Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, Summer 1945

This issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES has a great zero-g cover by Earle Bergey and a few writers inside you may have heard of: Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, Jack Vance, Murray Leinster, and Frank Belknap Long (twice, once as himself and once as Leslie Northern). That's just a spectacular lineup. If you want to read this one, you can find it here, along with a bunch of other issues of THRILLING WONDER STORIES.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Space Stories, December 1952

I've never seen an Earle Bergey cover I didn't like. This is a nice one on this issue of SPACE STORIES, the least successful (five issues) of the SF pulps from the Thrilling Group. Inside are stories by Jack Vance, Kendall Foster Crossen, William Morrison (Joseph Samachson, the guy who created the Martian Manhunter for DC Comics), and little known writers Robert Zacks and Phyllis Sterling Smith. If you want to read this issue, you can find the whole thing here. The other four issues of SPACE STORIES' short run can be found on the Internet Archive, too.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1951

Okay, is that a space helmet or a bowling ball this space babe is holding? If it's a bowling ball, I want to read the story this Earle Bergey cover is illustrating. Of course, it's probably just a space helmet. Either way, there are some fine writers in the pages behind this cover: Jack Vance, James Blish, Charles L. Harness, Carter Sprague (actually my old mentor, Sam Merwin Jr.), Roger Dee, H.B. Fyfe, and somebody I don't normally associate with science fiction, even though he wrote a respectable amount of it, William Campbell Gault. If you want to read this issue, you can find a PDF of it on this page.

UPDATE: As Rick Robinson points out in the comments, it's actually Earth the lady is holding. I should have noticed that. I just got distracted by the bowling ball idea. (I know there have been science fiction stories about other sports, such as baseball, but I wonder if there's ever been one about bowling . . .)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Startling Stories, March 1949

That's an Earle Bergey cover on this issue of STARTLING STORIES, of course, and I can see why Bergey's work moved copies off the newsstands while annoying some of the more serious-minded SF fans at the same time. However, I don't see how anybody can argue with the line-up of authors in this issue: Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, Clifford D. Simak, Murray Leinster, Noel Loomis, L. Ron Hubbard (writing as Rene Lafayette), and Robert Moore Williams. I'm sure it was a very entertaining issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1950

All that futuristic-looking machinery in the background, and the girl's using a plain old revolver. But hey, it's Earle Bergey's work, so I'm not going to complain. I wouldn't complain about the contents of this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES, either, since it features stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Henry Kuttner, Jack Vance, L. Ron Hubbard, Walt Sheldon, and Wallace West. That's a pretty good lineup.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Startling Stories, November 1948

The cover on this issue of STARTLING STORIES is by Earle Bergey--but most of you already knew that, didn't you? I know his work was controversial at the time, but I really enjoy it. And inside this issue are stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, John D. MacDonald, A.E. van Vogt, Frank Belknap Long, and Robert Moore Williams. Edited by my old editor and mentor, Sam Merwin Jr. I like having that link with pulp history.

Forgotten Books: Vandals of the Void - Jack Vance

When I was a kid I loved the science fiction novels published by the John C. Winston Company, many of which were available on the bookmobile that came out to my little hometown every Saturday from the public library in the county seat. How could I not love them? I mean, look at that classic endpaper painting by Alex Schomburg! I read all of them I could get my hands on, beginning with, as I recall, THE YEAR THE STARDUST FELL by Raymond F. Jones. Although my first one could have been the iconic DANGER: DINOSAURS! by Richard Marsten, who was Evan Hunter, of course. I can't remember for sure.

But one I'm certain I never read was VANDALS OF THE VOID by Jack Vance, and since this is Jack Vance Week on Forgotten Books, why not? Well, for one thing, copies of the original edition can be found easily on-line, but they ain't cheap. As in a couple of hundred bucks not cheap. Luckily, there's a Kindle edition which is very inexpensive considering the alternative. It doesn't have those great endpapers, of course, but I was able to read the book itself.

The protagonist of VANDALS OF THE VOID is Dick Murdock, the teenage son of an astronomer. Despite being of Terran heritage, Dick was born and raised on Venus. He gets to leave the planet for the first time when he goes to visit his father at an observatory on Earth's Moon. On the way he sees a disabled spaceship with everyone on board dead and hears about a dreaded space pirate known as the Basilisk who is thought to be to blame for the atrocity. Once he gets to the Moon he meets an old prospector who claims that the remnants of a race of lunar natives still live in caves deep under the surface. That's more than enough to draw me in, but there are more plot twists still to come, as a murder takes place and Dick is forced to turn detective to expose the killer and save his own life.

There's almost a frontier feel to this novel, since space travel has progressed only as far as Terran colonies on Mars and Venus and is actually fairly primitive. I don't mind a big sprawling galactic empire space opera once in a while, but I really like this sort of smaller scale story, too.

I would have absolutely loved this book when I was twelve years old. Heck, I enjoyed it a lot now, and I'm considerably older than twelve. Unlike many of you, I haven't read a great deal of Jack Vance's work. I've enjoyed what I've read, he's just one of those authors I've never sampled extensively. In the reviews of this one I've read by Vance fans, there are a lot of comments about how it's one of his early novels and his later books are much better written, but I've got to say, I think VANDALS OF THE VOID is very well written, with a smart plot, a refreshingly realistic and likable protagonist, and plenty of excitement. I had a great time reading it.

I may have to see if any of those other Winston SF novels are available as e-books.