Wednesday, April 26, 2023

Short Story Wednesday, Guest Post: Paul Di Filippo: THRILLING WONDER STORIES, Winter 1945, edited by Sam Merwin, Jr.

[TM notes: Paul posted this review in FictionMags, and it's reprinted with his permission. It should be noted that this was Sam Merwin's first issue of the magazine, after it had been edited by perhaps its worst editor, Oscar J. Friend, for several years.]




















Over the course of many weeks, I read a few pages each night of this zine:

Contents (view Concise Listing)

[to read this issue at the Luminist Archives]
[to read the issue at the Internet Archive]

I'll try to reconstruct a few thoughts.  Overall, I have to say this was a humdrum, just good-enough issue, with a couple of stinkers.

First, the cover is an accurate depiction of an event in "Fog Over Venus"--except that in the text, no women are involved, just burly construction workers.  But of course, the gal makes for a better cover.

• 6 • The Reader Speaks (Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1945) • essay by Sergeant Saturn [sic--an editorial fiction, soon banished by new editor Merwin. TM]

The character of Sergeant Saturn, ringleader of the letters column, is absolutely bonkers.  His speech reads nowadays like someone suffering from glossolalia and fantastical delusions:

"Careful with the Xeno jug, Frogeyes, you're spoiling my space vest--and with dry-cleaners shot to Pluto and gone.  That's better, but less noise please. Old Wart-Ears is after my scalp since last issue."

I detect in this banter full of in-jokes and specialized jargon the roots of what Stan Lee did in his heyday at Marvel Comics. "Listen up, pilgrims--nuff said!"  I wonder if Lee was raised on TWS and other pulps of its ilk. [Seems likely. I will note my own first exposure to the characters gave "Wart-Ears"'s name as "Wartears", and I wasn't at all sure, given the era, that he/its name wasn't essentially "War-Tears"... TM]

In any case, though, these letter writers sure are lively and opinionated. They obviously go through a lot of work to compose their responses, all for egoboo and the glory of SF and TWS.  Most famous name [among the letter-writers] this time around is Chad Oliver.

Maybe modern zines should have such a fictional mascot. I fondly recall Pedro the Mule from my Boy's Life days. And of course the EC Comics horror figures, The Old Witch, etc.

F&SF could have "Old Sally Sturgeon, widow to one of the first Martian settlers." Asimov's could have "R. Tarheel Oliphant, cybernetic circus performer."  I don't know, I'm sure the Assembled Here can think up better mascots.

Lightspeed could have Tacky Yon, sentient photon.

• 11 • "Fog Over Venus" • novella by Arthur K. Barnes

Dueling entrepreneurs fight to tame the hell of Venus with a reliable transport system.  Explicit reference to Barnes's "Interplanetary Hunter".  Vivid, but a little drawn out.  The great men duke it out while the grunts do all the work.  Reprinted once, in 1955.

• 37 • "Castaways in Two Dimensions" • short story by Frank Belknap Long

Dan and Joan crash land on an asteroid, then enter the "Ul Dimension" with their robot Knobby.  The inhabitant of this space threatens, but they escape.  Ends with Joan kissing Knobby:  "a kiss so wet and vehement, it almost short-circuited him..."  Never reprinted.
• 46 • "Pi in the Sky" • novelette by Fredric Brown

The constellations start changing shape, confounding humanity.  They eventually form an advertising jingle. But our hero uncovers the fact that it was all a global illusion. Reprinted often.

• 63 • "Stop, Thief!" • short story by Fox B. Holden

Ostensibly humorous short-short about an alien--Fuj--who wants to steal the Earth. Human hero stymies him, then send him to bother the Japs. Never reprinted.
• 68 • "I Get Off Here" • short story by Oscar J. Friend [as by Ford Smith]

In the 22nd century, the villain Hermes threatens nastiness via teleportation rays, but is stymied by Devore Ragon, operative of "the Solar Observance System, famous detective agency." But Hermes does escape, opening up room for a sequel, natch. Never reprinted.
• 76 • "They Sculp" • short story by Frank Belknap Long [as by Leslie Northern]

A little girl's father-inventor opens an interdimensional portal, and she and a local hobo go through it, to confront the resident aliens.  "It looked not unlike an enormous mummified bullfrog, agate-eyed and with folds of dead-black flesh..."  But the aliens are aesthetes, and the humans finally flee with an extremely valuable sculpture. The end. Never reprinted.
• 85 • "You'll See a Pink House" • short story by Wilm Carver

Our hero is the only one--thanks to brain damage--who can see a certain pink house. Everyone else thinks he's crazy. But he investigates and finds that the pink house is itself an alien entity, that there are millions around the globe, and that they suck elan vital from humans. The pink house kills the narrator, but he survives in astral form. He eventually descends into the the body of one Wilm Carver, SF author, types up the narrative we are reading--as a warning--then drifts off into the ether. Never reprinted.
• 92 • "De Profundis" • short story by "Murray Leinster"

Deep-sea sentient creatures exist, unknown to humanity--until a record-breaking bathyscaph penetrates, before encountering potential destruction. Inside are a husband and wife--as in Long's asteroid story--and the benthic creature can read their minds. He takes a liking to them and carries them to the surface, at some cost to himself. However, when he returns down below, he is regarded as crazy, imagining non-aquatic life. Much reprinted.

• 111 • The Story Behind the Story: "Fog Over Venus" • essay by Arthur K. Barnes

This listing only partial, since Brown also contributes a few paragraphs about his story.


Copyright © 2023 by Paul Di Filippo (on LJ)

For more of today's SSW reviews, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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4 comments:

George said...

I'm a fan of retro-SF like this...but I have to be in the Right Mood.

April 26, 2023 at 10:21 AM
pattinase (abbott) said...

Way out of my comfort zone.

April 26, 2023 at 12:28 PM
TracyK said...

Very interesting post. Most of the authors here I do not recognize, but I would enjoy all the artwork.

April 26, 2023 at 4:30 PM
Todd Mason said...

Of course, George, it wasn't Retro then...but there was a certain unseriousness to Friend's magazines, and thus this earliest Merwin issue, that might be said to exceed even what Ray Palmer was doing at AMAZING and FA at the time, much less what Mary Gnaedinger and John Campbell were doing at their magazines...Merwin would improve his magazines sharply over the next several years, and move on to eventually edit MIKE SHAYNE and other CF titles, and help foster the careers of the likes of James Reasoner and Joe R. Lansdale thus.

You might've liked Merwin's later issues better, Patti...and most of the writers in this issue, Tracy, are pretty obscure today, even if, say, Fox Holden did some mildly better work elsewhere..."Leinster"/Will Jenkins did a lot of good work, as did Fredric Brown, of course. F.B. Long did some, occasionally.

April 29, 2023 at 6:02 AM

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