Short Stories from “Invisible Men,” (1960) edited by Basil Davenport. Reviewed by Jeff Baker (Part Four.)

Posted on March 31, 2020 by jeffbaker307

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Basil Davenport’s “Invisible Men.” (Part Four.)

Sturgeon and O’Brien.

By Jeff Baker

A Topical Note: While I highly recommend this anthology, I would ask that you forgo buying it on Amazon, as their employees are currently (as of March 31, 2020) on strike, protesting health risks in the current pandemic their employers refuse to address.

To conclude this set of reviews of the stories in Basil Davenport’s fine anthology “Invisible Men,” from 1960 we close with two tales of horror; my first encounter with two American masters of the genre, way back in the late 70s when I bought the book in a used store in Albuquerque.

“What Was It?” by Fitz-James O’Brien deals with an old house, young bold adventurers, a rumor of ghosts and the deadly presence of a thing that is never explained. The feeling in the story moves from one of mounting terror to one of pity for the creature. The horror is perfectly conveyed for O’Brien was (as I have said) a master of the tale of fear. The story was first published in 1859 and has not aged a day, as befits a classic. It has been reprinted every decade of the 20th Century and into the 21st. O’Brien, however, did not live to enjoy his literary successes for long; he enlisted in the Union Army at the start of the Civil War and was killed in 1862, not by bullets or battle but by disease. His stories have been collected and remain in print. Early science fiction as well as masterful tales of dread, marking O’Brien as worthy of comparisons to the other great American master Edgar Allan Poe.

“Shottle Bop” by Theodore Sturgeon, blends a bunch of clichés into one story: Invisibility, an unseen world, ghosts, the mysterious little shop and a magic potion. In this case, the potion is sold to our narrator by the proprietor of The Shottle Bop (“We Sell Bottles With Things In Them” reads the shop sign.) The shop and its owner are a blend of the humorous and the sinister. (I imagined the owner being played by Billy Barty, right down to the Peter Lorre voice.)

The potion gives the narrator the ability to see the ghosts that inhabit our world, while the dead cannot see him. The descriptions of the ghostly are evocative and wondrous, proving Theodore Sturgeon as a writer who earned comparisons to Bradbury for his themes and his prose. The story speeds along with encounters with ghosts both funny and tragic until he ignores a warning…

Sturgeon’s skill as a fantasist needs little recapping here. Suffice to say his work, including “Shottle Bop” is readily available, including in a multi-volume Complete Stories. Paperback editions of his story collections are easier to find and all are worth it.

It has been over forty years since the summer when I spent a couple of evenings reading “Invisible Men,” and I am now a published writer of fantasy and horror, sowing the seeds planted all those years ago by these imaginative tales.

—-jeff baker, March 31, 2020

ADDENDA: Interested readers might want to seek out Davenport’s companion anthology to this: “Deals With The Devil,” featuring stories by Henry Kuttner, John Collier, DeCamp and Pratt, and of course Stephen Vincent Benet.

Posted in Basil Davenport, Books, Edgar Allan Poe, Fantasy, Fiction, Fitz-James O'Brien, Fletcher Pratt, Henry Kuttner, Horror, Invisibility, Invisible Men, John Collier, L. Sprague DeCamp, Reviews, Science Fiction, Short-Stories, Stephen Vincent Benet, Theodore Sturgeon, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Cat Came Back; Friday Flash Fics by Jeff Baker for March 27, 2020.

Posted on March 27, 2020 by jeffbaker307

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The Cat Came Back

By Jeff Baker

 

I’d never slept in a church before, especially not a deserted one, but it beat spending another night on the street. Anyway it was cold in the city and I didn’t want to get picked up by the cops as a runaway which technically I was, as a sixteen-year-old whose parents had bailed on him. I’d been lucky; I looked older than I was and I’d found some places to work and live over the last few months. But I kept out of trouble; a youth center was no place for a gay teenager in 1977. Which brings me to the church.

I’d been warming my hands over a fire in a trash can under a bridge, feeling uncomfortable about the way a couple of the bigger guys were looking at me when I overheard somebody saying something about the old church on Haley Street. It was closed up, I knew that, but someone else had told me earlier that people stayed away from the church and that it wasn’t a church anymore, and that “it wasn’t a place where anybody would go, not even the cops.”

I wandered away from the fire; the big guys didn’t follow me. I guess they just wanted the fire to themselves. I looked around and walked down the street, turning a corner and taking a zig-zag route in case I was being followed. It was after midnight when I found the church, a one story building in a run-down neighborhood. The street light in front of the church was burned out or shot out. The only light was another streetlight a block away. I looked around again and climbed over the sagging wire fence that someone had put up a while back. There was dead, brown grass about a foot tall around the little building which was about the size of a convenience store. I kept imagining giving the cops my usual spiel: that my name was Bryce Going, that I was nineteen and seeing the country and that somebody had stolen my wallet with my I.D. and cash. I shuddered and felt my way around the building. The back door was boarded over, but I pulled at it and I could crawl through into the church as the board snapped back into place behind me. I looked around; most of the windows were boarded-up too. I pulled out the little pocket flashlight I’d bought months ago (thank God I had a warm jacket!) and flashed the beam around the room. Floor solid; some broken glass around the edges of the room: pew toward one end, a Christmas decoration hanging lazily from a beam in the ceiling. A couple of worn, felt banners hanging on the wall. When I was sure I was alone, I turned the light off, dusted off the nearest pew and lay down, using my gym bag as a pillow. I started to doze, glad at least that the church was sealed-off from the wind and open air and was somewhat warmer than the outside. I was falling asleep, hearing my own breathing in the quiet and the far off sounds of the highway.

There was a noise in the church, a rustling sound. I sat up, wide awake, breathing hard. I fumbled for the flashlight. I saw movement on part of the floor dimly lit from the light from between the boards on the windows. A small, grey-white kitten crawled from under a chair. I could hear the purring in the quiet of the church. I smiled and sighed with relief.

The purring grew louder. It filled the room, it filled my ears. The kitten began to puff out, swell and then grow. In instants it was the size of a horse, and then its ears brushed the roof. The purring was deafening, its eyes glowed like moons. Its teeth were bright and sharp.

I grabbed my bag and ran, I wasn’t sure where. I found myself at the back door and slammed against the board, falling outside. I was halfway down the street when I realized the purring was gone. And that I had been screaming. I ducked down a side street and made my way downtown. I spent the night walking in and out of convenience stores and the bus station, eating my last candy bar. Tomorrow I’d find a job, get some money. I kept remembering what the man had told me about the church on Haley Street: “It ain’t no place where anything holy lives anymore.”

 

—end—

Posted in Bryce Going, Fantasy, Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Horror, LGBT, Short-Stories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Short-Stories from “Invisible Men,” (1960) Edited by Basil Davenport. Part Three. Reviewed by Jeff Baker.

Posted on March 26, 2020 by jeffbaker307

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Basil Davenport’s Invisible Men (Part Three)

Slesar and LeBlanc

By Jeff Baker

 

Continuing my review of the stories in the 1960 anthology “Invisible Men,” edited by Basil Davenport. As promised last time; two tales of mystery.

“The Invisible Prisoner” by Maurice LeBlanc. This review is going to skirt very close to spoilers. A mysterious burglar breaks into a house and steals money. The burglar ducks out of the house into a walled area of the city pursued by the owners of the money and several locals. There is no way for the man to escape “Unless old Nick carries him over the walls.” A mysterious stranger arrives in town and is able to deduce where the burglar has hidden himself. Fans of Maurice LeBlanc will have no trouble identifying the stranger before the reveal at the end of the story. The story, of course, is a mystery with invisibility used as a metaphor, as it involves a clever “impossible crime,” in this case the disappearance of the burglar. In the book’s introduction the story is described as involving “extremely clever robbers and cleverer detectives.” But that’s not even the whole story!

I confess I had never read one of LeBlanc’s stories before, and found this one highly enjoyable. It is also the only story in the book I had not read back in the 1970s and holds up well for a mystery originally published around the turn of the last century.

Like LeBlanc, Henry Slesar has rock-solid credentials as a mystery writer, and his “The Invisible Man Murder Case” does not disappoint. In it, a formula for invisibility is used by a clever killer. Not quite a “fair play” detective story, but almost. Likewise a lot of fun. Slesar’s television credits include Alfred Hitchcock Presents and hundreds of soap opera scripts.

Next time, we close out this review as two masters of horror pull back the curtain onto invisible worlds.

 

—end—

Posted in Basil Davenport, Books, Fiction, Henry Slesar, Invisibility, Invisible Men, Maurice LeBlanc, Mystery, Reviews, Science Fiction, Short-Stories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Keep On Keeping On–Jeff Baker, March 22, 2020

Posted on March 22, 2020 by jeffbaker307

 

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Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

 

The world has gone mad to-day, and good’s bad to-day, and black’s white to-day, and day’s night to-day, and that gent to-day you gave a cent to-day, once had several chateaus.—Cole Porter, from “Anything Goes.”

Things are going nuts right now, and myself and a lot of writers I am online with are wondering what to do. A lot of us are hunkered-down in our homes and trying to keep “business as usual” as usual as possible by keeping up our regular schedule or just plain writing, maybe more than usual.

About three-and-a-half years ago I wrote a column for Queer Sci-Fi (thanks, Scott!) which touches on some of these issues. It is as topical now, as it was then. Here it is:

(From Boogieman In Lavender, November 13, 2016.)

So how should writers react? Write with passion, continue to type the good fight and do not be intimidated. Which brings me to Marcel Ayme…

Marcel Ayme (1902-1967) was a French novelist, children’s writer, playwright, humorist and short-story writer, the latter being what he is best known today. He was in Paris during World War Two, the time of the occupation by the Germans. He wrote on political issues while at the same time writing stories, many of them using Paris of the time as a setting for fantasies like “The Man Who Walked Through Walls” or “Across Paris.”

One of my favorite Ayme stories, “Tickets on Time” incorporates the realities of wartime rationing with a twist; Parisians are issued time cards that determine how long they will exist that month. The vanishings and reappearances lead to amusing and odd complications.

The point is; Ayme’s typewriter did not go silent. Our word processors, pens, typewriters and other writing implements of choice should not either.

Write with passion. Keep on keeping on.

 

—end—

 

Posted in J. Scott Coatsworth, Marcel Ayme, Uncategorized, Writing | Leave a comment

Short Stories from “Invisible Men” edited by Basil Davenport, 1960 (Part Two.) By Jeff Baker.

Posted on March 22, 2020 by jeffbaker307

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Basil Davenport’s Invisible Men

Beaumont, Bradbury and Gold

By Jeff Baker

More stories form Basil Davenport’s 1960 anthology “Invisible Men.” The anthology which exposed me to a bunch of stories from the pulp days (and earlier) and became something of an influence on my own writing.

“The Vanishing American” by Charles Beaumont. One of my favorite stories by the author best known for his “Twilight Zone” scripts. This story was omitted from the fine Beaumont collection “Perchance to Dream” but is available elsewhere. The story touches on familiar Twilight Zone territory: the little man in an office job; the ordinary everyday setting and then the touch of strangeness that Beaumont specialized in.

“Invisible Boy” by Ray Bradbury is quintessential Bradbury; the implication of witchcraft, the hint of Halloween, the young boy character. Stirred together in a heady brew.

“Love in the Dark” by Horace L. Gold. Back in the 1970s I’d never heard of Gold, the editor of Galaxy Magazine and a fine writer. This story is another of my favorites in the anthology and was reprinted with an explanation of how it came to be written, in Gold’s collection “The Old Die Rich.” Livy Ransom has a strange feeling that someone is watching her undress at night. What follows is a delightful blend of sci-fi and whimsy. (“Long blue hair and wide blonde eyes?”)

Two tales of invisibility and mystery in the next installment.

Posted in Basil Davenport, Books, Charles Beaumont, Fantasy, Fiction, Horace L. Gold, Invisibility, Invisible Men, Ray Bradbury, Reviews, Short-Stories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Short Stories from “Invisible Men,” 1960; Edited by Basil Davenport. Reviewed by Jeff Baker.

Posted on March 20, 2020 by jeffbaker307

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Basil Davenport’s Invisible Men; a review by Jeff Baker

Part One: London, Collier, Pratt, Wells and de Camp

I stumbled across Basil Davenport’s 1960 paperback anthology “Invisible Men” around 1975, at a used bookstore in Albuquerque, NM. I’ve liked stories and comic books involving invisibility since I first saw “My Favorite Martian” and later read H.G. Wells’ novel “The Invisible Man,” and so I picked this one off the shelf and when I found it had a story by H.G. Wells in it, I bought it. Nearly a dozen stories on variant themes of invisibility, marketed for young adults with a preface for students and teachers which did not talk down and was spoiler-free (a term that did not exist in that era of bell bottoms and Bicentennials.) The gist of it all was the book introduced me to authors and themes which would affect the course of my writing career, so the least I can do is review the stories here. Not in order, but I will start with the first story in the book:

“The Weissenbroch Spectacles” by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt. I am not sure if I had read the paperback of “The Compleat Enchanter” yet, but I’m sure this was my first encounter with de Camp and Pratt’s humorous fantasy series set in Gavagan’s Bar, collected as “Tales From Gavagan’s Bar” which I found when I had just started college around ’78. The story is whimsical, uses invisibility in a different way than I’d expected and also manages to reference Benjamin Franklin. At the time I didn’t dream I’d want to write funny fantasy of this type and actually would years later.

“The New Accelerator” by H.G. Wells. I don’t think I’d read this in the Wells collection in the South High School Library in Wichita, but Wells was one of a few prose writers whose work I actually looked for back then. I would read through an anthology (usually of ghost stories) and not pay any attention to the author’s names. These days, I look for the author’s names first. This story tells of a scientist and his drug which speeds someone up temporarily. The invisibility is the result of super speed; a concept I was familiar with from comic books. (I read far more comic books than short stories back then!) Wells’ story features descriptions of the area the accelerated narrator and scientist travel through and others moving in seeming slow motion. Loads of fun.

Almost a companion piece to the Wells story; “The Shadow and the Flash” by Jack London presents two scientists, life-long rivals who have each devised a method of invisibility. I love London’s stories, even though there is a scene where he posits that a Black man would be nearly invisible in a nearly dark room which might not go over as well today.

Wells and London probably fired up my latent interest in the magazine writers of short popular fiction of the pre-pulp era.

John Collier is a legend of short story writing and “The Invisible Dove Dancer of Strathpheen Island” is a reason why. A fantasy with a downbeat ending and the work of a master at the top of his craft.

I’ll write more about these stories in a future post. And the anthology is readily available online. Seek it out.

—end—

Posted in Basil Davenport, Books, Fantasy, Fiction, Fletcher Pratt, H. G. Wells, Horror, Invisibility, Invisible Men, Jack London, John Collier, L. Sprague DeCamp, Reviews, Science Fiction, Short-Stories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Cab ride with Friday Flash Fics, by Jeff Baker. March 20, 2020.

Posted on March 20, 2020 by jeffbaker307

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And Now When David Banner Grows Angry Or Outraged A Startling Metamorphosis Occurs

By Jeff Baker

 

You see a lot of things when you drive a cab for a living and although I have never held that particular occupation, I have heard from those who have that the claim is no exaggeration. I am going to tell you the story as I heard it told to me by one of those selfsame cab drivers.

The driver of the yellow cab looks like he could play a kid in a revival of “West Side Story,” but his I.D. says he is 42.

“Look at that!” the Cabbie said. “It’s really coming down, isn’t it?”

“Glad I’m in here,” his passenger says.

“Me too, I need the fare,” the Cabbie says. “And this is a real thrill; I’ve never had a real bear in my cab before. I mean, I had celebrities, like Paul Rodríguez once, but never a bear.”

“I know,” the Bear says. “It breaks with the stereotype, doesn’t it?”

“I know,” the Cabbie says. “I expect bears in the middle of the woods or in a zoo. No offense.”

“None taken,” says the Bear. “I usually don’t come into the city, but I’m here on business.”

“What kind of business?” the Cabbie asks. “Not Wall Street?”

“If it was, I might be riding with a bull,” the bear says. He and the Cabbie both laugh. The Bear scratches the back of his neck. He is a big brown, furry bear, wearing a seatbelt in the back of the cab with a small briefcase on the seat beside it.

“Turn up there will you,” the Bear says, pointing with a furry paw. “That office building on the right.”

“Okay,” says the Cabbie, turning and parking in front of the building.

The Bear pulls out a roll of bills, and hands it to the Cabbie.

“Here, and keep the change,” the Bear says.

“Thanks!” says the Cabbie, for whom tips were as rare as parking spaces outside the stadium during the playoffs.

“I will be on my way,” the Bear says, picking up his briefcase.

“Might want to give that door an extra shove,” the Cabbie says. “I been having trouble with it sticking.”

“All right,” the Bear says. “But it shouldn’t be any, be any…” The Bear is struggling with the handle of the cab door. He grunts and pulls, and then he rolls over on his back and with another grunt, shoves the door with both of his powerful feet. With a loud creaking noise the door pops off its hinges and falls onto the sidewalk in front of the building.

The Bear steps out of the cab, puts the door in the back seat and apologizes to the Cabbie.

“Maybe this will cover it,” the Bear says, handing the Cabbie another roll of bills.

Now, I am not sure exactly what business the Bear had in the city, or where it earned all of that money but as long as he can pay for damages like that and tell a cabdriver to keep the extra, nobody is going to complain!

 

—end—

 

NOTE: Copied Damon Runyon’s style for this one and had fun doing it! —-jsb

Posted in Fantasy, Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Short-Stories, Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Words for our time:

Posted on March 18, 2020 by jeffbaker307

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Here are some words for our current surreal times:

 

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”  

Franklin D. Roosevelt said this during the Great Depression of the 1930s. Fear and panic are running rampant these days. More people will be hurt by unreasoning panic than by any virus.

 

“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, but most of all, beware this boy…” 

The Ghost of Christmas Present says that to Scrooge in Charles Dickens’  “A Christmas Carol,” about the children that cling to him. (“Spirit! Are they Yours?” Scrooge says. “They are Man’s,” the ghost replies.)

There is plenty of misinformation and rumor flying around these days, spreading far swifter than any virus. And they are just as dangerous and deadly in the end.

If you do not believe we are in times ruled by ignorance, rumor and fear, just think of the empty shelves where the toilet paper was.

 

——-jsb. March 18, 2020

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“The River of the New Moon,” by Jeff Baker, Going Dark for Friday Flash Fics (Friday, March 13th, 2020)

Posted on March 12, 2020 by jeffbaker307

The River of the New Moon

By Jeff Baker

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During the nights when the Moon is new and not in the sky, she is nonetheless busy elsewhere. Sometimes she manifests herself as a nighthawk and soars the evening skies. Sometimes, she becomes a mole and burrows down into the ground to sleep. And sometimes, she appears as a lady in a boat on the river Ie.

It was during one of those nights that she came to the edge of the riverbank she often shone on from the sky. She felt the tall rushes with her hands, gazed at the tiny fish asleep in the shallow water and poked an investigating finger into the mud. And there were three young men on the riverbank who saw only a woman in a boat and quickly came up to her with knives and demanded her gold. One of them clamored into the front of the boat, displaying his knife, the other two were in the boat behind her. It was in the next moment that the boat set on down the river, moving swiftly against the current. And when the young men tried to leave the boat but could not and saw the woman smile with a smile broader than any woman could possibly have, they knew who they were with.

It is said the nights of the new moon are the best ones to see falling stars, which are not really stars but flecks of meteors which try but do not make it to earth.

And three of those falling stars on those nights are the young men who were let loose in the sky far from Earth, trying desperately to return home, to the lives they had before they foolishly invaded the boat of the New Moon.

 

—end—

Posted in Fantasy, Fiction, Friday Flash Fics, Horror, Moon, Short-Stories, Uncategorized | 1 Comment

“The Adventure of the Open Field.” Mystery and Murder for the March Flash Fiction Draw Challenge by Jeff Baker. March 9, 2020

Posted on March 8, 2020 by jeffbaker307

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Note: This month’s Flash Fiction Draw Challenge was for a mystery, set in an open field involving a beard trimmer. I’ve been to a few small farm towns in Kansas like the one I depict here. Special thanks to Cait Gordon for hosting the draw!—-jsb.

The Adventure of the Open Field

By Jeff Baker

 

Raymond Ervine had been found dead in the middle of a field of harvested wheat, and he had been shot in the back of the head at close range not more than a day ago. It had rained for several days earlier and the field had been muddy for much of the week and there were no footprints around the body. Sherriff Joe Cornwall stood by his car on the paved road a few yards away from where they’d found the body.

“I hate days like this,” he muttered. Probably so did the victim. His cellphone went off; nobody seemed to use the radio in his car anymore. “Hello…yeah…he was holding what?”

Sherriff Cornwall had never liked being in the new hospital, especially the room used by the County Coroner. Especially with a corpse under a sheet on a table. The coroner usually dealt with farm accidents and, last year, the two kids who had gotten drunk and raced each other out of the Quickie-Mart parking lot. This was his first murder.

“That’s right Joe,” said Dr. Harrison. “We found this clutched in his hand. We had to pry the hand open”

“A beard trimmer?” the Sherriff asked.

“Yup.”

Cornwall stared at the small trimmer. He’d never used one. And he’d never taken one out to the field with him.

“Well, now we know Ervine wasn’t killed in the middle of the field,” Cornwall said. “He must have grabbed this when he realized what was going to happen.”

“As a weapon?” Dr. Harrison asked. “And how’d he get in that field? There weren’t any footprints in the mud!”

“That part’s easy,” Cornwall said. “Somebody drove a combine on the road by the field and swung the unloading tube over it to drop him in it. Probably had a rope of some kind that tied him fast, lowered him enough and dropped him. That way they created enough of a mystery. It had to have been done at night, and probably by someone nearby. You know the only people bordering his land?”

“Old Man Collier, Zach Zebrowski and Billy Viers.” Doctor Harrison said.

“He ever quarrel with them?”

“Yes, with all three,” Harrison said. “They were in here a year ago after the four of them got into a fight over at The Lazy Bull.”

“Why wasn’t I called?”

“They didn’t press charges. They’ve been at it for years. Ervine’s Granddad left him the property and he others say he’d cheated them out of it; that it had been part of each of the other’s land once.” Harrison said. “Another time I heard them arguing at the gas station, could barely hear it over that loud rock music Ervine was playing in his car.”

“Rock music…” the Sherriff muttered. “Hold the fort here, Doc; I have to make a call. I think I found a killer.”

It was later when Sherriff Cornwall found time to come back and explain everything to Doctor Harrison.

“Well, he’s in jail, even if Old Man Collier wanted to confess himself,” Cornwall said.

“Who?”

“It was the beard trimmer that clinched it. The killer must have gotten into the house and confronted Ervine with a gun. Ervine wasn’t a big man; he wouldn’t have been able to overpower anybody who was armed, so he grabbed the beard trimmer. Only it wasn’t a weapon, it was a message.”

“A message?”

“All that rock music Ervine was always playing? Ever see that band with the three guys with two of them in long grey beards and dark glasses? Beards? Like in beard trimmer?”

“I think I saw them on T.V….”

“Z Z Top,” Cornwall said. “And that corresponded to a name of someone he knew; his killer.”

“Zach Zebrowski.” Harrison breathed.

Cornwell nodded. “He confessed. He’d planned it for weeks. Even drove his combine up and down the road a few nights ago to see exactly how long it would take.” He shook his head. “Want to hear something funny?”

“I could use it,” said the doctor.

“That band, Z Z Top, the one band member without a beard?”

“Yeah?”

Cornwell smiled. “His name’s Beard.”

 

 

—end—

Posted in Cait Gordon, Fiction, Monthly Flash Fiction Draw Challenge, Mystery, Short-Stories, Uncategorized | 2 Comments