Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Startling Stories, May 1949

I'm not sure who painted the cover for this issue of STARTLING STORIES. I immediately think of Earle Bergey when it comes to that pulp, but somehow this doesn't quite seem like Bergey's work to me. I'm sure one of you out there reading this knows, though. Inside this issue is a fantastic group of writers: Arthur C. Clarke, John D. MacDonald, Sam Merwin Jr., Charles Harness, Willy Ley, Eando Binder (Earl and Otto Binder, with an Anton York story that's a reprint from the August 1937 issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES), and Rene LaFayette, who was really L. Ron Hubbard, of course. That's a pretty potent bunch, and as it happens, this entire issue can be found online here, if you want to check it out for yourself. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective, August 1952

Even this late in its run, DIME DETECTIVE looks like a pretty darned good pulp. This issue has a Norman Saunders cover, and the line-up of authors inside is really strong: John D. MacDonald, Richard Deming, Talmage Powell, Philip Ketchum, Larry Holden (Frederick Lorenz), Harry Widmer, Dane Gregory, and Albert Simmons. Some of those aren't as well-known as the top guys, of course, but with a Popular Publications pulp, chances are their stories are pretty entertaining.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, March 1951

Now that's a striking cover. That guy looks a little calmer than I would be in the same situation. Not that I would ever find myself in that situation. There's quite a lineup of authors in this issue of DETECTIVE TALES, too: John D. MacDonald, William Campbell Gault, Steve Fisher, Gil Brewer, T.T. Flynn, John Hawkins, and Paul Kingston. I don't know anything about Kingston, but the others are all top-notch. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Super Science Stories, November 1949

This issue of SUPER SCIENCE STORIES has a good cover by Lawrence Sterne Stevens. Not one of my absolute best, maybe (in my opinion), but still eye-catching enough that I would have picked up this issue at the newsstand. And once it was in my hands, the lineup of authors inside would have been enough to get me to plunk down my hard-earned pazoors: Fredric Brown, Ray Bradbury, John D. MacDonald (twice, once as himself and once as John Wade Farrell), Murray Leinster, Frank Belknap Long, Margaret St. Clair, and Neil R. Jones with a Professor Jameson story. That's a lot of heavyweight talent. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Mystery Book Magazine, Summer 1950

"The Best in New Detective Fiction", this cover from MYSTERY BOOK MAGAZINE proclaims, and I think they could make a persuasive argument. Inside this issue are "The Case of the Dancing Sandwiches" by Fredric Brown, also known as one of the famous Dell 10 Cent Books (see below), as well as stories by John D. MacDonald, Philip Ketchum, D.L. Champion (creator of the long-running Phantom Detective series), the house-name John L. Benton, and a couple of authors I've never heard of, Jonathan Joseph and Bryant Ford. I don't know if that's actually the best, but it's pretty darned good.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, April 1949

I keep telling guys, never trust a suit of armor. Nine times out of ten, there's a killer hiding inside it. But do they listen to me? No. But if they did, there wouldn't be a story, would there? Day Keene is the biggest name in this issue of DETECTIVE TALES, at least he is unless you know that one of the other authors, John Lane, was really John D. MacDonald. C. William Harrison has a story in here, too, but I think he was best known as a Western pulpster. The other authors are either house-names or writers I've never heard of, like Philip Weck and Robert Zacks. So I can't guess at the overall quality of the fiction, but I like the cover and I'm sure the stories by MacDonald and Keene are good. (I wish somebody would do a complete collection of JDM's pulp detective yarns.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: F.B.I. Detective Stories, June 1949

Another great Norman Saunders cover graces this issue of F.B.I. DETECTIVE STORIES, a very late G-Man pulp. Inside are stories by some well-known authors: John D. MacDonald, Bruce Cassiday, Paul W. Fairman, Roe Richmond, Hank Searls, and Tedd Thomey. Richmond was best known for Westerns, of course. I don't think I've read anything by him in any other genre. Hank Searls was a bestseller for a while with mainstream novels like THE CROWDED SKY and THE PILGRIM PROJECT. Tedd Thomey wrote some celebrity biographies as well as a few hardboiled crime novels for Gold Medal, Signet, and Ace. I think it's safe to say Paul Fairman is best known for editing and writing science fiction, but probably his most successful novels in terms of sales were the historical romances he wrote late in life as Paula Fairman. (He died after doing a couple of these, but the pseudonym lived on in a bunch of books ghostwritten by a friend of mine.) Cassidy wrote for the mystery digests and did some paperbacks. Then there's John D. MacDonald, and I think we all know what he went on to do after the pulp market dried up. That's a pretty impressive line-up all the way around.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Super Science Stories, March 1950

Another fine Norman Saunders cover graces this issue of SUPER SCIENCE STORIES. Inside are stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, A.E. van Vogt, John D. MacDonald, Raymond Z. Gallun, Robert Arthur, and Neil R. Jones. I've read and enjoyed stories by all of them, although I haven't read much by van Vogt, Gallun, or Jones. You don't hear that much about Popular Publications' SF pulps, but this looks like a very good issue. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Startling Stories, November 1948

The cover on this issue of STARTLING STORIES is by Earle Bergey--but most of you already knew that, didn't you? I know his work was controversial at the time, but I really enjoy it. And inside this issue are stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, John D. MacDonald, A.E. van Vogt, Frank Belknap Long, and Robert Moore Williams. Edited by my old editor and mentor, Sam Merwin Jr. I like having that link with pulp history.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: New Detective, July 1949

Not a bad cover on this issue of NEW DETECTIVE, but look at that line-up of writers inside: John D. MacDonald, Day Keene, Fredric Brown, William Campbell Gault, J.L. Bouma, and Joel Townsley Rogers. Those are some heavyweight pulpsters who also had successful careers as hardback and paperback novelists.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1950

I'm well aware that my brow is on the low side, but dang, I love this stuff. An Earle Bergey cover and stories by John D. MacDonald, Eric Frank Russell, Sam Merwin Jr., Walt Sheldon, William F. Temple, and Robert Moore Williams. I'd read that. And enjoy it.

Forgotten Books: Darker Than Amber - John D. MacDonald

I have to cheat a little bit this week. I was going to reread this book so I could write about it intelligently, but time and real life conspired against me. I mentioned it just the other day in my final Favorite Bookstores post, though, so it seemed appropriate for John D. MacDonald Week.

As I said earlier this week, I bought this book off the paperback spinner rack at Lester's Pharmacy, walked back across the highway and up the street to my parents' house, sat down on the porch, where I did a lot of my reading, and read this opening line: "We were about to give up and call it a night when somebody dropped the girl off the bridge."

How could I not keep reading after that? Years later I read an interview with MacDonald in which he said that opening was inspired by a pulp story that got right into the action with the opening line, "I dropped to one knee and fired twice" (probably a Race Williams story by Carroll John Daly). It sure worked for me, because I tore right through DARKER THAN AMBER, then went back to Lester's and bought A DEADLY SHADE OF GOLD. For a long time after that I grabbed every John D. MacDonald book I could find.

I never stole the line about somebody dropping a girl off a bridge, at least that I remember, but if you pick up a copy of LONGARM AND THE OWLHOOT'S GRAVEYARD, you'll see that the opening line is, "Longarm dropped to one knee and fired twice." I'm nothing if not shameless.

As further evidence of that, I've written an entire Forgotten Books post and said very little about the actual book. But I don't hesitate to recommend DARKER THAN AMBER. It made me a life-long John D. MacDonald fan.

Where is Janice Gantry? -- John D. MacDonald

It takes me a long time to read a book these days, a combination of being really busy, not having much time to read, and a rather scattershot attention span. But even though it took me about a week, I read John D. MacDonald’s novel WHERE IS JANICE GANTRY? and enjoyed it quite a bit, especially after reading the disappointing A MAN OF AFFAIRS by JDM earlier in the year.

I liked the narrator/hero in this one, Sam Brice, a former pro football player and insurance appraiser who lives in a small town on the west coast of Florida. Trouble comes into his life in the form of a young acquaintance of his who has escaped from prison and needs his help. Somewhat against his better judgment, Sam goes along with the request, and that sets in motion a series of violent events that include the disappearance of his former girlfriend, the Janice Gantry of the title.

The plot’s a little thin and probably won’t surprise many readers, but MacDonald’s ability as a pure storyteller is clearly in evidence here, pulling the reader along. I don’t doubt that under normal circumstances I would have finished this book a lot faster than I did, because when I did get a chance to read I got caught up in it and was really flipping the pages. The last fifty pages or so are very suspenseful. Well worth reading, I say. (Thanks to Bill Crider)

On the recovery from the fire front, we’re making steady but frustratingly slow progress. We haven’t been able to move into the mobile home on our property yet because it’s taken longer to get the utilities hooked up than we thought it would. We’re hoping to get in there this week so we can really get started on cleaning up what’s left of the old house, as painful as that’s going to be. It’ll certainly be nice to be back in a place of our own, though.

As for writing, I get pages done whenever I get the chance. I’ve recreated well over half of what I lost on the current manuscript. It’s been an interesting experience, rewriting that much of a book that I had written before. The storyline is the same, and most of the scenes are, too, but most of the words are different and I’ve added some things and left out others. Definitely a weird sensation, and one that I hope I never have to go through again.

All in all, though, we’re plugging along and doing okay. Continued thanks to all of you who have helped us out, and are still helping us out, in so many different ways.

A Man of Affairs -- John D. MacDonald

This novel is one of John D. MacDonald’s rare misfires. Rather than his usual crime or suspense yarn, it’s more of a mainstream novel concerning an attempted business takeover and for the most part takes place at a fabulous estate in the Bahamas belonging to a famous corporate raider. The narrator is one of MacDonald’s fallible but sympathetic heroes who tries to prevent the takeover. Meanwhile, there’s a variety of soap opera-like dramatics going on among the group of people that has gathered on the island.

I was tempted to give up on this one early on, but I stuck with it and ultimately was glad that I did. It’s certainly the worst JDM novel I’ve read, but there are enough good lines, enough examples of elegant writing, and enough effective moments that I consider it worth reading . . . barely. MacDonald was a good enough natural storyteller that the second half of the novel can’t help but pick up a little steam as it unfolds. If you’re a JDM fan, you can make it through A MAN OF AFFAIRS all right, but if you’ve never read his work before, you’d be much better off starting with almost any of his other novels. (I have to qualify that because I haven’t read all of them.)

Yesterday I had other stuff besides writing going on, so I only made it to the computer for a few hours. Wrote 7 pages during that time, and despite my early reservations I still think this book is shaping up fairly well. Circumstances are going to prevent today from being very productive, too, but I’m going to do what I can and not worry about it.

JDM

Ed Gorman and Bill Crider have both talked about John D. MacDonald on their blogs in recent days, and that inspired me to pull down one of my unread JDM novels from my shelves. Unfortunately, I think I picked the wrong one. It's A MAN OF AFFAIRS, and so far, about a third of the way into it, it's a showcase for all the things I don't like about MacDonald: the precious dialogue, the moralizing, the corporate intrigue. I want to like it, I really do, but so far I'm finding it heavy going. Maybe it gets better, though. I've liked everything else I've ever read by him.

My page count today was 22. I worked on a different computer, just to change things up a little. I've been doing that for the past several books. Each of them has been written on two or three different computers, in two or three different rooms. I don't know if that helps or not, but it hasn't hurt. The extremely prolific pulp author H. Bedford-Jones had several different typewriters with a different story going in each one, and he'd switch back and forth between them. I haven't gone that far yet and don't plan to. I can work on more than one project at a time if I have to, but I don't like it.