003: And All The Girls Were Nude by Richard Magruder and The Queen of Space by Joseph Slotkin

Today we’ve got two lost sci-fi short stories for you. On the surface they would appear to be dissimilar. But they do have a few things in common. Both stories were written by men, if you can believe the names used when the stories were published in 1954. The use of pseudonyms was very common in science fiction magazines during the 40’s, 50’s and 60’s. We know nothing about these two men and neither produced many stories that appear in the publications of the time, or since for that matter.

Our first story is one of my personal favorites for what you may consider an odd reason. When narrating an audiobook the writing style of some authors just, for lack of a better word, works. It flows off the tongue and it’s easy narrate. If I could find more stories by Richard Magruder I would narrate them. But this is the only one I could find. 

Our main character is an inventor, Nathanial Evergood was an eccentric old man with a photographic passion for pretty girls. So he invented a camera lens for special effects. From Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy in December 1954 And All The Girls Were Nude by Richard Magruder.

And All The Girls Were Nude by Richard Magruder. I don’t know what it is about that story but I absolutely love it. One of the reasons I started narrating these lost sci-fi stories was that many of them had never been available as audiobooks. And All The Girls Were Nude was one of those. Is it just me or is that a great story? 

I’d love to hear your thoughts if you’d be kind enough to share them. Please feel free to send me an email at scott@lostscifi.com with any ideas, thoughts, comments or suggestions. I look forward to hearing from you.

On to our second lost sci-fi short story. As mentioned previously I have been unable to discover anything about author Joseph Slotkin. This is the only short story I can find by Slotkin and like And All The Girls Were Nude it has never before been available as an audiobook.

Helen LaTour had the best hip wriggle in galactic Burleyque. In fact, it was so good she hipped herself smack into another dimension!

From Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy August 1954, The Queen of Space, by Joseph Slotkin