boyajian%akov68.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (09/09/85)
From: boyajian%akov68.DEC@decwrl.ARPA (JERRY BOYAJIAN) > From: orstcs!richardt@topaz.rutgers.edu (richardt) > I thought bibliography was your business. You flubbed up. At least > three of the 36 Black Widowers stories are sf in nature or topic > ("The Backward Look" comes to mind). In fact, a goodly percentage > of the BW stories were bought by IASFM and F&SF -- I'm almost > certain (I don't have the books handy) that F&SF + IASFM have bought > more BW stories than EQ or any other mystery magazine! (1) Actually, there are 52 stories in the series. Four book collections of 12 each (TALES OF THE BLACK WIDOWERS, MORE TALES..., CASEBOOK..., and BANQUETS...) plus four others. The most recent story, "Triple Devil", in the August 1985 ELLERY QUEEN'S MYSTERY MAGAZINE lists itself as #52. (2) Out of those 52, only five have appeared in the science fiction magazines --- three in F&SF, two in IASFM. Twelve appeared as original stories in the collections, and 33 appeared first in EQMM. The other two I haven't tracked down yet, but I know *for sure* that they haven't appeared in the sf magazines. If you consider 10% to be a "goodly" percentage, I won't argue, but the number of BW stories in EQMM outweighes by *far* the number in the sf magazines. (3) Of the five stories that appeared in the sf magazines, NOT A SINGLE ONE is science fiction. I don't care where they appeared --- they are not sf. The first, "Nothing Like Murder" (F&SF, 10/74) is nothing more than a tribute to J.R.R. Tolkien. Another one, "Friday the Thirteenth" (F&SF, 1/76), is a simple mathematical puzzle involving the superstition of Friday the 13th. The other three, "Earthset and Evening Star" (F&SF, 8/75), "The Missing Item" (IASFM, Win/77), and "The Backward Look" (IASFM, 9/79) are simple astronomical puzzles. In the first of the latter, the Widowers solve a crime involving someone who designed a lunar base set for an sf movie. In the second, they figure out a way to disprove the claim of a religious cult leader that he's traveled to Mars via astral projection. In the third, they help a writer come up with a motive for an sf/mystery story he wants to write, the problem at hand involving celestial mechanics. But in none of the stories appear any sf elements except as hypothetical scenarios for the puzzles the Widowers try to solve. None of the stories are set in a future time, or an alternate timeline, or space, nor do they involve technology not available to us at this time, nor do they contain any other elements that might be considered science fictional. They are nothing more than simple armchair detective stories. They are meta-sf at best; no more sf than Anthony Boucher's ROCKET TO THE MORGUE is, just because the characters in it are sf authors. If you can present a good argument for why they should be considered sf, I'll listen, but it'll have to be a *real* good one. --- jayembee (Jerry Boyajian, DEC, Acton-Nagog, MA) UUCP: {decvax|ihnp4|allegra|ucbvax|...} !decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-akov68!boyajian ARPA: boyajian%akov68.DEC@DECWRL.ARPA <"I did not flub"> and <"Bibliography *is* my business">