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Dream Quest, v. 1, issue 1, July 1947
Page 30
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DREAM QUEST 30 First a note about the stories, then after that we shall discuss the new magazine as a whole. The cover is copped by "The City of the Living Dead," by Fletcher Pratt and Lawrence Manning. This ancient reprint from a Gernsback Wonder appeared a few years ago -- we believe in 1941 -- as a hall of fame classic in STARTLING. Now, as then, the thing is anything but sensational. It is not difficult to see why. Like all stories written in the long-gone and antique era of the late twenties and early thirties, it lacks something. Probably it is just the point of view, nothing more, and if a Gernsback reader had been given one the modern tales to read he would have said "It lacks something." Be that as it may, TOOTLD is far from a classic. ## The first story you read on your way through the book is "Stenographer's Hands" by Dr. David H. Keller. This one concerns the efforts of a company called Universal Utilities to increase its business by increasing stenographic efficiency. Seems that there had been a business falloff due to large amounts of errors made by the stenographical staff. Well, the big chief decided to remedy this situation; the plan he finally hit upon was selectively breeding the stenos like cattle, thereby eliminating bad strains and giving an eventual race of fine, blooded stenos. It will add nothing to the quality of this review to recount the methods used -- suffice it to say that the plan broke down, in the usual heartrending manner, when the stock of typists began to get epileptic fits due to inbreeding. So their race was allowed to die out due to the efforts of beautiful Mirabella Smith, umpteenth granddaughter of the Great Man who founded the breeding process in the first place, and a handsome doctor who in the end turns out to be an atavistic typist, a throwback to the days when typists were human. Altogether it makes a nice pulphack story in the best formula tradition; we were not impressed by anything but wonderment, wonderment that any author could have supposed that anything like selective breeding of employees could ever take root in the nation's business. And also a slight amount of disgust...a reprint from the Munsey Argosy is next, "The Strange Case of Lemuel Jenkins" by Philip M. Jenkins, Jr. Lemuel Jenkins was a very impressionable man. He took everything he heard in all seriousness. As gospel. So once his friends decided to rib him; they pretended they couldn't see him. Alas but the poor soul believed them, and really became incapable of being seen. They returned him to normalcy by reversing the process, pretending they could see him; presto, he appears. Another tale in the endless mind-over-matter saga, told, however, in an interesting manner -- and does not have the highly forced and at time laughable tone of Dr. Keller's yarn...Guy Endore, of "Werewolf of Paris" game, is in with "Day of the Dragon", in which he sets up the theory that dragons -- the fire-breathing monsters of legend -- were really alligators, minus heart trouble. It seems that all reptiles have imperfect hearts -- when the blood returns to the heart from Reptilian veins, instead of all being cleansed by the lungs, part of the old, used blood is allowed to go back into the arteries and circulate again, due to a weak wall between the two bloodstreams in the heart. Hence an endless case of autointoxication; hence the sluggishness of the larger reptiles. So a scientist with an inferiority complex, hunting for egoboo, repairs
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DREAM QUEST 30 First a note about the stories, then after that we shall discuss the new magazine as a whole. The cover is copped by "The City of the Living Dead," by Fletcher Pratt and Lawrence Manning. This ancient reprint from a Gernsback Wonder appeared a few years ago -- we believe in 1941 -- as a hall of fame classic in STARTLING. Now, as then, the thing is anything but sensational. It is not difficult to see why. Like all stories written in the long-gone and antique era of the late twenties and early thirties, it lacks something. Probably it is just the point of view, nothing more, and if a Gernsback reader had been given one the modern tales to read he would have said "It lacks something." Be that as it may, TOOTLD is far from a classic. ## The first story you read on your way through the book is "Stenographer's Hands" by Dr. David H. Keller. This one concerns the efforts of a company called Universal Utilities to increase its business by increasing stenographic efficiency. Seems that there had been a business falloff due to large amounts of errors made by the stenographical staff. Well, the big chief decided to remedy this situation; the plan he finally hit upon was selectively breeding the stenos like cattle, thereby eliminating bad strains and giving an eventual race of fine, blooded stenos. It will add nothing to the quality of this review to recount the methods used -- suffice it to say that the plan broke down, in the usual heartrending manner, when the stock of typists began to get epileptic fits due to inbreeding. So their race was allowed to die out due to the efforts of beautiful Mirabella Smith, umpteenth granddaughter of the Great Man who founded the breeding process in the first place, and a handsome doctor who in the end turns out to be an atavistic typist, a throwback to the days when typists were human. Altogether it makes a nice pulphack story in the best formula tradition; we were not impressed by anything but wonderment, wonderment that any author could have supposed that anything like selective breeding of employees could ever take root in the nation's business. And also a slight amount of disgust...a reprint from the Munsey Argosy is next, "The Strange Case of Lemuel Jenkins" by Philip M. Jenkins, Jr. Lemuel Jenkins was a very impressionable man. He took everything he heard in all seriousness. As gospel. So once his friends decided to rib him; they pretended they couldn't see him. Alas but the poor soul believed them, and really became incapable of being seen. They returned him to normalcy by reversing the process, pretending they could see him; presto, he appears. Another tale in the endless mind-over-matter saga, told, however, in an interesting manner -- and does not have the highly forced and at time laughable tone of Dr. Keller's yarn...Guy Endore, of "Werewolf of Paris" game, is in with "Day of the Dragon", in which he sets up the theory that dragons -- the fire-breathing monsters of legend -- were really alligators, minus heart trouble. It seems that all reptiles have imperfect hearts -- when the blood returns to the heart from Reptilian veins, instead of all being cleansed by the lungs, part of the old, used blood is allowed to go back into the arteries and circulate again, due to a weak wall between the two bloodstreams in the heart. Hence an endless case of autointoxication; hence the sluggishness of the larger reptiles. So a scientist with an inferiority complex, hunting for egoboo, repairs
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