Scientifiction, Away!

I've been getting a few too many ideas for my upcoming smutty space opera series Something Rocket Whatever (real name pending), one being a Ming the Merciless bad guy I thought up a month or so ago but I hadn't gotten any further than thinking he'd be fun to write. I've decided he needs a robot army, some useless henchmen and a big dumb hero to foil his evil plans. Colonel "Spurt" Jizzman from the Quickie "All Aboard!" was meant to be the big dumb hero until he flatly stated he didn't want to be that guy because it would mean he didn't know how girls worked, then he flipped me off, got drunk and tried to ride a Bru-mu'tkl. Stupid fictional spaceman.

Anyhow, the two loudmouthed Space Marines from the USS Priapus barely mentioned in "Science With Benefits" will return, complete with stupid porny names, and there'll be a little bit of overlap with the USS Mike Hunt in a story or two. I kinda want to see Olgotha the Terrible and ex space copper Tony Queef again, along with racketeer Dick B. Swellen but they may wind up in another series.

I polished off Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones yesterday and I won't wreck the ending by mocking every plot twist, like the part where he was stranded on an asteroid and built a transmitter out of gravel and space grubs or something, so you'll just have to read it for yourself. You can download a free pdf copy at the Internet Archive but it won't have the two non-Capt. Future short stories each issue normally has. The epub versions are also missing those but there are a few paper reprints of a limited number of issues of the magazine that have everything, just not reproduced very well. 

The only place I've found downloads for every issue of Captain Future Magazine, as well as the Startling Stories magazines that picked up the series after the original magazine folded during WWII, is Radio Archives. They don't have the illustrations, extra short stories, letters or the special features that tell you things about the Futuremen you were probably better off not knowing, but you can read them on the bus without leaving crumbs of pulp paper on the seat. They also appear to be OCR scans that have insanely weird typos, almost as though the person who made them just ran the resulting text through spellcheck and didn't actually read them one last time before uploading. Amusingly, OCR substituted "anal" for "and" in Triumph of Captain Future. "A door opened, anal she stepped hesitantly into a lighted room."

Anal She Stepped. It's like the name of a really crap indie band.

The original magazine was ostensibly aimed at the younger crowd and while this explains the simplistic plots, Marty Stu main character and all the fightin' and killin' this doesn't explain the ads. Oh blasted imps of Saturn, the ads. I have yet to find a single kid-aimed ad in these damnable things beyond the blurb begging everyone to join the Futuremen club, unless they really thought there was a teen market for Mr. Boston's Rocking Chair Blended Whiskey. There aren't even any ads for Grit, X-Ray Specs or live squirrel monkeys by mail. I'm taking this personally because I totally need an X-Ray Specs-wearing squirrel monkey right now to deliver this stack of Grit I stupidly signed up for.

Take this issue of Capt. Future, for instance. Quest Beyond the Stars, Winter 1942, whatever number that is. I'm too lazy to drag it out of the plastic bag again to check. I haven't read this one yet since I'm going through them in order and I still have Star Trail to Glory, Magician of Mars and The Lost World of Time to read first. 

You see on the cover Joan has gotten captured again for fuck's sake, though this time it might just be a desperate bid for Captain Future's attention since that faint looks straight-up fake.

On page 9, right after the ubiquitous Charles Atlas 97-pound weakling ad, we find this disturbing entry, and no, it isn't the only false teeth by mail ad in here. There are two more small ones and another for that gunk you stick them in with.

You get to test-drive these bad boys for 60 days so if you need to impress the new in-laws at your daughter's wedding you can borrow a set of store teeth like they came from a dental library.

I'm thinking one of the worst jobs on the planet would've been opening the boxes of returned teeth. I'm imagining a dank mailroom smelling like halitosis and sadness.

"don't Worry about Rupture." I'm not, really. I'm way more concerned about your capitalization skills or lack thereof.

There isn't a picture of this air-cushioned contraption so I'm picturing some ungodly inflatable trouser thing like from the Monty Python Trim Jeans Theatre skit. Maybe you hook it up to a vacuum cleaner or an air compressor (compressor not included), then try and hide it under your voluminous 1940s slacks. Oh, the misunderstandings when your Brooks Appliance has a sudden decompression when you take that special lady out to dinner. I doubt a simple "scuse me" will suffice.

Blast jets, Futuremen!