe

The spikes of the crocus.

The smell of the earth is good.

It is apparent that there is no death.

But what does that signify?

Not only underground are the brains of men

Eaten by maggots.

Life in itself

Is nothing.

An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.

It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,

April

Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers.

-- Edna St. Vincent Millay