Summer means a little more free time for many people and with the current situation, some of us have a lot more free time. What do we do with it? Watch old sci-fi movies, of course!

No, it's not a prequel to 28 Days Later (although I do love that movie), it's a 50s Cold War dread film, cloaked in light science fiction.

The IMDB summary describes it best:

Five individuals from five nations, including the "Superpowers," USA, USSR, and China, suddenly find themselves on an alien spacecraft. An alien gives each a container holding capsules. No power on earth can open a given container except a mental command from the person to whom it is given. Each person has been provided with the power of life and death. Any of these individuals has the capability to instantaneously launch the capsules to whatever coordinates he/she chooses, and each capsule will then eradicate all human life within a 3,000-mile radius of its designated location.

Since it's 50s sci-fi, most of it is not very subtle. Here are the folks who've been chosen. Can you spot the Communist?

They sit around wondering what's going on until their alien host appears. He introduces himself simply as "The Alien" and since it's that kind of sci-fi, he's very patrician, uses no contractions, wears a jumpsuit and is, of course, super-intelligent. 

The Alien gives each of these people three capsules, which from the descriptions are basically nuclear weapons. They can each use each one however, wherever, whenever they wish on any target, anywhere in the world. If all fifteen of the capsules are used, however, every living thing on Earth will be destroyed. Gosh.

And why the hell would the Alien do this? Because his people's planet is dying and he wants to move them onto the Earth, but his personal code prevents him from wiping out humanity himself, so he's giving them the opportunity to do so. If they don't, I guess he'll just go away and play his little game with another planet, huh? The name of the film, by the way, comes from the Alien's confidence that we'll wipe ourselves out within twenty-seven days.

There's really nothing else to this film that you can't guess for yourself. The Chinese lady kills herself immediately because she can't handle the responsibility, the Englishwoman throws her capsules into the ocean, not wanting any part of any of this. The German scientist gets hit by a car. The Russian soldier is interrogated by the Kremlin because they simply must have this power for themselves. The American and the Brit, of course, go to the US authorities who are wise and decent - but then they can't resist testing one of the capsules out, either.

Yow.

Eventually, the German scientist notices there is writing on the capsules. Nobody else ever actually looked at theirs, of course, but it turns out that the capsules only kill enemies of freedom and the capsules are all set off, destroying all those nasty little bad guys who hate freedom. You know who I mean as well as the audience would have.

Then, because there's all this empty land on another continent, the United Nations invites The Alien and his people to live there. How nice.

​Unlike this movie.

I'm quite the fan of Day Keene. While his books are not always great, when they're good, they're fantastic.

Beginning his career as a radio writer (rising to become head writer of Little Orphan Annie, of all things), Keene began publishing crime stories in the pulps in the early 40s before turning to prose full time.

Mostly a writer of crime and mystery stories, he co-wrote at least one sci-fi novel (which I've avoided, due to the ridiculous, and sadly of its time, premise), but I recently discovered he also published, shortly before the end of his life, a western novel.

Of course, I was curious. And it certainly has a premise I've not see before: in the short years between the end of the Civil War and Texas's readmittance back into the union, an unscrupulous woman tries to carve her own fiefdom out of a corner of Texas, using her supposedly-dead husband's resources. Her husband, Major John Royal, formerly of the Confederate Army and a proud son of Texas, of course can't let this happen when world of it rearches him in Mexico (where many Confederate soldiers fled to, instead of pledging loyalty to the union at the end of the war).

Unfortunately, it doesn't live up to the potential of the premise. I've definitely read worse novels--I've even read worse Keene novels--but it isn't all that great, either. It's certainly an okay read, but it seems less like a western and more something reworked from another genre. For one thing, the dialogue is too modern and many of the interactions in it feel misplaced, as if they were excised from some other work and dropped into it. It just doesn't feel like a western.

There are some technical issues, as well, that I know probably came from gleaning knowledge of the west from other westerns, rather than doing any research (common in western fiction, unfortunately). Another thing that bothered me, and I know some would call this nitpicking, but it took me out of the flow of the story it was so jarring: the cost of things are insanely inflated for 1869. Cowhands being paid $100 a month, ranches that cost $160,000, horses valued at thousands of dollars each. Those are 1967 costs, when the novel was published, not 1869.

As a novel, it's not great, but it was interesting to see a writer I enjoy try his hand at something different. Towards the last years of his life, Keene tried many different things and some of them worked out quite well. For example, his very unusual crime novel Joy House not only sold very well, it was adapted into a very successful film. Was GUNS ALONG THE BRAZOS (they never even come close to the Brazos River, by the way), another one of these experiments? Did Keene simply want to try writing a western? We'll probably never know, but I'm still glad I gave it a try, even if I can't recommend it.

Nothing much going on this week, but I did just watch 52 PICK-UP, the film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Elmore Leonard.

It's really the only Leonard novel I've read that I really liked. The film does a good job capturing the feel of the novel (helped, no doubt, by Leonard co-writing the screenplay).

​It made me wonder, though, where the concept of "rich industrialist has problems that turn violent" set-up for crime novels originated. John D. MacDonald, of whom I've written much, used it quite frequently, but he's hardly the only one. It would be interesting to try to figure out the origin, but I honestly wouldn't know where to begin.

At any rate, read the novel or watch the film - they're both good.

This new story is quite a bit different from any other I've written and features a young Azuma's first encounter with the Other Shore. I hope you'll pick up a copy of the magazine and I hope you'll let me know what you think of the story. It's one I'm very proud of.

One last SINNERS RIDE teaser, at least for now.

Here is the inked first page of the first issue, art by the inestimable Reine Rosenberg.

Stay tuned for more!

Just a quick update to share some of Reine Rosenberg's design art for our upcoming western/horror comic, SINNERS RIDE.

This is the design sheet for the main character, Ben Keelock, a man condemned to death by a lynch-mob who survives in a way even he can't explain.

​More to come!

That's right, I'm actively making comics again.

The amazing artist Reine Rosenberg, whom I've known for several years but never worked with, contacted me some little while ago asking if I would be interested in writing a western comic for him to draw. He was interested in something horror/western and I had the glimmerings of an idea from the instant he asked me.

I've completed my scripts for all four issues and sent them off to Reine, and he's started doing some design and character work.

Below is an example of the style he's leaning towards for you to check out.

​Check back soon for more information and more art!

You may remember that January of last year saw the release of "Shadow's Angle," the first of my stories about hitman-turned-exorcist Azuma Kuromori, published in Occult Detective Quarterly #5. 

Kuromori's second story, a rather different one going back to his childhood called "Beyond the Faded Shrine Gates" will appear in Occult Detective Magazine #7 (the magazine was renamed with the changing of publishers, but retains the original numbering) coming in the next week or so.

If you missed Azuma's debut, now's a great time to check it out and familiarize yourself with the character before his new story drops.

Below is the cover of ODM #7. More info when it's available.

As readers of this site probably know, I am a big fan of John D. MacDonald, one of the greatest of American mid-century crime writers. While his stand-alone novels (all 49 of them) vary wildly from incredible to lousy, his Travis McGee series, about an unlicensed P.I.-type who refers to himself as a "salvage consultant" (because he will return your missing money/goods/in one case, daughter for half the perceived value), ran 21 novels and are all good to excellent.

Now I've come to the end of the series at last...

I assumed THE LONELY SILVER RAIN was the last Travis McGee novel only because JDM died (unexpectedly from complications during a surgery) the year after it was published, but it actually reads as if it's intentionally the last McGee novel.
Throughout the first half of the series, from the first novel, 1962's THE DEEP BLUE GOOD-BY, to, I'd say, THE SCARLET RUSE in 1972, McGee is a boat-bum with intentionally few connections to people and world, believing it gives him the ultimate kind of freedom.
Slowly, over the next ten years and seven novels, his attitude changes to one of surprise, then dismay, then depression over how shallow and pointless his life is, even lamenting at one point that the "big door will slam" (a metaphor for death MacDonald used in many books) on him some day without McGee even having a window in it through which to peer at life.
Most of this novel is standard McGee (though better than the previous entry, FREE-FALL IN CRIMSON).  Aside from the main plot, and a couple secondary plots, there's a very minor subplot in it that culminates in the only thing of significance in the novel: McGee learning that he has a bastard daughter by the one true love of his life, Puss Killian from 1968's PALE GRAY FOR THE GUILT, who left him for reasons of her own, to go back to her husband, not telling McGee she was dying of cancer or knowing she was pregnant and not getting a chance to tell him as she dies after an emergency c-section.
In the very last section of the novel, McGee's entire outlook from the previous 13 years' worth of novels has turned around and he's actually looking forward to living for the first time in a long, long time. At a gathering of all of his surviving friends, colleagues, and acquaintances from the previous novels, there's a celebration that feels very much like an end to the series, even though McGee does, in dialogue, proclaim he isn't through with his "salvage" business yet, because now he has a daughter to provide for.
I was worried that, after 21 novels, the series would be left hanging with JDM's unexpected death, but whether intentional or not, this does give it a fitting and satisfying end.

There's two more interesting things about this novel:

One is that there's direct, if casual, reference to characters from ONE MORE SUNDAY, JDM's second to last standalone novel (and the novel he published immediately before this one), making me wonder if JDM considered his works all in the same canon.

Secondly, this is the first McGee novel that finally nails down how time flows in McGee's world: it's real-time. Times change in the novels, but it's unclear until this one that they each take place in the year they were published (or thereabouts) and that McGee is definitely 23 years older in 1985 than he was in 1962 when the first novel was published, and his stated age was thirty.

A lot of stuff is going on right now, and I know folks need distractions, so please enjoy a new to the site comic.

​Several years ago, artist Leigh Walls and I did stories for the first and second volumes of an anthology series called Memoirs of the Mysterious, featuring short sci-fi and horror stories in the vein of old pulp magazines. One, Baby's Blues, I've already posted.

Here is the second one, "Of Consequence." It's quite different, but I always liked it a lot.

Click and be whisked away! I hope you'll enjoy it.