Fiction and Reality

To the end of January, 2012

2012-02-01T21:49:00.000-08:00

ONE HUNDRED THIRTEENTH DAY (Jan. 21)

Twilight Zone, “Walking Distance”; At Last, the 1948 Show ep. 2

Gilligan, “Music Hath Charms”

IT! The Terror from Beyond Space (1958 sf)

“Neighbors: The Werwolf in Pennsylvania,” New York Folklore Quarterly Vol. 7 no. 2 (Summer 1951) & “Another Werwolf,” Vol. 7 no. 4 (Winter 1951), both by Henry W. Shoemaker

ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH DAY (Jan. 24)

“The Monster That Challenged the World,” Al Taylor and Dave Everitt, from Filmfax No. 19 (March 1990) – decided I could do without the magazine, but kept the article about this movie.

Secret Origins – Giant Issue – 1998 reprint of 1961 comic. Now Cubby knows several DC heroes, like J’onn J’onzz and the Flash.

It Happened to Me! Vol. 4, ed. David Sutton – hit the shelves the day after I finished Vol. 3, but I think they are scraping the bottom of the barrel for “true” paranormal stories.

The Strange World of Dinosaurs, Dr. John H. Ostrom – when I was a kid, this was the greatest book on earth, and Cubby just about agrees! Now we know all about many kinds of dinosaurs and prehistoric reptiles. The amazing illustrations by Joseph Sibal really enhance the book. Dr. Ostrom was an early proponent of the “Hot-Blooded Dinosaur” idea.

NASA, “Apollo/Soyuz”; Gilligan, “The Match-Maker”

The Six Million Dollar Man, “Survival of the Fittest”

Four and Twenty Blackbirds (4/22/84) – college radio show from Edmond, OK, this one featuring William Blackfox and bagpipe music.

Sixty-four books read = 1/75 of all the books.

ONE HUNDRED NINETEENTH DAY (Jan. 27)

Gilligan, “Music Hath Charm,” “They’re Off and Running”

Six Million Dollar Man, “Operation: Firefly”

“Hold That Lion” (1947) – Three Stooges short with Shemp, but Curley makes a cameo. The only time Curley and Shemp appeared together.

The Night Stalker (1972 horror) – this made-for-TV movie introduces us to Carl Kolchak, a reporter who discovers that a vampire stalks Las Vegas

It couldn’t happen here No. 1 (Fall 1996) – Kolchak fanzine. Read it before seeing the above, so I about had to watch The Night Stalker. Introduction, episode guide, trivia, etc., concerning the movies and series.

“The Bray Road Beast: Wisconsin Werewolf Investigation,” Scarlett Sankey, from Strange Magazine No. 10 (Fall-Winter 1992) – article on the Wisconsin Werewolf.

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-FIRST DAY (Jan. 29)

The Lone Ranger, “Finders Keepers”

Scooby-Doo: Mystery, Inc., Vol. 1

Mazeppa, “Spicy Pictures from Outer Space”; Superman, “Volcano”; Zorro’s Fighting Legion, “Chapter Eight: Flowing Death”; The Lodger (1926 horror) – very grainy copy with very inappropriate music.

Six Million Dollar Man, “Day of the Robot”

“The Little Glass Bottle,” “The Secret Cave,” “The Mystery of the Graveyard,” “The Mysterious Ship” (long & short versions), and “The Very Old Folk”: very early tales by young H. P. Lovecraft

“Bray Road Beast Update,” Linda S. Godfrey – from Strange Magazine No. 11 (Spring-Summer 1993) – the second of two articles on the Beast. Next: Godfrey’s books on the “manwolf” phenomena.

ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-THIRD DAY (Jan. 31, 2012)

The Stars Are Ours!, Andre Norton (SF novel) – now here’s science fiction! The heroes go from bare subsistance-level survival in a Dystopian future to the first starship to another solar system, and that’s just part of their adventures. Yet the story never feels rushed or contrived.

“Hare-Way to the Stars,” “Rocket Squad,” “The Hasty Hare,” Warner cartoons

At the end of month four, Cubby has seen Carl Kolchak, Steve Austin, James Bond, Godzilla, and Frankenstein. John Ostrom’s dinosaur book is a great overview of prehistoria, as mentioned. Several other books and magazines await, partly read, and Cubby’s score could have been much higher. He skips from book to book, not because of a short attention span but because there are so many interesting things to sample.

To Day 108

2012-01-18T19:31:00.000-08:00

ONE HUNDREDTH DAY (Jan. 8, 2012)

Lone Ranger, “Return of the Convict;” Jonny Quest, “”The Deadly Dolls”

Victory at Sea, “Sea and Sand;” NASA, “On the Shoulders of Giants”

Gilligan. “Big Man on a Little Stick;” Scooby-Doo, “A Tiki Scare is No Fair”

ONE HUNDRED-FOURTH DAY (Jan. 12, 2012)

“Monster-God of Mamurth,” Edmond Hamilton (SF/horror ss) – 1927 story to start on early science fiction

It Happened to Me! Vol. 2, ed. Paul Sieveking – another collection of fortean anecdotes

“An Historical Study of the Werewolf in Literature,” Kirby F. Smith – folklore article from Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (Vol. IX, New Series, Vol. II), 1894. An important early article on lycanthropic legends.

Writer’s Digest Vol. 91, No. 7 (Oct. 2011) – an entire magazine that will help us in our writing career

The X-Men no. 1 – 1991 reprint of a September 1963 comic. The General promised that everyone would honor the name of – the X-Men! I’m sure.

Secret Origins no. 6 (Feb 1974) – the origin of a WW II hero, “Blackhawk”, and of a whole Legion of Super-Heroes

Gilligan, “How to Be a Hero”; Scooby-Doo, “Haunted House Hang-Up,” “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Werewolf?”, “Don’t Fool with a Phantom” ends Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? Seasons 1 & 2

“The Solid Gold Kidnapping” – third Six Million Dollar Man TV movie

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH DAY (Jan. 14)

Map of Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Texas, from National Geographic Magazine (Oct. 1974) – Cubby wants more visuals. Now he has seen beyond Oklahoma. Soon, the world!

Gilligan, “Return of Wrong-Way Feldman;” Scooby-Doo: Mystery Inc., “Battle of the Humongonauts,” “Howl of the Fright Hound”

It Came from Outer Space (1953 sf) plus extras

Frankenstein (1931 horror) – another basic movie monster seen.

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH DAY (Jan. 16)

“Duck Dodgers in the Twenty-Fourth and a Half Century,” “Jumping Jupiter,” “Rocket-Bye Baby,” Warner cartoons

Scooby-Doo: Mystery Inc., “The Secret Serum,” “The Shrieking Madness”

Gilligan, “New Neighbor Sam”

Victory at Sea, “Beneath the Southern Cross”

Unsolved Mysteries, “Houie Long,” “John Wilkes Booth”

Gojira extras

Thistle & Shamrock #689, “Duos”

“Life-Line,” Robert Heinlein (sf ss) – first Hamilton’s first published story, now Heinlein. We’re into the Golden Age of SF!

It Happened to Me! Vol. 3, ed. David Sutton and Paul Sieveking – more fortean anecdotes

Sixty-two books read = 1/79th of all books!

The end of 2011/the Cubby Experiment continues

2012-01-09T04:51:00.000-08:00

After Three Months/End of 2011:

At the beginning of the Cubby Experiment, it was interesting to see how much our imaginary friend could learn about the world in one day, two days, etc. Now I’m starting to think in terms of “One Month Old Cubby,” “Two Month Old Cubby,” when it comes to knowledge. So I’m kind of setting goals for him. I wanted him to finish “Who Fears the Devil?” by December 31, see a Sherlock Holmes film, a James Bond film, and read “The Time Machine” by H. G. Wells – one of the basics of science fiction. Didn’t quite do that, but Cubby has absorbed quite a bit of literature and media in three months. He’ll know even more at four months!

NINETY-SECOND DAY (Dec. 31)

Sting of the Green Hornet no. 3 (Aug 1992) and no. 4 (Sept 1992)

“I Can’t Claim That,” “The Little Black Train,” “Who Else Could I Count on?”, “Walk Like a Mountain,” “None Wiser for the Trip,” “On the Hills and Everywhere.” “Nary Spell,” “Nine Yards of Other Cloth” finish off Who Fears the Devil? by Manly Wade Wellman

It’s Obvious You Won’t Survive by Your Wits Alone, Scott Adams (comic strips)

The Best of the Spirit, Will Eisner (comic strip/book collection). Needed to finish it for:

Batman/The Spirit no. 1 (Jan 2007)

Connections, “Death in the Morning”

Victory at Sea, “Rings Around Rabaul;” NASA, “In the Mountains of the Moon”

Hound of the Baskervilles (1958 mystery) – Peter Cushing as Sherlock Holmes

Thistle & Shamrock #675, “A Celtic Feast” – cassette of Celtic music

Fifty-seven books read = 1/85 of all books!

NINETY-EIGHTH DAY (Jan. 6, 2012)

Gilligan, “X Marks the Spot,” “Gilligan Meets Jungle Boy,” “St. Gilligan and the Dragon,” “Diamonds are an Ape’s Best Friend”

Scooby-Doo, “Nowhere to Hyde,” “Mystery Mask Mix-Up,” “Jeepers, It’s the Creeper,” “Scooby’s Night with a Frozen Fright”

Twilight Zone, “The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine”

Victory at Sea, “Marenstrum”; NASA, “Nothing So Hidden” – some odd moments on the Apollo 16 mission

Rudolph’s Shiny New Year – Red Skelton’s “Baby Bear” voice in this holiday special has always been my idea of what very young Cubby, excited about the world, sounds like.

Dr. No (1962 thriller) plus extras – now we know who Bond – James Bond – is.

Gojira (1954 sf) – seeds from the earliest times still sprout. At last we know about the monstrous reptile glimpsed on the First Day on the Ghidrah poster and given a page-long synopsis in the Japanese Fantasy Film Journal.

Marvel Tales no. 154 (Aug 1982), re-printing Amazing Spider-Man no. 18, with Daredevil, 1963

“The Gods of Pegana,” Lord Dunsay (fantasy novelette) – Cubby’s first taste of fantasy is the quasi-creation myth that influenced H. P. Lovecraft and others.

It Happened to Me! Vol. 1, ed. Paul Sieveking and Jen Ogilvie – first-hand fortean accounts

The Sunday Best of B.C., Johnny Hart (comic strips) – should have been one of the first things read, because I remember these strips from when I was almost too young to understand the dialogue. Still fun.

Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak (jv) – still a few juvenile books around. Some funky monsters presented here.

Sixty books read = 1/80 of all books!

December 18 - 24

2011-12-28T21:16:00.000-08:00

You have to admit, I've found one way to fill a blog! So:

SEVENTY-NINTH DAY (Dec. 18)

The Fantastic Four no. 5 (July 1962) – 1992 reprint. First appearance by Dr. Doom; the time machine and Blackbeard story explains things that were mentioned years later.

Unsolved Mysteries, “Bugsy Siegel;” “D. B. Cooper;” “Mona Lisa”

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981 made-for-TV horror)

Gilligan, “Three Million Dollars, More or Less;” Scooby-Doo, “Scooby-Doo and a Mummy, Too”

Mazeppa, “Sherman Oaks’ School for the Dead;” Superman, “The Magnetic Telescope;” Zorro’s Fighting Legion, “Chapter Six: Zorro to the Rescue;” Dracula (1931 horror)

EIGHTY-SECOND DAY (Dec. 21)

“Find the Place Yourself,” “The Desrick on Yandro,” “The Stars Down There,” “Vandy, Vandy,” M. W. Wellman (Fantasy ss)

“A Christmas Carol,” Charles Dickens (fantasy novella) – plus glosses – a fun tale of the season, with ol’ Ebenezer Scrooge

Strange Creatures from Time and Space, John A. Keel (fortean) – a benchmark in “monster” reading; very early and basic, yet with advanced (read: weird) fortean theories

The Incredible Hulk no. 1 (May 1962) – 2004 reprint of the slightly bulky, slightly sulky man-monster

A Charlie Brown Christmas – animated classic. At least we’ve read one Peanuts book

How the Grinch Stole Christmas – animated version of the Seuss story, plus extras

Gilligan, “Water, Water, Everywhere;” Scooby-Doo, “Which Witch is Which?”

EIGHTY-FIFTH DAY (Dec. 24)

The News no. 1 (Nov. 1973) – the first issued of what became The Fortean Times. A miscellanea of odd news stories. The most interesting bit was probably the frog-fall of 1954. The funniest concerned a pair of “witches” who intended to fight a magic duel in England – which was to start by sacrificing a cat. One witch didn’t show, the other “was seen running away from Hampstead Heath pursued by hundreds of laughing children.”

Famous Monsters of Filmland no. 68 (Aug. 1970) – quite informative issue, with long articles on Lugosi/Dracula, the Phantom of the Opera, George Pal, and the amazing Mysterious Island of 1929, plus mini-reviews of Frankenstein, the Wolf-Man, the Creature, etc. If Cubby was still unfamiliar with the “basic” movie monsters and horror films, that’s been corrected.

Sting of the Green Hornet no. 1 (June 1992) – the Hornet is back – but who is the shadowy character who tells Walter Gibson what to do?

Marvel Tales no. 138 (Apr. 1982), reprinting Amazing Spider-Man no. 1 from 1962. Who is this newspaper guy writing bad things about Spidey? Plus the first appearance of astronaut John Jameson.

“Canon Alberic’s Scrapbook,” M. R. James – a ghost story for Christmas

Gilligan, “So Sorry, My Island Now;” Scooby-Doo, “Go Away Ghost Ship”

Star Trek, “Man-Trap” – a great new sf show for Cubby to watch

The Lone Ranger, “Six-Gun’s Legacy;” Jonny Quest, “Skull and Double-Crossbones”

Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (1964 sf) – a true holiday classic! Not.

Frosty the Snowman (1969) – more of a classic

Mazeppa, “These Boots Were Made for Walkin’”; Superman, “The Electric Earthquake;” Zorro’s Fighting Legion, “Chapter Seven: The Fugitive”

December 7-14

2011-12-14T20:56:00.000-08:00

SIXTY-EIGHTH DAY (Dec. 7)

Meet the Werewolf, Georgess McHargue (jv folklore) – Now we’ve been introduced to the werewolf! Vampires we know from the film Nosferatu. And all sorts of creatures cavorted through Famous Monsters magazine.

“The Joker,” from Batman no. 1 (Spring 1940) – but this Clown Prince of Crime is worse than most monsters!

Gilligan, “The Big Gold Strike;” Scooby-Doo, “Backstage Rage”

Connections, “The Trigger Effect” – Amazing and disturbing look at the net of interconnected technology we live in. Now here’s edifying TV!

“Chair of Death,” “RFK Pictures,” “Anastasia”, and “Bermuda Triangle,” Unsolved Mysteries

SEVENTIETH DAY (Dec. 9)

“Prof. Hugo Strange and the Monsters.” “The Cat,” “The Joker Returns” finishes The Batman Chronicles Vol. 1

Mammoth Book of Illustrated Crime, Colin & Damon Wilson (true crime) – The Wilsons’ stated desire was to describe the history of the last century and a half using crime tales, and they succeed. (Of course, they define everything from violent acts of war to making whiskey during Prohibition as “crime”.) Cubby learned a lot from this book about everything from the Mafia to Watergate to Hollywood scandals.

Gilligan, “Waiting for Watubi,” Scooby-Doo, “Bedlam in the Big-Top”

The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953 sf)

Forty-eight books read = 1/100 of the way through all the books I estimate Cubby will ever read. Yes, most of them were for youngsters, but it’s a good boost for his ego. That’s not counting twenty or so books he is part-way through!

SEVENTY-SECOND DAY (Dec. 11)

Lone Ranger, “High Heels;” Jonny Quest, “Shadow of the Condor”

Gilligan, “Angel on the Island;” Scooby-Doo, “A Gaggle of Galloping Ghosts”

The Six Million Dollar Man, “Population: Zero”

Phantom of the Opera (1925 horror) – should have been paired with the last “Mazeppa” showing.

Pat Savage, Woman of Bronze (Oct. 1992) – one-shot comic from Millennium. Doc Savage and his crew may be the characters Cubby has seen the most, at this point.

A Study in Scarlet, Arthur Conan Doyle – Now we’ve been introduced to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson

The Who, “Who’s Better, Who’s Best” (cassette)

SEVENTY-FIFTH DAY (Dec. 14)

“Yes, We Have No Bonanza,” Three Stooges short

Gilligan, “Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Talk;” Scooby-Doo, “The Spooky Space Kook”

Star Ka’at, Andre Norton and Dorothy Madlee (jv sf) – managed to get in a second Norton book

Don’t Step in the Leadership, Scott Adams (comic strips)

Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles (cd)

Fifty books read = 1/96 of books

Nov. 27 -- Dec. 4

2011-12-08T23:05:00.000-08:00

FIFTY-EIGHTH DAY (Nov. 27)

What’s New, B.C.?, Johnny Hart – comic strips with funny versions of cavemen, dinosaurs, ants, etc.

“Frost and Fire,” Ray Bradbury -- Really long and strange sf story about people on a planet where you are born, live, and die in eight days

“The Choccolocco Monster: Jokester Reveals 32-Year-Old Prank,” Matthew Creamer, article from the Anniston (AL) Star, Oct. 31, 2001 – Amusing hoax from 1969; bored fifteen-year-old plus fur coat plus cow skull = monster.

Fantastic Four no. 1 (Nov. 1961) – 2005 reprint of Silver Age comic. New superheroes to stand beside Superman, Batman, and Captain America

Doc Savage: Curse of the Fire God no. 3 (Nov. 1995)

“Peril in Paris,” from Detective Comics no. 24 (Dec. 1939)

The Lone Ranger, “Tenderfeet”; Jonny Quest, “Double Danger” introduces Jade

Gilligan, “President Gilligan”; Scooby-Doo, “What the Hex Going on?”

Victory at Sea, “Guadalcanal”; NASA, “Houston, We’ve Got a Problem”

Mazeppa, “The Reverend Dr. Menleaux Park;” Superman, “The Bulleteers,” Zorro’s Fighting Legion, “Chapter Five: The Decoy”

SIXTY-FIRST DAY (Nov. 30)

Gilligan, “The Sound of Quacking;” Scooby-Doo, “Never Ape an Ape-Man”

The Six Million Dollar Man (1973 TV movie) – the pilot for the series. Oddly, we’re about 2/3 through the novel Cyborg, but Cubby couldn’t resist. The stock footage at the beginning reminds him of the NASA films.

Thistle & Shamrock #703, “Rising Scots” and #705, “Same Tune, Different Planet”

“The Case of the Ruby Idol,” from Detective no. 35 (Jan. 1940)

Doc Savage, Curse of the Fire God no. 4 (Dec. 1995) finishes this mini-series

“Here There Be Tigers,” “Uncle Einar,” “The Gift,” “The Time Machine,” “The Strawberry Window,” “The Dragon,” “The Exiles” finished R Is for Rocket by Ray Bradbury

Notes on the Second Month: Cubby has finished 43 books, including a second Bradbury. So many to go! His TV viewing has strayed to Gilligan’s Island, Scooby-Doo, and the Three Stooges, but a little kid likes such things. Cubby now thinks of Dr. Seuss and similar books as being for “little kids,” even though he only started reading two months ago. So we’ll have to feed him more informational items in the future.

SIXTY-FOURTH DAY (Dec. 3)

“Professor Hugo Strange,” Detective Comics no. 36 (Feb. 1940); “The Spies,” no. 37 (March 1940); “Introducing Robin, the Boy Wonder,” no.38 (April 1940)

Dogbert’s Clues for the Clueless, Scott Adams (comic strips)

Gilligan, “Good-Bye, Island”; Scooby-Doo, “Foul Play in Funland”

When Worlds Collide (1951 sf) – another science fiction epic!

SIXTY-FIFTH DAY (Dec. 4)

Amazing Fantasy no. 15 (Aug 1962) – 2002 reprint of the first Spider-Man story. Another costumed hero in the comics! Spidey’s was only one of several stories in that issue. Comics books used to be a lot longer – and cheaper!

“Restless Knights,” Three Stooges short

Wine, Women, and War (1973 TV movie) – second Six Million Dollar Man movie. They were trying to make Steve Austin look like James Bond. (Reminding me: Cubby needs to see the first Bond movies, if he’s watched this and The Avengers episodes.)

November 18-25

2011-12-03T18:40:00.000-08:00

FORTY-NINTH DAY (Nov. 18)

Victory at Sea, “Mediterranean Mosaic”

NASA, “The Eagle Has Landed” – as promised since the First Day, the story of men landing on the moon!

Gilligan, “Voodoo Something to Me”; Scooby-Doo, “A Clue for Scooby-Doo”

“The Batman Meets Doctor Death,” from Detective Comics no. 29 (July 1939), and “The Return of Dr. Death,” from no. 30 (Aug. 1939) – Batman’s mighty free with his Bat-Gun and bright red Batmobile.

Bartholomew and the Oobleck, Dr. Seuss (jv) – We missed a Dr. Seuss somehow. Cubby, at less than two months, feels himself beyond such things already. But with the mysterious green Oobleck falling from the sky, this second Bartholomew book is also quite fortean.

Day the Earth Stool Still (1951 sf) – Another alien arrives in another flying saucer, like The Thing, but Klaatu isn’t so bad.

FIFTY-FIRST DAY (Nov. 20)

Strange But True, Donald J. Sobol – juvenile accounts of real-life mysteries from the creator of Encyclopedia Brown.

Day of the Ness, Andre Norton and Michael Gilbert – finally a book by Andre Norton (or, at least, co-written). Juvenile sf tale of a bizarre group of aliens menaced by the ugly, troll-like Ness, and the earth boy who helps them (with contributions by Susie the cat).

Doc Savage: Curse of the Fire God no. 1 (Nov. 1995) – The Man of Bronze begins another comic book adventure. I’ll be superamalgamated!

The Lone Ranger, “The Renegades”; Jonny Quest, “The Robot Spy”

Gilligan, “Good Night, Sweet Skipper”; Scooby Doo, “Mine Your Own Business”

Day the Earth Stood Still DVD extras; the Three Stooges, “We Want Our Mummy”

The Avengers, “The Gravediggers”

FIFTY-FOURTH DAY (Nov. 23)

“Batman vs. the Vampire” Part One, from Detective Comics no. 31 (Sept. 1939), and Part Two, from no. 32 (Oct. 1939).

Marvels no. 0 and no. 1, from the trade paperback (1994). We see the early Human Torch, Namor, and Captain America, with cameos by Lois Lane and Clark Kent, Doc Savage and Lamont Cranston, and Popeye the Sailor!

INFO Journal no. 22, March 1977

Gilligan, “Wrongway Feldman”; Scooby Doo, “Decoy for a Dognapper”

Mazeppa, “Shampoo and Tattoo;” Superman, “The Arctic Giant;” Zorro’s Fighting Legion, “Chapter Four: Bridge of Peril.”

FIFTY-SIXTH DAY (Nov. 25)

“You Know the Tale of Hoph,” “Old Devlins Was A-Waitin’,” Manly Wade Wellman

Doc Savage: Curse of the Fire God no. 2 (Oct. 1995)

“Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom,” from Detective Comics no. 33 (Nov. 1939)

King Kong (1933 sf) – Quite a follow-up to The Lost World, and it’s a Thanksgiving tradition (at least in the New York area) to watch it on Turkey Day. We’re millionaires, boys! I’ll share it with all of you!

The Giant Claw (1957 sf) – Saw this and am not proud of the fact, but it’s becoming a Thanksgiving tradition to watch this turkey as well.

The Cubby Experiment Goes on

2011-11-17T20:09:00.000-08:00

The Cubby Experiment continues, with the imaginary "Cubster" gathering information every day. What's that? Input like "Gilligan's Island" and "Scooby-Doo" doesn't sound very edifying? Well, they were always on in the afternoon when I came home from school, so -- why not?

FORTY-FOURTH DAY (Nov. 13)

“Royal Death Plot” (7/24 – 11/11, 1939), Superman comic.

Lone Ranger, “Pete and Pedro”; Jonny Quest, “Calcutta Adventure” – origin of Hadji.

Scooby-Doo, “Hassle in the Castle”; Gilligan, “Home Sweet Hut.” I haven't mentioned that, due to Gilligan, Cubby now knows who Jim Backus is, who was mentioned in a newspaper clipping way back on the second day.

Mazeppa, “Chinchilla Attack #3”; Superman, “Billion Dollar Limited”; Zorro’s Fighting Legion, “Chapter Three: Descending Doom”; The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923 historical).

Thistle & Shamrock #694, “A Robust Tradition” – harp music.

Captain America no. 109 (Jan. 1968) – “The Origin of Captain America!” A 2002 reprint of a 1968 issue retelling events from a 1942 comic – all drawn by Jack “King” Kirby! A direct sequel to the Doc Savage/Shadow comic (retroactively), with “Dr. Reinstein” perfecting his Super-Soldier serum.

Excerpt from Furred Animals of Australia by Ellis Troughton – the mysterious Marsupial Tiger-Cat!

“Close Encounter of the Third Kind at Kelly Re-Examined,” from The International UFO Reporter Vol. 3, no. 5 (May 1978) – article on the Kelly/Hopkinsville case.

FORTY-SIXTH DAY (Nov. 15)

“Underworld Politics” (11/13 – 12/16, 1939) and “Unnatural Disasters” (12/18/39 – 1/6/40) finishes off Superman: The Dailies 1939-1940 Vol. 1.

“West Virginia’s ‘Mothman’”, article/chapter from John Keel’s Strange Creatures from Time & Space.

Unsolved Mysteries, “Agatha Christie,” “Skunk Ape,” “Mothman” – because Nov. 15 was the 45th anniversary of the appearance of Mothman, more-or-less. Cubby recognizes Agatha Christie as the creator of Miss Marple (though the film Murder She Said was not a very close adaptation).

37th - 42nd Day

2011-11-12T18:23:00.000-08:00

THIRTY-SEVENTH DAY (Nov. 6)

“The Most Deadly Weapon” (5/1 – 6/10, 1939); “Superman and the Runaway” (6/12 – 7/22, 1939) – Superman comic strip.

Journey, “Infinity” (cassette)

Unsolved Mysteries, “Grace’s Ghost,” “Voice from the Grave,” “Ghosts Go to Court,” “The Entity,” “Ghost Boy”

Silent Invasion, Stan Gordon (fortean) – Waited thirty-seven years for this one, so read it even though it’s a bit advanced for Cubby. A major flap of UFOs, hairy monsters, mystery men, and various weird occurrences from the wild year of 1973.

FORTIETH DAY (Nov. 9)

“The Crowd,” “The Long Rain,” “The Sound of Summer Running,” Ray Bradbury.

“Call of Cthulhu,” H. P. Lovecraft – pretty scary, that vast shifting corpulence, Cthulhu!

The Family Circus By Request, Bil Keane (comic strips)

Tales of the Green Hornet no. 1 (Jan. 1992) and no. 2 (Feb. 1992) – The story of how newspaper publisher Britt Reid became the masked crime-fighter, the Green Hornet. Say! He has the same last name as the Lone Ranger!

Red Skelton, “The Iceman Goeth”; Twilight Zone, “One for the Angels” – Death comes after you? No fair!

“Another Whitechapel Murder,” from the London Times, Nov. 10, 1888, p. 7 – The Ripper strikes.

“The Whitechapel Murder,” the Times, Nov. 12, 1888.

“Supposed Murder at the East End,” the Times, 11/14/88 – Body found floating in the Thames. Nothing to do with ol’ Jack, just an interesting Victorian item.

“A Detective’s Diary a la Mode” plus Review of the play Uncles and Aunts, from Punch, or the London Charivari (Sept. 22, 1888). “Detective” is a satire on the search for Jack the Ripper. The review happened to be on the same page. I wonder if anyone else on earth today has read this 123-year-old review, or ever heard of this play?

Excerpts from Jack the Ripper by Daniel Farson (1972) – telling of the Ripper’s effect on people beyond London. Read these items today because November 9 is the anniversary of the Kelly murder.

Thirty-six books = 3/400 of the way done.

FORTY-SECOND DAY (Nov. 11)

The Shadow and Doc Savage no. 1 (July 1995) and no. 2 (August 1995) – “The Case of the Shrieking Skeletons” brings back Doc, whom we saw in The Man of Bronze, plus a new mysterious character called – The Shadow!

“The Cask of Amontillado,” “The City in the Sea,” “Annabelle Lee,” Edgar Allan Poe.

Wild Life in the Alps, Gerth Rokitansky – a small volume translated from German, with the occasional “ob” and “und” left in. Ibexes, marmots, ptarmigans, and the golden eagle – we’re learning more about nature.

Favorite Tales of Monsters and Trolls, George Jonsen – pamphlet of Troll tales, including “The Three Billy Goats Gruff.”

All Creatures Great and Small, “Dog Days” – brother Tristan appears.

Victory at Sea, “Midway is East”; NASA, “Gemini VIII”

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?, “What a Night for a Knight”

Gilligan’s Island, “Two on a Raft” plus pilot episode with different actors.

Unknown World (1951 sf) – Explorers seek an underground haven to escape an atomic war. No dinosaurs, mole men, or lost civilizations, and very cheap, but not too bad.

33rd - 36th Days

2011-11-07T22:56:00.000-08:00

THIRTY-THIRD DAY (November 2, 2011)

Murder, She Said (1962 mystery) – Margaret Rutherford as Miss Marple. Like The Lady Vanishes, the mystery involves a train and a missing woman. Cubby will have to spread out, mystery-wise.

Excerpt from In Northern Mists, by Fridtjof Nansen (1911) – a mention of Dog-Headed Men in Norway.

THIRTY-FIFTH DAY (Nov. 4)

“First Person,” first-hand accounts sent to Strange Magazine, now on their website. Monsters and ghosts, including the infamous “Giant Shrimp in the Laundry Room.”

Kolchak: The Night Stalker, “Horror in the Heights” – I intended to watch TV shows in a sort of historical order, beginning with Twilight Zone and going on to Night Stalker later, but I decided on a bit of “random access” viewing. The Rakshasa is quite a nasty customer in this episode!

“The Picture in the House,” H. P. Lovecraft (horror ss)

“The Rag-Thing,” David Grinnell (Donald Wollheim) (sf ss)

THIRTY-SIXTH DAY (Nov. 5)

Pockets World History, Philip Wilkinson – A tiny paperback, but it gives us an outline of history from cavemen to 1996 when it was published. Now Cubby knows all the basics of history, and how the fragments and bits he has learned fit together! It’s like a couple of pages of Life Story multiplied a thousandfold, yet it is itself very sketchy (Ancient Rome gets two pages, The Cold War and The Space Race get a page each, etc.). Nothing to do but expand more into history!

Lone Ranger, “War Horse”; Jonny Quest, “Treasure of the Temple” – Maya-type ruins and gold treasure remind us of the Doc Savage book.

Unsolved Mysteries, “Friendly Ghost,” “Resurrection Mary,” “Matchmaker Ghost,” “Queen Mary Ghosts”.

Rocketship X-M (1950 sf) – Could almost be considered the first of 1950s SF. It was filmed quick in order to get it out before George Pal’s announced Destination Moon. Though cheaply made and rushed, it’s not too bad. Would have been #1 in “Fantastic Theater,” except I just found it.

Thirty-four books = 1/144 of the way.

27th to 31st Days

2011-11-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

TWENTY-SEVENTH DAY

You’ve Done it Again, Charlie Brown, Charles Schulz – Finally we see what that one comic strip from AD 2000 referred to. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and other characters from Sunday “Peanuts” strips.

“The Damned Thing,” “Mysterious Disappearances,” Ambrose Bierce (h ss) – More scary tales, these by a fellow named Bierce.

Psycho (1960 horror) – Another Hitchcock film, this one the ancestor of all sorts of serial killer and slasher movies. Maybe Cubby is reading and watching too many scary things!

“The White River Monster of Jackson County, Arkansas: A Historical Summary of Oral and Popular Growth and Change in a Legend,” William Harris – an article of folklore from Mid-South Folklore, Vol. 5, No. 1, Spring 1977. A monster in an Arkansas river? Hard to imagine!

Thirty-Two books read = 1/150 of the way done.

TWENTY-NINTH DAY

“Some Haunted Houses,” “The Ways of Ghosts,” “The Death of Halpin Frasier,” Ambrose Bierce (h ss).

“The Borden Case,” a sizable portion of Studies in Murder by Edmund Pearson, plus “Legends of Lizzie” from More Studies in Murder.

Unsolved Mysteries, “Ghost Writer,” “The Marie Celeste,” Myrtle Plantation,” “General Wayne’s Inn.” More scary ghost stories!

Lone Ranger, “The Rustlers’ Hideout”

Jonny Quest, “Riddle of the Gold”

Legend of Boggy Creek (1972 horror) – docu-drama about the Fouke Monster in Arkansas. Certainly unique with its folk-song interludes!

THIRTY-FIRST DAY

Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949 animated) – A Disney more-or-less feature film. A rather hurried version of Wind in the Willows, but great adaptation of “Sleepy Hollow.” A harrowing final chase by the Headless Horseman at the end!

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966 animated short) – plus extras. We see more of those “Peanuts” kids (and that World War I flying ace, Snoopy) as they prepare for “Tricks or Treats.”

The Colour Out of Space, H. P. Lovecraft (h ss) – As much sf as horror, this story about something nasty in a meteorite brings us one HPL story before the end of the first month.

Excuse Me While I Wag, Scott Adams (comic strips) – this new comic collection introduces us to Dilbert, Dogbert, and co. – and what a workplace is really like.

Observations on the First Month: Cubby has seen, heard and read quite a bit during his first month. TV shows and movies, from the educational to pure entertainment, from funny to frightening. History: still mostly from Victory at Sea; the 9-11 LIFE magazine showed the modern world. Nature: Well, we learned a lot about whales and dolphins! Science: NASA shows and the Golden Book of Stars are still the leaders here.

Cubby’s read through most of the juvenile books I have. Next come more challenging books. He has read a few poems and one novel (a pulp Doc Savage though that was). Music is probably the smallest category in my personal collection, but, besides the CDs Cubby has listened to, he’s heard music in every DVD and VHS he’s seen.

I couldn’t help leaning toward horror tales and monsters as we swept towards Halloween. Cubby’s read about and seen ghosts and monsters, imaginary and (supposedly) real. A single issue of Famous Monsters gave him a passing acquaintance with all the Universal monsters like the Wolfman, the Creature, the Mummy, etc. He’s read stories by Bradbury, Wellman, Jackson, and others. Space travel he knows from Bradbury and the reality of NASA films. Wells introduced the concept of time travel. Monster movies were a staple in my own diet when I was young, then I made the leap into science fiction literature. That comes next!

21st, 22nd, 25th Days

2011-10-29T17:35:00.000-07:00

THE TWENTY-FIRST DAY

Had to let items accumulate during the busy week. Anyway:

“The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” by Washington Irving. A famous ghostly tale. Also Preface and first sketches of The Sketch Book.

The Spooky Thing, William O. Steele (jv) – Funniest thing I ever read (as a little kid), and Cubby agrees. A tall tale from Tennessee, adapted by Steele, full of exaggerations and quips that have stayed with me all my life. I often say I have double-distilled dropsy or the dry wobbles when I’m sick. But the Spooky Thing itself is quite a nasty monster!

“On the Trail of the Brontosaurus,” by “Fulann” (Captain W. Hichens) – from BFR website, originally from Chamber’s Journal, Oct. 1927. Dinosaurs, Chemosit, Nunda, and other monsters in Africa!

“Lizzie Borden’s House,” “Tatum’s Ghost,” “Ghostly Attraction,” “Comedy Store Ghosts,” “Devil’s Backbone,” ghostly segments from Unsolved Mysteries. We’re getting into the Halloween spirit, all right!

TWENTY-SECOND DAY

“The Lottery,” “Biography of a Story,” “Tootie in Peonage,” “Janice”, Shirley Jackson (ss) – finally stories by a female writer. “Biography” tells of all the lunatics who wrote in about “The Lottery”. And “Lottery” is another scary tale.

“Then I Wasn’t Alone,” “Shiver in the Pines,” M. W. Wellman (ss)

The Pied Piper of Hamelin, Robert Browning – more poetry, this effort is about a mysterious character who can control rats – and children – with his music.

How to Take Care of Your Monster, Norman Bridwell (jv) – funny book on owning a monster as a pet. We’ve seen all these monsters in Famous Monsters. Now how about movies and stories about them?

“How It All Began,” Kenneth Arnold, from Proceedings of the First UFO Congress by Curtis Fuller – Don’t usually list a single article by itself (unless Xeroxed or clipped from a magazine), but this tells us of the origin of “Flying Saucers” in 1947 (the name, at least). Much like “Ishtar Gate” is like the seed of Cryptozoology, and the Ford’s Theater clipping, telling of Lincoln being seen after death, slid us into the area of ghosts.

Lone Ranger, “The Legion of Old-Timers”

Jonny Quest, “Pursuit of the Po-Ho”

Thirty books read = 1/160 of the way through!

TWENTY-FIFTH DAY

Mazeppa, “Chinchilla Attack #2,” “Slow-Motion School”; Superman, “The Mechanical Monsters”; Zorro’s Fighting Legion, “Chapter Two: The Flaming Z”; Nosferatu (1922 horror) – We learn about vampires big time!

“The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Black Cat,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “The Premature Burial,” “The Raven,” and “The Conqueror Worm,” stories and poems by Edgar Allen Poe – very Halloweeny.

Whales, Dolphins, and Other Marine Mammals, George S. Fichter – a Golden Nature Guide.

15th, 16th, 18th Days

2011-10-23T20:30:00.001-07:00

THE FIFTEENTH DAY

Ren & Stimpy, “Ren’s Toothache,” “Nurse Stimpy,” “The Cat that Laid the Golden Hairball” plus two Powdered Toastman commercials. A bit of a jump from early, basic Warners and Disney cartoons to this, but – just felt like seeing them.

All Creatures Great and Small, “Horse Sense” – The perfect follow-up to Usborne Farm Animals. More real animals are seen, and Cubby wonders where places like Yorkshire and Glasgow are.

At Last the 1948 Show episode #1 – Ancestor of Monty Python from 1967 – John Cleese, Tim Brooke-Taylor, Marty Feldman, and Graham Chapman.

Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919 horror) – should have gone with “Mazeppa” airing last week. Just about the oldest horror movie.

THE SIXTEENTH DAY

“The Attempt on Everest” (London Times, Oct. 21, 1921); “The Abominable Snowmen” (ca. Nov. 1, 1921); “Abominable Snowmen: A Traveller’s Experience” (Nov. 3, 1921 p. 11) – Cryptozoological news clippings. The Howard Bury expedition gave us the name “Abominable Snowman.”

Goofy in “Giant Trouble”, Don Christensen – a Big Little Book from 1968. Part of my childhood. Odd reading Mickey Mouse and Goofy in prose.

The Lone Ranger, “The Lone Ranger’s Triumph” – third episode ends a storyline, like a mini-serial.

Jonny Quest, “Curse of Anubis” – Whatever a “mummy” is, says Cubby, don’t violate its tomb!

Biography: Ed Gein – VHS copy. Account of a weird killer. Kind of appropriate for an autumn evening.

Doc Savage #1: The Man of Bronze, Kenneth Robeson – first in the series of pulp books about the proto-superman Clark Savage, Junior and his Fabulous Five!

THE EIGHTEENTH DAY

Famous Monsters of Filmland no. 37 (February 1966) – Many years ago a little child flipped through this very issue of Forry Ackerman’s magazine in a tiny Tulsa drugstore, but his mother made him put it back on the shelf. Now Cubby has finally read it! He at least knows the names and faces of quite a number of – well – famous monsters. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolfman, the Mummy . . . And like any red-blooded American lad, he wants more!

Kennedy Half Dollars, 1964-2003 – Coin collecting albums, surprisingly full. More half-dollars to go with his 2000 S “proof” coin. Coins are shiny and round . . . he might collect more of these, too.

The Avengers, “The Cybernauts” – Can John Steed and Emma Peel stop these steel automatons that go around terminating people? The talk in this programme (Brit. Spelling), about a new “circuit” that’s going to replace the transistor – computers and TVs that will fit in your pocket – is pretty amazing for 1965, and does better than some actual SF films and fiction of the era.

“Dragon of the Ishtar Gate,” an excerpt from The Lungfish and the Unicorn by Willy Ley (1941) – a chapter from the earliest cryptozoological book, which gave the world the word “Mokele-Mbembe”. Could the Sirrush of ancient Babylon and the Mokele-Mbembe of central Africa be dinosaurs? Fun to imagine, at least.

Twelfth and Fourteenth Days

2011-10-18T22:29:00.000-07:00

THE TWELFTH DAY

“How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and “The Lorax”, Dr. Seuss – A Christmas classic and a tale of environmental catastrophe from the good doctor. They finish off the volume “Six by Seuss.”

LIFE Magazine vol. 11 no. 12 (September 2, 2011) – “In the Land of the Free,” September 11 memorial issue, updated. Didn’t intend to read it so soon, but couldn’t put it down. Cubby has seen war and murder, so he might as well see terrorism. (Don’t know what the volume number signifies. A “new series,” as old magazines often had?) This is the most recent publication he has yet come across.

Twenty-four books down = 1/200 of the entire lot. Quite a bit for twelve days! Of course, the majority are longer and more involved than Dr. Seuss . . .

THE FOURTEENTH DAY

We skipped a day! After the tumult of trying to get tons of reading and viewing and listening done early on, Cubby will settle down into a pattern. After all, real world things like work slow things down.

“Besides a Dinosaur, Whatta Ya Wanna Be When You Grow Up?”, “Lo, the Dear, Daft Dinosaurs!”, “What If I Said, the Dinosaur’s not Dead?”, “Tyrannosaurus Rex,” (sf ss) finish off Dinosaur Tales by Ray Bradbury.

“Lithobolia, or, the Stone-Throwing Devil,” excerpt from Legends of the New England Coast by Edward Rowe Snow – Early poltergeist story.

The Thing from Another World (1951 sf) – the earliest ‘50s SF movie I have starts off “Fantastic Theater.” Superman was a benevolent visitor from another planet – here’s a nasty one!

Observations after the first two weeks (a fortnight): The Cubster has seen six movies, fifteen TV episodes, and numerous cartoons and assorted bits. He’s read 25 books and many excerpts.

Science fiction he knows mainly from a few Bradbury stories, Superman’s origin, and a few TV viewings, like Twilight Zone and “The Thing”. This definitely needs improving! Fantasy – mainly juveniles so far. Horror – the Silver John stories, though science fiction shows can be scary. Mysteries – two mystery-type movies so far. Comedy comes from cartoons, Red Skelton, and the Marx Brothers. Westerns – there’s been Stagecoach and The Lone Ranger.

Some of the ghost and cryptozoology articles were certainly scary. I’d like to have more history and science before unleashing forteana on Cubby, though.

Science has come mainly from the little book Stars, as well as the NASA shows. Dinosaurs and prehistoric eras have popped up several times. History has come from Victory, NASA, and books like Discovering the World. The LIFE magazine has shows us a harsh bit of modern history. Washington and Lincoln, so far, are the names of individuals he knows best, though he has seen Churchill, FDR, Alan Shepherd, and John Glenn. The biggest need is for more female authors and historical personages.

Tenth and Eleventh Days

2011-10-15T16:45:00.000-07:00

THE TENTH DAY (Oct. 10, 2011)

Stars, Herbert S. Zim and Robert Baker – This Golden Nature Guide really opens up the Universe! Now we know of stars, galaxies, comets, and other planets; we know the Main Sequence of stars, and that Antares, if placed where the Sun is now, would reach past Mars, and that the Great Comet of 1843 had a tail three hundred million miles long. One page tells us of men landing on the Moon!

Detective Comics No. 28 (June 1939), “Frenchie Blake’s Jewel Gang,” another Bat-Man adventure.

Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories, Dr. Seuss (jv).

The Lone Ranger, “The Lone Ranger Fights On” – Will the Ranger and Tonto triumph?

Jonny Quest, “Arctic Splashdown” – The Quest group has been joined by a character named Hadji.

Twilight Zone, “Where Is Everybody?” – A mysterious tale that ends up, again, with men heading into space.

“Chinchilla Attack #1,” “Dialing for Dullards,” from the local show Mazeppa Pompazoidie’s Uncanny Film Festival and Camp Meeting, starring Gailard Sartain, circa 1971. Fleischer animated Superman, “The Mad Scientist;” Zorro’s Fighting Legion Chapter One, “The Golden God.” Creating my own Saturday matinee-type show, with a funny skit, a cartoon, a serial chapter, and an old movie. Cubby recognizes Superman, at least.

THE ELEVENTH DAY

Victory at Sea, “Sealing the Breach” – those Nazi U-Boats are nasty.

NASA, “The Four Days of Gemini IV” – The world learns a new word: EVA. Although technically that’s not a word, but an acronym for Extra-Vehicular Activity.

The Avengers, “Town of No Return” – British action and intrigue with John Steed and Emma Peel.

“Why They’re Called That,” “One Other,” Manly Wade Wellman (horror ss) – more Silver John.

Strangely Enough!, Carroll B. Colby – The one true introduction to ghosts, flying saucers, mysterious disappearances, and other fortean phenomena, plus lost treasures, historical oddities, and amazing adventures!

The Eighth Day/ The Ninth Day

2011-10-11T19:58:00.000-07:00

THE EIGHT DAY (October 8, 2011)

Thistle & Shamrock #805, “A Celtic Harvest” and #806, “The Water is Wide.”

Horton Hatches the Egg, Dr. Seuss – Pretty funny, yet Horton the Elephant’s faithfulness and friendliness impressed Cubby.

Superman comic strip, “Jewel Smugglers” (3/20 – 4/1, 1939) and “The Skyscraper of Death” (4/3 – 4/28, 1939).

The Strength of Lions & the Flight of Eagles, Joe Nigg – The greatest birthday card ever, a mini-pamphlet about gryphons! At last the bird-beasts have come into their own.

“The Rocket Man,” “The Golden Apples of the Sun,” Ray Bradbury (sf ss)

Ice Age Monsters: Woolly Rhinoceros, Rupert Oliver (jv nf) – Another look at prehistoric critters. The Homotherium that attacks the rhino looks like a prehistoric werewolf (although Cubby hasn’t officially discovered werewolves yet).

Warner Brothers Cartoons: “A Tale of Two Kitties,” “An Itch in Time,” “Ding Dong Daddy.”

The Maltese Falcon (1941 mystery) plus DVD extras – It feels like Cubby has covered the basics of classic movies – John Wayne, Hitchcock, The Lost World for science fiction and monsters, and now Humphrey Bogart.

THE NINTH DAY (Oct. 9, 2011)

The Sneetches and Other Stories, Dr. Seuss (jv) – more funny stories, but those empty walking pants freaked Cubby out!

Excerpt from The Story of My Life, Augustus Hare – includes a phantom carriage, a banshee tale, and the Vampire of Croglin Grange. Pretty scary, but Cubby wanted scary stories!

“A Sound of Thunder,” Ray Bradbury (sf ss) – astounding use of language, of dinosaurs, and of time travel!

Heavener, Oklahoma – map of Heavener Runestone State Recreation Area and the general area around. A bit more of Oklahoma’s “Green Country” seen. Did Vikings reach Oklahoma and carve runes in boulders?

“Terror Reigns in Whitechapel as Jack the Ripper Strikes” – London Times coverage reprinted in A Treasury of Great Reporting (1949), edited by Louis Lee Snyder and Richard Brandon. Now we know the basics of the most infamous of killers, Jack the Ripper. Hope it’s not too scary for Cubby!

Twenty books read = 1/240 of the way done.

The Sixth Day/The Seventh Day

2011-10-08T18:15:00.000-07:00

THE SIXTH DAY (Oct. 6, 2011)

The Lone Ranger, “Enter the Lone Ranger” – More cowboys and the old West. Amazingly, the map of the western USA here shows mostly the “Four Corners” area – the only part left blank by the Abe Lincoln book!

Jonny Quest, “Mystery of the Lizard-Men” – Pretty exciting! Laser beams, the Sargasso Sea, and a mention of men to the moon!

Thistle & Shamrock #692, “Hammer Out a Tune” – more great Celtic music.

Superman, “The Comeback of Larry Trent,” (2/20 – 3/18, 1939) – More of this Superman person.

The Monster at the End of This Book, Jon Stone (jv) – Lovable, furry old Grover is sure scared of the approaching Monster. (Oh, I am so embarrassed!) Cubby wants to read more about monsters. Forry Ackerman will take care of that.

When the Wolves Returned, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent (jv nature) – We learn about wolves with a vengeance! Never thought that the lack of wolves would cause the disappearance of songbirds, aspens, willows, badgers, foxes, eagles . . . but it did!

“Little Orphant Annie,” “The Fishing Party,” “The Raggedy Man,” poems by James Whitcomb Riley – since a poem slipped in with “Ghosts I Have Known,” here are some more. “Annie” is kind of creepy, with the Gobble-uns going to get you if you don’t watch out! The coming of fall puts a Halloween feeling in the air, and Cubby wants to read/see some scary stories. Well, we’ll see.

“Sunnybank’s Canine Ghost,” an excerpt from Sunnybank: Home of Lad, by Albert Payson Terhune. Now a ghost dog!

The Lost World (1925 sf) – A movie about dinosaurs still living in a distant jungle. A logical extension of Cubby’s interest in dinosaurs and monsters, and of the hints of cryptozoology we’ve seen. This movie will be the precursor to “Mazeppa” (local host who showed old horror films) and “Fantastic Theater” (which long ago featured ‘50s SF, Toho films, Hammer films, odd horror and sci-fi, etc.) After all, the brontosaur loose in London bit is the ancestor of King Kong, the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and all other rampaging giant monsters.

THE SEVENTH DAY (October 7, 2011)

Victory at Sea, “The Pacific Boils Over” – Pearl Harbor and all that. The first episode made Germany look bad; this one does the same for Japan. Cubby assumes things “got better” if something like the Japanese Fantasy Film Journal eventually came out.

NASA, “The Flight of Friendship 7” – Godspeed, John Glenn! An American orbits the earth. Neither NASA film so far even mentioned Yuri Gagarin or the Russians.

The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins, Dr. Seuss (jv) – prose fairy tale from Seuss. Not even wizards and wise men can explain Bartholomew’s materializing hats, so this is a rather fortean tale.

“Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” from Detective Comics no. 27, May 1939 – first a Superman, now this Bat-Man!

Knott’s Berry Farm map of Southern California – a vacation map from 1977, showing Knott’s Berry Farm (obviously) but also a lot of California – actually the most intricate map Cubby has yet seen. We’ve all heard names like Burbank, Hollywood, Tarzana, Anaheim, Azusa, and Cucamonga – names like Tujunga Canyon, Devil’s Gate, and Riverside will become important later.

Excerpts from Cow By the Tail, Jesse James Benton – Haunted stage station, giant skull, monstrous snakes, and meteorites! The old West could be weird!

Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, Virginia Lee Burton – amusing fantasy by the author of Life Story.

Monkey Business (1931 comedy) – funny Marx Brothers vehicle. The nearest Zeppo came to being one of the gang. Amazing clarity.

Eighteen books read = 3/800 of the way done.

The Fourth Day/The Fifth Day

2011-10-05T19:12:00.000-07:00

THE FOURTH DAY (Oct. 4, 2011)

Flying the B-17 (VHS) – great visuals of a great World War II aircraft.

Map of Oklahoma’s Green Country – Cubby sees a bit of the area in which he lives. “Oklahoma” resembles the “Indian Territory” of the Abe Lincoln map.

“R Is for Rocket,” “The Rocket”, Ray Bradbury (sf ss) – More amazing use of language in these short stories.

“The Chronic Argonauts,” H. G. Wells (sf ss) – the prototype of The Time Machine introduces another amazing concept to go with space travel – travel through time!

Discovering the World, Neil Grant (jv history) – The Age of Discovery from Columbus to Magellan to Hernando de Soto. We learn a lot about history, geography, and the countries and civilizations of the world, from Eskimos to Incas to China. Cubby could now draw a fairly accurate map of the world. The old explorers are admirable in some ways, but most were hell-bent on conquest and enslaving those they discovered! The “Pizarro” story is here repeated (first read in “Wild Animals I Have Known”).

The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, Dr. Seuss – Here is more whimsy from Seuss to me, with Little Cat A to Little Cat Z.

“Superman’s War on Crime,” comic strips 1/30 – 2/18, 1939 – introduces Lois Lane, lady reporter.

Three Comic Strips. 1/3/2000 – including the final “Peanuts” by Charles Schulz. Cubby doesn’t know Snoopy – yet.

“Monsters – American Style” – article from unidentified DC comic circa 1968. Eerie introduction to Bigfoot, a year before the Patterson film. Freaked me out as a kid, but Cubby just finds it interesting.

Heavy Metal (soundtrack cd) – Wow! Some great choices on this album! Cubby likes rock ‘n’ roll. (Note I wouldn’t show a youngster like Cubby the movie Heavy Metal!)

THE FIFTH DAY (Oct. 5, 2011)

“John’s My Name,” “O Ugly Bird,” Manly Wade Wellman (f ss) – We learn about backwoods country ways, and we meet the frightening Ugly Bird.

And To Think That I Saw it on Mulberry Street!, Dr. Seuss (jv) – his first book of whimsy.

A Gryphon in the Garden, Elsa Marston (jv) – neat griffin drawings. The bird-beast has gone from a single drawing in Animal Ghosts to one character among several in Sir Toby to a starring role. But what of “real” griffins?

Disney’s Extreme Sports Fun: “Canine Caddy,” “How to Play Baseball,” “The Hockey Champ,” “Double Dribble,” “How to Play Football,” “Mickey’s Polo Team,” “Tennis Racket,” “Goofy Gymnastics.” Cartoons by someone other than Warner.

Krista Hartman letter #1, Nov. 18, 1980 – my favorite pen-pal correspondence from the times before email. Cubby thinks it’s addressed to him. We mainly discussed Andre Norton tales, so Cubby knows of an author he has to brush up on (or he’ll be all at sea).

“Ghosts I Have Known,” Vida Herbison; “Cutting the Hedge,” Magaret Stanley-Wrench (poem); “Second to None,” Wendy Wood – items from The Countryman, Vol. LIV, no. 4, Winter 1957. More on these here “ghosts”.

“Werewolves in Sussex,” Doris W. Metcalf – The Countryman, Spring 1958. And now something called werewolves, when we barely know what a wolf is. That will change.

Fifteen books down (“Mulberry” is in a multi-story volume) = 1/320 of the way done.

THE THIRD DAY (October 3, 2011)

2011-10-03T21:27:00.000-07:00

Usborne Mysteries & Marvels of the Animal World, Karen Goaman and Heather Amery (jv nature) – more information about real animals – they don’t act much like they do in Dr. Seuss. Mentions Yeti, the Loch Ness Monster and rats raining from the sky – another step towards fortean phenomena.

The Cat in the Hat, Dr. Seuss (jv) – more whimsy from Seuss.

Usborne Book of Farm Animals, Felicity Everett (jv) – companion to Marvels & Mysteries. Now we learn of sheep, cows, goats, horses, pigs, chickens, ducks, etc. Even cats and dogs.

Sir Toby Jingle’s Beastly Journey, Wallace Tripp (jv) – A man with armor and a sword is a “knight”. A child’s glimpse of medieval times, castles, dragons, and such. There was a drawing of a gryphon in Animal Ghosts; here we find a well-drawn gryphon character. And, after the Usborne books, Cubby knows that cats, foxes and wolves don’t normally talk.

“The Fog-Horn,” “The End of the Beginning,” Ray Bradbury (sf ss) – Our first proper short stories show an amazing use of language. The first gives us more in the dinosaur arena; the second could accompany the NASA film.

Superman: The Dailies, 1939-1940: Introduction and “Superman Comes to Earth” (1/16 – 1/28, 1939) – This was easy for Cubby to understand: Krypton was a tiny disk floating in space, like Earth in LS, and the “supermen” evolved beyond earth people as LS showed fish, reptiles and mammals in succession. The Big Idea, though, is: there may be other planets out there in the dark universe with inhabitants of their own!

The Lady Vanishes (1939 thriller) – Early Hitchcock mystery. The first real (and model) trains Cubby has seen, though Wile E. Coyote tends to get hit by them in cartoons. They look like fun! And he spotted a young (but balding) Hitchcock. Baseball is “Rounders”, eh? No cricket? Americans have no sense of proportion . . .

Twelve books read = 1/400 of all books. Cubby’s advancing in leaps and bounds, or so he thinks.

The Second Day (October 2, 2011)

2011-10-02T21:54:00.000-07:00

Warner Brothers cartoons, “Zip ‘N’ Snort,” “Ready, Woolen, & Able,” “Beep-Beep!” “To Beep or not to Beep” – More funny cartoons.

Green Eggs and Ham, Dr. Seuss – pretty funny

Adventures of George Washington, Margaret Davidson (jv bio) – a book focusing on a single important person. We see a map of New England (the thirteen colonies), with Virginia Burton’s Massachusetts in the upper right-hand corner. The world grows!

Meet Abraham Lincoln, Barbara Cary (jv bio) – another bio. The map here shows the whole future USA and names Massachusetts. The Washington map is totally subsumed. Washington was Lincoln’s hero, so there is a bit of continuity.

Little Golden Book of Dinosaurs, Jane Werner Watson – Dinosaur book for young people. I remember it from second grade.

Thistle & Shamrock #673, “Tributes” – great Celtic music, with fiddles and bagpipes.

Stagecoach (1939 western) – Cubby’s first movie. These cowboys don’t dance and sing, and these “Apaches” don’t like them too much.

Japanese Fantasy Film Journal #5, ca. March 1970 – ancient, torn, stained fanzine, tossed in at random. Now we know a little about one “Ghidrah” monster: Godzilla! Cubby has seen more Japanese names now than English ones.

Newspaper clipping from the Tulsa Daily World, Sunday, May 2, 1976 – This ancient yellowing clipping has three stories: actor Jim Backus hates Mr. Magoo, the nineteenth century ax murders of Smuttynose Island, and strange noises and sights in Ford’s Theater. Like war, there are murderers out there ready to send people back to the darkness on Page One. More importantly, Lincoln seen a hundred years after his death (plus weird lights and phantom footsteps) give us the first inklings of life-after-death and fortean phenomena. These immaterial images of dead people are apparently called “ghosts”.

Observations on the second day: “Indians” are mentioned in the Washington and Lincoln books. It is acknowledged that white civilization intruded on their land. “Stagecoach” shows just how much one native nation (Apache) resents that.

More dinosaurs have been seen, and we have another progression from my favorite poster to a magazine devoted to Japanese fantasy films. Forteana grows, with ghostly phenomena added to the cryptozoological.

Odd coincidence: Life Story’s last night takes place on a May 5, running into May 6. The book was published in 1962, so probably in manuscript form in 1961. Perhaps that is the year Burton was reviewing. Alan Shepherd became America’s first man into space on May 5, 1961 . . . go figure.

Eight books out of the estimated 4800 = 1/600 read.

THE FIRST DAY (October 1, 2011)

2011-10-01T21:13:00.001-07:00

Islands, Mike Oldfield (cd) – The perfect music for an “awakening”. The first section sounds like a dawning, the middle consists of soft instrumentals, and finally we reach vocals.

Warner Brothers cartoons – “Fast & Furry-ous,” “Gee Whiz-z-z-z-,“ “”Operation: Rabbit,” and “Hook, Line, & Stinker”. Colorful, loud Roadrunner and Coyote cartoons (“Operation” actually features Bugs Bunny). Easy to follow, no dialogue (except in “Operation”), and, of course, mindless violence.

Life Story, Virginia Lee Burton (jv nature; hereafter LS) – The perfect manual for a newly awakened consciousness. It starts off with a two-page spread of solid black, representing the darkness and emptiness before the universe. On the following pages, a timescale spirals out of the Unknown. “Life Story” touches upon the beginning of the universe, the Sun, the Earth; it shows us the earliest life forms, dinosaurs, Ice Ages, Mankind, and finally ends up on Burton’s back porch at 5:33 AM on May 6. All this in a juvenile book by the author of Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel!

Go, Dog, Go!, Phillip D. Eastman – Early reader; I loved all the different-colored dogs and their race cars as a preschooler, and so does Cubby.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish, Dr. Seuss – Early reader; all the bizarre but friendly creatures are fun to see.

Animal Ghosts, edited by Claudea Clow – More dinosaurs and extinct animals, plus the first touch of cryptozoology with the suggestions that ground sloths, pterodactyls, and the like might still exist!

“Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster” poster – Why not? Greatest movie poster I ever saw. Cubby’s now interested in the monsters depicted. They look a bit like the dinosaurs in Life Story to the nth degree.

Kitsune statuette – the pseudo-ivory white fox statue I found, just because it’s pretty.

2000 S Kennedy half-dollar – have a vague idea of getting back into coin collecting. I love half-dollars, and this “Proof” one is so – shiny!

54 holiday snaps – photos from vacation trips, mostly from Farley’s Dinosaur Park in Arkansas. Life-sized concrete dinosaurs, cave men, and bison! Can’t do better than that!

Revolver, the Beatles (cd) – Soft introduction to rock’n’roll.

Classics Illustrated, “Wild Animals I Have Known,” Ernest Thompson Seton – Our first comic book shows more realistic animals. Dogs and wolves mostly, with horses, rabbits, and sheep also seen. The time period is given as the 1890s, and Victorian and cowboy clothing are seen. Prose pages give a bio of Seton, a bio of Francisco Pizarro, and Noah’s Ark from Genesis.

Victory at Sea, “Design for War” – This strange new world isn’t all beer and skittles! War sends many back to that Utter Darkness on page one. Cubby really worries about this Hitler guy.

NASA, “Freedom 7” – humanity tries to reach the stars from which all things spring. Since the date given was twenty years after “Victory”, things must have turned out all right.

Wild Kingdom, “King of the Beasts” – We see real animals here instead of anthropomorphic ones. Cubby sees a bit of the real world. Strangely, while there were narrations for “Victory” and NASA, the first person Cubby actually saw speaking was Marlin Perkins!

Red Skelton, “Lillian Martin,” “Pledge of Allegiance,” “Red at the Reno Rodeo” – A comedy to round off the first day. The “cowboys” here look a bit like the folks in “Wild Animals” – except they dance and sing. “Pledge” makes you proud of these here United States, though Cubby only has a cloudy idea of “nation”.

Observations after a single day: Cubby crammed quite a bit into one day. He has at least a vague idea of the Universe, dinosaurs, real animals, and music (lots in the background of the TV episodes as well as the two albums). Oddly, the first human being he actually heard speak was Marlin Perkins! He understands life and the beginnings of things (like his own slow awakening that morning), and death appeared as soon as Life Story got going (the end of many prehistoric species). Death, as seen in Victory at Sea, he thinks of as returning to that darkness at the beginning of Life Story.

He saw ships, planes, and vehicles in Victory and in NASA. Crowd scenes in both showed him that there are many people out there. Excepting women glimpsed in crowd scenes, his knowledge of the female of the species was limited to a photo (and self-portraits) of Virginia Burton – until we reached the Red Skelton episode with Jane Russell as a Western dance-hall singer! A brother and sister appear in One Fish . . ., so he knows children, too.

He knows there was an “Egypt”, a “Greece”, a “Rome”, and medieval times. Indians appear in a single painting of LS, then come the “settlers”. WWII began in 1939, and Alan Shepherd became America’s first man into space in 1961. Such is his grasp of history.

The World: seen in little globe-maps the size of a quarter in LS. Maps of the Atlantic Ocean seen in Victory, surrounded by lands with names: Canada, Greenland, Iceland, England. World maps seen in the background in NASA and Wild Kingdom. LS exaggerates Massachusetts when we shrink down to see life there – bear that in mind.

Dinosaurs are cool, seen in LS, Animal Ghosts, and “holiday snaps.” The monsters of Ghidrah are dinosaur-like, so he likes them, too. The first glimpse of forteana comes in Animal Ghosts, with the suggestions that some prehistoric creatures might still live – somewhere.

It’s amazing how much literature and media for young children concentrate on funny animals. More serious versions will wait for the future.

Four books read out of 4800 = 1/1200 of the way done!

THE CUBBY EXPERIMENT

2011-09-30T19:41:00.000-07:00

Starting in the mid ‘nineties, I seemed to reboot my writing career (such as it was) about once a year. I would wait for all stories out at magazines to return (as they usually did), then I put my stories in a pile, swearing to review/edit/reprint them and start afresh.

On New Year’s Day 2000, I looked at all my shelves of books. I must have been part-way through sixty or seventy of them, and I hated picking up one halfway done, knowing I’d lost the thread of the narrative. I decided to re-boot my reading. I pretended I had never read a thing in my life, and that all the books were fresh.

This worked quite well for several years, but unfortunately 2000 onward was the beginning of the crappiest period of my life.

Which brought me to one more major reboot. I invented a younger version of myself and decided that everything he saw, heard, read, and experienced was as new to him as to a newborn infant. Oh, he could read, write, talk, and otherwise function, but all media and life had been forgotten, like a total amnesiac.

I thought of him just as “the little dude” for a long time, but he developed a personality of his own (as characters are supposed to do for novelists) and decided his name was Cubby. Obviously there’s the idea of a baby animal, but a “cub” is also defined as “a young and inexperience person.” So Cubby he was.

Of course, being a figment of my imagination, he takes after me, and the books, TV shows, music, and stories he encounters are from my own collection, thus reflecting my tastes. At first I was just hoping to experience things afresh, but now my hope is that Cubby will rekindle the freshness in my life and work that fizzled out over the last decade.

I started the Cubby project on January 1 of 2008, twice in 2009, and twice in 2010. Each time personal crises shook up my life so much, I abandoned the mental exercise after a few weeks.

However . . . Cubby sort of reappears in my head of his own accord once in a while. He wants to know about the world and his place in it. He’s decided to begin his education again, despite raging allergies with cold-like symptoms and headaches on my part. Perhaps the sixth time is the charm, especially since the Cubster initiated the project himself rather than let me launch it artificially.

An aside: I have reviewed every bibliography, scoured AbeBooks and Amazon, and I have listed nearly every book that I don’t have that I’d like to have. If I collected them all, I would own about 4800 books altogether – all I could conceivably need. So Cubby has a ways to go to read them all. He’ll keep a count and a comparison.

So: On to Cubby’s awakening into the world.

But I Don't Control the Hand -- the Hand Controls Me!

2011-07-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

We've all listed the Great Movies, genre-related or otherwise, and our personal favorites, but sometimes my own lists ring false. Yes, sometimes I'll list a film as a favorite because everyone calls it a classic, or it was so influential, or it was a favorite growing up. Now, though, I think I've found a true measure of what my genuine loves are.

On Friday nights, it's time for my own personal sf/horror theater, and I reach for the DVD/video shelves. When I do so, unless I make some conscious decision ("Last week it was Quatermass Xperiment; this week, Quatermass II"), my hand will reach of its own accord toward the same small number of films. I'll grin like an idiot and pull out the same movies over and over unless I remind myself, "You've seen that this year already! And sit up straight!" So here's a list of movies the Hand of Fate always returns to, written as I thought of them myself, stream-of-consciousness style:

The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas

X -- The Unknown

Dinosaurus!

Monster That Challenged the World
Day of the Triffids
Quatermass and the Pit
The Thing
The Day the Earth Stood Still
War of the Worlds
The Andromeda Strain
Legend of Boggy Creek
Revenge of the Creature
The Mysterious Island
Journey to the Center of the Earth
Duel
Rodan

Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster
Destroy All Monsters
THEM!
The Blob
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet
The Monolith Monsters
Atragon

Dogora the Space Monster
War of the Gargantuas
Godzilla: Final Wars
The Deadly Mantis
The Lost Continent
Village of the Damned
Raiders of the Lost Ark

There may be others, but this will do for a start. I personally see little rhyme or reason to this list. A lot of 50s SF, but no early Universals or other 30s-40s films; I subconsciously see those all as classics and am a bit intimidated because I should like them. RODAN, GHIDRAH, GARGANTUAS but no GOJIRA? I feel like I should pay more attention to serious films, and I guess that detracts from the sheer fun of watching. THEM!, the first "big bug" movie, and the goofy DEADLY MANTIS, but not TARANTULA? I can't explain that one. Anyway, the Hand has spoken -- or made the sound of one hand clapping -- or something.

Magazine Review -- "How It Works"

2011-04-05T19:39:00.000-07:00

When the British magazine How It Works began appearing a couple of years ago, I cheered. I've read plenty of science magazines, but I always seemed to lag behind the curve -- far behind -- OK, flatlining. How It Works took it upon itself to explain to techno-feebs like me pretty much everything -- diagramming and identifying the inner workings of just about anything from iPads and Harrier jets to dinosaurs and the moons of Saturn. It let you understand LEDs, laptops, and nuclear submarines.

Visually, I can't complain about the 'zine. The photos, computer generated images, and artists' conceptions are vivid, large, and exciting, and quite up to date (such as an amazing image of the Sun, "taken by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO)" on March 20, 2010, seen in the recent How It Works Book of Space. However . . .

I noticed some odd typos in this 'zine starting from the very first issue. I'm not the one to quibble over a few misspellings, but the typos were often in numerical info that, above all else, ought to be correct. Now the new Book of Space seems to be taking errors and poor grammar to a new level.

The first page with prose, "Journey through the Solar System" (page 8), ends with this line: "In addition, the solar system is home to numerous small solar system bodies*, which include all minor planets," . . . and that's it. Presumably they might have listed comets, meteoroids, and dust -- but there is no "continued" for this page.

There's a two page spread on pp. 10 and 11 devoted to the Sun and its planets. At the top of page ten we're informed that "Saturn is so light that if it could be hypothetically placed in a galactic-sized ocean of water it would float." Lower down the page, on "Map of the Solar System," we're told that "Saturn is so light - thanks to its compositon from the lightest elements - that if it could be hypothetically -" etc. And at the top of page 11, under "5 Top Facts: Solar System," we learn that "Hypothetically speaking, Saturn is so light that if it were placed in a galactic-sized swimming pool --" Well, you know.

There are lots of little "Statistics" areas that look almost like Magic: The Gathering cards. Page 10's "The Statistics -- The Sun" states: "Surface temperature: 5,500 degrees C." All well and good, but on page 12 -- another blue "The Statistics -- The Sun" card: "Average surface temperature: 1-2 million degrees." that was quite a jump in two pages!

Page 18 brings us to the Moon. "The moon does have days that last about 29.5 hours." Page 19 asks "Could We Ever Live There?", answering that colonists would have to get used to many hardships, such as "the relatively long lunar nights (15 hours)."

Whoa, whoa there! Day to night to day is marked by sunlight passing over the surface of an object. The sun's rays do pass across the moon -- in what we call phases, from new to full to new again -- a period that last approximately 29.5 days. We get the word "month" from "moon", in fact.

The above is what jumped out at me after reading only 11 pages out of nearly 170. I'm almost afraid to read further. All I can say is -- guys, you have the best-looking science/technology publication on the planet, but invest in some proof-readers!

_______

*Ya think?

Lost in Darkness and Distance

2010-12-04T20:48:00.000-08:00

It's December -- guess I'll write a little tale for Christmas.

LOST IN DARKNESS AND DISTANCE

The Monster slogged tirelessly across the pack ice.

"I do not forget my vow to immolate myself, Victor Frankenstein," he muttered, "but firewood is scarce in this frozen clime."

He huffed a thundercloud of breath and marched on, hearing only the crunch of snow and the howl of wind. Here, at the top of the world, he could wander unchallenged and unfeared, but only because no one lived here to object.

"Perhaps it was you, not the Almighty, who made me, Victor," he said to the black sky, "but I prayed for so long that there might be a place for me somewhere in God's creation."

Ahead the jagged peaks of a small island rose over the ice. Tiny flames crackled on the shore. Intrigued, the Monster approached.

Small creatures huddled around the fire. Some resembled animals up on their hind legs. Some resembled children with malformed heads and limbs. Stitches lined their bodies as if each one had been sewn together -- badly.

"Oh!" exclaimed a girl with red yarn for hair. "You're the biggest dolly I've ever seen. You must be a misfit!"

A bear with the incongruous fan-tail of a peacock ambled up.

"If you're a misfit, you're welcome here."

A winged form passed overhead, backlit by the wavering aurorae. It was no bird, but a regal hunting beast.

The Monster smiled.

Another Death

2010-11-28T21:34:00.000-08:00

Only three weeks after my father's passing, my uncle (Don's brother) Bruce Winkle died in Eldorado, Kansas, at the age of 73. Although Bruce had suffered a number of strokes, it was cancer that did him in. Ironically, the doctors only discovered he suffered from cancer two weeks before he succumbed.

These exposures to mortality drive home the fact that our time on this globe is finite. If I can glean anything positive out of the past few months, perhaps it will be the desire to work anew on the goals important to me, the projects that have stalled out during the past few years.

The new year is approaching. Perhaps, for 2011, you, too, should review your priorities -- before personal tragedies force them upon you.

Donald W. Winkle, 1930-2010

2010-11-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

On October 21, 2010, after years of fighting cancer, congenital heart failure, and Alzheimer's, my father, Donald W. Winkle, passed away.

Don's health problems began nearly a decade ago, when it was determined that he needed triple bypass surgery. He has been in and out of hospitals ever since. Anesthesia and drugs never seemed to affect him as they were supposed to, and he learned to hate the doctors and hospitals stays -- I can't say I blame him. Don's increasing physical and mental problems were hard on everyone close to him, particularly so on his wife of 37 years, Sharon Stewart Winkle.

The end came with shocking swiftness. One weekend he was still quite active and talkative; two weeks later he all but stopped speaking, spending his time simply wandering around the house and yard. A week after that he collapsed, having literally (according to the hospice nurses) forgotten how to walk. A few days later, his pulse, blood pressure, and respiration simply grew weaker and weaker until they ceased altogether.

Donald Winkle was interred in Bixby Cemetery, Bixby, Oklahoma on Monday, October 25, 2010.

Reboot Part One

2010-09-13T22:58:00.000-07:00

Today is -- or was, as I'm typing after midnight -- the 36th anniversary of the short-lived TV series, "Kolchak: The Night Stalker." Yep, on September 13, 1974, intrepid reporter Carl Kolchak began his weekly encounters with supernatural and sci-fi terrors.

I thought about watching the series from the beginning, seeing as I have it both on DVD and VHS (those great Columbia House videos), but I can't. I rebooted.

That is to say, I'm pretending I've never seen any movies or TV shows before, and I'm starting off as if from the beginning of things. I'll probably explain that more thoroughly in another post, but it does make old things seem fresh, if you can make yourself believe in the idea.

So what is at the beginning of things? TV-wise I started off with the two oldest genre shows I own, "Twilight Zone" and "One Step Beyond". I'm much too impatient to go through them all to get to later programs, so my idea is that after seeing a few episodes of each I have the "right" to see examples of later series. To me, "One Step Beyond" led to quasi-documentaries like "Unsolved Mysteries." "Zone", however, led to "Outer Limits", "Night Gallery", and even "Star Trek." After a few episodes of all those, I could snatch a couple of "Night Stalkers." Someday I'll even reach "The X-Files" and "Millennium".

But wait -- there are movies, also. Rebooting a lifetime of movies requires a multi-pronged attack: I have several areas I've started into: Classic Horror (Old Universals, serials, even way back to "Nosferatu" and the 1925 "Lost World"); 1950s (and other) SF films (starting with "The Thing" and "Day the Earth Stood Still"); Summer Blockbusters (an era that began with "Jaws", "Star Wars", "Close Encounters," and the like -- backing up to include James Bond); and "Other" (mostly non-genre films).

I just couldn't watch the Night Stalker series without watching the original TV movies, "The Night Stalker" and "The Night Strangler" . . . but the very first "Stalker" was something of an inversion of all previous vampire flicks, with the undead in the bustling metropolis of Las Vegas instead of a Transylvanian forest. So, at the very least, one ought to be familiar with the 1931 "Dracula", with the Lugosi accent and the opera cape and the rubber bats.

. . . But I've been slow in the Classic Horror area. I've seen "Nosferatu" (1922) and "Frankenstein" (1931), and that's about it.

I've got it! I'll do a crash course -- "Dracula", then "The Night Stalker", then "The Night Strangler", then "Kolchak: the Night Stalker"! I hope my nerves can take it.

2010-07-12T22:26:00.000-07:00

Just to toot my own horn, my tale "The Curious Adventure of the Jersey Devil" is due to come out in September in Panverse Two, an anthology devoted to the nearly forgotten literary art of the novella (stories between about 15,000 and 50,000 words in length).

To continue publishing, however, Panverse needs your help:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/928299198/wonder-story-theyre-back

Meanwhile: I just re-read Ray Bradbury's R is for Rocket, the book that first opened my eyes to the amazing possibilities of language and words back in 3rd or 4th grade. R is for Rocket contains stories that first appeared in other Bradbury paperbacks; some of Ray's best, in my opinion, like "The Fog-Horn," "The Long Rain," "A Sound of Thunder," and the short-short, "The Dragon". The title story, along with four or five others including "The End of the Beginning," are true sense of wonder stories about humanity's need to explore, which must now turn to the universe as our little world is thoroughly mapped.

The strange thing, however . . . I've read or at least flipped through this slim paperback many times, but this time -- there's a story in it I swear I've never read before, "Here There Be Tygers." It's not something they slipped into a new edition; my paperback copy was published about 1967. Perhaps my little brain is turning to mush at last.

Oh, well, it's great to find a Bradburian jewel as if for the first time. In case you've never read it, I won't give away the plot, but it's sort of the opposite of another Bradbury classic, "Mars Is Heaven!"

Bradbury recently celebrated his 90th birthday. If only Mr. Electrico could wave his sparking wand of lightning and restore Ray's youth! But I'm not sure my mind and soul could absorb another near-century of poetic prose from the Master: such ambrosia may be too much for mortal senses.

YouTube is Five

2010-06-06T10:44:00.000-07:00

As you can see by the dates, I haven't been able to post in a couple of months. Well, YouTube's recent anniversary gives me a nice excuse to fill space.

Favorites from YouTube:

"Premakes: Raiders of the Lost Ark" -- if the Spielberg/Lucas hit had been made in 1951:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUPDuQq9GsM

"Halloween" theme song -- lyrics that actually fit the music of John Carpenter's original:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8VfreZsuPg

"Iron Man vs. the Incredible Hulk": Best mixing of two movies I've seen yet, helped by the fact that Robert Downey, Jr., actually appeared briefly in HULK:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19Cm31h2NXI

"Dennis DePue Case" from "Unsolved Mysteries" -- I tried to describe this episode in one mof my first posts; at last I know its title. This video shows that the movie "Jeepers Creepers" was inspired by this segment. Guess I'll have to watch that soon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycS_RHbW3o0

"How Terminator Should Have Ended" -- this is the pastiche I was trying to write years ago. Heck, I'd fight to write the novelization now!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBBw9E2Q_aY

The After-Image Ghost

2010-03-21T19:09:00.000-07:00

Keeping to my project of vacuuming up all my writings lost in cyberspace, and hoping to keep "Fiction and Reality" interesting, here's the strange story of:

THE AFTER-IMAGE GHOST

One night when I was seven or eight, I went to bed – or was ordered to bed – as usual. As always, I clicked off the overhead light and dashed across the room before any “boogers” could get me. When I crouched to make this brief run, I sometimes glanced up at the light, which would momentarily blind me. This didn't really matter, as I jumped under the sheets in complete darkness.

That night the light blinded me just as I snapped off the switch. I jumped into bed and closed my eyes as I cocooned myself in the covers.

An after-image hung behind my eyelids, yellow and sharp with purple highlights. Rather than a simple blob of color, this image looked like a woman. The figure startled me, because I didn’t remember anything feminine-looking in my room – certainly not the overhead fixture, of which this was presumably an echo.

The after-image woman in yellow and purple had long, flowing hair and an oval, sallow face. She wore bell-shaped hoopskirts out of the mid-nineteenth century. Her arms seemed to be bare. In this quasi-photo image, she appeared to have just stepped into a room from a doorway on my left. The back of her dress was cut off vertically as if by a door frame, and her right arm stuck out as if she had opened a door wide and now let her hand hang on the knob. No background of wall or door was visible, however.

She had an air of looking for someone or something, though she did not move. Her eyes, mere purple blots in her yellow face, were turned intently upon me.

I opened my eyes in the darkness of my room. The after-image hung before me, only a shapeless mass now. I closed my eyes, and the image returned. Open, featureless blob; closed, ghostly woman in bell skirts.

The After-Image Ghost frightened me, but I did not run off to my parents’ room. It would have been difficult to explain, and, besides, how do you run from an after-image? Any direction you move, it’s already in front of you!

The After-Image Ghost took a long time to fade. I kept expecting it to move or speak, but it did nothing but shimmer and break up, finally becoming no more than those random sparks you see behind your eyelids.

Was the spectral woman just a trick of the light? Possibly, but it was some trick!

The Plastic Blob! A True Tale of Terror -- Sort of

2010-02-24T04:58:00.000-08:00

When we were kids, my brother Mark and I made goofy home movies which spoofed James Bond, Superman, "Jaws", and horror movies. One of these teenage epics was called "The Plastic Blob." The Blob was just one of those thin, clear plastic sheathes that dry cleaners slip over suits. It made a perfect blob for several reasons: It was voluminous enough to pass as a large "thing" when shot at the right angle; when wadded up it really looked like a huge ameba, with endoplasmic reticulae and what-have-you; the thin material stayed wadded up, rather than "unfolded" as thick plastic does; it was so light that an off-screen fan would make it ooze along, and if left on the edge of a table or car roof, we could jump out of the way, start filming, and it would "flow" off with a natural-looking movement, like a living creature.

Anyway, we filmed "The Plastic Blob" one year during summer vacation, along with other deathless cinematic efforts like "The Glop Man" and "The Assassin." Then I graduated from high school and went to Oklahoma State University. Our filmmaking efforts ended and "The Plastic Blob" faded from memory.

I found the OSU Library to be a mind-expanding center of learning with its acres of floor space and its million-plus volumes. I would leave my dorm room and stay there until late at night -- often 'til one or two AM.

One night, probably in my Junior year, as I passed a wide parking lot on the way from the library to my dorm, I heard a soft hissing noise. Out in this parking lot, the wind -- which wasn't that strong -- was pushing along a large white mass. I recognized it as a plastic bag of the type put over suits at the cleaners. It made little impression on me, although it was certainly the largest object being pushed by the wind, and it was ghostly white in the darkness (of course, clear objects begin to look white when folded, wadded, or fissured, due to refraction).

Anyway, I was out late most week nights, and I always walked by or through that parking lot on the way back to my dorm. (It was a lot for professors and custodians, so few cars were parked there at night, although vehicles lined it on all four sides.) I kept seeing the plastic sheathe blowing from one side of the lot to the other, sometimes scooting under one side of a car and out the other. Sure, Styrofoam cups and little paper bags blew around too, but the "plastic blob" was large and eye-catching.

I supposed the janitorial services at OSU weren't efficient enough to catch all the detritus around the campus, but I found it odd the bag never blew away. The parking lot opened into another large lot on the west, and onto streets and open land on the north and east, but no matter which way the wind blew, the bag always stayed in this one lot. And the wind varied frequently -- at least, the bag was always sailing from one end to the other.

I reached the point where I watched for the plastic bag at night. I usually spotted it after hearing the hiss it made over the concrete. The way it billowed under or between cars made it look like a shy animal hiding from my approach. When it flowed in the same direction with other wind-blown trash, it looked like it was playing tag with empty paper cups and the like. I wondered why it never snagged on anything or got wedged under someone's tires. A plastic membrane that thin usually only has to touch a branch or something before it gets tangled like old cobwebs.

Finally one night came the culminating horror, or at least a sort of climax. At two AM, the library guardians kicked me out, and I walked through the cold, dark night toward my dorm. I took a short cut through the parking lot, staying near the line of parallel-parked vehicles on the south side.

I heard a hissing, scraping sound that I could not place at first. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I could see through the driver's side window of one parked car, across the front seat, and out the passenger's side. A large mass rose up into view on the passenger's side. It looked like someone had ducked down behind the vehicle and was just lifting their head up for a peek, except the "head" was clear/white. It was the plastic bag, wadded up. After a moment that really gave the impression of it "looking" back, it rolled up the passenger's window and flowed onto the roof with a "crinkly" sound. It flowed over to my side of the car and waited in a half-spread lump, like some predatory animal with its forelegs splayed, ready to pounce.

I wonder how many students were roused from slumber by my cry of "Holy _____! It really is the Plastic Blob!" Then I hurried away -- not quite running -- to my dorm. From then on, I took an alternate route to and from the library.

In these modern times, when plastic bags have essentially won out over paper (they don't even ask "Paper or plastic?" any more in the stores hereabouts), I have seen plenty of bags scooting along in the wind. I have seen small bags blown toward a car, scraping the ground all the way, which looked like they'd just slide under but instead swept up the side of the car high into the air, caught in some errant eddy. I've never seen anything that gave such an impression of deliberate movement, however, as the Plastic Blob. I can't help but wonder, too, if I would have found it so strange -- or even have noticed the bag in the first place -- if my brother and I had not made that short 8mm film. Go figure.

The Shortest Stories Ever

2010-02-10T20:13:00.000-08:00

In 2006 WIRED magazine asked a number of SF/fantasy writers to come up with stories only six words in length. Unable to resist a challenge, I had to scribble some of my own:

Cockroaches. Dinosaurs. Mastodons. Humans. Cockroaches again.

Molecules – cells – brains: Universe, Know Thyself.

“We come in peace – AAACHOO!” Genocide.

Nostradamus’ Predictions for 2020: (Blank pages.)

“EXTRA! Hiroshima Destroyed!” “Oy,” said Einstein.

Gollum, falling: “Hey! This is brass!”

"Humans? No such thing," said Bigfoot.

"Holmes!" "Elementary, Watson. Jekyll was Hyde."

Cthulhu groaned. "Again with the Necronomicon?"

“I’ve captured the God Particle!” Silence.

1984 has passed. Big Brother stayed.

“We are the Martians!” “Well, duh.”

Kong wins! (Godzilla took a dive.)

“Don! We forgot Dr. Smith!” “Who?”

“You okay, Mister?” “Shaken, not stirred.”

“Stormtroopers? That’s your answer to everything!”

“Time ended – yesterday!” “Sorry, not original.”

Gaslight Encounters

2010-02-05T20:58:00.000-08:00

One thing I've worked on occasionally is a 19th Century/Victorian era world, where the characters and stories of various authors co-exist. There were so many ghost and horror stories published in the 19th and early 20th centuries, you could have a "monster manual" of Gaslight Encounters: monsters, spirits, and villains that might appear in a tale set in the era.

Here is a sample entry from one of the most basic stories of one of the most famous authors:

BLACK CAT (PLUTO)

Pluto began life as a housecat, “a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree.” His owner, unfortunately, was a sadistic drunkard who blamed alcohol for his rages, during one of which he cut out one of the animal’s eyes. Later the violent owner killed Pluto by hanging him from a tree in his back yard. Soon thereafter the man’s house burned down, except for a wall on which was, “as if graven in bas-relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat.”

The cruel man and his wife lived in the basement of the burnt house, unable to afford better lodgings. He drank even more and beat his wife frequently. A stray cat appeared in their impoverished lives, to the delight of the woman and the horror of the man – a black cat with one eye missing. This cat, however, bore a white patch on its breast that slowly resolved into a gibbet.

During one drunken rage, the man attempted to slay the cat. His wife intervened only to die in its stead. The killer walled her corpse up in the cellar of the burnt-out house. Like the killer of “The Tell-tale Heart,” he was rather pleased when the police came to search for the missing woman. Suddenly, however, a mournful howl rose from within the walls. The bricks were torn down to reveal that the killer had entombed the second black cat with the dead woman.

Pluto became a spirit of vengeance due to the sadistic nature of his death. His haunting presence can cause misfortune to strike (such as a house fire), as in the traditional view of black cats being “bad luck.” He can possess, influence, or become reincarnated as a similar black cat, missing an eye, and possibly displaying some sort of disturbing symbol made of white fur on his breast. In this form he re-enters the physical world and allies himself with a new master. Although not powerful physically, he can judge circumstances with near human intelligence, especially those that will ruin or destroy people who maltreat him. A kind owner may allay his anger, perhaps even let him know peace at last, but he seems drawn to cruel and sadistic people.

When/Where: Circa 1843 onward; place unknown, possibly New England.

“Black Cat,” Poe

2010-02-01T21:22:00.000-08:00

After years of resisting the call of the blog, it may have its uses after all. For instance, I might jot down story ideas, stream-of-consciousness considerations, interesting ideas I've heard or read about, or slices of my (often dull, I admit) life.

Today I think I'll rescue part of my old web-page, which concerned a short article that's haunted me for years:

Under the Ice

Sometimes the best intentions come to naught. Take all the recent fuss over global warming. Even if everyone came together to prevent cars and cows from giving off greenhouse gases, it may not help, due to an interesting fact uncovered in February 1993.

At that time a team of geophysicists led by Donald Blankenship (University of Texas) and Robin Bell (Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) were flying over the Antarctic ice sheet south of Marie Byrd Land. Three hundred miles in from the Ross Ice Shelf, they noted a four-mile-wide depression. They flew back, using radar to prenetrate the ice, and discovered a 2,100 foot mountain. They measured the peak's magnetic field and found "the strong signal characteristic of iron-rich volcanic rock." In other words, there was an active volcano beneath the Antarctic ice -- probably more than one, as the area is a rift valley, like the infamous Atlantic Ridge.

Oddly, the problem is not that the icecap might melt. Not even a volcano could do that. But it could melt the lowest layer of ice, which would then mix with the sediment base, which would erode away. The western ice sheet might then collapse into the sea. According to science writer Robert Naeye, "if it did, the global sea level would rise about 20 feet, and coastal cities will be flooded."

This is not to say we should let greenhouse gases spew into the atmosphere at our hearts' desire, but . . . Someday I intend to move from my present apartment, and when I do, it will be to someplace inland. And high.

Naeye, Robert, "The Strangest Volcano," Discover vol. 15, no. 1, January 1994.

The First Post

2010-01-29T16:18:00.000-08:00

FICTION & REALITY 2.0

Well, ten years after I joined the Internet, nine years after I created my first crude web-page, it's time for a blog. I resisted for a long time, barely able to think of anything to put on a web-page every month or two, but, when I considered all the remarks I've posted on message boards and the like, some of which I consider halfway interesting, I decided this would be a good place to gather them.

"I" am Michael D. Winkle, author of several published short stories and articles. There's my high school picture to the left, taken when I had a few more strands of hair. If I'm feeling exceptionally cruel, I may post a more recent photo, but I don't want to frighten people off yet.

Anyway, my published works include "Typo" in Cthulhu's Heirs (edited by Thomas Stratman), "Wolfhead" in Tales of the Witch World 3 (edited by Andre Norton), and "Toon-Boy" in Going Postal (edited by Gerard Houarner). Naturally, I'd like the "several" to become "many", and I'd like to add novels to the stories and articles. After several tense and very dry years, the writing machine is puttering away again at last, and my wishes may finally come true!

In the meantime, here's one of those scattered posts I mentioned, this concerning my favorite single television episodes. No, not favorite TV series -- single episodes, if I could remember them. There may be some spoilers here, so read at your own risk:

FAVORITE TV EPISODES

The Twilight Zone: "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street" -- They wouldn't let Rod Serling write scripts attacking bigotry, racism, and other issues on "normal" programs, but once he disguised them as fantasy and SF, he slipped them by the network bigwigs. A UFO is seen over Maple Street, USA, and all the power goes out -- except for a few choice people. Are they spies for the invaders? Paranoia mounts, erupting into mob violence.

Jonny Quest: "Terror Island" -- Hey! A killer crab the size of an M1 tank! A freaky, squealing giant spider! Roger "Race" Bannon demonstrates that he could have beaten North Vietnam single-handed! An Asian mad scientist who gets wiped out by Godzilla's ugly cousin! And JADE! What else do you need?!

The Avengers: "The Positive-Negative Man" -- THE AVENGERS began as a take-off on the spy-craze of the '60s, but I think TPNM is one of the best science fiction episodes ever made. It took a concept that's been bandied about since the 1930s (projected power -- electricity reaching homes, cars, airplanes, etc. from towers, just like radio waves) and took it in a totally new direction. The Positive-Negative Man himself, silent and shiny-gray, accompanied by ominous generator hums and electric crackling, capable of knocking people through brick walls with a touch of his finger, is one of the small screen's most memorable "monsters". Then there are John Steed and Emma Peel at their best, exchanging witty lines of dialog.

The Prisoner: "Hammer Into Anvil" -- When the newest Number 2 tortures a woman to the point of suicide, Number 6 shifts his campaign from trying to escape to destroying Number 2. He flashes Morse code out to the empty sea, writes gobblety-gook messages in code, and speaks spy-type "messages" into the ears of Village personnel, all in full view of the hidden cameras. The paranoid Number 2 eventually comes to believe Number 6 was sent to spy on him, and that the Village staff are helping 6! It's interesting to think that The Prisoner (so-called) could outsmart the whole Village if he was fighting for someone else (or their memory); had he put this much effort into his escapes, he would been back in London after a week. The only thing missing from "Hammer Into Anvil" is Rover, the balloon thingy, but, hey, you can't have everything!

Star Trek: "Balance of Terror" -- Sure, it was a WW II submarine movie translated to outer space, but "Balance" is probably the best "battle among the stars" episode ever. After a hundred years of uneasy peace, the Romulans (never before seen by humans) are trying to sneak across the Neutral Zone using their latest invention, the cloaking device. Only the Enterprise is available to stop them before the situation escalates into a galactic war. Rather than just phaser-ing off wildly in all directions, the captains and officers on both sides try to outthink their opponents, sometimes succeeding, sometimes not. And no wonder that one guy is suspicious of Spock -- the Romulan commander looks just like his father!

Monty Python: "Full Frontal Nudity" -- This episode features the Colonel, the stuffy military officer who hates all things silly. It contains the infamous "Parrot Sketch," as well as "Hell's Grannies," and the hymn that essentially became the show's theme song ("England's Mountains Green"). The only slow part is some bit with hermits living on a mountainside. Otherwise it is the quintessential Python show. Except that it's too silly.

Kolchak: the Night Stalker: "The Ripper" -- Robert Bloch's most famous short story was "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper," in which we learn that the infamous London killer has become immortal by making blood sacrifices to "the dark gods." In later years Bloch complained that other writers, movies, and TV shows were stealing his concept of an immortal Jack. But the Ripper has become "immortal" on his own, a dark apotheosis like Vlad the Impaler forever with us as Dracula. While Bloch's Ripper was a chameleon who hid among us, Kolchak's Saucy Jack is an over-the-top super-villain who parades around in front of God and the world in Victorian finery and wades through armies of cops sent to stop him. He's as arrogant in his own way as the pun-slinging Freddy Krueger, yet he doesn't receive a word of dialogue. "The Ripper" has the most amazing cops vs. monster fights of the series -- outdoing the two TV movies as well, and possibly outdoing any other hand-to-hand battles I've ever seen on the small screen. At the end there's the oddest hero-confronting-villain bit of all time -- Kolchak hiding in the Ripper's closet, a scene terrifying and hilarious at the same time.

Connections: "The Trigger Effect" -- James Burke's show started off with a bang, using the 1965 New England power blackout to show how dependent we have become on technology. And he piles it on: If the power went out permanently, what would you do? Flee the city? Do you have enough gas? Can you beat the streaming millions? If you reach the country, could you find shelter? Food? If you staked out land, doesn't someone probably own it already? If farmhouses are the only shelter, will you take one by force? Burke goes on and on about what a delicate mechanism our modern society is. Really makes you think.

Sherlock Holmes: "A Scandal in Bohemia" -- The first episode of the Jeremy Brett series. Brett made people forget Basil Rathbone. At last Dr. Watson is shown to be fairly intelligent and capable. And in Irene Adler, we are introduced to "the Woman", a "villain" who stalemates Holmes and comes as close to stealing his heart as any female. (And in various Holmes pastiches, she does, but that's another story.)

Unsolved Mysteries: That one where the old couple go on a Sunday drive in the country and see a mysterious van wherever they go -- and its driver, who tosses out a blood-covered sheet. We find out he killed his wife, and the update shows him with his new wife, watching his own segment on Unsolved Mysteries! He flees, gets chased by the cops, runs a roadblock, and, after a pitched gun battle, he shoots himself. A Hitchcockian beginning, a nasty villain, a sequel that folds the show itself into the plot, a police chase and gunfight as good as any cop show, and eye-for-an-eye closure to what had been a -- well -- an unsolved mystery!

Batman: the Animated Series: "Heart of Ice" -- This, the third episode of B:TAS to be aired, introduced Victor Fries, aka Mr. Freeze, formerly a very minor villain, and made of him an epic, tragic figure. Freeze, who looks like something out of an old issue of AMAZING STORIES, is cold, calculating, and terrifying when out for revenge on the man who put his wife in a coma. However, he is driven by his love for his wife, and in future appearances he goes to any length to cure her. One might make parallels between Bruce Wayne and the Joker, but I think Fries, with his tragic origin story, is an even closer "shadow" of Batman.

The X-Files: "Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space'" -- Just the teaser to this one made me think I was in for one of the great audio/visual experiences of my life, and I was right: A young couple driving down a country road is abducted by Grays -- who are themselves attacked by a monstrous Cyclopean creature from a second spaceship! This episode was like the whole series rolled into 46 minutes -- conspiracies, hoaxes, abductions, Men-in-Black, a shaggy monster, an alien autopsy, all seen from the point of view of a writer, Jose Chung (Charles Nelson Riley), who has the uneviable job of trying to make sense of it all. There's even a cameo by The Amazing Yappi (from "Clyde Bruckman's Final Repose"). And, like the UFO buff in "Jose Chung . . .", I often find myself shouting, "You can't hide the truth forever! Roswell! Roswell!"