Reading Report for February 20^th, 2024 (Covering Jan/Feb. 2024)

Most of my fiction reading has been short-stories from the middle of January through mid-February.

Read several of Fritz Leiber’s “Changewar” stories (many collected in the book “Changewar,” my paperback dating from 1983.) Started with “The Oldest Soldier.” A perfect story! With the feel of Leiber’s hometown of Chicago. Also read his “Knight to Move,” from the same collection. One of his many chess stories. Set in the future it references a long-distance way to sign a document. Clever ending.

Also read “Nice Girl With Five Husbands,” (from “The Worlds Of Fritz Leiber”) which Leiber said fit into the series and that he based the character on his friend Judith Merrill. Also read “When the Change-Winds Blow,” from “Changewar,” which was more poetic.

For my read of Leiber’s Fafhrd & Gray Mouser series I read the short-short “Bait,” also in “The Worlds of Fritz Leiber. So were the disquieting and brilliant “Waif,” and one of his cat stories “The Lotus Eaters.” As well as “Strange Doings At the Metropolitan Museum.”

Also read two Leiber stories not from “Worlds Of…” Namely “Cat’s Cradle” and “The Death Of Princes,” the latter one of his astronomy-related fantasy/horror stories, and a good one! Title from “Hamlet,” of course.

Also from “Worlds Of Fritz Leiber” (whose contents Leiber selected himself) read “Our Saucer vacation.” A riff on the Heinlein Juveniles and loads of fun! I could imagine the kid narrator’s voice as being in a 60s Hanna-Barbera adventure cartoon and the Dad’s voice as Mike Road.

But neither character is at all human!

Leiber and Heinlein knew each other, and if he read the story I bet Heinlein got the joke! I did!

Speaking of Heinlein, I’d been neglecting reading his “The Rolling Stones,” so I cracked that open and read some more.

The other novel I’ve been reading was recommended to me by a friend. “52 Steps to Murder” by Steve Demaree is a funny detective/mystery story, the first in a series.

The big news reading-wise for this month was the long-awaited last story by the late Tom Reamy. “Potiphee, Petey And Me” was written about 45 years ago for Harlan Ellison’s unreleased “Last Dangerous Visions” and never published. It’s in the recent definitive Reamy collection “Under the Hollywood Sign: the Collected Stories Of Tom Reamy.” It’s perfect. Disturbing, funny, dystopian and probably rated “R.” Reamy was only getting better.

On a few different notes, I got a pamphlet with a Christmas story from Crippen and Landru Publishers of a story by Richie Narvaez; “Raul And Rita In It’s A Wonderful Wife.” Great fun.

Another Christmas story was “Nothing You Dismay” by Ellis Peters. Suspenseful with a twisty ending.

Re-read a few stories like G. J. A. O’Toole’s “Turn Down For Richmond” (which I’d read in “Twilight Zone Magazine” in college.) Also “Little Note Nor Long Remember” by Henry T. Parry, “Drawer 14” by Talmadge Powell, and “The Remember Service” by John Bennett.

All of those from a fine set of anthologies collecting ghost/horror stories from various regions of the U.S. The Kansas entry was Charles Wagner’s “Deadlights,” (set in Beloit!) Spooky, especially the last line! (Not sure if I’d read it before.) And re-read the creepy Wisconsin-set “Death’s Door” by Robert McNear (from “Ghosts Of the Heartland.”) A page turner about a basketball team and an iced-over lake that I read when the anthology first came out, standing there in the bookstore. Yeah, it’s that good!

I bought a crumbling, 80 year-old copy of “Thrilling Wonder Stories” (Winter 1944) After reading a blog post about three (!!!) Henry Kuttner/C.L. Moore stories in the issue and finding out there was a Robert Arthur story in there as well. “Swing Your Lady” (as by Kelvin Kent) was Kuttner’s last story about time-traveling Pete Manx who finds himself among Amazons. (Not the website!) Sort of a wacky Damon Runyon.

“The Hunter” (as by Scott Morgan) is a WWII tale with some racist lines directed at the main character, a Japanese officer, not only from the American character but the editor’s intro. It has a grim and clever twist that I kind of guessed!

“A God Named Kroo,” as by Kuttner. Some humor, a lot of magic, adventure and a sweet ending. The Kuttners in fine form if not up to the standards of “A Gnome There Was.” An unjustly neglected fantasy, maybe because of a few anti-Japanese bits. (It IS set in Burma during 1944, but the racism could have been much more overt.) An enjoyable story.

The Robert Arthur story, “Space Command,” is an okay stuck-on-a-hostile-planet sci-fi adventure story with some problem-solving typical of the sci-fi of the era and something of a character study thrown in for good measure.

Some very clever bits, if not up to Arthur at his best. The story moves along (maybe a bit too long, Arthur was probably being paid by the word and I think the brawl near the end of the story was unnecessary. ) In the story-behind-the-story bit (“Thrilling Wonder Stories” regularly ran them at this time) Arthur said he envisioned the story as taking place in 2011. Wow!

The issue included wartime advertisements, including one for razor blades that had a sign: Win the War in ‘44. The issue came out in early 1944—right before D-Day.

All-in-all, the crumbling magazine was worth the $15.

Also read (and blogged about!) an anthology for writer H. M. Wolfe (who is ailing) called “Love and Hope.” A bunch of M/M Valentine’s Day stories including one by Kaje Harper: “Toby, Doyle And the Cats,” set in her “Hidden Wolves” series. Sweet and fun!

Neglected my Edgar Allan Poe reading this time around, but I did start reading one more by Leiber: “The Terror From the Depths,” a story Leiber started in the 30s but didn’t finish until the 1970s! Got it read about halfway so far!

——-jeff baker, February 21, 2024