Other reviews:1
Alva Rogers, A Requiem for Astounding p. 126-127
_____________________
Editor, John W. Campbell Jr.; Assistant Editor, Catherine Tarrant
Fiction:
Recoil • novelette by George O. Smith ∗∗
Death Sentence • short story by Isaac Asimov ∗
The Beast • novelette by A. E. van Vogt ∗∗∗
Gallegher Plus • novelette by Henry Kuttner [as by Lewis Padgett] ∗∗∗
“… If You Can Get It” • short story by Murray Leinster ∗
Non-fiction:
Cover • by William Timmins
Interior artwork • by Paul Orban (x9), Elton Fax (x2), Alfred (x3)
Arithmetic and Empire • by John W. Campbell, Jr.
The Analytical Laboratory: September 1943
In Times to Come
“Those Giant Tubes …” • science photos
“Turn On the Moon—Make It Hotter!” • science essay by R. S. Richardson
Keep ’Em Under • science essay by Malcolm Jameson
Brass Tacks • letters
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In 1943 Astounding went through two format changes because of wartime restrictions, changing from a large bedsheet magazine to the smaller pulp size in May, and shrinking further to digest size now. The magazine also drops all advertising with this issue.
The fiction leads off with Recoil by George O. Smith, the third of his ‘Venus Equilateral’ series about a future space station cum communications hub. The opening establishes that Channing, the station director, is on honeymoon, and Walter Franks is in charge:
Walter Franks sat in the director’s office; his feet on the director’s desk. He was smoking one of the director’s cigarettes. He was drinking the director’s liquor, filched shamelessly from the director’s private filing cabinet where it reposed in the drawer marked “S.” Drawer “B” would have given beer, but Walt preferred Scotch.
He leaned forward and tossed the director’s cigarette into the director’s wastebasket and then he pressed the button on the desk and looked up.
But it was not the director’s secretary who entered. It was his own, but that did not disturb Franks. He knew that the director’s secretary was off on Mars enjoying a honeymoon with the director.
Jeanne entered and smiled. “Must you call me in here to witness you wasting the company’s time?” she asked in mock anger.
“Now look, Jeanne, this is what Channing does.”
“No dice. You can’t behave as Don Channing behaves. The reason is my husband.”
“I didn’t call to have you sit on my lap. I want to know if the mail is in.”
“I thought so,” she said. “And so I brought it in with me. Anything more?”
“Not until you get a divorce,” laughed Franks.
“You should live so long,” she said with a smile. She stuck her tongue out at him.
Walt thumbed his way through the mail, making notations on some, and setting others aside for closer reading. He came to one and tossed it across the desk at Jeanne.
She took the message and read:
.
Dear Acting Director:
Having a wonderful honeymoon; glad you aren’t here!
Don and Arden.
.
“Wonderful stuff, love,” smiled Franks.
“It is,” agreed Jeanne. A dreamy look came into her eyes.
“Scram, Jeanne. There are times when you can’t work worth a damn. Usually when you’re thinking of that husband of yours. What’s he got that I haven’t?”
“Me,” said Jeanne slyly. She arose and started for the door. p. 5-6
One would hope that she goes straight to HR to file a sexual harassment complaint, but what actually happens is that she stays to listen to a data dump lecture. Franks is developing an electron gun to be fitted to spaceships, to move obstructions out of their path (the station struggles to maintain contact with the ships when they manoeuvre rapidly to avoid meteorites, etc.).
A later first test is unsuccessful, even when they use the full power of the station on a passing meteor.
The story then cuts to Channing (the director) and Arden, who are on their honeymoon, and where a reporter interrupts them with a question about a missing spaceship. After some (unconvincing) hand-wavium from Channing, he tells the reporter that piracy is the most likely cause. Sure enough, as the couple go the spaceport to talk to its boss, a ransom demand arrives, and the couple leave immediately for Venus Equilateral. After a long flight they have to take evasive action to avoid pirates—who have recently surrounded the station—before making a rough landing.
The rest of the story is about how the Venus Equilateral team (spoiler) sort out the technical problems with the gun and defeat the space pirates.
If all this talk of interstellar swashbuckling sounds dead exciting, be warned that some of the story is aimed at an Astounding audience and not a Planet Stories one:
“But in the betatron, the thing is run differently. The magnet is built for A. C. and the electron gun runs off the same. As your current starts up from zero, the electron gun squirts a bouquet of electrons into a chamber built like a pair of pie plates set rim to rim. The magnet’s field begins to build up at the same time, and the resulting increase in field strength accelerates the electrons and at the same time, its increasing field keeps the little devils running in the same orbit. Shoot it with two-hundred cycle current, and in the half cycle your electrons are made to run around the center a few million times. That builds up a terrific velocity—measured in six figures, believe it or not. Then the current begins to level off at the top of the sine wave, and the magnet loses its increasing phase. The electrons, still in acceleration, begin to whirl outward. The current levels off for sure and begins to slide down—and the electrons roll off at a tangent to their course. This stream can be collected and used. In fact, we have a two-hundred-cycle beam of electrons at a couple of billion volts. That, brother, ain’t hay!” p. 25
—little surprise that Astounding/Analog is sometimes described as “the science fiction magazine with rivets”.
There are about six pages of this—my eyes glazed over—which is a pity, as the story was fairly good up until this point. That said, this will appeal to some readers, and you can see why these stories of optimistic, flirty, can-do engineers were popular at the time, even if they are now rather dated (and I’m mostly referring to the science here).
Death Sentence by Issac Asimov is one of his robot stories but, even though it involves United Robots and positronics, it doesn’t seem, for reasons that will become apparent, to be a tale that fits into that universe.
The story begins with Theor Realo approaching Brand Gorla, an old college classmate, for help. Realo describes to Gorla the ancient science of psychological engineering, and tells him about a planet of positronic robots that was set up to conduct experiments in this subject. Realo then reveals that the experiment has been running on its own for tens of thousands of years, and that he has been there for the last five! Gorla agrees to present the information to the Federation’s Board Master, and an expedition is organised.
The rest of the story takes place on the planet, and details the accompanying Under Secretary’s increasing concern about the threat the robots pose to the stability and peace of the Federation. After they discuss the matter, the team agree to blockade the planet if the money can be found, and not to do anything further unless the robots develop interstellar travel.
What then happens is that (spoiler), during a conversation between the Board Master and Realo, the latter reveals hitherto unknown information about his arrival on the planet. The robots closely examined his ship, and Realo realised that they would eventually develop the technology themselves. When the Board Master states that this means a death sentence for the robots, Realo runs off to warn them. There is a lame twist ending where (spoiler) one of the robot cities is revealed as . . . New York! This ridiculous final twist drags down a okay-ish story to mediocre.
I note that, although there are some memorable Asimov stories from this period (the ‘Foundation’ stories, Nightfall, some of the ‘Robot’ tales), he was still capable of producing poor work at this stage of his career (I wasn’t that impressed with last year’s Runaround either, although it’s not as bad as this). And what is it with the weird names?
I guess this one got on to this year’s Retro Hugo final ballot because of name recognition.
The Beast by A. E. van Vogt is the second of the ‘Pendrake’ series, which opens with a mini-data dump about the previous story The Great Engine (Astounding, July 1943):
Slightly more than two years had passed since that day in August, when he had found an atomic engine in the hillside near Crescentville, slightly less than two years since he had traced the marvellous machine to these turreted towers and to a group of scientists who were secretly operating spaceships to Venus, carrying emigrants to that fantastically lovely and fertile planet under an idealistic plan of their own. p. 48
For “idealistic plan” read “with press gangs”.
The story starts with Pendrake (a one-armed man of unusual strength) again visiting the Lambton Settlement Project building, which was the scientists’ front operation. Here he finds that Germans have taken over the building, and is held at gunpoint before being put on a spacecraft into orbit.
Before his story continues there are two other sub-plots set running. The first of these involves Pendrake’s Air Force buddy, Major Hoskins, who is questioned by his bosses about his friendship with the Pendrake, and the kidnapping, murders, and propeller-less plane he witnessed at his home (part of the previous story). The second sub-plot has a henchman called Birdman meet his boss, where they drink a toast to Hitler.
Pendrake meanwhile wakes up on the moon near a crashed spacecraft. He remembers a fight on board that led to the accident. He realizes, while examining the site, that he cannot keep warm in the shade, and cannot work out how to use the suit controls to turn the heater on. Night starts falling, and with it the possibility he may freeze to death, so he periodically buries himself in the dust to warm himself up as he treks across the Moon. He eventually descends deep into a cave, stumbles on a radiant ore, and then an artificial corridor. Eventually he finds a stream, where spacesuit-less men attack him.
Back on Earth the two sub-plots merge when Birdman is told the FBI are investigating, and that he is to kill Hoskins, who has been examining Pendrake’s home. The assassination attempt on Hoskins occurs at a public meeting, but his bullet proof vest saves him. As the Feds arrive, Birdman escapes in his car:
The gray car slowed, hesitated, and for the first time Hoskins grew aware that its engine was making no noise. With a hiss of indrawn breath he realized what was going to happen.
The gray sedan rose, like a thistledown it rose into the air and climbed straight up like a shooting star in reverse.
It became a dot in the sky and headed into the blue mists of immense heights. Just before it vanished, Hoskins had the curious impression that a long torpedo-shaped structure was waiting up there.
It was there; and then it wasn’t.
Gone, too, was the car. Hoskins shook his head, thinking hazily: It could have been a trick of his vision.
But he knew better. A torpedoshaped spaceship was not at all out of place in the tremendous game that was being played here. p. 63
A short data dump then sets out the general situation, revealing that the government know about a number of missing scientists and the atomic engine. Meanwhile, Birdman’s boss tells him about Pendrake’s arrival on the Moon, and that they will need to deal with him and the cave-dwellers.
Up until this point the story is a rather uneven, kitchen-sink piece but it subsequently develops a propulsiveness that propels the reader through the remainder of the far-fetched plot: to wit, Pendrake awakes to find a man called Morrison tending him, and is told that he will be taken to see Big Oaf—a near-immortal Neanderthal. There is also mention of the “devil beast in the pit”.
When Pendrake finally gets to his feet in this lunar chamber he sees an almost impossible scene:
Below him was a town set in a garden of trees and flowers. There were broad streets, and he could see men and—queer!—uniformed women.
He forgot the people of the town.
His gaze soared from horizon, to horizon. There was a green meadow on the far side of the town where cattle grazed. Beyond, the ceiling of the cave swept down to a junction with the ground at some point below the cliff, a point invisible from where he sat.
It held him for a moment, that line where a radiant cave sky met a cave horizon.
Then his gaze came back to the town, to the gorgeous town. A hundred yards away it began. First there was a line of tall trees heavily laden with large, gray fruit. The trees sheltered the nearest of many buildings. The structure was small, delicate-looking. It seemed to have been built of some shell-like substance.
It glowed as if light was inside it, shining through its translucent walls. Its design was more that of a shapely bee’s nest than of a sea shell, but the resemblance to the shell was there, too.
The other buildings that glinted tantalizingly through the trees differed widely in details, but the central architectural motif, and the basic glow-material was ever present. p. 68-69
Pendrake goes to see Big Oaf, and notices on the journey there that the people in the town are from various periods and locales: German Army women, Neanderthals, and a number of men from the Wild West, etc. Pendrake later finds out that this strange mix has been gathered either from raids on German bases on the Moon, or from a time portal that Big Oaf keeps guarded.
Most of the rest of the story concerns Pendrake’s attempts to undermine Big Oaf’s rule in the town, during which further (!) fantastic elements are introduced:
Pendrake approached the edge of the abyss cautiously, and peered over. He found himself staring down a wall of cliff that descended smooth and straight for a distance of about five hundred feet. There was brush at the bottom and a grassy plain and—
Pendrake gasped. Then he felt faint. He swayed dizzily— and then with a terrible effort caught his whirling mind. And looked again, trembling.
The yellow-green-blue-red beast in the pit was sitting on its haunches. It looked as big as a horse. Its head was tilted, its baleful eyes glaring up at the two men. And the hideously long teeth that protruded from its jowls confirmed Pendrake’s first mind-shaking comprehension:
The devil-beast was a sabretoothed tiger. p. 76-77
Various things happen: Big Oaf tries to recruit Pendrake to shut down the portal (so that they cannot be invaded from other time periods), and also to go on a raid of a German lunar base. He also tells Pendrake that men with silver suits and laser guns appeared out of the portal hundreds of thousands of years ago, but he left them to die of hunger and thirst inside the stockade in case they proved a threat.
Back on Earth, meanwhile, Hoskins and Lipton go to occupied Germany to be briefed on two “murder centres”, which appear to be linked with spaceship activity. This section produces some predictive (although wrong) post-occupation comment:
As you know, Hitler’s method was to put a party man into every conceivable controlling position in every community.
“Naturally, we deposed all these petty fuehrers, replacing them with the stanchest pre-war democrats we could find. At this point we ran into a difficulty.
“The Nazis had anticipated us. In every district a secret Nazi cell had been built up with a secret leader under whose command were young, stone-hearted men specially trained to commit murder and to defeat all attempts to reconstitute democracy. The leaders we appointed hardly dare to make a move for fear of displeasing these hidden Nazi zone chiefs.
“It will straighten out in time, of course. As the Nazi youth go into their thirties, get married, their zest for danger will fade; and the new, younger generation is being trained our way.
“Nevertheless, political creeds like pretensions to thrones, die hard. And right now these people are committing about a thousand murders a week in Germany itself; about eight hundred more in the rest of Europe.” p. 86
The climax involves (spoiler) a fight between Pendrake and Big Oaf, which the former loses, but Big Oaf is the one who ends up in the pit with hungry sabre-tooth tiger. We learn that Birdman’s boss is Hitler, who shoots himself when the Americans arrive on the Moon. The sabre-tooth tiger (amusingly) ends up in a cage in an unsuspecting zoo (presumably the RSPCA/ASPCA et al ducked that call).
Van Vogt does a good job at melding these disparate and unlikely elements: show me another writer who could put together a one-armed superman, anti-gravity drives, caves on the Moon, time portals, immortal Neanderthals and sabre-toothed tigers, lunar Nazi holdouts, etc., and produce an entertaining potboiler.2
Gallegher Plus by Henry Kuttner is the fourth of the ‘Gallegher’ stories, and the last that would appear until a final story in 1948 (Ex Machina in the June Astounding). This one starts, as usual, with Gallegher waking up with a hangover to find he has built another machine:
Gallegher uncoiled his lanky body and wandered across to the machine, examining it curiously. It was not in operation. Through the open window extended some pale, limber cables as thick as his thumb; they dangled a foot or so over the edge of the pit where the back yard should have been. They ended in—
Hm-m-m! Gallegher pulled one up and peered at it. They ended in metal-rimmed holes, and were hollow. Odd.
The machine’s over-all length was approximately two yards, and it looked like an animated junk heap.
Gallegher had a habit of using makeshifts. If he couldn’t find the right sort of connection, he’d snatch the nearest suitable object—a buttonhook, perhaps, or a coat hanger—and use that. Which meant that a qualitative analysis of an already assembled machine was none too easy. What, for example, was that fibroid duck doing wrapped around with wires and nestling contentedly on an antique waffle iron? p. 122
Joe (the “Proud Robot” from the last story) tells Gallegher a cop is waiting, and Gallegher gets served a summons. He also finds that he needs to deliver on three paid-for contracts, and that his recently bought shares in Devices Unlimited have tanked.
He contacts the man who served the summons after talking to his lawyer, and the former says he’ll come over. Gallegher meanwhile turns on the machine, which uses its tubes to hoover up material from the hole, plays the tune St James infirmary, and produces nothing.
The rest of the story (again, as usual) weaves together a number of strands until (spoiler) Gallegher finally discovers the purpose of the machine, which is (a) to get rid of the spoil from a building site excavation, (b) produce a wire for spaceship control runs and (c) stereoscopic screens. The fourth function is to sing a duet with Gallegher while he is drunk.
This is a pleasant enough story with some amusing elements: the exchanges with Joe the robot, for instance, or the drinking game that Gallegher undertakes:
Unfortunately an alphabetical pub-crawl, with its fantastic mixtures, proved none too easy. Gallegher already had a hangover. And Cuff’s thirst was insatiable.
“L? What’s L?”
“Lachrymae Christi. Or Liebfraumilch.”
“Oh, boy!”
It was a relief to get back to a Martini. After the Orange Blossom Gallegher began to feel dizzy. For R he suggested root beer, but Cuff would have none of that.
“Well, rice wine.”
“Yeah. Rice— hey! We missed N! We gotta start over now from A!”
Gallegher dissuaded the alderman with some trouble, and succeeded only after fascinating Cuff with the exotic name ng ga po. They worked on, through sazeracs, tailspins, undergrounds, and vodka. W meant whiskey.
“X?”
They looked at each other through alcoholic fogs. Gallegher shrugged and stared around. How had they got into this swanky, well-furnished private clubroom, he wondered. It wasn’t the Uplift, that was certain.
Oh, well—
“X?” Cuff insisted. “Don’t fail me now, pal.”
“Extra whiskey,” Gallegher said brilliantly. p. 137
Nevertheless, the story feels too similar to the previous three, and has more of a deux ex machina ending. Although I enjoyed this one I’m glad he stopped the series here (until adding one final story in 1948).
“… If You Can Get It” by Murray Leinster has the narrator go to a show where he sees an old college acquaintance called “Stinky” doing sensational magic tricks. Afterwards he goes to see Stinky and discovers that he isn’t doing conventional tricks at all, but knows how to imagine things into reality.
As the story progresses we find out that there is one drawback, which is that if someone does not believe he is capable of doing something he can’t do it. The major downside of this is that he can’t get back to Llanvabon, a created world where they believe he can do anything (the narrator wants to go there because of the large number of pretty young women).
Ultimately (spoiler), the problem isn’t resolved, and the ending—an appeal to the readership for help—does not disguise that:
SOS! R.S.V.P.! Help! Aid! Assistance! Any bright mind in call, work out a solution for Stinky Selden and me, and write your own ticket! Anything you like, from a couple of hogsheads of jewelry to King Chosroe’s harem, is yours if you figure out a way to get back the knack that Stinky had a little while ago. It’s life and death! It’s patriotism! Write, wire, or telephone. Put your brains to work! I’m dizzy with trying to figure it out, but it’s bound to be simple!
SOS! R.S.V.P.! Help! p. 165
The month’s Cover by William Timmins is a particularly dreary, almost monochromatic affair, and shows us the wrong end of the action (there is a tiny spaceship at the other end of the electron beam).
The Interior artwork is mostly by Paul Orban, who provides the best of it (his work for the van Vogt story). That said, some of his other illustrations are mediocre, as are the ones from Elton Fax (disappointingly, after his near-Schoenherr quality effort in a previous issue) and Alfred. There is also a new illustration on the redesigned contents page:
Arithmetic and Empire by John W. Campbell, Jr. follows on from his Galactic Empire editorial in the last issue with speculation about the huge number of government employees required to run it.
The Analytical Laboratory: September 1943 was discussed in the review of that issue.3
In Times to Come plugs a new E. Mayne Hull ‘Artur Blord’ story, and talks a little (see above) about the Timmins cover to go with it, and the problems in painting an invisible spaceship. Most of the rest of the space concerns George O. Smith’s new story (you can tell that Smith was one of the first to press Cambell’s buttons):
George O. Smith is a radio designing engineer; he’s got a yarn coming up next month that comes from the heart. Any technician who’s tried to work from a “complete” instruction manual knows with a bitter certainty that such texts invariably leave out all the important data. In “Lost Art,” Smith discusses the ancient Martian technique of—something or other. Like most manuals, the “complete” manual found in the Martian ruin neglected to explain what the purpose of the technology was.
(Ever see a standard manual that explained what radio was intended for? RCA’s excellent and elaborate “Receiving Tube Manual.” for instance, doesn’t so much as hint that a transmitting station somewhere is a great help to proper operation of a radio!) The discoverers of the manual—and the necessary tube to go with it—know it’s a vastly important science. Only—what the heck is it? p. 154
Pages 99 to 114 are the sixteen special pages (I presume) that Campbell mentioned last issue, the ones done in rotogravure printing, and which allow the reproduction of photographs. To squeeze in “Those Giant Tubes …” and the two science articles that carry photographs into that space, the first article by Richardson is truncated and completed at the end of the issue.
The first of those articles, “Turn On the Moon—Make It Hotter!”, tells of Richardson’s time as an astronomical adviser on a Hollywood film, The Heavenly Body.
There are some interesting sections in the article:
In addition to having an astronomer present to supervise the observatory scenes, the studio also employed an astrologer to handle the astrological sequences. The two of us never met, the studio evidently fearing that we would immediately start to tear each other apart upon sight. I always had the greatest curiosity to meet this individual, with the idea of asking some of the questions that people are continually asking me about astrology. Half of an astronomer’s social time is spent in explaining that he doesn’t know how to cast a horoscope. p. 105
In addition to catching astronomical errors, the technical adviser is also called upon for lines that have an authentic ring to them. I was asked for a line in Bill’s speech to the effect that if he hadn’t made a mistake in his calculations, the comet was sure to hit the moon. One that sounded really powerful and dramatic.
After pondering the matter for several minutes, I finally came through with the following:
.
BILL (DICTATING TO HIS ASSISTANT):
“And should there be no error in my calculations, these two heavenly bodies are sure to intersect in their orbits.”
.
To my amazement, everyone in the room, from the director to the stenographer, burst into laughter. They assured me that under no circumstances would the Hays [censors] office allow a line like that one to get by. I never realized what the moving picture industry was up against before. p. 106
The second article has little to do with SF—it would be a good fit for Reader’s Digest—but is one which, having just finished watching the WWII U-boat series Das Boat, I found fascinating. Keep ’Em Under by Malcolm Jameson is about submarine warfare, and it also has a number of interesting passages:
The submarine carries no armor beyond light splinter plating on the conning tower. Any hit on it may well prove fatal, however small the caliber of the shell, for the greatest of all the sub’s weaknesses is its lack of reserve buoyancy. Where even the rustiest of old cargo ships could receive hit after hit and ship tons of water and still stay afloat on a reasonably even keel, the submarine is mortally injured by the slightest puncture of its skin. The sub is always in a state of delicate trim, and the admission of unwanted salt water not only tends to destroy the small store of spare buoyancy, but may send the sub reeling at crazy angles and out of control.
Buoyancy and trim are the key words to submarine performance. p. 108Correcting trim is a tricky job.
There are two reasons for this. One is inherent in submersibles, the other is due to human frailty. A submarine has two conditions of stability—one when light and on the surface, the other when completely under. When the Main Ballasts are flooded there is a sickening moment of uncertainty as the boat tremblingly shifts from one condition to the other. It may have been in apparently perfect trim above, yet assume a disconcerting slant the moment it is under. This can be forestalled by thorough knowledge of the characteristics of the particular boat and painstaking care in compensation. Human frailty enters in that things are sometimes overlooked, or go unreported, or errors may be made in computation.
Even veteran submarine men undergo a moment of anxiety when diving after a long period on the surface, for they can never be sure until they get under and see how the boat behaves. p. 112Submarines usually will submerge at the first sight of hostile aircraft, and deeply, for subs can be seen from the air in certain lights even when at considerable depths. p. 116
Altogether, the lot of the submariner is not a happy one, despite the scare he sometimes throws into us and the undeniable damage he does. Every man’s hand is against him, including those of his own people, for submarines are shot at first and challenged afterward. He works alone and every move he makes is attended by the threat of sudden death. When he dies in action—and he often does—the world does not know when or how. His death may be swift, or again by slow asphyxiation in the dark of the ocean bed. While he lives he is always in discomfort, cooped up under artificial light in cramped quarters and breathing smelly air. In the winter he is always cold, for he is immersed in icy brine and energy for heating is too precious to be expended. Yet there are plenty of men who like it. p. 117-118
The first two letters in Brass Tacks are both from Paul Carter, but the first has a Idaho address, and the second a Massachusetts one. The first mentions the July issue and praises Leiber’s Gather Darkness; the second discusses C. L. Moore’s Judgement Night, Hal Clement’s Attitude, and van Vogt’s Concealment. Given the non-overlap I presume they are from the same person.
There follows a short letter from George O. Smith (in reply to Caleb Northrup’s comments in an earlier issue about, I think, the problems of scientific development), and then a very long letter from Walter A. Carrithers Jr. of Fresno, CA, who has gone through all the Brass Tacks letters to develop a reader score for all stories published to date:
This, unfortunately, is one of those garbage in, garbage out analyses—the author himself points to the varying numbers of letters in Brass Tacks over the years (the column didn’t appear for a while in 1938, so there are no letters from that period), as well as their varying content (some early 1930’s columns were mostly concerned with fan feuds, etc.). This perhaps explains the poor showing from Golden Age stories in the list—that, and the small sample size, which may not reflect the views of the wider readership.
The last letter is from a regular, Chad Oliver, who didn’t like Bradbury’s Doodad, “because he tried to suit his style to Astounding [. . .] I prefer the old style—the serious, even beautiful writing to the clever stuff in Doodad.”
Finally, the column has a new title design:
An okay issue. ●
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1. Rogers says that “the magazine was 5½ x 7¾ inches in size, [and] had 176 pages” and that fan reaction to the new size was “in the main favourable”. He adds that “the best story in the issue was Padgett’s Gallegher Plus”. The Asimov and Leinster stories are not mentioned.
2. The Pendrake stories were fixed up into one of the earliest paperback novels I bought, Moonbeast (originally The Beast). I didn’t particularly like it as, if I recall correctly, it was too kitchen sink. Although van Vogt’s wild plots work over the course of a novelette or novella, they just seem a jumble when you strap three or four of them together and call the result a “novel”.
The ISFDB page for the ‘Pendrake’ series is here. The notes for The Beast/Moonbeast tell us that, according to Icshi,* chapters 1-5 are The Great Engine; chapters 5-11, are The Changeling (not a ‘Pendrake’ story according to Ischi); chapters 12-13 are linking material; and chapters 14-31 & Epilogue are The Beast.
*Ischi’s van Vogt site is here.
3. The Analytical Laboratory results for this issue appeared in the January 1944 issue:
I would have put the van Vogt and Kuttner together at the top, followed by the Smith, and then the Asimov and Leinster a long way behind . . . but as Campbell says, there was a small sample size. ●
