Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Planet Stories, Spring 1949

This is actually a fairly sedate cover by Allen Anderson on this issue of PLANET STORIES. There's a good group of writers inside, too, including Ray Bradbury (with a reprint from MACLEAN'S), Damon Knight, Alfred Coppel, Henry Hasse, Basil Wells, Stanley Mullen, and the less well-known (at least to me) Robert Abernathy and George Whitley. I don't own this issue, but it's available on-line here if any of you want to check it out. (With all the pulps that I own and all the ones that are on-line, I swear I could sit and read pulps all day, every day, and never even come close to reading all the ones I'd like to. It's a frustrating state of affairs, but what're you gonna do?) 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December 1943

It's hard to go wrong with a brawny, bare-chested hero and a good-looking girl in a skimpy leopard-skin outfit. Throw in an angry panther and you've got something, pal. Although if I had been the art director at Popular Publications, I might've told Lawrence Sterne Stevens (the artist) to make the girl's outfit a little skimpier. Got to catch the attention of those potential buyers at the newsstand, you know. Anyway, FAMOUS FANTASTIC MYSTERIES was mostly a reprint pulp, and this issue features classic stories from William Hope Hodgson, Robert W. Chambers, and J. Leslie Mitchell. I'll admit, I'm not familiar with Mitchell's work, but this story sounds fairly intriguing. FFM published a few original stories, as well, and there's one in this issue by a young Ray Bradbury. A bunch of issues, including this one, are available online if you want to check them out. 

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: Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1949

Ah, the wonderful cover art of Earle Bergey! I would have grabbed this issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES off the newsstand if I'd been browsing the new pulps in 1949. And the line-up of authors inside certainly doesn't hurt: Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, James Blish, Murray Leinster, Cleve Cartmill, L. Sprague de Camp, Raymond F. Jones, and William Morrison. You can download a PDF of this issue here.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Super Science Stories, November 1941

You know, sometimes it seems like the bugs around here are that big, too. This looks like a great issue of SUPER SCIENCE STORIES, with stories by Robert A. Heinlein (writing as Lyle Monroe), Alfred Bester, Henry Kuttner, a collaboration between Ray Bradbury and Henry Hasse, a yarn by pioneer pulpster Ray Cummings, and a reprint of a Tumithak of the Corridors story by Charles R. Tanner. I've been aware of those Tumithak stories for many years now, but I'm pretty sure I've never read one. Are they worth seeking out?

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: Detective Tales, June 1944

You know me. Any cover with a sexy redhead on it is going to catch my interest. But in addition, this issue of DETECTIVE TALES features stories by Ray Bradbury, Frederick C. Davis, and Fredric Brown. That's a pretty potent trio of authors! Also on hand are Donald G. Carmack, Francis K. Allan, and a few lesser-known authors. The cover would have made me pick this one up. Bradbury, Davis, and Brown would have made me plunk down my dime.

UPDATE: The cover art is by Gloria Stoll.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Super Science Stories, November 1949

This issue of SUPER SCIENCE STORIES has a good cover by Lawrence Sterne Stevens. Not one of my absolute best, maybe (in my opinion), but still eye-catching enough that I would have picked up this issue at the newsstand. And once it was in my hands, the lineup of authors inside would have been enough to get me to plunk down my hard-earned pazoors: Fredric Brown, Ray Bradbury, John D. MacDonald (twice, once as himself and once as John Wade Farrell), Murray Leinster, Frank Belknap Long, Margaret St. Clair, and Neil R. Jones with a Professor Jameson story. That's a lot of heavyweight talent. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1949

This is an odd issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES in that the cover art isn't attributed to Earle Bergey. I don't know who painted it, but it's certainly an appealing, eye-catching cover. The list of authors with stories inside is pretty eye-catching, too: Ray Bradbury, Edmond Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, Murray Leinster, James Blish, Noel Loomis, Margaret St. Clair, and Rog Phillips. And it was edited by my old mentor Sam Merwin Jr. Some people today may not think so, but to me that was a great era in science fiction.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Startling Stories, March 1949

That's an Earle Bergey cover on this issue of STARTLING STORIES, of course, and I can see why Bergey's work moved copies off the newsstands while annoying some of the more serious-minded SF fans at the same time. However, I don't see how anybody can argue with the line-up of authors in this issue: Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, Clifford D. Simak, Murray Leinster, Noel Loomis, L. Ron Hubbard (writing as Rene Lafayette), and Robert Moore Williams. I'm sure it was a very entertaining issue.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Super Science Stories, March 1950

Another fine Norman Saunders cover graces this issue of SUPER SCIENCE STORIES. Inside are stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, A.E. van Vogt, John D. MacDonald, Raymond Z. Gallun, Robert Arthur, and Neil R. Jones. I've read and enjoyed stories by all of them, although I haven't read much by van Vogt, Gallun, or Jones. You don't hear that much about Popular Publications' SF pulps, but this looks like a very good issue. 

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Startling Stories, November 1948

The cover on this issue of STARTLING STORIES is by Earle Bergey--but most of you already knew that, didn't you? I know his work was controversial at the time, but I really enjoy it. And inside this issue are stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, John D. MacDonald, A.E. van Vogt, Frank Belknap Long, and Robert Moore Williams. Edited by my old editor and mentor, Sam Merwin Jr. I like having that link with pulp history.

Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Weird Tales, July 1943

This cover by Franklin Wittmack is on the mild side for WEIRD TALES, but what a fine issue this is. I read it a number of years ago and still recall most of the stories. In addition to Robert Bloch's classic "Yours Truly--Jack the Ripper", there are tales by H. Bedford-Jones, Ray Bradbury, Otis Adelbert Kline and Frank Belknap Long, Frank Owen, Allison V. Harding, and the underrated Harold Lawlor. I know the magazine's glory days were supposedly over by then, but I really like the 1940s issues of WEIRD TALES that I've read.

Forgotten Ray Bradbury: "Jonah of the Jove Run", PLANET STORIES, Spring 1948

I'm cheating a little since "Jonah of the Jove Run" is a short story, not a book, but I wanted to write about something fairly obscure for Ray Bradbury Week, and as far as I can tell, this is one of the few Bradbury short stories that has never been reprinted since its appearance in the Spring 1948 issue of PLANET STORIES.

I'm not sure why it hasn't been reprinted. "Jonah of the Jove Run" is a pretty good story, certainly not up to the level of some of Bradbury's other work but well-written and very entertaining. It's about an old man named Nibley who has a unique, almost supernatural ability to calculate the orbits of objects in motion. That's a valuable ability to have for navigating in space, of course, but science has passed Nibley by and all rockets now have radar computators to handle such navigation. But then an accident happens and the fate of the entire Earth colony on Jupiter relies on getting a supply ship through the Asteroid Belt without its instruments, with only a dying old man to guide the way . . .

Bradbury really packs a lot into this story. There's the poignancy of science versus natural ability, the gritty, blue-collar setting of the supply ship, and some espionage involving the barely touched upon background of a Cold War-like rivalry between Earth and Mars. These days this plot would be enough for a novella, at the very least. The writing is good solid pulp for the most part, with occasional poetic flourishes that foreshadow the sort of thing Bradbury would be doing a few years later. Of course, none of the science is believable, but I've never been one to care about that. I like my rocket ships with fins and always have.

And since I had this issue of PLANET STORIES out anyway, I figured I might as well go ahead and read the rest of it for the Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp series, although it may take me a few weeks to get to it.

UPDATE: A friend of mine pointed out that "Jonah of the Jove Run" has indeed been reprinted, in an e-book collection available on Amazon called NINE RARETIES. I'm off to check it out now to see what else is in it.