Through the Jukebox: Five Jukebox Science Fiction Short Stories

By Dean Wesley Smith

Dean Wesley Smith, famous for being one of the most prolific and wide ranging authors working today, draws on his library of science fiction stories to produce this collection of short stories from his famous jukebox series.

Through the Jukebox collects five of the award-nominated and bestselling stories. The collection opens with “Jukebox Gifts,” a story of four friends getting a chance to change their own pasts as a Christmas present. The collection ends with “Black Betsy,” a story about how a regular in the Garden Lounge uses the jukebox to not only meet Shoeless Joe Jackson, but to right a horrible wrong.

Discover why Dean’s jukebox stories remain favorites of his many fans.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Apr 18, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386429289

Dean Wesley Smith

Dean Wesley Smith is the bestselling author of over ninety novels under many names. He has written books and comics for Marvel, DC Comics, and Dark Horse, as well as scripts for Hollywood. Over his career, he also worked as an editor and publisher for Pulphouse Publishing and Pocket Books. Currently, he writes thrillers and mysteries under one of his many pseudonyms.

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Introduction

About forty or so years ago, I was tending bar in this place called The Moscow Mule (yes, the bar that invented the drink).

One fine spring afternoon a song playing on the jukebox caught my attention and yanked me back to a memory from about ten years before of a fun evening with a date.

It was a good memory of fun and laughter.

From the outside it must have seemed as if I had left the bar. One of the regulars sitting at the bar finally said, Earth to Dean.

I was that far gone into the memory.

So as a writer who had sold a few short stories at that point, I figured what a fun idea that would be, to have a jukebox actually take a person out of a setting and back to the memory for the length of the song only.

I know for two minutes or so I wouldn’t have minded going back to the memory associated with that song.

The key to the idea was that the person traveling back into their younger self had their future memories and could change the memory and thus change the future.

(I liked my old memory, no desire to change anything, but we writers tend to twist things.)

So off I went later the next day to my trusty electric typewriter.

I remember I wrote that first attempt at a jukebox story and immediately ruined it by rewriting it to death. (I was in that phase of my learning at that point. And copies of that story are long gone, burnt up in a house fire.)

A year or so later I tried another story with the idea.

Again failure.

All form rejections and I honestly didn’t feel like I had done the idea justice.

Five years later I tried again. This time the story sold to Twilight Zone Magazine but came out in its sister publication Night Cry Magazine.

I still didn’t feel like I had done the idea any justice at all, so I tried again.

Same basic idea of the time travel jukebox.

The next attempt turned out the story Jukebox Gifts, the first story in this collection. It sold to the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.

From there I kept writing jukebox stories. And they kept selling.

One point that bothered me along the way was that I never once knew the origin of the jukebox. I would try to figure it out and always fail. So I just wrote the stories with the characters not knowing how the jukebox did what it did.

Finally, two years ago, forty years after I came up with the idea, I wrote a novel in my Thunder Mountain western time travel series that ended up being the origin of the jukebox. Finally I figured it out.

The novel is called Melody Ridge: A Thunder Mountain Novel and is in Smith’s Monthly #21 and is also out as a stand-alone novel if, after reading this collection, you are interested in how the jukebox was built.

For me, a simple idea blossomed into twenty or so short stories and then a novel over forty years of time.

Sort of real time travel.

I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I enjoyed writing them over the years. And I hope as time goes on there will be more jukebox stories. Even after forty years, I’m sure not tired of the idea.

Thanks for reading.

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—Dean Wesley Smith

Lincoln City, Oregon

A bar, five friends, and a very special jukebox that lets you time travel back to a memory for the length of the song.

What could go wrong with giving such a special trip and the gift of a second chance to each of your closest friends?

First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction way back in 1994, this story kicked off my Jukebox Series of stories, even though the first real Jukebox Story was published in Night Cry Magazine in the 1980s.

For those wondering, the Jukebox Stores are tied to the Thunder Mountain series of novels.

1

The stereo behind the bar was playing soft Christmas songs as I clicked the lock to the front entrance of the Garden Lounge and flicked off the outside light. I could feel the cold of the night through the wood door and the heat of the room surrounding me. I took a deep breath. Christmas Eve was finally here.

I could see the entire lounge and the backs of my four best friends sitting at the bar. I had never been much into decorating with Christmas stuff, and this year was no different. My only nod to the season was a small Christmas candle for each table and booth. Some customer had tied a red ribbon on one of the plants over the middle booth, and the Coors driver had put up a Christmas poster declaring Coors to be the official beer of Christmas. The candles still flickered on the empty tables, but the rest of the bar looked normal. Dark brown wood walls, dark brown carpet, an old oak bar, and my friends. The most important part was the friends. My four best friends’ lives were as empty as mine. Tonight, on the first Christmas Eve since I bought the bar, I was going to give them a chance to change that. That was my present to them. It was going to be an interesting night.

All right, Stout, Carl said, twisting his huge frame around on his bar stool so that he could face me as I wound my way back across the room between the empty tables and chairs. Just what’s such a big secret that you kick out that young couple and lock the door at seven o’clock on Christmas Eve?

I laughed. Carl always got right to the point. With big Carl you always knew exactly where you stood.

Yeah, Jess said from his usual place at the oak bar beside the waitress station, What’s so damned important you don’t want the four of us to even get off our stools? Jess was the short one of the crowd. When he stood next to Carl the top of Jess’s head barely reached Carl’s neck. Jess loved to play practical jokes on Carl. Carl hated it.

This, I said as I pulled the custom-made, felt cover off the old Wurlitzer jukebox and, with a flourish, dropped the cloth over the planter and into the empty front booth. My stomach did a tap dance from nerves as all four of my best customers whistled and applauded, the sound echoing in the furniture- and plant-filled room.

David, my closest friend in the entire world, downed the last of his scotch-rocks and swirled the ice around in the glass with a tinkling sound. Then, with his paralyzed right hand, he pushed the glass, napkin and all, to the inside edge of the bar. So after hiding that jukebox in the storage room for the last ten months, we’re finally going to get to hear it play?

You guessed it. I ran my shaking fingers over the cold smoothness of the chrome and polished glass. I had carefully typed onto labels the names of over sixty Christmas songs, then taped them next to the red buttons. Somewhere in this jukebox I hoped there would be a special song for each man. A song that would trigger a memory and a ride into the past. My Christmas present to each of them.

I took a deep breath and headed behind the bar. I hope, I said, keeping my voice upbeat, that it will be a little more than just a song. You see, that jukebox is all that I have left from the first time I owned a bar. Since I’ve owned the Garden Lounge, it has never been played.

Jess, his dress shirt open to the third button and his tie hanging loose