Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Amazing Stories, June 1945

Is that a great big cat, or are those little-bitty spacemen? I don't know, but it's a striking cover by Robert Gibson Jones anyway. Several of the usual suspects are on hand in this issue of AMAZING STORIES, including Richard S. Shaver, Chester S. Geier, Berkeley Livingston, Frances M. Deegan, Don Wilcox, and surely the best-known name in the issue, at least as far as we remember them today, the great Edmond Hamilton. There's also a short story by William Hamling, who would go on to be the publisher of the Fifties digests IMAGINATION and IMAGINATIVE TALES, as well as hundreds if not thousands of pseudonymous soft-core novels by Robert Silverberg, Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, Evan Hunter, and many other authors who became famous in other fields. It never hurts to recall that Hamling was a science fiction guy starting out.

Happy Fourth of July!

 

The art on this cover is by Robert Gibson Jones, who did a bunch of covers, most of them excellent, for FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. William Brengle, author of the lead novella, is a house-name, and the actual author behind this one is Howard Browne. Also on hand in this issue are William P. McGivern, Robert Bloch (twice, once as himself and once as Tarleton Fiske), Don Wilcox, Harold Lawlor, and Leroy Yerxa. That's a pretty good line-up. I don't own this issue, but you can find a PDF of it here, along with a bunch of other issues of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. In the meantime, Happy Fourth of July to everyone reading this in the United States, and I hope it's a great day for you and everyone elsewhere in the world, too.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fantastic Adventures, October 1942

I don't think J. Allen St. John's cover on this issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES is one of his best, but it's still pretty darned good and is intriguing enough to make me want to read the story it illustrates, so I guess it did its job. The whole issue is on-line here, along with lots of other issues of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. Will I ever get around to reading it? Who knows? But there's a good group of writers inside including Robert Bloch, Nelson S. Bond, Don Wilcox, Ross Rocklynne, Leroy Yerxa, Dwight V. Swain (writing as Clark South), James Norman, and Robert Moore Williams (writing as Russell Storm). The lead novel is by house-name E.K. Jarvis, so there's really no telling who actually wrote that one.  

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: Amazing Stories, December 1944

I'm not really familiar with artist James B. Settles, but I like the cover he did for this issue of AMAZING STORIES. Not only that, it illustrates a Ray Bradbury story I'd never even heard of, let alone read. If you want to read it, and the rest of the issue, it's available here. Also with stories in this issue are Emil Petaja, Stanton A. Coblentz, Berkely Livingston (twice, as himself and as Lester Barclay), Don Wilcox, Helmar Lewis (Louis Herman), C.A. Baldwin, Donald Bern, and George Tashman. (I never heard of those last four guys, either.)

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Fantastic Adventures, May 1942

I hate snakes in real life, but for some reason, put one on the cover of a pulp or a book and it always catches my attention. Throw in a scantily clad young woman with a spear, and I'm definitely going to notice a cover like this one by Malcolm Smith. Several of the Ziff-Davis regulars show up in this issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES, including David Wright O'Brien (once as himself and once as John York Cabot in a collaboration with another Z-D stalwart, William P. McGivern), Don Wilcox, Robert Moore Williams, and David V. Reed. Also on hand some pretty famous names: Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Nelson S. Bond, Stanton Coblentz, Ralph Milne Farley, and future comic book scripting legend John Broome. FANTASTIC ADVENTURES always had good covers and pretty good writers. I'm not sure why I haven't read more of them. 

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: Fantastic Adventures, September 1952

That's a good cover by Walter Popp on this issue of FANTASTIC ADVENTURES. Popp also did some excellent paperback covers during the Fifties, most notably for Beacon Books. John Fletcher, the author of the lead novella in this issue, appears to have been a real person, not a Ziff-Davis house-name, although he wasn't prolific at all. Other authors with stories in this issue are Noel Loomis, Rog Phillips, Don Wilcox, and John Jakes (Mr. Kent Family Chronicles his own self, or as I call him, "the guy whose books taught me how to write historical sagas"). I've always found FANTASTIC ADVENTURES to be an inconsistent but usually entertaining pulp. This issue looks to be solidly in that tradition.

Forgotten Books: The Iron Men of Venus - Don Wilcox

While I was looking for pulp cover scans to use in my Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp series, I came across the February 1952 issue of AMAZING STORIES, featuring the short novel "The Iron Men of Venus" by Don Wilcox. As I looked at that cover, I thought, "I have to read this!" And sure enough, it's actually available as part of Armchair Fiction's double novel series, so I soon had a copy and eagerly dived in.

What was it I landed in? Well, that's debatable. The story is set in a future in which Venus was turned into a penal colony for Earth criminals. However, the descendants of those prisoners have formed their own government and become a sovereign, if somewhat shady, trading partner with Earth. They still harbor a lot of resentment over the past, though, and when they get the chance they launch an audacious scheme to get their revenge and take over the planet that banished their ancestors.

That's a pretty decent back-story, and the method the Venusians use to attack Earth is fairly ingenious, too. It seems that Venus is rich in iron, and some of the iron beams, plates, etc., they ship to Earth are equipped with mechanisms allowing them to move around and assemble themselves into giant killer robots guided by mechanical brains. That's right. They're Transformers.

Wilcox also creates an Earth where nightclubs, restaurants, etc., are located on floating anti-grav platforms thousands of feet above the surface, much like on THE JETSONS. Once again, AMAZING STORIES was there first.

Our heroes are Joe Kane, a working class guy who discovers the Venusians' plot before anyone else, and his comedy relief sidekick Dan "Dynamite" Dinkins. With Earth under attack, they're the ones who figure out everything and come up with a way to save the day.

I have a hunch that a lot of modern SF readers would find this novel terrible. It's not particularly well-written. Coincidence plays a huge part in the plot, and Wilcox's style is strictly meat-and-potatoes for the most part, although there's a surprisingly elegant line here and there. But the main ideas of the story aren't bad, and man, it sure races along. And that cover is great! If you remember this sort of pulp adventure SF with as much fondness as I do, you might enjoy THE IRON MEN OF VENUS. I had a fine time reading it and will read more by Wilcox.