Thursday, June 16, 2016

THE PULP CALENDAR: June 16


The June 16, 1934 issue was the first Argosy I bought for myself. It was a matter of opportunity more than anything else; here was an Argosy at an affordable price from the period I had come to like from reading the issues at unz.org. It isn't really one of my favorite issues. Theodore Roscoe's lead novelette "Lady of Hades" is okay. If I recall right -- I don't have the magazine in front of me right at the moment -- we have a jewel thief trying to convince a boatload of rival thieves that he doesn't have the prize they've all been seeking, and a romance involving the boat captain's ill-treated daughter. I was glad to see Sinclair Gluck's name on the cover when I bought it because I'd liked his later Dan Brice stories, but "Secrecy," a tale of Middle Eastern intrigue, proved a disappointment. It just seemed dull to me. W. C. Tuttle's short story "Romances and Racehorses" is pure comedy and I found it purely hateful. As for the serials, Eustace L. Adams closes out The Terror with an atypical thud, F. V. W. Mason's The Barbarian is pretty good to the limited extent that I've read it, and part two of Frank Richardson Pierce's Picture Rock is at least promising, though as the only installment of five that I've read it can be no more than that. Later I would know which issues I actually wanted and I would know where to go to have an actual choice of what to buy.

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