MY SCIENCE FICTION COLLECTION
by Forrest J. Ackerman
Part Four
In my collection are the manuscripts of such stories as "West of the Earth" (renamed "In Martian Depths") by Juve, Miss Long's "The Last Man" ("Omega"), "The Egg from the Lost Planet" ("Girl from Mars," by Breuer-Williamson), Skidmore's "Romance of Posi and Nega," "Lancer in the Crystal" … "The Cities of Ardathia" … "In the Land of the Bipos" … "The Machine Man of Ardathia"… "By the Hands of the Dead" …. "Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds" …. "The Head of Apex," and others all by Francis Flagg … "The Golden Bough," by Dr. Keller, Ed Earl Repp's "Metal World", Bob Olsen's "My Martian Sweetheart", pages from different Edmond Hamilton stories, and others, plus the entire serial by C. Willard Diffin, "Two Thousand Miles Below." I have, in addition, a translation into French of David H. Keller's "Stenographer's Hands," which originally appeared in Amazing Stories Quarterly. The French version is known as "Les mains et la machine."
Also, there are four letter files and a large cabinet—all chock full of correspondence from authors and fans.
There is one portion of my collection yet to be described: the scientifilms. In a large box are advertisements, press-sheets, reviews, write-ups, publicity copy, photos, "cuts," and all similar material from dozens of movie magazines, newspapers, other periodicals, film companies and all parts of the world on the scientific from long years ago up to even those to be produced in the future. The amount of material covered in this file is impossible to describe.
(In the installments Mr. Ackerman tells about his scientifilm "stills".)
Birkett's Twelfth Corpse
by August W. Derleth
The wall of hate that stood between the two old rivermen, Fred Birkett and Hank Blum, had grown from a strange and gruesome rivalry—the finding of dead bodies of persons drowned in the Wisconsin River at Sac Prairie. At the time of the tragic drowning of Bud Enders, the rivermen were tied—each had found eleven bodies in the past forty years. It was said by each of them, and repeated in Sac Prairie, that Bud Enders' body would decide the contest.