BITS & PIECES

Incoming:  I attended the final hours of the Pensacola library's three-day Fall Book Sale and walked away with thirty books for a total of seven dollars.  By the time I got there, things were pretty much picked over but I still managed to find some pretty nifty books, along with one turkey (I'll let you guess which one that was as you read through the list).

Oh, and I also picked up a Kate Wolf CD. 

• Paul Auster, Oracle Night.  Novel with possible fantasy elements.  "Several months into his recovery from a near-fatal illness. thirty-four-year-old novelist Sidney Orr enters a stationary shop in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn and buys a blue notebook.  It is September 18, 1982, and for the next nine days Orr will, live under the spell of this blank book, trapped inside a world of eerie premonitions and bewildering events that threaten to destroy his marriage and undermine his faith in reality.  Why does his wife suddenly break down in tears in the backseat of a taxi just hours after Sidney begins writing in the notebook?  Why does M. R. Chang, the owner of the stationary shop, precipitously shut down his  business the next day?  What are the connections between a 1938 Warsaw telephone directory and a lost novel in which the hero can predict the future?  At what point does animosity explode into violence?  To what degree is forgiveness the ultimate expression of love?  Paul Auster's mesmerizing eleventh novel reads like an old-fashioned ghost story.  But there are no ghosts in this book -- only flesh-and-blood human beings, wandering through the haunted realms of everyday life,  At once a meditation the nature of time and a journey through the labyrinth of one man's imagination, Oracle Night is a narrative tour de force that confirms Auster's reputation as one of the boldest, most original writers at work in America today."
• James Warner Bellah, A Thunder of Drums.  Western.  "Captain Maddox was the toughest solder on the frontier.  So to Maddocks, his new lieutenant, McQuade, was just another West Point dude -- a man to be broken, ground down, remade into a fighting machine for killing Indians.  But Lieutenant McQuade was the son and grandson of generals.  Born on a cavalry post, raised on gunpowder, he was proud, stubborn and rebellious.  Maddocks found that the only way to tame McQuade was to kill him?"  This was filmed in 1961 with Richard Boone, George Hamilton, and Charles Bronson.
• Peter Brandvold, two westerns from Mean Pete:  The Devil and Lou Profit and Once  More into the Fire.  Devils:  "As long as the cash was cold and the trail was hot, bounty hunter Lou Profit would run his quarry to ground.  He loved his work -- it kept him in wine and women, and was never, ever dull.  And his latest job sounds particularly attractive.  Her name is Lola Diamond.  she's a showgirl, and a prime witness kin a murder trial that's going on without her.  Profit is supposed to find and 'escort' her to the courthouse, whether she likes it or not.  But some very dangerous men are moving to make sure the pair never reaches the courthouse alive."  Fire:  "Sheriff Ben Stillman finds himself in the unenviable position of having to arrest a young man for murder on suspicious evidence.  The cards are stacked against the young firebrand who calls himself Johnny Nevada:  Johnny has gotten Judge Hoagland's daughter pregnant, and he warned the dead man he was going to kill him because he ordered Johnny to stay away from his daughter.  Now Stillman has Johnny locked up in his jail.  The judge wants to try the boy pronto and won't recuse himself though Stillman knows he should.  Johnny's luck is about to get even worse when unknown men try to kill him.  Knowing that Johnny Nevada will hang at the very least, or get filled full of lead before he can hang, Stillman does the unthinkable -- he busts his prisoner out of his own jail."  This also includes an additional Been Stillman novella, "Rattlesnake Convention."
• Donna Collingwood and Robin Gee, editors, Mystery Writer's Market Place and Sourcebook.  From Writer's Digest and published in 1993, this book is woefully out of date and is useful perhaps only to me, who loves to read this sort of thing.  I'm kinky that way.
• John Douglas & Mark Olshaker, The Anatomy of Motive.  Non-fiction.  Douglas,  now retired, was the FBI's most famous profiler and was head of the agency's Behavioral Science Unit.  He was the author (also with Olshaker) of the bestselling book Mindhunter:  Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit (in the CBS television show Criminal Minds, the characters Jason Gideon and David Rossi were based on Douglas).  In Anatomy, the authors explore the key to understanding and catching violent criminals.
• Roger Elwood, Wise One.  Christian fiction.  "A gentle old man comes out of his mountain home to issue a warning to the residents of an ancient village.  'Satan himself intends to destroy this village.  He plans to attack most severely:   The angels of heaven itself can protect you since they will be sent by Almighty God, but this will happen only of you rededicate yourself to the Savior.'  The he is gone and does not reappear for  more than a decade.  But he leaves behind the legacy of...WISE ONE.  None of the villagers retain more than a dim memory of that strange afternoon.  They are more concerned with the sudden reality of immense wealth -- a large oil field has been discovered on village property!  All the villagers are soon swept away from near-poverty to substantial wealth.  But they must now deal with another reality:  the impact of money-mania and the materialism it causes on the aspect of their lives that sets them apart from every other group kin the region.  The one morning Wise One comes into their midst again.  He is now 110 years old.  And his message is more compelling than ever."  Before he found religion, Elwood was a prolific science fiction anthologist flooding the market with titles and almost causing the death of the science fiction anthology.  He entered the Christian market with a vengeance, penning some thirty novels between 1988 and 1998.  I've picked up a couple of his Christian novels as curiosities in the past, but I doubt if I'll ever read one.
• Loren D. Estleman, The Master Executioner.  Western.  "Oscar Stone is a hangman.  Ordinary people do not understand Oscar Stone or his motives.  Everything he does, he does impeccably.  He is more bloodless than bloodthirsty.  He is a profound student of his art, completely versed in its traditions over the centuries.  He is a student of ropes and their properties, a master of the latest scientific knowledge about the human neck, a  careful calculator of weights and drops, and an exacting observer of results.  For more than a quarter of a century he has worked to  create a reputation as a man peerless in his craft:  the master executioner.  He is also utterly alone with his craft.  Suddenly, one day, on a single piece of knowledge, Oscar comes to a moment of devasting truth and for the first time knows himself."  Also, Port Hazard, a Page Murdock western.  "Hired killers are sent, lone by one, to Montana Territory after Page Murdock.  Murdock doesn't know why someone wants him out of the way, but he knows where they're coming from. Thus begins Murdock's descent in to a hell more decadent, corrupt, and dangerous than any he has ever seen -- San Francisco's Barbary Coast,  With an unwilling backup man, Murdock takes up temporary residence among the whores, gamblers, dope addicts, and cutthroats of the continent's foulest district.  No man here is trustworthy.  The enemies he's really worried about, though, are the men who run things, the politicians.  Murdock's quest takes him to Chinatown, into opium dens, and into league with a man of an alien culture who controls vices that make respectable people quail.  but perhaps the men who seem respectable are the most insidious of all"  And, Something Borrowed, Something Black, a Peter Macklin thriller.  Macklin "is a killer -- or was.  He got out.  He quit the mob, left Detroit, and finally met Laurie, a gorgeous, smart, passionate woman who makes him feel that perhaps life holds more for him than the deadly game of his former profession.  Los Angeles.  honeymoon.  Only the memories hurt, and she's so good she knows not to ask him about what he won't discuss.  Then comes the phone call. He's got to travel to Sacramento to take care of a  business matter that he thought was already settled.  It'll just be the day, he tells her, and then they'll continue their honeymoon.  A day passes, and instead of Peter, a man called Abilene shows up, sent, says Peter's note, to take care of her while he's gone.  But when Laurie tires of Abilene's hick, country ways and attempts to break away from him, one hard moment tells her that he's no friend -- and that she knows she's having the Honeymoon from Hell.  Peter loves her, doesn't he?  But if he does, would he leave her with his 'friend'?  Peter has his own problems, taking care of  business, nasty business, in San Antonio, and it isn't pretty.  What has he gotten her into?  Will it ever end?  Or will he always be a killer?  Laurie just wishes she could know...but right now, she's not sure she wants to know.  And Macklin?  He's not sure of anything, anymore."
• "C. S. Forester " (Cecil Louis Troughton Smith), The Sky and the Forest.  Adventure novel.  "In the beginning Loa was all-powerful in his tiny native village, brother of the forest, his friendly brother, and of the sky, the unfriendly one.  Into this idyllic scene came the Arab raiders, burning, killing, and enslaving the village under the hated whip and yoke.  Terror and hardship forced Loa to realize that he was only a man after all, but the change was made bearable by his wife, Musini, who continued to worship him as a god in public and perhaps let him think she did in private, while actually discovering a new tenderness for him as a man.  Furthermore, Loa was not too too slow to learn that where a god may rule a village, empires are man-made.."
• Simon R. Green, Just Another Judgement Day.  Urban fantasy, a novel of the Nightside.  "I'm John Taylor.  I work as a PI out of n office tucked away ion a shadowy street in a corner of the Nightside, that secret centre of London where the clocks always read three A.M., where terrible things happen with predictable regularity, and where the always-dark streets are full of people partying like Judgement Day will never come.  Now it may have arrived -- God's own enforcer, the righteous engine of destruction known as the Walking Man, has come to the Nightside.  The past few months, the Nightside has seen its share of chaos, some of it because of me.  Still, things were getting back to as  normal as they can ever be around here.  But the arrival of the Walking Man has the Authorities seriously worried.  He's a being whose sole purpose in life is the elimination of the wicked and the guilty -- and given the nature of the Nightside, there is a good chance that once he gets started, he'll just keep on until there's no-one left.  So they hired me to stop him.  Legend has it that he can't be killed.  I'm very much hoping that the legend isn't true."
• Russell Hoban, The Medusa Frequency.  Fantasy.  "Alone in London Herman Orff writes comic books in the afternoon.  Through night into morning he looks for aa third novel in the dancing green phosphors of his computer screen while he listens to sweet shortwave voices from far away singing words he cannot understand.  Hoping for a little help with his brain waves he undergoes and electrical head-zapping treatment and the next morning finds the head of Orpheus in the low-tide mud near Putney Bridge.  Between them they try to work out what went wrong between Orpheus and Eurydice and Herman and his lost love Louise von Himmelbelt.  Life, meanwhile, doesn't stand still:  Herman falls in love with Melanie Falsepercy and explores the nights and days of past and present in a ship across the North Sea, a museum, and a hotel in The Hague, the remembered olive trees of Paxos, and the Orpheus-haunted streets and underground of London."
• Richard Jessup, Threat.  Thriller.  "Looming one hundred stories above Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, the deluxe St. Cyr Tower, with its elaborate security system designed to protect the rich and powerful, suddenly receives a shock.  A message -- signed simply and ominously, 'Threat' -- is found inside an empty beer can planted behind an off-limits computer bank.  Chris Murdoch, the Tower's vice-president and general manager, has been warned.  The hidden attacker is Tonio Vega, a Viet Nam veteran expert in demolition and guerilla tactics.  For an urgent and compelling reason of his own, he needs four million dollars; and Vega knows that in the city, if you ae shrewd and skilled enough, you can get away with anything.  Methodically and obsessively, he reveals his devasting power, planting dummy charge and sending threatening notes -- and then, at last, he presents his simple yet fiendishly challenging demand.  Murdoch knows that his unseen enemy can low the building sky-high, and he stands helpless."
• Antonio  Jimenez-Landi, The Treasure of the Muleteer and other Spanish Tales.  Collection of ten popular Spanish legends retold by the  noted poet and author.  Translated from the Spanish by Paul Blackburn.
• "M. E. Kerr" (Marijane Meaker), Linger.  Young adult novel.  "How would you feel about having a Gulf soldier for a pen pal? my brother wrote Lynn Dunlinger.  If the answer is no, don't write back.  but she did write back, of course, for it happened in the days of yellow ribbons and CNN report from the gulf.  No one would refuse to write to one of our boys, not even if it was Bobby Peel.  All Gary Peel could think about was what his brother had once said about Lynn, the town's one world-class beauty.  Bobby'd said, 'Why line up with the sheep and drool over her?  that's not for the cool, cool Peel brothers.'  Bobby changes his mind once he's in Saudi Arabia.  Down the way someone's playing that song again on Desert Shield Radio, the 91st Psalm.  YOU WILL NOT FEAR THE TERROR OF THE NIGHT.  I wonder if I'll die without ever knowing what someone like Lynn Dunlinger says when you kiss her.  And back home, Lynn is asking Gary not to tell anyone what he saw, and what he heard, one night at Linger, her father's restaurant.  Perhaps the only thing that stays the same. as the Desert Storm builds, is that big white restaurant at the top of the hill, where everyone likes to hang out.  Ned Dunlinger is its imperious owner.  People call him Mr. D.  Gary remembers the time Bobby used to work at Linger, as Gary does now.  He never knew the reason Bobby fought with Mr. D., never knew why Bobby swore he'd never set foot in Linger again.  The piano player wrote a song about that place:  So linger a while, let's see that smile, Secrets are mysteries still...  But the secrets of Linger don't stay mysterious, and that piano man doesn't stay at Linger.  By the time Private Robert Peel is back from the Gulf, it's the Fourth of July...and the fireworks begin,"
• John Lutz, The Honorable Traitors.  A Thomas Laker thriller.  "Officially, Thomns Laker is an employee of the NSA.  His real employer, known as the Gray Outfit, is not listed -- anywhere,  When a Washington, D,C,, insider is killed in a bomb explosion.  Laker teams up with cryptographer Ava North on a desperate search for clues.  The only thing certain is that another act of terrorism is imminent.  Delving into the dangerous past when America was drawn into global conflict, they discover one of history's greatest -- and deadliest -- secrets.  In the wrong hands it can unleash unimaginable destruction.  Now, to keep his homeland from plunging into its darkest hour, Laker will have to defend everything he believes in..."
• A. Lee Martinez, Divine Misfortune.  Humorous fantasy  novel.  "Teri and Phil had never needed their own personal god.  But when Phil is passed up for a promotion -- again -- its time to take matter into their own hands.  And look online.  Choosing a god isn't as simple as you would think.  There are too many choices; and they often have very hefty prices for their eternal devotion:  blood, money, sacrifices, and vows of chastity.  But then they found Luka, raccoon god of prosperity.  All he wants is a small cut of their good fortune,  Oh -- and to crash on their couch for a few days."
• Peter May, Blowback.  The fifth Enzo Files novel.  "A long-ago promise made to a dying man leads forensic ace Enzo Macleod, a Scot who's been been teaching in France for many years, to the study which the man's heir has preserved sine the man's unsolved murder.  The dead man left several clues in the study designed to reveal his killer's identity to his son, but ironically the son died soon after the father and never set eyes on the father's legacy.  So begins the fourth of seven cold cases written up in a bestselling book by Parisian journalist Roger Raffin that Enzo brashly boasted he could solve.  The case takes Enzo to a tiny island off the coast of Brittany in France, where he must confront the hostility of locals who have no desire to see the infamous murder back in the headlines.  And attractive widow, a man charged but acquitted of the murder (but still the viable suspect), a crime scene frozen in time, a dangerous hell hole by the cliffs, and a collection of inpeneterable messages, make this one of Enzo's most difficult cases."  UPDATE:  Janet Randolph just posted on her blog that Peter May died on Saturday.  An amazing and talented writer, his final book will be published in January.  He will be missed.
• Archer Mayor, Tag Man.  A Joe Gunther novel.  "Across Brattleboro, Vermont, rich [people (some with dark secrets) are waking up in their high-security, alarm-equipped homes to find a Post-it note stuck to their bedside table reding, 'You're it.'  There is little sign of disturbance anywhere, nothing stolen (that anyone admits), and only a bit of expensive food eaten as a signature.  The local press love the story and have collectively dubbed the burglar the Tag Man.  But who is he?  And what is he doing?  In fact, there's more to this than a strange, if benign, game, for what the Tag Man discovers in one of these houses appears to be proof of a heinous string of murders -- a discovery that quickly has him running for his life.  Joe Gunther, struggling to recover from a devastating personal loss, heads his VBI team to untangle the many conflicting pieces of evidence, while the burglar himself fights for survival in the no-man's-land between the police and  the villains.  No one knows what to believe, or whom to trust, or even who may be watching as they sleep..."
• Patricia McKillip, Solstice Wood.  Fantasy.  "When bookstore owner Sylvia Lynn hears her grandmother's voice on the phone she knows she must finally return to her childhood home in upstate New York.  Her beloved grandmother has died, and though she has put a country between her and the past, the time has come for Sylvia to face the grandmother who raised her and the woods which so beguiled -- and frightened -- her.  Though Lynn Hall is nearly ramshackle, Sylvia's grandmother is just as spry as ever.  there is no escaping her scrutiny -- and Sylvia has something to hide.  But it's not until she meets the Fiber Guild -- a group of local women who meet to knit, embroider, and sew -- that Sylvia learns why her grandmother watches her.  A primitive power exists in the forest, a force the Fiber Guild seeks to bind in its stiches and weavings.  And Sylvia is not stranger to the woods..."
• Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child, Riptide.  Adventure thriller, an early standalone.  "In 1695, a notorious English pirate buried his bounty in a maze of booby-trapped tunnels on an island off the coast of Maine.  In three hundred years, no one has breached this cursed and rocky fortress.   Now a treasure hunter and his high-tech, million-dollar recovery team embark on the perfect operation to unlock the labyrinth's mysteries.  First the computers fail.  Then crewmen begin to die.  The island has guarded its secrets for centuries, and it isn't letting them go -- without a fight."
• Robert J. Randisi, Blood on the Arch.  A Joe Keough mystery.  "Joe Keough, St. Louis's top homicide cop, knows what it's like to stare into the face of death, to sift through the handiwork of killers.  And now he'll have to do it again.  A body has been found near the famous St. Louis Arch, its blood staining the monument a deep crimson.  Keough hopes this will prove to be jut another routine murder -- but in his heart he knows it's not."  (An aside that has nothing to do with the book:  did you know that the lights on the Arch are turned off during the evenings for one month a year so as not to confuse migrating birds?  I think that's a great idea.  Kudos to St. Louis!)
• "Kenneth Robson" (Lester Dent), Meteor Menace.  A Doc Savage adventure originally published in Doc Savage Magazine, March 1934; Doc's 13th adventure and #3 in the Bantam reprints.  "Doc Savage and his fabulous new journey to Tibet in pursuit of their most dangerous adversary, the evil genius Mo-Gwei.  Battling against overwhelming odds, they try to stop him from conquering the world with a diabolical machine known as the Blue Meteor, a screaming blue visitor from space that turns men into raving animals!"
• Jessica Amanda Salmonson, The Swordswoman.  Sword and Sorcery.  "Kendo is a thing of the spirit...or so Erin /Wylie thought of the ancient art of Japanese sword fighting -- until that day in the fencing hall when her bamboo sword was transformed into whetted steel of supernatural sharpness, and her smiling sparring partner became a loathsome demon thirsting for her soul,  Suddenly Kendo had become a thing of madness..."
• Brandon Sanderson, Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians.  Juvenile fantasy, the first in the Alcatraz Smedry series.  "Alcatraz Smedry has an incredible talent for breaking things; he's hardly a hero.  But he receives a bag of sand on his thirteenth birthday, and his life takes a bizarre form,  This is nor ordinary bag of sand, and it is quickly stolen by the cult of evil Librarians who are taking over the world by spreading misinformation and suppressing truth.  Alcatraz must stop them!...by infiltrating their library, armed with nothing but eyeglasses and a talent for klutziness."  One of the conceits of this book is that Sanderson is a pseudonym for Alcatraz Smedry.
• Harold M. Sherman, Interference and Other Football Stories.  Collection of five YA sports stories, two apparently original, with two stories from Top-Notch Magazine and one from Boys' Life.  Sherman was a prolific writer of juvenile sports and adventure stories, with nearly one hundred short stories (most of them for Boys' Life) and twenty-eight books to his credit.  He was also a noted psychical researcher, publishing two dozen books on that and related subjects, including How to Make ESP Work for You.  Much of his science fiction appeared in Amazing Stories during the heyday of Raymond A. Palmer, and thus is best forgotten.
• Les Savage, Jr., Arizona Showdown.  Collection of four western stories originally published in Indian Stories, Star Western, Mammoth Western, and Zane Grey's Western Magazine.  Savage published over ninety swell-regarded western stories (mostly novellas) and more than two dozen books in his short lifetime; he died at age thirty-five from complications from hereditary diabetes and elevated cholesterol.
• Andrew Vachss, Pain Management.  A Burke novel,  "Burke is back, but still lurking in the shadows, unable to return home.  He is prowling the unfamiliar streets of Portland, Oregon, in search of a runaway teen.  By all accounts, Rosebud Carlin is a happy, well-adjusted girl.  She doesn't fit the profile of the runaway kids Burke knows so well...and once was.  But there's something about her father...  Burke knows the street script, but the actors are all strangers.  cut off from his family and his network of criminal contacts, Burke is forced into a dangerous alliance with a renegade group dedicated to providing relief by any means necessary to those  in intractable pain.  A bargain is struck, and the fuse is lit."
• Donald E. Westlake, Thieves' Dozen.  Collection of eleven stories about everybody's favorite thief, John Dortmunder.

HYMN TIME

 Naomi Raine.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHQtr8LZKj8

EXCITING COMICS #1 (APRIL 1940)

 There is a bit of confusion about Major Mars, the futuristic hero depicted on the cover of this issue.  In fact, Major Mars (who evidently made his only appearance in this issue of Exciting Comics) is in reality, a watered down version of Edmond Hamilton's Captain Future.  The Major Mars story "The  Beast Men of Jupiter" was adapted from Hamilton's first Captain Future story, Captain Future and the Space Emperor, which had been published two months prior in the first issue of Captain Future (Winter 1940).   The artwork in the Major Mars comic book story is credited to Max Plaisted; no author is credited.  Since Exciting Comics and Captain Future was published by Better Publications;  both were among the titles edited by Mort Weisinger, a science fiction fan who had previously started, with Julius Schwartz, the first literary agency to concentrate on science fiction; their first client was Edmond Hamilton.  When Weisinger left the agency to begin working for what would become Better publications, he brought Hamilton and many other clients with him to fill the many pages the pulp and comics industry demanded.

From Major Mars' first panel:  "Major Mars, wizard of science and inventor of Grag, the robot, endowed, with a synthetic brain.  Grag can think and talk!  Born on the  moon of Earthly parents, Major Mars is a one-man vigilance committee dedicated to the maintenance of peace among the planets!"

In the pulps, Captain Future is aided by the robot Grag, a shape-shifting android named Ortho, and the encased brain of an aged scientist, Simon Wright; Grag had been created by Simon Wright and Captain future's father Roger Newton.  For the Major Mars adventure, only Grag assists our hero; Ortho and Simon Wright are not mentioned.  Also, instead of Captain Future's semi-love interest Planetary Agent Joan Randall, we have Joan Jilson, the scantily-clad daughter of the governor of the Earth colony on Jupiter.

A mysterious villain dubbed the Space Emperor is turning the Earthmen on Jupiter into ape-like beasts, intending to take over the planet and rule it himself.  He gets his powers from an ancient belt because there's no better way to explain how he is doing what he is doing.  Major Mars wears a long-sleeved form-fitting shirt with astronomical symbols on the front, tight yellow Speedos (they are blue on the cover) that look like diapers, and calf-high red boots; Captain future, on the other hand, is often portrayed on the magazine covers wearing a full space suit -- either red or blue -- with a fish-dome helmet; no Speedos or diapers for him!

But wait, there's more!

Norman Daniels contributes a story about The Mask, which is a riff on Daniels' first Black Bat story from Black Book Detective magazine (July 1939).

And "The Black Inferno" gives us a tale of Jim Hatfield, Texas Ranger, the long-running pulp western hero created by A. Leslie Scott for Texas Rangers magazine, which ran from October 1936 to February 1958.

In addition, Sergeant Bill King takes on the Nazis in "In No-Man's-Land"; champion pistol shot "Gunner Thompsn" takes on two -- count 'em, two -- gangs of racketeers preying on the city in "Payoff in Lead"; Hy Hardy, the ace newsreel cameraman, makes his only comic book appearance in "Deep Sea Drama on Parade"; Dan Williams, Private Investigator, solve "The Forbes Case"; Klaus Nordling's Make-Believe Micky's flights of fancy keep getting interrupted; and Sam Brant (a house name used by Frank Gruber, Louis L'Amour, Syl MacDowell, and others) contributes a one-page text story of the Old West, "A Real Waddy."

A pretty good bargain for your dime, I'd say.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=102492

FORGOTTEN BOOK: STAR SURGEON

Star Surgeon by Alan E. Nourse  (1959)

One interesting sub-group of science fiction is medical science fiction, from the early days of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to the plethora of today's medical technofiction.  Stories from the days of the 40s, 50s, and 60s -- L. Ron Hubbard's Old DocMethuselah, Murray Leinster's Med Service, James White's Hospital Station, and even Piers Anthony's dentist-to the stars Doctor Dillingham -- remain popular to this day.

Alan E. Nourse, who was a medical doctor by training, spent much of his science fiction career writing medical SF, including his brief Hospital Earth series.  When humanity finally invented a faster-than-light star drive and began to explore the galaxy, they encountered many thousands of alien races that formed the Galactic confederation of Worlds.  Earth was admitted to the Confederation on a probationary basis, eventually -- it was hoped -- to be given full status.  Because each of these races had their own unique talents in aggregate, it was decided that humanity would concentrate on its latent ability for medicine.  Thus Earth became Hospital Earth and humans became doctors to the many worlds of the Confederation, sending ship of medical professionals into space to respond to whatever medical emergencies might arise, usually to the planets who had signed a highly valued medical contract with Hospital Earth.  These space doctors consisted of small trams of probationary medics, hoping tearn the coveted "Star" that would indicate a full-fledged doctor after their one-year mission., of course, would help any race, contract or not, but it was hoped that a planet would agree to sign a contract once medical service was successfully given.

The hierarchy of Hospital Earth was rigid and divided as to medical specialties.  At the top were the Black Doctors of Pathology, who were also the administrative arm of the organization.  Among other groups were the White Doctors of Radiology, The Red Doctors of Surgery, The Green Doctors of Medicine, and the Blue Doctors of Diagnosis.  Each persons ranking in the hierarchy as based on the number of Stars they earned, from One to Four.  Because humanity was on a probationary basis with the Confederation, Hospital earth felt it was incumbent to allow only humans in their membership.  Until...

Dal Timgar was a native to the planet Garv (the full name of the planet was too long and too unpronouncible to be of any use to humans).  He was short, covered with fur, and four-fingered, and since childhood has wanted to be a doctor, despite the fact that his family and his entire planet were highly successful merchants.  Somehow he was accepted for medical training on Hospital Earth -- it was generally felt that once he flamed out and failed that no other non-human would bother to attempt to become a doctor.  Despite extreme prejudice and antagonism from his fellow students, the faculty, and the administration, he managed to graduate.  Now he must on on a year-long flight as a Red Doctor with two fellow probationers to provide medical services on demand to a variety of planets and alien races.  Should Dal make even the slightest mistake, his enemies would not hesitate to kick him out.  His companions on the flight were Blue Doctor Jack Alvarez, who resented Dal for daring to take a position that should rightfully (and only) belong to a human, and Green Doctor Frank "Tiger" Martin, who was Dal's only friend during training.

So off we go into the galaxy, meeting strange races and stranger illnesses, most of which were easy to handle for the trio.  On one planet, an injury required a complicated surgery that Dal was unsure that he could perform so he asked for a Hospital Earth team to come to the planet to take over, nearly risking the patient's life; the surgery turned out to be fairly simple and Dal's hesitancy was a black mark against him and almost had him relieved of duty.

Then came a strange request from a little known and out-of-the way planet, 31 Brucker, whose people are being destroyed by a mysterious, unidentifiable plague.  Among the strange aspects of this case, 31 Brucker had been casually surveyed 80 years earlier and had been found to contain no intelligent races.  the inhabitants of 31 Brucker are now highly intelligent and evolved with an advanced technological science, although the population appear to avoid any technological advances whenever possible.  the simian-like people themselves where shy and withdraw appeared to accept the horrible fate that the plague has in store for them.  Two-thirds of the planet's population was already dying or dead, the remainder soon to join them.  Despite their best efforts, Dal, Tiger, and Jack could not find a cure for the plague; the virus causing it having completely baffled them.  Then Dal had a strange idea...what if their patients were not the inhabitants of 31 Brucker, but instead was the plague itself?

An intellectual puzzle wrapped in a protest against racism and prejudice, Star Surgeon is a competent story of people (of all races and types) facing near-impossible odds.  It reads well, although I wish  more time was spent going into the many alien races and their individual illnesses, even tough I realize that that would have slowed the book's pacing considerable.  All in all, a stellar --dare I say "Star"? -- achievement.

Alan E. Nourse (1928-1992) earned his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1955, helping to pay for his medical education by writing science fiction stories.  He wrote a bestselling nonfiction book, Intern, under the pseudonym "Dr. X," a pen name he also used, a name he also used for a few medical articles; he had a regular medical column in Good Housekeeping, which earned him the nickname "Family Doctor."  He published science fiction books for both juveniles and adults, often focusing on medicine and/or psionics.  Nourse also wrote a number of nonfiction books, many of them geared to a juvenile audience, including the So You Want to Be... series, The Teen Guide to Safe Sex, "Impact Books on various medical issues (viruses, hormones, herpes, AIDS, etc.), and books on astronomy (Venus and Mercury, the giant planet, the asteroid belts, etc.).  He also wrote The Body for Time-Life Books.  Critic John Clute has remarked on Nourse's "sharp and shapely virtues as a storyteller," concluding that "A sense of fundamental decency permeates Nourse's fiction; and, though sometimes too easily achieved, the victories of decency over bigotry cannot, either for the market upon which Nourse concentrated or the adult market in general, can be seriously faulted."

I find Nourse's fiction to be extremely addictive.

I also feel it is incumbent on me to mention one other thing.  Evidently the author's last name is pronounced "Nurse," which leads me to imagine hospitals loudspeakers to blare out, "Paging Doctor Nurse. Paging Doctor Nurse" to the confusion of all around.

Star Surgeon is available to be read on the internet:   http://durendal.org/anss/

PHILO VANCE: THE CASE OF THE CELLINI CUP (APRIL 29, 1943)

Ogden Nash opined that Philo Vance needs a kick in the pance, and I can see where he was coming from.  I can only take S. S. Van Dine's works about the detective in very small doses -- like one in every three to four years.  Does the same aversion  work with the radio program about Mr. Vance?  Let's see.

"The Case of the Cellini Cup" is one of only two episodes starring John Emory to survive.  Here, Philo investigates the murder of an owner of a curio shop.

Check out the link to see how he did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z94TI4mJV90

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: MUCKLE-MOUTHED MEG

"Muckle-Mouthed Meg" by Howard Pease  (from Border Ghost Stories, 1919)

    'Hang him, Provost!' cried the Town Clerk; 'he was caught red-handed, i' the verra manner, makin' awa aff wi' a quey o' your ain frae oor Common.'

    'Fear God, Provost,' exorted the Burgh Chamberlain, astonished at the Provost's hesitancy, ' nut ne'er a North Tyne Robson."

     'Ay," rang out a dozen voices from the crowd assembled in front to the Provost's house in Hawick, 'mak him "kiss the woodie", let the prood Northumberland thief cool 'is heels i' the wind!'

Accent notwithstanding, it's obvious that the townspeople wanted blood.  Bot the Provost's wife had another option,  Taking her husband side, she pointed out that their daughter, "Muckle-Mouth Meg," may never marry without a handsome dowry.  But the accused was a handsome young man; they could marry him to Meg and have them ride off together -- even if he was one of the "auld enemy."  If he married Meg, his dowry would simply be his own life.  How could he refuse such an offer.  Meg was not a beauty, but she was not ill-natured and would do in a pinch as his housekeeper.  and so the deal was set, and the crowd was as pleased at a wedding as they would have been with a funeral.

And Meg determined to be a good wife, especially once she found out that her new husband was not already married.  "I and bake an' mak ye sowans, scones, brose, kail o' all kinds, an' parritch."  Curious about her new home, she asked, "There wull be muckle ghaists aboot?"  He answered "There's naught but the 'wee gray man' o' the moor, but here's no harm in 'im."

And things were going well, even though there was some talk of young Robson taking a Scot as a wife.  Soon the talk reached the ears of the Land Sergeant of Gilsland, who resented the Robsons ever since one of that ilk gave him a "lick" on the head in a fray a few months bygone.  He determined this was a case of treason for, marriage or not, "all intercommuning with Scots is clean against Border law."  He decided to take two men and capture young Robson and bring him before the Lord Warden's court, where he would surely be condemned to hang.

When they arrived to take Robson, Meg was alone.  She told the Sergeant that the house was o the edge of the border of Scotland and any "intercommuning" was done on Scottish soil.  And when he tried to serve a warrant, Meg called out for the Bargeist, a giant ram with "loose hide and hanging horns, long tail and clattering hoofs"  The Sergeant's men took off in terror:  " 'Tis the Bargeist, the Bargeist!  Ye can fight against thae devils if ye like,  but I'll no."  So off they went, soon to be followed by the Sergeant whose horse was sent on its way by a smack on the buttock.  They stopped half a mile away.  the Sergeant's men wanted to head home, but the Sergeant wanted to head back and arrest Robson.  Then who should ride by but Robson, on his way home,  They attacked him and a bloody battle ensued.   Robson slew the two of the men but his lance got caught and the Sergeant was bearing down on him with a gleaming spear.  Then Meg threw herself in front of her husband and Robson found himself on the ground, "kneeling beside his wife whose life-blood a spear head was drinking."  Dying, she asked for a kiss...on the "muckle moo."

The story was most likely based on a Northumberland legend.  It has all the rhythm and pacing of a well-told folk tale.  I have no idea what happened to the evil Sergeant (presumably he also met his end) but it doesn't matter, the tale is about the impossible and reciprocal love between a deformed girl and a handsome young man, and it's an effective one, suitable to be told over a warm fire on a cold Northumberland night.

Howard Pease (1853-1928) "was an English writer from Northumberland, a barrister by training who devoted himself to the history, ballads and folklore of the Border country.  His ghost stories grew directly about of that landscape of peel towers and raiding country, and he also wrote on the region's antiquities and the Border wars." (Aeneaus Press)  Pease's family had interests kin the railway business;   he was a landowner and an ex-sheriff of the County and "has taken a wide and practical interest in the administrative, artistic and literary affairs in Northumberland."  He was a member of the Society of Antiquities and served as editor of the Northern Counties Magazine, Newcastle-on-Tyne.   He married Margaret "Marna" Kynaston, the daughter of Canon Herbert Kynaston in 1887; their youngest son, Captain Cuthbert Pearse, died at age 24 in 1916 "of wounds in the action beside Ginchy.  He lost his life leading his company in one of the finest heavy fire that has been made in the war."  Among Pease's other books were Borderland Studies, The History of the Northumberland (Hussars) Yeomanry, 1819-1919, The Lord Wardens of the Marches of England and Scotland, Tales of Northumbria, and The white-Faced Priest, and Other Northumbrian Episodes  -- all of which are available on the internet.

 He should not be confused with another Howard Pease (1894-1974), a popular American author, of 22 novels, mainly children's books (they'd be considered "young adult" books today), many of which were nautical adventures featuring young merchant mariner Tod Moran.  (When I was in elementary school, it seemed that the Scholastic Book Club was top-heavy with Tod Moran mysteries.)  That Howard Pease was also a high school English teacher and was principal of Los Altos Elementary School.

OVERLOOKED TELEVISION: MICKEY SPILLANE'S MIKE HAMMER: THE HIGH COST OF DYING JANUARY 7, 1958)

Mickey Spillane's tough private eye made his television series debut with "The High Cost of Dying," starring Darrin McGavin.  The syndicated half-hour series ran from January 7, 1958 to November 28, 1959 for a total of 78 episodes.  Spillane himself had minimal involvement in the series ("I just took the  money and went home"), thus the character was not as gritty as the author had portrayed him.  Nonetheless, the series was knocked from some corners for its "excessive and gratuitous violence" and TV Guide opined that it was "easily the worst series on TV."  That reaction, I suppose, mirrored the common perception at the time of Spillane's work, despite the fact that the books rank among the best selling novels of our time with estimated sales of more than 200  million copies, and that Spillane received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America in 1983 and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of America in 1995.   I liked the series, and McGavin had a tongue-in-cheek approach to the character that many viewers responded to.

In this premiere episode, a convicted bank robber, Floyd Ingalls,  has been stabbed in prison and is dying.  He asks Hammer it retrieve the loot he hid before he was arrested and use the money to ransom his wife who had been kidnapped.  But things may not be what they seem.

Directed by Lawrence Dobkin and scripted by Ken Pettus.  Throughout the series Bart Burns played Captain Pat Chambers, Hammer's cop buddy, in 22 episodes.  (Sorry, no Velda in this version of the series.)  Also included in the cast were Lynne Allen, William Allyn, Robert Patten, Eleanore Tanin, Don Kennedy, Paul Baxley, Neil Collins, Herschel Graham, and Russ Collins.

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfK93gNoCGY&list=PLRDHyUbhI8-WLt2eiUXzvx7A2bwQFwOO5&index=1