The Vanguard of Venus

This is a replica of a promotional booklet sent out by Amazing Stories magazine to its readers in 1928. The idea was that anyone could write in to the magazine and receive a free copy of the story The Vanguard Of Venus by Landell Bartlett. The promotion was open to anyone and did not require being a subscriber (see the .jpg scan of the original ad from Amazing Stories in the files tree on this page). The story would never be printed in the magazine and this was the only way to get a copy. Allegedly, this was being done in order to get a handle on where in the country Amazing Stories readers were located. Editor Hugo Gernsback was likely also compiling a list of science fiction fans that he would use to launch his Wonder Stories magazines after Amazing 's Experimenter Publishing was forced into bankruptcy in March 1929. This replica was produced by Gilbert Campbell's Filter Press some time after 1974 when the original copyright would have expired, and two years after the author's death. The author's last name is misspelled as Barlett on the cover and title page. There is a single illustration by R.E. Lawlor. Landell Bartlett (1897-1972) was an author and editor who lived in Colorado. He was part of the science fiction fan community there into at least the 1950s. The Vanguard Of Venus is the story of a geologist in New Mexico who is kidnapped into an underground world by invaders from Venus. He is eventually returned to the surface because the Venusians know he will be thought insane if he tells his story. Bartlett eventually wrote a sequel entitled Operation Venus which appeared in the March 1948 issue of The Gorgon , a short-lived fantasy and science fiction fanzine published in Denver, Colorado by editor Stanley Mullen.