“What Every Young Ghoul Should Know” (Amateur Correspondent, September-October 1937)

Bloch, Robert. “What Every Young Ghoul Should Know.” Amateur Correspondent, September-October 1937, pp. 12-14. https://fanac.org/fanzines/Amateur_Correspondent/Amateur%20Correspondent%202%20Stickney,%20Corwin%20F.1937-09%20US.pdf 

This is a piece of comedy by Bloch that chronicles the mysterious disappearance of fantasy-magazine editors, many of them, such as “Farnsworth Wrong,” easily connected to their real-world origin (in this case, Farnsworth Wright). Bloch’s fictitious magazine titles alone are worth the price (ten cents) of the magazine: Flabby Stories, Monstrous Yarns, Asinine Tales, Worried Tales, Awful, Putrid, and Pleurisy. After having his work rejected by several editors, the antagonist and narrator builds a rocket, kidnaps all of the editors, and sends them to the moon. Soon thereafter, he contacts them by radio expecting them to beg for forgiveness. Instead, they tell the narrator that they have found the people of the moon to be avid readers, and they have already established a new magazine on the moon for them. The narrator is heartbroken: I sat aghast. I'm always a little aghast after meals. A fine revenge this turned out to be! I send them to the moon, and they immediately start science-fiction magazines up there! It just ghost to show how uncooperative some people will be” (14). 

There is just something so appealing to these “amateur” magazines. This issue contains work by Eando Binder, Sam Moskowitz, and others whose names I do not know.  was put out by Corwin Stickney, a prodigy of sorts whose letters were being published in Amazing Stories when he was only thirteen years old. He was sixteen when this issue of Amateur Correspondent was published. He had gotten a job at Frank Bogert’s print shop and did not ask for a salary. In exchange for his work, Bogert allowed him to print whatever Stickney wanted and to pay only for the paper. Stickney worked from what was likely his home in Belleville, New Jersey, a suburb of New York City. I google-mapped the contact address listed in the magazine, and there it is: an old brick house right there on a suburban street. (Check the link if you want to do the same.) I want to knock on the door and ask them if they know that their house is a tiny bit famous—if we emphasize “tiny.” Thank you to Jim Nemeth for the link to the impossible-(for me)-to-find story!