Stanton A. Coblentz

(original unknown) "The Day The World Stopped" (nv) © 1936, Astounding Stories novel: 1966, Avalon "Enchantress of Lemuria" (nv) © Amazing Stories, Sep 1941 --/ cool sf novella --/ wonder award --/ rare find ---------------------------------------------- "An Episode In Space" © Astounding Stories, Sep 1935 --/ fourth place space sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ rare find Standard fare for the pulps of the Thirties, but in no way easy to find today. When did you last read a very straightforward story about landing on a forbidding planet, meeting creepy inhabitants in caves, being attacked by them, and shooting them all to hoobenajeebies, or smithereens, whichever you prefer. Kind of a computer game without a monitor or a joystick. As such, it is colorful, with good "resolution" graphics, logical and satisfying script. They DID stop writing such stories as early as the Forties, so this sub-genre is fast receding into literary oblivion, leaving behind crumbling pulp pages instead of red-shift. review: 09-Aug-06 (read in 2005) ---------------------------------------------- "Fire Gas" © Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Apr 1940 --/ cool mad scientist sf story ---------------------------------------------- "The Glowworm Flower" © Astounding Stories, Jun 1936 --/ cool sf story: alien plant dreams --/ wonder award --/ rare find An imaginative tale from legendary Stanton Coblentz. He had uneven writing standards: some of his stories soared into imaginative pantheons worthy of the greatest practitioners of the genre, but some lagged behind with very contrived plots. This story straddles the middle, as it describes in hallucinogenic detail the drugged dreams induced by an alien plant. review: 02-Aug-06 (read in 2006) ---------------------------------------------- "Lord of Tranerica" (nv) © Dynamic Science Stories, Feb 1939 novel: 1966, Avalon "Over the Space-Waves" © Startling Stories, Mar 1941 --/ cool sf story --/ rare find "The Stygian Terror" © Fantastic Adventures, Nov 1942 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award --/ rare find ---------------------------------------------- Stanton A. Coblentz "The Sunken World" (nv) © Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1928 --/ cool sf novel --/ first story --/ rare find This is very, very predictable fiction, but mostly because it was the first of its kind! First published piece by Stanton Coblentz is a full-scale epic "lost world" Atlantis novel, that is so classic in its elements and concepts, so unremarkable in its adventures, - but says who? Says the guy who read countless, innumerable consequent variations on the same theme. However, for the audience in 1928 (published in the same issue with another wonder-classic R. F. Starzl's "Out of the Sub-Universe") it was no doubt a hit, a wide-screen epic to behold. review: 20-Dec-07 (read in 2007) ---------------------------------------------- Stanton A. Coblentz "The Treasure of Red-Ash Desert" © Weird Tales, Mar 1942 --/ cool sf story --/ adventure award --/ rare find Another wildly uneven pulp writer. Some Stanton Coblentz stories are exciting, and some are so conventional that they seem to be written entirely from a bag of cliches with a very limited "action" tool set. This story is a competent and rare (but ultimately unfulfilling) adventure set among the lavender-tinted towers of future Southern California. The opening line is promising: "La-Glo stood on the third parapet of the Balcony of the Sun, and looked out over the Amethyst City", but it gets too colorful too soon. Too many mixed colors for my liking. ----------------------------------------------

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