Short Stories: William F. Nolan

This weekend I read two sf short stories by William F. Nolan, the 84-year old American writer of science fiction, fantasy and horror stories, who I discovered for the first time while searching the internet for something specific. Both the stories are well written and were featured in the Fantastic Universe Science Fiction magazine. 

William F. Nolan (© Bluewater Productions) 

Of Time and Texas

“A groundless fear, boy,” assured Ohms. "I have seen to it that the Time Door can never be closed. And now, good-bye, gentlemen. Or, to use the proper colloquialism — so long, hombres!”

The first story, Of Time and Texas, is just 595 words, far short of the Gutenberg legal text of over 3,000 words.

In this hilarious story, written by Nolan in November 1956, Prof. C. Cydwick Ohms unveils the C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door with a grand flourish before a group of reporters and photographers. The Time Door — and not a Time Machine which the professor dismisses as “wild fancy” — will transport people from their world of 2057 to the past, Texas of 1957, and solve mankind’s greatest problem — overpopulation. The professor is confident that his Time Door will succeed where colonising the Polar wastes and birth control programmes didn’t. 

The professor chooses Texas in the southwest because it has vast lands to absorb people from the future. The only hitch is that the Time Door is a one-way ride: you can re-enter the past but you cannot return to your present.

Prof. Ohms, draped in "an ancient and bizarre costume," steps into the Time Door and prepares to vanish into the past but nothing happens. He is still inside the contraption, blinking. Just as the professor bemoans his failure, the assembled journalists hear a slow rumbling coming from within the Time Door. As the sounds grow louder and closer, the terrified reporters and photographers run for the stairs, and Prof. Ohms finds himself straddling one of the 3,000 Texas steers charging into his laboratory.

I had a strong feeling that the Time Door would work in the reverse direction. I couldn’t imagine the story ending any other way. It was fun to read, especially the part where one reporter asks Prof. Ohms in earnest, “What if the Texans object?” He says, "They don’t have a choice." 

Small World

He was running, running down the long tunnels, the shadows hunting him, claws clutching at him, nearer...

Nolan wrote Small World (also known as The Underdweller and The Small World of Lewis Stillman) in August 1957. It’s much longer at nearly 3,700 words and, unlike Of Time and Texas, is a grim tale that reads more like horror than sf.

Lewis Stillman is, or rather was, a construction worker and the lone survivor of an alien invasion that has destroyed all human beings above the age of six. He has been living in the storm water tunnels beneath the city of Los Angeles for three years — living in hope that he will one day find another like himself; living in fear of the hideous “creatures” that prowl the ground above. Only hunger forces him out of the drains and even then he never risks going anywhere without his trusted gun, for he has been pursued by the aliens more than once. 

One day, Lewis, whose father wanted him to be a doctor, has a sudden desire to read a particular set of medical books — Erickson's monumental three-volume text on surgery — which he had read in pre-med school. Armed with the small gun and a .30-calibre Savage rifle, two of several arms he took from the LA police arsenal, Lewis sets out for Pickwick’s bookstore in Hollywood where he finds the “richly bound and stamped in gold” volumes. His luck finally runs out as he steps out of the store with the carton of books.

“The entire lower floor was alive with them! Rustling like a mass of great insects, gliding toward him, eyes gleaming in the half-light, they converged upon the stairs. They had been waiting for him.”

Lewis drops the carton and makes a dash for the street, firing, running, firing, running, firing, till he finds himself encircled by the aliens, the tiny claws reaching for him… You might guess who those claws belong to.

William F. Nolan, who co-authored the novel Logan's Run with fellow science fiction writer George Clayton Johnson, has a clear style of writing and his prose flows smoothly across the page. Also, the first thing I noticed about Nolan’s writing is that he doesn’t confound you with big words and keeps his plots and characters simple. I can’t judge his writing on the basis of just two short stories and I am looking forward to reading his various series of novels. 


Note: For earlier reviews of short stories, click Anton Chekhov and Sundance Western Comic-Book

BOOK REVIEW

A Fine Night for Dying by Jack Higgins (1969)

This book review is offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase. Hop over and check out the eclectic mix of reviews by other bloggers. It will be worth your while.

A Fine Night for Dying, in spite of the arresting title, is not one of the best novels of British author Harry Patterson who wrote it in 1969 under his most famous pseudonym, Jack Higgins. The story is predictable, the plot is hackneyed, and the secondary characters are uninteresting. But then, it’s a Jack Higgins and if you are a fan of his, like I am, then you overlook the negative aspects and enjoy the novel, as I do.

Not every Jack Higgins novel can be like The Eagle Has Landed or The Last Place God Made or The Savage Day or Storm Warning or A Prayer for the Dying. If you’d like to dig into Higgins, these are some of the novels you ought to read. 

In A Fine Night for Dying, Jack Higgins resurrects Paul Chavasse in his sixth and final avatar as special agent for the Bureau, the little-known branch of British Intelligence that handles all the delicate assignments, read dirty work.

Chavasse, a master of languages (he even knows Urdu), must investigate the cold-blooded murder of Harvey Preston from Jamaica. The body of the former Royal Army Service Corps officer turned black marketer and smuggler is washed up ashore on the English side of the Channel, with seventy pounds of chain wrapped around him. As Chavasse discovers later, Preston was alive when his enemies drowned him. A horrible way to die.

The trail leads Chavasse to a passage-by-night racket where illegal immigrants from all over the world are promised safe passage across the Channel in the dead of night, except they all turn up dead before they can set eyes on the English coast. And eventually to the brain behind the shady business, Leonard Rossiter, a Jesuit priest who lost his faith during his incarceration and subsequent indoctrination by the Chinese during the Korean War. A man with a “tortured, aesthetic face” who couldn’t possibly be the murderer of innocents and yet that’s what he is.

However, Rossiter, himself, is a pawn in the hands of the Chinese who have few friends and allies on the continent and use his second-rate organisation to run the immigration racket and advance their political goals. 

Predictably, Chavasse, the agent with a heart (as all Jack Higgins’ agents are), goes out of his way to help the mostly poor and unsuspecting immigrants, including an Indian girl who falls for Rossiter, and on a couple of occasions lets his guard down, enough to allow his enemies to capture him. In the end Chavasse, with a lot of help from the revenge-seeking Darcy Preston, Harvey’s brother, hunts down Rossiter and kills him.

A Fine Night for Dying is a mediocre thriller because there are too many gaps in the story. For instance, Chavasse’s trail leads him directly to millionaire Enrico Montefiore, a recluse who hides on his island stronghold, at least that’s what the blurb on the back cover tells us. Inside, Montefiore has been driven to drugs by Rossiter who is after his wealth. Montefiore, himself, has very little role in the story, save for begging Rossiter for his lethal dose. If the blurb is meant to sell the book to the reader, it doesn’t.

Jack Higgins’ heroes (there are at least seven of them, Liam Devlin and Sean Dillon being the more popular ones) are a lot like Mack Bolan, the Executioner — they rarely come to harm and when they do, they manage to get out of the most difficult situations. It’s a miracle they live to tell another story. All said and done, Jack Higgins is a pure entertainer — treat him as such.

Note: I gave Jack Higgins’ The Keys of Hell, another Paul Chavasse adventure, a more or less similar verdict. You can read it here.

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012: A pictorial tribute

© Creative Commons

"Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about."

[This quote is not from the insightful interview Bradbury gave The Paris Review in 2010. You can read that interview here.]

In 1939, Ray Bradbury published Hollerbochen's Dilemma, one of his first short stories, in the magazine Imagination and launches his own magazine called Futuria Fantasia.

Dark Carnival, his first collection of short stories, was published in 1947.

The Concrete Mixer, a short story, was published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1949.

The Martian Chronicles, 1950, and Fahrenheit 451, 1953. During these four years, Bradbury released The Illustrated Man, a collection of 18 short stories, in 1951, and followed it up with The Golden Apples of the Sun, an anthology of 22 short stories, in 1953.

Bradbury's last published novel was Farewell Summer, 2006, a sequel to Dandelion Wine, 1957.

A look at a few assorted covers and pages of magazines and comic-books that featured Ray Bradbury's short stories.

Stamp of a Statesman: Abraham Lincoln

"The things I want to know are in books; my best friend is the man who'll get me a book I ain't read."

"If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business. I do the very best I know how — the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what's said against me won't amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels swearing I was right would make no difference."

"Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all."

"Some of Shakespeare's plays I have never read; while others I have gone over perhaps as frequently as any unprofessional reader. Among the latter are Lear, Richard III, Henry VIII, Hamlet and especially Macbeth. I think nothing equals Macbeth. It is wonderful. Unlike you gentlemen of the profession, I think the soliloquy in Hamlet commencing "Oh my offense is rank" surpasses that commencing, "To be or not to be." But pardon this small attempt at criticism."

"'Tis better to be silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt."

"Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world...enabling us to converse with the dead, the absent, and the unborn, at all distances of time and space." 

"...when I came of age I did not know much — Still somehow, I could read, write, and cipher to the Rule of Three, but that was all — I have not been to school since — The little advance I now have upon this store of education, I have picked up from time to time under the pressure of necessity...."

"In regard to this great book (the Bible), I have but to say it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Savior gave to the world was communicated through this Book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are found portrayed in it." [Apparently, Lincoln could quote parts of the Bible, but his favorite book was believed to be Psalms and his favorite poem was Mortality by William Knox.]

"With the fearful strain that is on me night and day, if I did not laugh I should die."

FILM REVIEW

Ruthless People (1986)

Ruthless People is my contribution to Tuesday’s Overlooked/Forgotten films and television over at Todd Mason’s blog Sweet Freedom. Don't forget to check out the other fascinating entries over there.

Sam Stone's wife has just been kidnapped... And he doesn't want her back!

Individually, they are funny. Together, they are a riot. 

Danny DeVito and Bette Midler are absolutely in their element in Ruthless People where they play husband and wife, Sam and Barbara Stone, who are caught in a marriage that’s cracking rather than crackling.

Sam marries Barbara for money and then one day decides to kill her. He confides his evil plan to his mistress Carol Dodsworth (Anita Morris) who has an agenda of her own — she asks boyfriend Earl Mott (Bill Pullman in a debut role) to catch Sam getting rid of his wife’s body on videotape, so she can blackmail him for more money than he spends on her.

Sam Stone: I had to live with that squealing, corpulent little toad all these years. God, I hate that woman. I...I...I...hate the way she licks stamps! I hate her furniture! And I hate that little sound she makes when she sleeps. 

When Sam, an apparel manufacturer, is about to put his plan into action, a mysterious caller rings up to inform him that his wife has been kidnapped and that she would be killed if he went to the police.

 
Sam Stone can’t believe his ears: someone else is going to do his dirty work and the magic of it is that he doesn’t have to go to jail and he inherits all her father’s wealth too. All he has to do is take the ransom call when it comes and refuse to pay — he wants his wife dead anyway. He clicks his heels with excitement and reaches for the champagne.

“Bye-bye, Barbara!”

Enter Ken Kessler (Judge Reinhold) and his timid wife Sandy Kessler (Helen ‘Supergirl’ Slater), a fairly innocent and well-meaning couple out for revenge against Sam who stole their idea for a garment and made money out of it. Ken and Sandy kidnap Barbara and keep her in their basement with only a small television set for company. (Eventually, her "imprisonment" turns out to be a boon as Barbara watches aerobics on the TV and begins to practice it in the basement and loses a lot of weight, much to the delight of her "captor" Sandy who helps her try on clothes that wouldn't fit earlier.) 

What the poor couple don’t realise is that Barbara is more than a handful as she terrorises Sandy every time she goes below and pokes fun at Ken over his manliness or the lack of it (we are talking about Reinhold here. Remember him as the bumbling cop in Beverly Hills Cop?).

Barbara Stone is street smart and instantly sizes up her kidnappers for a pair of novices who would probably buckle at the knees if someone booed them from behind the curtain. 

“My husband worships the ground I walk on! When he hears about this, 

he will EXPLODE!” 

This one is even better… 

Barbara: YOU'VE FUCKED WITH THE WRONG PERSON! My husband does business with the Mafia! When they track you down, you, your entire family, everyone you ever KNEW will all get chainsaw enemas!

She doesn’t know that Sam Stone won’t pay because he wants her out of the way. When Sandy tells her as much, she is shocked and bursts into tears. 

Barbara: So, when do I get out of here? 

Sandy: As soon as Mr. Stone pays the ransom. 

Barbara: What's the problem? What is the ransom? 

Sandy: Well, we asked for $500,000. 

Barbara: That should be no problem. 

Sandy: He wouldn't pay. 

Barbara: He wouldn't pay? 

Sandy: Then we asked him for $50,000. 

Barbara: Yeah? 

Sandy: He still wouldn't pay. So now we're lowering our price to $10,000. 

Barbara (crying): Do I understand this correctly? I'm being marked down? I've been kidnapped by K-Mart! 

When Barbara realises that Sam has dumped her, she becomes a willing accomplice in her own kidnapping! She joins hands with Ken and Sandy to teach Sam a lesson he will not forget in a hurry. 

There’s plenty of funny stuff but I’m not going to spoil it for those of you who haven’t seen Ruthless People which is directed by slapstick filmmakers Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker.

The diminutive Danny DeVito and Bette Midler — with a combined stature of just 10’ 1” between them — are absolutely hilarious as Sam and Barbara, which is not surprising as both are very natural and hugely gifted actors. DeVito and Midler don’t need to move around much, their wide variety of facial expressions is enough to see their characters through. If you love comedies as I do, Ruthless People gets a top-notch recommendation. Don’t miss it. Especially, don’t miss the end.

Incidentally, Danny DeVito and Bette Midler have a few things in common. They are both very short (he’s 5’, she’s 5’1”), both were born a year apart (he in 1944, she in 1945), both married actors and around the same time (he in 1982, she in 1984), and both are still married to the same people (he for 30 years, she for 28 years).

JUKE BOX

Astaire and Goddard in Second Chorus

Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers and Donald O’Connor are some of my favourite actors in musical-romantic comedies. I never tire watching their films, particularly the song-and-dance sequences that are so much fun. You only have to see O’Connor’s ‘climbing up the wall’ act in Singing in the Rain to know what I mean. Astaire and Kelly are a class apart. This evening I had the rare opportunity to watch Fred Astaire and Paulette Goddard in Second Chorus (1940) on TCM (hopefully they will show it again). Now Goddard as you well know is more famous for her long filmy association and romantic liaison with Charlie Chaplin but she puts in a fine performance with Astaire by her side including in this delightful song-and-dance routine. Take a look…

BOOK REVIEW

How Superman Would End the War (1940)

This book review (magazine actually) is offered as part of Friday’s Forgotten Books meme over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase. Hop over and check out the eclectic mix of reviews by other bloggers. It will be worth your while.

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were bubbling with ideas to give Superman new adventures. How else do you explain this two-page comic story Jerry wrote and Joe drew for Look, a general-interest American magazine, in February 1940? The world is barely six months into World War 2 when the Man of Steel swoops down upon Hitler’s alpine mountain retreat and flies off with him, like a great eagle taking off with its unsuspecting prey.

Superman then stops over in Moscow to grab hold of Hitler’s ‘friend’ Josef Stalin, in front of his troops, before turning around and heading for Geneva where he deposits the two dictators at a meeting of the League of Nations which holds them “guilty of modern history’s greatest crime — unprovoked aggression against defenceless countries.” We don’t know whether they are sentenced to death or to a life behind bars. Death by legal or foul means was rare in early comics in which superheroes regularly handed over criminals to law enforcers. 

Everything’s fine about this short comic story except for Superman’s costume — white bodysuit, white cape and a pair of red shorts. Even the big ‘S’ on his chest is wonky. Those were early days. I liked the comic though, it’s vintage stuff (courtesy: www.archive.org).

Take a look at the comic strips below…and don’t forget to check out an sf book way below.

Among other Forgotten Books news (at my end), I recently picked up a used science fiction paperback titled We All Died at Breakaway Station by American sf writer Richard C. Meredith (Venture SF, 1969). A short version of this story, about “race survival teetering in the balance,” appeared in Amazing (1968). I liked the cover. I hope I like the story too.

The blurb on the back cover says...

When race survival teetered in the balance...

Captain Absolom Bracer, with an artificial brainpan and synthetic eyes. Astrogation officer Gene O'Gwynn, a lady with a plastic face. Weapons officer Akin Darby and Communications Officer Miss Cyanta, both with assorted prosthetic parts.

These were the officers of the Iwo Jima, one of the two heavy battle-cruiser starships protecting the vast, cumbersome Rudoph Cragstone, a hospital ship returning to Earth with thiousands of wounded in 'cold-sleep'. These brutally injured officers had been restored to temporary, artificial life to do this job because no intact man or woman could be spared from the main conflict.

But then Breakaway Station, a vital link with Earth, was suddenly threatened...

It looks like a challenging read, doesn't it?