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Inspiration, v. 4, issue 1, April 1946
Page 14
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14 INSPIRATION A STREET & SMITH PUBLICATION ASTOUNDING STORIES OCT 1933 20[[cent symbol]] THOUGHT-VARIANT 1933 had been a bad year for science-fiction, and not a single mag had appeared with the September 1933 dateline -- the only time such a thing has happened in literature's history. But in October 1933, things began to pick up. Bot WONDER and AMAZING went back to monthly publication. But the most important development at this period, and he of the most important in the history of science-fiction, was the revival of ASTOUNDING. The Clayton ASTOUNDING had folded several months before, and now the title was picked up by the largest and best known of the pulp publishers, Street and Smith. Like Clayton, S & S set fairly high standards, and it only remained to be seen what the editorial policy of the new magazine would be. Editor was F. Orlin Tremaine, and Tremaine has been one of those most influential in the development of s-f. Luckily, he was apparently given a free hand so long as circulation standards were met. That first, October 1933, S & S ASTOUNDING wasn't especially exceptional, and about half the stories were of a weird or fantasy nature. Best of the purely s-f stories was the Gilmore space-opera "The Space Coffin". The next issue was a big improvement, with Williamson's unforgettable "Dead Start Station" heading the list. This is one of the greatest shorts ever printed. Also liked was West's "Plane People", despite the weak science. It was probably the December 1933 ASTOUNDING that first started me on the road to ruin and rabid prozine reader. Before this issue I'd read fairly steadily all 3 s-f mags, but without any exceptional interest. Now I started reading them all regularly, and ASTOUNDING became almost an obsession. I see now that I'm going to have hard job in writing about the ASTOUNDINGs of 1934-35. There will be a desire to stop typing and re-read innumerable stories, and to mention almost every story. During this period, and for that matter right up to the present, ASTOUNDING printed so many good stories that, in the interests of keeping this to a reasonable length, I'll have to omit many stories which would have been listed had they appeared in some other mag. This December 1933 issue had Wandrei's "Farewell to Earth" and Locke's "The Machine That Knew too Much". But the story which seemed outstanding to me and probably got me into the habit of reading s-f regularly almost to the abandonment of all other literature was Schachner's "Ancestral Voices". Time has dimmed some of the luster from this story, but it's still interesting reading, and deserves classic classification. 1934 opened with another classic, Wandrei's "Colossus" ', and also contained Schachner's "Redmask of the Outlands". The Coblentz "Confessions of Dr. DeKalb" also deserves listing. "Colossus really gave indication of the unusual story
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14 INSPIRATION A STREET & SMITH PUBLICATION ASTOUNDING STORIES OCT 1933 20[[cent symbol]] THOUGHT-VARIANT 1933 had been a bad year for science-fiction, and not a single mag had appeared with the September 1933 dateline -- the only time such a thing has happened in literature's history. But in October 1933, things began to pick up. Bot WONDER and AMAZING went back to monthly publication. But the most important development at this period, and he of the most important in the history of science-fiction, was the revival of ASTOUNDING. The Clayton ASTOUNDING had folded several months before, and now the title was picked up by the largest and best known of the pulp publishers, Street and Smith. Like Clayton, S & S set fairly high standards, and it only remained to be seen what the editorial policy of the new magazine would be. Editor was F. Orlin Tremaine, and Tremaine has been one of those most influential in the development of s-f. Luckily, he was apparently given a free hand so long as circulation standards were met. That first, October 1933, S & S ASTOUNDING wasn't especially exceptional, and about half the stories were of a weird or fantasy nature. Best of the purely s-f stories was the Gilmore space-opera "The Space Coffin". The next issue was a big improvement, with Williamson's unforgettable "Dead Start Station" heading the list. This is one of the greatest shorts ever printed. Also liked was West's "Plane People", despite the weak science. It was probably the December 1933 ASTOUNDING that first started me on the road to ruin and rabid prozine reader. Before this issue I'd read fairly steadily all 3 s-f mags, but without any exceptional interest. Now I started reading them all regularly, and ASTOUNDING became almost an obsession. I see now that I'm going to have hard job in writing about the ASTOUNDINGs of 1934-35. There will be a desire to stop typing and re-read innumerable stories, and to mention almost every story. During this period, and for that matter right up to the present, ASTOUNDING printed so many good stories that, in the interests of keeping this to a reasonable length, I'll have to omit many stories which would have been listed had they appeared in some other mag. This December 1933 issue had Wandrei's "Farewell to Earth" and Locke's "The Machine That Knew too Much". But the story which seemed outstanding to me and probably got me into the habit of reading s-f regularly almost to the abandonment of all other literature was Schachner's "Ancestral Voices". Time has dimmed some of the luster from this story, but it's still interesting reading, and deserves classic classification. 1934 opened with another classic, Wandrei's "Colossus" ', and also contained Schachner's "Redmask of the Outlands". The Coblentz "Confessions of Dr. DeKalb" also deserves listing. "Colossus really gave indication of the unusual story
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