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More Tales of the Black Widowers

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More Tales of the Black Widowers
Cover of first edition, 1976
AuthorIsaac Asimov
Cover artistLawrence Ratzkin[1]
LanguageEnglish
SeriesBlack Widowers
GenreMystery short stories
PublisherDoubleday
Publication date
1976
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardcover)
Preceded byTales of the Black Widowers 
Followed byCasebook of the Black Widowers 

More Tales of the Black Widowers is a collection of mystery short stories by American author Isaac Asimov, featuring his fictional club of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers. It was first published in hardcover by Doubleday in October 1976, and in paperback by the Fawcett Crest imprint of Ballantine Books in November 1977. The first British edition was issued by Gollancz in April 1977.[2]

This book is the second of six that describe mysteries solved by the Black Widowers, based on a literary dining club he belonged to known as the Trap Door Spiders.[3] It collects twelve stories by Asimov, nine reprinted from mystery or science fiction magazines and three previously unpublished, together with a general introduction, and an afterword following each story by the author. Each story involves the club members' knowledge of trivia.

Contents

  • "Introduction"
  • "When No Man Pursueth"—The guest, Mortimer Stellar, is based on Asimov himself. John H. Jenkins writes, "Mortimer Stellar, a prolific writer (modeled on somebody who will go nameless but whose initials are Isaac Asimov), is enormously frustrated because an article he written has been bought — but never published. Nor will the publisher let him have it back to publish elsewhere. (This is a frustration, one supposes, that only Asimov or someone like him could truly feel.) This is a reasonably good Black Widower story, not perhaps the best but not second-rate, either. And, of course, because Asimov himself is, after a fashion, the guest at the banquet, it's a vaguely interesting poke at himself, too."[4] The title phrase was taken from the King James Version of the Bible, Book of Proverbs 28:1: "The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion."[5]
  • "Quicker Than the Eye"
  • "The Iron Gem"
  • "The Three Numbers"
  • "Nothing Like Murder"
  • "No Smoking"
  • "Season's Greetings!"
  • "The One and Only East"
  • "Earthset and Evening Star" (first published in Fantasy and Science Fiction (August 1976) pages 110-124)
  • "Friday the Thirteenth"
  • "The Unabridged"
  • "The Ultimate Crime"

References

  1. ^ http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pl.cgi?22850
  2. ^ More Tales of the Black Widowers title listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
  3. ^ Asimov 1994, I. Asimov, chapter "120. The Trap Door Spiders".
  4. ^ Jenkins, John H. "When No Man Pursueth". www.asimovreviews.net. Retrieved November 8, 2014.
  5. ^ BibleProtector (2012). "Proverbs 28". Bible Hub. Retrieved November 11, 2014.
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