Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Carson of Venus" (novel, adventure, free): Hero helps win a war

This is #3 in author's Venus series. I've not read the earlier books, but it's pretty much an independent adventure. And very readable if you can keep plausibility aside.

Story summary.

Carson Napier, hero of the story, along with his ladylove Duare, is homeless & wanted in many jurisdictions on Venus. But he has an airplane he built that can stay up in the air without maintenance or refueling for 50 years! But he needs to land for food. The duo are seeking a home where they will be wanted.

They'll end up on a large island (Korva) with war going on - a common soldier has usurped power & has imprisoned the king. All of Korva has fallen except one holdout, the walled city of Sanara. The city is now under seize.

Carson will end up befriending the holdouts, & help them win the war by bombing enemy from his plane & by playing a spy in usurper's city.

Notes.

There is also an unrelated short story length adventure at the beginning of the novel - tribals kidnap Duare & Carson will rescue her.

Fact sheet.

First published: As a serial in 6 parts in Argosy, Jan 8, 15, 22, 29, & Feb 5 & 12 issues, 1938.
Download full text from Project Gutenberg of Australia or Feedbooks.
Rating: A.
Nominated for Retro Hugo Awards 1939 in novel category.

"Argosy Weekly", 30 November 1935 (magazine, free): Annotated table of contents

While Argosy did publish some science fiction, it wasn't exclusively a science fiction magazine. It published all sorts of action stories.

Link on author fetches more fiction by author. Where I have a separate post on a story, link on story title goes there. For stories I've read, my rating appears in brackets.

Table of contents (best first, unread last).

1. [ss] Murray Leinster's "The Extra Intelligence" (B): Something evil is looking for a human brain it can take control of ...
2. [serial - 1/6] George Bruce'd "Flying Circus": "The first of the aerial daredevils".
3. [serial - 2/3] Judson P Philips' "Off-Side!": "Dirty politics & clean football don't mix".
4. [serial - 3/6] J D Newsom's "Fool's Mate": "The Foreign Legion--a feud within the ranks".
5. [serial - 4/6] Arthur Hawthorne Carhart's "Rodeo": "Drama in the West's greatest show".
6. [novelette] Anthony M Rud's "Byng of Ballarat": "One man's fight in the Australian goldfields".
7. [ss] R V Gery's "Goliath": "Fighting sea wolves of the Medeterranean".
8. [ss] Odgers T Gurnee's "Taos Men Were Mountain Men": "With the army of the West in the days of Fremont".

Fact sheet.

Labeled: Vol 260, No 3.
Download scans as a CBZ file. [via Mark Pruett @pulpscans]
Related: Fiction from Argosy; old "pulps"; 1930s.

Free fiction: Genre pulp magazines at Project Gutenberg

1. "The Argosy (Bookshelf)".
2. "Astounding Stories (Bookshelf)". I've linked several of these in the past, but a few seem to be new entries.

Related: Fiction from Argosy, Astounding/Analog.

Free fiction: 2 issues of "Argosy" - 8 August 1931, & 17 March 1888

Scans in CBR/CBZ formats at Crosseyed Cyclops in two RAR files.

Note that while Argosy has published some good science fiction, it was really a multi-genre magazine.

Different titles of the two included issues could be because of magazine's name change over its long life; I'm not sure.

1. "Argosy #1 1931 rar": Contains "Argosy, 8 August 1931" issue.
2. "Golden Argosy 1888 rar": Contains "Golden Argosy, 17 March 1888" issue.

Related.

1. Fiction from Argosy.
2. Old "pulp" magazines.
3. Fiction from 1930s, 19th century.

Murray Leinster's "The Mad Planet" (novelette, adventure, free): Beginning of the Man's return to sentience after a major environmental disaster

Among the best known stories of Leinster, & the first in a series of 3. The fix up novel, The Forgotten Planet, combines the 3 stories, moves the location away from earth, & has a silly ending. But this post is about the original & the best known story of the lot.

Story summary.

For unknown reasons, earth's interior began spewing carbon dioxide. By the time things settled down, earth had returned to carboniferous era - low oxygen, lot of carbon dioxide in atmosphere.

30,000 years later, most humans, animals & plants are dead. This is a world dominated by giant fungi & insects - insects far more dangerous than the worst mammals we know. Some tiny isolated tribes of what were once human survive; but they're physically transformed beyond recognition, have lost not only all technology including fire making but most language & indeed sentience. This is the story of man's beginning of the return to sentience & hopefully greater things.

20 year old Burl, the hero of this story & the series, is out to hunt something special to impress Saya, the girl of his tribe he has a soft spot for. The hunt will turn into a major adventure, & by the time he returns several days later, he will be a different man.

Quotes.

1. "He was ignorant of fire, metals, or the uses of stone and wood. A single garment covered him. His language was a meager group of a few hundred labial sounds, conveying no abstractions and few concrete things."
2. "Only a man attempting to advance in the scale of civilization tries to explain everything. A savage or child is content to observe without comment, unless he repeats legends from wise folk possessed by the itch of knowledge."
3. "Even in the high civilization of ages before, few men had really used their brains. The great majority had depended on machines and leaders to think for them."
4. "There is something strangely daunting in the actions of an insect. It moves so directly, with uncanny precision, utterly indifferent to anything but the end in view. Cannibalism is almost universal. The paralysis of prey, so it remains alive and fresh--though in agony--for weeks on end, is commonplace. The eating piecemeal of still-living victims is a matter of course.
   
   Absolute mercilessness, utter callousness, incredible inhumanity beyond anything in the animal world is the way of insects. And these vast cruelties are performed by armored, machinelike creatures with an abstraction and a routine air that suggests a horrible Nature behind them all."
5. "30,000 years of savagery had not lessened Saya's femininity. She became aware that Burl was her slave, that these wonderful things he wore and had done meant nothing if she did not approve."

Fact sheet.

First published: The Argosy, 12 June 1920.
Rating: A.
Download full text from The Wondersmith.
Related: Stories of Murray Leinster.

Free fiction: 16 monthly issues of "The Argosy" magazine of Frank A Munsey at Internet Archive

Sometimes called the first "pulp" magazine in the US, it has had nearly a century long run, & still efforts are made occasionally to revive the venerable magazine. It used to include science fiction stories, among other genres.

16 issues are now available at Internet Archive, in the form of 4 packages of 4 monthly issues each. Please note the IA post titles don't always match the contents of the package; links below mention what is found inside the downloaded documents.

1. December 1897 to March 1898: 4 novels, 6 serialized stories, 14 short stories, plus a dozen poems.
2. December 1898 to March 1899: 4 novels, 7 serialized stories, 14 short stories, & over a dozen poems.
3. December 1899 to March 1900: 4 novels, 8 serialized stories, 32 short stories, 2 dozen poems.
4. April-July 1990: Posted today. 4 novels, 8 serialized stories, 48 short stories, & over a dozen poems.

Any future posts of it at IA, along with Astounding scans, will now be automatically picked up by reprints feed.

An aside: Wikipedia provides this helpful tidbit from the early days of the magazine when it was targeted at children: "Munsey found that targeting children had been a mistake, as they did not stay subscribed for any length of time, since they grew out of reading the magazine. Additionally, children did not have much money to spend, which limited the number of advertisers interested in reaching them."

Related.

1. Stories from The Argosy.
   
2. Someone has been maintaining an online database of Argosy covers.

Murray Leinster's "The Runaway Skyscraper" (novelette, time travel, free): Adventure thousands of years ago in the current location of New York City

While not among the most entertaining stories, this might be among the earliest of the kind where a physical structure mysteriously appears at a place it doesn't belong. A more entertaining modern variant, but with a wilder plot, is Adam Troy-Castro's "Sunday Night Yams at Minnie and Earl's".

Native Americans might find parts of the story offensive.

Story summary.

As an after-effect of an earthquake, the ground shifted under an office building called the "Metropolitan Tower" in New York along the "Fourth Dimension" (time) - sinking the building down thousands of years in time! No other building is affected, & this building is transported generally unharmed to the ancient wilderness where New York City now stands.

As a coincidence, the building will appear next to a village of native Americans. Small parts of the story deal with interactions of building dwellers with those of this village.

It's mostly about adventure in this time - primarily finding food for some 2000 men & woman in the building by city dwellers who don't know how to get food from nature. Plus a background romance between the hero Arthur Chamberlain & his secretary Estelle Woodward.

Arthur, a civil engineer, will figure out what happened, will provide leadership to the stranded lot, & will eventually get the building back to its own time by adding soap to a natural water reservoir below the building!

This story talks of extreme abundance of "wood-pigeons" in the country-side of this era; they will be food for time travelers during their early days. This abundance also figures in another Leinster story - "Sidewise in Time".

I found it curious that electric supply to the building was not affected by travel. Where was the building drawing power from?

Fact sheet.

First published: Argosy magazine, 22 February 1919 issue.
Rating: B
Download full text.
Related: All stories of Murray Leinster.