Seminal tale of ratiocination, as C. Auguste Dupin solves the mystery of an inhumanly horrible double-homicide in Paris. For Poe, the reasoning is the thing, with dramatic effect largely sacrificed in its favor. Still, an unusual crime, one which Clive Barker would, almost a century and a half later, pay tribute to in his story, “New Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Poe himself wrote a sequel the following year, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.”
(B) Better Than Most
Seminal tale of ratiocination, as C. Auguste Dupin solves the mystery of an inhumanly horrible double-homicide in Paris. For Poe, the reasoning is the thing, with dramatic effect largely sacrificed in its favor. Still, an unusual crime, one which Clive Barker would, almost a century and a half later, pay tribute to in his story, “New Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Poe himself wrote a sequel the following year, “The Mystery of Marie Rogêt.”
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(B) Better Than Most Typically goofy Dick story of unassuming clerk settling for the implantation of false memories to achieve his long-cherished dream of an exciting life on Mars, but instead turning up real adventures imperfectly erased from his mind. Choppy and expository, and absurdly amusing. The basis for the film Total Recall (1990). (A+) Must Read Classic tale of eight men, one small, isolated island, and a sentient bulldozer with a thirst for human blood. Horror with a science fiction twist: the cloudform that takes possession of the dozer is the lone survivor of an ancient Earth civilization. Sturgeon's experience as a Seabee in WWII lends the story valuable verisimilitude. The basis for the 1974 TV-film Killdozer. (D) Take It or Leave It Bell, a mathematician and better known to science fiction readers as John Taine, writes of the world’s last dictator on the eve of World War II. Politically and geographically imprisoned in jungle-choked Amazonia, where cattle and all other sources of meat are impossible to maintain, the dictator must rely on a doctor and his strange experiments to produce a fruit that tastes like meat. The doctor, however, has other plans. Stilted SF/horror hybrid sounds preachy without having anything much to preach about. (F) Valueless Poorly imagined, deceptively plotted tale of an L.A. cop playing cat-and-mouse with a serial killer who is something other than what he appears to be. Disgraceful and insulting, this one was dug up from 1974 for an original anthology published 13 years later merely, it seems, to cash in on Koontz’ name. |
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