The Doorway To The Moon
Such a practical and down-to-earth organization as the United States Army is very busy trying to bounce bits of metal oil the surface of the moon. That's what guarded dispatches from the "guided missile" areas inform us in the daily newspapers. Receiving re-echoed radio signals from Luna's pock-marked surface is already old stuff, last year's headlines. People read these reports as they go about their daily work: outwardly they do not change, but we feel confident that inwardly a very profound disturbance is moving into the hearts of humanity.
For thousands of years, as far back as recorded legend goes, the moon has been a symbol of the unattainable, of the heights of ambition and vanity and desire. Luna, hanging there, has inspired libraries of verse, oceans of prose. Fantasy hinged on the silver crescent and that deep dark background of glittering stars to which it seems the key. Now, in this day out of all history we are earnestly reaching for it. First to peg missiles, then eventually, in our own time, to reach out bodily for it, to go there on wings of atomic flame and stalk its conquered surface in person.
It is no wonder at all that the Avon Fantasy Reader has found its readers applauding each number with mounting enthusiasm. In the pages of this hook we present the best efforts of imaginative men and women to obtain glimpses beyond the moon, to tell us tomorrow's blazing headlines today. Nothing else but the omens of our times can account for such stories as the pen of Catherine L. Moore can turn out. Such a tale as Scarlet Dream, interlocking within itself the future of men on Mars and temptations of dimensions yet unguessed by science.
Another member of C. L. Moore's sex is Clare Winger Harris whose tale of The Miracle of The Lily also tackles boldly a problem of communication between worlds (this time the planet Venus) and an even more desperate problem, the struggle of man against Nature. Nature includes many things besides the sciences we recognize. There are forces still to be guessed at, and Carl Jacobi has written a new story for us dealing intriguingly with the possibility of The Random Quantity.
Stephen Vincent Benet's story, The Gold Dress, is a ghost story, told in the manner that has made Benet famous among American storytellers. And W. F. Harvey's SAMBO is a tale of a different type of weird force, manifesting itself through a dreadful African doll. Africa, that continent of dark marvels, called forth from the hand of Robert Bloch the eerie narrative, Fane of The Black Pharaoh, wherein the whole of the past, present, and future comes to a grim focus.
Frank Owen likewise knows how to tie in the past with the present as you will find in his enthralling modern legend of China, A Study in Amber. We cannot fail to see the doorways of power and terror that open up in the startling tales of C. M. Kombluth and Robert W. Chambers.
You'll find this an all-around collection of really superior fantasy. Write us and tell us what you think of it and what you would like to see in the future numbers.
Acknowledgments
Scarlet Dream by C. L. Moore. Copyright, 1934, by the Popular Fiction Publishing Company.
Sambo from The Beast with Five Fingers by William Freyer Harvey. Copyright, 1947, by E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc.
Fane of the Black Pharaoh by Robert Bloch. Copyright, 1937, by the Popular Fiction Publishing Company.
The Random Quantity by Carl Jacobi. Copyright, 1947, by Avon Book Company.
The Gold Dress by Stephen Vincent Benét. Copyright, 1942, by Hearst Magazines, Inc.
The Miracle of The LILY by Clare Winger Harris. Copyright, 1928, by Experimenter Publishing Co.; copyright, 1947, by Dorrance & Co., Inc.; rights now held by Ziff-Davis Publishing Co.; reprinted by arrangement with Ackerman Authors' Agency.
A Study in Amber by Frank Owen from Fireside Mystery Book. Copyright, 1947, by Frank Owen.
The Words of Guru by C. M. Kornbluth. Copyright, 1941, by Albing Publications. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Avon
Fantasy Reader
No. 5
Edited By
Donald A. Wollheim
| C. L. Moore | • | Robert Bloch |
| Frank Owen | • | Carl Jacobi |
| Clare Winger Harris | • | W. F. Harvey |
| Robert W. Chambers | • | C. M. Kornbluth |
Stephen Vincent Benét
Avon Book Company
119 West 57th Street, New York 19, N. Y.
Contents
Scarlet Dream
By C. L. Moore |
7 |
| 30 |
Fane of the Black Pharaoh
By Robert Bloch |
37 |
The Random Quantity
By Carl Jacobi |
54 |
The Gold Dress
| 62 |
| 75 |
| 92 |
By Frank Owen |
100 |
By C. M. Kornbluth |
119 |
Avon Fantasy Reader: No. 5
Copyright, 1947, by Avon Book Company . . . Printed in U.S.A.
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