{"id":104,"date":"2015-12-19T06:48:53","date_gmt":"2015-12-19T06:48:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=104"},"modified":"2020-02-09T18:46:13","modified_gmt":"2020-02-09T18:46:13","slug":"unknown-v02n06-february-1940","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=104","title":{"rendered":"Unknown v02n06, February 1940"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Unknown194002x600\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Other Reviews:
\nFred Smith:\u00a0Once There Was A Magazine<\/em>\u2014<\/a>\u00a0p.16-17.<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nDeath’s Deputy<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novella by L. Ron Hubbard ♥♥♥
\nCall of Duty<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Laurence Bour, Jr. ♥
\nThe Wisdom of an Ass<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 novelette by Ulysses George Mihalakis [as by Silaki Ali Hassan] ♥♥♥
\nThe Psychomorph<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by E. A. Grosser ♥
\nOn the Knees of the Gods<\/strong><\/em> (Part 2 of 3) \u2022 novella serial by J. Allan Dunn ♥♥♥+
\nWhen It Was Moonlight<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 short story by Manly Wade Wellman\u00a0♥♥<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nOf Things Beyond<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 essay by The Editor
\n\u2014And Having Writ\u2014<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 Letters
\nLurani<\/strong><\/em> \u2022 poem by Robert A. W. Lowndes [as by Paul Dennis Lavond]<\/p>\n

This issue has what must be one of the best Unknown<\/em> covers ever:1<\/sup>\u00a0I can see why people say that Cartier\u2019s artwork suited the humorous aspects of the magazine. The interior artwork is by Edd Cartier, R. Isip, Virgil Finlay and M. Isip. Once again, the poor unz.org<\/em> scan of the magazine makes it difficult to appreciate the artwork, especially one of the Finlay illustrations.<\/p>\n

The lead fiction this month is a novella by L. Ron Hubbard, Death\u2019s Deputy<\/strong><\/em>. I think this is probably the first work I\u2019ve read by Hubbard and tried to think back to why that was. Initially I thought it was that his Dianetics and Scientology connections may have put me off but it was pointed out to me that the more pragmatic reason was probably Hubbard\u2019s patchy reprint record in the 1960s and 70s.
\nWhatever, this long novella (about 30,000 words) tells of a Canadian Air Force Spitfire pilot2<\/sup>, Clayton MacLean, who is shot down, badly injured and left with disabling injuries. He ends up back in America as a civilian where one night he is transported into the presence of Destruction (who is effectively Death) and asked to work for him. When he refuses he is told he has no choice and he will either serve or die.
\nThe rest of the story tells of the numerous people who subsequently die in his presence (including one aeroplane crash). Matters are complicated when he falls in love with Laura \u2014 but he decides he must leave her to keep her safe. Having been cured of his disabling injuries in the meantime by a doctor’s experimental technique (which the doctor subsequently takes to the grave with him) he re-enlists and ends up causing a troopship to be sunk.
\n<\/strong>After a number of high casualty bombing missions he meets up with his wife and determines to come to an accommodation with Death. I thought this a fairly good, readable pulp pot-boiler.<\/p>\n

Laurence Bour\u2019s Call of Duty<\/strong><\/em> concerns a WW1 U-boat commander who has a milky haze affecting his vision. The story develops fairly slowly to the climax, rather telegraphing the ending (doubt about the time as their position doesn’t make sense, target ships looking oddly modern, etc.) where they sink a passenger ship and then sink themselves.
\nThe twist end (spoiler) is that the ship is the Athenia, the first casualty of WW2.\u00a0A ploddingly done weird story.<\/p>\n

Ulysses George Mihalakis\u2019s The Wisdom of an Ass <\/strong><\/em>is an Arabian ‘legend’ that tells of Brahim becoming the Visier of Yafri and the appalling judgements he hands down in court. Kassim, a cobbler in the town, who had previously been dealing with disputes in a low-key local manner, is drawn into a case of poor merchandise and ends up at the wrong end of one of Brahim’s judgements. Fortunately he manages to avoid the punishment. Subsequently he encounters a djinn, repels him, and is then gifted special powers by Allah.
\nKassim turns himself into an ass, places himself in the centre of a dispute between two farmers and manages to ingratiate himself into Brahim’s court, where he helps him formulate judgements.\u00a0Matters come to a head when the Mufti arrives with two Caliphs on the brink of war over a valley.
\nThis is a fairly good Arabian Nights type story for the most part, but the denouement isn’t as good as the rest of the story.<\/p>\n

A. Grosser\u2019s The Psychomorph<\/strong><\/em> is a poor short story about a creature who turns up in a ship’s cabin where both men think it looks like their wife\/lover. When the wife and lover return matters have already progressed to the point where one of the men is dead and the remaining one has resolved to kill\u00a0the creature. A twist end that you can see coming from miles back.<\/p>\n

This second part of J. Allan Dunn\u2019s serial On the Knees of the Gods <\/strong><\/em>gets into its stride in this instalment. Peter meets with the centaur chief Cheiron but the gift of the salve for their hooves doesn’t provide sufficient incentive for his help. Peter suggests horseshoes for the centaurs and Cheiron dispatches Peter to another of the Gods, Hephaestus, who is capable of making them.
\nFirst though, Peter has to go to Poseidon to negotiate passage across the Mediterranean. Whilst at the latter’s temple he actually meets with Poseidon\u2019s wife, Amphitrite, who tries to seduce him. He mentally calls out to Pan, who arrives and takes his place, also arranging a sea vessel to take him to Hephaestus.
\nAt this point I found myself quite enjoying this story and it struck me that it would be very much be enjoyed by the admirers of Thomas Burnett Swann. Allan wrote over a thousand stories and novels, half of them Westerns. I suspect this may have been a labour of love, for no book version has ever been published.
\nThe final section of this part is the actual sea journey to Hephaestus, which is equally enjoyable.<\/p>\n

The fiction is rounded off by Manly Wade Wellman\u2019s When It Was Moonlight<\/strong><\/em>, <\/strong>an OK short story about Edgar Allen Poe investigating a case of premature burial in his town and finding a vampire.<\/p>\n

The non-fiction this issue is similar to last month\u2019s: an editorial puffing next month\u2019s contents (the start of an interesting sounding Jack Williamson serial), a poem about a mermaid that is OK, and the letters column which, inelegantly, has one page on p.6 and has the rest from p.122 onwards. The latter is rather dull and starts with a long letter about Eric Frank Russell\u2019s article on Fortean phenomena.<\/p>\n

A better issue than last month’s but still little in the way of the stand-out fiction I have been expecting.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. This cover image\u00a0comes from Siren in the Night<\/a><\/em> on flickr.com. Well worth a look.<\/li>\n
  2. Hubbard obviously didn’t wear himself out on the aviation research. He refers to the Spitfire as the ‘Vickers Spitfire’, odd given that Spitfires were called just that or \u2018Supermarine Spitfires\u2019. Also his fateful initial encounter is with half a dozen H.126s: a recce plane unlikely to be flying in formation and they were not armed with\u00a020mm cannons. Also, that calibre of shell would\u00a0have probably\u00a0ripped his arm off rather than injuring it.
    \nAt the end of the story he needs help when back in the cockpit of a Spitfire and is told that several Lysanders are on the way to help him. The Lysander is probably best known for its SOE clandestine operations: it was slow and wasn’t armed until the Mk3 entered service in July 1940, several months after this story appeared.
    \nThis information brought to you by a misspent childhood reading Commando<\/em> comics and the modern wonder of Wikipedia<\/em>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n    \"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Other Reviews: Fred Smith:\u00a0Once There Was A Magazine\u2014\u00a0p.16-17. Fiction: Death’s Deputy \u2022 novella by L. Ron Hubbard ♥♥♥ Call of Duty \u2022 short story by Laurence Bour, Jr. ♥ The Wisdom of an Ass \u2022 novelette by Ulysses George Mihalakis [as by Silaki Ali Hassan] ♥♥♥ The Psychomorph \u2022 short story by E. A. Grosser […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unknown"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-1G","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12221,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/12221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}