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INTRODUCTION

“Time for Us Runs Slow”

My journey looking into the life and work of Alan Nelson has been a long one. It began in the 1980s when I was preparing to publish a small chapbook collecting some of his stories. I’ve always been a reader, and hence a fan. I believe that all publishing, editing, and writing in some manner comes from that initial love of reading. I’ve been a fan of Alan Nelson’s whimsical, witty, wonderful fantasy stories for decades. His Doctor Departure stories are masterpieces, but he wrote many other short stories that never fail to hit the mark and are just as good. Maybe even better!

These Doctor Departure stories, with a few others, I collected into a small chapbook many years ago—appropriately entitled Doctor Departure and Others (Gryphon Books, 1989), and I am now proud to offer this new complete Wildside Press collection of Man in A Hurry. It is well warranted, and it is about time!

Alan Nelson was not a prolific writer, and as far as I know he wrote (or at least had published) only short stories. No novels. However, these stories are true gems. They originally appeared in some of the most prestigious venues for short fiction of the 1940s and 1950s. Many of Nelson’s fantasy tales first appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, where they were very popular, but his stories also appeared in Bluebook, Weird Tales, and even Cosmopolitan. Wherever these appeared, readers could always be assured that any Alan Nelson story would be something special, something that would be great fun to read and eminently entertaining—often thoughtful—always wonderful!

Initially I found very little information about the man. It seemed that details on the life of Nelson are scarce, but I have been able to cobble together information from various sources that hopefully will give you some measure of the man and his work.

Alan Nelson was a long time resident of San Francisco, and a man who by all accounts loved the feeling and flavor of that unique city very much.

The September, 1952 issue of the pulp Bluebook includes a photo of Nelson (perhaps the only published photo of him ever), with a brief description written by the editor, and even adding some input from Nelson himself:

“Pot Luck” (pages 88-91) is Alan Nelson’s second story for Bluebook, having his previous “No Strings Attached” in the May issue. A life-long resident of the San Francisco area, Mr. Nelson explains that “Pot Luck” came as the result of his having stepped into a health-food store to light his pipe in shelter from a high wind, which action netted him an hour’s lecture from the clerk on vitamins, soy-bean flour and how to get juice from a carrot. Mr. Nelson remained unsold, however. “I was broke, having just bought a fifth of Scotch. The clerk seemed disappointed, but, after all, you can’t get blood from a turnip.” We think you’ll get some laughs from “Pot Luck,” however. Try it and see.

Nelson’s stories were published during the golden age of pulp fiction, and of science fiction—the 1940s and the 1950s. In each story he paints a fine, intricate tapestry with his words, building very human and humane fantasies and incorporating some very unique ideas. All his stories are hallmarked by wit, satire and just plain fun—often ending with some unexpected twist of satisfying ironic justice. In “Narapoia” a play on the word “paranoia,” and the first Doctor Departure story, a man is convinced people are plotting to do him good. It is a wild and witty romp. In “The Shopdropper,” Doctor Manly J. Departure returns to solve one of his most bizarre cases—featuring a man who is a klepto-kleptomaniac. In “Cavitto,” we are treated to the horror of a hand with a mind of its own. In “The City Where No One Dies,” Nelson gives us a tale of murder, and the mysterious city of Kala Kurghan, that I am sure Poe himself would have been proud of!

In his foreword to Nelson’s “Professor Ptaff’s Last Recital,” legendry editor and critic August Derleth called the story “…a study in cruelty and revenge which is sufficiently memorable to excite some comparison with Poe.”

Noted science fiction scholar Sam Moskowitz told me in an August 27, 1985 letter that “Man in A Hurry” was one of his all-time favorites, which he re-read about once a year. He called it a masterpiece.

August Derleth offered the following notes in his anthology The Night Side:

Alan Nelson was born in 1911 [in an earlier letter to Derleth, Nelson told him that he was born in Las Cruces, New Mexico on December 11, 1911]. He was a Californian writer who graduated from the University of California in 1934, and since that time he has worked as a janitor, bank clerk, truck driver, social worker, etc. Especially fond of the off-trail story, Mr. Nelson’s work has appeared in Cosmopolitan, Weird Tales, Esquire and Good Housekeeping. This is his initial anthology representation.

However, it would not be Nelson’s last anthology appearance. Of the four magazines mentioned above by Derleth, I could only find Nelson’s work that originally appeared in Weird Tales and Cosmopolitan, both of which stories have been reprinted here. The stories appearing in the other two magazines may be rare undiscovered tales, or more probably originals of his very popular and often anthologized earlier tales, and may be reprinted in this volume.

Noted science fiction scholar and author Reginald Bretnor wrote to me in a letter of February 23, 1990 about Alan Nelson:

I first met Alan at a writer’s group to which we both belonged, and so heard him read some of the stories aloud. We were friends for quiet a number of years, but after he took a job (I believe writing advertising), we saw little of him and of Gina. He was an excellent writer, and I am delighted to see that at long last an entire volume of his work is in print.

In a later April 17, 1990 letter, Bretnor added the following:

When Rosalie and I first knew Alan, he was married to a rather older woman named Ora, who had a small boy from a previous marriage, and he was definitely unhappy. They were eventually divorced, and his second marriage, to Gina, was much happier. As I recall, he had spent a couple of years in Europe—Eastern, as I recall—and had also spent some time in a TB sanitarium, As I may have mentioned, we belonged to a very useful writers’ group which we called the Koffee Klatch, ramrodded by Lloyd Eric Reeve, who taught writing in UC’s Extension Division, and was one of the best teachers of writing in the country. Most of us met each other because we had taken one or another of his courses. Anyhow, that’s where I heard Alan read most of these stories aloud when they were first written. When he wrote “The Gualcophone,” I cobbled up a very impressive Gualcophone, complete with labels and such, from all sorts of bits and pieces, and Helen (my first wife) and I presented it to him when we went over to San Francisco to have dinner with them.

In that February, 1990 letter Reg Bretnor was of course referring to my 1989 collection of Nelson stories; however I would like to think that he would heartily approve of this far more inclusive collection—and I believe you will also.

Alan Nelson passed away in 1966 at only 55 years of age. Too young for anyone, but far too young for such a talented writer. However, by that time his stories were regularly being reprinted in leading book anthologies and most of them have since become classics. Of course, the next best thing to reading an Alan Nelson story for the first time is to be able to share them with new readers. I hope this new edition of Man in A Hurry will pass on to you some of the delight and sense of wonder I have always enjoyed in the fantasy stories of Alan Nelson. You’re in for a real treat!

Gary Lovisi

Brooklyn, N.Y.

June 1, 2013