Title: Futuria Fantasia, Fall 1939
Author: Bradbury, Ray
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Futuria Fantasia, Fall 1939" ***


                            FUTURIA FANTASIA

                               fall 1939

                              vol. 1 no. 2

                            Ray D. Bradbury
                                editor

                               10 cents



[Illustration: WORRY!!!]


A newer, plumper Futuria Fantasia greets you, with more articles, more
value and less Technocracy! The reason for the scanty garb of our summer
issue was TIME, that villain who holds his sword over all humanity. I
didn't have time to contact various authors and fans--and there was
little time for mimeographing, since the Angel expedition to New York
was fast approaching, and ye editor was wandering around in a daze
waiting for the day when his bus would sweep him off to Manhattan. The
trip to New York was a happily successful thing. Futuria Fantasia would
like to toss an orchid to the editors who contributed so generously to
the convention, and at the same time blare forth with a juicy razzberry
for a certain trio of fans who made fools of themselves at the Conv.
(and u know who we meen).

But enuf of this boring fan quarreling ** action should have been taken
at the convention and there's no use bawling over fused rockets. This
issue we bring you another cover by Hans Bok. We sincerely believe his
work is superior to any work done in fan mags for a long time. He has to
be good ** for he is a protegee of no less a person than Maxfield
Parrish, whose paintings have, at one time or another in the past
decades, made more than one home beautiful. If you haven't had a
Maxfield Parrish painting in yur home, it ain't a home. And, we feel
proud of Hans becuz we acted as agent to Weird Tales while
conventioneering in New York. Latest report is that Hans is doing an
Illustration for Weird Tales. Here's luck, Hans, and may you keep up the
good work while staying in Manhattan.

With this issue we introduce two new fans, and two new authors. They are
Anthony Corvais, who makes his part-time home in Tucson, Arizona, and
Guy Amory of Phoenix. Corvais, twenty-two years old, has done a neat job
with his RETURN FROM THE DEAD. In the winter edition he will let go with
another original SYMPHONIC ABDUCTION. Guy Amory, after sum few hours of
hard labor, finally got an interview out of Hankuttner, which is work in
any man's lingo. Both boys were in L.A. for two weeks about a month
back, and gave their promise to support FuFa from now to TDWACOH (the
day when _astounding_ comes out hourly).

Ron Reynolds, whose satire on Technocracy received favorable comment,
comes back with his views and news about the Convention ** and Corrinne
Ellsworth, gracious female fan of L.A. presents us with something that
is distasteful to me, THE CASE OF THE VANISHING CAFETERIA. I protest
against her grossly horrid insinuations about my Ghoul's Broths.
Manhattaneers will tell you that it is only at the full moon that I can
concoct one ... tho a cafeteria or Automat atmosphere does work wonders
with my ego--specially if there are enuf people watching to make it
profitable.

As you will notice there is not a great deal to be sed about Technocracy
in this issue ** mainly becuz I am tired of talking and the response we
get is vury, vury funny, if not childish. If someone cares to challenge
us on Technocracy we shall be only too glad to answer all questions, but
when a bunch of crackpots start dragging in their own theories,
relatives and human nature then we give up the ghost. We take this
occasion to challenge the so-far-silent John W. Campbell to a duel of
words on this subject. How's about it, Campbell?



The Galapurred Forsendyke

A tale of the Indies

By H.V.B.


He remembered--but never dreamed its source--the old poem which began,
"A swibosh is an Indian," and as he leaned back in his chair puffing on
a pipe, his lean bronzed face darkly serious against the moonglow, a
little echo hooted from the hills as if an owl'd cried.

Then Edris called. At the alarmant tingle of the bell, like a tinnient
tang of a rattlesnake's tremor, he ran to the telephone and shouted
eagerly, "Edris! My darling." Then he remembered to take receiver off
the hook. He was answered by dead silence. Then, to his amazement and
utter horror, a long damp tongue swished out of the mouthpiece, lapped
his cheek and disappeared in a puff of acrid steam. "The Martians!" was
his first thot, as he tremblingly buttered his toast. Then he heard
Edris' voice. It floated easily from the ceiling as if it were inverted
steam. He looked up, and discovered overhead that the planet India had
vanished from the map. It had peeled itself loose and inched over the
wallpaper and was now wrapping itself like a second skin around a baked
potato. "But that's impossible!" he breathed, "There aren't any potatoes
in August, and especially in bathtubs." Again Edris' voice reached him.
What was she saying? "Go with the pretty men, dear, they'll feed you an
orange." But that sounded crazy. He was worried, and clung to a red-hot
radiator which melted into a puddle at his touch, burning a round red
hole in the rug.

Seventeen puffs of black vapor--he counted them--whiffed up winsomely
from the charred circle. "Around and around," he said, dreamily,
remembering the second line of the poem, "When Fifthly is perplexed."
Edris oozed out of the shadows to him, longlike and snaky, with fearthy
fettles adorning her foresome, and a blaze in her eyes like the
hurmwurst of Whidby. Island, island, he repeated to himself, thrusting
an negatory hand thru the farthing of her wrabdy--and her mouth parted
to disclose another mouth, from which issued visible words like ticker
tape of steam in chilly air, so surprising him that he could only stand
rooted, like a tree. It was then that he noticed the snakes in her hair,
as the leaves sprouted from his cheeks end from every simple vascicle of
his tubular perpendages sometimes cursorily applellated, eyebreams.

Among the amiderie of her fascinating fingers, which she waved before
his face like the shimmer of phosphorescence on a salty sea on hot
midsummer moonlight, took shape an elegant form, something reminiscent
of a redchief. Within his sore heart a black thot grew, spurred by the
excess of his agonized birdtwitters, bidding him to slay and do so
quickly. He reached for a weapon. There was nothing at hand but a slug.
He groaned. A slug against snakes? What chance of victory? As tho she'd
read his thot, she moved nearer, her laffter lifting and lowering like a
fragile boat on waves of honey. One by one her eyes--390 of them--popped
out with hollow slaps like corks from bottles, while within the dull
draperies of scarlet which adorned the farthest lamp-post stirred an
unnameable bloody something which sent forth a thrill of foreboding into
his anguished heart, and he remembered the 4th and last lines of the
poem "He who dines alone is hexed." He uttered a gurgling scream as she
leaped upon him, and her snales torn and the steam of her bare
eye-sockets scalded him--then the ensanguined thing crawled limply over
the face of the blinding desert and the vacant sun stared sitelessly at
nothing.



I'M THROUGH!

BY _Foo E Onya_


The editor of this magazine, under the impression that I am still one of
that queer tribe known as science-fiction fans, has asked me to write an
article. I am no longer a science-fiction fan. I'M THROUGH! However, I
have decided to do the article and explain with my chin leading just why
I am through. Here goes.

As to science-fiction; the trouble with me, I think, is that I have
outgrown the stuff mentally--and that's not a boast, seeing the type of
minds modern science-fiction is dished up for. I'll admit there are a
few exceptions, but on the whole, s.f. fans are as arrogant,
self-satisfied, conspicuously blind, and critically moronic a group as
the good Lord has allowed to people the Earth. I don't blush that I was
once a s.f. fan, starting back in '26--I merely thank my personal gods
that somewhere along the route I woke up and began to see s.f. as it
really is. The superiority complex found in group known as science
fiction fans is probably unequalled anywhere. Their certitude in their
superiority, as readers of s.f., over all other fiction, is
representative of an absolutely incredibly stupid complacence. Facing
the business squarely, we can see why s.f. lays CLAIM to such
superiority: for no other obvious reason than that such fiction is the
bastard child of science and the romantic temperament. But NOT, good
lord, because it is INSTRUCTIVE! This has too long been preached, until
s.f. readers actually believe it! The amazing _naivette_ of these
readers who think their literature is superior merely because they think
it teaches--this simple moves me to despair. The fact is, any literature
whose function it is to teach, ceases to be literature _as such_; it
becomes didactic literature, which is the color of another horse. When
literature becomes obsessed by _ideas as such_, it is no longer
literature. Just how the delusion could have arisen that writing,
because invested with scientific symbols, automatically became possessed
of new and more precious values, is beyond me to explain. Ideas are out
of place in literature unless they are subordinate to the spirit of the
story--but s.f. readers have never perceived this. "Give us SCIENCE!"
they shriek, running with clenched fists uprisen to the stars. "We want
SCIENCE! Give us the Great God!" Well, they are given _science_, and
what does it turn out to be? For the most part the off-scourings of the
lunatic fringe. Talk about scientists being inspired by s.f.
stories--WHEW! Why, not one s.f. writer in fifty has the remotest idea
of what he is talking about--he just picks up some elementary idea and
kicks hell out of it. I'll wager that no scientist is going to produce
very spectacularly on the basis of any ideas provided by s.f. It's
possible, but wholly improbable. Scientists don't tick that way.

Another amusing fallacy: this well-known business of Wells and Verne
doing some _predicting_. It's one of the biggest laffs of all. They made
a _flock_ of predictions, a few of which were realized, and some only in
ways most vaguely related to the original conception. How many ideas did
they have that _never_ have been realized and never will? Give them
credit for being good and often logical guessers, perhaps--but don't
claim that as a merit for their WRITING! And how many other good
guessers must there have been who never got around to setting down their
predictions in print?

There is but one affectation about Wells' "scientific" stories which he
published before he discovered his capability at characterization, and
this is the affectation of imagination. There is no genuine imagination
in beating out cleverness of the s.f. type; the point of view, the
inventive quality necessary for their construction, is the same as with
the widely circulated tales of Nick Carter. Science-fiction stories are
not struck forth with a creative hand, they are manufactured products
put together piece-meal--none of them being written in any but the
calmest and most conscious mood. They are lacking in that important
element of all really GREAT works of the imagination: inspiration. And
what is inspiration? It is essentially the soaring of one's soul without
the knowledge of the mind. In the gleaming moment the mind becomes the
slave of the spirit. Read Wells' EXPERIMENT IN AUTOBIOGRAPHY and see why
and what he thinks of his early writings of s.f. He admits that they
were only a means to an end, a preparation for his more serious writing
that was to come later--Plato's REPUBLIC and More's UTOPIA also serving
largely to hasten Wells' Utopian proclivities. When he really began to
take his predictions seriously, he began to turn out the important stuff
which now bores the average s.f. enthusiast silly--or should I say
sillier!

As for Verne, his stuff has never been literature except for boys. It is
innocuous adventure--stuff that will not pervert morals. It is not too
badly written, and the language is so simple that Verne is readily to be
read in the original French, in fact some of his stuff serves as
textbooks in French classes in American schools.

But in the main, what I am speaking about now is s.f. as it is
constituted today. All of this modern s.f. is worthless except in
perhaps _one minor respect_, and I'm not even sure of that. It CAN open
the minds of boys and girls reaching puberty, giving them a more
catholic attitude toward startling new ideas. However, it is so very
often fatal at the same time, in that these boys and girls become
obsessed with it--it enmeshes them until, as I said, they become
incredibly blind to all else, so certain are they of the superiority of
their hobby over all other fiction. There are exceptions, but my
experience has proven that the exceptions are by far a minority.

Also I will admit that s.f. can on occasion provide escapist flights of
imagination--in fact, it can be admirable for this; but this type of
s.f. has become exceedingly rare because this crazy superstructure of
SCIENCE, and even more so ADVENTURE, has become such a fetish that sound
writing concerning people is rarely to be found. In pulp
science-fiction, never.

And the frightful smugness fostered by the modern s.f. magazines is
simply appalling. It seems that not only the readers, but the editors
and writers as well, cannot or will not see anything beyond their own
perverted models. Just as one example which I remember very well, look
how BRAVE NEW WORLD, the admirable and really important novel by
Huxley, was received a few years ago. It was Clark Ashton Smith, I
believe, who mentioned it as embodying some of Huxley's "habitual
pornography"--simply, stunning P. Schyler Miller; whom, I might mention,
I consider as one of the most intellectual authors and fans. And,
reviewing the book, C.A. Brandt also decried its preoccupation with sex,
but said complacently that it might, at least, bring to the attention
of people that there was such a thing as the science-fictionists and
their so-called literature. Of all the damned nonsense! BRAVE NEW WORLD
was, as a matter of fact, a satire on sex, and of FAR MORE IMPORTANCE
than to "bring to the attention of people that there is such a thing as
sci-fiction." Huxley conceived a future world in which Ford's
mechanistic contributions had become so emphatic as to deprive the
people of all but an animal interest in sex; he projects a more normal
man into such a civilization for no other reason than to characterize
present-day tendencies with searing satire. But Brandt--he evidently
would demolish this to set up in its stead a "Space-wrecked On Mars"
atrocity.

To get back to the subject, it is my honest opinion that no person of
very conspicuous intelligence can subsist very considerably on s.f.
after he begins to mature intellectually. There is simply not enuf _to_
it to provide intellectual or spiritual nourishment. He may string along
with it for a few years out of habit or some mental quirk--but stuff
aimed at juvenile minds cannot very long sustain a person of mature
years, unless that person is himself a mental adolescent. The way the
fans flocked to the S.F. League, indulged in "tests" to prove their
"superiority" over other readers, the silly letters in the mags, the
petty internal strife, and many other things, have served to widen the
gulf between me and s.f.

The most important thing, however, is that I have discovered that
there's been too much else of importance, REAL importance, that has been
said and written in this world (and is being and will be), for me to
desire to give much attention to such a petty thing as s.f. any more. I
shall read on the fringe of it, but increasingly less frequently I'm
afraid.

I might have summed this entire thing up by saying, "I'm satiated," but
that wouldn't be the entire truth. The entire truth would be: "I am
satiated and much wiser." In conclusion let me point out that this is
only one man's opinion. I have intentionally been harsh in my estimates,
maybe some points are in need of qualification or elucidation, but by
and large, I stand back of what I have written here. AMEN.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE ABOVE ARTICLE IS SUBJECT TO CRITICISM--THEREFORE ANY AND ALL FANS
AND AUTHORS WHO DISAGREE WILL FIND THEIR ARTICLES AGAINST THIS ONE BY A
FAMOUS AUTHOR WELCOMED AND PRINTED IN THE WINTER EDITION OF FUFA!. THE
WINTER EDITION WILL BE OUT DURING THE MONTH OF DECEMBER--SO
CONTRIBUTIONS SHOULD BE MAILED IMMEDIATELY TO FUTURIA FANTASIA--3054-1/2
West 12th Street, Los Angeles. (EDITOR)

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration]

    FUTURIA      VOLUME ONE NO. THREE
    FANTASIA!    OUT IN DECEMBER   TEN CENTS

Contributions welcomed. Short stories preferred. No personal stuff or
caustic feuding. Humor wanted. Material bought but never paid for--so
what can you lose? We suggest you send a quarter for the next 3 issues
of Futuria Fantasia and save yourselves a nickel.

     Contributing Authors/ Willy Ley, Rocklynne, Hasse,
                           Kuttner, Ackerman, Corvais



Satan's Mistress

by Doug Rogers


    Where flames of purgatory twist, and Earth's transgressors dwell,
    She dances swathed in heated mist, before the gates of Hell.
    Her gleaming naked body flees before the Demon fires,
    Along the shores of molten seas--ridged high by fuming pyres.
    Her hair, a liquid cape of flame, whips hot about her breasts,
    A strumpet in the Devil's name, which he alone invests,
    Gives power to a woman born of brimstone, steam and smoke,
    Her soul, a spark in early morn, flares up to share the yoke
    Of evil Mephistopheles upon his throne of death,
    Unheeding shrieks and doleful pleas choked out by dying breath.
    The Devil's Mistress dances down thru dungeons carved from bone,
    Upon her head the sinner's crown, each jewel a sigh, a moan.
    Before the wailing souls in caves, tossed down from earthly things,
    To charred and cindered minds of slaves her dancing passion brings.
    Then, tired of her evil joke, and laughing at her games,
    She draws about her fiery cloak to vanish in the flames.



Lost Soul

by Henry Hasse


    From far across the desolate moor I heard
    The echo of a wild and anguished cry--
    A tortured voice that shrieked aloud a word,
    A name, that shivered 'cross the leaden sky.
    I stopped--stared 'round--I knew that voice did sound
    A faint, familiar note within my brain.
    I fled across that dark and desolate ground
    Seeking out the direction whence it came.
    Forebodingly, that voice kept echoing
    Within a brain that did not seem my own ...
    A vague remembrance of a recent thing
    I could not grasp ... I was a lost and lone
    Forsaken soul that sped I knew not where,
    Wondering frightenedly what I did seek....
    At last I found it, there beside a bare
    And lonely road, when trembling and weak,
    I gazed upon a gallows-tree where hung
    A corpse, the very site of which did freeze
    The blood within my veins; a corpse that swung
    Grotesquely to and fro upon the breeze.
    And then, through rising panic, closer still
    I peered--then saw!--and knew! Again that cry
    That shrieked a name--the cry that issued shrill
    From my own throat, and shivered to the sky!

           *       *       *       *       *

    The name I shriek beneath the gallows-tree
    Was mine. The dead thing swinging there was me!



The truth about goldfish

KUTTNER


For some time I have been wondering what the world is coming to. More
than once I have got up in the middle of the nite, padded toward the
bureau, and, peering into the mirror, exclaimed, "Stinky, what is the
world coming to?" The responses I have thus obtained I am not at liberty
to reveal; but I am coming to believe that either I have a most
mysterious mirror or something is wrong somewhere. I am intrigued by my
mirror.

It came into my possession under extraordinary and eerie circumstances,
being borne into my bedroom one Midsummer's Eve by a procession of cats
dressed oddly in bright-colored sunsuits and carrying parasols. I was
asleep at the time, but awoke just as the last tail whisked out the
door, and immediately I sprang out of bed and cut my left big toe rather
badly on the edge of the mirror. I remember that as I first looked into
the fathomless, glassy depths, a curious thot came into my mind. "What,"
I said to myself, "is the world coming to? And what is science-fiction
coming to?"

It is quite evident that a logical and critical analysis of
science-fictional trends is a desideratum today. The whole trouble, I
feel, can be laid to velleity. (I have wanted to use that word for
years. Unfortunately I have now forgotten exactly what it means, but one
can safely attribute trouble to it. Where was I?)

Today science-fiction is split by schisms and impaled on the trylon of
bad thots. The fans, I mean, not the writers. The writers have been
split and impaled for years, but nothing can be done about that. In a
way, it's a good thing. Look at Jules Verne, Victor Hugo, and, for that
matter, the late unfortunate Tobias J. Koot.

I put flowers on his grave only yesterday. He lies at rest, tho his
ghastly fate pursued him even to the grave. And I attribute Mr. Koot's
fate to nothing less than the schisms of fandom. For Koot was a hard
working young man, serious, earnest, with promise of becoming a
first-class writer. He took life very solemnly--almost grimly. "My job,"
he told me once, "is to give people what they want."

"I want a drink," I said to him. "Give me one."

But Koot couldn't be turned from his rash course. He began to write
science-fiction. That was where the trouble started. "Is it science?" he
pondered. "Or is it fiction?" Already the cleavage--the split--had
begun.

It was a matter of logical progression toward ultimate division. Koot
got in the habit of typing the science into his stories with his left
hand, and the fiction with his right. He began to twitch and worry. He
got up nites. He was troubled, uneasy. "I have one thing left to cling
to," he muttered desperately, "Fandom! I can point to that and say: It
is real. It exists. It is dependable."

When fandom had its schism, Koot immediately developed a split
personality. It was rather horrible. His left side--the scientific
side--grew cold and hard and keen. He grew a Van Dyke on the left side
of his face and his left hand was stained with acids and chemicals. But
the right side of his face became dissipated and disreputable, with a
leer in the eye end a scornful, sneering curve to the lip. He grew a
tiny moustache on the right side, waxed it, and twirled it continually.
It was rather horrid, but worse was yet to come.

One day the inevitable happened. Tobias J. Koot split in half, with a
faint ripping sound and a despairing wail. He was, of course, buried in
two coffins and in two graves, the wretched man's fate pursuing him even
beyond death.

Well, you can understand how I feel, what with the mirror, the cats in
sunsuits and the weasel. Or haven't I mentioned the weasel? I mean the
brown one, of course, and he is, perhaps, worst of all. It isn't what he
says so much as his sneering, ironic tone. The other weasels, who live
in the spare bedroom with the colt, were happy enuf till HE arrived, but
now THEY are arranging a schism. As you will readily see, something must
be done about it before science-fiction collapses and the standard falls
trailing into the dust.

I suggest that we mobilize, and, to avoid dissension, give everybody the
rank of general. Then, first of all, we can march to my house and get
rid of that weasel.

The Brown One, of course. The others are welcome to stay as long as they
like. I feel that they are weak rather than wicked, and need only a good
excuse, or should I say example, in order to brace themselves up.

Contributions to the fund for the mobilization of science-fiction and
the extermination of brown weasels may be sent to me in care of this
magazine. Do not delay. Each moment you wait brings us closer to doom,
and, besides, I need a new piano.

H.K.

       *       *       *       *       *

[Illustration]

    READ
    freehafer's
    POLARIS!

    404 S. Lake Ave.
    Pasadena, Calif.

    10¢

       *       *       *       *       *



GOD BUSTERS

ERICK FREYOR


Mark Twain, in his _mysterious stranger_, makes no bones about his
sentiments towards Christianity and the God illusion. Speaking of
Christian progress he says, "It is a remarkable progress. In five or six
thousand years five or six high civilizations have risen, flourished,
commanded the wonder of the world, then faded out and disappeared; and
not one of them except the latest ever invented any sweeping and
adequate way to kill people. They all did their best--to kill being the
chiefest ambition of the human race and the earliest incident in its
history--but only the Christian civilization has scored a triumph to be
proud of. Two or three centuries from now it will be recognized that all
the competent killers are Christians; then the pagan world will go to
school to the Christian, not to acquire his religion, but his guns. The
_turk_ and the _chinaman_ will buy these to kill missionaries and
converts with."

Again, in speaking of God, comparing the God conception to an impossible
dream, he continues, "Strange, because they are so frankly and
hysterically insane--like all dreams: a God who could have made good
children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could
have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one;
who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who
gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other
children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his
other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who
mouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell; mouths
Golden Rules and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and
invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself;
who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without
invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon
man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and
finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused
slave to worship him!"

One wonders what the Christian Ethiopians thot when the Christian
Italians playfully, and undoubtedly with the sanction of the Holy Mother
Church, began to spray them with liquid fire, blast their cities, and
mutilate their children with the newest Christian improvements on the
Christian weapons of war. They probably couldn't quite understand the
logic or the fairness of it, but we must not blame the Ethiopians for
failing to comprehend, as they haven't had the benefits of Christian
civilization for as long a time as the Italians.

Let's put a stop to this shilly-shallying. Let's put these destructive
Atheists in their place. The Christians KNOW that God DOES exist. That
God _is_ all powerfull. So it would be only a simple matter to arrange
an appointment with God, (we don't exactly know what his office hours
are,) and prevail upon him to write a message in fire saying, "YOU BET,
GOD IS THE REAL MCCOY" or something similar, and spread it all over the
sky. That'll convince even the most reluctant Atheists, and it should be
a rather simple trick for a God who once stopped the sun (sic!), created
a universe in 6 days, and engineered an immaculate conception.

Clarence Darrow, world famous criminal lawyer, the man who made the
Silver-Tongued and Godly Bryant appear the verbose addlepate he was,
beneath his platitudinous phrases, during the Scopes trial, said, to an
interviewer, "All my life I've been an Agnostic. But I am no longer an
Agnostic, I am now an Atheist."



THE PENDULUM


Up and down, back and forth, up and down. First the quick flite skyward,
gradually slowing, reaching the pinnacle of the curve, poising a moment,
then flashing earthward again, faster and faster at a nauseating speed,
reaching the bottom and hurtling aloft on the opposite side. Up and
down. Back and forth. Up and down.

How long it had continued this way Layeville didn't know. It might have
been millions of years he'd spent sitting here in the massive glass
pendulum watching the world tip one way and another, up and down,
dizzily before his eyes until they ached. Since first they had locked
him in the pendulum's round glass head and set it swinging it had never
stopped or changed. Continuous, monotonous movements over and above the
ground. So huge was this pendulum that it shadowed one hundred feet or
more with every majestic sweep of its gleaming shape, dangling from the
metal intestines of the shining machine overhead. It took three or four
seconds for it to traverse the one hundred feet one way, three or four
seconds to come back.

THE PRISONER OF TIME! That's what they called him now! Now,
fettered to the very machine he had planned and constructed. A
pri--son--er--of--time! A--pris--on--er--of--Time! With every swing of
the pendulum it echoed in his thoughts. For ever like this until he went
insane. He tried to focus his eyes on the arching hotness of the earth
as it swept past beneath him.

They had laughed at him a few days before. Or was it a week? A month? A
year? He didn't know. This ceaseless pitching had filled him with an
aching confusion. They had laughed at him when he said, some time before
all this, he could bridge time gaps and travel into futurity. He had
designed a huge machine to warp space, invited thirty of the worlds most
gifted scientists to help him finish his colossal attempt to scratch the
future wall of time.

The hour of the accident spun back to him now thru misted memory. The
display of the time machine to the public. The exact moment when he
stood on the platform with the thirty scientists and pulled the main
switch! The scientists, all of them, blasted into ashes from wild
electrical flames! Before the eyes of two million witnesses who had come
to the laboratory or were tuned in by television at home! He had slain
the world's greatest scientists!

He recalled the moment of shocked horror that followed. Something
radically wrong had happened to the machine. He, Layeville, the inventor
of the machine, had staggered backward, his clothes flaming and eating
up about him. No time for explanations. Then he had collapsed in the
blackness of pain and numbing defeat.

Swept to a hasty trial, Layeville faced jeering throngs calling out for
his death. "Destroy the Time Machine!" they cried. "And destroy this
MURDERER with it!"

Murderer! And he had tried to help humanity. This was his reward.

One man had leaped onto the tribunal platform at the trial, crying, "No!
Don't destroy the machine! I have a better plan! A revenge for
this--this man!" His finger pointed at Layeville where the inventor sat
unshaven and haggard, his eyes failure glazed. "We shall rebuild his
machine, take his precious metals, and put up a monument to his
slaughtering! We'll put him on exhibition for life within his
executioning device!" The crowd roared approval like thunder shaking the
tribunal hall.

Then, pushing hands, days in prison, months. Finally, led forth into the
hot sunshine, he was carried in a small rocket car to the center of the
city. The shock of what he saw brought him back to reality. THEY had
rebuilt his machine into a towering timepiece with a pendulum. He
stumbled forward, urged on by thrusting hands, listening to the roar of
thousands of voices damning him. Into the transparent pendulum head they
pushed him and clamped it tight with weldings.

Then they set the pendulum swinging and stood back. Slowly, very slowly,
it rocked back and forth, increasing in speed. Layeville had pounded
futilely at the glass, screaming. The faces became blurred, were only
tearing pink blobs before him.

On and on like this--for how long?

He hadn't minded it so much at first, that first nite. He couldn't
sleep, but it was not uncomfortable. The lites of the city were comets
with tails that pelted from rite to left like foaming fireworks. But as
the nite wore on he felt a gnawing in his stomach, that grew worse. He
got very sick and vomited. The next day he couldn't eat anything.

They never stopped the pendulum, not once. Instead of letting him eat
quietly, they slid the food down the stem of the pendulum in a special
tube, in little round parcels that plunked at his feet. The first time
he attempted eating he was unsuccessful, it wouldn't stay down. In
desperation he hammered against the cold glass with his fists until they
bled, crying hoarsely, but he heard nothing but his own weak,
fear-wracked words muffled in his ears.

After some time had elapsed he got so that he could eat, even sleep
while travelling back and forth this way. They allowed him small glass
loops on the floor and leather thongs with which he tied himself down at
nite and slept a soundless slumber without sliding.

People came to look at him. He accustomed his eyes to the swift flite
and followed their curiosity-etched faces, first close by in the middle,
then far away to the right, middle again, and to the left.

He saw the faces gaping, speaking soundless words, laughing and pointing
at the prisoner of time traveling forever nowhere. But after awhile the
town people vanished and it was only tourists who came and read the sign
that said: THIS IS THE PRISONER OF TIME--JOHN LAYEVILLE--WHO KILLED
THIRTY OF THE WORLDS FINEST SCIENTISTS! The school children, on the
electrical moving sidewalk stopped to stare in childish awe. THE
PRISONER OF TIME!

Often he thot of that title. God, but it was ironic, that he should
invent a time machine and have it converted into a clock, and that he,
in its pendulum, should mete out the years--traveling _with_ Time.

He couldn't remember how long it had been. The days and nites ran
together in his memory. His unshaven cheeks had developed a short beard
and then ceased growing. How long a time? How long?

Once a day they sent down a tube after he ate and vacuumed up the cell,
disposing of any wastes. Once in a great while they sent him a book, but
that was all.

[Illustration]

The robots took care of him now. Evidently the humans thot it a waste of
time to bother over their prisoner. The robots brot the food, cleaned
the pendulum cell, oiled the machinery, worked tirelessly from dawn
until the sun crimsoned westward. At this rate it could keep on for
centuries.

But one day as Layeville stared at the city and its people in the blur
of ascent and descent, he perceived a swarming darkness that extended in
the heavens. The city rocket ships that crossed the sky on pillars of
scarlet flame darted helplessly, frightenedly for shelter. The people
ran like water splashed on tiles, screaming soundlessly. Alien creatures
fluttered down, great gelatinous masses of black that sucked out the
life of all. They clustered thickly over everything, glistened
momentarily upon the pendulum and its body above, over the whirling
wheels and roaring bowels of the metal creature once a Time Machine. An
hour later they dwindled away over the horizon and never came back. The
city was dead.

Up and down, Layeville went on his journey to nowhere, in his prison, a
strange smile etched on his lips. In a week or more, he knew, he would
be the only man alive on earth.

Elation flamed within him. This was _his_ victory! Where the other men
had planned the pendulum as a prison it had been an asylum against
annihilation now!

Day after day the robots still came, worked, unabated by the visitation
of the black horde. They came every week, brot food, tinkered, checked,
oiled, cleaned. Up and down, back and forth--THE PENDULUM!

... a thousand years must have passed before the sky again showed life
over the dead Earth. A silvery bullet of space dropped from the clouds,
steaming, and hovered over the dead city where now only a few solitary
robots performed their tasks. In the gathering dusk the lites of the
metropolis glimmered on. Other automatons appeared on the rampways like
spiders on twisting webs, scurrying about, checking, oiling, working in
their crisp mechanical manner.

And the creatures in the alien projectile found the time mechanism, the
pendulum swinging up and down, back and forth, up and down. The robots
still cared for it, oiled it, tinkering.

A thousand years this pendulum had swung. Made of glass the round disk
at the bottom was, but now when food was lowered by the robots through
the tube it lay untouched. Later, when the vacuum tube came down and
cleaned out the cell it took that very food with it.

Back and forth--up and down.

The visitors saw something inside the pendulum. Pressed closely to the
glass side of the cell was the face of a whitened skull--a skeleton
visage that stared out over the city with empty sockets and an
enigmatical smile wreathing its lipless teeth.

Back and forth--up and down.

The strangers from the void stopped the pendulum in its course, ceased
its swinging and cracked open the glass cell, exposing the skeleton to
view. And in the gleaming light of the stars the skull face continued
its weird grinning as if it knew that it had conquered something. Had
conquered time.

The Prisoner Of Time, Layeville, had indeed travelled along the
centuries.

And the journey was at an end.



IS IT TRUE WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT KUTTNER?

OR

the man with the Weird Tale

by GUY AMORY

[Illustration]


The extremely interesting specimen to your right is not a head from a
formaldehyde jar, though at times we have seen it, or him, pickled. It
is I, Henry Kuttner, the laziest man who ever punched a typewriter and
got paid for it. Like several other L.A. natives he is too busy living
to do much worrying--and besides--what does it get him? (a check from
Weird Tales) Henry has just sold them a 20,000 word yarn about Elak of
Atlantis. At present he has finished a story headed for STARTLING, fifty
thousand words or more, and been working with C. L. Moore on a new
chiller.

Hank's first story for Astounding was a disappointment, but he fully
made up for that by turning in a sockerooo to Unknown called _the
misguided halo_, written after the fashion of his most highly cherished
author THORNE SMITH. What the fans don't know is that this little tale
had a different ending than the one used by Campbell. Kuttner's finis to
the halo was hysterically funny, but John W. thought otherwise and
tagged a new finish on it--spoiling it as far as this author is
concerned.

Kuttner is 24 years old. He's been writing most of his life--learned how
to type at the age of eight and hasn't left it alone since. Was born
with a type-bar in his mouth. Lives in a quiet catacomb called Beverly
Hills, the first cemetery I've ever seen with street lamps. At present,
though I have broached the subject on numerous occasions, Hank
steadfastly refuses to write for slick magazines. His best excuse being
his laziness.

Hanks is quiet-speaking, sincere. But he has a sense of humor, the kind
that hits you amidriff abruptly. He is the perfect dead-pan jokester.
His digs many times being too subtle for your correspondent to catch
until several moments have passed, Kuttner is always ready to rush in
mildly and put the immature fans to route. It is only when you see the
ghastly pictures that he takes out at his charnal cave that you realize
his true sense of comedy. He and Hodgkins and Shroyer, the fiends, get
together in outre garb, in horrifying pose, and bring forth films that
would shake the mind of even such a horror as Robert Bloch.

Kuttner likes the way C. L. Moore writes (and who doesn't). He wishes he
could write like her--but claims that when he tries imitating it comes
out so much trash. If you've read any of his stories you realize that
Hank is a master of the bingety-boom type of fiction--but with feeling!
He puts more Incident in ten pages of Elak than any other author in
WEIRD, and makes you feel it. He paints his picture with masterfully
abrupt dabs, while Moore lays on her horror with the touch of a mosaic
master, building up. Kuttner knocks you down and keeps you bouncing.
Moore swirls you in cobwebs and totes you away into infinity. Combining
their efforts in '37 for QUEST OF THE STARSTONE they turned out
something to remember ... with Hank's flair for lightning pace and
Moore's for description they went to town.

That's about all we can say about Hank, He doesn't like New York because
it's too dirty, noisy and big. He dotes on Thorne Smith. Rite now he's
trying to crash Argosy with a story--and in the future you can expect
some big things from this quiet author.

Oh, yes, and is it true what they say about Kuttner?

No, he doesn't use dope to get the effect in his stories. He has a
massive painting of Art Barnes on his desk and when he prepares to write
he squints once and once only at that painting to get gruesome
atmosphere. Then he starts typing!

Take a bow, Mr. Kuttner.

(Jus bend over a little more, Hank! A' K' BARNES)

WHUMP!

Ouch! (KUTTNER)

The End (of Kuttner)



ANALYSIS

[Illustration]


FROM J CHAPMAN MISKE: Pretty snappy cover on the 1st issue of fufa. At
least I like it. Simple stuff looks best on mimeod covers. By the way,
what, I'd like to know, is the sex of that Bokian creature? WHY MR.
MISKE! WE THOT U ABHORED SEX! TSK! TSK! I'm for Technocracy. Personally
I suspect Reynolds of being Kuttner NOPE.... TRY AGAIN, JACK. Your
poetry not so hot. U wandered a bit and were melodramatic.

DALE HART POSTS: Bok cover good. Yerke and Reynolds interesting.
Forrie's story unique. Yur poem full of thot but it didn't scan very
well. MAYBE IT'S BECUZ I'M MORE BRITISH THAN I AM _SCAN_-DIN-AVIAN.
(BRAD) How about an increase in pages--this issue much too small. HOPE
YU LIKE THIS BIGGER SIZE, DALE.

GERTRUDE HEMKIN MUMBLES: Cover startling, technocracy article sounds
sensible, ron reynolds satire amusing and contains a few kernels of
logic, at that. And where hav I red 4SJ's RECORD bee4?

(WE _Wonder_) HENRY HASSE TYPES: "Hans Bok steals 1st honors 4 his
cover. Hope yu can get Hans to do all yur illustrations each month."
YES; HENRY, WE'LL HAVE BOK ON THE COVER EVERY ISSUE FROM NOW ON EVEN THO
HE'S BUSY IN NEW YORK WITH HIS PANTING--SINCE THE EDITORIAL FOR FUFA WAS
STENCILED THE DECEMBER ISSUE OF WEIRD TALES HAS APPEARED ON THE STANDS
ALL OVER AMERICA WITH ITS COVER DONE BY BOK. IT WAS FUTURIA FANTASIA'S
PLEASENT DUTY, THIS SUMMER; TO BRING ABOUT THAT DEAL BETWEEN BOK AND
WEIRD AND WE ARE JUSTLY PROUD OF HANS AND HIS SUCCESS. HERE'S HOPING HE
HITS ASTOUNDING NEXT. HASSE CONTINUES: "Best written feature was yur
poem, Brad. Next is Reynolds piece and the one by Ackerman." DUE TO LACK
OF SPACE IN THIS ISSUE WE ARE CONDENSING THE ABOVE LETTERS. IN THE
WINTER EDITION THERE WILL BE A BIGGER LETTER DEPARTMENT--THAT IS, IF YU
WRITE IN. WE'RE ANXIOUS TO KNOW HOW YOU LIKED OUR SPECIAL _the
pendulum_. UNTIL THEN, FU, FAREWELL!



RETURN FROM DEATH

_by ANTONY CORVAIS_


They were seated in his parked, car, miles from the city, when Robert
told Ellen; "I'll always love you, darling, forever and ever. I just
can't help myself, and I don't want to."

The girl nestled closer without reply.

"And if something should happen to one of us, the other would
wait--because love like ours will never know death--it must go on--for
eternity," he continued. "I know that I'll love you even when I'm dead,
and if there are such things as spirits, I'll come back to you--somehow.
Or would it frighten you?"

Ellen pouted: "Don't be so funereal! It makes me feel strangely inside.
Of course nothing can separate us. It's a beautiful nite and we're
wasting it on--oh, dear!" Her eyes had glanced at the small clock on the
paneling. "It's late, Robert. You must hurry me home now or mother will
be furious!"

Sighing, Robert started the car. As they roared toward town over the
twisting roadway, suddenly the car swerved.

"Lookout, Bob! A man!" It was Ellen's high voice screaming.

The car skidded sickeningly on loose gravel, crashed thunderously
through the railing bordering the highway, and richocheted, turning over
and over, halting as wreckage. Robert was crushed under the metal bulk,
losing consciousness.

Thrown clear, Ellen scrambled to the man, bent over him. Something more
than pain filmed his eyes; he heard himself muttering: "I'll come
back?--you wait--" in a failing whisper as illimitable darkness swept
over him, accompanied by dreadful nausea. A point of light appeared in
the void, expanding into a dazzling rectangle which split into thousands
of lesser planes; these shaped a geometric pattern which whirled
dizzily, humming, the drone rising in pitch with every sickening
revolution, becoming incessant mechanical scream----

"And this is death. This is past human endurance." With sudden
omniscience he knew that he WAS dead and the meaning of the spinning
pattern. The knowledge ebbed and carried with it all of his memories
except for Ellen's face and her name.

The wheeling design parted like a curtain, and Robert observed beyond it
a branching path spreading before him like a flattened tree. At the end
of every fork was Ellen's face, wavering and blurred. He fixed his
attention upon the nearest furcation, aspiring toward it desperately,
and sensed himself hovering in space.

Shock, as of lightning coursing his veins, knotted him with agony.
Involuntarily his eyes squeezed shut. Icy air tortured his lungs. As he
raised his voice in weak protest, the pain ceased and he relaxed, spent.
His eyes continued shut, as though the lids were gummed down. Failing in
many attempts to open them, he quested food, found it, and consoled
himself with it.

Occasionally plaintive voices babbled unintelligibly, arousing him.
Always, if he listened, he heard a gentle murmur reply to the voices.
And then everything was quiet. He felt very sleepy. Finally he dropped
off into slumber, deep and restful.

Between periods of sleep, Robert struggled with his heavy eyelids.
Memories might have associated his sightlessness with blindness--but he
had none. There were only Ellen's face and her name which, when
expecially desperate, he called again and again.

Gradually his vision became clear, and he stared in awe at a world of
immensity which was peopled with Titans. The picture of Ellen in this
gigantic place troubled him, for the colossal beings looked upon him as
an animated toy. Often he was elevated to their reeking mouths, kissed,
and dropped aside; if he were insistent upon attention, inquiring for
Ellen, the giants beat him and thrust him from their presence.

Inert bare-surfaced looming things inclosed him, from some of which,
when he approached them, he was kicked away. Incredibly huge portals
barred egress to an outer world, from which seeped strange sharp odors.
By calling his one word to the world beyond the doors, Robert endeavored
to explain to the Titans that Ellen might possibly be outside. But they
hushed him with amusement, sometimes with abuse.

There had been others prisoned here like himself while he had not seen,
but they had vanished now, but this bothered him not in the least--his
thoughts were of Ellen, and finally the giants lifted him and put him
into a windowless room and clamped a fretted ceiling over it. The
chamber rocked gently; he realized that it was being moved from one
place to another. Leaping frantically he touched the ceiling's lattice,
clung to it, struggling to force himself through its interstices.
Unsuccessful, tiring, he fell back, crouched in a corner, weeping.

Motion of transit ended--the confining ceiling vanished. Robert
scrambled over a wall, dropped to the ground of the outer world, whose
heavy conflicting odors, dazzling lights and moving shadows alarmed him.
Dim with distance was the withdrawing form of a giant, which he pursued,
crying out his one word, "ELLEN!"

The giant vanished among weird wavering plants. Alone, Robert skulked
nervously through tall rustling things, was terrified at times by an
unexpected sound or motion. But the swaying things appeared unaware of
him and he became self-confidant. Discovering a stretch of damp earth
gemmed with puddles, he drank. His head cocked at a sound reminiscent of
Ellen: her soothing voice.

A giantess had appeared over him. She was--ELLEN! At sight of her,
Robert's pent memories burst free, overwhelming his consciousness with
turbulent pageantry. He thrust up his arms; gently indulgent, the girl
bent and drew him to her breast. She cuddled him, cooing to him. At the
moment her monstrous size did not concern him.

"I've found you! I've found you!" he cried. "Oh, Ellen, if only you knew
how lonely it has been--" He opened his glad heart to her in a
stammering urgency, bliss in his eyes, tears in his voice. Breathless,
he raised his face to the girl's; she hesitated. Then she kissed him and
set him down at her feet. She strode away. Crying with hurt amazement,
he followed. She shook her head. She kept walking swiftly. He could not
keep up with her and he stopped forlornly as she disappeared behind an
obstruction. He stared after her with unbelieving eyes. Tho mysteriously
stunted, he had returned to her from death, and she had not accepted
him. He stepped close to one of her prodigious footprints in the mud and
surveyed it grimly. His eyes sought an impression of his own foot. And
suddenly he cried in mingled grief and horror--for there in the mud was
his footprint--small--strange--the footprint of a half-grown cat!



CONVENTIONAL NOTES or the report on THE S.F.L. BALL GAME

by the editor

score: 27 sprained ankles to 3 cracked knees.


Ross Rocklynne: Tall, freckled, red haired, pleasent looking,
good-natured and humorous--that is Rocklynne--and, by the way, in real
life he spells it Rock_lin_. Makes the ideal traveling companion.
Continually clicking away with his candid camera. Is versed in many
subjects--likes plots about gigantic ideas, such as THE MOTH, giant men,
and THE MEN AND THE MIRROR with an amorphous reflector, while JUPITER
TRAP gave us a giant siphon. Rocklynne, 26, looks 22 or younger.
Favorite expression, when agreeing with anyone is, "That's right."
Spending most of my time after the convention with Ross, painting the
town a delicate pink, I found that he is now trying a bit of Weird
writing which has been unsuccessful, and some Western concocting--ditto.
Ross is quite different than his characters Deveral and Colbie. Somehow
I had imagined a Rocklynne with a sharp gaunted face and bulging
muscles--I found, instead, a good example of what mite be called typical
college species number #569Z, a cross between science and wit, well
mixed and jelled in an Empire State tall body. Lives in Cincinnatti. His
characters, Colbie and Deveral, are two of the most consistent and
popular guys in s.f. today, according to Campbell.

Charlie Hornig: The dark horse who says neigh to every manuscript I
write for him. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned fiend who deals from
the bottom of the manuscript pile over at _Science-fiction_. He has just
learned to speak English during the past week and now he finds it much
more fun picking out the manuscripts instead of leaping into a pile of
them and bobbing up with one between his teeth. Makes lousy speeches. Is
a human dynamo and expert guide to anyone in Manhattan. Makes money on
the side selling shoestrings on the I.R.T. between the Bronx and Coney
Island. Father was a toupee manufacturer which makes Charlie hair to a
big-wig's fortune. Thanx, Charlie, for your presence in New York to
guide me around. And I just LOVE Science Fiction! (paid adv.)

Impressions cawt short: John W. (werewolf) Campbell, a scientific theory
in a potato sack suit with high rubber boots to match.

Julius Schwartz and Groucho Marx look-alikes.

Mort Weisinger, a plump smile.

A. Merritt, the man on the billboards with a mug of Milwaukee beer in
his hand. Jovial, glasses, chubby. Not a bit mysterious.

Forrest J. Ackerman, dressed in future garb at convention, looking like
a fugitive from a costume shop.

Willy Ley, a pair of thick-lensed glasses with an accent.
Lowndes--moustache and gold tooth--double feature. Leslie Perry--Madame
Butterfly with bangs.

Henry Kuttner, a voice from a pile of cigarettes. Morojo, short and
sweet, commonly referred to as the VOICE OF MIDGE. Sykora, nervous
breakdown with hair. Moskowitz, human fog-horn: following his opening
speech New York gripped by earth tremors. Wollheim, Communist, born in a
revolving door, believes in revolutions, get it? Or do you? Sykora,
Moskowitz, Taurasi--three little pigs. Manly Wade Wellman--the human
JELL-O! Kornbluth, a well-padded belch. Swisher, massive literary Babe
Ruth, king of so-what! Robert J. Thompson, the leaning tower of Pisa
wired for sound.



LOCAL LEAGUE LIFE


Nite of Halloween the Paramount theatre found itself besieged with
members of the S.F.L. when 4Sj, Morojo, Pogo, Bradbury, Corvais, Rogers,
Amory, Eldred and others met there to enjoy special preview of Bob Hope
film CAT AND CANARY. Bradbury took along weird mask fashioned by
Harryhausen and, in spookiest part of film, scared hell out of innocent
blonde sitting alongside. Her scream was heard over in Pomona.
Chandeliers rocked. Bradbury then took off mask and laffed and the girl
tainted.

       *       *       *       *       *

One month ago Bradbury stenciled and printed the editorial to this
second issue of FuFa, only to be delayed by various troubles, mostly
typewriter and stencil scourges, until now. In the meantime the December
Weird had come out and FuFa's artist Bok had a cover on it. We'd like to
take this opportunity to congratulate Bok on his splendid work and wish
him luck.

       *       *       *       *       *

Yerke, in one of his britest moments, growled, "The little man who
wasn't there, certainly didn't take up lots of air, but just think of
the air he wouldn't take up if he were twins!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Henry Hasse, now a regular writer for Weird again, according to late
reports, has one coming up in a short while. Hopes to have it
illustrated by Bok.

       *       *       *       *       *

Last moment arrival of material from various authors thrust the
Technocracy article out of this issue. We suggest that all those
interested in Technocracy go to your nearest Section in your city and
save us the trouble of converting you. We will, tho, in the Winter
Edition, give you a few facts and predictions made by Technocracy.

       *       *       *       *       *

ADDRESS COMMUNICATIONS:

    FUTURIA FANTASIA
    AN L.A. SFL PUB.
    30 54 1/2 W. 12th St.
    Los Angeles, Cal.

    Ray Bradbury, Editor





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