Reading Report, September/October 2024

Jeff Baker

Grabbed a lot of time to read this month!

Started reading Dave Musson’s “Once More Round the Sun.” Read the stories “Start As You Mean To Go On,” “The Strange Phenomenon of Epping Manor,” “Time Capsule” and “You’re Melting.”

Like his inspiration, Stephen King, (Musson runs “Dave Reads King,” a You Tube Channel devoted to King’s works) Musson captures the reader with the ordinary details told in a captivating way; the sounds of breakfast being made, the smells of bacon, before hitting the reader with a kicker line when the character hearing and smelling these things remembers “He lived alone.”

The book contains many sneaky references to King’s work; the number nineteen, men wearing yellow coats, a town named “Kingsworth,” but Musson is his own writer with his own voice. “Once More Round the Sun” has the nifty premise of a story for every month of the year. (I’d never read a horror story for April Fool’s Day before!) Like other writers before him, Musson sets his stories in prosaically normal-seeming locations the reader will feel they know.

One note here; the stories are excellent but in some of them, Musson goes for the gross-out.

Read (online) “Full Report Of the Second Meeting Of the Mudfog Association For the Advancement Of Everything Section B-Display Of Models And Mechanical Science.” This is an 1837 science fiction story, by Charles Dickens no less, that presages “Westworld” by about 130 years! Also, there’s a scathing and brilliant bit about eyeglasses that let the viewer see things far away but not nearby.

“…a large number of most excellent persons and great statesmen could see, with the naked eye, most marvelous horrors of West India plantations, while they could discern nothing whatever in the interior of Manchester cotton mills.”

Early science-fiction and pointed commentary by Dickens.

Bummed through Jim Beard’s “Breaking Bold and Brave,” his non-fiction book about “The Brave And the Bold” comic book. There’s some history, a few personal recollections and a guide to/review of every one of the 200 issues (and a few specials!) An informative nostalgia trip, very well-done!

Got a couple of books to read stories by Hildegarde Hawthorne. (Daughter of Julian, Granddaughter of Nathaniel.) Read “Unawares,” a sweetly sentimental Christmas ghost story in “Spirits of Christmas,” edited by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. A fine writer. Sentiment usually doesn’t fly today but some writers (like Runyon) were damn good at it!)

The other Hawthorne story I read was “A Legend Of Sonora.” I’d probably read it before. Reminicent of Ambrose Bierce’s work. Read this one in “100 Fiendish Little Frightmares” one of the anthologies Barnes & Noble published thirty-some years ago.

And I had seen the title mentioned a few times so I read Bierce’s “An Inhabitant Of Carcosa.” May have read it before. An influential horror story, if only for all the authors who have re-used the name.

Another story I couldn’t resist re-reading was Louisa Baldwin’s spooky tale “How He Left the Hotel.” Both of the above in “The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories”

Read John Kendrick Bang’s “The Mystery Of My Grandmother’s Hair Sofa.” A spoof of long-winded prose and 19th-century ghost stories from an absolute master. In the anthology “Spirits Of Christmas.”

And from the same anthology I read “Breakdown,” a spooky and sweet little ghost story (with a happy ending!) by Marjorie Bowen. I saw a talk given on her at the World Fantasy Convention last year in Kansas City.

Read Robert Duncan Milne’s story “A Base-Ball Mystery” from 1887. The story starts off being told in a room at San Francisco’s Palace Hotel (!!!) but then moves to Indianapolis. Fun 19th-Century Sci-Fi.

Milne’s stories are full of references to landmarks people in the San Francisco of the 1880s would have known; the Bay, Market Street, Woodward’s Gardens and others. In his fun (but implausible!) story “Into The Sun,” those landmarks do not fare well. His description of a fire engulfing the City with toppled buildings is startling, considering it was published 1882.

I ordered a copy of the 1980 Sam Moskowitz edited Milne collection “Into The Sun And Other Stories.” Well worth it and I’ll be reading more as I have a thing for 19th-Century Sci-Fi.

(There’s a companion volume; “Science Fiction In Old San Francisco; Volume One, History Of the Movement From 1854 to 1890,” a non-fiction work by Moskowitz which I don’t have. The collection is actually Volume two.)

Recently there was a collection of more Milne stories available on Kindle and a very pricey hardback collection. These and the Moskowitz books are the first collected Milne ever. (Bring on the mass-market paperback!)

Read “Kindergarten” by James Gunn, a short-short collected in the Asimov anthology “Comets” 40-some years ago.

Pulled out my copy of “Night Shadows: Queer Horror” edited by Greg Herren and realized I hadn’t read every story, including a couple by writers I know;

“Filth” by ‘Nathan Burgoine. I love ‘Nathan’s work and a full-fledged horror story from him is rare. This one was excellent.

“Blackout” by Jeffrey Ricker. A fine and frightening haunted-house story with sweet touches as the loving couple’s wonderful house in the country becomes a nightmare.

Michael Rowe’s “All the Pretty Boys” gives us a young hustler who becomes prey.

And also from “Night Shadows” I read “A Letter To My Brother Relating Recent Events With Unintended Consequences,” by Carol Rosenfeld. A funny vampire tale.

Read “The Flimflam Affair,” one of the fine mystery novels by Bill Pronzini about Carpenter and Quincannon Professional Detective Services. Set in and around San Francisco around the turn of the last century it’s a series that almost never would have happened except an editor asked for a short-story sequel to a somewhat downer Western novel Pronzini had written. In this latest series of novels the focus is also on John and Sabina’s relationship as well.

Read a few of Jack Cole’s Plastic Man comic book stories from “The Plastic Man Archives, Volume Two.” Cole was a genius.

Re-read my own story “The Ghannidor-Ra” in the paperback copy of “Schlock! Webzine,” April 2024. Looks good and has a Weird-Talesy illustration of a bottle and a skull in the middle of one page of text!

Read an extra Kaje Harper story on he blog she posted: “Fake Boyfriend’s Choice.” Perfect! Sweet and romantic.

Read a couple of entries in the Bay Area Queer Writer’s Association Antholgy called “Together.” “The poem “Together,” by K. S. Trenten and the story “Bon Appetit” by Pat Henshaw.

Tracked down Fritz Leiber’s “When they Openly Walk,” a cat story I didn’t think I’d read (but I had!) in the August 1969 Galaxy Magazine. Also read Leiber’s “The Cat Hotel,” from the October 1983 Magazine Of Fantasy And Science Fiction. There’s a hint of the “L” in “LGBT” in the story!

Also read Leiber’s “Schizo Jimmy. Excellent, and somewhat topical!

Read Manly Wade Wellman’s early story “At The Bend Of The Trail.” Only story of his I’ve read set in Africa where he was born!

Read H. Warner Munn’s “Out Of the Night.” Never read Munn before. (Oh, the last three stories were in the fun Barnes and Noble “100…” series of anthologies from thirty-some years ago!)

Got on a Julian Hawthorne jag (love his stuff!) and started reading “Absolute Evil” and realized I’d read it before (under the title “Island Of Ghosts.”) I WILL re-read it because it’s just good! Ordered a book with two stories about the same character from the story; Martha Klemm.”

Read Hawthorne’s “Rumpty Dudget’s Tower” an okay fairy tale he wrote for his kids. Has a couple of clever touches. And I started reading the stories in Hawthorne’s “Six Cent Sam’s” which I really hadn’t looked at. Club stories from the 1890s. Started with “Mr. Dunton’s Invention.”

AND I read Bram Stoker’s recently re-discovered story “Gibbet Hill.” Very much a weird tale that would have fit in E. C. Comics. Read it off a photo of the newspaper story from December 1890!

—-jeff baker, October 20, 2024