Two Uncle Stories

I have read two Uncle stories in the past week. (I write on July 29, 2024.) First was "Green Magic" by Jack Vance, originally in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in June 1963. It contains an insight into human nature, namely, the importance we place upon knowledge and experience over happiness. Second was The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown, a crime novel originally in Mystery Book in April 1946. It was published as a hardbound edition in 1947 and after that in one paperback edition after another. I have the David R. Godine trade paperback edition of 1986. In Jack Vance's story, the uncle is one who was involved in the pursuit of green magic. He's missing at the beginning of the story, and for good reason. It has to do with green magic. In The Fabulous Clipjoint, the uncle is named Ambrose, and he's not missing, even though his name is Ambrose.

Fredric Brown contributed to Weird Tales. Jack Vance did not. Brown put a minor character named Bradbury into his story. I don't know whether he knew Ray Bradbury, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did. Oddly, Brown also put a character named Dutch Reagan into The Fabulous Clipjoint. And I really doubt that he knew Ronald Reagan, who went by the nickname Dutch when he was young. But Brown knew Chicago, the fabulous clipjoint of the title, and portrayed it memorably in his novel. What a great image and a great title: the big city as a fabulous clipjoint. One more thing: for the first time in my life, I have seen the word doniker in print. My mom used that word. I thought it might be a German word that came to her from her German family. As it turns out, doniker is carney slang and comes from an English word. And now I wonder how my mom came to use it.

Anyway, we now have two more Uncle stories to add to the list.

The Fabulous Clipjoint by Fredric Brown in a Bantam edition, with cover art by Grant. This is the scene that every artist seems to have homed in on, and why not? The story turns on it. It also involves a beautiful woman (she's not a blonde in the story but has black hair instead). More than that, it is in this scene that the protagonist, young, working-class Ed Hunter, rises above the bars, flats, cheap restaurants, and dark alleyways of Chicago into its "tall, narrow buildings [. . .] like fingers reaching towards the sky," into a higher and finer place where it's possible to meet and know and love such a woman. It's a fantasy, of course, but so much of literature is a fantasy after all. Fredric Brown was onto something, then, when he wrote in the very next sentence: "It was like something out of a science-fiction story." (p. 178) He was of course a science fiction author, but who else in a mystery story or in mainstream literature would have made such an observation or admission in 1946 or 1947?

By the way, Fredric Brown was, for the briefest period of his life, a Hoosier in that he attended Hanover College. His story is set not only in Chicago but also in Gary, which is on the opposite end of the state from Hanover. The black-haired woman Claire is from Indianapolis, and so we have two places that figure in the history of Weird Tales magazine, Indianapolis and Chicago. Those same two places figure in another Uncle story, "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes" by Otis Adelbert Kline.

Original text copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley