{"id":1154,"date":"2015-09-09T12:07:44","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T17:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2015-09-08T13:36:42","modified_gmt":"2015-09-08T18:36:42","slug":"kuttner-unkollected-trophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/kuttner-unkollected-trophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Kuttner Unkollected: “Trophy”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"$(KGrHqZ,!i4E8VDJi4qGBPHe1IuBYQ~~60_35\"<\/a>“Trophy”
\nHenry Kuttner writing as Scott Morgan
\nThrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1944<\/p>\n

As I mentioned in my post on “A God Named Kroo”, this is the second of three stories Kuttner had in this issue of Thrilling Wonder. Unlike “Kroo”, “Trophy” isn’t a humorous yarn. It’s a science fiction story with a nice little horror ending.<\/p>\n

Like “A God Named Kroo”, this story concerns the Japanese theatre of operations during WWII. This time the viewpoint character is a Japanese officer who is also a Western trained surgeon. In fact he’s one of the best surgeons in the world.<\/p>\n

The backstory is that he and his men are marooned on a remote island in the Pacific when they see a US plane. They attempt to lure the plane to the island one evening and are almost successful when a flying torpedo shaped object zoomed by, causing the plane to crash. The airmen aren’t the pushovers the Japanese soldiers are expecting. A gun battle ensues, and the surgeon and a single airman are the only survivors.<\/p>\n

The next morning the surgeon is hunting the airman when he discovers a pile of gold coins on the path. He suspects a trap, and he’s right. Only it’s not the airman who has set the trap.<\/p>\n

I’ll not say anymore about this one. If you’re alert, you’ll figure out what the twist is. I don’t want to give it away. I’ll just say that “Trophy” is Kuttner in his dark mood. It was a solid tale, perhaps not to the level of some of his better known work, but a good story nonetheless.<\/p>\n

“Trophy” was reprinted in 1945 in THE SAINT’S CHOICE OF IMPOSSIBLE CRIME (Leslie Charteris, ed.) of all places. I have no idea if it was published under the Morgan pseudonym or Kuttner’s real name. It hasn’t seen print in 70 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Trophy” Henry Kuttner writing as Scott Morgan Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1944 As I mentioned in my post on “A God Named Kroo”, this is the second of three stories Kuttner had in this issue of Thrilling Wonder. Unlike “Kroo”, “Trophy” isn’t a humorous yarn. It’s a science fiction story with a nice little horror […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[216],"tags":[771,756,689],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pulp","tag-henry-kuttner","tag-leslie-charteris","tag-thrilling-wonder-stories"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-iC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1156,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions\/1156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}