Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Mammoth Western, December 1948

That's certainly an eye-catching cover by Arnold Kohn on this issue of MAMMOTH WESTERN. The line-up of authors inside is a little eye-catching, too, but not for the reason you might expect. There's not a single author in this issue who's really known as a Western writer. Paul W. Fairman is the closest thing to that. Some of the others are Ziff-Davis house names: S.M. Tenneshaw, Alexander Blade, G.H. Irwin. The rest are science fiction authors: Don Wilcox (who has two stories in this issue, one under his own name and one as Max Overton) and Charles Recour (who was really Henry Bott). Which is not to say that the stories are bad, I really don't know. I don't own this issue and it doesn't appear to be on-line, so I'll probably never find out. But I do like the cover.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Mammoth Adventure, May 1947

MAMMOTH ADVENTURE was one of the most short-lived Ziff-Davis pulps, running for only eight issues in 1946 and 1947. It appears to have been a decent adventure pulp, though, with some good covers, like this one by Z-D regular Robert Gibson Jones, and good authors. I'm not sure you can include Richard S. Shaver as one of those good authors, but hey, I haven't read that much by him and certainly am not an expert on him or his work. In fact, I didn't even know he wrote other things besides science fiction. But he has the lead story in this issue, probably because his name sold copies. Also on hand are another Ziff-Davis stalwart, Berkeley Livingston, with a story under his name and one under his Lester Barclay pseudonym; a couple of writers unknown to me, Phillip Sharp and Leonard Finley Hilts; and house-name Alexander Blade with a story where the actual author hasn't been identified. This issue is available on the Internet Archive if you want to check it out for yourself. I might, one of these days, or I might not.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Mammoth Detective, September 1942

I've said it before, and it's still true: you can't trust mummies. This cover is by Ziff-Davis regular Robert Gibson Jones. I always like his covers, and this one is no exception. Inside this issue are a number of authors I also associate with Ziff-Davis: Howard Browne, William P. McGivern, Dwight V. Swain, David Wright O'Brien (as himself and as John York Cabot), and house-name Alexander Blade. But there are also some authors who I don't think of as your usual Z-D authors: Robert Leslie Bellem, G.T. Fleming-Roberts, George Armin Shaftel, and Harold Channing Wire. MAMMOTH DETECTIVE lived up to its name. There are well over 300 pages in this issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Amazing Stories, July 1943

Okay, I may be nuts, but the guy in this cover by Harold W. Macauley looks to me an awful lot like Ray Palmer, the editor of AMAZING STORIES. It wouldn't surprise me if Macauley used Palmer as his inspiration for this one. Many of the usual Ziff-Davis writers are on hand in this issue, including Alexander Blade (in this case, Howard Browne), P.F. Costello (in this case, William P. McGivern), Don Wilcox, Robert Moore Williams, and Festus Pragnell. I love this era of science-fiction, although admittedly AMAZING STORIES is on a slightly lower rung for me than PLANET STORIES, THRILLING WONDER STORIES, and STARTLING STORIES.

Raymond A. Palmer, editor of AMAZING STORIES

UPDATE: It is indeed Palmer on the cover. Here's the editorial from that issue, in which he talks about it. Many thanks to Dwight Decker for providing this. You can click on the image to read it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: South Sea Stories, February 1940

It's been cold and dank here, so what better antidote to that than a cover depicting a nice warm beach and a beautiful island babe? That guy over there in the bushes with a gun? Oh, don't pay any attention to him. I'm sure he doesn't mean any harm. And while you're lying there on the beach, you could read an issue of SOUTH SEA STORIES like this one, which features stories by David Wright O'Brien, S. Gordon Gurwit, Orlin Tremaine, L. Ron Hubbard, and Ziff-Davis house-names Alexander Blade and Peter Horn. That sounds to me like a pretty good way to spend an afternoon.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Mammoth Western, March 1948

I can't tell if this hombre's hat got shot off or just fell off, so I can't say for sure if it's an Injury to a Hat cover. But I can tell you that the cover is by Robert Gibson Jones, this issue was edited by Ray Palmer, and the authors who have stories inside include Dwight V. Swain, "Alexander Blade", Chester S. Geier, Robert Moore Williams, Paul W. Fairman, William P. McGivern, H.B. Livingston (who was really Berkeley Livingston), and Lester Barclay (who was also Berkeley Livingston). In other words, the usual suspects for a Ziff-Davis pulp. But it's a pretty entertaining group of usual suspects.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Amazing Stories, June 1949

This cover by Arnold Kohn has some obvious attributes, but what I really like is the crazed look in the horse's eye, right at the edge of the cover. Now that's a war horse. Inside, the lead story is by "Alexander Blade", who appears in this case to have been Richard S. Shaver, not a good sign. Then there's a story by S.M. Tenneshaw, also a house name, but the real author of this one isn't known. Robert Moore Williams and a handful of lesser known names round out the issue. I have a feeling that based on the fiction this may not be a top-notch issue of AMAZING STORIES, but I do like that cover.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Amazing Stories, December 1948

I wrote a couple of days ago about the Richard S. Shaver novelette “Daughter of the Night” in the December 1948 issue of AMAZING STORIES, and I thought while I had that pulp out, I might as well go ahead and read the rest of it.

Despite saying that I wasn’t going to read anything else by Shaver, what should come up second on the table of contents except a short story called “The Plotters”, published under the house-name Alexander Blade. And who might Blade be in this particular case? Why, none other than Richard S. Shaver, of course. Thinking that this yarn couldn’t be any worse than “Daughter of the Night”, I plunged right into it, and I was a little surprised to find that . . . it’s not bad. The writing is a little clunky in places, and the plot, which concerns an alien spy who comes to Earth to find out our atomic secrets, is pretty stereotypical, but the story moves right along and winds up being somewhat entertaining, which makes it a lot better than the incomprehensible mess that’s “Daughter of the Night”. Actually, I never would have guessed that they were by the same writer.

The next story, “Tillie” is by Craig Browning, a pseudonym for Rog Phillips, who also has a story in this issue under his own name. “Tillie” is about some physics teachers at a small university who discover a new element and use it to power a homemade rocket ship on a journey to Mars. Of course, numerous things go wrong and endanger the lives of the protagonists. This is a really silly story with a weak premise, but it’s decently written.

Next up is “Once Upon a Planet” by J.J. Allerton, an author I’m not familiar with but evidently a real person, not a house-name. It’s about an alien warlord whose consciousness is transferred into the brain of a soldier on Earth during a war in the 23^rd Century. The idea has some potential, but Allerton’s writing is so bland it was hard to finish this one.

Rog Phillips returns under his own name with “The Unthinking Destroyer”, a tale that consists of two sets of characters, one human and one not, having conversations about the nature of intelligence. That’s all there is to it other than a would-be twist ending that’s painfully obvious from the first page of the story.

All that leaves is a serial installment from “The Return of Tharn” by Howard Browne, which I didn’t read because I haven’t read any of the other Tharn stories, and “Beyond the Thunder” by H.B. Hickey (really Herbert Livingston), which is my favorite story in this issue. “Beyond the Thunder” is a novelette in which aliens attack Earth through a rift in space with a death ray that can destroy cities. It’s up to two-fisted rocket jockey Case Damon to locate the source of the attacks, put a stop to them, and uncover a conspiracy that reaches into the highest levels of Earth’s government, all in 10,000 words. As you might imagine, it’s fast-paced (Palmer calls it “mile-a-minute reading” in his introductory column), full of fistfights and blasting ray-guns. It’s fun, even though it is pretty much pure hokum. I don’t recall ever reading anything by H.B. Hickey before, but based on this one, I’d give his work another try.

As I said in my comments on “Daughter of the Night”, I don’t generally write reviews of things I don’t like, but honestly, this issue of AMAZING STORIES is pretty bad. If it’s representative of the late Forties AMAZING, I can see why that era in the magazine’s history doesn’t have much of a reputation. The Hickey story is okay, the two by Rog Phillips are weak but readable, and the “Alexander Blade” story by Shaver is at least fairly entertaining. Nothing rises to a level that I’d actually recommend, though, and I’m not even fond of the cover painting by H.W. McCauley. If you have a copy of this one, I think you can just leave it on the shelf without worrying about reading it.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fantastic Adventures, April 1949

This has to be one of the goofier covers on a pulp that had plenty of them. The art is by Edmond Swiatek. I'm fond of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, silly though it may be at times. This issue has stories by a couple of house-names, Alexander Blade and E.K. Jarvis; the actual authors of those yarns don't appear to be known. Robert W. Krepps is in there, too, under his Geoff St. Reynard pseudonym, as is Rog Phillips. Hey, just a mention of giant apes would have been enough to get me to read it if I'd been around to see it on the newsstand.