Wed 15 May 2024
SF Diary Review: OTHER WORLDS SCIENCE STORIES June-July 1951.
Posted by Steve under Diary Reviews , Magazines , Science Fiction & Fantasy[12] Comments
OTHER WORLDS SCIENCE STORIES. June-July 1951. Editor: Raymond A. Palmer. Cover art: H. W. McCauley. Overall rating: *
RUSSELL BRANCH “Time Flaw.” Novelette. The love betwen Captain Hunter of the S. S. Stella and one of his passengers is interrupted by disaster and application of Einstein’s theories. Poor writing keeps plot from any depths it might have been capable of. (1)
POUL ANDERSON “The Missionaries.” Alien worship of machines is carried to its logical conclusion, cannibalism. (2)
R. BRETNOR “The Fledermaus Report.” Martin Fledermaus, chosen as first human to fly to the moon, discovers that the beauty of one’s wife is relative. Tripe. (0)
ROBERT BLOCH “The Tin You Love to Touch.” Low-grade comedy about the female robot maid that comes between Roscoe Droop and his domineering wife, This is really low. (0)
RAY PALMER “Mr. Yellow Jacket.” Galactic census-takers discover that some humans have the power yo make thoughts real, Included (page 81) is one of the silliest theories of meteors ever. (0)
S. J. BYRNE “Beyond the Darkness.” Novella. Intrigue aboard one of a fleet of FTL ships seeking new worlds for humanity. The passengers are subjected to a memory-erasing device so that the rebellious navigators can return to contest for already inhabited worlds. Nad, our hero, finds the ex-captain still alive; the plan fails, escape, discovery, loss of heroine, villain returns from oblivion, cowardly brother redeems himself. People don’t really talk and act this way, do they? *½
May 16th, 2024 at 3:52 am
Your rating for this issue seems on the mark for a typical Palmer-edited magazine, although I would willingly read the Anderson, the Bretnor, and the Bloch, no matter how poorly they are presented. The Branch, the Byrne, and the Palmer, not so much.
McCauley’s cartoonish yellow jacket on the cover did not help.
May 16th, 2024 at 12:50 pm
I was still young and a somewhat inexperienced reader of science fiction at the time when I read the magazine and wrote this review. I don’t think I could make it through *any* of the stories now, save maybe the Anderson, whose contribution was probably rejected by every other editor he submitted it to.
May 16th, 2024 at 3:05 pm
I’ve just checked. Poul Anderson’s story in this issue has never been been reprinted or collected.
I thought not.
May 17th, 2024 at 12:36 am
Low comedy by Robert Bloch? Well his humor in those days was always influenced by Thorne Smith and Edgar Allen Poe.
May 17th, 2024 at 1:00 am
Now that you mention it, who remembers Thorne Smith any more? Besides me, and obviously you.
May 17th, 2024 at 11:49 am
As forgotten as James Branch Cabell, another fantasist, whom I was thinking about the other day. At least Smith made some money from the movies. How about a Thorne Smith Film Festival, with the Topper films, I Married a Witch, and Turnabout?
May 17th, 2024 at 12:10 pm
Sounds like an all-day affair. I’d go!
May 23rd, 2024 at 12:17 pm
There are Always lower depths…Lester Del Rey went on a tear of reprinting Smith novels in the ’80s, and they presumably sold well enough…and Bloch’s lesser efforts were easier jokes in the same mode, to be sure, but they should’t be used to calumnify either Bloch’s or Smith’s better efforts (a clown on another site decided Bloch was basically Dan Brown the other week, and I’ve now received my Only Warning from the pseudonymous host for being so very mean to said commenter). Instead of RAP barely trying with this issue of OTHER WORLDS with mostly capable writers dumping their least efforts, you could’ve been reading, say, SPACE SCIENCE FICTION (the worst US one) or the WONDERS OF THE SPACEWAYS and the other John Spencer UK magazines.
May 23rd, 2024 at 2:30 pm
Yes, SPACE SF as a magazine was another one that fed on rejects from other magazines, but I seem to remember thinking it better than OTHER WORLDS. I never tried reading WONDERS OF THE SPACEWAYS, but its reputation is Not Good. (SFE calls the stories “dreadful to abysmal.”)
May 23rd, 2024 at 2:31 pm
Doing some Googling on my own, I have just learned that SPACE SF was edited by none other than Michael Avallone (both issues). I did not know that before.
May 23rd, 2024 at 3:37 pm
https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2022/09/sswffb-stories-by-fritz-leiber-brian.html
A quick survey of Avallone’s magazines and a notable F&SF…
May 23rd, 2024 at 8:57 pm
Thanks, Todd. I knew that Avallone had a hand in some of these things. but not all. I met him a number of times. He was quite a guy, always with a story to tell.