Welcome to Litsy!

Wrapped up my visit to the monster museum this morning with a look at the Ray Bradbury wing (“Homecoming”). This was a fun collection with several solid stories and many zany twists on classic ideas. Favorites: “Shadow, Shadow on the Wall,” by Theodore Sturgeon, and “Slime,” by Joseph Payne Brennan. I also enjoyed looking up more about the authors, because they had some unique bios. If you can find a copy I would recommend a visit to this museum.

So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow in this story, “The Wheelbarrow Boy,” by Richard Parker, in which a teacher turns his student into a wheelbarrow as punishment for not doing his work properly. It‘s a short one, amusing, but with an ending that didn‘t age well. I can‘t find much about the author other than he was a UK children‘s author known for the Escape the Zoo series. Some of his sci-fi sounds interesting, especially The Hendon Fungus.

“The Desrick on Yandro,” by Manly Wade Wellman is the strangest but also most culturally interesting story in this collection so far. Narrated by John the Balladeer, apparently a recurring character in Wellman‘s stories, this is the tale of a long-vanished mountain in North Carolina and the witch who lives there. The grandson of the lover who jilted her hears John sing about Yandro, which is his last name. ⬇️

I don‘t think I‘ve ever read such an odd character description:
“His buckskin hair was combed across his head to baffle folks he wasn‘t getting bald. His round pink face wasn‘t soft, and his big smiling teeth reminded you he had a skull under the meat. His pale eyes, like two gravel bits, made me recollect I needed a haircut and a shoe shine.”

In this wing of the museum, we see the werewolf cub… “The Young One” by Jerome Bixby had a nice twist. Young Johnny befriends the new neighbor, Bela from Hungary. All the neighborhood animals are scared of Bela and he has a strict curfew of 7:00 the night of the full moon. Tensions rise when Johnny plays a prank on Bela, taking him to the local caves at night and pretending to get lost. Will they stay out too late, and what will happen if they do?

Just finished “Doomsday Deferred” by Will F. Jenkins. This was a curious story about a lepidopterist tasked by a wealthy benefactor to find a rare butterfly in Brazil. There, he encounters a family scared for their life and in need of a herd of cattle ASAP. It‘s an intriguing premise involving the horrors of nature. ⬇️

Here‘s one for #weirdwordsWednesday. This comes from “The King of the Cats,” by Stephen Vincent Benet.
Pizen-sure… here‘s the thing about this one. I can‘t find it online written like this. It must be an alternate spelling of poison-sure, but there‘s not much about that either. I guess the meaning can be inferred, but it‘s an interesting expression. It gives me saloon in a western vibes. Has anyone seen this written elsewhere?
@CBee

Today‘s exhibit in the Monster Museum was “Shadow, Shadow On the Wall,” by Theodore Sturgeon. The monster in the story is the evil stepmom, Mommy Gwen, who punishes young Bobby by sequestering him in his room without any toys for long periods of time, proffering verbal abuse when he doesn‘t seem hurt enough by her punishment. ⬇️

Shades of Kafka, indeed! “Henry Martindale, Great Dane,” by Miriam Allen deFord is probably the silliest in this collection so far. It gave me 60s TV, I Dream of Jeannie/My Mother the Car vibes. deFord was, apparently, an activist for women‘s suffrage, distributing birth control and information to women, as well as active in the Socialist Party of America for a few years. ⬇️

This morning‘s monster story: “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles,” by Idris Seabright, a pseudonym of Margaret St. Clair. I enjoyed this one. It wasn‘t earth shattering, but it was short and snappy, and had a fun meeting between this new-to-me creature, the gnole, and a salesman. I loved the details of gnoles having emeralds for eyes. They can‘t hear or speak, but the salesman does his best, until he commits a deadly cultural misunderstanding.⬇️

Next late-night story is “The King of the Cats” by Stephen Vincent Benet. This was an interesting one. Benet weaves a story of a man with a tail (an orchestra conductor on tour in the US), a visiting princess from Thailand (then Siam), and her love interest jealous of the new attention the princess is paying to the cat-like visitor. I learned this is a retelling of a British folk story, which Benet includes as a meta element. ⬇️

Sometimes a spooky story is perfect to read before bed. The first in this collection is “Slime,” by Joseph Payne Brennan. Despite the similarity of being about an amorphous, gelatinous, carnivorous creature, this 1958 story was somehow not the basis for the 1958 movie The Blob. Independent invention?
Incidentally, I love this cover. I feel like Hitchcock was going for Druid or something with that robe, but I‘m imagining Jedi Master Hitchcock. ⬇️