{"id":3025,"date":"2017-06-09T14:33:41","date_gmt":"2017-06-09T14:33:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=3025"},"modified":"2017-07-25T19:46:53","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T19:46:53","slug":"the-magazine-of-fantasy-science-fiction-14-june-1952","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=3025","title":{"rendered":"The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction #14, June 1952"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

Other reviews:
\nJohn Loyd, There ain\u2019t no such thing as a free lunch<\/a><\/p>\n

Editors, Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas; Managing Editor, Robert P. Mills<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nLove<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Richard Wilson \u2665
\nThe Causes<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Margaret St. Clair [as by Idris Seabright] \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nThe Desrick on Yandro<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Manly Wade Wellman \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nThe Moon Maiden<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Hannibal Coons \u2665
\nThe Brothers<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Clifton Dance \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nFinale<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Reginald Bretnor \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nThe Beach Thing<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Ralph Robin \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nDragon on Somerset Street<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Elmer Roessner \u2665
\nUnderground Movement<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Kris Neville \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nArtists at Work<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Harold Lynch, Jr. \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nThe Call of Wings<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint short story by Agatha Christie \u2665\u2665
\nThe Business, As Usual<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Mack Reynolds \u2665
\nLambikin<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Sam Merwin, Jr. \u2665\u2665<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nLove<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 cover by Emsh
\nRecommended Reading<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by The Editors
\nThe Big Nasturtiums<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 reprint poem by Robert Beverly Hale<\/p>\n

This issue doesn\u2019t have any stand out stories but it does have several that fall into the \u2018good\u2019 category. The first of this group is The Causes<\/em><\/strong> by Margaret St. Clair, which is a story that manages to outdo L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt\u2019s \u2018Gavagan\u2019s Bar\u2019 series (although that\u2019s a pretty low bar for the most part). It starts with a man called George in a bar talking to the regulars: the conversation is about the dangerous state of the world. A number of his co-drinkers give, in turn, alternative theories about why this is the case. First he is told that all the Gods, bar Athena and Ares, have permanently moved to New Zealand, leaving this unhealthy pairing of science and war behind. The second tall tale is told by a man who produces a strange-looking horn, and he tells George about the Last Trump. The third story is about a lama in Tibet who desires one of the local girls, and the vagaries of reincarnation. There is one final episode that more directly involves George.
\nThis doesn\u2019t really amount to anything more than four tall tales, but it is a pleasant enough piece nonetheless.
\nThe Desrick on Yandro<\/em><\/strong> by Manly Wade Wellman is another \u2018Silver John\u2019 (or \u2018John the Balladeer\u2019) story. It is an atmospheric piece about a rich, arrogant man who hears John singing about Yandro, a faraway hill. He tells John that Yandro is his surname, and asks about the song.
\nOnce he finds out it refers to a real place, Yandro commandeers John and they leave in a plane. After they land the pair immediately drive to the area and start climbing the hill.
\nHalf-way up they come upon a rough cabin, and meet an old woman who offers to let the pair spend the night on her porch. Over a meal she tells Yandro how his grandfather was involved with the witch at the top of the hill, and how he snuck away with gold. She also tells Yandro other things:<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn says they have bears and wildcats up here.\u201d He expected her to say I was stretching it.<\/em>
\n\u201cOh, there\u2019s other creatures, too. Scarce animals, like the Toller.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cThe Toller?\u201d he said. <\/em>
\n\u201cIt\u2019s the hugest flying thing there is, I guess,\u201d said Miss Tully. \u201cIts voice tolls like a bell, to tell other creatures their feed\u2019s near. And there\u2019s the Flat. It lies level with the ground, and not much higher. It can wrap you like a blanket.\u201d She lighted the pipe. \u201cAnd the Bammat. Big, the Bammat is.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cThe Behemoth, you mean,\u201d he suggested. <\/em>
\n\u201cNo, the Behemoth\u2019s in the Bible. The Bammat\u2019s something hairy-like, with big ears and a long wiggly nose and twisty white teeth sticking out of its mouth\u2014\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cOh!\u201d And Mr. Yandro trumpeted his laughter. \u201cYou\u2019ve got some story about the Mammoth. Why, they\u2019ve been extinct\u2014dead and forgotten\u2014for thousands of years.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cNot for so long, I\u2019ve heard tell,\u201d she said, puffing.<\/em>
\n\u201cAnyway,\u201d he went on arguing, \u201cthe Mammoth\u2014the Bammat, as you call it\u2014is of the elephant family. How would anything like that get up in the mountains?\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cMaybe folks hunted it there,\u201d said Miss Tully, \u201cand maybe it stays there so folks will think it\u2019s dead and gone a thousand years. And there\u2019s the Behinder.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cAnd what,\u201d said Mr. Yandro, \u201cmight the Behinder look like?\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cCan\u2019t rightly say, Mr. Yandro. For it\u2019s always behind the man or woman it wants to grab. And there\u2019s the Skim\u2014it kites through the air\u2014and the Culverin, that can shoot pebbles with its mouth.\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cAnd you believe all that?\u201d sneered Mr. Yandro, the way he always sneered at everything, everywhere. \u201cWhy else should I tell it?\u201d she replied.<\/em> p. 23-24<\/p>\n

In the morning the men continue up the hill. . . .
\nThe Brothers<\/em><\/strong> by Clifton Dance (the introduction mentions he is a doctor by profession) is a promising first story about a patient who ends up in a locked psychiatric ward. There he starts to decline, regardless of what they try to feed him, while they deal with what they think is an unusual form of madness. Then, one of the nearby patients dies from a gangrenous leg. . . .
\nThis is a gripping piece that is given an edge by some clinical but visceral medical information:<\/p>\n

Presiding at the special meeting was Dr. Heinrich Fuchs, chief of the psychiatric service, a wise and learned man. He\u2019d seen and heard a great many things and what he hadn\u2019t seen or heard himself, he\u2019d read about.<\/em>
\nBut, he had said, never before had he known of a thing like this happening in a hospital. In cemeteries, yes, but never in a hospital. <\/em>
\nDr. Mayer, the pathologist, who always personally checked every cadaver in the hospital, was finishing his report. \u201cI would say the marks were those of human teeth. An area 12 centimeters by 9 centimeters on the anterior aspect of the thigh was denuded of skin and the underlying portions of the rectus femoris, vastus intermedius and sartorius muscles were apparently devoured, exposing about five centimeters of femur. Tentative bites appear to have been made on the neck, chest and upper extremities. Through the jugular vein, apparently, most of the blood was drained off.\u201d<\/em>
\nThe abundant use of \u201capparently\u201d was characteristic of Mayer\u2019s professionally conservative attitude, but his opinion as to the physical factors involved settled the matter, for he had examined more bodies than all the other men put together. Numerically, his autopsy record was unrivaled in the world. He put down the notes he had been referring to and looked quizzically at the assemblage. \u201cIs it not strange that so many seemingly inexplicable happenings occur on the psychiatric wards?\u201d He paused for a moment: \u201cPerhaps where science ends, the mysterious begins.\u201d<\/em> p. 52-53<\/p>\n

The other element in play throughout the story is that the patient can telepathically sense another of his kind\u2014another ghoul\u2014working in the hospital but can\u2019t identify who it is. This story arc has an ending that is a little disappointing (spoiler)\u2014the other ghoul identifies himself but, rather than helping\u00a0the patient set up\u00a0a life in the human world, he\u00a0helps him\u00a0escape and tells him to go back to his cemetery.<\/p>\n

My reaction to the next two stories was rather atypical in that they were both pieces where I wasn\u2019t entirely sure what was going on but enjoyed anyway. Both reminded me somewhat of the kind of thing you\u2019d sometimes found in the Orbit<\/em> anthologies of the late-sixties or early seventies. Finale<\/em><\/strong> by Reginald Bretnor (Pacific Spectator<\/em>, 1949) is a striking piece that describes a situation where time has fractured and a small group of people are making their way across an ashen landscape:<\/p>\n

Behind them walked the man in uniform, with the counter which had ceased to click, choked by the radiation of the yellow fog. Behind them walked the man in leather, with sword and casque, whom they had first seen standing guard at a stone sally port behind which neither castle nor courtyard lay. Then came a woman in a fur coat, crying silently, and a fat old man whose burned skin hung from his hands like a pair of moist, gray gloves. The naked brown girl lagged behind, for she could not quite believe that her child was dead. Sometimes, she stopped, and opened the rabbit-skin apron in which she had it wrapped, and tried to shake it into life.<\/em> p. 58<\/p>\n

They pause briefly at a river until time is destroyed there too. In the final scene they make it to a huge plain where (I think) the rest of humanity has assembled for a rapture-like event.
\nThe Beach Thing<\/em><\/strong> by Ralph Robin is about George, who jilts two women at the start of the story and then departs for a month\u2019s holiday to a hotel on the coast. Apart from George there are another four guests at the hotel:<\/p>\n

There was Sibyl McLeod who said she was psychic and was.<\/em>
\nThere was Mr. Baker who said he was wealthy and wasn\u2019t.<\/em>
\nAnd there was a couple named Weatherby.<\/em>
\nThere was also the owner of the hotel, Edgar Downie, a little man with a brown-and-white cat.<\/em>
\nGeorge was quickly absorbed into the social life, which consisted of eating three meals a day at separate tables in the hotel dining room and talking in the lobby and on the porch. His other pastimes were solitary: sleeping, shaving, cleaning his teeth, taking baths, reading, and walking on the beach. He did not overeat, overexercise, or underexercise. George was a young man who wanted very much to live to be an old man.<\/em>
\nObviously George needed no one to look after him. He realized now that he had gone too far in letting the girls think otherwise, though the pretense was useful for a healthful sex life.<\/em>
\nA disadvantage of his hiding place was the lack of someone to have a healthful sex life with. Sibyl McLeod was forty-five and skinny. Mrs. Weatherby was young enough and rather pretty\u2014but George believed\u00a0<\/em>that sex life with married women was unhealthful. He made the best of things, especially since he may have overindulged lately. A rest would be good for him.<\/em> p. 62-63<\/p>\n

Sybil later asks if there is a poltergeist in the hotel, and the owner says no. One of the other guests starts relating an anecdote, during which the owner\u2019s cat returns after having been out on the beach. Something has upset it. Sybil goes out and later returns:<\/p>\n

Sibyl McLeod came back. Where her face was not red from the cold beach wind, it was very pale. \u201cI was right,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is something on that beach.\u201d<\/em>
\nShe let Baker help her into a chair. She blew her nose efficiently in a sheet of kleenex; then delicately touched her lips with a filmy handkerchief.<\/em>
\n\u201cIt was horrible.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cWhat was it, Miss McLeod?\u201d George asked.<\/em>
\n\u201cIt was love.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cWhy, that doesn\u2019t sound so horrible, Miss Sibyl,\u201d Baker said, laughing heh-heh, a good-humoured fat man.<\/em>
\n\u201cYou needn\u2019t laugh heh-heh,\u201d said Sibyl McLeod. \u201cIt was horrible the way the word really means. It filled me with horror. It was fearful. It filled me with fear.\u201d She rubbed and twisted her pearl choker. The necklace broke, and the pearl beads dropped and rolled. Mr. Weatherby began to pick them up.<\/em>
\nMrs. Weatherby was puzzled. \u201cBut love isn\u2019t horrible or fearful,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s sweet.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cThis love was sweet. Sweet and thick like honey. And I felt like a fly being buried deeper and deeper in the honey till it dies.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cYou\u2019re still with us, praised be the Lord,\u201d Baker said. <\/em>
\n\u201cAmen,\u201d George said.<\/em>
\n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t looking for me. It expectorated me.\u201d Sibyl McLeod began suddenly to cry. George, who hated crying women, was annoyed. He decided she was acting.<\/em> p. 65-66<\/p>\n

One of the guests decides to leave; George, meanwhile, goes outside. In the last scene Sybil hypnotises\u00a0Mrs Weatherby into a trance state, and we get a hint about what is happening to George.
\nThis is a strange, enigmatic story\u2014presumably an elliptical look at George\u2019s inability to commit emotionally, but how love consumes him\u00a0regardless. Whatever, it is one of those surreal stories that has a dreamlike logic and inevitability of its own.
\nUnderground Movement<\/em><\/strong> by Kris Neville is a dark and moody story about a FBI telepath who is investigating a wave of mutant births around the world.1<\/sup> There is a striking passage that describes his physical appearance:<\/p>\n

Howard Wilson glanced at the mirror and saw the ridiculous bump on his forehead, round and blue, like a newly discolored bruise. It was the emblem of a telepath, and it grew, cancerous, from the \u2018twentieth\u2019 year of his life it would destroy him, eating inward to his mind and shooting malignant cells into his blood for impartial distribution to lungs and stomach and bones, before he was forty. His mouth remained emotionless, as he tried to imagine the bump away, and to recall his clear adolescent forehead in the days before he matured into hearing thoughts he did not want to hear. The mirror image peered back at him, nature\u2019s mistake, a false evolutionary start, unproductive.<\/em> p. 75<\/p>\n

Throughout the investigation he experiences odd pains in his head. He also has feelings of unease which intensify and, after a meeting he has with another telepath who hands him a disturbing mutant autopsy report, these are exacerbated.
\nThe final reveal (spoiler) is his chilling discovery of a worldwide network of mutants who are supposedly dead and buried but are really resting and growing. It sounds like a ridiculous ending, but after the constant feeling of unease set up throughout the story it may give you, as it did to me, a shiver.
\nArtists at Work<\/em><\/strong> by Harold Lynch, Jr. is about a man and his friend who go to a watch repair shop. There, after some initial chit-chat about classical music with the German proprietor, one of the young men spins a tall tale about a composer who writes a symphony that involves the musical participation of several swarms of bees.
\nThis is a minor but enjoyable tall tale, improved by an ending that demonstrates it may not be so tall after all.<\/p>\n

The also-rans lead off with the first story in the issue, Love<\/em><\/strong> by Richard Wilson. This is about a blind young woman called Ellen, who is in love with a Martian man called Jac. Her father forbids the relationship:<\/p>\n

He\u2019d stormed up and down the living room of their house at the edge of the spaceport. He\u2019d talked about position and family and biological impossibility. He\u2019d invoked the memory of her dead mother and reminded her of the things he had sacrificed to give her the education he\u2019d never had: the special schools and the tutoring. He said that if she could see this Martian\u2014this Jac person\u2014she\u2019d understand his point of view and thank him for his efforts to spare her the anguish she would experience as a girl who had crossed the planet line. He didn\u2019t stop till he had brought tears to the blind eyes of his daughter.<\/em> p. 3<\/p>\n

The next day Ellen slips out of the house with her dog and she goes to visit her lover. They discuss their differences, their relationship, etc., etc.<\/p>\n

They went arm-in-arm across the park to the meadows beyond. Pug was unleashed now and frisked about them, his bark echoing flatly in the Martian air. <\/em>
\n\u201cThis is a beautiful day\u2014one should be so happy,\u201d Jac said. \u201cAnd yet you look unhappy. Why?\u201d<\/em>
\nAnd so Ellen told him, and Jac was silent. For a long time they walked in silence until the ground began to rise and Ellen knew they were nearing the hills. <\/em>
\nJac said at last, \u201cYour father is a good man, and the things he wishes for you are things I cannot give you.\u201d<\/em>
\n\u201cIf you\u2019re going to sound like my father,\u201d she told him, \u201cI won\u2019t listen.\u201d Then he was silent again for a time, but soon he began to speak seriously, and the gist of what he said was that she must forget him because he had been selfish about her. He said he had never really considered that there would be more to their life than just the two of them, and that they must not break her father\u2019s heart. <\/em>
\nAnd she asked him, what about her heart? And his, too, he said. <\/em>
\nAnd so they were silent again.<\/em> p. 5<\/p>\n

There is more relationship navel-gazing that follows this passage, and some material about Ellen\u2019s inability to see Jac\u2019s physical appearance.
\nIn the last part (spoiler) they stumble on the long-lost Cave of Violet Light in The Valley of Stars, a place that reputedly\u00a0has healing properties. The dog, who had wandered off, returns with no sign of his habitual limp or the old injury that caused it. After some agonising, Ellen decides to enter the cave and cure her blindness:<\/p>\n

Jac\u2019s hand tightened until her hand hurt. \u201cYou are afraid you will see me and find me ugly. In your mind they have made me something monstrous because I am different!\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cLet us go away,\u201d she said miserably. \u201cI love you.\u201d <\/em>
\nHe was silent for a long while. <\/em>
\n\u201cIf the Cave will let you see me,\u201d he said at last, \u201cthen you must. In the darkness, shadows become terrible things.\u201d <\/em>
\nHer hand touched his face gently. He kissed the slim, cold fingers. \u201cWill you go in?\u201d <\/em>
\n\u201cYes,\u201d she whispered.<\/em> p. 8<\/p>\n

This is obviously about racism\/mixed-race relationships in the 1950s, and it deserves credit for tackling a (at the time) difficult subject\u2014it\u2019s just a pity that it has to do it in such an angst-ridden and ponderous way.2<\/sup>
\nThe Moon Maiden<\/em><\/strong> by Hannibal Coons (Collier\u2019s<\/em>, November 10th<\/sup> 1951) is a light-hearted piece of froth about a movie producer who sends one of his lackeys to a spaceship that is being privately built by a German professor. His task when he arrives\u00a0is to arrange for photos of a starlet to help publicise a forthcoming movie.
\nFor the most part this is reasonably entertaining piece, albeit a dated 1950\u2019s take on near future SF. However, the ending is very weak, involving (spoiler) the rep overloading the rocket\u2019s computer and causing it to overheat, with the rocket consequently blowing up. Not a NASA employee then.3<\/sup>
\nDragon on Somerset Street<\/em><\/strong> by Elmer Roessner (Esquire<\/em>, November 1951) is a rather pointless story about a man who finds a dragon outside his house. He attempts to phone the authorities, talks a man out of killing it, makes a second phone call from the nearby apartment of a flirty woman. When he finally gets back it is gone.
\nIt is worth noting that these last two stories are both \u2018humorous\u2019 reprints from the slick magazines: Boucher and McComas were obviously trying to instill more humour, wit, style and literary sensibility into the SF field, but too often these reprints lack any sort of substance.
\nThe Call of Wings<\/em><\/strong> by Agatha Christie (The Hound of Death and Other Stories<\/em>, 1933) has a rich man encountering a legless cripple on the way home. He listens to him play unusual, high-pitched music on an instrument that looks like a strange kind of flute. As the music plays he experiences a\u00a0feeling of lightness, of ascent, and, even after he leaves the man and goes home, he continues to experience similar episodes. No matter how high he soars, he is always painfully brought back to his body.
\nEventually, after talking about these experiences with an old friend, and tracking down and talking to the beggar, he decides to dispose of all his money and possessions. However, the voice that he has heard saying \u2018You cannot bargain with me\u2019 requires one final sacrifice.
\nThe Business, As Usual<\/em><\/strong> by Mack Reynolds is an entertainingly enough told but ultimately trivial time-travel story: (spoiler) you can\u2019t take anything back in time, not even memories, you can only take things forward.
\nThe last story in the issue is by Sam Merwin, Jr., the ex-editor of Startling Stories<\/em> and Thrilling Wonder Stories<\/em> (he had given up the editorship of the magazines the previous year).4<\/sup>
\nLambikin<\/strong><\/em> is about a female sculptor called Jeanette, who is at a boxing match with her boyfriend when a stranger tells her the champ will win in the second round. He also tells her that her boyfriend will lose the ten bucks he is betting on the fight. Both events promptly happen.
\nShe later learns that the man is Tony, a wealthy scion cared for by\u00a0his uncle. After sending her a car and chauffeur to ask her to visit, the uncle tells her about Tony\u2019s history, and his request that she come to live with them. Later, she goes to speak to Tony and he puts her into a three-way trance between the pair of them and a \u2018familiar\u2019 that the uncle mentioned before. After this Tony produces a sketch showing what one of her sculptures should look like. She goes back to her studio and finishes a work that was proving problematical.
\nThe rest of the story details her move to Tony\u2019s mansion, and repetitions of this process. A physical attraction develops between them but, when they finally kiss, Tony reacts violently and Jeanette leaves the house and then organises a long holiday with her old boyfriend.
\nThis story has interesting parts (there are undeveloped hints that the familiar is \u2018life on an alien plane\u2019) but Tony\u2019s motivations aren\u2019t convincing, and the piece doesn\u2019t quite gel.<\/p>\n

This issue\u2019s cover, Love<\/em><\/strong>, is by Emsh\u2014I probably wouldn\u2019t have been able to guess that before finding out as it isn\u2019t typical of his later work.
\nRecommended Reading<\/em><\/strong> by The Editors states that the column was written in\u00a0mid-January but that most of the scheduled books aren\u2019t due for release until late-Spring at the earliest. Given this state of affairs they use the situation to catch up on some books they missed in last issue\u2019s annual review. They close by mentioning the forthcoming The Best From Fantasy & Science Fiction<\/em>, the first in what would be a long running series.
\nThe Big Nasturtiums<\/em><\/strong> Robert Beverly Hale (The New Yorker<\/em>, February 3rd<\/sup> 1951) is a poem about exactly what the title says.<\/p>\n

A solid issue.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The introduction to Kris Neville\u2019s story states: \u2018Two of the Great Clich\u00e9\u2019s of modern science fiction are that human mutants will spring from the release of atomic radiations, and that the telepathic mutant will be an invincible superman.\u2019<\/em> That will be John W. Campbell they are talking about then. . . .<\/li>\n
  2. Barry N. Malzberg and Bill Prozini thought better of Wilson\u2019s story than I did as they included it in their anthology, The End of Summer: Science Fiction of the 1950s<\/em>, Ace 1979. In the afterword Barry Malzberg says: \u2018This sensitive story is, of course, as much about racial prejudice in contemporary society as it is about a union between an alien and an Earthwoman. It was something of a \u201cdelicate\u201d story for its time. Controversial and \u201cmessage\u201d themes were generally eschewed by the pre-1950 pulps; their readers, it was said, preferred escapist science-adventure fiction. \u201cLove\u201d would not have been published at all\u00a0in the thirties and might not have been in the forties; that it found a ready market and was well-received in 1952 is testimony not only to the then-budding maturation of science fiction, but to the then-budding maturation of the American outlook on civil rights.\u2019<\/em> p. 61
    \nRichard Wilson has this in his afterword to the story: \u2018In the early fifties I had just joined Reuters\u2019 New York bureau after the demise of another wire service, Transradio Press, and began to eke out my salary with extracurricular writing. Reuters had a rule against free-lancing but made an exception for fiction writers. It had been nearly ten years since I\u2019d written science fiction, and \u201cLove\u201d was born at this time. It was literally a dream story. I\u2019d awakened before dawn with the story complete in my mind and wrote all 3,000 words at once, in longhand.\u2019<\/em> p. 63<\/li>\n
  3. NASA was not established until 1958, of course.<\/li>\n
  4. The introduction to the Sam Merwin Jr. story gives a potted publishing biography: \u2018He\u2019s published a series of amusing mystery novels and countless hundreds of thousands of words of science fiction while at the same time managing to edit not one but two science-fantasy magazines. (It takes two of us to edit one; and we can\u2019t help feeling awed respect for what Mr. Merwin accomplished single-handed in raising the standards of two.)<\/em>
    \nA short while ago, however, Merwin abandoned editing and even deliberately cut down on his prolific production as a pulp writer. At present he\u2019s devoting himself to more serious (though by no means ponderous) imaginative writing\u2014strange and provocative concepts fully developed and fictionally fleshed.<\/em>
    \nAmong the first products of this new Merwin period are that fascinating study in multiple universes, <\/em>The House of Many Worlds (Doubleday, I951).\u2019<\/em> p. 111
    \nThis book was mentioned in a previous review column, and I\u2019ve been eyeing up for a future review the issue of Startling Stories<\/em> that has the first of the two stories that were fixed up to create the book.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This magazine is still being published!<\/strong>\u00a0Subscribe:\u00a0Kindle UK<\/a>,\u00a0Kindle USA<\/a>,\u00a0Weightless Books<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0physical copies<\/a>.<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    ISFDB link Other reviews: John Loyd, There ain\u2019t no such thing as a free lunch Editors, Anthony Boucher & J. Francis McComas; Managing Editor, Robert P. Mills Fiction: Love \u2022 short story by Richard Wilson \u2665 The Causes \u2022 short story by Margaret St. Clair [as by Idris Seabright] \u2665\u2665\u2665 The Desrick on Yandro \u2022 […]<\/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":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fantasy-and-science-fiction"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-MN","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025","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=3025"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3184,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3025\/revisions\/3184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}