I almost headlined this "A Rogue at Bouchercon" as I am
packing tonight for the trip to Las Vegas. My first panel is
on Thursday afternoon and I gather has something to do with
Las Vegas and gambling in mystery fiction. It's
understandable how Carole Nelson Douglas is on the panel with
her Midnight Louie series based in Vegas. My selection seems
random but I am prepared to talk about earlier novels based
in Reno and how the Black Mask crowd led the way into Vegas
as a setting. I also just finished John D. MacDonald's THE
ONLY GIRL IN THE GAME and have one or two others to review on
the plane. My second panel is on Sunday, probably after most
folks have left. Pulp fiction is the topic and that's the one
I really look forward to having spent a fortune on the pulps
bidding on eBay auctions in the last couple of months.
I'm taking a computer with me, so I may get off an
on-the-scene report or two.
One non-pulp magazine has my interest lately, the Playboy
knockoff Rogue that William Hamling published in the late
1950s and 1960s. Hamling was an editor at Ziff-Davis with Ray
Palmer and Howard Browne (and Frank M. Robinson as the office
boy). He went on his own in the 1950s with Imagination and
Imaginative Tales. Heffner sought out the experienced
publisher and offered him half interest in this new idea he
had for a magazine for men. Hamling passed but when Playboy
hit big, he entered the market with Rogue.
I began bidding on issues trying to find those with articles
by my friend Ted White, who back then was a jazz critic. The
issues are not expensive, and not knowing which issues had
White's articles, had me picking up a fair number. At last,
today's mail brought the January 1961 issue with Ted's first
hand account of "Riot at Newport." But (and this is the joy
of the issues!) there are columns by Lenny Bruce and Alfred
Bester and another jazz article by Nat Hentoff.
Better yet for this list is the December 1959 issue. Fiction
by Harlan Ellison and Richard Matheson, another column by
Lenny Bruce and an article by Howard Browne on the creation
of the television series "77 Sunset Strip." The
"Rogue Notes" in the front say Browne's novel SEVEN AGAINST
THE WALL is "down on Simon & Schuster's Spring list as
'the big one' ...you saw it on Playhouse 90 last season..." I
don't believe any such novel ever appeared but I am curious
if anyone knows anything about the Playhouse 90 show.
Finally, there is the December 1961 issue (by this time Frank
Robinson is listed as Editor) with columns by Alfred Bester
and Robert Bloch, an article on the Roger Corman movie "The
Intruder" based on a Charles Beaumont novel, and a short
story by Hunter S. Thompson.
I'll sign off now with one last William Hamling story.
Hamling was often in court fighting pornography charges. Long
ago at a Bouchercon pulp writer Dwight V. Swain who became a
professor at a university in Oklahoma recalled testifying as
an expert witness on his behalf. Hamling was eventually
convicted for publishing the official U.S. government report
issued by a presidential commission on pornography. Hamling's
was, of course, an illustrated edition.
Richard A. Moore
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