#John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

theamazingstories · 2 years ago

Text

TV REVIEW: THE MIDWICH CUCKOOS (2022), some spoilers

Figure 1 – Midwich Cuckoos First Edition (British) Before I begin, let me congratulate our R. Graeme Cameron, who has won the Canadian Aurora Award for Fan Writing! Well done, Graeme! Back in the late 1950s, when I was a wee lad, I read everything in the library that was even vaguely science-fictional. That’s the reason I read Moonraker, by Ian Fleming, years before anyone ever heard of James…

View On WordPress

4 notes · View notes

novaterrae · 6 years ago

Text

Vol 1 No. 2, again only dated 1946. Carnell’s own cover design, and from this distance it really isn’t all that much of an improvement on the first issue. The contents aren’t all that much of an improvement, either, sadly.

Kicking things off is ‘The Living Lies’ from one John Beynon. Beynon went on to fame, success and immortality as John Wyndham (he gloried in the full name of John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris, all of which he used in various combinations), but on the strength of his offering here you’d have to have been exceptionally prescient to put your money on him. ‘The Living Lies’ is a stinker. While it’s not badly written, the plot is so preposterous that it stretches the reader’s willingness to suspend disbelief past breaking point. It’s a pity, because Beynon was clearly trying to tackle some interesting issues (race, capitalism, the relationship between the two), but his central conceit that Venusian settlers from Earth manufactured their own racial problem by turning a proportion of their new-born whites either green, red or black via the application of a certain marinade and a slow bake at gas mark 3 is just too absurd.

Having said which, ‘The Living Lies’ shines in comparison to Patrick S. Selby‘s ‘Space Ship 13′ (inexplicably, the cover story), which is so poor it defies summary. It’s difficult to imagine that Carnell was so short of material that he felt the need to print this. Even the half-a-million words John Russell Fearn submitted weren’t this poor.

As proven by the next story, ‘Vicious Circle’ by Polton Cross. Cross was, of course, John Russell Fearn, and considering this, ‘Vicious Circle’ isn’t that bad. Silly, yes; undeveloped, yes; dashed off before the idea had had chance to germinate properly, probably. But for all that it’s far more interesting than any of Fearn’s contributions to No. 1. In this one, a poor chap’s timeline takes a spiral path, continually throwing him further into the future and (alternately) the past. It’s an interesting notion that could have made a pretty enjoyable novel in the hands of - say - Brian W. Aldiss.

Between these two stories is a short editorial, in which Carnell pronounces himself dissatisfied with No. 1, and states that each successive issue will see some improvement. After a little flannel about upcoming issues he notes the positive effects of the Bikini atom bomb test and the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on sales of science fiction magazines. Good-oh.

L. J. Johnson’s short article ‘Ahead of Reality’ has a similar preoccupation, tempered with a kind of told-you-so fatalism. “But now,” he says, “...enthusiasts are returning from a scientific War... they find themselves living in a world of science fiction instead of reading about it.” He concludes that “Man is fast catching up his own imagination.”

If ‘Vicious Circle’ had engendered any vague notion that John Russell Fearn had a decent story in him, it’s pretty soon trampled into extinction by Thornton Ayre’s ‘Lunar Concession’. Thornton Ayre is - again - Fearn, and one wonders if it were he or Carnell who came up with all the pseudonymns. ‘Lunar Concession’ is as dismal as all the others, and must have stunk even by the standards of 1946. The characters are the merest cut-outs, walking talking stereotypes clothed in the barest threads of a plot which is only science fiction by virtue of being set on the moon and involving some guff about a super fuel. It could just as easily be a Western, or a poor entry in the Sexton Blake Library, or something of Ian Fleming’s.

Forrest J. Ackerman’s account of ‘Pacificon’ is of little interest, but at least it cleanses the palate after the second helping of Fearn.

Sadly, there are seventeen exclamation marks on the first page of John Brody’s ‘Foreign Body’. Seventeen! And the text only takes up half the page! So it’s a pretty peppery dish. Other than that, the story is only notable for sharing the same central conceit (and insect aliens) as ‘Quatermass and the Pit’, which it predates by a good twelve years. One wonders if Nigel Kneale read it.

Alden Lorraine’s ‘The Micro Man’ is a dreadful mish-mash. Lorraine was Forrest J. Ackerman, and his story is just nonsense. It’s about a tiny man who somehow ends up on earth and is accidentally crushed by the ‘big’ man who finds him on the window-sill of a street car. Tosh, from start to finish.

W. P. Cockcroft’s ‘Green Spheres’ brings no. 2 to a close and - while it’s nothing special, being a sort of Wellsian tale of an invading species being defeated by something commonplace after all sorts of other tactics have failed - it’s (along with Vicious Circle) undoubtedly the best of the bunch. Again, one wonders if Nigel Kneale read it, or (even) John Wyndham.

#new worlds #John Beynon #John Wyndham #Patrick S. Selby #E. J. Carnell #science fiction #Polton Cross #john russell fearn #thornton ayre #forrest j. ackerman #john brody #Alden Lorraine #W. P. Cockcroft

1 note · View note