Beneath Strange Stars: A Collection of Tales by Ralph E. Vaughan

Author:Ralph E. Vaughan [Vaughan, Ralph E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dog in the Night Books
Published: 2015-02-08T23:00:00+00:00

Mystery and detective stories have always figured large in my literary universe, but when I encounter old acquaintances after years of silence the first question asked is, “Are you still reading and writing science fiction?” People forget that I was as likely back in the day to have a mystery story in my hand as a science fiction book. But they noticed the science fiction books more than the mystery books. At the time, mysteries were not only an accepted form of literature, but a genre in a long descent, having fallen quite a bit since the Golden Age, which started in the late 1920s and ended in the early 1950s. I blame that on changing popular tastes, a decline in recreational reading, and the demise of magazines, which was where most writers honed their craft, where classic detectives achieved their greatest popularity. True, on television during the 1960s and 1970s cops and detectives dominated the airwaves, but that did not translate into a florescence of mystery literature in culture at large, though many great novels were published. Science fiction, on the other hand, was experiencing a new popularity, no doubt tied to the rise of the counter-culture and the exploration of social issues like race relations and the environment. But I always read both genres, a reason, perhaps, why, like Isaac Asimov, I saw no problem in writing stories which combined elements of various genres, such as this one, in which we discover that going to Heaven doesn’t make a private eye any less hardboiled. Demons beware.

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