Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Startling Stories August 1952

We begin our tribute to the late Philip Jose Farmer with his first published story. The Magazine of the Week is the August 1952 issue of pulp magazine Startling Stories, containing Philip Jose Farmer's "The Lovers" (cover art by Earle Bergey). This copy was signed by Farmer on the story's 50th anniversary, the party for which a book club buddy was able to attend.

"The Lovers" caused an instant sensation, and garnered Farmer a Hugo Award for Most Promising New Talent (a short-lived Hugo category, since replaced by the John W. Campbell Award for best new writer). "The Lovers" was influential because it was one of the earliest works of science fiction to address issues of sexuality in an open and frank matter. This story was thus an important step in the development of the SF genre into a mature branch of literature (even if not everybody yet recognizes it as such).

After the success of "The Lovers," Philip Jose Farmer went on to publish over 75 books. BOTW has featured him twice before, for Fire and the Night and Venus on the Half-Shell. Next week, we will continue our tribute to Farmer with his single most famous book.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Astounding November 1952

Continuing our tribute to Algis Budrys (1931-2008), the Magazine of the Week is the November 1952 issue of Astounding, cover art by Charles Schneeman. When published, the highlights of this issue were the second part of Isaac Asimov's serialized novel The Currents of Space and "Last Blast," a novelette by popular author Eric Frank Russell. But in hindsight, this issue was most important for launching the career of Algis Budrys, with his first story "The High Purpose."

Algis Budrys went on to become an important science fiction author for about the next ten years. After that, he wrote only sparingly -- although his 1977 novel Michaelmas was very well-received, and its premise of a media mogul who manages to assume control of global politics is perhaps more relevant today than ever -- focusing his energies instead on editing and reviewing. He was a long-time reviewer for F&SF and the Chicago Sun-Times. In recent years, he was the editor of Tomorrow magazine (where he rejected the first story I ever tried to sell, a truly dreadful piece that did not at all deserve the gentle note he sent me). He also managed the L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future contest, which under his leadership became a very useful resource for aspiring writers, discovering such major authors as Stephen Baxter, Karen Joy Fowler, James Alan Gardner, Robert Reed, and Patrick Rothfuss, despite the Scientology baggage the Hubbard name carries.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Fantastic November-December 1952 issue

In honor of Mickey Spillane, who passed away recently at the age of 88 (sadly not from a gunshot to the chest), the Magazine of the Week is the November-December 1952 issue of Fantastic magazine, containing Spillane's "The Veiled Woman" (with appropriately sexy cover art by Barye W. Phillips).

Mickey Spillane was world famous for his best-selling hard-boiled mysteries, starring tough-as-nails private eye Mike Hammer. Leave it to me to honor him with his one and only (so far as I am aware) foray into the science fiction genre. Not to worry, though, "The Veiled Woman" may contain Martians and an interplanetary plot, but it has just as much sex and violence as all of Spillane's work, and is loaded with lines like, "She had a body that would melt a glacier from across the street." Like Spillane's first novel, I, The Jury, "The Veiled Woman" ends with the hero shooting a naked woman in the gut in cold blood.

The hard-boiled narrative voice is a uniquely American contribution to literature -- as well as to cinema, in the form of film noir. The hard-boiled subgenre was invented in a particular pulp magazine, and first popularized in the detective stories of a particular author. This author is almost forgotten today, but he inspired an entire generation of hard-boiled detective writers, including Dashiell Hammett (creator of Sam Spade), Raymond Chandler (creator of Philip Marlowe), and later Mickey Spillane (who deliberately patterned Mike Hammer after this author's best known detective). Returning at last to our history of the pulp magazines, next week's Magazine of the Week will be a rare pulp magazine starring the first successful hard-boiled detective, the precursor to Sam Spade, Philip Marlowe, and Mike Hammer.