Editor, Alden H. Norton; Assistant Editor, Frederik Pohl1
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Fiction:
For Sale—One World • novelette by Ross Rocklynne –
The Persecutors • novella by Cleve Cartmill ∗
Garments of Doom • short story by William Morrison ∗
Circle of Youth • short story by Frank Belknap Long –
Sunward Flight • novella by Arthur Leo Zagat ∗
The Fear Planet • short story by Robert Bloch –
War God’s Gamble • short story by Harry Walton ∗
Non-fiction:
Circle of Youth • cover by Virgil Finlay
Interior artwork • by Damon Knight (x2), Lawrence (x3?), Leo Morey, Frank R. Paul, Boris Dolgov
Fantasy Reviews • book, film and play reviews and news by Donald A. Wollheim and Richard Wilson
The Science Fictioneer • essay
Missiles and Missives • letters
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Super Science Stories only had two 1943 issues before wartime paper shortages killed it off.2 This is the first of these, and the last with which Pohl had any editorial involvement.
The fiction in this issue (which is all poor or worse) leads off with For Sale—One World by Ross Rocklynne. This has two shapeshifting aliens arriving on Earth who later attempt to buy the Statue of Liberty. Along the way they impersonate two scientists, leaving them unconscious in a cupboard while one of the aliens gives an almost unintelligible speech to an audience of scientists about worms from the planet Nargan. They subsequently sell the planet the worms come from to a millionaire called Randolph, and use the money to buy the Statue of Liberty from a fraudster.
When they return to the unconscious scientists they are held at gunpoint by the fiancé of one of them. Then, after extricating themselves from this situation, they attempt to rectify matters.
This is supposed to be a light/humorous piece, but that doesn’t stop it from being pretty awful.
The Persecutors by Cleve Cartmill opens with Dr Earl putting a candidate through a telepathy test for his psychometric class in a future college. The man tells Earl he isn’t interested, and then tells him that Peebles (the father of an expelled child from one of Earl’s classes) is going to have him prosecuted for witchcraft. We learn that Earl has been suffering from outbreaks of paranormal phenomena:
Those whirling mists, those green flames, those balls of screaming colors which had appeared to him in his study at night had roused actual fear in his mind. Yet, beyond and above these, he had sensed—something. Something had been persecuting him, driving him to madness, for psychic flashes had accompanied each materialization of meaningless blobs. He had felt that somewhere in the vast deeps of unplumbed experience, some presence—force, intelligence—was hammering at his brain with a message.
Message? Command? Request?
He didn’t know. They came silently, evilly in the dark to persecute him. He recognized the feeling as possible evidence of psychic trauma, the development of a persecution complex. But nonetheless a deep conviction whispered that the experiences were real, that some actual identity pounded at the barrier of his consciousness. p. 31
After another manifestation of these phenomena in Earl’s class he is given extended leave by the college principal. There are more manifestations, and he is eventually contacted by the beings behind it all—the Possessors: they give him plans for a machine they want him to build.
Earl then goes to meet a friend called Julie, discusses matter with her, and later builds the machine. Peebles tries to buy the machine from Earl (Peebles, the father of the expelled pupil, has been causing Earl no end of trouble with injunctions and rumours of witchcraft). When Earl refuses, Peebles switches it on, and the Possessors attempt to break through to this world. Earl destroys the machine, but Peebles is left a gibbering husk.
To prevent any further incursion by the Possessors Earl jumps off a building, but they intervene to prevent his suicide, and he floats gently to the ground. Further attempts to kill himself lead to Earl being committed to an asylum.
Up until this point the story is predictable but readable enough. However, from this point onwards it becomes quite ridiculous, with Earl (spoiler) facilitating the possession of a young woman by the aliens, which leads to her death (the example of what happened to Peebles obviously wasn’t enough of a warning). Earl finally realises the threat the Possessors pose to humanity and manages to incite a mob to kill him.
Apart from the poor ending this story is somewhat padded—something I am beginning to suspect is a recurrent Cartmill fault.
Garments of Doom by William Morrison3 starts with the commander of an alien fleet discussing with his underlings whether to attack Earth after subjugating Mars. As they do not have any reliable intelligence about the opposition they may face one of their scientists is given a captured cargo of clothing to investigate (the gimmick is that they have a machine which analyses the traces left on the clothes to provide information about the wearer’s intelligence, etc., a kind of alien CSI I suppose).
The conclusion is that the owners of the clothing are simpletons and will provide little opposition, so the aliens attack Earth (spoiler) but are destroyed. The last part of the story has two Earth soldiers speculating about why the remains of the alien fleet includes a captured freighter full of baby’s diapers—this makes no sense as the diapers would have to be previously used for the aliens to get any information from them. Why would Earth send a cargo of second-hand diapers to Mars?
I note in passing that, despite the daft ending, this is better written than most stories of the time and has the feel of a Galaxy story.
Circle of Youth by Frank Belknap Long has a middle-age space captain called Caldwell on one of Neptune’s moons. He encounters aliens there, and subsequently passes through a luminous hoop which makes him twenty years younger. By the time he gets back to the ship he finds that the “young chit of a girl” who is his navigator is twenty years older (the aliens have put her through the hoop in the other, i.e. ageing, direction). Meanwhile the young man who is the third member of the crew is now a kid. Oh yes, and a mad old man from a previous spaceship turns up.
This piece of nonsense ends in a shootout with the aliens:
Again and again Caldwell blasted, pumping energy pellets at the surviving monsters and sending sheets of flame zigzagging between them.
When he ceased firing the ground was strewn with unmoving, hideous fragments—a rugose limb, something that resembled a shoulder, faces upturned to the Neptunelight that brought a chill to his vitals.
At the base of the great, stationary square lay a young girl, her arms outflung and her coppery hair aureoling her pale brow like a nimbus of rust-colored ectoplasm.
Slowly—so slowly that for an instant a terrible dread came upon him—her eyelids fluttered open.
“Darling,” she whispered. “Oh, darling—” p. 81
The captain stays the same age as his female navigator (who has gone through the hoop again to revert to her original age), much to the displeasure of the third crew member, who has changed back to a young man.
This one is pretty dreadful.
Sunward Flight by Arthur Leo Zagat is, from the beginning, pretty obviously a pulp story but it gets off to a good start:
The incessant noise of the crowd which had gathered on Whiteface Mountain rose to meet the roar of the furious combat over Lake Placid. An orange plane cut across the nose of a scarlet ship, escaping destruction by inches. The mask-helmeted and armored figures harnessed by aludur straps to the tip of each stubby wing leaned rigidly into the speed-gale. A woman screamed shrilly above the sound of the crowd. Princeton’s Left Two caught the ball with a magnificent backstroke of his mallet and sent it whirring two miles back down the lake.
“That’s polo, Toom Gillis,” Rade Hallam shouted in my ear. “That’s airpolo at the acme.”
The dazzling play had averted a sure goal. The score was still Princeton—one, Rocketeer Training School—one, and the emerald flare that dropped from the referee’s gyrocopter signaled that time had run out, that the extra chukker and the game would end at the next pause for score or out-of-bounds. p. 83-84
Toom, the narrator and a controlman, his wife, and Master Rocketeer Rade Hallam are at the game to recruit a new cadet for Hallam’s ship. After the game they are interrupted by Gurd Hardin, a powerful and influential Controller, and invited to a fancy restaurant. Hallam makes an unlikely excuse, and as Toom notices that they are the subject of a listening ray. He realises something strange is going on.
Before Toom can question Hallam back at their plane, a black cloud envelops them. They are lifted into the air and shortly find themselves aboard Hardin’s ship. A seven-foot Marsman guards them as Hardin questions Hallam about his secret. A fight breaks out, and there is a derring-do escape from Bardin’s craft involving Toom operating the hangar door in the stratospheric near-vacuum. He is saved from certain death by two of the air-polo cadets who noticed their abduction and pursued them in their plane.
When the escapees regroup, Rade finally reveals Bardin’s megalomaniac desire to take over the world, and a secret weapon he intends to use—and that they must find.
They set off for Mercury:
I was strapped into the controlman’s chair, Master Rade Hallam clamped into the hammock spring-hung from the ceil of the Aldebaran’s control cabin.
His stratagem in concealing our arrival and entrance into the spaceship by use of the black cloud from Bardin’s lifeplane had been completely successful. No light had shown out across the spaceport’s tarmac. No one could know there was anyone beside Atna aboard.
They would know in an instant.
“All set for blast-off,” I reported.
“Make it so, mister.” Rade acknowledged. My hand dosed on the handle of the switchbar before me. “Blast off!”
I shoved over the switchbar.
A gigantic, invisible weight forced me down on the chair’s heavy springs. There was no breathing, no sight, no thought but that I must not let go the handle in my grip. Blood swelled my fingers, my body, as an acceleration of ten times gravity pressed consciousness from my darkening brain. Somewhere a bell rang, signal that we had attained the seven miles per second speed that would free us from Earth’s pull to her center of mass. I held the switchbar an instant longer, released it.
The weight was gone. My head cleared and sight returned. In the central pentagon of the great six-fold viewscreen that filled the wall in front of me, I saw only the starry blackness of space to which the Aldebaran’s nose was pointed. p. 99-100
The rest of the story involves a spaceship journey to Mercury, and an unbelievable duel with a pursuing ship (theirs has a velocity of forty miles per second compared with forty-five for the pursuer yet they do a U-turn to go head on against it). They finally find a dome on Mercury’s surface and, after an unsuccessful kamikaze attack by one of the cadets, return to Earth to raise the alarm.
This last part (as compared with a not bad beginning) is rather disappointing (as well as some unconvincing details—Toom’s jealousy over his wife’s supposed behaviour with one of the cadets, etc.—the events are rather clichéd). It also takes about half of the story’s length to set up and reveal the problem.
The Fear Planet by Robert Bloch has a spaceship landing on a planet with inimical green vegetable aliens. One by one the crew are bitten and change into similar creatures. What we have here is essentially a vegetable vampire story, and not a very good one.
War God’s Gamble by Harry Walton starts with two prisoners in a cell, Gamirand and Stirn, discussing the interrogation they are undergoing at the hands of their Martian enemy. After Stirn goes to sleep, one of the Martian officers comes to speak with Gamirand about his cellmate. He suggests that Stirn will soon break under questioning, and that it will destroy him. Despite this, Gamirand refuses to reveal any information but agrees to a deal where he will play a game for their freedom. If he wins they go free; if he loses he will tell the Martian what he wants to know. Stirn (who has not been asleep but been listening) challenges Gamirand over this and punches him, giving him a nosebleed. Stirn is removed from the cell.
Gamirand plays the board game with the Martian and (spoiler) subsequently wins: he later explains to Stirn how he used the blood from his nosebleed to alter the face values of the tiles—Martians can’t see the colour red.
This is a gimmicky end but the initial setup is okay.
The eye-catching Cover for Circle of Youth by Virgil Finlay has an alien that is very orange! Not his best work.
As for the Interior artwork, when I initially flicked through this issue before reading it this struck me as pretty good—certainly better than the rather lacklustre efforts in the January Astounding, and probably the reason I decided to read this issue.
The well-known writer and editor Damon Knight is responsible for two of the illustrations in this issue (for the Rocklynne and the Morrison): these aren’t bad (possibly because his style appears to be influenced by Bok, who I like).
The best illustration of the issue is (by a nose) the one for the Cartmill which, though uncredited, I assume is by Lawrence (he has a penchant for frames on his illustrations) and not Leo Morey (who I assume did the middling artwork for the Long, also uncredited). The other piece I also liked is by Frank R. Paul for Zagat’s story—there is always so much detail in his machines and buildings, and this one has an attractive stylised sun in the background too.
The one remaining uncredited illustration is for the Bloch and I assume, from the quality, that it is by Lawrence and not Leo Morey, but I’m unsure about that.
Fantasy Reviews has book reviews by Donald A. Wollheim and film and stage reviews by Richard Wilson.
Wollheim’s review choices seemed very strange to me until I remembered this was the early-40s and that there was very little SF being published in book form. (The reviews are for the likes of Out of Space and Time by Clark Ashton Smith, They Walk Again by Colin de la Mare, The Uninvited by Dorothy Macardle, Try Another World by John J. Meyer, etc.) This is confirmed by Wollheim’s comments towards the end of the column:
Our attention has been called to the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Formerly Grosset & Dunlap reprints of scores of his Tarzan and Mars novels were available practically anywhere. Today most of them appear to be either out of print or out of stock and no more are being produced. Burroughs has not yet successfully renewed his contact with the public and Burroughs fans are therefore well-advised to try to obtain any books they may be missing before it becomes impossible to do so. p. 68
Wilson reviews a number of movies, and has this too generous comment about one of them, Invisible Agent, a dreadful ‘spy on the Nazis’ Invisible Man rip-off which I watched for last year’s Retro Hugo vote:
This is saved from total loss only by the smooth performances of Sir Cedric Hardwicke as a German officer and Peter Lorre as his Japanese ally. p. 68
The only noteworthy aspect for me was the SFX used in portraying the invisible man, and his later application of face cream to become visible (something that Wilson comments on too).
He has this specific comment on The Mad Doctor of Market Street that makes a wider point about the movie’s sub-genre:
The chief fault of “The Mad Doctor of Market Street”, aside from its come-and-be-horrified title, is one in common with too many other pseudo-scientific pictures. Although the protagonist is presented as a pioneer, his theories and experiments are invariably looked upon with disfavor, if not loathing, no matter how beneficial they could turn out for humanity. The result is that any logical-minded moviegoer is more in sympathy with the “villain” than with the intended heroes. And so when the scientist dies at the end, as Hollywood, worshipper of the status quo, seems to think he must, the fantasy fan is likely to feel a little disgusted with the whole thing. p. 69
My favourite part of Wilson’s eclectic column is his review of a stage play by William Saroyan called Talking to You:
More a fantasy in a strict literary than in a science-fictional sense, Saroyan’s one-acter is highly allegorical and perhaps only completely understandable to William himself.
In a basement in San Francisco gather an odd assortment of people, consisting of Blackstone Boulevard, a Negro prizefighter who knows “good people” from “ bad people”; the Tiger, a philosophical blind man; Fancy Dan, his brother; the Crow, a Mexican guitarist; a deaf boy and Maggie. All are unhappy—Blackstone because he can’t bring himself to hit a good man and hasn’t yet fought a bad one, the Tiger because he can’t see, the Crow and Maggie because the Tiger is unhappy, the deaf boy because he can’t hear, and Fancy Dan because he is being chased.
Fancy Dan is being chased by a German-spouting midget with a gun who goose-steps around in a storm trooper’s uniform. But somehow Fancy Dan gets away and it is Blackstone Boulevard who gets killed, while the curtain comes down on the deaf boy’s crying, “What’s happening? What’s the matter?”
Evidently the uniformed midget is the embodiment of the world’s evil and the deaf boy is the common people who wonder why it must be—but don’t take my word for it. You’ll have to ask William. p. 69
For those of you who, like me, get more than a whiff of Springtime for Hitler (from Mel Brooks’ film The Producers) here, I’d note that Brooks was resident in New York at the time and occasionally got free theatre tickets from an uncle who was a cab driver.4
Wilson notes that Saroyan’s play closed before the end of its first week, a financial failure.
The column ends with various snippets of film news (including comments on I Married a Witch and Cat People, another two films I’ve recently viewed).
The Science Fictioneer is “the organ of the Science Fictioneers”, or the newsletter of what would seem to be a nationwide fan club (if you can get three members together to form a branch they will give you a charter, or you can join the organisation directly). The column starts with news of members that have started service in the military before degenerating to the whimsy (if you are being kind) or drivel (if you are not) of the Los Angeles club’s minutes :
The minutes were read and left alone, except that one nameless person didn’t like the so-called verbosity of them. That was beside the point, and after several contemptuous stares he subsided.
“T. Bruce Yerke sent in a note pleading for a leave of absence. It was probably granted.
“Someone started an argument on the way most great men aren’t recognized until after death. Some of us slept while it went on.
“A motion was made to get some more staples for the stapler. Our unlucky guest was deputized to go and get them. She made a donation to the club of the money they cost her. Our guest for this evening was Miss Gladys Briggs, who made an instantaneous and complete hit with all the members of the club.
“Because nothing else happened, the meeting was adjourned at 8:59½ p.m. Everyone left after that, much soon.” p. 127
Missiles and Missives has a letter from Chad Oliver from Cincinnati, OH, (he started publishing SF stories in 1950 and would have been fourteen going fifteen when writing this) where he raves about the November 1942 issue. He then goes on to give his ratings on a scale of 1 to 10. If that isn’t precise enough, he also uses decimals:
Cover: Excellent; where has Lawrence been all these years? The painting is unusual, too, in that it reminds one of Finlay, Morey and Paul all at once. The two Valkyries are very reminiscent of Finlay at his best: the space-suited figure looks like some of Morey’s better work, while the background and planet is typical Paul stuff. This is not an accusation, understand, it’s merely a statement of fact. I hope that “Cover by Stephen Lawrence” will appear frequently on your contents page from now on.—9.5.
“We Guard the Black Planet!” [by Henry Kuttner] A beautifully written story, which is, I think, destined to become a real classic. The ending fairly screams for a sequel, and I, for one, will be looking forward to it. Excellent illustrations.—10.
“The Revolt of the Machine Men” Pure hack. Mr. Tanner apparently thinks all fans are about three years old with corresponding intelligence. No more of this sort of thing, please!—5.6.
[. . .]
“Beyond the End of Time!” Cummings is finally improving,5 and I have but one complaint. Does there have to be a female in every one of his stories? In this one I was hopeful when, in the beginning, it stated that his (the hero’s) sweetie-pie had been liquidated. But what does our hero do but pick up the usual heroine out of the future? I give up.—7.9. p. 6/8
In among the other letters are a couple that praise the artwork, and a rebuttal from Henry Kuttner to a letter criticising one of his stories. He ends with this:
I regret to note the puritanical tendency of Mr. Hunter to deplore the lack of brassieres on the Valkyries. These confining garments interfere with a good, hearty wing-stroke, and thus were never invented on the Black Planet. I suggest Mr. Hunter don a suit of 12th Century armor and try a brisk run around the track. It’s all very well to talk, my good man, but honi soit qui mat y pense [“May he be shamed who thinks badly of it”], and a good thing it is, too. Always glad to receive more brickbats from your direction too, Mr. Hunter—but you had better read the story first. I’ve been bawled out by experts. p. 145
There are also a number of house advertisements for other Popular Publications magazines in this issue: Pohl used these to fill up space, and generally save on the fiction budget.
There are also some advertisements that are distinctly of the time:
The art and non-fiction are the highlights of this issue. The fiction alone would probably make it the worst magazine I’ve read since I started this blog. ●
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1. From chapter six of Frederik Pohl’s The Way the Future Was:
Early in 1942 Alden H. Norton sent me a telegram, asking me to come back to Popular Publications as his assistant. To make it sweeter, he offered me more as an assistant than I had been paid as a full-fledged editor. I felt around my pride to see if it was injured, and when it did not seem to hurt anywhere, I accepted at once.
Al Norton was a boss editor, a department head. He had fifteen or sixteen pulp magazines to look after and four people to help him do it: a secretary and three assistant editors, including myself.
Pohl subsequently reports being inducted into the US Army on April Fool’s Day, 1943.
2. Super Science Stories was the sister magazine of Astonishing Stories, and has an interesting history (there is a comprehensive article at Wikipedia), not least the existence of a Canadian edition that continued after the demise of the American one due to wartime paper shortages (according to Pohl there were plenty of trees and paper north of the border but no transport to bring it down to the States).
The Canadian edition eventually (from 1944 onwards) added original fiction to its reprints of stories from Super Science Stories and Astonishing Stories (and later Famous Fantastic Mysteries). Some of this original work was later reprinted in a second US run of the magazine (1949-1951).
3. I’m not sure I recognised William Morrison’s name (the pen name of Joseph Samachson). When I checked his ISFDB page and SFE entry I found he was the author of eighty or so short stories, all uncollected. SFE states, “When Frederik Pohl, Martin H Greenberg and Joseph D Olander compiled Galaxy: 30 Years of Innovative Science Fiction (1980), they remarked that Samachson was ‘one of the most shamefully neglected writers in the history of science fiction.’” SFE’s page on Morrison is here and the ISFDB page is here.
4. Mel Brooks’ Wikipedia page.
5. There is a comment about Cummings in chapter six of Frederik Pohl’s The Way the Future Was:
When I started [at Popular Publications, publisher of Astonishing and Super Science Stories] and Ray discovered I was a fan, it was a great day for Ray. Not only could he get back to science fiction, but he quickly perceived that I was his pigeon. I had no way of saying no to so great a man. Worse than that. He would not write for less than a penny a word, and I missed my chance to tell him that that was beyond the limits ordained for me by God and Harry Steeger [one of the owners of Popular], because the day he first walked into my office was the day I discovered I had a few extra dollars to play with. So for months he would turn up regularly as clockwork and sell me a new story; I hated them all, and bought them all. ●
