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

**********

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