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Stardrift and Other Fantastic Flotsam

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Though he had more than 150 short stories published throughout his long career, "Stardrift and other Fantastic Flotsam" is Emil Petaja's only short story collection. It contains 14 of the author's fantastic tales (as chosen by Petaja), along with an introduction by Forrest J. Ackerman. (The artwork of Petaja's favorite artist and lifelong friend, Hannes Bok, adorns the dust jacket and endpapers of this 1971 collection.)

In the introduction, Ackerman states, "Through the years I have thought of Emil Petaja as a kind of literary chameleon. . . . In the fantasies of Petaja one comes upon elfin echoes of A. Merritt, crystalline concepts of Clark Ashton Smith and horrors out of Lovecraft. . . . He is an old soul, a talent surviving from the Golden Age." Apt words, for Petaja - who corresponded with Lovecraft and was a close friend with Clark Ashton Smith - was a bridge between two eras. He was - in the old fashioned sense of the term - a writer of "weird fiction."

The tenor of these sometimes moody, atmospheric works might well be suggested by the tagline for "The Answer" which appeared when the story was first published in 1951. "He had strangled Lisa many times in his dreams. But always, as she died, the phone rang. Did he dare to pick it up and answer the call?"

There is a touch of Saki and John Collier in "Found Objects" and "Dark Balcony," while "Only Gone Before" and "Dark Hollow" are horror in the Lovecraft vein. "A Dog's Best Friend" makes a grim social comment, while "Moon Fever" and "Peacemonger" are science fiction with a twist. Those who have enjoyed Petaja's well-regarded Kalevala novels (based on the Finnish epic he so loved) will be pleased to find an Otava story in "Pattern for Plunder." "Dodecagon Garden" examines what a hip planet might be like, if. . . . Also included in this 220-page collection are the title story, as well as "Where Is Thy Sting," "Hunger," "Dark Balcony," and the amusing "Be a Wingdinger, Earn Big Money." Some of these stories, it should be noted, first appeared in the pulps of the Golden Age - publications such as Amazing Stories, Fantastic Adventures, and Weird Tales.

Emil Petaja (1915 - 2000) wrote all kinds of stories - fantasy, science fiction, horror, mystery, detective fiction, and even westerns. He was a member of the Mystery Writers of America and the Science Fiction Writers of America. (In 1995, Petaja was honored as the first ever Author Emeritus by the SFWA.) "Stardrift and other Fantastic Flotsam" is an all-too-slight sampling of the fantastic fiction of a gifted, though now neglected writer.