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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 2, whole no. 11, Summer 1945
Page 13
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Gallet's correspondents in America and England. To say that they ware scarce would hardly be exaggerating matters; probably not more than a half-dozen exist in this country. And that many more in England. Gallet himself is a reasonably young man who is widely travelled, a veteran of all sorts of experiences, and intensely interested in matters fantastic. He writes--and presumably speaks--excellent English, knows America pretty well, and planned to use this country as the source of much of the contents of Conquetes. Only one thing prevented the magazine from appearing as planned: the Second World War. That experimental issue, "Number 00", was dated August 24, 1939. A week later, Hitler marched into Poland; less than a year later, France had been conquered. Gallet, an officer in the French army, had fought, escaped across the channel from Dunkirk, gotten back to France, and managed to find a way for himself and his wife into southern, then unoccupied, France. Plans for Conquetes had to be abandoned, since the presses needed were in German hands. When Germany completed the occupation of France, all communication from Gallet was cut off, and he was heard from no more until May of this year. Conquetes was intended by Gallet to sell to "an intelligent audience" of young men and women about 18 years old, according to this editor. "that is, it is the first attempt in a long while to build up a field in France for stf, that one has to begin slowly to accustom one's audience to quite a new climate," he wrote me. It must be understood that this publication was neither similar to the American prozine, nor merely a "popular science" publication of the old Gernsback Science and Invention type. It was somewhere between the two, approximating in general scheme the British boys' paper, Scoops, which Gallet may conceivably have used for a model. The one and only issue consists of 16 pages, 12 1/2 X 9 1/2, half of them printed in two or more colors, on good magazine stock, neither "slick" nor "pulp". The cover was surprisingly conservative--merely a drawing of an airplane in flight over a landscape, completed with blurbs in the best American tradition for the stories and articles featured in the issue. Each copy bore also a rubber-stamped notation, *Numero experimental--confidentiel". Two fantasy serials begin in this issue. One of them, entitled "Kilsona", turns out to be a translation of Festus Pragnell's "Green Men of Kilsona", which had already appeared in English as a serial in Wonder Stories, and in book form. The translation, by one Robert M. Zakovitch, was reasonably literal. The portion contained in this issue included the story, with a few minor deletions, up to the words "with what might have been a bow and a quiver of arrows on his back" on page 32 of the British edition in book form. There was a good illustration, and an editorial note which explained that "About nine years ago, the cover on an American fantastic adventure magazine attracted the attention of a London policeman on duty in Paddington....A vocation was determined; Festus Pragnell was to become one of the leading writers of'scientific fiction', as the Americans say." The other serial was not a translation. The title was "Le Mystere de Padio-Zero", proclaimed to be a "great unpublished story of heroic adventures", by "Commander Cazal, author of 'War, War', 'Maginot-Siegfried', etc." The editor's note kept intelligent 18-year-old readers in the dark as to the identity of "Commander Cazal", calling him a "prudent person, shunning publicity, great talent as an author, fiery patriotism--that is Commander Cazal, whose heroic tales have an extraordinary popularity." The lengthy first chapter of this story described the manner in which the famed Captain Sarlatt was assigned to investigate a mysterious series of plane wrecks. The French "Service secret des Reseignments au Ministere de la Defense Nationale" had -- 13 --
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Gallet's correspondents in America and England. To say that they ware scarce would hardly be exaggerating matters; probably not more than a half-dozen exist in this country. And that many more in England. Gallet himself is a reasonably young man who is widely travelled, a veteran of all sorts of experiences, and intensely interested in matters fantastic. He writes--and presumably speaks--excellent English, knows America pretty well, and planned to use this country as the source of much of the contents of Conquetes. Only one thing prevented the magazine from appearing as planned: the Second World War. That experimental issue, "Number 00", was dated August 24, 1939. A week later, Hitler marched into Poland; less than a year later, France had been conquered. Gallet, an officer in the French army, had fought, escaped across the channel from Dunkirk, gotten back to France, and managed to find a way for himself and his wife into southern, then unoccupied, France. Plans for Conquetes had to be abandoned, since the presses needed were in German hands. When Germany completed the occupation of France, all communication from Gallet was cut off, and he was heard from no more until May of this year. Conquetes was intended by Gallet to sell to "an intelligent audience" of young men and women about 18 years old, according to this editor. "that is, it is the first attempt in a long while to build up a field in France for stf, that one has to begin slowly to accustom one's audience to quite a new climate," he wrote me. It must be understood that this publication was neither similar to the American prozine, nor merely a "popular science" publication of the old Gernsback Science and Invention type. It was somewhere between the two, approximating in general scheme the British boys' paper, Scoops, which Gallet may conceivably have used for a model. The one and only issue consists of 16 pages, 12 1/2 X 9 1/2, half of them printed in two or more colors, on good magazine stock, neither "slick" nor "pulp". The cover was surprisingly conservative--merely a drawing of an airplane in flight over a landscape, completed with blurbs in the best American tradition for the stories and articles featured in the issue. Each copy bore also a rubber-stamped notation, *Numero experimental--confidentiel". Two fantasy serials begin in this issue. One of them, entitled "Kilsona", turns out to be a translation of Festus Pragnell's "Green Men of Kilsona", which had already appeared in English as a serial in Wonder Stories, and in book form. The translation, by one Robert M. Zakovitch, was reasonably literal. The portion contained in this issue included the story, with a few minor deletions, up to the words "with what might have been a bow and a quiver of arrows on his back" on page 32 of the British edition in book form. There was a good illustration, and an editorial note which explained that "About nine years ago, the cover on an American fantastic adventure magazine attracted the attention of a London policeman on duty in Paddington....A vocation was determined; Festus Pragnell was to become one of the leading writers of'scientific fiction', as the Americans say." The other serial was not a translation. The title was "Le Mystere de Padio-Zero", proclaimed to be a "great unpublished story of heroic adventures", by "Commander Cazal, author of 'War, War', 'Maginot-Siegfried', etc." The editor's note kept intelligent 18-year-old readers in the dark as to the identity of "Commander Cazal", calling him a "prudent person, shunning publicity, great talent as an author, fiery patriotism--that is Commander Cazal, whose heroic tales have an extraordinary popularity." The lengthy first chapter of this story described the manner in which the famed Captain Sarlatt was assigned to investigate a mysterious series of plane wrecks. The French "Service secret des Reseignments au Ministere de la Defense Nationale" had -- 13 --
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