SOME COOL MUSIC : EINE KLEINE NACHTMUSIK

 Here's Mozart played on the banjo-guitar by Luca Stricagnoli.  Fascinating.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiu54fd6Pu0

FORGOTTEN BOOK: VOR

 VOR by James Blish (1958)

In the beginning there was Damon Knight, who found himself stuck on a story he was writing called "Mercy Death," so the story, half-written, went into a drawer.   Then James Blish had an idea on how to complete the story and finished it.  It was published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1948, as "The Weakness of RVOG" (editor Sam Merwin thought this was a better way to arrange the capital letters) as by Damon Knight and James Blish.

Blish had a habit expanding stories that he had written into novel-length.  And so it was with this onoe, published as a paperback origin as VOR.  He retained much of the original tale and padded the book with extra characters and a side plot.   The result was an amazingly good, amazingly flawed novel.

Marty Petrucelli is a member of a Michigan Civilian Air Patrol of the Air Force.  (Blish himself was a member of the CAP for three years and he got the technical details right.)  Marty was decorated war pilot but his experiences have left him with a deep phobia of flying; he was only member of his group that did not fly, restricting himself to training.  Marty's fear of flying has strained relations with his wife, also a menber of the CAP, and has left the door open for young, brash pilot Al Strickland to pursue his wife.  This two-fold soap opera of Marty's crumbling marriage and his phobia spurs much of the padding.

A vessel has crashed near the CAP headquarters and Marty is one of those to reach the scene first.  It's a spaceship and it is occupied by a large indestructable robot.  Why it is here?, why had it crashed?, where did it come from? are all unswered questions.  Efforts are made to communicate with the robot filed because it used a color organ instead of a mouth -- it communicated only in colors.  It is the task of government scientist to analyze its means of communication and to try to speak to it.  The robot (or is there an extraterrestial under the robot's surface?) is dubbed VOR, for Violet-Orange-Red, three of the colors it communicates with.

Ever so slowly, the scientists work out a rough way of talking to VOR.  Finally they determined why VOR had come to their planet:  he/it wanted to die.  Indestructable VOR gave Earth an ultimatum:  Kill me or I will kill you.  This scenario had played out on a number of planets before with VOR extinquishing all life when he could not be killed.  How do you kill a creature that can ot be killed?  VOR had been sent by an alien race to test the planet's defenses.  (The aliens themselves, unlike VOR, can be destroyed.)  If VOR is destroyed, the aliens won't come; if VOR wipes out a planet, the aliens come in to take possession.

It all makes for an interesting problem and an interesting book.  Blish's detailed and well-researched backgound and technical expertise shine throughout the novel.  Most of the padding, however, is not science-fictional, which has turned off some readers.  In addition, one of the padded plot points is resolved in the hokiest way possible.  As a blend of the science fiction and the mainstream novel, VOR is a well-paced, highly readable novel.  As one reviewer put it, VOR is "surprisingly good."

MUSIC FROM THE PAST: GHOST CHICKENS IN THE SKY

Sometimes you just need a laugh.  Here's Leroy Troy on The Marty Stuart Show with The Fabulous Superlatives.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pkdci55adqk

THE WHISTLER: THE LADY AND THE KNIFE (MARCH 24, 1947)

Joseph Kearnes is The Whistler, the host and narrator of this popuilar radio show that ran for 13 years from 1942 to 1955.  Over the life of the show, The Whistler had been portrayed by six actors, beginning with Bill Foreman; others were Gale Gordon, Marvin Miller, Bill Johnstone, and Everett Clarke.

Wait.  Do you that whistling?  Just thirteen notes, whistled by Dorothy Roberts?  Then:

"I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night.  I know many strange tales, many secrets hidden in the hearts of men and women who have stepped into the shadows.  Yes...I know the nameless terrors of which they dare not speak!"

There's a corpse in Omaha, a lady on the train to San Francisco, and the key to a quarter of million dollars in stolen diamonds...What could go wrong?

Enjoy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKrUHBL8DlQ

MUSIC FROM THE PAST: JUST A GIGALO/I AIN'T GOT NOBODY

 Louis Prima.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kkrb4h4weW4

SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: THE SILVER BULLET

 'The Silver Bullet" by Phyllis A. Whitney (first published in Weird Tales, February 1935; reprinted in Edwina Noone's Gothic Sampler (pre-publication title The Award Gothic Sampler), edited by "Edwina Noone" (Michael Avallone), 1966, and in Startling Mystery Stories, Summer 1970, edited by Robert A. W. Lowndes)

First off, everyone nows the silver bullets are used a defense against werewolves, right?  And maybe, in a pinch, against vampires.  But using them aginst witches and warlocks?  That strains my credibility.  I'm willing to forgive the author because this story was written in her salad days when she was selling to church and pulp magazines, at least six years before her first novel was published.

"The Silver Bullet" is a by-the-numbers tale typically found in the pages of Weird Tales and, like many other stories from that magazine, the story stills reads well.

Ramsay (I have no idea if that's his first or last name) and his wife Linda are driving to the remote town of Loon Mountain, where Linda was born.  Shortly after her birth, Linda's mother sent her away from Loon mountain, gaving her to strangers -- something that may have contributed to the "nervous spells" that Linda had been experiencing all her life.  On the advice of a psychiatrist, are headed to Linda's birthplace to discover the origin of her spells.  (Yes, it's a muzzy diagnosis and a muzzy solution, but it moves the plot.)  

Loon Mountain and Loon Valley are remote places.  The couple are driving up a tricky dirt (well, actually, mud) road at the dark of night with a thick pea-soup fog that makes driving dangerouse, especially since on one side of the road is a steep precipice and their car keeps sliding in the mud.  Ramsay stops the car and they expected to have to spend the night there when they spot a lit window through the fog.  The trudge to the house looking for help.

The house turns out to be a former hotel and they are greeted by a woman in strange black garb who offers to put them up for the night.  This woman curiously resembles Linda in many ways -- the same dark flowing hair, the same set of the face...but the woman has a far more exotic beauty than Ramsay's wife.  We never learn her name.  Also at the house is a man with frightenly piercing eyes and a zombie-like stature.  Their hostess ignores him.  Their room was dark and poorly furnished and they are given a key and told to lock the door for their own safety.  Before she leaves them, their hostess gives Linda a silver bullet -- a good-luck charm she had been carrying for years -- telling her to place the bullet under her pillow.

When Ramsay wakes up the next morning, Linda is gone.  The door remains locked but the window is now open.  He searches the entire building and finds no one.  He is then met by Samuel, a wizened old man who claims to be the caretaker of the building.  Samuel vows that the building has been empty for years and that there was never a dark-haired woman living there.  Ramsay insists on a search party for his wife and the townspeople oblige, although they appear to doubt the existence of a wife at all.

Near the end of his rope, Ramsay is confronted by some of the searchers who say they found Linda's body in a near-by gravel pit.  On inspection, the body turned out not to be Linda, but that of their hostess.  The townspeople say they have never seen that woman before.

Ramsay has an epiphany:  "The poeple from Loon Mpountain faded from the room and Ramsay knew the thing thaat was required of him if he was to save himself and reach Linda.  He must be as cunning as the dark forces leagued against him.  Never again must he give way to despair, thus opening a doorway to all evil.  And he must fight alone.  By some strnge intuition he knew that all the mountaainside was against him -- little men like Samuels, with blurred and shifty eyes, crowding their lies upon him; driving him with a slow, devilish peristence until his mind would abandon his last outpost and they woulld be rid of them forever."

There is a rifle hanging on the wall.  Ramsay grabs it.  It is unloaded.  Ramsay reaches under his wife's pillow to retrieve the silver bullet.   The bullet appears to have made to fit the rifle...

There is not much more to say.  All ends well for Ramsay and Linda.  And -- son of a gun! -- silver bullets do work against warlocks, leving one "an ooze of gray and jelly-like matter."

Phyllis A. Whitney (1903-2008; yes. she was 104 when she died of pneumonia) was one of America's premier writers of romantic suspense -- a description she preferred more than "The Queen of American Gothics."  Over her long career, she penned 73 novels plus three textbooks on writing.  Working in both the juvenile and adult suspense novels, she won two Edgar Awards for juvenile mysteries (and was nominated for three more) and often hit the best-seller lists with her romantic suspense novels for adults, winning comparisons to Mary Stewart and Victoria Holt.  She served as president of The Mystery Writers of America and received their Grand Master Award in 1988.  She also received the Agatha Lifetime Achievement Award from Malice Domestic in 1989, The Romance Writers of America Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990, and The Society for Midland Authors Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.

"The Silver Bullet" is available to read online in the February 1935 issue of Weird Tales and on the Summer 1970 issue of Startling Mystery Stories.  The Weird Tales issue also contains stories by Seabury Quinn, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long, Jr., Edmond Hamilton, August Derleth, and Henry S. Whitehead, "Kurt Barle" (Kurt Schwabe-Barlewin), and Fanny Kemble Johnson, as well as the second installment of a three-part serial by Paul Ernst and poetry by Cristal Hastings and Donna Kelly.  The Startling Mystery Stories issue also contains stories by "Francis Flagg" (George Henry Weiss), David H. Keller, M.D. (a "Taine of San Francisco" story), Eddy C. Bertin (translated from the Durch), and Seabury Quinn (a Jules de Grandin story).  If you happen to pick up Edwina Noone's Gothic Sampler (not available online, alas), you will find additional stories from Mignon G. Eberhart, Virgina Coffman, Veronica Parker Johns, Gladys Cluff, Natalie MacMurdy, Mary Wollestonecraft Shelly, and two pieces witten by Michael Avalonne under pseudonymns.

VACAY

 The tribe is headed off to Cape Cod for a well deserved vacation, so the blog will be on hiatus until August 10.  I'm planning on some Olympic-level relaxation,  The ladies are planning on some Olympic-level shopping.  There's sightseeing, whale watching, and eating (lobser! yum!  and real fried clams, not those wimpy little clam strips! yum again!) on the itinerary.

On Tuesday, August 3 -- assuming the whale watching boat doesn't sink that morning -- we'll be meeting up at Kimball's Ice Cream in Westford, Massachusetts.  Legendary sundaes and banana splits and much more.  If you are in the area, come and join us.  We're a friendly crowd and we don't bite.

See you on the other side.