Back in the 1940s even the best and most experienced science fiction writers couldn’t get a mainstream publisher to buy their novels. But even a first novelist could sell a straight mystery. So a lot of people better known as f&sf writers started out writing mysteries. And sneaking science fiction into them.
The first example I know of is Rocket to the Morgue (1942), by Anthony Boucher, under his alternate pseudonym of H. H. Holmes. (Not his first novel but early in his career.) All the characters are based on real-life f&sf writers belonging to L.A.'s Mañana Literary Society.
Then there’s Wilson Tucker’s first novel The Chinese Doll (1946), with a fanzine writer suspiciously similar to Wilson Tucker being one of the suspects.
And the most famous one nobody’s ever seen, The Case of the Little Green Men (1951), Mack Reynold’s first novel, in which all the suspects are part of a local fan group.
These went away in the 1950s when it became possible to get f&sf novels into print. Sharon McCrumb got notoriety four decades later with Bimbos of the Death Sun (1988) and Zombies of the Gene Pool (1992), two not-very-flattering looks at fan conventions.
All of these are genre mystery whodunits, not in any way part of the f&sf genre. I know there are f&sf novels set in fandom and of course zillions of genre f&sf books that include mysteries. That’s not what I’m looking for. Anyone know any more pure examples of genre mysteries being about f&sf in any way?
The book that got me hooked on William Marshall’s Yellowthread Street Hong Kong police procedurals-“Sci Fi”. It takes place during a Hong Kong science fiction convention, and it is freakin’ hilarious.
Murder at the ABA also isn’t really an example of what the OP is talking about, since by that time, Asimov was a well-established author who had no trouble finding a publisher in any genre he chose to write in.
And it might be well-written, but as a mystery, it totally flops. When there’s a key clue at the crime scene that narrows down the list of possible suspects to only two, and the detective-character notices and points out that clue immediately on first seeing it, and then just declares that it’s probably not important and proceeds to ignore it, it rather removes most of the interest.
I’ve only read the SF work of Brendan DuBois, Jake Page, and William Sanders but I know all three of them have written mystery works as well (and are probably better known for their mysteries). Can anyone who’s read their mysteries tell us if they contain SF references?
Oh, man. I should have remembered William Marshall. I’ve read all of his Yellowthread Street books. *Sci-Fi *isn’t one of his best, but the ending - the police pursue an arsonist wearing an asbestos costume through a burning hotel - rocks. He’s of the Mickey Spillane school: the first chapter makes the reader want to read this book; the last chapter makes them want to read the next book.
They don’t need to be first novels, though. That’s only a point about the different publishing culture I find interesting.
Antiques Con by Barbara Allan (pseudonym of Max Allan Collins and Barbara Collins), a recent installment in their Trash ‘n’ Treasure series, is about mother-and-daughter antique dealers who attend a comic book convention in NYC to auction off an original Joe Shuster Superman drawing, and get involved in a murder mystery.
The second one (Zombies) isn’t set at a con (it takes place at a reunion of a fan group from the 50s, I don’t think it’s fair to call that a convention). This may be why Zombies is a better novel (in my opinion of course) since it doesn’t have the crutch of mockery of convention fandom to fall back on.
The start of Niven and Pournelle’s *Inferno *takes place at a con. The narrator, an author, takes a stupid bet and winds up falling out the window, waking up in Hell. The joke is, he thought the crowd was cheering for him, but actually, Asimov had just walked into the room.
You know, all I did was ask you politely what your answer had to do with fandom. Because you didn’t say anything at all about the book’s contents. How in the world are you taking it as a personal slam?
