ISFDB link
Luminist.org link

Other reviews:¹
Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, p. 130-132 The Annotated Guide to Unknown & Unknown Worlds (Starmont, 1991)
Fred Smith, Once There Was A Magazine— p. 36-37 (Beccon Publications)

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Editors, John W. Campbell Jr.; Assistant Editor, Catherine Tarrant

Fiction:
Prelude to Armageddon • novella by Cleve Cartmill
Jesus Shoes • short story by Allan R. Bosworth ∗∗
The Compleat Werewolf • novella by Anthony Boucher ∗∗∗∗
The Room • short story by L. Ron Hubbard ∗∗∗
Census Taker • short story by Frank Belknap Long ∗∗+
Pobby • novelette by Jane Rice ∗∗∗

Non-fiction:
Interior artwork • Kramer (x8), Kolliker (x2), Manuel Isip (x7), Paul Orban, Ed Cartier
The Science of Magic • editorial by John W. Campbell, Jr.
—And Having Writ— • letters
Book Review • essay by Anthony Boucher

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One of the stories I read for my last review was Cleve Cartmill’s With Flaming Swords (Astounding, September 1942), which I thought was the best story in the issue. So, when I started Prelude to Armageddon I had high hopes for it; initially these were met.

The story starts with a prologue where Ira Rafel, a fallen angel, meets others of his kind, and tells them to inform the Old One that he has found a hybrid human. If this hybrid mates with a certain woman and produces a child, it will be immortal; Armageddon will be forestalled, and the Old One saved from the Bottomless Pit.
The story then cuts to an editor/reporter called Brad McClain, the protagonist, who is in a barber’s shop having a vision:

“Blood shall cover the earth,” said the angel.
“This must be prevented. Armageddon must never come. You, McClain, and you alone may prevent it. You have the power. Find your mate! Take her, and bring forth a son! He shall live forever, rule forever, for you have eternity in your loins. You are the hybrid with whom we may communicate, and we tell you this—find your mate!”
Brad McClain snapped out of the lethargy these visions always produced, and tore the facial towel from his face. His wide dark eyes wheeled about the barber shop for a moment.
This was the third time within the week, the hundredth—thousandth?—time in his life the angel had appeared and told him he was destined to be the father of an immortal. He looked at Sam, the grizzled barber.
“Sam, do you think I’m crazy?”
“Sure,” Sam said tolerantly. “Want anything on your hair?”
“I mean it,” Brad insisted. “I either dropped off while I was under that towel or else I saw a vision.”
Sam eased Brad back in the chair and dried his face. “Shucks, Brad, people always do that sort of thing. They just don’t talk about it.”  p. 9

McClain goes from the barber to a bar, and meets two of the other main characters, a beat cop called Balaam (who hardly ever goes to his work during the story—there is a semi-jokey aside about this later), and his secretary Sherry. McClain gets a racing tip from Balaam that later wins (it emerges that the cop has a certain precognitive ability).
When McClain gets back to his newspaper office with Sherry, he finds Boles, a religious crank (who is later revealed to be a “good” angel) squaring off against Rafel (the “bad” angel from the prologue). McClain gets rid of Boles and speaks to Rafel. Compelled by a strange impulse, McClain hires him.
McClain and Sherry then go out for dinner with the money he has won from the race. They drive around and end up in a restaurant below the cave where Rafel spoke to the other fallen angels. Inside, a very tall violinist plays a hypnotic tune, and McClain reflects on life. He has another vision where he is again told that he will marry and produce an immortal. He speculates that the woman he is to marry is Sherry and almost proposes, but then suspects he is under a malign influence and starts to leave the restaurant. He is intercepted by Balaam, who tells McClain he isn’t destined to marry Sherry, but will meet his his intended bride tomorrow.
The next day McClain meets the woman by an odd route: Rafel brings him evidence that a respected community businessman called Homer Windsor is running a drug business. As there isn’t enough there to print a story McClain arranges to see the man to feel him out. While he is there he meets the daughter Clare, and realises that she is his bride. Now McClain has a problem: if he reveals her father’s shady doings, he’ll lose the girl. (I note in passing that there are relatively explicit references to the drug trade and addicts at this point in the story, and there are later references to an addict as a “cokie” and “snowbird”—I can’t remember seeing these kind of drug references in other contemporary fantasy or science fiction of the time.)
McClain later gets a visit from Fiero, the violinist from the bar, who reveals his interest in Sherry. He mentions Balaam sent him, and tells Brad a story about a race of giants called the Nephilim who lived thousands of years ago. He also tells Brad that he has discussed this matter in the past with a knowledgeable, one-eared drug addict called Gerald. Brad goes to see Balaam and asks him about Fiero’s story, and where he can find Gerald. Brad goes to the park to try to find the man, and has a vision of a giant walking on a vast plain—his son.

This takes the story up to the quarter-way mark and, at this point, I thought that Cartmill’s vaguely Jonathan Hoag-ish story was moving along well, but wondered if he would be able to sustain this for another forty pages.
The short answer is no. There are a couple of subplots that rumble on from this point: the first is one that involves Windsor and his gangsters warning McClain from seeing Clare; the other involves Mr Jerrold (not “Gerald”) and a scroll that has information about the Nephilim but which kills everyone who tries to translate it. Both of these subplots go round and round in circles.
McClain takes Clare across the state line to marry her but is arrested when she says she has been abducted; later, she changes her mind, and McClain has her stay with Sherry. Meanwhile, he goes and gets drunk and is picked up by Windsor’s heavies, etc., etc.; McClain also blows hot and cold about getting the mss translated before a professor acquaintance of Balaam’s attempts it (and dies) before partially completing it—then the mss is stolen by Windsor’s heavies anyway.
There is a lot of other padding—there are what seem like pages of Sherry’s attempts to convince McClain to go out on the lash²—as well as McClain’s constant change of mind or mood about what he is going to do next. Every now and then Boles, the good angel, has a one-sided conversation with a pillar of light. There is also material about Satan never having had a fair hearing.
And then, at the end of all this waffle (spoiler), McClain infuriatingly marries Sherry not Clare! She was supposed to have been his bride all along! This makes the previous forty or so pages of material about Clare a complete and utter red herring.

The epilogue flashes forward a few months to Boles and Rafel, the two opposing angels, talking over McClain’s baby in the couple’s house. Boles tell Rafel that even though the hybrids have bred they will never win.
This is easily the worst thing I can remember reading in Unknown.

Jesus Shoes by Allan R. Bosworth is a story about a religious young black man called Pettijohn, who joins the crew of a ship called the Vermont. The crew torment him with the usual pranks, errands to get patterned paint, etc., until he almost drowns in one incident, and an order comes to stop the hazing.
Later, Pettijohn gets in a fight and kills a man in self-defence. While Pettijohn is treated by the pharmacist’s mate (who is the narrator) the latter kids him (obviously he didn’t get the memo) that a pair of Dutch clogs he owns are “Jesus Shoes” and that they enable the wearer to walk on water. The narrator gives Pettijohn the shoes and afterwards the man escapes out the cabin porthole. He is presumed drowned, as he can’t swim and they are twenty miles from shore.
The story above is related by the narrator many years later, after he gets a note from a parson asking him to come and see him about Pettijohn. Of course (spoiler) the narrator is given back his clogs.
There is some period racial description in this piece: the narrator refers to Pettijohn as a “shine” in one place and a “darky” in another.

The Compleat Werewolf by Anthony Boucher, the first of the ‘Fergus O’Breen’ series, was one of this year’s 1943 Retro Hugo novella finalists (and my reason for reading the issue). It is the best story in the issue and was my choice for the award.³
The protagonist is a college professor called Wolfe Wolf who, upon receipt of a message from his film star girlfriend which upsets him, goes to a bar to get drunk. There he meets a magician called Ozymandias, who performs a couple of tricks for him before identifying Wolf as a werewolf. The latter isn’t convinced:

The statement was so quiet, so plausible, that Wolf faltered. “But a werewolf is a man that changes into a wolf. I’ve never done that. Honest I haven’t.”
“A mammal,” said Ozymandias, “is an animal that bears its young alive and suckles them. A virgin is nonetheless a mammal.”  p. 72

The next part is probably the weakest part of the story, and has the narrative jump to a black mass organised by one of Wolf’s professor colleagues, something mentioned to Wolfe at the beginning of the story. There, Wolfe bites someone and Ozymandias appears with a blue aura in lieu of the devil. This part is a little random but, fortunately, the rest of the story is considerably more sure-footed.

Wolf wakes up the next day and uses the magic word that Ozymandias taught him to change himself into a wolf again, only to find that, as a wolf, he doesn’t have the vocal cords to say the other magic word to change himself back. Ozymandias, having anticipated this, turns up to help.
Other elements are then added to the mix, including a supposed private detective called O’Breen who is working for Wolfe’s film star girlfriend Gloria—this thread develops later in the story into an opportunity for Wolfe to get closer to her by auditioning for the part of a dog in one of her upcoming films.

Meanwhile, Ozymandias helps Wolfe with his changes, and during one werewolf patrol Wolfe finds a two-year old, who he takes home. For his trouble, he almost gets put in the pound by a police officer. During this adventure, Wolf chats to a cat while he is hiding from the pursuing policeman:

Wolf became aware of another scent. He had only just identified it as cat when someone said, “You’re were, aren’t you?”
Wolf started up, lips drawn back and muscles tense. There was nothing human in sight, but someone had spoken to him. Unthinkingly, he tried to say “Where are you?” but all that came out was a growl.
“Right behind you. Here in the shadows. You can scent me, can’t you?”
“But you’re a cat,” Wolf thought in his snarls. “And you’re talking.”
“Of course. But I’m not talking human language. It’s just your brain that takes it that way. If you had your human body, you’d just think I was going meowrr. But you are were, aren’t you?”
“How do you . . . why do you think so?”
“Because you didn’t try to jump me, as any normal dog would have. And besides, unless Confucius taught me all wrong, you’re a wolf, not a dog; and we don’t have wolves around here unless they’re were.”
“How do you know all this? Are you—”
“Oh, no. I’m just a cat. But I used to live next door to a werechow named Confucius. He taught me things.”
Wolf was amazed. “You mean he was a man who changed to chow and stayed that way? Lived as a pet?”
“Certainly. This was back at the worst of the depression. He said a dog was more apt to be fed and looked after than a man. I thought it was a smart idea.”
“But how terrible! Could a man so debase himself as—”
“Men don’t debase themselves. They debase each other. That’s the way of most weres. Some change to keep from being debased, others to do a little more effective debasing. Which are you?”  p. 78-79

The cat then interrupts their conversation by calling Wolfe’s attention to a mugging that is about to happen in the street; Wolfe intervenes and gets shot four times. He isn’t killed but finds that it makes him tired, and he has to find somewhere to sleep.
When he wakes up he can’t get back into his hotel to see Ozymandias (the doorman has changed) so he goes in early to one of his university classes and chalks the reverse change word onto the blackboard. His plan works when one of the students comes into the class, sees the word, and says it out loud. He turns back into a man. Unfortunately he turns back into a naked man and gets fired.
The rest of the story ties together Wolfe’s film audition and relationship with Gloria to the Black Mass group (spoiler: she is an Axis agent involved in a magnetic bombs plot) and Wolfe’s subsequent recruitment by O’Breen into the FBI.

There is a clever last paragraph that ties Ozymandias’s rope-trick disappearance (this happens at a film party before the union guys strike the set leaving him stranded) and the repeated Darjeeling references that the character makes throughout the story.
This is a slick, witty, and clever piece.

Every now and then you get a glimpse of L. Ron Hubbard as the writer he might have been if he didn’t need to crank out the pulp to make a living. The Room opens with Joe, who is adopted, discussing with Aunt Cynthia the disappearance of Uncle Toby. The first part of the story goes on to describe the domestic setup of the three, Joe’s unsuccessful search for his uncle, and the latter’s room.
The second part of the story starts with a lawyer turning up on the sixteenth day after Uncle Toby’s disappearance. He tells the pair about Uncle Toby’s will: everything will go to Aunt Cynthia except his room and everything in it, which goes to Joe.
Joe later takes over his uncle’s role as a veterinarian, and also starts acquainting himself with the room. He finds that it has a bottle of bourbon that refills itself (and flies through the air to pour a drink) as well as other charmed objects:

There were other knicknacks now that he looked. From lord, king, duchess or ladies. And all to their dearest, or respected and admired Toby, or Uncle Toby. There was a perfume container which played music as it sprayed and made rainbows in its mist. There was a little ring which spread a sphere of light. There was an apple which, no matter how often or hard it was bitten or eaten, always remained itself. There was a little golden monkey which did tricks endlessly and wittily and finished up by grinning for applause and then resumed its metallic inanimacy. There was a book which read poetry aloud in a soothing, feminine voice and a little muzzein which called out a strange tongued phrase and turned ever in a certain direction no matter which way he was set down.  p. 97

The last part has Joe discovering that one of the room’s doors is a portal to different worlds. The first is an underwater one, where he can breathe normally; the second is a desert, where people come to meet him and give gifts.
While this is going on, his aunt starts declining:

Aunt Cinthia was very quiet these days, her eyes lighting only when a step sounded upon the back porch—to darken when she discovered it was not Uncle Toby. She grew thin and preoccupied and the veins stuck out on her huge red hands and little spots of unnatural color stood high on her cheekbones in sharp contrast to the gray hollows below. Joe began to worry about her for it was very plain to him at least that Aunt Cinthia, inch by inch, was pulling a shroud over herself.  p. 97

Years after his aunt’s eventual death, Joe also disappears.
There is a postscript that (spoiler) involves Aunt Cynthia’s coffin and how, when the church is rebuilt and her remains are moved, it is found to be empty. This doesn’t entirely fit with the disappearance of the two men, but it does add a slight frisson to this comparatively languid and descriptive tale, a piece that is much more oblique than others of its time.
It is an unusual if not totally successful story.

Census Taker by Frank Belknap Long (which is missing off the contents page) starts with a man called Phillip who is reading when interrupted by an odd man who comes to the door. He tells Phillip that he is a census taker and asks him how many wives he has:

Phillip’s jaw jiggled downward, and his cigarette fell to the floor. He retrieved it, a slow flush mounting up over his face. A lunatic! Not an income-tax investigator, but a raving lunatic sitting there opposite him.
“It’s a nice place you’ve got here,” the little man reiterated, staring about him admiringly. “I’ve never seen a fireplace quite like that, and these chairs—antiques, of course. Bless my soul, where did you pick up that rug?”
With lunatics you had to be careful. It was best to humor them, pretend to agree with them one hundred percent.
Phillip’s jaw was rigid now. Pretending wasn’t going to be easy. His heart had started pounding, and his throat felt dry and tight.
“I’ve been expecting you to call,” he said. The steadiness of his own voice surprised him. “I’m afraid I haven’t even one wife. You see—”
The little man leaped up with a startled cry. “Not one wife ! But you couldn’t . . . you couldn’t pay that kind of tax.”  p. 100

After some further exchanges, the census taker vanishes. Phillip, fearing for his sanity, phones Claire, and asks her to come over but before she can arrive four large men appear at the door and take him away. Something doesn’t seem right about them, and when Phillip punches one of them his hands sinks all the way into his attacker’s stomach.
In the middle of this scuffle, Claire arrives, and before long they are both being driven away in a van and experiencing some odd reality effects:

Phillip screamed and flattened himself against the bench. The telephone pole had passed right through the vehicle, leaving a misty glimmering in its wake. Fortunately it had zigzagged, grazing Phillip’s knees and not touching Claire at all.
Phillip sat very still for a long time, and all Claire did was gulp, and look at him.
The man must have been walking in the middle of the road, because he didn’t zigzag. He whisked past Phillip with his chin thrust out and rain cascading from the brim of his hat.
It was horrible after that. A cemetery came in. That is to say, three or four tombstones skidded erratically between the benches, missing them by inches.
“We must have left the road,” Phillip said.  p. 103

Ultimately they end up in a swamp watching the van disappear into the sky.
The coda (spoiler) has the census taker at home in the Purple City, reflecting on the new sleeping cabinets that he and the other four men have just used, how realistic their dreams were, and how all of the city’s citizens will soon be using the devices.
Essentially this is an ‘I woke up and it was all a dream’ story, but it is quite interesting for all that, and has some good lines and a lightly humorous touch: I look forward to reading more of Long’s work.

Pobby by Jane Rice is another of this writer’s humorous novelettes, and one that was probably inspired by L. Ron Hubbard’s Typewriter in the Sky, which had appeared in the magazine in 1940 (the protagonist of that book finds himself as a character in a friend’s book, which is set in the Caribbean during the 17^th Century).
In this story Hugh Gibbons is a writer who has one of his characters turn up on his doorstep. This happens when Gibbons is out, however, and his man-servant Smuthers is left to deal with the situation. Smuthers invites Pobby (a simple farming type) into the library and gives him a drink:

Smuthers summoned his courage about him and said, “Could I ask the nature of your call, sir?”
“You mean what do I need of Mr. Gibbons?”
“Yes, sir.”
Pobby unclenched his fist and extended it, palm upward, toward Smuthers. “I wanted to talk to him about this here.”
Smuthers peered down his nose at the calloused and none-too-clean hand. He blinked. He peered again. On the man’s palm reposed a bean-shaped seed.
Smuthers didn’t know why he, suddenly, should be filled with loathing except that, somehow, it was nasty-looking. A kind of slimy green and covered with fine, silvery hair.
“He’s a-going to make me plant it, lessn I can stop him,” Pobby continued, “and I got to stop him.” He beat the words out with the flat of his hand on his knee. “I got to,” he said desperately. “I jest got to.”
Smuthers had the distinct sensation that his wits had all performed an abrupt about face and had marched out the back of his head.
[. . .]
“I’m afraid, sir—”
“You’re afraid,” said Pobby grimly, “what do you think I am! I got the trembles so bad I act like a chicken with the tizic. Get the dry sweats, so I have, jest thinking about it. It ain’t right for Mr. Gibbons to do this to me. I ain’t never harmed him none. It’s agin the rights of Magna Carta, that’s what it is, so it is.”
Smuthers looked from Pobby to the seed and back to Pobby again.
“Magna Carta?”
“Yessir. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Mr. Gibbons ain’t got no call to send me to my death this away, ’thout so much as a by your leave.”
“Your death, sir!”
“You don’t think I’m going to live after I’m chewed up, et, swallered ’n’ digested, do you? Why I ain’t got a fighting chance.”
“Et—eaten by what, sir?”
“Why, by this here”—Pobby indicated the seed.
Moisture dewed the Smuthers’ brow and Smuthers’ eyes grew slightly glazed.
“I’ll bring your drink, sir.”
“Thankee. I declare I’m plumb whooed from worrying. Ain’t nothing like worry to squz out a man’s innards.”
“No, sir.” Smuthers departed.
Hurriedly.  p. 112-113

This establishes one of the elements of the story (and metastory), which is that if Pobby plants the seed and allows it to grow, it will turn into a monstrous plant which will eat him. The other element is established when Gibbons arrives home, goes straight to his study and starts typing a new part of the tale—this causes Pobby to disappear (we find later he goes to his farm, which is hundreds of miles away). The next part of the story is a loop where Pobby tries to get hold of Gibbons at one of the latter’s lady friends but is again forestalled by the further progression of the story.
Eventually Gibbons figures out what is happening (he keeps getting told about the strange character that is looking for him) and he and Pobby meet, whereupon the latter lists a number of grievances: his impending death at the tendrils of the plant, the fact he has no reflection or shadow, that he is always having to hoist his trousers, etc.
There are further complications, which variously involve Pobby being taken to a society party and causing a fight, and Gibbons writing a short note to get rid of Pobby before a wedding he must attend—only to have Smuthers burn it and negate the effect. Gibbons finally goes to Pobby’s farm to see the plant for himself.

The story ends (spoiler) at Pobby’s farm where Gibbons is relieved to find him burying the plant. He discovers that Pobby brought matters to a head by writing his own version of the story and adding THE END to prevent it being changed. Some may find this a weak ending, but I thought it not bad, and there is a nice little half-twist in the final paragraphs which bootstraps the story up a level.
This is more of a mixed bag than the other stories of Rice’s I’ve read (probably because I am coming to them in reverse order). It is a little flabby in places and could probably have done with a bit of tightening. Also, the writer’s attitude to Pobby is initially not much more than disinterested amorality, and his post-meeting indifference seems little more than a plot device to extend the story. That said it is almost a three and a half star story courtesy of some neat one-liners and amusing parts. It had me chortling throughout.

There is a lot of Interior artwork in this issue but none of it is particularly noteworthy: I thought the Manuel Isip illustrations for the Boucher were probably the best. I also realised something about his style when I was looking at his illustrations for the Rice story: these pieces are spoiled a little by the simple comic book faces he gives the characters, the simplicity of which is at odds with the rest of the illustration (see the plant illustration above for an example of what I mean, the face is considerably less detailed than the rest of the picture).
The Science of Magic is a rambling editorial by John W. Campbell, Jr. about what the title says: the spells and evocations used by magicians and priests. Campbell ends up comparing this with modern-day electricity.
—And Having Writ— has a long and eye-glazingly dull letter from L. Sprague de Camp about a previous article on Nostradamus by Anthony Boucher. There are a couple of moderately interesting letters—one is from LeRoy Yerxa, who was just about to start a prolific career in the pages of Amazing and Fantastic Adventures. He would be dead within four years from a stroke, aged thirty.
In his Book Review of The White Wolf by Franklin Gregory, Anthony Boucher provides an interesting essay on the werewolf subgenre as well as reviewing the book (which he conditionally recommends as nothing new but literately written):

Is it possible now, at this late date, to write a good fantasy novel strictly on a werewolf theme? When the werewolf was as fresh material as the vampire was in 1897, it should have been possible to produce the Dracula of the field. But instead of one striking masterpiece, the werewolf has fathered a dozen or so novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them unbelievably bad and some few good.
[. . .]
Jack Williamson, in his “Darker Than You Think”—an admirable novel surely deserving book publication—escapes from the conventionality of lycanthropy by broadening its scope immeasurably. His daring concept of Homo lycanthropus, his extension of the metamorphic process to cover all forms of animal life for one individual, these give the story tremendous freshness and power. But excellent though the novel is, it remains a treatment of a new, imaginative and peculiarly Williamson concept, rather than a true novel of traditional lycanthropy.
By the way, may I propose to fantasy writers the term therianthropy, which would apply to any man-into-animal transformation, and suggest to Mr. William son that his horribly plausible species might be more appositely christened Homo therianthropus?  p. 108

A mixed issue, which would have been a lot better but for the Cartmill novella.

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1. Stefan R. Dziemianowicz’s review says that the Cartmill story is “interesting for its idea that the battle in heaven was not so much one of good versus evil as one with winners who considered themselves good and who stigmatized the losers as evil. It also offers some subtly caustic commentary on man’s responsibility for the state of his world and his delusions regarding his free will.” He adds that “one tires quickly of the chain of unusual coincidences necessary to keep the story moving and the characters confused. This probably would have worked much better as a shorter story.”
Dziemianowicz states the story is 49,000 words long (versus Fred Smith’s 56,000 words, and the 43,000 words of my uncorrected OCR scan).
He adds that Boucher’s The Compleat Werewolf “affectionately spoofs both the fantasy and mystery story”, and Rice’s Pobby is “too obviously padded”.
Fred Smith found the issue “an exceptional all-rounder”, stating that Cartmill’s novel was “the best thing he had so far written for Unknown and was distinctly different from anything previously featured in its pages.” He adds that “Cartmill introduces many twists in the plot and presents an authentic-seeming newspaper background—probably from his own experience. It’s an intriguing, unusual yarn which holds the reader’s interest right up to the final denouement.”
Of the two novelettes he says, “[The Compleat Werewolf] is a joy to read and has been deservedly reprinted down the years. The Jane Rice piece, Pobby, is likewise a joy and shows this writer at the top of her form”. The latter story also has “little touches of Thorne Smith and P G . Wodehouse” and “she introduces many nice touches into her story (including excerpts from Hugh’s ‘novel’) and would appear to have had a lot of fun writing it. It’s certainly fun to read and in fact is one long chuckle from beginning to end. One of the best!”
He finishes with a comment that the artwork “was handled in passable fashion by M. Isip and Orban and in mediocre style by Kramer and Kolliker (as if one Kramer was not enough!)”

2. To go out on the lash is to go out drinking (usually to excess).

3. Robert Heinlein’s Waldo (Astounding 1942), my second choice pick, won the novella category. The full 1943 Retro Hugo Award results are here.