Blog Archives

United We Stand, by Mack Reynolds, appeared in the May 1950 issue of Amazing Stories. It can be read here at archive.org. United We Stand is an experimental story told almost entirely in the form of short news-clippings, excerpts of speeches, and broadcast transcripts. Think Dracula, only each excerpt is a paragraph or two instead […]

The Psyche Steps Out was published in the May 1950 issue of Amazing Stories. Though attributed to the Ziff-Davis house-name “Gerald Vance”, its author is unknown. It can be read here at Archive.org. Look. The “[Pulp Story] is Isekai” meme is getting worn out. I’m tired of it. But dammit, sometimes a story hits all […]

Let’s Do It My Way, by Robert Bloch, was published under the Ziff Davis house name E. K. Jarvis in the May 1950 issue of Amazing Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. Now HERE we’ve got a quick little ray-gun thriller like what you’d expect to see out of Planet Stories. (And a […]

Tooth or Consequences, by Robert Bloch appeared in the May 1950 issue of Amazing Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. Oof. Well, not quite an oof, even though maybe it should have been an oof. In Tooth or Consequences, Master of Horror Robert Bloch tells the story of a struggle between a vampire […]

Keep it Simple, by Frances M. Deegan appeared in the May 1950 issue of Amazing Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. I haven’t really read enough Spy-Fi from this period to accurately judge Frances M. Deegan’s Keep It Simple. While it wasn’t quite as high-tension thrilling as the first half of Heinlein’s Gulf, […]

The Lost Bomb by Rog Phillips appeared in the May 1950 issue of Amazing Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. Rog Phillips certainly dominates this issue of Amazing stories with around 50k words of his fiction. Unlike Slaves of the Crystal Brain, The Lost Bomb is published under his own name. The Lost […]

Short Reviews will return next week with more Rog Phillips in Amazing Stories! Cirsova Publishing is thrilled to announce Duel Visions, an all-new anthology of horror and macabre by Misha Burnett and Louise Sorensen. Duel Visions marks Cirsova Publishing’s second departure from its flagship publication, Cirsova Magazine, and its first ever traditional format book release. […]

A lot of ink has been spilled on trying to categorize science fiction into hard and soft categories, whether at the Castalia House blog, other online sites, and in print. What quickly emerges is how fluid the definitions are. Hard science fiction may refer, depending on the speaker, to fiction addressing the physical sciences, adhering […]

If This Be Utopia… by Kris Neville appeared in the May 1950 issue of Amazing Stories. It can be read here at Archive.org. Kris Neville’s “If this Be Utopia…” is a classic example of one of those “warning what the future will be like under this or that political system” sci-fi fables. In a future […]