Saturday, November 14, 2020

STRANGE ESP by Warren Smith












Warren Smith continues his STRANGE saga through Popular Library with this entry from 1969, focused on ESP. There's men with "Computer Eyes" and "IBM Minds" and good ol' "X-Ray Vision!"

Smith revisits railroad tycoon Arthur Stilwell, last seen in Brad Steiger's Beyond Unseen Boundaries. We also get a reprise of the well-worn stories of Clever Hans and Jef (or Gef) the Talking Mongoose. "Doc" Anderson rates two whole chapters, although really the second one could have been folded into the first, being concerned solely with a brief anecdote of Jackie O's post-Camelot nuptials. The predictions listed in his first chapter don't add up to much either, come to think of it! Anderson was a regular subject for Smith and Steiger. Japanese artist Kyoshi Yamashita gets a very unflattering chapter which focuses on his status as an "idiot savant" and doesn't include anything vaguely related to ESP!

There's a heavy load of celebrity entries, including Eartha Kitt, David Niven, and Hypnotist to the Stars Arthur Ellen. Geronimo and Teddy Roosevelt make a fine pair of historical persons tangentially connected to psychic phenomena, while President Garfield's assassin Charles Guiteau takes things in a more sinister direction.


The silliest chapter title in this volume? My money's on "Deadly Vision of Death" ... it's double the deadly!


Popular Library, 1969

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