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.

February 16

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanideâ€”not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juiceâ€”resulting in his death in late 1937.

February 15

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

February 14

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

February 13

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.