Soldiers of Fortune
Total Issues: 4

Soldiers of Fortune lasted 4 issues from October 1931 to May 1932. It specialized in historical adventure, and in that sense, was a precursor to another short-lived pulp, Golden Fleece. Subtitled "Stories of Glamorous Romance and Adventure In All Lands In All Times", the covers were all painted by Jerry Delano and featured a knight in plate armor (10/31), a Robin Hood-type (12/31), a samurai warrior (2/32) and a Davy Crockett lookalike (5/32).

Perhaps its greatest claim to fame today is the indirect hand it played in the launch of Astounding Stories, as related by Harry Bates in the introduction to Alva Rogers' A REQUIEM FOR ASTOUNDING. At the end of 1929, William Clayton was going to publish a historical adventure pulp, to be called Torchlights of History. The editor he tabbed for the task was Harry Bates, who begged off and instead convinced Clayton to publish a SF magazine. However, Bates could not so easily escape his fate--when Soldiers of Fortune was launched in 1931, he was its editor.