Saturday, July 26, 2014

Crossover of the Week

July 1944-January 1945
TO DUST AND ASHES IN ITS HEAT CONSUMING
            Five airplanes, including one piloted by Group Captain Victor Carroon, trail UFOs that have appeared above London. One saucer is followed by a plane flown by Flight Lieutenant Tug Carrington. In Mission Control, Captain Boothroyd and Air Commodore Lord George Beltham give orders to the pilots. Professor Bernard Quatermass dismisses Beltham’s claim that one of his fellow investigators is an enemy agent. Harry Dickson breaks up the argument. Dickson’s protégé is a sergeant seconded from the Marine Police, Stanley Bulman, who mentions his nephew George.
            Short story by Nigel Malcolm in Tales of the Shadowmen Volume 9: La Vie en Noir, Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Black Coat Press, 2012; reprinted in French in Les Compagnons de l’Ombre (Tome 13), Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier, eds., Rivière Blanche, 2014. Professor Bernard Quatermass is the protagonist of several British television serials and films, including The Quatermass Experiment, which also features Victor Carroon. Tug Carrington is an ally of aviator James “Biggles” Bigglesworth in novels by W.E. Johns. Captain Boothroyd is the future Major Boothroyd, service armorer for the British Secret Service in the James Bond novels. Lord George Beltham is a later holder of the title once belonging to Lord Edward Beltham in Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre’s Fantômas novels. Harry Dickson, “the American Sherlock Holmes,” appears in pulp stories by Jean Ray and others. Stanley Bulman is the uncle of Detective Sergeant George Bulman, who appears in the TV series The XYY Man, Strangers, and Bulman.

3 comments:

  1. This will be reprinted in the next volume of Harry Dickson stories that Black Coat Press is releasing. I really enjoyed the first volume (and just about anything I've read by Jean Ray.)

    I always assumed Major Boothroyd was in the Army, but its been awhile since I read the James Bond books so for all I know he was in the RAF.

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  2. I'm guessing and hoping that most, if not all, of the new stories in that volume will have crossovers, considering Black Coat's track record with single-character anthologies. The fact that one story is titled "Moreau Lives!" is probably a good sign. I just edited my entries for this story, "Wings of Fear," and "Sleep No More," (all the reprinted stories that are in Volumes 3 and 4) to add Harry Dickson vs. the Spider to their publication history.

    I don't recall whether Fleming ever specified which branch of the Armed Forces Boothroyd was in, and this bio doesn't give any details:
    http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Q

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  3. Since I plan to get the Harry Dickson Vs. the Spider I'm hoping to it will have crossovers too. Mostly, I want it though because Jean Ray's fiction is hard to get in English. I know the White Lady of Pourville was originally published in a French Language volume of Shadowmen and includes among others Sexton Blake. I had my Lupin story translated in the volume and I was able to figure out that the story was the same one in both volumes. Not that I speak French.

    I just assumed that the gun expert would be in the Army, but I don't suppose he has to be. There's an interesting story I just found out about Bond's gun.

    http://jamesbond.wikia.com/wiki/Beretta_418

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