OSCAR CESARE - 100 CARTOONS BY CESARE (1916)

Cesare (1883-1948) was a Swedish-born American caricaturist and editorial cartoonist whose grease crayon technique was used to great effect in opposing World War I.  Some of the nuances and references in this 1916 book may be lost on modern readers, but his visceral reaction to the War to End All Wars remains stunning.  As the publisher of this book said, "the caricature merely makes you laugh; the cartoon makes you think."  Sometimes art can serve a higher purpose, and sometimes (alas) that purpose is forgotten by the march of history...

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=102117&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: GLORY IN DEATH

Glory in Death by "J. D. Robb" (Nora Roberts), 1995.

Okay, so here's my plan.  I am going to live forever, or at least for a very long time.  How will I accomplish that?  By reading all of J. D. Robb's ...In Death books featuring futuristic police detective Eve Dallas.  There are, or will be by September, 63 novels in the series, and growing.  Plus at least 12 novellas.  If I read one every other month or so, and if the author keeps churning them out, I will be busy far, far into the future.  And of course, the gods of reading will do nothing to prevent me from finishing this simple task.  Voila!  Instant near immortality!

So what's the hype about these novels, anyway?  All I can say is that a number of people whose judgment I truly respect go ga-ga over them, to the point that a couple of months ago I decide to rad the series in order, from start to finish.  The first book, Naked in Dead, set the groundwork.  It's New York City in the mid-21st century, and there have been a few technological and social changes, but  nothing that is explained in enough detail to get in the way of a crime thriller.  Eve Dallas, both beautiful and sensual, is one of the best homicide cops in the city.  She is passionate about her job and, as is explained more than once, stands for the victim unwaveringly.  Eve has a mysterious and lonely past -- she has no memories of her life before the age of eight and grew up with no family and no past, which allows to have very few friends or connections and allows her to concentrate on her job.   In the first novel, Eve is handed a particularly nasty murder and meets Rourke, a mysterious and powerful billionaire with with a shrouded past.  Rourke, too, has had a rough childhood and has accumulated few friends.  In that first book, Rourke becomes a main suspect, as well as -- to her great surprise -- Eve's lover.

In Glory in Death, a talented and successful prosecutor is murdered in a disreputable part of the city, her throat cut open.  What was she doing there?  Eve is upset to learn that the victim is also a business partner of Rourke, although Rourke was not involved in her murder.  Suspicion begins to fall on the victim's family:  her ex-husband, her spoiled son, her aggressive daughter and her gambling addict fiance, and her current lover, all of whom seems powerful enough to block Eve's investigation.  Things get more complicated when Eve's boss turns out to be a close friend of the family and the godfather to the victim's children.  Then a second victim gets her throat cut; this time it's a young up-and-coming actress who also happens to be previous lover of Roarke's.  The influential standing of the victims make this case a major news story, spurred on by the opportunistic reporting of an unethical newscaster who tries to make Eve's investigation look bad.

Because the victims were both well-known females, Eve decides to us herself as bait, using her connections with a television station to promote herself.  This ploy fails horribly when a third victim, an assistant to the reporter Eve is working with, is murdered in a case of obvious mistaken identity.  Coincidences keep tying the family of the first victim to the murders, leading to a false confession and bad publicity for Eve.  But the murderer still has it out for Eve, leading to a final, knife-weilding climax in a darkened corner of Central Park.

Along the way, Eve's relationship to Rourke deepens despite the fact that both are highly independent and naturally suspicious people.  The two finally acknowledge their love for each other and now they must work out the boundaries and kinks of that romance.  It's no secret that the pair eventually marry -- most likely sometime over the course of the next few books, I presume.

Glory in Death is a sensual romantic and somewhat violent mystery.  The romance is sometimes sappy and a tad unbelievable, but is true to the nature of the characters, heightened  by the fantasy and power of Rourke's immense wealth.  A good blend of futuristic police procedure, criminal psychopathy, and smart characterization.  It's easy to see why all of the books in the series have been best-sellers.  I'm actually looking forward the third book in the series, Immortal in Death.

Nora Roberts (born 1950) is the author of over 225 novels of classic contemporary romance, romantic suspense, crime, and fantasy.  She is one of the most successful novelists in the world.  Since 1999 every one of her novels has been a New York Times bestseller -- over 220 of them, many debuting in the number one spot.  Her books have sold over 500 million copies globally.  Her books have won seven Golden Medallion awards, fifteen RITA Awards, three Quill Awards, one Romantic Times Reviewer Choice Award, and has won three times in the AAR (All About Romance) Annual Reader Poll.

MYSTERY PLAYHOUSE: CHARLIE CHAN -- THE PEARL OF GREAT PRICE (SUMMER, 1944)

Today is King Kamelamela Day in Hawaii, and when I conjure up Hawaii in my mind I picture Luaus and hula, Don Ho, an old Elvis Presley movie, Magnum, P.I., Barack Obama, the USS Arizona, and how cute Connie Stevens looked in Hawaiian Eye, as well as the island's most famous pre-Steve McGarrett fictional police detective, Charlie Chan.

Here's Charlie, as played by Walter Connolly, who must face the kidnapping of his beloved daughter Rose by bank robbers after a  bungled robbery.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbmWQ83QnnU

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: OLD FAGS

 "Old Fags" by Stacy Aumonier  (first published in The Grim 13, edited by Frederick Stuart Green, 1917; reprinted in Hutchinson's Magazine, March 1928; and reprinted in The Edge of the Chair, edited by Joan Kahn, 1967, and in an abridged paperback version titled The Graveyard Shift, 1970)

"The boys called him 'Old Fags,' and the reason was not hard to seek.  He occupied a room in a bock of tenements off Lisson Grove, bearing the somewhat grandiloquent title of Bollingbroke Buildings, and conspicuous among the many doubtful callings that occupied his time was one in which he issued forth with a deplorable old canvas sack, which, after a day's peregrination along the gutters, he would manage to partly fill with cigar and cigarette ends.  The exact means by which he managed to convert this patiently gathered garbage into the wherewithal to support his disreputable body, nobody took the trouble to inquire, nor was there any further interest aroused by the disposal of the contents of the same sack when he returned with the gleanings of dustbins, distributed thoughtfully at intervals along certain thoroughfares by a maternal Borough Council."

Old Fags basically kept to himself.  He had lived in the building for seven years and no one knew anything about him.  He was unwashed and his clothes were caked with dirt.  His gleanings from the cigar and cigarette butts he accumulated were evidently enough to support him because he was never behind on his measly rent and always seemed to have enough for his constant bottle of cheap gin.  When his door was open a pungent smell of cooked onions for a stew would permeate the hallway.  His neighbors and those he met on the street avoided and berated him, but he seldom noticed.  He was basically a kind-hearted and simple soul; once, when the woman next door could not make her rent, he gave her fifteen shillings, which she slowly repaid, resenting him greatly all the while.

It was a poor neighborhood and times were hard and employment scarce.  One neighbor was old Mrs.  Birdle, who did laundry and ironing when she wasn't ill.  Her daughter, Minnie, was employed at the estate of Mrs. Bastien-Melland as a very low level servant -- so low that her mistress had never met her, nor talked to her, nor even knew she existed.  Mrs. Bastien-Melland's pride and joy was her dogs -- ten purebred show dogs, Chows and Pekinese, on whom she doted and spent money on their pampered care.  The dog groom was named Meads, a handsome but mean-spirited man with a weakness for women and gambling.  As dog groom, he had a somewhat comfortable position in the household and was considered among the higher echelon of its workers.

As it happened, Meads was occasionally interested in Minnie and took her out several times.  Then Minnie became an "unmarried girl in that condition" and was fired.  By this time Means had lost interest in her and had dropped -- he was already paying for children in Norfolk and Enfield, and was determined not to the same with anyone else.  But Mrs. Bridle was very ill and Minnie could scarce find work and the two were in desperate straights, seldom being able to afford food.  Minnie's health also began to be affected and she was often week and bed-ridden.  Seeing this, Old Fags offered them some of his ever-present onion stew, highly-spiced, and with undetermined meat and bones in it.

The baby came and milk for the infant was a paramount need, often provided to the expense of the two women.  Old Fag's stews became more important.  But times were also tough for Old Fags, his stews became weaker and weaker, with less and less meat, and at times only bones among the onions.  Then Old Fags made the mistake of passing out drunk in a public park and was arrested and spent ten days in jail.  When he returned to Bollingbrook Buildings, he found the Birdles in even more desperate circumstances.  He promised them that he would bring them a heaty stew that evening.

That day he came across Meads in a pub and plied him with drink and told him of a beautiful and willing woman who would be waiting for him that evening between six and seven, giving Meads a fictitious address.  But Mead had to walk the dogs between 5:30 and 6:30 -- Mrs. Bastien insisted and the imperious Mrs. Bastien-Melland must not be disobeyed.  but Old Fags offered to walk the dogs for Meads while he went on his romantic interlude.

And so it happened.  Meads spent hours trying to find the fictitious address and Old Fags took control of the dogs.  And that night, the Birdles had the "finest stoo" they've ever had in their lives.

Of course, there is more to the story than this, but this is its essence.  We never learn the actual fate of the dogs so out imagination must fill in the blanks.  The anthology in which the story first appeared, The Grim 13, was comprised of tales rejected by magazines because they were too gruesome or horrible...

Stacy Aumonier (1877-1928) was a stage performer and popular author who published six novels, a book of essays, a book of character studies, and some 85 short stories.  He was best known for his short stories, which were highly praised  by the likes of John  Galsworthy, Rebecca West, and James Hilton.  Part of his genius was in the variability of his writing; There is no typical Aumonier story, or typical Aumonier character."  Among his more noted tales were "The Octave of Jealousy," "Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty," "Where Was Wych Street," "The Accident of Crime," "The Landlord of the Love-a-Duck," "The Perfect Murder," and "A Source of Irritation."  Aumonier died of tuberculosis at age 51.

UPDATE, AND A PERSONAL COMMENT:  I've been thinking about this story and why it resonated so much with me.  When I was a kid we had our own version of Old Fags in my small town.  He did not gather cigarette  butt s for possible financial reward, though.  We called him Dirty Ernie; I have no idea what his real name was, nor anything about his personal history, although I do know his name was actually Ernie, and he was unwashed and filthy and had distinct mental deficiencies.  According to rumor, Ernie would garner cigarette butts from the gutter and eat them; I never personally witness this but I had friends who swore they had -- but we were very young at the time, between ten and twelve, so who knows if what they claimed was true.  In private we might make fun of Ernie, but never to his face; no one in town that I knew of ever teased or ragged him to his face; he was treated with benign neglect, if anything.  Ernie was strange and unintelligible, but never feared for his difference.  One of the locals allowed Ernie to live in his barn, and -- perhaps -- even fed him.  I don't really know and I never cared to ask; I was just a kid.  I also don't know what ever happened to him.  He just wasn't important enough to me to ask why.  I was not deliberately callous; I was just an unthinking kid.  I suppose every town has its local legends and Dirty Ernie was ours, and how much we told ourselves about him was fact and how much was imagination is something I can not answer.  In the city next to us -- Lowell, Mass. -- they had their own legend; she was called Depot Annie; beyond that I know nothing, not who she was, what she was known for, or if she was even real -- for a kid, the legend was always enough.  It occurs to me that we often go through life, looking at others and filling in the blanks with out imaginations, regardless of whether it is the truth or just a good story.  The one true fact about Ernie that I know is that he was never treated unkindly; at the very worst he was tolerated, and that makes me feel a little better.  And, considering the treatment that the mentally ill often got in the 1950s, the fact that he was given a safe place to stay and to call his home -- even if it was a barn  -- was an act of great kindness.

The adult me, the mature and considerate me, wishes I knew more about Ernie.  Who he was, where he came from, did he have any family anywhere, and was he in his own way satisfied with his life...

Those are some of the thoughts that have been rattling around in my brain since I read Stacy Aumonier's story.

OVERLOOKED SINGING COWBOY OATER: RAWHIDE (1938)

Sykes "Smith" Ballew is a sometimes overlooked singing cowboy.  A studio vocalist for dance bands and jazz records, Ballew formed his own orchestra in 1929 and was one of the earliest singing cowboys of the 1930s, beginning with Western Gold (1937), although he had dubbed singing for John Wayne in 1934's The Man from Utah, and between 1929 and 1935, he made scores of records as Buddy Blue & His Texans and Jack Blue's Texans.

Co-starring with Ballew was baseball great Lou Gehrig, playing a version of himself.  Gehrig decides to retire from baseball and become a western cattle rancher, visiting his sister Peggy (Evelyn Knapp, Perils of Pauline, In Old Santa Fe, One Frightened Night) in Rawhide, Montana.  Once there, Gehrig discovers that local ranchers are being extorted by a protection racket run by bad guy Ed Saunders (Arthur Loft, The Woman in the Window, Should a Girl Marry?, Charlie Chan in the Secret Service).  Joining  in the fight against Saunders is local attorney Larry Kimball (Ballew).  Gehrig plays his role with charm and humor; in one bar fight scene, he uses billiard balls as baseballs to clock his opponents.  It should be noted that researchers have shown that Gehrig showed no sign of ALS while filming this film, although an analysis of photos taken in 1938 indicated that the disease had begun its progression.

Songs include two -- "When a Cowboys Goes to Town" and "Driftin'" -- written by Albert von Titzer, who, appropriately was the man who wrote "Take Me Out to the Ball Game."  Other songs in the movies are "A Cowboy's Life" and "That Old Washboard Band."

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7bQaVq2fKw

THE LENA BAKER CASE

Today marks the 126th anniversary of the birth of Lena Baker, the only woman to be executed by electrocution in the state of Georgia.

Lena was African-American, one of four children born to a family of sharecroppers jut outside of Cuthbert, Georgia.  As a child, she and her siblings worked as farm laborers.  By the 1940s she had three children and worked as a maid.  In 1944, she began working for Ernest Knight, an older white man who owned a gristmill, and had broken his leg.  Knight was a cruel man who repeatedly sexually assaulted Lena and would keep her locked up for days as a virtual slave.  There seemed to be little that Lena could do about her situation.  Although Knight's son and many townspeople were aware of the situation and disapproved, Knight refused to give up his "relationship" with Lena.  Not only was Knight physically abusive, but his son had also beaten Lena at least once in a effort to stop the relationship; Lena tried to get away that night and slept in the woods, going into Cuthbert the next morning.  Knight found her and locked her in the gristmill, returning a while later.

When Knight returned Lena told him that she was leaving.  Knight threatened her her with an iron bar.  As she tried to escape, they struggled over his pistol and the gun went off, killing Knight.  Lena then reported the incident to the county coroner, who had been one of Lena's previous employers.  The date was April 29, 1944.

Lena was arrested for murder.  An all-male, all-white jury discounted her plea of self defense and convicted Lena of murder -- a charge that carried an automatic death sentence.  Georgia law in 1944 was heavy sided against African-Americans and none were legally allowed to sit on the jury.  The judge in the case was William "Two Gun" Worrill, who famously kept a brace of pistols in open view on his bench.  Lena's court-appointed lawyer, W. L. Ferguson, filed an appeal and then immediately dropped Lena as a client.  Georgia's governor at the time, Ellis Arnell, granted Lena a 60-day reprieve so the state Board of Pardons and Parole could review the case; they determined there was no case for clemency.

Lena was executed on March 5, 1945, and was buried in an unmarked grave behind Mount Vernon Baptist Church, where she had sung in the choir.  Her last words were:

"What I done, I did in self-defense, or I would have been killed myself.  Where I was I could not overcome it.  God has forgiven me.  I have nothing against anyone.  I picked cotton for Mr. Pritchett, and he has been good to me.  I am ready to go.  I am one in the number.  I am ready to meet my God.  I have a very strong conscience."

And there things stood for over fifty years.

In 1998, congregants of the church provided a simple gravestone for Lena.  In 2003, descendants began to mark the anniversary of her death and Mother's Day at her graveside.  Also in 2003, Lena's grandnephew, Roosevelt Curry, with the assistance of the Prison and Jail Project, an advocacy group, requested an official pardon from the state of Georgia.  

Justice can work slowly.  In 2005, a full and unconditional pardon was issued by the Parole Board -- sixty years after her execution.  The Board stated that they could not find Lena innocent, but that she should have been tried for manslaughter -- a charge that carried only fifteen years -- rather than murder; one wonders whether they considered her argument of self-defense at all.

HYMN TIME

 Tennessee Ernie Ford.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbnbil9T2SQ

PLANET COMICS #71 (JULY 1953)

Five typical 1950s planetary adventures in this anthology comic book.  The artwork is pretty good and the writing is above average:

• "Invasion?"  [listed as "Invaders from  Alturo" on the cover]  Was the satellite ,launched from Earth a mighty force for peace?  Or was it an invitation for INVASION?  Every six  months a relief ship from Earth brought new personnel to be rotated with those on the distant satellite.  But this time the ship carried green-skinned aliens who overpowered the satellite.  Only Major Joe Vickers, who was stationed on a remote refueling station, was spared; everyone else had become mindless slaves to the aliens' intoxicating hypnotic gas.  Can one man defeat the forces of Alturo that are hell-bent on conquering Earth?
• "The Sandhogs of Mars"  "It was strictly a routine job.  Earthmen were  building a roadway across the blood-red sands for the Martians:  a routine job, that is, until the grinding, jolting halt came so suddenly!"  The sandhogs had hit a huge city that was buried under the Martian sands eons ago in an atomic explosion.  Okay, so...atomic explosion...a city hidden for the surface for millennia ...eons of radiation...gives you deformed, Martian monsters, an entirely different type of Sand Hog!  And they are not friendly.  With the crew is a Martian girl, Urla, who is drop dead gorgeous, with a killer bod and tiny antennae.  And there's a  mutiny among the stranded Earthman and the mutineers are all uncouth shirtless brutes.  Talk about your recipe for excitement!
• "Space Rangers:  The Changelings"  From previous adventures we have Space Rangers Flint Baker and Reef Ryan, now headed to the prison city of Bacarat, with Borlu, the Martian in charge of the mission, and a being with his own agenda.  The Rangers are to pick up a group of parolees and take them back to Earth.  But something is amiss.  Borlu announces that these are not the prisoners that had originally been sent to the prison planet.  It turns out that they are the Changelings from Arcturus, who have taken over the bodies of the prisoners.  Borlu defeats the leader of the Changelings in a battle of mental powers and Earth is saved.  Flint and Reef realize that any suspicions they had about Borlu were ill-founded.
• "Silence from Planetoid X"  [How many times has a Planetoid X appeared in 1950s SF stories, films, and comic books?  If I had a nickel...]   "This was the year 2556.  fifty years ago Arn Guro had led a band of hardy Earthpeople off to colonize a new world in outer space.  For a long time he kept electron-radio contact with Earth.  Then the messages became fewer and fewer.  Now Earth's far-reaching communicators picked up nothing.  There was only...SILENCE FROM PLANETOID X."  Turns out that a rebellion had destroyed the planetoid's civilization and its people reverted back to a caveman-like existence.  I'm not sure what the point of this story was.
• "Hi-Jack on Alpha-7!"  A slave ship is intercepted by an interstellar patrol ship.  the slave ship damaged badly, the cargo of slaves are jettisoned into space to die, and the slave ship limps to the nearest asteroid -- Alpha-7.  Not much is known about Al[ph-7; it never joined the Galactic Union and was a civilization shrouded in secrecy; it is peopled by green, ant-like beings with four limbs -- not six -- and ears.   The slavers hijack one of the ships from Alpha-7, and to their horror, they learn the secret of the asteroid.

A pretty good issue for the most part -- above average, I'd say.  The aet was done by John Belcastro, Maurice Whitman, Bill Discount, Bill Benulis, and -- possibly -- Jim Mooney or Art Peddy.  Every now and then I'd see the influence of Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, and Ed Emshwiller,  but that's just me.

Check it out:

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=102103&comicpage=&b=i

FORGOTTEN BOOK: COSMOS, THE SERIAL NOVEL (1933-1934)

Cosmos (first published in seventeen consecutive parts in Science Fiction Digest, July 1933 to December 1943/January 1935 -- the magazine's title changed to Fantasy Magazine in January 1934, and was published monthly except for the final two issues, which were on a bimonthly schedule; Chapter Two was reprinted as "Volunteers from Venus" in the Otis Adelbert Kline fanzine OAK Leaves, V1N8, Summer 1972; the entire serial was reprinted in 29 parts in the Ace paperback Perry Rhodan series, #32-60, October 1973- December 1974; around 2014 (date uncertain), fan David Ritter produced The Cosmos Project, an online resource that reprinted the entire serial, as well as ancillary items of interest -- https://cosmos-serial.com/;  and reprinted by First Fandom Experience, date uncertain -- which also reprinted in two volumes all 39 issues of Science Fiction Digest/Fantasy Digest)

In July 1933, science fiction as a separate genre was just a .kittle over seven years -- and the term "science fiction" some four years old.  Hugo Gernsback, the original editor of Amazing Stories, had encouraged his young readers -- and they were almost always young, male, and white -- to communicate with each other to discuss the ideas that could be found in his magazine.  And communicate they did.  Soon, the enthusiastic readers were forming clubs, meeting in person, and issuing newsletters and fanzines.  One of the more noted fanzines of the time was Science Fiction Digest, begun in September 1932 and initially published and edited by Maurice A. Ingher;  editorship was taken over by Conrad H. Ruppert in April 1933 and becoming publisher a month later.  Ruppert's young and ambitious staff included Julius Schwartz (age 18) and Raymond A. Palmer (age 23).  they proposed a monumental project for the fanzine: a round robin novel by some of the leading science fiction writers of the day.  Palmer wrote a preliminary outline and they convinced seventeen of the most popular science fiction writers of the time to contribute; to be fair, it did not take much convincing -- writers and fans was closely bound together in those early days.  Palmer himself contributed two chapters, one under his own name and one under a pseudonym.

Thus was born Cosmos, a legendary slam-bang, gee-whiz extravaganza of imagination, derring-do, and super-science, a work that truly has to be read to be fully appreciated.

Expect no sophisticated writing.  But does your twelve-year-old inner child really need sophistication?

The story:

In Chapter One, Dos-Tev is the deposed emperor of a planet in Alpha Centauri.  The usurper, Ay-Artz, is planning to invade and conquer Earth's solar system with the use of newly developed faster than light-speed ships.  In an attempt to stop him, Dos-Tev lands in the Copernicus crater of the moon and attempts to rally the various peoples of the solar system.

Chapter Two takes us Mercury where on e of the wealthiest people on earth has fled to avoid a robot takeover of humanity.  Chapter Three takes us to Jupiter's moon Callisto, which is ruled by women.  We go to Mars in Chapter Four, where the planet is filled with sentient beings that resembles giant flying squirrels.    Saturn's beings in Chapter  Five are cone-like things that communicate by color.

Chapter Six returns to Dos-Tev, who is encountering opposition from a mysterious intelligent force dubbed "the Wrongness of Space."  In Chapters Seven, Eight, and Nine, the people of Neptune (sentient gas-filled balloons), Venus (transplanted Earthmen), and Earth send emissaries to Dos-Tev, but -- SPOILER -- the Earthmen are controlled by their robot masters.

Chapter Ten has Dos-Tev, despite interference from the Wrongness of Space, convincing the representatives of the various planets to build fleets of space ships to fight Ay-Artz.

Chapter Eleven sees the Earthmen overturing their robot masters.  This chapter, written by A. Merritt, was later revised and published as a short story, "Rhythm of the Spheres" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1936).

Chapter Twelve reveals that the Wrongness of Space is an insane interdimensional creature named Krzza of Lxyia, who has allied itself with Ay-Artz.  Dos-Tev tries to defeat the creature and fails.  Krzza hijacks communication equipment to sent the planetary fleets to an intended doom.

The fleets of Earth, Neptune, and Saturn struggle for survival from the misdirection from Krzza in Chapters Thirteen, Fourteen, and Fifteen.  Chapter Thirteen, by E. E. Smith, was revised and reprinted as a shlort story, "Robot Nemesis" (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1939).

We are in the home stretch now, kiddos.  In the penultimate chapter, Dos-Tev manages to defeat Krzza and heads to join the planetary fleets for the final showdown with Ay-Artz.

In the world-destroying final chapter, an epic space battle destroys the forces of Ay-Artz,  but at a terrible cost.  The outer planets -- Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto -- are completely destroyed, as is the heroic Dos-Tev.

Phew!

The contributors:

• "Ralph Milne Farley" (Chapter One:  Faster Than Light).   The pen name for Roger Sherman Hoar (1887-1963), one-time state legislator and assistant Attorney general for the state of Massachusetts.  He campaigned for women's suffrage and was instrumental in the passage of the Employee Unemployment Benefits Act; he also published landmark works on constitutional and patent law.  He later  moved to Wisconsin, where he was a member of the Milwaukee Fictioneers.  He turned down an offer to become the editor of Amazing Stories, recommending Raymond A. Palmer for the position.  The "Farley" by-line is understood to have been used exclusively for collaborations with his daughter Carolyn, who was a writer (as" Jacqueline Farley") and an engineering student.  Farley's most famous work was The Radio Man (1924; book version, 1948; alternate title An Earthman on Venus); there were several sequels
• David H. Keller, M.D.  (Chapter Two:  The Emigrants).  Keller (1880-1966) was a popular author in the early science fiction and fantasy magazines; his first published story appeared when he was fifteen.  Keller was a neuropsychologist noted for treating shell-shocked soldiers in World War I -- an experience that contributed to the pessimism found in some of his writings, and served as Assistant Superintendent of the Louisiana State Mental Hospital.  Keller wrote recreationally util his wife convinced him to make a profit from his hobby.  Among his classic stories are "Revolt of the Pedestrians," "Stenographer's Hans," "The Ivy War," and "The Thing in the Cellar."  His novels and collections were among those published by the early science fiction specialty press; he underwrote the publication of several of his Arkham House collections, which helped keep he struggling publisher above water.  Hugo Gernsback hired him as editor of his magazine Sexology, a post he held for five years, leading to the publication of the best-selling Sexual Education Series of ten books.
• Arthur J. Burks (Chapter Three:  Callisto's Children).  Burks (1898-1974) was a marine officer and aide-de-camp to Brigadier-General Smedley E. Butler; Burks left the marines after a decade of service, but rejoined during World War II, retiring as a lieutenant colonel.  He was one of the most prolific writers of the pulp era -- by early 1936, he estimated that he had published  some 1400 stories.  Burk was also active as a ghost writer and a writer of nonfiction.  Only a very small portion of his output was ion the science fiction and fantasy fields.  His most memorable early stories were "Earth, the Marauder," "Lords of the Stratosphere," "Manape the Mighty" and sequel "The Mind Master," and "Black Harvest of Moraine."  His ghost writing included seven books for Princess Der Ling, the first lady-in waiting for the Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi; Princess Der Ling became the subject of a Chinese period drama television series in 2006.
• "Bob Olsen" (Alfred Johannes Olsen, Jr.) (Chapter Four:  The Murderer from Mars).  Olsen (1884-1956) ran his own advertising agency while writing humorous science fiction stories from 1927-1936.  His stories were extremely popular, but not very lucrative.  He is noted for his "Fourth Dimension" tales ("The Fourth Dimension Roller-Press" and sequels), "The Ant with a Human Soul," and "Rhythm Rides the Rocket."
• "Francis Flagg" (Henry George Weiss and not George Henry Weiss as is sometimes given) (Chapter Five:  Tyrants of Saturn).  Weiss (1898-1946) published about thirty stories in the SF pulps (mainly Astounding, Wonder, Weird Tales)  He was a correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft.  His most popular story was his first, "The Machine Man of Ardathia," which was followed five years later by a sequel "The Cities of Ardarthia."  In 1947, Fantasy Publishing Company, Inc. [FPCI] released his story The Night People, which became a highly sought-after chapbook.
• John W. Campbell (Chapter Six:  Interference on Luna).   Before he became the stories editor of Astounding and rushing in science fiction's "Golden Age," Campbell wrote  both slam-bang, gosh-wow planet-busting Sf adventure stories (:"The Brain Stealers of Mars," "Invaders from the Infinite," etc.), as swell as sensitive and thoughtful stories under under his "Don A. Stuart" pseudonym ("Who Goes There?," "Cloak of Aesir," "Twilight," etc.).  Because of his non-PC attitudes toward race and his misogynistic leanings, among other things, he has fallen out of favor.  (I still cannot forgive him for being the first to publish and promote L. Ron Hubbard's Dianetics.)  Campbell may well be what they claim he is (and I have no reason to doubt that) but, at heart, he was a man who loved to argue and would often pick the  most unpopular side.  whatever the case, his place in the history of science fiction is secure -- even it is tarnished.
• "Rae Winters" (Chapter Seven:  Son of the Trident)  Rae Winters...who is she?  Nobody, it turns out.  Winters was a pen name for Raymond A. Palmer (for which see Chapter Ten, below).  Palmer used this pseudonym for two stories in 1933 and 1934.
• Otis Adelbert Kline & E. Hoffman Price (Chapter Eight:  Volunteers from Venus).  Kline (1891-1946) was an author and literary agent, and an amateur orientalist and student of Arabic (as was Price).  He was most noted for his Edgar Rice Burroughs-like novels, The Planet and The Prince and Port] of Peril, The Swordsman [and The Outlaws] of Mars, Jan of the Jungle, and Jan in India.  He began to concentrate on his literary agency ion the mod-Thirties; perhaps his most  notable client was Robert E. Howard.  Price (1898-1988) was a proud fictioneer of the pulps, writing in a number of genres, but may be most noted for his work in Weird Tales; he has also been called a "real-life soldier of fortune."  He famously co-wrote a story with H. P. Lovecraft and was the writer known to have met Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, and Clark Ashton Smith in person.  Among his most notable stories were "The Stranger from Kurdistan" --and "The Infidel's Daughter," a 1927 story that satirized the Ku Klux Klan and angered a number of Weird Tales' Southern readers. Price also wrote the popular Solomon Boliver Grimes stories which were humorous fantastic takes on the western story, and a series about Pawang Ali, a Malaysian detective on Singapore.  He co-wrote several of Kline's stories about the Dragoman, Hamad the Atar.
• Abner J. Gelula (Chapter Nine:  Menace of the Automaton).  Gelula (1906-1985) published only six science fiction stories, five of them from 1931 to 1934.  His first story, "Automaton," is noted for creating a lecherous robot who had to be destroyed.  The robot theme was popular enough to be re-used for this chapter of Cosmos.  Not much is known about Gelula, except that he was one of the first radio hams, and worked as a newspaper reporter who work at one time in New York and Atlantic City.  "Automaton" was purchased shortly after publication by Universal Pictures, but  the cost of  bringing the story to the screen was then deemed to be too expensive.  None of his stories have been anthologized.
• Raymond A. Palmer (Chapter Ten:  Conference at Copernicus).  Palmer (1910-1977) was a unique character in science fiction.  A childhood accident crushed his spine, leaving him in adulthood as a hunchback measuring less than five feet.  He found a home on science fiction fandom and was the Associate Editor of Science Fiction Digest from its start; after the fanzine changed its title to Fantasy Magazine, Palmer helped conceive and wrote the preliminary outline for Cosmos.  His first science fiction story was published in 1930.  He became the editor of Amazing in 19238 and immediately give the magazine a lively, albeit more juvenile slant, increasing the magazine's sales significantly.  The following year, he started companion magazine magazine Fantastic Adventures. He filled both magazines with many of his stories written under various pseudonyms.  A shameless promoter, he popularized the infamous Shaver Mysteries, based on the idea that an underground race was controlling humanity through various psi powers; from the Shaver Mystery it was a short step to Scientology and other pseudoscience nonsense such as that of Erik von Daniken.  Palmer went big for the Flying Saucer craze and promoted ilot Kenneth Arnold.  He started the occult-oriented pseudoscience magazines Fate and Mystic (later Search) and the science fiction magazines Other Worlds and Imagination.  Later in life, he promoted a man who claimed to actually be the outlaw Jesse James.  For science fiction readers of the early Thirties, Palmer's name meant non-stop action and imagination.
• A. Merritt (Chapter Eleven:  The Last Poet and the Robots).  Merritt (1884-1943) was (and is) one of the most famous and influential fantasy adventure writers of the early 20th century, author of The Moon Pool, The Ship of Ishtar, The Face in the Abyss, Seven Footprints to Satan, Dwellers in the Mirage, Burn, Witch, Burn!, and Creep, Shadow, Creep!  He was the assistant editor of American Weekly, a Sunday newspaper from 1912 to 1937, and editor from 1937 until his death.  Merritt was also one of the most highly paid journalists of his tine, making $25,00 a year in 1919, and over $100,000 when he died.  He was a much-loved hypochondriac who kept a supply of musical instruments in his office and would play them for his employees; Merritt's employees loved him because he would never fire anyone.  His autobiography-ish book, The Story Behind the Story (1942), gives little mention to the work that made him famous.
• J. Harvey Haggard (Chapter Twelve:  At the Crater's Core).  Haggard (1912-2001) published mainly in the Thirties and Forties, starting with "Faster than Light" (Wonder Stories, October 1930).   He is best remembered for "Through the Einstein Line," which inaugurated his stories about the Earth-Guard Interplanetary Police, "Children of the Ray," "Human Machines," "Thought Crystals," and "The Light That Kills."  Most of his stories, though popular at the time, are pretty mundane.  He also wrote poetry as "The Planet Prince."  A number of his stories ends with "it was only a dream..."   In his professional life, he was evidently a railroad man.
• Edward E. Smith, Ph.D. (Chapter Thirteen:  What a Course!)  "Doc" ("Skylark") Smith (1890-1965) has been called the Father of Space Opera -- pretty nifty for a professional food chemist specializing in doughnuts.  His Skylark of Space set the limits for galaxy-spanning super-science adventure, and was followed by three sequels.  His most ambitious series, the Lensman books, beginning with 1937's Galactic Patrol, and followed by Gray Lensman, Second Stage Lensman, Children of the Lens, Triplanetary, and First Lensman, spanned the universe through time and space and used just about every conceivable superscience trope that ever was.  Smith embraced his young science fiction fans and remained a popular presence at various science fiction conventions.  With the possible exception of A. Merritt, Smith was the most famous of the contributors to Cosmos.
•  P. Schuyler Miller (Chapter Fourteen:  The Fate of the Neptunians).  Miller (1912-1974) is probably best remembered as the book reviewer for Astounding Science Fiction; his reviews began in 1945 and ran regularly from 1951 util his death.  A technical writer by trade, he began publishing science fiction with "The Red Plague" in 1931.  His interest in archaeology informed his classic story "The Sands of Time."  "The Titan" was a noted, albeit uncompleted story in 1934-35; the magazine folded before the final installment -- the full work was finally published in 1952.  A long-time fan, Miller's Alice in Blunderland was a series of linked Science fiction parodies first published in Fantasy Magazine shortly before the magazine began publishing Cosmos.  Miller's one novel, 1950's Genus Homo, was a collaboration with L. Sprague de Camp.  Among his more than forty published science fiction stories, notables include "Old Man Mulligan," "Over the River," "The Frog," and "As Never Was".
• L. A. Eschbach (Chapter Fifteen:  The Horde of Elo Hava).  Lloyd Arthur Eschbach (1910-2003) was a noted science fiction fan, writer, and publisher.  From 1958 to 1962 he was a church publisher, then became a salesman for the Moody Bible Institute until his  retirement in 1975, after which he became a Congregational minister in Pennsylvania.  He started two of the early science fiction small press publishers, Fantasy Press and Polaris Press, and helped create of assist a number of other fan presses, including FPCI, the Buffalo Book Company, and Hadley press, and helped William Crawford launch his magazine Marvel Tales.  His 1947 book Of World Beyond was the first full-length work on science fiction writing from a professional pint of view.  He flooded the science fiction magazines of the 1930s with twenty two stories, including "The Tyrant of Time," "A Voice from the Ether," and "The Kingdom of Thought."  In ;later years he did much to promote E. E. Smith's writings and collaborated with him on the novel Subspace Encounter. Escbach also reported that L. Ron Hubbard told him in 1949, "I'd Like to start a religion.  That's where the money is."
• "Eando Binder" (Chapter Sixteen:  Lost in Alien Dimensions).   At first, "Eando Binder" as the writing brothers Earl (1904-1966) and Otto (1911-1974) [E. and O.] Binder, who wrote  ore than thirty stories together before Earl bowed out of the partnership in late 1935; from that point on the pseudonym referred to Otto alone, although collaborations with Earl would continue to  be printed through 1939.  (A third brother, Jack binder was a science fiction and comic book artist.)  Early Binder stories included "Dawn to Dusk," "The First Martian.," "Murder on the Asteroid," Lords of Creation, and Enslaved Brains.  On his own, Otto wrote the Adam Link robot stories, the Anton York, Immortal stories, the Lieutenant Jon Jarl of the Space Patrol series, and the Via series.  Otto also wrote many comic book stories for Fawcett (including over 880 stories in the Marvel Family universe), DC (where he co-created the Legion of superheroes, the villain Brainiac, Supergirl, and Krypto the Superdog, among others; he also wrote many of the early bizarro stories), and Timely (the precursor to Marvel), where he wrote adventures of Captain America, Sub-Mariner, and the Human Torch.  He also wrote the first Marvel tie-in  novel, The Avengers Battle the Earth-Wrecker (1967).
• Edmond Hamilton (Chapter Seventeen:  Armageddon in Space).  Of course the conclusion to the serial had to be written by "World Wrecker" Hamilton (1904-1977).  It was Hamilton, along with E. E. Smith and Jack Williamson, who set the course for science fiction in those early days.  Among Hamilton's early tales were "The Monster God of Mamurth," "Crashing Suns," "Cities in the Air," "The Man Who Saw the Future," "The Man Who Evolved," "Devolution," and :"He that Hath Wings."  Hamilton wrote 24 of the 27 Captain Future novels.  Like Otto Binder, Hamilton wrote for the comics, he specialized in stories for Superman and Batman.  Hamilton's later writings displayed a sophistication and sensitivity missing from much of his earlier work; books like The Star Kings, The City at World's End, the Star of Life, and The Haunted Stars, and stories such as "What's It Like Out There?," The Stars, My Brothers," and "Sunfire!" have helped to cement his reputation.  Hamilton was married to writer Leigh Brackett and they combined to of their series with "Stark and the Star Kings" (2005).

Cosmos contains a lot of creaky, sometimes laughable, writing  but it also contains the vision and hope that marked science fiction as an important genre.  Reading the serial takes one back to a not-so-distant day when anything was possible and imagination was king.  For those who were raised on science fiction and those, like me, who sat breathless and enthralled on the evening of July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong stepped from the Apollo 11 lunar module, Cosmos provides a historical record of exactly where we came from and a hint of where we are going.  It's not just a nostalgia thing; it is visible evidence that we can dream and hope and aspire, that no barrier is too difficult to overcome, and that we still contain that vital spark of creativity within us.  As such, I submit that Cosmos is a worthwhile place to visit. 

AFTERNOON THEATER: JOSEPHINE TEY'S THE DAUGHTER OF TIME (AUGUST 30, 1982)

 Neville Yeller dramatized one of the most famous novels in detective fiction for the BBC. 

Inspector Alan Grant is laid up in hospital with a broken leg.  He decides to fill his days trying to solve the famous case of the murders of the Princes in the Tower.  Richard III's name has been synonymous with evil, but did the hated hunchback really murder his two nephews?  Or did they actually outlive him?

Directed by Graham Gould, the broadcast starred Peter Gilmore as Alan Grant, and featured Simon Hewitt, Frances Jeater, Jill Lidstone, and Rosalind Shanks.

The Daughter of Time, published in 1951, was the last book that "Josephine Tey" (Elizabeth MacKintosh) published during her lifetime.  Anthony Boucher called the book "one of the best, not of the year, but of all time.."  Dorothy B. Hughes echoed that feeling, saying it was "not only one of the most important mysteries of the year, but of all years of mystery."  The book was number one in Britain's Crime Writers' Association's "Top 100 Crime Novels of All Time" list, and number 4 in the Mystery Writers of America's "Top 100 Mysteries of All Time" list.

Enjoy this most unusual exercise in criminal deduction.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg4xETbv0bM

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE WILD WOLF OF KOSTOPCHIN

"The Wild Wolf of Kostopchin" by Sir Gilbert Campbell  (from Campbell's book Wild and Weird:  or, Remarkable Stories of  Russian Life, 1899; that book was incorporated into the omnibus Wild and Weird:  Tales of Mystery and Imagination , 1899 [which also included Campbell's Mysteries of the Unseen: or Supernatural Stories of English Life, 1899, and Dark Stories from the Sunny South: or, Legends of the Mediterranean, 1899]; reprinted in Upon the Midnight, edited by R. C. Bull, 1957; in Book of the Werewolf, edited by Brian J. Frost, 1973; in The Werewolf Pack, edited by Mark Valentine, 2008; in Wulf:  Tales of Wolves and Werewolves, edited by Chad Arment, 2010; in Terrifying Transformations:  An Anthology of Victorian Werewolf Fiction, 1838-1896, edited by Alexis Easley & Shannon Scott, 2012;  in The Werewolf Megapack, edited  by John Betancourt, 2013; in Black Book of the Werewolf, editor uncredited, 2017; in Silver Bullets, edited by Eleanor Dobson, 2017; in Fireside Horror Stories about Werewolves, edited by M. Grant Kellermeyer, 2017; and in Were Wolf Short Stories, editor unknown, 2025)

Yep.  This is a werewolf story.  This one looks to be a classic, but does mean that it is any good?  let's see.

The author, Gilbert Campbell, 3rd Baronet, was one of the more interesting of the Victorian writers.  Born in 1838, Campbell attended Harrow before joining the army and serving as an officer before the Sepoy Rebellion.  He succeeded his father as baronet in 1870.  He married Esther Selina Maynham.  "The couple had one child, Claude Robert Campbell.  Shortly thereafter, husband and wife separated.  Thereafter, his life descended into a life of crime and literary hackdom.  Of the latter, he began contributing work to various periodicals such as Bow Bells and Judy's Annual, translating French detective fiction, writing sensation fiction, and editing Lambert's Monthly.  Always struggling for money, Campbell initiated or furthered various frauds such as beginning the Carlist Committee to fund a Spanish civil war, attempting insurance fraud, lending his name to various shaky business schemes, and serving on the board of a fake literary society.  The latter drew the attention of Henry Labouchere's newspaper Truth, prompted a criminal trial, and led to conviction in 1892.  Campbell was released from prison in 1894 and went on to publish a collection Through an Indian Mirror (1894).  He died in the second quarter of 1896 in London.  His sone assumed the title before dying himself ion 1900.  One of the more colorful characters in Victorian literary life. [my emphasis]."  

Also note that some sources list his death date as 1899, the same year that five of his books were published.  Other works include In the Shadow of Death (1888), New Detective Stories (1891), and The Vanishing Diamond:  A Story of the Himalayas (1891).

An online check finds that Wild and Weird is listed in eBay for $1200, plus shipping.  (Gulp!)  There is no indication which 1899 version of the book it is. the shorter book, or the omnibus.

About "The White Wolf of Kostopchin":

Paul Sergevitch is the reprobate owner of Kostopchin, an estate in what us now Lithuania.  He spends his time drinking, gambling, and living the high life in Moscow, but his vices are expensive, so has to regularly demand money from the estate, where he has not set foot since childhood.  A drunken argument with the well-connected son of a foreign dignitary led to a duel in which Paul killed the foreigner.  This displeased the Czar, who ordered Paul banished to Kostopshin.  the estate is now in sad disrepair due to Paul's wasteful life.  He is bitter about having to live in such a desolate and poverty-stricken place.  Rather than trying to revive the estate, Paul spends his days hunting, drinking, and cursing both his lot and the Czar.  Eventually Paul marries, but he is a violent and bitter man and his wife dies -- perhaps due to his overt cruelty -- several years later,  but after giving birth to two children.  For some reason, Paul is devoted to his daughter, Katrina, now age five, but he remains bitter and unloving to her brother, Alexis, age seven.

As Paul is about to go hunting one day, Katrina reminds him that he has promised her some gray squirrel pelts.  Paul replies that he will into the woods and find an old poacher, who surely would lead him to the squirrels.  Old Mikhal, the estate manager, who had been a valet for Paul's family for over fifty years, warned him against going into the woods, citing stories of supernatural beings...and of wolves.  Mikhal had recently been in the woods when he was confronted by a large pack of wolves.  Mikhal's crucifix had frightened the pack away, except for the leader, an enormous gray she-wolf, who kept her distance from the crucifix, but was obviously looking for a way to get around it.  The wolf followed Mikal back to estate, constantly looking for a way to attack him.

Paul poo-pooed the old man's warnings, stating that, if the she=wolf actually existing, she would not be about to stand against his shotgun.  Now in the forest, Paul's dog began acting strangely, and led him to a part of the woods he did not recognize.  The dog, obviously in terror, was compelled to lead Paul on to an opening, where he found the body of the old poacher, torn to shreds by some wild beast, lying at the base of a shattered stone cross.  The only animals found in the forests of Russia that were capable of such damage were the bear and the wolf, and near the body, Paul found the large tracks of a wolf.   As he made his way home, Paul felt that some thing, some shadow, was lurking in the distance, watching him.

When Paul had returned  home, he learned that a local girl had gone missing.  Her father was dying from a venomous snake bite and the girl had gone to fetch a priest.  The old man died and the girl never returned.  The girl's body was found on the marsh, killed and savaged by wolves.  The girl had ben mutilated in exactly the same manner as the poacher.  The next day an old man staggered out of the vodki shop on his way home.  He never made it and his mangled body was found nearby.  Then there were three  more deaths -- a little child, an able-bodies laborer, and an old woman.

The serfs demanded that Paul, as master of Kospotchin, do something.

Paul and an army of bearers searched the area thoroughly for the giant white she-wolf with no luck.  then one of the bearers screamed.  Still barely alive, he told Paul that he had been attacked by the white wolf, who ran off into the thicket.  The group was about to set fire to the thicket when a feminine voice called out, asking them tom hold their flames until she exited the thicket.  It was an aristocratic appearing woman, fair of face, with titian hair, and wearing a mantle of white fur.  She said a terrible white wolf had run past her and dived into a cavity in the earth in the center of the thicket.  As Paul ordered his men to dig out the cavity and get to the wolf, he  noticed that the woman's hands were stained with fresh blood, presumably from the wolf as it brushed past her. 

The mysterious woman claims to have been on the run from the police for speaking out on some sensitive subject.  She asks Paul to provide her shelter from the police.  Paul, having been exiled himself and having not fondness for the police, agrees.  In the meantime, Pal's crew fund no trace of the wolf in the newly-dug crevice.

We all know where this is going.  Paul takes her home; the woman gives her name as Ravina.  Katrina, ever trusting, loves her; Alexis, however, dislikes her, as does Mikhal, who says she reminds him of the white wolf.  Paul proposed marriage.  She agrees conditionally:  for a month she will stay there and visit Paul for only two hours a day, and after a month she will make her final decision.  'then, shortly before the month was over, Mikhal tells Paul that he has once again seen the white wolf.  In the house.  Just outside Ravina's apartments.  But Paul is getting more and more infatuated with Ravina's charms.

Things come to a head.  Katrina is in danger.  Paul is uselessly smitten.  Mikhals has been banished by Paul.  But seven-year-old Alexis has a pistol...

An interesting story.  Part fairy tale, part shilling shocker, and part atmospheric thriller.  In answer to my earlier question, is the story any good?, I would have to give a qualified yes. if only because the modern reader would see through the tropes which were not that common a century and a quarter ago.  Also, I have to admit that I had a constant urge to whack Paul on the side of the head with a large stick; but that's just me -- your mileage may differ.

The story can be read at the University of Pennsylvania's Online Books Page.

COLONEL MARCH OF SCOTLAND YARD: THE ABOMINABLE SNOWMAN (OCTOBER 8, 1955)

Once again let's visit Boris Karloff as Colonel March of "The Department of Queer Complaints," created by John Dickson Carr writing as "Carter Dickson."

"Members of a British mountain climbing club are seemingly terrorized by an abominable snow man after film of the tracks belonging to the creature are released.  March struggles to accpet the nature of the creature, and what its real motivations are."

Directed  by Bernard Knowles and scripted by Leslie Slote.  Also featured are Ewan Roberts, Doris Nolan, Ivan Craig, Olaf Pooley, Alec Mango, and Peter Bathurst.  A minor subplot has a woman (horrors!) applying to join the club, with Colonel March strongly advocating for her.

An interesting bit of nonsense all around.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3uduVrfmQY

TODAY

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jaMbkTQC8_o

INCOMING

Let's start June off with a pile of books.

Incoming:

• Poul Anderson, All One Universe.  Retrospective collection of 18 science fiction stories and articles.  Also, The Fleet of Stars.  Science fiction, the fourth novel in the Harvest of Stars series and a sequel to 1995's Harvest the Fire.  Anderson  "brings  back the wildly colorful Anson Guthrie, the iconoclastic hero of Harvest the Stars.  The staid, somber people of Earth are not only dependent on technology, they are all but ruled by machine intelligence.  suspecting a conspiracy to suppress the last vestiges of freedom known to humankind, Guthrie sets out on a dangerous and hair-raising journey encompassing the realm of the comets, the asteroids, and the stars themselves.  Among the many exciting characters he meets along the way are the brave, beautiful Kinna Ronay and her courageous friend Finn, who against the advice of the wise and cautious Chuan, will join Guthrie in his attempt to stop the Terrans.  Guthrie and his friends are determined that humankind will travel to the stars and roam the galaxies, even the universe itself, or die trying."
• Isaac Asimov, Understanding Physics, Volume II:  Light Magnetism, and Electricity.  Part of a 1966 tome that, while outdated, is still as relevant today as it was then.  Asimov's prose is clear and a pleasure to read and explains why he has been called America's Explainer.
• Katie Bernet, Beth Is Dead.  Mystery, an updated riff on Little Women.  "When Beth March is found dead, her sisters vow to uncover her murderer -- until they begin to suspect one another.  Jo, an aspiring author, with a huge social media following, would do anything to hook readers.  Did she kill her sister for the story?   Amy is desperate to study art in Europe, but she needs money from her aunt -- money that's always been earmarked for Beth.  Meg wouldn't dream of hurting her sister,  but her boyfriend might have done it -- and she'll protect him at all costs.  And the March sisters aren't the only ones with a story to tell.  There's Theodore Laurence, the neighbor who has feelings for not one but two sisters. Meg's manipulative best friend, Amy's flirtatious mentor, and Beth's lionhearted first ,love.  But the suspect pool stretches far outside family and friends. Months ago, the March sisters were dragged into the spotlight when their father published a controversial bestseller about his own neighbors, so anyone could have wanted Beth dead..."  I'm looking forward to this one, but I have to admit that I have never read Little Women and ;probably never will.
• David Brin, Existence.  Science fiction.  "Gerald Livingston is an orbital garbage collector.  For a hundred years, people have been abandoning things in space, and someone has to clean it up.  But there's something spinning a little higher than he expects, something that isn't on the decades-old orbital maps.  An hour after he grabs it and brings it in, rumors fill Earth's infomesh about an 'alien artifact.'  Thrown into the maelstrom of worldwide shared experience, the Artifact is a game changer.  A message in a bottle: an alien capsule that wants to communicate.  The world reacts as hun]mans always do:  with fear and hope and selfishness and love and violence.  And incredible curiosity."
• Algis Budrys, editor, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume XXII.  Annual volume presenting the winners of the Writer of the Future and the Illustrator of the Future contests of 2006.  Basically a contest for unpublished authors, most of the winners -- as expected -- are not that good, and most do not go on to greater things.  But there are some who make it; the inaugural class of 1985 included Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Leonard Carpenter, David Zindell, Dean Wesley smith, and Karen Joy Fowler; 1986 had Robert Reed and Howard Hendrix; bugt over the years, most of the authors and their stories vanished in the dust.  The WOTF contest is a big deal, however, drawing a lot of support from the writing and publishing community, but -- at tis heart -- it's just a promotional gimmick for scientology and its founder, the sometimes talented and often erratic L. Ron Hubbard.  Authors included in this volume are Blake Hutchins, Judith Tabron, Michael Velichansky, Lee Beevington, David Sakmyser, Diana Rowland, David John Baker, Brandon Sigrist, Joseph Jordan, Richard Kirslake, Sarah Totton, and Brian Rappatta -- the only name I recognize here is Diana Rowland, who has published six novels in the Angel Crawford/White Trash Zombie series and nine novels in the Kara Gillian/Demon series, but whose name I recognized only because she published in just one of G.R.R. Martin's Wild Cards series of "mosaic novels."  How many of these names did you recognize?  Also included are four article from Hubbard, Bob Eggleton, Robert J. Sawyer, and Orson Scott Card.  B ot, I'm afraid, a very worthwhile anthology.
• Gwendoline Butler, Coffin's Game.  The 29th (of 34) mysteries featuring John /Coffin.  "A series of random terrorist acts have struck the heart of Commander John Coffin's Docklands area.  The  body of a dead woman, rendered unidentifiable by her killer, is at first believed to be Stella Pinero, Coffin's wife.  While Coffin confirms it is not, he cannot explain the disappearance of Stella, or the treachery that is poised to shatter his personal and professional world.  A second body, obscenely costumed in theater clippings, implicates Stella in a double murder.  Coffin's deepest motivations and loyalties are put to the test as a puzzle of evil and deceit unfolds.  Only a third murder will tip the killer's hand, revealing a twisted, tragic mystery of blackmail, revenge, and madness unlike any other that /Coffin has faced."  Butler also wrote the Charmian Daniels series as "Jennie Melville."
• Michael Connelly, Lost Light.  A Harry Bosch novel, the ninth in the series.  "Only the money was real.  Four years ago, LAPD detective Harry Bosxh was on a movie set asking questions about the murder of a young production assistant when an armored car arrived with two million dollars cash for use in a heist scene.  In a life-imitates-art firestorm, a gang of masked men converged on the delivery and robbed the armored car with guns blazing.  Bosch got off a shot that struck one of the robbers as their van sped away, but the money was never recovered.  And the young woman's murder was in the stack of unsolved-case files Bosch carried home the night he left the LAPD.  Now Bosch moves back full bore into that case, determined to find justice for thee young woman.  Without a badge to open doors and strike fear into the guilty, he learns afresh how brutally indifferent the world can be.  But something draws him on, past humiliation and harassment.  It's not just that the dead woman had no discernable link to the robbery.  Nor is it his sympathy for the cops who took over the case, one of them killed on duty and the other paralyzed from the same attack.  With every conversation and every shred of evidence, Bosch senses a larger presence, an organization bigger than the movie studios and more ruthless than even the LAPD." 
• John Darton, Neanderthal.  Suspense thriller.  "In the  mountains of northern Asia, a guerilla fighter vanishes, a schoolgirl is  murdered, and an eminent Harvard paleontologist disappears.  To a shadowy government agency in Maryland, these are all signs that something has gone terribly wrong with the  most extraordinary expedition ever mounted.  Matt Mattison and Susan Arnot, who were once lovers and are now academic rivals, are dispatched to find the secret their Harvard mentor was seeking:  a species linked to the origins of mankind.  They have existed for over forty thousand years.  They possess powers man cannot even imagine.  And in a world dominated by humans, they are about to alter the face of civilization forever."
• Joe Gores, Glass Tiger.  Thriller.  "Brendan Thorne, ex-ranger in Panama, ex-sniper for a CIA front in Cambodia, has foresworn violence and is living in Kenya when FBI agent Terrill Hatfield arranges for Thorne's deportation back to the United States.  In a top secret meeting. Thorne is told that Halden Corwin, legendary Vietnam sniper and mercenary, has vowed to assassin ate the recently elected president of the United States.  The government's computers have picked Thorne as the most likely person to find Corwin and stop him.  Thorne won't have to kill anyone:  Hatfield's crack FBI tam will take care of that.  But when the plan doesn't go as described, Thonre discovers he can't trust anyone of anything he's been told.  Drawn into a wed of lies, ambitions, and double-crosses, Thorne must run for his life and, ultimately, stand and fight."
• Donald Hamilton, The Retaliators.  A Matt Helm spy-guy novel, the 17th (of 27) in the series.  "Matt Helm was unexpectedly rich and he didn't like it.  The $20,000 that had been deposited in his account was a complete surprise.  Very nice.  Except Matt knew that someone was setting him up, making it look as though he was a traitor and getting a payoff.  Someone who wanted Matt out of  business.  Suddenly, another secret agent with an unexplained surplus in his bank account was murdered.  Matt figured he'd better track down the 'benefactors' before they retired him for good."
• Anthony Horowitz, Magpie Murders.  Mystery, the first novel in the Susan Ryeland series.  "Alan Conway is a bestselling crime writer.  His editor, Susan Ryeland, has worked with him for years, and she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pund, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages.  Alan's traditional formula pays homage to queens of classic Briitish crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.  It's proved hugely successful.  So successful that Susan must continue to pout up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job.  When Susan receives Alan's latest manuscript, in which Atticus Pund investigates a murder in an English manor house, Pye Hall, she has no reason to think it will be any different from the others.  there will be dead bodies, a cast of intriguing suspects, plenty of red herrings and clues.  but the more Susan reads, the  more she realizes that there's another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript -- one of ruthless ambition, jealousy, and greed -- and that it will soon lead to murder."
• Joan Kahn, editor, The Edge of the Chair.  Suspense anthology with 35 stories and essays.  Kahn (1914-1994) was the legendary mystery/suspense editor at Harper & Row for nearly thirty-five years (which included the launch of her own imprint, Joan Kahn books); among her signing were John Creasey, Patricia Highsmith, Julian Symons, Dick Francis, and Tony Hillerman.  she has long been considered one of the premiere editors in the field.  The Edge of the Chair was the first of at least ten highly respected anthologies published over a twenty-year period, blending the usual suspects with writers from mainstream litersature, past and present.  An excellent anthology on every level.
• Elmer Kelton, Many a River.  Western.  "The Barfield family, Arkansas sharecroppers, are headed west with their sons, Jeffrey and Todd. to find good farmland they can call their own.  In far West Texas their camp is attacked by Comanche raiders, and the elder Barfields are savagely killed.  Todd, the younger son, is taken captive by the Indians.  Jeffrey manages to hide and is rescued by white militiamen.  While his older brother is given in the care of a homesteading family, Todd is sold -- for a rifle and gunpowder -- to a Comanchero trader named January.  Years later, after escaping from near-slavery with the trader, Todd, now fluent in the Spanish language, serves and an interpreter for Confederate troops marching to Santa Fe.  Jeffrey and his adopted family are forced to flee their North Texas farm and head south for the Mexican border to escape the turbulent battles between Unionists and Confederates.  Brothers Jeffrey and Todd, separated by violence, have crossed many rivers, but are determined to be reunited and discover hoe their separate lives have changed them."  Kelton was a seven-time Spur winner.  
• "Freida McFadden" (Sara Cohen), The Widow's Husband's Secret Lie.  Satirical novella.  "My husband is dead.  I attended his funeral.  I watched his casket be lowered six feet into the ground.  (Actually, it may have been only five feet, but that still seems like more than enough.)  And then we ate an array of finger sandwiches and deviled eggs and miniature beef wellingtons that cost more than my first car.  My pint is, Grant is gone.  And so are all his many, many deep, dark secrets which I never really bothered to ask him about.  He is never coming back.  So why do I still see his face everywhere I  go?"  The acclaimed author of thirty novels was named by Time as one of the 100 most influential people of the year, so i thought I'd see what all the hubbub was about  and am staring with this novella.
• Jo Nesbo, Cockroaches.  The second Inspector Harry Hole novel.  "When Norway's ambassador to Thailand is found dead in a Bangkok brothel, Inspector Harry Hole is dispatched from Oslo to help with the case.  Once he arrives Harry discovers that this case is about much more thana random murder.  Something else. something more pervasive, is scrabbling around behind the scenes:  for every cockroach you see, there are hundreds behind the walls.  Assaulted round-the-clock by traffic noise, Harry wanders the streets of Bangkok -- lined with go-go bars, temples, tourist traps, and opium dens -- trying to peace together the truth behind the ambassador's death even though no one asked him to, and no one wants him to -- not even Harry himself."
• Kim Newman, The Man from the Diogenes Club.  The first collection of mystery/fantasy/horror stories about the Diogenes Club, with eight stories.  "Introducing Richard Jeperson...in the 1970s the  most valued member of the Diogenes Club -- the least publicized of Britain's law enforcement and intelligence agencies.  his cases involved haunted trains and seaside resorts, murder in utopian communities and London's vice district, voodoo and mind-altering therapists.  His fashion sense is gaudy, his enemies deadly,  and his associates glamourous."  The Diogenes Club may ring a bell with long-time mystery fans.
• Warren Norwood (& Mel Odom, uncredited), Time Police, Volume 2:  Trapped!  The second of four science fiction novels in a series created buy Byron Preuss.  "Jackson Dubcheck's family  has vanished!  As if they never existed, Jackson's sister-in-law, mom, and nephew have disappeared.  Even their names had been erased from public records.  He must find them and knows where to look -- in the past.  The Second Republic, the dictators of 2249 and inventors of time travel, preserve their future by changing the past.  Jackson, an ordinary citizen, was no threat to the Republic until he discovered their secret.  Now Jackson is on the run.  With the Time Police hot non his track, can he help overthrow the Republic?  Can he rescue his future by fixing his past?"
• "Ellis Peters" (Edith Pargeter), The Confession of Brother Haluin.  The fifteenth chronicle of Brother Cadfael.  "After a mild autumn, December of 1142 brings a smothering, silent blanket of snow.  Thus it comes about that the great hall of the Bendictine Abbey of Saint Peter and Saint Paul is damaged, and the brothers must repair its roof before the damage worsens.  The treacherous icy conditions are to prove near-fatal for Brother Haluin.  He slips from the roof in a terrible fall., sustaining such grave injuries that he makes his deathbed confession to the Abbot and Brother Cadfael.  A startling story of trespasses hard for God or man to forgive emerges.  But Haluin does not die.  On his recovery, he sets out on a journey of expiation, with Cadfael as his sole companion.  An arduous trip, it leads to some shocking discoveries, and to murder."  Also, The Summer of the Danes.  The eighteenth chronicle of Brother Cadfael.  "In the summer of 1144, a strange calm has settled over England.  The armies of King Stephen and Empress Maud have temporarily exhausted each other.   Brother Cadfael considers peace a blessing, but a little excitement never comes amiss to a former soldier and Cadfael is delighted to accompany his young friend, Brother Mark, not expecting to be caught up in yet another royal feud.  The Welsh prince Owain Gwynedd has banished his brother Cadwaladr, accusing him of the treacherous murder of an ally.  The reckless Cadwaladr has retaliated by leading an army of Danish mercenaries, poised to invade Wales and retake his Just lands.  As the two armies teeter on the brink of bloody civil war, Cadfael is captured by the Danes, together with a headstrong young woman fleeing an arranged marriage, but before he can untangle such domestic passions, Cadfael has to survive the brotherly quarrel that could plunge an entire kingdom into deadly chaos."  I had a signed copy of this book years ago that went walkabout before I had a chance to read it, so I'm grateful for this copy.
• John Saul, Three Complete Novels.  Horror omnibus containing Hellfire (1986), The Unwanted (1987), and Sleepwalk (1990).  Hellfire:  "Westover's old mill hides a horrifying act behind the doors that slammed shut a century before.  The eleven youngsters caught within those doors faced a fierce inferno.  Just as the secretive townspeople must face a long-overdue vengeance."  The Unwanted:  "When her mother dies in a violent accident, sixteen-year-old Cassie Winslow goes to live with her father's new family.  Her increasingly bizarre dreams leave her to discover the frightening psychic forces of The Unwanted."  Sleepwalk:  "A sleepy New Mexico Town becomes the scene of nightmares that appear deathly real to the victims.  but what -- or who -- is the sources of these psychic attacks?"  Saul (b. 1944) made his bones with more than three dozen best-selling suspense and horror novels beginning in 1977, many of them dealing with children either in peril or causing peril.  his books readable, but because of his emphasis on putting kids through the wringer, I have to space reading them far apart.  He should not be confused with Canadian author and political philosopher John Ralston Saul (b. 1947).
• Mark Schorr, Diamond Rock.  The third, and thus far final, adventure of Red Diamond. Private Eye.  Simon Jaffe, New York cabbie, believes himself to be a tough 1940''s PI named Red Diamond in this series of hard-boiled detective novels.  Simon Jaffe, aka Red Diamond, has a .38 in his pocket and steel in his fists, and he's right on the money when it comes to cracking a case, catching a killer, or cuddling up to the doll of his dreams, Fifi La Roche.  This time out Red's looking for a mob boss named Becker who hustles all the angles.  But the angle that sends Red north on the West Side Highway and into a sharp left over the George is a fast lane straight to L.A. where an  eighties' scene of rock stars and dirty deals introduces Red Diamond to a deadly world of soft porn, hard drugs, and heavy metal -- heavy like the lead that's got his name and address on it."  I read the first book in  the series when it came out in 1983 and was impressed by the writing and the introduction of a delusional detective; for some reason I never followed up with the sequels.
• Jack Seabrook, Sources of Suspense:  Alfred Hitchcock Presents and the Stories That Shaped It.  Reference.  Covers all 268 episodes from the seven seasons of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962) in chronological order.  Included is information about the source material, plots of both the episodes and the source material, details on the filming (including innovative camera angles), and details about the cast, directors, script writers, and authors of the source material, plus a plethora of interesting tidbits that Seabrook throw in gratis.  It is based on the long-running The Hitchcock project that Seabrook penned for the bare*bones website.  This is a heft oversized book with small, two-column type, one that is best reading in small doses to avoid being overwhelmed.  An essential book for fans of Hitchcock, his program, television history, and the suspense field in general.  Seabrook is now working on a companion volume detailing The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
• Dan Simmons, Flashback.  Dystopian science fiction thriller.  "Some twenty years from now, the United States is near total collapse.  But 85 percent of the population doesn't care.  They're addicted to Flashback, a drug that allows its users to experience the best moments of their lives.  After former detective Nick Bottom's wife dies in a car accident, he started going under the flash to be with her; now an addict, he's lost his job and is estranged from his teenage son.  Nick may be a tortured soul, but he's still a good cop, so he's hired by a top government advisor to investigate the murder of the advisor's son.  Soon Nick becomes the one man who can change the course of an entire nation turning away from tomorrow to live in the past."
• Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in Hurry.  Non-fiction.  Popularized description of our essential universe by one of the great explainers in the field.  Black holes, quarks, quantum mechanics, the search for planets and the search for extraterrestrial life, and more...  A  nifty book to read when I want to appear smart.
• Amanda Eyre Ward, The Lifeguards.  Suspense novel, the May pick for Erin's Family Book Club.  "Austin's Zilker Park neighborhood is a wonderland of greenbelt trails, live music, and moms who drink a few too many margaritas.  Whitney. Annette, and Liza have grown thick as thieves as they have raised their children together for fifteen years, believing they can shelter their children from an increasingly dangerous world.  Their friendship is unbreakable -- as safe as the neighborhood where they have raised their sweet little boys.  Or so they think.  One night, the three women have been enjoying happy hour when their boys, lifeguards for the summer, come back on bicycles from a late-night dip in their favorite swimming hole.  The boys share a secret -- news that will shatter the perfect world their mothers have so painstakingly created."  This one got a lot of good revues and I zipped through it quickly; I enjoyed the book despite some glaring plot holes.
• David Weber, Worlds of Honor #3:  Changer of Worlds.  Military science fiction collection in the Honor Harrington universe, including a novel, a short story, and a novella  by Weber, plus a novella by Eric Flint.  "Lady Dame Honor Harrington -- starship captain, admiral, Steadholder, and Duchess -- has spent decades defending the Star Kingdom of Manticore.   But it's a big universe, and Honor's actions affect a lot of lives, not all of them human."
• Dave Wolverton, editor, L. Ron Hubbard Presents Writers of the Future, Volume 30.  Annual collection of winning stories from the Writers of the Future Contest, along with illustrations from winners of the Illustrators of the Future Contest.  I find these compilations to be a mixed bag:  some previous winners have gone to have distinguished careers, while others sink into obscurity with tales that are IMHO pure dreck.  I am prejudiced because, despite the support of the project from many professionals I admire, I still consider this contest to be pure Scientology PR, and= part of their continuous effort to deify Hubbard  This volume covers  the year 2014 and also includes short stories from Orson Scott Card, Mike Resnick, and the long-dead Hubbard, as well as essays from Robert Silverberg, Val Lakey Lindahn, and the still-dead Hubbard.  For what it's worth, I do not recognize any of the names of that year's winners presented here.

HYMN TIME

The story of Noah told through country music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hucLYuYvL8

DELL FOUR COLOR (1939 SERIES) #6: DICK TRACY

This issue collects 64 Sunday strips featuring Chester Gould's famous detective.

It starts when Tracy arrests a gang of female perfume thieves and he meets spoiled Johnny Mintworth, who is sweet on one of the crooks.  Johnny is being blackmailed by racketeer "Collie" Vinsso, but the picture that Vinsso is blackmailing him for is a fake, showing Collie with the wife of a man willing to kill out of jealousy; fearing for his life, Collie pays the up.  Again, Tracy puts the kibosh on that.  But Johnny isn't through acting dumb' he attempts to break his girlfriend out of jail, is caught, and then escapes.  Now a fugitive, he is targeted by underworld lawyer Danny Supeena, who knows he comes from a very wealthy family.  Supeena takes out accident insurance policies on Johnny and the proceeds to break his arm.  Supeena kills Johhny's mother, making it look like suicide, but that does not fool Tracy.  In the meantime Supeena talks Johnny into faking a drowning for the insurance money; Johnny tries to drown himself but is rescues by swimmers.  Supeena shoots at Johnny, wounding him,  but johnny makes his way to the police where he is arrested for his mother's murder.  Things just don't seem to be going well for Johnny Mintworth...but there's worse to come.

In typical dick Tracy fashion, one crime leads to another:  "Little crimes lead to big ones.  Crime not only doesn't pay --  but it can't pay -- It has the world against it.  Remember that, boys."  Tracy not only uses his intuition and displays bravery, but he also has the latest crime solving techniques at his fingertips.  Tracy (of course) also enters a death traps, as usual, and comes out unscathed -- not that the same can be said foe a progressive lit of bad guys.  Pat Patton is here, and Junior, bot not Tess Trueheart.  Nor are there Gould's patented, deformed super villains.  Still, all in all, it's not a bad look at Dick Tracy in the Thirties.

Enjoy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=95726

FORGOTTEN BOOK: THE LOST CITY

 The Lost City by "John Blaine" (Harold L. Goodwin & Peter J. Harkins)  (1947)

Book Two in a series of twenty-four, with the first three written by Goodwin & Harkins, and the remaining twenty-one by Goodwin alone.  This was a boy's series, inaugurated before the young adult genre came into it's own, but it was aimed at a slightly older audience than the typical Grosset & Dunlop juvenile series; it combined science fiction, mystery, and adventure tropes.  The first few books books were termed "Electronic Adventures," then "Science-Adventure Stories," and finally "SCIENCE Adventures."  the first twenty-three books were published from 1947 and 1968, with a previously unpublished book ending the series in 1990.

Under his own name, Goodwin wrote popular science books, many about space exploration.  Goodwin had a strong technological background.  It is interesting to note that The Lost City was published only two years after Arthur C. Clarke first proposed satellite communication via geostationary orbits -- an idea which was modified to provide the scientific background for this book.

Rick Brant is the teenaged sone of Hartson Brant, a world-famous electronics scient who heads the Spindrift Foundation, a group of scientists headquartered on Spindrift Island off the coast of New Jersey.  In addition to being a good athlete and a private pilot, Rick invents various electronic devices.  He often accompanies his father on scientific expeditions.

Rick's best friend is Donald "Scotty" Scott, a boy of his own age, an ex-marine who lied about his age to join in World War II.  Scotty is strong, tough, fiercely loyal, and is enamored with weaponry.  Originally hire as an employee of the Spindrift Foundation, Scotty is now a firm part of the Brant family.

The other member of the brant family are Rick's mother, who serves merely as a placeholder -- over the course of twenty-four books we never learn her first name, and Rick's younger (by one year) sister Barby, a pretty and extremely spunky girl, who appears only briefly in this book.

When we open, Rick is feeling verklempt, he is about go on an expedition with Scotty that will take him from his home and his father for a full year.  They will accompanying noted mathematician Julius Weiss and Hobert Zircon, who is almost as famous an electronics scientist as Hartson Brant, on a journey to a desolate region of Tibet to perform one leg of an important scientific experiment.  the theory is to establish the beginnings of a world-wide communications network by shooting a signal to the moon, which would then beam back to a distant corner of the Earth.  (Clarke's proposal was to one day use artificial satellites for this purpose, but the first artificial satellite would not be launched until ten years into the future, so for the novel's purpose, the moon would have to do.)  As you can imagine, this was a majorly big deal for the time and had the potential to be a game-changer.  The remote regions of Tibet were about as far as one could get from Spindrift Island and an ideal location for Rick's end of the experiment.  The experiment also required a number of uniquely designed and manufactured pieces of  equipment, all of which had been carefully crated for the journey to Tibet.

The first leg of the trip was by freighter to Bombay, where the expedition would wend their way to Tibet.  There appeared to be no logical reason for anyone to want to throw a monkey wrench into the experiment, but several attempts were made to destroy the vital equipment on the voyage to Bombay.  Rick and Scotty managed to catch the saboteur  but all they could learn was that he was paid by a mysterious "Mr. Conway"; why remained a mystery.  Then, the equipment was stolen from the Bombay docks by a vicious gang.. Again, Rick and Scotty manage to recover everything, with the help of a young young beggar named Chahda -- who would soon become a regular character in the series.

The thing to understand is that all the troubles could have been avoided had not Weiss and Zircon -- as brilliant as each is -- not been absolute idiots.  Their every decision sets off warning flags with the reader.  But let's be kind and assume that they are just naive, trusting, and gullible.  Another obvious bad guy, the oleaginous Hendrick Van Groot, supplies Weiss and Zircon with a wrong map for the trek from Bombay to Tibet, and they blithely go on their merry mistaken way.  Speaking of idiots, Rick and Scotty do not show much initiative in the smarts department, either; only Chahda appears to have any common sense, perhaps because the has read only one book in his short life -- The World Book Almanac.

Despite all their travails, our heroes finally cross into Tiber at the half-way point of the book.  And now they are on the road to Lhasa, "the holy city of the Tibetans, where sits the boy ruler...the Dalai Lama."  Their ultimate destination is the city of Tengi-Bu.  But the man they hired to lead their group turns out to be in the pay of Conway, and is  leading them down the false trail from the map provided by Van Groot.  But, fear not campers!  Chahda, who had been left behind at the Bombay railway station, has managed to follow them into Tibet with the correct map.  But our ragged little  group is being followed and watched...by who?  Could it be ancient Mongols, not seen in this area for six hundred years?

Our expedition of four woke up one morning to find that their not-very-trustworthy guide and all the bearers had absconded, along with most of their supplies and animals.  The scientific equipment remained but there was no way to transport it, and the nearest village was a two-week walk way.  Worse, Chahda was among the missing, but Rick felt that he had gone to get help. 

By now the reader is wondering, where the heck is the "Lost City" of the book's title, and what does that have to do with geosynchronic satellite transmissions?

As Rick climbs a cliff to scout the area, Scotty, Weiss, and Zircon are taken captive  by strange warriors from a distant age.  Rick goes through a cave tunnel and emerges at a lost city of ancient Mongols!  Finally! And on page 153, to boot!

Can Rick save his friends and solve the mystery of the lost city?  Will they be able to foil Conway and Van Groot and complete the experiment?  And why were they so determined to stop the experiment?   And who the heck was Conway, anyway? And will loyal Chahda be able to rescue Rick and his friends?  And what was the gift that Barby gave the boys before their journey, telling them not to open it until the Fourth of July?  (Well, the answer to that question is pretty obvious, don't you think?)

The Rick Brant series of scientific adventures was surprisingly popular, and the books are still highly sought after.  But, for reasons I can't understand, they did not transcend beyond the actual series...no spin-offs, and no media media offshoots (although, if you squint real heard, you might believe they influenced the Johnny Quest franchise).  Grosset & Dunlap began transferring the rights to the series to Goodwin in the 1980s.  The Goodwin family is currently working to bring the books back in print.

A personal confession:  Prior to reading this book, I had only read one other Rick Brant adventure, number 15 in the series, The Blue Ghost Mystery (1960).  I was not impressed.  It turns out that the publisher refused to have any supernatural element in the books, and the original novel was modified to reflect that, and I suspect they did a poor job of it, which goes a long to explaining why I did not care for the book.  (They also rejected an entire novel for that reason; The Magic Talisman had elements of ESP in it, and remained unpublished until it was released in 1990 as the final book in the series.)   The Rick Brant series based its science fictional background as close as possible to real science, unlike, say, the many novels in the Tom Swift and Tom Swift Junior series, both of which went far afield in scientific extrapolation.  As flawed as they were, the Rick Brant stories were exciting reading for their time, and their original magic still remains for those wishing to recapture those days.

And, yes, I am planning to read many more entries in the series.  I may carp and bitch, but I can be amazingly enthusiastic and uncritical in my reading.

MERCURY THEATER ON THE AIR: THE MAN WHO WAS THURSDAY (SEPTEMBER 5, 1938)

 Perhaps, G. K. Chesterton's most famous novel, The Man Who Was Thursday has been tagged as a "metaphysical thriller."  I suppose that's a good a description as any.  But it's also a classic mystery and a classic fantasy and a classic spy novel and a classic whatever you wish to call it.

First published in 1908, the book follows Gabriel Syme, who is recruited by an anti-anarchist squad from Scotland Yard.  Syme meets anarchist poet Lucien Gregory, who takes him to a local meeting of anarchists, whose leadership consists of seven men, each going by a day of the week.  The local group is about to elect a person top fill the role of Thursday and somehow the choice falls on Syme.  It turns out that at least five of the seven are in reality police informants out to expose each other and the group.

A surrealistic work, heavy on Christian allegory (Chesterton was a noted Christian apologist), but also embued with a great sense of pessimism; the novel has left many readers scratching their heads for well over a century.  Novelist and critic Kingsley Amis did not scratch his head; pointing to the book's many twists and turns, he called it "the most thrilling book I have ever read."

Orson Wells wrote and starred in the Mercury Theater on the Air adaptation. In abridging the book for the radio, Wells dropped most of the metaphysical references that appeared in Chapter 14 of the novel, to make the story more palatable for his audience.  The episode appeared toe month before the infamous War of the Worlds broadcast.

A brilliant and influential novel and an equally brilliant adaptation.  

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH-32M_WoaY&t=5s