My favorite of Tenn’s stories is Time in Advance. In the future, criminals are shipped out to harsh frontier worlds to serve out their sentences performing the back-breaking work of terraforming the planets. Few survive more than a few years, let alone their entire sentence. There is also the option of serving time in advance. In this case, you haven’t committed any crime yet, but you are planning to. By serving your sentence first, with a hefty fifty-percent reduction in length, you are entirely free to commit your crime upon your return to Earth — if you happen to survive. As the story begins, two convicts have just returned after serving their time in advance for murder. This is a big story for the media — only rarely does a single time-in-advancer survive, let alone two arriving on the same day. However, the two convicts find that having the freedom to commit a murder of their choice open up doors and exposes secrets they weren’t expecting. It’s a great story, with a nice undercurrent of dark comedy.

Time in Advance, along with 32 other stories can be found in Immodest Proposals: The Complete Science Fiction of William Tenn, Volume 1. If you haven’t the story before, or Tenn at all, I recommend picking up the book, or (more economically) at least encouraging your library to do so.

El Borak, by Robert E. Howard
The White Wolf — a.k.a. El Borak — is my second favorite Howard character (with Solomon Kane being number one). El Borak has swashbuckling adventures in the early part of the twentieth century: think Lawrence of Arabia with a liberal dash of sword and sorcery. His stories have been out of print for decades, but will be available Tuesday in a nice new edition.

Jirel of Joiry and Northwest Smith, by C. L. Moore
Moore was one of the first female adventure pulp writers — she wrote as “C. L.” instead of Catherine to disguise her gender. Most of her stories were published in Weird Tales and have a slight Lovecraftian feel to them.
Jirel is the ruler of a small medieval kingdom and her lands always seem to be under threat from natural, and supernatural, enemies. Her stories tend towards the darker aspect of fantasy.
Northwest Smith is a smuggler and anti-hero in the distant future. His stories have a darker edge to them as well.
The Science Fiction Book Club has inexpensive hardbound collections of Jirel and Northwest Smith. Paizo, under their Planet Stories imprint, also offers a Jirel as well as a Northwest Smith collection. (Paizo also offers several collections of Moore’s husband and fellow writer, Henry Kuttner. Sadly, I haven’t seen any recent reissues of stories by Lewis Padgett, which was the name Moore and Kuttner used when they collaborated together on a story).

Speaking of Paizo, they also are offering what look to be great collections of the Eric John Stark series by Leigh Brackett.

The Plot:The episode starts with Mr. Jones, the enigmatic villain who escaped from a German prison several episodes ago through the use of Dr. Bishop’s teleport machine. He was shoved in a decompression chamber the minute he arrived, and now he finally emerges 2 weeks later. Everything should be fine, but he notices a distinct tremor of his hands.

Meanwhile, a newspaper vendor in the city dies in a particularly gruesome way. In a matter of seconds, his skin grows over his eyes, nose, and mouth and he suffocates to death. On first hearing about the case, Bishop suspects ceramides were involved. Agent Dunham, on her part, suspects that Mr. Jones is behind the death and is determined to find him.

One of the junior FBI agents determines that Jones’ late lawyer had access to a warehouse in Texas that, after years of lying dormant, had its power switched back on the same day Jones escaped from prison. Broyles is just about to order a raid on the warehouse when Mr. Jones turns himself in to the FBI at the Boston office. He refuses to speak to anyone but Agent Dunham.

For once making sense, new head honcho Harris refuses to let Dunham talk to Jones, telling her that doing so would be giving in to a terrorist’s demands. Instead he sends Dunham on the raid on the Texas warehouse. The raid turns up evidence that Jones had been there, and when one of the FBI agents (coincidentally, the same one who located the warehouse in the first place) dies of the same weird condition, the team knows Jones is responsible for the strange disease.

Dunham and Peter Bishop track down the manifesto of the ZFT, the group Jones is associated with. It tells of a coming war between two realities with only one surviving. By now, Dr. Bishop has discovered that the strange disease is caused by toxin absorbed through the skin that causes hyperactivity of the “protein responsible for scar tissue.”

Back in Boston, Jones refuses to talk to Harris, but does give him a list of supplies he requires. Dunham returns from Texas and meets with Jones. She hands him the supplies he requested and he promptly uses them to make an anti-surveillance device so no one can overhear their conversation. He admits that he is responsible for the two deaths, but tells her he wants to prevent any more. Before giving her anymore information, he tells her that she must take the key he brought with him and take it to an abandoned amusement part. Once there, she finds what appears to be a box of old children’s games. A note tells her that she must pass the “first test” — mentally turn off all the lights in a box — with her mind alone before Jones will tell her anything else.

Dunham tries the test, fails, and is convinced it is nothing but a game Jones is playing. She confronts him again, and he tells her it is not a game, but reality. He then tells her that she is special because she received treatment with the drug Cortexiphan. It turns out that this is a drug designed by Massive Dynamics — by Dr. Bell himself in fact — which is supposed to “remove limitations” from the mind. During their conversation, Jones collapses, suffering from after effects of teleportation; effects which are hinted at, but never explained. He is rushed to Bishop’s lab where Dr. Bishop manages to resuscitate him. Dunham has Peter Bishop rewire the light board so it looks like she passed the test. Jones relents and tells her the location of a bomb containing the compound that causes the disease. The FBI rushes there to find that the bomb is wired with an array of lights, just like the “test” Dunham was given. The only way to defuse the bomb is turn out all the lights without touching the device. Olivia decides she has to try and manages to mentally turn off all the lights with just seconds to spare.

Afterward, when she goes to talk with Jones, she discovers he has escaped the hospital where he was transferred by punching an enormous hole in the wall. The words “You Pass” are scrawled on the wall. Meanwhile, Walter has been reading the ZFT manifesto and discovers that its typewritten pages exactly match the print produced by his old typewriter.

1. Would a Fat-Free Diet Help?
Ceramides are lipid molecules common in cell membranes. As Walter says, they play a role in cell differentiation. On the other hand, he’s mostly wrong when he also mentions cell growth. Ceramides don’t seem to play a role in overactive cell growth — just the opposite actually — they appear to inhibit cell growth. (And being a lipid – a fatty molecule — it has nothing to do with the scar tissue protein implicated later).

2. Not Quite Far Enough
Performing her emergency tracheotomy, Agent Dunham successfully cut through the skin, but neglected to actually cut into the trachea — the key part of the procedure. She just slid the tube into the loose tissue in front of the trachea — though it ended up being a moot point.

3. Rescue Me
Unexplained bradycardia. An EKG is a good call.
They confused cardiac arrest (the heart stopping) and heart attack (lack of blood flow to the heart causing damage). Nitroglycerin is good for a heart attack, but won’t do any good for a cardiac arrest.
50cc is not enough saline to resuscitate anyone; it’s only about 1 ½ shot glasses of salt water. A normal resuscitation required liters of fluid. Though to be fair, Walter orders the saline and never states why; it is Peter who tells us it is for resuscitation, and he might not know what he’s talking about.

4. Lying or Stupid?
Mr Jones didn’t tell Olivia “where or when” the bomb was going to go off? He may have neglected the where, but he certainly told us the when — 16 hours.

5. Elementary, My Dear Watson
Some interesting choices for the movies and book mentioned in this episode. I’m suspicious they may be clues, or at least hints.
The Land of Laughs. I actually have the book in my library (but not the edition shown). A very good book. Among other themes, it deals with reality versus fantasy. Since they explicitly singled out the book by name, I suspect it’s important. I’ll have to reread it.
Charade. Good movie. Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn. Deals with people who aren’t what they seem. Good guys are bad guys and bad guys are good guys.
Rear Window, the only Jimmy Stewart/Grace Kelly movie. A classic Hitchcock suspense thriller.

There were hokey aspects (Dunham’s psychic powers, alternate realities) and questionable medicine, but there was enough cleverness in this week’s plot to allow me to overlook them. I particularly liked the manifesto and the twist that the bomb had to be deactivated just like the test she only beat by cheating. I’m moving back the clock another minute, and the Doomsday Clock now stands at 11:55. (Of course, now we have to wait until April for new episodes, and I will have forgotten all the clues and the show will have lost all its building momentum.)

My top three are pretty much written in stone. They may not be everyone’s top three, but they better be in everyone’s list of five. If not, well, you’re wrong and you should come back after you’ve thought things over and admitted your mistake.

Numbers four and five are certainly open for debate, though.

Honorary mentions:
Jame (P.C. Hodgell), Kerowyn (Mercedes Lackey), and I’m sure there’s a swordwoman somewhere among Bradley’s Darkover novels.

1. Solomon Kane
A puritan who obsessively fights evil, armed with only a sword, musket, and his unwavering sense of righteousness. His stories tend toward a darker, grimmer view of the world. Kane has the best sense of style of any literary swordsman — I always played the Witch Hunter character in Warhammer Quest because he is clearly Solomon Kane. The best story is Red Shadows, where Kane travels the world tracking down the killer of a girl he never even knew. (Wikipedia link: Solomon Kane)

2. El Borak
Francis Xavier Gordon was a Texas gunfighter and adventurer who settled among the tribes of Afghanistan and had adventures among the deserts and mountains of Asia. Think Lawrence of Arabia combined with Captain Blood. The best story: Hawk of the Hills. (Wikipedia link: El Borak)

3. Kull
Not to be confused with Krull (and I like to forget the Kevin Sorbo movie ever happened). There were only a few Kull stories, but they were all good. The best: The Shadow Kingdom. (Wikipedia link: Kull)

4. Conan
The best known of Robert E. Howard’s characters. Truly, there have been some great Conan stories, but he also has his share of stories that are just okay, and that’s what marks him down in my eyes (and I’m only counting Howard’s stories; not the lesser Conan stories written by Lin Carter or Robert Jordan or others). My favorite: Red Nails. (Wikipedia link: Conan)

5. Bran Mak Morn
A darker series of tales. Bran Mak Morn is the last king of the Picts, a degenerate and dying race. The best story: Worms of the Earth. (Wikipedia link: Bran Mak Morn)

Solomon Kane	El Borak

Comics:
Most of these characters have appeared in comics at one time or another.
Solomon Kane appeared in an adaptation of Red Shadows in Marvel Premiere #33-34 in 1976, then had a six-issue mini-series from Marvel in the mid-eighties that featured adaptations of existing stories as well as new stories (and some nice Brett Blevins art). A new mini-series from Dark Horse has just started, and so far, seems good.
Conan has appeared in numerous comics published by Marvel and Dark Horse, the majority of which have been quite good.
Kull appeared in a handful of Marvel books in the ’70s and ’80s. I haven’t read them, so I can’t vouch for their quality. Dark Horse has a new Kull series coming out soon.
Bran Mak Morn appeared in several issues of the Savage Sword of Conan in the ’70s. Dark Horse published a two issue adaptation of Kings of the Night in the mid-’80s. It was not their best work.
To the best of my knowledge, El Borak has never appeared in the comics.

script by Eddie Campbell and Darren White, art by Bart Sears

What’s the error in this scene from Legends of the Dark Knight #200?

I reviewed this issue when it first came out, and other than some geographic/medication concerns, I was impressed by it. Now that it has been re-released as the final part of the Batman: Going Sane TPB, the time seemed right to take another look at it — and I’m afraid that I was overly generous in my initial assessment. Expect that mistake to be remedied shortly.

Previous picture quizzes

It’s not a comic book story, but instead a classic pulp science fiction short story from 1935. The setup is simple: a scientist creates a serum from drosophila (the fruit fly), knowing it is one of the most adaptive animals in the world. He and his partner inject the serum into a dying woman, figuring it is her last chance of survival. The patient not only survives, but she thrives in ways the scientists could have never predicted. The rest of the story deals with what happens with a woman who has the ability to literally adapt to anything.

Stanley Weinbaum, sadly, is a mostly forgotten science fiction writer from the 1930s. He died young, only 18 months after publishing his first story, so didn’t have the chance to produce many stories. He may have only written a handful of stories, but they’re all well worth reading. From the medical science point of view, Parasite Planet and Redemption Cairn are the most interesting. The planet Venus is the setting of Parasite Planet — Weinbaum’s Venus is a jungle world so virulent that any living flesh exposed to the air for more than a second or two develops a score of deadly infections. At the other end of the spectrum, Redemption Cairn takes place on Europa, a world where there is no microscopic lifeforms, so there is no risk of infection at all.

Other favorite stories of mine include Mad Moon, Shifting Seas, and A Martian Odyssey, probably his best known story.

The Adaptive Ultimate is available from Project Guttenberg (the Australian site anyway — I suspect it may not quite be public domain in the U.S. yet). Take a few minutes and read it, if you never have.

I also strongly recommend you pick The Best of Stanley Weinbaum, a 1974 collection of his works, including all the stories I mentioned above, available fairly inexpensively on Amazon and eBay.

Here are three of his books from that era: Time is the Simplest Thing, Destiny Doll, and my favorite, The Goblin Reservation

Time is the Simplest Thing Crest Books, 1964	Destiny Doll Berkley, November 1975	The Goblin Reservation Berkley, March 1969
All books by Clifford D. Simak, all covers by Richard M. Powers

Fiction
1. My Husband the Skrull
Judith thought she had the perfect marriage, but then the truth came out: not only was her husband seeing other people, he was other people.

2. How Green Was My Jury
In her third book, ace attorney Suzanne Grey takes on the Crass Corporation, accused of poisoning an entire town with toxic gamma radioactive waste.

3. Un-Registered Love
He was an vigilante who refused to register, she was the government agent designed to hunt him down. Could the love they once shared survive this tumultuous time?

4. Secret Agent Spencer: Death Wears a Cape
In his eighth book, the world’s top secret agent Blaze Spencer takes on a crazed serial killer who was once a teen-aged sidekick.

5. Superheroe$ Wive$
Being the wife of a famous super-hero isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, discovered Tess, the young wife of Mr. Patriot. She soon learned the sordid details of what really goes on behind closed doors at “team meetings.”

Non-Fiction
1. Iron Man’s Fascism is Fun Children’s Activity Book
Now in its 17th printing, this exciting coloring book allows children to understand why it is important to do everything the government asks without question.

2. The Champion’s Order’s Guide to Trademark Protection
Tired of your once protected trademarks expiring? This book will tell you how to keep trademarks forever and ever. Endorsed by Disney.

3. So Your Neighbor is an Un-Registered Vigilante
Learn how to turn in your neighbors, family, and friends for fund and profit. Sold in sets with The Field Guide to Registered Super-Heroes.

4. Doc Samson’s Guide to Cooking Lean and Staying Clean
Eat healthy and think healthy thanks to America’s favorite super-hero psychiatrist.

5. The Wit and Wisdom of Penance
Pamphlet. Large Print.