Duck-Footed

by Joe R. Lansdale

#517 of 750 Signed Chapbooks. From the publisher's This one needs an explanation. In 1996, when Joe was assembling his first collection of early stories, The Good, the Bad and the Indifferent, and again last year, when ferreting out the tales that would make up For a Few Stories More, he kept talking about a long-ish tale he remembered very fondly, but could never find. Joe made trips into his basement. Came out covered in dust, unfulfilled. Rooted around in his office. Not there, either. I wrote the university library that houses many of his papers. Nope. That story, "Duck-Footed" couldn't be found and included in either collection. Every once in a while he'd mention it to me, but I gave up hope of ever seeing a copy. "Duck-Footed" finally surfaced, and though it's early, never-before-published Lansdale, there?s a freewheeling craziness that shows up later in novels like The Drive-In and Zeppelins West. Join hisownself for another tale set in Mud Creek, one fraught with aliens, bad television, and televangelists. Duck-Footed will be available only from Subterranean Press

Genres: Horror

27 pages, Chapbook

First published January 1, 2003

About the author

Champion Mojo Storyteller Joe R. Lansdale is the author of over forty novels and numerous short stories. His work has appeared in national anthologies, magazines, and collections, as well as numerous foreign publications. He has written for comics, television, film, newspapers, and Internet sites. His work has been collected in more than two dozen short-story collections, and he has edited or co-edited over a dozen anthologies. He has received the Edgar Award, eight Bram Stoker Awards, the Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Grinzani Cavour Prize for Literature, the Herodotus Historical Fiction Award, the Inkpot Award for Contributions to Science Fiction and Fantasy, and many others. His novella Bubba Ho-Tep was adapted to film by Don Coscarelli, starring Bruce Campbell and Ossie Davis. His story "Incident On and Off a Mountain Road" was adapted to film for Showtime's "Masters of Horror," and he adapted his short story "Christmas with the Dead" to film hisownself. The film adaptation of his novel Cold in July was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, and the Sundance Channel has adapted his Hap & Leonard novels for television.

He is currently co-producing several films, among them The Bottoms, based on his Edgar Award-winning novel, with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman, and The Drive-In, with Greg Nicotero. He is Writer In Residence at Stephen F. Austin State University, and is the founder of the martial arts system Shen Chuan: Martial Science and its affiliate, Shen Chuan Family System. He is a member of both the United States and International Martial Arts Halls of Fame. He lives in Nacogdoches, Texas with his wife, dog, and two cats.

Reviews

[Tom Loock · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brief story that Lansdale supposedly brought out of his basement to publish*. Some stories better stay in the drawer, but when you are as famous and popular as Lansdale you can probably sell your laundry list ...
Not a bad story as such, but I doubt it would have sold without the name of the author.

* Ironically I found it myself while doing some (private) library maintenance.

[Geoff · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a chapbook of a lost story Joe brought out of his basement to publish. This is Lansdale when he goes weird, which I always like. It's scary but somehow funny. It's about a bunch of human sized ducks from outer space trying to take over a town by influencing them through a religious television channel. Sound weird? Well it was, and it was also good.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love everything I have read by Joe R Lansdale so far. This was a signed/limited edition chapbook that was published by Subterranean Press. It is about a doctor in his sixties that moves back to a small East Texas town (so far everything I've read by Lansdale takes place in small East Texas towns) to continue to practice medicine after his wife passes away. He soon becomes friends with the local librarian, James Reasoner (I assume he picked this name after another Texas Author James Reasoner), and acting as the coroner, he investigates a suicide victim who is wheel chair bound in front of a TV. Seems the gentleman was watching a Televangelist on TV and ended up shooting himself in the foot, then shot the TV, and then shot himself. The story progresses into a humorous, sci-fi type horror story with Aliens, Ducks, and Televangelists that would have worked quite well as an episode on the Twilight Zone, especially with CGI available today.

[Brett]

As usual, fantastical!