Reviews for Astounding science fiction, July 1939

The average rating for Astounding science fiction, July 1939 based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2012-12-31 00:00:00 avit watchman This is a reprint of the issue of Astounding Science Fiction and is widely considered to be the beginning of the golden age of science fiction. Some of the stories are quite good and some are just silly. Still it was an interesting read. AE Van Vogt's, Black Destroyer is definitely one of the best stories in the collection. It was the first of four stories he would write about the voyages of the Space Beagle. Isaac Asimov's first story, Trends, appears in this issue, another good read. City of the Cosmic Rays, by Nat Schachner, was one of the sillier stories, it's written more in a pulp fiction kind of fashion. It's actually the second part of a three part series, so I don't know, maybe if I had started at the beginning I might have enjoyed the story more. Lightship Ho! by Nelson S. Bond was another of the pulp like stories. The characters were very cardboard like. The villian, a pirate, was very over the top with his antics. He behaved like he was in a silent movie. I could almost see him twirling his moustache. One of the silliest stories was When The Half Gods Go by Amelia R. Long, I mean one of the characters contract Venusian flu which makes a person act like a lizard. Yet, I enjoyed this story the most. Great Than The Gods by C L Moore was another good read. It dealt with alternate realities. Similar in style to Frederick Pohl's The Coming of the Quantum Cats. A very good read.

Review # 2 was written on 2012-01-21 00:00:00 Michael Choong The July, 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction is widely considered to be the lush overture to the "Golden Age" of American science fiction. Unfortunately, it's very expensive to obtain a decent copy of the original pulp magazine. Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered that the University of Illinois Press had, in 1981, printed a facsimile reproduction of the whole magazine in a hardcover edition! Further, imagine my excitement upon finding a very inexpensive copy on ABEBooks. I just got it in the mail a few days ago (we're talking January, 2012), and I'm looking forward to reading it. Will I actually read it, or will it end up in a pile of unread materials? It's a big question for me, these days. (It only takes a few seconds to click through a few screens and buy a book on the Internet, but the reading part can take many hours.) I did read Van Vogt's "Black Destroyer" a few years ago, in a general science fiction anthology. It didn't strike me as memorable then, so maybe my excitement is misguided.