Saturday, December 10, 2022

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ace-High Western Stories, May 1945


Another dramatic, action-packed cover on this issue of ACE-HIGH WESTERN STORIES. I don't know the artist. As always with Western pulps from Popular Publications, the lineup of authors is a good one and the story titles are great. On hard are prolific Western pulpsters Thomas Thompson, Wayne D. Overholser, Archie Joscelyn, and M. Howard Lane, but the lead-off story in this issue is by science fiction legend Clifford D. Simak. Simak was a solid enough Western writer that I think he could have made a bigger name for himself in that genre if he'd wanted to, but of course his main interests lay elsewhere.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I never read a Simak western. I wish they were collected somewhere, but I can't imagine they are.

Between the wild, almost Norman Saunders style, action and the slightly goofy horse face low on the right, I thought this might be Allan Anderson. But this isn't a Fiction House mag and most of Anderson's other elements seem to be missing.

Hope someone out there knows who painted this fine pulpy scene.

And I hope the Holidays are treating you well, James.

John Hocking

James Reasoner said...

There's a Simak story in WESTERNS OF THE FORTIES, edited by Damon Knight and published by Bobbs-Merrill in 1977. That's the only one I know of that's been reprinted. That's a good anthology, by the way, with a slightly offbeat selection, as you might expect. There are three stories by Murray Leinster in it, as well as one by John D. MacDonald. The other authors are ones you'd expect, Blackburn, Bonhan, Coburn, Farrell, Roan, etc.

Anonymous said...

Interesting, I never realized that Simak or Leinster wrote westerns. But then I was also surprised to find out that Tennesse Williams and L. M. Montgomery both submitted stories to Weird Tales.

Hopefully one day someone will track them down and put them in an anthology.