Science Fiction Tales (Roger Elwood, Rod Ruth, 1973)

And finally here's Science Fiction Tales, the remaining entry in a series of hardcover science fiction/horror anthology books for children published by Rand McNally in the 70s (I previously posted on Monster Tales, Horror Tales, Tales of Terror, Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures, and this book's direct follow-up, More Science Fiction Tales).

Edited by Roger Elwood and illustrated by Rod Ruth, here are seven stories by seven authors, with an introduction by Theodore Sturgeon.

THE SMALLEST DRAGONBOY (Anne McCaffrey)

In the first story, Keevan, a young boy on an alien world, participates in a coming-of-age ritual that revolves around the hatching of baby dragons. The alien world is Pern, and this tale turns out to be an early entry in McCaffrey's successfull Dragonriders of Pern franchise.

ALONE IN SPACE (Arthur Tofte)

A young boy left alone in a spaceship after the death of his father must outsmart space pirates looking for rare interplanetary gems. The boy cleverly uses a display case of geological samples to disguise his valuable payload.

THE MYSTERIOUS GEM (Claire Edwin Street)

Two kids cross paths with blue-skinned aliens after happening upon a teleportation device.

THE TRIPLE MOONS OF DENEB II (David H. Charney)

In this werewolf story transplanted to an alien world with three moons, the livestock of interplanetary colonists are being killed and eaten by some mysterious animal whenever the moon and the moon and the moon is full....

THE LAUGHING LION (Raymond F. Jones)

A boy accidentally time-travels back in time to a medieval castle on the eve of its mysterious destruction. A knight wearing the crest of a laughing lion helps protect him and his egg-shaped craft from superstitious villagers.

TWO YEARS TO GAEA (Rick Bowles)

The last young survivor of a spaceship in which the rest of the crew has been killed off one by one after succumbing to madness, encounters friendly plant-like aliens.

SOME ARE BORN CATS (Terry & Carol Carr)

This humorous story suggests your pet cat just might be an alien in disguise.

More Science Fiction Tales (Roger Elwood, Rod Ruth, 1974)

Here's More Science Fiction Tales (1974, edited by Roger Elwood, illustrations by Rod Ruth), a follow up to 1971's Science Fiction Tales (also edited by Elwood and illustrated by Ruth) and belonging to a series of hardcover children's horror/sci-fi anthology books published by Rand McNally in the 70s (I've previously posted on the Elwood-edited Monster Tales and Horror Tales, Ida Chittum's Tales of Terror, and perhaps the most sought after entry, Baleful Beasts and Eerie Creatures, also illustrated by Ruth).

The full title is More Science Fiction Tales, Crystal Creatures, Bird-Things, & Other Weirdies, seven tales of science fiction by seven authors, with an introduction by Barry N. Malzberg (full table of contents posted below).

Several of the stories here could rightfully be considered belonging to the horror genre, including my favorite, A Hole In Jennifer's Room by Brian T. LoMedico.

Fourth-grader Jennifer is awakened one evening by a glowing orb that materializes out of her bedroom wall. A creature that she describes as resembling a large chicken embryo emerges from the lit portal and begins stalking around her bedroom.

Frightened, Jennifer is about to attack the alien thing with a baseball bat when the creature suddenly introduces itself, speaking perfect English. Its name is Xander, and it is an inter-dimensional traveler that took a wrong turn and ended up in Jennifer's room in Dimension Three. At first it seems like the beginnings of a friendship between the unlikely pair is starting to emerge, until Xander decides to explore the rest of the house on his own and is never seen again.

Jennifer's parents don't believe her story and she is forced to see a doctor who prescribes pills to alleviate what they presume is a hallucinatory episode.

But the pills don't help, as Jennifer is continually tormented by the sounds of Xander's clicking beak, and glimpses of movement caught in her peripheral vision. Xander, as it turns out, never really did leave Jennifer, as the final chilling paragraph reveals:

And sometimes, in the deep darkened corners of her mind, Jennifer heard a whispering voice, answering her as if from a great distance. It always said the same thing. "I'm right here, Jennifer. And remember, you did it all to yourself.... You should have hit me with that baseball bat."

...

In The Bend of Time (William Danton), a boy returning to a recolonized Earth in the year 4010 is able to communicate across time with another boy his age from a prior millenium, when the world was ruled by robots called Ogolots.

In Hide and Seek (Mario Martin Jr.), a boy looking for a fallen meteor encounters a friendly crashed alien who helps him defend the Earth from some not-so-friendly crab-like invaders.

The Music of Minox (Howard Goldsmith) finds an interplanetary mining camp attacked by aliens monsters resembling crystalline porcupines that emit harp-like sounds.

In The Thing From Ennis Rock (Thomas F. Monteleone), a boy brings home a large egg found in the rubble following an earthquake and soon hatches a baby pteranodon. But mama pteranodon isn't giving up on her baby that easily. This story has a surprisingly dark ending.

A Thirst For Blood (Arthur Tofte), a story of vampires and interplanetary adventure set in the year 2040, opens with a boy being forced to carry out the grim ritual of decapitating the corpse of his father to cancel a vampiric curse.

Finally, a girl is temporarily transformed into a wolf by a mad scientist in Werewolf Girl (Nic Andersson).

Voodoo Magic

It was around 5th or 6th grade that I became aware of James "The Amazing" Randi, the magician turned debunker who would appear on talk shows and PBS documentaries to challenge claims of psychic ability. I'm not sure which TV appearance it was that finally solidified him in my mind. It could have been this 1980 episode of "That's My Line", where he takes on James Hydrick, who claimed to be able to turn phone book pages and spin pencils using only his mind (and a little dose of contrived Eastern spirituality).

Randi became one of my first role-models. I loved the fact that he could perform astounding feats of magic, then turn around and demonstrate how a particular faith-healer or psychic medium was full of it.

Randi's 1982 book "Flim-Flam", purchased with allowance money.

However, prior to Randi, I was a true-believer in all things supernatural. Ghosts and spirits, good-luck charms, fortune-telling, Tarot cards, mind-reading, witchcraft and voodoo--I was convinced all these things were real. This was not the result of any personal experience...it was simply that I wanted to believe. These mysterious forces suggested a secret avenue of power , which might be available to an otherwise powerless class of people...children.

At this time, shows like That's Incredible and In Search Of presented the topic of spells and psychic powers as more or less decided science. Psychics like Uri Geller and others of his ilk were regularly appearing on talk shows and in documentaries, often unchallenged.

And there was a series of seemingly academic books called "A New Library of the Supernatural" which was advertised regularly on TV (Witches and Witchcraft, etc.)

So it's no wonder that prior to Randi, I found the idea of casting spells to be perfectly plausible, and tried it occasionally using whatever methods I pieced together from library books or pop-culture. I previously mentioned attempting a "headache spell" on a teacher using some symbols I saw in a dramatization of John Bellair's "The House With a Clock in It's Walls".

Another time I enlisted the help of a friend who thought she might be able to acquire a sword and a ram's horn to re-enact a ritual described in a story about witches from the book Monster Tales (note: she didn't end up delivering those items, but God bless her for trying!)

I would keep a notebook of whatever magic words and symbols I came across, which got me into a bit of trouble when my Dad found it while going through my papers and was appalled to find a death-spell that involved placing various ingredients into a miniature black coffin, to be left on the victim's doorstep.

Which leads me to "Voodoo Magic", a 1958 episode of Leave It To Beaver that I saw as a child in reruns, in which Beaver dabbles in the black arts. When I first saw this episode, I was just a little bit older than The Beaver, and given my own personal experiments with magic and curses, his predicament really resonated with me.

It starts with the Beaver and brother Wally borrowing some money so they can go to the movies with their friend Eddie Haskell. But mother June forbids Wally to take Beaver once its learned the picture they are planning to attend is "Voodoo Curse" (this despite Eddie's assurance that it's an educational film, as it was shot on location in Haiti). The kids agree to see a reissue of "Pinocchio" at another theater instead.

However, Eddie, in his typically devious fashion, goads the Cleavers into going to "Voodoo Curse" anyway, with the argument that it would be okay for the Beaver to take Wally, since mother only forbid Wally from taking Beaver.

The picture terrifies Beaver, who clings to Wally's sleeve as we hear dialogue from the film:

"And now, powers of darkness and black voodoo magic, come to me. And as this pin pierces this image of my enemy, let it pierce his body, and bring to him the torture of slow death. And now, my enemy, you will feel pain. You will sicken and die!"

When their parents find out Beaver left his cap at the Globe theater, where "Voodoo Curse" was playing (and not at the other theater where they were supposed to be seeing "Pinocchio") Beaver and Wally are grounded for their deception.

Both kids agree that Eddie is to blame for luring them into lying to their parents.

The next morning, Beaver reveals his plan to fix Eddie. In a shoebox under his pillow is a makeshift voodoo doll.

"It's a voodoo curse just like in the picture. I stuck the pin in, in case the nail don't get him." In the midst of this allegedly lightweight comedy, I think it's important to note that based on his knowledge of voodoo from the film ("...you will sicken and die!"), Beaver must assume that his doll is actually going to kill Eddie Haskell!

The next morning, when Eddie doesn't come to school due to illness, Beaver assumes his doll is to blame. That evening he tries to undo his spell by removing the nail and pin.

"Eddie, please get well." Beaver pleads over the doll.

The next day Beaver visits Eddie at his home (arriving with a bouquet of flowers...what a little goof!) but as soon as they are alone, Eddie reveals that he's only faking his illness to get out of school.

Beaver is relieved, and confesses to Eddie about his voodoo doll, explaining where he put the pins.

"I don't like you very much, but I'd feel kind of bad if you died." Eddie doesn't believe any of this black magic nonsense, but is angered by Beaver's actions nonetheless, and orders him to leave. But with the idea of a voodoo curse now planted in his head, Eddie suddenly feels pain in his chest and stomache.

When Eddie's dad George confronts the Cleavers about his son's pain and the "black magic doll" that is causing it, it's the first that father Ward has heard of it.

When questioned about it, Beaver cheerfully produces the doll, leaving Ward speechless.

Ultimately, it takes a second magic spell to undo the first. Ward arms Beaver with the recipe for a supposed "voodoo curse remover", consisting of three worms from the backyard, four hairs from a dog's tail, six toadstools picked in the light of the moon, and two hairs from a small boys head, to be placed in a sack and passed over the victim six times.

Of course by now, Beaver is aware that there never was anything substantive to his voodoo curse and that the "curse remover" spell is a farcical bit of performance art. He has gone from black magic practitioner to flim-flam artist in just a few days.