Having thus become prolific in books and having made a start in the direction of automobiles and offspring, I was ready for anything and began to accept all kinds of assignments.

Among the many science fiction magazines of the early 1950s, for instance, there was one called Marvel Science Fiction. It was the reincarnation of an earlier Marvel that had published nine issues between 1938 and 1941. The earlier magazine had specialized in stories that accented sex in a rather heavy-handed and foolish manner. [In a very indirect way this eventually led to my writing a story called Playboy and the Slime God which appeared in the March 1961 Amazing stories and was then included in my collection NIGHTFALL AND OTHER STORIES under the much better title What Is This Thing Called Love?

After Marvel was revived in 1950 (it lasted only for another half-dozen issues) I was asked for a story. I might have recalled the unsavory history of the magazine and refused to supply one, but I thought of a story I couldn’t resist writing because, as all who know me are aware, I am an incorrigible punster.[I once asked a girl named Dawn if she had ever used one of those penny weighing machines on a trip to Florida she was telling me about. She said, “No. Why?”and I said because there was a song written about it. She said, “What are you talking about?” and I said, “Haven’t you heard ’Weigh Dawn Upon the Swanee river’?” and she chased me for five blocks before I got away.]The story was SHAH GUIDO G.and it appeared in the November 1951 issue of Marvel.

Shah Guido G.

Once every year Philo Plat returned to the scene of his crime. It was a form of penance. On each anniversary he climbed the barren crest and gazed along the miles of smashed metal, concrete, and bones.

The area was desolate. The metal crumplings were still stainless and unrusted, their jagged teeth raised in futile anger. Somewhere among it all were the skeletons of the thousands who had died, of all ages and both sexes. Their skully sightlessness, for all he knew, was turning empty, curse-torn eye holes at him.