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Dream Quest, v. 1, issue 1, July 1947

Page 44

DREAM QUEST  44
THE ISSUE. It concerns the theft by various peoples of a block of a new element called zonium. And the reasons for said thefts. There is a punch ending. We think George O. has found his metier at last. He seems to do better on yarns of this kind than he did on purely technical yarns like THE LOST ART and RECOIL. QRM--INTERPLANETARY was another yarn in this humorous vein, and a good one. We hope to see much more of Smith in TWS. And ITC is one of the neatest yarns we've read in quite a while, even if not classical like Kuttner's masterpiece.

That brings us to the first of the shorts, "Noon" by Hudson Hastings. Most of you have read a yarn called "Twilight," by John W. Campbell, Jr., under the pen name of Don A. Stuart. "Noon" is in the same vein. There we have to stop. Only to say that "Noon" ranks easily among all our all-time top five list of shorts...leave us predict that this little superclassic will rate mighty darned high on the Fsy Review poll next year. It's easily TWS's best yarn yet in 1947. It may be the best of the last five years. We wish we had words to describe it. And may we ash who is Hudson Hastings? He must be the pen name of some top author. Maybe C. L. Moore. We wouldn't be one bit surprised.

There are two other shorts among the five that are worthy of more than passing consideration. They are "The Stroller," by Margaret St. Clair, and "Dark Dawn," by Kuttner Hammond. The former is notable mainly for one of the neatest endings we've seen. And DD is another beautifully written story about a man who was stricken blind by an atomic blast, but whose brain was altered somehow so that he could take possession of the eyes of animals and look through them. Doing this, he made contact with an ocean floor civilization. Altogether a very well-written story.

The other two shorts are average. "The Jet Jockeys" is about the lives and loves of stunt rocket pilots of the future. "Donkeys to Bald Pate," by Samuel Mines, is a very, very inconsequential thing in which a scientist raises donkeys to human intelligence. You can skip both of these without missing too much.

Departments -- The Reader Speaks has improved. It's long, and the letters seem not to have been cut too much. And for the other department, SCIENCE FICTION BOOK REVIEW -- this is good. We wish Merwin wouldn't pan Doc Smith so much, however. He seems to forget how long ago the EEEpics were written. After all, most any mediocre novel of today, had it been printed in the Gernsback era, would be acclaimed as the greatest classic of all time, now. What if, say, HIDDEN CITY had been issued in AS in 1927 instead of 47? Or even if ALL ABOARD FOR THE MOON. And maybe STF BOOK REVIEW could be made longer.
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WEIRD TALES. VOL. 39 #11, July 1947. 15c ((Then))

This number of the oldest mag contains nine stories, two of them dubbed "long novelets" and the rest short stories -- one of them isn't

WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE SERIOUS ARTICLES, FICTION, HUMOR TO DQ???

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DREAM QUEST 44 THE ISSUE. It concerns the theft by various peoples of a block of a new element called zonium. And the reasons for said thefts. There is a punch ending. We think George O. has found his metier at last. He seems to do better on yarns of this kind than he did on purely technical yarns like THE LOST ART and RECOIL. QRM--INTERPLANETARY was another yarn in this humorous vein, and a good one. We hope to see much more of Smith in TWS. And ITC is one of the neatest yarns we've read in quite a while, even if not classical like Kuttner's masterpiece. That brings us to the first of the shorts, "Noon" by Hudson Hastings. Most of you have read a yarn called "Twilight," by John W. Campbell, Jr., under the pen name of Don A. Stuart. "Noon" is in the same vein. There we have to stop. Only to say that "Noon" ranks easily among all our all-time top five list of shorts...leave us predict that this little superclassic will rate mighty darned high on the Fsy Review poll next year. It's easily TWS's best yarn yet in 1947. It may be the best of the last five years. We wish we had words to describe it. And may we ash who is Hudson Hastings? He must be the pen name of some top author. Maybe C. L. Moore. We wouldn't be one bit surprised. There are two other shorts among the five that are worthy of more than passing consideration. They are "The Stroller," by Margaret St. Clair, and "Dark Dawn," by Kuttner Hammond. The former is notable mainly for one of the neatest endings we've seen. And DD is another beautifully written story about a man who was stricken blind by an atomic blast, but whose brain was altered somehow so that he could take possession of the eyes of animals and look through them. Doing this, he made contact with an ocean floor civilization. Altogether a very well-written story. The other two shorts are average. "The Jet Jockeys" is about the lives and loves of stunt rocket pilots of the future. "Donkeys to Bald Pate," by Samuel Mines, is a very, very inconsequential thing in which a scientist raises donkeys to human intelligence. You can skip both of these without missing too much. Departments -- The Reader Speaks has improved. It's long, and the letters seem not to have been cut too much. And for the other department, SCIENCE FICTION BOOK REVIEW -- this is good. We wish Merwin wouldn't pan Doc Smith so much, however. He seems to forget how long ago the EEEpics were written. After all, most any mediocre novel of today, had it been printed in the Gernsback era, would be acclaimed as the greatest classic of all time, now. What if, say, HIDDEN CITY had been issued in AS in 1927 instead of 47? Or even if ALL ABOARD FOR THE MOON. And maybe STF BOOK REVIEW could be made longer. ************************* WEIRD TALES. VOL. 39 #11, July 1947. 15c ((Then)) This number of the oldest mag contains nine stories, two of them dubbed "long novelets" and the rest short stories -- one of them isn't WOULD YOU LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE SERIOUS ARTICLES, FICTION, HUMOR TO DQ???