Kuttner And Moore’s “Portal In The Picture”

review by Jeff Baker

A Reading Report Addenda.

(September 19th, 2025)

There’s a land that I’ve heard of, once in a lullaby—–”Over The Rainbow.”

Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore’s novella “The Portal In the Picture” was first published as “Beyond Earth’s Gates” in the September 1949 issue of “Startling Stories Magazine.” The Kuttners (Husband-and-Wife writers; that’s “Catherine” L. Moore, by the way.) collaborated on a lot of fiction to the extent that they said they weren’t sure who wrote what since they would alternate writing chores on a single story and “Portal…” is basically a short novel, so this review will credit it to both writers.

The plot is simply told: New York actor Eddie Burton inherits an apartment from his favorite uncle, Jim Burton. When a portal opens up in the air in the apartment Eddie’s wannabe-girlfriend Lola is sucked through and Eddie follows some time later. Eddie discovers he is in Malesco, a fantastic city that is nonetheless a gritty, urban jungle, and is the place Eddie’s Uncle Jim used to spin bedtime stories about. Eddie finds it’s quite real and that Uncle Jim had spent about ten years there, which explains to Eddie how his Uncle could make up the Malescan language which he partially taught Eddie.

Eddie narrates to us that he is no hero like Alan Quattermain or John Carter Of Mars: he just wants to get Lola and go home. But he gets involved in the oppressive world held in the grip of a hierarchy of priests and their religion of Alchemy.

The story is set in the very-near future and the Kuttners, writing in the 1940’s, had no problem making television and video a regular part of both the worlds of New York and Malesco. Nonetheless the story is old-fashioned in a lot of ways: Lola comes off as a ditsy airhead who has no problem with Malesco venerating her as an “angel.” Also, Eddie comes off like the standard Kuttner hero; just short of being a character out of Damon Runyon.

As the story goes on and Eddie gets in further over his head, the reader wonders how he’ll get out of this. So does Eddie and so did I! Knowing how the Kuttners did their writing I can almost imagine one of them getting up from the typewriter at a pivotal moment in the story leaving the other to figure out “what’s next?”

Eddie starts off the story sitting in a nightclub after his adventure is over and references his eventual return during the story so while we know he does get home, we wonder what will happen along the way. The climax is satisfying and clever. The entire story is a breezy read with the humor mainly coming from Eddie as he deals with a situation straight out of one of the novels of Haggard or Burroughs. The Kuttners had read those book series which were still being written when they were growing up.

There were also moments that reminded me of the novel “The Wizard Of Oz” as well as “Logan’s Run,” the latter of which did not exist when Henry Kuttner was still alive.

“The Portal In the Picture” is readily available online or in used stories in various collections. My copy is collected in the 1987 Warner Books paperback “The Startling Worlds Of Henry Kuttner” which collects three novels the Kuttners published in “Startling Stories” Magazine, where they were regular contributors.

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