I'm Getting Sentimental Over You

Tommy Dorsey / I' m Getting Sentimental Over You 

Dorsey was nicknamed the "sentimental gentleman of swing" Here is his distinctive smooth trombone-playing, in this captivating piece first performed in 1932. 

Fredric Brown: What Mad Universe (1949)

What Mad Universe is a SF classic from 1949 and it is the ultimate pulp story. But one of an outstanding quality. The pulp story to finish all pulp stories. Or rather to discover and enjoy them.

This novel by Fredric Brown came out in what was going to be known in later years as the Golden Age of SF, which took place approximately from mid 1930s to mid 1950s (according to most critics), an era marked in scientific fiction by those lovable pulp magazines. What Mad Universe, aside from its position within "pulp history", is a delightful all-absorbing narration on its own account, with a smart page-turning plot, lively characters and an unmistakable 1940s flavor...1954 is the future in this novel, and that is the year that mankind tries its first travel to the moon!

Keith Winton is the director of a successful scientific fiction pulp magazine of the time. One with the usual covers portraying awful bug-eyed- monsters (BEMs) and beautiful curvy women. Young and proactive, Keith Winton is some sort of "yuppie" avant la lettre in the New York of 1954. He plays tennis and has an interesting social life. He is invited by Mr. Borden, his tycoon-boss, to his magnificent country house. Keith meets Betty Hadley there, who is the director of a female magazine, a new acquisition of Borden's  publishing house. She is blond and slender, beautiful and elegant, and plays tennis very well. Keith falls in love straight away. Later that day, when he is not thinking of his editorial work, he finds himself thinking of her.

It is early in the evening at the Borden House and supper is coming, to Winton's delight. While he is waiting to be called in, he is lying down out in the garden on a chaise longue, thinking about his work, the magazine´s readers and their suggestions, the artistic quality (or lack of it) of the covers...and of course he thinks, and a lot, about his adorable Betty. And then something unexpected and devastating happens. A rocket falls nearby, only a few yards away from where Keith is lying, and some sort of dislocation of Space-time occurs. He is discreetly catapulted into another universe. He simply loses conscience for a few seconds and suddenly, he is over there.

Of course he is not immediately aware of the change. At first he simply thinks that everything is Ok. But at some point he starts to notice that all is not exactly the same. For one thing, the place where he is lying on now is not the one it used to be a few minutes ago. He is down on the grass now, and Borden´s house has vanished . Anyway he still seems to be in the New York outskirts, near Greenville, but...

That universe which at first sight is roughly the same will not take long to show minor differences, that will get bigger in the hours and days to come and increasingly scary. There is another Keith Winton there. And another Betty Hadley. Keith will soon understand the mess he is in and will have to make his way in this increasingly sinister parallel universe, and try to go back to his own,  if he could.

What Mad Universe is full of fascinating situations and characters. This New York city that transforms itself at dusk into a black horrible hell where you cannot see a single thing, as if you had become blind amidst unspeakable dangers. Like those frightening night beings who go about hunting in the city streets for victims. An I am Legend kind of thing. And what about the weird reddish beasts from the Moon that you encounter outdoors in broad daylight and that nobody seems to pay attention to? Ordinary interplanetary travel in this parallel 1954, for just a few hundreds of dollars. And an exhausting war with Arcturus and its hideous creatures (this is a pulp after all!). With some hints of the narration reminding us that Brown was also an accomplished noir writer, author of such masterpieces of crime fiction like The Screaming Mimi.

What Mad Universe has also some touches of humour. Like those knitting machines that open the way for the discovery of an efficient space travel technology! And which marked the real point of divergence in the year 1903 of this parallel universe. This humouristic side will be further developed by Brown in novels like Martian go Home.

In short, What Mad Universe is a must for fans of pulp literary culture and the history of science fiction. Or simply those who want to enjoy an irresistible vintage SF read.

Brian Aldiss: Frankenstein Unbound

This is a very interesting retelling of Mary Shelley's famous teenage work. Mary's achievement was to create not only a superb novel of smart gothic horror with moments of brilliant poetry, but also an immortal myth on the impact of natural science on human culture. Science is here symbolized by Victor Frankenstein's cold approach to knowledge, and his creation of a hideous monster as a result of it. Or as one critic once put it: the monster is himself a symbol for the Science-oriented 20th century as a whole, with its huge potential that ended up, to a great extent, in tragedy.

Science is a strong force in human culture, an unbelievable tool able to reach the most distant goals. But if not properly managed or not properly integrated in the fabric of our civilization, if this huge intellectual force is in the wrong hands or serving misguided interests, then Science might become something rather evil. The scientific enterprise always starts as something theoretically neutral, but it could easily be put at the service of alienation and slavery. Rather than freedom and human growth, as the Enlightenment dreamed. 

This idea can be richly traced in Mary Shelley's book, along with its nice poetry in the frame of a magnetic story. Among the Swiss mountains and lakes, and in the company of Byron, Shelley, Claire and Polidori, one night Mary was to have a most vivid nightmare which would give birth to an unforgettable literary creation. And that nightmare would have the strongest influence in the history of our modern literary culture. Dreams recalled by Freud aside.

English author Brian Aldiss is in love with Mary Shelley. Quite obvious, when reading the novel and his alter ego's impressions, that he would have liked to meet her. And make love to her, like Unbound's main character Joe Bodenland manages to do. In Aldiss's book, we will encounter nearly in flesh and bone some of the characters that marked early nineteenth century English literature: Lord Byron, Percy Shelley and Mary Godwin (Shelley). Along with William Polidori and Clare Clairmont, in their Geneva exiled household. The story of Mary's creation of the monster was as "literary" as the novel itself, as we all know. And in Aldiss's narration, all is mixed up. Literary and historical beings share the same stage. Along with Shelley, Byron and Mary we have Victor, the monster and the hideous bride that the first is obliged to create for the "demon".  

Frankenstein Unbound is a great read for lovers of the history of literature. But it is also unmistakably a SF novel. Science is here, and its powerful myth. Joe Bodenland, the novel's narrator, lives in 2020 America. Nuclear war technology has not yet destroyed Earth, but it has caused serious "dislocations" in the fabric of Space-Time. The result of which are strange, impossible to foresee, time slips. Just to give an example: at some point, in front of your 21st century home, you may encounter a village (with its people) from the Middle Ages or a piece of 1860s American Civil War. The other side of the river could suddenly appear inhabited (after a Time slide) by a a few square miles of Viking England. Space and Time are definitely out of joint. 

So what is in front of Joe's home at one point? Well it is 1816 Geneva that he encounters before his very windows. Eventually he enters the place at the wheel of his highly techno 2020 car and gets lost in that world. His original home and time being lost after another time slip. And in this strange 1816 he steps into, history and literary creations will share a single reality. Mary Shelley and Victor Frankenstein, reality and myth are there together in the same Space and the same Time. Yes, blame the Space-Time dislocation caused by nuclear technology in 2020. 

There are some brilliant moments in Frankenstein Unbound. One of the most remarkable ones being the scene of the courtship between Frankenstein's original monster and his just manufactured awful bride. That female monster was created by Victor after the pressure put on him by his nemesis. She comes through the front door out of the house after being reanimated. The monster follows her in lust. They dance, they play. A fascinating and powerful scene is narrated afterwards. 

Some may say that Frankenstein Unbound is not the best novel by the great SF master Brian Aldiss. But it is well worth the reading in any case. Also it deserved a movie version in 1989 by Roger Corman. The narration is told by a single individual, Joe Bodenland, and the rest of the characters are mostly little more than outlined. Even if Aldiss undoubtedly manages to blow some life into Byron, Shelley and Mary, "awakening them from their clay". The novel is another turn of the screw in the myth of the impact of science in our civilization. "Intellect has made our world unsafe for the intellect" is an outstanding idea in these pages. The myth that Mary Shelley first modeled in the realm of literature. 

Throughout the pages of the novel, Bodenland, an intellectual individual and 21st century scientist (a 2020 imagined from 1973 by the way), reflects constantly on the problem. Science and Technology, their fundamental part in the tormented human affairs, their potential and their dangers. The kind of cold cultural approach to Reality that Science demands.  In her novel, Mary Shelley managed to create a myth that has not been exhausted and probably never will.  Frankenstein Unbound has not got its excellence, but it is a clever imaginative narration that follows an old path of fear and concern, one we will never be able to neglect.