Ronald Searle covers for original hardback and Penguin paperbacks of Angus Wilson

70 years too late some incidental humour relating to reviews of Anglo-Saxon Attitudes by Angus Wilson (1956), missing from Margaret Drabble's breeze block of a Wilson biography. The emotional literateur Elvira Portway in the book is based on Sonia Orwell. (1)

Much of Before She Met Me ( Julian Barnes 1983 ) is very funny Here an overly-precise attention to semantics and the changing of social attitudes in which this characer feels slightly left behind captures an era between David Nobbs and Amis:

The last 10-15 years of conservative writing has delivered some terrible straining prose, habits of style now institutionalised in Grokipedia. A drive-by shooting of an explanation from Ruth Rendell in "A Demon in My View":

Stumbling across Celia Dale's earliest story, "The Scream" in "The Bystander" August 25, 1937, the issue also has this glorious photo of Alastair Sim in the play "The Gusher"

#hhgg Was Marvin the Paranoid Android in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy gay? Would he have been happier out of the closet? Well, not quite… But Douglas Adams did say Marvin was inspired by comedy writer Andrew Marshall’s worst sullen behaviour and in a 2 Oct 1983 NME interview:

This from Charles Beaumont's "The Heavies - A retrospective appreciation of filmdom's black-hearted bad guys" (Playboy, Feb 1965) perfectly encapsulates the villainous western stereotypes in BLAZING SADDLES

John Sladek – Bugs – 1990 Hoorah for logical semantic equivalences. Multiple times the AI computer intelligence in this novel argues “ Orwell was right “ explaining:

Theodore Sturgeon 26 February 1918 – 8 May 1985 Over 15 years ago I wrote (and wrote and wrote – approx. 30,000 words) on Sturgeon’s life, struggles, marriages, novels, stories, reviews, scripts, teaching, criticism, ghost-writing, writer’s block and so much else. Some excerpts:

Bradley Denton - Buddy Holly is alive and well on Ganymede - 1991 A Charles Portis-influenced odyssey less gonzo sf than deeply-rooted chronicle of Boomer coming of age and aging. An appealing colloquial humorous tone (ala Howard Waldrop). The intro to a great fundamentalists bust-up over rock/pop:

Gene Wolfe - Castleview - 1990 Some prose that is more John Crowley than most of this novel, which is more interesting and exciting for its novel pacing and structure, offering experiences for which are there precious few "why"s proffered

Odd fact hidden in Ricard Lupoff letter in SF Eye #5 1985 TV Movie "Scandal Sheet" with Burt Lancaster is kind of a parallel evolution of "Trust Me on This" by Donald Westlake. Westlake wrote a script in 1982, parted ways with the producers, but apparently the movie still hews close to his story.

Thomas M. Disch February 2, 1940 - July 4, 2008 For years one of my favourite living authors: novels, stories, poetry, reviews, childrens books. Digging up his works across UK & US magazines was an education in itself SCHROEDINGER'S CAKE was where I wrote about him web.archive.org/web/20110510...

In a 1970 SFWA Forum Harlan Ellison reveals Robert Sheckley's agent removed a story from Again, Dangerous Visions to sell to a better market. Possible dates, venues, and "dangerousness" suggest to me the story was: Can You Feel Anything When I Do This? - Playboy Aug 69

Paula Gosling – Monkey Puzzle – 1985 Sprightly university-set murder novel, combines both police procedural and the late surprising character reveals of an Agatha Christie. Hoped for more meta-commentary of one character’s lectures on crime fiction - and much less of book's prevailing homophobia.

Marty Supreme 80s synth-pop helps makes 50s Marty equiv of 80s young crazily ambitious adult protags ala Michael J Fox, Tom Cruise, etc. Everybody Wants to Rule the World was one of poss songs I thought would end on. Yazoo Oh Yeah should've played as he had sex with Gwyneth Paltrow in Central Park

J. G. Ballard! thou shouldst be living at this hour! And the raving raging racist, paranoid, hysterically thanatophobic billionaire Benedict Howards and his "Foundation for Human Immortality" in Norman Spinrad's "Bug Jack Barron" (1967-68) does seem a lot more on the mark nowadays unfortunately

Read this year approx 117 booka. Much of it Americana bought long ago as I try to clear my shelves

A selfish, cynical TV executive haunted by three ghosts at Christmas Eve? Scrooged from 1988, script - Michael O'Donoghue? Nope! It’s The Return of A Christmas Carol (Esquire, Dec 1961), script - Harvey Kurtzman, art - David Levine The original massive 1960s’s Esquire pages are truly impressive

By the great, lamented cartoonist Richard Sala, this is his fabulous round-up (anatomy, even?) of !!! PSYCHO SANTA MOVIES !!! Sala’s original comments on how much harder it was to compile this kind of piece back in 2003: hereliesrichardsala.blogspot.com/2009/12/slig...

A nice anatomy of a centuries-old literary habit: D. Keith Mano National Review JUNE 9, 1972 from a review of The German Lesson by Siegfried Lenz, translated by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins

What happens if you think of Avram Davidson, less as sf writer, and instead as a contemporary of Saul Bellow, Delmore Schwartz , Isaac Rosenfeld, Philip Roth, and Wallace Markfield: Avram Davidson: Jew d’Esprit efanzines.com/SFC/SFC122L....

Given these are excerpts from a mere magazine column I could easily, happily believe it's some extended scene-setting from Saul Bellow, “Mr Sammler’s Planet” or “Humboldt’s Gift” maybe. D. Keith Mano NATIONAL REVIEW November 24, 1972

Did you get a notice in the press for staring a new job? Here's a report on Avram Davidson as the first kosher fish-liver inspector, in "The Jewish Post" 21 November 1952

Walter Van Tilburg Clark - "Why Don’t You Look Where You’re Going?" (Accent, Summer 1941)

Terry Bisson – Talking Man - 1986 Off-page for much of story the titular silent demi-urge is “one of those deals where a tall man was called Shorty or a fat man, Slim” First half replicates the world of Bobbie Ann Mason’s new South, bookended by an Alan Garner–esq Brisingamen/Elidor mythos

Kate Wilhelm - April Fool’s Day Forever - Orbit 7, 1970 In which a conspiracy of stagnant immortality is counteracted by an upsurge of the collective unconscious expressed by artistic works like this sculpture:

Kate Wilhelm - The Fusion Bomb - Orbit 10, 1972

I'll never remember this otherwise. Raymond Burr imitating Jackie Gleason, and accidentally foreshadowing John Cleese's silly walk and the worst of Freddie Garrity www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S4h...

Kate Wilhelm - THE PLASTIC ABYSS - 1971 Gary, not believing a word until he uttered it aloud, then believing it to be gospel. We say what we want to hear, not what others want to hear, and when it pleases us, we call it truth

Kate Wilhelm "Somerset Dreams", Orbit #5, ed. Damon Knight, 1969

Amanda Cross - Death in a Tenured Position, 1981 "Men are always writing books about murdering women — it's one of their favorite fantasies: revenge for having their prerogatives usurped: sexual prerogatives, political prerogatives, social prerogatives "

Horace McCoy in a 1951 interview with Ward Moore mentions he originates from *those* McCoys of "Hatfields and..." fame:

Bobbie Ann Mason - Love Life (1984) As a retired, slightly drunken teacher enjoys watching MTV, her thoughts on zombies as the horror of aging watching Michael Jackson’s Thriller:

@briansiano.bsky.social I've spent half a day wondering why your name seems familiar. Could I be remembering your name from ancient days of the (Harlan) Ellison Webderland bulletin board?

Kate Wilhelm - Oh, Susannah! (1982)

Elmore Leonard, Freaky Deaky, 1988 "See? You really want to drive," Chris said. "You just didn't know it." Maybe quintessential EL. Manoeuvring somebody into a position where they can't resist, with this line as the capper to assert awareness and speaker's superiority. And this is the good guy

Probably - rock critic Lester Bangs as a crowd scene extra in the movie version of Everything You Know is Wrong (1974) by the Firesign Theatre. An uncollected Creem article (April 1975) by Bangs recounts he was mostly drunk for this appearance.

John D. MacDonald - Dead Low Tide - 1953 Mosquitoes fell on us with shrill cries of delight, yelling to all their relatives to pile on and have some nice blood.

The debt to "The Faculty" in "Sinners", which Coogler has mentioned: Not just scene where all have to eat garlic repeating Faculty's characters having to snort speed as proof not infected But also that its possessions produce a gestalt: memories, sensations are shared and everyone genuinely happy

Avram Davidson takes up a heavily sarcastic cudgel on behalf of Sholem Aleichem after reading a poster promoting the film of "Fiddler on the Roof" San Francisco Examiner, 31 October 1971

An odd moment when Ward Moore as book reviewer gets name-dropped by Roy Cohn during the McCarthy Hearings Especially as there is a parody of this kind of political purity inquisition by committee in Moore's "Greener Than You Think" (1947) - 6 years before this 1953 incident.

Before Avram Davidson ever refused permission to reprint his works in Germany, Ward Moore took the action below regarding a potential German reprint of Greener Than You Think: National Jewish Post, 12 September 1952

Harlan Ellison made much of editing and ghostwriting Lenny Bruce. But how reliable was Ellison as an editor? And what did Bruce think of him? A letter to Rogue magazine's other editor Frank Robinson. "What gives with harlin is he a goof?" catalogue.swanngalleries.com/Lots/auction...

Steven Womack – Dead Folks’ Blues 1992 For when Joe R Lansdale or Colin Bateman aren’t to hand Never so many bloody descriptions of traffic jams Autopsist’s license plate: DED FLKS Theme of belated reckoning with living up to or opting out of Reaganomic ambition

Theodore Sturgeon - The Rare Breed 1966 [title: both bull and JStewart] Re all novelisations, what is original script, what Sturgeon expanding upon film’s rollicking culture-clash, and Sturgeon himself? Oddly, last half of film’s rancher family plot elided into 2½ pages of character description.

Charles Neider - The Authentic Death of Hendry Jones - 1956

Walter van Tilburg Clark - The Ox-Bow Incident 1940 My impressions of Nazi demagoguery in film proved right. Throwaway comment by son of consciously not acting on gay inclination - cf. repression and toxic masculinity in Thomas Savage's The Power of the Dog (1967) / Campion film.

Sue Kaufman - Diary of a Mad Housewife , 1967 five quotes:

Anne Richardson Roiphe – Up the Sandbox, 1970 A (164 word!)sentence that works nicely as a feminist response to the Bellow / Roth Jewish American (male) Writer style: