Forgive me, it’s been four weeks since my last Vacation episode. Early in my reading for this episode, I caught a cold that was followed by the first ear infection that I can recall since childhood. It made it impossible to do any reading or writing and so I really had no choice but to…
As I finished up the issue at hand, I looked ahead on the calendar and discovered one of those nice little congruities which life sometimes tosses you. I will finish 2011 with 30 Episodes in this Vacation. That isn’t any news, but what is kind of cool is that Episode 30 takes us through 1941…
A good argument can be made that the issue which you are about to read about is one of the best issues to come out of the Golden Age. The issue contains three stories that have gone on to become classics of the genre. Contained within its pages are names like Isaac Asimov, Alfred Bester…
I like stats and numbers and I was culling some data on my Vacation posts the other day and thought it would make for an interesting post itself, so here you go. The numbers below represent the first 26 episodes of my Vacation in the Golden Age, covering the July 1939 through August 1941 issues…
More and more I find myself referring back to things I wrote in these episodes and it was becoming increasingly difficult to quickly locate what I was looking for. For a while, I had in mind a master index, and shortly after Episode 25 was released, I also released the first version of the Author…
I’ve been wanting to do this for some time now, and I’ve finally got it done! I have put together an Author Index to the Vacation in the Golden Age. The index is a listing of all authors alphabetically. Indexed beneath each author is their stories or articles that have appeared in the Vacation so…
I have just returned from a science fictional weekend spent attending various panels at Capclave up in Gaithersberg, Maryland (a post on this is forthcoming). It’s always fun to attend conventions because you get to talk with people who breath the same kind of air that you breath. And you can talk about old stories,…
Over at RT Book Reviews, Elisa Verna has written a nice post about my Vacation in the Golden Age. This is so cool! I’ve been taking this Vacation primarily for the enjoyment, and blogging about it allows me to share that enjoyment with others. So I’m delighted whenever I discover there are others out there…
As I mentioned last week, the newly revived Amazing Stories is going to be reprinting my Vacation in the Golden Age columns from the very beginning. Today, Episode #1, covering the July 1939 issue of Astounding is reprinted there. Episode #2 will follow in 2 weeks. Meanwhile, Episode 25, covering the July 1941 Astounding will…
It is hard to believe, but with this Episode, I’ve now completed the first two years of my Vacation in the Golden Age. The schedule has changed slightly and there have been one or two delays in episodes (and I apologize for the most recent delay). But the joy of reading these issues has…
I hate doing it, but this last week has been so busy that I haven’t been able to keep up with my reading and because of that, I have to delay the release of Episode 24 by one cycle. We’re juggling newborn and toddler and I go back to the day job on Monday and…
This batch includes the April through September 1943 issues. The April 1943 issue is the last of the “bedsheet” issues. Astounding went back to its earlier format after the April issue, and even that would not last for long. Soon the premium on paper during the war would push the magazine down to digest size.…