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: Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1953

I usually think of Walter Popp as a paperback cover artist, but he did some pulp covers, too, including this one for THRILLING WONDER STORIES. Inside are stories by Murray Leinster, Chad Oliver (always nice to see a pulp with a story in it by someone I've actually met), Kris Neville, Wallace West, John Christopher, and a couple of lesser-known authors, R.J. McGregor and J.W. Groves. If you'd like to read this issue, it's available on the Luminist League website here.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Complete Northwest Magazine, July 1938

It seems like it's been a while since I posted a Mountie cover, so here's one I like by one of my favorite pulp and paperback cover artists, A. Leslie Ross. Since this cover features a Mountie, Ross couldn't give him a hat with an enormous brim, as he usually does on Western covers, but I like it anyway. Quite a bit to like inside this issue, too, as it features two stories by Harry Sinclair Drago, one under his name and one as by Will Ermine, as well as yarns by Murray Leinster, Charles H. Snow, C.V. Tench, and Zachary Strong (probably E.B. Mann). That's a good lineup.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, May 11, 1940

This issue is a good example of why ARGOSY was a great magazine, even in the later years of its pulp run. Start with a good cover by Rudolph Belarski that promises action, and follow that inside with stories by E. Hoffmann Price, Theodore Roscoe, Murray Leinster, Robert Arthur, Charles Marquis Warren, Willliam Du Bois, and forgotten pulpster William Templeton. The only drawback, as usual, is that two of the stories are serial installments (Warren and Du Bois) and you're out of luck if you don't have the other parts. Well, in Warren's case you're not completely out of luck because his serial "Bugles Are For Soldiers" was reprinted as a novel, used copies of which are readily available. The title was changed, and I honestly don't remember which of Warren's Western novels it is, either ONLY THE VALIANT or VALLEY OF THE SHADOW. But I know it's one of them because at one point I had both the serial version and the novel version. And this will come as no surprise, I never got around to reading either of them. Warren is supposed to have been a pretty good writer. He wrote, produced, and/or directed a number of Western movies and TV shows, including GUNSMOKE and RAWHIDE.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Startling Stories, November 1947

This is a pulp that I own and read recently. That’s my copy in the scan. The cover is by Earle Bergey, a little more sedate than usual and not one of his better ones, but still not bad. Unlike the fans at the time (more about that later), I’m a big fan of Bergey’s work.

I’ve been reading stories by Murray Leinster, whose real name was Will F. Jenkins, for more than 50 years. I’m sure some of his stories were in various science fiction anthologies I read in junior high and high school. His novella “The Man in the Iron Cap” is the lead story in this issue of STARTLING STORIES. I’d barely started reading it when I came across this gut-punch of a passage:

The world, of course, was bright and new and shining on its sunlit side, and restful and peaceful and secure where night clothed it. In the countries where the sun shone men and women worked and children played and where the stars looked down they slept quietly.

But all assured themselves that they were secure. They were perfectly, perfectly safe. The world was made safe by Security, which was an organization of quite the wisest men on earth. They were at once the greatest scientists and the most able administrators. They had the welfare of everybody in mind.

They had begun, of course, by forbidding anybody to experiment with atom bombs because the human race could be wiped out by so few of them. They could make all the earth's atmosphere poisonously radioactive. Then everybody would die. But Security prevented that.

And presently it forbade the use of atomic energy as such in any form because, of course, any generator of atomic power makes radioactivity which may escape into the air. Not long after that, the wise men of Security learned that someone had been experimenting with germs and by accident had created a new and very deadly mutation.

It could have been used in biological warfare, but also it could have released a new and very deadly plague upon the world. So Security forbade experiments with germs. And still later a physicist discovered the principle of a very tiny generator which developed incredibly high voltages. Beams of deadly radiation became possible. So Security had to take steps to protect the world from that.

Security was very wise and very conscientious. It did not stop all scientific advance, of course. Its scientists experimented very carefully, in especially set-up Experimental Zones, with all due care that nothing could happen to endanger the people of Earth. Which meant, naturally, that they did not make any very dangerous experiments.

In time Security took a fatherly interest in public health because new plagues sometimes arise in nature. It issued directives governing quarantine and medicine in general and, of course, travel by individuals because individuals are sometimes disease carriers. And presently it was inevitable that Security should give advice on education, and arrange that technical knowledge should be restricted to stable personalities.

In a complex modern civilization a single paranoiac could cause vast damage if he were technically informed. So presently everybody took psychological tests, and those who received technical educations were strictly licensed by Security. Then libraries were combed and emptied of dangerous facts that lunatics could use to the detriment of mankind.

The people of Earth were very secure. They were protected against everything that Security could imagine as happening to them. But they weren’t free any longer. The tragedy was that many of the guiding minds of Security were utterly sincere, though there were self-seekers and politicians merely seeking soft jobs and importance among Security officials.

The guiding minds believed devoutly that they served humanity by using their greater knowledge and wisdom to protect human beings from themselves. But somehow, knowing their own motives, they did not see that they had created the most crushing tyranny ever known to men.

Looking around at our world, that’s chillingly prescient and would keep this story from being published in any mainstream SF market today. It’s also a little long-winded and repetitive, which is this story’s main flaw. Leinster recapitulates what’s going on a lot. Also, the plot depends on several huge coincidences.

That said, “The Man in the Iron Cap” has some real strengths, too. The protagonist is a scientist named Jim Hunt, who has been sentenced to life in prison for unauthorized experiments involving telepathy. He escapes, but then he stumbles into an alien invasion of telepathic, blood-sucking creatures from outer space that have taken over a mountainous, rural area and are gradually expanding into nearby cities. The Little Fellas, as their mind-controlled victims refer to them, are some of the creepiest villains I’ve ever encountered in science fiction. This story is really a cross between SF and horror. Leinster throws in some nice twists, as well, as Jim Hunt tries to figure out a way to defeat the aliens, and the ending is very satisfying. Leinster expanded this into a novel called THE BRAIN STEALERS, which was published as half of an Ace SF Double in 1954. I haven’t read that version and likely never will, but I really enjoyed “The Man in the Iron Cap” despite the somewhat dated writing.

I’ve been reading Jack Williamson’s work about as long as I have Murray Leinster’s. The first Williamson I remember reading is his novel GOLDEN BLOOD, which I bought in the Lancer Easy-Eye edition off the paperback spinner rack in Tompkins’ Drug Store when it was new. I really ought to reread that book one of these days. His short story “Through the Purple Cloud”, which appeared originally in the May 1931 issue of WONDER STORIES, is reprinted as a Hall of Fame Classic in this issue of STARTLING STORIES. That may be stretching it a little. The plot has an airliner flying through a purple cloud that suddenly appears in the sky in front of it and winding up crashing on a savage world in another dimension. Among the few survivors are an engineer (a lot of protagonists from this era of SF are engineers, of course), a beautiful girl, and a villainous brute. The struggle to survive and eventually get back to our own world ensues. This is mostly an action story with a little scientific speculation, but it’s well-written and moves right along at an entertaining pace. It’s actually a minor Williamson yarn, as far as I’m concerned, but I’m a big fan of his work and found it enjoyable if not quite a classic. I should note that it’s the cover story in both its pulp appearances, with the art on the WONDER STORIES cover provided by Frank Paul.

I’ve heard of British SF author John Russell Fearn for a long time, too, but unlike Leinster and Williamson, I’ve read very little by him. His story in this issue, “Chaos”, written under the pseudonym Polton Cross, is a “last days of Atlantis” yarn, in which Atlantis is a scientific paradise until something goes wrong and leads to its destruction. It’s well-written but a little dry for my taste.

The final story is “Anastomosis” by Clyde Beck, an early SF fan who published only four stories. This one is probably more fantasy than SF, a whimsical domestic comedy about a math professor, his young children, a mysterious visitor, and a gizmo. It reminded me a little of some of Robert Bloch’s humorous stories. Mildly amusing and worth a few smiles.

Wrapping things up is a lengthy editorial department/letters column called “The Ether Vibrates”. Some familiar names show up: Chad Oliver, Lloyd Arthur Eshbach, Stanley Mullen, Lin Carter, and Virgil Utter. The other correspondents are probably well-known to those more familiar with SF fandom from that era than I am. Several of them complain about Earle Bergey’s covers. One even calls them immoral. Me, I still like those Bergey space babes.

Another interesting letters section comment comes in response to a reader request for stories from some of the old-time SF authors. One of the authors he mentions is Ed Earl Repp. The editor's response says that Repp is staying busy with the "writing school" he runs (quote marks mine). We know from Frank Bonham's great essay "Tarzana Nights" that Repp wasn't running an actual school for writers. He was farming out Western pulp work to several writers, providing them with plot ideas, then selling the stories under his own name and splitting the money with the ghostwriters. Bonham seems rather bitter about this, but having been on both sides of that equation myself, I think Repp's operation was reasonably fair. He could have paid the ghosts less than half and found plenty of writers who'd be happy to get the work.

After that little digression, I should mention that the editor of STARTLING STORIES at this point in its run was none other than Sam Merwin Jr., who bought the first story under my name for MIKE SHAYNE MYSTERY MAGAZINE approximately 30 years later and had a huge impact on my career by asking me to write one of the Mike Shayne novellas under the Brett Halliday house-name. As I’ve mentioned many times before, I owe Sam a big debt, not just for the stories he bought but for the hastily scrawled but always enthusiastic and encouraging notes he sent along with dozens of story rejections in 1975 and ’76 when I was trying to break in. He put me on the path I’ve followed for almost half a century now.

Overall, I think this is a very good issue of STARTLING STORIES. If you want to check it out, the whole thing is available at the Internet Archive.

 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Astounding Stories, August 1936

I'm not sure what's going on in this cover by Howard V. Brown, but that looks like a mosh pit in the background. Well, they do say that science fiction can predict the future. Inside this issue of ASTOUNDING STORIES are stories by some great writers: Jack Williamson, Murray Leinster, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Nat Schachner, Raymond Z. Gallun, Ralph Milne Farley, and Wallace West. F. Orlin Tremaine was still the editor at this point, but John W. Campbell has an article in this issue. The whole issue is on-line at the Internet Archive, so I guess if I'm curious enough about that cover, I can find out. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Blue Book, May 1939

As far as I'm concerned, BLUE BOOK was at its peak in the mid-to-late Thirties, although it remained at a pretty high level on into the Forties. But that's the era when it had great authors and a long run of consistently excellent covers by Herbert Morton Stoops. Here's one of them, illustrating a story from H. Bedford-Jones' series "Trumpets From Oblivion". Bedford-Jones had two other stories in this issue, an installment of "Ships and Men" (a "collaboration" between him and the fictional Captain L.B. Williams) and one under his Gordon Keyne pseudonym. Other authors in this issue are Will Jenkins (better known under his pseudonym Murray Leinster), Georges Surdez, Karl Detzer, and Fulton T. Grant. That's a great bunch of pulpsters.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1949

Ah, the wonderful cover art of Earle Bergey! I would have grabbed this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES off the newsstand if I'd been browsing the new pulps in 1949. And the line-up of authors inside certainly doesn't hurt: Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, James Blish, Murray Leinster, Cleve Cartmill, L. Sprague de Camp, Raymond F. Jones, and William Morrison. You can download a PDF of this issue here.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Astounding Stories, November 1933

I don't know about you, but I find that cover by Howard V. Brown intriguing. Scans of this issue are available on-line. I may have to see if I can find time to read it. The line-up of authors is certainly a strong one: Murray Leinster, Jack Williamson, Arthur J. Burks, Harl Vincent, Wallace West, Robert H. Leitfred, Desmond Hall (writing as Ainslee Jenkins), and a couple of lesser-known authors, Stuart Jackson and Holloway Horn. You can find a PDF of this issue here. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Top Detective Annual, 1952

That line "The Year's Best Mystery Story Anthology" makes it sound like the stories in this pulp are the best (in the editor's judgment) published in the past year, right? Well, you'd be wrong if you thought that. This is actually just a regular reprint pulp, with stories that go back to 1934 in their original appearances. Most are from various Thrilling Group pulps published during the Forties. But I'm willing to overlook that bit of hyperbole when you get a good Sam Cherry cover, along with writers such as Fredric Brown, William Campbell Gault, Murray Leinster, Stewart Sterling, Wyatt Blassingame, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Dwight V. Babcock, Ray Cummings, and Joe Archibald. The stories may be reprints, but if you haven't read them before, they're new. And those are some good authors. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fantastic Novels, May 1949

This reprint pulp from Popular Publications usually had good covers like this one by Lawrence Sterne Stevens, usually credited as just Lawrence. Most of the stories were drawn from early Munsey pulps, which Popular had acquired the rights to several years earlier. This issue features a novel by Victor Rousseau published originally in ALL-STORY WEEKLY in 1920. I've read a reprint of "The Eye of Balamok", but it was many years ago and all I recall is that I liked it. By the time this pulp came out, Rousseau had been a stalwart of the Spicy/Speed line for a decade, under his name and numerous pseudonyms. I don't think I've ever read Murray Leinster's "The Red Dust", but I'm pretty sure I have a copy of the novel version somewhere. It was published originally in ARGOSY ALL-STORY WEEKLY in 1921. Rounding out the issue is the Max Brand short story "Devil Ritter", which I think I've read but I'm not sure. It comes from a 1918 issue of ALL-STORY WEEKLY. One interesting thing about FANTASTIC NOVELS is that it featured a letter column, and this issue includes letters from future pros W. Paul Ganley and Samuel A. Peeples, who wrote Western novels as Brad Ward and under his own name, scripted at least one episode of STAR TREK, and created the TV series LANCER.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories, July/August 1950

That's an Earle K. Bergey cover, of course. His work is instantly recognizable. FUTURE COMBINED WITH SCIENCE FICTION STORIES (a long title!) was a Columbia pulp edited by Robert W. Lowndes, and as usual, Lowndes managed to get better writers than you would expect on his minuscule budgets. Granted, maybe he was getting stories from them that had been rejected elsewhere, but still . . . In this issue are stories by Murray Leinster, Fritz Leiber, Lester del Rey, Judith Merril, Bryce Walton, and George O. Smith. That's a pretty talented group, and I'll bet this is an entertaining issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Super Science Stories, November 1949

This issue of SUPER SCIENCE STORIES has a good cover by Lawrence Sterne Stevens. Not one of my absolute best, maybe (in my opinion), but still eye-catching enough that I would have picked up this issue at the newsstand. And once it was in my hands, the lineup of authors inside would have been enough to get me to plunk down my hard-earned pazoors: Fredric Brown, Ray Bradbury, John D. MacDonald (twice, once as himself and once as John Wade Farrell), Murray Leinster, Frank Belknap Long, Margaret St. Clair, and Neil R. Jones with a Professor Jameson story. That's a lot of heavyweight talent. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1949

This is an odd issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES in that the cover art isn't attributed to Earle Bergey. I don't know who painted it, but it's certainly an appealing, eye-catching cover. The list of authors with stories inside is pretty eye-catching, too: Ray Bradbury, Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, Murray Leinster, James Blish, Noel Loomis, Margaret St. Clair, and Rog Phillips. And it was edited by my old mentor Sam Merwin Jr. Some people today may not think so, but to me that was a great era in science fiction.

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: Famous Detective Stories, August 1950

I think this may be the first "beautiful blonde in slinky red dress plus skeleton in diving costume" cover I've ever seen on a pulp. But of course I could be wrong about that. All I know is I like this cover quite a bit and it would certainly intrigue me enough to plunk down a quarter, if I had one. The lineup of authors inside is intriguing, too, since they're mostly better known for science fiction rather than detective stories: Murray Leinster, Ray Cummings, James MacCreigh (Frederik Pohl), and Oscar J. Friend, who was pretty well-known as a Western writer, too. Also on hand are Norman A. Daniels, who wrote everything, and Robert Sidney Bowen, who I always think of as an aviation writer, even though he wrote a lot of other things, too. I suspect it's a pretty entertaining issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Blue Book, March 1939

This issue of BLUE BOOK is from my favorite era for that magazine, the Thirties, especially the second half of the Thirties. The usual great cover by Herbert Morton Stoops, and a line-up of authors that's hard to beat: H. Bedford-Jones (twice, once with his imaginary collaborator, Captain L.B. Williams), Max Brand, Will Jenkins (better known by his pseudonym Murray Leinster), Robert Mill, Fulton Grant, William Byron Mowery, and Captain Dingle, all BLUE BOOK stalwarts during this period. It's the closest thing to a cross between a pulp and a slick.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: All Western Magazine, May 1933

Well, that's got to be kind of a shock, when you're just riding along and this big ol' bird swoops down and attacks you. I don't really care much for this cover, but it's bizarre and eye-catching, I'll give it that. And as usual with ALL WESTERN, the authors inside are good ones, including Murray Leinster, T.W. Ford, W. Wirt, J.E. Grinstead, Anthony Rud, and William E. Barrett.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, Summer 1946

I like this Earle Bergey cover, but then, I always like Earle Bergey covers. I don't recall ever reading anything by Stanton Coblentz, who wrote the lead story in this issue, and I probably should. The other authors in this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES include Murray Leinster, Ross Rocklynne, Noel Loomis, John Russell Fearn writing as Polton Cross, and an author I've never heard of, Charles F. Ksanda, who sold only a handful of stories. I really like the science fiction from this era and need to read more of it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Double-Action Gang, February 1937

I've never read much from the gang pulps, but this issue of DOUBLE-ACTION GANG looks like a pretty good one, and a bit unusual, too, because most of what's inside it was written by a pair of authors much better known for their Westerns. The featured novel "This Way to Hell", which fills up about two-thirds of the issue, is by Harry Sinclair Drago, who had a long, prolific career as a Western novelist and pulpster under his own name and the pseudonyms Bliss Lomax and Will Ermine. The supposedly true story about the Jesse James gang attributed to Bill Stiles is actually by Ed Earl Repp. And there are two stories by Will F. Jenkins, one under his own name and one under his much more famous pseudonym Murray Leinster. While Jenkins/Leinster isn't really famous as a Western author, he wrote quite a few of them. On top of all that, I like the cover. If I actually owned a copy of this pulp, I'd read it, you can count on that.