Despite its name, this magazine from Popular Publications wasn't a mystery or detective pulp. Instead it was a reprint magazine featuring primarily science fiction and fantasy, with the stories sometimes abridged from their original appearances. FFM also had plenty of good covers, including this one by Lawrence Sterne Stevens. This particular issue includes a novel by H. Rider Haggard originally published in 1914, a short story by Margaret St. Clair, and a poem by Stanton A. Coblentz. I haven't read this issue of FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES, but I've read several others and always found them enjoyable, although the notion that the stories had been cut is a little bothersome.
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FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES and the companion title, FANTASTIC NOVELS, are two of my favorite magazines. They used the best artists for the covers and interior illustrations and both magazines were two of the best looking pulps ever published.
It's possible to still buy issues at reasonable prices and not hard at all to put together complete sets.
I used to have complete runs of FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES and FANTASTIC NOVELS but lost them in the fire of '08. They came from the collection of the late Barry Gardner, son of pulp author Bennie Gardner. Since then I've picked up a handful of issues of FFM but don't have any of FN. One of the great things about FFM is the letters column. I flipped through a couple of issues and found letters from Chad Oliver, A. Bertram Chandler, W. Paul Ganley, and Shelby Vick, who is still with us and quite active on the Internet.
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