JF Ptak Science Books   (Expanding an ealier post #610 from 2010)

I am very attracted to the innocence and softly bizarre category of my store’s Naïve Surreal Collection, like this little pamphlet that came out New York in 1945.   The titles in this category are odd but still understandable, and the “what the ____!” response to the subtle ones isn’t quite so high and the exclamation points not so many as in the cases of the Naive Surreal titles. 

Bizarre is just that, certainly not hiding behind any lesser or ambiguous title–it seems to be a parody of  small magazines and their advertising sponsors,  and copyrighted by the very far-reaching Hugo Gernsback, who in 1926 started the first magazine dedicated to the genre of science fiction (Amazing Stories) and for whom the World Science Fiction Society’s annual award for Science Fiction Achievement is named (the “Hugo”).  Gernsback evidently had a taste for cheeky parody, producing similar magazines to this called Quip, Forecast, Jolliers, Tame and Newspeep.

I guess that this was deeply weird for mass-production publication, and it was probably funny–now it is just weird, odd, and somewhat discomforting–a successful and intentional reach for being part of the Naive Surreal right from the start.