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Other Reviews: Fiction: Non-fiction: This issue\u2019s cover1<\/sup> by M. Isip has a bland, washed-out appearance and it is wrongly credited on the contents page to Ed Cartier. As well as not being too keen on Isip\u2019s\u00a0cover, the B&W illustrations inside the magazine from the same artist are too much at the comic book end of the art spectrum for\u00a0my taste. As for Cartier, his illustrations for the Williamson piece are fine but I\u2019m not sure his talents are best matched to the straight adventure of that piece: I would imagine he is a better fit for\u00a0humorous or light fantasy. The best of this issue\u2019s illustrations are probably by Kramer. They look better to my eye (even in this poor unz.org scan) and the one on p.85 is probably my favourite of the issue.2<\/sup><\/p>\n Moving on to the fiction, this issue is dominated by the two serials: it opens with a good chunk of Jack Williamson\u2019s new serial The Reign of Wizardry<\/em><\/strong> and closes with the last part of J. Allan Dunn\u2019s On the Knees of the Gods<\/em><\/strong>. Coincidentally, both are set in classical periods: Williamson\u2019s in Knossos, and Dunn\u2019s in Olympus.<\/p>\n Williamson\u2019s serial, The Reign of Wizardry<\/em><\/strong>, is a pretty good story about a pirate, Captain Firebrand, going to Knossos to depose the Minos and the sorcerers who hold power there. The story starts out at sea where Firebrand\u2019s boat engages two war vessels from the Knossos fleet, and sinks them, before boarding a trading vessel. At this point Firebrand picks up a minor wizard called Snish, who has the ability to cast spells that can change the appearance of people so they look like others\u2014Snish initially had the form of a golden-skinned princess. Soon after, the sorcerers of Minos send a storm and more of their navy to seek revenge and, before long, Firebrand is wrecking the trading ship on the rocks of Crete. The pair escape a metal man called Talos, and make their way to Ekoros, where the games to select the Minos are held. En route they pass through a\u00a0slum area:<\/p>\n They crossed a stone bridge, and came into Ekoros. This was the poor section of the city, where dwelt the\u00a0lesser artisans, small shopkeepers, and laborers from the docks. Flimsy buildings, three stories high, confined a powerful stench to the five-foot street. This economical but descriptive prose drives the story forward. The other serial is the last instalment of On the Knees of the Gods<\/em><\/strong> by J. Allan Dunn, which brings this novella to a satisfying close. Peter manages to convince forge-God Hephaetus to make the horseshoes and, after spending a night there, returns by boat to the centaur Cheiron. Satisfied, Cheiron tells him where Python can be found. Peter makes his way into the lair of Python (spoiler) and manages to recover the jewel and rescue Ephryne after piping the snake to sleep. As they leave he realises that Python is shedding his skin and depart quickly with Pan\u2019s help. Peter had summoned Pan as Ephryne was pressing her affections on Peter with a view to marrying him. Unfortunately, the short fiction rather disappoints this month. The strongest candidate is The Black Farm<\/em><\/strong>, the novelette by Howard Wandrei. This is actually a pretty good Weird Tales<\/em>-type story to start with. It tells of a farmer, Anton, that has an creature on his property he calls Mr Zero. It is a large, spherical and almost completely invisible and thus\u00a0far has killed his wife and various livestock, including a cat and her litter of five kittens. He monitors its movement with help from his dog Smoke who has an acute sense of where this monster is. As the story develops his sister-in-law\u2014initially looking for vengeance for her sister, who she believes was murdered by Anton\u2014becomes involved. There is also a criminal on the run who goes missing in front of the eyes of his pursuers. This is a well told and absorbing story but unfortunately it comes to a fairly abrupt halt. There is not much in the way of non-fiction this issue. After the usual Of Things Beyond<\/em><\/strong> puffing next issue\u2019s contents, there are a couple of short essays, very short in the case of The Drug That Kills the Soul<\/em><\/strong> by Edward Podolsky, an unlikely \u2018factoid\u2019 about zombies supposedly. Willy Ley\u2019s A Few Notes\u2026<\/em><\/strong> is a short article debunking more far-fetched newspaper items, probably a side swipe at Fortean phenomena.\u00a0Don\u2019t believe everything you read in the papers is its message. It brought back memories of a not so distant childhood, some scant eight years or so ago, of when I lived in a small country town and often found such scenery and such atmosphere as was described so well in Walton\u2019s yarn. There was feeling in that story. I don\u2019t know how to put over the idea, but it was the sort of thing that makes you draw a bit nearer the fire or jerk suddenly around to look at the darkness just outside your window or perhaps stiffen at the sound of dry leaves clacking on the panes… Walton\u2019s yarn had IT. <\/em> What this correspondent wrote touched me, and made me think that across the decades there was a connection between us: hadn\u2019t we both just read this story? And, as I read his letter, weren\u2019t we both thinking about it? Ray D. Bradbury, Editor of <\/em>Futuria Fantasia, Los Angeles, Calif.<\/em><\/p>\n In conclusion, good serials in this issue but disappointing short fiction: I am beginning to wonder if the only good stuff in Unknown<\/em> is going to be long form.<\/p>\n Other Reviews: Fred Smith:\u00a0Once There Was A Magazine\u00a0p.17-18. Fiction: The Reign of Wizardry (Part 1 of 3) \u2022 serial by Jack Williamson ♥♥♥+ Philtered Power \u2022 short story by Malcolm Jameson ♥ The Black Farm \u2022 novelette by Howard Wandrei [as by H. W. Guernsey] ♥♥ The Living Ghost \u2022 short story by E. A. […]<\/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-736","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-bS","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736","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=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12222,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions\/12222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFred Smith:\u00a0Once There Was A Magazine<\/em><\/a>\u00a0p.17-18.<\/p>\n
\nThe Reign of Wizardry<\/em><\/strong> (Part 1 of 3) \u2022 serial by Jack Williamson ♥♥♥+
\nPhiltered Power<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Malcolm Jameson ♥
\nThe Black Farm<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Howard Wandrei [as by H. W. Guernsey] ♥♥
\nThe Living Ghost<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by E. A. Grosser ♥
\nGateway<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Robert Arthur ♥♥
\n\u201cDerm Fool\u201d<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Theodore Sturgeon ♥
\nOn the Knees of the Gods<\/em><\/strong> (Part 3 of 3) \u2022 serial by J. Allan Dunn ♥♥♥<\/p>\n
\nThe Reign of Wizardry<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 cover by\u00a0M. Isip
\nIllustrations<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Ed Cartier, M. Isip, Frank Kramer, Paul Orban, Koll.
\nOf Things Beyond<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 in times to come by The Editor
\nThe Drug That Kills the Soul<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Edward Podolsky
\nA Few Notes on the Reliability of Newspaper Clippings Without Additional Remarks About Charles Fort and Others<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Willy Ley
\n\u2014And Having Writ<\/em><\/strong>\u2014 \u2022 reader\u2019s letters<\/p>\n
\nMost of the street was a foul, brown mud, the rest a shallow open sewer in which a thin trickle of yellow slime ran through piles of decaying garbage and reeking manure. Flies made a dark cloud above the ditch, and their buzzing was an endless weary sound.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nIn the narrow slum street Firebrand skirmishes with Ariadne’s (the Minos\u2019s daughter) guards: after defeating them, Firebrand forces her to pick up a dead child, killed by her charging chariot. This is a nice scene, one of many juicy nuggets that are embedded in this instalment and which make this is an engrossing heroic adventure: a more humane and intelligent Conan story if you will. One minor criticism: I am not sure the foreword at the start of the story is necessary.<\/p>\n
\nThe final section is on Olympus where Peter has one final audience with Zeus and is granted his boon of returning to his own world. There is one final complication before he achieves this.
\nNot as strong an instalment as last month\u2019s perhaps, but overall a fairly good serial, and, as I said before, worth a read for Thomas Burnett Swann fans.<\/p>\n
\nPhiltered Power<\/em><\/strong> by Malcolm Jameson is a weak tale of a state assayist\u2019s assistant first making a love potion to get a girl, and then making a potion to help his boss get money to sort their office roof.
\nYou may have better luck with The Living Ghost<\/em><\/strong> by E. A. Grosser than I did\u2014if you understand what happens at the end of this story about a lawyer who visits an elderly couple and their granddaughter. The grandparents can\u2019t see her\u2014she is a ghost\u2014but other people can.
\nGateway<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Arthur is actually OK. It is about a man (\u2018Horace Golder\u2019) who is out in the park and hears an iron door open. A strangely dressed man eventually materialises out of nothing and starts oiling the joints on the door. Golder joins the man on his journey to service the rest of the doors. Along the way they have lunch and Golder picks up hints of the elysian delights that may be on the other side of these doors. When they end up in his apartment, where the last gate is, he is given the opportunity to cross over. Golder hesitates, and, as he does so, hears his wife and children coming into the apartment\u2026
\nFinally, \u201cDerm Fool\u201d<\/em><\/strong> by Theodore Sturgeon tells of a couple who have been bitten by a strange snake and now regularly shed their skin. They monetise this affliction and investigate the physical process with a view to controlling it. This would probably have read slightly better at the time than it does now, but its\u00a0light, slangy 1940s style dates it.<\/p>\n
\n\u2014And Having Writ<\/em><\/strong>\u2014, the letter column, has praise for L. Sprague de Camp\u2019s Lest Darkness Fall<\/em> and Unknown<\/em>\u2019s first year of publication amongst other comments. The last letter is interesting. The correspondent discusses The Swamp Thing<\/em>, which appeared in the January issue, and which he liked more than me. He says of the story:<\/p>\n
\nIt speaks with the melancholy of old memories of country nights, of deserted places and cold moonlight. It is so close to reality as to be REAL in my mind. I have experienced exactly those same feelings.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nI read on: the rest was about the other material in the January issue of Unknown<\/em>, and then, at the end of his letter was the name of the person who had sent it in:<\/p>\n\n
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