Astounding Stories of Super-Science

About this issue

Astounding Stories of Super-Science (January 1930, Vol. I, No. 1) is Clayton Publications' inaugural science fiction magazine. The issue contains seven stories spanning speculative science, adventure, and war fiction. Victor Rousseau's two-part novel "The Beetle Horde" begins the issue: two young explorers—Tommy Travers and Jim Dodd—discover something near the South Pole during an expedition, with Dodd apparently behaving erratically afterward; their discovery threatens global catastrophe via colossal man-sized beetles released by a vengeful madman named Bram. Ray Cummings contributes the complete novelette "Phantoms of Reality," involving Red Sennia and a revolution in a fourth-dimensional realm. Captain S. P. Meek's "The Cave of Horror" depicts an unseen menace attacking a guardsman in Mammoth Cave. M. L. Staley's "The Stolen Mind" explores a protagonist whose consciousness is stolen from his body. Other contributions include C. V. Tench's "Compensation" (featuring Professor Wroxtos and a mysterious crystal cage), Murray Leinster's "Tanks" (soldiers amid fog-gas and mechanical warfare), and Anthony Pelcher's "Peril—Death" (concerning an invisible threat to a millionaire).