ED’S WORLDS

by Steven Steinbock

I think it’s fair to say that Edward D. Hoch was best known for his tradition mystery stories. The stories about Dr. Sam Hawthorn are all impossible crime “problems.” Most of his other series characters also dealt with impossible crimes or paradoxical situations. Nick Velvet was cast from the mold of A.J. Raffles but given the twist of only stealing valueless items and then answering the mystery of why he was hired to steal them. Simon Ark, his first series character and the hero of his first published short story, was a seeker of supernatural evil who always found a rational explanation behind the spectral illusion of impossible. Even the spy stories featuring Jeffrey Rand had plot-twists and situations that went beyond the standard espionage fare.

That’s only part of the story. Readers familiar with his stories in Manhunt, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, or Off-Beat Detective Stories, or who have read his stories in the anthologies The Night My Friend or People of the Night know that Ed was also adept at writing dark, tough-edged, and atmospheric hard-boiled crime and detective stories.

My guess is that most readers familiar with Ed’s name through Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine don’t know that he also wrote a respectable number of science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. In the late 1950s he had stories appear in the pulps Fantastic Universe, Future Science Fiction, and Original Science Fiction. The very first issue of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine featured a futuristic story of corporate espionage between competing biogenetics labs. In the late 1960s he wrote a story (“Computer Cops”) about a computer forensics team. Those cops would return in three of Ed’s novels. Ed’s most frequently anthologized story, “Zoo,” is a short-short about an intergalactic traveling animal show.

Many of Ed’s science fiction stories featured impossible crime plots set in the future. Most of these future worlds are high tech. But one story, “The Wolfram Hunters” (The Saint Mystery Magazine, March 1964) features a post-apocalyptic tribal society in which an outcast wise-man solves a mysterious disappearance during a religious festival. Ed wrote several stories about dystopian futures, usually giving them a “Twilight Zone” style twist ending. “Versus” (Fantastic Universe, June 1957), “The Forbidden Word” (EQMM July 1972), and two stories that appeared in anthologies – “God of the Playback” and “Unnatural Act” are all examples of this theme. Religion plays an interesting and complicated role in a lot of Ed’s science fiction stories, as does youth counterculture.

One motif that pops up several times in Hoch’s science fiction/fantasy oeuvre is the historical What-If theme. Not exactly alternate history stories, these tales suggest alternate explanations for historical (or pseudo-historical) events. “The Last Unicorn” (Original Science Fiction Stories, February 1959) is a tongue-in-cheek suggestion of how the unicorn went extinct. “The Maiden’s Sacrifice” (Famous Science Fiction, Fall 1968) gives an alternate explanation for evidence of human sacrifice among the Aztecs. One of my favorites, “Who Rides with Santa Anna?” (Real Western Stories Feb. 1959), provides a hauntingly anachronistic explanation for the outcome of the Battle of the Alamo.

ETERNAL COMPANIONS

While we’re on the subject, I was saddened to learn of the death earlier this week of Elisabeth Sladen, who played “Sarah Jane Smith” in the long-running science fiction program “Doctor Who.” She died of cancer.

Between 1973 and 1976, she appeared in the series alongside the third (Jon Pertwee) and fourth (Tom Baker) incarnations of The Doctor as they journeyed through time and space. In 2006 she reprised the role in the “Doctor Who” episode “School Reunion.” Shortly afterward, the BBC launched a children’s science fiction series, “The Sarah Jane Adventures,” in which The Doctor’s former companion battles unearthly evils with the aid of three teenage companions of her own. “The Sarah Jane Adventures” ran for four years. A fifth season was in production at the time of Sladen’s death.

The BBC has a short tribute video of Lis Sladen on their website. Tom Baker, who played what for many fans was THE Doctor with his fluffy-hair, floppy coat and hat, and long scarf, wrote about Sladen on on his blog.