{"id":9307,"date":"2018-12-19T16:35:53","date_gmt":"2018-12-19T16:35:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=9307"},"modified":"2020-02-09T18:46:15","modified_gmt":"2020-02-09T18:46:15","slug":"unknown-worlds-v06n05-february-1943","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=9307","title":{"rendered":"Unknown Worlds v06n05, February 1943"},"content":{"rendered":"

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ISFDB link<\/a>
\nArchive.org link<\/a><\/p>\n

Other reviews:1<\/sup>
\nFred Smith,\u00a0Once There Was A Magazine\u2014<\/em> p. 42-43 (Beccon Publications<\/a>, 2002)
\nStefan R. Dziemianowicz, p. 140-142, The Annotated Guide to Unknown & Unknown Worlds<\/em> (Starmont, 1991)<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editors, John W. Campbell Jr.; Assistant Editor, Kay Tarrant<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nWet Magic<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novella by Henry Kuttner \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThieves\u2019 House<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Fritz Leiber \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Angelic Angleworm<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Fredric Brown \u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Ultimate Wish<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by E. Mayne Hull \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nNo Graven Image<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Cleve Cartmill\u00a0\u2217<\/strong>
\nGuardian <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 short story by Cleve Cartmill [as by Michael Corbin] \u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Hat Trick<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Fredric Brown [as by Felix Graham]\u00a0\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Witch <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 novelette by A. E. van Vogt \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by W. A. Kolliker (x9), Frank Kramer (x3), Manuel Isip (x8), Edd Cartier (x2), Paul Orban (x2)
\nOf Things Beyond<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial
\nThe Ka of Kor-Sethon<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 poem by Hannes Bok
\n\u2014And Having Writ\u2014<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 letters
\nOn Books of Magic<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by L. Sprague de Camp [as by J. Wellington Wells]<\/p>\n

____________________<\/p>\n

This issue of the magazine has a distinctly Sword & Sorcery feel to start, courtesy of the first two stories,\u00a0Wet Magic<\/em><\/strong> by Henry Kuttner, and\u00a0Thieves\u2019 House<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Fritz Leiber, the fifth of his \u2018Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser\u2019 stories to see print in Unknown<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Kuttner\u2019s Wet Magic<\/em><\/strong> is an Arthurian fantasy that starts with an AEF pilot called Arthur Woodley getting shot down by a pair of Stukas in Wales2<\/sup> and bailing out into a swirling grey fog. When he later looks for shelter he checks the hollow at the base of a tree for bears (!) and gets kicked twice by something unseen. He moves away.
\nLater, while Woodley is resting, he wakes when someone kisses him, and opens his eyes to see a young, dark-haired woman who wears a gold band in her hair, and a full length robe. After some back and forth we discover her name is Vivienne, that people cannot normally see her as she is invisible, and that, according to her, \u201che smells of Merlin\u201d. She adds that she lives under the lake in Morgan\u2019s (the Queen of Air and Darkness\u2019s) castle, and that she will be his if he passes the testing. When Vivienne gets airborne to fly to the lake, Woodley trips, bangs his head, and passes out.<\/p>\n

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After this slightly clunky setup the rest of the story takes place underwater in Morgan\u2019s castle. Woodley wakes to find a translucent green woman (a naiad) attending to him. She explains where he is and that he will\u00a0have to pass a test set by Morgan that evening.
\nBefore Woodley can find out more, an angry knight called Sir Bohart\u00a0interrupts them, and challenges Woodley to a sword fight (he is jealous that Woodley has Vivienne\u2019s affection). Vivienne arrives and banishes Sir Bohart from the room.
\nVivienne explains Woodley\u2019s situation:<\/p>\n

The girl laughed softly. \u201cYou have no gills. Morgan\u2019s magic works more subtly. You have been\u2014altered\u2014so that you can live under water. The element is as air to you. It is the same enchantment Morgan put upon this castle when she sank it in the lake, after Camelot fell and the long night came upon Britain. An old enchantment\u2014she put it upon Lyonesse once, and lived there for a while.\u201d
\n\u201cAnd I thought all that was just legend,\u201d Woodley muttered.
\n\u201cHow little you mortals know! And yet it is true\u2014in some strange paradoxical way. Morgan told me once, but I did not understand. Well, you can ask her tonight, after the testing.\u201d
\n\u201cOh\u2014the testing. I\u2019m not too happy about that. What is it, anyway?\u201d
\nVivienne looked at him with some surprise. \u201cAn ancient chivalric custom. Before any man can dwell here, he must prove himself worthy by doing some deed of valor. Sir Bohart had to slay a Worm\u2014a dragon, you know\u2014but his magic cuirass helped him there. He\u2019s quite invulnerable while he wears it.\u201d
\n\u201cJust what is this testing?\u201d
\n\u201cIt is different for each knight. Morgan has made some being, with her sorcery, and placed it behind the Shaking Rock. Ere sundown, you must go and kill the creature, whatever it is. I would I knew what manner of thing lairs there, but I do not, nor would Morgan let me tell you if I knew.\u201d
\nWoodley blinked. \u201cUh . . . suppose I don\u2019t want to take the test?\u201d
\n\u201cYou must, or Morgan will slay you. But surely you are not afeared, my lord!\u201d
\n\u201cOf course not,\u201d he said hastily. \u201cJust tell me a little more, will you? Are we really living under water?\u201d
\nVivienne sighed, pressed Woodley down to a sitting position on the bed, and relaxed comfortably in his lap. \u201cKiss me,\u201d she said. \u201cThere! Now\u2014 well, after the Grail was lost and the table broken, magic went out of Britain. There was no room for the fairy folk. Some died, some went away, some hid, here and there. There are secrets beneath the hills of Britain, my Arthur. So Morgan, with her powers, made herself invisible and intangible, and sank her castle here under the lake, in the wild mountains of Wales. Her servants are not human, of course. I had done Morgan a service once, and she was grateful. So when I saw the land sinking into savagery, I asked to go with her to this safe place. I brought Bohart with me and Morgan took Merlin\u2019s old master, Bleys the Druid. Since then nothing has changed. Humans cannot feel or see us\u2014or you either, now that you have been enchanted.\u00a0 p. 13-14<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After Vivienne leaves he quizzes the naiad about what is behind the rock, and learns it is an undine, a tendrilled beast. Woodley goes to see the Druid Bleys for advice. . . .
\nAt this point the story becomes a faster paced and more enjoyable tale (even with some more world-building) of Woodley\u2019s underwater adventures. He goes on a tour of the castle with Bleys the Druid and they end up on a balcony overlooking the castle\u2019s dragon (it keeps the fish out). Bleys falls asleep, and then Woodley is knocked over the balcony (Sir Bohart again) and finds himself outside the castle. He tries to make his escape to the surface but cannot breathe in air: a result of the \u201cwet magic\u201d. At this point, Woodley realises he will have to undertake the test and sets about outsmarting the various factions in the castle to do so. The rest of the story involves (spoiler) an unlikely alliance between Woodley and Sir Bohart, Vivienne\u2019s discovery of his plan to escape the castle, Merlin the wizard hiding in his tree, the reappearance of\u00a0King Arthur, and a final confrontation with Morgan.<\/p>\n

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

This is lively, clever and amusing tale that uniquely exploits the Arthurian myths. It is also written in better prose than you normally get from Kuttner (which makes one wonder if C. L. Moore had a hand in it\u2014perhaps the fate of every good story the man wrote). One of the other things I liked about it is that it keeps Morgan, and the threat of being forced to \u201cplay chess\u201d with her\u2014a terminal event\u2014offstage most of the time. When (spoiler) Sir Bohart eventually falls foul of this game there is a skilful piece of writing that leaves the results to the reader\u2019s imagination:<\/p>\n

Slowly Woodley rose and began to descend the slope of the lake bottom. A green twilight surrounded him.
\nThen he saw\u2014something\u2014slowly stirring at his feet.
\nFor a moment Woodley\u2019s shocked eyes could not quite comprehend what he saw. He gave a little choking gasp of nausea. It was not the actual appearance of the\u2014thing\u2014so much as the unmistakable fact that it had once been Sir Bohart.
\nAnd it still lived, after a fashion.
\nMorgan\u2019s chess game was finished.
\nWoodley shut his eyes, squeezing the lids tight together, as he fought down the sickness of his human flesh, revolting from that which Morgan had done. Through the dark came a voice.
\n\u201cShe plays at chess with Bleys now,\u201d it said.
\nWoodley tried to speak, but could not. That which should have had no voice went on thickly:
\n\u201cShe dared not slay him before, since he held Excalibur for Arthur. But the hour for Arthur\u2019s coming has passed, she said to me before I died, and she has no more fear.\u201d
\nThe thing did not speak again, for it had disintegrated.\u00a0 p. 31<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recommended.<\/p>\n

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Thieves\u2019 House<\/em><\/strong> by Fritz Leiber is perhaps not quite as good as the Kuttner but it is structurally superior: the writer uses his stage experience to construct a story that is essentially a selection of key scenes tied together with a minimum of connecting material.
\nThe first of these scenes has three thieves, two men and a woman, discussing the recruitment of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser to steal the bejewelled skull and hands of a long dead master thief. After the robbery\u00a0Fissif, one of the thieves, is to double cross the pair.
\nThe story then cuts to after the event:<\/p>\n

The ten remaining days of the Month of the Serpent had passed, and the first fifteen days of the Month of the Owl, since those three had conferred. And the fifteenth day had darkened into night. Chill fog, like a shroud, hugged ancient stony Lankhmar, chief city of an ancient barbaric world. This night the fog had come earlier than usual, flowing down the twisting streets and mazy alleyways. And it was getting thicker.\u00a0 p. 35<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are pursuing the double-crossing Fissif to the Thieves\u2019 House. The pair fight their way in past concealed traps and assassins, and arrive to see a red-haired woman (one of the three from the initial meeting) disappear with the skull and hands. The current master thief sits motionless in the corner, strangled.<\/p>\n

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The pair pursue the woman but, when she blocks her escape route, they hide in an alcove and listen to the thieves convene a court to try Fissif, who they think has double-crossed them. Later, when one of the latter reports to the new master thief that the pair have not left by any of the exits, the thieves realise that Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser are still in the house. The pair spring out from their hiding place to take advantage of the surprise, and there is a fight and pursuit.
\nDuring this Fafhrd gets separated from the Grey Mouser, and finds himself in a dark underground chamber. Voices speak to him, and he realises they come from the skeletons of long dead thieves. They are affronted by the theft of the master thief\u2019s remains, and tell him that he is to return the skull and hands to them or he will die. Before he can do anything Fafhrd is captured by his pursuers. The Grey Mouser meantime escapes and later gets a ransom note for Fafhrd.<\/p>\n

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The rest of the story (spoiler) details how the Mouser achieves Fafhrd\u2019s release: he cross-dresses as an old witch, recovers of the bones from the redhead\u2019s house, and uses a convenient connecting passage to the Thieves\u2019 House (she was the master thief\u2019s mistress). Meanwhile, Fafhrd tells his story to the thieves as time runs out. The Mouser uses the skull for a spot of mummery, and there is a final fight scene where the skeletons take their revenge against the current crop of thieves. . . .
\nThis is an atmospheric and entertaining sword and sorcery tale.<\/p>\n

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

The Angelic Angleworm<\/em><\/strong> by Fredric Brown starts with a short scene that describes the main character Charlie Willis getting up in the morning to go fishing with a friend called Pete. The first fantastic element appears when he is digging for worms while waiting for the latter to turn up:<\/p>\n

He took his jackknife out and knelt down beside the flower bed. Ran the blade a couple of inches in the ground and turned over a clod of it. Yes, there were worms all right. There was a nice big juicy one that ought to be tempting to any fish.
\nCharlie reached out to pick it up.
\nAnd that was when it happened.
\nHis fingertips came together, but there wasn\u2019t a worm between them, because something had happened to the worm. When he\u2019d reached out for it, it had been a quite ordinary-looking angleworm. A three-inch juicy, slippery, wriggling angleworm. It most definitely had not had a pair of wings. Nor a\u2014
\nIt was quite impossible, of course, and he was dreaming or seeing things, but there it was.
\nFluttering upward in a graceful slow spiral that seemed utterly effortless. Flying past Charlie\u2019s face with wings that were shimmery-white, and not at all like butterfly wings or bird wings, but like\u2014
\nUp and up it circled, now above Charlie\u2019s head, now level with the roof of the house, then a mere white\u2014somehow a shining white\u2014speck against the gray sky. And after it was out of sight, Charlie\u2019s eyes still looked upward.\u00a0 p. 50<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In between scenes that take place at Charlie\u2019s job at a printers, or involve his girlfriend Jane and their upcoming marriage, the story subsequently details other fantastic events in Charlie\u2019s life: he challenges a brutal teamster who is mistreating a horse, passes out, and finds himself in hospital with sunburn; at a museum exhibition he sees a teal duck flapping around in a hermetically sealed cabinet until it finally expires; on the golf course he sees a lei (wreath) where he thought his golf ball should be; when he goes into the jewellers to pick up a wedding ring he smells ether and passes out.
\nLater, he works out that the events occur every fifty-one hours and ten minutes and, after another event, he works out the connection. He positions himself\u00a0at the town line in a place called Haveen for the next episode and, when this occurs, he (spoiler) finds himself in Heaven talking to the Chief Compositor. We learn that the problem has been a technical error in the typesetting machine that writes Charlie\u2019s life: he got an angelworm and not an\u00a0angleworm, heat instead of hate, lei instead of a lie, teal instead of a tael, etc. This also explains him going to Haveen to enter heaven. The problem is sorted and his life revised: he is happy to miss the wedding ceremony but wants to go back in time for his wedding night.<\/p>\n

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This is a clever gimmick but it is one that the reader has little chance of guessing, and any writer would struggle to turn it into a decent story. The tale (tael?) is also dreadfully padded\u2014at half its length it might have stood a chance.<\/p>\n

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The unexpected treat of the issue (I was not impressed by two of her earlier collaborations) is The Ultimate Wish<\/em><\/strong> by E. Mayne Hull. Initially this does not get off to a promising start with its unpleasantly stereotypical portrayal of Lola Pimmons, a hunchback who, it is implied, is as twisted on the inside as she is on the outside. Further, her work colleagues are unpleasant and cruel people. Then, as the latter are talking about her:<\/p>\n

There was a green flash in the air, and a small creature stood before her. Two red horns grew out of the forehead of its semihuman green face; the thing snapped at her.
\n\u201cDon\u2019t get scared. I told you the first time that I could never appear twice in the same shape to a human being. And don\u2019t worry about these others. Time stops for you when I come. They can\u2019t hear or see us talking.\u201d
\nLola\u2019s spasm of fear dwindled. The funny part was that she was not afraid of the creature. It had been the same that morning, when it had first appeared, as she finished dressing\u2014she had actually managed to suppress the scream that formed in her throat.
\nShe licked her lips now with a smacking sound of purest animal elation; behind that joy was a swift kaleidoscopic mind picture of all the frustration wishes that had ever distorted her daydreams and nightmares. She said:
\n\u201cNo, I haven\u2019t decided yet; and I\u2019m not going to rush it. I want the best wish there is, and you said that I had till six o\u2019clock.\u201d\u00a0 p. 72<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the tale tells of the further appearances of the demon (in a different guise each time) and Lola\u2019s detailed questioning about what her various possible wishes will result in. The demon explains the hidden downsides each time, and has this to say about her potential wish for the love of her employer, a good-looking man of thirty-five:<\/p>\n

\u201cAh, I see you\u2019ve made your wish.\u201d
\n\u201cI want to know first how you\u2019d do it.\u201d
\nThe crone leered: \u201cYou\u2019re a sharp one, eh? Well, all right. What do you want? Love or marriage?\u201d
\nLola tightened her lips, narrowed her eyes, snapped: \u201cDon\u2019t try to kid me. I want enough love for marriage.\u201d
\n\u201cNope. That\u2019s two wishes. One\u2019s spiritual. The other\u2019s physical.\u201d
\nThe old one wrinkled her long, hideous nose, added:
\n\u201cI guess the likes of you won\u2019t be wanting the first.\u201d
\n\u201cWhat do you mean?\u201d Lola said, stung. Her eyes flashed a darker blue, with abrupt, easy hatred.
\n\u201cThe kind of love you can get,\u201d said the old wretch coolly, \u201cdoesn\u2019t pay dividends.\u201d
\nLola was thoughtful. Her round, her too-round face twisted with a sullen moue. \u201cWhat kind of love can I get?\u201d she demanded.
\n\u201cBetter than the kind you give, my dear,\u201d smirked the other. Her voice softened, glowed a picture into words: \u201cHe\u2019ll start feeling sorry for you. Bring you an occasional box of chocolates, talk to you oftener; it\u2019ll be a sort of pity love,\u201d she finished.
\nLola waited, then as the other made no attempt to go on, she said, amazed: \u201cIs that all?\u201d
\nThe black eyes snapped; the old woman said: \u201cI can only work with the material you offer. I might manage a kiss for you every Christmas.\u201d
\nLola squirmed with a curious, unsightly movement of her body. She was not aware of the graceless action, and she would have been amazed if someone had told her that the maneuver was a physical expression of the thought that had come into her mind.
\n\u201cSuppose I wanted to be his mistress?\u201d
\nThe moment she had spoken, she shivered.
\nShe hadn\u2019t intended to put it so baldly. For the barest instant she had the feeling that her soul had come out of her body with the words, and it was lying in the waste-paper basket beside her, a dirty, crumpled thing, for all to see and shudder at.
\nThe grisly feeling passed, as the old woman chuckled slyly, and, seeming to understand what had passed through her mind, said: \u201cDon\u2019t worry, my dear, we have no secrets from each other.\u201d
\nAll reticence gone, Lola sat with open-mouthed eagerness. \u201cWell?\u201d she urged.
\n\u201cAn accident would do the trick,\u201d was the chilling answer. \u201cBoth his legs amputated, his face torn and scarred for life. Afterward, he\u2019d feel that you were the best he could do.\u201d
\n\u201cUgh!\u201d said Lola, and looked sick in her unbeautiful way. \u201cWhat do you think I am?\u201d
\n\u201cMy dear,\u201d crooned the old woman, \u201cI know what you are. Let\u2019s not go into that.\u201d\u00a0 p. 73<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The story cycles through this scenario a few times, during which the demon repeatedly tells Lola there is one ultimate wish he can grant that will give her the contentment she desires, but he cannot tell her what the wish involves. . . .
\nThe ending is, perhaps, obvious (spoiler: she is hit by a truck).
\nI think people\u2019s responses to this story will be split. Some will find this an unpalatably grim\u2014even brutal\u2014story that treats its unfortunate heroine badly (part of my reaction to the piece). Hard not to when there are passages like this:<\/p>\n

Across the street from the restaurant, Lola stopped abruptly before the gleaming window; and her eyes, weakly blue behind the owlish spectacles, peered with abrupt covetousness at a slinky black gown that draped a lean Judy against a background of fine furniture.
\nFor a long, trembling moment, it was enough that the gown itself was a sheeny, lovely creation that she could own at the snap of a finger; and then, as the sun burst from a bed of clouds above, its brilliance emphasizing the shadows inside the window, and starkly reflecting the slight, crooked image of her body\u2014she shuddered.
\n\u201cBeauty,\u201d she thought with a pang that stabbed along her nerves. \u201cIf I had beauty\u2014\u201d\u00a0 p. 75<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you can overlook a badly used protagonist, and an ending that perhaps comes off the boil a little, it is an impressive and relentless little piece that is a bracing antidote to more run-of-the-mill \u2018Wish\u2019 stories.
\nThis is probably the best story in the issue, and one I\u2019d have in my \u201cBest of the Year\u201d.<\/p>\n

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No Graven Image<\/em><\/strong> by Cleve Cartmill uses\u00a0the old superstition that every time a camera takes a photo of someone they lose a piece of their soul. This phenomenon has finally caught up with movie star Norman Courtney, who is catatonic in hospital. The three characters who come to his rescue are Al, his agent\/manager, Lily Kung, a Chinese woman who is a script girl cum Asian sorceress, and Pat, Al\u2019s fianc\u00e9e.
\nBy the quarter way point I was beginning to get a little impatient with the lack of progress (the piece has the usual Cartmill padding, with lots of running around and dialogue). However, it picks up in the central section, which involves among other things: a ghoul called Dr Barq in charge of the hospital treating Courtney; Lily creating a zombie doll of a producer they want to force into helping them retrieve a number of film masters; the threesome\u2019s attempt to rescue Courtney from the hospital armed with the local market\u2019s supply of garlic; etc.<\/p>\n

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None of this really makes much sense to be honest, but Cartmill manages to keep the plates spinning entertainingly for a while\u2014until the end that is, when they all fall to the floor (Lily uses her birth charm and some Chinese symbols on a car tyre to vanquish Dr Barq the ghoul: I\u2019m not entirely sure why they didn\u2019t do this to start with).<\/p>\n

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By the way, Lily is, for the period, an atypically strong, capable character, so I\u2019m not quite sure why Cartmill has her breaking into \u201ccoolie chatter\u201d every now and then:<\/p>\n

So we bought practically all the garlic in Hollywood.
\nThe Hollyfax Market: arc lamps on the sidewalk, stabbing a veil of fog; hillbilly entertainers, stabbing your eardrums with sharp blades of nasal harmony.
\n\u201cWe want some garlic,\u201d I told the Japanese vegetable man.
\nHe spread a smile between his ears. \u201cGarric, how much, prease?\u201d
\n\u201cAll you\u2019ve got.\u201d
\n\u201cAh? Have too much. Busher basket full. How much you want?\u201d
\n\u201cThe whole works.\u201d
\n\u201cAh, so? Will never use, misser. Too much.\u201d
\n\u201cWassa malla you?\u201d Lily snarled. \u201cYou savvy Inglis? Gollic you got, gollic we buy. You savvy? You bring, chop chop!\u201d
\nAs he scurried away, I said, \u201cCut out that coolie chatter. You speak better English than I do.\u201d
\n\u201cI think it\u2019s cute,\u201d Pat said.
\n\u201cThat\u2019s just the trouble. She\u2019s got a Ph. D in languages, and uses the sloppiest English in town. Cute!\u201d
\n\u201cHush yo\u2019 mouf,\u201d Lily said fiercely. \u201cTime\u2019s a-wastin\u2019.\u00a0 p. 92<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Guardian<\/em><\/strong>, also by Cleve Cartmill, is a pseudonymous effort. To begin with I thought it was by Frederic Brown:<\/p>\n

INTEROFFICE COMMUNICATION
\n.<\/span>
\nTo\u2014Secretary, Recording Office
\nFrom No.\u20141,234,567,890,123
\nRank\u2014Guardian Angel
\nSubject\u2014Resignation
\nRemarks\u2014See Below
\n.<\/span>
\nI should have followed my hunch and gone into the Harp & Halo Corps when I re-enlisted this time. But some of the other Guardians said this was a fairly soft touch, this watching over a man till the Sands & Time department sends out his Day-is-done order.
\nWell, the job is about what I expected, and I handled my first assignment discreetly. Look at my card; you\u2019ll see.
\nSo I can\u2019t see any reason for my suspension\u2014\u201cpending an investigation.\u201d And the semiofficial suggestion that I resign and be forgiven smells like office politics to me.
\nEvery time you turn your back around here, you\u2019re likely to get a flaming sword between your shoulder blades. I\u2019m not going to resign, even if I get Hell for it.\u00a0 p. 102<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although this sets up the story as a light piece it gets darker by the minute. The plot is that Bonnie Camber, the above guardian angel\u2019s ward, is running for election as the DA against the incumbent, and Bonnie has evidence of his corruption. The plan is to reveal this two days before the election.
\nHowever, things start going badly for Bonnie. He is visited by the DA\u2019s thugs and given a systematic and brutal (and fully described) beating to try to force him to hand over the evidence. The next day he meets Ellen, his campaign manager Harry\u2019s fianc\u00e9, and discovers the DA has bought\u00a0Harry off. Next, Ellen and Bonnie discuss their feelings for each other (there is a bit of a love triangle thing going on between the three). Bonnie says that he is too old for her and that she will be better off with Harry. He asks Ellen to tell Harry that he won\u2019t be publishing the evidence.
\nBonnie then hires a car and goes to the house of one of the thugs who beat him up, and knocks him out. He intends to give the thug a serious revenge beating but concludes there is no point, and leaves.<\/p>\n

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The rest of the story (spoiler) has a despondent Bonnie going to a bar, and later drinking himself to death in a hotel room. The guardian angel\u2019s only intervention, and the one that got him in trouble, is to stop Bonnie being killed in a car accident involving Ellen driving his car. Ironically, she is on the way to tell him Harry has changed his mind.
\nThis is essentially an unpleasant, nihilistic piece bookended with some standard \u2018Guardian Angel\u2019 patter. Frank Capra\u2019s It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em>, it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n

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

The Hat Trick<\/em><\/strong> by Fredric Brown is a brief and slight story, but it has a central scene that is well done: two couples are together in one of the women\u2019s homes with the two men needling each other over card tricks. During this one of them goads the other into producing something from a top hat:<\/p>\n

He left the top hat right on the table, but he reached out a hand toward it, uncertainly at first. There was a squealing sound from inside the hat, and Walter plunged his hand down in quickly and brought it up holding something by the scruff of the neck.
\nMae screamed and then put the back of her hand over her mouth and her eyes were like white saucers. Elsie keeled over quietly on the studio couch in a dead faint; and Bob stood there with his cane-yardstick in midair and his face frozen.
\nThe thing squealed again as Walter lifted it a little higher out of the hat. It looked like a monstrous, hideous black rat. But it was bigger than a rat should be, too big even to have come out of the hat. Its eyes glowed like red light bulbs and it was champing horribly its long scimitar-shaped white teeth, clicking them together with its mouth going several inches open each time and closing like a trap. It wriggled to get the scruff of its neck free of Walter\u2019s trembling hand; its clawed forefeet flailed the air. It looked vicious beyond belief.
\nIt squealed incessantly, frightfully, and it smelled with a rank fetid odor as though it had lived in graves and eaten of their contents.
\nThen, as suddenly as he had pulled his hand out of the hat, Walter pushed it down in again, and the thing down with it. The squealing stopped and Walter took his hand out of the hat. He stood there, shaking, his face pale. He got a handkerchief out of his pocket and mopped sweat off his forehead. His voice sounded strange: \u201cI should never have done it.\u201d He ran for the door, opened it, and they heard him stumbling down the stairs.\u00a0 p. 112<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The coda suggests (spoiler) that Walt may be an extra-terrestrial.<\/p>\n

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

The Witch <\/em><\/strong>by A. E. van Vogt3<\/sup> is a story about Marson, the headmaster of a school, and the unwelcome lodger that he and his wife have inherited, his great-grandmother Mother Quigley.
\nThe story starts with Marson watching the old woman sitting outside in the sun, near the couple\u2019s house beside the sea. He glances away for a moment, and by the time he looks back, she has vanished. Quigley cannot work out how she got past him and back to the house without him seeing her. Matters become even more peculiar when he goes back to the house and his wife tells him she was inside the whole time.
\nThis unsettles Marson\u00a0more than it normally would as he has also received a letter from a distant village stating that Mother Quigley died and was buried last year. He wonders who the woman staying with them really is.
\nWhen the point of view then switches to the old woman we learn that she is planning to leave her old body and transfer to Joanna\u2019s young one. While she is sitting in the lounge thinking about this she screams when she realises that the Marsons have not closed the blinds: she has a terrible fear of the night (and, we find out later, the sea). Marson\u2019s resentment towards the old woman\u2014there are undertones of unwanted elder relatives here\u2014comes out into the open when he later challenges her about the letter he received. She tells a story about how she impersonated the dead woman to take her money.<\/p>\n

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

That afternoon, and in response to Marston\u2019s awkward questions, Mother Quigley decides to make sure that she can quickly possess Joanna when the time arrives (there is a full moon due\u00a0in a few days). However, Marson\u00a0catches her trying to force feed a green powder to Joanna while the latter is having an afternoon nap. There follows a fantastical scene when Marson grabs the old woman:<\/p>\n

And then, Marson was on top of her. That loathsome mindwind was blowing stronger, colder; and in him was an utter, deadly conviction that demonic muscles would resist his strength to the limit. For a moment, that certainly prevailed even over reality.
\nFor there was nothing.
\nThin, bony arms yielded instantly to his devastatingly hard thrust; a body that was like old, rotten paper crumbled to the floor from his murderous rush.
\nFor the barest moment, the incredibly easy victory gave Marson pause. But no astonishment could genuinely restrain the violence of his purpose or cancel that unnatural sense of unhuman things; no totality of doubt at this instant could begin to counterbalance his fury at what he had seen.
\nThe old woman lay at his feet in a shapeless, curled-up blob. With a pitiless ferocity, a savage intent beyond any emotion he had ever known, Marson snatched her from the floor. Light as long-decayed wood, she came up in his fingers, a dangling, inhuman, black-clothed thing. He shook it, as he would have shaken a monster; and it was then, when his destroying purpose was a very blaze of unreasoning intensity that the incredible thing happened.
\nImages of the old woman flooded the room. Seven old women, all in a row, complete in every detail, from black, sacklike dress to semi-bald head, raced for the door. Three exact duplicates of the old woman were clawing frantically at the nearest window. The eleventh replica was on her knees desperately trying to squeeze under the bed.
\nWith an astounded gasp, brain whirling madly, Marson dropped the thing in his hands. It fell squalling, and abruptly the eleven images of the old woman vanished like figments out of a nightmare.\u00a0 p. 122<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After a further period of self-doubt, Marson goes on a trip to the Mother Quigley\u2019s previous home village to disinter the coffin; he\u00a0also asks a teacher colleague to do an analysis of the green powder. After Marston returns (spoiler) from an empty grave, he is told the results of the tests:<\/p>\n

\u201cGrainger identified it as a species of seaweed, known as Hydrodendon Barelia.\u201d
\n\u201cAny special effects if taken into the human system?\u201d Marson was all casualness.
\n\u201cNo-o! It\u2019s not dangerous, if that\u2019s what you mean. Naturally, I tried it on the dog, meaning myself, and it\u2019s rather unpleasant, not exactly bitter but sharp.\u201d
\nMarson was silent. He wondered whether he ought to feel disappointed or relieved. Or what? Kemp was speaking again:
\n\u201cI looked up its history, and, surprisingly, it has quite a history. You know how in Europe they make you study a lot of stuff about the old alchemists and all that kind of stuff, to give you an historical grounding.\u201d
\n\u201cYes?\u201d
\nKemp laughed. \u201cYou haven\u2019t got a witch around your place by any chance?\u201d
\n\u201cEh!\u201d The exclamation almost burned Marson\u2019s lips. He fought hard to hide the tremendousness of that shock.
\nKemp laughed again. \u201cAccording to \u2018Die Geschichte der Zauberinnen\u2019<\/em> by the Austrian, Karl Gloeck, Hydrodendon Barelia<\/em> is the modern name for the sinister witch\u2019s weed of antiquity. I\u2019m not talking about the special witches of our Christian lore, with their childish attributes, but the old tribe of devil\u2019s creatures that came out of prehistory, regular full-blooded sea witches. It seems when each successive body gets old, they choose a young woman\u2019s body, attune themselves to it by living with the victim, and take possession any time after midnight of the first full moon period following the 21st of June. Witch\u2019s weed is supposed to make the entry easier. Gloeck says . . . why, what\u2019s the matter, sir?\u00a0 p. 125-126<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Marston later decides that he cannot just kick Mother Quigley out of his house and put her in an old folk\u2019s home as that will leave the real problem unresolved, so he decides on a more permanent solution. This plays out in a tense and creepy finale.
\nThis is an entertaining and engrossing novelette, and if this is what van Vogt was capable of in the fantasy field it is a pity he didn\u2019t produce more stories of this type.<\/p>\n

The Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong> for this issue is quite surprising. Normally I\u2019d be berating Kolliker (who provides illustrations for the Kuttner and Cartmill stories) and praising Edd Cartier, but Kolliker produces the best illustrations in this magazine and Cartier the worst. One wonders if Kolliker read\u00a0all the criticism in the letter columns of Astounding<\/em> and resolved to do better.
\nManuel Isip\u2019s illustrations for Cartmill\u2019s second story Guardian<\/em> are better than the ones for the other two stories he illustrates: he uses a multiple line style of shading that gives them a certain something. The other illustrations by Frank Kramer and Orban are also-rans.
\nOf Things Beyond<\/em><\/strong> is a short but interesting editorial about how different times and places develop different mythologies and myth-beings:<\/p>\n

The myth-people live on chance and luck, good or ill. When it was purely a question of luck whether a crop grew or died, the brownies and the fairies lived. When it becomes a matter of lead arsenate and pyrethrum dust against the insects, and soil analysis to determine the best type of crop and most suitable type of fertilizer\u2014
\nOf all the cultures man has evolved, only one has not developed its own generation of myth beings. The steel-and-stone cities of today alone of all man\u2019s housings offer shelter to no pixies.\u00a0 p. 6<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Ka of Kor-Sethon<\/em><\/strong> by Hannes Bok is an okay poem about a spirit, a ka, trapped in an Egyptian tomb.
\n\u2014And Having Writ\u2014<\/em><\/strong> is a short letter column this time around that has positive mentions for Hannes Bok\u2019s novel The Sleeping Sorceress<\/em>, and Alfred Bester\u2019s Hell is Forever<\/em>. It also has this from Mary McGregor, the wife of Astounding<\/em> and Unknown<\/em> regular Malcolm Jameson:<\/p>\n

Dear Mr. Campbell:
\nThe last thing in my mind is to start a feud with Malcolm Jameson, but it goes against the grain to pick up the magazine containing my very first brainchild to see the light of print and find him hogging the spotlight on the cover and pretending it was his own.
\nNow don\u2019t misunderstand me. I admire his work extravagantly, and needless to say like him, too. Otherwise I wouldn\u2019t have lived with him all these years, raised his kids and kept his house and traipsed all over the seven seas trying to keep up with him, but it seems to me he has glory enough without cutting in on my poor maiden effort. Or was it your own fault? Did you think that \u201cMrs.\u201d on the return address was a misprint or something?
\nThey say you can\u2019t unscramble eggs, so I don\u2019t know what you are going to do about it now that it has happened, but I know darn well I don\u2019t want my first and maybe only story to go down the chute as just another Jameson yarn. Outside of that, I think Unknown is a pretty good magazine. This story is more autobiographical than you think. The only place I could find to rent in Washington, when my husband went off to sea in the last war, was a haunted house in Georgetown. I don\u2019t recommend \u2019em except in emergencies.
\n\u2014Mary MacGregor (Jameson).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Campbell replies \u201cWe wuz wrong\u2014and she wuz robbed!\u201d.
\nOn Books of Magic<\/em><\/strong> by L. Sprague de Camp is an interesting and informative review of Witchcraft<\/em> by Charles Williams (Faber & Faber, 1941), a history book on the subject of witchcraft and the witchcraft trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.<\/p>\n

Another good issue, the third one in a row.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

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

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. Fred Smith,\u00a0Once There Was A Magazine\u2014<\/em> p. 42-43 (Beccon Publications<\/a>, 2002), says that \u201cthe reader [is] once again transported into the world of Arthurian legend courtesy of Henry Kuttner\u2019s Wet Magic<\/em>\u201d, and that the \u201cstory is smoothly written but, as with some others, blends an uneasy mixture of whimsy, horror and adventure.\u201d There is \u201cno such problem\u201d with Fritz Leiber\u2019s story.
\nAs for the other two novelettes, Frederic Brown\u2019s The Angelic Angleworm<\/em> is a \u201clight-hearted tale\u201d but one which ultimately turns out to have a \u201cshaggy dog\u201d ending. No Graven Image<\/em> by Cleve Cartmill is \u201coriginal and entertaining\u201d.
\nSmith notes that Edna Mayne Hull (A. E. van Vogt\u2019s wife) makes her first contribution to Unknown<\/em> with The Ultimate Wish<\/em>. There is no comment about the quality of this story or the others, bar The Hat Trick<\/em> by Fredric Brown, which was not \u201cBrown at his best but is an early example of his speciality: ultra short fiction\u201d.
\nThe artwork was \u201cpassable with M. Isip up to standard, one Cartier drawing and Kolliker and Kramer slightly better than usual\u201d.
\nStefan R. Dziemianowicz, p. 140-142, The Annotated Guide to Unknown & Unknown Worlds<\/em> (Starmont, 1991) says that the first half of Kuttner\u2019s Wet Magic<\/em> \u201chas several good slapstick scenes. Then the story takes a none-to-successful serious turn, when a wizard proposes that maybe Woodley was fated to end up where he is because he is the latter-day incarnation of King Arthur. The ending sputters inconclusively.\u201d
\nHe goes on to add that \u201cKuttner\u2019s use of the \u201claws of compensation and revision\u201d to describe how it\u2019s possible for a person\u2019s actions in the present to affect the past is reminiscent of the laws of \u201csimilarity and contagion\u201d in the Harold Shea stories.\u201d
\nAs to the other novelettes, he notes that the Grey Mouser\u2019s cross dressing scene in Leiber\u2019s Thieves\u2019 House<\/em> \u201cis one of the first flashes of the humor that was to become a trademark of this series.\u201d Brown\u2019s The Angelic Angleworm<\/em> \u201cproceeds to a witty conclusion\u201d, whereas Cartmill\u2019s No Graven Image<\/em> \u201cthoroughly exhausts the originality of its idea very early.\u201d He adds that \u201cthe characterization is surprisingly poor for Cartmill\u201d.
\nDziemianowicz thought that Hull\u2019s The Ultimate Wish<\/em> was \u201can unusually cruel story\u201d. Cartmill\u2019s Guardian<\/em> has a \u201cportrayal of guardian angels as invisible G-men [that] is original and effective\u201d.
\nFinally, he says this of A. E. van Vogt\u2019s The Witch<\/em>: \u201cAt Campbell\u2019s request, van Vogt built a story around a character who resembled Granny in Slan<\/em>. [. . .] This story tries to be as complex as The Ghost<\/em> [Unknown<\/em>, August 1942] but the ending is nowhere near as good.\u201d He adds that the story was televised on Rod Serling\u2019s Night Gallery<\/em>.<\/p>\n

2. The Stuka was a dive-bomber and not a fighter, so it is highly unlikely that a pair of them would be dog-fighting over Wales (if\u00a0they had the range to get there from France). Further, the World War 2 Database<\/a> site says in its timeline, \u201c20 Aug 1940: Luftwaffe leadership ordered that no more Ju 87 Stuka aircraft were to be sent into action over Britain, after suffering unsustainable loss rates; almost 60 were shot down in the past 11 days.\u201d
\nThere have been no wild bears in Wales since the (at the latest) the early Middle Ages, according to this BBC<\/a> webpage.
\nI am surprised that neither Kuttner nor Campbell caught these errors.<\/p>\n

3. As noted above, van Vogt got the idea for The Witch<\/em> from Campbell. He had this to say in his 1980 interview with Robert Weinberg:<\/p>\n

Campbell offered me an occasional idea. But the fact is that it takes me a long time to organize someone else\u2019s story thought into my own system. He suggested the concept of a wizened old witch, which I eventually evolved into \u201cThe Witch\u201d for Unknown Worlds<\/em>. What I principally utilized Campbell for was information. When I was writing \u201cThe Storm\u201d I wrote him and asked him if there was a possibility that some equivalent of a storm could exist in space. He wrote R.S. Richardson, and the result was what appears in the story. Campbell wrote me long letters loaded with information whenever I queried him, or if he had some thought stimulated by a story of mine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The rest of the interview is at Sevagram<\/a>, a website dedicated to A. E. van Vogt.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Archive.org link Other reviews:1 Fred Smith,\u00a0Once There Was A Magazine\u2014 p. 42-43 (Beccon Publications, 2002) Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, p. 140-142, The Annotated Guide to Unknown & Unknown Worlds (Starmont, 1991) _____________________ Editors, John W. Campbell Jr.; Assistant Editor, Kay Tarrant Fiction: Wet Magic \u2022 novella by Henry Kuttner \u2217\u2217\u2217+ Thieves\u2019 House \u2022 novelette […]<\/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-9307","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\/p6Pcj7-2q7","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307","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=9307"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14795,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9307\/revisions\/14795"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}