INCOMING

I had just two items come in these past two weeks:

• Crypt of Cthulhu #94, Hallowmas, 1996
• James Norman, Oscar, Detective of Mars

    
      Crypt of Cthulu is a small-press journal from Necronomicon Press.  This particular issue contains August Derleth's B.A. thesis from 1930, "The Weird Tale in English Since 1890."  I'm a huge Deleth fan so this made me happy.

     The other item, the Norman book, is a collection of five stories from Fantastic Adventures from the early Forties, and now collected by the wonderful Pulpville Press.  The stories (with their original magazine blurbs) are:

• "Oscar, Detective of Mars", October, 1940.  "Out of a magician's hat popped the lovable Martian, Oscar, right smack into the middle of a deadly situation"
• "Death Walks in Washington", March, 1941.  "Oscar, Detective of Mars, was the strangest creature ever seen on earth -- but the lovable little fellow wasn't half as strange as the ghastly figure that stalked murderously out of nowhere to challenge Oscar to a deadly duel of wits"
• "Oscar Saves the Union", September, 1941.  "An Indian uprising dangerous?  While everybody laughed, Oscar used his sensitive nose, and it told him of an incredible danger to America..."
• "Oscar and the Talking Totems", April, 1942.  "It took all the other-world science of Oscar, the Martian detective to combat the dastardly Jap plot that lay behind these innocent totem poles in Alaska"
• "Double Trouble for Oscar", October, 1942.  "Oscar couldn't be in two places at once...Anyway, it meant danger to Fort Knox's gold"

     Neat, huh?