Series Saturday: the Philip Marlowe novels

This is a blog series about … well, series. I love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies, comics.

In 2019, I realized after several conversations with my friend Dave (our conversations often lead to me identifying something I haven’t read or seen) that I had never read a Philip Marlowe novel (or likely anything else by Raymond Chandler). I mean, I knew who Marlowe was, and I knew Chandler’s influence on the mystery genre overall and noir in particular. So how was it that I could not recall every having read a single Marlowe book? It was time to fix that!

As with so many of the reading and/or viewing challenges I set myself, it took a while for this one to play out. I listened to the first Marlowe novel, The Big Sleep, in late 2019, and then decided to motivate myself by making the Marlowe books a part of my “Complete the Series” Challenge for 2020. I made a game start at the beginning of the year thanks to several long work trips with lots of driving, then dropped the ball until Noirvember when I read the final two books written or co-written by Chandler.

The long gap between the first six books and the final two influenced my experience of the series as a whole. Another influence was experiencing the series in three different forms. I listened to the first two novels narrated by Ray Porter. When I went to purchase book three, I discovered that it was not available with narration by Porter – nor were the rest of the books. That left me with either listening to abridged editions narrated by Elliot Gould or full-cast recording from the BBC starring Toby Stephens. As I really wanted to continue the experience of hearing Chandler’s actual words, I chose the Gould abridged editions. When it came time for book seven? Only the full-cast BBC version was available. I switched to print for the final two books, which partially explains the seven months gap as the last book (started by Chandler but completed after his death by Robert B. Parker) was harder to track down than I expected it to be.

Overall, I loved this series. So much of what Chandler did is consider trope now – but I believe he was the first to do it, or at least the first to do it well enough to influence others.

His characterization of Marlowe – world-weary, introspective, a bit of a horn-dog, chivalrous and chauvinistic in equal measure, aware of his own prejudices and not always able to stop himself from acting on them – set a standard for disgruntled, distrusting protagonists. And the characterization isn’t quite static. In some books, he’s far more introspective and fatalistic while in others he’s just cynical and snarky. (Okay, he’s snarky in every single book. It’s part of his charm.) The heaviest introspective moments, the moments that gave noir its enduring rep, seem to come in the second through fifth books. In the first book, Marlowe is thoughtful but not full-out depressing. In the later books, Marlowe seems to have mellowed a little. He’s still world-weary but he seems to have accepted it and ruminates less on it. Or at least, he spends fewer words ruminating on it.

Chandler’s formula was to have Marlowe take on a case that then connects to one or more other cases. I may be mistaken, but I don’t think he varied from that basic formula throughout the books (and it’s especially evident in the final book, Playback). Most of the time, he’s hired by someone rich who is condescending at best and occasionally downright hostile. And these rich folks usually get some kind of come-uppance even when they’re not the actual bad guy of the story. In terms of the mysteries, Chandler is usually good about providing the reader with enough hints of what’s going on that the reveal doesn’t come out of nowhere. Marlowe’s interactions with the police are always interesting and not always antagonistic (I’d say it’s about 50/50 over the series). It’s also sort of fun trying to figure who Marlowe is going to go to bed with and when (and occasionally even if – he doesn’t always let his hormones win over common sense).

One of the things that did surprise me was how few continuing supporting characters there are. I expected Marlowe’s former boss, introduced in the first book, to appear or at least be mentioned more than once. Likewise, some of the cops; I realize Los Angeles was a big city even in the 1940s and that some of the action rolls outside of LA proper (even down to San Diego and into Mexico), but we rarely see an officer of the law a second time. (Parker does bring one of them back in Poodle Springs, but I have to wonder if Chandler would have done so had he written more than four chapters before passing away). Nowadays, the idea of a detective character without a regular supporting cast, including a regular antagonist of some kind, is unthinkable. Then again, the idea of a series lead without a serious romantic interest is also unthinkable these days, and it’s only in the final three books that we see Marlowe make a serious commitment (even if we don’t realize he’s making the commitment until the end of Playback and the opening of Poodle Springs). I personally thought Anne Riordan from Farewell, My Lovely, had the makings of a perfect non-romantic Girl Friday and would have added a lot to later books.

So how did the various listening/reading formats affect my experience?

I really loved Ray Porter’s interpretation of the character, gruff-voiced but still relatable, and that set the tone for me. He plays with Chandler’s language the way someone who really enjoys lush descriptions does. He’s clearly invested in the role and having fun with it, and every word has appropriate weight. I really wish the entire run was available narrated by Porter (who has narrated a LOT of other stuff, and I’m never disappointed with his work when I get to listen to it).

Elliot Gould is well known for playing Marlowe in 1973’s film version of The Long Goodbye, and he’s a great reader who also really gets the character – but the abridged audiobooks feel rushed. There are no chapter breaks, the action running from one scene to another without the pause such breaks afford the reader. More than once I found myself confused because of contradictory back-to-back statements (it’s midnight, and then suddenly it’s noon, for instance) that a simple intonation of “Chapter Six,” or even a ten second pause, would have broken up. My theory, which I haven’t checked, is that the Gould-narrated books (including the first two, which I didn’t listen to) were recorded at a time when audiobooks were on cassette (and the more cassettes a publisher had to produce, the higher the price) or early CDs (when the discs couldn’t hold as much data as they do now). Then there’s the fact that they’re advertised as “abridged,” which means something deemed inconsequential by someone was removed to make the narration fit into the allotted cassette or CD space. I’m still wondering what I missed by not just reading the actual novels of these five books.

Reading, instead of listening to, Playback and Poodle Springs allowed me to merge the best parts of Porter and Gould’s performances in my head. Although thanks to the cover art on Playback my mental image of Marlowe was Robert Mitchum. (It’s not Mitchum on the cover – it just looks a lot like him.) It felt appropriate to be in the home stretch with Marlowe on my own, turning yellowed pages (one paperback, one hardcover, both from used bookstores) and savoring Chandler’s descriptions of places and people.

I can imagine rereading the entire series one day, especially because I’ll always have that nagging question of what the abridged audiobooks cut out. But for now, I’m glad I finished this challenge this year!

The Marlowe Books, in order, are:

·       The Big Sleep (1939)

·       Farewell, My Lovely (1940)

·       The High Window (1942)

·       The Lady in the Lake (1943)

·       The Little Sister (1949)

·       The Long Goodbye (1953)

·       Playback (1958)

·       Poodle Springs (unfinished by Chandler at his death in 1959; completed by Robert B. Parker in 1989)

Parker did write another sequel completely on his own, which I decided not to include in this particular challenge. And there have been several other Marlowe prequels and sequels in the past few years that sound like they might be worth seeking out.

Book Review: Bad Blood: A Life Without Consequence

TITLE: Bad Blood: A Life Without Consequence

AUTHOR: David B. Roundsley

328 pages, DBR Design, ISBN 9781735377902 (hardcover)

DESCRIPTION: (from Goodreads) "Bad Blood: A Life without Consequence" chronicles one adoptee's search and journey to discover his birth parents and his roots in the new world of DNA testing, data aggregation, and social media. What began with a simple inquiry to hopefully find his biological roots led one adoptee down a rabbit hole of intrigue, secrets, dark deeds, infidelity, and organized crime.

Tracing his birth parents' origins from Detroit, Michigan, and on to their subsequent movements to Southern California, northward to Montana, and then on to Washington, and later to Oregon, he uncovered secrets and exposed many of the lies they told along the way. The trail of abuse and damage led to a man who lived a life without consequence.

A search begun in the early 90's was abandoned but was revived when he caught a TV show on adoption by chance and submitted the information he had to a "Search Angel". This led to the discovery of his birth parents, several half-siblings, infidelities, organized crime, drug use, abuse, and attempted murder.

Both a how-to and a cautionary tale of navigating the world of complex social media hurdles, sifting through massive quantities of data, and dealing with an often unhelpful and obstructive legal system.

MY RATING: 5 stars out of 5.

MY THOUGHTS: This is an absolutely engrossing memoir about adoption, secrets, and the search to understand where we came from and who we are. I found it extremely hard to put down. That’s partially because of the way the book is structured. The reader only becomes privy to information as Roundsley’s original search uncovered it. There are a few hints at the start of the book of what will ultimately be revealed (most but not all of which is noted in the book’s back cover matter) but for the most part we the audience must endure the same staggers and stutters the author did. Long fallow periods are interspersed surges of new leads some of which go nowhere and some of which open new roads of inquiry. This heightens the immediacy of the book and kept me more interested than maybe a straight chronological history of the author’s birth parents would have.

It doesn’t take long for Roundsley (and the reader) to realize his adoption was an unusual one. Or perhaps not so unusual given the time period as it was something “nice” people just didn’t consider a reality: that behind-closed-doors baby-trafficking happened even among “polite” society. As author learns more about his late birth mother’s life and gets closer to meeting his birth father, the stakes start to feel exceedingly high indeed. There are some very, very dark moments in the birth parents’ past, and some of them are uneasy to read about.

But the story is not all crime, drug use, physical abuse, and attempted murder – Roundsley discovers several half-siblings and meets their families. Their parts in the story are equally, if not more, tragic – but the larger family and obvious love these half-siblings develop for each other are a happy ending to such a dark background. Roundsley sprinkles their stories in with his search, even letting one sister take over for a section to reveal her own almost Dickensian history. I do feel as though I intimately know all of the parties involved thanks to Roundsley’s very personal, intimate, and familiar writing style and the way he’s willing to cede the stage to his siblings when the narrative warrants.

Along the way, the author also reveals a bit about his adoptive family and touches on the struggles of being a creative and obviously gay boy in a family that clearly doesn’t accept it. While the adoptive parents and sibling don’t have nearly the tragic life Roundsley’s birth parents did, they still play several key roles in the way the story unfolds. I have to say I’d love to see a second memoir from Roundsley about his later childhood and eventual coming out; I suspect there’s a lot more to that part of his life than he was able to include in this book. He’s also had quite a career in the music industry: he writes and records music as Munich Syndrome, and there is a companion CD to the book. I know there are a lot of compelling stories he could weave together with his coming out to form a second memoir.

Bad Blood: A Life Without Consequence is available for Pre-Order in Kindle form on Amazon if you missed the Kickstarter for the project.

Reading Round-Up: November 2020

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues as “books.” I read or listened to 15 books in November: 14 in print, 1 in e-book format, and 0 in audio format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #126 (November 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories. This month’s favorites for me were Jake Kerr’s “Three Speeches About Billy Grainger,” Molly Tanzer’s “Le Cynge Baiseur,” Alberto Yàñez’s “Burn the Ships,” and Kat Howard’s “The Lachrymist.”

2.       Lumberjanes: Bonus Tracks edited by Dafna Pleban and Whitney Leopard. A neat collection of various single-issue Lumberjanes tales published outside of the series main run. The Janes encounter ghost horses, addictive fungi, a Renaissance Faire, a sphinx, and Ripley’s favorite telenovela.

3.       The Dreaming (2018) Volume 2: Empty Shells by Simon Spurrier, Bilquis Everly, others. Dream is locked out of his realm as a hostile takeover begins, and Lucien loses his mind.

4.       The Big Hoax by Carlos Trillo, Roberto Madrafina. A very graphic “island noir” tale of an abused woman who seeks help from a downtrodden detective. Politics and misogyny abound. The art is distinctive and fits the tone.

5.       The Dreaming (2018) Vol 3: One Magic Movement edited by Simon Spurrier, Bilquis Everly. Dora and Matthew quest to save The Dreaming from Wan, and we learn Rose Walker’s role in all of this.

6.       A Rough Knight for the Queen by Philip Jose Farmer. Farmer’s concise biography of Sir Richard Francis Burton. A fast, easy read in which Farmer’s fascination with Burton shines through but in which the author also acknowledges the man’s shortcomings.

7.       When the Tiger Came Down the Mountain (Singing Hills Cycle #2) by Nghi Vo. Vo’s second adventure of Cleric Chih of the Singing Hills Abbey is another rumination on how fact becomes legend and how people from disparate cultures can interpret the same events in wildly different ways to fit their cultural identities. Oh, and there are also adorable giant mammoths and wily shape-shifting tiger women. Full review to come on Strange Horizons.

8.       The Last Temptation by Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli. I first read this graphic novel featuring Alice Cooper as a demonic theatrical barker trying to steal a boy’s soul when it came out in three monthly issues from Marvel Comics back in the early 90s. Revisited it this month in the hardcover collection from Dark Horse, and it holds up. The Zulli art is beautiful, the story solid enough as a Halloween tale of temptation, puberty, and wishes.

9.       Miles Morales Spider-Man Vol 3: Family Business by Saladin Ahmed, Javier Garron, others. Miles Morales continues to try to juggle super-heroics, school, and the arrival of a baby sibling.

10.   Up from the Bottomless Pit by Philip Jose Farmer. Farmer’s novel of ecological disaster following the sabotage of a cutting-edge oil rig off the coast of Los Angeles was written in the 70s, published in a limited rare edition about a decade ago, and is finally available in an affordable paperback edition. The book was way ahead of its time, predicting not only the Deepwater Horizon oil spill but also the rise of religious fanatic “militias” and the government’s willingness to find any scapegoat. I also love that the hero is fallible – errors in judgement in the spur of the moment continue to come back to haunt him. Full review coming soon, I hope.

11.   Magnificent Ms. Marvel Vol 1: Destined by Saladin Ahmed, Minkyu Jung, others. Kamala Khan and her family are nabbed by an alien culture that thinks she is destined to be their savior. She does save the day, but at a cost.

12.   Magnificent Ms. Marvel Vol 2: Stormranger by Saladin Ahmed, Minkyu Jung, Joey Vasquez, others. Returning to Earth with her parents’ memory of her superhero identity wiped, Kamala must deal with her father’s illness and her new battle-suit’s attempt to take over.

13.   Killer, Come Back to Me by Ray Bradbury. Celebrating Bradbury’s 100th birthday, editor Jonathan R. Eller brings together crime stories from across Bradbury’s career. Most are straight up noir, suspense, or psychological studies, but there are a few science-fictional crime tales in here as well. Full review coming soon, I hope.

14.   Playback (Philip Marlowe #7) by Raymond Chandler. The last full Marlowe novel Chandler wrote finds the detective placed on the trail of a beautiful woman who clearly has secrets that endanger her and the people she interacts with. There are, as usual with Marlowe, intertwining cat-and-mouse games that keep the detective guessing and the reader involved until all is revealed. This felt a bit less introspective than earlier Marlowe fare.

15.   Poodle Springs (Philip Marlowe #8) by Raymond Chandler and Robert B. Parker. When Chandler died, he had written only four chapters of the next Marlowe novel, in which our hero is married and moved to a desert city outside of LA. Of course, the case he gets hired for turns out to have a number of twists (double identities, polygamy, and some very jealous women included). Parker does a fine job of developing the story and matching the tone of Chandler.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 366 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) this year (366 because it’s a Leap Year). Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it.

1.       “Schrödinger’s Catastrophe” by Gene Doucette, from Lightspeed Magazine #126 (November 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams

2.       “Seven Ways to Fall in Love with An Astronaut” by Domenica Phettleplace

3.       “Three Speeches About Billy Grainger” by Jake Kerr

4.       “Le Cynge Baiseur” by Molly Tanzer

5.       “Burn the Ships” by Alberto Yàñez

6.       “The Lachrymist” by Kat Howard

7.       “Magnificent Maurice, or The Flowers of Immortality” by Rati Mehrotra

8.       “And This Is How to Stay Alive” by Shingai Njeri Kagunda, from Fantasy Magazine #61 (November 2020), edited by Christie Yant and Arley Sorg

9.       “An Introduction” by Reina Hardy

10.   “To Look Forward” by Osahon Ize-Iyamu

11.   “Love Laws and a Locked Heart” by Tamoha Sengupta

12.    “What You Pay For” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

13.   “Night Doctors” by P. Djèlí Clark, from Nightmare Magazine #98, edited by Wendy N. Wagner

14.   “Dreams of Salt” by Cynthia Ward, from Skelos #4, edited by Mark Finn, Chris Gruber and Jeffrey Shanks

15.   “Born in Strange Shadows” by Charles R. Rutledge

16.   “Under the Blood” by Darrell Z. Grizzle

17.   “The Legacy of Alexandria” by Maurice Broaddus, from Apex Magazine Promo 2020, edited by Jason Sizemore

18.   “Small Hopes and Dreams” by Beth Dawkins

19.   “A Touch of Petulance” by Ray Bradbury, from Killer, Come Back to Me: The Crime Stories of Ray Bradbury, edited by Jonathan R. Eller

20.   “The Screaming Woman” by Ray Bradbury

21.   “The Trunk Lady” by Ray Bradbury

22.   “” I’m Not So Dumb!”” by Ray Bradbury

23.   “Killer, Come Back to Me” by Ray Bradbury

24.   “Dead Men Rise Up Never” by Ray Bradbury

25.   “Where Everything Ends” by Ray Bradbury

26.   “Corpse Carnival” by Ray Bradbury

27.   “And So Died Riabouchinska” by Ray Bradbury

28.   “Yesterday I Lived!” by Ray Bradbury

29.   “The Town Where No One Got Off” by Ray Bradbury

30.   “The Whole Town’s Sleeping” by Ray Bradbury

31.   “At Midnight, In the Month of June” by Ray Bradbury

32.   “The Smiling People” by Ray Bradbury

33.   “The Fruit at the Bottom of the Bowl” by Ray Bradbury

34.   “The Small Assassin” by Ray Bradbury

35.   “Marionettes, Inc.” by Ray Bradbury

36.   “Punishment Without Crime” by Ray Bradbury

37.   “Some Live Like Lazarus” by Ray Bradbury

38.   “The Utterly Perfect Murder” by Ray Bradbury

So that’s 38 short stories in November. Once again, a bit more than “1 per day.” I’m ahead of where I should be for the year. (November 30th was the 335th day of 2020.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 0 read; YTD: 4 of 14 read.

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  38 read; YTD: 357 of 366 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 8 read; YTD: 28 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 15 read; YTD: 130 of 125 read. (CHALLENGE ACCOMPLISHED!)

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 1 read; YTD: 10 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 2 read/watched. (Note: I forgot to update this in October to reflect that I read/watched The Bad Seed and Evening Primrose.)

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 2 books read; YTD: 8 of 16 read.

                                                          Series fully completed: 1 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: November’s mini challenge was “Noirvember,” which means for me a mix of crime, mystery, and thriller tales. Four of the books read this month fit the bill: The Big Hoax; Killer, Come Back to Me; Playback; and Poodle Springs.

December’s mini challenge is Christmas/Winter Holiday tales, naturally, with a secondary goal of completing one or two of the year’s Challenges (motivated by finishing one of the Complete the Series Challenges, the Philip Marlowe books).

Sunday Shorts: Two Updated Slave Folktales

Sunday Shorts is a series where I blog about short fiction – from flash to novellas. For the time being, I’m sticking to prose, although it’s been suggested I could expand this feature to include single episodes of anthology television series like The Twilight Zone or individual stories/issues of anthology comics (like the 1970s DC horror or war anthology titles). Anything is possible. But for now, the focus is on short stories.

Every now and then the timing is right and I end up reading two stories with similar themes or structures or what-have-you in two different publications and realize I need to blog about them together. That happened last week with two reprinted stories: “Ah Been Buked” by Maurice Broaddus, which originally appeared in the author’s short story collection Voices of Martyrs and will be reprinted in the December 2020 issue of Lightspeed Magazine (#127), and “The Night Doctors,” which originally appeared in Eyedolon and is reprinted in the November 2020 issue of Nightmare Magazine (#98). Both stories trade on the history of collecting slave narratives and folktales and add fantasy/supernatural elements.

Admittedly, the fantasy/supernatural element of Maurice Broaddus’ “Ah Been Buked” is almost non-existent, practically an afterthought. The spirit stone is more a framing device, a reason for former slave Viney Scott to tell her story while standing over the grave of the man she loved (and have it recorded by someone named John Henry Freeman, presumably sent by the Federal Writers Project to collect slave narratives, but who we never see or hear from in the story itself). “Ah Been Buked” is, fantasy aside, the story of how one woman lost almost everything – parents, friends, lover – to a cruel plantation master, but has survived to tell her tale. Viney’s voice is colloquial and engaging. Every time I read this story (and this makes probably the fourth or fifth time I’ve done so), I cannot turn away until Viney’s story is done. Each time, I notice something different in the way people are described or events are reconstructed, the way she draws out some moments and leaves others to be implied. The anguish of living under slavery is prevalent, but so is the love with which she describes her father, her favorite aunt, and her lover. The twist at the end is more horror than fantasy, giving a satisfactorily dark conclusion to Viney’s story (but not to her life, which has clearly carried on but of which we get only hints). I probably say this a lot, but this is one of those stories I would love to see performed as a monologue. Preferably by Cecily Tyson or Phylicia Rashad.

The narrator of P. Djèlí Clark’s “Night Doctors” has also been tasked by the Federal Writers Project to collect slave narratives, and we find him in Durham NC in 1937 (two years later and several states southeast of the setting of “Ah Been Buked”). But for this Mister Bisset, collecting those narratives is a convenient cover story. What he’s really searching for is proof the folkloric Night Doctors really exist. Night Doctors are night-time beings who steal slaves away for nefarious research purposes. Some believed they were plantation owners just out to scare slaves into not running away, while others believed they were actual white doctors stealing (or being given) slaves or the dead bodies of slaves to perform medical research. Bisset believes there’s more to them than that, if he can only find a way to meet them. Which of course he does in this story, thanks largely to conversations with a former slave. The supernatural and horror elements of this story are far from subtle. Clark’s description of the Night Doctors is eerie and disturbing and lingers well after the story is done – I can still sort of see them out of the corner of my eye while thinking about other things. But there’s also the very human horror of Bisset’s actions when he’s not interviewing former slaves – bloody revenge writ large and in detail (in one scene, at least), trading on the folklore Bisset is in Durham to investigate. I suspect this is another of those stories that will reveal more of itself to me upon multiple rereads. It should also be noted that while “Night Doctors” stands complete in itself, it also serves as something of a prequel to Clark’s recent novella Ring Shout, which I reviewed recently. The two stories come at slave folklore and the power of Story from very different directions but complement each other.

Series Saturday: The Führer and the Tramp

This is a blog series about … well, series. I love stories that continue across volumes, in whatever form: linked short stories, novels, novellas, television, movies, comics.

cover art by Dexter Wee

The Führer and the Tramp, published by Comics Experience and Source Point Press, 2020

Writers: Sean McArdle and Jon Judy

Pencils and Inks: Dexter Wee

Letters and Colors: Sean McArdle

Editor: Andy Schmidt

Synopsis: Charlie Chaplin – comic, filmmaker, and raconteur – didn’t become the world’s biggest star by courting controversy, but when he comes face-to-face with the horrors of Hitler, he feels compelled to get off the sidelines and get involved. And then Charlie is approached by FDR himself with a special assignment. His mission, if he chooses to accept it: create a propaganda film to drum up public support for joining the war in Europe.

And so Charlie goes from movie maker to provocateur, traveling the world and dodging danger to complete his film. With the help of undercover agent Hedy Lamarr, her handler Errol Flynn, and British patriot Alfred Hitchcock, Chaplin faces down American fascists, Nazi spies, and his own massive self-doubt to complete his masterpiece.

But just because the film is done doesn’t mean the mission is, and little tramp and great dictator go toe-to-toe, Charlie and Adolph, one-on-one, mano a mano in a rip-roaring climax that fully delivers on the promise of the premise.

My Thoughts: I ordered this series through my local comic shop partially because the concept sounded fun, but mostly on the strength of Dexter Wee’s art. I got to know Dexter’s work on the webcomic Cura Te Ipsum, in which Dexter and writer Neal Bailey “Tuckerized” me in a few scenes. I’ve always found Dex’s work to be fluid, expressive, and full of action. So I was not surprised at how well he captured Chaplin’s antic physicality, Lamarr’s intelligent sexiness, Hitchcock’s imperious posture, and Flynn’s swashbuckling stature. He also manages to lampoon Hitler and the Nazi rank-and-file without being cartoony, not always an easy line to walk when one is trying to tell a funny story that doesn’t deflate the seriousness of the threat the Third Reich posed. Wee moves effortlessly from panoramic establishing shots to multi-panel action sequences to intimate close-ups. The things he closes in on aren’t always faces – another way he drives home each character’s personality (for instance, the focus on Chaplin’s legs on the first page of the first issue, as Charlie is confronted by a Nazi soldier who mistakes him for a German Jew lacking a star and papers conveys Chaplin’s aggravation at not being recognized, anger at the way Jews are being treated, and nervousness at possibly being arrested – all accomplished without a single facial expression in evidence). And his visual representations of very real people, from Chaplin to FDR to some surprise cameos in book five that are too fun to spoil here, are spot on. I’m pretty sure most folks would recognize each historical person even without dialogue or captions.

Wee’s art brought me to the book, but Sean McArdle and Jon Judy’s story and dialogue kept me invested through all five issues. They balance the comedy, drama, and action elements perfectly throughout, never allowing the comedic or fanciful sequences to subvert the very real seriousness of the Nazi threat. Of course, the series is intended to be, first and foremost, comedy. That comedy swings between physical slapstick (Chaplin naked and spilling iodine in FDR’s lap) and Noel Coward-esque banter (especially between Flynn and Lamarr), with some more subtle humor sprinkled throughout. The dialogue, whether comedic or serious, captures the vocal ticks and mannerisms unique to each character, matching how well Wee’s art captures their physical likenesses without sliding into cliché or pastiche. All three creators really did their homework, is what I’m saying. The pace is also near perfect: I can’t imagine this story feeling as complete if it had run fewer than five issues, but I can certainly imagine how bloated it would have felt at six or more.

Being a story that purports to tell “the truth behind the true events,” there’s a lot of stuff the creators admit isn’t historically accurate (it’s unknown whether Chaplin actually ever met FDR, for instance) and bits that trade off of urban legend (this is not the first time its been suggested that Lamarr and/or Flynn were employed by the US government as spies/operatives). The fun is in imagining that this all could have happened and been highly classified all this time. McArdle, Judy and Wee roll with that sense of fun throughout … and even hint that maybe this wasn’t the only time Charlie Chaplin got suckered into a high-stakes adventure alongside Lamarr and Flynn. I can only hope there’s another miniseries in the near future from this creative team.

I believe the individual print issues of The Führer and the Tramp are sold out from the publisher, so your local comic shop may have a hard time getting them for you. But there’s always the secondary market and the ebooks, until the trade paperback collection comes out in 2021.

Page to Screen: The Bad Seed

Page to Screen is a series of blog posts where I read a book or story and then watch a movie based on said book or story. It will be intermittent, I’m sure, like most of my “regular” features.

Because I am obsessed with “trade dress” book series, I bought all of the titles in Vintage Books’ Vintage Movie Classics series several years ago, with the intent to read each one and then watch the movie based on the book. I read/watched and reviewed The Bitter Tea of General Yen by Grace Zaring-Stone (movie directed by Frank Capra) and then sort of got distracted by other things. So here, finally, is the second entry in that series (and the third entry in my Page-to-Screen series overall, following Evening Primrose). WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS (can’t discuss the differences between the book and the movie without spoiling).

BOOK REVIEW

TITLE: The Bad Seed

AUTHOR: William March

205 of pages, Vintage Books, ISBN 9781101872659 (paperback)

DESCRIPTION: (from back cover): There’s something special about eight-year-old Rhoda Penmark. With her carefully plaited hair and her sweet cotton dresses, she’s the very picture of old-fashioned innocence. But when the neighborhood suffers a series of terrible accidents, her mother begins to wonder: Why do bad things seem to happen when little Rhoda is around? Originally published in 1954, William March’s final novel was an instant bestseller and National Book Award finalist before it was adapted for the stage and made into the 1956 film.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: William March’s final novel isn’t perfect by any means, and in fact may be a bit problematic as it trades so heavily on stereotypes of women and black characters. But it gave us one of the most chilling, creepiest child villains ever written. Rhoda Penmark is, in my opinion, the gold standard by which all other child villains in horror fiction should be judged. She is truly sociopathic, and none of her evil can be blamed on a supernatural aspect. Blamed on genetics, sure, as March explicates late in the book. But this is pure human evil distilled into an innocent-looking (and usually innocent-acting) eight-year-old.

Of course, if this were just 200+ pages of evil actions by a kid, the book would probably get boring pretty quickly. What makes the book work for me is that we as the reader are never really in Rhoda’s head. We hear her “rationale” (if it can even be called that) for killing her classmate Claude Daigle, and we see the series of interactions with Leroy Jessup that lead to the penultimate scene in the book. Most of what we see is filtered through the eyes of Rhoda’s mother Christine. With her husband away in South America on business and her parents deceased (and her husband’s family emotionally distant), Christine is functioning as a single mother albeit surrounded by older folks who adore Rhoda and want to help. Christine’s character arc – from a mother concerned about her too-perfect daughter’s socialization skills to a mother in denial that her daughter is a murderer to a woman torn between her forgotten past and an uncertain future – is a compelling read. March may handle most of the women in this book as stereotypes, but he gives Christine much more depth. And it is Christine’s research into serial killers (prompted by a dinner party conversation with a friend of a friend) to understand her daughter that leads to the reveal of her repressed memories about her own past. The hints leading up to the reveal are well-placed in dreams and half-asides, but the actual reveal is a bit awkwardly staged, just about the only time in the book where a flashback through Christine’s point-of-view fails to be effective.

As mentioned, the other female characters are barely more than stereotypes: Monica Breedlove is a blowhard who must be the center of attention in all things (starting with her officious gifting to Rhoda of a pendant). Hortense Daigle never really rises above the stereotype of braying alcoholic – I wanted to feel more for the woman whose only son is killed by Rhoda simply for the “crime” of winning an award Rhoda thought she deserved more. Rhoda and Claude’s school is run by a trio of spinsters called the Sisters Fern – and while each is given her own first name and role at the school, I’m hard-pressed now to remember what those names are or what their official jobs were at the school that bears their name. And the male characters fare mostly worse: Christine’s husband is off-screen until the very final pages of the book, Christine’s famous reporter father is only mentioned in flashback, Monica’s brother Emory is a drunken flirt, and Emory’s friend Reginald Trasker is a mere plot device, existing only to provide Christine with the research he’s developed on his favorite subject (in general, serial killers, and in specific, one Bessie Denker). Even Leroy Jessup, Rhoda’s primary foil for much of the book, never really rises to the level of fully realized character. Leroy is the apartment complex handyman and the only other adult who sees through Rhoda’s prim-and-polite exterior, but he’s mostly stereotype: he’s the lazy black working class guy who is horny for women (especially Christine), hates anyone who thinks they are better than him (Monica and Emory) and has a big chip on his shoulder. The scenes between Rhoda and Leroy are tense and build the drama of the book overall (when is little Rhoda going to turn on him?) but Leroy’s inner monologues and home-life scenes read like March is just ticking boxes in writing a “standard Negro character.”

Despite the stereotype-ridden supporting cast, the book is a great read for the characters of Rhoda and Christine, and for an ending that must have shocked readers when the book first came out: the heroine of the story (Christine) attempts a murder-suicide – but only the suicide part is successful. The troubled but basically good mother dies while the evil child survives idea is now a trope of horror movies, but it had to be a surprise at the time. For my money, it’s a perfect ending to the book.

MOVIE REVIEW

TITLE: The Bad Seed

DIRECTOR: Mervyn Leroy

CAST: Nancy Kelly (Christine), Patty McCormack (Rhoda), Evelyn Varden (Monica), Eileen Heckart (Hortense), Henry Jones (Leroy), Paul Fix (Richard Bravo)

2 hours and 9 minutes, black and white, 1956, Warner Brothers

DESCRIPTION: (from IMDb): Christine Penmark seems to have it all: a lovely home, a loving husband, and the most "perfect" daughter in the world. But since childhood, Christine has suffered from the most terrible recurring nightmare. And her "perfect" daughter's accomplishments include lying, theft and possibly much, much worse. Only Christine knows the truth about her daughter and only Christine's father knows the truth about her nightmare.

MY RATING: 4 out of 5 stars

MY THOUGHTS: The journey from novel to movie took a side-step into the world of live theatre, and it’s really the stage play that Mervyn Leroy adapts for this classic film. With a couple of exceptions, he sticks to the Broadway staging, which in places can feel a bit stilted and staged as it forces almost all of the action to take place in Christine and Rhoda Penmark’s living room. There are a few cut-away scenes (to the streets outside the apartment building, the lake where Claude Daigle dies (although we don’t see the death), the apartment’s backyard, and to the hospital) which are very effective when used, but they are few and far between.

The staging being somewhat static, it’s the performances that carry the film. Most of the actors carried over from the Broadway production. Patty McCormack had had plenty of time to hone her performance as Rhoda and it’s pretty much perfect. Her ability to go from innocently polite to cloyingly sweet to angrily psychotic within seconds is impressive. Nancy Kelly is wonderful as Christine, but the character lacks the excellent progression of the novel: Christine looks harried and afraid of her daughter from the very first scene rather than having that fear develop as the story goes on. Still, Kelly is a strong presence on screen and she makes you believe every moment of her performance. Interestingly, Eileen Heckart’s portrayal of Hortense Daigle rises above the base stereotype of the novel. You can hear Hortense’s heartbreak and despondency in every slurred line of dialogue, see it in every misstep and in her slouched posture. Heckart’s performance is one of the standouts of the supporting cast, alongside Henry Jones as Leroy Jessup. The Broadway show (and thus, the movie) changed Leroy from a black man to a white guy. I’m not sure why, but Jones’ performance is pitch perfect. He’s lascivious when leering after Christine, angry when dealing with Monica, and insincerely apologetic to both. But the scenes between Jones and McCormack, especially the one in the backyard arbor, match the tension of the novel. You’re just waiting for Rhoda to crack and when she does Jones plays Leroy’s fear as the very potent thing it is. This is a man who realizes, even more than he does in the novel, that he just brought the full attention of a predator to bear on him, and he has only himself to blame for it.

The change of Leroy from a black character to a white one (leaving the movie with absolutely no people of color, even in background scenes) and setting most of the action in the Penmark living room are not the only difference from book to movie. Some of the other changes are basically inconsequential to the story (instead of being a businessman, Mister Penmark now works for the military and has been called to Washington DC; instead of three Fern Sisters, there is only one), but two are pretty substantial. The first is that Christine’s father, reporter Richard Bravo, is alive and comes for a visit. This was a change made for the stage play, and allows the reveal of Christine’s past to happen via dialogue instead of monologue – which makes it much more effective and gives Nancy Kelly some of her finest moments in the movie, opposite the understated Paul Fix as her father. The love these two share is palpable in every moment of their screen time together, and Fix really drives home how much it hearts Richard to reveal a past to Christine that he hoped she’d never have to be burdened with. I really wish March had given us this in the novel as well.

The other major change is to the ending of the story. The play retained the partially “successful” murder-suicide shock ending, but that wouldn’t fly in Code-era Hollywood. So Christine and Rhoda both survive the murder-suicide – but Rhoda is killed in a cheesily-staged final scene where she makes a midnight, thunderstorm-covered trip back to the lake where she killed Mark and is struck by lightning while standing on the pier. In one respect, it’s nice to see Rhoda get the comeuppance she deserves, but it robs the ending of all the power it has in the book (despite the director’s attempt to draw out the suspense of who lived and died via the scenes in the hospital). It’s the only part of the movie I really didn’t like.

One other weird bit of business. The closing credits are staged as they would be on Broadway, with each actor taking a bow. Nancy Kelly is the last one, and after her bow she looks off-camera and says “and as for you…” and then walks over to the living room sofa, pulls McCormack over her lap and proceeds to jokingly “spank” her, with McCormack laughing the whole while. Almost like the studio felt they needed to give the audience one more reminder that these were just actors in a movie and that McCormack wasn’t really an evil psychotic murderer.

The Bad Seed has been adapted to film twice more, for television. The 1985 version on ABC, which I have vague memories of seeing the commercials for but not of actually watching, started Blair Brown as Christine, Lynn Redgrave as Monica, David Carradine as Leroy, and David Ogden Stiers as Emory, with Carrie Wells as Rachel (Rhoda) and Chad Allen as Mark (Claude) Daigle. I plan to watch it soon and probably write a review. In 2018, Lifetime aired a version with Rob Lowe as the distraught parent and pretty much all of the names changed. This version is apparently not on DVD (I haven’t searched for it on streaming because honestly it sounds pretty bad).

Page To Screen: Evening Primrose

Page to Screen is a series of blog posts where I read a book or story and then watch a movie based on said book or story. It will be intermittent, I’m sure, like most of my “regular” features. The first, unofficial Page to Screen entry was my review of The Bitter Tea of General Yen and the classic movie adapted from it.

Okay, so this one is technically a little backwards from the intent, because I first saw the television musical version of Evening Primrose at the Museum of Television Arts in New York City back in the late 90s. I had not seen it since then. When I discovered that the episode was on DVD and that the short story it was based on was available in print, I decided it was time to read the original story and rewatch the movie. WARNING: HERE THERE BE SPOILERS, FOR BOTH THE STORY AND THE TELEVISION EPISODE. I can’t talk about the differences between the two without spoiling stuff.

STORY REVIEW

“Evening Primrose” by John Collier is a brief twelve pages, an “accidentally found manuscript” type of story. The story purports to have been found scribbled in a pad of Highlife Bond paper bought by a customer at Bracey’s Giant Emporium. What the purchaser of the notepad (a Miss Sadie Brodribb) thinks of the tale she’s accidentally purchased, we never learn. As is the nature of people, she probably thought it was some kind of practical joke by the store employees (akin to finding a “help, I’m being held prisoner in a fortune cookie factory” note in your fortune cookie). The story itself is the first person account of Mr. Charles Snell, a poet who decides the real world is no longer for him and that he’ll live in Bracey’s. He’ll hide during the day, and eat/drink/write poetry at night, deftly avoiding the store’s night watchman. He quickly discovers he’s not alone in living in the store, that this is a thing people do in stores large and small all across the city – people who for one reason or another have eschewed normal society. The community in Bracey’s has a hierarchy, at the top of which sits the regal Mrs. Vanderpant, and at the bottom of which sits a teen serving girl named Ella. Charles is warned that people who betray the community are sentenced to removal by the Dark Men, who turn the offendees into mannequins. Charles falls in love with the servant girl, who is in love with the night watchman (who remains oblivious to the community living around him). Charles decides to respect Ella’s love for another man and to help them meet and escape. Only in his emotional despair over Ella not loving him, he spills the beans to a community member he trusts. The story ends with Ella trussed up for the Dark Men and Charles determined to find the night watchman and rescue her. Charles’ final lines indicate his plan to leave his notes where a customer might find them, in case his plan to rescue Ella results in himself and the watchman also being killed. 

It’s a tightly-told story, and Collier builds the mystery of the community and threat of the Dark Men smoothly throughout the story – but the ending feels just a bit too abrupt. Charles declares his love, gets rebuffed, accidentally betrays Ella, and sets his plan to rescue her all within the final two pages of the story. I wish Collier had built the suspense of what would happen to Ella and Charles just a little bit more before the end. Regardless, I enjoyed the concept, the mood, the reveal of Charles’ character, the development of the Bracey’s community (and their relationship to communities in other stores) and eerie threat of the Dark Men.

“MOVIE” REVIEW

The television episode “Evening Primrose” first aired on November 16, 1966 as a part of the ABC Stage 67 anthology series. I would have been a whole three months old. I have no clue whether my parents watched it. Given their love of television and my father’s love of musicals, I’m going to guess they did. It starred the perfectly cast Anthony Perkins as misanthropic poet Charles Snell and Charmaine Carr as innocent, uneducated Ella Harkness, with Dorothy Stickney as more dotty-than-regal Mrs. Monday (a renamed Mrs. Vanderpant).

It’s a musical, with music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim and book by James Goldman and directed by Paul Bogart. The creators and cast do a wonderful job translating the mood of the story to the screen – all the “free but still sort of trapped” sensibility, the rigidness of the Paul Stern (renamed from Bracey’s) store community, the threat of the Dark Men is there in the staging, dialogue, lyrics and instrumental music – and hey fix the pacing issue I had with the story, giving the romantic relationship more time to develop and giving space to the real threat of the Dark Men at the end. The songs start out character-centric and then become plot-propelling. Charles’ song “If You Can Find Me I’m Here” is one of the best misanthropic “you don’t like my art, screw you” songs ever written, while Ella’s “I Remember Sky” is a wistfully beautiful piece. The duet “When” moves their relationship along and incorporates their fears of being found out, while the duet “Take Me to the World” is the point at which the plot turns towards the big denouement.  

There are a couple of significant changes to the story, as often happens in page-to-screen adaptations. Ella is now an adult (to remove the ickiness of a poet in his late twenties falling in love with a sixteen-year-old, I assume) and her mistreatment at the hands of the older community members is made more explicit (including that they have never taught her to read, write, or do math, and force her to live in the store basement). Instead of unrequited love, Ella falls as much in love with Charles as he does with her. And in what I think is a very sensible change that heightens the drama of the last act, the couple is found out not through Charles intentionally revealing his feelings to his ‘trusted friend’ Roscoe, but because Charles accidentally turns on the store’s speaker system while they are singing “Take Me To The World” and unknowingly lets the entire store community know what they are planning (the night watchman hears too, thus revealing that there are people living in the store even if he can’t manage to find them, which puts him in danger without having to work in the awkward love triangle).

The final act is a wonderful game of cat-and-mouse through the store as Mrs. Monday and Roscoe try to delay Charles and Ella long enough for the Dark Men to catch them. The fate of the characters implied by the structure of Collier’s story is made explicit in the final scenes of the episode. I always thought it was a delightfully dark ending, and I’m glad Goldman and Sondheim didn’t decide to change it for television.

Interesting trivia: while the television episode originally aired in color, the only print remaining is in black and white. And I actually think that adds to the mood and thus effectiveness of the production. I’m kind of glad the color print isn’t available (the DVD has some test footage of Anthony Perkins in Stern Brothers and it just feels too bright for the story being told).

FINAL COMPARISON

While I liked Collier’s story well enough and I want to read more of his short stories, I think I prefer the musical in this instance.

The Collier story can be found in his collection Fancies and Goodnights. The Sondheim-Goldman musical is available on DVD and Prime Video.

Reading Round-Up: October 2020

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues as “books.” I read or listened to 9 books in October: 7 in print, 1 in e-book format, and 1 in audio format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #125 (October, 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories. This month’s favorites for me were Todd McAulty’s “The Ambient Intelligence,” Ken Liu’s “Byzantine Empathy,” PH Lee’s “The Vampire of Kovácspéter,” and Minsoo Kang’s “The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations.”

2.       Battle Ground (The Dresden Files #17) by Jim Butcher. The second Dresden Files release this year continues the story from Peace Talks, and is pedal-to-the-metal action from start to finish as Harry and company fight to save Chicago from utter devastation at the hands of the Fomor and a mad Titan. Very few quiet moments, but this is a game-changer for Harry as much as Changes was.

3.       Ring Shout by P. Djèlí Clark. A masterful alternate history in which the filming of Birth of a Nation allowed entry to Earth by Lovecraftian horrors who disguise themselves as Ku Klux Klanners. The main characters are strong black women in 1920s Macon Georgia who fight to Kluxxers and their masters. FULL REVIEW HERE.

4.       Dagon Rising by William Meikle. The first entry in Crystal Lake’s Vs. series reprints Lovecraft’s short story “Dagon” and then gives us Meikle’s short story response “Dagon Rising.” FULL REVIEW HERE.

5.       Surviving Tomorrow: A Charity Anthology to Fight Covid-19 edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt. I had the pleasure of proofreading/copyediting this several months ago. The stories mostly focus on surviving changes in technology and how humanity adapts to adversity. Many of the stories are post-apocalyptic, but not all.

6.       Dying with Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins by Seanan McGuire. This book collects all six of McGuire’s previously published short stories about the Fighting Pumpkins cheerleading squad, who are tasked with protecting their town from supernatural menaces, and adds four brand new stories to the mix that flesh out the squad’s history. FULL REVIEW HERE.

7.       The Bad Seed by William March. This classic about an eight-year-old girl who murders a classmate to get what she wants and the mother who can’t decide what to do about it was adapted into a stage play and a movie. Full review forthcoming.

8.       The Sandman (Sandman Audible Original #1) by Neil Gaiman and others. I am a long-time fan of Neil Gaiman and collaborators’ Sandman comics series (like many folks, I read them as they came out and also bought the trade paperback collections). I was skeptical about an audiobook production – the few other graphic novel audioplays I’ve listened to haven’t quite worked for me – but I was happily surprised. I think what makes it really work is the use of Neil Gaiman (and one assumes, his original script notes) as Narrator, describing what we’d otherwise be seeing as the graphic part of a graphic novel. The cast is fantastic from top to bottom, especially James McAvoy as Morpheus and Kat Dennings as Death.

9.       A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny. My annual re-read of this classic. Certain people are drawn to a certain location in years where the full moon falls on Halloween, to fight over opening or closing a gate for the Elder Gods to come to Earth. It’s funny, it’s poignant, and there’s one chapter for every day in the month so it’s a month-long reread during which I always notice something I’d never noticed before (or had forgotten).

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 366 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) this year (366 because it’s a Leap Year). Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it.

1.       “The Ambient Intelligence” by Todd McAulty, from Lightspeed Magazine #125 (October 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Everything and Nothing” by Jenny Rae Rappaport

3.       “Byzantine Empathy” by Ken Liu

4.       “Forty Acres and a Mule” by Stephanie Malia Morris

5.       “The Vampire of Kovácspéter” by PH Lee

6.       “The Virtue of Unfaithful Translations” by Minsoo Kang

7.       “Everquest” by Naomi Kanaka

8.        “Poor Fancy’s Followers” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

9.       “Dagon” by H.P. Lovecraft, reprinted in Dagon Rising, edited by Monique Snyman.

10.   “Dagon Rising” by William Meikle.

11.   “Evening Primrose” by John Collier, from Fancies and Goodnights.

12.   “Last Bus to North Red Lake” by Martin L. Shoemaker, from Surviving Tomorrow, edited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

13.   “Windstream” by Andrew Mayne & Roshni “Rush” Bhatia

14.   “When Sysadmins Ruled The Earth” by Cory Doctorow

15.   “Call It Only” by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

16.   “Face Your Furs” by Seanan McGuire

17.   “Dale & Mabel” by Scott Sigler

18.   “Flinch” by K.D. McIntire

19.   “Carousel” by Orson Scott Card

20.   “The Monsters Underneath His Bed” by Ken Scholes

21.   “Lord of Time” by Livia Blackburne

22.   “Evacuation” by Alan Dean Foster

23.   “Pure Silver” by A.C. Crispin & Kathleen O’Malley

24.   “Writing on the Wall” by Jody Lynn Nye

25.   “Back to Black” by Jonathan Maberry and Bryan Thomas Schmidt

26.   “We Can Get Them For You Wholesale” by Neil Gaiman

27.   “Hopium Den” by John Skipp

28.   “The Ultimate Wager” by Raymund Eich

29.   “Bitter Honey” by Julie Frost

30.   “Voracious Black” by Mercedes M. Yardley

31.   “A Love Monstrously Grateful” by C. Stuart Hardwick

32.   “The Sweetness of Bitter” by Beth Cato

33.   “Six Lil’ Reapers (A Grim Days Mystery)” by J. Kent Holloway

34.   “Impact Mitigation” by Jay Werkheiser

35.   “Fair Play” by Claire Ashgrove

36.   “In Their Garden” by Brenda Cooper

37.   “Empty Nest” by Tori Eldridge

38.   “Shotgun Wedding” by Peter J. Wacks

39.   “Once on the Blue Moon” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

40.   “This is the Road” by Robert Silverberg

41.   “Dying with Her Cheer Pants On” by Seanan McGuire, from Dying with Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins

42.   “Tryouts” by Seanan McGuire

43.   “Trial by Fire” by Seanan McGuire

44.   “Gimme A “Z”!” by Seanan McGuire

45.   “Turn the Year Around” by Seanan McGuire

46.   “Fiber” by Seanan McGuire

47.   “Switchblade Smile” by Seanan McGuire

48.   “School Colors” by Seanan McGuire

49.   “Compete Me” by Seanan McGuire

50.   “Away Game” by Seanan McGuire

So that’s 50 short stories in October. Looks like a bit more than “1 per day,” but in reality I read the Surviving Tomorrow stories when I proofread the manuscript months ago. Still, they count for the year total, which I’m now ahead of again. (October 31st was the 305th day of 2020.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 1 read; YTD: 4 of 14 read.

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  50 read; YTD: 319 of 366 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 1 read; YTD: 20 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 8 read; YTD: 106 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 2 read; YTD: 9 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 6 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: October’s mini-challenge was “horror, horror, horror!” I didn’t read (or watch) anywhere near as much horror as I’d intended to, but didn’t completely blow it, either. Ring Shout, Dagon Rising, The Bad Seed, A Night in the Lonesome October and The Sandman all land firmly in the horror genre, and Dying with Her Cheer Pants On is an urban fantasy – horror hybrid. Some of the short stories in Surviving Tomorrow are more horror than SF as well.

November’s usual mini-challenge is “Noirvember,” which means for me a mix of crime, mystery, and thriller tales.

Review of DYING WITH HER CHEER PANTS ON

TITLE: Dying with Her Cheer Pants On: Stories of the Fighting Pumpkins

AUTHOR: Seanan McGuire

304 pages, Subterranean Press, ISBN 9781596069978 (deluxe hardcover; also available as ebook)

DESCRIPTION: (from the back cover): Despite its humble origins, there is no more challenging or physically dangerous sport in the world than cheerleading. Cheerleaders are seriously injured and even killed at a higher rate than other high school sports. Their stunts are performed in skimpy uniforms without the benefit of proper safety equipment … and yet they love them, glittery eyeshadow, spirit bows, and all. And then there are the Fighting Pumpkins, who take that injury rate as a challenge. Students of Johnson’s Crossing High School, they answer to a higher calling than the pyramid and basket toss, pursuing the pep rally that is rising up against mysteries and monsters, kicking gods with the pointed toes of professional athletes chasing a collegiate career. Meet Jude, the half-vampire squad leader; Laurie, who can compel anyone to do as she asks; Heather, occasionally recreationally dead; Marti, strong enough to provide a foundation for any stunt; Colleen, who knows the rule book so well she may as well have written it; and Steph, who may or may not be the goddess of the harvest. The rest of the squad is ready to support them, and braced for the chaos of the big game, which may or may not have a big body count. Prepare to jump high, yell loud, and look pretty with the Fighting Pumpkins, those glorious girls in the orange and green, whose high kicks could still be enough to save the world. And if they’re not, it isn’t going to be for lack of trying.

MY RATING: Five stars out of five

MY THOUGHTS: Although the book is already available in ebook format and Subterranean Press has started shipping the deluxe hardcover, this review was written off of a print Advance Review Copy provided by the publisher.

The Fighting Pumpkins are not as well-known as most of Seanan McGuire’s on-going urban fantasy series (the October Daye and InCryptid books, most notably). But I have hopes that the release of this collection, which includes six previously-published stories and four new adventures, will begin to change that. This is a world and characters that deserve more attention. I’m not advocating for a Fighting Pumpkins novel, mind you – I think this concept works wonderfully at short story to novella length, as the collection shows. I just think there should be more FP stories. A lot more.

Seanan’s original concept for the Fighting Pumpkins was as a “horror movie comedy sendup, with the entire squad dying at the end of the adventure, only to be replaced by a new squad who has no memory of the previous one.” By her own admission, that plan quickly fell to the wayside as the current squad (Jude, Colleen, Marti, Heather, and Laurie) seem to have taken up space in Seanan’s heart and brain and don’t want to shuffle off the page just yet. It’s been 10 years since the first FP story saw print (featuring the ill-fated previous squad) and 9 years since the first story featuring the current squad – so I’d say most of the current group is safe for the time being, as Seanan builds towards these girls fighting whatever Big Bad there ultimately is. (I say “most,” because this is Seanan and you never know when she’s going to surprise you and murder one of her darlings.)

I remember reading that first story, “Dying with Her Cheer Pants On,” and thinking “wow, that’s a morbid ending. Everybody dies … but at least they go out on their own terms and pretty heroically.” And then, because I sometimes am not good about picking up every single anthology Seanan has stories in, several years went by before I came across “Fiber” on Tor.com and thought “wait, didn’t they all die?” Then came “School Colors” in 2017 (in the anthology Little Green Men – Attack!) and “Away Game” in 2019 (in the anthology A Secret Guide to Fighting Elder Gods). With each story, my interest in the characters and setting, and my intrigue about how all these stories fit together chronologically, and my questions about how these later stories dovetailed with the first one, grew exponentially. I discovered I had missed “Gimme A ‘Z!’” and “Turn the Year Around,” but hadn’t gotten around to tracking down the anthologies they were in (Zombiesque and Harvest Season, respectively) when Subterranean Press announced this collected edition with the intent to include four new stories.

The four new stories (“Tryouts,” “Trial by Fire,” “Switchblade Smile,” and “Compete Me”) go a long way towards fleshing out the current squad’s connection to both the squad that preceded them and much earlier squads, as well as filling in some of the gaps in the current squad’s history. All of the stories are presented in character-chronological order (new stories interspersed with the reprints), with the exception of “Switchblade Smile” which flashes back to an earlier squad and is positioned at a point where learning that earlier story answers some questions other stories have raised.

The style of the stories varies from light-hearted (my internal eternally-13-year-old loved that the action of “Fringe” hinges on impending stomach distress and potty humor) to poignant (the denouement of “Compete Me”), the threats range from earthy (“Turn the Year Around”) to extraterrestrial (“School Colors”). Some stories are narrated in first person by a particular member of the squad (“Gimme A “Z”!” among them) and some by a more omniscient narrator. In other hands, I’d be worried that the shifting of tone and narrators’ voice would make the collection feel disjointed. But one of Seanan McGuire’s many talents is making disparate elements (like physical comedy and emotional drama) work together.

Taken together, it strikes me that these stories are very much about dealing with loss and finding ways to move forward. Jude knows that a squad has been lost, even if no-one can remember who that squad was or how they died. Heather copes with being dead (for a while at least), Steph with the absence of memory or any real sense of self. Marti … well, Marti’s loss is such a vital part of “Compete Me” that I don’t even want to talk about it; it’s a stunningly beautiful reveal that had me in tears. Jude’s mother, the vampire, is one of very few previous squad captains to have survived beyond high school and it weighs on her but doesn’t stop her from raising her daughter. The Fighting Pumpkins’ history is one of loss and being forgotten, but that doesn’t stop Jude and her team from living every moment and hoping for a better future (or any future at all).

There are so many aspects of this world that Seanan has yet to reveal. We get hints about why the Fighting Pumpkins are tasked with saving their town from supernatural (and extraterrestrial) threats both large and small. We get glimpses at the squad’s history and its place in a much larger networks of cheer squads and little league teams and retirement home sewing circles. And for now, at least, we get to hope that Jude’s team will be the team that survives past high school and goes on to happy adults lives. I’m very hopeful that Seanan will get to reveal much more of this world in the near future.

The deluxe hardcover is not yet sold out on the publisher’s website, and the ebook is available from all the usual suspects. Check it out if you like urban fantasy, strong teen female characters, and a bit of comedy thrown into your metaphysical threats.

Reading Round-Up: September 2020

Continuing the monthly summaries of what I’ve been reading and listening to.

BOOKS

To keep my numbers consistent with what I have listed on Goodreads, I count completed magazine issues as “books.” I read or listened to 8 books in September: 7 in print, 1 in e-book format, and 0 in audio format. They were:

1.       Lightspeed Magazine #124 (September, 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams. The usual fine assortment of sf and fantasy short stories. This month’s favorites for me were Caroline M. Yoachim’s “Shadow Prisons of the Mind,” Sunny Moraine’s “Note to Self,” Moses Lewis’s “Moses,” and Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s “Entanglement.”

2.       Tarzan: Battle for Pellucidar by Win Scott Eckert. The second new canonical ERB Universe novel brings the Jungle Lord back to the Hollow Earth alongside his granddaughter, Jason Gridley and family, and a few other surprises. There’s also a bonus novella by Mike Wolfer featuring Victory Harben in the Land That Time Forgot.  FULL REVIEW HERE.

3.       Greatheart Silver and Other Pulp Heroes by Philip Jose Farmer. Meteor House’s hardcover reissue of Farmer’s three pulp adventure pastiches featuring Greatheart Silver includes two other classic Farmer pulp-inspired tales: “Savage Shadow” and “Skinburn.”

4.       Middlegame by Seanan McGuire. The new stand-alone (so far) science fiction novel from Seanan is amazing, full of deep characterization and a really unique take on the feature known in gaming circles as “save points.” Twins separated at birth Roger and Dodger were created to enable their “father” to rule the world. But they might have other plans.

5.       Over The Woodward Wall by A. Deborah Baker. At the heart of McGuire’s Middlegame is a series of children’s books written by an alchemist named A. Deborah Baker. So of course, McGuire had to write the book she’d be quoting from. It’s a wonderful portal fantasy, and you don’t have to have read Middlegame to enjoy it (although if you have, you’ll see the parallels and connections.) FULL REVIEW HERE.

6.       Halloween Season by Lucy A. Snyder. Another great short story collection from Snyder, mostly horror and a bit of comedy focused on Halloween. But of course Christmas can’t resist getting in on the act a little early. FULL REVIEW HERE.

7.       The Shadow Diaries by Shadow, with help from his “daddy” Joseph Pittman. A really cute journal by a dog learning about his new home and fathers. Originally appeared as a series of weekly posts on Pittman’s Facebook page. Kids will love it.

8.       Hawkman Vol 3: The Darkness Within by Robert Venditti, Pat Oliffe, Tom Palmer and others. I was afraid this volume would be derailed by its connection to one of DC’s all too frequent line-wide crossovers, but Venditti and company manage to retain everything I’ve come to love about the series even in the crossover episodes.

STORIES

I have a goal of reading 366 short stories (1 per day, essentially, although it doesn’t always work out that way) this year (366 because it’s a Leap Year). Here’s what I read this month and where you can find them if you’re interested in reading them too. If no source is noted, the story is from the same magazine or book as the story(ies) that precede(s) it.

1.       “The Author’s Wife Vs. The Giant Robot” by Adam-Troy Castro, from Lightspeed Magazine #124 (September 2020 issue), edited by John Joseph Adams.

2.       “Note To Self” by Sunny Moraine

3.       “Machine Learning” by Hugh Howey

4.       “Moses” by L.D. Lewis

5.       “Destinations of Waiting” by Alexander Weinstein

6.       “Persephone of the Crows” by Karen Joy Fowler

7.       “Entanglement” by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam

8.        “Believe” by Seanan McGuire, on the author’s Patreon page.

9.       “Wait For Night” by Stephen Graham Jones, from Tor.Com website.

10.   “Savage Shadow” by Philip Jose Farmer, from Greatheart Silver and Other Pulp Heroes

11.   “Skinburn” by Philip Jose Farmer

12.   “Hazelnuts and Yummy Mummies” by Lucy A. Snyder, from Halloween Season

13.   “Cosmic Cola” by Lucy A. Snyder

14.   “Visions of the Dream Witch” by Lucy A. Snyder

15.   “What Dwells Within” by Lucy A. Snyder

16.   “The Porcupine Boy” by Lucy A. Snyder

17.   “In The Family” by Lucy A. Snyder

18.   “The Kind Detective” by Lucy A. Snyder

19.   “A Preference For Silence” by Lucy A. Snyder

20.   “Wake Up Naked Monkey You’re Going To Die” by Lucy A. Snyder

21.   “The Great VuDu Teen Linux Zombine Masacree” by Lucy A. Snyder

22.   “The House That Couldn’t Clean Itself” by Lucy A. Snyder

23.   “The Toymaker’s Joy”’ by Lucy A. Snyder

24.   “The Tingling Madness” by Lucy A. Snyder

So that’s 24 short stories in September. Not quite “1 per day,” but pretty close and keeping me only slightly short for the year-to-date. (September 30th was the 274th day of 2020.)

Summary of Reading Challenges:

“To Be Read” Challenge: This month: 1 read; YTD: 4 of 14 read.

366 Short Stories Challenge: This month:  24 read; YTD: 269 of 366 read.

Graphic Novels Challenge:  This month: 1 read; YTD: 20 of 52 read.

Goodreads Challenge: This month: 8 read; YTD: 106 of 125 read.

Non-Fiction Challenge: This month: 2 read; YTD: 9 of 24 read.

Read the Book / Watch the Movie Challenge: This month: 0; YTD: 0 read/watched.

Complete the Series Challenge: This month: 0 books read; YTD: 6 of 16 read.

                                                                Series fully completed: 0 of 3 planned

Monthly Special Challenge: I didn’t set a monthly mini-challenge for September.

October’s usual mini-challenge is Horror, Horror, Horror!