FFB: Ray Bradbury's Weird Fiction (a sampling)

In tribute to Ray Bradbury, who recently left us to go travelling for eternity through space and time, I offer up a brief review of some stories I found in my pulp magazines and the anthologies on my overcrowded shelves.

1. From Weird Tales, May 1946: "The Smiling People"

"Nothing is quite so horrible, so final as complete utter silence" is the tagline for this chilling tale about Mr. Greppin who claims to have found true happiness with Alice. She is the love of his life and he remembers announcing his news that they are to be married to his uncle and aunt and how he made them smile. But now something strange has happened. Mr. Greppin's aunt and uncle sit at the kitchen table in utter silence, not moving, not speaking as he prepares to bring Alice to this house. And every sound in the house is amplified. Drops of water sound like harp strings being plucked at a deafening level, even whispers are like screams.

Bradbury has concocted a devilish little portrait of a diseased mind and a pathetic soul that brings to mind the work of Robert Bloch who seems to have been an influence on so many of the writers who contributed to Weird Tales in the 1940s. It's not hard to figure out what happened to Aunt Rose and Uncle Dimity but that's not the point of the story. It's Bradbury's depiction of the house, its sounds, and the supposed absence of sound, the wonderful silence that Greppin thinks he has finally achieved.

This particular passage is sublime, I think:

But of course nothing is perfect. The police make a visit to the house and Greppin's dream world comes to a literal crashing end.

"The Smiling People " later appeared in Bradbury's first short story collection Dark Carnival published by the preeminent purveyor of weird fiction Arkham House. August Derleth again selected it to appear in his anthology The Night Side (Rinehart, 1947) and it has since been anthologized in numerous collections in both the US and the UK.

2. From Nightmare Garden, edited by Vic Ghidalia: "Come into My Cellar" (originally published in Galaxy, October 1962)

This is a variation on the themes previously explored by Jack Finney in his classic novel The Body Snatchers (1955). Bradbury takes inspiration from those goofy ads seen in the back of comic books and magazines for do it yourself kits and get rich quick schemes. In this case the ad is for  "Sylvan Glade Jumbo-Giant Guaranteed Growth Raise- them-in-Your-Cellar-for-Big-Profit Mushrooms. Tom Fortnum is terribly excited when he receives his order. Special Delivery no less. Tom's father is less than excited about the postage expense but allows his son to tend to his fungus garden in the dank basement. Meanwhile, Mrs. Goodbody, the paranoid neighbor next door, is fearful about an invasion from outer space and is already beginning the fight in her front yard by spraying all the insects attacking her plants. Is it possible invaders from another world could travel to Earth as insects? Or even tinier forms of life? Spores, perhaps. Once they've arrived what would they do with us? Tom and his family find out all too soon.

3. From Masterpieces of Mystery & Suspense, compiled by Martin H. Greenberg: "And So Died Riabouchinska"
(originally written in 1953)

Which was the first story to play with the idea of duality in the life of a ventriloquist I wonder. John Keir Cross wrote a nightmarish version of this theme in his story "The Glass Eye" back in the mid 1940s. Were there others prior to that story? Bradbury's certainly is one of the earliest and predates the famous Twilight Zone episode "The Dummy." William Goldman's Magic, at one time the most famous ventriloquist movie, borrows heavily from all the stories and movies of the 40s and 50s with twisted dummy handlers. It's worth some research, I think.

John Fabian is a successful ventriloquist with a breathtakingly beautiful doll named Riabouchinska as his partner. Fabian's wife serves as his drudge assistant. When the story opens there is a dead body on the floor of Fabian's dressing room and a police detective named Krovitch is interrogating the ventriloquist, his wife and this press agent. They all deny knowing the dead man. As the story progresses Krovitch confronts Fabian with his many lies. He produces a photograph of Fabian's former assistant who bears a striking resemblance to Fabian's female dummy. The assistant even bears a similar Russian name. She disappeared in 1934 and Krovitch now suspects foul play. Krovitch is relentless in his pursuit of the truth and manages to get Fabian to reveal all in a most unusual manner. The story ends on a surprisingly poignant note.

Claude Rains with the lovely Riabouchinska
(talented radio actress Virginia Gregg did the voice of the dummy)

"And So Died Riabouchinska" was adapted for the TV series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" in a very faithful teleplay by Mel Dinelli who also did fine adaptations of crime novels in his screenplays for The Reckless Moment, The House by the River and The Spiral Staircase. So true is Dinelli to the spirit of the story that he used much of Bradbury's original dialog and managed to craft some of Bradbury's more artful prose into speeches delivered by the great Claude Rains in the role of Fabian. Charles Bronson plays Lt. Krovitch. The adept director was Robert Stevenson, a Hitchcock series regular. It's one of the highlights of the long running series and can be viewed at for free at hulu.com here.

FFB: The Leprechaun Murders - Adrian Reynolds

Second only to Carolyn Wells is Amelia Reynolds Long in the race for the title Queen of the Wacky Detective Novel. Long lived her entire life in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania where she began her writing career with science fiction. Several of her early stories are considered classics (though whether they also classify as "alternative classics" I cannot tell you as I have read none of them). She tired of science fiction and weird fiction in the late 1930s and moved onto detective fiction in 1939 when she penned The Shakespeare Murders which feature themed murders related to the works of the Bard. Literary murderers were to be a favorite topic of Long's and she would revisit them in Murder by Scripture (1942) in which the Bible is used as an inspiration for killing and Death Looks Down (1944) with its killer using Poe as a murderous muse. She wrote under her own name and two other pseudonyms: Patrick Laing and Adrian Reynolds. As Reynolds she wrote three books featuring Professor Dennis Barrie, an American literature college professor, who quite by accident becomes an amateur detective. The Leprechaun Murders (1950) is his second appearance. It is a blend of the puzzle whodunits Agatha Christie wrote which Long loved and her own unique brand of the fantastic and the bizarre.

In the opening pages Professor Dennis Barrie has a chance encounter in a bar with Owen Maloney who latches onto him and drunkenly introduces his new friend Mr. Hannigan, an Irish gent with a suspicious resemblance to the cigar chomping fairy godfather character in the Barnaby comic strip. He also has a habit of being invisible just like Harvey, the pooka. Barrie wants to escape from Maloney's company when Maloney explains that Mr. Hannigan is a leprechaun and he has made a bargain with the leprechaun. He will pay him $5000 in order for a wish to come true. And that wish is to make his niece Eileen happy by making her husband disappear. Maloney having exhausted himself (and the reader) with an overload of exposition soon passes out (or is that just the alcohol?). The bartender is ready to throw him out but Barrie volunteers to be a Good Samaritan and drive Maloney home after learning he lives relatively nearby. When he arrives at Maloney's home he discovers an impromptu party with several neighbors and town locals in attendance. We meet almost the entire cast of characters at this party scene. They include:

Eileen Maloney - Owen's niece and her husband the unliked, unloved Bert Henderson
Michael Maloney - Eileen's twin brother, a budding poet Owen calls "the new Thomas More"
Eric Kingsley - a musician in love with Eileen
Sheriff Warner - an ex-private eye from San Francisco now in charge of the law in this Pennsylvania town
Phillip Benson ("The Great Bensoni") - an itinerant ventriloquist on a theatrical circuit currently living in the boarding house next door who provides a bit of entertainment for the party-goers
Mabel Marple - the busybody landlady of the boarding house where Kingsley and Benson live (Yes, they call her Miss Marple throughout the book. Some nerve that Amelia has, eh?)

The rainy weather continues to worsen and Barrie is invited to stay and spend the night (such hospitable strangers). He accepts the offer. During the night he is disturbed by some activity in the yard. He wakes and from his window watches a strange hunched over figure running across the lawn and into a shed in the backyard of the Maloney property. He continues to watch as the figure climbs through an open window in the shed, turns back to close the window and reveals its face -- it looks exactly like the ventriloquist's dummy. The following morning Miss Marple stumbles across a dead body just outside the shed and goes next door to get help from the Maloney. Barrie and several others come out but the body is gone though there are definite traces of a corpse having been there. When it is also learned that Bert Henderson is missing the police are contacted and a search is instituted for Bert or perhaps his dead body. Prof. Barrie is reluctant to reveal what he saw the previous night. For who would ever believe him if he offered his idea that 1. a leprechaun has made a drunk's wish come true and 2. that a ventriloquist's dummy came to life.

The author in 1931

As is usual with Long we get an entire trunkful of detective novel tropes. The story is a mish mash of gimmicks and plot devices she must have picked up in her extensive reading of old mystery fiction. She borrows heavily from the Carolyn Wells bag of tricks with a secret passage (part of the Underground Railway of the Civil War era no less) that no one seems to be aware of that amazingly connects all the cellars of the homes in the neighborhood. Henderson turns out to have a dirty secret in his past that led to his murder - a nod I'm sure to Long's hero Agatha Christie. And -- conscious borrowing or not -- one of the most outrageous parts of the book is a direct descendant of an eerie short story by John Keir Cross now virtually a cliche in mystery and horror fiction. Yet though this book may seem a compendium of other writers' trademarks Long still manages to make this one a real page turner. I had to keep going to see how much she could tip the scales in terms of the preposterous. She does an impressive job, my friends.

Like a true alternative classic mystery writer Amelia Reynolds Long has a unique way with metaphoric language. Chapter 18, the most Gothic section of this particular book, offers the best of Amelia's descriptive talent.

The dark hall in which they stood was like the inside of a pocket.

He fumbled about on the wall just inside the door for a moment, then located the light switch. As he pressed it, a small orangish bulb set close against the ceiling flashed on. Before its mellow glow, the darkness fled down the hall and scuttled up the staircase. [...] he felt the roots of his hair suddenly prickle, while the skin at the back of his neck seemed to be trying to climb up to join his scalp. From somewhere behind him, a huge snake hissed!

There is no monstrous serpent in the house, of course. It turns out that Sheriff Warner was only whispering "Professor!" to get Barrie's attention and the college man's fearful imagination took over.

While some of Long's books turn up in cheap paperback editions and relatively affordable used copies of UK editions, The Leprechaun Murders received only a single printing in hardcover in the US. Sorry to say that it is one of the most difficult of her titles to find. I located only two copies being sold on-line, both of them with the DJ shown above. One is $26, the other is $50. Don't all rush at once! If you live in Chicago you can always check out the copy I found at the library. Believe it or not it's been returned to the shelves of the main branch eagerly awaiting new readers. Luckily it happens to be in excellent condition or else it would've suffered the same fate as Long's other four books that used to be on the shelves.

A complete bibliography of Long's mystery novels is available at her tribute website.  While there you can also read one of her rare interviews conducted by fantasy and horror writer and fellow book collector Chet Williamson shortly before Long's death in 1978.

LEFT INSIDE: George Johnstone Bookplate

I bought a book at the Printer's Book Fair earlier this year solely for the book plate firmly glued to the front endpaper.  It announces that the book comes from the library of George Johnstone, an American magician who died in 2004.

Apart from some amusing anecdotes from fellow magicians on several on-line magician forums I could only discover that Johnstone was an avid book collector, appeared on Ed Sullivan, was the opening act for the 1956 Elvis tour, and he started out as an assistant for Blackstone back in the 1930s.

Click on the image to enlarge and you will be able to read all of the book titles.  Each one is a real book considered a classic in the magic world.  I assume that the GJ on the right hand side above the bookend are George Johnstone's initials and that he himself designed the bookplate.

The book came from the huge collection of magic books, magic tricks, stage illusionist posters and ephemera belonging to Chicago magician, ventriloquist and puppeteer Jay Marshall who died in 2005.  I knew Jay for exactly one year and visited his house once when I was a puppeteer with a company called Hystopolis Productions back in the late 1990s.  He was approaching his seventies at the time, but was still a good spirited, very funny man with a devilish sense of humor.  He still did a few tricks at summer parties and enjoyed doing his very adult puppet show for friends only.  I only wish I got to know him better than the few hours I spent in his backyard for that one summer party.

It was sheer luck that I found the book pictured below at the book fair this year.  The dealer was the one who told me she thinks it came from Marshall.  The finest and rarest objects, posters and books from his staggering collection were auctioned off over a three year period between 2007 and 2009 in Illinois and Kentucky at three magic collector annual conventions and a private auction house. You can still view the "Part 3" auction catalog here. (Remember the auction ended over two years ago. Don't get too excited looking.)  It's stunningly impressive, if you are a magic geek like me, filled with rare posters, rarer autographs, vintage magic tricks, and very scarce magic books.

Apparently some of the lesser quality books were still in Jay Marshall's world renowned store Magic Inc, a few years after Jay's death in 2005.  This was one of them.  Strangely, the book has nothing to do with magic.  Ladies of the Underworld, as the title suggests, is a non-fiction account of women criminals.  The subtitle is "The Beautiful, the Damned, and Those Who Get Away With It."  There are twenty-six chapters each devoted to a specific woman or a type of female criminal.  Included are such intriguing chapters as "Vera, the High Flyer and the Shooting of Prince Fahmy," "The Cobra Woman, The Parisian Queen of Crime," "Aysah, The Malayan Hell Woman," and other chapters on female spies, forgers, mafia women and one about women living as men.  I haven't read any of the book yet, but just typing all that has made me want to read at least a few select chapters.