While now best known for his horror fiction, prolific pulp writer Robert Bloch (1917–1994) also often contributed to Amazing
Stories
and other magazines that helped define SF's Golden Age. Critic and anthologist Dziemianowicz (Rivals of Weird Tales
) has done a real service by collecting 21 Bloch stories from this era, many never before reprinted, in the first volume of a new series devoted to Bloch's short fiction. Because Bloch's science fiction typically featured loony characters and a bunch of gags with a few technical terms tossed in, his work in this vein has dated less than much of the more serious, speculative SF of his contemporaries. Gems include the embarrassingly hilarious "yellow peril" story "Secret of the Observatory"; "Beep No More, My Lady," in which space has been taken over by advertising; and the preposterous "Queen of the Metal Men," an H. Rider Haggard spoof with Lovecraftian touches. As Dziemianowicz so aptly observes in his introduction, "By his own admission Bloch never was a power hitter in science fiction—but maybe it was because he didn't regularly swing for the fences that he managed to connect as often as he does in these stories." Agent, Chris Lotts at the Ralph Vicinanza Agency. (Nov. 3)
