A Henry Kuttner-heavy Reading Report for March/April 2025
Read “Food For Thought” by Felice Picano who had died a week earlier. It’s in is collection “Tales From A Distant Planet.” The story plays like an episode of the original “Star Trek,” albeit with group sex as well as a good story.
Finished the Kuttner/Moore story “We Kill People.” A perfect bleak, clever story with some Kuttneresque, sci-fi, near-future touches. First published in “Astounding” in 1946, reprinted in the 1955 British anthology “Looking Forward,” edited by Milton Lesser. The story (as by “Lewis Padgett” has rarely been reprinted. It includes the line: “The first true humans were mutants, and were given intelligence so they could dominate.”
Started reading the collection “Somewhere In the Night” by Jeffrey N. McMahon. Fine horror stories I will write more about later.
Read N. K. Jemisin’s story “Reckless Eyeballing” in the anthology “Out There Screaming.” (Special thanks to Brent Silveria for pointing out Jemisin to me!)
For the April 3rd birthday of Washington Irving I read his story “Legend Of the Arabian Astrologer.” I will here gush about Oldstyle Press’ fine collection of his tales: “The Best Ghost Stories and Folk Horror of Washington Irving.” https://www.oldstyletales.com/irving
I’m bumming my way through “Mark Twain’s Mississippi River,” by Peter Schilling, Jr.
For Henry Kuttner’s April 7th birthday I listened to a You Tube reading of “Where The World Is Quiet.” A Kutneresque horror story from the 50s that plays like one of his earlier stories but very well-written.
I finally started reading “The Wrong Box” by Lloyd Osbourne and his stepdad Rbt. Louis Stevenson. Black humor and not as laugh-out loud funny as I expected but I’m only in the early chapters.
Listened to a fine reading of “John Mortonson’s Funeral,” by Ambrose Bierce.
Also read Bierce’s “A Cargo Of Cat.” A tall tale and a grotesque one at that.
Read Robert W. Chambers’ “The Repairer Of Reputations.” Hadn’t expected it to be a dystopian story that rang so contemporary; set in the near-future (1920) with references to tariffs, immigration “…and new laws concerning naturalization and the centralizing of power in the executive…”
Oh, and a war with Germany, in the Nineteen-Teens. Remember, this story was published in 1895.
First time I’d read one of Chambers’ “King In Yellow” stories. (I can’t find my full collection.)
NOTE: Book Tubers are doing “Horror MAYhem: Decades of Horror” in May, reading one story for a decade. I decided to do it here and start a month early. My decades also start about a century earlier. “Repairer…” will be my story for the 1890s.
For the 1930s I read Henry Kuttner’s Prince Raynor story “Citadel Of Darkness.” Fun sword-and-sorcery adventure with enough horror to qualify for the BookTubers theme.
Been keeping up with the fine weekly stories by Kaje Harper and J. Scott Coatsworth’s entertaining serial “Down The River,” as well as E. H. Timm’s excellent monthly stories on the Flash Fiction Draw Challenge.
I also re-read a lot of J. Scott Coatsworth’s “Miz Fortune’s Lonely Hearts Salon,” which is now available in an anthology.
And I actually paid about five bucks for a comic book I bought for twelve cents back in 1970; a one-shot called “Zody the Mod Rob” which blends hippies, the zodiac, a little magic and robots! Actually fun! Worth a smile or two. Would’ve made a fun Saturday Morning cartoon show!
More next month, including a few more decades of “Horror MAYhem.”
—-jeff baker, April 21, 2025
Here’s the link to the anthology Scott’s story is in: “Romance Is a Drag.” https://www.jscottcoatsworth.com/book/romance-is-a-drag-anthology/
