Doctor Corinne Broadway, a highly esteemed in zoological research, is conducting experiments with Specimen 913, a sentient rat she has named Jeffrey. Jeffrey is not only able to calculate grade-school verb math problems, but he also shows manners. He asks for more challenging problems, but, as Corinne tells him, the protocol has already been determined by the people who are paying for the experiments.
Jeffrey is aware of something Dr. Broadway doesn’t want him to know. Others have informed him.
“Conversations between the peons here are not what you would call subtle,” he tells her.
Thoughts:
This is an odd little read, with both characters caught traps they cannot escape. The lab rat is a lab rat whose existence is in the hands of his human handler. The human handler also must dance to tunes others call. Dr. Broadway knows the questions she asks Jeffrey pose no intellectual challenge to him, but she must ask them and no others because they are the ones those who pay for her research gave her. Having to act against her better judgment does not stop there.
I don’t think this story is intended as a slight to scientific research. If I were to pretend to peer inside the author’s mind and hazard a guess, I would say it’s more of a statement about the corrupting influence of money.
This is a sad but enjoyable little tale.
Bio:
According to his blurb, when he’s not writing, author R.D. Harris enjoys time with his kids, watching cartoons, and retro gaming. His work has appeared in Terraform[Motherboard], Galaxy’s Edge, and Liquid Imagination. Even though he is a member of the Horror Writers Association, the only thing scary about him is his verb-subject agreements.
This is more of a setting than a plot. The (unnamed) prime minister of Australia joins a meeting of government and military officials. Outside, bushfires rage, and an alien spaceship hovers, inert, over the Museum of Old and New Art in Tasmania. It is so inert that seagulls have begun to use it as a roosting site.
“So it’s already interfering with local wildlife,” The prime minister makes a note of this and adds, “Inform me immediately if the seagulls visibly sicken.”
This concern surprises the deputy prime minister. “Why? They’re just seagulls. Nobody will care. We let a billion animals die during the last fire season, and we still got reelected.”
This same heartlessness is shown to the protesters outside. Who cares if the treehuggers die? Granted the mess would be embarrassing—
Thoughts:
In the meeting room, a few raise concerns over what the prime minister is doing and saying, but there is also a chorus of faceless brown-nosers, whose encouraging words appear out of thin air, and who laugh on demand.
While I appreciate many of the author’s witticisms (seagulls roosting on an alien spaceship? Cute.), I also feel like this tale is much a reflection of whatever chunk of the twenty-four-hour news cycle one happens to be watching at any given moment. I could not enjoy this piece. It’s all too familiar because it depicts the same callousness reflected in every accursed news broadcast for at least the last four years or so.
Having said that, I know that the story is not the author. In her story notes, author Anya Ow, who lives in Melbourne, speaks of the devastating fires Australia experienced last year:
“…for everyone who volunteered, who raised money or awareness or helped during the bushfire crisis, thank you.”
Bio:
According to her blurb, author Anya Ow was born in Singapore. She is a graphic designer, illustrator, cat minder, and ex-lawyer living in Melbourne. Her work has appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Uncanny, and Aurealis. Her first novella, Cradle and Grave, was published this year. She can be found on twitter: @anyasy or at uneasy.com.
“Other Life Forms Are The Most Of Our Problems” can be read here.
Title: “Other Life Forms Are The Most Of Our Problems” Author: Anya Ow First published: Daily Science Fiction, August 10, 2020
Saturday night pizza and bad movie night with Svengoolie, a bit delayed. Guess I need some of those atom rays to help me on my way. Not interesed in dying first to get them though.
Plot:
The opening credits roll over shots of an expressionless man (an uncredited Karl “Killer” Davis) walking down a wooded lane. He has prominent surgical stitches across his forehead and walks with a lumbering gait. He drives up to a large building and watches silently.
The expressionless man breaks through a window and attacks a casino owner who is putting the night’s take into a wall safe. The expressionless man asks, ambiguously, “Do you remember Buchanan?
“But you’re not Buchanan,” the gangster says, gun trained on the intruder.
“I don’t look like him, but I am him.”
The words don’t belong to the expressionless man, but to a third man, Frank Buchanan (Michael Granger), speaking through a microphone. He, along with (mad?) scientist Dr. Wilhelm Steigg (Gregory Gaye), has devised a way to reanimate corpses and control them through electrodes implanted in the brains. Steigg decries that his work, intended for the good of mankind (really?), has been been hijacked to serve evil. Buchanan wants revenge on those who sent him to prison and had him deported.
Later, the police find quite the puzzle of a crime scene inside the large building. There is an open safe with six thousand dollars inside and a dead casino boss, whose spine and neck bones look like they were broken by twisting. The window has been smashed in. The rods on the iron fence outside have been bent as well. Crime scene investigator Dr. Chet Walker (Richard Denning) finds bloody fingerprints and shoeprints. Oddly, they glow in the dark. He takes a carpet sample and sends the fingerprints for identification.
The next day, District Attorney MacGraw (Tristram Coffin) is found dead in his garage. The attacks look similar. What could the two—a crime boss and a district attorney—have in common?
Thoughts:
The opening scenes with the zombie are genuinely creepy and imbued with unspoken menace. Later, the viewer learns this monster, and others like him, are charged with atomic energy, giving them superhuman strength. They can both kill a full-grown man and bend metal with their bare hands. Bullets can’t stop them. Their blood is radioactive, as Dr. Walker’s busy Geiger counter reveals. They have no volition or even awareness—they are dead, after all—but are controlled by a vengeful Buchanan, making the atmosphere all the creepier.
The district attorney and the cops ponder whether robbery could be a motive in the death of the gangster in light of the six thousand dollars left in an open safe.
“Maybe [the thief] didn’t want to get into a higher [tax] bracket,” says Capt. Dave Harris (S. John Launer).
Later, when the reporters ask about the iron fence, bent into odd and pleasant concentric rosettes, Dr. Walker tells them the intruder must have been taking his vitamins.
The same Dr. Walker arrives home to find his wife (Angela Stevens), the mother of his child, bent over cleaning something. He makes sure to stop a moment to ogle her rear end. Yeah, this is how one shows appreciation of a life partner.
On the one hand, this movie has it all: creepy atmosphere, goofy science (when it wasn’t just wrong, e.g., confusing Galvani with Faraday for starters), a police procedural, zombies, a mad scientist (albeit a whiny one), mobsters, smartass lines, sexist attitudes that would make the Stepford wives pack up and go home to mother, and a big zombie-cop shootout toward the end. On the other hand, it gets… dull, the one unforgivable sin. This should be non-stop fun. The snoozer sections weren’t so long that they spoiled the movie for me, but it did decrease my enjoyment of it.
Cast (in credits order) Richard Denning…Dr. Chet Walker Angela Stevens…Joyce Walker S. John Launer…Capt. Dave Harris Michael Granger…Frank Buchanan Gregory Gaye…Dr. Wilhelm Steigg (as Gregory Gay)
One day in 2009, Neil Burton perished in a hail of snow peas. He’d been trying to re-arrange thousand-pound crates of vegetables with his forklift while eating a sandwich, and things didn’t go well.
The angel who met him at his demise explained his time was up, so regardless of what he’d done that day, he would have died. He now had two options. He could spend an undisclosed amount of time in Purgatory, or he could stay on earth as a ghost until he saved the soul of a living person. He figured the latter would be easier, rather than waiting around in Purgatory for some predetermined (and unknown) time. Why not be proactive, right?
Neil quickly discovers the living can neither see nor hear him, making his mission nearly impossible. His hands pass through solid matter. He cannot even sit down. He merely spends his days floating along, hovering above the ground.
Ten years pass. Neil is in a playground, amusing himself by pretending to be struck by the kids on the swings. He hears laughter.
Thoughts:
There’s nothing profound here (unless you need instruction in not chowing down on a sandwich with operating a forklift), but it is entertaining. The reader feels for Neil, who while he might have been a slacker in life, made the best choice he could with the limited information he had.
The author manages to keep the piece light-hearted without letting is slide into the facile or (egad!) maudlin. I enjoyed this.
Bio:
According to his blurb, author James Rumpel is a retired high school math teacher who has greatly enjoyed using his newfound additional free time to rekindle his love for science fiction and the written word.
Daisy, a mildly clever Pomeranian, wakes up at the sound of a street light winking out and begins to bark—until she isn’t making noise despite her efforts. She’s floating, carried away by the light. The kitchen window opens for her and closes behind her.
The next morning, her human scolds her while sweeping up the dog food she finds on the kitchen floor, unaware of what she’s destroying.
Thoughts:
This is a light-hearted short-short. Poor Daisy, who is only trying to be heard in ways she things her humans will understand, is dismissed and scolded for her efforts. No doubt she’s a good girl. She’s just too easily ignored.
Never fear. Her day will come. Maybe.
I liked this little tale.
Bio:
According to his blurb, Sean Patrick Whiteley is lives in Massachusetts. When he isn’t doodling or staying up far too late, he is exploring the curious places of New England and experiencing sunlight with his wife. His fiction has been featured in The Furious Gazelle Halloween Anthology, FIVE:2:ONE, various podcasts, and elsewhere. Find him on Twitter @SeanPWhiteley.
Saturday pizza and bad movie night with Svengoolie. Is it too much to say it was a howl?
Plot:
Respected London botanist Dr. Wilfred Glendon (Henry Hull) has found a rare plant in Tibet, Mariphasa lupino lumino (or maybe Mariphasa lumina lupine, as it’s referred to later), which only blooms in the moonlight. A camel-riding priest (Egon Brecher) the expedition came across warned them away from the valley where they discovered the flower, but, in true horror film tradition, they went ahead. While Glendon is taking a few clips, the audience sees what looks like a teddy bear face rise over a bank above the botanist. An animal attacks Glendon.
…who is suddenly back in his lab in London, trying to get his specimen of Mariphasa to bloom. His wife, Lisa (Valerie Hobson), tries to enter the lab, wearing a lovely round hat that would social distance all by itself. Wilfred doesn’t have time and, after some words with her, sends her away.
The next person to arrive is one Dr. Yogami (Warner Oland), who says they met briefly in Tibet. Glendon doesn’t recall meeting the gentleman. Dr. Yogami says the Mariphasa he has in his lab is a treatment—not a cure—for werewolfery. He himself knows of two cases of the condition in London and asks Glendon for two blossoms from his plant.
Glendon doesn’t buy this and throws him out. He’s seen his own hand turn hairy in the artificial moonlight he’s using for the plant. Later, the viewer sees a pair of hands clip the blossoms.
Glendon is too busy to go to a party Lisa’s Aunt Ettie (Spring Byington) is throwing. Whaddya know. Lisa’s childhood friend, Paul Ames (Lester Matthews), shows up, only too happy to escort her. What could go wrong?
Thoughts:
Glendon is a jerk to his wife, losing himself first in Tibet and then in his lab. While he gives Paul the stink eyes and at one point even snarls that he’s had enough of childhood reminisces, he sees no reason Paul shouldn’t take his wife to Aunt Ettie’s party. By then, he’s got a lot on his mind. Dr. Yogami has told him how to keep from becoming a werewolf, but the blossoms he needs have mysteriously disappeared. The good doctor also warned him that the werewolf instinctively hunts the one he loves…
Part of the reason for making Glendon such a jerk is that the audience doesn’t mourn when he meets his untimely end. There is also some comic relief. Aunt Ettie is a party animal and likes her bottle. She refers to Dr. Yogami repeatedly as “Dr. Yokohama,” an indignity he bears with silent eye-rolling grace.
When newly-minted werewolf Glendon makes his first foray into the night, he dons a top hat and scarf. The werewolf make-up leaves enough of this face uncovered that other characters recognize him.
Variety (May, 1935) compared this movie to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which had come out in 1932. I can understand this not only because of the top hat and scarf, and the split personality theme, but werewolf Glendon has a penchant for chasing after young women who are alone. Longshoremen (or dockers since this is London) and boxers who might give the wolf a run for his money seem perfectly safe.
The print we saw of this was consistently nice and sharp. The audio was muddled at points, but still comprehendible. This was a pleasant surprise for an eighty-five-year-old movie.
Dr. Yogami’s (Warner Oland) was a familiar face. He played Charlie Chan in the innumerable Charlie Chan movies. He seems to have made a habit out of playing Asian characters, though he was of Swedish origin and immigrated to the U.S. with his family when he was a child.
The special effects went smoothly enough, but really. This is 1935.
I enjoyed this, though I felt there were some lost opportunities.
Title: Werewolf of London (1935) Directed by Stuart Walker
Writing Credits John Colton…(screenplay) Robert Harris…(story) Harvey Gates…(adaptation) (uncredited) Robert Harris…(adaptation) (uncredited) Edmund Pearson…(contributing writer) (uncredited)
Cast (in credits order)
Henry Hull…Dr. Wilfred Glendon Warner Oland…Dr. Yogami Valerie Hobson…Lisa Glendon Lester Matthews…Paul Ames Lawrence Grant…Sir Thomas Forsythe
Dr. Harry Topper Ph.D., professor of Philosophy (retired), is annoyed with his lifelong friend, Dr. Jack Trask. It’s so unlike Jack, perhaps the most fastidious man on the planet, to be late—and so late! Twenty minutes he’s been waiting at their regular table in the diner! Something must be wrong.
The sight of Trask, when he shows up, reinforces the feeling that something is wrong. He’s grinning, but it’s a nervous grin. Jack apologizes for being late.
Topper rather ungraciously tells him to stop smiling. It’s making him uncomfortable.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, Harry, but I can tell you this is a big one. This one’s for real,” Trask tells his friend.
After some back and forth, Trask declares he’s come to understand the nature of time and demonstrates it by predicting some events in the diner. Topper discounts each incident, but he can’t help feeling ever more nervous.
Thoughts:
Frankly, I didn’t see this ending coming, yet there were hints along the way. The conclusion is logical rather than a bait and switch. As a reader, I enjoy this sort of storytelling and respect writing that can pull it while making me laugh. This is it.
At the same time, the arguments between Topper and Trask ring hollow. Topper starts annoyed and only grows more irritated. He is stubborn. Their sniping and smirking gets tedious, but the payoff does arrive.
I couldn’t buy Trask’s description of the nature of time any more than did Topper, but the sense that all was not as it appeared rang true. It continued until the end.
Aside from some repetition in the argument between the two characters, I found this a fun little tale. I liked it.
Bio:
According to his blurb, author Preston Dennett has worked more types of jobs than you’d care to shake a stick at, but his favorite is “writing speculative fiction stories and books about UFOs and the paranormal.” His work has appeared in Andromeda Spaceways, Black Treacle, Cast of Wonders, Daily Science Fiction, T. Gene Davis’s Speculative Blog, and many others. Additionally, he’s written twenty-six non-fiction books and more than one hundred articles.
He says he spends his days looking for new ways to pay his bills (I hear you, brother), and his nights exploring the farthest reaches of the Universe. He currently resides in a crowded suburb outside of Los Angeles, CA.
The narrator’s silent alarm goes off while he (? Maybe. The narrator’s gender is never specified) is still at work. He gets ready to depart for the big event.
Mabel tries to stop him, but he’s having none of it. She might not be done, but records show he finished his assignment. He’s not staying over to help her finish hers.
Thoughts:
A lot of this sounds familiar to the working stiff—big plans for quitting time, the coworker who wants one last thing. It might even be a New Year’s celebration, with people waiting for a countdown in a bar, a bit of drinking, and a traditional toast.
There are also a couple of wrinkles in this one, however, to let the reader know all is not well in the narrator’s world. The final line is a punchline, but not one that turns the whole micro-tale on a dime. And yeah, there’s a bit of preachiness to it.
Having said that, I enjoyed how the author built everything up to a final ironic ending quickly and efficiently.
Bio:
According to his blurb, author Charles Michael Stucker is a literal rocket scientist, who has been trying to make ends meet with writing since the 2010 cancellation of the Ares program. He currently lives in Houston with his wife.
Saturday pizza and bad movie night with Svengoolie. Oh, brother. The pizza was good.
Plot:
The Navy is sending an expedition to Antarctica amid stories of an area of warm water in the interior. A helicopter is sent to survey the area, with Commander Alan Roberts (Jock Mahoney), a geophysicist, in command. The pilot is Lieutenant Jack Carmen (William Reynolds). Also aboard are mechanic Steve Miller (Phil Harvey) and the pretty lady reporter from Oceanic Press, Miss Margaret Hathaway (Shirley Patterson, credited as Shawn Smith).
A storm brings orders to return. They don’t have enough fuel to go around the storm. There’s no place to land to wait out the storm. Lt. Carmen looks for a break in the weather and takes it.
They don’t see much of anything but fog, snow, and ice until a pterodactyl swops by and damages the machine. Lt. Carmen realizes he can only descend—through the fog. Everyone braces for impact as the altimeter shows sea level, but they keep going down. And keep going down. It gets warmer. They have to shed their arctic gear. At 2500 feet below sea level, they land gently in a jungle.
The radio works, but they’re out of range. They hear rescue planes overhead, but they’re too far away for the flare guns to be noticed. (Those flares will come in handy later.)
Commander Roberts (Alan? Or Hal?) notices some of the trees they see have been extinct for millions of years. He guesses the jungle is still in the Mesozoic Era—you know, when dinosaurs roamed.
Jack and Steve find a bent push-pull tube to be the source of the mechanical trouble. All they have to do is straighten it out, but it’s made of a magnesium alloy and snaps after a few blows from a hammer. Bummer that!
If they don’t find a solution within a month, they’ll have to have their mail forwarded to Antarctica, because the fleet sails so as not to get locked into the winter ice, whether they’re with it or not.
Not only do they realize they’re not alone in the reptile department, they find someone has gotten into their food supplies, and that someone knows how to use a can opener! Later, the can-opener-savvy guy, a sole survivor of an earlier expedition named Hunter (Henry Brandon), kidnaps Maggie. He offers to tell the others the location of his wreck, where they might find spare parts to fix their own helicopter, in exchange for Maggie, an offer the Commander turns down. No one (including Hunter) bothers to ask Maggie how she might feel about the arrangement. After all, the decision would affect her. Think she’d want to have a say.
Such a gentleman.
Thoughts:
A warm water jungle in Antarctica or some other exotic area of the world is an idea that’s been explored in such stories as James De Mille’s A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder and Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land that Time Forgot. Arthur Conan Doyle set his (yes) Lost World on a plateau in South America. Most of these stories have dinosaurs fighting each other and chasing the puny humans.
The prehistoric critters in this movie include the aforementioned pterodactyl; a man in a t-rex suit; a real monitor lizard or two, shot to make them look threateningly large; a plesiosaurus (probably?) that reminded me of a river carnival float; and a tiny tarsier.
Shooting this in color would not have made a better movie. The monsters were silly. Even the carnivorous plant was—oh, let’s just say you could see the strings. The flick was a real stinker, though, in that the story stunk.
The four people were all in danger. Or maybe they’re camping. In any event, they adjusted to the bizarre world of the steaming hot jungle surrounded by the frozen wasteland eagerly enough. They ran from those dangers—except Maggie, who screamed.
The actors do the best they can with the material they’re given, but there’s little room for curiosity for their surroundings. No one displays despair. Nor is there any of the expected military discipline or command to understand what they’re up against. Initially, while Jack and Steve try to find what’s wrong with the helicopter, Alan and Maggie walk away into the fog, primarily so he can hit on her. She narrowly (and unwittingly) escapes the clutches of the carnivorous plant in much the same way Daphne of Scooby-Doo fame steps away from being grabbed by some ghoulish hand when she finally decides which way to go.
Cheap effects (even a guy ambling around in a t-rex suit) I can forgive. Not every production company has the money or the knowhow to make fantastic effects. Hokey effects can be fun. But I cannot forgive a boring story.
Title: The Land Unknown (1957)
Directed by Virgil W. Vogel…(as Virgil Vogel)
Writing Credits László Görög…(screenplay) (as Laszlo Gorog) William N. Robson…(adaptation) Charles Palmer…(story)
Cast (in credits order) Jock Mahoney…Commander Alan Roberts Shirley Patterson…Margaret Hathaway (as Shawn Smith) William Reynolds…Lt. Jack Carmen Henry Brandon…Dr. Carl Hunter Douglas Kennedy…Capt. Burnham (as Douglas R. Kennedy)
Released: October 30, 1957 Length: 1 hour, 18 minutes
Ghost-hunter Tom Monaghan stops for coffee in a small roadside diner in Maine on his way to Boston. His ears prick up overhearing snatches of conversation among the local: “mutilated bodies,” “some kinda spooks,” and “I heard it was the Devil hisself!”
Sometimes you just get lucky, Monaghan says.
After getting directions, he heads up McGinney Road to find the (yep) Innsmouth House. By this time, he’s switched to “clericals” so he can present himself to the cops on scene as “Fr. Beauregard of Our Lady of the Snows” and ask about “an evil force at work in the house.”
He does indeed find three murder victims, each with a pentagram carved into their torso, with the apex star pointed to the “One below the floorboards.” His instruments detect electromagnetic radiation—which all spectral entities give off. This calls for the deployment of the Delving Industries model P-157 Plasmatic Cell.
Of course, not all is as it seems.
Thoughts:
Ghost-hunting, it seems, is a business with a bottom line. Whodathunk. Any trades-offs one might make to improve the bottom line is simply the cost of doing business.
The author explains the title comes from an old Army joke: “We have to get out of this hole, boys! Dig faster!”
“Innsmouth” is a fictitious town from the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, where all sorts of untoward things happened. The relevant allusion probably has to do with the religion that involved human sacrifice.
I enjoyed reading this story. The mixture of Satanism, cold-blooded murder, and corporate cynicism was perfect. However, the ending struck me as a little fuzzy. Even after several readings, I wasn’t sure precisely what happened, other than things did not return to normal, as odd as normal was to begin with.
Bio:
According to his blurb, author J.B. Toner studied Literature at Thomas More College and holds a black belt in Ohana Kilohana Kenpo-Jujitsu. He has published two novels, Whisper Music and The Shoreless Sea, and numerous shorter works. Toner lives in Massachusetts (not far from Lovecraft’s old stomping grounds of Rhode Island) with his lovely wife and two daughters.
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 