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Fantasite, v. 2, issue 4, November-December 1942
31858063099612_007
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THE FANTASITE..............................7 [large letters, with bookshelf and elephant bookends in background : RECOMMENDED READING BY BOB TUCKER ] REVIEWING A brace of books dealing with ye infiltration of ye cunning enemy into our fair land, and how we dealt with them in ways expected. Grosset & Dunlap have published a 50c edition, with jacket, of Hendrik Willem van Loon's [title underlined INVASION (first published by Harcourt in 1940); a short book describing the author's experiences that fateful day the fifth columnists, soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Rhineland "took over" New York, New England, and various inland and Gulfport cities. They didn't keep their new-won prizes long but that is beside the point. Van Loon, as does the second author in the work reviewed below, writes from the standpoint of a person actually facing these things--first person singular, with himself, van Loon, the leading character. This is a dramatic, punchy way of telling an exciting narrative; and having a weakness as we do for autobiographies, especially newspapermen's and war diarys, [sic] it reads to us as if it actually happened. Which is what the author desires. The author departs from New York City one sultry summer afternoon after a disheartening round of publishers and newspaper syndicates. As one who has seen his native Holland fall to the Nazis via the agency of fifth columnists and national unpreparedness, he attempts to warn America of these same shortcomings within herself; but America in the summer of 1940 isn't interested. Hitler has assured us that he has no designs upon the western hemisphere. We're isolated by a big ocean. At home that evening (in Connecticutt) [sic] he notices a gigantic red glare over distant New York, finds that all metropolitan radio stations are off the air, telegraphic communications dead and only local telephone service available. He receives a friendly warning to leave home and not to take time to pack his toothbrush, inasmuch as a carload of gun-toting strangers are headed his way with homicidal intents. His writings and warnings, it seems, received a deaf ear in America, but they certainly received attention in Germany. The Nazis are offshore, the fifth columnists are riding, and he is their first target. He sends his family packing to friends in Vermont, and with his son makes a get-away in an old Ford after an encounter with two carloads of gunmen and a machine gun. He makes his way to an upstate newspaper office where a somewhat incoherent story of the night's events is patched together from short wave radio accounts. New York City was, of course, thoroughly sabotaged. "Swedish" and "Portuguese" ships in the harbor spewed forth Nazi troops, who seized trucks and sped through the city machine-gunning indiscriminately. Bridges were blown up, the tunnels blocked, and Manhattan Islanders found themselves marooned on the island, while others from the northeast bombed Detroit, Akron, and Canadian points. Parachutists land in New England and establish themselves in sturdy farmhouses. All in all, the enemy field day lasts about 48 hours or a trifle longer, before the regular army troops land at the Battery and work their way uptown; and before the loyal Vermonters lay a trap for parachuters and pick them off as they descend--by the hundreds. Not a fantastic book, but thoroughly recommended reading. Tiffany Thayer's (title underlined) THE GREEK, published by Charles & Albert Boni, 1931. (Next page)
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THE FANTASITE..............................7 [large letters, with bookshelf and elephant bookends in background : RECOMMENDED READING BY BOB TUCKER ] REVIEWING A brace of books dealing with ye infiltration of ye cunning enemy into our fair land, and how we dealt with them in ways expected. Grosset & Dunlap have published a 50c edition, with jacket, of Hendrik Willem van Loon's [title underlined INVASION (first published by Harcourt in 1940); a short book describing the author's experiences that fateful day the fifth columnists, soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Rhineland "took over" New York, New England, and various inland and Gulfport cities. They didn't keep their new-won prizes long but that is beside the point. Van Loon, as does the second author in the work reviewed below, writes from the standpoint of a person actually facing these things--first person singular, with himself, van Loon, the leading character. This is a dramatic, punchy way of telling an exciting narrative; and having a weakness as we do for autobiographies, especially newspapermen's and war diarys, [sic] it reads to us as if it actually happened. Which is what the author desires. The author departs from New York City one sultry summer afternoon after a disheartening round of publishers and newspaper syndicates. As one who has seen his native Holland fall to the Nazis via the agency of fifth columnists and national unpreparedness, he attempts to warn America of these same shortcomings within herself; but America in the summer of 1940 isn't interested. Hitler has assured us that he has no designs upon the western hemisphere. We're isolated by a big ocean. At home that evening (in Connecticutt) [sic] he notices a gigantic red glare over distant New York, finds that all metropolitan radio stations are off the air, telegraphic communications dead and only local telephone service available. He receives a friendly warning to leave home and not to take time to pack his toothbrush, inasmuch as a carload of gun-toting strangers are headed his way with homicidal intents. His writings and warnings, it seems, received a deaf ear in America, but they certainly received attention in Germany. The Nazis are offshore, the fifth columnists are riding, and he is their first target. He sends his family packing to friends in Vermont, and with his son makes a get-away in an old Ford after an encounter with two carloads of gunmen and a machine gun. He makes his way to an upstate newspaper office where a somewhat incoherent story of the night's events is patched together from short wave radio accounts. New York City was, of course, thoroughly sabotaged. "Swedish" and "Portuguese" ships in the harbor spewed forth Nazi troops, who seized trucks and sped through the city machine-gunning indiscriminately. Bridges were blown up, the tunnels blocked, and Manhattan Islanders found themselves marooned on the island, while others from the northeast bombed Detroit, Akron, and Canadian points. Parachutists land in New England and establish themselves in sturdy farmhouses. All in all, the enemy field day lasts about 48 hours or a trifle longer, before the regular army troops land at the Battery and work their way uptown; and before the loyal Vermonters lay a trap for parachuters and pick them off as they descend--by the hundreds. Not a fantastic book, but thoroughly recommended reading. Tiffany Thayer's (title underlined) THE GREEK, published by Charles & Albert Boni, 1931. (Next page)
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