1935 - Year in SF&F: Reviews

THE WONDER TIMELINE: SF&F RETROSPECTIVE Read other issues here ------------------------------------------------------- "The Challenge from Beyond" (Round-robin serial: sf part + weird fantasy part) © Fantasy Magazine, Sep 1935 The Challenge from Beyond, 1990 SF PART: Stanley G. Weinbaum Donald Wandrei Edward E. Smith Harl Vincent Murray Leinster FANTASY PART: H.P. Lovecraft Robert E. Howard C.L. Moore A. Merritt Frank Belknap Long --/ wonder award --/ rare find The Ultimate SF&F Collectible! An extremely rare "round-robin" serial, published in the impossibly hard-to-get magazine (almost a fanzine) and only recently reprinted as a limited-edition chapbook. The similar SF round-robin serial "Cosmos" from "Fantasy Magazine" is also hard-to-find: it's been reprinted only in "Perry Rhodan" magazine, of all places! It's time for somebody to publish these serials together as one paperback... The best pulp writers at the time were asked to submit a story episode, and they all did - this tells you what an unpretentious and enthusiastic crowd they were - each keeping his or her own signature style, together making a sort of "Who's Who" catalogue of the fantastic pulps. So far I have only read a few episodes, but let me tell you, it's almost like coming to the most delicious smorgasbord of all times... vintage and delectable stuff all over. review: 30-Sep-06 (read in 2002) (cover images credit: Chris Perridas) ---------------------------------------------- One of my favorite pulp covers of all time: Phillip Jacques Bartell "One Hundred Generations" (also as by Philip Barshofsky) © Wonder Stories, Sep 1935 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award --/ rare find Published during the last year of "Wonder Stories" magazine, before it became "Thrilling Wonder Stories" with slightly less wild and woolly fiction inside - this is unashamedly grand (and hopelessly naive) futuristic storytelling. An implausible future, which only could've been imagined at the end of the 30s: human beings evolve into brainy but utterly helpless and sexless creatures (like in the famous Harry Bates "Alas, All Thinking" story), their joy of living largely lost in the sterile and manufactured lifestyle. However, there is a scientist in his fortress in the sky (sane, for a change), who brings back the normal human form, but with one substantial improvement - wings. In the most sensual and beautiful part of the story a bunch of flabbergasted and scared man-geeks catch their first glimpse of a female "angel" and realize that they need to shed their age-old inhibitions... Learning to fly, learning to love again. Carried in the air by a cute & mischievous angel... Memorable & exotic tale. review: 20-Dec-07 (read in 2007) ---------------------------------------------- Robert Bloch "The Shambler from the Stars" (Cthulhu Mythos) © Weird Tales, Sep 1935 The Opener of the Way, 1945 --/ fourth place f story --/ wonder award --/ style award The Thirties gave history many monsters, some very real (like Stalin, Hitler, etc), but most imaginary - in the pulps. No other decade produced such a fertile crop of aliens and mad-scientist pets, and most of them were indeed pretty ugly. Witness this "star vampire" creature (part of the Cthulhu Mythos zoo of beings)... Quote from the story: "It was red and dripping; an immensity of pulsing, moving jelly; a scarlet blob with myriad tentacular trunks that waved and waved. There were suckers on the tips of the appendages, and these were opening and closing with a ghoulish lust.... The thing was bloated and obscene; a headless, faceless, eyeless bulk with the ravenous maw and titanic talons of a star-born monster"."The star vampire dwells in outer space and is characterized by its ravenous appetite for blood. The creature uses its enormous talons to capture its prey, grappling and crushing the unfortunate and then draining the victim's blood through its tubular suckers. It is normally invisible, but following a sanguine repast, the star vampire becomes temporarily visible from the undigested blood it has absorbed." (Wikipedia) The story itself is an assault on the senses in the best "weird wonder" pulp tradition. Bloch apparently had a blast writing it, even killing off his fellow writer H. P. Lovecraft at the end of the story, in his unbridled enthusiasm. Lovecraft returned the favour, killing off a Bloch character in his "Haunter of the Dark". All in good fun, fellows. review: 30-Sep-06 (read in 1999) ---------------------------------------------- WONDER STORIES, FEBRUARY 1935 - FULL REVIEW: Eando Binder "The Robot Aliens" © Wonder Stories, Feb 1935 Wonder Story Annual, 1950 --/ cool sf novella --/ wonder award --/ rare find A major novella describing the invasion of "robot aliens" of the title, with the subsequent battles being waged in cities and throughout the countryside. Similar to the "War of the Worlds", this story is just one of many, many such stories about a straightforward (even primitive) Menace from the Skies. Such type of story was eventually brought to its ultimate level of boredom by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle in their "Footfall" - and I figure that the only way to improve on this sub-genre would be to show several such invasions happening at once, with humans merely getting in the way or even completely ignored (as, for example, in 1973 novella "Chains of the Sea" by Gardner Dozois), unaware that aliens are actually trying to wrestle the Earth from its true owners... hamsters, or maybe multi-level marketers :) By the way, I found a curious info, that "the first use of the word "robot" in the United States was probably in Eando Binder's 1935 story, "The Robot Aliens"... which may also be the first story in which the word "alien" is used to describe an extraterrestrial." I'm not sure if it's true, but this novella certainly created a stir when it appeared, and even earned a reprint. ---------------------------------------------- Derwin Lesser "Fatal Glance" © Wonder Stories, Feb 1935 It has been said that anything imaginable by the human mind is possible. We can imagine only things and combinations of things that we have known and therefore the most fantastic conception is not in the least bit "alien" in its essence. What's more, a thing entirely outside of our realm of experience and existence may even destroy our mind as it enters it. This story takes a "glimpse of an utterly alien world" and turns it into a fatal experience for human observers. There is an interesting side-thought to this: I think I agree with C. S. Lewis, when he says that if we can imagine something, then it's bound to exist somewhere or sometime. The fact that we are created to hope and dream for certain things makes these same things a definite possibility. ---------------------------------------------- Edmond Hamilton "The Truth Gas" © Wonder Stories, Feb 1935 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award --/ rare find This is a predictable story about what would happen if everybody told the truth... especially governments (it includes a cool jab towards Soviet propaganda, which was already notoriously known in the West). By the way, it is still a mystery to me how many officials in America were swooned and deluded by Stalin's lies during the infamous trials, and even wrote of the Soviet Union as a well-run and organized state. Were they sincere in missing the truth? The lies were certainly grandiose enough... ---------------------------------------------- David Keller "The Life Detour" © Wonder Stories, Feb 1935 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ idea award --/ rare find David Keller is another popular pulp SF writer whose stories are consistently not reprinted and completely overlooked by publishers. Works of Ray Cummings and Milton Lesser (to name just a few) have suffered the same fate. It must be the fact that publishers do not read original pulps, only anthologies, which are severely limited in their choices. Keller was so popular that editors even had a "trademark" for his stories: "Kelleryarns". One can see why - a solid idea (in this case a desciption of "heavy water" - way ahead of its time in nuclear research) presented through a very visual set-up (here, a bridge literally spans the gap between Engineers and Dreamers in a future society). A fascinating Kelleryarn, among the Heinleinisms and Asimovations of our times. ---------------------------------------------- ASTOUNDING STORIES, MAY 1935 - FULL REVIEW: ---------------------------------------------- John Russel Fearn "Earth's Mausoleum" © Astounding Stories, May 1935 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ awesome scale --/ rare find The Sun is destroyed and the Moon transformed into a miniature sun... Stupendous stuff. Every chapter leads to something larger and more exciting in a good old Doc Smith tradition. It does not shine in literary qualities, but for the pure "summer blockbuster" of pulp entertainment, this is a very good pick. This novelette also describes the process of terra-forming with wonderful detail for 1935. Some memorable scenes will stay with the reader: for example, the energy tower, depicted on the pulp cover, designed to turn our Moon into a small star. (let's not go into the science of it here) ---------------------------------------------- John W. Campbell "The Escape" (as by Don A. Stuart) © Astounding Stories, May 1935 Cloak of Aesir, 1952 --/ cool sf story "An odd love story forms the core of "The Escape," where a brave new world relies on neural coercion to enforce matings." I found this story not to the usual Campbell standards, but still engaging. "The Cloak of Aesir" collection in general left me unmoved, mostly because Campbell adopts a more dry, academic, flat narrative style in these stories. Which is strange, considering that he usually chose the pen-name Don A. Stuart to go with his more emotional, atmospheric pieces, such as "Twilight" or "Night". ---------------------------------------------- Eando Binder "Set Your Course by the Stars" © Astounding Stories, May 1935 --/ cool sf story --/ idea award --/ rare find This is a strange story based on a simple "what if" premise, played out between two space explorers: what if there was no diffusion of light in open space, and light from the infinite Universe could effortlessly add up before reaching our eyes? In this story the space pilot explains why he could not set course by the stars: the space around him was WHITE from a lot more stars than anybody expected... Remember the vision of "inverted" star-fields that astronaut Dave Bowman sees at the end of "2001: A Space Odyssey"? Black stars strewn over white space? Well, it seems that Earl and Otto Binder brothers beat Arthur Clarke to such a spectacular sight by 30 years at least. According to the story, this crazy notion of "white space" could prove why our Universe is not eternal or infinite, because if that was true, then the combined light from all infinite and eternal stars would hit us from the heavens, and there could be no darkness. Maybe in some alternative world, with different set of physics... Certainly not in our case, but that fact should not prevent you from enjoying this simple "what-if" thought-variant story (perhaps a precursor to Isaac Asimov's classic "Nightfall"?). ---------------------------------------------- Stanton A. Coblentz "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. ---------------------------------------------- Donald Wandrei "The Whisperers" © Astounding Stories, May 1935 Avon SF Reader, Feb 1947 Strange Harvest, 1965 --/ cool apocalyptic sf story --/ wonder award --/ idea award Another strange tale. The world is experiencing the worst plague in history (described quite vividly, including some Soviet propaganda press-releases). Something infects people and makes a strange whispering sound in their bodies as it kills them off... It turns out that this sound is the full blast of microscopic civilizations of sentient aliens who also have a much faster time rate, so after entering the human body they evolve, have an epic history and an apocalyptic finish - all in a matter of hours! As though this idea was not wild enough, Wandrei tells us about the remedy - getting drunk and making these industrious "virus" civilizations finish themselves sooner; in other words, stressing out these little buggers with a totally mad (drunk) rat race. Do you sense an irony here? ---------------------------------------------- Raymond Z. Gallun "N'Goc" © Astounding Stories, May 1935 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award --/ rare find This is an uninvolving planetary tale about a strange civilization, and a quest of a particular being toward... greater heights of... I did not really care much for this character, but the story environment is professionally told and weird, as usual. ---------------------------------------------- David R. Daniels "Stars" © Astounding Stories, May 1935 --/ cool sf story Average stuff. Two marooned spacemen debate should they go on to the stars; being in a hopeless situation, they choose exploring over slow death. ---------------------------------------------- J. George Frederick "The Einstein Express" © Astounding Stories, May 1935 --/ cool sf story --/ awesome scale A curious debate over how a superior being (the size of a Galaxy or larger) would see the surrounding Universe and travel in it by macroscopic "steps". Such movements would surely defy the "speed-of-light" limit, just like our cars would seem to move with stupendous speed from "a tiny molecular being's" viewpoint. Size does matter; with another scale come another laws of physics (if you doubt that, observe completely different laws of quantum and astro-physics, and the bridge between them that is, well, missing). As for how our Universe might look "from an outside point of view", a series of amazing extrapolation pictures were published recently, showing the clusters of clusters of Galaxies, which seem to join together in strands, knots - weirdly similar to... neurons and structures inside a human brain. Think about that. The recent NASA computer model of the "Large Scale Structure" - the meta-clusters of Galaxy Superclusters, in other words the view of our Universe from the "outside" - resembles the neuron bridges in our brain.. is this the ultimate shape of our cosmos, or just "neurons" in an even larger-scale order?.. ---------------------------------------------- John Taine "Twelve Eighty-Seven" © Astounding Stories, May 1935 --/ cool sf story Simply a future-warfare story... but considering the direction human history was going in 1935, this story carries a creepy premonition. The tank war (see illustration) and the bomber squadrons depicted in the story bear an uncanny resemblance to the ones from WWII, but also to their Cold War era variants. Such "dark military optimism" often appeared in the pre-war pulps, and was supposed to stir up patriotism, because the war in general needs as much patriotism, ideology and propaganda as it can possibly gobble up. ---------------------------------------------- In general, this is a great issue, a veritable "Who's Who" in the Thirties Pulp Scene: just look at the contents: Campbell, Binder, Wandrei, Coblentz, Gallun, Fearn ! Harl Vincent does not have a story in this issue, but - surprise! - his name can be plainly seen on the cover! Looks like somebody goofed up (making this issue more collectible, I suppose), or he got pushed out in order to make way for the "bigger guns". ---------------------------------------------- ASTOUNDING STORIES, JUNE 1935 ISSUE - FULL REVIEW: Raymond Z. Gallun "Blue Haze on Pluto" © Astounding, Jun 1935 --/ third place space sf story --/ wonder award --/ adventure award --/ emotion award --/ rare find Very simple and very effective adventure tale; the definitive "planetary crash" experience with noble characters doing noble deeds without being too sugary or heroic about it. Great descriptive passages of starscapes, landscapes, blue sentient mistballs and aggressive sentient ice crystals. Spectacular, pure, gorgeous story, proving that a classic simple plot sometimes is the most effective. (it also helps to be the first on the scene, as this story was written in 1935, before such heroic storylines were shamelessly over-used.) review: 25-Dec-07 (read in 2007) ---------------------------------------------- Nat Schachner "The Orb of Probability" © Astounding, Jun 1935 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ awesome scale --/ rare find The same machines-as-saviors future that was later very effectively used in Arthur Clarke's "The Lion of Comarre". The same vista of endless centuries fruitlessly spent under the watchful eye of all-knowing and all-caring machines. The same rebellious character who strives for an element of unpredictability, imagination and risk. The only difference is that Schachner got there first, and this novelette is one of the original & great treatments of this idea. Read this when you need an injection of grand scale and wide perspective (as with almost any Nat Schachner story) review: 25-Dec-07 (read in 2007) ---------------------------------------------- Donald Wandrei "Murray's Light" © Astounding, Jun 1935 Strange Harvest, 1965 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award This is not the best story of Donald Wandrei, by any means. Yet, its readable, appropriately large-scale scientific disaster yarn, with convoluted, florid style: check it out: "Destiny donned impalpable fingers. Phantasmal ribbons fluttered from oceans of light that raged mysterious. The sky crept down to earth in countless questing festoons." and so it goes - rather a painting than a story. review: 25-Dec-07 (read in 2007) ---------------------------------------------- Harl Vincent "The Plane Compass" © Astounding, Jun 1935 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award Pretty standard pulp fare with the mad scientist scheming some sinister inter-dimensional plots, but that's the cheesy pleasure of it. Nice adventure, with campy romantic interest, and the other interest being, who will fall into the dimensional oblivion never to return. I think this story did the exact same thing, too. review: 25-Dec-07 (read in 2007) ---------------------------------------------- John W. Campbell "The Invaders" (as Don A. Stewart) © Astounding, Jun 1935 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award --/ shock value This has been a bit of a surprise: Don A. Stewart supposed to be lyrical and somewhat poetic alter-ego of John W. Campbell, but certainly not in this story, which is a gritty account of invasion by cannibalistic aliens, who take human specimens for grizzly scientific anatomy investigations. In times, the story seemed to be shocking just for the sake of it, and in this respect belongs more in "Marvel Tales"-like pulp. Certainly an oddity, no wonder it was not often reprinted. review: 25-Dec-07 (read in 2007) ---------------------------------------------- David R. Daniels "Into the Depths" © Astounding, Jun 1935 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award I can read such stories by the dozen, not tiring a bit: a gradual descent into unknown ocean depths, many kilometers of weird darkness and monsters... with stars and planets at the end... what?! Well, don't ask, really crazy idea, I know. review: 25-Dec-07 (read in 2007) ---------------------------------------------- Also in this issue: John Taine "Twelve Eighty-Seven" (nv) © Astounding Stories, 1935 John Duthie "Electrolythic Onslaught" © Astounding Stories, 1935 Horace Gold "Fog" (as C. C. Campbell) © Astounding Stories, 1935 Harry Bates "Alas, All Thinking" © Astounding Stories, Jun 1935 --/ cool sf story ---------------------------------------------- David R. Daniels "The Far Way" © Astounding Stories, Jul 1935 --/ cool sf story --/ rare find Pretty cool tale of a guy, who falls into a time abyss, sporadically intersected with fourth dimensional planes - which stretches him along the craziest cosmological lines, and makes him thoroughly confused. I wonder why. ---------------------------------------------- Horace Gold "Gold" (as by Clyde Crane Campbell) © Astounding Stories, Jan 1935 --/ cool sf story --/ rare find Humorous investigation of the true value of gold, when anything can be turned to gold. Written by Gold (how appropriate). Plenty of Jewish flair & flavor by one of the most prominent Jewish sf writers / editors. ---------------------------------------------- Warner Van Lorne "The Upper Level Road" © Astounding Stories, Aug 1935 --Groff Conklin' story selection --/ cool time sf story --/ wonder award: ruins above our plane --/ rare find Unusual idea for the period: Archeological ruins exist in a dimensional plane above our own, so they sometimes superimpose over the real world and cause all kinds of "hallucinations". Pretty cool visuals and competent storytelling. review: 30-Sep-06 (read in 2004) ---------------------------------------------- Stanley Weinbaum "The Ideal" (Professor Manderpootz) © Wonder Stories, Sep 1935 Startling Stories, Jun 1943 A Martian Odyssey, 1949 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award A hodge-podge of curious ideas and situations, a vintage "wonder" tale. "An eccentric scientist announces that he intends to build an omniscient device in the form of a head. This is possible since he has already discovered the basic unit of time (the chronon) and space (the spation). Beyond these is the cosmon (the ultimate), and from these can be constructed the psychon (the unit of thought)" (this is a typical example of pseudo-science of the early pulps) When he actually constructs his device, it turns out to be a mechanism for viewing the ideal of anything thought of. He asks his friend, a bored playboy character, to use the idealizator, and, naturally, he thinks of his ideal woman. She appears and what follows is, an at times hilarious, P. G. Wodehouse-like silly romantic mess, which slowly unravels toward the end of the story. The illustration below shows a curious sub-plot - a mechanical "beast of prey" that was designed to "kill" automobiles. It's programmed to seek out the automobile, seize it, and drain its fuel. Sounds like a very timely invention indeed, for use in the coming oil crisis :) review: 27-Sep-06 (read in 2003) Artwork by Frank R. Paul ---------------------------------------------- Stanley Weinbaum "The Worlds Of If" (Professor Manderpootz) © Wonder Stories, Aug 1935 Startling Stories, Mar 1941 Dawn Of Flame, 1936 A Martian Odyssey, 1949 --/ cool sf story --/ wonder award Lightly humorous story, not very memorable, but cute. Professor van Manderpootz, an eccentric megalomaniac genius, has invented a machine that sees into worlds that might have been, if things had turned out differently. Classic theme, classic treatment. Well worth reading with your cup of coffee at breakfast. review: 30-Sep-06 (read in 1995) ---------------------------------------------- Return to the Wonder Timeline

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