Post by demonik on May 2, 2006 6:09:25 GMT -5
As far as I know, there were four of these, all published by Pyramid from 1961-1965. I've put the covers and contents of all four up at junkyarddog.batcave.net/margulies.html, but here's the lowdown on the first to give a taster.
The Unexpected (Pyramid, February 1961)
Menace, anyone? If you've ever wondered
what hobbies an undertaker has ...
who answers the Lonely Hearts ads ...
what it could cost to become the richest man in the world ...
just what secrets a child and his teddy bear share ...
what a mad scientist is really like ...
this collection has the unexpected answers - in eleven cheerful or chilling fantasies by masters of the supernatural shocker.
Intoduction - Leo Margulies
Theodore Sturgeon - The Professor's Teddy Bear
Isaac Asimov & Frederik Pohl - Legal Rites
Robert Bloch - The Strange Island Of Dr. Nork
Margaret St. Clair - Mrs. Hawk
Ray Bradbury - The Handler
Fritz Leiber - The Automatic Pistol
Mary E. Counselman - The Unwanted
Manly Wade Wellman - The Valley Was Still
Anthony Boucher - The Scrawney One
Frederic Brown - Come And Go Mad
E. F. Russell - The Big Shot
You've maybe come across a number of these in other collections, and if so, you'll probably agree that it's a decent selection. Bradbury's is possibly his most ghoulish horror story, as the secret life of a kindly, put-upon undertaker goes under the microscope. I'm pretty sure Frederic Brown's detective story was the inspiration for classic madhouse flick "Shock Corridor". Robert Bloch's Dr. Nork populates an island with the cartoon characters he's manufactured, Frankenstein fashion, in his labs. "The Professor's Teddy Bear" sits well alongside Sturgeon's other horror masterpieces,"It" and the short vampire novel "Some Of Your Blood", as an evil teddy gradually destroys the mind of an infant.
Robert Bloch - The Strange Island Of Dr. Nork: The narrator, a journalist, is sent to a remote Caribbean island to interview the reclusive Erasmus Nork and find out the truth about his "experiments". He soon learns that Nork is the man behind the comic books - his staff (zombies, a talking gorilla, etc.) torture masochists to provide the inspiration for the panels and the authentic sounds to fill the balloons, while Nork creates super heroes - 'Waterboy' (raised from a tadpole), 'Two Dollar Rogers' (twice as good as Buck), 'Firebug, the human torch', 'Hammerhead', etc. Needless to say, 'Albino, Goddess of the Jungle', whose costume is a leopard skin bra and shorts, is the token beautiful daughter these mad-scientist types are forever siring.
Even a genius can have an off day and Dr. Nork's failure is the evil renegade known as 'The Faceless Fiend'. One stormy night, the jouro is captured, taken to an underground cavern and strapped down for the featureless one to saw off his face. Meanwhile, the laboratory above is destroyed in a hurricane and all within perish - save one. Albino comes to the rescue, freeing the prisoner while her lion converts the Faceless Fiend into the Faceless, Bodiless Fiend. They escape - but not before the seemingly fearless Jungle Queen has been reduced to a shrieking, pleading wreck - by a mouse. Wedding bells, etc.
Ray Bradbury - The Handler: The simpering undertaker Mr. Benedict, bullied and belittled by the living, vents his spleen on the dead, playing malicious pranks on their unresisting corpses. Mr. Meriwell Blythe, afflicted by "spells and comas" which have several times almost caused him to be buried alive, awakens from his latest cataleptic trance to witness Mr. Benedict in action. Before he succumbs to a lethal injection, Blythe calls on the dead to rise up and give the undertaker his just desserts. That night, during a terrible storm, they come out of their graves and storm the mortuary. Mr. Benedict learns the hard way that you really shouldn't play with dead things ...
Anthony Boucher - The Scrawny One: John Harker (!) convinces a magician to raise a demon on his behalf. The wizard obliges, Harker kills him, and trades the corpse to the hungry demon in return for a wish: he wants to exchange bodies with the world's richest man. Unfortunately, this turns out to be the Djatoon of Khot who is dying of a degenerate malignancy ...
Manly Wade Wellman - The Valley Was Still: Paradine, a Confederate, stumbles upon a valley littered with the undecayed corpses of Yankee soldiers. The black magician, Teague, has hypnotised them: he plans to rule the country, and offers Paradine the Generalship of his private army. The pious rebel will have none of it and smartly decapitates the wretch, destroys the talisman and frees the Union soldiers. In the ensuing conflict he and his comrades are all but routed but, reasons Paradine, if you can't win fair ...
The Unexpected (Pyramid, February 1961)
Menace, anyone? If you've ever wondered
what hobbies an undertaker has ...
who answers the Lonely Hearts ads ...
what it could cost to become the richest man in the world ...
just what secrets a child and his teddy bear share ...
what a mad scientist is really like ...
this collection has the unexpected answers - in eleven cheerful or chilling fantasies by masters of the supernatural shocker.
Intoduction - Leo Margulies
Theodore Sturgeon - The Professor's Teddy Bear
Isaac Asimov & Frederik Pohl - Legal Rites
Robert Bloch - The Strange Island Of Dr. Nork
Margaret St. Clair - Mrs. Hawk
Ray Bradbury - The Handler
Fritz Leiber - The Automatic Pistol
Mary E. Counselman - The Unwanted
Manly Wade Wellman - The Valley Was Still
Anthony Boucher - The Scrawney One
Frederic Brown - Come And Go Mad
E. F. Russell - The Big Shot
You've maybe come across a number of these in other collections, and if so, you'll probably agree that it's a decent selection. Bradbury's is possibly his most ghoulish horror story, as the secret life of a kindly, put-upon undertaker goes under the microscope. I'm pretty sure Frederic Brown's detective story was the inspiration for classic madhouse flick "Shock Corridor". Robert Bloch's Dr. Nork populates an island with the cartoon characters he's manufactured, Frankenstein fashion, in his labs. "The Professor's Teddy Bear" sits well alongside Sturgeon's other horror masterpieces,"It" and the short vampire novel "Some Of Your Blood", as an evil teddy gradually destroys the mind of an infant.
Robert Bloch - The Strange Island Of Dr. Nork: The narrator, a journalist, is sent to a remote Caribbean island to interview the reclusive Erasmus Nork and find out the truth about his "experiments". He soon learns that Nork is the man behind the comic books - his staff (zombies, a talking gorilla, etc.) torture masochists to provide the inspiration for the panels and the authentic sounds to fill the balloons, while Nork creates super heroes - 'Waterboy' (raised from a tadpole), 'Two Dollar Rogers' (twice as good as Buck), 'Firebug, the human torch', 'Hammerhead', etc. Needless to say, 'Albino, Goddess of the Jungle', whose costume is a leopard skin bra and shorts, is the token beautiful daughter these mad-scientist types are forever siring.
Even a genius can have an off day and Dr. Nork's failure is the evil renegade known as 'The Faceless Fiend'. One stormy night, the jouro is captured, taken to an underground cavern and strapped down for the featureless one to saw off his face. Meanwhile, the laboratory above is destroyed in a hurricane and all within perish - save one. Albino comes to the rescue, freeing the prisoner while her lion converts the Faceless Fiend into the Faceless, Bodiless Fiend. They escape - but not before the seemingly fearless Jungle Queen has been reduced to a shrieking, pleading wreck - by a mouse. Wedding bells, etc.
Ray Bradbury - The Handler: The simpering undertaker Mr. Benedict, bullied and belittled by the living, vents his spleen on the dead, playing malicious pranks on their unresisting corpses. Mr. Meriwell Blythe, afflicted by "spells and comas" which have several times almost caused him to be buried alive, awakens from his latest cataleptic trance to witness Mr. Benedict in action. Before he succumbs to a lethal injection, Blythe calls on the dead to rise up and give the undertaker his just desserts. That night, during a terrible storm, they come out of their graves and storm the mortuary. Mr. Benedict learns the hard way that you really shouldn't play with dead things ...
Anthony Boucher - The Scrawny One: John Harker (!) convinces a magician to raise a demon on his behalf. The wizard obliges, Harker kills him, and trades the corpse to the hungry demon in return for a wish: he wants to exchange bodies with the world's richest man. Unfortunately, this turns out to be the Djatoon of Khot who is dying of a degenerate malignancy ...
Manly Wade Wellman - The Valley Was Still: Paradine, a Confederate, stumbles upon a valley littered with the undecayed corpses of Yankee soldiers. The black magician, Teague, has hypnotised them: he plans to rule the country, and offers Paradine the Generalship of his private army. The pious rebel will have none of it and smartly decapitates the wretch, destroys the talisman and frees the Union soldiers. In the ensuing conflict he and his comrades are all but routed but, reasons Paradine, if you can't win fair ...