Summary: A poor issue with little of note—not even the three Kuttner stories are up to much. But it was nice to get acquainted with Sergeant Saturn in the letters column.
[ISFDB page] [Archive.org copy]

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Editor, Oscar J. Friend

Fiction:
A God Named Kroo • novella by Henry Kuttner ∗∗
Venusian Nightmare • short story by Oscar J. Friend [as by Ford Smith] –
The Invisible Army • novelette by Ross Rocklynne –
Trophy • short story by Henry Kuttner [as by Scott Morgan] ∗
Moon Trap • short story by John Foster West –
Swing Your Lady • short story by Henry Kuttner [as by Kelvin Kent] ∗∗
Space Command • novelette by Robert Arthur –

Non-fiction:
Cover • by Rudolph Belarski
Interior artwork • by uncredited (x7), M. Marchioni (x2), Virgil Finlay (x2)
The Reader Speaks • letters
Headliners in the Next Issue
Scientifacts • science filler
The Reasons Why • essay by Walter Lippmann
Wonders of War • war weapons filler
Meet This Issue’s Amateur Contest Prize-Winner!
The Story Behind the Story: The Invisible Army • essay by Ross Rocklynne
The Story Behind the Story: Space Command • essay by Robert Arthur

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I picked up this issue to read the Retro Hugo Award nominated Kuttner novella, and decided to read the rest of it as there were another two of his (pseudonymous) stories here as well. Big mistake. The difference in quality between this magazine and Astounding is marked and, if other issues of Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories are as poor as this one, then I’m baffled as to how Oscar J. Friend is one of the Retro Hugo Award Best Editor finalists.

The fiction leads off with A God Named Kroo by Henry Kuttner, which isn’t science fiction but a Unknown-ish (or perhaps more accurately sub-Unknown-ish) fantasy that starts with the Himalayan god Kroo lamenting his lack of followers, lack of sacrifices, and consequential slow death. Then a white man comes and buys/requisitions the holy yak that lives in the courtyard of Kroo’s temple; the man, Dr Horace Danton, needs to get his expedition collection down from the Himalayas to the river.
Unknown to Danton and the rest of the party, Kroo tags along when they leave, and soon makes his presence felt from his position in the dark cloud above the group: when there is a landslide that sweeps the holy yak and another beast into the crevasse, Kroo levitates the former and puts it back on the track while the other yak falls to its death; later, when the local hillmen attack Danton and the others, lightning shoots out of Kroo’s cloud. Kroo then removes all doubt about his existence when he starts talking through Danton who, when he still doesn’t believe, is levitated into the air. When Kroo makes Danton his high priest, the latter complains that he needs to get back to the States, so Kroo levitates the yak as well, and off they go.

En route Kroo drops off Danton and the yak at a power station in Burma, and departs on an errand. After a night’s sleep Danton wakes up in the station to find Japanese soldiers there and, when he is taken to see Captain Yakuni, the educated and urbane Japanese officer in charge of the power plant, he finds out that WWII started while he was in the mountains exploring. While Danton is in Yakuni’s office he meets the story’s token female interest, Debbie Hadley, a spunky sort straight out of a Hollywood B-movie, and also a prisoner.
The rest of the tale plays out mostly as you would expect: Debbie updates Danton on the progress of the war and also tells him that Yakuni is using the electric powerhouse to make small potent bombs that are causing havoc for the Allies. The pair decide to escape from their confinement so they can blow up the powerhouse but, before they can progress their plan, Kroo returns from his travels and gets involved. When he again speaks through Danton, it causes trouble with Yakuni:

“Why did you come to Myapur? Why the powerhouse?” [asked Yakuni.]
“Delay not the priest of Kroo,” Danton roared abruptly.
Yakuni jerked back with a startled gasp. The soldiers moved their rifles into position.
Deborah made a hopeless, inarticulate noise and gripped Danton’s arm.
“Dan, be careful,” she gasped. “Don’t take off again. They’ll shoot you sure this time.”
“Ho,” Danton bellowed at the astounded Yakuni. “Bow down and worship Kroo. He shall protect his chosen. Their nation will prosper above all others. Obey!”
“Dr. Danton,” the Captain said carefully, rising. “I must ask you to modulate your voice. I must also request an apology. As an officer and representative of my country, I cannot allow this insult to pass.”
“Waste not words,” Danton roared. “Your allegiance henceforth is to Kroo. He shall make you mighty.”
“Don’t mind him,” Deborah whispered faintly. “He’s really crazy. You mustn’t have him shot, Captain Yakuni. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”
The officer slowly unholstered a pistol.
“I have said that I am willing to accept an apology. I am a civilized man, Miss Hadley, but I am also a servant of the Son of Heaven.”
“A false god,” Danton broke in tactlessly. “He shall be overthrown by Kroo’s might. Never dare to refer to your petty god again in Myapur, henceforth the holy sanctum of Kroo. On your knees, dog!”
Yakuni’s eyes widened.
“You die!” he said in a shocked voice, lifting his gun.  p. 28-29

The rest of the story proceeds pretty much in the same vein, complicated by the fact that Kroo considers the power station his temple, which makes it difficult for Debbie and Danton to destroy (they are both put under hypnotic conditioning by Kroo to prevent them harming the plant).
Eventually, at the end of the story (spoiler), Kroo has to fight the stronger Dynamo god, and quickly dies in the explosion. This rather perfunctory climax does, however, provide a good closing passage:

The fog was thick. It clung dankly, choking in its chill moisture, but as Kroo rode onward upon the yak he saw that it was drifting apart into rags and tatters. And now four tall figures were visible through the mist, guarding a bridge. Beyond them an arched span led into infinity. Silently the giants waited.
Bull-thewed and terrible they stood. They greeted Kroo with strange, formal gestures of welcome.
They gave their names.
Marduk and Ormazd the Flame—Osiris and Allatu of Babylon. Ormazd shook his red head and grinned at Kroo.
“We greet you, Kroo the Warrior.”
But Kroo could not speak, for a little while.
“This could not be Godsheim,” he said. “I am a little god—”
“This is the bridge to Godsheim,” Marduk told him. “Dead gods pass this way, if they are not weaklings. There is a place for you.”
Kroo’s hairy hands went out in a gesture of disbelief. “Ormazd! Tall Osiris—Marduk and Allatu! But I am not great—I might have been, in a thousand years, but I died too soon.”
“You fell in battle,” Osiris said. “You challenged the mightiest entity in all the universes. None of us has dared to meet such an opponent as slew you. Hai—you are one of us, brother. Come!”
Marduk and Ormazd flanked him. Allatu went before. Osiris followed.
And Kroo the Warrior rode across the bridge to Godsheim.  p. 42-43

This first part of this piece is average to good fantasy but, when they land en route at the power station in Burma, it becomes more of a wartime adventure and, although there are parts that aren’t bad, it mostly reads like something Kuttner made up to pay the rent. It’s not good enough to be a Retro Hugo finalist, never mind a winner.¹

Venusian Nightmare by Oscar J. Friend² opens with three men, including a cop, walking across the semi-quicksand surface of Venus after their ship  was forced to land (they can’t stop walking or they’ll sink like it did). It has some pretty awful writing:

“Could it have been a Crowder agent, then?” mused Morton.
“Why would Crowder want to kill the publicity we could give him?” demanded Doville. “This is the greatest iratrum strike anywhere in the System since the Lunar mines started playing out. Coupled with a revolutionizing method of extracting metallic iratex simply and quickly without going through the Bundersohn Process, it will make Amos Crowder the most famous man of the colonized worlds.”
“If all this is on the level,” added Carter. “The important thing right now is for us to get to the Crowder mine as soon as possible. Lucky there are no dangerous carnivores in this area. All I have in the way of a weapon is a hand ray-gun which won’t even stun a man beyond twenty paces. Your two primitive hunting knives are more of an advantage under the present circumstances.”  p. 45

When they get to the mining camp they find it deserted, and also find the spaceship of Miriam Montez, an attractive but duplicitous reporter. Then they hear a thumping noise and follow it down the mine, where they find Montez tied up.
The final act has the cave wall give way and (see cover) a Venusian Medusa’s huge face fill the hole. The men grab their damsel in distress and escape.
This is complete rubbish that was probably written to either (a) fill a pre-publication hole in the issue or (b) go with the cover painting.

The Invisible Army by Ross Rocklynne has a plot based on a passage that appears at the beginning of the story:

Shortly after the Armistice which followed World War Two, when the troops of the United Nations marched into Germany to supervise the disarmament of the citadel of Festung Europa, one million of the three million men in arms remaining to Nazi Germany had vanished into thin air.  p. 50

This comes to light in a conversation between Phil Hardesty and James Capet about a (supposedly-ex) Nazi called Maurer who came to live in America after the war. Hardesty and Capet know each other because of Hardesty’s relationship with Capet’s daughter Ileen, an investigative reporter who disappeared after taking a job as Maurer’s housekeeper.
Hardesty and Capet subsequently break into Maurer’s house to see if they can find out what happened to her and, during their search, they find a fully-equipped lab in the basement. When one of them looks down a microscope (spoiler), they see thousands of microscopic troops! While the pair observe, Maurer ambushes them with a gun and sleeping gas.
When Hardesty and Capet awake, they find that they are in the miniaturised world and, after rescuing Ileen from a tentacle waving germ, they notice the military equipment around them:

“Well, we seem to have found the missing army—more important, they’ve managed to get it on American soil.”
“And that,” said a deep voice from behind him, “is the final and most important step in blitzrieg warfare.”
Hardesty turned quickly. He knew without asking that this was General von Streiber. Beneath his transparent helmet, the man was a perfect apotheosis of the thin-lipped, cold-eyed, square-headed Prussian military type. The general stood at ease, his feet planted wide apart, undressing Ileen coolly with his stare. She colored under his gaze, moved closer to the inventor.
“Beauty,” he said pompously, “should never be chary of her charms. Young lady, I must remember to compliment Herr Maurer on the ravishing guest he has sent me. These eternal maneuvers against germs keep the men hard and fit, but they grow wearisome in time.  p. 56

Various sub-microscopic and Brownian motion adventures ensue before the German invasion plans are neutralised.
This reads like a refugee from the early 1930s.

Trophy by Henry Kuttner is the first of his two pseudonymous appearances in this issue, and starts with the Japanese ambush of a landing American aircraft—which is interrupted by a torpedo shaped flying object that causes the latter to crash. In the ensuing firefight, the only two men to survive are Major Satura, a Japanese character similar to the one used by Kuttner in A God Called Kroo (but this time a surgeon and a schemer) and Corporal Jarnegan, an American.
The rest of the story (narrated, unusually, from Satura’s point of view) involves a game of cat and mouse between the two men on the island, further complicated by various mirages or visions that Satura sees upon as he moves around (a pile of gold, a woman, a short-wave radio, a Mitsubishi Zero fighter, etc.). When Satura eventually picks up what he thinks is an automatic pistol, he finds himself transported into a silver walled cell. Once he manages to figure out how to get out, he realises he is inside the torpedo shaped vessel from earlier on. When he sees the hunting trophies hanging from the wall of the spacecraft’s cabin he leaves quickly. Then he arranges matters so that Jarnegan will be the trophy of the alien hunter and not him. Biter-bit ending.
Although this early Predator-type story sounds interesting, it is contrived and, at times, reads like anti-Japanese propaganda (which, given the times it was written in, is understandable—it’s just that the semi-stereotypical characterisation doesn’t improve the piece).

Moon Trap by John Foster West is this issue’s “Prize Winning Amateur Contest Story,” and starts with Lieutenant Cross getting a briefing from the ship’s captain about his upcoming mission on the Moon:

“You are quite aware of the situation, and your duties, Lieutenant?”
Lieutenant Cross hesitated before answering. “I am aware of my duties, sir. But not completely aware of the situation. I know that we must find a huge deposit of radium. The life of every inhabitant of United Earth depends on it. What I don’t know, sir, is why, day after day, back on Earth thousands and more thousands of people become walking automatons, why they walk until they can stand no longer. And keep moving until they die from sheer exhaustion and malnutrition. I know that most of it is shrouded in military secrecy.”  p. 74

We later learn that the malady is a nervous disorder caused by exposure to radiation from atomic combustion, and that Radium is the only known cure. As if.
The rest of the story (spoiler) has Cross land on the Moon and then fall down a long tunnel. Eventually he comes out the other side, and pendulums back and forth until he comes to a halt in the middle of the (co-incidentally) Radium-filled Moon. Once he figures out how to use timed bursts from his pistol to pendulum himself back to the surface, all that remains is to get back to the spaceship for tea and medals.
A gimmick story that should have stayed in the slushpile.

Swing Your Lady by Henry Kuttner is one of his ‘Pete Manx’ series. From a comment in the letter column, and a later remark in the story (“Make it a nice safe time, Prof. I don’t want to meet up with Lucrezia Borgia again—or Merlin!”) I get the impression that these stories pretty much take the form of Manx escaping his current day scrapes by time-travelling to different historical periods (I use the word “historical” loosely).
Manx explains his current romantic predicament to Professor Aker, operator of the time machine:

“I dunno how I got into this scrape, anyhow. I took her out once or twice and then she decides we’ll get married. Ugh, the way she looks at a guy. Like needles. She figures we’ll be married and I’ll spiel for her act.” Pete Manx laughed hollowly.
The professor seemed amused. “Why not tell her no?”
“Look,” said Mr. Manx, “let’s say you’re in a cage with Gargantua, or maybe a giant python. Talking don’t do much good. All you can do is run like blazes. And Margie’s got detectives trailing me. I tried to skip out four times—and the last time she—talked to me.” Manx gulped. “You never been talked to by a snake charmer with gimlets for eyes and a couple of baby boas twined around her neck. I argued. I begged. I said I’d make a punk husband. ‘I’ll mould you into shape,’ she says. And today’s the wedding.”  p. 86

Aker subsequently sends Pete back to the time of the Amazons and, when he arrives in the middle of a battle only to be captured by Queen Thecla, Manx realises he has exchanged one set of problems for another.
The rest of the story is a breezily and entertainingly told tale about how Manx reinvents 20^th Century technologies (he electro-plates swords, manufactures a searchlight (!), makes creosote, etc.) to get the upper hand for himself and the rest of the male servants. Then, when the men finally take control, there is a Greek invasion and none of them want to fight, so it’s back to the women. There are another couple of plot twists but they are as ridiculous as the rest of the plot (using electric batteries to win wrestling matches with the Amazons, etc.).
If you can ignore the nonsense you may find some amusement here.

Space Command by Robert Arthur³ starts with Dan Harrigan, the captain of the Jupiter, writing a letter of resignation as his spaceship approaches Venus. The trip has not gone well, and this is partially because the jealous first mate has, unknown to Harrigan, undermined his command throughout the trip. This will cost Harrigan not only his job but the hand of the fleet owner’s daughter. Then an emergency causes them to force land on one of the few open spots on Venus. When the men go outside to commence repairs a huge black tentacle lifts the ship and takes it away.

The rest of the story is mostly an exobiology puzzle, which initially sees a near-lethal encounter with other “eight-ball” like aliens before Harrigan manages to work out how to use the latter to produce water (and  another alien life-form to produce oxygen) in a cave like building left by extinct indigenous life. Another scientific insight sees Harrigan and his crew manage to manufacture and explode hydrogen over the black-tentacled beast, bringing the cliff down on it and releasing their ship.
Back in port Harrigan then fights the first mate (we discover Harrigan is a boxing champion) and, because of the rest of the crew’s glowing report, he keeps his command and gets the girl.
This is a readable piece, but pretty dreadful nonetheless.

The eye-catching Cover is by Rudolph Belarski, and not bad if you like that sort of thing: the woman tied to the post is wearing a strange kind of outfit for a reporter, however.
The Interior artwork is largely uncredited but there are a two drawings attributed to M. Marchioni and two to Virgil Finlay (who, strangely, contributes the second illustration for the Arthur story but not the first). None of it really grabs me apart from the uncredited first illustration for the Arthur (which looks like Hannes Bok’s work to me).

I found The Reader Speaks letter column quite irritating to begin with. First, there seem to be an endless series of—mostly juvenile—letters that are little more than lists of favourite stories (yes, I’m aware of the irony) and, second, the column is hosted by “Sergeant Saturn,” an equally juvenile (when not disgruntled) creation who refers to the readers as “kiwis” and “pee-lots”—that’s when he’s not asking “Frog-eyes” to break out the “Xeno jug.” What also didn’t help was that I haven’t read any of the stories that the readers are talking about.
Matters improved, however, as I ploughed through the column. Jotting down the favourites from the Autumn 1943 issue helped make sense of the comments (Fredric Brown’s Daymare seemed popular, as was The Man from the Stars by Robert Moore Williams, and the amateur story prize winner The Bubble People by James Henry Carlisle, III, a one-shot wonder). Also, every now and then, there are letters about the poor quality of the column, such as this one from Don Campbele:

Dear Sarge: (to be read aloud in a high, nasal tone) “I am six years old and I read CF, TWS, SS, WPA and OFA every issue. I. have my own rating system (who hasn’t?) and it goes, in successive order of interest—Bam, Zowie, Pop, Swish, Glug, and Phooey. For the last issue of TWS—DAYMARE: Bam. The cover pic was good, too,” etc., etc.
That, Sarge, is a typical letter sent you. Please, sir, are all your readers morons or infants? F’ hevvins’ sake!
[. . .]
Now don’t get me wrong. There are some readers who appear to have one or both feet on the ground. I find that in the last ish a guy named Marty Seligson holds the same views as I. Yet, Sarge, you call him down for taking shots at those who take shots at others. I am a peaceful man, but I’m willing to join Seligson in the battle for more coherent reading material.
There was a good example of fine letter-writing from a cadet at Camp Davis, yet you buried it deep in the department where people would never read it, having grown disgusted trying to wade through the others. Put your best letters in front!
I hope you can find space for this letter. I would really like some of the Happy Gang to find out what some of us think of their literary carousings. If another missive appears to say essentially the same thing as I do, only saying it better, by all means, print that—only please don’t let those infants hog the whole department every issue.  p. 11

The Sarge replies:

So? You unload a full cargo on the old space dog and then steam out of port and leave me holding the bag, eh? Okay, Kiwi Campbele. I’ll just shake this sack of clinkers out along the path and let the other junior astrogators kick peebles around. You know, sailor, the old Sarge personally has no time for fiction. He only prints the letters which come in. If they aren’t erudite enough to suit, some of you adult critics write in more often.
What you see in it, I’m not responsible for.  p. 11

Mmm, that’s not quite right, Sarge—you’re the one padding out your magazine with endless letters-of-comment rather than paying for more fiction.
The Sarge also has this to say to Bill Stoy, who suggests that the worst parts aren’t the letters but the comments between them:

So you’re going to lay your temporary distaste for The Reader Speaks on the old Sarge, eh? You know, kiwi, it’s a thrilling experience to be like an item on sale in a bargain basement. You get pulled apart by so many different people and from so many different angles. Good thing the senior astrogator was put together on the order of Grag. Too much space lingo—not enough space lingo—too hard on the junior pee-lots—not hard enough on the junior pee-lots—too highbrow—too lowbrow—too much chatter by the Sarge—not enough chatter by the Sarge. Quick, Frog-eyes, the Xeno jug!  p. 118

A couple of the correspondents (Chad Oliver and Paul A. Carter) include their best story list for 1943 and agree on The Piper by Ray Bradbury (February), Devil’s Fiddle by N. R. de Mexico (June), The Lotus Eaters by Bolling Branham (August), and Expedition by Anthony Boucher (August). Oliver has another half dozen picks, whereas Carter just has one, Grief of Bagdad by “Kelvin Kent” (although he knows the writer is really Henry Kuttner):

After “De Wolfe of Wall Street,” I was afraid Pete had slipped for good. I see that he hadn’t. Gentle hint: Mr. Kuttner, Pete is much better when managing shady deals in the more or less remote past than when delving into paradoxes of Time. Just a suggestion.  p. 120

The column ends with the newly repositioned notes for the Science Fiction League, the Amateur Story Contest and Looking Forward (this last somewhat duplicates the Headliners feature).
I ended up quite enjoying this lively letters column.
Headliners in the Next Issue trails, among others, two stories by women, Veil of Astellar by Leigh Brackett, and the amateur prize-winner, Unsung Hero by Ruth Washburn.

Scientifacts is four pages of science facts filler. Some of it is quite interesting (how diet determines the colour of flamingos; the colour seen in insect wings is due to refraction of light; an account of the newly begun mass manufacture of penicillin, etc.), but some of it is wibble:

Professor L. H. Thomas, of Ohio State University, says that he has worked out a satisfactory theory concerning the reddish glow of light from the more distant star clusters. The dimming, reddish light—as though the stars were running away and burning out—is due, according to the professor, to a sort of “friction.” The light, coming to us from such illimitable distances, becomes weaker—tired—and thus its color turns reddish. As the light energy weakens, the more it sags toward the seventh color of the spectrum and turns reddish.
The friction is with the rubbing against so many other waves of light that the beam of a given star is buffeted about until its vibrational energy is lessened. This kind of friction Professor Thomas calls electro-magnetic in nature.  p. 82-83

There is also this acid remark regarding the astronomical use of radar:

Thus, the same beam that reported the presence of Japanese planes when they were still 135 miles distant from Pearl Harbor can report the arrival and departure of asteroids of greatly eccentric orbits.  p. 84

Ouch.

The Reasons Why by Walter Lippmann is (I suspect) a government supplied piece about War bonds, and begins with this:

The man who understands the war bonds will certainly buy them. For we can either save the money we do not have to spend now in order to live, or we shall lose it. It is one or the other.  p. 112

The man who understands that second sentence without having to think really hard about it will probably read on. After the next two equally difficult to comprehend paragraphs, I didn’t.

Wonders of War details a number of war inventions (e.g. a “safer” grenade, glider torpedoes, etc.) that I’m pretty sure never went anywhere, never mind to war.

Meet This Issue’s Amateur Contest Prize-Winner! Is a short half-page autobiographical piece from John Foster West (author of Moon Trap) and it paints a picture of an enthusiastic and industrious young man destined to become a writer or journalist. However, the article ends with this:

I am in the U. S. Army Air Corps reserve, and will become a flying cadet upon graduation from Carolina.  p. 127

West survived the war and went on to become a writer and university professor. He lived to the grand old age of 89.⁴
The Story Behind the Story: The Invisible Army by Ross Rocklynne is a couple of hundred words of blather about his microcosmic story.
The Story Behind the Story: Space Command by Robert Arthur points out (as I should have done in my review) that his story has this to say about the likely evolution of space travel (as seen from the mid-1940s):

“Space Command” is a story of trans-planetary rocketing which I have visualized as in the same kind of transition stage as was commercial flying in the middle twenties. Flying passed from an individualistic, daredevil phase into the scientifically coordinated, carefully supervised, business-like medium of transportation it has become.
There is no more room in it for the ‘seat-of-the-pants’ flyers who flew by guess and by God and called any landing they could walk away from a good landing. Similarly, logic indicates (anyway, my logic indicates, and who’s writing the story, anyway?) that rocketing, after being pioneered by the rough and ready boys who risk their necks cheerfully, will be taken over by the scientifically trained, highly educated men who will turn it into as safe and everyday an affair as possible.
This won’t be too safe and too everyday, space being what it is; nevertheless, the transition will be tough on the pioneers, and there’s bound to be a lot of friction between the representatives of the different orders when the time comes.  p. 129

Well, pee-lots, I’ll conclude this review by saying that this is a poor issue (all the stories bar the Kuttners are awful, and even his aren’t particularly good). It gets a rating of Phooey.⁵  ●

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1. There is a more positive review of Henry Kuttner’s A God Called Kroo by Cora Buhlert at Retro Science Fiction Reviews.

2. Oscar J. Friend is a nominee in this year’s Retro Hugo Awards. The other nominees are John W. Campbell, Jr., Mary Gnaedinger, Dorothy McIlwraith, Raymond A. Palmer, and W. Scott Peacock (I’ve never heard of the latter but I see that I should have—he is the editor of Planet Stories and Jungle Stories).

3. Robert Arthur would turn later turn up in F&SF with his ‘Muchinson Morks’ stories. His ISFDB page.

4. There is a John Foster West page on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine that outlines his writing career. I had a look at his novel Time Was on the Internet Archive (his writing ability improved markedly) and noticed that someone had defaced the scanned copy by scoring out or overwriting all the swear words. I’ll reserve a particularly spikey seat in Hell for the offender.

5. I’m sure that Thrilling Wonder Stories published some decent stories, but I suspect you probably had to wade through a lot of dross to find them: the next time I read an issue Frog-face better have a few jugs of Xeno ready.  ●