#super science stories

[gameraboy2]

"World of No Return" by Bryce Walton Super Science Stories, September 1949 Illustration by Virgil Finlay

[thefugitivesaint]

Hannes Bok (1914-1964), ''Super Science Stories'', Vol. 1, #4, 1940 Source

[driveintheaterofthemind]

Vintage Pulp - Super Science Stories (Mar1950)

Popular Publications

[thehauntedrocket]

Vintage Pulp - Super Science Stories (July1940)

Art by Robert Sherry

Popular Publications

[tomoleary]

Gabriel Mayorga (1911-1988) “Juice” Super Science Stories magazine cover (June 1940) Source

How the book looks now:

Source

[chernobog13]

SUPER SCIENCE STORIES (vol. 5) #4 (September, 1949). Cover by Lawrence Stevens.

Popular Publications was one of the largest publishers of pulp magazines. Among its titles were the long-running Argosy, as well as The Spider, G-8 and His Battle Aces, Operator #5, and The Mysterious Wu Fang.

Super Science Stories was Popular Publications entry into the field of science fiction. However, they had no staff and almost no budget. The company hired a 19 year-old Frederick Pohl, science fiction fan and future Hugo Award- and Nebula Award-winner, and science fiction grand master, as its editor.

Pohl tried hard to compete with the other science fiction magazines, but the low page rate he was forced to work with (half a penny per word) didn't attract the established writers. Instead, he bought manuscripts that were rejected by the other mags. He also published stories from fellow science fiction fans, such as Isaac Asimov, as well as filling out issues with stories he wrote himself under various pseudonyms.

The magazine was published from March, 1940 to May, 1943 when paper shortages due to World War ll, and not-so-great sales, led Popular to cease publication of Super Science Stories.

Science fiction became a hot market again in 1948, and Popular revived the magazine in 1949. The pulp magazine format, on the other hand, was dying out. Super Science Stories lasted another three years, from January, 1949 to August, 1951, before shutting down again, this time for good.

[oakendesk]

Super Science Stories Sep 1950

Henry Richard Van Dongen

[barkingbonzo]

Lawrence Sterne Stevens, The Star Beast, Super Science Stories, September, 1950

[ufohio]

[spirk-trek]

Nightvisions Fanzine & Novel | Merle Decker, Signe Landon (1979)

Nightvisions, by Susan K. James and Carol A. Frisbie, is one of the first standalone k/s novels published in a zine. It can be read in full here!

[tofu83]

The new cybersuit

The hacker tried on the new cybersuit and helmet given by his scientist friend. He was told that the suit could help him sneak into the "Enterprise's" database more secretly and escape quickly, making it safer than ever. And it was made of a new material mixed with metal and rubber, which maintained body temperature and was fireproof, waterproof, alkali-proof and bulletproof, ensuring that his body would not be harmed.

Little did he know that his scientist friend had already fallen into cooperating with the Enterprise. This was a trap designed by his friend to show his sincerity to them. After he sneaked into the database, his digital consciousness would be captured by the anti-virus software and rewritten by the company's engineers. Dissatisfaction with the Enterprise will be rewritten into loyalty to the them, and his yearning for freedom would be transformed into support for order. Other hobbies and interests will become beneficial to the enterprise, too.

When his consciousness was transferred back to the chip in his brain, his original personality had been completely overwritten. The freedom fighters died and the corporate warriors were born. He was better called a drone or a robot than a human being now. He would serve as a super soldier of the Enterprise, pulling out all his past companions and converting them.

Without the Enterprise there is no order, without order there is no peace, and without peace no one can live, so the Enterprise will ensure that they remain standing. Do you agree or disagree? The Enterprise welcomes you to challenge their super soldiers and looks forward to your joining. The order and harmony of society need your strength.!

[driveintheaterofthemind]

5 Random Pulps

[encrucijada]

rereading all the words i've written for fantasybane and holy shit i'm the writer ever

[tomoleary]

Hannes Bok “Mutation” Super Science Stories (Popular Publications) Pulp Vol. 8, Issue 2 (June 1951) for Lilith Lorraine’s poem

Source

[whereserpentswalk]

Imagine what would happen if a super soldier fell on hard times. After he's served the empire and returned to civilian life. He's so obviously not fully human, he's so much larger and stronger than everyone else, metal bolts stick out of him, his very bones are made of metal, his eyes can see things nobody else can see. Yet here he is expected to be human again, after his humanity was taken away from him so young.

Slowly everything is pawned away. Power armor that's only valuable to collectors. Rare trinkets from places that most humans will never hear of. All of it slowly going away as it seems more and more impossible for his job to overcome his purpose.

Eventually he ends up on a street corner somewhere on a city the size of a planet. Begging for small coins from a population he once protected. He overhears a young woman say to her friend that she wishes she was lucky enough to see a super solider in person, she doesn't realize how lucky she is.

The things that go through his mind as he sits there, thinking about the wonders he once saw. Aliens, human, demons, things beyond mortal comprehension, slain at his hands. He wonders if it was the right thing to do, if he defends humanity or just one of humanity's countless empires. Yet still he wants to be there again, the armor over his body, the glowing sword in one hand and the heat pistol in the other, human troops behind him, and an inhuman enemy before him. Really, he wanted to tell the things that turn humanity into victims that he wouldn't be their victim, and that nobody else would be.

And even if the violence of the system is inescapable, he'd still rather be the one doing it. Though still, he has found peace, his body can withstand the elements better than his fellow beggars.

Eventually planetary authorities come to take down the camp he set up for himself. Of all the training he had for survival on hostile planets he was not prepared for his own empire. Local police come for him, men in black plated armor with slitted visors, the local population fears them, but to him they're nothing but cowardly little men. A single officer comes to paste a routine notice to leave the area, that officer will see something inhuman rise above him, something large, with metal bones and metal bolts sticking out of him. And that officer will learn that this person will not be another one of his victims.