{"id":10784,"date":"2019-07-26T15:23:47","date_gmt":"2019-07-26T15:23:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=10784"},"modified":"2019-07-27T09:13:40","modified_gmt":"2019-07-27T09:13:40","slug":"fantastic-novels-magazine-v04n02-july-1950","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=10784","title":{"rendered":"Fantastic Novels Magazine v04n02, July 1950"},"content":{"rendered":"

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ISFDB link<\/a>
\nInternet Archive link<\/a><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, Mary Gnaedinger<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nEarth\u2019s Last Citadel<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint novel by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner \u2217<\/strong>
\nDeath\u2019s Secret<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint novelette by John L. Schoolcraft \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Soul Trap<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Charles B. Stilson \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nLost\u2014One Mylodon<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Elmer Brown Mason \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-Fiction:
\nCover <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Lawrence
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Virgil Finlay (x6), Lawrence
\nWhat Do You Think?<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial by Mary Gnaedinger & reader\u2019s letters
\nFantasy Book Reviews <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Sam Moskowitz<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

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Earth\u2019s Last Citadel<\/em><\/strong> by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner is one of the finalists for this year\u2019s 1944 Retro-Hugo Award in the novel category (although it appears in this 1950 publication, it was originally serialised in Argosy<\/em>\u2019s April to July 1943 issues). It starts off in the Tunisian desert with Alan Drake of US Intelligence trying to protect a distinguished Scottish scientist called Sir Colin Douglas from two Nazi agents. While they evade capture, Drake and Douglas come upon a shining sphere that appears to have risen out of the sand, an event that coincides with the two Nazis turning up (one of the two is Karen Martin, a spy with \u201cthe unstable brilliance of many mixed races shining in her eyes\u201d\u2014an unlikely hire, I think\u2014and the other is Mike Smith, an American gangster of German origin). Before Drake and Sir Colin can be taken prisoner, this Central Casting quartet are compelled to enter the sphere, where they enter a deep sleep or stasis, and end up in the far future.
\nDrake is the first to wake up, with the vague memory of dreaming about an alien. He soon sees that, if there was an alien with them in the sphere, it has left. The others come round, and any burgeoning fight between the four is forestalled by what awaits them outside:<\/p>\n

[This] was not the flame-scorched valley they had left. And it was not morning, or noon, or night. There was only a ruddy twilight here, and a flat, unfeatured landscape across which patches of mist drifted aimlessly as they watched, like clouds before a sluggish wind. Low down in the sky hung a dull and ruddy sun that they could look upon unblinded, with steady eyes.
\nBriefly, in the distance, something moved high up across the sky. There was a dark shape out there somewhere, a building monstrously silhouetted against the sun. But the mists closed in like curtains to veil it from his gaze, as if it were secret to this dead world, not for living eyes to look on.\u00a0 p. 18<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Shortly after this they see and hear a winged human, and decide to go in the direction it was flying in an attempt to get food. During their journey they see another flier, which Smith (or perhaps that should be Schmidt) tries to shoot before Drake stops him. Later on a huge worm appears through the mist and slides past them. They eventually come to the previously seen building and note that it appears to be a fortress, albeit one which has a strange alien shape constructed from the same dark material as the sphere that brought them here. Drake has a premonition about something inside the fortress, and then something runs through the mist, which he catches. This turns out to be a young woman called Evaya:<\/p>\n

The captive\u2019s struggles had ceased when light came back around them. She hung motionless in Alan\u2019s embrace, head thrown back, staring up at him. Not terror, but complete bewilderment, made her features a mask of surprise.
\nThey were unbelievably delicate features. The very skull beneath must not be common bone, but some exquisite structure carved of ivory. Her face had the flawless, unearthly perfection of a flower. That was it\u2014she had a flower\u2019s delicacy, over-bred, painstakingly cultured and refined out of all kinship with the coarse human prototype. Even her hair seemed so fine that it floated upon the misty air, only settling now about her shoulders as her struggles ceased. The gossamer robe that had made her outlines waver so strangely in the fog fell in cobwebby folds which every breath fluttered.\u00a0 p. 24<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At this point the pace picks up somewhat. Evaya takes them to Carcasilla, an underground city where they meet the others of her race as well as their ruler Flande (he is essentially a cross between the big taking head from Mork and Mindy<\/em>, and the Wizard of Oz<\/em>). He telepathically questions them until he gets bored, then summons a barbarian tribe called the Terasi to deal with them. Drake is knocked unconscious and separated from the other three during the fight, and Evaya later tends him at an \u201cimmortality\u201d fountain in the centre of the city. Drake learns more about the history of the place.
\nThen, if the recent addition of the big talking head and the barbarians wasn\u2019t enough to keep up the tempo, priestess Evaya receives a telepathic summons from the alien Light-Wearer, the only surviving member of the race that subjugated humanity millennia ago. When it arrives through the portal it engulfs Drake and tries to feed on his life force, but Sir Colin arrives and saves him with a gunshot. Drake is told later that the Light-Wearer cannot stand noise, and also that it is the alien from the sphere (there is no mention as to why it did it not feed on them while they were all together).<\/p>\n

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The rest of the story has a lot of running around that involves, largely, the Light Wearer and the Carcasillians trying to overwhelm the defences (large gongs) of the Terasi, who are sheltering the foursome. There is a bit more to the plot than that but you\u2019ll have got the idea.
\nThis is not a very good piece, and it has several failings. First, it takes ages to get going\u2014they encounter Evaya a quarter of the way through the novel, and the writing up to that point is largely descriptive (this, the poor pacing, and the prose mark it out as Moore\u2019s work). Second, the characters are cardboard cut-outs\u2014I\u2019ve already mentioned the Central Casting aspect above, but you can add to that a dreadful Scottish accent from Sir Colin and that Karen\u2019s character is hardly used. Finally, the various ideas used in the story\u2014predatory alien, immortality fountain, portals, remnants of humanity, etc.\u2014are all just futuristic kitchen-sink nonsense, and hard to engage with.
\nI suspect that this was a fragment that Moore started and abandoned, and which Kuttner largely or entirely completed (compare the amount of description versus incident in the first quarter against that in the remainder, and you will see what I mean). Whatever, it is the worst thing of theirs I\u2019ve read, and certainly not up to the quality of their other 1943 work. To that latter point\u2014how on Earth did this become a Hugo finalist when Moore\u2019s Judgement Night<\/em> was overlooked? What on Earth were the Retro Hugo nominators thinking?<\/p>\n

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Death\u2019s Secret<\/em><\/strong> by John L. Schoolcraft (All-Story Weekly<\/em>, December 1st<\/sup> 1917) starts with an archaeologist called Williamson riding out to explore a desert oasis. On his arrival a strange noise spooks his horse so he looks around: he doesn\u2019t find the source of the sound but he does find an unopened tomb. After he manages to dig his way into it, he finds a mummy in a casket\u2014even though they are a thousand miles from the Nile\u2014and a script that identifies the body as a young girl, and which also gives an account of how she was kidnapped and treated dreadfully by her captors. At the end of the script there is a curse which states that anyone who repeats the story will die within twenty-four hours.
\nAt this point Williamson summons his boss Talcott, and the rest of the archaeological expedition. Initially Williamson hides the scroll from his boss, but on the way back tells him about it and later reads it to Talcott and another man called Purdy. The next day Williamson returns to the tomb to finish some work but does not come back. After Talcott and Purdy fruitlessly search for Williamson they find one of the natives with his watch, and are later led to his body.<\/p>\n

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After Talcott and Purdy bury the corpse they discuss the curse, and decide to set Williamson\u2019s watch going again (it stopped when he fell from his horse) to see if he died within the twenty-four hour period. They find out he died three hours after leaving camp.
\nMost stories would stop at this point after suggesting that the curse is real, but this isn\u2019t what happens here. This is just the start of a more complicated set of affairs which involve Talcott and Purdy going home by ship, and further deaths and mishaps. These include (spoiler) the ship hitting a derelict and Purdy going missing (after having told the story to a couple on board); Talcott consulting a psychic investigator and deciding to test the efficacy of the curse at his cottage; and an attack by a cat with poisoned claws, followed by another by its handler, one of many generations of tomb-guards.
\nTalcott sees off the cat and the handler (who Talcott discovers killed Williamson and Purdy), but the cottage collapses on him during a storm. The curse has finally claimed one of the three men.
\nThis story is convoluted and a little far-fetched, but it\u2019s a fairly good read for a 1917 work, I thought.<\/p>\n

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The Soul Trap<\/em><\/strong> by Charles B. Stilson (All-Story Weekly<\/em>, March 10th<\/sup> 1917, as Liberty or Death?)<\/em> has a doctor tending a dying man called Theon Karker, who uses what little strength is left in him to implore the doctor to go up into the attic of the house and break a Crystal cabinet. The doctor does not pay too much attention to this but, after Karker dies, finds a letter addressed to him. He reads of Karker\u2019s researches into spiritualism, and his inability to communicate with the spirits as they all too quickly move to another plane:<\/p>\n

[The] soul passed beyond, like that newly come to this world, is weak and inexperienced in its state and must develop and progress, as a child\u2019s mind unfolds. And when the soul does gain in strength and expression, it straightway uses its new-found powers to pass on into another realm, whence no mediumistic summons may recall it.
\nThen, on an accursed day, I reasoned, if all these things be true, and a man find some way to cage a spirit and confine it, he might find it to progress and grow under his hand, in a hot-house as it were, and control it to his purpose. Familiarity with the sciences of the laboratory led me to ponder this problem to a conclusion. Spirits, I argued, must have some material qualities; else how can they produce audible phenomena, how rap on walls, play musical instruments, move articles of furniture? If so, if the soul is capable of such manifestations\u2014and I had experienced them often\u2014it must be in the nature of an ethereal fluid or essence; and such may be confined. \u00a0p. 99-100<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Karker then gives an account of how he incarcerated a dying man in a glass cage to trap his departing spirit and later communicate with it. This proved successful, but after a period of this the spirit made dire threats, and Karker had an accident and paralysed himself before he could release it.
\nThe remainder of the story builds atmosphere as the doctor waits on the porch for dawn before he goes up stairs to investigate. When he does so he sees a glass cage in the gloom, and he hurriedly goes back downstairs and outside to wait until there is more daylight. Later he goes back up . . . .
\nThe final part (spoiler) reveals that there is no body in the glass cage and that the whole story was in Karker\u2019s mind. Or as the story puts it:<\/p>\n

Pennerton stepped to the side of the couch. He looked down at the dead man and his face grew solemn with pity. Slowly he said:
\n\u201cAh, the poor tortured spirit was not there, not in the crystal chamber, my friend. It was here\u201d, and he laid his hand on Theron Karker\u2019s cold forehead.\u00a0 p. 104<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This ending will no doubt prove irritating to some as it completely subverts reader expectation and the supernatural premise of the story, but I thought it an atmospheric and quite well done piece (and uttered a \u201cHa!\u201d on finishing it). I\u2019ll be interested to see what is said about this one in forthcoming letters columns.<\/p>\n

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Lost\u2014One Mylodon<\/em><\/strong> by Elmer Brown Mason (All-Story Weekly<\/em>, April 1st<\/sup> 1916) is a sprawling story about two explorers who travel to Patagonia to investigate a cave where they hope to obtain the bones of a long dead creature called a mylodon. When they get there (via a night in a South American town and a journey by yacht\u2014I did say it was sprawling) they descend into the cave where they dig up little more than human bones. When they go deeper into the cave, one of them slips down a slope, and finds a pile of interesting remains. When the other goes to get a rope to help his colleague back up the slope he is taken hostage by a group of natives. While they rebury their ancestors\u2019 remains, he manages to free himself, simultaneous with his colleague appearing covered in phosphorescent mud. The natives flee, bar one woman who is hit by falling rock and is kept as a hostage by the pair.
\nThe rest of the story involves them trailing down the coast after her to a place where they find still-living examples of the mylodons:<\/p>\n

\u201cWheet-wheet, wheet-wheet,\u201d came a tiny voice from the tree tops, and I looked up straight into a face peering down at me. And what a face! The round, yellow, foolish eyes were set well up in the narrow, greenish forehead; two flat, sniffing nostrils expanded and closed above a thicklipped, vacuous mouth, from which protruded a long, slender, blue tongue, like a piece of satin ribbon. Never have I seen anything that portrayed such complete imbecility as that face!
\n\u201cThe utter damned fool!\u201d I heard myself say aloud.
\n\u201cWheet-wheet,\u201d came the ridiculously tiny voice, the underbrush parted, and an immense bulk moved out into the open.
\nIf you could have forgotten the idiot face (which you couldn\u2019t), I suppose the mere size of the animal would have made it impressive. It was as big as an elephant, as an elephant sitting on its haunches. The hind legs were enormous, doubled under it, and ending in great, flat paws; the back was curved, nearly humped; the forelegs were short, powerful, and armed with stupendous claws; the neck was long, a cord dangling from it, and topped by that fool head, maddeningly out of proportion to the bulk of the rest of the animal; while the entire body was covered with short, very green fur.\u00a0 p. 117<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Later (spoiler) our two geniuses decide that it will be a good idea to take flash photographs of the creatures in their cave, at which point they stampede and the only remaining male is killed.
\nThis is a readable enough story, but you will need to overlook the fact it is a rambling and ultimately dispiriting story about two theriocidal idiots.<\/p>\n

The Cover <\/em><\/strong>is an average effort by Lawrence, who also contributes one of the interior illustrations. The rest of the interior artwork is by Virgil Finlay, which includes some good work (the title pages for the Moore\/Kuttner and Schoolcraft) and some that may be a variation on other work (the dark fortress from the Moore\/Kuttner). Some of it just does not reproduce that well (the woman from the Schoolcraft is too dark, as is the Lawrence illustration for the Mason).<\/p>\n

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What Do You Think?<\/em><\/strong> opens with a short note from editor Mary Gnaedinger about a couple of recent items, and she also plugs a couple of upcoming stories (the third of Charles B Stilson\u2019s \u2018Polaris\u2019 trilogy, and The Son of the Red God<\/em> by Paul L. Anderson\u2014the latter story did not appear before the magazine folded a year later). Gnaedinger ends with this:<\/p>\n

I believe you will agree with me that the letters in this issue reflect a great enthusiasm for our magazine, and that they show even more than heretofore a profound interest in the selected stories, and a heart-warming and comfortable companionship among the readers in their relationship to each other.
\nSincerely yours in Fantasy,
\nMary Gnaedinger.\u00a0 p. 6<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This editorial content is followed by a huge amount of reader\u2019s correspondence (around forty letters): there is comment about A. Merrit\u2019s Fantasy<\/em>, a new companion magazine to this title and Famous Fantastic Mysteries<\/em> (the fourth of this new magazine\u2019s eventual five issues was on the newsstand the same time as this issue of Fantastic Novels Magazine<\/em>); announcements of various conventions and clubs; a number of letters from British readers (this includes anecdotes about difficulties with UK exchange controls\u2014sending money out of the country\u2014and mention of the new British edition of the magazine).
\nAs for comments on the stories, Max Brand\u2019s The Receding Brow<\/em>, and Charles B. Stilson\u2019s Minos of Sardanes<\/em> (the second of the \u2018Polaris\u2019 trilogy) are the two that receive the most positive mentions.
\nNegative comment comes from Marion McNunn Nelson from Caspar, Wyoming, (one of the few thoughtful letters in the issue):<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t resist writing you once again after just finishing the letter section of the March issue of Fantastic Novels<\/em>. I always read the letter section first and always enjoy it, and always have a great many comments, backtalk and enthusiastic agreements swarming through my mind when I finish; and always feel I, too, simply must sit down at my typewriter and have my say. But fortunately for you\u2014for I\u2019m sure you must always get much too many letters\u2014I usually subside again without writing.
\nWhile I have enjoyed some stories better than others, I feel you have never really let me down. I am amused at the tone of weighty and Olympic wisdom with which some of your younger readers criticize this and that yarn. And at the widely varying definitions of \u201cfantasy\u201d made. Fantasy is, to me, an all inclusive word\u2014the supernatural, the practically impossible adventure, horror, science-fiction (the interplanetary part of which I easily get fed up on\u2014in fact, the only kind of science fiction I care for really is that on the order of Taine or Stapledon, etc.)
\nOf all the stories you\u2019ve published the only two I really didn\u2019t like are the Chesterton\u2019s \u201cThursday\u201d novel, I\u2019ve even forgotten the exact name\u2014\u201cThe Man Who Was Thursday\u201d, I guess [Famous Fantastic Mysteries<\/em>, March 1944]. And your last, \u201cThe Flying Legion\u201d [by George Allan England in the January 1950 issue]. Exciting, sure. But Chesterton was very subtly putting over a great piece of illusionary, reactionary propaganda; and England\u2019s story, too, seemed to express much too much of personal and propagandaish bias. I am neither an anarchist nor a Moslem, but both those stories left me disgusted, with a bad taste in my mouth. I was surprised and disappointed with the England story. (Chesterton I knew of old.) Because one man is bored with life, having everything in a material way anyone could want, he is perfectly willing to sacrifice any number of lives of innocent people in a wild, cruel adventure.
\nThe whole story is an affront to a great and brave people\u2014even though they may have their cruelties, too. And I think anyone who has read Lawrence of Arabia\u2019s \u201cSeven Pillars of Wisdom\u201d, as I have, would feel the same way. I hate any stories today that make villains out of a whole people. \u00a0p. 126<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Fantasy Book Reviews<\/em><\/strong> by Sam Moskowitz is an interesting column, given his habit of contextualising the books covered. There is this on Theodore Sturgeon\u2019s collection Without Sorcery<\/em>, for instance:<\/p>\n

Unlike Ray Bradbury, who has written the introduction to this volume and who is one of the brightest literary stars on the fantasy horizon, Sturgeon does not present even a hint of the repetition in theme, style and ideas, which duplication presents Bradbury\u2019s chief weakness. Because of this, there is no need to urge moderation in the sampling of Sturgeon\u2019s wares. With the lone exception of Butyl and the Breather<\/em>, which is a sequel to The Ether Breather<\/em>, it would be hard to believe that any two stories in the volume came from the pen of one author.\u00a0 p. 105<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And this on Ralph Milne Farley\u2019s Myles Cabot on Venus<\/em>:<\/p>\n

If you fancy yourself as an ultra-sophisticate who must find social significance in the web of the stories and cannot tolerate lines that are not clipped in the Hemingway fashion, this tale of Myles Cabot, who is transported to the planet Venus without preparation or travail; who battles against and then with the giant ants of Venus to attain the hand of Lilia, fair princess of that planet, will prove utterly insufferable to you. But those who retain enough of their youth to remember the magic of roaming the ancient plains of Mars with Edgar Rice Burroughs\u2019 famous character, John Carter, will also relish this story.
\nOld-time readers of Argosy<\/em> and early issue followers of F.F.M.<\/em> will he pleased to see this famous old-time scientific romance gain the sanctity of hard covers at last.\u00a0 p. 106<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Elsewhere there are a couple of interesting snippets. In his review of The Lungfish, the Dodo and the Unicorn <\/em>by Willy Ley, he states that \u201cLey leans to the conclusion that some day a sea animal, hitherto unknown and larger than any whale, may be discovered.\u201d In the comments on Stanley G. Weinbaum\u2019s book Martian Odyssey and Others<\/em>, Moskowitz notes that Time<\/em> magazine used the book as an excuse for a \u201cfull page write-up on science fiction\u201d.<\/p>\n

A middling issue, with the Moore and Kuttner novel a particular disappointment.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

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_____________________<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Internet Archive link _____________________ Editor, Mary Gnaedinger Fiction: Earth\u2019s Last Citadel \u2022 reprint novel by C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner \u2217 Death\u2019s Secret \u2022 reprint novelette by John L. Schoolcraft \u2217\u2217\u2217 The Soul Trap \u2022 reprint short story by Charles B. Stilson \u2217\u2217\u2217 Lost\u2014One Mylodon \u2022 reprint short story by Elmer Brown […]<\/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":[45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantastic-novels-magazine"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-2NW","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784","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=10784"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10822,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10784\/revisions\/10822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}