Bond Nelson - Ningun Tiempo Como El Futuro Doc (16752)

RESEÑA:
El autor norteamericano NELSON BOND es un escritor apocalíptico, es decir, que está
obsesionado por el fin del mundo. En esta obra magistral, `NINGUN TIEMPO COMO
EL FUTURO`, nos presenta este presunto fin del planeta de diversas maneras, desde la
desintegración atómica hasta la muerte por eclosión del globo, que alberga en su seno el
titánico polluelo de una monstruosa ave cósmica.

El grupo de narraciones y novelitas que integran este volumen constituye una de las más
valiosas aportaciones universales a la literatura de ficción científica. Algunas de sus
páginas son verdaderamente alucinantes, y otras nos transportan a un futuro más o
menos lejano, pero en el que los hombres aman, luchan y mueren movidos por ideales y
motivos que no son muy distintos de los nuestros. Desde `Factor Vital`, que abre el
libro, hasta `El Planeta Silencioso`, que lo cierra, el lector asiste, con el ánimo en
suspenso, a un desfile de personajes y situaciones que no podrá olvidar jamás.

BIOGRAFIA:
Nelson Slade Bond (23 de noviembre, 1908 - 4 de noviembre, 2006) fue un escritor
temprano de ciencia ficción y fantasía, así como de deportes y de novela negra. Publicó
principalmente historias cortas para las revistas `pulp` durante los años 30 y 40, aunque
también escribió para la radio y la televisión.

Es particularmente conocido por la serie de historias de `Lancelot Biggs: Spaceman`

(1950), aunque en su bibliografía encontramos las novelas `Exiles of Time` (1949),
`That Worlds May Live` (2002) o `When Freemen Shall Stand` (2009), así como las
colecciones con tirajes de varios títulos dentro de cada una como `Mr.Mergenthwirker`s
Lobblies` (1946), `The 31st of February` (1949), `The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot
Biggs: Spaceman` (1950), `No Time Like the Future` (1954) o `Nightmares and
Daydreams` (1968).
Bond Nelson - Ningun Tiempo Como El Futuro Doc
El autor norteamericano NELSON BOND es un escritor apocalíptico, es decir, que está
obsesionado por el fin del mundo. En esta obra magistral, `NINGUN TIEMPO COMO
EL FUTURO`, nos presenta este presunto fin del planeta de diversas maneras, desde la
desintegración atómica hasta la muerte por eclosión del globo, que alberga en su seno el
titánico polluelo de una monstruosa ave cósmica.

El grupo de narraciones y novelitas que integran este volumen constituye una de las más
valiosas aportaciones universales a la literatura de ficción científica. Algunas de sus
páginas son verdaderamente alucinantes, y otras nos transportan a un futuro más o
menos lejano, pero en el que los hombres aman, luchan y mueren movidos por ideales y
motivos que no son muy distintos de los nuestros. Desde `Factor Vital`, que abre el
libro, hasta `El Planeta Silencioso`, que lo cierra, el lector asiste, con el ánimo en
suspenso, a un desfile de personajes y situaciones que no podrá olvidar jamás.

Tamaño: 339 Kb, Narrativa,Fantástica,Ciencia Ficción    2004-10-06

Bond Nelson

La Voz Del Extraño Cubo (1937)

Bond Nelson - La Voz Del Extraño Cubo (1937) Pdf

Aún no hallamos una reseña para este libro

Tamaño: 9 Kb, Narrativa,Fantástica,Ciencia Ficción    2004-05-24

Bond Nelson - Miren El Pajaro (1950) Pdf

`Miren! El pájaro!` es uno de los 12 relatos de ciencia ficción que forman el libro
`Ningú tiempo como el futuro`, donde Nelson Bond nos presenta el presunto fin del
planeta Tierra de muy distintas maneras. `MIREN! EL PÁJARO!`: Abramson, un
científico, ha observado algo en su telescopio y decide comunicárselo a Flaherty, un
periodista de la prensa generalista que nada tenía que ver con las publicaciones
especializadas. Se trata de un gigantesco pájaro, tan enorme que deja pequeño a
cualquier planeta del sistema solar, dirigiéndose hacia el sol sin margen alguno de error,
a una velocidad de 200.000 kilómetros por minutos. ¿Cómo es posible algo así? Y, lo
más inquietante, ¿qué busca cuando parece detenerse entre Mercurio y el sol, volando
en círculos?

Tamaño: 28 Kb, Narrativa,Fantástica,Ciencia Ficción    2004-05-24

NELS
ON
S.  B O
ND:
Looking
Way
Back

(excerpted
from Locus
Magazine,
October
1998)
 Nelson Slade Bond
was born November
23, 1908, in Scranton
PA, and grew up in
Philadelphia. He
attended Marshall
University,
Huntington WV, from
1932 to 1934, and that
was also where he met
his wife, Betty Gough
Folsom; they married
in 1934, and had two
sons. He worked as a
public relations field
    Photo by Beth Gwinn director for the
 
  Province of Nova
 
Scotia in 1934-'35,
  then began freelance
writing, at first with
non-fiction pieces.

The first of his many

story sales came in
1935, but he came to
science fiction and
fantasy in 1937 with
SF ''Down the
Dimensions''
(Amazing) and the
memorable humorous
fantasy ''Mr.
Mergenthwirker's
Lobblies'' (Scribner's).
The latter, which
spawned several
related stories, was
turned into a radio
series, and eventually
a TV play. He wrote
extensively for
Amazing Stories,
Fantastic Adventures,
Weird Tales, and non-
genre magazines
Scribner's and Blue
Book. His ''Magic
City'' in Astounding
(1941), part of the
''Meg the Priestess''
series, was very
popular. His works
were collected in Mr.
Mergenthwirker's
Lobblies and Other
Fantastic Tales
(1946), The Thirty-
first of February
(1949), The
Remarkable Exploits
of Lancelot Biggs,
Spaceman (1950), No
Time Like the
Future (1954), and
Nightmares and
Daydreams (1968).

His one published

novel, Exiles of Time
(1949), belongs to a
tetralogy of short
novels, ''Sons of the
Deluge'', ''Gods of the
Jungle'', and ''That
Worlds May Live'', all
originally published in
Amazing in the '40s. A
few of his plays have
been published,
including his TV
adaptation of ''Mr.
Mergenthwirker's
Lobblies'' (1957), the
comedy State of Mind
(1958), and his two-
act adaptation of
George Orwell's
Animal Farm (1964).
He has been a well-
known dealer in rare
books for several
decades, and was a
very popular Writer
Emeritus at the
Nebula Banquet this
past April.

''I wrote as many, or

more, sports and
detective stories as I did
fantasy and science
fiction. I never thought
of myself as a science
fiction writer; I thought
of myself as a fantasy
writer. But occasionally
the fantasy would
include hardware. That
was particularly true in
the 'Lancelot Biggs'
stories, which were
humorous space stories.
The first one appeared in
Amazing Stories, and
then it shifted over to
Fantastic Adventures,
then to Weird Tales.
When I started writing
various kinds of stories
for Blue Book, I worked
up to $500 per story,
whatever the length.

''I began writing for radio

after they started
adapting some of my
stories. I thought, 'Well
hell, I can do better than
that,' and I started
adapting them myself.
After a while, a couple of
series opened up, and
they asked me to become
the writer. I wrote 52
weeks of 'Hot Coffee'
and about 26 weeks of
'The Sheriff Show', a
comedy western. Then
television came along. I
had just written 'Mr.
Mergenthwirker's
Lobblies' as a radio
series, and I adapted it
for television. It became
the first television play
ever aired on a network.
The network, however,
consisted of Boston,
New York, and
Washington. (This was
1946.) The presentation
was so elaborate, there
was a studio audience,
and they printed a
program for it.
Unfortunately, no copy
of the show exists,
because they didn't have
tape in those days. All
they had was kinescope,
flickering black & white
movie stuff.

''That was probably the

golden opportunity of my
life that I threw out the
window. After the play
was done, the director
said, 'This is a brand-new
medium. Why don't you
come up here and get
into it with us?' They
couldn't pay me very
much, and I said, 'I'm
making more than that in
radio right now,' so I
turned it down. The
director's assistant, Fred
Cohen, went on to
become president of
NBC.

''But I wrote about 15 or

20 television plays, some
of them adaptations of
my own things, others
original. 'State of Mind'
was a fantasy about a
man who got pissed off
at modern civilization.
He said, 'I'm gonna
secede from the Union.'
So he did. I thought it
was a helluva good idea!
(Still a cute play, but it's
not produced anymore.) I
adapted my second
Mergenthwirker/Lobblies
story as a television play,
and then there was a
third one.

''Then came Exiles in

Time (1949), my one
novel. It was the
Ragnarok story, when the
Lemurian civilization
was knocked off by a
comet striking the earth.
(Now they're worrying
about that again.) The
project was to have been
a series of four books
published independently
and ending with that one,
set in the future, but then
the publisher, Jim
Williams of Prime Press,
died, and the project died
with him.

''August Derleth, who I

had known and
corresponded with for
years, asked me for a
collection of newer
stories for Arkham
House, and when I put
together Nightmares
and Daydreams, to fill it
out I wrote the original
poem 'I'll Report', which
was the only one of my
verses that ever appeared
in book form. But I
always had a desire to
write poetry, good or bad
or indifferent. For the
pulps, I wrote narrative-
length poems 'The Ballad
of Blaster Bill', 'The
Ballad of Venus Nell',
and a few others. I
submitted a long poem
entirely written in iambic
pentameter to Blue Book,
and the editor said,
'Nelson, you know Blue
Book doesn't print
poetry.' I rewrote it in
paragraph form and
resubmitted it, and he
bought it. So 'Life Goes
On' is a poem which
actually scans, if you
read it that way!

''My favorite stories?

With great affection, I
remember 'Mr.
Mergenthwirker's
Lobblies', because it got
me started off on a
writing career. I think
one of the best stories I
ever wrote was 'The
Sportsman'. Although I
am not a religious
person, I wrote a number
of stories based on Bible
legends or stories, to the
point where, I am told,
one of the science fiction
conventions proposed a
question, 'If you were
cast aside on a desert
island, what ten books
would you like to have
with you?' and somebody
said, 'The Bible, as
rewritten by Nelson
Bond'! I did the Cain and
Abel story in 'The
Cunning of the Beast',
 the Adam and Eve story
in 'Another World
Begins', a number of
interpretive things that
said, 'This is how it could
really have happened.'

''I wrote six to eight

50,000-60,000-word
novels, but I never wrote
one of those monstrous
300,000-word things you
read nowadays, and I
don't think I would have
been able to, because one
of my axioms of writing
has always been that
good stories are not
written - they're
rewritten. I would talk a
story into the dictaphone,
Betty would type it, then
I would revise it, and it
was always shorter,
because I cut it down,
trimmed. The story had
to be packed tight
together. So I was fair at
10,000 words, good at
5,000 words, and
excellent sometimes at
2,500. The shorter the
Bond, the better the
story, as proven by 'Vital
Factor' and a few stories
like that.

James Joyce and the Language of

History: Dedalus's Nightmare
Author(s): Robert Spoo

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA, Year: 1994

ISBN: 0195087496,9780195087499

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Amazon.com

Description:
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake." Stephen Dedalus's famous
complaint articulates a characteristic modern attitude toward the perceived burden of the
past. As Robert Spoo shows in this study, Joyce's creative achievement, from the time
of his sojourn in Rome in 1906-07 to the completion of Ulysses in 1922, cannot be
understood apart from the ferment of historical thought that dominated the nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries. Tracing James Joyce's historiographic art to its formative
contexts, Spoo reveals a modernist author passionately engaged with the problem of
history, forging a new language that both dramatizes and redefines that problem.
Spookiest Stories Ever: Four Seasons of
Kentucky Ghosts

Author(s): Roberta Simpson Brown, Lonnie E. Brown

Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky, Year: 2010

ISBN: 0813125952,9780813125954

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Description:
If tree branches scratching at your window on a stormy April night or the hot, sticky
oppression of a stifling summer's day puts fear into your heart. Or rustling November
leaves, and the chill that sneaks into your bones during the darkened days of winter
makes you quiver with anxiety, then reading spooky thrillers shouldn't wait until
October.From masterful storytelling duo Roberta and Lonnie Brown comes Spookiest
Stories Ever: Four Seasons of Kentucky Ghosts, a creepy collection of tales from their
home state. Featuring familiar Kentucky landmarks such as the Palace Theater and the
Waverly Hills Sanatorium in Louisville and Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, these
accounts from across the commonwealth are sure to put a tingle in the reader's
spine.These notable stories, including tales of the "chime child" who can see and talk to
ghosts, graveside appearances, and the Spurlington Witch of Taylor County, occur in all
four seasons and come from every corner of Kentucky. An essential part of the
American storytelling tradition, these ghost stories will delight readers who love getting
goose bumps all year long.

Fungi

Author(s): Brian Spooner, Peter Roberts

Series: Collins New Naturalist

Publisher: HarperCollins UK, Year: 2005

ISBN: 0002201526,9780002201520

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Description:
A comprehensive account of the natural history of fungi, from their lifestyle, habitats
and ecology to their uses for humans. Brian Spooner and Peter Roberts are both widely
respected experts in fungi from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. In this highly
authoritative guide they examine all aspects of fungi, from their lifestyle and habitats to
their diverse reproductive strategies. With practical tips on collecting, preserving and
identifying fungi, this is an ideal reference guide for enthusiastic amateurs and
professionals alike.

Libertario en 30 días

Author(s): Robert Wenzel; Henry Hazlitt; Llewellyn Rockwell; Wilhelm Röpke;

Ludwig von Mises; Yuri N. Maltsev; Murray N. Rothbard; David Gordon; Thomas J.
DiLorenzo; Lysander Spooner; Walter Block; Robert Higgs

Publisher: Mises Hispano

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Without Copyrights: Piracy, Publishing,
and the Public Domain

Author(s): Robert Spoo

Series: Modernist Literature and Culture

Publisher: Oxford University Press, Year: 2013

ISBN: 0199927871,9780199927876

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Description:
The names of James Joyce and Ezra Pound ring out in the annals of literary modernism,
but few recognize the name of Samuel Roth. A brash, business-savvy entrepreneur,
Roth made a name--and a profit--for himself as the founding editor and owner of
magazines that published selections from foreign writings--especially the risqué parts--
without permission. When he reprinted segments of James Joyce's epochal novel
Ulysses, the author took him to court.

Without Copyrights tells the story of how the clashes between authors, publishers, and
literary "pirates" influenced both American copyright law and literature itself. From its
inception in 1790, American copyright law offered no or less-than-perfect protection for
works published abroad--to the fury of Charles Dickens, among others, who sometimes
received no money from vast sales in the United States. American publishers avoided
ruinous competition with each other through "courtesy of the trade," a code of etiquette
that gave informal, exclusive rights to the first house to announce plans to issue an
uncopyrighted foreign work. The climate of trade courtesy, lawful piracy, and the
burdensome rules of American copyright law profoundly affected transatlantic writers
in the twentieth century. Drawing on previously unknown legal archives, Robert Spoo
recounts efforts by James Joyce, Ezra Pound, Bennett Cerf--the founder of Random
House--and others to crush piracy, reform U.S. copyright law, and define the public
domain.

Featuring a colorful cast of characters made up of frustrated authors,

anxious publishers, and willful pirates, Spoo provides an engaging
history of the American public domain, a commons shaped by custom
as much as by law, and of piracy's complex role in the culture of
creativity.

By Bud Webster

Nelson Bond

"Past Masters." That's a pretty generic title for a column that features tiny slices of
obscure science fiction history. Why that title? It's glib, it's inclusive without being
specific, and it permits me to do pretty much what I want to do. As a rule, this is an
advantage.

Sometimes, however, it's necessary to do that which I'd just as soon not have to do, as is
the case with this installment. This time, I'm going to use the rubric of "Past Master" in
a very real and particular sense: to venerate the recently deceased author, Nelson Slade
Bond, who left us only four days ago as I write this.

I'll make no attempt at objectivity this time around, no effort to View Askance From
Lofty Heights. Nelson was a friend, and he deserves better than that from me. His
passing, although certainly not unexpected at the age of 98(!), came not even a week
ago, and it still hurts. I'll run down the usual information, of course, but this isn't an
examination of a writer I've heard of and/or studied, but a tribute to a man that I knew.

I grew up in Roanoke, Virginia, where Nelson and Betty Bond spent most of their
married lives, raising two sons. One of them, Kitt, even dated the younger of my two
sisters a few times. And as a reader from a very early age, I was at least peripherally
aware that there was an AUTHOR in my home town, even though I'd never met him. I
knew he was active in local dramatics, as was I while in high school, but our paths
didn't cross.

Skip ahead a few years, several moves, and a couple of semesters of college in
Richmond. I became active in fandom, attending conventions and cranking out my own
fanzine, which I traded with whoever would trade back. At some point, this brought me
to the attention of a nascent fan organization which called itself the Nelson Bond
Society, which published a clubzine called "The Jinnia Clan Journal" — a reference to
Nelson's Meg and Dayv stories, which took place in a far-future America. They invited
me to join, and I did, partly because when one first encounters fandom after a lifetime of
segregation from the mainstream one tends to join everything, but mostly because I had
become more familiar with Nelson's stories in the intervening years and looked forward
to finally meeting him.

In 1974, the WorldCon was held in Washington, DC, and I was told that Nelson might
attend. Now, bear in mind that I still had not actually met the man; all I had to go on
were rather crude portraits the JCJ "staff artist" did of him, which showed an older man
with a neat van Dyke. When I saw someone fitting this description at the "Meet the
Pros" party at DisCon II, I approached him and asked if he was Nelson Bond. Nodding
gravely, the gentleman in question replied, "Yes, as a matter of fact, I am L. Sprague de
Camp."

For the next fifteen minutes or so, de Camp alternated between regaling me with stories
of the old days when he'd known Nelson, and asking me questions about what Nelson
was doing now. "Christ," I recall him saying when I hastily apologized for the mistaken
identity and explained. "I didn't even know Nelson was still alive!"

This was to be a typical response by other SF writers when I mentioned Nelson to them:
story after story about him, and surprise that he was still around.

Nelson's first SF story was "Down the Dimensions" in the April 1937 Astounding, but
this followed two years of humor, romance and sports stories. In fact, for the first four
years of his writing career, the vast majority of his sales were to the sports pulps. His
final story, "Proof of the Pudding," was published in the October/November, 1999
Asimov's by direct invitation of then-editor Gardner Dozois after Nelson's well-
deserved (and superbly performed) stint as SFWA's Author Emeritus in 1998. Aside
from one other story, "Pipeline to Paradise" in the Roger Zelazny-edited anthology
Wheel of Fortune (AvoNova 1995), it was his first publication since 1958.

And that is all the faux-academic bibliographica I will impose on you this time.

I did, finally, meet Nelson in 1975, when he agreed to be interviewed for my fanzine
and invited me to visit him and Betty. Betty brought sandwiches and beer (Canadian, of
course), and I asked this fascinating man every question I could think of about his career
in the pulps, his interaction with other writers, and his life-long love for antiquarian
books while a cassette recorder whirred quietly in the middle of the table.

Among the bits and pieces of his writer's life that he passed along to me that afternoon
was the advice he'd given a young Isaac Asimov when he'd boasted of selling his first
story in 1939. Nelson, by then a seasoned vet of four years and more than four dozen
stories, said, "Son, anybody can sell one story. It's the second one that proves you're a
writer." He gave me the same bit of advice decades later after I sold my first yarn.

Harlan Ellison asked him to contribute a story to The Last Dangerous Visions after one
of the younger Bond Society members wrote him saying that the book wouldn't be
complete without one, and so Nelson wrote his first fiction in almost two decades:
"Pipeline to Paradise." When the anthology still hadn't appeared after six years, Nelson
withdrew the story with a sharp letter to editor Ellison. This caused a breach between
the two men, one that was healed in September of 2001 when a group of ex-Bond
Society members and others paid tribute to Nelson and Betty. After a sumptuous lunch
(with a special cake depicting the cover of Nelson's first book), letters from various
writers, editors and publishers who had known and worked with Nelson were read by
those present. In part, the letter from Ellison read:

There have been few writers in my well-read life whose work I've been more in love
with than yours. I came upon you when you were in fullest flower. I was in high school,
1950 I think, and I was a reader of Blue Book magazine. And it was there that I came
across "And Lo! The Bird," which I suspect I've reread more than a hundred times;
suspect I've read it aloud to high school and writing classes possibly half a hundred; and
don't suspect, but KNOW, I've recommended it to readers MORE than a hundred times.

Nelson positively beamed when this letter was read, and all differences between the two
men were forgotten.

Nelson and I shared a love of books, not only as repositories of information, but as
artifacts as well. He was an antiquarian, with a general knowledge of books and their
history that I could never equal in a lifetime. My interests were more specialized, and I
was thrilled on those occasions when he would call me or send e-mail asking about a
specific SF or fantasy title with which he was unfamiliar.

His library was, if not all-encompassing, certainly extensive and eclectic. Among other
things, he had a nearly complete collection of Cabell, and any number of signed first
editions, which he would lovingly pull down and share with those he trusted to handle
them. He had been close friends with Ray Bradbury, and among the treasures on that
particular shelf was a copy of the asbestos-bound edition of Fahrenheit 451, one of only
200 copies, and the first edition of The Illustrated Man which Bradbury not only
warmly inscribed, but in which he drew a sketch of the title character.

Nelson's catalogs were witty and frequently contained hoax titles, such as the
autobiography of one Irene Wanda, who married first Howard Hughes and then Henry
Kissinger, resulting in the title I. Wanda Hughes Kissinger Now. They were also
sprinkled by bits of light, if perfectly scansioned, verse which were tied to specific
books, such as this from one of his 1970s lists, referring to a H. P. Lovecraft book, and
titled "Nyarlathotep is Petohtalrayn Spelled Backwards:"

I never subscribed to the Cthulhu cult.

I certainly don't denounce it,
But the reason I never joined it is
Because I cannot pronounce it.
Over the years, Nelson was warm, generous with his time and potables, incisive and
insightful when reading one of my stories before I sent it out ("Remember," he told me
more than once. "Great stories aren't written, they're re-written."). He was both funny
and witty, and would laugh as hard at my jokes as I did at his.

He could also be acerbic and stern, as any number of people around him (including me)
discovered when there were disagreements, but in every case, he was the epitome of an
old-fashioned gentleman. I regret now that I didn't call him more often, but as has been
pointed out to me, had I called him once a week I'd feel badly that I didn't call twice a
week.

Over the years, a lot of Nelson's stories were rescued from potential obscurity by
anthologists who knew good stuff when they saw it. "Conqueror's Isle," perhaps his
most commonly reprinted story, appeared in no fewer than eight anthologies, "And Lo!
The Bird" in a half dozen, and the breathtaking "Magic City" stayed in print for decades
though its publication in Anthony Boucher's massive A Treasury of Great Science
Fiction, which was kept alive and very much kicking through the SF Book Club. This
is, perhaps, the anthology in which many — if not most — young readers first
encountered Nelson's playful, intricate prose.

Much of Nelson's work, however, remains unreprinted. In the case of the sports stories,
this was fine with him; he recognized them for what they were, bread-and-butter yarns
intended to keep a roof over his head. However, there have never been definitive
collections of some of his most famous characters: Squaredeal Sam McGhee, Pat
Pending, and Horse-Sense Hank remain out of print, barring a singleton reprint here and
there. Perhaps this can be rectified in the future.

It's customary in these sorts of things to say something along the lines of "We'll not see
his like again." Well, yes, but that's practically universal, and hardly does anyone
justice, let alone someone who was the master craftsman that Nelson was. He was one
of the very few remaining links with our shared history, one of the last of the Giants. In
the words of Lord Buckley, he stomped upon the Terra, and left his mark not only on
the readers he touched, but the other writers with whom he shared pages.

I'll miss your laugh, Nelson, and your grace and honesty. May the earth rest lightly on
you.

A Brief Bond Bibliography (books only)

 Mr. Merganthwirker's Lobblies (Coward-McCann, 1946)

 Exiles of Time (Prime Press, 1949; Paperback Library, 1965)
 The Thirty-First of February (Gnome Press, 1949)
 The Remarkable Exploits of Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman (Doubleday, 1950;
Wildside, 2000)
 The Postal Stationary of Canada (Herman Herst, 1953)
 No Time Like the Future (Avon, 1954)
 Nightmares and Daydreams (Arkham House, 1968)
 The Far Side of Nowhere (Arkham House, 2002)
 That Worlds May Live (Wildside, 2003)
 Other Worlds Than Ours (Arkham House, 2005 )
 Back to index

PW Talks with Nelson Bond

by Ben P. Indick
Interview with Nelson Bond as featured in Publisher's Weekly.

PW:  As a veteran SF/fantasy writer, you haven't published for

decades. Now Arkham House is issuing your story collection,
The Far Side of Nowhere. How did that come about? 

NB: A couple of years ago, Peter Ruber [Arkham House's editor]

wrote and asked me if I had enough uncollected stories for a big
collection. A contract was signed, the table of contents was
decided. The rest is history.

PW: You're a Virginian, yet your stories are often set in New York. Where did you
grow up?

NB: I was made in Canada and my mother wanted me to be born in the United States,
so she moved to Scranton, Pa., where I was born. My family moved to Philadelphia
after World War I. I went to public schools there and to Marshall College in West
Virginia, where I met and married my dear wife. 

PW: How did you get into writing?

NB: I started out writing sports stories, but then wrote "Mr. Mergenthwerker's
Lobblies," which was bought by Scribner's magazine. "Mr. Mergenthwerker" was also
bought by radio, and someone wrote the serial for 13 weeks. I thought, hell, he's getting
all the script money, I can write it myself. I later sold about 200 radio scripts. When
radio shifted over to television, so did I, and I adapted "Mr. Mergenthwerker's Lobblies"
for NBC in 1946. It was the first full-length television play ever performed, live, on
network TV, which then consisted of Washington, New York and Boston. Then I wrote
he adaptation of Animal Farm, still running in two versions, one musical, by Peter Hall,
of which I have a piece.

PW: Didn't you also sell to magazines like Esquire and Blue Book?

NB: I wrote more for Blue Book than I did for the penny-a-word pulps. It paid so much
more and was such a prestigious magazine, it became my number one market.

PW: Was Donald Kennicott of Blue Book your favorite editor?

NB: Donald became not only my favorite editor but one of my closest friends. Donald
never presumed to edit a writer's stories. He would call me up and say, "Nelson, I think
you should consider page 13," and more often than not it required revision. He scorned
paying by the word--he said, "I'm paying for your name on the cover." He started me
out at $350 a story and gradually raised that to $500 and $750. Back in the 1940s that
was pretty good money. 

PW: Did you ever write for Hollywood?

NB: I had a very disappointing experience in Hollywood. Several people, including Rod
Serling, urged me to come out there. I got promises, promises, nothing ever happened.
So after I'd been out there about four months and spent all my money, I came home with
my tail between my legs. My only screenplay was for the Department of Forestry.

PW: Were you influenced by other writers?

NB: Not consciously, but subconsciously. I must have admired Damon Runyon. In the
envoi to The Far Side of Nowhere, I said that stories come spontaneously. Writing is not
an option. It's a compulsion. I never started writing a story until I knew the last
sentence. That way I knew where I was going and could not wait to get there. Once the
opening and final sentences were the same: "I wonder what it feels like to be dead."

PW: Have you influenced other writers?

NB: At the first World Science Fiction Convention in 1939, a little skinny guy, as
skinny as I am, came running up to me and said, "Mr. Bond, I just sold my first story."
"Congratulations," I said. "I suppose you have a drawer full. Forget them. The second
story must be better, and then they'll know you can repeat." Years later, Isaac Asimov
wrote to me and said, "Thank you for the best advice I ever had."

BUY THE BOOK

BOOK REVIEW

In memory of Nelson Bond

 By Mike Allen | The Roanoke Times
 May 18, 2008
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Let me tell you about a man I knew named Nelson Bond.

He wrote a ton of short stories, more than 250, most of them with a fantasy or science-
fiction theme, most of them published in the 1930s, '40s, and '50s.

He wrote scripts for radio and even for television in the days when the studios were
based in New York, not Hollywood. He lived most of his long life in the Roanoke
Valley, where after he retired from writing, he first ran a public relations company, then
a book store.

Toward the end of his life, he received awards and new recognition for his literary
legacy -- but perhaps none of it excited him more than the news that Marshall
University in West Virginia, his alma mater, intended not just to archive his papers, but
to re-create the office in his Roanoke County home where he wrote his other-worldly
stories.

Though Nelson didn't live to see it -- he died in 2006, just shy of his 98th birthday --
Marshall University unveiled the Nelson Bond Room last month. It's on the third floor
of the James E. Morrow Library, behind a plate glass window. The same metal shelves
that once lined the walls in his basement display copies of the magazines that hold his
stories, with cover art ranging from the elegant paintings adorning issues of Bluebook
magazine to the garish science fiction scenes fronting copies of Weird Tales and
Thrilling Wonder Stories.

Also displayed: the cumbersome Dictaphone set that Nelson used to compose his
stories, with a lot of help from his wife Betty, who still lives in Roanoke. Nelson would
dictate his stories, and Betty, the faster typist, would transcribe them. Nelson would
revise, and dictate the changes for Betty to type, as many as five times per story.

I never saw the Dictaphone while Nelson was alive -- it had been placed in storage long
before we met.

How I met Nelson

When I first heard of Nelson Bond, he seemed more like an urban legend than a real
person -- a science-fiction writer who worked for radio and television, living right here
in Roanoke.

Though I was (and still am) an avid reader of science fiction, fantasy and horror, I'd
never run across Nelson's work. Yet his reputation only seemed to loom larger as I
studied for my master's degree in creative writing at Hollins College, and the program's
director, Richard Dillard, frequently made reference to Nelson's stories, speaking with
fondness of Nelson's sense of humor and knack for quirky dialogue.

In 1995, the year after I graduated, I finally met Nelson. As a fledgling writer, I confess
I felt a bit intimidated when I pulled into the driveway of his home in the suburbs near
Sugar Loaf Mountain -- what would the "dean of Roanoke writers," as he'd been called
in this newspaper, make of me?

Nelson turned out to be small in size but not in demeanor. If I began a sentence with,
"You know," he immediately cut in, "No, I don't know."
He would emphasize points in conversation by quoting entire poems -- even Middle
English passages from the Canterbury Tales -- from memory.

Though he'd been brusque and businesslike on the phone, he was more cordial in
person, and it wasn't long before he led me to the book shop in his basement and started
showing me treasures, such as a copy of Ray Bradbury's "The Illustrated Man" in which
the author -- a fan of Nelson's writing -- had drawn a man in one color ink and tattoos
on the man's body in another color.

My visit became the first of many. When I asked him to sign a book I discovered one of
his more charming quirks.

Instead of autographing the book then and there, he'd take it into his book shop, which
was also his office, to think about what he'd write. Sometimes he returned the book after
a few minutes. Sometimes you picked it up the next time you came by.

He always had the television tuned to a channel with a stock ticker, and he took great
pride in his business acumen. He bragged about how the IRS once audited his book
business and couldn't find a single mistake.

As I learned more about him, I came to understand why, despite his revered reputation
-- authors as diverse as Sharyn McCrumb and Neil Gaiman have expressed admiration
for him -- I had never run across any of his stories.

As a writer, Nelson followed the money. As he was always quick to point out, he wasn't
truly a science-fiction writer. He wrote detective and sports stories when they were
popular, then fantasy stories, which sold well for him and earned the most money in his
halcyon days.

When radio began to supplant the pulp magazines, he wrote scripts. When television
started to take over, he was there -- but when television broadcasting moved from New
York to Hollywood in the late 1950s, he found he could no longer make money writing
the way he wanted, using his own stories, his own ideas.

Out of frustration, he quit writing altogether. Though his stories continued to make
impressions on those who encountered them, most of his work was out of print.

Rediscovering his stories

I made an effort to find his books and discovered a writer of intense imagination with a
knack for whip-crack smart-aleck dialogue. My favorite story was "The Fountain,"
about a rich, hateful miser who drinks from the Fountain of Youth and undergoes a
remarkable transformation -- as he grows younger, he forgets the grudges he
accumulated as he grew old, and sets about undoing the damage he's caused in the lives
of others. It's a tragic story, but also a story of redemption.

When I asked him to tell me about how he created "The Fountain," he said he no longer
knew what was on the mind of the young man who wrote it.
As I stood outside the Nelson Bond Room after the dedication ceremony, a young
reporter interviewed Bond's sons, Lynn and Kit.

Lynn Bond said that his father believed every person should leave a mark, and toward
the end of his life, despite the acclaim and the honors he'd received, he worried he
hadn't left one himself.

Lynn told the reporter, "This is his mark."

For my part, I felt, in that room, some of the same old delight I'd felt in those visits to
Nelson's book shop -- that sense of being a kid again, opening a box full of delightful
new toys. Had Nelson been there, I wonder what he would have shown me.