'The Permanent Playboy': Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror stories
edited by Ray Russell
3 / 5 Stars
'The Permanent Playboy' was published in hardcover by Crown in 1959. It's a slipcased, 503-page book, and a reminder that as the 1950s drew to a close, Playboy magazine was a powerful entity in American popular culture. The top fiction writers and essayists of that day would submit to the magazine, as it was one of the best-selling periodicals in the country.
The stories compiled in this anthology first saw print in Playboy from 1953 to 1959. They range in subject matter from romantic comedy, to crime / suspense, to urban satire, to horror, fantasy, and science fiction.
Editor Russell is quite clear about the editorial policy in place at Playboy:
Fiction readers of marked avant-garde persuasion are hereby warned that they may find the majority of the stories in this book somewhat unstylish. They are, with few exceptions, stories.
If construction skill, firm plotting, the creation of suspense and the knack for satisfying and entertaining the reader are currently among the lost and unfashionable arts, PLAYBOY has had the guts to fly in the face of fashion, to start a counterrevolution, to seek and find those writers who persist in using the classic tools of storytelling. Happily, quite a few were and still are being found.
It took me come time to read each entry in TPP. Rather than summarize the contents in one long long post, I thought it best to deal with the 49 entries in separate posts, as catalogued by genre.
As far as sci-fi goes, George Langelan's 'The Fly' remains a standout, nearly 70 years after it first was published.
Also good is Charles Beaumont's 'The Crooked Man,' about a future where homosexuality is legal, but heterosexuality is not. The eponymous Man is looking for girl love, which makes him a pervert. Beaumont's description of the gay lounge (where the Man has gone for an assignation) is greasy and disturbing. This story was quite provocative for its time, but likely would not be well-tolerated in today's popular culture.
'Victory Parade,' by Henry Slesar, takes a trenchant look at patriotism in the age of nuclear warfare.
Ray Bradbury contributes 'In A Season of Calm Weather,' about an American tourist who encounters Pablo Picasso, on a beach in Biarritz. This encounter is transcendental. It's also rather boring.
Robert Sheckley's 'Love, Incorporated' is about Alfred Simon, a young man living on the backwater planet of Kazanga IV. Seeking true love and excitement, Simon travels to Earth, and to the 42nd street district of New York City. It's a 'rube meets the city' tale, and while I am not a big fan of comedic sf, this story is readable.
Richard Mattheson's 'The Distributor' is about a man who moves onto Sylmar Street in a majority-white, middle-class, suburban neighborhood. Bad things begin to happen; could it be due to the fact that on Sylmar Street, everyone internally is seething with suppressed bigotry, hostility, and sexual desire ? But then again, isn't that the trope mined for racy excitement by almost every Sleaze paperback ever printed ?!
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| image from the 'Killer Covers' blog |
Overall, the sci-fi and horror entries in 'The Permanent Playboy' are, with the exception of 'Fly' and 'Crooked Man,' are not that special. That said, there is other content, in other genres, in the volume that make it more appealing, so I'll address that content in future blog posts.
