Free Collection of Stories Eligible for 1941 Retro Hugos

When File 770 commenter von Dimpleheimer heard about the 1941 Retro-Hugos, which MidAmeriCon II members will select in 2016 (in addition to the regular Hugos), he realized many of the eligible stories must be in the public domain.

He has assembled 26 of those stories in an epub that can be downloaded from his Google drive. Here is the link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2Q8-08mD2rFMk1BYVdRM2N3MEU/view?usp=sharing

In establishing their public domain status, he says research showed none of the stories had their copyrights renewed individually and most of them appeared in magazines which did not have their copyrights renewed. The magazines which did have their copyrights renewed were unable to renew the copyrights for these particular stories since their authors had died by then and death negates any contract the author may have had with a magazine.

I downloaded the volume and spent a few minutes seeing how easy it was to use. My epub reader (Adobe Digital Editions) couldn’t display the cover properly, and seemed to take a bit of time to open the pages, but in due course the text appeared onscreen, perfectly readable.

Table of Contents

  • “The Ray that Failed” by Albert Bernstein (as Donald Bern) in Fantastic Adventures, August 1940.
  • “Queen of the Metal Men” by Robert Bloch in Fantastic Adventures, April 1940.
  • “The Syphonic Abduction” by Hannes Bok in Futuria Fantasia, Winter 1940.
  • “The Voice of Scariliop” by Hannes Bok (as H. V. B.) in Futuria Fantasia, Winter 1940.
  • “Lancelot Biggs Cooks a Pirate” by Nelson S. Bond in Fantastic Adventures, February 1940.
  • “The Stellar Legion” by Leigh Bracket in Planet Stories, Winter 1940.
  • “The Flight of the Good Ship Clarissa” by Ray Bradbury in Futuria Fantasia, Spring 1940.
  • “The Piper” by Ray Bradbury (as Ron Reynolds) in Futuria Fantasia, Spring 1940.
  • “The Man Who Killed the World” by Ray Cummings (as Ray King) in Planet Stories, Spring 1940.
  • “Sabotage on Mars” by Maurice Duclos in Fantastic Adventures, June 1940.
  • “Glamour Girl-2040” by Oscar J. Friend in Startling Stories, May 1940.
  • “HEIL!” by Robert Heinlein (as Lyle Monroe) in Futuria Fantasia, Spring 1940.
  • “Tickets to Paradise” by D. L. James in Comet, December 1940.
  • “The Itching Hour” by Damon Knight in Futuria Fantasia, Spring 1940.
  • “50 Miles Down” by Henry Kuttner (as Peter Horn) in Fantastic Adventures, May 1940.
  • “The Shining Man” by Henry Kuttner (as Noel Gardner) in Fantastic Adventures, May 1940.
  • “Hell in Eden” by Richard O. Lewis in Fantastic Adventures, January 1940.
  • “Inflexible Logic” by Russell Maloney in The New Yorker, February 1940.
  • “Song in a Minor Key” by C. L. Moore in Scienti-Snaps, February 1940.
  • “Blue Tropics” by James Norman in Fantastic Adventures, April 1940.
  • “The Strange Voyage of Hector Squinch” by David Wright O’Brien in Fantastic Adventures, August 1940.
  • “The Intruder” by Emil Petaja in Futuria Fantasia, Winter 1940.
  • “Martian Terror” by Ed Earl Repp in Planet Stories, Spring 1940.
  • “The Tantalus Death” by Ross Rocklynne in Planet Stories, Spring 1940.
  • “The Girl in the Whirlpool” by Don Wilcox in Fantastic Adventures, August 1940.
  • “The Golden Princess” by Robert Moore Williams in Fantastic Adventures, August 1940.
  • “Captives of the Void” by R. R. Winterbotham in Fantastic Adventures, January 1940.

25 thoughts on “Free Collection of Stories Eligible for 1941 Retro Hugos

  1. @ von Dimpleheimer

    Thank you!
    I had no problems with the cover or text in iBooks on my iPad.

    @ Camestros
    I just realized yesterday was Friday the 13th.
    In the year 2180 we still grieve and commemorate this sad day.

  2. Just downloaded the mobi version. It reads quite well here in 2994, where we still don’t have the flying cars the Jetsons promised us.

  3. The epub works fine in version 3 of Adobe Digital Editions, but when I updated to version 4.5 it did not like my epub at all! I couldn’t find anything wrong in the epub, so I don’t know why 4.5 squashes the cover and is so slow to open each story.

    It made it with Sigil. It works fine with Calibre, Readium (epub 3 chrome browser extension), on my Sony PRS-T1 ereader, and on my Onyx T68 ereader using NeoReader and Moon+ Reader. It didn’t work well with O Reader on my T68.

  4. This may be interesting as a curiosity, but it won’t be much use for the Retro Hugos. There are no stories from Astounding or Unknown, and that was where the action was in 1940.

    An inordinate number of these stories come from Ray Bradbury’s fanzine. The fanzine was not noted for the high quality of its fiction. Later fanzines would adopt the attitude “If you can’t sell it, we don’t want to read it.”

  5. I have Book Bazaar Reader for Windows 8.1, and it downloaded and opened up just fine. Thank you, von Dimpleheimer!

  6. junego on November 14, 2015 at 1:16 am said:

    @ Camestros
    I just realized yesterday was Friday the 13th.

    I hadn’t made that connection due to the timezone I’m in (i.e. it was saturday already here)

  7. You’re welcome. Should have Vol 2 ready later this week, and Vol 3 may be an all Nelson Bond issue.

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