Speculative Sounds Pt. 2: Composer Elinor Armer on Collaborating with Ursula K. Le Guin

By RL Thornton. Introduction: After discussing Ursula K. Le Guin’s other collaborations with musicians (see the first part of this article), I contacted composer Elinor Armer to discuss her collaborations with Le Guin on their work Uses of Music in Uttermost Parts on Koch Classical and Armer’s settings of Le Guin’s poems in From To The Western Sea – Remembering Ursula K. Le Guin on Centaur.

Here are my questions:

1. How did you and Ursula K. Le Guin first meet and when did you decide to work together on compositions?

2. How did both of you come up with a compositional style for Uses For Music In Uttermost Parts? It feels very modernist to me.

3. Once you started to work together, what sorts of ideas did you come up with? Did you discard any concepts before settling on Uttermost Parts?

4. What was it like spending nine years to finish the composition? When did it become evident that it would take that much time?

ELINOR ARMER: During the early 80’s Ursula Le Guin’s daughter Elisabeth was a student in the first counterpoint class I taught at the San Francisco Conservatory. Elisabeth and  I remained friends after her graduation, and it was in the mid-80’s that I met Ursula at Elisabeth’s wedding. Ursula had grown up next door to my grandparents’ house in Berkeley, my grandmother and her mother had been friends, so we had reason to know OF each other but didn’t actually meet until Elisabeth’s wedding.

Ursula and I had never sought each other out, as strangers, asking about collaboration; however, when we met I asked her (naively) if she wrote poetry and had any that might be set to music. She subsequently sent me a few volumes and also loose-leaf, individual poems. From these sources I selected five which seemed to me to form a cycle and then began setting them the following summer while at the MacDowell Colony. The title, “Lockerbones/Airbones”, referred to one of the five poems containing these Ursula-contrived words. The set was performed in San Francisco the following year and subsequently published by my first publisher, J. B. Elkus & Son. Some years later we recorded another performance and Ursula put it on her website where it remains to this day. (All pertinent details regarding performers, sources, etc., may be found there.) 

So you see, it was friendship first, then my setting of already written poems—not a collaboration in the true sense at first. That friendship flourished and gave us great fun and pleasure; when we did decide to collaborate on something together from the ground up, I learned the true meaning of art as play, deep play. (We laughed uproariously at times, when Beethoven would have scowled.) On one of my visits to her California vacation home we agreed that it would be fun to collaborate on something from scratch. We came up with the preposterous notion of music being used for other purposes. We did not, however, conceive of the whole series or what it would become or what it would be called, nor did we work non-stop for ten years on this theme. Rather, when I received, sporadically, future commissions or requests from various performing forces I would consult with her to see if she thought we might collaborate in these instances. The musical forces involved on each occasion suggested the appropriate simile; for example, when I told her I had received a grant to compose something for the San Francisco Girls Chorus, she then created the text for Anithaca, designed for girls’ voices, a capella.

Ursula did not come up with “compositional styles”, nor I with textual ones. Fundamentally, I do not have a single compositional “style” that can be defined as such. Rather, I looked for characteristics in each of Ursula’s texts that could also translate to musical qualities. For example, both food and music can be crunchy, sweet, bitter, rich, liquid, thick, thin, spicy, etc; both music and weaving have threads, patterns, texture, direction (warp and weft), etc., etc.

So you see, while it was ten years or so before we recorded “Uses of Music in Uttermost Parts”, we did not start out with this as a goal. Rather, most of the pieces came about when opportunities arose as described above. It was not until after Ursula and I had co-narrated “The Great Instument of the Geggerets” with the Women’s Philharmonic under JoAnn Falletta’s baton, that we decided to form a series under one title.

World Builders: Women Shaping SF and Fantasy: Guest Post by Sondi Warner

Sondi Warner is an author with a flair for the paranormal. Her debut novel, Lead Me Astray, was selected as an Amazon Editor’s Pick Best Romance in March 2022 and published by W by Wattpad Books. Sondi is also an avid astrologer, gardener, and painter, who draws inspiration from the natural world and the cosmos. She shares her home in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, with her soulmate, their four amazing kids, and their mischievous pets, Se7en and Jack. Sondi’s new sci-fi title, Eidola Mater: Mother of Gods, is posting exclusively to Wattpad in April 2024 — check it out here.

By Sondi Warner: Great science fiction and fantasy transcend mere entertainment, sparking a profound awareness of the boundless potential of human creativity. These genres transport readers to worlds where reality is reimagined and perceptions are challenged—like the perception that women are not among the primary architects of sci-fi/fantasy.

In the vast cosmos of creativity, a fascinating phenomenon persists—the notion that women are somehow “bad” at crafting serious science fiction and fantasy.

Pat Murphy, American science writer and author, famously explained the thinking behind this misconception that women destroy sci-fi: “A persistent rumbling that I have heard echoing through science fiction … says, in essence, that women don’t write science fiction. Put a little more rudely, this rumbling says: ‘Those damn women are ruining science fiction.’ They are doing it by writing […] ‘soft’ science fiction and fantasy.”

Hard science fiction, with its laser focus on scientific accuracy and intricate technical details, has long been associated with male writers. The genre’s rules were etched into the fabric of the universe generations ago, relegating female authors to the lesser realm of “soft” science fiction, which is character-driven and speculative.

Meanwhile, fantasy carries its own conventions and historical biases. Male authors have perpetuated the “chosen one” or heroic quest trope. Women who dare to deviate from these established norms are sometimes considered less authentic within the genre.

The assertion that women can do anything men can do may forever spark celestial debates. Perhaps all sides can agree that when it comes to writing science fiction and fantasy, differences exist.

As the trailblazing author Ursula K. Le Guin once astutely pointed out, “Women are writing many of the things male […] writers thought could never be written.” These differences are not diminishments; they are diversifications—the cosmic engine spinning out new constellations.

In other words, what women are writing is different; but different is good. And rather than destroying science fiction and fantasy, we have made noteworthy contributions to the genres.

From inception, women have shaped science fiction and fantasy. Mary Shelley, the visionary behind Frankenstein, has become a cultural icon. Gertrude Barrows Bennet, writing under the pseudonym Francis Stevens, is considered the inventor of “dark fantasy” and is claimed to have had an observable impact on her contemporary, H.P. Lovecraft. Notably, Leigh Brackett blazed trails by being the first woman short-listed for a Hugo Award, and her work on the screenplay “The Empire Strikes Back” popularized the concept of a space opera.

In the present day, three-time Hugo Award-winning author N.K. Jemisin—acclaimed for her masterful The Broken Earth trilogy—persists in revolutionizing science fiction and fantasy. Jemisin deftly merges themes of survival, power dynamics, and a world on the precipice of catastrophe. Her novel The Fifth Season, with its intricate world-building and compelling characters, has earned widespread critical acclaim and numerous awards. She is well-known for featuring bisexual and transgender characters, too.

Jemisin and the other luminaries above remind us that the imagination knows no bounds, and women’s voices resonate across the galaxies of science fiction and fantasy. Women have always helped build these worlds. Women continue to challenge gatekeepers to make these worlds more inclusive.

As a science fiction and fantasy writer myself, I use these powerful tools of literature for social change. In my books, I delve into LGBTQ+ themes and characters that reflect the complexity of the human race. I write stories rife with imaginary elements—magic and supernatural creatures—set within science fiction and fantasy worlds. But beyond the surface, I write stories that envision a society where acceptance of differences is the norm.

Women are different from men and, regardless, essential in science fiction and fantasy. Women illuminate the fields with their brilliance, maintaining an enduring influence. Our stories reveal not only our perspectives but also the aspirations and wonders of millions of fans who admire and rejoice in our works. As the saying goes, the future is female, and so is the past and present of science fiction and fantasy.

ABOUT LEAD ME ASTRAY

Lead Me Astray follows Aurie Edison, a ghost who teams up with a psychic empath and a werewolf detective to solve her own murder. Along the way, she discovers a passionate and complex relationship with her two partners, as well as secrets of her past. Lead Me Astray is a diverse and inclusive story that blends fantasy, mystery, and romance in a thrilling and captivating way.

SONDI WARNER ON SOCIAL MEDIA

Murderbot and Me: A Guest Post by Robin Anne Reid

Merian C. Cooper: A King And A God In The World He Knew

Merian Cooper as a director.

By Steve Vertlieb: On April 21, 1973, a hero by the name of Merian C. Cooper laid down the gauntlet of fame and passed quietly into memory. He’d grown ill from the rigors of age and experience, losing his grasp of earthly endeavors after a brief hospitalization. Like so many who had passed before him, his name and contributions would become a line or a paragraph in recorded history, meaning no more than most men do or have done…and yet, this proper Southern gentleman would not have passed quietly, nor would his legend be blinded by death…for his was a singular journey, and his memory would continue to inspire excitement and imagination among those searching for adventure and significance along life’s often empty corridor. He was a king and a god in the world he knew and, like the giant ape that he created, Merian C. Cooper lived in both the civilized and primordial jungles of mortal endeavor.

I first became acquainted with the Cooper name somewhere around 1956 when I was a mere lad of ten.  My mother had told me stories for years about a movie she had seen as a young woman concerning a fantastic tale of beauty and a fabled beast, a huge mythological, predatory ape alive in a lost, primordial jungle who follows the scent of a young American woman back to the “civilized” shores of New York City.  There, amidst the spiraling skyscrapers of a volatile human jungle, the beast falls to his death from atop the newly constructed, tallest steel mountain in the world, the Empire State Building.  Yet, the shattered titan laying crushed upon the streets of the young city would not be stilled.  Like the martyred prophet finding rest at last on a Roman cross two thousand years earlier, the fallen Kong would rise again in resurrection and mythology far beyond his mortal years. Its legend would hover uneasily within the vague cracks and crevasses of my mind for most of my life and consciousness.

I was haunted by nightmares about Kong for many years. In my dreams I fancied that this huge, primordial ape had come for me and was marauding the night streets of the city in search of human prey. I could hear the distant pounding of his colossal footsteps in the darkness. I could see the cataclysmic shadow of his gargantuan features peering angrily through my window, roaring in immortal defiance of my sheltered sleep. I’d struggle to open my eyes and regain consciousness, for I knew that if I succumbed to the reality of slumber’s horrifying phantoms that I’d be lost. Locked in deep repose, my eye lids fluttered open and I sat up in bed, sweating profusely and gasping for breath. I had managed to escape the demons of my own youthful imagination once more. Yet, I knew that somewhere beneath my own consciousness he was waiting and that I dared not return to sleep.

Merian Cooper dreams of King Kong.

When my local CBS television affiliate in Philadelphia announced in the mid-Fifties that they were going to air the local premiere of Cooper’s masterpiece King Kong, I was thrilled. After years of dreams and fanciful imaginings, I was at last going to see the actual film. My mother’s tales of this magical motion picture had conjured countless nights of mythical, nocturnal wanderings in which the horrific beast would trample surrounding buildings, coming ever nearer to where I lay asleep in my room. I’d first sense, and then actually hear the prehistoric pounding of his premeditated footsteps approaching as I slept, paralyzed with fear. As the visage of this terrible beast peering through my bedroom window, huge eyes gaping in bewildered rage, awakened me in a cold sweat, the utter immensity of this astonishing stranger in a strange land invoked an uncontrollable eruption of frightened screams in the night.

I’d waited anxiously for the day in which “Kong” would finally reveal himself on my tiny television screen. In my arrogance and expectation, I’d forgotten that I was still but a small boy, subject to the stringent rules and regulations of the house in which I lived.  I’d assumed that seeing the film was a right, rather than a privilege and so, in my self-righteous determination to watch the film on my parents’ television set, I callously disregarded the sometimes thin line separating entitlement from boorishness. I was therefore punished, and forbidden from watching the premiere telecast of “Kong” at home.  I still had time, however, before the movie would begin.  I ran to a neighbor’s house and asked if I might watch “Kong” there.  My friend’s mother was moderately compassionate, allowing me to sit in front of their television set to watch the film.  My heart was beating wildly as the strange beeping atop the RKO tower filled both the tiny screen and my ears.  The overture commenced, and I was transported to a far away land into which the mortal walls of civilization and confinement evaporated, as though time itself had melted into primordial remembrance.

The film began as Carl Denham searched New York for a frail, vulnerable woman to accompany his motion picture crew to Skull Island. Fog lit seas concealed the enormity of the cavernous island, while ominous drumming sounds pierced the mist.  Expectation gave way to wide eyed wonderment as Ann Darrow was carried away from her safe confines aboard “The Venture” by ferocious natives, tied to a sacrificial altar in the black jungle, illuminated by the fires of burning torches, breathlessly awaiting an unimaginable fate. Huge trees came crashing to their roots as the jungle erupted with violence. Something was coming for her. As Ann looked higher, still higher toward the jungle skyline, her eyes beheld the greatest sight she’d ever beheld. There, gaping down at her from the far horizon, was an enormous beast, a ferocious predator, with lust in its eyes.  Ann’s screams echoed my own as they pierced the terrible night skies.

It was at that moment that my friend’s mother entered the room, announcing sweetly that their dinner time had arrived, and that the time constraints of my kind invitation had expired.  In utter disbelief and frustration, I ran from the house screaming yet again.  In desperation I tried frantically to think of someone…anyone…who might permit me to continue watching the film.  I remembered my sainted Aunt Jesse who lived perhaps six blocks away.  I ran until I thought my heart might burst.  When I reached my aunt’s house I began pounding on her door. Thinking something was wrong, she opened the door with a worried look, wondering what on Earth must have happened. I quickly explained that my own mother has punished me, forbidding me from savoring the most deliciously awaited moment of my entire life. Graciously, my Aunt took pity on this pathetic, tortured little boy, and turned on Channel Ten. There, before my tender young eyes, the drama played itself out…the capture of Kong by civilized “soldiers,” his unseen voyage back to America, the poetic crucifixion on a New York stage, and the fabled finale in which the crippled denizen of a lost, primordial jungle is ravaged by airplane bullets, his torn limbs and carcass crashing violently to the streets of Manhattan. 

Frustrated, yet determined, I had gotten my first taste of the legendary motion picture. It was not to be my last. Mere days later, I went to the traditional Saturday Matinee for children at the local Benner Theater on Castor Avenue in Philadelphia. The short subjects, cartoons, and serials had ended and now, before the unspooling of the scheduled feature of the week, the trailers began for subsequent features. “Coming Next Week” announced the on screen banner. As light filled the darkened theater screen, a giant primordial gate began to open slowly, painfully, against the crushing weight of terrified natives trying vainly to hold it back. There, between rotting splinters within wooden gates of this ancient, collapsing structure, was KONG, the mythic, nocturnal face of my terrified dreams and imaginings. I gasped in excitation. God in his kindness had taken pity on me.  I was to be given a second chance to see King Kong as it was meant to be seen…on the giant theatrical screen that, alone, could mirror its image and stature. I had never beheld anything so amazing. I sat quietly in the noise filled theater as other children of my age ran up and down the aisles.  I was enraptured with awe and with wonder. It was an experience that would eternally haunt me, forever changing the course of my life.

In October 1965, Bantam Books published the novelization of the fabulous tale.  First printed in 1932 by Grosset and Dunlap, with authorship ascribed to Merian C. Cooper and Delos W. Lovelace, this slim new edition was heralded in banner lettering that excitedly proclaimed…”NEVER BEFORE IN PAPERBACK!  THE ALL-TIME KING OF THE MONSTERS…KING KONG.”  My sweat soaked fingers reached out longingly for the book, pulling it from the drug store rack, and holding it tenderly in my hands. I rushed home and read it from cover to cover. The inside teaser promised the greatest adventure of all time: “…King Kong, the giant killer ape whose savage heart was touched by the innocent beauty of a strange blonde girl…Who battled to save her from the ravenous jaws of man-eating dinosaurs…Who finally broke loose into the modern world and terrorized a whole city in search of his lost love. The one and only KING KONG.”  The back cover was equally lurid, and unashamedly enticing: “Taller than a five-story building, capable of crushing airplanes with his bare hands, ruler of a lost empire of prehistoric monsters.  The Bride Of Kong…blonde waif from the city streets who invaded Kong’s kingdom, with a group of motion picture adventurers, and became the prisoner of the beast’s strange passion. KING KONG…The world-famous story of beauty and the beast which has thrilled and amazed millions all over the world.”

Intoxicated by the thrill of owning a fragment of the fabled film, I decided to reach out to the publisher in an attempt to actually locate and contact the man who had created, written, and filmed this amazing motion picture. I sent a letter to Merian C. Cooper in care of Bantam Books in New York, hoping that they might forward my letter to him. I remember composing a rapturous letter of praise for both the film, and its makers in which I spoke lovingly of how deeply the film had impacted not only my dreams, but my life. I co-signed my little brother’s name to the letter in the hope that if it elicited a response, that he might be included in that recognition. To my utter astonishment, a letter arrived with a postmark dated November 27, 1965, from a post office box in Santa Monica, California. The return address read simply…Merian C. Cooper, Brigadier General, USAF, Ret.  The typewritten letter was signed by Merian C. Cooper, and began…”Dear Stephen and Erwin Vertlieb…Thank you for your fine letter of November 11.  It is a great pleasure for a man like me to receive such a fine letter from much younger people. Of course I have received many, many thousands of fan letters in my life, but yours is one of the finest. I feel entirely unworthy of such words of praise and therefore am honored that you should so write me.” Thus began an enduring, surprisingly intimate friendship between teacher and student that would last for the next eight years until his passing in 1973.

Cooper was a faithful and tireless correspondent.  No sooner would I mail off a letter to him than another one would arrive by return mail. Except for his first letter which was handsomely typewritten, all of his subsequent correspondence over the next eight years would be handwritten in what would quickly become his instantly recognizable style and signature. In the years that followed, our correspondence grew in singular intensity.  There were weeks in which five of the seven days of the calendar would bring letters or packages from this remarkable soul, and historical giant. General Cooper and I would grow very close over the next eight years and, although we were never destined to meet, our daily and weekly correspondence would grow in both frequency and deepening involvement. He was a war hero, an aviation pioneer, a Brigadier General in The United States Air Force, a motion picture studio head, a famed documentary film maker, producer, director, writer and New York Times journalist. Perhaps it was advancing age and changing times that led him to become so enamored of the adulation of a then nineteen-year-old film student but, whatever the underlying reasons, we became close friends through correspondence over the remaining eight years of his life.

Cooper in uniform.

I received one particularly fascinating letter from “Coop” while he was visiting Vienna, Austria in the Spring of 1969. In a letter dated April 26, 1969, he wrote “Have only been back in Vienna a short time. We spent the Winter about 30 miles up the Danube from here. On a Famous hilltop care-restaurant on the edge of the Vienna Woods, my wife (Dorothy Jordan) and I are writing a few brief notes.” He went on to answer a few historically related questions about the pre-production and shooting of King Kong.  He wrote “The great wall and gate in ‘King Kong’ was thus built: I was wandering one day on the 40 acre ‘back lot’ of RKO Pathe in Culver City, and saw the skeleton of a huge gate that Cecil B. DeMille had built in the mid 20’s for his silent version of ‘The King of Kings.’  I had it quickly remodeled with great doors etc. for Kong – Built the village in front of it, etc. and shot it there. Instead of Roman structures, I remodeled the King Kong structure out of it.  It worked well. Glad you liked ‘The Selznick Years’ and the battle scenes from ‘Four Feathers,’ and the sequence from ‘King Kong’.  David – a friend of mine – had nothing to do with either, except to back me up on ‘Kong’ when no one else believed in it. He had already left RKO and gone to MGM, and I had become production head of RKO in his place when Schoedsack and I directed the Empire State sequence of ‘King Kong.’ Nevertheless, unless Dave Selznick believed in me, ‘Kong’ could not have been made. He never saw the battle scenes in ‘Four Feathers’ until the picture was finished. Part of it Schoedsack and I produced and directed in Africa, and part about 20 miles from Palm Springs.  But Selznick had great talent and was my friend.”  

Meanwhile, back in Philadelphia, I was drafted into the U.S. Marine Corps in February, 1966, and spent some nine weeks on Paris Island, South Carolina.  While never a promising physical specimen by any stretch of the imagination, I tried to pass the grueling physical regimen of life in the Marines.  After a couple of months of frustrating efforts to succeed, I was eventually advised by a kindly drill inspector that, while he sincerely believed that I was trying to make it, that not everyone was physically cut out to be a Marine, and that he was going to recommend my discharge.  He reassured me that I would likely be re-assigned to the Army upon my discharge.  During that remarkable journey as a “Marine,” I received a letter from Coop.  In a note dated March 11, 1966, he wrote… “Dear Stephen Vertlieb:  Your brother has just written me you are a private in the Marines at Parris Island. This is just a line to wish you all the luck in the world and to say that I know you will make a great Marine. With every best wish, and God keep you…Cordially yours, Merian C. Cooper.” I suspected that my drill instructors were more than in awe, and a little shocked to hand this young private a letter from a Brigadier General in The United States Air Force. 

Our correspondence was lively and fascinating.  I was yearning to learn more about this fabulous individual, and the film he had created which had so pervasively invaded my dreams and fertile imagination. One of the more controversial aspects of Cooper’s masterpiece was the fabled spider crab sequence which no one had apparently ever seen. In the ensuing moments following the great gorilla’s encounter with the white invaders upon the giant log bridging the ravine, the terrified remnants of Carl Denham’s crew are hurled to their deaths in the cavernous pit below. In surviving prints of the legendary sequence, the men crash to the primordial ground beneath Kong’s jungle. Cooper originally filmed an extended sequence in which the hapless victims are then devoured and torn to shreds by carnivorous prehistoric spiders while their terrified screams fill the night. Forrest J Ackerman reported in early issues of Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine that there were rumored, unedited prints circulating in the Philippine Islands, and that various fans had claimed to have seen these rare sequences in theatrical prints of the film over the years.  I asked Cooper point blank if this was at all possible, and he vehemently denied their existence. He wrote that the inclusion of this sequence in any known prints of the picture was patently impossible, as he had personally cut the scene out of the negative before the final version had even been scored by composer Max Steiner. The film would not have been released to the public in a rough cut version, and so these fables, while undeniably intoxicating, could never have occurred. Many years later, when Warner Bros. Pictures was preparing their definitive box set release of the restored epic on DVD, I was asked by the studio to provide evidence of the deletion for their lengthy documentary on the production of the picture. I photocopied Merian Cooper’s original letter to me and circled the paragraph in which he denied any possibility of the sequence surviving his cut.  I then forwarded the statement and mailed the letter to the studio. That portion of his letter to me, along with the incriminating circle in my own hand, appears in the completed documentary. Hence, my name was included in the special “Thank You” credits concluding the impressive new feature film, documenting the production of “Kong.”

 When King Kong was originally released in early 1933, it included what would later become notorious sequences in which natives were literally torn apart by Kong, ground into the mud by his giant foot, and eaten alive on the mean streets of New York City.  However, the most provocative and notorious of these sequences involved an unconscious Fay Wray awakening in the ape’s huge paw as Kong tears fragments of her clothing away from her quivering body, and brings her undergarments to his nose, sniffing her scent in mounting curiosity.  Forrest J Ackerman dubbed this interlude the “rape” scene from King Kong.  Filmed one year before the Hays Office imposed its infamous decades of censorship upon Hollywood films, the violence and implied sexuality in these scenes, deleted in 1938 upon the film’s first official re-release, had grown in both legend and intensity.  When the missing scenes were discovered by a Pennsylvania collector named Wes Shank in the early seventies, they were sold to Janus Films, and restored to all subsequent versions of the picture. In my eagerness to query Cooper about these scenes, and his psychological intent in filming them, I described the most provocative of these as the “rape” scene. His response was immediate and indignant. In no way, he insisted, was that sequence ever designed to suggest assault or rape. It simply reflected the innocent curiosity of a primordial denizen of the jungle who had never before encountered or sniffed the female scent.  Kong became increasingly enamored of Ann Darrow and protective of her well-being, he insisted. Such violence would never have occurred to him. I had forgotten in my delirium that Cooper was an old-world Southern gentleman whose gallantry would never have permitted so violently sexual a thought. He was deeply offended by the suggestion of sexual motivation on the part of the ape, and it took some profoundly apologetic words of innocence and explanation on my own part in order to earn back his eventual forgiveness and understanding of my impetuosity.

Another such misunderstanding occurred toward the end of our relationship when I wrote a series of articles for the then fledgling New York cinema tabloid, The Monster Times in 1972.  While I always both respected and cherished the cinematic milestone that Cooper had created in the infancy of sound back in 1933, and was in awe of the film’s wondrous stop motion photography created by Willis O’Brien, I always encountered difficulty with a particularly brief sequence toward the end of the film.  Early stop motion possessed a lovely archaic jerkiness which only served to further endear its primitive photography and personality to successive audiences. The ultimate crudity of early animation truly became a signature component of the character of these marvelous creations. That was why I took notice of the singular moment in the film when Kong climbs up the Empire State Building in a long shot taken from a distance away. The gorilla movement seems much too smooth in his climb, and the scene contains none of the signature jerkiness shown in all other shots of Kong. There even seems to be the suggestion of a sagging suit, however briefly, that would apparently betray a process filmed in another fashion entirely for the remaining moments of the sequence. In discussions with several fans, historians, and even a local special effects technician, I became convinced that there might have been an actor donning a gorilla costume, if only for several seconds of film, during that fateful climb. I published that opinion in my series of articles for The Monster Times. Cooper was understandably protective of his creation, and grew offended once more by my unfortunate insinuation. He swore repeatedly that only Willis O’Brien’s revolutionary visual effects were represented in the finished film, and that no human actor had ever donned a gorilla suit. Once again, I apologized profusely to Cooper, explaining that I was simply attempting to analyze and explain a somewhat controversial sequence in an otherwise flawless cinematic masterpiece. In a letter from Coop dated March 20, 1972, he wrote a note of clarification.  “That scene of King Kong climbing The Empire State Building was a very simple ‘special effect’ shot.  Anyone reasonably acquainted with ‘special effect’ works can tell you how it was done. Why don’t you ask Ray Harryhausen? I’m almost sure Willis O’Brien and I told him when I hired him for his first real animation job of consequence – ‘Mighty Joe Young.’  Consequently, I did ask Ray Harryhausen how he felt the controversial sequence might have been filmed, and sent me a detailed sketch by return mail explaining, in his own hand, how he felt the scene might have been photographed.

Merian Cooper, Willis O’Brien, Fay Wray, and Ernest B. Schoedsack.

Additionally, when a subsequent installment of my series was altered, and its language dumbed down by the publisher to more easily appeal to young fans reading the issue, Cooper had difficulty understanding why I didn’t have more creative control over my own work.  When he was a reporter for the New York Times, he explained, the editor respected his “copy,” and never exerted unwelcome creative control over its contents.  I politely explained to Cooper that The Monster Times was not in the same league as the New York Times, and that I was not Merian C Cooper.

On March 30, 1972, I was surprised to find that Merian Cooper had sent me an urgent telegram. It read “Forgive my hasty, ill tempered letters.  You wrote about me most splendidly in your articles, for which I thank you. Seems to me petty detail if original New York showings was 100 minutes or not. Whole point is when cuts were made. When I go to Los Angeles will make check as, of course, I have full access to official records there of ‘King Kong’.  Best regards to Erwin and you – Merian C. Cooper.”

At about the time that my series of articles appeared in The Monster Times, I received a telephone call from two college professors who had read my work on “Kong,” and wanted to talk to me about incorporating my series into a new book that they were editing for Avon publishers in New York. Harry Geduld and Ron Gottesman, professors of film at Indiana University and Princeton University respectively, drove to my home in Philadelphia and took me out to lunch to pitch the assignment. I adapted my work from the original series of tabloid articles, and the completed essay became the lead chapter in The Girl In The Hairy Paw published in 1976 by Avon Books. The handsome edition, edited by Ron and Harry, became the very first volume ever devoted entirely to King Kong.

In a letter from Cooper dated March 27, 1972, he attempted to explain conflicting “cuts” of King Kong for separate preview audiences. He wrote that “The preview in San Bernadino in February, 1933, and the Hollywood premiere at Grauman’s Chinese March 24, 1933, had in the motion picture itself the long titles which I have sent under separate cover to you and Erwin. I cut these titles drastically for the March 2nd New York opening. Max Steiner scored separate opening title music for the long title opening and the short title opening. I planned it that way and personally edited both versions.” He went on to discuss the subsequently edited release versions of the film thusly. “The reasons for the cuts were voluntary by RKO, but not approved by me. If the original press book says 100 minutes – then the press book, as press books so often are, was wrong. The original New York opening was a little over 104 minutes. I have copies of my directions to the New York, and to the Hollywood openings – which I have looked up – giving exact running times each place. I think you write exceedingly well, Steve.  How can I expect you to know all of the immense detail of my picture ‘King Kong’?  I was wrong to let myself be disturbed over trivialities. I treasure the letters from you and Erwin – so no hard feelings from me.”

I received an additional letter from “Coop” written a day earlier in which he related some anecdotes about Fay Wray’s legendary screams in the finished picture. “She was down to see my wife and me last week, and we joked and laughed about the full day I had her work in the recording room – screaming!!!  Of course, I am sure you realize I had her do a number of variants for ‘King Kong.’  But when those screams were used in other pictures – often quite inartistically – I, for sure, didn’t like it. I had her scream up and down all the way along the scales – and I think I used them correctly. I liked them; Obie liked them; “Maxie” Steiner liked them – Monty Schoedsack didn’t. But I was the Boss – so I used them as planned by me from the outset. You no doubt got the cost of ‘King Kong’ from me…about $650,000.00. I have the detailed budget now before me. The total direct charges were $513,242.02, but I picked up a big portion of that ‘overhead’ which Dave Selznick had left behind him and charged $163,337.18 to ‘King Kong’ (though its actual overhead was only roughly $40,000.00.) Those were busy days. Simultaneous with ‘King Kong,’ I produced the first Astaire-Rogers picture, ‘Flying Down to Rio’; ‘Little Women’ with Katherine Hepburn; was her first Academy Award picture with ‘Morning Glory’ (part of which I directed myself) and a lot of others too.  And, I might add, took RKO – in my administration – from an $18,000,000 loss to a $5,000,000 profit – all in the midst of The Great Depression. Indeed, if I tell the unvarnished truth, I am the only man in all of RKO’s history who ever made the company profitable. All this is confidential to you as I am using it in my own book.” (Sadly, his own accounts of these transactions were never finalized or published.)

A week or so earlier in a letter dated March 22, 1972, Coop addressed the somewhat “sticky” issue of authorship of King Kong, so often ascribed to novelist Edgar Wallace.  He wrote “Just found my copy of Edgar Wallace’s ‘My Hollywood Diary.’ He arrived in Hollywood December 2, 1931, and the last day of his diary is on Sunday 7th February, 1932. He died a day or two later, as I recall it. On Wednesday, 6th January, 1932 he wrote in his diary on Page 170 as follows: ‘The next month or two are very important for me.  If this film gets over that Cooper is doing it’s going to make a big difference to me, for although I am not responsible for the success of the picture, and really can’t be, since the ideas were mainly Cooper’s, I shall get all the credit for authorship and invention which rightly belongs to him.’  This is the fact, not a publicity man’s dream!!! Always question advertising and publicity!!! Check your sources, so Winston Churchill once wrote. How right he was.”  In his letter of April 7, 1972, Coop admitted that “Kong” was not his favorite picture. “I’ve always considered ‘Chang’ my best picture,” he wrote, “though ‘Grass’ – my very first picture – is historically the best known of all my 4 pictures as either writer, director, or producer.  On ‘Grass,’ and ‘Chang’ I was all three – also some other pictures.”

 On January 18,1972 Coop wrote me of his relationship with composer Max Steiner. He writes “Did you know that I flew up to Los Angeles for Max Steiner’s funeral to give the final eulogy at Mrs. Steiner’s request? Did you know that ‘Maxie’ always gave me credit for first getting him to write ‘dramatic screen music’?  Of course, I didn’t write a note of it, but the concept was mine. Until ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ where my ideas were tried out a little, until I worked out with Maxie a full idea for his great dramatic screen score for ‘King Kong,’ nobody – but nobody – had conceived the idea.  At least Maxie said so.  He sent me magnificently framed original 1st sheets of 5 of the great scores he did for me in remembrance of our work together to ‘free the screen’ from the old fashioned techniques of the stage. I treasure it. It hangs on the wall of my den. He was a true creative genius, and one of my oldest and best friends. I admired and loved him. God rest his great soul.”

Cooper had always promised that if I ever ventured West, that he would be happy to introduce me to Fay Wray who he had enticed into starring for him in King Kong by promising that her co-star would be “the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood.” I accepted his gracious invitation and hoped that upon some future trip to Los Angeles I might meet my beloved correspondent, as well.

I hadn’t heard from Cooper in several weeks, and began to wonder if he’d grown ill. To my utter disbelief and sadness, I learned that he had been admitted to the hospital and that he was gravely ill. I felt that I had somehow hurt him by believing that even a single frame of “Kong” had been filmed with a man in a gorilla suit, rather than by stop motion animation. Indeed, a Chicago newspaper had run an absurd story about some elderly gentleman claiming to have “played King Kong” in the original movie, relating his wholly fabricated story of how it felt to stand perched atop the model of The Empire State Building battling toy airplanes. I wrote an angry letter to the reporter who had filed the story, accusing his subject of being either a lunatic or a baldfaced liar. The reporter wrote me back an indignant letter, insulted by my insinuations, standing by his “sources,” and never printing a retraction.

Deeply concerned for Cooper’s health, I wrote an apology along with a get well card and sent it to him in the hospital. I soon learned that what I most feared had finally happened. This wonderful pioneering soul and visionary film maker had passed away. I was heart broken, and worried that he had slipped away without ever having seen my note of apology. I spoke with his widow, actress Dorothy Jordan, afterward and learned from her that he had indeed received my card prior to his passing, and that he had smiled when he read it. In a case of poetic irony that could only have occurred in Hollywood, both Cooper and his on screen persona, Carl Denham, passed away within hours of one another. Actor Robert Armstrong, who will forever be identified as “the man who captured the monster,” died on April 20, 1973, while his real life counterpart passed away on April 21, 1973.  Both Carl Denham and Merian C. Cooper returned home together, walking hand in hand, immersed in primordial mist beyond the legendary wall, on Skull Island.

When I finally made the trip to Los Angeles for the first time during the Summer of 1974 I had an opportunity to visit Fay Wray. I had secured her home address from Ron Gottesman and wrote her in advance of my trip. I told her who I was, and that I had known Merian C. Cooper somewhat intimately through eight years of intense and passionate correspondence, and that he had advised me that if I ever came West that he would introduce us. She wrote back a series of letters, and kindly asked me to telephone her when I arrived in town. I picked up the phone and telephoned her as soon as I got into town. She was, of course, retired and living in Century City, the wife of a prominent physician. I recognized her voice as soon as she answered the phone. I was actually speaking with Ann Darrow, the Girl In The Hairy Paw.  She invited my brother Erwin and I to come over to her high rise, and spend the afternoon with her. We arrived at the appointed time, and waited patiently for her in the lobby. The desk attendant said that we were expected, but that she had stepped out and hadn’t returned as yet. At last I saw her come through the door. She took my breath away. Even at age seventy, she was still a vision of loveliness, a wonderful remnant of classic, original Hollywood. She apologized for her late arrival, stating that he she had just come from the funeral of one of her dearest friends. I felt badly for her, and suggested that we might try and come back another time.  With amazing grace and dignity, I felt, she waved her hand into the air and said “No, life must go on.”

We spent two hours or more with Fay in her apartment talking about old Hollywood, and the making of both King Kong, and The Most Dangerous Game, its sister production.  She spoke lovingly of her friendships with Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schodesack, and Robert Armstrong whose character of Carl Denham, she remembered, was based solidly upon Cooper himself.  She said that she had remained in touch with each of them over the years and regarded them as close friends. When I asked her about her relationship with co-star Bruce Cabot, however, she grew silent and then said that she’d prefer not to talk about him. Cabot had won a reputation over his years in the film community as both a womanizer and something of a scoundrel. Apparently, these stories were silently verified by her reluctance to discuss him. She asked if I would mind going into her kitchen and pouring some cokes for each of us. I found the Coca Cola cans stocked in her refrigerator but, as I opened the first soft drink, it exploded in my hands and spilled over her sink counter.  I felt terribly about the accident, but she laughed graciously and excused my “accident.” She guarded her privacy at this point in her life, and wanted her fans and admirers to remember her as she was on the silver screen. Consequently, she politely turned down my request for photographs, but was kind enough to autograph many of the still photographs that I’d brought along with me for her to sign. We remained in touch for a time, but after she moved to New York I lost track of her. Her daughter, Victoria Riskin, went on to play her mother’s creation, Ann Darrow, in the briefly televised Volkswagen commercial in which a fully animated King Kong climbs to the top of The Empire State Building, then descends and makes his escape in a gigantic Volkswagen car. The very clever ad campaign was soon scrapped, as the executives at Volkswagen thought that the image of a gargantuan automobile betrayed their brand identification as a dependable small car.

Thanks to the generous intercession and kindness of “Coop,” I was able to begin a friendship through correspondence with Ray Harryhausen in February of 1966. The supreme animation genius had been a lifelong hero, and I was thrilled to commence a relationship that lasted from that day until his passing on May 7, 2013. However, because of his frenetic filmmaking schedule in Europe and in Spain, as well as his living now in England, our friendship had grown only through correspondence, as it had with “Coop.”  In 1981, as Ray was preparing to tour the United States while promoting what would be his last film, Clash Of The Titans, I learned that he would be making a personal appearance at Temple University in my hometown of Philadelphia. Needless to say, I was more than mildly excited by the prospect of finally meeting this brilliant motion picture technician whose career, along with Cooper’s, had so profoundly impacted my life. I drove to the University campus and walked into the lobby surrounding the auditorium where he would be making his presentation. Predictably, there were numerous fans and admirers gathered there in anticipation of meeting the great Ray Harryhausen. Not wanting to become lost in the proverbial shuffle and crowd, however, I resolved to locate the “green room” where guests of the University might be sequestered while awaiting their appearance. Happily, I found a door leading to a dressing area where a guest might be hidden away from his audience. Unhappily for me, the door was being guarded quite anxiously by an armed Temple University police guard who was obviously not in the mood for any funny business. As I approached the door I noticed that the officer was becoming increasingly agitated. He was perspiring profusely and, as I approached his appointed post, he instinctively placed his right hand upon his holstered weapon. I calmly explained that I wished to speak to Ray Harryhausen before the program began. He defiantly explained to me that I could just as easily wait with the other fans in the lobby adjoining the auditorium until Ray finally emerged.

Steve Vertlieb and Ray Harryhausen.

 After several somewhat tense moments in which I attempted to explain to Wyatt Earp that I was, indeed, a “friend” of Ray’s, and not merely a fan trying to connive my way into the room, the guard cautiously opened the door, allowing me to enter.  I tried to reason with him, explaining that if, indeed, I was lying and that Ray wouldn’t know who I was, that the guard had my explicit permission to kick my rump out into the crowded street.  As I entered the large room, I spied Ray and his lovely wife, Diana, seated at a small table having coffee.  Approaching them, I could quite literally feel the breath of my armed companion blowing hotly onto the back of my neck.  As I walked closer to the table, Ray arose from his chair.  I extended my hand in friendship and said “Ray, we have corresponded for many years.” He asked “What’s your name?” I answered “I’m Steve Vertlieb,” to which Ray’s mouth opened in amazement as he exclaimed quite loudly…”STEVE VERTLIEB?”  Turning to Diana, he yelled quite loudly “DIANA…IT’S STEVE VERTLIEB.” As this was transpiring, and as I was myself drowning in a self-manufactured sea of nervous perspiration, I felt the proximity between the guard and I grow ever wider. Ray clasped my hands warmly, and invited me to sit with them. This was to be only the first of many shared interludes with Ray Harryhausen over countless ensuing years, which included a special program in Baltimore at the Fanex Film Expo in 1990 in which I both hosted and shared the stage with Ray for a programmed event called “An Afternoon With Ray Harryhausen.”

Steve Vertlieb and Ray Harryhausen.

A year or so earlier, somewhere around 1980, I was able to make a trip to the home that Merian C. Cooper had shared with his wife Dorothy for many years until his death. The house was located in Coronado, California, and Erwin and I had been been invited by Dorothy to come and visit. She met us at the door, along with her son Colonel Richard Cooper. I was taken aback rather quickly as I noticed the striking resemblance between Dorothy and Fay Wray. Apparently, Cooper may have subconsciously cast his own wife in the key role of Ann Darrow in his film masterpiece. Their shared likeness was startling. Dorothy was very sweet and kind and showed us many of her husband’s mementos and artifacts. I held his original bound script for King Kong in my hands with his hand written notations. I was terribly excited and, frankly, stunned to turn around and see the famous caricature of Cooper directing “Kong” hanging quite prominently on the wall behind me. The drawing showed Cooper with megaphone in hand shouting “Make It Bigger…Make It Bigger,” and was a Christmas present given him by his cast and crew during December 1932. I found it difficult to hide my excitation over standing next to this fabled piece of art. Dorothy reminded us that she had appeared as an actress in films of the 1930s under the name of Dorothy Jordan, and that that she had actually come out of retirement, and returned to the screen as the woman whose family is massacred by “Scar” in her husband’s production of The Searchers, directed by John Ford in 1956.

Sharing an unforgettable afternoon with Dorothy (Jordan) Cooper, the widow of Merian C. Cooper, at their family home in Coronado, California, during September, 1980.

As we were preparing to leave Dorothy and Richard, after several hours of sheer magical conversation and memories, I grew emotional and said with tears filling my eyes that “I wish He was here.” Dorothy smiled, growing somewhat emotional herself, and replied simply…“He is. He is.” Dorothy would live another eight years. When I learned that that she had passed away in December, 1988, I telephoned the Cooper house and expressed my sadness to one of her daughters. When I explained who I was, Dorothy’s child became choked up and said “Oh, I remember you. Your letters meant to very much to my father.” That single farewell remembrance by the succeeding generation of Coopers brought a tear to my eyes, and a sense of final resolution to my heart. It had been a long, adventurous voyage upon often rough seas and alternately choppy waters with “Coop” aboard his beloved ‘Venture,” the embattled freighter that carried Carl Denham, Ann Darrow, and Jack Driscoll to Skull Island to meet their fate…and with them, my own.

 My association with Cooper and his larger-than-life creation has continued from my own childhood until now. In 1981, I was asked by legendary Philadelphia television children’s host Gene London to appear with him at The Philadelphia Art Museum for a one-hour lecture and presentation chronicling the making and production of King Kong before a live audience. Later, during the Winter months of 1993, I was invited to appear with Kong author and historian George Turner (The Making Of Kong Kong) on stage as a guest speaker at the venerable Gateway Theater in Chicago for the sixtieth anniversary celebration of the motion picture. George and I talked about the making of the film, and answered questions from an audience of some five hundred fans, prior to a 35mm screening of the historic motion picture, while Turner Entertainment sent over an “actor” in a gorilla suit to stroll about the theater lobby as King Kong. I couldn’t help wondering what “Coop” might have thought of the irony of that spectacle.

Together with American Cinematographer journalist, and co-author of “The Making of King Kong,” George Turner, at the official “King Kong” sixtieth anniversary celebration at The Gateway Theater in Chicago in 1993.

Merian C. Cooper remains a fascinating, legendary figure in the evolution and history of motion pictures. He was pioneer, and a founding influence in the development of the art of film. That this fabulous individual took such an interest in me and became my intimate correspondent and friend for the final years of his life is a source of perpetual astonishment on my part. He was larger than life and, in many ways, more colorful and gigantic than even the prehistoric ape that he created and so cherished. Eighty years have passed since Cooper’s King Kong first startled and thrilled theater goers around the world. As Carl Denham so triumphantly exclaimed to an audience of mere mortals, from the stage of the theater in which the immortal KONG was displayed to “gratify your curiosity,” the mythical creature was “A King And A God In The World He Knew.”  Much the same could be said of his creator.

 ++ Steve Vertlieb, March 2024

Kong at Yankee Stadium.

Speculative Sounds with Ursula K. Le Guin Part 1: Music And Poetry of the Kesh and Rigel 9

Le Guin in 1984, a year before Rigel 9’s release. (Harlan Ellison at left.) Pip R. Lagenta/CC BY 2.0

By RL Thornton:

Introduction: When we think about speculative fiction (i.e. science fiction and fantasy), we usually think about novels, movies, or TV. But there are authors and musicians who try to expand those visions into sound. Ursula K. Le Guin was one of those people. This week, we will look at two of Le Guin’s musical collaborations with Todd Barton (“Kesh”) and David Bedford (“Rigel 9”), and next week, we will discuss Le Guin’s collaborations with composer and music educator Elinor Armen.

“Kesh” and Always Coming Home: Originally, this collection was on a cassette that came with a deluxe first edition of Le Guin’s 1985 novel Always Coming Home. Le Guin teamed up with synthesist Todd Barton to create a soundtrack to her 1985 novel Always Coming Home.

But it was reissued by the label RVNG International to acclaim by periodicals Pitchfork, who deemed it a Best New Reissue that “highlights the rich, totally immersive art Ursula K. Le Guin sought to create” and UK’s Guardian, who called it “deeply weird and enjoyable” even though they mistakenly called it an “electronica” album”. The first edition of 1000 vinyl LPs sold out and it was reissued a second time in 2018.

Music And Poetry of the Kesh is definitely different. Much of it is grounded in woodland sounds and the majority of the tunes feature sparse solo and duo unaccompanied singing that occasionally plays against a drum beating out time. Those unaccompanied tracks seem immediate and recorded live but feel a little thin due to the lack of reverb. Most of them seem to be a little thin sonically, though Barton occasionally brings in his synths (“Heron Dance”) and uses multitracked voices for “Long Singing.” It is said that there are instruments designed for the album but I didn’t really hear anything new–there was one sound that resembled a didgeridoo in “A River Song,” possibly the long droning horn that I read about.

Previously, I rejected this album out of hand because it lacked sound production values, but this album didn’t make sense to me until I actually started listening to it and reading Always Coming Home at the same time. As Le Guin’s prose cast its spell over me as usual, the soundtrack actually made Le Guin’s novel come alive. The decision to make the tracks part of the local soundscape suddenly made sense. It felt like I was among the Kesh! I swear it was absolutely magic. Who knew that the choice to use a minimum amount of recording tech would work so well! I’m really impressed. If you are a fan of Le Guin and especially a fan of Always Coming Home, I would say this is a must buy.

“Rigel 9” and Bedford: Next, we have Le Guin creating a libretto for a literal “space opera” with composer David Bedford and the County of Avon Symphonic Wind Band. In this story, explorers from Earth land on Rigel 9, a planet that seems to be nothing but bizarre trees. When the party begins to explore the world, everything changes after one of them is kidnapped by intelligent life. Bedford’s songs are grounded in that jazzy 70s British prog rock sound reminiscent of bands like Gong, Soft Machine, Robert Wyatt, and Henry Cow. Occasionally, I hear a brass band playing but most of the time it’s buried in the mix.

When the songs end and the spoken part of the libretto begins, Bereford’s blaring synths lay down weird background songs that are, well, like the BBC Radiophonic Workshop’s soundtracks for Doctor Who. Mix in the Dalek-ish robotic vocals that instruct the ship’s explorers, and Rigel 9 feels a lot like a rogue Doctor Who episode. My guess is the Bedford was trying to sell his rather unusual concept by deliberately pandering to the Whovians. Unfortunately, adopting the Whovian soundworld dilutes the work’s originality. The best part of Bedford’s musical setting is his cunning choice of ethereal female vocals to serve as the voices of Rigel 9’s inhabitants–literally unearthly and beautiful.

So what about Le Guin’s libretto? Honestly, it’s really meh for her and possibly the least interesting work that she has ever done, but even the least Le Guin is better than most. The explorer’s conversations are pretty flat and the characterizations are also flat, but the plot twist is actually pretty neat. Since this is on Apple Music and probably Spotify, I would suggest listening to Rigel 9 on those services before buying. And Whovians might want to try it too.

Interview With Michael A. Burstein, Editor of Jewish Futures 

Last year, Michael A. Burstein edited a new collection of original Jewish science fiction stories called Jewish Futures. Michael worked with Ian Randal Strock, publisher of Fantastic Books, to produce the book as a Kickstarter project, and it raised more money than any of the previous Fantastic Books anthologies funded through Kickstarter. They hit their top stretch goal, which was to do a second anthology of stories, and this time around, Michael is looking for Jewish fantasy as well as science fiction, even though the current working title is Jewish Futures 2. They are open to submissions now and plan to publish the book in the fall.


File 770: Michael, to begin with, tell us a little bit about the first Jewish Futures. Where did the idea come from?

MAB: Well, as I say to anyone who asks, I was inspired by the two Wandering Stars books that Jack Dann edited in the 1970s and 1980s. Wandering Stars was published in 1974, and it was the first time, as far as I know, that someone had put together a collection of specifically Jewish science fiction and fantasy stories. The book included a mix of original and reprint stories, and some of them have stayed with me all my life. Since then, there have been other Jewish SF collections, but I’ve always wanted to do a book that would be a spiritual successor to the Wandering Stars books. Fortunately for me, Ian Randal Strock, the publisher of Fantastic Books, agreed, and we managed to launch it last year by doing it as a Kickstarter.

File 770: And now you’re committed to a second book?

MAB: Yeah, and we really weren’t expecting that to happen! We included it as a stretch goal if we managed to raise twice the money we needed just to do the first book, and we actually reached that goal. So as it is, everyone who backed the project at $5 or more will get the ebook of Jewish Futures 2 for free, as that was the promised stretch goal. But obviously, Ian and I are hoping that enough readers out there will want to buy the book in print and that other readers will be interested in the ebook too.

File 770: This is the first time you edited a book of short stories, yes? Did you find anything surprising about the experience?

Michael A. Burstein

MAB: Just for the record, a few years ago I guest edited an issue of Apex Magazine. But yeah, this is the first book of other writers’ short stories that I put together. One thing that surprised me were the questions I got when we posted submission guidelines. It hadn’t occurred to me to state explicitly that we were OK with multiple submissions but not with simultaneous submissions, so we had to add that. We also had people wondering if you had to be Jewish to have a story in the book, and the answer is not at all. In fact, the first book includes a story by writer Shane Tourtellotte, who is not Jewish at all but did his research. I told him his story read to me as if he had swallowed a Talmud. 

As for the current book, we’ve had people ask if they could resubmit stories that I had to turn down for the first book. I’ve added to the guidelines that they are welcome to, but of course I hope they’re aware that these stories still might not get in, even if last time we sent them an encouraging note. Because, sadly, I don’t have the ability to purchase every story that gets submitted. There will no doubt be stories I read that I really like, but in the end, I simply won’t have room for, whether it is because they are too close in theme or idea to another story or for some other reason.

File 770: What makes Jewish science fiction different from other science fiction?

MAB: I suppose the obvious answer is that it has to have some sort of Jewish content. I could say something like, if you remove the Jewish content then you don’t have the same story anymore, and in a way that’s true. 

File 770: Are there any inherent difficulties in making a genre story also a Jewish story?

MAB: There certainly can be! One issue writers need to address is how to craft a story that is accessible to both audiences: Jewish readers and science-fiction readers. I had some stories submitted that dove deeply into the minutiae of Jewish religious practice and how technology might affect that, and I love those kinds of stories. But they need to be accessible to the reader who knows nothing or very little about such practices. Leah Cypess handled this well in her story “Frummer House,” about a non-observant Jewish family whose house AI gets an update that assumes they are religiously observant and starts trying to force observance onto them. By presenting her story in that way, she is able to introduce the more obscure concepts to the general reader as the story moves along. It’s kind of like how the protagonist in Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber series starts with amnesia. The reader gets to learn about the world he lives in along with him.

I would suggest that someone who writes a story dependent on Jewish minutiae run it by a few non-Jewish beta readers. Find out what they don’t understand and edit the story accordingly. But I will admit that it can be a difficult thing to balance, presenting an introduction to Jewish concepts for the readers who need it but also avoiding boredom in a reader who is already familiar with the concepts you need for the story.

File 770: Finally, as long as you’re offering suggestions, is there any advice you would give to writers trying to sell a story to Jewish Futures 2? Is there any way to improve their chances?

MAB: Well, other than the obvious thing, which is that you should write a good story, one thing to think about is how to be original with your concept and theme. For example, when it comes to Jewish fantasy, many writers look to the legend of the golem as a place to start. Now, there are some excellent golem stories out there; I even bought one for Jewish Futures: “Baby Golem” by Barbara Krasnoff. But in general, you want to consider that many other writers might also think about writing about a golem, and I’m not likely to take more than one unless there is a compelling reason to do so.

What I really want is a story that makes me think as well as entertain. I’ll put it this way: the stories I ended up accepting for the first Jewish Futures were stories that essentially lingered in my mind after I read them. They wouldn’t let me go. They were stories that made me go back to them, to read them again and again.

Meeting Piltdown

By Lee Weinstein: When I was a child, my father gave me a set of the illustrated New World Family Encyclopedia, published in 1954. One illustration that burned itself into my brain was composed of photographs of three sculptured busts of “cavemen” peering out from under the entry for “Man” in volume 12. They were labeled “Neanderthal,” “Piltdown,” and “Cro-Magnon”. The Cro-Magnon Man, aside from the pre-hippie-era shoulder length hair, looked like he could have been someone who lived down the street. But the other two, the Neanderthal and Piltdown men, had brutish faces and sinister straight-on stares that drilled into me.

It was in the ninth grade that I discovered Piltdown Man had been a hoax. My teacher told us that a little old man had confessed on his deathbed to creating the hoax. There had never been a Piltdown race. I went home and dug out my old encyclopedia volume. A hoax? He had even been assigned a scientific name, Eoanthropus dawsonii, which placed him in a separate genus from genus Homo. But there he was, staring back at me from the page. The face of someone who never was. The idea intrigued me.

Years later, I discovered that there was no little old man or any deathbed confession. There have been a number of candidates for the perpetrator of the hoax, including Charles Dawson, Pierre Tielhard de Chardin, Arthur Keith, Martin A.C. Hinton, and even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, among others. But it is still a matter of debate. It was, nonetheless, a deliberate fraud. In 1953, very shortly before my encyclopedia had been published, Joseph Weiner, an Oxford anthropologist, had shocked the scientific world with the revelation that the Piltdown bones were artificially aged fragments of a modern human skull and an orangutan jaw. But the revelation was just a little too late to affect the encyclopedia entry. In popular culture, Piltdown Man already had a presence, from references in Edgar Rice Burroughs’s novels of the ‘teens and the Peter Piltdown comic strip of the 1930’s to the MacIntosh prototype “PDM” computer of more recent years.

He had entered my imagination as well. There was something about his non-existence that fascinated me. I decided that I wanted to meet him face to face. So I scanned the internet and plumbed the depths of the library stacks.

First, I took a closer look at the encyclopedia entry. Under the photographs was an attribution to the American Museum of Natural History in New York. That was a clue. I emailed the museum’s library and found out that the busts had been part of a major exhibit that was no longer there. The librarian had no idea of what became of them.

In the stacks of the Philadelphia library where I worked, I found a book called Men of the Old Stone Age (1915), by Dr. Henry Fairfield Osborn, which had more photographs of the busts in question, and others as well. The sculptor was identified as a Professor J.H. McGregor of Columbia University.

Further research revealed that in 1922, Dr. Osborn, then president of the museum, opened the exhibit, which was called “The Hall of the Age of Man”. The busts that had fascinated me had been specially made for the exhibit by Professor McGregor, who was a former student of Osborn’s and who became a Research Associate in the museum’s Department of Comparative Anatomy.

In scanning the internet, I also found another fascinating recent photograph that opened up further possibilities. It was of the familiar Neanderthal bust and posed with it was a Dr. Gary J. Sawyer, as well as a science fiction author I happened to know, Robert J. Sawyer, who had recently addressed the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society.

I sent Robert J. Sawyer an email and asked him about the photograph and how he had come across the sculptures. He replied quickly and told me that in researching his novel Hominids he had contacted Dr. Gary Sawyer (no relation to him) and Dr. Sawyer had invited him to come to the museum and get a behind-the-scenes tour. He suggested that I contact Dr. Sawyer and I could get a look behind the scenes in the museum as well.

I did so and Dr. Sawyer, a physical anthropologist, graciously invited me to let him know the next time my wife and I were in New York and he would show us around his department.

Sometime in 2001, Diane and I made the pilgrimage by rail from Philadelphia to New York. We were greeted by Dr. Sawyer, a slender, cheerful man in a white lab coat, who ushered us past the public exhibits and into his laboratory in the hidden recesses of the building.

He began by telling us that people who do such reconstructions should have artistic ability, a good knowledge of human anatomy and a background in anthropology. By way of modern examples, he showed us a replica of the “Lucy” reconstruction as well as some current projects being done in the museum.

He said he thought of himself as McGregor’s present day spiritual successor at the museum and bylined his papers G.J. Sawyer, in homage to J.H. McGregor. An anthropologist with a flair for the dramatic who clearly loves his work, he explained to us how he still employs McGregor’s techniques. An entire skull is extrapolated in clay from assorted fragments of bone. Next, layers of muscle, followed by the other soft tissues, are lovingly modeled over the skull, all to a carefully determined thickness. Ears, nose, and eyeballs are added. What had been a few pieces of a skull now has a human face.

In the office were the original busts of a Neanderthal, a Java man, a Cro-Magnon, and of course the Piltdown man that I had come to see. I saw now that the sinister and unnerving effect of the straight-on stares had been created by the pupils of the eyes being carven depressions.

Busts of a Neanderthal, Piltdown, and Cro-Magnon

We moved the life-sized plaster busts from his office and set them out on a long table, creating a veritable rogue’s gallery. The Neanderthal bust, we were told, was modeled on one of the earliest finds of skeletal remains in Chappelle-aux-Saints. He assured us that the Neanderthal bust is as accurate a rendition as any that have ever been done.

And then there was the Piltdown bust. Professor McGregor had no way of knowing that those bones he was given to work from had been deliberately doctored. Confronting Piltdown, and looking into his carved eyes with the hollowed-out pupils, I could almost hear him grunt.

I couldn’t resist taking a few photos, before thanking Dr. Sawyer and taking our leave. The one of Piltdown man, I framed and is still on display in my living room.

To most, he represents a fraud; an embarrassment. But to me, he represents imagination made concrete. He represents a reality where dragons still fly and unicorns graze.

When I looked, at last, at that face in bronze-painted plaster I knew that Dr. McGregor had done his best with the dubious bones he had been given. No, Piltdown Man never existed. But if he had, I know I can rest assured that this is what he would have looked like.

More Things Left Undone

[Introduction: There are three days left to go in Francis Hamit’s Kickstarter to fund publication of Starmen: A Novel. Donors of $1 or more get a copy of the ebook as a reward. The following post first appeared as one of his campaign updates and is reprinted with permission.]

By Francis Hamit: One of the privileges of writing fiction, even fact-based historical fiction is the right to make up improbable coincidences.  You can slide with perfect confidence into Alternative History because Real Life has outdone you at every turn.  Hence the phrase “you can’t make this stuff up”.

But you can try.  And here I have. One of the characters in Starmen is borrowed from my novel The Shenandoah Spy — Sir Percy Wyndham, the Irish “wild goose” mercenary recruited to lead the 1st New Jersey Cavalry during the early part of the American Civil War.  He developed a rivalry with 7th Virginia Cavalry leader Turner Ashby, derided him as a dirt farmer amateur only to have his entire unit trapped and captured soon thereafter by Ashby.

The same day Ashby was killed by friendly fire. Belle Boyd’s birthday as well.  While I know the exterior circumstances I have little idea of how those people felt, reacted, or what they said to each other.  One of the revelations of my Civil War Research is that the so-called Official Records were usually written months after the actual events by staff officers who were not there.  What shreds of truth there are can be used to support an otherwise bald lie.  Diaries as and letters are more reliable but even there some people lie.

And lie I also must to create creditable dialog about and between my characters.  To that end Sir Percy Wyndham must stay in character as a flawed, egotistical and suicidally brave soldier willing to die in battle.  With a strong moral center.  In real life, once he knew that he was surrounded, he jumped down off his horse and indulged himself in a rather childish tantrum.  Then he surrendered.  He might have been willing to fight Ashby to the death (although that was not how they did things in Europe) but his men came first.  They were able and willing to fight.   He would not let them be slaughtered.

Wyndham goes through a number of transformations is an alternative timeline that depends a great deal on my layman’s understanding of quantum physics.  In it he is critical to the ending I currently plan. At no time does he fall out of character or lose that strong moral center every professional soldier must have.

Robert Bloch: The Psychology of Horror  

By Steve Vertlieb: Across a sea of stars and time lies a horror too terrible to endure…an evil Hell-Bound Train riding to infinity upon tracks immersed in darkness, careening toward midnight, consumed by madness…a terrible Opener of The Way to flights of fancy and depravity lost in translation, yet rediscovered in endless pages of classic fantasy rendered by one of the greatest, most enduring writers of the genre, Robert Bloch.  One of the original circle of authors and students inspired by the eloquent lunacy of H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Bloch began his writing career in 1935 with a series of frightening short stories that soon assumed a poetic eloquence that rivaled Lovecraft in horrific intensity and originality.  The crumbling pages of Weird Tales entertained these imaginative stories of witchcraft, mayhem and tales that witnessed madness. With fables such as “The Hungry House,” “The Cheaters,” “Yours Truly Jack The Ripper,” “I Kiss Your Shadow,” “The Dark Demon,” “The Faceless God,” “Beetles,” and “The Shambler From The Stars,” Robert Bloch quickly and effectively established himself as a master of the macabre, setting a standard of writing unequalled by any writer before or since.

Born in Chicago on April 5, 1917 to Jewish parents, Robert Bloch became an avid reader of pulp magazines and, in his teenage years, began a life transforming correspondence with Lovecraft who became his mentor, encouraging the young fan to write and develop his own fantastic fiction.  At age seventeen he sold his first professional stories to Weird Tales and, with such lurid titles as “The Feast In The Abbey,” and “The Secret In The Tomb,” began to carefully establish his own fictional identity and style. In tribute to his young disciple, Lovecraft paid incomparable homage to the teenager by writing him into the text of his novel “The Haunter Of The Dark” as Robert Blake.  After Lovecraft’s untimely death in 1937, Bloch continued to write for Weird Tales, as well as the science fiction themed Amazing Stories Magazine, quickly becoming one of the most widely read and popular authors of the genre.

In his private persona, Bloch was a gentle soul with a huge heart who delighted in regaling audiences and friends with jokes and vaudevillian one liners.  A student of motion pictures and the arts, he entered a hidden chamber within his soul when setting about creating the terrifying stories that solidified his reputation and career.  A Mr. Hyde to the softer reflection of Henry Jekyll, the writer rarely shared his darker inspiration with his adored and adoring wife, Elly, who preferred to gloss over and forgive his celebrity, finding solace instead in his culture and humanity.  For millions of readers of traditional horror fiction, however, Robert Bloch was the master of the macabre, a superb story teller whose hauntingly fanciful tales became the standard by which others were judged.  His fertile imagination sired the stuff that unsettling dreams and nightmares are made of.

Admittedly an armchair psychologist, Bloch found the human psyche endlessly fascinating, infusing his characters with complex, disturbing behavioral patterns he could only imagine.  An enthusiastic student of bizarre human behavior, he carefully crafted each characterization with dangerously woven personality flaws that lifted mere single dimensional protagonists from the printed page to uncomfortable realization.  In his introduction to a paperback anthology, Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper, published by Belmont Books in January 1962, Bloch writes: ”My life as Jekyll has been commonplace in the extreme.  I have a home, a family, a regular occupation, friends; a normal schedule of hobbies and amusements.  Yet, Mr. Hyde is active, nonetheless.  It is a partnership which has proved both pleasant and profitable — and it would ingratitude indeed if I allowed Dr. Jekyll to take the credit without proper acknowledgement to his alter ego. But the inspiration comes from Mr. Hyde.  I fear, however, that Mr. Hyde must also share the blame for errors of taste and judgement.  In his haste to affect some particular ghastly revelation, he has ignored many literary niceties.  I can only submit that this is matter beyond my control.”

Bloch, along with the reader, has given away both his rational reasoning and will power, consciously sacrificing his higher instincts for the greater good of his imagination.  As an actor of gentle or docile spirit studiously packs away his better nature in order to mine the trenches of his hidden demons, and more accurately capture the ugliness he must portray, either on screen or in the theater, the writer’s imagination floods his more spiritual sanctuary in search of the characters and stories lurking just beyond the fragile threshold of sanity.  He must unleash Hyde at the expense of Jekyll, sleepwalking vicariously through the dungeons of depravity.

Sensitive to the duality of human nature, Bloch’s essay on “The Clown At Midnight” remains a classic of extraordinary perception.  He asks the reader to visualize a circus clown performing within the restricted confines of a three ring tent.  The surroundings are familiar, and the imagery comforting.  Children of all ages laugh at the frantic behavior of the jolly clown adorned in frilly, loose fitting costuming. The circus performer cavorts with blackened teeth, his face pale and unrecognizable beneath the theatrical makeup that deftly conceals his identity.  Now, as Bloch suggests, what would happen if you lifted that very same clown out of the familiar surroundings of a circus sideshow, and placed him alone on a deserted corner, standing solitary beneath a dimly lit street light?  There, motionless and grinning beneath a soul less mask, he assumes the persona of a demonic and terrifying escapee from either an asylum for the criminally insane, or from the bowels of Hell.  Sanity grasps tentatively at the bonds holding together reason as the veil that witnessed madness crumbles in horrifying confusion.

In his short story “The Hungry House,” (1951) a psychologically vulnerable couple move into an old mansion priced just a little too inexpensively.  They quietly congratulate themselves on their shrewd negotiating skills, little realizing that the realtor was a bit too anxious to let the property go at such an unrealistic cost. It isn’t long before they begin to suspect that they aren’t alone in the property, for this is a troubled house, a disturbed structure whose malevolence conspires to consume them.  It had never occurred to the couple that an alarming absence of mirrors within the dark walls of their new home might have been a forboding suggestion of danger to come.  Reflections caught out of the corners of their eyes suggest a shadowy presence hidden just beyond recognition.  Shaving mirrors shudder in vague, unholy perception, multiple and uninvited images shimmering in faded twilight.  The house had once been inhabited by a vain, beautiful belle of the ball whose self adoration had all but consumed her.  Mirrors adorned every corner of the house so that she could observe her own perfect loveliness.  The years had finally passed her by but, for the mad and lonely soul who danced solitary within its walls, time had stood mercifully still.  She danced into the very mirrors that had once caressed her, an old embittered hag whose frail skin had been torn to ribbons by the jagged daggers smashing about her.  They said that her spirit still lived, and danced within those mirrors, mirrors discovered in a locked attic upon investigation of the shadowy house.  For now, unleashed from her imprisonment, the tortured reflection of the haggard crone, withered and cruel, reached out from beyond the grave to invite others to join her…others who might come to worship her beauty, frozen in Hell.

“The Cheaters” (1947) portrayed the terrible consequences of greed and distrust as the bewitched spectacles of an infamous sorcerer are discovered hidden in the secret drawer of some antique furniture.  The ancient eye glasses reveal the naked truth and soul of anyone encountered by the wearer, exposing in unimagined honesty, the inner thoughts and heart of their focus.  Little is left to the imagination as, one by one, its victims wear the accursed “cheaters,” falling victim to dirty truths that might better have been left unspoken.  As secrets unravel in unwitting candor, betrayal and revenge all but destroy the inquisitive inheritors of the deadly spectacles until, at last, the ugliness of one’s own soul drives the final owner to madness and suicide. As in Hitchcock’s cinematic morality play Rear Window (1954), there is little reward for even the most selfless peeping tom.  Bloch’s characters draw noble, self serving parameters for themselves in which the hypocrisy of their mental eavesdropping achieves intellectual justification and moral outrage but, in the end, the lines between veracity and deception become as blurred as the distorted lens of the “cheaters.”

Most, if not all, of Bloch’s stories involve damaged people.  They are misfits living beneath societal radar, outcasts from the mainstream living lives of quiet desperation.  Some are overweight and slovenly, while others are isolated and lonely.  They are abandoned by their world, left to find solace in unsavory redemption.  There is little tolerance for the unattractive or unintelligent in a world of uniformity, and so these discarded souls must reach out in directions normally shunned by polite society.  Abnormality attracts its own, and so humanity’s refuse finds value in the darker corridors of exploration.  Bloch’s protagonists have degenerated to the deepest refuge of the inhuman psyche, finding comfort and delusional grandeur in satanic ritual and supernatural depravity.  Their decadence offers respite from the outer storm of derision, and seeming unity in leprous colonization.  Often, their rebellious rage threatens the very balance of sanity and reason, as miscreants and misfits discover validation in psychological deformity and demonic possession. 

Bloch, like Lovecraft before him, was able to vividly illustrate a vast nether land in which deformity threatens to overcome the waking world, while night consumes the sun.  Lovecraft’s terrifying Cthulhu Mythos found new, if fetid, breath in a continuing sequence of tales based upon the demented writings of the “Mad Arab,” Abdul Alhazred, in the fabled book of the damned, the “Necronomicon.” Anyone in possession of this hellish tome might summon the “great old ones” from their slumber, causing a tear in the fragile fabric of time and space in which the lumbering elder gods might rupture the Earth once more, achieving infinity in terrifying abandon.  After Lovecraft’s death in 1937, Bloch expanded the mythological library of literature sought by sorcerers with such infamous texts as “De Vermis Mysteriis,” and “Cultes des Goules,” each offering unholy access to monstrous damnation.

In 1945, Bloch was asked to write exclusively for a new syndicated radio program called Stay Tuned For Terror.  Broadcast and produced from Chicago, the series presented a full season of thirty-nine episodes showcasing the work of the author, which he adapted for air from his own short stories.  In addition to writing for print and for radio, Bloch held down regular weekly employment as a copywriter for the Gustav Marx advertising agency, a position he maintained for eleven years.   

Although maintaining a respectable income and reputation during the forties and fifties, and winning the coveted Hugo for his short story “That Hellbound Train” (1958), Bloch continued to reside in the Midwest and worked in an advertising position in order to remain economically afloat.  That changed in 1959 when the writer published his new novel…the story of a boy, his mom, and a motel.  The work, which he titled “Psycho,” based somewhat loosely upon the real life exploits of  notorious Wisconsin mass murderer Ed Gein (as was the somewhat less subtle Texas Chainsaw Massacre), changed Bloch’s life forever.  The book was purchased by blind agents for Alfred Hitchcock and the rest, as they say, is history.  Having literally no idea who was purchasing his book, Bloch sold the film rights for something in the neighborhood of two thousand dollars.  Had the identity of the purchaser been revealed, the author might have been entitled to a far grander sum.  While Outer Limits writer/producer Joseph Stefano penned the screenplay for the controversial motion picture, Hitchcock commented in print that “Psycho was ninety percent Robert Bloch’s book.”

Psycho will forever remain Robert Bloch’s most popular and identifiable work based largely, of course, upon the success and legacy of the motion picture.  To begin with, Hitchcock was one of the most respected and enduring directors on the world stage, and so his decision to make a film of the author’s work was one of considerable importance to Bloch.  Much has been said about the director’s decision to do away with the star of the picture roughly half way through the film, and how daring and provocative that remarkable creative decision actually was.  To his credit, Hitchcock wisely chose a major actress to play the tragic Marion Crane, enabling her shocking early demise to attain near operatic surprise and dramatic crescendo.  However, it must be remembered that Marion was killed quite early on in Bloch’s novel, as well, insuring calculated shock by the unprepared reader.  Hitchcock merely embellished the calculation by casting the biggest star in the film as the doomed heroine. 

Hitchcock’s other masterly decision was to cast Anthony Perkins in the role of Norman Bates.  Unlike Bloch’s sleazier depiction of Norman, Hitchcock chose to portray Norman as the boy next door, an outwardly shy sexual innocent, brilliantly camouflaging his Jekyll and Hyde persona.  Hence, the revelation of his inner demons became more effectively disturbing.  In some ways, Norman Bates was a projection of Robert Bloch’s own literary personality.  As stated earlier, Bloch was himself a gentle, sensitive soul with an appreciation for the arts, and a broad, infectious sense of humor.  When he chose to don the cape of creativity, however, he transformed himself into a far darker, Freudian evocation of his personal complexity and shadowy identity.  It may truthfully be stated that each of us masks our own inner demons with smiles and banal pleasantry. If Robert Bloch, during his waking hours, was his own Henry Jekyll then, surely, his Mr. Hyde would take center stage when immersed in the twilight zone inhabited by Norman Bates.

The genius of Bloch’s Psycho is, of course, that the supposed main character of the novel isn’t revealed as merely a “red herring” until well into the story’s progression.  The groundwork for Marion Crane’s moral dilemma and near redemption is laid out meticulously.  She has abandoned her integrity out of thoughtless greed, never fully comprehending the circumstances of her fall from grace or its ultimate consequence.  She has been entrusted with depositing forty thousand dollars by her boss and his client, deciding instead to steal the money and join her lover in an idealized dream of financial security and sexual domesticity.  The reader’s concern, then, is that she has come to her senses in time to redeem her fortunes and return to her life, virtually unscathed by a momentary decline into criminality.  It is only then that we learn that the story isn’t about Marion Crane at all but, rather, a recently introduced proprietor of a seedy motel in which she quite innocently decides to spend the night, while en route to her destiny.  Tragically, the motel IS her destiny as she is gruesomely slaughtered by Norman Bates, the true focus of the novel.  All that has transpired up to this point is merely the expository groundwork that serves to introduce the reader to the real thrust of both the story, and Norman’s knife.  Marion is expendable.  She is a fragile, flawed individual who can be sacrificed for the greater good of the novel.  Bloch has carefully led the reader into a sheltered sense of complacency, travelling down a calculated detour to a climactic intersection in which the proverbial rug is unceremoniously pulled out from under him.  Marion’s world, as well as our own, has been turned inside and out. The bathroom door has closed, and there is no turning back. 

On the basis of the novel’s huge success, Bloch moved his family to Los Angeles, leaving his day job behind and settling into the film community as a full time, working author.  Any acrimony with Hitchcock was washed away by the muddy waters of success, and the opportunity to write stories for the director’s popular television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. Bloch became one of the program’s most prolific writers, contributing some seventeen teleplays including “The Greatest Monster Of Them All” (1961), “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (1962), and “The Sign Of Satan” (1964) guest starring Christopher Lee.

Collections of short stories by the celebrated writer began appearing both in hard and paperback editions with luridly commercial titles such as Nightmares, More Nightmares, Even More Nightmares, Pleasant Dreams, Mysteries of the Worm, and Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper.

It was about this time that NBC television producer, Hubbell Robinson, began developing a new series for the network to star horror actor Boris Karloff.  Airing over the network in prime time from 1960 until 1962, Boris Karloff’s Thriller remains the most frightening, potent and atmospheric series in the troubled history of horror television.  The series presented some of the most disturbing and nightmarishly visual hours of the past fifty years and many of its most memorable, haunting episodes were written for the program by Robert Bloch.  These included “The Cheaters” (the story of a deadly pair of Victorian spectacles that delved into the truth of every soul it perceived), “The Grim Reaper” (featuring young William Shatner as the greedy heir to a writer’s fortune who conspires to frighten the elderly woman to death with stories of a terrible painting coming to life) and, perhaps, the program’s defining moment.  Based upon Bloch’s short story, “The Hungry House,” William Shatner was featured once again in “The Hungry Glass” as a recovering victim of a nervous breakdown who purchases a house with a terrible secret, and strangely devoid of any mirrors.  Rarely has the medium of film so chillingly captured the gothic temperament and nightmarish language of horror as effectively, or as reverently, as in this uncompromisingly graphic, black and white television series.  If Psycho brought Robert Bloch’s name and reputation into the cinematic consciousness of theater goers, Boris Karloff’s Thriller brought the author lasting fame and recognition in captive living rooms across the country. It was fitting, then, that the decadent domicile used by NBC and Universal for the “Hungry Glass” episode was, in fact, the very same structure utilized by Hitchcock to house Norman Bates and his skeletal mother. Despite the apparent popularity and success of the literate young series, however, it was surprisingly cancelled by the network after only two years, reportedly at the urging of Alfred Hitchcock who felt that its early suspense oriented stories constituted direct competition to his own half hour anthology program on NBC.  

Assignments for both television and theaters continued with screenplays for The Cabinet Of Caligari (1962), “The Couch” (1962), Strait-Jacket (1964) (starring Joan Crawford as an ax murderess), The Night Walker (with the former husband and wife team of Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Taylor in 1964) The Skull (1965) with Peter Cushing (adapted from Bloch’s short story, “The Skull Of The Marquis De Sade”) (1966), The Psychopath (1966), Torture Garden (1967), The Deadly Bees (1967), The House That Dripped Blood (1971), Asylum (1972) (once again starring Peter Cushing), The Cat Creature (1973) for ABC television, three episodes of the original Star Trek (“What Are Little Girls Made Of,” “Wolf In The Fold,” and “Catspaw”). Star Trek’s “Wolf In The Fold” offered a futuristic variation of his earlier take on the White Chapel slasher, “Yours Truly Jack The Ripper.” Bloch had been working on a massive teleplay for CBS television in 1980, an adaptation of H.G. Wells’ “In The Days of the Comet” produced by the legendary George Pal, when the fantasy film pioneer died of a sudden heart attack. The ambitious collaboration, sadly, was not to be. Among Bloch’s most curious projects for television aired as the final episode of the ABC series, Bus Stop.  Based upon the popular 20th Century Fox classic starring Marilyn Monroe, this all out horror tale became the final episode of the short lived series, with actor Alfred Ryder in a frightening adaptation of Bloch’s short story, “I Kiss Your Shadow.”

Bloch was never entirely satisfied with his screen work, for neither the direction or the theatricality of these final picturizations ever truly captured the genuine dread portrayed by his written word.  Only Hitchcock’s Psycho ever realized the black and white simplicity of the writer’s psychology of horror.  Bloch wrote in black and white or, to put it more succinctly, from a darkened perspective devoid of color.  The visualization of horror must be stripped of comfort with the familiar.  While colors enrich the waking realm in which we work and interact, their very reassurance serves to erase the frighteningly primordial recollection of a world immersed in dreams.  Bloch’s stories were essentially driven by his, and our, deepest fears.  As we struggle to awaken from night’s journey through shadows, it is the first light of day in which we must find solace.  Bloch understood that nightmares are derived from darkness, for it is there that familiarity is lost.  One cannot understand what he cannot see.  Rationalization is clarified by light.  We can attempt to define what lies before us.  It has definition and color.  Strip away that color, however, and the horizons before us become dreamlike, or surreal. Drained of color, the world degenerates into a simplistic panorama in which monstrous apparitions can co-exist comfortably with reality.  It is here, in a world stripped of pretense and calming reassurance, that we walk naked through the night.  Alone in the darkness, we become vulnerable to emotional assault, and prey to the denizens of darkness.  The simplicity of black and white has now prepared our emergence, or descent, into the nether world of dreams and nightmares.  It is for this reason, perhaps, that Bloch’s most successful work on screen remains the quintessential horror anthology hosted by Boris Karloff for NBC Television.  

Bloch lent distinction to his name whether adapting one of his own short stories for the screen, or reworking the efforts of another writer.  Asked to adapt a short story written by Harold Lawlor for the Thriller series, the author composed one of his most terrifying confections, entirely re-structuring the thread of the original tale and turning it into modern horror classic.  “The Grim Reaper” aired during the 1961 television season, becoming one of the earliest efforts in the fledgling series’ subtle transformation from suspense to outright horror. The greedy nephew of an Agatha Christie styled mystery writer attempts to frighten his wealthy aunt to death with the gift of an accursed portrait of a skeletal avenger brandishing a razor like scythe.  The tale is, of course, a lurid fabrication concocted by Paul Graves (William Shatner) to drive his elderly aunt either to madness or to death so that he might inherit her fortune.  His plan works all too well, for the normally grounded writer (Natalie Schafer) sits before the awful portrait, drinking herself into an hallucinatory stupor in which she imagines that the evil figure in the picture has stepped down from its bloody perch to stalk her.  The alcohol induced delusion convinces her that Paul’s wicked stories of a cursed creature are, indeed, true and she succumbs to the sum of her fears while frightened to death.  Paul has woven his insidious tale a little too well, however, for as he prepares his departure from the house, he senses something not quite right about the portrait.  The hideous image upon the bloody canvas has disappeared from its ornate frame.  As Paul clutches the opening of his mouth in mortal fear, barely stifling a heart shattering gasp, he hears the rhythmic swish of the deadly blade from somewhere in the room.  Nothing is seen but Paul’s mask of terror as the sounds grow closer to his body, frozen in paralyzing fear.  An awful scream is heard from beyond the locked door to the library, as frantic relatives and friends of the late writer try unsuccessfully to pry open the lock.  Paul’s own vivid imagination has conspired to consume his weak and greedy psyche, and he is torn to shreds by the monstrous aberration he conceived.  The Reaper has returned to its menacing lair within the canvas as though it had never left its position on the wall…and yet…there is fresh blood glistening on the painted scythe.

Both honored and treasured in his later years, Bloch received a Life Achievement Award at the first World Fantasy Convention in 1975, a Big Heart Award presented at the World Science Fiction Convention, the Bram Stoker Life Achievement Award, and the World Horror Convention’s “Grand Master Award.”  A respected and gifted writer of mystery, as well as horror fiction, he served a term as President of The Mystery Writers Of America.  During his lifetime, Bloch wrote twenty-five novels, four hundred short stories, an infinite number of collections, radio programs, screenplays and teleplays.

In his personal life, despite his public persona, Robert Bloch was a quiet, gentle man with a robust, self-effacing sense of humor and a love of the arts.  Cancer consumed his sensitive soul in 1994 at age 77.  The Grim Reaper of his imagination had returned to claim just one more victim, as endless night descended in Pleasant Dreams. 

++ Steve Vertlieb, 2008

Gareth L. Powell: Sailing the Starry Sea — Why I Write Space Opera

Gareth L. Powell

[Editor’s Note: Gareth Powell is a British SF writer who has written three series, to wit the Ack-Ack Macaque series with airships and cigar-smoking-monkey fighter pilots, and the Embers of War with ships akin to those in Iain M. Banks’ Culture series. Powell’s latest series is The Continuance in which all of humanity has been exiled from Earth and is wandering the galaxy in vast ark ships. The latest novel in that series, Descendant Machine, came out in May. Both the Ack-Ack Macaque and Embers of War series had novels in them that won British Science Fiction Society Awards. Keep up with Gareth L. Powell’s Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook via Linktree. And at his Substack: Gareth’s Newsletter. Cat Eldridge says, “You, Ian McDonald and Iain M. Banks are the best writers of space opera that there has ever been.”]


“I was attracted to science fiction because it was so wide open. I was able to do anything and there were no walls to hem you in and there was no human condition that you were stopped from examining.”

Octavia Butler


While I have been known to write other types of science fiction, there’s something about space opera that keeps drawing me back.

The term ‘space opera’ has been around since the heyday of the pulp magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. Initially the term was one of derision, likening the genre to tacky ‘horse opera’ westerns. However, just as the hippies and punks of the 1960s and 1970s took their derogatory labels and wore them with pride, so the term ‘space opera’ eventually became a byword for action-packed stories featuring big spaceships and weighty themes.

To date, I’ve written eleven novels, from Silversands (2010) through to Future’s Edge (coming 2025), and at least seven of them can be described as space opera. What is it that keeps bringing me back to the sub-genre?

At its best, space opera contrasts the personal with the cosmic. Human characters struggle against the backdrops of infinite space and deep time, wrestling to uncover the reasons why we’re here and what it all means. It gives us a vast canvas on which to make our points. As storytellers, we’re no longer confined to one world or one society. If we want to say something meaningful about the world of today, we can let our tales leap from culture to culture, shining a light on our real life existence by showcasing worlds that are very different in almost every respect.

When George Lucas wanted to write about a great democracy falling to fascism, he wrote Star Wars to dramatise his concerns; similarly, Iain M. Banks invented the Culture, a spacefaring, post-scarcity civilisation with utopian ideals in order to write a counterpoint to the politics of 1970s Britain; and Ursula K. Le Guin wrote her classic novel The Dispossessed to examine her feelings regarding the Vietnam War and the contrast between anarchy and capitalism.

Not all space operas are primarily political, of course, but there is that old maxim about all books being essentially about the time in which they’re written, and the very act of imagining societies different than our own cannot help but invite comparison. I certainly used books like Embers of War and Stars and Bones to comment on what I see as some of the absurdities of our current set-up in ways I possibly couldn’t have articulated in a more contemporary setting.

More than that, I think the appeal of space opera is that by placing relatable characters outside of the contexts with which we’re familiar, and contrasting them with non-human intelligences, you can really unpack what it means to be human in the unspeakable vastness of the universe.

As an author, it gives you the freedom to write whatever you want, in a cosmos where almost anything is possible.

But maybe what really appeals is the sense that in space opera, we’re all masters of our own destiny. We’re not bound by anything, save the need to keep our ship flying and stay one step ahead of our enemies and creditors. We go where we want and we do what we have to in order to survive. And we’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. We’ve left footprints in the multi-coloured sands of a thousand deserts. Our faces have been tanned by the light of stars so far from here their light won’t reach this part of space for another hundred years. And we’re still questing outwards, still searching for adventure—for an alien invasion to repel or a repressive regime to overthrow. And, at the end of the day, we get to sit in our ships and look out the windows at the cold, distant stars and somehow make our peace with our place in the unending wonder of it all.

[Reprinted with permission.]