Astounding Science-Fiction v42n05, January 1949

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Archive.org link

Other reviews:1
Alva Rogers, A Requiem for Astounding  p. 172

_____________________

Editor, John W. Campbell Jr.; Assistant Editor, Catherine Tarrant

Fiction:
Private Eye • novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett] ∗∗∗∗∗
Expedition Polychrome • novelette by Joseph A. Winter, M.D.
How Can You Lose? • short story by W. Macfarlane
Death Is the Penalty • short story by Judith Merril
The Red Queen’s Race • novelette by Isaac Asimov +
The Players of Ā (Part 4 of 4) • serial by A. E. van Vogt (unread)

Non-fiction:
Cover • by Hubert Rogers
Interior artwork • by Hubert Rogers (x10), Edd Cartier (x5), Paul Orban (x3)
Gleep and Bepo • editorial by John W. Campbell, Jr.
The Analytical Laboratory: September & October 1948
Modern Calculators • science essay by E. L. Locke
Brass Tacks • letters

_____________________

I ended up reading this issue as I have been working my way through The Great SF Stories 11: 1949 (edited by Marty Greenberg & Isaac Asimov, 1984), and realised that I’d read two of the stories here (the Kuttner/ Moore and the Asimov)—so I thought I may as well finish it off. Apart from that I wanted to talk at greater length about Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore’s story Private Eye, which is probably the best thing I’ve read in Astounding so far.

In their anthology Asimov and Greenberg both describe Kuttner and Moore’s piece as a murder mystery, but this rather misdescribes the story as it is much a psychological portrait of the main character as anything else. However, that said, it begins with a forensic sociologist and a “tracer” engineer watching Sam Clay kill, perhaps murder, a man called Vanderman:

The tracer engineer twirled a dial and watched the figures on the screen repeat their actions. One—Sam Clay—snatched the letter cutter from a desk and plunged it into the other man’s heart. The victim fell down dead. Clay started back in apparent horror. Then he dropped to his knees beside the twitching body and said wildly that he didn’t mean it. The body drummed its heels upon the rug and was still.
“That last touch was nice,” the engineer said.  p. 8

The pair watch via a device that can see into the past by using the “fingerprints” of light and sound waves imprinted on matter (although the machine can only go back fifty years), and their job is to investigate Clay’s timeline to find out if the killing was premeditated. In this future world only intent enables a charge of murder to be brought, otherwise killers usually go free, or receive some lesser punishment.
One of the first things the pair discover is that Clay was dumped by Bea, his dominating girlfriend, for Vanderman eighteen months earlier. What isn’t apparent from their observations is that Clay has decided to murder Vanderman because of this, and plots how to kill him without leaving any evidence for the all-seeing temporal eye that will examine his historical actions afterwards.
Clay decides to pick a fight with Vanderman:

Anywhere you sat in the Paradise Bar, a competent robot analyzer instantly studied your complexion and facial angles, and switched on lights, in varying tints and intensities, that showed you off to best advantage. The joint was popular for business deals. A swindler could look like an honest man there. It was also popular with women and slightly passé teleo talent. Sam Clay looked rather like an ascetic young saint. Andrew Vanderman looked noble, in a grim way, like Richard Coeur-de-Lion offering Saladin his freedom, though he knew it wasn’t really a bright thing to do. Noblesse oblige, his firm jaw seemed to say, as he picked up the silver decanter and poured. In ordinary light, Vanderman looked slightly more like a handsome bulldog. Also, away from the Paradise Bar, he was redder around the chops, a choleric man.
“As to that deal we were discussing,” Clay said, “you can go to—”
The censoring juke box blared out a covering bar or two.
Vanderman’s reply was unheard as the music got briefly, louder, and the lights shifted rapidly to keep pace with his sudden flush.
“It’s perfectly easy to outwit these censors,” Clay said. “They’re keyed to familiar terms of profane abuse, not to circumlocutions. If I said that the arrangement of your chromosomes would have surprised your father . . . you see?” He was right. The music stayed soft.
Vanderman swallowed nothing. “Take it easy,” he said. “I can see why you’re upset. Let me say first of all—”
Hijo—”
But the censor was proficient in Spanish dialects. Vanderman was spared hearing another insult.
“—that I offered you a job because I think you’re a very capable man. You have potentialities. It’s not a bribe. Our personal affairs should be kept out of this.”
All the same, Bea was engaged to me.”
“Clay, are you drunk?”
“Yes,” Clay said, and threw his drink into Vanderman’s face. The music began to play Wagner very, very loudly. A few minutes later, when the waiters interfered, Clay was supine and bloody, with a mashed nose and a bruised cheek. Vanderman had skinned his knuckles.  p. 11-12

After this Clay buys a gun and threatens Vanderman, but does not follow through. Later he feigns remorse, but is secretly pleased that he has established an alibi against premeditation by giving the impression that his anger has dissipated.
The next section details an elaborate plot that Clay sets in motion, wherein he befriends Vanderman’s personal secretary, Josephine, and later guilts Vanderman into giving him a job. Over the next year and a half he slowly insinuates himself into Vanderman’s good graces, a process helped by the announcement that he intends to marry Josephine. Vanderman and Bea’s relationship eventually hits a rocky patch, and it is then Clay chooses to act: he goes to her and Vanderman’s apartment when the latter isn’t there and breaks the spy camera in the wall so Vanderman will not know what transpires between them.

The murder occurs when Clay next sees Vanderman in his office: the latter toys with the “stingaree” whip that Clay has previously planted (Vanderman habitually fingers objects while at his desk). When Vanderman finally snaps, he lashes out with it, causing Clay immense pain. In a supposedly reflexive retaliation, Clay picks up the scalpel that Vanderman uses as a letter opener and stabs him.
In the subsequent trial the forensic sociologist offers no evidence of premeditation, so the court acquits Clay and he walks free.
I’ll admit that this plot synopsis does not sound convincing, but what it doesn’t fully convey is the length of time that elapses (eighteen months), or the gradualist development of these interlocking plot pieces, or that this is only the first three quarters or so of the story. Moreover, what I’ve described so far is only a skeleton over which much, much more is laid, in particular the evolving psychological portrait of Clay, the submissive role he played in his relationship with Bea and, more pivotally, what happened to him as a child:

The engineer had a free period. He was finally able to investigate Sam Clay’s early childhood. It was purely academic now, but he liked to indulge his curiosity. He traced Clay back to the dark closet, when the boy was four, and used ultraviolet. Sam was huddled in a comer, crying silently, staring up with frightened eyes at a top shelf.
What was on that shelf the engineer could not see.
He kept the beam focused on the closet and cast back rapidly through time. The closet often opened and closed, and sometimes Sam Clay was locked in it as punishment, but the upper shelf held its mystery until—
It was in reverse. A woman reached to that shelf, took down an object, walked backward out of the closet to Sam Clay’s bedroom, and went to the wall by the door. This was unusual, for generally it was Sam’s father who was warden of the closet.
She hung up a framed picture of a single huge staring eye floating in space. There was a legend under it. The letters spelled out: THOU GOD SEEST ME.
The engineer kept on tracing. After a while it was night. The child was in bed, sitting up wide-eyed, afraid. A man’s footsteps sounded on the stair. The scanner told all secrets but those of the inner mind. The man was Sam’s father, coming up to punish him for some childish crime committed earlier. Moonlight fell upon the wall beyond which the footsteps approached showing how the wall quivered a little to the vibrations of the feet, and the Eye in its frame quivered, too. The boy seemed to brace himself. A defiant half-smile showed on his mouth, crooked, unsteady.
This time he’d keep that smile, no matter what happened. When it was over he’d still have it, so his father could see it, and the Eye could see it and they’d know he hadn’t given in. He hadn’t . . . he—
The door opened.
He couldn’t help it. The smile faded and was gone.  p. 27-28

There is much more psychological observation and comment in the story, albeit most of it from the viewpoint of the forensic sociologist and, to a lesser extent, the engineer.
As well as all this there is also some world building going on in the background—we’ve seen the futuristic bar in the passage above, but there are also quirky details like this:

It appeared as though Andrew Vanderman had, during a quarrel, struck Clay across the face with a stingaree whip. Anyone who has been stung by a Portuguese man-of-war can understand that, at this point, Clay could plead temporary insanity and self-defense, as well as undue provocation and possible justification.
Only the curious cult of the Alaskan Flagellantes, who make the stingaree whips for their ceremonials, know how to endure the pain. The Flagellantes even like it, the pre-ritual drug they swallow transmutes pain into pleasure.  p. 9

And the curious upshot of this imbalance came when the act of homicide was declared nonpunishable, unless intent and forethought could be proved. Of course, it was considered at least naughty to fly in a rage and murder someone on impulse, and there was a nominal punishment—imprisonment, for example—but in practice this never worked, because so many defences were possible. Temporary insanity. Undue provocation. Self defense. Manslaughter, second-degree homicide, third degree, fourth degree—it went on like that. It was up to the State to prove that the killer had planned his killing in advance; only then would a jury convict. And the jury, of course, had to waive immunity and take a scop test, to prove the box hadn’t been packed. But no defendant ever waived immunity.  p. 8-9

These glimpses of this dark future, combined with a psychologically driven and flawed character, recall Alfred Bester’s novels The Demolished Man and The Stars My Destination, and more than once it felt like I was reading one of that writer’s better mid-50’s short stories.
All of the plot elements and psychological observations are drawn together in the final section, when Bea and Clay meet after the trial. She wants him back, but he tells her he plans to marry Josephine. She laughs and mocks him, and they argue, and then Clay blurts out that he planned Vanderman’s murder. Almost immediately he realises that this puts him at risk of a retrial and conviction.

Clay reflects on the peril he has put himself in, and also what he was hoping to achieve by murdering Vanderman. From his inner turmoil comes to a pivotal moment of self-realisation: he wasn’t defying the eye after he murdered Vanderman, but has been hiding from it. The last few lines provide (spoiler) a shockingly violent end where Clay transcends the psychological trauma of his childhood (although not in a good way), and the Eye appears as a final image.
It’s hard to overstate how powerful an ending this is—for the most part I thought the story oscillated in quality between good and very good, but those last few sentences pull all the elements into alignment. I can’t remember the last time I finished a story and was left staring at the page open-jawed, and thinking, “Wow.”
An excellent piece, and the best thing of theirs I’ve read.2

Expedition Polychrome by Joseph A. Winter, M.D. is the sequel to an earlier ‘Expedition’ story (Expedition Mercy) which appeared in the November issue. Both stories take place on an alien planet called Minotaur.
The story is breezily told but feels amateurish and clunky, and it is full of talking heads:

No doubt about it—Edwards was feeling quite pleased with himself.
And it was well-deserved. The medical expedition under his direction to the planet Minotaur had just solved a most unusual problem involving the death of all members of Expedition I.
He tilted back in his chair in the control room and continued.
[. . .]
“To give you another example: the body is capable of only certain color changes. The skin might turn brown, due to the presence of melanin, one of the normally found pigments. Or it might turn any one of the colors seen in the degradation of hemoglobin. You know, those fascinating hues which change from dark blue to green to yellow, which we all saw adorning your left eye last year.
“No,” he continued, without giving Tom a chance to explain how he got that shiner, “we could never expect to see a man turn, say, an aquamarine blue. There just isn’t a precursor for that color in the body. So we’ll never see an exotic disease where the skin is aquamarine or we’ll never see a disease where a man reacts outside of the normal limitations of response.”
“So that’s it,” mused Tom. “Yes, what is it ?” He turned around as a knock came at the door.
It was one of the crew members. “Sorry to interrupt, sir, but I’d like to have Dr. Edwards take a look at me. My skin is kind of a funny color.”
Edwards turned around. Like the Bay of Naples on a sunny day, or Lake Superior in July, the man’s skin was a beautiful vivid aquamarine blue.
Bob’s jaw dropped. He had just said that such a color couldn’t possibly occur, yet here it was!  p. 34

After much medical discussion, the patient’s problem (spoiler) is traced to a plant he sniffed while wandering around on the planet’s surface (yes, yet another Darwin Award candidate). When another crew member goes to get a sample of the plants he observes a new alien life form:

Picture a four-legged animal with a body the same size as a St. Bernard dog, with disproportionately short, bowed legs like a dachshund. Give him a hairless, wrinkled graygreen skin, and a long, graceful neck dike a camel, emerging from powerful shoulders. Put a head with long jaws on that neck; large yellow eyes, no external ears and a placid expression, for features. And finally, on the anterior surface of the long neck, imagine a rugose, lobulated mass of flesh reminiscent of the wattles of a turkey. There you will have, at first glance, the dominant inhabitant of the planet Minotaur.
[. . .]
“Look at the color changes in that gadget on his neck! What do you suppose that’s for?” asked Schultz.
And the colors were changing; various shades of red were playing over the surface. A broad, horizontal band of scarlet, followed by a light pink, would travel down the length of the colored area. This would be replaced by a vermilion, which would seem to pulsate, gently, alternately deepening and lightening in shade.  p. 42

The crew attempt to communicate with the aliens and then, just as Slawson, the sick man, looks like he is going to expire from some haemoglobin-bonding syndrome (a bit like carbon monoxide poisoning), the aliens come aboard the ship. They take a particular interest in Slawson; one them then leaves (spoiler), returning with flowers which cure the sick man.
This is pleasant enough but, added to its other shortcomings, the idea that the aliens would have diseases analogous to ours is just not believable.

How Can You Lose? by W. Macfarlane is an epistolary story (a letter this time, not a diary) where the writer discusses fixing a college football team to win bets. The SF gimmick, dropped in towards the end of the story, involves (spoiler) a serum from an unknown dinosaur that makes the players strong and heavy.
A weak squib.

Death Is the Penalty by Judith Merril is about a future couple who meet at a stream when they both go there to swim at the same time. Over the course of the story they fall in love, and the story has a number of mawkish passages such as this:

And then how impossibly perfect it was when he did begin to talk. He listened gravely. He didn’t say anything; he nodded, but in the nod she saw he knew about all the years and all about the men who were just a little silly, a little juvenile, who came running when she smiled, but backed off in fright when she talked.  p. 59

She knew he had understood, from the beginning, so she poured out to him now all the lonely years. She told him how the exams in Secondary had just barely passed her by for Restricted work, how she was left among men who were pleasant, friendly, good at their work. But always, when she met someone, he stayed a little while, then went away.
She was too good—too smart, too quick. A man doesn’t want a woman who is greater than he is.
Janice had subjected them, one by one, to the hot inquiring searchlight of her intellect, probed at their minds, and, when she was not herself discarded, she had discarded them, each in turn. Because a woman doesn’t want a man who is less than she is.  p. 61

Throughout this (and from an initial bookend section) we find out that they work in different areas and are not supposed to meet. At the end of the story (spoiler) security turns up and, while they embrace, they are turned into “dark shapes”:

By the side of the stream, the two black figures have made an island of quiet for themselves. The area inside the unrepaired old fence is filled with the calm inwardness of their tender cold embrace.
The guide will stop here and wait, until everyone is in the clearing, until each face has turned questingly toward the dark mystery. And when he speaks, the guide’s voice will be quiet. Under the great trees he shouts, but in the presence of the black lovers, a man does not speak too loudly.  p. 56

The SF part of the story is never explained, i.e., what ultimately happens to the pair, or what their work is about, and I wasn’t interested in the emotional yearning in the rest of it. I’m somewhat surprised that Campbell bought this, and suspect he only did so as a future investment in the writer who had previously sold him That Only a Mother (Astounding, June 1948).3

The Red Queen’s Race by Isaac Asimov starts with an incident at a nuclear power plant, where all of the fuel has been converted to energy by means of an abnormal process that caused no explosion or released any gamma rays—although the temperature of the immediate surroundings was slightly raised. A Professor called Tywood is found in the reactor, dead from apoplexy, and the strange equipment beside him is a fused mass.
The story continues from the point of view of an agent who is at the university questioning the other staff and students. Initially the agent talks to the other professors but gets nowhere, so he decides to interview the dead man’s research assistants. One of them reveals that Tywood was researching “micro-temporal translation”—sending material back in time.
When the agent then researches the magazine articles that Tywood wrote he discovers something that he takes to his boss:

“The article,” I went on, “is entitled: ‘Man’s First Great Failure!’”
Remember, this was just before the war, when the bitter disappointment at the final failure of the United Nations was at its height. What I will read are some excerpts from the first part of the article. It goes like this:
“ ‘Then Rome came, adopting the culture, but bestowing, and enforcing, peace. To be sure, the Pax Romana lasted only two hundred years, but no like period has existed since . . .
“ ‘War was abolished. Nationalism did not exist. The Roman citizen was Empire-wide. Saul of Tarsus and Flavius Josephus were Roman citizens. Spaniards, North Africans, Illyrians assumed the purple. Slavery existed, but it was an indiscriminate slavery, imposed as a punishment, incurred as the price of economic failure, brought on by the fortunes of war. No man was a natural slave, because of the color of his skin, or the place of his birth.
“ ‘Religious toleration was complete. If an exception was made early in the case of the Christians, it was because they refused to accept the principle of toleration; because they insisted that only they themselves knew truth—a principle abhorrent to the civilized Roman . . .
“ ‘With all of Western culture under a single polis, with the cancer of religious and national particularism and exclusivism absent; with a high civilization in existence—why could not Man hold his gains?
“ ‘It was because technologically, ancient Hellenism remained backward. It was because without a machine civilization, the price of leisure—and hence civilization and culture—for the few, was slavery for the many. Because the civilization could not find the means to bring comfort and ease to all the population.
“ ‘Therefore, the depressed classes turned to the other world, and to religions which spumed the material benefits of this world—so that science was made impossible in any true sense for over a millennium. And further, as the initial impetus of Hellenism waned, the Empire lacked the technological powers to beat back the barbarians. In fact, it was not till after 1500 A.D. that war became sufficiently a function of the industrial resources of a nation to enable the settled people to defeat invading tribesmen and nomads with ease . . .
“ ‘Imagine then, if somehow the ancient Greeks had learned just a hint of modem chemistry and physics. Imagine if the growth of the Empire had been accompanied by the growth of science, technology and industry. Imagine an Empire, in which machinery replaced slaves; in which all men had a decent share of the world’s goods; in which the legion became the armored column, against which no barbarians could stand. Imagine an Empire which would therefore spread all over the world, without religious or national prejudices.
“ ‘An Empire of all men—all brothers—eventually all free . . .
“ ‘If history could be changed. If that first great failure could have been prevented— ’ ”
And I stopped at that point.

The agent says that he suspects that Tywood has sent a translated science book back in time to change the past and improve the present. The pair calculate that, if this is the case, they have two and a half weeks until any change “ripples” forward through time. In the meantime they decide to track down the Ancient Greek translator, Professor Boulder, only to find that he has already come to them, and is outside in the anteroom.

The final interrogation reveals that Professor Boulder was aware of Tywood’s plan to change the present but was scathing about the possibility of success. There is then an extended conversation/lecture about a variety of subjects—the history of scientific progress, how man progresses, etc.—until Boulder (spoiler) reveals a critical piece of information:

“In other words, gentlemen, while you are right that any change in the course of past events, however trifling, would have incalculable consequences, and while I also believe that you are right in supposing that any random change is much more likely to be for the worst than for the better, I must point out that you are nevertheless wrong in your final conclusions.
Because THIS is the world in which the Greek chemistry text was sent back.
“This has been a Red Queen’s race, if you remember your Through the Looking Glass. In the Red Queen’s country, one had to run as fast as one could merely to stay in the same place. And so it was in this case! Tywood may have thought he was creating a new world, but it was I who prepared the translations, and I took care that only such passages as would account for the queer scraps of knowledge the ancients  apparently got from nowhere would be included.
“And my only intention, for all my racing, was to stay in the same place.”

Despite the fact that the story contains virtually no action or characterisation, and the narrative almost entirely involves talking heads (it reads like a fictionalised version of one of the writer’s later science columns) Asimov nevertheless manages to make an engrossing story out of all this. If you don’t mind lecture-type stories, and are interested in the history of scientific progression (with a nod towards atomic state security and the guilt of A-bomb scientists), you should find this of interest.
I note in passing that the general quality of this story is markedly better than some of Asimov’s early-1940’s work.

Normally I wouldn’t leave a magazine unfinished but, at the moment, I didn’t want to read the previous three parts of A. E. van Vogt’s The Players of Ā, or reread the prequel, The World of Null A (Astounding, August-October 1945). I’ll revise this when I’ve eventually done so. Meanwhile, here is some of Rogers’ artwork:

(I hope this idea of posting pictures without any text doesn’t catch on or I’ll be out of a job.)

The Cover by Hubert Rogers is a striking effort for the Kuttner & Moore story, but I don’t know what the skull is doing there. If you ask me, he missed a trick by not replacing the latter with an image of a boy in a cupboard .
Rogers also contributes most (and the best) of the Interior artwork, although I also liked Edd Cartier’s ‘two dinosaurs’ drawing. I don’t think the latter’s light style was a good match for the Merril story. Paul Orban draws some people from the 1940s.
Gleep and Bepo by John W. Campbell, Jr. is an editorial that discusses early atomic piles (these were used for making radioisotopes rather than producing power it seems, primarily plutonium for bombs). He focuses on two British reactors, Gleep and Bepo,4 and ends with this:

In the field of peacetime atomic energy, therefore, the British are doing a first-rate job, and have every reason to do so. They are, in fact, quite apt to establish commercial atomic power plants before we do.
Be it remembered that the United States has unlimited coal reserves, and completely adequate coal production; we don’t need atomic fuel. Britain, on the other hand, is severely pinched by lack of fuel power; they want and need a new source of energy for energy’s sake. The United States wants and needs atomic energy for special purposes, special situations, but not for the sake of simple bulk energy.  p. 6

The Analytical Laboratory: September & October 1948 will be discussed in those issues if and when I read them. Campbell gives explanation of how the AnLab scores are calculated “for those who wonder”.5

Modern Calculators by E. L. Locke is a very dry article about computers (binary and analog) that I struggled to get through. I did learn where “bits” came from though:

Thus, if we wish to express a 12 decimal digit number in the binary notation, we will need forty binary digits. Incidentally, some wag proposed to refer to these as bigits. Happily, this term has been contracted to “bits.”  p. 98

Brass Tacks is rather dull this month, leading off with a letter about the dynamics of the Weissacker Theory (I hadn’t read the original R. S. Richardson article, it was late, and I started skimming). In among the letters there are two half-page adverts for books. I can’t recall seeing these in Astounding before—they are no doubt a result of the burgeoning book market of the late 1940’s.

A must get issue for the Kuttner & Moore story, with the bonus of the Asimov.  ●

_____________________

1. Alva Rogers, in A Requiem for Astounding, concentrates (like Greenberg and Asimov) on the murder mystery aspects of Private Eye but adds that Kuttner and Moore tell their story in “their usual masterful manner and [throw] in a lovely twist at the end.”

2. A straw poll of less than a handful of people on the Great SF Stories group (groups.io) suggests that Kuttner & Moore’s three best stories are: Mimsy Were the Borogoves, Vintage Season, and Private Eye. The general feeling is that Vintage is mostly Moore, and Private Eye is mostly Kuttner, but see the quote below from C. L. Moore’s introduction to Fury (1947):

We collaborated on almost everything we wrote, but in varying degrees. It worked like this. After we’d established through long discussion the basic ideas, the background and the characters, whichever of us felt like it sat down and started. When that one ran down, the other, being fresh to the story, could usually see what ought to come next, and took over. The action developed as we went along. We kept changing off like this until we finished. A story goes very fast that way.
Each of us edited the other’s copy a little when we took over, often going back a line or two and rephrasing to make the styles blend. We never disagreed seriously over the work. The worst clashes of opinion I can remember ended with one of us saying, “Well, I don’t agree, but since you feel more strongly than I do about it, go ahead.” (When the rent is due tomorrow, one tends toward quick, peaceful settlements.)

James Blish adds this in his introduction to the story in The Mirror of Infinity, ed. by Robert Silverberg (Harper & Row, 1970):

Some of the strengths you will find in this story, however, are not actually his. Almost all of his mature work was written in collaboration with his wife, Catherine L. Moore. There seldom seemed to be much foreplanning in this collaboration, especially in its last years; one of them would simply leave a story in the typewriter, so to speak, and return to find that it had been advanced several thousand words by the other. Viewing stories written individually by each of them, one can see what each of them gave the other: Henry by himself had no particular eye for sensory detail, while Catherine had a relatively weak plot sense and could not write clean, pointed dialogue.
The combination was ideal, and resulted in some of the best science fiction ever written by anybody (as well as an excellent suspense novel, Man Drowning). Their productivity was enormous, too; at one time the Kuttners operated so many pen names that almost any new writer was automatically suspected of being another of their masks. I myself in 1948 received a letter which, once out of the envelope, turned out to begin, “Dear Mr. Kuttner.” I forwarded it to him, thus beginning a ten-year correspondence from which I learned more about writing than I have ever learned from any other person.  p. 97-98

The bulk of Blish’s piece focuses on Kuttner’s plotting skills, and has several quote-worthy passages:

The old pulp magazines cared very little for style or characterization, but they absolutely required that their authors know how to plot. This is a craft that is viewed with indifference, if not with outright scorn, by most publishers of the art story, though there is no objection to it in the slick magazines. Even in science fiction, we have today a whole generation of writers which has grown up unexposed to the rigorous plotting demands of the (now extinct) pulps, considerably to their loss, and the readers’.  p. 95

These days it is considered equally unsatisfactory for the omniscient author to lay out the precedent material, a la Trollope. Kuttner, however, never took any of the technicalities of writing for granted, and after close examination of the machinery, he worked out a way of rehabilitating the omniscient author. His method was to start the story not with the usual narrative hook (“Autumn was descending on U.S. Highway 66 when John met the naked princess’’) but with a genuine sub-crisis, and within the space of about a thousand words develop it into a resounding paradox. While the reader is wondering what the answer to the paradox could possibly be, Kuttner drops the story for about a thousand words of straight lecture on the background of the situation, confident that the reader, captured by the paradox, will sit still for it.  p. 96

If you can find a copy this essay it is worth a read (there is currently one at archive.org that you can borrow for 14 days, but you’ll have to join the queue).

3. It appears that Merril never sold to Campbell again, and most of her subsequent two dozen or so stories sold to secondary markets (bar half a dozen, mostly to F&SF). My tentative deduction is that her reputation is mostly based on her editorial and critical work, and not her fiction.

4. There is information about the Bepo (British Experimental Pile) here.

5. The Analytical Laboratory results for this issue appeared in the April 1949 one. It seems that Campbell only took a decade to work out that longer stories get higher marks:

I suspect that Private Eye did not top this poll as it was too complex, too dark. A pity.  ●

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4 thoughts on “Astounding Science-Fiction v42n05, January 1949

  1. jameswharris

    Man, it seems like you’re extra productive lately, churning out these reviews. Another good one. I guess this one stands out for me since I just read “The Red Queen’s Race” and “Private Eye.”

    I really liked “Private Eye” but probably not as much as you. Like you, I thought it got much better after Clay was cleared by the trial. I wonder how much Kuttner/Moore rewrote a story? My guess, is I don’t think they knew the ending when they wrote the beginning. So it would have improved this story to have another complete rewrite. I’ve always felt that most pre-1950s pulp stories were polished first drafts. I assume that because so many stories seem meander around until they found a conclusion. As SF writing got better, I got the feeling the entire story worked towards the conclusion. Of course, this is only guessing on my part.

    I thought “The Red Queen’s Race” was on the clunky side. Asimov wasn’t that good of a writer.

    Reply
    1. paul.fraser@sfmagazines.com Post author

      Thanks Jim–I must admit I find reviews of magazines I’ve read more interesting because you know exactly what they are talking about and can compare notes.

      I felt the opposite about whether or not they knew where they were going, and would bet they had the last scene in mind before they started. There is a lot of psychological and image detail planted throughout the story, which itself is pretty complicated. It uses, I think, what Blish (in another part of that introduction) calls “double plotting”. Hard to see how they could wing it, but I’m not a writer.

      I do agree that it feels like a polished first draft–it is uneven on the way through and, like you say, would benefit from another draft. Part of the problem is probably that they got paid by the word, and needed the money. Hence no concision, no revision.

      Reply
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