THRILL BOOK

   US magazine in the larger, saddle-stapled DIME-NOVEL format for 8 issues, then PULP-MAGAZINE size. 16 issues, 2 per month, 1 Mar-15 Oct 1919, published by STREET \& SMITH; ed Harold HERSEY (Mar-June 1919) and Ronald Oliphant (July-Oct 1919). The legendarily rare TB is often cited as thefirst SF MAGAZINE, but its initial 8 issues contained no sf, rather stories intended to provide "thrills" of an occult or weird sort. Only after Oliphant became editor did TB regularly publish sf stories, including 2 by Murray LEINSTER (one involving a mad inventor, the other a biological menace). Others included: an H.G. WELLS-inspired story of INVISIBILITY by Greye La Spina (1880-1969); a Sax ROHMER-inspired Chinesesupervillain whose inventions include a device for creating black light in "Mr Shen of Shensi" by H. BEDFORD-JONES; and the satirical "The Man fromThebes", featuring a reanimated mummy, by William Wallace COOK. Additional sf by less notable authors treated routinely such sf/ HORROR motifs as devices to communicate with the dead, drugs that distort the time-sense, men protected by invisible armour, and LOST WORLDS. TB's most famous story was The Heads of Cerberus (Aug-Oct 1919; 1952) by Francis STEVENS, a SCIENCE-FANTASY adventure set predominantly in a Philadelphia located inan alternate time-track. The definitive work on TB is Richard BLEILER's obsessively thorough The Annotated Index to The Thrill Book (chap 1991).

RB