Weird Tales, Dec 1936: R E Howard, J R Fearn, O A Kline & E H Price and A Derleth & M Schorer

Let's revisit the December 1936 issue of one of our favorite periodicals, Weird Tales.  Way back in 2014, when we were young, we read the Robert Bloch story from this issue, "Mother of Serpents," and in 2019 we read Henry Kuttner's contribution, "It Walks By Night."  But this issue includes a bunch of stories by other guys we are interested in, so let's read four of them, Robert E. Howard's cover story "The Fire of  Asshurbanipal," John Russell Fearn's "Portrait of A Murderer," and two collaborations, one between Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price, "The Cyclops of Xoatl," as well as August Derleth and Mark Schorer's "The Woman at Loon Point."

"The Fire of Asshurbanipal" by Robert E. Howard (1972/1936)

I decided to read "The Fire of Asshurbanipal" in an electronic edition of the 2010 collection El Borak and Other Desert Adventures because sometimes these 21st-century books have versions based on Howard's own manuscripts that lack the editorial changes sometimes seen in magazines and present a text closer to Howard's original intent.  After finishing the story, I drafted my reactions to it and then took a gander at a scan of the December '36 Weird Tales to find that the illustration for "The Fire of Asshurbanipal" showed a monster that I did not recall appearing in the text.  A few moments' look at the intro to El Borak and Other Desert Adventures and at isfdb opened my eyes--the version I had read was first printed in 1972 in Glenn Lord's The Howard Collector and is an alternative version with almost no supernatural elements; the WT version includes explicit fantastical and Yoh-Sotherish material.  In light of this revelation, I then read the 1936 version of the story in an electronic edition of the 2008 collection The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard; except for a few typos, that book version, we are told, is identical to the 1936 magazine version.  

So, below, find my assessment of the mundane '72 version of "The Fire of Asshurbanipal" and then some comments on how different the '36 WT version is.

1972 realistic version

Here we have a pretty routine adventure story, but Howard tells it well so I enjoyed it.

An American adventurer and his friend, a huge Afghan, came to the desert to search for a lost city they had heard about--within the city is said to rest, in the hand of the skeletal remains of a king upon his throne, the jewel of the title, the Fire of Asshurbanipal.  Howard's story begins in medias res, as our heroes fight off some Bedouins with their Lee-Enfield rifles.  (Howard may be making a mistake; I think the Lee-Enfield is a bolt action rifle, but at one point Howard tells us that the Afghan "levered out his last empty shell and slipped a single cartridge into the breech of his rifle," which sounds like maybe he's using a Martini-Henry.)

Then comes the long march to the city; Howard spends a lot of time on the agony of the journey, our guys having lost most of their supplies in a sandstorm, on describing the appearance of the ruined city, and on the American's speculations about the history of the city and the Afghan's fears it is haunted by devils and protected by curses.  Howard is good at this sort of thing and I was into it.  Just as the men find the throne and the jewel in a huge temple dedicated to Baal, a "hawk-faced" sheik appears at the head of his band of thieves--the American has met this guy before, in East Africa, when he protected a "wretch of a negro" from this slave-trading Arab.  The sheik seeks elaborate vengeance on our guys so even though the Yank and his Afghan comrade kill many of the sheik's lackeys in the fight, the sheik insists they be taken alive.  

Before our heroes can be tortured or whatever, the sheik snatches up the jewel and a small snake emerges from the bones on the throne and kills him, scaring off his superstitious followers.  The bandits leave behind not only the jewel but some equipment and supplies which our heroes sorely need--a happy ending for them.

The interesting thing about this story for 21st-century readers is how all the characters' behavior is driven by their ethnic or cultural background.  Two examples: the American seeks the Fire of Asshurbanipal because "deep in his soul lurked the age-old heritage of the white man, the urge to seek out the hidden places of the world," and when the sheikh seizes the jewel he "was like one hypnotized, as all the slumbering mysticism and mystery of his Semitic blood were stirred to the deeps of his strange soul."  These quotes may also give you an idea of the sort of melodramatic style Howard employs in this story in reference to everything, not just people's racial makeup, and which I personally find fun. 

1936 supernatural version 

The version of "The Fire of Asshurbanipal" that appeared in Weird Tales is similar to the non-weird version first published in 1972 up until our heroes come upon the throne on which lies the jewel.  The scenes in the throne chamber are full of weird stuff; for example, the jewel seems to pulsate as if it is a living heart, and even move of its own volition.  The Afghan is revealed to have an "Oriental telepathic instinct" that warns him of danger.  When the sheik (or "shaykh" as it is styled in this version) captures the protagonists, one of his subordinates, a Bedouin, relates the eerie history of the city and the Fire of Asshurbanipal, a history which involves a wizard and a monster and includes mention of Cthulhu and Yog-Sothoth.  When the sheik grabs up the jewel despite his follower's warnings, the monster attacks via a secret door, killing him.  The American glimpses the monster and the sight of it almost drives him insane.  Luckily, the monster only kills those who touch the Fire of Asshurbanipal, so our heroes are spared and get out of the city alive.

Though the idea of an "Oriental telepathic instinct" is a little much, not only goofy but unnecessary, Howard otherwise handles the supernatural elements pretty well, and this version certainly feels more complete, what with the history of the city being revealed and the sheik being destroyed not by some random event but by his own effrontery in ignoring the warnings of his fellow Muslims.  

I'll also note that, in the Weird Tales version, instead of "negro" we get the full strength "n-word;" did Glenn Lord in 1972 do a little editing of the manuscript of the mundane version of the story?

Both versions are good, but the supernatural version of "The Fire of Asshurbanipal" is more satisfying.  You can find the weird version of the tale in many Howard collections and some anthologies of Lovecraftian stories.  As for the version lacking weird elements, besides the El Borak volume, it has been reprinted in Joe Marek's The "New" Howard Reader and Robert M. Price's Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos.

"Portrait of a Murderer" by John Russell Fearn

Looks like this will be our third Fearn story, we having read an Amazing story by the gentleman, "The Secret of the Ring" in June of 2024, and an Astounding story of his, "Mathematica," in September of that year. "Portrait of a Murderer" was reprinted in 1946 in an issue of the British magazine Strange Tales which, it seems, was printed with two different sexy covers (gotta catch 'em all), and then had to wait until our own strange 21st century to appear in book form in a Best of collection of Fearn's work. 

The bulk of the text of "Portrait of a Murderer" is the first-person testimonial of a dead man, a journalist executed for murder, transmitted to this world through a medium.   

The journalist tells us that while on holiday in the environs of Coniston Old Man, apparently a famous mountain in England, he met a fat guy with a beautiful voice and captivating eyes, Pym.  Pym is one of those guys we meet on the regular in SF stories, the guy who is studying the occult, and one of those people we meet regularly in all fiction*, the individual who is sick of his or her spouse.  The plot of "Portrait of a Murderer" follows the journalist as he is hypnotized by the "podgy" little Pym into murdering Mrs. Pym and carries this small attractive woman up the mountain to throw her down into a chasm.  The narrator thinks the murder is all a dream while he is committing it, but come the morning, the boys in blue carry him off to jail.  Pym visits the imprisoned journalist and tells him that the missus was unfaithful and so a perfectly suitable subject for Pym's experiment investigating the possibility of using mental powers alone to commit a murder.

*Don't say "And in real life!" you comedians--it's Christmas, for goodness' sake!

Following conviction and execution, the journalist found himself in the afterlife, envisaged by Fearn as a sea of empty darkness in which one swims amid the jumbled vague thoughts of most living people but the clearer thoughts of gifted clairvoyants and trained mediums.  He achieves vengeance on Pym, exerting his mental force to drive the fat little hypnotist insane.

Like Howard's "The Fire of Asshurbanipal," "Portrait of a Murderer" is a sort of routine or traditional story, but it is well-told, Fearn doing a particularly good job on the hypnotism bit and making the actual murder pretty exciting, so I enjoyed it.  The vision of the afterlife Fearn paints, and the journalist's method of revenge, are a little questionable (the deceased journalist detects no sign of other dead people, but can sense the teeming masses of living people?) and probably should have been eliminated, but this rocky stretch at the end doesn't sink the story. 

"The Cyclops of Xoatl" by Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffmann Price

Earlier this year we read Kline and Price's story about a white hunter and his Afghan pal fighting a leopard monster in Burma, "Spotted Satan."  I gave that 1940 work a passing grade, so let's see if this story published like four years earlier can also escape condemnation by the ruthless MPorcius Fiction Log staff.  The heartless jury that is the editors of the SF community has already passed a severe judgement on "The Cyclops of Xoatl," as reflected in the fact that the story has never been reprinted, but maybe I'll find the story more palatable?

"The Cyclops of Xoatl" turns out to be the story of a white adventurer and his Mexican pal fighting a one-eyed ogre in a Mexican village, a tale built along the same lines as "Spotted Satan," but, unfortunately, less interesting and entertaining than that later work; "The Cyclops of Xoatl" is a mish mosh of tedious detective story elements, less than credible science fiction elements, and mediocre action sequences, while its pacing and structure are poor, rendering the story a repetitive series of scenes that don't flow logically or satisfyingly from one to the next.    

Well-known American he-man Bart Leslie, a veteran of the Border Patrol known as "Two-Gun Bart," has been summoned to a little Mexican village by his friend Arturo Hernandez.  Arturo, who speaks a sort of comedy Spanglish presented here in phonetic form ("Son of wan gun!  That ees good") recently purchased a hacienda, I guess a sort of ranch-slash-farm, but is having trouble making it pay because all his employees ("peons" or "mozos") are liable to quit due to a series of murderous attacks upon them; these murders are attributed to an eleven-foot tall cyclops that drinks the blood of its victims.  

"I cannot work the property. It is a total loss, but if I abandon it, I am what you call busted! Clean’ out.”

The day he arrives in his roadster, somebody tries to murder Bart with a machete.  That night, a waiter tries to drug Bart, but Bart turns the tables on the creep, making him drink the coffee he tried to serve to our hero.  Bart puts the unconscious waiter in the bed he himself was to occupy, and during the night the waiter is murdered--this poor bastard's throat is torn out, like those of the victims at the hacienda, and Arturo declares that it must have been the blood-drinking cyclops that slew him.  

A German anthropologist has been eavesdropping on Bart and Arturo as they discuss the weird goings on at the hacienda, and this nosey Teuton asks to join our gang when they head out to the estate--herr doktor, of course, thinks there is no monster, that the workers are letting their superstitions get the best of them.

In his absence, another of Arturo's men has been slain and drained of blood.  The entire workforce threatens to quit, but the presence of Bart, a famous gunslinger, and the example of the loyal housekeeper, a pretty middle-aged mestiza, stiffens them.  Throughout the story the Mexican peasant and working class are shown to be emotional and excitable, fickle and erratic like women or children, quick to take fear and quick to take heart again when things seem to be going their way, and Bart and Arturo often talk about methods of managing these people.  Bart leads a hunting party in search of the cyclops; they don't find the monster, but do discover a clue that seems to suggest there is no monster, that somebody is hoaxing the peons as well as murdering them, as herr doktor has been saying. 

"The Cyclops of Xoatl" is like a mystery story in its requirement that there be many characters to serve as suspects, and Arturo's sister Maria, the most beautiful woman Bart has ever seen, arrives at the hacienda, followed by Pacheco, the old man who sold Arturo this cursed estate and seems to have had some relationship with the mestiza housekeeper in her youth.  Bart carefully watches the facial expressions of the many characters, trying to figure out the connections between them and assess whether they might be behind the murders and the monster--Pacheco is a prime suspect, as he now wants to buy the hacienda back.  Then Bart catches sight of the monster and he as well as those of us reading this thing have no choice but to accept the reality of a towering blood-drinking ogre.  Professor Jerry of Kraut U. suggests the being is an atavism, a throwback to the race of the cyclops Polyphemus described in Homer, and should be captured and put in a museum or zoo.  

There are multiple scenes in which the monster attacks and gets away, sometimes after grabbing a woman and then dropping her, and the behavior of the various Mexicans as well as of the German anthropologist during the monster encounters raises questions about who is in cahoots with the monster and clues as to why.  For example, Bart is about to catch the ogre but then his horse is felled by one bullet of the wild fusillade coming in the monster's general direction from the posses of trigger-happy peons accompanying him--is this an accident born of Latin exuberance or deliberate sabotage? 

The story grinds on, suspicion drifting from one figure to another, people getting killed, etc., until somebody betrays Bart and our hero ends up trapped in a cave with the bloodthirsty cyclops.  "The Cyclops of Xoatl" then resembles a science fiction story for a brief period as we get a description of the monster's biology and scenes of Bart using his knowledge of literature and the properties of the batteries in his flashlight to improvise a means of escape from the blood-drinking menace.  Then, as at the end of a conventional detective story, we are provided a full accounting of which of the characters has been using the monster to achieve his or her goals, passages on the how and the why of each murder, plus the less than believable origin story of the monster, which turns out not to be a space alien or a member of a lost race but the product of the illicit liaison of Pacheco and the mestiza housekeeper, what Bart explains as

"an example of teratology, caused by a deficiency in formative power in the embryo, and resulting in what the doctors call 'imperfect separation of symmetrical parts.’"

Oh, brother, a birth defect that makes you eleven feet tall and keeps you from growing any grinding teeth so you can't eat hard food and can only subsist on milk and blood?  "The Cyclops of Xoatl" would work better if it was more Lovecraftian or more Christian, with the monster being the product of sex with an alien or sex with Satan or representing God's punishment for infidelity or something like that.  Random instances of bad luck have no moral weight and do not reflect poor decisions, and so are far far less satisfying in a story than when bad things happen as a result of a character's actions or judgement.  Tsk, tsk.

Anyway, the monster is dead, the manipulators and killers are all punished, Maria falls in love with Bart, and I guess Arturo's hacienda will now turn a profit.

Thumbs down for the deservedly obscure "The Cyclops of Xoatl," though it may perhaps be of value to students of depictions of Latin America in popular fiction with its sexy and sophisticated Maria, stolid and Catholic Arturo, and excitable and malleable masses of superstitious Mexican peons.

"The Woman at Loon Point" by August Derleth and Mark Schorer

"The Woman at Loon Point," which you can find in Derleth collections and which Charlotte F. Otten included in her anthology The Literary Werewolf, is illustrated here in Weird Tales with an interestingly flat and square Virgil Finlay drawing that is reminding me of a Greek frieze, like from the Parthenon or something.  (This issue of Farnsworth Wright's magazine also includes a more conventional female nude by Finlay that illustrates Granville Hoss's "Out of the Sun.")  

"The Woman at Loon Point" is an obvious and traditional werewolf tale.  The narrator is spending a few months at his father's remote hunting cabin in the woods of Minnesota and learns from the locals about a pretty girl and her brother who live in a cabin a few miles away, how the girl was happy and carefree when the pair first arrived in the area but now she is always nervous and sad and is almost never seen.  Her brother has become very ill and is seen even less often.  Oh yeah, and a wolf is terrorizing the neighborhood. 

Our narrator tries to build a relationship with the hermitish girl, at the same time avoiding the dangerous wolf which is always skulking around, and eventually she tells him the truth and enlists his aid in freeing her brother from the malign influence of the werewolf.  Our guy kills the monster and marries the girl and the brother heals up.

The plot of "The Woman at Loon Point" is routine but Derleth and Schorer do a good job with the individual scenes, the characters are sympathetic and act in a manner that is believable, and the narrative moves forward in a fluid, logical fashion, and so I enjoyed this competent filler piece.  I can recommend the story moderately.  Critics are always praising work that pushes the envelope or subverts expectations or innovates, but here in "The Woman at Loon Point" we have a healthy specimen of the foundations, the norms, the conventions, that those innovators are lauded for subverting or expanding, and it is an entertaining read.

**********

None of these stories is groundbreaking, but three of them are entertaining, so we are not going to lodge a formal complaint--here we have a worthy issue of the unique magazine of the bizarre and unusual.  

More 1930s stories when next we convene here at MPorcius Fiction Log!

Merril-approved 1958 stories by P Ustinov, J Vance, J Vatsek and K Vonnegut, Jr.

The year: 1958.  Our mission: To explore the SF of that year.  Our guide: critical darling Judith Merril.  On the last leg of our journey through the year the Hope Diamond made its way to the Smithsonian Institution, the first communications satellite reached orbit, and the Fifth French Republic was founded, we finished off the "T" authors included on the Honorable Mentions list in the back of Merril's SF: The Year's Greatest Science-Fiction and Fantasy: 4th Annual Volume, and today we'll tackle the sole "U" on the list and the three "V"s, reading two stories by people considered important outside our beloved SF ghetto that debuted in mainstream publications, as well as a story by one of the giants of SF that debuted in a lesser pulp and a story by some woman I've never heard of that first saw print in one of the most pretentious SF periodicals.  Today we are celebrating diversity here at MPorcius Fiction Log--when the revolution comes, tell them to spare me!

But first!  A list of links to the twenty-two (!) previous stages of this epic journey!

Poul Anderson and Alan Arkin
Pauline Ashwell, Don Berry, and Robert Bloch
John Brunner, Algis Budrys, and Arthur C. Clarke
"Helen Clarkson" (Helen McCoy), Mark Clifton, Mildred Clingerman and Theodore R. Cogswell
John Bernard Daley, Avram Davidson and Chan Davis
Gordon R. Dickson 
Charles Einstein, George P. Elliot, and Harlan Ellison
Charles G. Finney, Charles L. Fontenay, Donald Franson, and Charles E Fritch
Randall Garret and James E. Gunn 
Harry Harrison, Frank Herbert, and Philip High
Shirley Jackson, Daniel Keyes, and John Kippax

Damon Knight and C. M. Kornbluth
Fritz Leiber, Jack Lewis and Victoria Lincoln
Katherine MacLean, "T. H. Mathieu" (Les Cole) and Dean MacLaughlin 
A. E. Nourse
"Finn O'Donnevan" (Robert Sheckley) and Chad Oliver
Avis Pabel, Frederik Pohl, and Robert Presslie

John T.Phillifent, Kit Reed, Mack Reynolds, and Charles W. Runyon 

Margaret St. Clair, Thomas N. Scortia and John Shepley

Robert Silverberg and Clifford Simak

Cordwainer Smith, Will Stanton, and Job Stopa

Theodore Sturgeon, William Tenn, and Walter Tevis

"The Man in the Moon" by Peter Ustinov

Ustinov is one of those guys who people say is some kind of genius, and who am I to disagree?  I barely know anything about him!  I recognize his name and face, though, I guess from Spartacus and all those Agatha Christie things my mother would watch.  

"The Man in the Moon" debuted in The Atlantic Monthly, one of those magazines smart people are always talking about, alongside a poem by John Ciardi, whose translation of the Divine Comedy I read back when I thought there was a chance I might amount to something and figured I should read real books and not just stuff about monsters and adventures to improbable locales.  You can read "The Man in the Moon" at The Atlantic's website, which is what I did; PDF scans of the original magazine are also out there in the Wild West that, for the time being, is still the internet.  The story was collected in Ustinov's Add a Dash of Pity.

Ustinov was an Englishman, though of Russian ethnicity, and some kind of activist who worked to confer upon the world the dubious blessings of world government, and "The Man in the Moon" is a tepid satire full of lame and obvious jokes the point of which is to attack British imperialism and promote world government.  Good grief!  

A British scientist with a Swiss friend develops a means of reaching other planets.  He hopes to go to America to discuss his success with other scientists.  The British government stops him from going to the US because they want to keep the ability to explore other planets in British hands with the hope of regaining the leading position in the world that Great Britain had in the 18th and 19th centuries.  In response, the scientist gives speeches in which he decries fear of the Soviet Union, insists he is not a patriotic Briton but a man of the world, makes disparaging remarks about Rudyard Kipling, denounces European imperialism and racism, compares the current British government to that of Nazi Germany, and laments that if mankind reaches other planets the result will be racism against and exploitation of aliens and war between humans, a replay of the colonialism and world wars of the period 1492-1945.

The story ends with the revelation that the English scientist has managed to get his innovation to Switzerland and so the Swiss are the first to land on the moon.

Banal politics plus tired jokes about the scientist's relationship with his wife and kids equals a story that feels like filler and offers neither entertainment nor intellectual stimulation.  "The Man in the Moon" is like a Socratic dialogue you've already heard bolted onto a hunk of bare bones sitcom humor you've already seen.  Thumbs down!  (You've probably already figured out on your own why leftist Merril, who is always trying to shoehorn mainstream figures and mainstream publications inside the SF tent as part of her project of dissolving the barriers between the literary mainstream and genre literature, felt the need to promote this mediocrity with a snooty pedigree.)

"Worlds of Origin" AKA "Coup de Grace" by Jack Vance

From one of our most reputable publications to a pulp magazine that wikipedia and the Science Fiction Encyclopedia suggest is a piece of garbage, Super-Science Fiction.  "Worlds of Origin" is one of the ten Magnus Ridolph stories and has been reprinted many times in Vance collections as well as in a few Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg anthologies under the title "Coup de Grace."  I own a copy of the issue of Super-Science Fiction in which the story debuted, and actually have already read the issue's Robert Silverberg, Robert F. Young and Koller Ernst stories, and it is in its pages that I will read "Worlds of Origin" today.  I'll also note that the Emsh illustration to the tale, featuring an old bearded skinny guy and an old fat balding guy and a slender elfish young lady, is quite good.

This is a fun detective story full of clever and amusing science fiction elements.  Vance with admirable economy sets a scene and describes characters and alien societies in a way that is interesting and his charming dialogue brings a smile to the face of the reader again and again.  The story also seems to push (perhaps ironically and insincerely?) what we might call a liberal or left-wing commonplace--moral relativism, the idea that each culture has its own theory of right and wrong and it is pointless to judge one theory as better than any other.  

Magnus Ridolph is on holiday in a space station hanging in interstellar space that serves the role of a resort.  There are a bunch of people in the station, among them an anthropologist who has with him three "palaeolithics" or "cavemen" he has restrained with various high tech devices.  He approaches Ridolph, saying he needs help because he is being pursued by a woman.  Ridolph, being on vacation, is not very interested in helping, and their interview is interrupted besides.

The next morning the anthropologist is found dead.  The resort space station is floating out in a region of space claimed by no government, so there are no police to solve the crime, so the resort owner enlists Ridolph the famous detective.  Lacking the scanners and analyzers that an official police force would employ to solve the crime lickety-split, Ridolph must rely on his knowledge of the cultures of the many suspects to determine who must be the killer.  Each suspect is interviewed, and Ridolph solves the case.  Because Vance comes up with a strange and fun (and by 20th-century standards, amoral or evil) culture for each of the suspects, and because the relationship between Ridolph and the resort owner is amusing, the interviews are actually fun, not the tedious blah blah blah of red herrings we get in so much detective fiction.

Thumbs up for "Worlds of Origin," a successful detective story which is also a successful humor story and which includes many entertaining science fiction elements and is, perhaps, a tricky philosophical story about moral relativism.

         

"The Duel" by Joan Vatsek

On her website, Joan Vaczek Kouwenhoven's daughter, Elizabeth Arthur, includes a bio of her mother, whose "The Duel" appeared in F&SF under the name Joan Vatsek.  Vatsek was born in the United States during World War One, the daughter of a Hungarian diplomat, and lived in Europe, Canada, Ohio and Egypt before making her career and getting married twice in the environs of New York and Washington, D.C.  Vatsek has only three credits at isfdb, but produced quite a number of mainstream (maybe some of them are thrillers?) stories, novels and plays.  As for "The Duel," it was included in one of those anthologies with Alfred Hitchcock's name on the cover that has been reprinted in numerous formats.

Laurence, a writer, grew up in a 17th-century house in Virginia, the remains of a slave plantation.  He has returned to the now lonely and remote house with his wife, Janine, who is graceful and not conventionally beautiful, but like a Durer drawing, arresting and unforgettable.  Janine doesn't like the house.  She is a superstitious sort; for example, she doesn't like it when moonlight lands on the bed.  (This is a superstition I never heard of before.)  One day, Laurence finds Janine using a makeshift ouija board; Janine's mother taught her this technique of communicating with the dead.

Janine acts as if she has developed a relationship with a soldier who died during the War of Independence and is buried on this property.  This Major Jamieson brags about his martial and sexual successes, and is jealous when Janine is intimate with her husband Laurence.  Laurence of course thinks his wife is loony, and considers taking her to a shrink, even though she seems happier than she ever has been.  But he holds off, and we get the horrible climax--Janine, in love with the ghost, helps the Major slay Laurence, but too late Janine realizes that the Major does not love her, only enjoys killing men and seducing women, he seeing other people as no more than opponents to be manipulated and defeated.  Janine goes insane.   

Of course I think Merril chose to promote this story because it was written by a woman whose work had appeared many times in mainstream venues, but "The Duel" is pretty good so I can't fault her for the choice.  The story moves along at a decent clip and has various memorable images; in particular, a fetishistic erotic scene in which Janine, who uses a wine glass as the ouija board's pointer or planchette, grasps the stem of the wine glass and touches her mouth to its rim as if she is stimulating a phallus, all while her poor husband watches. 

We might see "The Duel" as a story about gender roles.  Janine's mother worked hard to provide Janine a good education, and had hopes Janine would be a writer or painter or actress or something.  Janine took a stab at these vocations, including doing actual remunerative work at an ad agency, but was never much good at them, or at least lacked the drive to succeed at them.  This sort of broke her morale.  Major Jamieson, the 18th-century womanizer, tells Janine a woman need not be useful, merely ornamental, and this assuages her guilt--embodying pre-feminist or anti-feminist views of a woman's role makes her happier than feminist career-oriented ones have, at least on the short term.  The story not only contrasts the frustrated career-oriented Janine of New England with the ornamental Janine of Virginia, but middle-class 20th-century Laurence and 18th-century aristocratic Major Jamieson--Laurence is committed to his wife and works for money, while the ghost is a guy whose life (and afterlife) are occupied with seducing women and killing men in duels.  The differences between the way Laurence manifests manhood and the Major does seems to advantage the Major--while Laurence, working hard on his books to pay the bills, cannot spend much time with Janine, the Major, a decadent and amoral aristocrat, is with her all the time and makes her happy.  Of course, the Major ultimately cannot satisfy Janine, he being totally selfish; "The Duel" may also be about how, for women, sexual relationships with men are always unsatisfactory.  

"The Manned Missiles" by Kurt Vonnegut 

Kurt Vonnegut is one of those writers of science fiction like J. G. Ballard and Doris Lessing who has a sparkling reputation among mainstream critics, and "The Manned Missiles" debuted in the mainstream women's magazine Cosmopolitan.  (Before TV took over the culture, magazines like Cosmopolitan included lots of fiction; I will also note that it appears that, before the 1960s, Cosmopolitan was geared towards wives and mothers, not sexually-active single career women, as it has been in my lifetime.)  It is easy to see why Merril liked the story, why it is in a women's magazine, and why the mainstream critics like Vonnegut--"The Manned Missiles" is a reasonably well-written sentimental and manipulative tear jerker (the characters actually cry) and it is also one of those stories that tries to get you to believe that the Soviet Union is no worse--hell, it's better!--than the United States.  A lot of educated people seem to believe this of the USSR, like a lot of educated people purport to believe that a man who cuts off his testicles (or says he plans to someday maybe cut off his testicles) is a woman, and it is hard to tell to what extent they really believe this stuff and to what extent they say it to advance and protect their relationships and careers.  "The Manned Missiles" is also one of those stories that tells you space travel is a total waste of time, that individuals probably can't handle it and the human race probably won't benefit from it.  (Remember that Camille Paglia quote about how if women were in charge we'd all still be living in grass huts?)

"The Manned Missiles" comes to us in the form of two letters, one from a citizen of the Soviet Union and one from an American, both working-class men who had ambitious sons who became astronauts and died when their space craft, the first manned Soviet and the first manned American space craft, collided out in space.  There is a lot of room for interpretation because both writers may be considered unreliable narrators, people deceived by their governments, but on the surface it seems like the Communists put up a manned satellite to study the Earth for peaceful purposes (or maybe spy on us?) and the untrusting Americans sent a rocket up to destroy the Soviet satellite (or maybe just spy on it?)  Vonnegut makes the Russian (though maybe he is Ukrainian) sympathetic and admirable, all high-minded and wise and cute (he calls satellites "baby moons"), with a son who was some kind of genius and suffered terribly in space from nausea and so forth.  The Yankee Vonnegut makes sympathetic but pathetic, a religious rube whose son was a single-minded and selfish square who was ambitious because of psychological problems.

Like Ustinov's story, "The Manned Missiles" is what you expect a story that employs science fiction devices but appears in a mainstream outlet to be, a rehash of lame left-wing politics married to family dynamics drama.  Vonnegut at least makes a go at writing in the voices of diverse characters and showing why space travel is stupid and the commies in the East are no worse than the hypocritical liberal market societies of the West instead of just speechifying about it like Ustinov, and Vonnegut tries to make you cry by portraying parents talking about their sons who were killed by the hubris, venality and paranoia of the ruling class instead of trying to make you laugh at bargain basement jokes about marriage like Ustinov does.  We'll call "The Manned Missiles" acceptable.

I read "The Manned Missiles" in a scan of 2017's Complete Stories and you can find it in other Vonnegut collections as well.

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The Vance is the most fun and entertaining and the most science-fictiony story of today's group, Vance coming up with wild settings and cultures, perhaps as a means to illustrate and maybe undermine the idea of cultural relativism.  The Vatsek is also a success as an entertainment and it is probably the most sophisticated of today's stories; she takes a traditional ghost story format and hooks it up effectively with a love triangle element with some powerful if sneaky sexual components, and uses this material to talk in an undogmatic way about gender roles.  Vonnegut and Ustinov's stories are just tendentious anti-Western Cold War dogmatism, Ustinov bludgeoning you while Vonnegut uses tried and true literary devices in an effort to pull your heart strings.  Taken as a group, not a bad illustration of the variety of what could be accomplished in 1958 with fantasy and science fiction techniques.

Bruno Fischer: "Girls for the Pain Dance," "Death Came Calling," and "The Chimes of Death"

I was disappointed by Bruno Fischer's 1950 novel The Lustful Ape, but maybe this guy shines in shorter forms?  Let's read three stories Fischer published under his pen name Russell Gray in late 1930s issues of Dime Mystery Magazine.  According to wikipedia, Dime Mystery Magazine was the first of the "weird menace" or "shudder pulp" magazines; wikipedia indicates that this genre is all about "torture and brutality" and features apparently supernatural phenomena that turn out to have mundane explanations.  

In 1937 [wikipedia tells us] the emphasis on sex and sadism in Dime Mystery's stories increased, but in 1938 the editorial policy switched back to detective stories. These stories now focused on detectives with some unusual handicap such as amnesia or hemophilia.

Well, we've got two 1937 stories and a 1939 story on today's dance card, so we'll see if they bolster wikipedia's descriptions or buck these alleged trends.  

"Girls for the Pain Dance" (1937)

The issue of Dime Mystery which includes "Girls for the Pain Dance" also offers a story called "Mate for the Thing in the Box," which sounds pretty wild, and a story by our old friend Ray Cummings, so maybe we'll come back to this publication some day.

A bunch of wealthy people are on holiday at some colony of rich peoples' estates near a lake in the woods, I guess in upstate New York.  Our narrator, his fiancé, and some of their pals see a pretty girl they know on the other side of the lake--she is naked, her skin looks burned, and she is doing some kind of frenzied dance!  The narrator and his friends swim across the lake but are too slow--the woman has danced back into the woods and they can't find her;m they proceed to the estate where she lives with her uncle.

The naked girl's uncle doesn't know where she is, and reports that she is sort of wild child, often away for days at a time.  Eventually she shows up, running into view in the dark of night, on fire, and dies among our shocked cast of upper-middle-class worthies after expending her last breathes in giving some vague clues about hell and the devil.

It is not long before another wealthy young woman has vanished and is then spotted across the lake, naked, her skin burned, doing a strange dance, just like her predecessor.  This time the cast hears from the victim's kidnappers, who demand a half million dollars from her father.  Daddy can only raise 300K, so he asks another rich guy, the narrator's future father-in-law, for 200, but father-in-law refuses, saying giving money to the kidnappers will only encourage them to kidnap more people.  The second victim, just like the first, bursts out of the woods after sunset, naked and on fire--we hear about how her formerly "luscious breasts" are now "two charred mounds"--and collapses among her friends and family.  With the last of her strength she offers semi-coherent comments about the devil.

The third victim is our narrator's fiancé, who is seized in a sort of commando raid by tommy-gun wielding men in devil costumes.  The police are on hand to prevent just such an eventuality, but if you've been watching the news you won't be surprised to learn that the villains outfight the boys in blue and escape scot-free on a motor boat, the future Mrs. Narrator in their clutches.  

Events occur that culminate in the narrator stumbling upon the abandoned coal mine where the men in devil costumes are holding his fiancé, and he watches as his nude betrothed "dances" in what amounts to a giant frying pan!  The big metal plate is divided into sections, and at a control panel the devils can heat up one section at a time--our narrator's fiancé jumps from one section to another as the temperature of the various sections increases or decreases.  The fiends are conditioning her to dance as the other two girls danced on the lake shore--the two previous girls, driven insane by pain, kept on dancing even when outside the frying pan.  

Insanity is a recurring motif of Fischer's repetitive story and multiple men lose their minds in reaction to the capture, torture and murder of their fiancés or daughters.  Our narrator isn't the only guy witnessing the torture session--his future father-in-law has been invited to watch the torture of his daughter, and this formerly tough egg starts losing it the sight of her agony.  The devil-clad men demand a million dollars from him.

The young woman in questions slips and falls, burning her hip, and this triggers the narrator's charge into the torture chamber.  He snatches up the devils' tommy gun and mows them down, saving the day.  Their leader turns out to be the uncle and financial guardian of the first victim; he killed her to get at her inheritance and then got greedy.

This story is not good.  We won't blame Fischer for all the typos, but we have to blame him for the less than credible behavior of the criminals and the police in the story, and the outlandish psychological effects Fischer suggests might result from being put in a giant frying pan, as well as the whole idea that frantically jumping from one spot to another would be interpreted as some kind of dance.  The best part of "Girls for the Pain Dance" is the response of the wealthy men to the capture and torture of the young women, which is pretty believable and thus disturbing.

"Death Came Calling" (1937)

While "Girl for the Pain Dance" was touted as a "thrill-packed terror novelette," "Death Came Calling," like Ray Cummings' "The Horror at Black Glen," also in this issue, is promoted on the table of contents as a "short tale of mystery and terror" and, indeed, it is like half the length of the saga of the giant frying pan we just endured.

The initial narrator of this caper is a reporter who handles the crime beat of a small town.  He is hanging around the cop shop when a man comes in bearing in his fist a human heart!  This blood-drenched man then takes over the job of narration as the journalist and police stenographer record his outré claims.  As he tells it, he banged some hot blonde chick but refused to marry her when she came by claiming she was preggers.  So she jumped in the river and drowned.

Being one of her friends, our guy had to attended the suicide's funeral, where he saw her body in the casket.  But when he got home, there she was!  Looking as hot as ever!  He couldn't resist her, and went to her, but blacked out and, when he awoke, wondered if it had all been a dream or hallucination.  But then the next day he saw the dead girl on mass transit!  

These sorts of episodes continue, wrecking the man's relationship with his new girlfriend and with his boss, who in separate incidents catch him embracing and kissing this woman who seems to come out of nowhere to seduce him with her gorgeous breasts.  He gets a new job, and then another when the living dead woman again appears to ruin his reputation at work; this happens again and again, driving the man into penury.  The living dead woman even comes on the scene to throw a monkey wrench into the works when our guy tries to hire a prostitute!

Eventually, the man decides to plunge a stake into the heart of the living dead woman, thinking that might put her in her grave permanent like.  After stabbing her with the stake again and again, he reaches into her oozing chest cavity to pull out her heart and bring it with him to the police station.

The reporter then resumes the responsibility for the story's narration, and we get the twist ending.  The woman who terrorized the man is the twin sister of the suicide and was derailing his career and relationships in pursuit of revenge.

"Death Came Calling" is a much more believable and compelling story than "Girls for the Pain Dance;" the gross out parts are less silly and everyone's behavior is more or less understandable.  The story also moves quickly and lacks the overabundance of characters and repetitive scenes that characterize "GftPD."  I can mildly recommend "Death Came Calling."

"The Chimes of Death" (1939)

"The Chimes of Death" is labelled (like its stablemate "The Case of the Frozen Corpses" by Ray Cummings) a "novelette of weird-crime adventure" and takes up about 16 pages.  Oy, I'm kinda wishing I had just picked out three eight-pagers like "Death Came Calling" for this blog post.

"The Chimes of Death" vies with "Girls for the Pain Dance" for title of today's most ridic story.  Our narrator is a private dick who happens to be very short.  He has been summoned by the mayor of a small city to help their overtaxed police force deal with the bizarre crime wave that has suddenly struck this little burg.  For the last three nights, precisely on the stroke of midnight, some normal citizen has gone berserk and assaulted another person for no reason.  Our narrator witnesses just such an event as the story begins: a couple are walking in front of city hall when the clock in the tower strikes twelve, and the man, well known as a devoted husband, suddenly starts clawing at his wife, ripping off her clothes and tearing at her flesh!  When the cops and our narrator pull him off his wife, the man comes to his senses and doesn't even remember what he has just done.

That same night, some thugs attack our little guy; he fights them off and as they flee he sees that one of them is a man he shot dead five years ago, a "notorious booze-runner"--the horrible injuries on the man's face, inflicted by our hero's bullets, are still evident! 

In addition to this wacky quasi-supernatural crime plot, "The Chimes of Death" provides us readers a love triangle plot.  The narrator is an expert ping-pong player and met a hot chick at a national table tennis tournament recently.  This girl is the daughter of the mayor of this town--it was she who got her dad to summon our narrator.  Some other dude is also smitten by the mayor's daughter, but she only has eyes for our hero; our guy rescues her when this rival tries to get fresh and, I guess, rape her.  The ensuing fight over the mayor's daughter is interrupted when the mayor's other daughter is assaulted by her wealthy boyfriend when the town clock strikes one.  People are now going berserk every hour instead of every twenty-four! 

Whoever is hypnotizing these people into attacking their loved ones has sent a note demanding 50k--these guys are not nearly as ambitious as the fiends in "Girls for the Pain Dance," or maybe their modest demands are just a reflection of the greater distance of this town from the economic juggernaut that is New York City.  The living dead booze-runner reappears; there is a car chase and gunfire, and the narrator is captured by the booze-runner after a crash.  The one-eyed revenant hypnotizes the diminutive detective--presumably planting the suggestion that he murder some individual at some specific time--and releases him. 

When our guy gets back to the police station he learns the mayor's daughter has been kidnapped.  But she reappears just before 4:00 AM.  She and our hero start making out, but when the clock strikes four, then begins the gore!  Each of these lovebirds turns into a frenzied killer bound and determined to tear the flesh from the other's bones with his or her fingernails and pearly whites!  The other guy who loves the mayor's daughter jumps in and preserves their lives, then carries off the woman.  When the detective comes to his senses he follows them, only to find his rival for the love of the mayor's daughter mortally wounded--the villains have killed him and captured our guy's sweetheart again!

The detective figures out where the criminals' hideout is and arrive just as the booze-runner with half a face is about to carve off half of the mayor's daughter's face.  Our guy captures the villains and gets his old foe to admit he spent the last few years in India learning hypnotism.  Another fight erupts and the detective guns down the villains.  Our hero is injured, but will live to marry the mayor's daughter.

While crazy, this story is much better than "Girls for the Pain Dance;" the wacky elements (a man with half a face, people tearing the flesh off their spouses, lovers and children with their fingernails and teeth) are actually sort of horrifying and not as risible as the material in the earlier story (like the spasmic dancing and thr giant frying pan), the plot operates somewhat more smoothly and the characters are significantly more interesting and behave more logically.  We're judging "The Chimes of Death" acceptable.

**********

This is shoddy exploitation junk, but "Death Came Calling" and "The Chimes of Death" have some entertainment value.  We may return to Dime Mystery Magazine for more twisted violence-against-women insanity, but our next adventures will find us in the pages of more influential and respectable publications.

Weird Tales Project: 1941

Progress can be reported!  I am now authorized by the MPorcius Fiction Log records department to announce that I have read at least one story from every issue of Weird Tales published with a 1941 cover date!  See below for links to my blog posts about each of the stories I read from the six issues of D. McIlwraith's magazine produced in that war year.  And first, links to other years, all of whose issues I have at least sampled a story from. 

1930    1931   1932   1933    1934    1935    1936    1937    1938    1939   1940    ---- 

January 

Henry Kuttner: "Dragon Moon"

David H. Keller: "The Goddess of Zion"

Robert Bloch: "House of the Hatchet"

Ralph Milne Farley: "Test Tube Twin"

March

August Derleth: "Come to Me"

Dorothy Quick: "Edge of the Cliff"

Donald Wandrei: "The Crystal Bullet"

Thorp McClusky: "The Graveyard Horror"

May

Mary Elizabeth Counselman: "Drifting Atoms"

Carl Jacobi: "The Phantom Pistol"

Robert Bloch: "Beauty's Beast"

August Derleth: "Altimer's Amulet"

July

Ray Cummings: "The Robot God"

Clark Ashton Smith: "The Enchantress of Sylaire"

Ralph Milne Farley: "I Killed Hilter"

Manly Wade Wellman: "It All Came True in the Woods"

September

August Derleth: "Beyond the Threshold"

Robert Bloch: "A Sorcerer Runs for Sheriff"

Manly Wade Wellman: "The Half-Haunted"

Thorp McClusky: "The Music from Infinity"

Dorothy Quick: "The Lost Gods"

November

Edmond Hamilton: "Dreamer's Worlds"
Manly Wade Wellman: "The Liers in Wait"
Henry Kuttner: "Chameleon Man"
August Derleth: "Compliments of Spectro"

Weird Tales, Nov 1941: E Hamilton, M W Wellman, H Kuttner, and A Derleth

It is time to set our feet back on the sacred path, to resume our holy mission of reading at least one story from each 1940s issue of Weird Tales.  Today we reach a milestone as we finish up 1941 by reading four stories from the November '41 number, stories by Edmond Hamilton, Manly Wade Wellman, Henry Kuttner and August Derleth.  This issue has a pretty famous cover, an image by the great Hannes Bok that has been used on the covers of several later books, both anthologies of stories culled from Weird Tales and collections of stories by Weird Tales authors.  However, I have to say that this painting lacks the distinct character that marks most of Bok's most recognizable work; I suppose the subject matter--dead bones, the straight vertical lines of a column and a lectern, and the distant silhouettes of soldiers--didn't provide Bok the opportunity to exhibit his peculiar style, which generally finds its expression in curves and living forms.  Thankfully, within the magazine there are Bok productions more characteristic of the man's work that feature human and humanoid figures in various states of undress.

"Dreamer's Worlds" by Edmond Hamilton

One has to wonder if Hamilton in this story means to remind us of Coleridge's "Kubla Khan," which bears as a subtitle "or a vision in dream.  A Fragment" and contains such lines as "A damsel with a dulcimer/In a vision once I saw."  The protagonist of "Dreamer's Worlds" is a prince named Khal Kan who lives on some alien planet inhabited by monsters and green-skinned barbarians as well as humans.  Khal Kan has been sent by his father, accompanied by two other fighting men, to scout an area for those greenies, but our guy decides to take a detour in hopes of catching a glimpse of a princess of the nomadic tribes of the desert who is famous for her beauty.  They infiltrate the camp of the desert people and lay eyes on this beauty, but the princess is a real she-cat, and when Khal Kan is recognized she has him bound and whipped.  Excited to find a woman of spirit, Khal Kan falls in love with her as she orders him whipped again and again.

We then learn an even more remarkable thing about Khal Kan--when he falls asleep at night he lives the life of a 20th-century paper pusher with a fat wife, American insurance company employee Henry Stevens!  When Stevens falls asleep, he lives the sword-swinging, monster-fighting life of Khal Kan!  All their lives these guys have had these recurring dreams that follow day by day the life of a man with a radically different personality in a radically different milieu.  Khal Kan assumes the dreary middle-class life of Stevens is just a dream, but Stevens isn't sure which life is the dream, and which the reality.  The insurance company functionary starts spending so much time thinking about Khal Kan's adventures that it has started distracting him from his work and damaging his relationship with his wife ("Henry Stevens, you haven't been listening to one word!...you're getting more dopey every day!....You go to bed earlier every night") that he goes to see a shrink.

When Stevens retires the night of the day he first sees the therapist, Khal Kan's comrades free the prince and he kidnaps the princess and carries her across the desert, kissing her against her will.  She very quickly goes from telling Khal Kan how he will be tortured when her people catch up to them to agreeing to marry him.  His new wife is at his side when just days later Khal Kan leads the defense of the kingdom against those green-skinned barbarians, who are led by Khal Kan's traitorous uncle.  The barbarians use poisoned arrows, and are winning the war, but Henry Stevens looks up in the encyclopedia how to make gunpowder and transmits this info to Khal Kan.  This innovation wins the war and saves Khal Kan's kingdom, but in the final fight against his uncle the prince is slain.  When the prince dies, Henry Stevens briefly wakes up and then dies himself, leaving both a beautiful sword-wielding desert princess and an obese housewife bereaved.  The shrink wonders if Henry died from some kind of "mental suggestion" when his fictional alter ego died, or if Henry was really in mental rapport with a man on another planet somewhere outside our solar system.

A decent filler piece, routine stuff but competent.  A mild rec, I suppose, for "Dreamer's Worlds."  It should probably be titled "Dreamers' Worlds." though.

In 1974, "Dreamer's Worlds" was reprinted in the Hamilton collection What's It Like Out There?, and in 2021 in the collection The Avenger from Atlantis. 

Left: USA, 1974  Right: Netherlands, 1975

"The Liers in Wait" by Manly Wade Wellman 

The narrator of this story is none other than Charles II, King of England!  Defeated by Cromwell's forces, the Royalist army is scattered and on the run, Charles himself in disguise as a wood cutter, making his way through a damp forest during a rainstorm.  He comes to a wretched little house inhabited by three odd characters, one of them the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, one of them a horribly diseased young servant, and the last a creepy tall man, father to the woman and master of the boy.  It turns out these three are witches and have used their black sorcery to trick Charles into coming to their disgusting domicile to cure the sick young man of his scrofula.  (As my well-educated readers all know, it was a common belief in the early modern period that the touch of a king could heal that disease.)  Charles heals the boy, who starts dancing around, so happy to be healthy for the first time in his life.  The witches then explain that they used their Satanic powers to make sure the Royalists were defeated by the Parliamentarians.  But these devil worshippers are not committed to the republican cause--they won the battle for Cromwell because of Parliament's backers purchased their infernal services!  And they are just as willing to turn their black magic to the cause of the King as that of the Roundheads!  The witches offer to put Charles back on the throne via sorcery in return for positions in his government; the gorgeous girl offers Charles her body.  Hubba hubba!  But Charles is a Christian and rejects the aid of the devil!

The father and daughter start casting spells to compel Charles, but the boy, grateful to the king for healing him, and considering how the Devil never lifted a finger to cure him of the scrofula which a follower of Christ liberated him from, renounces witchcraft and rescues his majesty; the two unrepentant conjurers and their spell book are destroyed.  The story ends with the suggestion that Charles II's commitment to religious tolerance later in his career stems from this weird encounter.

In some ways, "The Liers in Wait" is like a Conan story--Charles is a big strong guy, a leader of men, who finds himself on his own after a misfortune and beset by diabolical sorcerers and an evil seductress, to which Wellman adds some Christian and historical elements.  These real-life components are integral to the plot and atmosphere, and they, as well as the old timey vocabulary Wellman puts in the mouths of his characters, give the story a unique texture and make it more compelling.  The king is likable, and all four characters behave in ways that make sense, and Wellman does a good job describing the creepy setting and the mechanics and effects of the black magic.  An entertaining piece of work.  Thumbs up for "The Liers in Wait!"

Peter Haining included "The Liers in Wait" in his Black Magic Omnibus; when that volume appeared in paperback it was split into two volumes, with Wellman's story in the first.

"Chameleon Man" by Henry Kuttner 

This looks like a Kuttner story that has never been reprinted.  We love exploring the deep tracks here at MPorcius Fiction Log!  Unfortunately, "Chameleon Man" is an overly long humor piece, page after page of moderately ribald absurdity featuring a few recursive elements and an omniscient narrator who acts as a Greek chorus, commenting on the action of the plot.  The style and some plot elements of "Chameleon Man" are perhaps an imitation of P. G. Wodehouse.  The story's central gimmick is totally inconsistent, giving the story an "anything goes" flavor I did not appreciate; the jokes are weak, and the whole thing is long and repetitive.  Gotta give this one a thumbs down.

Vanderhoff is a guy who works in New York's most expensive women's clothier, a place where rich women and their hen-pecked men come to see fancy dresses and lingerie modelled by young ladies prior to selecting what to purchase.  Many of the gowns on offer are one-of-a-kind.

Vanderhoff is kind of a loser, a reader of science fiction magazines (Kuttner lists such authors as Verne, Wells, and himself, one of his little jokes) who has no personality of his own and so takes on the personality of those around him, as well as a man with no willpower who can't help but obey those who possess willpower, like his boss, manager of the store.

An irate customer, a red-faced colonel who served in Burma, chews out the manager and, after the colonel leaves, the manager takes out his frustrations on Vanderhoff.  I guess because of all the stress, or because the plot requires it, Vanderhoff's chameleon and yes-man traits manifest themselves in extreme and literal fashion.  Vanderhoff starts expertly mimicking the manager's every angry word and gesture--not voluntarily, mind you, but against his own will.  This apparent mockery further enrages the manager.  Then, after an extended period of precisely repeating the manager's words, when the manager says "I wish you would go drown yourself," Vanderhoff doesn't simply repeat this phrase, but is instead compelled as if by hypnotism to go to the subway station and take the long ride from Manhattan to Coney Island to jump in the ocean and destroy himself.  (Wait, this is Manhattan--couldn't this nut just have walked a few blocks east or west to the river?)

Out on Coney Island, Vanderhoff is diverted from his quest to drown himself by the command of another strong willed individual--a carnival barker--and Vanderhoff gets mixed up in wacky shenanigans at the peep show arcade and the boardwalk freak show.  His chameleon ability becomes even more extreme--when he looks into a coin-operated peep show machine and sees a gorilla abducting a native girl, his body takes on the form of a gorilla!  When he looks at a bearded man he takes on the man's appearance and is assaulted by the man's domineering wife!  At the freak show he takes on the shape of one freak after another.  A drunk attacks Vanderhoff, and our hero learns to control his ability to change his shape and uses this new skill to outfight the drunk.  

Somehow, Vanderhoff attains the power to create duplicates of himself.  Back in Manhattan, his yes-man persona shed, he uses this ability to humiliate his manager.  At a fashion show, the manager tells the assembled potential customers that the next dress they will see is a one-of-a-kind exclusive.  So Vanderhoff dons the dress, changes into a pretty girl, and creates dozens of versions of himself who stride out onto the stage in the purportedly unique dress, making his boss look a liar.  (One of Kuttner's blunders in the story is the inconsistent fashion with which he deals with whether Vanderhoff's powers to change himself can change or create his attire.)  A bunch of robbers bust in, keen to relieve the wealthy audience members of their jewels and cash, but Vanderhoff and his duplicates (whom he controls as easily as he does his own original body) revert to his natural shape and their overwhelming numbers allow them to outfight and capture the crooks.  Vanderhoff is now a hero!  He gets promoted by the owner of the store, taking the position of the manager who for years dominated him!  The angry colonel reappears and Vanderhoff uses his powers to manipulate the colonel into assaulting the former manager and achieving additional vengeance.

Fifteen pages of poor filler.

"Compliments of Spectro" by August Derleth 

Here we have a story inspired by such proto-superheroes as The Shadow and Doc Savage and the people who produced them.  Ashwell is an English author (why Midwesterner Derleth set his tale in England I have no idea) who created and writes novels weekly about Spectro, a guy in a cape who goes around retrieving stolen property and slaying archcriminals, leaving behind his trademark, an inscription of the phrase "Compliments of Spectro."  Sales of the Spectro novels have made Ashwell fabulously wealthy.

Ashwell is also a jerk, petty and snobbish and so forth.  A fan, Weedle, sent him a story of his own; unlike most of the unsolicited manuscripts Ashwell receives, the Weedle story is pretty good, and Ashwell plagiarizes it.  When Ashwell's and Weedle's stories, each using the same central gimmick, appear in print the same month, a court case results and Weedle is the loser.  The man commits suicide, leaving behind an impoverished widow.  

One of the character Spectro's signature gags is sending three warnings to a malefactor--the criminal thus has a chance to make amends or turn himself in or whatever and avoid the death Spectro inevitably deals out to those whose evil comes to his attention, should they refuse to repent.  Ashwell starts getting such warnings, but he doesn't take them seriously enough to forthrightly confesses his plagiarism and pay restitution and so doesn't live to the end of the story.

The ideas behind this story are good, but the resolution is a little lackluster.  For one thing, Ashwell dies in an unsatisfying fashion.  Worse, Derleth seems to leave open both the possibility that Ashwell's guilt led him to subconsciously give himself the three warnings and then kill himself and the possibility that it was some supernatural agency that warned and then slew him, but clues render both explanations unlikely, leaving the reader disconcerted as the story ends.

We'll call "Compliments of Spectro" acceptable.  Kurt Singer included the story in his anthology Tales of the Macabre, which enjoys some good living-dead-centric covers, and of course you can find it in Derleth collections. 

Left: UK, 1969.   Right: Norway, 1975

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Wellman's story is the winner here, though Hamilton's is a professional pedestrian piece of work.  I am against Kuttner's whole project here, and the story's execution is full of missteps besides.  Derleth's story represents a lost opportunity, Derleth having come up with a good idea but apparently lacked the time to bring it to fruition.

Wellman's only real competition for memorability comes from Hannes Bok's illustrations for a poem and two stories I didn't even read, plus his headings for the fan club and coming attractions columns.  Bok really makes this issue worth checking out.

With 1941 behind us, we can look forward to exploring stories from the six issues of Dorothy McIlwraith's magazine printed in 1942.  I have glanced at the tables of content of these issues and they are full of familiar names, so there is a lot of weird excitement ahead of us. 

Detail of Hannes Bok's illustration to the poem
"Haunted Hour" by Leah Bodine Drake