Black Cat Weekly #11

THE CAT’S MEOW

THE CAT’S MEOW

Welcome to Black Cat Weekly #11! Our regular readers may have noticed that last week’s editorial was a little, ah, short, to put it mildly. A one-sentence editorial may, in fact, be the shortest ever published in any mystery or science fiction magazine. I suffered a fall that left me unable to use a mouse (I’m a lot better now, as this editorial demonstrates) but at the time, it was quite annoying and frustrating. And painful. Luckily x-rays showed I hadn’t broken anything, so I’m hoping for a complete recovery in a few more weeks. Soft tissue damage can tale a while.

For those who read the Wildside Press and Black Cat Weekly newsletters and sent me get-well-soon emails, many thanks. I was not able to respond to them all (there were several hundred), but I appreciated it, and it definitely cheered me up.

What does an editor do when he can’t use a mouse? I worked on audiobooks, wrote a couple chapters of my next novel using voice dictation software, and took a few hours of forced vacation from work. (That last bit hurt the most. I love my job and can’t think of anything I’d rather do.)

Speaking of audiobooks, I’m part of a beta test at Google. They have been developing text-to-speech technology for many years, and it’s advanced to the point where they are going to begin commercial use for audiobooks. Yes, “autonarrated audiobooks” is Google-speak for audiobooks read by a computer instead of a human.

Autonarration seems to work best for non-fiction, but fiction can also be more than passable, particularly for older, special-interest stories with little likelihood of a “real” audiobook ever appearing. Much pulp fiction—my personal favorite reading matter—falls into this category. It’s certainly a lot better than many of the audiobooks released by volunteer projects such as Librivox. (Some Librivox narrators are excellent, but many are…well, not.)

Over the last week, I released 54 autonarrated audiobooks. (Some were short stories, but most were novels or collections.) Fun stuff, and probably the future for niche audiobooks like the ones I release. In 10 years, I predect you will have trouble telling autonarrated audiobooks from human-read ones.

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Anyway, this issue has been fun to put together. As a Maryland resident, I’ve always been partial to stories set in my home state, and Golden Age mystery author Zenith Brown is here this time with Murder in Maryland, a classic mystery originally published under her “David Frome” pseudonym. (She also wrote as Leslie Ford.) Add to that more mysteries by Hal Charles (another Solve-It-Yourself mystery challenge), Lester Dent (author of the famous Shadow pulp novels), Murray Leinster (whose name most science fiction readers should recognize), plus a great tale by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera (selected by Barb Goffman), and you have a terrific lineup. Alas, I wasn’t able to get to another Frank Lovell Nelson story, but his telepathic detective will be back next week.

In the words of TV hucksters, But wait, there’s more!

Remember, we also include great science fiction and fantasy in every issue, and here we have a bunch of classics by Lester del Rey (a rare fantasy from John W. Campbell’s Unknown first published in 1940), a devilish fantasy tale by Jerome Bixby, and a science fiction story by Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett in collaboration. Plus I’m sneaking in one of my own Zelloque fantasies, written when I was reading the Richard Burton translation of The Thousand and One Nights. Our science fiction novel this issue is Get Off My World, by Eando Binder.

Here’s the complete lineup:

Mysteries

“This Will Slay You,” by Dale Clark [novelet]

“Playing by the Rules,” by Hal Charles [Solve-It-Yourself Mystery]

“The Pipeline Juggernaut,” by Lester Dent [short story]

“Pink Ears,” by Murray Leinster [short story]

“The Right Profile,” by Carolina Garcia-Aguilera [Barb Goffman Presents Mystery]

Murder in Maryland, by Zenith Brown [novel]

Science Fiction & Fantasy

“The Pipes of Pan,” by Lester del Rey [fantasy short story]

“The Incomplete Theft,” by Robert Silverberg & Randall Garrett [science fiction short story]

“The Last Guardian of Ru Ishtl,” by John Gregory Betancourt [fantasy short story]

“The Battle of the Bells,” by Jerome Bixby [fantasy short story]

Get Off My World, by Eando Binder [novel]

Enjoy!

—John Betancourt

Editor, Black Cat Weekly