This post is brought to you by Ships of Steel edited by G. W. Thomas. This anthology of Space Opera and SF Adventure tales features four novellas, each with its own illustration by M. D. Jackson. If you enjoy your Science Fiction with more action this is the book for you. Manhunts across a giant spaceship, a quest for stolen space pirate treasure with killer androids, a lost child that is the key to a mystery and a planet with a deadly secret that will cause a galactic war. These are stories that move but will also move you. Be sure to check Whispers of Ice and Sand by G. W. Thomas as well, featuring four stories about Sudana and Zaar. Coming soon: Ships of Steel II!
I love Marvin Kaye’s Horror anthologies but I have never made any secret of my dislike of his Weird Tales, The Magazine That Never Dies (1988). My gripe is that the contents doesn’t really reflect the true magazine. It is a book full of exceptions. If Kaye had sold it as a collection of rarities rather than a comprehensive look, I might quibble less.
Well, ol’ Marv ain’t the only one at it. Martin Greenberg does a similar Bait & Switch with Amazing Stories: The Wild Years 1946-1955 (1987). Robert Bloch does a great job of setting the whole thing up in the introduction with a look back at Ray A. Palmer and the Shaver Mystery and later UFOs. But then you get to the stories and what do you see?
“You Could Be Wrong” (Amazing Stories, March 1955) by Robert Bloch, “Breakfast at Twilight” (Amazing Stories, July 1954) by Philip K. Dick, “Operation RSVP” (Amazing Stories, January 1951) by H. Beam Piper, “Satisfaction Guaranteed” (Amazing Stories, April 1951) by Isaac Asimov, “Restricted Area” (Amazing Stories, June-July 1953) by Robert Sheckley, “Peacebringer” (Amazing Stories, March 1950) by Ward Moore, “Little Creeps” (Amazing Stories, December 1951) by Walter M. Miller Jr., “The Draw” (Amazing Stories, March 1954) by Jerome Bixby, “A Way of Thinking” (Amazing Stories, October-November 1953) by Theodore Sturgeon, “Skirmish” (Amazing Stories, December 1950) by Clifford D. Simak, “They Fly So High” (Amazing Stories, June 1952) by Ross Rocklynne and “Chrysalis” (Amazing Stories, July 1946) by Ray Bradbury.
This isn’t a collection of Ray A. Palmer edited stories. Only the last one qualifies. The book should be called Amazing Stories: That Three Years Periods Where We Paid Better. Or The Howard Browne Years. Those would be a truer titles. After RAP left and Browne, who selected all of these tales before running back to his Mystery novel-writing career, was supported with a good budget and went off to poach from Galaxy, Fantasy & Science Fiction and Astounding Science-Fiction. In “Profit Without Honor” (Amazing Stories, May 1984) Browne talks about how he was saddled with tens of thousands of dollars worth of trash he couldn’t use. Palmer’s back-log would not suit this new award-winning Amazing Stories.
Browne couldn’t stay on that high horse for long since the profits were not forthcoming with the higher pay and better writers. By 1956, the editing would shift to Browne’s assistant, Paul W. Fairman, and an era of pseudonym-filled speed writing took over. Authors like Robert Silverberg and Randall Garrett netted $500 a month for 50,000 words. It is unlikely Fairman even read them, as long as the quality didn’t dip too low. An anthology of these dogs would have been a fairer collection of stories than those Greenberg used. (Fairier, but duller.)
So here are my suggestions for a Ray A. Palmer/Howard Browne Wild Years anthology. I will even stay within the 1946-1955 time line but I will also steal from Amazing‘s sister mag Fantastic Adventures.
“A Room With a View” (Amazing Stories, May 1946) by David Wright. O’Brien is a strange case as the author was dead in 1946. O’Brien, the nephew of Farnsworth Wright, was killed in action in WWII in 1944. He wrote under many pen names including John York Cabot when he wrote his parody of Jules deGrandin for Fantastic Adventures.
“Haunted Metropolis” (Amazing Stories, November 1946) by Chester S. Geier
“The Secret of Sutter’s Lake” (Amazing Stories, January 1947) by Don Wilcox. Wilcox was a Palmer writer for his entire career, writing for Palmer’s later Other Worlds.
“The Prop” (Amazing Stories, August 1947) by William L. Hamling. Hamling left writing for publishing. Imagination and Imaginative Stories were his digest-sized magazines. He later married the widow of Leroy Yerxa and faced prison time for pornography charges.
“The Court of Kublai Khan” (Fantastic Adventures, March 1948) by David V. Reed. Reed would later write comic books.
“The Death of a B. E. M.” (Amazing Stories, October 1948) by Berkeley Livingston is largely forgotten. His work is often satiric in nature.
“M’Bong-Ah” (Amazing Stories, February 1949) by Rog Philips. Philips was prolific in SF and Mystery fields.
“The Strange Tea of Ting Sun Fu” (Amazing Stories, March 1949) by Leroy Yerxa
“Exiles of the Elfmounds” (Amazing Stories, July 1949) by Richard S. Shaver. Shaver and Palmer were told to drop the Shaver Mystery stuff by the publisher (despite it making them $50,000 more an issue.) Shaver switched here to Celtic mythology but….
“The Girl Who Read Minds” (Amazing Stories, September 1949) by Robert Moore Williams. Williams’ Science Fiction was branded by Palmer’s magazines. His Jongor series was later reprinted in paperback, but Williams also wrote a few higher concept pieces like “The Robots Return” for Astounding.
“Tooth or Consequences” (Amazing Stories, May 1950) by Robert Bloch. Classic pun title, but not a Lefty Feep story. (He was still writing those in 1946. They haven’t aged well but if you like humorous stuff…) Bloch wrote the intro to The Wild Years, so he had to be here. His fame as the author of Psycho overshadows that he sold to SF markets.
“Let’s Do It Again!” (Fantastic Adventures, March 1951) by William Campbell Gault. Gault gained fame as a Noir Mystery writer, like William P. McGivern below.
“Murder on Mars” (Amazing Stories, April 1952) by Francis M. Deegan. One of those SF Mystery stories that Asimov railed against, I suppose. All of Palmer’s SF mags featured Mystery-edged tales after the huge success of Eando Binder’s Adam Link stories.
“The Machine That Knew Too Much” (Amazing Stories, September 1952) by William P. McGivern
And that’s not even including any of the fake authors like Alexander Blade, S. M. Tenneshaw, Guy Arnette, E. K. Garvis, etc. You could do another book just of pseudonymous fiction. Oddly, I could do two other companion volumes with the exact same line-up of authors: Mammoth Detective and Mammoth Western, since most of these guys wrote for all of Ray A. Palmer’s Pulps.
Conclusion
What Greenberg really gave us was an anthology of Astounding/Galaxy/F&SF stories that got away. The Rivals of Weird Tales (1990) edited by Robert Weinberg, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz and Martin H. Greenberg does a much better job of labeling what is inside. (The Weird Tales type stories that appeared elsewhere.) Amazing Stories: The Wild Years could have been part of The Rivals of Astounding Science-Fiction. Perhaps the stories Greenberg selected are better ones (I am sure they are!) but that title is my objection. The Palmer Gang were inferior craftsmen of SF. I would be the first to agree to that. But perhaps they deserve to be remembered as such in their own anthology. Nobody would buy it I suppose, but you might be surprised.
Next time I will do a Paul W. Fairman/The Crappy Years 1956-1958 anthology. It will be all pseudonyms.
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