The Case of the Little Green Men published in 1951 was Reynolds first novel. Once he got going there seemed to be no stopping him. He had 100's of short stories published in Science Fiction magazines and nearly as many novels between 1961 and 1985. His main claim to fame seems to have been [Mission to Horatius] which was the first original novel based on the Stare Trek series. He is one of those science fiction writers that had escaped my attention completely until this week.

This is a first novel by a pulp science fiction writer and so I had no great expectations, especially on reading the title of the book, however I was pleasantly surprised. The Case of the Little Green Men is a detective story, set against a background of science fiction fandom. Jeb Knight is a not very good or very successful private investigator. He drinks too much and has recently suffered with some bad publicity and so when three men come into his office and hire him to investigate the possibility of aliens living on earth, he is inclined to accept the job. The three men are members of a committee that are organising a science fiction convention highlighting the possibility of extraterrestrials and wish to present to the convention a scam investigation by a private detective. Jeb is unaware that he is being made use of in this fashion and wonders how to set about his investigation into aliens on earth and It is suggested that the people around the committee would be a good place to start. He is invited to attend a get together of the group and at the event one of the group is found dead. Jeb gets to the body to find that the corpse looks as though it has fallen from a great hight, but there are no buildings tall enough in the vicinity. The police are called and the Inspector warns Jeb not to interfere. Next day one of the committee rings Jeb in a panic saying he has been attacked by a ray gun.......

Jeb finds himself caught between the committee and the police investigation and finds himself as prime suspect for the murder and so he must find out what is happening to save himself. The story becomes a detective novel but Mack Reynolds has plenty of fun with the science fiction fans. The dressing up for the convention, the comic books and magazines on sale, the arguments as to who are the best science fiction writers. Reynolds writes well enough and the name checks and discussions about extraterrestrials will amuse science fiction readers. Not bad 3.5 stars. ( )

Reynolds, Mack. The Case of the Little Green Men. 1951. Prologue Books, 2013.
Mack Reynolds was a staple figure in science fiction magazines of the 1950s and ‘60s. The Case of the Little Green Men is purportedly his first science fiction novel, but not really. It is actually a down-the-line detective story of the kind he had been writing before he started writing science fiction. The twist is that, as far I can remember, it is the first story that uses a science fiction convention as its setting. That made the novel popular among hardcore science fiction fans. There are elements of the story that suggest Reynolds knew he was leaving detective fiction behind for a career in science fiction. He would go on to specialize in stories with utopian and antiutopian themes that must have inspired a young Mike Resnick, who played a similar role in the genre for the next generation. 3.5 stars. ( )