Vintage Pulp Science Fiction Publication, three stories

Cafe Society
1

Hi, I’m looking for a back issue of a pulp science fiction publication I bought at a used comic store years ago when I was a boy, but I can’t remember the name or issue date, but judging by the artwork and stories it was sometime in the 30’s or early 40’s. It may have been Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories or something else. However, I distinctively remember three stories with illustrations:
[ul]
[li]One story centred about some sort of timeslip, or time distortion or time out of sequence; possibly controlled by an alien. I recall a man who works some office job goes back or forward in time by a few days. I remember a charcoal or pencil drawing of The Ancient of Days by William Blake (the alien) and other of the man fallen on the ground.[/li][li]Another story was about a space explorer possibly on Mars or Venus who discovers a race of (possibly ant-like) male aliens with three arms, the third sprouting from the center of their chests to hold a shield. A queen controls them, but I cannot remember how the story ends, but I seem to recall he had to rescue her from a revolt. I did not finish it. I remember it was also illustrated. [/li][li]A story at the back was about a hypothetical visit to Pluto (or possibly Neptune). It was about a possible encounter if an explorer visited the planet and the race of beings they would likely discover. I remember it described this alien with thick fur and heavy beard and moustache to protect him from the cold. I still remember a drawing of him sitting on his throne with some kind of sceptre.[/li][li]The cover of the issue was dark with a rocket or two on it if memory serves me well.[/li][/ul]
I’d sure be happy to find this issue either physically or in electronic form. I’ve tried many of the pulp fiction sites including Cover Browser, Vintage Pulps, Pulpworld.com, Speculative Fiction Database, The Ultimate Science Fiction Web Guide, The Online Books Page and UNZ.org with no success. I’ve tried searching all publications with time and Pluto as the keyword with dead-end results. Any help would be very much appreciated. Thank you in advance.

I have confirmed these stories are not in the following issues (as they resemble the cover I remember):
[ul]
[li]Amazing Stories Quarterly Spring 1928[/li][li]Amazing Stories Oct 1931[/li][li]Amazing Stories Sep 1934[/li][li]Amazing Stories Apr 1935[/li][li]Amazing Stories Oct 1935[/li][li]Amazing Stories Oct 1936[/li][li]Amazing Stories Dec 1939[/li][li]Amazing Stories Aug 1940[/li][li]Amazing Stories Oct 1942[/li][li]Astounding Stories Jul 1937[/li][li]Astounding Science Fiction Jul 1938[/li][li]Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec 1936[/li][/ul]

2

I have the Day Index, which has the contents of every sf magazine from 1926 - 1950, but it does not include plot summaries. If you can remember the authors of at least one of the stories, I could check, or if you have a few dates I can tell you the contents of those magazines.

This site has all the Amazing covers - I suspect the parent page has the covers of the other magazines too.

3

I was only ten or eleven years old, with a passing fancy to pulp science fiction. I would not have paid attention to the authors. That site you mention is familiar, and I believe is a resource I used previously to narrow down my search. Other than that, all I can provide is what I have already. Thanks anyway.

4

Archive.org has just about every Golden Age issue of Amazing and all the other sf pulps. You can read them online or download them as pdf’s or in other formats.

5

Just about, except what I am looking for. Archive was what I used to narrow my list. Thanks for the try.

6

Found what I was looking for, thanks to Microsoft Copilot. It was Science Fiction Adventure Classics #29 (1974 03).

Although it was published in 1974, all the stories were from the 30’s and 40’s. In it you’ll find my three searches. The essay, Warriors of Other Worlds (1943) by Morris J. Steele, about the hypothetical visit to Pluto was actually to Uranus. The alien was on the cover of the magazine, fighting some earthling explorers, not sitting on a throne. I must have been thinking of something else when I thought the cover had flying spaceships.

The timeslip story, what I was so confident that had an image of Willam Blake’s The Ancient of Days was actually a depiction of Father Time holding back a clock’s hour-hand drawn by one Alec Gorey in the story The Missing Year (1939) by Eando Binder.

And the other exploration story with the three-armed aliens was the novelette Warriors of Mars (1939) by Authur Tofte.

Goes to show you how memory can fade after 50 years.

Anyway, I can rest easy now. Thanks to all for your tireless work helping me out. The cheque’s in the mail.

7

That is great that you found it. And thank you for coming back to the thread and providing closure.

8

I have that issue if you need something in the hard copy for some reason. Sol Cohen bought Amazing and Fantastic, and because they came with the rights to old stories republished a lot of them, one set really old that yours and another from the ‘50s. Pissed off a lot of sf writers since he had republication rights so they didn’t get paid.

9

No thanks, I got what I needed: 50 years catchup of lost sleep due to trying to remember what that issue was.