stein himself, makes it possible for many ma-
chines—led, of course, by the toaster—to cross the
gap between worlds to confront the Martian na-
tives, who are preparing to invade the Earth. The
Martian machines are encouraged to rebel against
their expansionist masters, and the machines from
Earth are able to return home in time for Christ-
mas. This spoof of science fiction approaches the
quality of the first book, but the satire is somewhat
more heavy handed.
Brennan, Joseph Payne (1918–1990)
One of the best writers to emerge in the latter days
of the pulp magazines was Joseph Payne Brennan,
whose weird fantasies and horror stories began ap-
pearing in the early 1950s. Although he continued
to write short fiction until the late 1980s, most of
his work was published by small presses and was
largely unavailable during his lifetime. Some of his
best work appeared quite early, including “SLIME”
(1953). “THE CALAMANDER CHEST” (1953), and
“Levitation” (1958), but his highly literate stories re-
mained entertaining and well constructed through-
out his career.
Brennan’s first collection, Nine Horrors and a
Dream (1958), contains the best selection, but
there are also many fine stories in Scream at Mid-
night(1963), Stories of Darkness and Dread(1973),
The Shapes of Midnight(1980), and The Borders Just
Beyond(1986). He also wrote a considerable body
of poetry, some of it with macabre themes, but his
only novels were a collaboration with Donald M.
Grant, Act of Providence1979), which has some
minimal fantastic content, and a marginally super-
natural mystery, Evil Always Ends(1982).
Brennan’s fiction often involved ghosts or
curses, such as in “Canavan’s Back Yard” (1958),
in which a man is lost and transformed in a magi-
cally cursed plot of land, and “The Mail of Juniper
Hill” (1958), which features the ghost of a mail-
man endlessly repeating his rounds. Juniper Hill is
a common setting Brennan used in many of his
stories, although the characters did not noticeably
overlap. A more formal series is the Lucius Leffing
sequence. Leffing is a psychic detective in the tra-
dition of Algernon BLACKWOOD’s John Silence or
the Jules de Grandin stories by Seabury QUINN.
Leffing’s adventures, which do not always involve
the supernatural, were collected in The Casebook of
Lucius Leffing(1973), The Chronicles of Lucius Leff-
ing(1977), and The Adventures of Lucius Leffing
(1990). Although never an immensely popular
writer, he was highly respected within the field and
produced a substantial body of quiet, literate tales
of the supernatural.“The Brighton Monster”Gerald Kersh
(1948)
It is sometimes difficult to determine whether a
time travel story is science fiction or fantasy, and,
in fact, there are some critics who insist that all
time travel is fantasy because it is patently impossi-
ble except by magic. Most readers, however, have
little difficulty differentiating between a story in
which the protagonist climbs into a machine and
travels forward and backward in time, and one in
which he or she accomplishes the same feat by
means of a magic amulet. There are, however,
many stories that straddle the two forms, in which
the motivating force is ambiguous or, as in this
case, never explained at all.
The author Kersh is himself the narrator of
this story, which is in large part based on his sup-
posed discovery of a pamphlet first published in- The pamphlet was written by a clergyman
named Arthur Titty, who recounts the discovery by
two fisherman of a humanoid creature that they
believed to be a monster from the sea. The crea-
ture’s body is covered with depictions of unusual
animals and strange symbols, and he is, apparently,
incapable of human speech, although he makes
noises that sound similar. Much of his skin is also
covered with what appear to be scales, adding to
his bizarre appearance.
Reverend Titty purchases the oddity from the
sailors and feeds and clothes him, occasionally
walking him around town on a leash. On one oc-
casion a burly local bully accosts them and is
thrown head over heels by the creature, although
it makes no move to harm Titty. Although the
minister is more benign than the sailors, he, too,
believes the creature to be other than human and
provides constant supplies of salt water in an at-
tempt to keep it healthy. Despite his best efforts,
36 Brennan, Joseph Payne