Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967. Damien Broderick

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Strange Highways: Reading Science Fantasy, 1950-1967 - Damien  Broderick


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be precise), price one and sixpence. The cover stock has more of a matte finish than most of the digest magazines of its day.

      The interior illustrations—including those by Turner and Powell—are thoroughly undistinguished, though they are also poorly displayed. They are small and do not seem to be well reproduced, though one can’t tell by looking what problems result from reproduction and sizing and what from the deficiencies of the original.

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      Most of these are review articles, running around two pages, of several books that are related thematically or otherwise. For example, Aiken’s article “A History of the Future” in 1 reviews three books by Robert Heinlein, and his “The Charms of Space Opera” in 2 covers Nelson Bond’s Lancelot Biggs, Spaceman; L. Ron Hubbard’s The Kingslayer; George O. Smith’s Nomad and A Pattern For Conquest; and Otis Adelbert Kline’s The Port of Peril. (Bond—“approximately, the P.G. Wodehouse of science fiction”—comes out much better than Smith—“His dialogue is flat with a terrible flatness, despite the fact that no character ever says anything which cannot possibly be snapped, hissed, grinned, thundered, grimaced, chorused, laughed, exploded, wisecracked or snarled.”) These reviews are all perfectly capable and literate, but not very interesting at this late date given the familiarity or deserved obscurity of the subjects and the solemn tones and middle of the road opinions of most of the reviewers.

      The other nonfiction items in 1 are Thomas Sheridan’s “The Battle of the Canals,” about the controversy over the existence of the Martian canals, and Herbert Hughes’ “The Djinn in the Test-Tube,” reacting to an article about SF by the celebrated scientist and humanist Jacob Bronowski (misspelled Brunowski) in the Continental Daily Mail. 2 features an article bylined Sheridan about the risks of Earth’s colliding with a comet, plus Valentine Parker’s “The Dawn of Space-Travel,” which rambles from a Hayden Planetarium show to the films Destination Moon and Rocket Ship X-M to the book The Conquest of Space.

      Advertisements on the inside front cover of 1 are from Arkham House and the bookseller Postal Preview; on the inside back cover, from the Fantasy Book Centre; and on the back cover for New Worlds and Astounding Science Fiction (“Famed throughout the world!”—no doubt the British Reprint Edition or BRE). The headline of the Postal Preview ad reads “Now is the TIME to obtain some of the absorbing books reviewed in this magazine,” and the four time-travel books from one of the review articles are listed. This coordination between advertisement and the contents of the issue in which it appeared gives a hint of what a small world SF must have been in the UK at the time. The ads in 2 are similar to those in 1.

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      The fiction...there’s the rub. The fiction contents of 1 include one novelette, “The Belt” by J. M. Walsh, and four short stories: “Time’s Arrow” by Arthur C. Clarke, “Monster” by Christopher Youd, “The Cycle” by P. E. Cleator, and “Advent of the Entities” by E. R. James. 2 similarly contains one novelette, F. G. Rayer’s “The Ark,” and four short stories: John Russell Fearn’s “Black-Out,” Arthur C. Clarke’s “Silence, Please!” (under the pseudonym Charles Willis) and “History Lesson,” and Norman C. Pallant’s “Martian Mandate.”

      The lead novelette in 2, Rayer’s “The Ark,” smacks of a later but not necessarily better vintage (Thrilling Wonder Stories circa 1940?). The world has been done in by nuclear power which first causes “radioactive infection” and then, after the atomic piles are shut down, a volcanic period that mostly wrecks civilization. Humanity has become divided into the governing Intellectuals and the beaten-down and brutish Workers. Now a comet is on the way to shut down the whole show. What to do but build an Ark to ride out the cataclysm and start a new civilization with a few carefully selected survivors? The obligatory beautiful stowaway is very much present and chewing the scenery, as are all the other stereotyped characters, and the plot is ponderously melodramatic.

      Neither story fits the Fantasy part of the magazine’s title. Both are examples of science fiction, although of a rather primitive kind more common decades earlier.

      So what exactly did Gillings think he was doing? It’s hard to say—apparently as hard for him as for anybody else. The first issue starts off with an editorial manifesto of considerable length but little discernible content. A sample:

      If few had faith in an inner world [referring to the Hollow Earth], there were thousands who believed in 1835 that there was a world of green mountains and blue lakes in the moon...and of flying men! Richard Adams Locke’s science-fantasy, better known as The Moon Hoax, was presented in the New York Sun in such clever style that it seemed gospel truth—at least for a week or so. More recently, New Yorkers exhibited no less belief in Mr. Wells’ invading Martians, as dispensed by radio by Mr. Welles. And the flying saucers? Space-ships, and little men from Venus...? Truly, science-fantasy has a potency which does not always depend on its plausibility; for its dreams very often come true.

      SCIENCE-FANTASY which is—intentionally—fiction. Science-fantasy which is—or might well be—fact. In this new magazine


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