{"id":761,"date":"2016-01-25T18:46:40","date_gmt":"2016-01-25T18:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=761"},"modified":"2020-02-09T18:46:14","modified_gmt":"2020-02-09T18:46:14","slug":"unknown-v03n02-april-1940","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=761","title":{"rendered":"Unknown v03n02, April 1940"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Unknown194004x600\"<\/p>\n

Other Reviews:
\nFred Smith:\u00a0Once There Was A Magazine\u2014<\/em><\/a>\u00a0p.18-19.<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nThe Indigestible Triton<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by L. Ron Hubbard [as by Ren\u00e9 Lafayette] ♥♥
\nThe African Trick<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Howard Wandrei [as by H. W. Guernsey] ♥
\nAll Is Illusion<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner]
\nHe Shuttles<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Theodore Sturgeon ♥
\nThe Reign of Wizardry<\/em><\/strong> (Part 2 of 3) \u2022 serial by Jack Williamson ♥♥♥+<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nThe Indigestible Triton<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 cover1<\/sup> by Edd Cartier
\nInterior Artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Frank Kramer, M. Isip2<\/sup>, Flessel, Edd Cartier
\nOf Things Beyond<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by The Editor
\n\u2014And Having Writ<\/em><\/strong>\u2014 \u2022 reader\u2019s letters by Harry A. Stern, Bob Tucker, Isaac Asimov<\/p>\n

This issue has another good Cartier cover and the internal illustrations are of a better standard, with Kramer, Cartier and Flessel the best (and noting my usual poor scan quality caveat).<\/p>\n

L. Ron Hubbard\u2019s long,3<\/sup>\u00a0pseudonymous fantasy novella The Indigestible Triton<\/em><\/strong> starts with an unnecessary introduction about the delusions of sane psychiatric patients. Interestingly, it references Hubbard\u2019s Death\u2019s Deputy<\/em> from earlier this year.
\nThe story itself pretty much falls into two parts. In the first half or so, Bill Greyson pretends to be crazy to avoid a marriage arranged by his rich family. This lands him in the asylum temporarily where he becomes so bored that he arranges to get out and go fishing. During this he hooks Trigon, a Titan from Neptune\u2019s court. Trigon takes great exception to this and physically enters Bill taking possession of him. Back on land the police are hunting for Bill, and when he returns from the fishing trip Trigon makes sure that they and the doctors (who want Bill to remain committed for the money he makes them) think he is properly crazy by the way he talks and his superhuman strength: bursting out of straight-jackets, bending lampposts, etc.
\nA lot of this is pulpy stuff, quite corny and a bit juvenile. For instance:<\/p>\n

\u201cSee here,\u201d said Trigon, suddenly exasperated, \u201cyou\u2019re nothing but a !!&&?(??)&&! man! Where do you get off telling me what to do and what not to do? If you think I\u2019d kill you now you\u2019ve got another thought coming. Why, you kelp-headed freak, you got to remember that you\u2019re talking to Trigon!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

The quality improves in the second half where Bill, still possessed by Trigon but with Bill able to hypnotise him, ends up in the depths of\u00a0the ocean. There follow more adventures with sharks, a helpful pilot fish, a Scylla, etc.\u2014at one point I got the feeling that\u00a0parts of this were\u00a0like a belligerent Finding Nemo<\/em>, but that would be misdescribing it. Eventually, Bill makes his way to Neptune\u2019s court and seeks a solution to his troubles.
\nOverall, this story has its shortcomings but it also has flashes of inventiveness and humour. I imagine that in 1940\u2019s America this would have been thought quite an entertaining yarn.<\/p>\n

As usual, unfortunately, the short fiction is dismal. I had high hopes for the Howard Wandrei contribution after last issue\u2019s The Black Farm<\/em> but The African Trick<\/em><\/strong> just doesn\u2019t work as a story for me. It tells of an explorer in Africa, Dr Leyden, who sends a strange seed back to a Russian man in America who is blackmailing him over the murder of his wife. Vladimir, the Russian, plants the seed and a young woman \u2018grows\u2019 from it overnight. She strangles Vladimir when he gets back home and makes it look like a suicide. Running parallel to this, Dr Leyden is in a strange village where the headman is controlling the girl from afar as payback for the Doctor saving his life. There is a further development as the doctor leaves to return home. These separate parts just didn\u2019t convince.
\nMatters do not get any better with All Is Illusion<\/em><\/strong>, a short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore. This starts with a man who goes into a supernatural bar while waiting for his sister\u2019s train. He ends up in an argument with a hairy midget and is cursed. He then ends up smelling of violets, has a whistling sound come from his stomach, smells of fish, turns into a duck, etc. Eventually, after a court trial, he goes back to the bar to get the curse lifted. All of this seems completely pointless, writers flogging a not particularly good idea for far too long: even if you got rid of all the padding it wouldn\u2019t be much better at a shorter length.
\nI was hoping that Theodore Sturgeon\u2019s novelette He Shuttles<\/em><\/strong> would improve the batting average for the short fiction but I didn\u2019t think this \u2018Three Wishes\u2019 story was successful. To me, this type of tale depends on a clear explanation of the rules governing the wishes and then a clever avoidance or pitfall, and Sturgeon’s story\u00a0doesn\u2019t do that. An unpleasant tycoon uses one of his wishes to get people to obey him and then sets out\u00a0to murder someone, using another wish to escape punishment for what he does. As it happens (spoiler) matters do not work out to his satisfaction, but I had to go back and reread part of the earlier story to work out why this happened. There is also some unnecessary authorial framing at the beginning, middle and end of the story.<\/p>\n

This issue has the second part of The Reign of Wizardry<\/em><\/strong> by Jack Williamson. This is a fairly short offering compared with last issue\u2019s and comprises three main sections. The first part (spoiler) tells of how Firebrand escapes from his\u00a0cell with help from the wizard Snish after assuming the form of Admiral Phaistro; the next has him meeting Adriadne as Phaistro; the final part has Firebrand sent down into the pitch-black labyrinth\u00a0and tells of him attempting to find his way out. He ultimately ends up circling back to where he started and meeting something that may be the Bull! The first and last sections are the strongest. You will get an idea of the overall quality, though, if I tell you I meant to read five or ten minutes of this before sleeping but finished the entire instalment just over an hour later.<\/p>\n

As well as the usual blurb about upcoming stories in Of Things Beyond<\/em><\/strong>, Campbell encourages readers to give their finished copies to those who may enjoy it\u2014an attempt to increase circulation as he feels it isn\u2019t getting off the news-stand to the kind of people who may be receptive.
\nHe also touches on short fantasy fiction:<\/p>\n

Generally speaking, shorts in the fantasy field have more difficulties, for the author, than longer yarns. They have to build up a mood and tell a story in rather limited space. More difficult\u2014but also more fun, when the author makes it tick.<\/em><\/p>\n

An interesting comment given that over the last four issues I have found the short fiction quite weak and easily outperformed by the longer material.
\nThe letter column \u2014And Having Writ<\/em><\/strong>\u2014 is fairly short this issue containing\u00a0only three letters that generally comment on Unknown<\/em>\u2019s first year. It ends with Isaac Asimov giving his top ten.4<\/sup><\/p>\n

Overall, an OK issue held up by the Williamson serial and the Hubbard novella.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. This cover is an edited version of one from Siren in the Night<\/a><\/em> on flickr.com.<\/li>\n
  2. Thanks once again to Fred Smith\u2019s book for catching the misattribution of M. Isip\u2019s work to R. Isip. Now that I\u2019ve examined some of their other artwork, M. Isip\u2019s signature seems to look like an ECG trace, whereas R. Isip\u2019s seems to be a more conventional signature with what looks like \u2018Rey\u2019 as the first word (his full name was Pagsilang Rey Isip). There is more information about Rey Isip on Lambiek Comiclopedia<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0and Pulpartists.com<\/a>\u2014although I think the latter has his brother Manuel\u2019s cover displayed. Talking of his brother Manuel, there doesn\u2019t seem to be anything on the web about him, certainly no further links on ISFDB.<\/li>\n
  3. A quick cut and paste of Hubbard\u2019s story from the PDF to MS Word gives a word count of 39,000 words, almost novel length.<\/li>\n
  4. Asimov\u2019s letter:
    \n\"Unknown194004letter\"<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n    \"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Other Reviews: Fred Smith:\u00a0Once There Was A Magazine\u2014\u00a0p.18-19. Fiction: The Indigestible Triton \u2022 novella by L. Ron Hubbard [as by Ren\u00e9 Lafayette] ♥♥ The African Trick \u2022 short story by Howard Wandrei [as by H. W. Guernsey] ♥ All Is Illusion \u2022 short story by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Henry Kuttner] […]<\/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-761","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-ch","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","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=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12223,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/12223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}