Tag: 1940

And Now For A Bit Of Fun


I know it’s been a rough … year … so let’s take a moment to relax. Here’s “Beauty And The Beast”, by Henry Kuttner, cover story for the April 1940 Thrilling Wonder Stories and it’s about a Venusian giant kangaroo-dinosaur monster that accidentally crashes his way through Washington, DC along the way to destroying the world although it’s not his fault. Um. Well, all right, how about this totally different story from the July 1940 Thrilling Wonder Stories about a gigantic reptilian monster that melts the ice caps and crashes through the New York harborfront and everybody acts like he’s the jerk?

Thrilling Wonder Stories cover for April 1940. A giant kangaroo-dinosaur crashes through the US Capitol dome while what's supposed to be a heat beam shoots him in the chin.
Fortunately the US Army had just completed testing of its powerful “tickle string ray gun” and was able to handle the monster reasonably well. Image and story from Archive.org which is just magnificent for this sort of thing. Also, when are we going to stop mindlessly bringing alien eggs back from Venus and raising giant kangaroo-dinosaur monsters in the Capitol’s backyard?

Science fiction: the literature of pleasant escapism.

Another Blog, Meanwhile Index

The index dropped one point on the debut of the rival Another Blog, Meanwhile index created by those dissatisfied traders I was talking about yesterday. We all thought they were bluffing, too. As it happens the alternate index dropped from its starting point of 100 also down to 99, which the alternate traders are saying is sheer coincidence and their index is going to take off like you never would believe. We shall see.

99