Vigorish

by John Berryman

This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery.

Genres: Science Fiction, Short Stories

31 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 24, 2011

About the author

Science fiction writer John Berryman, not to be confused with the poet John Berryman.

John Berryman was a US writer and economist who was chief executive officer of a hardware wholesale company; author of some two dozen stories, beginning with "Special Flight" for Astounding in May 1939 and ending with "The Big Dish" (November 1986 Analog). His most anthologized story is "BEROM" (January 1951 Astounding), in which initially incomprehensible visiting Aliens prove to be speaking in a UK commercial telegraph code of the 1920s that they picked up via radio (> Linguistics). "The Trouble with Telstar" (June 1963 Analog) centres on an engineer who travels into space to repair an elusive fault in the indicated Communications satellite (the first experimental AT&T Telstar satellite had been launched into orbit by NASA in July 1962). As Walter Bupp, Berryman also wrote a series of linked Telekinesis tales for Analog in the early 1960s, beginning with "Vigorish" (June 1960 Astounding/Analog). Other short-story pseudonyms under which he appeared were William C. Bailey, used 1951-1953, and Joseph Tinker, used for a single story: "Tinker's Dam" (July 1961 Analog).

Reviews

[Norm Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vigorish, Randall Garrett, Astounding Science Fiction June 1960, Chapterbook, short story or novella.

First, lets talk a little about this story as it is simply difficult to find out what it is about online. In fairness, it is difficult to say all of what it is about as this is really an excellently crafted multi-plot story for how short it is. The story rides on the psychic, telekinetic theme of speculative fiction. This story surfs in gambling crucible and undercurrents of something that is wrong, as would be certain if telekinesis or other superpower psychic-telekinetic were involved in gambling.

Almost unknowingly this (anonymous?) author is sneaking in a love story while you're not noticing. Kind of a psychic backhand during a psychic-telekinetic story. It's rather endearing by the time you catch on. It's also a crime, mystery, and detective story in addition to speculative fiction. Pack that into a story this short and you have an author who has MY respect.

That's all, the rest is gibberish floating around in my head.

1, didn't like it, 2, it was ok, 3, I liked it, 4, really liked it, 5, it was amazing. These old short-science-fiction-collection stories, novellas, or chapterbooks rarely rise about 2, it was ok. This one did. A solid 3 pushing to round up.

Randall Garrett... and or John Berryman, and/or pages of alternate “pen names”, I really like the writer's style of writing. Maybe because I lived on Doc Savage (30s-50s, reissued in 70s) when I was younger and the similar style unconsciously makes me feel... good. I do realize it isn't for everyone and may be dated. This one is still good though. Kind of reminds me of Jim Butcher in his Dresden Files series, which, btw, are also mystical-magical.

I didn't have a clue what vigorish might have meant. Have a better idea now. I looked it up to be sure and realized that in this story it is used for wider meanings than you'll quickly find definition for online.

Coincidentally, Wally Bupp turns out to be our main protagonist's name! Yeah, why the exclamation point? Wally Bupp is one of the many pen names used by the person(s) writing this story.

Technically....
FREE Librovox audio (https://librivox.org/short-science-fi...) A big and sincere thank you to Tim Casey. I know you're a good volunteer contributor to Librovox. I've listened to more than one of your readings. For the consumer... if you have a sound mixer control you should be ok. If not, this recording may be useless. If the volume is really low, you may be able to understand it, but not hear it. If the volume is up so you can hear it, but it sounds like you're in an echo chamber. I may sound bitchy and ungrateful but I'm just trying to alert listeners they may need to make adjustments in order to enjoy the audio should they decide to download it. BTW, I worked on jet engines for years... could be me & my hearing.

I pretty much always read along when the audio is less than 2 hours. So...

Feedbooks, FREE, good epub copy.
Project Gutenberg, FREE, with the normal pages and pages of Project Gutenberg mono-spaced font rendition of details, licenses, etc. It is also where everyone else copied it from.
And this story also available FREE at Amazon.com. Imagine that! I didn't look at the copy.

Finally... The author: I would not venture a guess at who or what produced this story. If you want to know you can start at BOTH these links as they both contain the names of the author attributed to this story at various sources. http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?2193 and or http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?239 which essentially means this could be anybody in the phone book.