Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Reading Rumble Round 13

Tunneling up through the floor, Richard Shaver emerges from the hollow earth and joins the fray.

Was Shaver a man haunted by strange messages from beyond and used those experiences to become a pulp writer? Was he an aspiring pulp writer first and used the Shaver Mystery as a gimmick? Was he a rambling lunatic whose inane scribblings were rewritten by Ray Palmer?

Whatever the truth, the man was crazy.


The Mind Rovers by Richard Shaver
Amazing Stories January 1947, Vol 21 No 1

A prisoner learns a novel means of escape - into his own mind. The world his dreams created has spawned life, and he can live in that world while a robot in the dream world controls his daily activities. He can travel into other dream worlds, where he recruits other prisoner and seeks to bust up the Prison Industrial Complex Racket, only to find it run by a former Nazi with strong mental defenses. Ambitious, creative, and Shaver definitely doesn't pull it off.


The Pitch by Dennis Etchison
Whispers, October 1978

Mall kitchen appliance pitchman with dark motives.


He Asked for Hell by Paul Ernst
Horror Stories, November 1935

A crystal cube creates a doorway to a gruesome dimension of the dead, where a man tries to dump the body of his murder victim. Truly chilling.


The Demons of Darkside by Leigh Brackett
Startling Stories, January 1941


A falsely accused man hijacks a ship to Mercury for evidence to save his loved one and encounters telepathic crystals.


On a Dark October by Joe R. Lansdale
The Horror Show, Spring 1984

Available in Bumper Crop from Amazon 

Dark quickie tale of human sacrifice.


The Grisly Horror by Robert E. Howard
Weird Tales, February 1935


Arcane African rites and a carnivorous gorilla in the pine swamps of Mississippi. More racist than it sounds.

All authors stay in the ring

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