{"id":9461,"date":"2019-01-13T15:01:31","date_gmt":"2019-01-13T15:01:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=9461"},"modified":"2019-01-14T21:52:42","modified_gmt":"2019-01-14T21:52:42","slug":"astonishing-stories-v04n03-february-1943","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=9461","title":{"rendered":"Astonishing Stories v04n03, February 1943"},"content":{"rendered":"

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

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

Editor, Alden H. Norton; Assistant Editor, Frederik Pohl1<\/sup><\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nThe Halfling<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Leigh Brackett \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nEarth, Farewell!<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Frederik Pohl [as by James MacCreigh] \u2217<\/strong>
\nIt Happened Tomorrow<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Robert Bloch \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nCome to Mars<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Walter Kubilius –
\nSoldiers of Space<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Henry Kuttner \u2217<\/strong><\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 cover by Milton Luros
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Lawrence (x3), Frank R. Paul (x2), Dorothy Les Tina
\nThe Mail Bag<\/em><\/strong>
\nFan Mags<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 fanzine reviews
\nViewpoints <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 author notes
\nFantasy Circle<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 film reviews<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

After reading the dreadful March issue of Super Science Stories<\/em> I wasn\u2019t expecting much from its sister magazine Astonishing<\/em>\u00a0Stories<\/em> apart from some decent internal artwork, but I was pleasantly surprised: apart from the illustrations, there are also two pretty good, \u2018Best of the Year\u2019 quality stories from Leigh Brackett and Robert Bloch.<\/p>\n

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The Halfling<\/em><\/strong> by Leigh Brackett, appears to be the only one of her future history series (ISFDB2<\/sup> describes it a \u201cLeigh Brackett\u2019s Solar System\u201d) set on Earth, and it concerns events that unfold in \u201cJade Green\u2019s Interplanetary Carnival Show, The Wonders of the Seven Worlds Alive Before Your Eyes\u201d.
\nThe owner, John Greene (his nickname is Jade), is approached by a young woman called Laura Darrow who wants a job as a dancer. Initially she tells him she wants the job so she can afford to eat, but later in the conversation we also learn that she is on Earth illegally and needs to get back to Venus. As they walk towards the stage for her audition they are startled by Laska, a cat-man from Callisto, who is strung out on caffeine (Greene explains later that this is their \u201ccoke or hashish\u201d):<\/p>\n

Laska slunk in towards us. I didn\u2019t blame her for yelping. Laska wasn\u2019t pretty. He wasn\u2019t much taller than the girl, and looked shorter because he was drooping. He wore a pair of tight dark trunks and nothing else except the cross-shaped mane of fine blue-gray fur that went across his shoulders and down his back, from the peak between his eyes to his long tail. He was dragging the tail, and the tip of it was twitching. There was more of the soft fur on his chest and forearms, and a fringe of it down his lank belly.
\nI grabbed him by the scruff and shook him. \u201cI ought to boot your ribs in! We got a show in less than two hours.\u201d
\nHe looked up at me. The pupils of his yellow-green eyes were closed to thin hairlines, but they were flat and cold with hatred. The glaring lights showed me the wet whiteness of his pointed teeth and the raspy pinkness of his tongue.
\n\u201cLet me go. Let me go, you human!\u201d
\nHis voice was hoarse and accented.
\n\u201cI\u2019ll let you go.\u201d I cuffed him across the face. \u201cI\u2019ll let you go to the immigration authorities. You wouldn\u2019t like that, would you? You wouldn\u2019t even have coffee to hop up on when you died.\u201d
\nThe sharp claws came out of his fingers and toes, flexed hungrily and went back in again.
\nI dropped him.
\n\u201cGo on back inside. Find the croaker and tell him to straighten you out. I don\u2019t give a damn what you do on your own time, but you miss out on one more show and I\u2019ll take your job and call the I-men. Get it?\u201d
\n\u201cI get it,\u201d said Laska sullenly, and curled his red tongue over his teeth. He shot his flat, cold glance at the girl and went away, not making any sound at all. \u00a0p. 13<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

They encounter other problematic characters on the way to the audition:<\/p>\n

Sindi was sitting cross-legged on the stage, sipping thil<\/em> and listening to sad Martian music on the juke box behind the screen of faded Martian tapestry. She looked up and saw us, and she didn\u2019t like what she saw.
\nShe got up. She was a Low-Canaler, built light and wiry, and she moved like a cat. She had long emerald eyes and black hair with little bells braided in it, and clusters of tiny bells in her ears. She was wearing the skin of a Martian sandleopard, no more clothes than the law forced her to wear. She was something to look at, and she had a disposition like three yards of barbed wire.\u00a0 p. 15<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

By the time Greene and Darrow get to the stage, word has spread:<\/p>\n

I shrugged and went in and fiddled with the juke box. When I came out Laura Darrow was up on the stage and we had an audience. Sindi must have passed the high sign. I shoved my way through a bunch of Venusian lizard-men and sat down. There were three or four little moth-people from Phobos roosting up on the braces so their delicate wings wouldn\u2019t get damaged in the crush.\u00a0 p. 16<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Darrow gives an extraordinary dance performance, and Greene hires her.
\nThe rest of the story details the interplay between the four characters mentioned so far. Greene falls for Laura; the shows start selling out; (spoiler) Laska the cat-man goes crazy on Venusian coffee, kills Sindhi, and later attacks Greene and Laura; Greene kills Laska in self-defence.
\nLater, a young man hired around the same time as Laura is also found dead, and a Martian sand cat is missing from its cage. When Greene examines the corpse he notices the man\u2019s eyes have contact lenses that make them the same colour as Laura\u2019s. He confronts her, and we find she is a disguised cat-person assassin\u00a0sent\u00a0from Venus to kill Laska\u00a0to avenge her tribe\u2019s honour; the young man was killed because he was an immigration agent.
\nLaura escapes, but Greene knows she won\u2019t get out of the carnival as he has stationed men at the exits. What he hasn\u2019t bargained on is her going into the \u201cbrute\u201d tent and not only releasing the animals but whipping them into a killing spree, which causes panic among the visiting crowds.
\nThe final scene includes a pitched battle between the various species of men and the animals, with a final confrontation between Greene and Laura (which ends a little abruptly).
\nThis is colourful and exotic stuff with a big action finish.<\/p>\n

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Earth, Farewell!<\/em><\/strong> by Frederik Pohl is about a future Earth ruled by the alien Others, and begins with the selection of Lyle, the narrator, as one of the \u201cFour and the Four\u201d. You can get an idea of the story\u2019s style\u2014a mixture of the ridiculous and portentous\u2014from the scene where Lyle is told about\u00a0his selection:<\/p>\n

But there was an Other in President Gibbs\u2019 mansion. I\u2019d seen the Others before, one or two of them. But this one was the first I\u2019d seen that had the wide orange circles around his irises to show he was a member of the king class. Tall, gray-skinned, looking as though he were constantly overbalanced by the weight of the flapping, ponderous fat-wings that grew out of his spindly back, he was an absorbing sight. They say that the Others used to swim around in the water of their home planet, long ago. I don\u2019t know, but those fat-wings were not made to work in any atmosphere, even the thin one of their light, dying world. They look something like a seal\u2019s flippers, but rigidly muscular and utterly boneless.
\nAs a member of the king class, the Other had a name. It was Greg. He said, \u201cYou are Ralph Symes. You have been chosen as one of the Four and the Four. Come up before me.\u201d p. 32-33<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

King class? Greg?
\nDuring the process to become one of the Four and the Four the men get chlorophyll skin, and a crown that gives anti-gravity\/force field\/etc. powers, while the \u201cgirls\u201d are turned into data repositories or some such. After this they all fly through space to the Others\u2019 home planet. This provides a rare moment of interest with a passage that presages the writer\u2019s 1972 story The Gold from Starbow\u2019s End<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The trip may have been long; I have no way of knowing, for the time was not like the passage of hours or days on a planet. Onward we fled, faster until even the stars were crawling about in space, and we could see them slide slowly behind us. Their colors changed and disappeared. Behind us the stars were red; ahead, deep, smoky violet. And then, quickly, all the stars were ahead of us, with different colors being the only thing that showed where they really were, as we caught up with and passed the light rays that came from behind. Faster than light\u2014infinitely faster\u2014we went, while the stars crept slowly around and winked from violet to red as we fled past them.\u00a0 p. 36<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On the Others\u2019 home planet the girls, who have been inert throughout the story (presumably a side-effect of being a biological hard disk),\u00a0go to a building that houses their predecessors (there have been several generations of Fours that have previously completed this journey):<\/p>\n

Inside\u2014there were rows upon rows of slabs, many empty and waiting. But most were in use. At the head of each of them there was a mind machine, like the mind machine the Others used to read and mold thoughts in the tests for the Four and the Four [. . .]. At the foot was a cylinder of crystal, and a box under each cylinder that droned and pulsed. And in the space between, on each slab, there lay the figure of a girl of the Four and the Four.
\nA hundred of them at least there were, in this one room. There are four each year, and the pick of Earth\u2019s young girls for a quarter of a century lay somnolent on plastic, molded slabs there before us.
\nMany of them were no longer beautiful. Some were no longer human.
\nEach cylinder of crystal at the slabfoot was filled with a bluish red fluid that was blood, and each cylinder had two flexible crystal tubes running out from it, sinking themselves at the ends into the flesh of the girls. That was what gave life to the girls who had been of the Four and the Four. That and nothing else, for they were unmoving, rigid. The eyes of each girl were closed, and only slowly did their bosoms rise and fall; only slowly did the pale veins pulsate in their throats.\u00a0 p. 37-38<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After the four new girls are plumbed in, the men join the other male Fours and are given routine administration jobs. One of the them, Collard, disappears with four other men and later returns to stage a rebellion. This section of the story is an okay action sequence that (spoiler) culminates in the overthrow of the Others.
\nThe piece is bookended with two short sections that have Symes telling the whole story from his prison cell. He has been an Other loyalist throughout and, at the end, Collard takes him to one of the Others\u2019 machines to be deprogrammed.<\/p>\n

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It Happened Tomorrow<\/em><\/strong> by Robert Bloch starts with newspaperman Dick Sheldon unable to turn off his alarm one morning\u2014and then he finds he can\u2019t turn off the room light either, or the water tap. Matters take an even stranger turn on his way to work when the streetcar he is on won\u2019t stop until the conductor smashes part of the trolley. There follows an equally eventful elevator ride to the newspaper offices and, when he finally arrives there, his boss Lou Avery shows him the wires:<\/p>\n

Avery tapped the desk.
\n\u201cThree planes due to land at the airport are still flying around somewhere over the Great Lakes. They won\u2019t come down.
\n\u201cThe Albania didn\u2019t dock this morning, either. It\u2019s out off the Sound, heading south. Here\u2019s the wires from the captain. He can\u2019t stop it.
\n\u201cThe gas company reports it can\u2019t turn power off. The electric company reports all lights burning. The waterworks has fifty calls of reported floods. Taps don\u2019t turn off.\u201d
\nAvery\u2019s pencil emphasized each point with a little excited click against the desk.
\n\u201cThe street car company reports trouble on all lines. There\u2019s been a subway smashup at 108th Street. Trains won\u2019t stop. Elevators in office buildings are out of control.
\n\u201cThe Empire Theatre called\u2014picture there\u2019s been running all night and they can\u2019t switch off the projector or the automatic rewinder.
\n\u201cThe whole gang is out covering the town\u2014I\u2019ve shut down on incoming calls. They\u2019re all the same, understand? They say the world\u2019s gone crazy.\u201d\u00a0 p. 52<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Avery tells Sheldon to go and see a physicist called Andrew Krane to see if he can explain what is happening. When Sheldon finally manages to fight his way through the chaos to Krane\u2019s house, the physicist theorises that the machines have come to life, and adds that their wilfulness may turn into independent action. . . .
\nThe two return to Sheldon\u2019s offices to meet with Avery. From this point on a slightly shaky story becomes more sure footed and increasingly engrossing.
\nAs the three men are discussing matters, an agitated printer arrives with a copy of the latest edition, but it is mostly gibberish:<\/p>\n

They read the first few lines.
\n\u201cToday\u2019s startling de down peril motorists advised grip of furnaces emergency pla pla London czaFortetttsten hahaDboootGla ezPlazazakl klkkkkk . 10 Ha prevallllha\u201d
\nIt was Hendricks who found his voice first\u2014and not much of a voice, at that.
\n\u201cWe set it. The presses wouldn\u2019t stop, but we set it. Set it right, too. Louie Fisher, he\u2019s dead. They caught him. That\u2019s when the loading vans charged. We locked ourselves in, then. They tried to break down the doors. Louie\u2019s dead. We set it. They couldn\u2019t stop us\u2014but they print wrong. See\u2014? They print wrong.
\nI won\u2019t tell you what happened to Arch. The presses didn\u2019t even stop then, just ground on, and the edition\u2019s all red. It\u2019s all red, I tell you!\u201d\u00a0 p. 58<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The three later find one of the women dead in the office, strangled by a telephone cord: the machines have started killing people before they themselves are destroyed.
\nThe next chapter or two of the story detail the battle between humanity and the machines. This involves, among other things, the three being sent by a police chief to destroy a garage full of trapped buses. There they organise some of the street mob to help them, but are then attacked by planes and tanks. Later, as they hide out in an apartment building, the three escape from machines that are searching door to door, but Avery falls to his death. The next set piece (spoiler) has Krane die after he sells out to the machines and attempts to betray Sheldon (they now realise that they will need human servants to service and refuel them, etc.).<\/p>\n

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This fight against the machines is a good tale in its own right (the same way that most man vs. technology stories are) but the story evolves into something superior in chapter seven, where the timeline telescopes into the future. Sheldon escapes the conflict and takes refuge in an abandoned farmhouse where he lies ill for several weeks. Later, he returns to a city where all human and machine life appears to have died out, but then meets a man he recognises as Piedmont, a millionaire who has apparently survived by locking himself and his supplies in one of his bank vaults. Piedmont tells Sheldon that the machines appeared to die off after humanity did, but that has seen smoke in the distance. After passing on this information, Piedmont shoots himself.
\nSheldon investigates the source of the smoke and finds a factory of robots building more of their kind. He goes off to get a keg of nitroglycerine to blow the factory up, and there is a final confrontation with the machines.
\nThere is a neat final passage that ties in with the machine motif:<\/p>\n

Sheldon never heard the explosion. His last conscious thought\u2014the last conscious thought of a human brain on Earth\u2014was of his body turning over and over. Turning over and over, as the earth turned over and over amidst the stars like a tiny cog in the vast machinery of the illimitable cosmos.\u00a0 p. 76<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This is a rather odd piece\u2014one that should probably be read as modern fantasy than SF\u2014and it gets off to a shaky start, but it does get better as it goes on. It is also a fast paced and compelling read, slickly written, and it does not overburden itself with much of the usual pulp baggage. Atypically, there is a story introduction by Bloch that makes that point, among others:<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to say a few words about this story. It\u2019s a yarn I came very close to not writing at all. I wanted to do just such a tale for a long, long time. But upon consistent reading of current offerings in science-fiction, I became discouraged. I could picture an editor saying, \u201cThis sort of thing is out. Destruction of the world. Where\u2019s your heroine, your twist in the plot?\u201d
\nOpposed to this was my sincere desire to tackle the job.
\nSo here is my story about the revolt of the machines. The idea is not new. The plot-structure is quite simple. But it represents an ambition of mine\u2014to actually write a story which would show what happens to men when the machines revolt.
\nDozens of such stories have been purportedly written around that idea\u2014but always around it. The author attempted to tackle the theme, but it was too big. Invariably, he glossed over the actual details in a few paragraphs: \u201cFirst New York and then London were engulfed by the machines.\u201d Get what I mean? He would generalize. And then a plot would be dragged in by the heels\u2014a villain, and a heroine would appear\u2014and the hero would save the world at the last minute.
\nSo I claim that the real revolt story, the daily account of what would happen to average people in a world gone mad, has never been told. And it\u2019s that story I\u2019m telling here. I know I\u2019m presumptuous\u2014the theme needs an H. G. Wells and that\u2019s why most writers have been afraid of it\u2014but the yarn had to be written. For a while I, too, toyed with a dozen devices to inject an artificial plot. Then I realized that the power lay in merely giving the true, detailed story. The inexorable unfolding of man\u2019s doom. So I write it that way, simply. If it meets with editorial approval, fine. If not, chalk it up as a literary sin, but one I\u2019m grateful for having committed.\u00a0 p. 47-48<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well worth a look.<\/p>\n

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Come to Mars<\/em><\/strong> by Walter Kubilius starts with a scientist called Kwain talking about his two new inventions: the first is a time twister that can send the entire cosmos back in time, and the second is a visualophone\u00a0for\u00a0contacting life on Mars. It turns out that he has already used the latter to contact that planet, which turns out to have human life too.\u00a0The Martian communicating with Earth, Hu-Lan, sends the plans for spaceships he wants the Earth to build and send to his planet. Despite his foreboding, Kwain is put in charge of the twenty-seven ship fleet and, when they get to Mars and land, they find only red dust on the planet\u2014the city they saw on the visualophone does not exist.
\nOn return to Earth (spoiler) the red dust they bring back kills all vegetation\u2014the Martians are not human beings but dust motes, and they sent the plans for the spaceships so they could hitch a lift between the two planets. Man\u2019s imminent extinction is undone by use of the time-twister.
\nThis is a pretty awful story but there is an interesting passage that foreshadows John Christopher\u2019s novel The Death Of Grass<\/em>:<\/p>\n

The dust that had collected in the jets of the rockets during their stay on Mars blew away with Earth\u2019s winds. An insignificant amount, it meant nothing. So they thought. . . .
\nThe apple trees of Oregon were ripe as luscious globules were ready for the picking in the grove. The farmer placed his ladder against the tree, stepped on it\u2014and the tree crumbled. A puff of gray and red dust sprung outward and was carried away by the wind. The red dust motes separated themselves from the gray and spread apart until they infected other trees.
\nA young couple in Central Park leaned against a tree. It collapsed under their weight, crumbling like dust. A small flurry of red dust was blown from the debris by the wind. Surprised, the young couple looked at the wreck, then at each other. Laughing, they went their way.
\nThere was drought on the Western plains, and the hungry cattle were turned loose to feed upon a carefully cultivated grange. Their hooves thundered as they reached the field. But when their hungry mouths reached for the rich food, they encountered dust\u2014gray and red dust. Slowly, with each breath of wind, the red motes separated themselves from the gray and made their way to other fields.
\nThe giant reapers were stationed in the great fields of the Ukraine, the bread basket of Europe. But when their metal arms reached for the staffs, they encountered masses of corruption. Dust rose like angry clouds over the wheat fields. With the dust came the dreaded horsemen\u2014Famine and Pestilence.
\nLumber regions of Canada, tobacco farms of Virginia, corn, rye, potatoes\u2014wherever food was grown, wherever plant life existed, there the red dust was found.
\nThere it grew and there it threatened the life of the Earth.\u00a0 p. 82<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Soldiers of Space<\/em><\/strong> by Henry Kuttner begins with ex-space pilot Gregory Lash living like a hobo\u2014he has fallen on hard times\u2014when a spaceship flies over his makeshift camp and crash lands nearby. When Lash arrives the pilot is unconscious, and the radio is calling from Denver, so Lash makes a few repairs to the ship and flies it and the unconscious pilot there. On his arrival the managers of the spaceport invite him for a meal, and quiz him about the ship: unbeknown to Lash they believe that the ship is unsafe and want to prevent a film director using it for a movie shoot flying it again. When one of the other director\u2019s pilots arrives he tries to punch Lash for talking too much. At this point Bruce Vane, an old friend of Lash\u2019s, turns up.
\nThe rest of the story has Lash join the other stunt pilots on the movie. Added to the mix is his friend Vane\u2019s PTSD, caused by a near terminal dive into an asteroid called Cerebus during the war\u2014if Lash hadn\u2019t been there to shake Vane out of his space shock he would have died. Needless to say, they are going to Cerebus to film the rest of the movie, and Vane is the only one who can fly the Martian ship. Much argy-bargy ensues between Lash and the director, who plans on making Vane recreate the dive.
\nFurther complications arise when Lash finds that the Martians\u2014his and Vane\u2019s enemies during the last\u00a0war\u2014have taken over Gap Station and are planning a sneak attack on Earth. This is something that is clumsily telegraphed earlier in the story:<\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t mentioned the Gap. Spacemen know it. It\u2019s one of the passes through the Asteroid Belt. It was fairly dangerous, and most transports and freighters used other openings, but it was one of the ways of getting through that vast, tumbling chaos of shattered worlds that ring the sun between Mars and Jupiter. The Belt is wide. That\u2019s why ships prefer to use the passes, instead of making the long detour above or below the plane of the ecliptic.
\nOn Gap Station was the giant radio powerful enough to communicate with all the planets. Remember that.\u00a0 p. 96<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Needless to say, the squabbling film crew pull together to fight off the Martians (fortunately they have munitions for their ex-space navy warships on hand\u2014which would be like the movie production of Dunkirk<\/em> having a huge stash of live ammunition for their Spitfires), and there is a (spoiler) climactic space battle where Vane dives towards Cerberus to rescue the director\u2019s ship.
\nThis is pretty hokum stuff, and obviously Kuttner writing to make that week\u2019s rent, but it is readable enough and I can see why this may have been popular with readers of the time.<\/p>\n

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I didn\u2019t start off as a huge fan of Milton Luros\u2019s Cover<\/em><\/strong> for Pohl\u2019s story showing the \u201cFour plus Four\u201d, but it slowly grew on me to the point I think that is okay. The Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong> again puts Astounding<\/em> to shame. There are three uncredited illustrations for the Brackett, Pohl, and Kuttner that are obviously by Lawrence (his style, and the others are signed). The third of Lawrence\u2019s illustrations would probably be the best of the issue if it wasn\u2019t for Frank R. Paul\u2019s second piece for the Bloch story. This (see above) is one of my favourite illustrations of the 1943 so far: a powerful diagonal; one robot climbing up the stairs using its tracks and the clamps at the end of its arms; the other robot lying flat and leaning over the ledge\u2014what\u2019s not to like? Dorothy Les Tina\u2019s effort is rather amateurish by comparison with all the others.<\/p>\n

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The Mail Bag<\/em><\/strong> has a number of letters that comment in some detail about their artwork likes and dislikes\u2014and nearly everyone raves about Leydenfrost (who I only just discovered in that issue of Super Science Stories<\/em> I recently read).
\nThe third letter is a joke one (I think) from Wilson Tucker about unnecessary clothing in space. Another is from the \u201cOne-man Gallup Poll\u201d, future SF writer Chad Oliver, who precisely scores the stories from one to ten and adds a decimal place. With one story, he even adds a fraction as well:<\/p>\n

\u201cNight of Gods\u201d: An excellent yarn, and Lawrence did it justice with his fine illustrations. Idle comment: Edmonds writes a great deal like Kuttner, doesn\u2019t he? Hmmmm. 9.8.
\n\u201cTaa the Terrible\u201d: Jameson comes through with the third-place yarn this time. And the pic! Paul!! Need I say more? 9.6\u00bd.
\n\u201cDestination Unknown\u201d: 9.6.
\n\u201cMimic\u201d: Nifty plot. 9.5.\u00a0 p. 108<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You sense a feeling of desperation in the letter from W. J. Mason, Franklin, NC, who ends with this:<\/p>\n

I would like to correspond with any one. I am interested in almost everything.\u00a0 p. 109<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Fan Mags<\/em><\/strong> is a couple of pages of reviews of various fanzines. Some of the zines seem quite useful, such as Fantasy Fiction Field Newsweekly<\/em>, published by Julius Unger:<\/p>\n

Its previews of the forthcoming science-fiction magazines are valuable to those who want to keep on the lookout for the work of some particular author; its serially-published \u201cScience-fiction Bibliography\u201d is a handy list of several thousand fantasy stories in book form for the collector. Among its recent news scoops has been the story of the purchase of Famous Fantastic Mysteries<\/em> by the publishers of this magazine.\u00a0 p. 28<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I also found out what FAPA is\/does:<\/p>\n

More fan magazines appear by way of the FAPA than are independent, and most of them compare in quality with the freelance jobs. The Association is composed of fifty fans who collaborate on writing and publishing several dozen magazines of all shapes and sizes, and who mail them out jointly two or three times a year.\u00a0 p. 29<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Viewpoints<\/em><\/strong> begins with an anecdote about one man\u2019s flat Earth beliefs before giving a series of author notes:<\/p>\n

Walter Kubilius, author of \u201cCome to Mars\u201d in this issue, may not be a \u201cbig-name\u201d author as yet, though he certainly ranks among the up-and-coming ones. Big he is, though, in the physical sense. The six feet, eight
\ninches that stretch between Walt\u2019s toes and the crown of his head make him truly outstanding in any crowd . . .\u00a0 p. 113<\/p>\n

Artists Frank R. Paul and Les Tina, both represented in this issue, have at least one thing in common besides their illustrating talents. Paul\u2019s first job was to deliver food to the palace of the imperial Hapsburgs in his native Vienna, many years ago\u2014 where Les Tina\u2019s grandmother was in charge of the kitchens!\u00a0 p. 113<\/p>\n

James MacCreigh, author of \u201cEarth, Farewell!\u201d, says, \u201cI can\u2019t write a sciencefiction short story\u2014as those who have read my efforts at it well know. Each story I write demands a brand-new cosmos, and all the rules have to be carefully worked out. What breaks my heart\u2014after I have painstakingly pared down a story to a mere ten or fifteen thousand words\u2014is to look at the mass of notes I\u2019ve meant to put into it, and to realize there just isn\u2019t room!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thank God.<\/p>\n

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

Fantasy Circle<\/em><\/strong> is an uncredited essay about foreign fantasy films mostly, although it refers to the odd SF title (Metropolis<\/em>, Things to Come<\/em>, etc.).3<\/sup> I wonder if this is Forrest Ackerman\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

In conclusion, this is a better issue than I was expecting, and is worth getting hold of for the Brackett and Bloch stories, and most of the artwork.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. As I\u2019ve already mentioned in my review of Super Science Stories<\/em>, March 1943, Pohl wasn\u2019t credited as an assistant editor in the magazine, but there is this information from chapter six of Frederik Pohl\u2019s The Way the Future Was<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Early in 1942 Alden H. Norton sent me a telegram, asking me to come back to Popular Publications as his assistant. To make it sweeter, he offered me more as an assistant than I had been paid as a full-fledged editor. I felt around my pride to see if it was injured, and when it did not seem to hurt anywhere, I accepted at once.
\nAl Norton was a boss editor, a department head. He had fifteen or sixteen pulp magazines to look after and four people to help him do it: a secretary and three assistant editors, including myself.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Pohl subsequently reports being inducted into the US Army on April Fool\u2019s Day, 1943.<\/p>\n

2. Leigh Brackett\u2019s ISFDB<\/a> page.<\/p>\n

3. I looked up some of the movie titles from the article: Douglas Fairbanks’ 1924\u00a0The Thief of Bagdad<\/em><\/a> looks promising.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Archive.org link Editor, Alden H. Norton; Assistant Editor, Frederik Pohl1 _____________________ Fiction: The Halfling \u2022 novelette by Leigh Brackett \u2217\u2217\u2217+ Earth, Farewell! \u2022 novelette by Frederik Pohl [as by James MacCreigh] \u2217 It Happened Tomorrow \u2022 novelette by Robert Bloch \u2217\u2217\u2217+ Come to Mars \u2022 short story by Walter Kubilius – Soldiers of […]<\/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":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astonishing-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-2sB","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9461","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=9461"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9547,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9461\/revisions\/9547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}