Part Two

The next task is more difficult: the question of back numbers of the current magazines. Some back issues are almost impossible to secure. However, be sure to try the magazine publishers. If this fails, scour the second-hand book and magazine stores. If they haven't the issues, leave a standing order with them. (They're eager for business and they'll make an honest attempt to secure the desired issues for you.) Scan the discussions columns. Readers often offer to sell or trade back numbers. Then try the large second-hand magazine dealers, such as Carl Swanson, Washburn, North Dakota and the Smith Book Co., Box 661, Lawrence, Massachusetts.

As a last resort advertise.

That takes care of all magazines that are now being published. Now we have to contend with real difficulties. We're going to trail down fantasy stories that were published in magazines no longer sold at newsstands! Chief among these defunct magazines is Astounding Stories, Strange Tales, and Wonder Stories Quarterly. (More details are needed with these out-of-print magazines, so it'll be given whenever definite information is known concerning them.) This periodical (Astounding Stories), a science fiction magazine, first appeared on the newsstands with its January, 1930 issue and was discontinued but a short time ago, in March 1933. Its companion magazine, Strange Tales, published weird, fantastic fiction. Dates: September, 1931 to January, 1933. Wonder Stories Quarterly, science fiction, ran from Fall, 1929 to Winter, 1933, publishing only inter-planetary tales in the last two years.

(Next month Mr. Schwartz describes the less known fantasy magazines.)

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INFORMATION

(This department will answer any question about fantasy fiction. There is no charge, and you may use it freely.)

1. When did Miracle, Science and Fantasy Stories come out, how long was it issued and what was the selling price?--Con Pankevich, Jr.

Miracle, Science and Fantasy Stories appeared in 1931. There were only two bi-monthly issues, April-May which was on sale April 5th, and June-July, which came out on May 15. Both issues had been printed before the first one was on sale. It sold for 20 cents per copy.

2. How many Amazing Stories Annuals were there, and for what years?--Con Pankevich, Jr.

The 1927 Amazing Stories Annual was the only one published.

3. In what issues of Amazing Stories did the Skylark stories appear?--J. Smart

"Skylark of Space," by Edward E. Smith, Ph. D., appeared in the August, September and October 1928 issues of Amazing Stories, and its sequel, "Skylark Three" appeared in the same issues for 1930. The former story was collaborated on Lee Garby. Dr. Smith is now working on his third story in this series, which will be published in Amazing some time next year.

4. Who wrote "Cosmic Power?"--J. Sam Smart

"Cosmic Power," in the April, 1931 issue of Amazing, was by John C. Dare.

5. What were the stories in the first Amazing Stories Quarterly?--J. Sam Smart

"The Morn of Doom" by Earl L. Bell; "The Atomic Riddle" by Edward S. Sears; "When the Sleeper Wakes" by H. G. Wells (reprint); "The Golden Vapor" by E. H. Johnson; "The Puzzle Duel" by Miles J. Breuer, M.D.; and "The Terrors of the Upper Air" by Frank Orndoff.

6. What were the stories in the first Wonder Stories Quarterly?--J. Sam Smart

"The Shot Into Infinity" by Otto Willi Gail (translated from the German); "The Artificial Man" by Clare Winger Harris; "The Hidden World" by Edmond Hamilton; and "The Gravitational Deflector" by Harry D. Parker.

7. Please give me a list of the stories written by Nathan Schachner--J. Sam Smart

"Back to 20,000 A.D."o Wonder, March, 1931; "The Death Cloud"o Astounding, May, 1931; "The Dead-Alive"o Weird, April-May, 1931; "Exiles of the Moon"o Wonder, Sept., Oct., & Nov., 1931; "Emperor of the Stars"o Wonder, April, 1931; "In 20,000 A.D."o Wonder, Sept., 1930; "The Menace from Andromeda"o Amazing, April, 1931; "Pirates of the Gorm" Astounding, May, 1932; "Revolt of the Machines"o Astounding, July, 1931; "The Tower of Evil"o Wonder Quart., Summer, 1930; "Venus Mines, Incorporated"o Wonder, August, 1931; "Slaves of Mercury" Astounding, Sept., 1932; "Emissaries of Space" Wonder Quart., Fall, 1932; "The Time Express" Wonder, Dec., 1932; "Memory of the Atoms" Wonder, Jan., 1933; "The Eternal Dictator" Wonder, Feb., 1933; "The Robot Technocrat" Wonder, March, 1933; a series of stories in the April, May, and June, 1933 issues of Wonder; "The Revolt of the Scientists", "The Great Oil War," and "The Final Triumph;" and "Fire Imps of Vesuvius" Astounding, Oct. (All stories marked with o were collaborated with Arthur Leo Zagat, and "The Memory of the Atoms" was composed with R. Lacher. Mr. Schachner's first story was "The Tower of Evil.")

8. What happened to the sequel to "Thru the Dragon Glass," by A. Merritt?--David Stolaroff

For some unknown reason, Mr. Merritt never wrote a sequel to this story, although it could stand one very well. Perhaps he will write one yet, even after all these years, if his fans are persistent enough. Reprint copies of this remarkable story, A. Merritt's first, can be purchased for ten cents a copy from Robert Scarlet, Jr., 87-36 162nd St., Jamaica, Long Island, N.Y.

ABOUT AUTHORS

Some fan, after reading one of Jules Verne's tales in Amazing, wrote in claiming that he was a very promising author! Charles Willard Diffin and C. D. Willard is the same author.... The fastest writer: Arthur J. Burks. The slowest: Edward Elme Smith.... P. Schuyler Miller became a science fiction author as the result of a cover contest.... You can't call Raymond Gallun a half-pint, anyway. (How did that pun get into this column?)... The question is still unsatisfactorily: WHO is Anthony Gilmore???... Allen Glasser's "Captives in Space" in the July, 1932 "The Time Traveller" is a rejected entry of the November, 1929 Science Wonder Stories cover contest.... Two of the titles of H. G. Winter's stories contain the word "ice," which seems quite appropriate.... Sewell Peaslee Wright had a story in Weird years before Astounding.

CONTEST RESULTS

The winner of last month's cash prize contest is William Sykora, 35-51 41st St., Long Island City, New York. Here is his answer to "Why do you read fantasy fiction?"

"Why do I read fantasy fiction? I often wonder. The occult, the fantastic, have always held me with supreme, almost unholy, fascination. I have found that by constant practice, an all-excluding, all-consuming concentration bonds stronger than the strongest steel to all dismally horrible tales of the supernatural. The earthly ties that hold me mentally and morally to a workaday existence, are hypnotically rent asunder by a mesmerism born of steely sharp concentration. Thus do I thrill--quake--and shudder with the delightful ecstasy of bizarre adventure through the awful expanse of the inconceivably terrible unknown universe, and I love it."

Because of lack of support, we will not present another cash prize contest, until enough readers ask for one. If we receive enough petitions, we will take great pleasure in featuring another in the near future.

SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE

by H. P. Lovecraft

(Copyright, 1927 by W. Paul Cook)

1. Introduction

The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. These facts few psychologists will dispute, and their admitted truth must establish for all time the genuineness and dignity of the weirdly horrible tale as a literary form. Against it are discharged all the shafts of a materialistic sophistication which clings to frequently felt emotions and external events, and a naively insipid idealism which deprecates the aesthetic motive and calls for a didactic literature to "uplift" the reader toward a suitable degree of smirking optimism. But in spite of all this opposition, the weird tale has survived, developed, and attained remarkable heights of perfection; founded as it is on a profound and elementary principle whose appeal, if not always universal, must necessarily be poignant and permanent to minds of the requisite sensitiveness.

The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of daily routine to respond to rappings from outside, and tales of ordinary feelings and events, or of common sentimental distortions of such feelings and events, will always take first place in the taste of the majority; rightly, perhaps, since, of course, these ordinary matters make up the greater part of human experience. But the sensitive are always with us, and sometimes a curious streak of fancy invades an obscure corner of the very hardest head; so that no amount of rationalism, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimney-corner whisper of the lonely wood. There is here involved a psychological pattern or tradition as real and as deeply grounded in mental experience as any other pattern or tradition of mankind; coeval with the religious feeling and closely related to many aspects of it, and too much a part of our inmost biological heritage to lose keen potency over a very important, though not numerically great, minority of our species.

Man's first instincts and emotions form his response to the environment in which he found himself. Definite feelings based on pleasure and pain grew up around the phenomena whose causes and effects he understood, whilst around those which he did not understand--and the universe teemed with them in the early days--were naturally woven such personifications, marvelous interpretations, and sensations of awe and fear as would be hit upon by a race having few and simple ideas and limited experience. The unknown, being likewise the unpredictable, became for our primitive forefathers a terrible and omnipotent source of boons and calamities visited upon mankind for cryptic and wholly extra-terrestrial reasons, and thus clearly belonged to a sphere of existence whereof we know nothing and wherein we have no part. The phenomenon of dreaming likewise helped to build up the notion of an unreal or spiritual world; and in general, all the conditions of savage dawn-life so strongly conduced to a feeling of the supernatural, that we need not wonder at the thoroughness with which man's very hereditary essence has become saturated with religion and superstition. That saturation must, as a matter of plain scientific fact, be regarded as virtually permanent so far as the subconscious mind and inner instincts are concerned; for though the area of the unknown has been steadily contracting for thousands of years, an infinite reservoir of mystery still engulfs most of the outer cosmos, whilst a vast residuum of powerful inherited associations clings around all the objects and processes that were once mysterious, however well they may now be explained. And more than this, there is an actual physiological fixation of the old instincts in our nervous tissue, which would make them obscurely operative even were the conscious mind to be purged of all sources of wonder.

(continued next month)

TRUE GHOST STORIES

Edwin C. Hill talks on various subjects every night on the Columbia Broadcasting System. One evening he devoted his program to ghost stories about London that are supposed to be true. They sound very convincing and have many witnesses. We leave it to the reader whether to accept them as truth, or discard them as merely hallucinations. However, they are extremely interesting, nevertheless.

Once, two sailors were roaming around London and came upon an old, but handsome, mansion.

"Funny no one lives here," said one, "This shack seems too good to be left vacant."

But the two sailors didn't intend to leave it vacant that night. They had no money, and thus could not pay for lodging, so they entered the old house, intending to spend the night there.

After climbing to the second floor and finding a fireplace, they built a blazing fire with some wood they had secured. Curling up in some old clothes, they went to sleep beside the roaring fire.

Suddenly, after many hours, one of the sailors awoke, half-conscious of some noise. There it was again! It sounded like a door being closed. Yes--that's what it must have been. A few pieces of wood to bring the dying fire to renewed activity gave him some courage, but he woke the other sailor anyway.

He had hardly time to explain to his friend the reason for his disturbance, when the noise was repeated.

"It's the wind," said one, and they accepted that explanation, preparing to go to sleep again, but instantly their returned with greater confirmation. Another sound.

Any thoughts but of the supernatural were out of the question. This time it was footsteps--but what footsteps! Not human--not animal! They were padded sounds--something like bare feet. Nearer and nearer.

Suddenly they stopped, and the door opened. Slowly--and there was revealed to their terrified senses the most horrible monstrosity imaginable. It could not be of this earth!

One crazed sailor jumped past it and flew down the stairs, out of the house, and screamed in mortal terror into the streets.

He told his story--and the next day the body of his companion was found mangled on the ground. He had leaped out of a second story window.

Another story tells the tale of a man walking through a London park at day-break on the bank of the Thames. While passing a bridge, he spies a woman jumping into the river, and he takes off his coat preparing to save her, but a hand touches his shoulder. An officer.

"It's no use," he said, "You could not save her. She is not a living woman. Return tomorrow at this time and you will see her repeat her ghastly act."

The bewildered man did so, and the next morning was but a repetition of the one before.

"You see?" said the officer, "She does that for seven consecutive mornings each year. Today is the last one this year. She died here a long time ago."

(This article will be concluded next month.)

THE BOILING POINT

You will remember the terrific outburst Forrest J. Ackerman made upon Clark Ashton Smith's stories and weird tales in general in last month's column. Shortly after the issue went to press, we received the following postscript to his article which he requested to have printed at the beginning of this month's column.

"I could as well pick on John Taine--a favorite author, mind you--for 'The Time Stream' in Wonder Stories, another story considered doubtful science fiction. My only interest is to keep stf. in the stf. publications, and let fantasies and weird tales appear in the magazines featuring that type.

"It is to be hoped that Mr. Smith will discover many of his admirers thru the writings of readers caring to present arguments...."

It is only fair that Mr. Smith himself should have the first blow against Mr. Ackerman's argument, in defense of his own stories. He calls his defense "Horror, Fantasy and Science."

"Mr. Ackerman's fervent and ebullient denunciation of my stories, followed by Editor Hornig's invitation to join the melee, is not to be resisted.

"I infer that Forrest J. Ackerman considers horror, weirdness and unearthliness beyond the bounds of science or science or science fiction. Since horror and weirdness are integral elements of life (as is well known to those who have delved beneath the surface) and since, in all likelihood, the major portion of the universe is quite unearthly, I fail to understand the process of logic or syllogism by which he has arrived at this truly amazing proscription.

"Let me recommend to Mr. Ackerman, and to others like him, a more scientifically open and receptive attitude of imagination. If Mr. Ackerman were transported to some alien world, I fear that he would find the reality far more incredible, bizarre, grotesque, fantastic, horrific, and impossible than any of my stories.

"In regard to 'The Light From Beyond,' I cannot see that this tale is any more fantastic and unreal than others dealing with unknown dimensions or planes of hyper-space. Physical entry into such planes is improbable, but form an alluring theme for fictional speculation.

"It is curious that Mr. Ackerman should profess to like 'Flight Into Super-Time', a story which is wilder, if anything, than the ones he has denounced. I might also add that it was written as a satire on time-travelling, and should not have been read too seriously.

"Of course, it is Forrest Ackerman's privilege to dislike my stories, and to express his dislike whenever he chooses. I have merely tried to point out that he is in error when he condemns them as being inherently unsuitable for a scientifiction magazine."

H. P. Lovecraft also defends the weird tale:

"As for Ackerman's ebullition, I fear he can hardly be taken seriously in matters involving the criticism of imaginative fiction. Smith's story was really splendid, except for the cheap ending on which the Editor Wonder Stories insisted. Ackerman once wrote me a letter with a very childish attack on my work--he evidently enjoys verbal pyrotechnics for their own sake and seems so callous to imaginative impressions."

August W. Derleth liked everything in "The Fantasy Fan" except the letter in this department from Forrest J. Ackerman "Who," he says, "while usually quite interesting, nevertheless has the unpleasant habit of trying to make everything over into his own imagine."

R. H. Barlow gives an open reply to Mr. Ackerman in defense of Clark Ashton Smith.

"To my mind you are deplorably lacking in imagination to so condemn some of the finest work of the greatest living fantasy writer. Must you be so literal, physical, in your interpretation of imaginative literature? Clark Ashton Smith, whom I have the honor of knowing, is primarily and foremost a poet, his work having received the highest commendation of such persons as Edwin Markham, George Sterling, etc. Truly, his colourfully nightmarish visions are far superior to the conventional type of--forgive me--trash--printed in the average mercenary scientifiction magazine. The mere fact that a few helpless ray-projectors, heroine consisting mainly of lipstick and legs, and a dastardly villain, are not dragged in by the nape of their respective necks certainly does nothing to impair the excellence of his dulcet prose, but rather it an agreeable relief."

Come on, now, everybody join in the battle!

ANNALS OF THE JINNS

by R. H. Barlow

"...Thither Ganigul often retired in the daytime to read in quiet the marvelous annals of the Jinns, the chronicles of ancient worlds, and the prophecies relating to the worlds that are yet to be born...."

Wm. Beckford --"Story of Prince Barkiarokh"

1--The Black Tower

At the head of the winding river Olaee, nearby the fragrant forest, stands the Black Tower of the Southlands. High into the air rise its bleak stone walls, piercing the sunset with slender spire. For eternity it has been there; by the sluggish waters on which float great bloated crimson lilies and for eternity will it be there. The peasants of the nearby village know not whence it came nor why 'tis there, and wisely avoid it when the moon is on the wane. Few dare visit the colourful forest of evil or the treacherous river, for strange and unholy things dwell therein.

Some tell of how on the dark of the moon there comes from the great star Sirius a growing speck of flame ultimately losing itself in the eternal midnight of outer space. However this may be, it is certain strange and alien beings built this ebon tower in the dawn of the world, for purposes not understood by mortals; sealing the door long ages since.

There is a tale the old wives spin, saying: One of the adventurous villagers, Castor by name, took undue interest in the tower and was frequently seen slipping furtively to and from it in the dusk. Of all the people of the town he had the least savoury ancestry, his father being a satyr, his mother a witch-woman. True, others mated with the people of the glen, yet it is not considered a thing to be proud of. The very Burgomaster had a gnome none too far back in his lineage, which was expressed in the coarse features of his evil countenance. But a satyr! The righteous citizens avoided Castor scrupulously, and the dislike was mutual. So it was he continued on his silent trips unheeded.

What he did there so often not known but the seasons came and went and the winter merged into spring and in time it was Walburgas Eve. That night the town gates were tightly closed and bolted and all cowered behind locked doors. Strange shapes flew screeching through the air and sniffed most horribly at the doorsteps.

That night Castor went to the tower as had become his habit, though his better sense warned him to stay home abed. His satyr ancestry openly rebelled, but the witch proved stronger. As he stole timorously through the wood he heard sounds of high revelry from within the castle. Therefore, he was quiet as he hesitated before the foot of the long unopened door. Queer things were abroad though he dared not return home alone through the forest, still more did he fear to remain within reach of the Things of the tower. As he deliberated on the course to take the great door swung silently open and a crab like claw lovingly encircled his waist and drew him in.

And he was seen no more by the villagers.

SCIENCE FICTION IN ENGLISH MAGAZINES

(Series 2)

by Bob Tucker

What England needs is a good science fiction mag. The present ones are thrilling, but small and cheap. They have swell titles, but often the story falls short. On the other hand, that's an old American custom. Believe it or not, but just 653210987600 stories have been written under the title "The End of the World"! (Editor's note: Mr. Tucker, I think you exaggerate. I haven't seen half that many.). And if you scientifictionists want some darned good arguments over anything scientific, just give this fellow a line: Dennis Gilbert Smith, 521 Bearwood Road, Smeethwick, Staffs., England. He is a student of theology.

Talk about a swell picture!--Wesso or Paul should look at the illustration of the moon-men attacking a giant army tank way back in the April 1st issue of "The Skipper," an English mag that makes a specialty of science-fiction.

Freaks in the raw: An English mag printed a story of a kid (age about 14) who had magnetic hands, and could draw metals to him by merely extending his fingers--well, the kid, instead of capturing the earth by pulling out its magnets with his fingers, as would usually be done does nothing but play tricks with scales, making water buckets dance in the air, etc--darn dumb, some of these authors.

"Red Raiders of Mystery" is a future air-war story in "Weekly Boy's Magazine", while another "The Rover," printed "Britain Invaded," this time by Chinese--what, again?...well, times are hard everywhere.... (Editor's note: not anymore. How about the N R A?) Another mag by the name of "Modern Boy" prints about two series of interplanetary stories a year concerning the adventures of Captain Justice. Blood and thunder. George Ward, 91 Milton Road Margate, Kent, England, would like to hear from some American fans.

MY SCIENCE FICTION COLLECTION

by Forrest J. Ackerman