The Compleat Werewolf and Other Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction by Anthony Boucher
Mass Market Paperback, 256 pages
A couple of years ago I heard a couple of writers talking about their experience at Bouchercon. It was a crime fiction convention. It never crossed my mind to ask how or why the con had that name and years passed before I learned about Anthony Boucher, he was the Boucher the con was named after. In fairness, I think plenty of people who attend the Con don’t know him either. I would later learn that he was a foundational writer in the mystery genre. So, I didn’t even think it was possible when his name kept coming up as an editor and friend of Philip K Dick in the sci-fi community that it was the same dude.
Most writers can write for their whole careers and never make an impact that defines a single genre. William Anthony Parker White wrote books and edited magazines that defined both Mystery and Science Fiction. It is one thing to have had such an impact in one genre that awards and conventions are named after you, but amazing to have impacted multiple genres. Boucher is known for being a godfather of American mystery novels but it was his impact on Science Fiction goes well beyond the amazing stories he left behind personally.
As a magazine founder, he published many of the debut stories from titans such as Philip K Dick and Richard Matheson. He was an active member of the community who socialized and worked with writers like Dick, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Ray Nelson during his time in the Bay Area From the 50s until his death) and in the early forties when most of these stories were written he was hanging out in a writers group in LA. That group had several sci-fi giants in it. From Heinlein, Hubbard, and the Kuttners his world was influenced by these major voices that were his friends. He wrote about them in a classic mystery novel Rocket to the Morgue that I reviewed here last year.
All the stories in the Compleat Werewolf were written during this period Boucher was publishing stories in both fields and hanging in LA with the Heinlein gang. They were not collected until the '60s but this book represents his wartime Science Fiction and Horror. The stories appeared in pulp magazines such as Unknown Worlds, "Astounding Science Fiction," "Weird Tales" and a few others from 1941-45. Think about it this way most of these stories were written when Hitler was still alive just to put the stories age in perspective.
For that reason, they have a certain surreal feel as speculation from a time so long ago. Of Course, the sci-fi stories have some silly robots and private tubes going directly to spaceports but if you don’t find that charming I don’t know what to tell you. Out of date Science Fiction is special for the window into the mind of the speculator – in this case, Tony Boucher.
It is almost impossible for me to not see this book through my Dickhead lens because Boucher was an important personal influence on Dick. It wasn’t just that he bought Dick’s first story but it was Boucher being a cool dude that helped Phil eject his notions that Sci-fi was just kids stuff. So his style of writing has some similar tones should not have surprised me.
From the opening title Novella with its sarcastic tone to the last story Ghost of Me that has a narrator questioning their sanity you can see the influence Boucher had on the guy who sold him Opera records. Let us start with that first Novella.
The Compleat Werewolf is a funny tale. The story of Professor Wolfe Wolf, an academic who is surprised when a mystic tells him that he has always been a werewolf and he knows just the spell to unlock his power. Published one year after Universal’s Wolf-Man. It presents the idea that a werewolf is automatically evil and the story more than any other in the collection has elements of Boucher’s detective stories.
I knew I was in for an amusing experience as soon as I read this scene early on…
“But a werewolf is a man that changes into a wolf. I’ve never done that. Honest, I haven’t.”
“A mammal,” Said Ozymandias, “is an animal that bears its young and suckles them. A virgin is nonetheless a mammal. Because you have never changed doesn’t make you less of a werewolf.”
“But a werewolf-“Suddenly Wolfe’s eyes lit up. “A werewolf is better than a G-man!”
There is some hilarious stuff relating to the professor trying to get closer to his crush as a dog, which as you can imagine doesn’t go well. Perhaps the funniest scene in the entire book is a part where Ozymandias talks about the word that unlocked his “were” skills.
“There is no telling what would happen if I taught her The Word.”
“Not the least. Of course, there’s some werethings that just aren’t much use being. Take a wereant. You change and somebody steps on you and that’s that. Or like a fella I knew in Madagascar. Taught him the Word and know what? He turned wereiplodicus. Shattered the whole house into pieces when he changed and damned near trampled me under hoof before I could say Absarka!”
The second story the Pink Caterpillar is an interesting story as it is very weird, almost hard to explain. Set in a small town in Mexico It opens with a time travel discussion where the characters talk about traveling 100 years into the future. Being 80 years in the storyteller’s future as I read I found that striking. It is the story of a supernatural pact with a rural medicine man.
The next two stories are robot stories that were published under the name H.H. Holmes without the internet Boucher got away with the in-joke of using the first American Serial Killer’s title as a pen name. These stories Q.U.R. and Roboinc are basically one long novelette. This is a very forward-thinking Sci-fi stories about the inventors who decide to stop wasting time making androids futuristic. While the story has forced sterilizations and travel tubes it also has black world leaders. Speaking to his audience in 1942 decades before the civil rights act Boucher said this…
"...ten centuries ago people would have snorted just like that at the idea of a black as Head on this planet. Such narrow stupidity seems fantastic to us now. Our own prejudices will seem just as comical to our great-great-grandchildren."
Snullbug was Boucher’s first short story as such it is important, containing magic and time travel it is a funny one. OK Gennie my wish is that you go to the future one day in the future and bring me back a newspaper. Fun one.
The Expedition is the best and weirdest sci-fi story in the collection. This story is bonkers and entirely built on a reversal. This is a story about the first contact between Martian and earthers during a Martian Expedition. This first contact is hilarious.
“…We have not fully deciphered his language but I have, as instructed, been keeping full phonetic transcriptions of his every remark. Trubaz has calculated psychologically that the meaning of this remark to be:
“Ministers of the Great one, be gracious to me.”
The phonetic transcription is as follows:
AND THEY TALK ABOUT PINK ELEPHANTS!
However, don’t leave this review that Boucher was only capable of humor. There is one truly great horror stories. For me the best of the collection is one F.Paul Wilson pointed out in our Tony Boucher panel (see links below). This story is a frightening horror story set in the sun-soaked California desert – They Bite. The set-up of this story in many ways reminded me of the classic Doctor Who story Blink. The set-up is great. Two characters are talking about the monsters that just barely stay out of sight.
“Optical fatigue-“ Tallant Began.
“Sure. I know every man to his own legend. There isn’t a tribe of Indians hasn’t some accounting for it. You’ve heard of the Watchers? And the twentieth-century white-man comes along and it is optical fatigue. Only in the nineteenth-century things weren’t quite the same and there were the Carkers.”
“You got a special localized legend?”
“Call it that. You glimpse things out of the corner of your mind, like you glimpse lean, dry things out of the corner of your eye. You encase them in solid circumstance and thy’re not so bad. That is the growth of the legend. The Folk Mind in Action. You take Carkers and the things you don’t see and you put them together. And they bite."
Are they monsters or just a cannibal family Like the Hills Have Eyes? Not a product of nuclear testing but being left alone away from civilization and growing in legend and isolation. This is a fantastic horror story on every level, every world. To me the best thing I have read by Boucher.
As a whole, The Compleat Werewolf should be essential history for fans of Horror and Science Fiction. It should be essential for serious Dickheads who want to understand Boucher or the development of the genre. A must-read.
Check out the panel I hosted about the author of this book on Dickheads... Featuring Gary K Wolfe, F.Paul Wilson, Gordan Van Geldermand myself.
https://soundcloud.com/dickheadspodcast/dick-adjacent-7-shout-out-to-tony-boucher
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fsz67cLwmuI&t=341s
3 comments:
I've only read Boucher's "Star Bride" (1951) [reviewed on my site] and it was a tepid condemnation of colonialism that really didn't work...
I am curious to pick up more of his work although I struggle with SF humor. Perhaps those that you flagged as more serious in tone might be my cup of tea!
Humor might be an ongoing problem you have with him he always has tongue in cheek a little. An influence on PKD that way.
I enjoy some SF humor -- like Sheckley. But it is hit or miss.
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