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 Book of the Week :: The Thing That Made Love by David V. Reed

A first edition may be especially collectible because the book become a classic or because the author went on to have a distinguished career. And then there are the books that are collectors' items simply because they are too outrageous and absurd for any collector to resist. In the latter category, the Book of the Week is The Thing That Made Love by David V. Reed.

This is a first printing, paperback original, published in digest format by Uni-Book in 1951. The novel had previously appeared in the pulp magazine Mammoth Detective, but under the dull title The Metal Monster Murders. Uni-Book changed the title, added cover art of a woman in a torn shirt and lacy bra, all under the tag line "No woman could survive such harrowing ecstasy!", creating perhaps the single most exploitative edition of a science fiction mystery ever published.

David V. Reed was the pen-name of David Vern (born David Levine, but no relation to the David Levine featured in our August 31, 2006 Magazine of the Week ). He started out as a minor author for the science fiction pulps before going on to a bit more success in comic books, authoring a number of Batman comics. By coincidence, a David V. Reed story appears in one of my personal favorite pulp magazines, also with an outrageous cover, illustrating a story by the most successful pulp writer ever. You will see that magazine, and learn what a "BEM" is, next week.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Famous Fantastic Mysteries February 1949

The Magazine of the Week is the February 1949 issue of Famous Fantastic Mysteries, cover art by Lawrence Sterne Stevens. The cover story is a reprint of the short novel The Scarlet Plague (1912) by Jack London.

Jack London is remembered today as the author of such classics as The Call of the Wild and The Sea-Wolf, but a great deal of his output was what we now call science fiction. The Scarlet Plague, a post-apocalyptic tale set in the year 2072, is a good example. Other Jack London SF includes The Iron Heel (1908), about a future dystopia; Before Adam (1907) and The Star Rover (1915), both of which feature time travel through out-of-body experiences; "The Unparalleled Invasion" and "Goliah" (1910), which describe future warfare involving biological and energy weapons; and "The Red One" (1918), in which an island comes under extraterrestrial control.

Also included in the Magazine of the Week is "Angel Island" by Inez Haynes Gillmore, a reprint of an important early work of feminist fantasy first published in 1914. The premise is that five sailors shipwrecked on a strange island fall in love with five beautiful native women who can fly. The men manage to woo the angelic women and marry them, but soon decide that it would be best to clip off their wives' wings. The story is a rather obvious, but remarkable for 1914, parable for Gillmore's feminist views.

We'll look at some less socially conscious pulp fiction next week.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week :: Famous Fantastic Mysteries June 1953

The Magazine of the Week is one of my recent acquisitions, the June 1953 issue (the final issue) of pulp magazine Famous Fantastic Mysteries, cover art by Lawrence Sterne Stevens. As suggested by the relative sizes of the words on the cover, the emphasis of Famous Fantastic Mysteries was on the fantastic, and the magazine was part of the science fiction and fantasy pulp genre, not the mystery genre.

Recent BOTWs have discussed the unfortunate tendency in the mainstream to be dismissive of anything published in the science fiction and fantasy genre. There is sometimes a corresponding reverse snobbery in the SF/F community toward science fiction penned by mainstream writers. More commonly, however, SF/F readers have welcomed fantastic literature by authors who are not associated with the genre.

Between 1940 and 1953, Famous Fantastic Mysteries found success reprinting older novels and stories in pulp format, and a great many of the stories were written by famous authors not typically thought of as sci-fi writers. (We will have another example next week.) Thus, the cover story of the Magazine of the Week is Anthem by Ayn Rand -- more social science fiction. Also listed on the cover is The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. The issue also contains stories by SF great Ray Bradbury and by Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian, yet somehow this diverse group of authors was able to appear in a single magazine without anyone getting hurt.

Aaron's Magazine of the Week - February 26, 1938 issue of Argosy

Thanks to Quentin Tarantino, the phrase "pulp fiction" has come back into use, but many have forgotten its origin. For the first half of the Twentieth Century, the popular market for fiction was dominated by "pulp" magazines. The Magazine of the Week is the February 26, 1938 issue of Argosy, arguably the most successful of the pulp magazines.

"Pulp magazines" are so named for the pressed wood pulp on which they were printed. Publishers used cheap wood pulp in lieu of ordinary paper both to keep costs down in a highly competitive market and due to paper shortages during the wars. Because they were printed on such poor quality wood pulp, most pulp magazines have disintegrated over time, and any copy that has survived in good condition is now a collector's item.

Pulp magazines tended to garish covers and sensationalistic stories -- the term "pulp fiction" refers to this exuberant but unpolished style -- but the pulps also printed a great deal of excellent fiction. Between the late 1890's and the early 1950's, many important American authors such as Jack London and Tennessee Williams got their starts in the pulps, and it is difficult to name a significant early writer of mystery, romance, science fiction and fantasy, horror, or westerns who did not write for the pulps. Indeed, the very concept of dividing fiction into these different genres originated with the pulps.

The February 26, 1938 issue of Argosy is a typical example of pulp fiction. It contains some short fiction best left forgotten, but also the first appearance of Ship of the Line, a Horatio Hornblower novel by C.S. Forester, whose outstanding sea adventures remain widely read to this day, as well as the conclusion of a novel by Luke Short, a successful author of westerns. (Argosy and other pulps often printed novel-length works by serializing them over several issues.) Incidentally, the apparent holes in the cover of this magazine are with one exception a deliberate part of the cover art -- Hornblower's ship HMS Sutherland and her French adversary are giving each other a pounding.

Argosy was the first of the all-fiction pulps, switched to that format by publisher Frank Munsey in 1896. Before the pulps came along, however, there was yet an earlier option for fiction readers who did not wish to pay for hardcover books. You will see an example of that format next week.