THE TIMELESS TALES OF REGINALD BRETNOR

Reviewed by Steven H Silver

Reginald Bretnor is best known for the invention of the "Feghoot," extremely short stories which end with a pun, much like the old "Aesop & Son" sequence on "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show". Beyond Feghoots, perhaps the most available writing of Bretnor are his Schimmelhorn series. Lost in the shuffle seem to be the short stories Bretnor turned out, both under his own name and a variety of pseudonyms. For their very first book, Story Books has decided to issue a collection of fifteen short stories by Reginald Bretnor, as selected and edited by Fred Flaxman. The result is a limited edition book, The Timeless Tales of Reginald Bretnor.

For the too many readers who are completely unfamiliar with Reginald Bretnor's writing, perhaps the stories who comes closest to Bretnor's style and wit are the Azazel stories written by Isaac Asimov during the final years of his life. This style of humor can particularly be seen in the first couple of stories, "Cat," which postulates a college professor who learns the language of cats and teaches courses, and "Maybe Just a Little One," about the atomic power of the element frijolium, extracted from common Mexican beans.

Bretnor's writing has a tall-tale quality to it, reminiscent of the gentleman's club or bar stories which have been a part of SF since its earliest days. However, Bretnor did not feel contrained to have his stories told third hand in the White Hart of Gavagan's. Instead, Bretnor either told them directly, or at one remove, for instance in the case of "Aunt's Flight," in which the narrator's Aunt Trivia flew across the Atlantic Ocean before Charles Lindburgh.

Bretnor has a strong sense of irony, as evidenced in "Cat," which could easily have become a version of Andersen's "The Emperor's New Clothes," and "The Murderer's Circle," in which Bretnor attempts to explain one of the differences between the English and American way of looking at crime.

While none of the stories in The Timeless Tales of Reginald Bretnor can be considered great literature, or even great SF, they are extremely funny and written with just the right light touch. If you are looking for a serious collection of stories, pass this one by and look for another author. Bretnor's sense of humor is always at the forefront of his writing, even when the stories are not laugh out loud funny. The primary problem with The Timeless Tales of Reginald Bretnor is that the book only contains fifteen of Bretnor's stories and readers will be forced to track down more of his writings in used bookstores if they want to read any more.

In the promotional literature which accompanied The Timeless Tales of Reginald Bretnor, Story Books noted that this is their first publication. If they can maintain the same level of quality, both with regard to text and production, Story Books should have a long career as a small press.

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