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A review by saareman
Rocket to the Morgue by Anthony Boucher
3.0
A Roman à clef* of Sci-Fi Writers
Review of the Penzler Publishers American Mystery Classics eBook edition (July 23, 2019) of the Duell, Sloan and Pearce hardcover original (1942).
Although Antony Boucher's Afterword tries to distance him from direct 1-to-1 correlations between his fictional characters in Rocket to the Morgue and the real-life science fiction authors they were based on, F. Paul Wilson's Introduction to this 2019 AMC edition states them explicitly. You can also read them in a section of the Wikipedia entry for the book.
So the fun of this is primarily the fictional depictions of authors such as [a:Robert A. Heinlein|205|Robert A. Heinlein|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1192826560p2/205.jpg] and [a:L. Ron Hubbard|33503|L. Ron Hubbard|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1485578081p2/33503.jpg] as murder suspects Austin Carter and D. Vance Wimpole in the book. The Wimpole character is already portrayed as a shifty, lecherous and unlikeable character, and this is well before the time when Hubbard invented his Scientology grift in 1953.
Cover of the original first edition published under the pseudonym H.H. Holmes by Duell, Sloan and Pearce in 1942. Image sourced from Wikipedia.
The detective Terry Marshal and his consultant Sister Ursula play rather minor roles throughout. It is a bit of a locked room mystery with various murder attempts on Hilary Foulkes, the son and literary executor of (fictional) sci-fi author Fowler Foulkes. Foulkes Jr. is despised by the rest of the literary community for exorbitant fees charged for the use of his father's copyright material. That scenario reminded me of the story of Stephen Joyce, the grandson of James Joyce, who held a similar iron hand over his grandfather's estate until the works entered the public domain in 2012. However, the situation in Rocket to the Morgue (1942) pre-dates the litigations and bans of the Joyce estate, which were mostly in the late 20th century.
Overall, this was goofy fun with most of the drama and interest coming from its real-world parallels.
Footnote
* From French: a novel with a key. Usually a novel where pseudonyms are used for the names of real life people. Sometimes the plot is a fictionalized version of events which actually happened. One therefore needs a "key" i.e. the secret code to identify who or what someone or something is based on.
Trivia and Links
There is a short section in this book devoted to a listing of "What If" speculative or alternate history literature, a sub-genre of fantasy and sci-fi. It was especially interesting to learn that [a:Winston S. Churchill|14033|Winston S. Churchill|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1306133803p2/14033.jpg] once wrote a speculative fiction piece If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg, written as if by a future historian in a world where the North had lost the American Civil War. The piece originally appeared in Scribner's Magazine in 1930 and was later collected in the anthology [b:If It Had Happened Otherwise|3071740|If It Had Happened Otherwise|J.C. Squire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1416417750l/3071740._SY75_.jpg|3102760] (1931).
This edition of Rocket to the Morgue is part of the Otto Penzler American Mystery Classics series (2018-ongoing). There is a related Goodreads Listopia here with 57 books listed as of early June 2024. There are currently 72 titles listed at the Mysterious Press online bookshop. The official website for the series at Penzler Publishers seems to show only the most recent and upcoming titles.
Review of the Penzler Publishers American Mystery Classics eBook edition (July 23, 2019) of the Duell, Sloan and Pearce hardcover original (1942).
This is the way it was in Southern California just before the war, when science fiction was being given its present form by such authors as Robert A. Heinlein (still the undisputed Master), Cleve Cartmill, Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, C. L. Moore, and many others. (And this is as wise a place as any to add hastily that no character in this novel is based specifically on any actual writer—nor is any character quite devoid of some factual basis.) - from the Afterword by author Antony Boucher.
Although Antony Boucher's Afterword tries to distance him from direct 1-to-1 correlations between his fictional characters in Rocket to the Morgue and the real-life science fiction authors they were based on, F. Paul Wilson's Introduction to this 2019 AMC edition states them explicitly. You can also read them in a section of the Wikipedia entry for the book.
So the fun of this is primarily the fictional depictions of authors such as [a:Robert A. Heinlein|205|Robert A. Heinlein|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1192826560p2/205.jpg] and [a:L. Ron Hubbard|33503|L. Ron Hubbard|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1485578081p2/33503.jpg] as murder suspects Austin Carter and D. Vance Wimpole in the book. The Wimpole character is already portrayed as a shifty, lecherous and unlikeable character, and this is well before the time when Hubbard invented his Scientology grift in 1953.
Cover of the original first edition published under the pseudonym H.H. Holmes by Duell, Sloan and Pearce in 1942. Image sourced from Wikipedia.
The detective Terry Marshal and his consultant Sister Ursula play rather minor roles throughout. It is a bit of a locked room mystery with various murder attempts on Hilary Foulkes, the son and literary executor of (fictional) sci-fi author Fowler Foulkes. Foulkes Jr. is despised by the rest of the literary community for exorbitant fees charged for the use of his father's copyright material. That scenario reminded me of the story of Stephen Joyce, the grandson of James Joyce, who held a similar iron hand over his grandfather's estate until the works entered the public domain in 2012. However, the situation in Rocket to the Morgue (1942) pre-dates the litigations and bans of the Joyce estate, which were mostly in the late 20th century.
Overall, this was goofy fun with most of the drama and interest coming from its real-world parallels.
Footnote
* From French: a novel with a key. Usually a novel where pseudonyms are used for the names of real life people. Sometimes the plot is a fictionalized version of events which actually happened. One therefore needs a "key" i.e. the secret code to identify who or what someone or something is based on.
Trivia and Links
There is a short section in this book devoted to a listing of "What If" speculative or alternate history literature, a sub-genre of fantasy and sci-fi. It was especially interesting to learn that [a:Winston S. Churchill|14033|Winston S. Churchill|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1306133803p2/14033.jpg] once wrote a speculative fiction piece If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg, written as if by a future historian in a world where the North had lost the American Civil War. The piece originally appeared in Scribner's Magazine in 1930 and was later collected in the anthology [b:If It Had Happened Otherwise|3071740|If It Had Happened Otherwise|J.C. Squire|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1416417750l/3071740._SY75_.jpg|3102760] (1931).
This edition of Rocket to the Morgue is part of the Otto Penzler American Mystery Classics series (2018-ongoing). There is a related Goodreads Listopia here with 57 books listed as of early June 2024. There are currently 72 titles listed at the Mysterious Press online bookshop. The official website for the series at Penzler Publishers seems to show only the most recent and upcoming titles.