STORIES FROM THE GOLDEN AGE

Startling Stories takes readers to the past, the future, and everywhere between.

For the purists among you, today we have a legit pulp magazine, an issue of Startling Stories published this month in 1947 by Chicago based Better Publications, also known as Standard Magazines. We don’t post these often because there’s a paucity of visual content other than the great covers but we do have a small collection of ’30s and ’40s pulps and love them. We can easily understand why these mags were so addictive. You got fresh fiction in various genres, wildly imginative for the most part, and at a great price—15¢, which would be about $2.10 in today’s money. The pulp era was long finished by the time we came on the scene, but we can project back to that long ago January, buying this in a whirl of adolescent eagerness, running home, reading until way past bedtime with the help of a flashlight.

The cover here was painted by Earle Bergey and illustrates the tale “The Star of Life” by Edmond Hamilton, which is about a “future civilization in a desperate struggle against tyrannical rule by a minority which derives its tremendous power through knowledge of the secret of immortality.” It resonates—tyrannical rule by a minority of the powerful has been our historical norm. And aside from a tyranny-lite era triggered by the black swan cataclysms of two world wars, a flu epidemic, and an economic collapse, elite minority rule is advancing again. How do the people in “The Star of Life” deal with these oppressors? We won’t give it away. We actually read this tale in novel form several years ago with no idea it was also in this Startling Stories. Imagine our surprise.

Startling Stories, Earle Bergey, Edmond Hamilton, Murray Leinster, Leo Morey, George Whitley, magazine art, literature

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

January 17

1950—The Great Brinks Robbery Occurs

In the U.S., eleven thieves steal more than $2 million from an armored car company’s offices in Boston, Massachusetts. The skillful execution of the crime, with only a bare minimum of clues left at the scene, results in the robbery being billed as “the crime of the century.” Despite this, all the members of the gang are later arrested.

January 17

1977—Gary Gilmore Is Executed

Convicted murderer Gary Gilmore is executed by a firing squad in Utah, ending a ten-year moratorium on Capital punishment in the United States. Gilmore’s story is later turned into a 1979 novel entitled The Executioner’s Song by Norman Mailer, and the book wins the Pulitzer Prize for literature.

January 16

1942—Carole Lombard Dies in Plane Crash

American actress Carole Lombard, who was the highest paid star in Hollywood during the late 1930s, dies in the crash of TWA Flight 3, on which she was flying from Las Vegas to Los Angeles after headlining a war bond rally in support of America’s military efforts. She was thirty-three years old.

January 15

1919—Luxemburg and Liebknecht Are Killed

Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, two of the most prominent socialists in Germany, are tortured and murdered by the Freikorps. Freikorps was a term applied to various paramilitary organizations that sprang up around Germany as soldiers returned in defeat from World War I. Members of these groups would later become prominent members of the SS.

January 14

1967—Summer of Love Begins

The Human Be-In takes place in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park with between 20,000 to 30,000 people in attendance, their purpose being to promote their ideals of personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralization, communal living, ecological preservation, and higher consciousness. The event is considered the beginning of the famed counterculture Summer of Love.