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Black Widowers
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The Black Widowers is a fictional men-only dining club created by Isaac Asimov, for a series of sixty-six mystery stories, which he wrote starting in 1971. Most of the stories were first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, though a few first appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and the various book collections into which the stories were eventually gathered.
The stories always follow the same convention: the six club members and a guest sit down to dinner, served by the incomparable waiter, Henry Jackson (almost invariably referred to as simply Henry).
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Encyclopedia
The Black Widowers is a fictional men-only dining club created by Isaac Asimov, for a series of sixty-six mystery stories, which he wrote starting in 1971. Most of the stories were first published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, though a few first appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, and the various book collections into which the stories were eventually gathered.
The stories always follow the same convention: the six club members and a guest sit down to dinner, served by the incomparable waiter, Henry Jackson (almost invariably referred to as simply Henry). During the meal it always comes out that the guest has a problem which varies from the personal to actual crimes. The club members try to solve the problem, raising various issues in the course of the conversation but are unable to come to an actual conclusion. In the end, it is Henry, who is highly-regarded by the club members, who provides the correct, and usually very simple, answer, obtained from aspects of the conversation. Asimov intended them to always follow that pattern.
Origins
The Black Widowers were based on a literary dining club Asimov belonged to known as the Trap Door Spiders. Members of the Widowers were based on real-life Spiders, some of them famous writers in their own right:
The deceased founder of the club, Ralph Ottur, on whom the plot of the story "To the Barest" turned, was based on the real-life founder of the Trap Door Spiders, Fletcher Pratt. The stage magician The Amazing Larri, from the story "The Cross of Lorraine", was based on James Randi. The arrogant science fiction writer Mortimer Stellar, from the story "When No Man Pursueth", was based on Asimov himself:.
Asimov was a P. G. Wodehouse fan and a member of the Wodehouse Society. He explained that Henry Jackson was not based on a real person, but might have been inspired in large part by Wodehouse's immortal character Jeeves.
Books
The first five books each contained twelve stories; in most cases, nine stories were first published in various magazines while three were first published in the book. As was usual with Asimov's collections, many stories had chatty forewords or afterwords. The sixth book, published posthumously, contained six previously uncollected stories, ten reprinted from previous collections, and additional material by Charles Ardai and Harlan Ellison.
- 1974 - Tales of the Black Widowers
- 1976 - More Tales of the Black Widowers
- 1980 - Casebook of the Black Widowers
- 1984 - Banquets of the Black Widowers
- 1990 - Puzzles of the Black Widowers
- 2003 - The Return of the Black Widowers
A few Black Widowers tales have been written by other authors as tributes to Asimov. One is "The Overheard Conversation" by Edward D. Hoch, which appears in the festschrift anthology Foundation's Friends (1989); another is "The Last Story," the Charles Ardai piece in Return of the Black Widowers (2003).
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