An Introduction to Katherine MacLean

The Fittest & Other Stories by Katherine MacLean A 3 Play Book, 2024     Introduction     The critic and author, Damon Knight wrote, “As a science fiction writer she [Katherine MacLean] has few peers; her work is not only technically brilliant but has a rare human warmth and richness.” An apt insight since Katherine MacLean’s speculative fiction had the grounding of hard science fiction—technically and scientifically accurate depictions of physics, mathematics, and engineering—mingled with the so-called “soft” sciences of culture and sociology. She specialized in exploring how the one impacted the other in near future worlds. As she explained in her essay, “The Expanding Mind”: “I write about the near future because I want an excuse to read science and economics and try to find out what is going to happen next. I don’t want to be in the surprised rocking chair set, trembling before an alien world.” MacLean excelled at this near future speculation. One example of her futuristic insight came in the story, “Syndrome Johnny” (Galaxy, July 1951, as by Charles Dye) where she predicted the potential use of DNA, which was still an emerging scientific idea at the time, as a tool to genetically improve humans. Her speculative writings, future technologies and all, were wrapped in a literate, unblemished style rare for the genre in the middle years of the Twentieth Century as the opening passage from “The Fittest” (Worlds Beyond, Jan. 1951) shows:   “Among the effects of Terry Shay was found a faded snapshot. It is a scene of desolation, a wasteland of sand and rock made vague by blowing dust, and to one side huddle some dim figures. “They might be Eskimos with their hoods pulled close, or they might be small brown bears. “It is the only record left of the great event, the event which came into the hands of Terry Shay. “Like all great events it started with trivial things.” MacLean’s work has been a regular in anthologies over the decades. Isaac Asimov selected “Defense Mechanism” (Astounding, Oct. 1949), “Pictures Don’t Lie” (Galaxy, Aug. 1951), “The Snowball Effect” (Galaxy, Sep. 1952), and “Unhuman Sacrifice” (Astounding Science Fiction, Nov. 1958) for inclusion in his The Great SF Stories series of anthologies. Her 1971 novella, “The Missing Man,” (Analog, Mar. 1971) won a Nebula Award and was later expanded into a novel of the same name. In a phrase, Katherine MacLean was a highly respected writer of science fiction with an interest in how humanity would cope with the future. Katherine MacLean was born on January 22, 1925 in Montclair, New Jersey, to Gordon—a chemical engineer—and Ruth MacLean (née Crawford). She received a B.A. in economics, and an M.S. in psychology. She worked various jobs, including as an English professor, a biochemist, an EKG technician, as an attendant in a vitamin store. She was married three times, and had one son. She died September 1, 2019.     The four tales included in The Fittest & Other Stories are a sampling of MacLean’s best work. “The Fittest” is a marvelous telling of first contact, moral dilemmas, and the violent nature of humanity. “Where or When?” is a love story that will ring true for anyone that has ever loved. “Carnivore” is a disturbing view of humanity’s sectarian and violent nature without, unfortunately, much redemption. “Contagion”—which is one of MacLean’s most popular tales—is about colonization, fear, and loss of self. Cover designed by Karadraws.com

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Praise for "Casinos, Motels, Gators"

 

I’ve been holding onto this bit of news for so long, three months and a day for anyone counting, that it feels (almost) sacrilegious to post about it now. But I’ve never been one to let a little discomfort keep me from annoying my three loyal readers. So…I’m sharing this wonderful review novelist and blogger James Reasoner wrote for my collection, Casinos, Motels, Gators, all the way back on June 5. He liked it, and from his kind words I’m comfortable saying, he really liked it. Here’s a sampling of some of my favorite parts of James’s review: “I really like Ben Boulden’s writing. His prose is as terse and tough and hardboiled as any you’ll find these days.” “I’d previously referred to “121” as a Manhunt story for the 21st Century. Having reread it and read the other two Jimmy Ford stories, I’d say that not only would the series have worked in Manhunt, it would have been right at home in the late Seventies/early Eighties issues of Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine. With some adjustment to the trappings, they could have even been Black Mask stories in the early Thirties. Boulden’s writing has definite echoes of Paul Cain, Raoul Whitfield, and Frederick Nebel.” “Casinos, Motels, Gators is one of the best books I’ve read this year.” You can read James Reasoner’s entire review here. When you’re done reading the review, do yourself (and me) a favor and read Casinos, Motels, Gators.

Casinos, Motels, Gators is available in Kindle, including Kindle Unlimited, here and as a trade paperback here.

Stephen Marlowe

 

A little piece about Stephen Marlowe for… Alternatives: Science Fiction Stories by Stephen Marlowe A 3 PLAY Book   Introduction     Stephen Marlowe—born as Milton Lesser on August 7, 1928, to Norman and Syliva Lesser in Brooklyn, New York—purportedly said: “At the age of eight, I wanted to be a writer and I never changed my mind.” And was he ever a writer. After graduating with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from William & Mary in 1949, with a referral from science fiction writer Damon Knight, Marlowe took a job with the famous Scott Meredith Literary Agency. The same place writers like Ed McBain, Donald E. Westlake, Lester del Rey, and Lawrence Block, started their careers. He sold his first story, a science fiction novelette titled “All Heroes Are Hated!,” to Amazing Stories in 1950. Marlowe, after that first sale, concentrated almost exclusively on science fiction throughout the first half of the decade; publishing dozens of stories in pulps and digests like Imagination, Marvel Science Stories, Galaxy, and Fantastic. His first novel, Earthbound, as by Milton Lesser, was a speculative young adult job for the John C. Winston Company. Earthbound was released the same day Marlowe, 23-years-old at the time, reported for his Korean War service in 1952. According to a 2007 interview with Ed Gorman, Marlowe had forgotten about contracting for a second book with Winston: “I was at a winter training exercise at Camp Drum [Western New York], where I was temporarily attached to the 82nd Airborne. I got a frantic call from my agent: How [are] you coming on the second Winston novel? I’d forgotten all about it and it was due in a week. I spent a weekend telling myself it was impossible. Then on Monday the colonel I worked for, on hearing of my plight, said, ‘Son, how much are they paying you to write that book?’ I told him the advance was a thousand bucks. ‘Son,’ he told me, ‘even the U.S. Army can’t stand between you and that kind of money. Go home and write that book.’ ” Marlowe wrote the book, The Star Seekers, in less than a week, delivered it, but “never had the courage to read it.” The Star Seekers hit bookshelves in 1953 and has been seldom seen ever since. In the mid-1950s, Marlowe shifted his focus from science fiction—although he continued to write speculative tales into the early-1960s—to suspense. He contributed to mystery pulps like Manhunt, Hunted, and Accused, and wrote novels for the paperback original market. His first suspense novel was Catch the Brass Ring, which was one-half of an Ace Double published in 1954. A year later, Marlowe introduced the character that made him famous: Chester Drum. Drum was a Washington, D.C. private eye specializing in international cases. An original idea in the mid-20th Century since the hardboiled dicks of the era were set in large American cities like New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. The international settings of Drum’s cases are vivid with an exotic realism that came from Marlowe’s real-life geography hopping. In an interview, Marlowe said, “[I’ve] lost count of how many places I’ve lived—surely more than a hundred in twenty-odd countries.” The series was a hit and Gold Medal, the premium paperback publisher of the day, sold millions of the books.  There were 20 Chester Drum novels between 1955, when The Second Longest Night appeared, and 1968 when Drum Beat—Marianne was published. The novels were accompanied by eight short stories published in Manhunt, Accused, Ed McBain’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. The New York Times mystery critic, Anthony Boucher, wrote: “few writers of the tough private-eye story can tell it more accurately than Mr. Marlowe, or with such taut understatement of violence and sex.” After Gold Medal dropped Marlowe’s Chester Drum series, he turned to more ambitious hardcover suspense novels. These big books—longer and more complex than his earlier novels—had similar exotic settings as the Drum stories. This, along with Marlowe’s ability to tighten suspense, scene-by-scene, and what Boucher had earlier called his understated sex and violence gave these books punch. The first of these, Come Over, Red Rover—if one discounts Marlowe’s 1966 hardcover, The Search for Bruno Heidler—appeared in 1968. Others of note are Summit (1970), The Cawthorn Journals (1975), and The Valkyrie Encounter, which Marlowe called, in that same Ed Gorman interview, his favorite of his own hardcover suspense novels.    The 1980s saw Marlowe pivot again into biographical novels, which the mystery author and critic Bill Pronzini called “brilliantly conceived [and] meticulously researched.” The Memoirs of Christopher Columbus appeared in 1987; The Lighthouse at the End of the World, about Edgar Allan Poe, in 1995; and The Death and Life of Miguel de Cervantes—which, according to Pronzini, Marlowe considered his best novel and Ed Gorman called “his masterpiece”—was published in 1996. Over his long career, Stephen Marlowe received the Prix Gutenberg du Livre, a French literary award, in 1988 for The Memoirs of Christopher Columbus and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Private Eye Writers of America in 1997. As we said earlier, Marlowe was born as Milton Lesser, but sometime in the late-1950s (after his Chester Drum novels had made a big splash) he legally changed his name to Stephen Marlowe. Shortly after graduating from William & Mary, Marlowe—then still known as Milton Lesser—married Leona Lang on June 2, 1950. Leona, who went by Leigh, was a trained psychologist. The couple had two daughters but divorced in the early-1960s. Marlowe then, in 1964, married Ann Humbert in Manhattan. The pair were married until Marlowe’s death from “myelodysplastic syndrome, a bone-marrow disorder” on February 22, 2008, in Williamsburg, Virginia. Alternatives: Science Fiction Stories features three of Marlowe’s best speculative tales—one novelette and two shorts. “Divvy Up,” Amazing Stories, 1960, is a dystopian treasure about one man’s survival in a world where death is a relief from a tortured and soulless world. Its dark themes would have made for a marvelous episode of the original The Twilight Zone. “Finders Keepers,” Fantastic Universe, 1953, is a light-hearted tale about time traveling historians and a search going all the way back to Adam and Eve. “The Passionate Pitchman,” Fantastic, 1956, is a slam-bang—read that as exciting—adventure novelette about gangsters, heists, and teleportation. Now on with the stories…   Cover by Karadraws.com

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A William Campbell Gault Intro

A little something I wrote for the William Campbell Gault collection…  Mixology: Science Fiction Stories 3 Play, 2024     Introduction   William Campbell Gault—born on March 9, 1910, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to John and Ella Hovde Gault—is one of the most critically acclaimed post-WW2 writers of genre fiction. He is best known as a mystery and juvenile sports writer for boys, but he successfully published in a variety of genres and in his early career wrote more than 300 stories for the pulps. The novelist Ed Gorman wrote, “[Gault] was a compelling short story writer who looked at the world honestly if sardonically and found a good deal of it to be depressingly hilarious.” Gault had the knack, as the Salem Press Biographical Encyclopedia says, of combining “various motifs from the different pulp magazine genres—sports, mystery, science fiction—and blend them into a distinctive style of his own.” Another trait separating Gault’s fiction from that of his peers—it is about something. It is filled with ethical dilemmas, racial tensions, bigotry, and political tolerance. Gault’s writing career began in 1936 when he won a $50 prize in a short story competition sponsored by the Milwaukee Journal. His first professional sales were to the sex magazines of the 1930s, including Paris Nights and Scarlet Adventuress “where”—according to a 1979 interview with Bill Crider—“the dirtiest word we used was ‘curvaceous’.” Gault published those stories with the pseudonym Roney Scott, which he dusted off for his early crime novel, Shakedown (1953), published with Howard Fast’s The Darkness Within as an Ace Double. Shakedown introduced Gault’s popular series character, Joe Puma, but the Joe Puma of Shakedown is a different man from what he is in the later novels and most knowledgeable readers exclude Shakedown from the official Puma literary canon. In the late-1930s Gault began writing for the sports pulps and quickly moved into the mystery pulps “because the sports magazines came out so erratically, ten one month, four the next” that he needed a larger market to earn a living. Gault’s stories appeared in many of the better pulps, including Argosy, Black Mask, Adventure, Dime Detective, and Short Stories. As the popularity of the pulps waned in the late-1940s—which forced Gault to take outside work with McDonnell Douglas and then the U.S. Post Office—he cracked the hardcover and paperback original markets. With Don’t Cry for Me (Dutton, 1952), Gault won an Edgar Award for best first novel. Like most of Gault’s mysteries, Don’t Cry for Me is set in Southern California—Kirkus called it “California complicated”—and its mid-century timeframe is still vibrant with readers more than 70 years after its first publication. Gault wrote a string of standalone crime novels before introducing his first series character, Beverly Hills private eye Brock “The Rock” Callahan, in the 1956 novel, Ring Around Rosa (Dutton). Callahan is a former WW2 OSS operator and he played guard for the Los Angeles Rams. He is an ethical cuss and there is no doubt he will do the right thing every time out. In 1958, Gault’s other private eye, Joe Puma, hit the page in End of a Call Girl (Fawcett Crest). While Callahan is upright, Puma is a little shifty and, as the critic Jon L. Breen wrote, “Joe threatens to spin out of control.” While both the Callahan and Puma books have become cult favorites, Gault claimed he never made much money with any of them. His biggest commercial successes were his juvenile sports novels for boys. The first of these, Thunder Road (Dutton, 1952), remained in print for close to 30 years and was reprinted by two different paperback houses, which, according to his 1979 interview, “helped keep me in used golf balls through my dotage.” So in 1966, Gault quit writing mystery—and everything else—to focus on the more lucrative juvenile market. He wouldn’t return to mysteries again until the late-1970s. But our interest is with William Campbell Gault’s science fiction. A genre that represents only a tiny fraction of his total output, but he served the genre well with several high-quality and thoughtful stories that are as much about morality—and not the easy kind you find in the Bible—as they are about entertainment. Gault’s speculative stories are fine examples of his genre-mixing style. He combines the tension and precise plotting of the mystery with, at times, sports and sporting events, and the audacity of idea-driven science fiction. They are damn entertaining, too. Mixology: Science Fiction Stories, brings together three of Gault’s best speculative tales—two novelettes and one short—published in the 1950s. “Title Fight” (Fantastic Universe, 1956), which showcases Gault’s bona fides as sports story writer with its vivid setting in the boxing ring, is a marvelous story about freedom and equality. As a bonus, the main player is a robot. “I’ll See You in My Dreams” (Imagination, 1951) is a sardonic tale about marriage, longing, and disappointment. It is played out using the machinations of an unknown alien civilization, a squirrel, and Venus. The final story, “Made to Measure” (Galaxy, 1957), would have made a brilliant episode for the original The Twilight Zone television series. At its center is a theme of appreciating what you have without looking too closely at its faults. William Campbell Gault died on December 27, 1995, in Santa Barbara, California. He had been married twice and had two children—a son and a daughter. During WW2, Gault served with the 166th Infantry in Hawaii from 1943 until the end of the war. He was awarded The Private Eye Writers of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He received a Shamus for his 1980 novel, The Cana Diversion—after returning to writing mysteries—and another Lifetime Achievement Award, this one from the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention, in 1991.

Click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback at Amazon. The cover was designed by Karadraws.com *            *            *

 

Now Available! — "Casinos, Motels, Gators" by Ben Boulden

 

Now Available!

My latest book, Casinos, Motels, Gators, which is part of 3 Play’s lineup of story collections, is available now. CMG is a collection of four crime stories—hardboiled, noirish, and darn good—which originally appeared in anthologies and magazines between 2019 and 2021. These four stories are some of my best writing and I think pretty much anyone who enjoys crime fiction will have a good time reading them.   This is how the publisher described CMG:   This exciting new collection, by cult favorite crime writer Ben Boulden, is a modern take on the hardboiled crime story. New York Times bestselling author James Reasoner called “121”—the first story in Casinos, Motels, Gators—a “Manhunt story for the 21st Century.” A high accolade indeed! All four tales are set in the cruel landscape of Utah’s West Desert between Salt Lake City and the Utah-Nevada border town of Wendover. Three stories find the burned-out former FBI agent, Jimmy Ford—a security consultant for a corrupt casino owner—working the wrong side of the street with better intentions than it first appears. The last story, “Asia Divine,” is a bleak murder investigation that reveals a dark secret about love and expectation. Casinos, Motels, Gators is an exemplary collection full of surprising twists, vivid settings, and powerful storytelling—certain to please every reader.

Casinos, Motels, Gators is available in Kindle—it is free with your Kindle Unlimited membership—and as a trade paperback everywhere. Click here for the Kindle version and here for the paperback on Amazon.   If you enjoy Casinos, Motels, Gators—do me a favor and review it on Amazon and/or Goodreads.   Thanks for your support!

Available for Pre-Order: "Casinos, Motels, Gators" by Ben Boulden

 

Available For Pre-Order

Casinos, Motels, Gators by Ben Boulden 3 Play, 2024   Big news at Maison Boulden. Casinos, Motels, Gators, which is a collection of four of my crime stories—three Jimmy Ford tales and a standalone—is available for pre-order now and scheduled for release in a week and a day: May 28, 2024. The Author’s Note tells it better than I could, so… The four short stories in Casinos, Motels, Gators were written between 2017 and 2020 in a broom closet-sized office in my former home in Salt Lake City, Utah. I worked fulltime and wrote in the early mornings and late at night. I conjured the character Jimmy Ford, appearing in the first three stories, during a long ago visit to the casinos of the Utah-Nevada border town of Wendover.      Wendover is a desert town nestled in a desolate valley about 120 miles west of Salt Lake City on I-80. It started life as a railroad town in the early-20th Century and boomed during World War Two when an Army Air Corps training base was built. The Enola Gay and the rest of the 509th Composite Group, which were responsible for dropping Fat Man and Little Boy on Japan, trained there. After the war, the old Air Corps base was largely left to rot and Las Vegas-style casinos came in, luring both the respectable and seamier residents of the City of Saints into their gambling pits.      These three Jimmy Ford stories—“121,” “No Chips, No Bonus,” and “Junkyard”—were all published in 2019. I think they work well as modern updates on the hardboiled detective genre, something like the old pulp Manhunt would publish if it was still around. Jimmy Ford as a character isn’t exactly likable—he is too violent, a bit smug, too easily manipulated by his unsavory boss, Jenkins—but he usually ends up doing the right thing even if it’s done the wrong way. These three stories are all of the Jimmy Ford’s misadventures, but who knows, Jimmy may rise from the page again. I should also tell you, the Wendover of my imagination and the real thing are different places. The Desert Diamond casino, where Jimmy is a security consultant, doesn’t exist, and as far as I know, no one like Jimmy Ford or his unscrupulous boss, Jenkins, exist, either.      The fourth and final story in the collection, “Asia Divine,” was written for a tribute anthology honoring the late-writer and all-around good guy, Bill Crider. It was published in 2021 with a table of contents filled with writers outside my weight class. There were stories by Joe R. Lansdale, William Kent Krueger, Charlaine Harris, Bill Pronzini, and Sara Paretsky. But—and I say this with all humility—I think “Asia Divine” held its own. “Asia Divine,” like the Jimmy Ford stories, is set in Utah’s West Desert but none of the action is as far west as Jimmy Ford’s Wendover.      Now, let’s get to the stories… *           *           * Oh, I should add. The New York Times bestselling author, James Reasoner, called “121” a “Manhunt story for the 21st Century.” A high accolade indeed!

Casinos, Motels, Gators is available here for pre-order as an ebook at Amazon. A paperback edition will drop either May 27 or 28 everywhere and the Kindle edition will be available on Kindle Unlimited with a subscription.

"Heretic: Stories" by Philip José Farmer

Introduction to Heretic: Stories by Philip José Farmer   The critic Leslie Fiedler called Philip José Farmer “the greatest science fiction writer ever” and Isaac Asimov proclaimed him as “a far more skillful writer than I am.” Farmer is widely considered to have broken the genres’ taboo with sexuality. His first significant publication, the novella “The Lovers” (Startling Stories, Aug. 1961), used sexuality—specifically a sexual relationship between a human male and an extraterrestrial—as a central theme, which would have been a volatile topic in mid-century America. According to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, “[‘The Lovers’] concerned xenobiology, parasitism and sex, an explosive mixture, certainly for the SF genre of that era.” Farmer’s fiction was consistently critical of religion, too, which is where the title of this collection, Heretic, is derived. As a boy Farmer attended religious training in the Church of Christ, Scientist (Christian Science), but by 14 he had become an agnostic and later in life he described himself as an atheist. Farmer’s criticisms of religion, particularly how it segregates people by creating false differences, can be seen in much of his fiction, including the stories in this collection. He is best known for his Riverworld series—which features such luminaries as Richard Francis Burton and Mark Twain in a world where every person who has ever lived is resurrected into a world dominated by river valleys—and his World of Tiers series about parallel universes and the origins of humanity. Farmer’s science fiction won three Hugo Awards—Best New SF Author or Artist, 1953; Best Novella, 1968, for “Riders of the Purple Wage”; and Best Novel, 1972, for To Your Scattered Bodies Go. He was awarded the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award from Science Fiction Writers of America and the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. Farmer’s birth name was Philip Josie Farmer. “Josie” was meant as an honor to his paternal grandmother, Josephine, but it he disliked it because of its feminine sound. As an adult Farmer legally changed his middle name to José, which he thought livened his rather bland and alliterative name: Philip Farmer. He was born in North Terre Haute, Indiana, on January 26, 1918, to George and Lucile Theodora Farmer (née Jackson). The Farmers moved frequently, at least six times, during the 1920s; living in Indiana, Missouri, and Illinois. In 1936, Farmer graduated from Peoria Central High School (Illinois) and enrolled at the University of Missouri, Columbia, where he studied journalism. He left school in 1937 to take a job with Illinois Power and Light—reportedly to help his father payoff a debt—and returned to school, Bradley Polytechnical Institute, in 1939 to study English literature. In 1941, he transferred back to the University of Missouri where his future wife, Elizabeth Virginia Andre, attended as a music student. He graduated with a B.A. in 1949 from Bradley in Peoria. Philip and Elizabeth were married on May 10, 1941. The couple had two children, a son and daughter. Farmer volunteered to become a pilot with the Army Air Corps in 1941, but he was discharged and took a job with the Keystone Steel & Wire Co. where he worked until becoming a fulltime writer in the early-1950s. During much of the 1950s and 1960s Farmer worked as a technical writer for defense contractors, including General Electric, Motorola, and McDonnell-Douglas. He became a fulltime fiction writer in 1969. Philip José Farmer died on February 25, 2009, in Peoria, Illinois. The three stories included in Heretic—a novelette and two shorts—are excellent examples of Farmer’s best work: thoughtful, critical of authority and religion, and downright fun to read. “The Celestial Blueprint” (Fantastic Journey, July 1954) is an entertaining and ironic journey into religious zealotry, distrust, and revenge. The central theme of “How Deep the Grooves” (Amazing Stories, February 1963) is free will and absolute predestination; a thinking person’s dilemma written as highspeed entertainment. The final story is the novelette, “Tongues of the Moon” (Amazing Stories, September 1961), which is a space opera-like adventure—hasty pacing, space blasters, and explosions—with a serious look at nationalism and religion. The cover was designed by www.karadraws.com   Click here to purchase the Kindle edition and here to purchase the trade paperback.

Philip José Farmer’s Heretic: Stories is the first volume in Vintage Lists’ 3 PLAY series, which is a line of high-quality books featuring three stories—every so often a bonus tale appears to keep things interesting—from authors both old and new. Each entry features stories from a single author with an emphasis on story quality. The books are short, anywhere between 95 and 120 pages and each is designed for readers with a discerning eye and a love of genre fiction—crime, mystery, horror, and science fiction—at its very best. Plus, and this is a big thing, the books are designed for easy reading—paperbacks have an easy-to-read font size—and affordability in both paperback and electronic editions.