Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: All-Story Detective, December 1949

ALL-STORY DETECTIVE was a short-lived Popular Publications detective pulp that ran for six issues in the late Forties. This was the last issue under that title. The magazine became 15 STORY DETECTIVE but managed only eight issues under that title. But many of the covers were by Norman Saunders, including this "What the heck is going on here?" number, and there were some good authors in its pages. In this issue, those authors include Frederick C. Davis, Bryce Walton, Bruce Cassiday, and Stuart Friedman, as well as lesser-known authors Robert Carlton, Ed Barcelo, and Robert F. Toombs. Like most of the short-run pulps, I'm sure many of the stories were good and the magazines failed for other reasons.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Leading Western, January 1949

This issue of LEADING WESTERN sports a cover that looks more like it came off an issue of SPICY WESTERN STORIES. And since they were from the same publisher, maybe it did. I don't know the artist. Bryce Walton, Frank Carl Young, and D.D. Sharp are the authors using their real names in this one. The rest are the usual combination of house-names and probable pseudonyms. For example, Hal Burke, author of the cover-featured story "Dames + Guns = Trouble", is credited with only that one story in the Fictionmags Index. Was that simply his only sale? Certainly possible. But I think it's equally likely he was really Walton, Young, or Sharp. Doubtful that we'll ever know.

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: 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.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Big-Book Western Magazine, March 1949

I love the expression on this cowboy's face. Somebody's gonna pay for that spilled drink! There are also some excellent authors in this issue of BIG-BOOK WESTERN MAGAZINE, starting with a couple of my favorites, Walt Coburn and Harry F. Olmsted. Also on hand are top-notch Western writers Thomas Thompson, Tom W. Blackburn, Tom Roan, and Bryce Walton. This looks like a fine issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Planet Stories, May 1952

Another excellent Allen Anderson cover on this issue of PLANET STORIES. Why the War-Maid of Mars' raygun looks like an old-fashioned Western six-shooter at first glance, I don't know, but it's eye-catching, as are other, ah, attributes. Maybe Anderson adapted this from an unused painting he did for LARIAT STORY. Anyway, speaking of the War-Maid, I wouldn't mind reading that story by Poul Anderson. I'll have to check and see if it's ever been reprinted anywhere. The only other familiar names in the Table of Contents are Bryce Walton, Robert Moore Williams, and J.T. McIntosh.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Detective Short Stories, October 1947

This issue of DETECTIVE SHORT STORIES features a number of authors better known for other types of fiction instead of mystery and detective yarns. Lee E. Wells and Rod Patterson wrote mostly Westerns in their careers. Bryce Walton was a triple threat but more highly regarded for his science fiction tales, along with being a prolific contributor to the Western pulps. Eric Howard and Ralph Berard (who was really Victor H. White) wrote a lot of Westerns. Ken Jason was a house-name used on all sorts of stories. The only authors in this issue I think of first and foremost as mystery writers are William Campbell Gault and Herbert Brean, and to be fair, Gault wrote a lot of other stuff, too. However, this sort of versatility is one of the things I admire the most about the pulpsters, so I'm sure this is a pretty good issue.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Ranch Romances, First May Number, 1952

I really like the Fifties issues of RANCH ROMANCES. Generally great covers, of which this is another one, and top-notch authors. This issue includes stories by Frank C. Robertson, Joseph Chadwick, S. Omar Barker, Bryce Walton, Chandler Whipple, and Cy Kees.

Saturday Morning Western Pulp: Triple Western, April 1953

This is a pulp I own and read recently. The scan is from the copy I read. Novellas have become just about my favorite length of fiction over the past few years as my time (and my attention span) have decreased, so I really enjoy pulps like this.

I remember reading at least one novel by Leslie Ernenwein and enjoying it, but that didn’t prepare me for just how good his novella “Rampage Range” is. There’s nothing special about the set-up: Jim Maiben is released from Yuma Prison after serving three years for arson (a crime he didn’t commit, of course) and returns to his home range to find that his ranch has been sold out from under him by the bank, everybody believes he’s a criminal and doesn’t want anything to do with him, and naturally there’s a bunch of rustling going on, too. Oh, and the guy who took over Jim’s ranch has a beautiful daughter. Well, with a plot like that, you’d think that you knew everything that was going to happen in this story . . . but you’d be wrong. Some of the characters turn out to be different than what you’d expect, and if in the long run things are resolved in typical fashion, getting there takes some unusual twists and turns. Ernenwein’s style is very effective, too, hardboiled in places, poetic in others, and there’s a surprising amount of sensuality as well. This story reminded me very much of the work of L.P. Holmes and made me eager to read something else by Ernenwein in the near future.

Seems like I've read stories by Bryce Walton before, but I couldn't tell you anything about them. He's best known for science fiction and hardboiled crime yarns, but he wrote quite a few Westerns for the pulps as well. His novella in this issue, "High Road to Hell", also has a standard plot: a drifting outlaw becomes involved in a range war between cattlemen and nesters. It's very reminiscent of SHANE, although this story had to have been written before the movie came out. Walton could have been influenced by Jack Schaefer's novel, though. More likely it's a case of there being only so many plots in the world. Walton's novella is pretty good, written in a hardboiled style that suits it well, and the action in it hardly ever lets up. There's one major coincidence in the plot that's a little hard to swallow, but other than that I enjoyed "High Road to Hell".

Next up is a short-short by Jonathan Craig, better known for his police procedural novels published by Gold Medal and assorted other hardboiled crime novels. "Slow Poison" is a psycological suspense tale about a man searching for his wife and the man she ran away with. (As I was reading it, I kept hearing Moe Howard in the back of my mind, saying, "Niiiiiagara Falls!") There's nothing particularly Western about this one—it could have played out almost exactly the same in a modern setting—but Craig is a good writer and makes a readable three pages out of not much.

The novella "Spawn of the Gun Pack" is by one of my favorite Western writers, T.T. Flynn. This is a reprint from the April 19, 1941 issue of WESTERN STORY, where it was the featured story on the cover. The set-up is familiar here, too: a teenager who is the son of a notorious outlaw and smuggler sees his father gunned down in an ambush because he was double-crossed. The protagonist takes to the owlhoot trail himself and vows to track down and kill the man responsible for his father's death. Enough time passes to give this yarn a bit of an epic feel, and then the hero finally gets a lead that takes him to a New Mexico mining boomtown. What he finds there isn't what he expected, as Flynn gives us some back-story worthy of Walt Coburn and then puts a nice twist on it. A lot more action ensues, told in Flynn's straightforward but highly effective prose. A pursuit scene across a lava bed is very suspenseful and reminded me of Louis L'Amour's FLINT. I've never read a bad story by Flynn, and this is a very good one.

There's also a "fact story" about the notorious outlaw Jack Slade by Gladwell Richardson, who's best known for his fiction. This is a pretty good article, and I'm not a fan of such historical features in pulps.

Overall, this is a really good issue of TRIPLE WESTERN with a decent triple-decker cover by Clarence Doore and three novellas well worth reading. I have more issues of this pulp and will be reading my way through them in the months to come.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1947

That cover is by Earle Bergey. (Was there ever any doubt?) I know his work was controversial at the time, but dang, I like his covers. This issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES contains stories by Henry Kuttner, Bryce Walton, George O. Smith, L. Sprague de Camp, and Will F. Jenkins twice, once under his most famous pseudonym Murray Leinster and once as William Fitzgerald. My old mentor Sam Merwin Jr. was the editor. Good stuff.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Jungle Stories, Summer 1947

I've got to read some more of the Ki-Gor novels one of these days. In the meantime, I'll just look at this eye-catching George Gross cover for a while. I don't know who wrote the lead novel under the John Peter Drummond house-name, but there are also stories by Fiction House regulars Dan Cushman, Bryce Walton, and Emmett McDowell.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Planet Stories, January 1952

Gotta love those Allen Anderson PLANET STORIES covers, along with titles like "Sargasso of Lost Spaceships", the Poul Anderson (no relation) yarn in this issue. There are also stories by John Jakes (long before he was a bestselling writer of historical sagas), Margaret St. Clair, Bryce Walton, and others. Personally, I really enjoy this sort of adventure science fiction, but I've never been noted for my highbrow tastes.