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Mort Weisinger was editor of Captain Future along with the other Better Publications SF titles Thrilling Wonder Stories and Startling Stories. The majority of the Cap Future novels were written by Edmond Hamilton. (For more on that glorious series, go here.) But Weisinger had pages to fill. He did this by buying some new stories (or others that were printed in fanzines or British mags, so basically new) but also by looking back over the old classics from Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories years (which Better Pubs owned). Using reprints wasn’t new. Gernsback had started in 1926 with mostly reprinted material. Weisinger chose three longer pieces that he could serialize over two to four issues. Weisinger recycled the old Frank R. Paul art with some new bits added. The exception to this was Jack Williamson’s “The Alien Intelligence” that received new art. (Later in 1951, when it was reprinted again in Wonder Story Annual 1951, a third set of illustrations were done!)
With the Fall 1941 (issue #8), Weisinger was gone to work for DC Comics and Oscar J. Friend took over. Whether Friend didn’t care for reprints or simply didn’t need them, I don’t know. With the last installment of “The Alien Intelligence”, the reprints were dropped. Friend used new stories from familiar Thrilling Wonder Stories‘ stable like Henry Kuttner, William Morison and Manly Wade Wellman among others. The magazine would go on for two more years before being cancelled.
Captain Future (Winter Spring Summer Fall 1940)
“The Human Termites” by David H. Keller from Science Wonder Stories, September October November 1929 is a tale in the giant insect sub-genre. The idea for the tale came from a suggestion from Gernsback at a dinner. Souderman is a scientist who studies termites in Africa and learns to translate their two languages (worker, ruler). The rulers plan to kill off the human race. Souderman flees to the US, convinces others that the termites have a central intelligence, gains helpers then goes to Australia. There, the female member of their party, Susanne, is taken inside a termite cavern to meet with an ant-brain. She sees a giant mutant variety of termite. The brain tells her that the white ants will begin using human bodies as carriers, allowing the termites to go north into colder climates. Susanne shoots her way out, escapes back to the US with Souderman while Australia is destroyed by giant ants. The survivors build a secret fortress in Quebec (because Canada is cold, folks!) as the ants take over the world. A termite germ is finally developed and the termites lose. Humankind can rebuild.
Captain Future (Winter–Spring 1941)
“Mutiny in Space” by Gawain Edwards from Wonder Stories, September October 1931 has Captain Ledyard, the inventor of super rocket fuel, leading the first expedition to another planet, Venus. Unfortunately, his crew is not worthy of him, some dying, others going insane. A mutiny happens just as they arrive at Venus. Ledyard is killed but writes out the information for landing despite their betrayal. He is remembered as a hero.
Captain Future (Summer 1941 Fall Winter 1942)
“The Man Who Woke” by Laurence Manning from Wonder Stories, March April May June July-August 1933 was originally a Wellsian five part story that was later collected as a novel. Norman Winters, a banker, is a man who has the technology to go into suspended animation. He wakes every five thousand years to see if humanity has improved. He is disappointed over and over. First it is a reversion to a forest utopia, then a city controlled by a giant brain, a city of dreamers who spurn reality (six months later Robert E. Howard would give us a similar set-up in “The Slithering Shadow, Weird Tales, September 1933), a society of loners who live inside machines and finally a tech society that has discovered immortality. Winters joins a cult led by Condonal, that seeks the meaning of life. Being immortal, he fades out here.
Captain Future (Spring Summer Fall 1942)
“The Alien Intelligence” by Jack Williamson originally appeared in Science Wonder Stories, July August 1929. One of Jack’s Merritt-esque adventures, it has a man, Winfield Fowler, going to a remote plateau in Australia in search of his lost teacher, Horace Austen. Once there he discovers a strange world populated with monsters as well as humans. Slowly Fowler unwinds the threads of mystery, finds Austen, who kills himself destroying a menace to all humanity. Fowler and his local girl, Melvar, escape back into our world. For the entire story, go here.
Conclusion
Let’s not have any mistake here. Weisinger was trying to save money as all editors do. Using stories the company owned was a great way to get free copy. But Science Fiction fans have long memories and Mort knew older fans might not be pleased. To salve the wound a little, he made sure to pick the best of the old Gernsbacks, branding them “The Science Fiction Hall of Fame”. In the early 1940s, the idea of a Hall of Fame was a little unlikely with less than twenty years of magazine SF to choose from. When The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 1 edited by Robert Silverberg appeared in 1970, none of these stories made the cut. None of the other volumes used any either.
The idea of using old Pulp archives to fill magazines bred such titles as Fantastic Story Quarterly, which used very similar longer tales along with old and new stories. Reprints took a more evil turn in 1963 when Amazing Stories went to a low-budget approaching, using mostly old stories. The Joseph Wrzos days of the 1960s make Weisinger look respectable enough. The expansion of reprint anthologies in book form sealed the fate of reprint magazines, with Ted White seeing the last of them in his version of Amazing Stories around 1969. Good riddance.
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