ISFDB link
Editor, John W. Campbell Jr.
Something from Jupiter • novelette by Raymond Z. Gallun [as by Dow Elstar] ∗∗
Flight of the Dawn Star • short story by Robert Moore Williams ∗∗∗
The Master Shall Not Die! • novelette by R. DeWitt Miller ∗
Duel in the Space Lanes • short story by William C. Beckett –
Jason Sows Again (Part 1 of 2) • novella serial by Arthur J. Burks –
Wings of the Storm • short story by Manly Wade Wellman ∗∗
Martyrs Don’t Mind Dying • short story by John Victor Peterson –
Vibratory • short story by Nelson Tremaine [as by Warner Van Lorne] ∗
Flareback • short story by Kent Casey ∗
Eye of the Past • novelette by Otto Binder [as by Eando Binder] –
Cover • by H. W. Wesso
Interior artwork • by H. W. Wesso (4), Charles Schneeman (4), Jack Binder (3), Elliott Dold, Jr. (3)
In Times to Come
Science-Fiction • editorial by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Power Plants of Tomorrow: Putting the Moon on the Job • science essay by Willy Ley
Science Discussions
Brass Tacks • letters
Heavy Elements are not Necessarily Inert • science filler
The major change this issue is a significant change of title, from Astounding Stories to Astounding Science-Fiction.1 There is an accompanying editorial, Science-Fiction, where Campbell gives his reasons for the change, before continuing with missionary zeal:
Something from Jupiter by Raymond Z. Gallun has a lot happening in its first few pages. Gregory Cross lives on an Earth suffering from an overactive sun and, meantime, has been communicating by Morse code with aliens on Jupiter, hoping to get their help. A spherical spaceship arrives and splits open to receive him. He feels compelled to enter, and is soon on his way.
After his arrival on Jupiter Cross wakes up in different chamber, and rubs the frost on the inside of the window—his skin has changed colour and the frost feels hot—and sees an alien outside. They communicate by Morse and Cross learns the Jovians have changed the biochemistry of his body so he can survive on the planet. He is taken out of the chamber and through a transparent tunnel to another part of their city:
Confronted thus by the vivid reality of the giant planet’s eternal, raging holocaust, Greg almost forgot his present position. He could see little through that blinding maelstrom, it was true; but from that little, one could still construct a mental picture that was more complete.
Wind. Lightning. Rain. Rain of liquefied ammonia, it must be. Greg could not smell its acrid pungence; but this, he decided, was natural. The sensitivity of his olfactory nerves had been changed, along with his flesh. On Earth, the water vapor in the air is almost odorless, too, as a result of human conditioning to its constant presence.
The rain thumped against the clear roof of the tunnel with the maddening roar of an avalanche. It was reddish, mucky rain, filled, no doubt, with the powdered ejecta of volcanoes. Not hot volcanoes such as existed on Earth, for Jupiter must be cold almost to the core. This vast world was composed largely of gases. The great cloud from which it had been formed, torn from the Sun by the passage of another star, had contracted slowly because of its low density.
Cold, however, does not deny the possibility of violent physical and chemical changes. On Jupiter there was still heat enough to produce tremendous explosive forces. Differences of high pressure in the vast atmosphere still could create winds that hurtled along at speeds of hundreds, even thousands of miles an hour. And deep in this planet’s solid core there was still warmth enough to change liquid ammonia to gas, creating pressure that could move masses of rock huger than the Earth. Thus Jupiter must still have belching volcanoes, erupting not molten lava and steam, but cold, speeding vapors, and the muck of silicious dust. p. 12-13
Cross doesn’t have time to contemplate the Jovian landscape for much longer, or the huge chamber the tunnel debouches into. He is taken to a spherical room, and watches a screen which shows the chamber he is in (as well as two others) take off and go to Ganymede.
When they get to the satellite, Cross sees a transformed Jovian disembark. Cross learns that Ganymede was the Jovians’ original home but, when the sun cooled ages ago, they had to change their form and go to Jupiter. When the sun resumed its former activity they could not return as they had lost the secret of the change technology—hence Cross’s presence: the study of his biology taught them what they needed to know. Cross asks if they will help Earth and, when he does not receive an answer, plots to steal their ship.
Later, Cross is taken by a Jovian for conversion back to his original form so he can disembark on Ganymede, but he escapes and hides on the ship. He destroys a robot and gains access to the control room.
He learns to fly the ship, and sets off for Earth. En route there are various struggles with another robot onboard until he is converted back to human form and put on a smaller vessel. It leaves the mother ship, which is moving too fast to land on Earth and crashes into the moon and blows it to smithereens. The rubble will end up orbit around Earth and shelter it from the sun’s heat. The story ends with a message of friendship from the Jovians.
This story is, as you can probably tell from the synopsis, a bit unlikely, but it moves along with a certain superscience verve and the aliens and the descriptions of Jupiter are quite well done.
The highlight of the issue is Flight of the Dawn Star by Robert Moore Williams.2 In this one a pair of spacemen land on a planet after accidentally passing through a warp. They leave their spaceship and see a deserted futuristic city. Later they hear voices, a find a group of people who seem like teenage youths but are in fact near-immortals.
The two spacemen try to adjust to their hosts’ pastoral existence but, when they find out one of the immortals can help them, they decide they want to return to Earth. They go to a room with a machine that simulates all the planets in the universe. After synchronizing the machine to the Earthman’s time, Nard searches for Earth but is unsuccessful. He quizzes the pair again as to the characteristics of Earth. After making an adjustment he eventually finds the Earthmen’s solar system. He then breaks the news that (spoiler) they can never go home as they are already on Earth, but a million years in the future. They have passed through a time warp, not a spatial one.
The synopsis of this probably makes it sound rather ho-hum, but it is a well-written mood piece.
The Master Shall Not Die! by R. DeWitt Miller3 starts with the eponymous Master contemplating his longevity (he has lived a thousand years), and the ennui that has begun to afflict him. We then find out that he is in charge of the world, assisted by the body of scientists under him (although limited political autonomy allowed to the populace). The reason he has to serve as the world’s Master is because a normal lifespan is too short to absorb the amount of knowledge required to run the system.
We later discover he has extended his life is by receiving complete blood transfusions from a young donor every thirty years (there is a lot of waffle about new and old blood, and associated ageing processes which was most likely nonsense at the time). The Master rejuvenates after the new blood; if the young donor receives the old blood they die.
The rest of the story concerns his interaction with Barrett Norgard, his prospective donor. The Master reveals to Norgard that, unknown to anyone else, all the other donors are in suspended animation along with jars of his old blood. The Master also reveals that he believes that he has discovered how to turn old blood into new (more gobbledygook).
Complications arise when the Master finds that the rat he has experimented on has died, and he decides he has had enough; Norgard tells him he must go on for the sake of humanity. A scuffle ensues, and the Master is knocked unconscious.
For all that the politics and science of this one are ridiculous, Miller does a good, if sometimes ponderous job of telling the story, and produces quite a good ending (spoiler: Norbert completes the Master’s rejuvenation process, potentially sacrificing himself. When the Master wakes he nonetheless decides to kill himself, but his mind is changed by a note left by Norbert telling him that he owes it to humanity to continue his search for a cure, referring to an earlier conversation about the “focal length of his mental lens”: a reference to taking the longer view. If it wasn’t for the dodgy science I would have rated this one higher.
Duel in the Space Lanes by one-shot wonder William C. Beckett is an awful story about one spaceman betraying another to aliens, and “emanations” from Jupiter. It is full of writing like this:
Thorp grasped a heavily armored cable, inserted its triple-pronged plug into a receptacle on a shining new panel above the instrument board. Plunging shut a switch, he watched as the frequency poured into the outer shell built up.
“If the equations are correct,” he mused, “the electromagnetic wave of the seventeenth octave should neutralize the emanation by interference. If it doesn’t—good-by, Theodore!” p. 62
One that escaped from the slushpile.
Next is the first half of a novella by Arthur J. Burks, Jason Sows Again.4 This story has America attacked by the “Yellow Girdle”, an unnamed Asian country. Fifty million soldiers launch a surprise attack in the American continent:
They struck like thunderbolts of doom on a certain morning never to be forgotten. Monsters rose from the deep off the West Coast of North America, over against San Diego, and San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver—nor did the enemy care for a single instant that the attack on Vancouver automatically forced Great Britain into the holocaust. They gave no thought to Great Britain at all, for world conquest was their goal, and they would swallow all nations as they declared war, or whether they did or not.
Great shells smashed into the coast cities. Sounds so great and dreadful the mind of man could not believe them—sounds which drove the hearers instantly mad, so that they turned on one another and fought like dogs in the streets, until the vast projectiles fell among them, leaving only piles of bloody human clay where the mad ones had fought. p. 65-66
There are several pages of this generalised destruction to start (and many more throughout the story, all described in a portentous and distant third person voice) before a twenty-five-year-old becomes a four star general and asks for a miracle from his Rockies redoubt.
The miracle appears in the form of Jarl Harvey:
Yet there would be a miracle, at that. It was even now moving up the mountainside, in the shape of a man with a small black box in his arms—a thing that looked like a camera.
But his hand, both of his hands, were hideous, for they had no fingers. And he must have been a man of great courage, for he tottered along on the stubs of his ankles, because his feet were gone.
And he couldn’t see where he was going, because his eye-sockets were empty.
Yet this caricature, this horror of a man, was the miracle for which a nation prayed— p. 70
This unlikely figure eventually manages to get to the Rockies stronghold (even more unlikely) with his superweapon. When they arrive the soldiers who rescued him leave him with his box—although they haven’t ascertained what the device is—and happily send for the General to speak with him. Jarl writes out his messages in the sand using his stump (his tongue is missing as well).
“The box must be guarded with all our lives until I have done my work! It is our salvation! It means defeat for the enemy!”
[. . .]
Maybe I am your miracle. There is a way to find out. I must have a room to myself, immediately. I must have a box of any size, so long as it is bigger than six by three, and deeper than two feet, inside that room. The box must contain ration components—300 pounds in all—in any form obtainable—meats, metals, condiments—and must be made radioactive. Your chemists will know. And hold the enemy at all costs until I am ready. p. 76-77
The General tells his men to hop to it. To cut a long story short, the box creates a healthy copy of Jarl, who then organises a demonstration for the General—just as the Yellow Girdle launch an attack on the Rockies. The General points out the flaw in Jarl’s plan: to make a million equipped men would take 300 million pounds of raw material! Which they don’t have.
This is pretty awful, but is of minor interest for its depiction of total war. I assume at the time there was a fear of something much worse than WWI occurring if the world fell into conflict again (due to technological developments, and what was seen in the Spanish Civil War, etc.).
Wings of the Storm by Manly Wade Wellman5 starts with an elderly science teacher reading something in a child’s essay that catches his attention:
“Many scientists believe that the smallest of the insects, such as the ants, are not aware of human beings near them. Human beings appear too big for ants to see or understand; they are like big shadows on the sky. When we step on an ant hill, it is like a hurricane to them, only harder for them to understand than for us to understand a hurricane.” p.88
He initially dismisses this out of hand, but later the thought returns and he speculates that there may be a huge creature that causes storms and hurricanes. Before much longer he is experimenting with a substance that will increase his size (both H. G. Wells and Ray Cummings are explicitly referenced at this point) and he transforms himself into a two hundred mile high being:
He gazed down at himself, and saw his naked body as it had always been, but misty, as though glimpsed through a light cloud of smoke. His hand, for instance, was recognizable in every crook and knob—but its nails had no clarity of outline. When he touched his face, the tag of moustache felt artificial and amorphous, like a single piece of fabric instead of a close-grown strip of separate hairs. p. 93
When he nears the hurricane he sees the massive creature:
What hovered between him and South America?
Mogollon’s first sensation was of looking an elephant in the face. There was a gray expanse that might have been the front of a smooth skull, with an earlike flap stirring gently to either side and a trailing proboscis at the bottom. Patently it was three-dimensional, and patently it was alive. Its bulk was as great as his own or even greater and—relatively speaking—it was as close as though on the opposite side of a wideish street. Mogollon narrowed his faulty eyes for a better view, and made out that the head had no body, was in fact a body in itself. What he had seen as ears were wings, or served as such. Wings of the storm—the hymn had been right about it! And the trunk was rather a neck or throat, as thick at the base as his calf and rather smaller at the tip than his wrist. p. 94
Battle commences.
If you can swallow both these unlikely ideas—the science teacher’s size change and the hurricane monster—there is some entertainment here.
A year or so later a story of this type would have appeared in Unknown.
Martyrs Don’t Mind Dying by John Victor Peterson is a breathless melodrama about a time-traveller called Duhamel, who vanishes in front of the worldwide viewing public and never returns. Several imitators come to grisly ends and further experimentation is banned.
The story picks up with one of the students of Duhamel, Bara Lowndi (and sister of one of the failed travellers who died a particularly grisly death, legs left behind, etc.), who has built another machine. She and her boyfriend Russ are arguing about the risk to her life when he is called by an assistant who tells him a metal capsule has been found among fossils near the site of Duhamel’s first attempt.
Russ jets over and telepathically receives the combination (never explained) to the capsule. Inside there is a note written in blood stating (spoiler) that he will return to Bara’s lab, argue with her, lose his mind, and shoot her in the head. He will then go back in time, meet Duhamel, and bash in his skull while being shot in the lung.
Russ jets back to Bara’s lab and it looks like this scenario will melodramatically play out:
But the madness—the stark, chilling insanity—had conquered whatever there was of culture, refinement, and decency within him. He thrust her savagely from him. She struck against a sharp edge of the helix and he laughed jerkily at the cry of pain that came from her lips.
“You can’t!” he screamed. “Can’t—wrong, utterly wrong! Time message—must kill—kill—” His pupils were dilated; he clawed the gun from its holster, aimed it at her white, terrified face—“KILL!” p. 195
The assistant who discovered the capsule intervenes, however. He is the aged Duhamel and provides a ‘many worlds’ explanation as to how he managed to change the course of history in this one timestream.
Another slush pile effort.
Vibratory by Nelson Tremaine6 starts with yet another loner scientist, this one a professor who has created what appears a technologically advanced organ capable of producing very specific frequencies. Having discovered how to “duplicate the vibrational chord of any object by mechanical means” he moves it to a deserted factory to experiment further and, during one of the testing sessions, one of the supporting beams of the factory disappears. He goes to inspect the area:
There was a hole in the foundation, as well as in the ceiling overhead. It was curved like a bowl and sunk about six feet below the surrounding level. The vibration in the pillar affected everything around it for a certain distance. The size of both openings were identical.
As his gaze wandered up through the opening, he saw the blunt end of the hissing steel beam hanging from the second-story ceiling. It appeared as if it had been sheared off about the same distance above the top of the pillar in the first story as the depth of the opening in the foundation. There was vague unreality about the missing section, almost as if the empty space between the two openings was cloudy. As Ernest bent forward to peer closer at the hole in the floor, his head hit something solid!
It threw him off his feet, as if he had been shoved back by some fast-moving object! His forehead was burned where it had made contact, and for a moment he couldn’t see. p. 126
When his vision clears he can see that the beam is beginning to rematerialise and he sees there is a living creature in the pillar. He falls into unconsciousness. When he comes to he sees the creature is trapped:
In the vibrational state the creature must have been more solid than the steel of the support. When the steel returned to the present form, by the elimination of vibration, the creature had come with it—and was alive in the pillar!
It was covered with thick hair, of a bronze hue, and wore no sign of clothing. He might have been an ape of the jungle, except that his hands were enormous—with twelve fingers on the one which was free of the pillar. His foot had nine digits.
His arm and leg seemed to be of about the same length, and were both long in proportion to his body. But his general proportions were similar to those of a man. He would stand about nine feet tall, and weigh about three hundred and fifty pounds.
The light was poor, but Ernest was able to see that his face was smooth and very pink. Suddenly he realized that he was watching an intelligent creature. The thing was motioning for aid to escape from the imprisoning metal! p. 127-8
The last section (spoiler) has the professor bond with the creature (he builds a structure to support it while he works out how to release it, feeds it, etc.). He then fires up the machine again after leaving notes to say that he is off to the creature’s world to support it in its recovery, and that his machine should not be used again until he returns, etc.
The last half of this is the best of what is still a pretty creaky story (this is largely due to the dated ‘lone inventor’ and ‘weird made-up science’ vibes) and it takes a long time getting there.
Flareback by Kent Casey7 is the first of four ‘Dr von Theil and Sgt John West’ stories. This origin story does not get off to a promising start with West, a college graduate and spaceman doing some pulp grumbling to himself:
“Just a space bum, that’s what I am. And now that the lanes are closed for duration of the war even bums like me can’t roam around. Free lance, huh! ‘Aye, aye, Sir! Sergeant West reporting for orderly duty, Sir!’ Phooey! I can’t even get to the front, but have to stick around here running errands for Colonel Brumby, the old Miss Nancy! Sit here twiddling my thumbs and opening doors for whiskery little goats like that Dutchman who just came in. I’ll bet I have to convoy him safe home and make sure no big, bad Uranians bite him after he’s through chewing the fat with the Colonel. Wotta life, wotta life!” p. 133
The Dutchman turns out to be Professor von Thiel, and West’s colonel tells him to take him out in a ship and to obey his orders. The rest of the story (spoiler) has them vaporise an asteroid with an experimental device, and then go to a station on Mars to repair some minor damage to their ship. While they are on the planet a Uranian ship lands and steals the professor’s device. West is knocked out during the first skirmish with the Uranians and, when he comes to, Von Theil freely admits that he knew the Uranians followed them to Mars. Just as West is about to rough him up, the Uranians attempt to use the weapon on the pair but destroy their own ship instead—as the professor expected.
This isn’t a particularly good story, but there are promising signs: there are passages of this that are quite lucid and concise (the explanation of how the device works mentions Dirac, and the creation of electron-positron pairs from space—but see footnote 7) and there is an attempt at some complexity of plot. The ‘buddy’ relationship works reasonably well, too.
Eye of the Past by Otto Binder is the sixth or seventh story in the issue that has a lone inventor or scientist at the centre of it. This one starts with a prologue that details a twenty year war on Earth that is so devastating that Earth becomes a pacifist world. Then, of course, the aliens arrive and start razing all the major cities of Earth to the ground.
Cut to our inventor, who is working on a machine to examine the insides of atoms to see into the past:
The young scientist’s voice became a sharp hiss. “Within the atoms of all the matter around us lie the records of the past, in the form of ether vibrations. An instrument that can reach down within the atom and translate those vibrations into visible light waves would make the past an open book. In plain words—television of the past!”
Tanya, womanlike, tried to hide the deep admiration in her eyes as she looked at the man she loved.
He eventually tracks down the inventor of an atomic ray device that was destroyed, along with the creator’s notes, after the twenty year war. Earth is saved.
This is very poor, and I was surprised that this came from the writer who would produce I, Robot (Amazing Stories, January 1939) less than a year later.
The Cover by H. W. Wesso, illustrates Gallun’s story Something from Jupiter. He also provides some of the Interior artwork along with Schneeman, Binder and Dold. Schneeman and Dold provide the best of the illustrations for my money; Binder’s aren’t of the same quality as the other three and look quite dated.
In Times to Come is, initially, In Times Present, as it starts by mentioning that the Burks’ serial in this issue arrived so late they couldn’t announce it last issue. After that there is mention of a couple of science articles before the big news:
Jack Williamson has submitted an outline for a story to be called “The Legion of Probability.” It isn’t finished, and I can’t be certain until it is— but I think Williamson is going to be the author of our first new-concept mutant story. He’s a corking good author under any circumstances, but he has a completely new concept to work on, and I’m expecting another, really great serial from him. p. 4
Power Plants of Tomorrow: Putting the Moon on the Job by Willy Ley is a fairly dull piece about using the seas as an alternative power source (tidal, temperature differential, etc.). It could do with more illustrations.
Science Discussions8 leads off with a letter from ‘Arthur McCann’ (Campbell’s science writer pseudonym) about lightweight magnesium alloys. The others are a decidedly cranky bunch (cranky-eccentric rather than the usual cranky-irritable) that includes stuff like this from George Trott, Bronx, NYC:
Anthropologists do know that homo-sapiens have advanced very little if at all in the past five or six thousand years. So you can imagine how long it must have taken to evolve up to then. I am of the opinion that the Bible was not so far wrong in its story of the creation of man, that is, in so far as the length of time it took to form mankind. Let me explain myself; today, scientists are experimenting with the mutation of species, which mostly consists of subjecting the eggs or female lower forms of life to X-rays, ultraviolet rays, radium rays, etc. The offspring of the parents in many cases are totally different species. p. 114
In Brass Tacks a number of the letters address Campbell by name, including one from Mark Reinsberg, Chicago, Illinois, who says this about the January issue in the first of his two letters:
The magazine shows the influence of its new editor a mile away.
With this kind of comment, and various other mentions of the new editor, it’s hard to see how you could say, as some do, that this is Campbell’s ‘first’ issue. There are various story comments: Fearn’s Red Heritage gets a number of positive mentions, likewise Van Lorne’s (Nelson Tremain’s) Ormoly of Roonerion.
Heavy Elements are not Necessarily Inert9 is a half-page filler that starts off with some facts about uranium (denser than lead, reacts with water, etc.) before mentioning other metallic elements.
A mediocre issue with a lot of pulp filler. ●
_____________________
1. Alexi & Cory Panshin’s The World Beyond the Hill (Chapter 12) (Amazon UK; ebook on iTunes) has this comment about the title change:
It was Campbell’s intention to gradually shift the name of the magazine from Astounding (which he didn’t much care for, perhaps thinking it imitative of Amazing—which, we may remember, it had been) to the generic Science Fiction. He would be forestalled when, early in 1939, one of the many new SF pulps then springing up was named Science Fiction first.
And still, Campbell had established a point. The first magazine to specifically present itself as science fiction—using those words as part of its title—was the Campbell Astounding.
In late 1946 the cover design changed (there had been previous alterations) to one that minimized the “Astounding” part of the title (and would until early 1953). This is the July 1949 cover:
The above (original image from Siren in the Night) is also an example of one of the magazine’s sober and occasional ‘fact’ covers.
2. As ever, Fantasy Commentator #59/60 by A. Langley Searles and Sam Moskowitz (recommended, and available at Lulu.com) has a number of letters from Campbell containing comments about these stories (with additional commentary from Sam Moskowitz). This is from his letter to Swisher of 11th November 1937:
“Robert Moore and Robert Moore Williams (‘Beyond That Curtain’, Thrilling Wonder Stories. December. 1937) are the same guy—and he’s sent in one that I’m taking that’s a definite try at a Don A. Stuart style. The sunuvagun positively cribbed—but did it delicately and very nicely. ‘Flight of the Dawn Star’, scheduled for February [. . .] Well told, but not new even for 1938.” p. 68
Now you know what Campbell and I thought about the stories, here is the reader vote from the first Analytical Laboratory in the May issue (bottom of page):
3. Letter from Campbell to Swisher dated 11th February 1938 (Fantasy Commentator #59/60):
“We—Astounding—are announcing to authors a new policy. Actually, strengthening an old one. Tremaine started, about 14 months ago, using more of the human interest type, definitely slanting toward human stories. The latest circulation figures show that we upped 30% in 12 months.
“We want more stories of the type of ‘The Master Shall Not Die!’ (by R. DeWitt Miller, March, 1938. This author [Moskowitz], while visiting Campbell in the Spring of 1938 was challenged to name one story in the entire history of science fiction better than Millers, so sold was Campbell on that story)— which I thought was darned good. I know you like heavy science, but you’ll have to part with it this time, because the readers don’t. I did notice you said it was an ‘impressive’ story, but gave it a blue rather than a gold. What was your reaction to the yarn? Why did it not merit a gold? (Despite Campbell’s personal promotion of that story it was never anthologized. Its scientific premise, that a complete change of the blood from a young man to that of an old man could renew youth was known to be false at the time the story was written, but possibly not to Campbell.) p. 81
The novelette was later expanded, in collaboration with Anna Hunger, to a 38,000 word novella that was half of Ace Double D-162 (the other half was Jerry Sohl’s The Mars Monopoly):
P. Schyuler Miller had this to say about it in Astounding (November 1956):
This is about the low point in the series of double novels that have been coming from Ace recently. “The Mars Monopoly” is a western transplanted to the future and to Mars, with villainous industrialists, heroic asteroid miners, misunderstood natives, and a least-suspected bad man. The Miller-Hunger effort is just another story about someone who keeps on living for the good of mankind, even though he has to slaughter a long series of young stalwarts to do it. I’m growing allergic to books in which the chief character is The Master. I’ll have to write one myself, to take the curse off and get a fresh point of view . . .
Anthony Boucher had this in F&SF (August 1955):
D-162 is easy to skip: THE MAN WHO LIVED FOREVER, by R. DeWitt Miller and Anna Hunger, is a mildly amusing romantic melodrama of 3097 with no relation to science fiction, and Jerry Sohl’s THE MARS MONOPOLY IS the ultimate example of labeling a routine western as s.f. because it is set on Mars. p. 108
The novella is available on Amazon. I’m not sure how many they are likely to have sold given the sample they send out has the complete text.
4. Letter from Campbell to Swisher dated 16th December 1937 (Fantasy Commentator #59/60):
“A week ago Friday, I gave Arthur Burks the idea of a duplicator machine to duplicate the enemy General and so cause confusion. Told him we needed a two-part serial. Monday morning—three days—or daze—later, he brought in ‘Jason Sows Again’, a very acceptable action story based on that, 30,000 words long. He hadn’t fixed it so it’d divide and hold interest, as I told him, in a letter sent Monday. Tuesday afternoon he showed up, said he’d rewrite parts. Wednesday, he brought it in. Thursday, we paid him $450 for the finished, nicely-done yarn. He sorta pounds ‘em out, kinda. But it’s a good enough yarn, with at least a different slant on the duplication idea. And—Arthur Burks’ name on the magazine means something to the regular readers—because they’ve praised him quite a bit—and it means a lot to people who never read Astounding. Furthermore, for those readers it (the story) will be satisfying, because it is almost wholly straight adventure, with a rather weird twist, and a logical solution to a problem raised at the end of the first half. p. 75
5. Letter from Campbell to Swisher dated 7th February 1938 (Fantasy Commentator #59/60):
“Personally, I’d give ‘Wings of the Storm’ a blue for being nicely handled, and considered as a pure fantasy.
6. Letter from Campbell to Swisher dated 7th February 1938 (Fantasy Commentator #59/60):
“‘Vibratory’ was, I agree, very pinkish (by Warner Van Lorne, March, 1938). But ye Gods, they just don’t send in enough blue stuff. It just makes me blue. We accept about one in 10 to 15—but we gotta fill the mag. I’d like to make the issues all outa stuff like ‘The Master Shall Not Die,’ ‘Flareback,’ etc., but there isn’t that much. If I culled the stuff submitted for six months, picking all the blues submitted for one issue. I’d have one super issue, and a bunch of tripe issues. I was lucky this time to get near half a point above average.
7. Letter from Campbell to Swisher dated 7th February 1938 (Fantasy Commentator #59/60):
“I hadn’t thought of the positron aspect for ‘Flareback’ and the [Nat Schachner] announcement. It (Kent Casey) is NOT Nat, however. The author is actually Capt. Kenneth Casey McIntosh, USN. retired of New Orleans. We have four yarns on hand—bought two—and they’re all blues. He’s got style, and his latest one, ‘Good Old Brig!’ shows definitely that Nat could never have been the author. He’s got a space-navy scene that could have been written only by a military man. McIntosh has been writing for Atlantic. North American Review, and similar mags, plus some for the Navy magazine. He’s got a son at Michigan who’s supplying the science background. Son slips sometimes; he did in ‘Flareback,’ wherefore I went over it with some changes and modifications. Agreed that other energy forms could have done the same. I still think positrons make it somewhat more interesting.”
. . . and more from a letter dated 28th February 1938 (Fantasy Commentator #59/60):
“You might be interested to know how the check chart (March, 1938 issue) stands. ‘Flashback’ by Kent Casey stands two points in the lead of ‘The Master Shall Not Die!’ which leads its nearest competitor, ‘Wings of the Storm’ by five checks. “But ‘Flashback’ fascinates me. That’s a first story of an absolute unknown, and everybody is piling on the bandwagon. ‘Duel in the Space Lanes’ (by William C. Beckett, March, 1938) which is almost the same plot, when you come to it, is getting as many goose-eggs as checks. But Casey’s yarn is going over stronger than any other first-time story we’ve published in 18 months.”
[. . .]
(The positron material, taken from Swisher’s article, was actually written in by Campbell, which probably influenced his enthusiasm for the story.) p. 82
I think the writer’s name is actually Kenneth Chafee McIntosh. There is a list of other (non-fiction) work at unz.com. His ISFDB page is here.
8. Letter from Campbell to Swisher dated 7th February 1938 (Fantasy Commentator #59/60):
“The letter department got shifted to the middle of the mag (March, 1938) because the advertising section was too darn long. I couldn’t get enough material to fill all those half-pages, and I had to run a story back
there. Thus, I had to put the letters in the middle. The front wouldn’t do— that’s much too valuable for display purposes (though Thrilling Wonder Stories used to break up the front of their book with reader’s columns).
9. Letter from Campbell to Swisher dated 14th January 1938 (Fantasy Commentator #59/60):
“Due to the impositions of the advertising department. I had a swell time making the March (1938) issue fit together. I had to do some trickiness, which may be noticeable to the practiced reader. Including the writing of a filler (“Heavy Elements are not Necessarily Inert’). Astounding hadn’t used fillers for a long time, but I had to this time. I may go so far as to reinstitute them. You know, brief paragraphs of supposed-to-be-interesting material.
[. . .]
The present example of the ‘genus fillersis’ concerns the non-inertness of heavy metals. Witnesses called: uranium, radium, tungsten, etc. Also iridium is much more inert than the familiarly inert platinum. These facts introduced in the hope that authors will cease from pulling the unnecessary type of boner indulged in by (Jack) Williamson in ‘Galactic Circle’, (Astounding Stories, August, 1935), where they ate off of U plates.” p. 76
Edited 15th March 2018 to add Analytical Laboratory results (footnote 2). ●
