Futuria Fantasia, Fall 1939 - 1

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]
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* * * * *


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