1942 - Year in SF&F: Reviews

THE WONDER TIMELINE: SF&F RETROSPECTIVE Read other issues here ---------------------------------------------- "FANTASTIC ADVENTURES", January 1942 - FULL REVIEW: David Wright O'Brien (as by John York Cabot) "The Daughter of Genghis Khan" © Fantastic Adventures, Jan 1942 --/ cool sf story --/ adventure award --/ rare find Typical wartime pulp fiction, with plenty of military action in China (against Japanese) - but this time with added "lost world" and slightly erotic context. Entertaining, with brisk pace and understated encounter with a super witch and her dragon-shaped ghostly friend. Strangely, the purple prose is mostly absent, and story almost grips with gritty action. ---------------------------------------------- Robert Moore Williams "The House of Fire" © Fantastic Adventures, Jan 1942 --/ cool sf story --/ shock value --/ rare find Another story with genuine wartime atmosphere... I remember from my genetic memory the low-flying bombers and skeletons of houses on fire (transfered to me from my grandmother... who had to jump from the 10 floor of the burning Moscow building) Terrifying ideas of things living in the flames of the bombed house could really be turned into a masterpiece of horror - but alas, here is just an average story. Still, reminds me somewhat of the excellent "Dagger of the Mind" by Bob Shaw. ---------------------------------------------- David Wright O'Brien "Spook for Yourself" © Fantastic Adventures, Jan 1942 --/ cool f story --/ rare find A precursor to the great movie "Ghost", a poor man's "Unknown Worlds"-style story - but could've been done better. The misadventures of a lovestruck ghost. You can deduce the rest of the story quite easily. As you can see, the shortage of writers in these times (at "Amazing Stories" and "Fantastic Adventures") resulted in the whole issue written by 2 people under various housenames. ---------------------------------------------- Don Wilcox "Rainbow of Death" © Fantastic Adventures, Jan 1942 --/ cool f story --/ rare find Very strange one, perhaps the best of Don Wilcox: a sinister waterfall consumes whole shiploads of tourists, taking their souls and leaving a ghost ship behind. Really creepy, considering that rainbow supposed to be a cheerful sign, here it's an omen of possession. ---------------------------------------------- SCIENCE FICTION QUARTERLY, SUMMER 1942 - FULL REVIEW: Arthur J. Burks "The Great Mirror" (nv) © Science Fiction Quarterly, Summer 1942 Not that great... Something about looking at the universe through an alien high-tech mirror and hunting for it in the deserts of East Asia, but really quite unreadable. review: 07-Jul-06 (read in 2006) ---------------------------------------------- Martin Pearson "Up There" © Science Fiction Quarterly, Summer 1942 --/ cool sf story --/ humour award Ridiculous story - to the point of being great. A truly rebellious uncle maintains that the starry sky is a firmament after all, and sets up to prove it in his rickety airplane. I could only gasp at the audacity of the author. review: 07-Jul-06 (read in 2006) ---------------------------------------------- John L. Chapman "Stroke" © Science Fiction Quarterly, Summer 1942 --/ cool time sf story Average piece about time paradoxes: learning about oneself being dead in the future, and getting a heart-stroke in the present as a result of it. review: 07-Jul-06 (read in 2006) ---------------------------------------------- Hannes Bok "Starstone World" (nv) © Science Fiction Quarterly, Summer 1942 --/ cool sf novel --/ rare find Illustrations by Damon Knight!! What a surprise! By the way this is a novel written by a famous sf artist, with artwork painted by a famous sf writer - quite funny. But also unfortunately, both are of an average quality. This is a very "visual" but totally un-involving novel by Hannes Bok, in contrast to his other wonderful novels. I could not really follow the plot and soon got tired of descriptive passages. However, this must be a total rarity, as it wasn't reprinted, to my knowledge. review: 07-Jul-06 (read in 2006) ---------------------------------------------- Hannes Bok "Web of Moons" © Future, Apr 1942 --/ fourth place sf story --/ wonder award --/ style award --/ awesome scale --/ rare find An Impressionist Painting... Hallucinations on a Cosmic Scale... Epic Canvas of Fantastic Imagery, compressed in only three pages of text. Hardly a story, but an author's "trip" under the influence of his favorite music (in this case, Tschaikovski's ballet masterpieces) - to places both splendid and utterly exotic. Prepare for sensory overload: there is bizarre Universal Eroticism for Planets and Nebulas, some Lovecraftian "living tree" beings thrown in for good measure, some Tolkien-sque mythical poetics - all, I repeat, in three pages of text. Hannes Bok was famous for his paintings, so here we have what he does best: a record of his WILD imagination. 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, but 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. ---------------------------------------------- J. Harvey Haggard "Messenger To Infinity"  Science Fiction Quarterly, Win 1942 --/ fourth place space sf story --/ wonder award --/ awesome scale --/ rare find J. Harvey Haggard writes with a highly visual style, which really shines in this short planetary tale. Great alien landscapes, infinite time vistas, and general sense of awesomeness prevail here, so do not look for much of the dialog, or much of the plot. The fairy godmother of Obscurity took a special liking to this wonderful "robot-explorer and life-progenitor" vignette, so it's nearly impossible to find. Tasty little morsel, indeed. ---------------------------------------------- Return to the Wonder Timeline

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