Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Tales, September 1939

I think this is a Tom Lovell cover on this issue of DETECTIVE TALES, but I'm not absolutely certain. I am certain, though, that there's a great lineup of authors in these pages: Norbert Davis, Cleve F. Adams, Wyatt Blassingame, William B. Rainey (also Wyatt Blassingame), Emile C. Tepperman, Philip Ketchum, William R. Cox, Stewart Sterling, and Ray Cummings. Every one of those guys was a prolific, top-notch pulpster, and I'm sure this was a well-above average issue. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Action Stories, October 1936

This Popular Publications detective pulp was never very successful, having two short runs during the Thirties. This issue is from the second incarnation of DETECTIVE ACTION STORIES. The cover, which admittedly is pretty striking, is credited to someone named A. Nelson. This is the only listing in the Fictionmags Index for whoever that was. As for the authors inside, Ray Cummings is probably the biggest name, although Walter Ripperger was fairly prolific and popular, too. Also, one of the authors, William Moulton Marston, went on to create the iconic comic book character Wonder Woman a few years later. Other authors on hand are Victor Maxwell, Arthur V. Chester, William Corcoran, and Richard L. Hobart. Chester's story is featured on the cover despite the fact that he sold only five stories to the pulps and couldn't have been considered a big name. But the story inspired a good cover.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, November 1937

I don't know who did the cover on this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE, but it's intriguing. And they definitely want you to that there's a Charlie Chan story in this issue, since it's mentioned twice. However (and that's a big however), it's not a lost tale by Chan creator Earl Derr Biggers, who died four years earlier in 1933. No, this story featuring Charlie Chan was written by journeyman pulpster Edward Churchill. Now, I usually enjoy Churchill's work and this may well be a good story, but I have to wonder if publisher Ned Pines cut a deal with Biggers' estate to publish a new Chan story, or if he just did it anyway. We'll probably never know. At any rate, it's the only non-Biggers entry in the series until the 1970s, when several different authors wrote Chan stories for CHARLIE CHAN MYSTERY MAGAZINE. Which, come to think of it, was owned and published by Leo Margulies, who worked as editorial director for Ned Pines. Hmmm. Anyway, elsewhere in this issue are stories by T.T. Flynn, one of my favorite Western writers who also did mysteries and detective yarns, Robert Sidney Bowen, and Ray Cummings. That's a talented bunch.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1940

There may not be any Space Babes of the sort he's known for on this THRILLING WONDER STORIES cover by Earle Bergey, but it's pretty eye-catching anyway. And the lineup of authors inside is more than enough to spark the interest of a science fiction fan: Edmond Hamilton, Manly Wade Wellman, Ray Cummings, Sam Merwin Jr., G.T. Fleming-Roberts, and Gordon Giles (Otto Binder). Those guys were dependably entertaining pulpsters. If you want to check out their work, this issue and many other issues of THRILLING WONDER STORIES are available here. 

Review: Tam, Son of the Tiger - Otis Adelbert Kline

Many, many years ago I read one or two novels by Otis Adelbert Kline and remember enjoying them, but I couldn’t tell you exactly which books I read. I do know, however, that TAM, SON OF THE TIGER wasn’t one of them, because I just read it and I'm certain I’d never read it before.

This adventure yarn was serialized in the June/July through December 1931 issues of WEIRD TALES, all with covers by C.C. Senf, by the way. It was reprinted in hardback by Avalon Books in 1962, probably in an abridged edition because most of Avalon’s editions were abridged. The pulp version was reprinted in 2010 by Pulpville Press in trade paperback and hardcover editions that are still available from the publisher. The pulp version can also be found on-line.

Kline is remembered primarily as a literary agent for some of the best-known authors of science fiction and fantasy from the pulp era, but he wrote several novels himself. They were heavily influenced by the work of Edgar Rice Burroughs and others. TAM, SON OF THE TIGER definitely shows that ERB influence as Tam Evans, the two-year-old son of an American soldier and adventurer in Burma, is carried off by a rare white tigress. She raises Tam to be a tiger (just like the apes raised Tarzan to be an ape), but eventually he meets an aged lama who befriended the tigress many years earlier, and this man educates Tam and teaches him how to use various weapons. Combined with his own strength and agility, these attributes make 20-year-old Tam a deadly and intelligent fighting man. So naturally, he soon runs into a beautiful princess wearing golden armor who is fighting some four-armed warriors. All of them come from a vast underground world populated by various races that gave rise to the legends of the Hindu gods, and when Tam ventures into this subterranean world to help the princess, he’s drawn into a war between those semi-deities just as you’d expect. Oh, and his father, who is still an adventurer and has believed for many years that Tam is dead, shows up, too, along with a scientist friend of his.

As you can tell from that description, TAM, SON OF THE TIGER is a real kitchen sink book. Kline keeps throwing in complication after complication, peril after peril, and in true Burroughs fashion splits his characters up and lets them have separate but interweaving storylines. Coincidences abound. While ERB is the most obvious influence in this novel (both Tarzan and Mars series), I also detected echoes of A. Merritt and Ray Cummings. Some of the vivid, bizarre descriptions of the underground world really reminded me of Merritt’s work, and I couldn’t help but think of Cummings’ THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN ATOM, too.

If I had read this when I was twelve years old, sitting on my parents’ front porch on a lazy summer day, I would have thought it was one of the best books I’d ever read. No doubt about that. Reading it now when I’m much older, I still had a pretty darned good time racing through it. Derivative or not, Kline was a good storyteller and knew how to keep the reader turning the pages. I think I’m going to have to read more by him. These days, pure entertainment is what I want most of the time, and TAM, SON OF THE TIGER definitely provided that.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, July 1950

Nothing like a beautiful blonde with a Tommy gun, as Rudolph Belarski demonstrates on this cover. There are some good authors in this issue of POPULAR DETECTIVE, including Stewart Sterling with a Gil Vine novelette (Gil Vine was a private detective in the pulps who became a house dick in a hotel when Sterling moved him to novels). Also on hand are Philip Ketchum (best known for his Westerns), O.B. Myers (best known for aviation yarns), Ray Cummings (best known for his science fiction), and detective pulp stalwarts J. Lane Linklater and Will Oursler, plus little-known, at least to me, Lew Talian and B.J. Benson.

A Rough Edges Rerun: The Girl in the Golden Atom - Ray Cummings

Science fiction existed long before people ever called it that, of course, dating back to Jules Verne and H.G. Wells and quite possibly earlier. And there was quite a bit of it published in the pulps before the term came into existence. A couple of examples are the debut novelette by Ray Cummings, “The Girl in the Golden Atom”, originally published in ARGOSY in 1919, and its novel-length sequel, “The People of the Golden Atom”, published a year later, which were combined into the novel THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN ATOM in 1923. That novel has been reprinted numerous times, often in an abridged version.

I just read the original pulp versions, which are available in various e-book editions. Sometimes these eighty- and ninety-year-old pulp yarns don’t hold up well for today’s readers. What about THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN ATOM?

The original novelette finds five men sitting around their club (gentlemen used to belong to clubs, you know, where they would sit around and smoke and drink brandy and tell each other about their adventures): The Chemist, The Doctor, The Banker, The Big Business Man, and The Very Young Man. Yes, that’s how Cummings refers to them throughout, although eventually he does reveal their names. It seems that The Chemist has discovered by using a super-high-powered microscope that there are worlds within worlds and habitated universes within the very atoms of everything that makes up our world. He has also developed chemicals that will allow him to shrink and enlarge, so he can visit the universe he has discovered within the atoms of his mother’s golden wedding ring. In other words, Cummings was there first with the idea that sparked the plots for countless comic books and movies later on.

In the first part of the story (the original novelette), The Chemist visits the Golden Atom, falls in love with the beautiful girl he spied on there, and helps out her people in a war with an enemy city-state. He does this by growing to giant size and stomping on the enemy army. (To quote Dave Barry, I am not making this up.) Since he decides not to come back to our world, eventually The Doctor, The Big Business Man, and The Very Young Man use the chemicals he left behind to follow him into the Golden Atom. They find their friend there, but they also find a revolution, excitement, danger, and romance, along with a lot of shrinking to hide from enemies and growing to giant size to stomp them. There’s a lot of stomping, both deliberate and accidental, in this book, which at times provides it with some rather bizarre humor.

The first half of the book is pretty slow, an example of what some people call travelogue SF, where the characters walk around, look at stuff, and talk about the history, geography, and social customs of the world where they find themselves. There’s also a lot of pseudo-scientific discussion about the whole shrinking process. In the second half of the book, though, the revolution gets underway and the whole thing turns into a colorful, violent, fast-paced adventure that fits pretty well into the sword-and-planet subgenre of science fiction.

So, is THE GIRL IN THE GOLDEN ATOM worth reading nearly ninety years later? If you’re interested in the history of science fiction, definitely. If you looking for an entertaining adventure novel, it qualifies there, too, although you have to be patient and the writing style is definitely old-fashioned. Cummings isn’t nearly the storyteller that his contemporary Edgar Rice Burroughs was, and the scientific speculation seems pretty silly now, but back then it was pretty dazzling stuff, I imagine. I enjoyed the book and I think some of you would, too.

(This post originally appeared in a somewhat different form on July 17, 2009. I haven't read anything else by Ray Cummings since then except some of his Weird Menace stories, which were pretty good.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1939

I like the cover by Howard V. Brown on this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES, and the lineup of writers inside is very impressive: Henry Kuttner, Alfred Bester, Clifford D. Simak, Eando Binder (probably just Otto at this point), Frank Belknap Long, Ray Cummings, Ward Hawkins, and an author I haven't heard of, Roscoe Clark. If you want to check it out, the entire issue is online here, along with numerous other issues of THRILLING WONDER STORIES. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Planet Stories, March 1943

I like this PLANET STORIES cover by Jerome Rozen, and inside this issue are stories by some excellent writers: Leigh Brackett, Nelson S. Bond, Carl Jacobi, Ross Rocklynne, Ray Cummings, and Milton Lesser (better known these days as Stephen Marlowe). This and a bunch of other PLANET STORIES issues can be read on-line here. Would that I had time to do so!

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Startling Stories, May 1948

Earle Bergey, of course. And behind his cover in this issue of STARTLING STORIES: Henry Kuttner, Ray Cummings, Frank Belknap Long, Arthur Leo Zagat, Robert Moore Williams, Paul Ernst (a reprint from THRILLING WONDER STORIES twelve years earlier), George O. Smith, and John Russell Fearn. Not all of those are favorites of mine, but it's still a lineup of solid, prolific, well-respected science fiction authors.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Popular Detective, March 1937

Look behind you, lady! (That's actually the title of a mystery novel by A.S. Fleischman that has absolutely nothing to do with this post, but it's an exclamation that's appropriate here, too, I think.) At any rate, I like the bright colors on this cover. POPULAR DETECTIVE was no BLACK MASK or DIME DETECTIVE, but there are some very good authors in this issue, including Frank Gruber, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, Lawrence Blochman, Frederick C. Painton, and Ray Cummings.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1936

This is the first issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES after Ned Pines bought WONDER STORIES from Hugo Gernsback and changed the title. That's certainly an eye-catching cover. I don't know the artist. Equally eye-catching is the lineup of authors in this issue: A. Merritt, Ray Cummings, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Otis Adelbert Kline, Paul Ernst, Eando Binder (Earl and Otto Binder), Arthur Leo Zagat, and Mort Weisinger, who also happened to be the editor. That's just an excellent group of writers. You can read this issue on-line here, along with a lot of other issues of THRILLING WONDER STORIES. You know, between the issues I own and all the issues that are available on-line, I could just about spend the rest of my life reading pulps of all kinds. And when I retire, I might just do that.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Argosy, July 4, 1931

Yesterday's pulp was dated July 4, 1931, and so is today's. This is an All-Star Number of ARGOSY, according to the cover, and I can't argue with that claim. The cover is by Paul Stahr, who painted many great ones for ARGOSY, and inside are stories by H. Bedford-Jones, Theodore Roscoe, George F. Worts, Robert Carse, Ray Cummings, J.E. Grinstead, William Merriam Rouse, and Lt. John Hopper. You won't find a lineup of pulp authors much better than that one.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Super Science Stories, November 1941

You know, sometimes it seems like the bugs around here are that big, too. This looks like a great issue of SUPER SCIENCE STORIES, with stories by Robert A. Heinlein (writing as Lyle Monroe), Alfred Bester, Henry Kuttner, a collaboration between Ray Bradbury and Henry Hasse, a yarn by pioneer pulpster Ray Cummings, and a reprint of a Tumithak of the Corridors story by Charles R. Tanner. I've been aware of those Tumithak stories for many years now, but I'm pretty sure I've never read one. Are they worth seeking out?

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Real Mystery Magazine, April 1940

This is the first issue of a very short-lived Weird Menace pulp (there was only one more issue) debuting at a time when the Weird Menace boom was just about over. Most of the authors inside are house-names. The only ones who aren't are Ray Cummings (with a story as by Ray King), Bruno Fischer (with a story as by Russell Gray), and somebody named Lon Cordot, who published only a few stories and may well have been a pseudonym or house-name, too. I don't know who did the cover, but it's pretty eye-catching.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Planet Stories, Winter 1948

I always like Allen Anderson's covers, and this one for PLANET STORIES is no exception. Based on the authors inside, this is a fine issue: Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, A. Bertram Chandler, Frank Belknap Long, Ray Cummings, Bryce Walton, Alfred Coppel, and a couple of lesser known writers, W.J. Matthews and William Brittain. One of the things I want to do this year is read more science fiction. Some stuff from PLANET STORIES would be a good place to start.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Super Science Stories, May 1940

This is the second issue of Popular Publications' science fiction pulp, edited by Frederik Pohl. The cover is by an artist I'm not familiar with, Gabriel Mayorga. It seems a little too busy to me, but it's eye-catching, no doubt about that. And the line-up of authors inside is an all-star one: Robert A. Heinlein (writing as Lyle Monroe), Manly Wade Wellman (writing as Gabriel Barclay), James Blish, Raymond Z. Gallun, L. Sprague de Camp, Donald A. Wollheim, Ray Cummings, P. Schuyler Miller, Cyril Kornbluth (writing as S.D. Gottesman), and Willy Ley. Granted, some, if not all, of those stories were probably rejects from ASTOUNDING, but still, that's a pretty impressive group. 

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: 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: Thrilling Adventures, January 1935

Here's another pulp featuring a Robert E. Howard story, and he made the cover this time. The story is "The Treasures of Tartary", a desert adventure featuring his character Kirby O'Donnell. There's a particularly strong line-up of authors in this issue with REH, Arthur J. Burks, Ray Cummings, Johnston McCulley, Wayne Rogers, and house-names Sam Brant and Kerry McRoberts. This looks like a really fine issue.