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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 6, Spring 1945
Page 131
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 131 Thumbing the Munsey Files with William H. Evans All-Story magazine for April, 1905 presented a semi-humorous story of passable quality by T. Z. Chiswick. "A Kansas Tornado Trust" tells of a device---its principles unstated---which one Horatio Binney invents to detect the approach of tornadoes. This he proceeds to rent to Kansas towns for nominal fees. Finally his discovers a way to control these storms, and tries to use this knowledge for blackmailing a town; but his control backfires, and he disappears into a tornado... May of the same year presented a much different type of story when it reprinted Garrett P. Serviss' "Moon Metal." This is a classic---and will bear rereading even today. I greatly enjoyed it on first reading it in Amazing Stories magazine, and once again when Famous Fantastic Mysteries reprinted it for the third time. The tale tells of a mysterious Dr. Syx, who perfects a process for getting a new metal from the moon. This metal is at first supposed to be mined on earth, and most of the tale is devoted to the revelation of its secret source; it is intensely interesting throughout. The June, 1905 All-Story offered no less than three fantasy tales. "A Dip in the Fourth Dimension," by F. J. Knight-Adkin shows one of the earlier uses of a theme made popular in later years by Bob Olson---the ability to reach around a container and thus take an object from inside without opening it. Here, Andrew Manchester discovers a means of operating through the fourth dimension to reduce the solidity of objects, thus making them almost non-existent. His adventures follow in the lighter vein of Gernsback's Wonder Stories. The tale is slightly more than fair... T. Z. Chiswick's "Wet Weather Vendor" is a sequel to his "Kansas Tornado Trust"; this time we encounter a rain-making device---but it eventually turns out be a hoax. This tale is the poorest of the three... "A Visitation of Voices," by George Halifax is so off-trail that it is difficult to review. In this story strange voices affect certain people strongly, making them good; it is unusual and well above average. Argosy magazine for April, 1905 concluded William Wallace Cook's serial "Adrift in the Unknown." In this final installment Professor Quinn foils the plans of a Venerian king to conquer the earth by remaining on Venus while his friends escape in his space-ship. While old stories like this cannot match the classics of today, they should be recognized as having paved the way for modern novels of the genre and read with an open mind and a few grains of tolerance. If this is done, they are frequently found to be quite good. Argosy for May of that year contained a rather poor effort, "The Crimson Blight," by Frank L. Pollock. In a summer resort a strange red light drives residents insane; the resort is nearly bankrupt when it is discovered that an old recluse who hates the town because it was built on land he once owned is using a giant burning glass equipped with a red filter to cause the trouble. He is finally killed by his own device. In May of 1905 also The Monthly Story Magazine was born. This, in a few years, reverted to the title of The Blue Book Magazine, and remained a prime source of fantasy fiction for decades. It is the only non-Munsey magazine to be considered in this column. The initial issues sets its pattern with Charles F. Willcut's "Enchanted Ring," which tells of a strange ring that predicts good or bad fortune for its owner; it is an interesting and well-told tale. The April 24, 1915 issue of Allstory-Cavalier weekly presented Allan Updagraff's "Gentleman from Jupiter." A dwarf, supposedly from the planet Jupiter, comes to earth to build magnets that are supposed to move it to his mother world. Despite the hoax at the end, the story is a good one... The old master Edgar Rice Burroughs on May 1st began his sequel to "At the Earth's Core." In "Pellucidar" David Innes returns to the center of the earth to rescue his sweetheart Dian; and all sorts of adventures follow in profusion during the five in-
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FANTASY COMMENTATOR 131 Thumbing the Munsey Files with William H. Evans All-Story magazine for April, 1905 presented a semi-humorous story of passable quality by T. Z. Chiswick. "A Kansas Tornado Trust" tells of a device---its principles unstated---which one Horatio Binney invents to detect the approach of tornadoes. This he proceeds to rent to Kansas towns for nominal fees. Finally his discovers a way to control these storms, and tries to use this knowledge for blackmailing a town; but his control backfires, and he disappears into a tornado... May of the same year presented a much different type of story when it reprinted Garrett P. Serviss' "Moon Metal." This is a classic---and will bear rereading even today. I greatly enjoyed it on first reading it in Amazing Stories magazine, and once again when Famous Fantastic Mysteries reprinted it for the third time. The tale tells of a mysterious Dr. Syx, who perfects a process for getting a new metal from the moon. This metal is at first supposed to be mined on earth, and most of the tale is devoted to the revelation of its secret source; it is intensely interesting throughout. The June, 1905 All-Story offered no less than three fantasy tales. "A Dip in the Fourth Dimension," by F. J. Knight-Adkin shows one of the earlier uses of a theme made popular in later years by Bob Olson---the ability to reach around a container and thus take an object from inside without opening it. Here, Andrew Manchester discovers a means of operating through the fourth dimension to reduce the solidity of objects, thus making them almost non-existent. His adventures follow in the lighter vein of Gernsback's Wonder Stories. The tale is slightly more than fair... T. Z. Chiswick's "Wet Weather Vendor" is a sequel to his "Kansas Tornado Trust"; this time we encounter a rain-making device---but it eventually turns out be a hoax. This tale is the poorest of the three... "A Visitation of Voices," by George Halifax is so off-trail that it is difficult to review. In this story strange voices affect certain people strongly, making them good; it is unusual and well above average. Argosy magazine for April, 1905 concluded William Wallace Cook's serial "Adrift in the Unknown." In this final installment Professor Quinn foils the plans of a Venerian king to conquer the earth by remaining on Venus while his friends escape in his space-ship. While old stories like this cannot match the classics of today, they should be recognized as having paved the way for modern novels of the genre and read with an open mind and a few grains of tolerance. If this is done, they are frequently found to be quite good. Argosy for May of that year contained a rather poor effort, "The Crimson Blight," by Frank L. Pollock. In a summer resort a strange red light drives residents insane; the resort is nearly bankrupt when it is discovered that an old recluse who hates the town because it was built on land he once owned is using a giant burning glass equipped with a red filter to cause the trouble. He is finally killed by his own device. In May of 1905 also The Monthly Story Magazine was born. This, in a few years, reverted to the title of The Blue Book Magazine, and remained a prime source of fantasy fiction for decades. It is the only non-Munsey magazine to be considered in this column. The initial issues sets its pattern with Charles F. Willcut's "Enchanted Ring," which tells of a strange ring that predicts good or bad fortune for its owner; it is an interesting and well-told tale. The April 24, 1915 issue of Allstory-Cavalier weekly presented Allan Updagraff's "Gentleman from Jupiter." A dwarf, supposedly from the planet Jupiter, comes to earth to build magnets that are supposed to move it to his mother world. Despite the hoax at the end, the story is a good one... The old master Edgar Rice Burroughs on May 1st began his sequel to "At the Earth's Core." In "Pellucidar" David Innes returns to the center of the earth to rescue his sweetheart Dian; and all sorts of adventures follow in profusion during the five in-
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