Most readers would identify Bill Pronzini as a mystery writer best known for his “Namless Detective” series. But, as Pronzini points out in his PREFACE, he started reading Science Fiction and Fantasy early in his youth and started publishing SF and Fantasy stories early in his writing career. High Concepts, just published by STARK HOUSE, collects 34 of Pronzini’s SF and Fantasy stories, some with his writing collaborator, Barry N. Malzberg.

I enjoyed reading these stories–about 70% were new to me. “The Screwiest Job in the World” centers around an agent who investigates oddities that his employer, a multi-millionaire, collects. Of course many of the oddities turn out to be frauds that the agent exposes. But, in this episode, the investigation concerns a talking bear in the wilderness of Alaska. The agent finds the bear…and something else just as strange.

My favorite stories in High Concepts are the “Tales of Luna Immigration” with Barry N. Malzberg. A customs inspector solves some baffling mysteries involving the galactic aliens who go through Luna Immigration facility on their journey to Earth. In “The Lyran Case” the inspector penetrates a scheme involving alien pornography. In “Wither Thou, Ghost” the inspector deals with an alien ghost that escapes into the Luna Immigration facility. If you enjoy locked room mysteries, you’ll going to love “Vanishing Point” where an alien who committed a murder is locked up in a holding cell…and disappears! “Transfer Point” might be the trickiest story of them all and highlights the brilliance of the customs inspector.

Barry N. Malzberg, in his AFTERWORD, asks: “How can a pair of writers really merge a narrative?” High Concepts provides several excellent examples of Pronzini and Malzberg merging their ideas to product first-rate stories. Working together on 75 stories and four novels, Malzberg concludes: “We were thus able to manage collectively what neither could have done alone and it is that which defines good collaboration.”

Of Bill Pronzini’s 20 collections of short stories, High Concepts ranks with his best! GRADE: A

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Preface — 11

• Shadows — 13
• Toy — 22
• High Concept (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 26
• Thirst — 34
• The Screwiest Job in the World — 39
• Reunions (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 51
• I Wish I May, I Wish I Might — 59
• It’s So Wonderful Here — 62
• Eve of Beyond (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 66
• Purple Cow — 74
• Tales of Luna Immigration (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 77
• The Lyran Case — 77
• Whither Thou, Ghost — 80
• Vanishing Point — 84
• Transfer Point — 92
• He Keeps Coming Back — 100
• Ancient Evil — 103
• And Then We Went to Venus — 112
• A Clone at Last (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 120
• The Hungarian Cinch — 122
• Tom — 140
• Pieces (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 146
• Peekaboo — 154
• Paradise Last (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 159
• The Rec Field — 164
• Dry Spell — 170
• Intensified Transmogrification (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 172
• The Coffin Trimmer — 179
• Stretch’s Quirls (with H. L. Gold) — 186
• Never to Happen Again — 193
• Holes — 198
• In the Mists (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 203
• The Being — 210
• Olaf and the Merchandisers (with Barry N. Malzberg) — 214
• The Evergreen Library (with Jeffrey Wallmann) — 221
• AFTERWORD by Barry N. Malzberg — 229
• BIBLIOGRAPHY — 231