P. Schuyler Miller

"As Never Was" © Astounding, Jan 1944 The Titan, 1952 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award "The Cave" © Astounding Stories, Jan 1943 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ rare find "Dust Of Destruction" © Wonder Stories, Feb 1931 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ rare find ---------------------------------------------- "The Fate of the Neptunians" (Cosmos Series) © Science Fiction Digest, Jul 1932 Fantasy Magazine, Dec 1934 Perry Rhodan, Ace Books --/ fourth place space sf series --/ wonder award --/ awesome scale --/ rare find Unreal... This is simply the most unique event in history of science fiction, the collaboration between the brightest stars in the field, some at the beginning of their career, some at the peak of their powers. The list of writers is a shining "all-star" galaxy in itself. The fiction is... well, it's certainly big-scale, brimming with grand conflict, ridiculous science, unpronounceable names and places, and more BANG that you ever encountered between soft book covers - testing, in fact, the limits of reader's imagination and believability. Impossibly hard to find today, "Cosmos" spanned the issues of "Science Fiction Digest", and then "Fantasy Magazine" (the installments were not printed in the issues themselves but as a separately-bound supplements). Personally I liked the "Last Poet" part of the serial and the crazy, absolutely delirious space battle extravaganza contributed by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach. A multi-dimensional "Wrongness of Space" anomaly attacks our system; a bunch of alien menaces and mad scientists pop out of every wrinkle of time and space, flying around (some may say chaotically) and driving the serial to its bang-up finish - good old Edmond Hamilton destroying planets Pluto, Neptune, and Uranus with an atomic disintegrator ray in his "Armageddon in Space". In other words, "The Cosmos" series is well worth searching out, it's a monumental literary artifact from the "wonder pulps" era, quite enjoyable even to this day. ---------------------------------------------- "Forgotten" (also as "The Forgotten Man of Space") © Wonder Stories, Apr 1933 Startling Stories, Winter 1946 Strange Ports of Call, ed. by August Derleth, 1948 The Titan, 1952 --/ cool space sf story --/ wonder award --/ emotion award "Dances with Wolves" set on a desert planet, with intense Italian western overtones. Big-eyed aliens are cute, and humans are ridiculously callous and mean, but this is not the point (though at the time it must've been a novelty to depict aliens as good guys and men as baddies) - the true pleasure of the story is in its tough-as-nails description of a desperate journey across Martian desert, with quite beautiful, almost surreal, narrative style. Recommended, both as a western and as a moderately-exciting planetary yarn. ---------------------------------------------- "Living Isotopes" © Super Science Stories, Sep 1940 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award --/ rare find "Old Man Mulligan" © Astounding Stories, Dec 1940 The Titan, 1952 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award "The Sands of Time" © Astounding Stories, Apr 1937 --short fiction : 1971 Astounding/Analog All-Time Poll /10 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ rare find ---------------------------------------------- P. Schyler Miller "Spawn" © Weird Tales, Aug 1939 --/ second place apocalyptic sf novella --/ wonder award --/ idea award: Elemental Monsters --/ style award --/ awesome scale --/ emotion award --/ shock value --/ rare award Some stories are docile and can be easily re-told by the campfire, or in a circle of friends; some stories are so ferocious and wild, that you can only shake your head, utter "what the heck was that?" and forget trying to tell someone about the experience. How could anyone convey the steam-roller impact of crushing imagery and seriously twisted cataclysmic events, over-the-top emotional charge and enough horrific visuals to make any special effects producer sweat with professional envy? This is a shocking story, which inherits some fearsome atmosphere from H. P. Lovecraft, some from Clark Ashton Smith, some from Donald Wandrei. The mesmerizing, almost trance-like narrative, which only gets weirder with every page until it reached some feverish pitch that no writer or reader can sustain for long. You are almost exhausted by the time the story ends... It's enough to say that even seasoned dark fantasy writers of the period (Henry Kuttner, for example) were overwhelmed and deeply impacted by it. The Elemental Beings arise from sinister spores: the carnivorous ocean, the hungry gold-mountain, the undead prophet and his undead spawns - all wage battles against each other and against stunned mankind. All this looks and feels like Japanese disaster animation on drugs, 50 years ahead of its time. Add to it some kind of Russian revolution "red terror" mad marriage with Apocalypsis. I guarantee you, you will never forget the imagery in this warped tale, for better or for worse. review: 23-Jan-07 (read in 2007) ---------------------------------------------- "Status Quondam" © New Tales of Space and Time, 1951 --/ cool sf story --/ rare find "Tetrahedra of Space" © Wonder Stories, Nov 1931 Startling Stories, Sep 1948 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ awesome scale --/ idea award "The Thing on Outer Shoal" © Astounding Stories, Sep 1947 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ rare find ----------------------------------------------

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