Fantastic Science Fiction August 1957 / Volume 6 Number 7. This item is unavailable.Fantastic Science Fiction August 1957 / Volume 6 Number 7

This 12 mo (digest-size, 5-1/2 X 7-1/2-inch) 1950s science fiction magazine is "good" at best with a visible 7-1/2-inch diagonal crease to front wrap, internal pages moderately age toned with several dog-ears; pages still flexible and easily read. The first page encountered -- bearing the Editor's Note, promoting the upcoming special Flying Saucer issue of "our companion magazine, Amazing Stories" -- is numbered page 3, with Table of Contents to verso numbered "4." If there were ever pp. 1-2, they're missing. But this issue is uncommon, probably because of the "bondage" cover by the redoubtable Edward Valigursky, in which the well-endowed blonde, chained to her post, watches with some trepidation the approach of the hairy brute. In fact, the concept probably could have formed the basis of an impressive science fiction tale; too bad a perusal of the contents of this magazine reveals no such tale within -- either the promised tale never arrived in time, or editor Paul Fairman simply selected lascivious (well, at least "eye-catching") cover art with no requirement that it bear even a tangential relationship to the story lineup inside. What we do find inside are Robert Silverberg's "Call Me Zombie" (Are we all mindless puppets? Well, pretty much.) and Harlan Ellison's post-apocalypse "Phoenix Treatment," in which a bunch of scientists led by a bacteriologist who might as well be Tony Fauci come up with a plan to keep the ignorant peasants from bothering them as they continue their secret work on, you know, The Plague. The torch-bearing, rock-throwing peasants just don't understand that the scientists are trying to HELP THEM, like, you know, the FDA, the CDC, the NIH, the WHO, Pfizer, Moderna. . . . Original cover price 35 cents; 130 pp., this monthly issue here reduced from $17.…