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athelind
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Date: 2005-05-02 07:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 07:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-02 11:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 03:02 am (UTC)Hmm...Magic and mystery has always been closely associated in the pulps.
Perhaps the most important writer to make this connection was Walter B. Gibson , ghost author of most of The Shadow stories for Street & Smith under the “Maxwell Grant” nom-de-plume. Gibson’s association with magic began when he worked with Houdini, and later ghost wrote some books for him and other stage magicians (Thurston comes to mind). This past association paid off for Gibson with many examples of stage illusion and other magics appearing in a good many pulp stories featuring the Shadow. Gibson also had a stage magician as the eponymous hero of a dozen or so “Norgil the Magician” stories, which were reprinted in two volumes by The Mysterious Press, both volumes now out of print
Another important author to feature a stage magician (and magic store owner!) as hero was Clayton Rawson, author of “The Great Merlini” series of ingenious impossible crimes. The very first of these stories, “Death on a Top Hat” has a killer stalking and killing several stage magicians and Merlini has to figure out not one but two locked room murder mysteries; it later the basis of the 1939 B-movie “Miracles for Sale” . Rawson was also the writer behind the pulp series, “Don Diavolo” (aka The Scarlet Wizard) that appeared in the Red Star Mystery pulp series.
Other stage magician appearances in pulp and pulp related material? Hmm…
In one of the best complete of Carlton E. Morse’s I Love A Mystery old time radio serials, “Bury Your Dead, Arizona”, the three comrades of Jack, Doc and Reggie meet a mysterious illusionist known only as “The Maestro”.
In the Lin Carter “Prince Zarkan” pulp pastiche series ( The Nemesis of Evil, Invisible Death, The Volcano Ogre, & Horror Wear’s Blue), one of his Omega Men is Nick Naldini, a lanky stage magician.
And finally, as mentioned by
::B::
no subject
Date: 2005-05-03 03:12 am (UTC)I would so love to play a character who did that. Or better yet, the classic Mandrake/Zatara type who actually knew "Real Magic", but employed stage magic as a double-blind. Knowing the way I play characters, he'd probably only pull out the REAL stuff in extremis, and consider it "cheating" if he had to...
no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 02:25 am (UTC)Supernatural magic only very rarely appeared in Gibson's Shadow stories (in stark contrast to the radio series), with most appearances of magic and dark arts later turning out to be synthetic or hoaxes. The one exception appeared in the "Shiwan Khan" sereis of stories, where the eponymous villain seemed to have unusual powers of telepathy and hypnotism and exercised these in several instances.
I'm uncertain why Gibson lapsed in this instance. My only explanation being that during the 1930s and 1940s, when so much scientific progress was being made in physical and biological fields, that it was postulated by Gibson that what we would call the pseudo-science of psionic ability would be in the future (ie. today) prove in fact to be true (when it never did).
::B::
no subject
Date: 2005-05-04 02:55 am (UTC)Or, in the words of someone who might have been ever so slightly inspired by Gibson:
"Criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot!"