Retro Review: "Blue and Silver Brocade" by Dorothy Quick

This cover illustrates not "Blue and Silver Brocade", but the rather lacklustre novel "The Elder Gods" by Don A. Stuart a.k.a. John W. Campbell

 

I'm taking a bit of a break from Jirel of Joiry, because in my experience, those stories are best, when not read directly one after another. And so I decided to take a look at another underrated woman author of the golden age, Dorothy Quick.

Comrade-in-arms Steve J. Wright recently came across the gothic horror story "Blue and Silver Brocade" by Dorothy Quick in the October 1939 issue of Unknown. The premise sounded interesting, so I decided to review it myself. The story may be read online here. 

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

In true gothic fashion, "Blue and Silver Brocade" starts on a cold night in a spooky mansion on the Scottish moors. The narrator, a young woman named Alice, cannot sleep, because she's cold. Alice would love to have another blanket, but she is loath to wake her Aunt Annabel, owner of the mansion, or the servants.

So Alice searches her room for something that will keep her warm. In a closet, she finds several boxes and looks through them in search of a blanket. In the last box, finally, she finds a patchwork quilt and decides that this will do just fine to keep her warm for the night.

The quilt is quite unusual. For starters, the patches are quite large and made from vastly different materials – velvet, silk, brocade, wool, ancient linen, some kind of parchment that might also be human skin – whereas quilt patches are normally made of the same material, usually cotton, because otherwise the quilt won't properly fit together (ask me how I know). What is more, the edges of the squares are embroidered and the embroidery seems to spell out words in what looks like runes.

One square made from blue brocade with silver embroidery and tiny crowns particularly fascinates Alice, because the material is so beautiful. And so she falls asleep with her hand resting on the blue and silver brocade square. This turns out to be a big mistake.

Alice suddenly finds herself in an unfamiliar room and equally unfamiliar body, wearing a gown made from the same silver and blue brocade as the quilt square. It quickly becomes clear that Alice is now inhabiting the body of a young woman named Jeanne in seventeenth century France. Alice can see and feel everything Jeanne experiences, but she cannot influence events nor does she know anything about what's going on apart from what she directly witnesses.

Jeanne is quickly joined by a beautiful woman named Francoise with whom she is about to embark on some kind of dangerous venture, which will put Francoise ahead of her rival, a mysterious woman only known as "the lady". Jeanne is apparently an attendant of this mysterious lady and wears the lady's silver and blue brocade livery, though her loyalty is to Francoise. Jeanne and Francoise both put on black hooded cloaks and leave through a secret passage. Outside the passage, they are met by Jeanne's lover Raoul.

A carriage takes Jeanne, Francoise and Raoul to a shabby house, where a rat-faced, toothless woman awaits them. Alice knows that Jeanne is terrified, though she has no idea of what.

Inside the shabby house, Jeanne and Raoul are taken to a ritual chamber where other cloaked and hooded figures are already waiting. Alice finally realises that she is about to witness a black mass.

Francoise is lying naked on the altar, while the ritual goes on around her. Raoul supplies some helpful dialogue explaining that Francoise – though already beautiful like a Greek statue – is attending the black mass in search of even more beauty, because she wishes to regain the affection of the king – Louis XIV of France – who has transferred his attention from Francoise to the mysterious lady.

We are now treated to a graphic description of the black mass, complete with a blood sacrifice that is initially implied to be a baby, but thankfully turns out to be only a black rooster whose blood is splattered all over the naked Francoise.

Before the black mass can reach its climax and more blood sacrifices can be made, the cultists are interrupted by a patrol of the king's men who break down the door on the orders of the mysterious lady. The satanic priest commits suicide, Raoul throws his cloak over Francoise's head and tells her to play dead.

Then the guards break down the door. The guard captain recognises Raoul and is clearly surprised to see him attending a black mass (I can't even blame him, since I would be surprised to see any acquaintance of mine attending a black mass, particularly one with blood-splattering sacrifices). Raoul claims that it was just curiosity which brought him there. However, the guard captain informs Raoul that he has to arrest everybody present, including Raoul.

Raoul asks if the captain if he could at least let Jeanne go and sweeps aside her black cloak to reveal the silver and blue brocade livery of the lady. The captain, however, insists that he has to arrest everybody - king's orders and the lady's will – and that there will be no exceptions for anybody, not even an attendant of the lady.

So Raoul, Jeanne and the rest of the cultists are arrested. Jeanne is glad that at least Francoise will be able to escape, since the guard captain thought she was dead, because her naked body was covered in (chicken) blood, and left her behind.

The captain grants Raoul and Jeanne a few minutes alone in a cell. Raoul says that this is good-bye for both of them. For the lady will be furious that Francoise escaped the trap she set for her and will have everybody who was arrested at the black mass tortured. However, of all the cultists, only Jeanne and Raoul know Francoise's name. Raoul also casually drops Francoise's full name, so Alice is able to use her knowledge of history to piece everything together. Francoise is Madame de Montespan, mistress of Louis XIV. The "lady" is her successor, Madame Scarron a.k.a. the Marquise of Maintenon. So Francoise's attempts to regain the king's favour by satanic means were ultimately futile.

Raoul now asks Jeanne if she is strong enough to withstand torture. Jeanne says that she hopes she will be strong enough, but she is afraid. However, Jeanne also declares that she would rather die than betray Francoise. So she begs Raoul to kill her. Raoul kisses Jeanne and strangles her. We get another quite graphic description of Jeanne being throttled to death, while a desperate Alice wonders what will happen to her, when Jeanne dies.

However, Alice does not die. Instead, she wakes up screaming, while her Aunt Annabel and Annabel's maid Hester stand over her bed. Both Annabel and Hester are horrified to see that Alice has found the quilt. Hester says that the quilt should have been burned long ago, while Aunt Annabel finally tells Alice the story of the quilt.

The quilt, it turns out, was made by an old witch who collected scraps of fabric with terrible histories connected to them. She pieced the scraps together with her magic, so that if someone falls asleep with their hand touching one of the squares, they will relive whatever terrible memory has been encoded in the square.

The quilt ended up with an ancestor of Aunt Annabel's late husband who put it in a guestroom and then waited for his guests to tell him about their nightmares. But then, one guest went mad and another died and the quilt was packed away. Aunt Annabel's husband showed her the quilt and Annabel slept with it for two nights, until she could not stand it anymore. However, she could never bring herself to destroy the quilt either.

Aunt Annabel wants to destroy the quilt now, but Alice won't let her. She wants to try sleeping under it again and she also has just the square picked out that she wants to try, the one which looks like parchment or human skin…

 

A portrait of the historical Madame de Montespan by an unknown artist.

"Blue and Silver Brocade" is a highly effective and – by the standards of the time – remarkably graphic story of gothic horror. It's yet another example of the "tale within a tale" stories that were popular during the golden age and that particularly Dorothy Quick was clearly fond of. But unlike other "tale within a tale" stories, here we don't have people sitting around a fireplace or dinner table telling a spooky story. Instead, there is a unique delivery vehicle, a haunted patchwork quilt that transports those who sleep under it into other eras and lives.

I have to admit that I love the idea of a haunted patchwork quilt that contains spooky stories and not just because I have been known to make quilts myself (not haunted, though). And making a real world replica of Dorothy Quick's fictional quilt – hopefully not haunted – sounds like a great craft project. Maybe an idea for a future Worldcon.

However, the haunted quilt is simply a great premise for a series of interconnected stories, though keeping the quilt in a box in a room where guests can stumble upon it unaware of the danger does strike me as very negligent. And indeed, Dorothy Quick wrote two more stories about the haunted patchwork quilt, which I will eventually review, if only because I love the premise.

While the framing story offers a standard gothic spooky mansion on the moors set-up, the dream story takes us into a completely different genre, namely that of historical fiction. Francoise de Montespan and her romantic rival, Francoise, Marquise de Maintenon a.k.a. "the lady" (probably because Luis XIV going for two women with such similar names would have been very confusing for readers) are both actual historical figures, though Jeanne and Raoul are fictional. There even is a portrait of Madame de Montespan wearing a dress of golden brocade like the one she wears in the story.

Madame de Montespan really was rumoured to have been involved in black masses where a rogue priest named Étienne Guiborg pouring blood over her naked body. She was also rumoured to have been a client of Catherine Monvoisin a.k.a. La Voisin (implied to be the rat-faced woman mentioned in the story), poisoner, abortionist and sorceress to the French aristocracy, who implicated Madame de Montespan after her arrest. Historical fiction generally is not kind to Madame de Montespan and tends to portray her as a villainess of the worst kind, even though we cannot be sure how many of the terrible stories told about her are really true and how many are the result of people arrested in connection with Catherine Monvoisin during the so-called affaire des poisons in 1677 (the story is implied to be set during this time) giving false confessions under torture. Interestingly, both history and fiction are much kinder to the Marquise de Maintenon who is generally considered to have been a good influence on Louis XIV, to have treated his legitimate wife well (unlike Madame de Montespan) and who founded a school for impoverished aristocratic girls.

So it's interesting that Dorothy Quick turns Francoise de Montespan into a semi-sympathetic character who commands loyalty unto death from Raoul and Jeanne, though it's never clear just why these two would be willing to die for her, while Madame de Maintenon is portrayed as the villainess of the story.

 

The tragic adventures of the doomed lovers Jeanne and Raoul in seventeenth century France reminded me very much of the Angélique series by Serge and Anne Golon, which my teenaged self devoured with great glee. Not just because of the setting – seventeenth century France during the reign of Louis XIV – but also because of the quite graphic violence and bloody happenings. And trust me, the Angélique series has a lot of that and is full of torture, executions, murders, sexual violence, pirates, harems, the inquisition, etc... Madame de Montespan actually does appear as a supporting character in some of the Angelique novels (as does Louis XIV), once again engaged in black masses, poisonings and other mischief. Though the first Angelique novel, Angélique, the Marquise of the Angels, did not appear until 1957, eighteen years after "Blue and Silver Brocade" was published, so it can't possibly have inspired this story.

Which begets the question, what did inspire this story? For while there are a lot of historical sagas full of romance and quite graphic violence with female protagonists, the examples that come to mind – the Angelique novels, the Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett, the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon, Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor – all postdate "Blue and Silver Brocade". And the historical fiction of the era, works by writers like Raphael Sabatini, Georgette Heyer, Talbot Mundy, Harold Lamb, Margaret Mitchell, Hervey Allen, etc… is quite different from the historical scenes in "Blue and Silver Brocade". The rivalry between Madame de Montespan and the Marquise de Maintenon and the affaire des poisons has been frequently chronicled, often in a quite sensational manner, so Dorothy Quick may well have come across the story. The graphic violence may have been inspired by the Theatre du Grand-Guignol, but the blood-drenched horror plays presented at that famous Paris theatre were usually not historical. So was Dorothy Quick the first to merge romantic historical drama with graphic violence? This is certainly a mystery to be explored further.

Steve J. Wright was quite shocked at how graphic the violence in "Blue and Silver Brocade" was. And indeed, the story is remarkably graphic by 1930s standards. We not only get a graphic description of a blood-drenched black mass and an equally graphic description of a woman being strangled to death from the POV of the victim, we also have nudity and several passionate and thrilling kisses, including one kiss which happens as Jeanne is strangled to death (which hints at erotic asphyxiation). By 1930s standards, this is strong stuff.

What makes this even more remarkable is that "Blue and Silver Brocade" was not published in the fairly liberal Weird Tales, where graphic violence, satanic rituals, passionate kisses and hints of sex all showed up more or less frequently, but in John W. Campbell's much more prudish Unknown, which was focussed more on proto-urban fantasy, humorous fantasy and Arabian Nights type adventures than on gothic horror. I'm not surprised that Dorothy Quick chose to submit this story to Unknown. After all, Campbell paid better and much more promptly than Weird Tales, which was notoriously slow to pay, particularly under Farnsworth Wright. However, I'm surprised that Campbell bought it, because "Blue and Silver Brocade" is so very much not a John W. Campbell type story and would seem much more at home in Weird Tales or even the likes of Spicy Mystery or Spicy Adventure.

"Blue and Silver Brocade" is also a depressing story, because the actions of the characters in the historical flashback are ultimately futile. Jeanne dies by the hand of Raoul, it is strongly implied that Raoul will be executed for his part in the conspiracy (and for killing Jeanne) and Francoise does not regain the affections of the King, but will be banished from court. It's very much a downer ending, which also heightens the impact of the graphic violence.

"Blue and Silver Brocade" passes the Bechdel test with flying colours, something which is exceedingly rare for golden age SFF stories. What's even more remarkable is that except for Raoul, all named characters are female. The other Dorothy Quick story I reviewed for the Retro Reviews project also passed the Bechdel test, which shows that Quick centered women characters and their experiences in her fiction.

Next to Fritz Leiber's justly beloved Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, Dorothy Quick's Patchwork Quilt series is certainly one of the most interesting and unusual works to appear in Unknown. Dorothy Quick is vastly underrated and I for one will be very interested to read the other two stories in this series.

Retro Review: "The Werewolf's Howl" by Brooke Byrne

I'm continuing my quest to review stories by obscure women authors of the golden age with "The Werewolf's Howl" by Brooke Byrne, a gothic horror short story which appeared in the December 1934 issue of Weird Tales. I came across the story, while reviewing "Black God's Shadow" by C.L. Moore. The story may be read online here.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

The story starts in full gothic manner with young Doctor Gradnov walking through a dark and sinister forest on a cold night, making his way to the equally sinister Castle Martheim, which is located on a cliff overlooking a nameless river. It's obvious that this errand will not end well.

The reason that has brought Doctor Gradnov to Castle Martheim is that the last Baron Martheim lies dying. Doctor Gradnov is troubled by this, because the Baron is not just a patient, he was also a friend with whom the Doctor played chess and talked about vintage wines.

Doctor Gradnov finds the Baron near death and clearly terrified of something. However, the Baron refuses a sedative – though not the brandy the Doctor gives him – and insists that he has to share his secret with the Doctor.

And so, the Baron tells his story. Some forty years before, the Baron – we now learn that his first name is Konrad – went to university and would hold forth about his grand theories about the nature of existence in the local coffeehouses, where he also fell for a waitress named Hilda. However, he had a rival for Hilda's affections, an older student named Ivan. Hilda preferred the young Baron, whereas Ivan was left stewing with jealousy.

One night, Ivan confronts Konrad in a tavern near closing time. The Baron knows that Ivan hates him and so he is very surprised that Ivan sits down to share a drink with him. Once the innkeeper has withdrawn, Ivan leans close to Konrad and asks if he still denies the existence of the soul. Konrad answer in the affirmative and declares that no, he has no returned to superstition. Next, Ivan asks if Konrad believes that one can sell one's soul. Konrad declares that this is nonsense. I guess we can all see where this is going by now.

Ivan now tells Konrad that he has sold his soul in exchange for great wisdom and the secrets of the old ones. Ivan also offers to show Konrad ghosts, werewolves and the undead. Konrad still doesn't believe Ivan, but agrees to go with him, when Ivan taunts him that he is just scared.

Ivan takes Konrad to a ruined castle in the deep dark woods. There, Ivan opens his bag, pulls out all sorts of ritual implements, which he had wisely brought along, and sets them up. He also has an old pistol and a blessed silver bullet marked with a cross, which is the only thing that can slay a werewolf. Ivan hands the pistol to Konrad and tells him to load it. He also tells Konrad that if he fires the bullet at a werewolf and misses, his soul shall forever be forfeit to the undead.

Then Ivan begins his ritual, which generates a lot of smoke. Outside the ruin, the wolves are howling. One appears inside the castle and attacks Konrad. Konrad fires, misses and gets bitten.

The next morning, Konrad flees the university town. He travels the world, looking for a cure, but finds none. For forty years, the Baron has lived in fear of the werewolves who will take his soul once he dies. And now that he is about to die, he is utterly terrified.

Doctor Gradnov tries to calm down the old Baron and tells him that he is safe and that there is no such thing as werewolves. The Baron claims that he can already hear them howling, that he know Ivan is waiting for him. However, Doctor Gradnov and the Baron's lone servant Hans can't hear anything.

The Baron finally expires, his face a twisted mask of horror, and now the young Doctor finally does hear something. Outside the castle, a wolf is howling. Three times the wolf howls, a long bitter howl of inhuman despair. Hans, the servant, and even the otherwise atheistic Doctor Gradnov both pray.

This is a typical example of the filler stories often found in Weird Tales. There are no real surprises here and it's clear from the beginning where the story is going. Not to mention that the title is a spoiler, which was a common problem during the pulp era. Like many other filler stories, "The Werewolf’s Howl" is also an example of a "tale within a tale" story. I have reviewed a couple of other stories of this type, including two from Weird Tales.

However, "The Werewolf's Howl" is nicely written and dripping with gothic atmosphere. It's set in the vaguely German, vaguely Slavic never-neverland of gothic fiction, where every dark forest is full of vampires and every castle is home to a vampire and a couple of ghosts.

Unsurprisingly, there is no German or formerly German town called Martheim nor is there a castle by that name. The university town where much of the tale within a tale takes place is never named. It might be Heidelberg, it might be Leipzig (I can't be the only one who got distinct Faust vibes from this story about university students hanging out in wine bars and coffeehouses and making deals with dark powers), it might be Göttingen, it might be completely fictional.

The mix of German and Slavic names is also typical for this sort of story. And so the Baron and his servant and the Baron's university paramour have solidly German names, while the young Doctor and the villainous Ivan both have Slavic names. Now you do find plenty of people with Slavic names particularly in the eastern parts of the former German Empire and universities have always attracted students from abroad anyway. Nonetheless, the coexistence of German and Slavic names in gothic fiction is a strange convention, especially since you never find German and French names existing side by side in this sort of story, even though this common in the areas along the French-German border.

Hilda, the waitress, with whom both Ivan and the Baron are infatuated, vanishes from the story once the rivalry between Konrad and Ivan has been established. I hope she found herself a nice solid student who did not dabble with dark powers.

The depiction of the werewolf legend in this story is certainly interesting, especially regarding the details which differ from the most common modern version of the legend. For example, I was surprised to see silver bullets mentioned as the sole weapon that can slay a werewolf, since I always assumed that this particular detail was invented (along with a big chunk of the modern werewolf legend) by Curt Siodmak for The Wolf Man, a film which did not come out until 1941, more than six years after "The Werewolf's Howl" appeared in Weird Tales.

Meanwhile, the fact that the Baron is doomed to become a werewolf after death reminds me of the legend of Lambert Sprengepiel, a German Imperial cavalry officer and guerrilla leader fighting the Swedish occupation during the Thirty Years War. Sprengepiel really did exist and lived on an estate just outside the town of Vechta, where he built a grain mill that still exists today and is still operational.

However, no one would remember a 17^th century cavalry officer if not for a local legend which claims that Sprengepiel made a deal with the devil, allowing him and his men to turn into bushes at will to confuse and ambush the Swedish forces. However, in return Sprengepiel was cursed to turn into a hellhound with glowing red eyes after death and roam the moors around Vechta (more on the Sprengepiel legend may be found on the website of the Museum im Zeughaus in Vechta). There even is a statue of Sprengepiel in Vechta – in hellhound form. Little children love riding on him.

I've been fascinated by the story of Lambert Sprengepiel, ever since I stumbled across him while teaching at the University of Vechta. He even shows up as a supporting character in one of my stories.

Was Brooke Byrne familiar with the legend of Lambert Sprengepiel? It's not completely impossible, since the story has appeared in collections of local myths and legends several times, including Elisabeth Reinke's collection of myths and legends from the Oldenburger Land, which was published in 1922. However, it's not all that likely either, since the Sprengepiel story is an intensely local legend, little known outside the immediate area where it's set. And there might well be similar legends elsewhere.

So who was Brooke Byrne, author of "The Werewolf's Howl"? Unfortunately, Brooke Byrne is one of those golden age authors who are a complete enigma. According to ISFDB, she had this one story as well as a poem named "Sic Transit Gloria" published in Weird Tales in 1933/34 and then never appeared again under that name in the SFF genre anywhere. Did she find greener pastures elsewhere in the pulps?

It's impossible to say, because unfortunately Brooke Byrne shares a name with an Instagram influencer who makes videos reviewing eyelash extensions as well as a class action lawyer, a softball player and a dozen other people, none of whom are the person who sold a story and a poem to Weird Tales in the 1930s. There is a Brooke Byrne who penned Mending Books Is Fun, a non-fiction book about bookbinding and book repair, in 1957. Is this the same woman as the Weird Tales author? Goodreads seems to think so, but we all know that Goodreads is not exactly reliable.

Interestingly, there is also a young writer from San Diego named Brooke Byrne whose story "Wolves at Twilight" was selected for an anthology of fiction by middle grade students. This Brooke Byrne is very obviously not the same person, but I still found it fascinating that two writers called Brooke Byrne would both write werewolf stories eighty-six years apart.

Considering how obscure Brooke Byrne is, I was surprised that "The Werewolf's Howl" has been reprinted in a 1994 horror anthology called 100 Creepy Little Creature Stories, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Weinberg. This anthology was part of a series of anthologies that the bookseller Barnes & Noble published in the 1990s. Those anthologies drew heavily from the pulps, particularly Weird Tales. Considering that Stefan R. Dziemianowicz and Robert Weinberg are both Weird Tales specialists, this isn't surprising.

A neat if predictable gothic horror story that is very typical of the bread and butter fiction published in Weird Tales.

Retro Review: "And the Gods Laughed" by Fredric Brown

Now that the finalists for the 1945 Retro Hugos have announced, it's time to get back to Retro Reviews and cover those finalists I missed the first time around. I'll start off with "And the Gods Laughed", a science fiction short story by Fredric Brown that was published in the Spring 1944 issue of Planet Stories and is a finalist for the 1945 Retro Hugo Award. The story may be read online here.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point.

"And the Gods Laughed" starts off with the line "You know how it is when you're with a work crew on one of the asteroids." It's an opening that pulls you right in. For not only is the reader tempted to reply, "No, actually I don't", but they also want to find out exactly what it is like to be part of a work crew on an asteroid. Furthermore, Brown also uses this first line to establish the setting of the story, namely a mining crew on an asteroid.

Over the next page or so, the first person narrator – we later learn that his name is Hank – tells us that asteroid mining mainly means being stuck in a very confined space with four other people and nothing in the way of entertainment. Because space is at a premium both on the mining outpost and aboard the spaceship that takes the crew there, so it's not possible to take along any books, magazines or other distractions. Nor is there radio reception except for a once-per-day newscast. And since a shift is only four hours long due to the technical limitations of space suits and airlocks as well as due to union regulations, this means that the five man work crews (and they are all men, of course) have a lot of time to fill.

As golden age science fiction goes, "And the Gods Laughed" offers a more realistic image of what space travel is really like than many other stories. Because conditions aboard spacecraft and space stations are often cramped – though the ISS does have a selection of books, DVDs, games, etc… available – and people are stuck together in a confined space for a long time. Interestingly, Brown also mentions at one point that Jupiter has several previously unknown satellites – "almost an asteroid belt", as Hank explains – which endanger spaceships trying to land on its moons. Voyager 1 and 2 as well as later missions to Jupiter would prove this prediction right. In 1944, when "And the Gods Laughed" was published, Jupiter had eleven known satellites. By 2020, it has 79. It also has rings.

Brown's asteroid miners spend their copious amounts of free time by spinning yarns and telling stories. Again, this is not entirely unrealistic – there are reports that storytelling is an ability prized in prison. Other activities that might occur between five men trapped together on an asteroid (or in a prison) for months on end are only hinted at.

The narrator Hank makes it very clear in his introduction that most of the stories the miners tell each other are tall tales and must not be taken too seriously. Then we are plunged right into the tail end of such a tall tale, when one of the miners, a man called Charlie Dean, recalls the time he spent fighting a hostile Martian race called the bolies, who look like alligators on stilts. And just in case we don't get whom the bolies are supposed to represent, the narrator helpfully informs us that the bolies think and fight a lot like Native Americans during the Indian wars of the 19^th century. Not that Hank knows much about that – in fact, he muses whether the Native Americans used crossbows or longbows to fight the white settlers.

In his story, Charlie mentions using zircon earrings to impress the bolies (more historical parallels), which causes Hank to launch into a story of his own about the first expedition to Ganymede, where the natives go naked wearing nothing but earrings. Only that, so Hank explains, the natives don't wear earrings, but the earrings wear them. Now Hank has the others hooked, he launches into his story.

We learn that eight months before, Hank was a crewmen on the first successful mission to Ganymede. The members of the expedition team were Dick Carney, the skipper, Art Willis, a fellow crewman, and three scientists, a biologist and linguist named Lecky, a geologist and mineralogist named Haynes and a botanist named Hilda Race. Yes, there is an actual woman scientist in this story, though she fills the traditional position of botanist (women on mixed gender spaceship crews in older science fiction are almost inevitably biologists, botanists or medical doctors). Hank's scant remarks about Hilda are also quite sexist – at one point he calls her "a hippopotamus acting kittenish".

Once the ship lands on Ganymede, the crew quickly encounters the native people and notice that they all wear an earring in one ear only. Biologist/linguist Lecky is sent to make contact with Hank and Art Willis acting as guards. They briefly leave Lecky alone in the native village to survey the surroundings and encounter another alien who is of the same species as the others, but does not wear an earring. He is also a lot more hostile.

When Hank and Art pick up Lecky, they notice that he is wearing one of the native's earrings. Lecky explains that the earring was a gift and that he gave the Ganymedeans a slide-rule in exchange. Hank and Art wonder why Lecky would give the aliens a slide-rule rather than the usual trinkets reserved for such encounters. Lecky explains that the aliens were fascinated by the slide-rule and quickly figured out how to use it. Lecky also explains that even though the Ganymedeans seem primitive, they have an advanced understanding of mathematics, science and philosophy. Finally, Lecky is curiously protective of the earring, which makes him an honourary member of the Ganymedean tribe, and won't take it off.

Further trips to the village consist of two scientists and one crewman as a guard. The first team consists of Lecky, Hilda Race and Art Willis. Upon her return to the ship, Hilda is wearing an earring as well and won't take it off either. The next day, Hank accompanies Lecky and Haynes to the village. Haynes declares that while he wants one of the earrings to analyse, he certainly won't stoop to wearing it.

While the two scientists are in the village, Hank takes off to explore the surroundings. By now we get the impression that Hank is not very good at his job, considering he leaves the people he is supposed to be guarding alone twice. He hears Haynes scream and comes running, only to find Haynes on the ground with what looks like blood on his shirt. Haynes seems dazed and insists that nothing is wrong, that he simply stumbled and spilled some wine. Oh yes, and he is also wearing an earring, even though he insisted earlier that he wouldn't.

Hank slips away again and watches two Ganymedeans trying to cross a stream, when one of them is attacked by an unseen creature and has their legs bitten off. Their companion drags them ashore. The Ganymedean is remarkably unbothered by having their legs bitten off. The injured Ganymedean tries to get up and notices that they cannot stand or walk because they no longer have any legs. So the injured Ganymedean nods to his companions, who removes their earring, whereupon the legless Ganymedean collapses – quite dead. Almost as if the earring was animating the alien.

Hank is understandably disturbed by this. He makes an even more disturbing discovery when he returns to the ship with Lecky and Haynes and notices that Haynes' shirt is not just bloody, it's also torn and has matching holes in the front and back. Holes that look as if someone had stabbed a spear through Haynes' chest.

Back at the ship, Hank notices that Lecky, Hilda and Haynes are all acting strangely. Plus, Art Willis is now sporting an earring as well. Furthermore, they seem to forget to talk at times and just stare at each other, before they suddenly resume talking in mid sentence.

Hank bides his time and waits until he can catch Dick Carney alone to share his suspicions. He corners Dick and tells him point blank that the other four are no longer the same people they were at the start of the journey. Whereupon, Dick sighs and says, "Well, it didn't work. We need more practice then." Hank realises too late that Dick is wearing an earring as well, though he is wearing it as a bracelet hidden under the sleeve of his uniform.

Dick threatens Hank with a gun and promises to tell him everything, which Lecky – the leader – then proceeds to do. Hank and the reader learn that the earring creatures have no name for either their race or its individual members. Instead, they refer to themselves by numbers. They are telepathic and parasites, which means they can only live when they take over another lifeform. It doesn't matter if that lifeform is alive or dead – after all, Haynes was killed before the earring creatures took him over.

Hank also learns that the earring creatures – or earring gods, as the Ganymedeans call them, hence the title – come from outside the solar system and arrived on Ganymede with alien visitors a very long time ago. Ever since then, they've been stuck there, because the Ganymedeans don't have space travel and the earring creatures cannot do anything without accessing their hosts' knowledge and memories. However, now that Earthpeople have landed on Ganymede the earring creatures finally have a way to get off the moon as well as a whole new planet and solar system to conquer.

Hank was the only crewmember not taken over, because the earring creatures wanted to use him as a guinea pig to see if he'd notice anything off. But now that the earring creatures know that they need to be more careful, Hank is no longer of any use and will be taken over as well. And so Lecky hands him an earring and tells him to put it on, otherwise he'll be shot. The earring creatures prefer to take over undamaged and living bodies, but they'll also take a dead one, if necessary.

Hank, however, launches himself at Lecky and manages to grab hold of the gun. He shoots his fellow crewmembers, but the shots don't even slow them down, let alone hurt them. So Hank flees out into the Ganymedean night. The earring creatures don't even bother to pursue him, cause they know he won't survive for long out in the cold and with insufficient oxygen.

Hank's tale stops at this point. Charlie asks what happened next and how he managed to escape, Hank says that he didn't. He just passed out from lack of oxygen and awoke the next morning aboard the ship.

While he was telling his story, Hank grabbed Chekhov's Gun (Anton, the Russian playwright, not Pavel, the Enterprise crewmember) from the wall and started to clean it. Conveniently, he finishes cleaning the gun just as he finishes his story. However, Hank's fellow asteroid miners Charlie Dean and Blake Powers are not as easily tricked as Hank himself. And so Charlie launches himself at Hank, grabs hold of the gun and points it at Hank.

Blake, who is the captain, still half believes that Hank was just spinning some spaceman's yarn. But just to be on the safe side, he order Charlie to keep the gun and Hank to roll up his sleeves and trouser legs. When this does not reveal any mysterious jewellery, Blake orders Hank to take off his clothes. Only when Hank is buck naked (no, there is nothing odd at all about two guys who haven't seen a woman in months forcing a third at gunpoint to strip) and there is still no sign of any malevolent jewellery anywhere on his body, Charlie and Blake are satisfied that Hank was really just telling a tall tale. They laugh, while Hank heads for the shower.

So all is well that ends well. Or does it? After all, this is a golden age science fiction story and we all know how much the golden age liked twist endings. And so the story ends with a one paragraph excerpt of a telepathic report from one number 67843 in the asteroid belt to one number 5463 on Earth. Number 67843 reports that the plan to test the credulity of the humans by telling them the truth about what happened on Ganymede was a success. The humans were fully willing to believe the story, but the absence of any visible earrings or bracelets persuaded them that it was just a hoax. Therefore, the process of surgically implanting the earring device into every human taken over must continue to avoid arousing suspicions. Number 67843, otherwise known as Hank, will make sure that the remaining four asteroid miners are all implanted with devices before they return to earth.

I have to admit that I haven't read much by Fredric Brown and what I have read was mixed. There is the haunting 1948 flash fiction story "Knock", which stayed with me for a long time after I first read it, even though I initially had no idea who the author was. On the other hand, Brown's 1943 Retro Hugo finalist "The Star Mouse" was just too silly for me and his other 1943 Retro Hugo finalist "Etaoin Shrdlu" – another possessed machine story – was okay, but nothing special.

As for "And the Gods Laughed", I'm not sure what to think about it. On the one hand, it is an effective and well written story. Brown skilfully combines two popular storytelling devices of the era, the "tale within a tale", a story told around the dinner table, fireplace or aboard an asteroid mining station, and the twist ending. Even Chekhov's Gun gets an outing – quite literally in this case.

Of course, anybody with any science fiction experience can see the twist ending coming from a mile away. However, the by now well-worn concept of alien parasites who take over humans to invade Earth was still a very new idea in 1944. The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein, probably the most famous early take on the trope, did not come out until 1951, six years after "And the Gods Laughed". And while A.E. van Vogt's "Discord in Scarlet" predates "And the Gods Laughed" by five years, the parasitic aliens in van Vogt's story are closer to the xenomorph from Alien (probably because both were inspired by the same real life creature, the emerald cockroach wasp) than to the parasitic invaders of The Puppet Masters. Furthermore, most alien parasites that take over humans are described as slug-like or starfish-like creatures, so malevolent parasitic jewellery is certainly a different idea as well as a fine example of the wonderful weirdness of the golden age.

Nonetheless, I had issues with the story. One is the fact that "And the Gods Laughed" is narrated in the first person by Hank, which is quite common for "tale within a tale" stories. However, as we learn in the last paragraph, "Hank" is not really Hank, but malevolent parasitic earring number 67843. So why is malevolent parasitic earring number 67843 telling the story as if they were Hank who had a spooky experience and got away? Is malevolent parasitic earring number 67843 trying to fool us just like they fooled Charlie and Blake?

Of course, "the narrator did it" was not a new idea even back in 1944 – after all, Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd came out in 1926, eighteen years before. However, revealing that the narrator is the villain without the narrator's voice hinting at that fact at any point before is not exactly playing fair with the reader. And considering Fredric Brown was also a (very good) mystery writer, he should therefore know a thing or two about mysteries playing fair. Honestly, I feel the story would have worked better, if Charlie or Blake had been the first person narrator (and in most examples of the "tale within a tale" trope, the first person narrator is not the same person as the one who tells the story within a story) instead of "Hank".

Another issue I had with the story is one that probably wouldn't have bothered 1940s audiences, but is really glaring today, namely the unquestioning acceptance of colonialism and imperialism. Of course, we know that the races who inhabit the various planets and moons in golden age science fiction are often stand-ins for Native Americans or other indigenous people, but Brown isn't just content to imply these parallels, no, he flat out has his narrator tell us. And just like European colonisers, the human explorers bribe/trick the various indigenous people with all sorts of worthless trinkets. For example, there is an anecdote about an alien race from the Martian moon Phobos who had never seen elastic before and were willing to trade a bucket full of gemstones for the suspenders of a spaceship crewman. This was probably considered light-hearted back in 1944, but it really hit me the wrong way.

On the other hand, the aliens also use worthless trinkets, the earrings, to trick and take over the human explorers and eventually the Earth. So was Brown interrogating and reversing that hoary old trope by placing the human colonisers on the receiving end of a truly bad deal?

Another thing that struck me is that a single earring worn in one ear (the right, apparently) used to code a man as gay. And here we have a story where single earrings are used to literally take over the almost all male crew of a spaceship. So is the story a metaphor for gay men supposedly turning heterosexual men gay? Or is this a complete coincidence? Though it is notable that the interior art depicts a man wearing a single earring in his right ear. And let's not forget that the story also contains a scene where two men force another man at gunpoint to strip naked, so they can examine his body jewellery or lack thereof? And where exactly did Charlie and Blake expect Hank to be wearing the earring that he needs to strip naked? Or am I seeing things here which aren't there?

Fredric Brown is clearly popular with Retro Hugo nominators, considering he had two nominations for 1943 and also had two for 1945. Nonetheless, I was a bit surprised to see "And the Gods Laughed" on the ballot, because it is not a particularly well known story. It has been reprinted a few times over the years, but it is not nearly as well known as "Arena", Brown's other 1945 Retro Hugo finalist. Nor does it show up in Isaac Asimov's and Martin H. Greenberg's The Great Science Fiction Stories anthology for 1944. And lesser known stories that make the Retro Hugo ballot can often be found in the Asimov/Greenberg anthologies such as Edmond Hamilton's "Exile" from last year.

Whatever the reason, quite a few people clearly liked "And the Gods Laughed" enough to nominate it. And to be fair, it is a good story, though it also has its share of flaws. But considering the competition this year, I don't really see it winning.

Retro Review: "Exile" by Edmond Hamilton

Now that we're waiting for the finalists for the 1945 Retro Hugos to be announced, let's take the time to look at some of the finalists for previous years of Retro Hugos. I'll start off with "Exile", a science fantasy short story by Edmond Hamilton that was published in the May 1943 issue of Super Science Stories and was a finalist for the 1944 Retro Hugo Award. The story may be read online here.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point.

"Exile" begins with four science fiction writers – Madison, Brazell, Carrick and the narrator – sitting around the fireplace, sipping whiskey and talking about hunting, baseball and science fiction. The narrator remarks that all four of them are trying very hard to seem like ordinary, solid citizens, even though they don't feel at home in this world and never will. They all want something different, something more, that's why they became science fiction writers in the first place.

Brazell points out that the fact that they get paid for it is a large part of the reason why they all write. The narrator agrees that yes, the money is important, but that they nonetheless all dreamt up stories and new worlds long before they were paid for it, even long before they started to write down their stories, because none of them fit in the real world.

"We'd feel a lot less at home in some of the worlds we write about," Madison says, whereupon Carrick pipes in, "That happened to me. I once wrote about an imaginary world and then I had to live in it."

Of course, everybody is eager for the story, so Carrick delivers it. It happened, he says, after he moved out to the edge of the city right next to a new power station, because it was quiet there and he needed the quiet to write. Carrick was about to start writing a new series of stories all set in the same world, so he began to create the world and its inhabitants. He made the inhabitants human, but he also made them and their world less civilized and more superstitious and barbarian than the real world, because that would provide conflict and fiction needs conflict.

Carrick is so engrossed in his worldbuilding that he suddenly experiences a click in his brain, as if the world he created and its people had crystallized into existence in another reality, likely due to the energy generated by the power station next door. Then Carrick wonders what would happen if he imagined himself living in that world and creates a character and history for himself.

There is another click and Carrick suddenly finds himself in his imaginary world, as if he'd been born there and always lived there. Carrick is excited at first, as he goes out and walks the streets of the world he created and looks at the people he dreamt up. But eventually, he becomes unhappy, because the world he created is just too barbarian for him and all the things that had seemed exciting from a distance are repulsive and unpleasant close-up.

So Carrick tries to imagine himself back into his own world, only to find that it doesn't work. He's stuck. He considers killing himself, but eventually he adapts. Brazell asks Carrick what he did in the other world. Carrick explains that he didn't have the skills or the knowledge to do most of the jobs in the other world, so he did the only thing he could do. He wrote stories. He wrote stories about his own world, which seemed like science fiction to the inhabitants of the other world and made him popular.

Madison wants to know how Carrick got back in the end. "I never got home," Carrick says sadly, "I'm still here."

"Exile" is very short, only two and a half pages long in magazine format, but it sure packs a punch. It is an example of the "twist in the tale" stories that were so popular during the golden age, stories which exist only to deliver the final punchline. "Exile" wasn't even the only "twist in the tale" story on the 1944 Retro Hugo ballot – "Death Sentence" by Isaac Asimov and "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" by Robert Bloch, both finalists in the same category, are "twist in the tale" stories as well.

"Exile" is however an excellent example of a "twist in the tale" story. It is a lot more effective than "Death Sentence" and on par with "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", which is remarkable, because unlike the Robert Bloch story, "Exile" doesn't have much of a plot. It's merely a story about four people sitting around the fireplace, drinking whiskey and telling stories. "The Man Who Wouldn't Hang" by Stanton A. Coblentz is probably the closest comparison. But "Exile" is much better. In fact, it is remarkable how well this little story works.

I suspect part of the reason why "Exile" works so well is that it perfectly captures the sense of alienation that many writers and fans of speculative fiction feel. Like the unnamed narrator of Hamilton's story, a lot of us don't feel at home in the real world, so we dream up imaginary worlds. And while getting paid to write about adventures in imaginary worlds is a nice side-effect, many of us dreamt up stories and worlds long before we were ever paid to do it and would continue to do so, even if we didn't get paid for it.

But even if we don’t really fit into the real world, would we truly want to live in the worlds we create or could we even survive there? I guess, as with poor lost Carrick, the answer is no.

Even though there is a pseudoscientific explanation for Carrick's predicament, "Exile" is more portal fantasy than science fiction. It's not even the only portal fantasy on the 1944 Retro Hugo ballot – "Doorway into Time" by C.L. Moore, which was nominated in the same category, is also a portal fantasy. Furthermore, travel to parallel worlds/other planets by the power of imagination has been a common trope in speculative fiction ever since John Carter wished himself upon Mars in A Princess of Mars back in 1911. Edmond Hamilton himself would also revisit the idea of imaginary space/time travel via pseudoscientific means in his 1947 novel The Star Kings.

Considering that "Exile" is essentially a story about four science fiction writers sitting around and talking, the question is which real science fiction writers of the golden age, if any, do the four characters represent. When I read the story last year for the Retro Hugos, I assumed that Madison was a stand-in for Edmond Hamilton and that Brazell was a stand-in for his future wife Leigh Brackett due to the vaguely similar names. And indeed, I named the Hamilton and Brackett stand-ins in my Silencer novelette The Heavy Hand of the Editor, in which my fictional 1930s pulp author Richard Blakemore locks horns with John W. Campbell (or rather a Campbell stand-in called Donald Angus Stuart) and interacts with several real authors of the golden age, Ed Madison and Liz Brazell in homage to this story. However, Leo Morey's interior art for "Exile" shows only white men in suits (and reminds me visually of the Dover reprints of selected pages from old Sears catalogues more than anything), no women anywhere in sight. So is Brazell a stand-in for Ray Bradbury, who was after all friends with Hamilton and Brackett? Or am I completely mistaken and it's someone else?

What's even more interesting is who Carrick is supposed to be? Cause I would really like to know which science fiction writer of the golden age dreamt our world into existence. For that matter, I'd also like to know which author of apocalyptic fiction is responsible for our current reality. However, I really cannot come up with any SFF writer of the golden age who'd fit what little we learn about Carrick. Though Carrick does put in a cameo in The Heavy Hand of the Editor, if only because paying homage to obscure golden age science fiction stories is fun.

But even though "Exile" appeared in Super Science Stories, which was one of the lesser science fiction magazines of the early 1940s, it's not exactly an obscure story. At any rate, it's less obscure than some of the other stories I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project. "Exile" has been reprinted several times and was selected for the Best of Edmond Hamilton collection that Leigh Brackett edited as well as for the anthology The Great SF Stories, Vol. 5, 1943, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. And of course, "Exile" was well enough regarded that it won a nomination for the 1944 Retro Hugo Awards, even if it lost out to Ray Bradbury's excellent "R is for Rocket" a.k.a. "King of the Gray Spaces" in the end.

A fine story about alienation and the power of imagination and also a great example of the "twist in the tale" stories that were so popular during the golden age.

Retro Review: "The Gothic Window" by Dorothy Quick

"The Gothic Window" is a short story by Dorothy Quick, which was first published in the May 1944 issue of Weird Tales and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The story may be found online here.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following.

"The Gothic Window" starts off, like so many horror stories and murder mysteries, with four couples or prospective couples spending a rainy weekend at a secluded country mansion. Anne, the protagonist and POV character, has arranged the house party to further her romance with Sheridan "Sherry" Crawford and to fix up her friends Bob and Nancy. However, another friend of Anne's, Claire Rowley, throws a spanner into the works, when she invites herself and her husband Jim along. Anne isn't happy about this, for not only does Jim cheat at bridge, he's also a cad and potential abuser and Claire is clearly afraid of her husband. To make matters even more complicated, Nancy is infatuated with Jim, which endangers her budding romance with Bob. And though Jim is married to Claire, he pursues Nancy as well. There is another couple as well, Lou and Gib Silvers, who are not involved in the romantic polygon developing at the country manor and are only there, because bridge requires four players in two pairs, so they need eight people.

During yet another round of bridge, Jim suddenly becomes fascinated by a stained glass gothic window that doesn't match any of the other windows in the house. He says that the window makes it difficult for him to concentrate, whereupon Anne offers to tell the story behind the window.

Anne explains that she first saw window during the requisite grand tour of Europe with her parents. Anne and her family stayed at a monastery in Spain, where they admired the gothic architecture and the beautiful stained glass windows. All of the windows are regularly opened except for one. And when Anne or her parents ask about that window, the normally so jolly monks fall silent.

One day, when Anne and her mother are walking along the cloister, they notice that the always closed window stands wide open and that a monk is lying on the floor in front of the window. Initially Anne and her mother assume that the monk is just unconscious, but upon closer examination, he turns out to be dead, an expression of unearthly bliss frozen on his face.

Now the monks finally do spill the beans about what is going on. For when the monastery was first built, a man was immured alive in its walls according to medieval custom. The unfortunate fellow had been sentenced to death for sorcery. Soon after he was immured, he started to haunt the monastery and who can blame him? The focus point of the hauntings was the window closest to the spot where he had been immured.

Soon mysterious accidents began to happen near the window. Furthermore, the monks discovered that passing through the window gave them wonderful visions. By now we realise that this particular window appears to be a French window, which also doubles as a door. Never mind that this makes no sense, because there were no French windows during gothic times. Nor can gothic windows be opened – they are fixed.

Because the visions bestowed by the window were so amazing, the monks kept passing through it, until one by one they were found dead, an expression of unearthly bliss frozen onto their faces.

The abbot did everything he could to keep the monks from using the window, but the monks kept findings ways around his measures and they kept dying. So in the end, the abbot walked through the window himself and promptly died, only that the expression on his face was not one of bliss, but of unbelievable horror.

You're think that this story, plus the physical evidence in the form of a dead monk lying on the ground in front of the window, would be enough to warn anybody with any shred of sense to keep the hell away from the haunted window. However, Anne's mother apparently does not possess a shred of sense and so she offers to buy the window from the monks who are only too glad to be rid of it. They also kindly offer to exorcise the window, before it is shipped to its new home.

Once the window has been installed in the house, strange accidents start to happen there as well. Anne sprains her ankle, her mother breaks her arm and her father breaks his leg, all after passing through the window. So Anne's family locks the window, but they stupidly leave the key in the lock and so it eventually kills a friend of the family. A sudden heart attack, the doctor says, but Anne and her family know better and finally keep the bloody window locked, though they still don't have enough sense to just tear it out.

After Anne has told her story, everybody gradually retires to their rooms, while the romantic drama continues. Claire confesses to Anne that Jim abuses her, that she knows he is stalking Nancy and that she is afraid of her husband, but that she cannot leave him, because Jim knows certain dark secrets about her. Nancy chances to overhear all this and confesses that she is terrified of Jim, too, but also feels inexorably drawn to him and there is absolutely nothing she can do about it.

Once Nancy and Claire have finally gone to bed, Sheridan finally proposes to Anne and they discuss their future life together until the wee hours. When they finally retire – to separate rooms, of course – they once more pass the haunted window and Anne realises that the key is still in the lock.

"But I thought you said that your father kept it in his desk," Sheridan points out, whereupon Anne confesses that she made the whole story up to interrupt the bridge game and keep Jim away from Nancy. Anne's mother really did buy the window in Spain, that much is true, but everything else was pure fiction.

Sheridan praises Anne's imagination, but he also worries about the psychological effects of Anne's tale. After all, what if one of the guests accidentally hurts themselves near the window? So Anne promises that she will clear up the whole ruse in the morning. But it never comes to that, for the next morning they find Jim Rowley dead in front of the open window, his face a mix of horror and bliss.

"The Gothic Window" is yet another example of the tale within a tale, usually told in appropriately spooky surroundings, that was very common in Weird Tales. "The Man Who Wouldn't Hang" by Stanton A. Coblentz from the same year is another example of the type.

Nonetheless, "The Gothic Window" isn't a typical Weird Tales horror story. In many ways, it is reminiscent of the gothic romance genre that was only just beginning to take off with the great success of Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca six year prior. All the elements of the gothic romance are here. We have the secluded country house, we have the Byronic hero who may or may not want to harm the heroine, we have the innocent ingenue he is pursuing, we have the good guy love interest and we have a malicious ghost, seeking revenge for an evil done to him centuries ago.

The romantic entanglements at the house are quite complicated and it took me some effort to remember who was in love with whom, who was married to whom and who was cheating on whom. The fact that all the characters have bland, if period appropriate names like Anne, Nancy, Claire, Bob and Jim doesn't help either. There also are more characters in the story than are necessary. Okay, so the number of bridge players must be dividable by four, but isn't there anything else they could have done over the weekend rather than play bridge?

That said, even if "The Gothic Window" has more characters than are strictly necessary, it is also the story with the highest number of named female characters, four in all, I have reviewed so far. Furthermore, "The Gothic Window" is also one of only two stories I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project so far which passes the Bechdel test, the other being Ray Bradbury's "Undersea Guardians". Finally, "The Gothic Window" is also one of only two stories with a female POV character, the other being once again "Undersea Guardians".

As soon as Anne tells the story about the murderous haunted window, it's pretty obvious that someone will succumb to its spell and that that someone will be Jim, the villain of the piece. Nonetheless, Dorothy Quick did manage to surprise me, when Anne confessed that the entire story of the haunted window was fake. Coincidentally, this also explains why neither the monks nor Anne and her family ever did the sensible thing and just tore out the window and/or smashed it.

Anne's revelation also casts some doubt on whether "The Gothic Window" really is SFF. After all, there is no malicious ghost of an executed sorcerer haunting the window – Anne just made the whole story up. As for what killed Jim, that was most likely the power of psychological suggestion rather than a vengeful ghost.

There is some historical evidence that humans were immured as a method of execution throughout history and occasionally, the remains of immured humans have been found. There are also plenty of legends about people – often young women or children – being immured in the walls of new buildings as a sacrifice found all over Europe. On the Balkan, there is a legend about a young bride being immured. And in Theodor Storm's famous novella Der Schimmelreiter (The Rider on the White Horse, 1888), protagonist Hauke Haien not only has some unacceptably modern ideas about flood protection and the proper way to build dykes, he also refuses to immure a living being (a dog in this case, because there is no child handy) into the new dyke. As a result, the superstitious locals believe the dyke to be cursed and when it breaks during a particularly vicious winter storm, Hauke's wife and daughter drown and Hauke sacrifices himself to save the village. Come to think of it, The Rider on the White Horse would not have felt out of place in an issue of Weird Tales.

There is no concrete evidence that human beings were ever immured as sacrifices during the Middle Ages or in modern times in Europe, but there is plenty of evidence of animals being immured or buried inside old buildings and yes, dykes. In the 1960s, my parents and some of their friends restored a 17^th century farmhouse as a weekend getaway. During the restoration work, they found the remains of an animal, probably a cat or dog, buried under the threshold. A historian carted the remains away and told them it was a building sacrifice and an important find.

I have no idea if Dorothy Quick has ever read The Rider on the White Horse, though it's not impossible, since the novella was first translated into English in 1914. And she was certainly familiar with the various legends about people immured as sacrifices. Though the choice of Spain as the origin of the haunted window is a bit strange, since Spain is one of the places in Europe, which does not have such legends.

Dorothy Quick is another woman SFF author who was clearly popular in her time, but is nearly forgotten these days. She published a science fiction novel entitled Strange Awakening in 1938, though she mainly seems to have specialised in horror fiction. She published twenty-three stories and twenty-seven poems between 1932 and 1954, mostly in Weird Tales, but also in Unknown, Oriental Stories, Strange Stories and Fantastic Adventures. Dorothy Quick was clearly popular and even contributed the cover story to the March 1937 issue of Weird Tales, illustrated by one of Margaret Brundage's striking covers.

However, Dorothy Quick rapidly fell into obscurity. As with her fellow Weird Tales contributor Allison V. Harding, very little of her work has ever been reprinted. Nowadays, she is remembered not so much for her writing but for striking up a friendship with Samuel Clements a.k.a. Mark Twain in 1907, when Quick was eleven and Twain was seventy-two and both were passengers aboard the SS Minnetonka. Dorothy Quick frequently talked about her youthful friendship with Mark Twain, who encouraged her to write, and even penned a memoir entitled Mark Twain and Me.

The only place where I found some biographical information about Dorothy Quick was Sisters of Tomorrow – The First Women of Science Fiction, edited by Lisa Yaszek and Patrick B. Sharp, which reprints Dorothy Quick's 1937 story "Strange Orchids". In their introduction to the story, Yaszek and Sharp note that Dorothy Quick was strongly influenced by domestic fiction and the gothic romance and that her stories frequently have female POV characters at a time when this was exceedingly rare in SFF. These observations certainly fit "The Gothic Window".

Mark Twin and Dorothy Quick in 1907

"The Gothic Window" is well written and Dorothy Quick was clearly a talented writer, but then she did impress the great Mark Twain himself as a precocious girl of eleven. The question is why has she been almost completely forgotten in spite of a twenty-two year career of writing SFF. Is it because her brand of domestic gothics fell out of fashion? But then, Dorothy Quick's work wasn't even reprinted when the domestic gothic romance was at the height of its popularity in the 1960s. Is it because Weird Tales is mainly associated with Lovecraftian horror and sword and sorcery these days, even though the magazine's bread and butter were far more traditional tales of gothic horror as well as proto urban fantasy?

Nonetheless, it is notable that even though Weird Tales was clearly a good market for women (the May 1944 issue alone contains stories by three women writers and both the cover artist and the editor were female as well), the male authors who penned more traditional horror stories for the magazine, writers like Seabury Quinn, Robert Bloch and Manly Wade Wellman, are still much better remembered than their female counterparts like Dorothy Quick, Allison V. Harding, Greye La Spina, Alice-Mary Schnirring or Mary Elizabeth Counselman, who penned "The Three Marked Pennies", one of the most popular stories in Weird Tales history and kept writing and publishing horror right up to her death in 1995.

An effective gothic horror story by an unjustly forgotten woman writer of the golden age. Well worth checking out.

Retro Review: "The Man Who Wouldn't Hang" by Stanton A. Coblentz

"The Man Who Wouldn't Hang" is a short story by Stanton A. Coblentz, which was first published in the July 1944 issue of Weird Tales and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The story may be found online here.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following.

This story takes the form of a tale told around the fireplace. One night, man called Carrigan, who's worked as a state executioner for thirty years, is hanging out with friends and telling stories about his work. The fact that Carrigan is so open about what he does for a living is remarkable, considering that most real life executioners rarely talk about their work (executioners also have a high rate of depression and suicide), though there are exceptions who like to give interviews or write memoirs. And considering that executioners were historically shunned and often had to live outside the city gate, it's also remarkable that Carrigan even has friends, even if those friends mainly seem to be interested in the macabre stories Carrigan has to tell.

Carrigan is quite unapologetic about his line of work. And so when one of his friends, the first person narrator of this story, asks him if there was ever a prisoner who got away, Carrigan tells the story of a convicted bank robber and murderer he calls Scar-Face because the man had a distinctive scar on his face.

Throughout his trial, Scar-Face insists that he is innocent and did not fire the shot that killed a bank clerk, but it is to no avail. He is sentenced to death anyway. On death row, Scar-Face is remarkably cool and sanguine, even as his execution date draws near.

On the way to the gallows, Scar-Face is polite and cheery and even helps his executioners to blindfold him. Meanwhile, Carrigan is overcome by a spooky feeling. And though Carrigan has zero moral qualms about executing people and even brags that he has already hanged fifty men, he is uncommonly reluctant to pull the lever. When Carrigan finally pulls the lever after all, what happens is… nothing. The trap door does not open and Scar-Face does not hang.

Carrigan pulls the lever again and again, but the trap door just won't open. So Carrigan and his assistants check the gallows and everything seems to be in order. Even the trap door opens as intended, when Scar-Face is not standing on it. But as soon as they return the condemned to the gallows, the trap door once more refuses to open. At one point, Carrigan even has his assistants try the gallows on himself, with the rope tied around his waist rather than his neck. The trap door opens. So Scar-Face is brought back to the gallows and once again nothing happens.

Eventually, Carrigan and his assistants give up. Scar-Face is returned to his cell and Carrigan has to explain to the state governor why the execution could not be carried out. The governor is furious and threatens to fire Carrigan, but eventually relents, since there are plenty of witnesses to confirm that the failed execution wasn't Carrigan's fault.

And so a new execution date is set and a new gallows is built. The governor even shows up in person to witness the execution. Scar-Face is taken to the gallows and once more nothing happens. The trap door refuses to open and a thorough examination of the gallows finds no technical fault. Exasperated, the governor finally gives up and commutes Scar-Face's sentence to life imprisonment. Of course, this would never have happened in reality, at least not in the US, where executioners try again and again, if the first execution attempt fails. And yes, there are several examples.

Carrigan concludes his tale by reporting that a few years later, a member of Scar-Face's old gang made a death bed confession and admitted that he shot the bank clerk. So Scar-Face was innocent after all and is promptly freed. When his friends ask Carrigan about his theories why Scar-Face couldn't be hanged, Carrigan admits that during the final execution attempt, he saw a strange mist in the gallows chamber, a mist which coalesced into a pair of hands that held the trap door shut.

I have to admit that I chose this story at random, while (virtually) flipping through the July 1944 issue of Weird Tales. What attracted me was the title and the evocative interior art by A.R. Tilburne. Besides, the story is very short – only four pages long – and so I decided to read it.

I wrote in my review of "Guard in the Dark" by Allison V. Harding that her stories were often dismissed as forgettable fillers in later years. I felt that was too harsh a verdict for "Guard in the Dark". "The Man Who Wouldn't Hang", on the other hand, really is a filler. The story is well written – the general writing quality in Weird Tales seems higher under Dorothy McIlwraith than during Farnworth Wright's tenure – and effective, but it is also very slight. There isn't any deeper meaning nor does the story offer any opinion on the death penalty one way or another. "The Man Who Wouldn't Hang" is merely a spooky anecdote. There also is very little supernatural content in this story apart from the mysterious misty hands. "The Man Who Wouldn't Hang" could have been published just as well in the likes of Black Mask or Dime Mystery or any other crime pulp.

The fact that the story is well written is no surprise, as author Stanton A Coblentz was a veteran pulp writer who had started publishing in the 1920s and kept writing well into the 1960s. He was a frequent contributor to Amazing Stories and the other Hugo Gernsback magazines. "The Man Who Wouldn't Hang" is somewhat atypical for Coblentz, since most of his work seems to have been science fiction, quite a lot of it satirical. In addition to writing speculative fiction, Coblentz also was a poet and literary critic.

"The Man Who Wouldn't Hang" is very likely based on a real case, that of John "Babbacombe" Lee, who was sentenced to death for the murder of his employer in England in 1885 and survived three attempts to hang him, when the trap door would not open. As in "The Man Who Wouldn't Hang", the gallows functioned perfectly fine, when tested. Like the fictional Scar-Face, John "Babbacombe" Lee had his sentence first commuted to life imprisonment and was eventually freed. Though John "Babbacombe" Lee was not saved by supernatural intervention. Instead, the most likely explanation for the failure to hang him is that the gallows had been disassembled and set up in a different part of the prison prior to Lee's execution. In the process, the trap door mechanism had become misaligned and the trap door refused to open. An alternate explanation is that a prisoner tasked with setting up the gallows in its new location had deliberately sabotaged the mechanism. But whatever the reason, John "Babbacombe" Lee survived his execution by sixty years.

The case of John "Babbacombe" Lee is fairly well known and was also described in detail in the memoirs of James Berry, the executioner who was supposed to hang him. Coblentz likely stumbled over this story at some point and fictionalised it.

A neat spooky anecdote, lots of atmosphere, but little substance.