Showing posts with label Lester Del Rey. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lester Del Rey. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 2, 2025

Wednesday's Short Stories: FANTASY MAGAZINE, March 1953, edited by Lester del Rey



One of the more promising fantasy fiction magazines to arise in the early '50s post-F&SF/Galaxy boom of fantastic-fiction magazines was the (sadly, four-issue run only) of Fantasy Magazine, which with its second issue changed its title to Fantasy Fiction, presumably due to legal pressure from one party or another--not the best way to help readers find the next issue (an even more short-lived and less impressive magazine called Fantasy Fiction had published two issues in 1950; it also leaned a bit on crime-fiction amphibians in its first issue, particularly). With a Robert Howard/Conan cover story "completed" by old hands L. Sprague de Camp and editor del Rey, and otherwise filling the first issue with young lions from fantastic fiction (and, as hinted above. a couple, Frazee and Deming, already more famous for their western and/or crime fiction) and with a striking Bok cover, the magazine couldn't overcome  the crowding of the newsstands, and undercapitalization will and did out. 

The stories I've read so far are more promising than brilliant, but I'm not sorry I've spent the time. Richard Deming's "Too Gloomy for Private Pushkin" has excellent detail in its WW2 setting, and Deming is game to introduce the fantasticated elements sparingly, even if the climax might feel a bit rushed vs. the build-up. Frank Robinson's "The Night Shift" lays its hardboiled-reporters-and-cops patter on a bit thick, and rushes its ending, but is clever enough. "Feeding Time", the shortest story in the issue, isn't quite clever enough for most readers not to see the punch coming; one guesses that's why Robert Sheckley chose to employ his pseudonym on this one, albeit it has a nice attention to detail, in describing a particularly odd, surprisingly large old bookshop.

For more of today's Short Story Wednesday entries (two shots of Jerry House this week), please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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Wednesday, January 3, 2024

Guest SSW: Paul Di Filippo on SPACE SCIENCE FICTION magazine, September 1952, edited by Lester Del Rey: Short Story Wednesday (1 of 2)

It took me months to work my way thru this 'zine at a page or two per night.  If I seem hazy on the earlier stories in the TOC, that might be why!  But I think I have given good valuations of them all. Overall, a decent issue with lots of entertainment but no classics and only one or two stinkers.


First the cover, then the TOC, with my brief comments interlineated:



1). The Del Rey lead-off story would have made a great Twilight Zone episode. A lone astronaut is sent to the Moon, and his promised return-trip vessel never shows. He manages (shades of Andy Weir) to survive and return to Earth, but back on Earth no one knows of him or his mission. The bulk of the story is an exercise in paranoia and weirdness, and the hurried conclusion—some unknown force is erasing all traces of any attempt by mankind to attain the stars—is weak by comparison. Basically never reprinted.
2). Simak’s piece has been much reprinted. In a post-scarcity world, our hero feels useless—and even more so when he discovers that mankind is part of a zoo exhibit of some sort.
3). Conan!  What more need be said!  [Uncredited "posthumous collaborator"] L. Sprague De Camp’s short intro opines that this must’ve been “one of the first Conan stories to be written.”  A satisfying amount of gratuitous slaughter.
4). “Michael Sherman” was really R.A.W. Lowndes. Never reprinted. This is the worst thing I have read in a long time. In trawling thru old zines, I try to read every word and not skim, but I had to skip sections here after a while, as the story goes on for what seems an infinite span without anything happening. Our hero has some kind of secret, and is pursued on a cultish planet by authorities, until he isn’t, because he joins the establishment, but is always at risk of falling afoul of the strange customs. The kicker is that—like the Star Trek episode where the natives are reciting a garbled U.S. Declaration of Independence—the three rival planets here derive their culture from three forms of office shorthand! “Gregg, Pittman and Speedwriting.”
5). "Leinster" gives us a competent but perfunctory tale.  A basically Asperger’s-type hero sacrifices love to achieve FTL travel. Basically never reprinted.
6). Jakes’s tale was about his 18th short fiction sale. A vignette about the sad fate a mutant boy. Never reprinted.
7). Pratt’s story has some sardonic humor and satire, as it chronicles a reconnaissance expedition into the territory of a former enemy that had been blockaded for decades while a deliberately deployed war virus has been allowed to run rampant. Some nice biopunk ideas still topical today. Of course, the “superior” invaders are quickly bamboozled and the table is turned. Sparsely reprinted.
8). Society is ruled by a Van Vogtian system that tests all citizens for their moral qualities. Thomas depicts the ramifications of this nicely—imagine politicians who are altruistic and trustworthy!—but then wraps the conceit in the notion that omnipotent aliens secretly watching Earth will utilize the system to deem humanity worth saving or needing destruction. This part seems unnecessary and at odds with the core conceit. Never reprinted.
And, elsewhere, John Boston was moved to comment on the Lowndes-story assessment:
Sherman/Lowndes's "A Matter of Faith" was later booked by Avalon in 1961 as BELIEVERS' WORLD, presumably with some expansion, even allowing for the large type and wide margins that publisher favored.  Interestingly (well, not very), Lowndes was editing their SF line at the time.  I had a similar reaction to yours 60-plus years ago, though unencumbered by any self-imposed obligation to finish it, and I didn't.   

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Sunday, July 26, 2015

Covers gallery: some short-lived fantasy and horror fiction magazines: the brilliant, the poorly designed, and the ridiculous

Fantasy Magazine/Fantasy Fiction (1953):
The first fantasy fiction magazine edited by Lester Del Rey, who would later edit the first short run of Worlds of Fantasy, then have a sustained run as the fantasy-fiction editor at Ballantine, then officially Del Rey Books. All four covers are by Hannes Bok.





















































































































































Fear! (1960)
The horror title from Great American Publications, also including The Saint Magazine and Fantastic Universe, newly acquired (and the latter soon folded). Only two issues were published.











































































Shock Tales,  Suspense (both 1959); Thriller (1962)
Myron Fass, one of the more prolific publishers of exploitation magazines over the latter half of the 20th Century (and perhaps best remembered as the producer of some of the more durable imitators of Warren Publishing's Creepy and Eerie with his Eerie Tales line of black & white horror comics magazines in the latter '60s and early '70s), apparently is responsible for these magazines, the first two more or less the same magazine (and perhaps the only issues published, even though Suspense is labeled #4), and the last having three known issues...all with similar amateurish photography as the interior illustration for what can be called "confessions-style" attempts at horror fiction, perhaps masquerading clumsily as true accounts. Note model recurrence.











































































All images courtesy Galactic Central
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