_____________________
Editor, John W. Campbell Jr.
Three Thousand Years! (Part 1 of 3) • serial by Thomas Calvert McClary ∗∗∗+
Matter Is Conserved • short story by Raymond A. Palmer ∗
Hyperpilosity • short story by L. Sprague de Camp ∗∗∗
Negative Space • novelette by Nat Schachner
The Faithful • short story by Lester del Rey ∗∗∗+
Iszt—Earthman • novelette by Raymond Z. Gallun
Jason Sows Again (Part 2 of 2) • serial by Arthur J. Burks ∗∗
Cover • Howard V. Brown
Interior artwork • Howard V. Brown (2), Jack Binder, Elliott Dold (4), Charles Schneeman (4), H. W. Wesso (3)
In Times to Come
Of the 500 Known Elements • science filler
Detail—But Immensely Important to Engineering • science filler
Radiation in Uniform • essay by Herbert C. McKay
Democracy • editorial by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Ignition Point • science essay by John W. Campbell, Jr. [as by Arthur McCann]
Science Discussions • letters
Brass Tacks • letters
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This issue sees incremental progress by Campbell in his quest to change the magazine into what he wants it to become. The most notable evidence of that here is the début of Lester del Rey and a second appearance by L. Sprague de Camp.
The first part of Three Thousand Years! by Thomas Calvert McClary gets off to a rather dull start with an argument between Drega, a wealthy industrialist, and Gamble, a scientist. The latter wants to release a number of his discoveries and inventions, which will provide cheap food for the masses, etc., but the businessman disagrees:
Heaven knew, their vaults were loaded with secret formulas Drega did not dare release because of the economic chaos which would ensue. Certainly they were progress! One would wipe out the Bessemer steel industry overnight. Another would crash the wool, cotton and pulp wood industries in weeks. p. 9
The story then leaps forward ten years, and picks up with a journalist called Lucky, who is discussing an end of the world story with his copy-editor when he suddenly thinks he is made of mud. Before this inexplicable event is explained there are a number of other bizarre episodes described:
A psychiatrist sat with a “client” overlooking a green inland valley. His client was under the delusion that there was no world except the imagination.
“If your theory were correct,” the psychiatrist explained simply, “we could imagine that the ocean rolled up to the foot of this cliff and it would be there.”
“Well,” insisted the client simply, “it is.”
The psychiatrist smiled tolerantly. His smile froze. From the foot of the cliff came the hollow thunder of surf. A sea broke in mottled spume.At a famed university a renowned scientist held indignantly, “Prophecies are rubbish!” and led the way into another room. He stopped, batting his eyes rapidly. The other room had somehow become a field of rampant violets. A brook ran at his feet.
The Reverend Percival Tweedy stepped forward to the cement parapet of the stage. “I would like to give a graphic illustration of the shockingness of modern dress.”
There was a burst of applause from hatchet-faced dowagers. The applause broke into startled gasps. Mrs. Hildebran said sharply, “Really, Reverend, it is highly unnecessary to be so graphic!”
But Reverend Tweedy could not bring his mind to dwell on that statement. Mrs. Hildebran was staring at him indignantly through lorgnettes. She was wholly unclad! Even in his amazement he thought, “Skinny old wretch!” p. 11-12
Lucky the reporter he finds that he isn’t actually made of mud but encased in it:
He moved his body slowly. Joints popped and creaked. Muscles cramped. He went through a series of simple exercises, but his motions were very limited and uncertain. Gradually, they became easier. Then, for a long time, his body was afire with prickling sensations and infinite small cramps. He knew that he should be in agony, but the sensations seemed very far away—as if they might be in another body.
He turned to careful inspection of himself. He found he was naked. There were numberless questions about how he got that way, but for the time being he simply accepted the fact. His nostrils were completely caked and closed, but only at the tips. He cleared them of chunks of rock-hard dirt. He found his whole body covered by a coating of peculiar mud, varying from one-eighth inch to two-inch thickness.
The hair on his legs was eight to twelve inches long. But it was brittle and broke off. His skin was peculiarly white and colorless and dry, so dry that he peeled off a three inch strip of flesh before realizing it. Blood began to ooze through the raw gash. The blood of a dead man might look like that, just before it turned to water.
[. . .]
A lock of hair fell across his chest. It was fully three feet long, and broke off in a bunch with a slight yank. It was gnarled and filthy and lifeless. It made him think of cadavers he had seen. Systematically, he pulled off all his hair. He kept scratching himself by accident, and suddenly noticed his finger nails were three inches long. His toe nails had been long, too, but most of them had broken off while he shambled about. He bent his finger nails and they snapped. Dry—brittle—dead. It was unpleasant, this deadness of a living body. p. 14
Although these events are not explained at the time, it becomes clear that all life has been in suspended animation for three thousand years (later, Gamble the scientist takes responsibility for this), hence the people encased in dirt with long hair and nails, and the changed landscape. There are myriad other environmental changes: buried buildings, steel and clothing has rotted away, etc.
The rest of this far-fetched but intriguing instalment follows Lucky’s subsequent adventures in this new world which include, at one point, a hand coming out of the soil and grabbing his leg! After digging the man out, Lucky swims across the bay (sunken city buildings can be seen at the bottom) to find Drega the businessman.
Once Lucky finds Drega, he describes what he has seen. Drega takes charge:
Drega clapped Lucky on the shoulder. “It’s marvelous, my boy!” he boomed lustily.
“What?” asked Lucky.
“The opportunity to build!” Drega said glowingly. “Look at it. A whole city, maybe a whole world, to rebuild. And this time we’ll build it right.” p. 23
Drega organises a team of workers he comes upon and leads them all back to the city.
The beginning of this installment could have been better structured but, if an unlikely start to the novel, it is also an intriguing, original, and enjoyable one.
Matter Is Conserved by Raymond A. Palmer1 starts with a data dump (albeit a well done one involving a talking parrot) about the gravitational lensing of light proving the existence of aether. A lone scientist has developed a machine to see into the past, but when used he finds himself in the future, materialising in an alien body. When he returns to his own time he still that form.
Subsequently his friends burst into the laboratory and find the ‘alien’ there but their friend missing. They think the ‘alien’ has stolen the machine and left their friend in the future, so they force it to take them there.
This is a poor pulp potboiler but it has (spoiler) a neat twist ending (the pair take some of the dust from the floor of the machine during their search for the scientist—the remains of Byrne’s body upon him taking alien form—and when they reverse the process he is left dead of a chest wound—the missing dust).
Hyperpilosity by L. Sprague de Camp is de Camp’s second story for the magazine.2 It has a man at a poker game telling of The Great Change, a historical account of a flu virus which had the side effect of causing permanent body hair growth on all humanity. De Camp uses this maguffin for occasional comedic and political purposes:
“In July Natasha, the gorilla in the Bronx Zoo, escaped from her cage and wandered around the park for hours before anyone noticed her. The zoo visitors all thought she was merely an unusually ugly member of their own species.” p. 43
“The destitution in the South intensified the ever-present race problem, and led eventually to the Negro revolt in Alabama and Mississippi, which was put down only after some pretty savage fighting. Under the agreement that ended that little civil war the Negroes were given the present Pale, a sort of reservation with considerable local autonomy. They haven’t done as well as they claimed they were going to under that arrangement, but they’ve done better than the Southern whites said they would. Which I suppose is about what you’d expect. But, boy, just let a white man visiting their territory get uppity, and see what happens to him! They won’t take any lip. p. 43
When the narrator and his boss finally create a cure (there is talk about alpha, beta and gamma proteins) there is no interest in returning to the status quo ante.
A smart if minor story told in a breezy style.
Negative Space by Nat Schachner has Space Commander Dan Garin getting things off to a fairly dire start:
“By the Beard of the Comet,” he roared suddenly, “I’m getting fed up with this silly patrol duty and sillier transportation of distinguished space tourists from one end of the Solar System to the other. I’m a fighting man, and the Arethusa’s a fighting ship. It ain’t natural for us to shuttle back and forth like brood hens clucking over blasted little chicks. I think I’ll ground me and spend my declining days in the Martian pulque-caves, mumbling over my drink and telling tall tales to the gaping tourists.” p. 50
Two other characters are quickly introduced, Jerry, a young scientist en route to a new job on Callisto, and his girlfriend Sandra. As the three are talking on the bridge, they watch a freighter fly towards what looks like a cloud of fireflies. Jerry tells Greer to issue a warning. He does so but the freighter ignores it (the freighter captain responds on the radio like a truculent fourteen-year-old) and it flies into the cloud and perishes. Greer, thinking this a new pirate weapon, attempts to attack but Jerry fires the rockets and they avoid the same fate.
Jerry’s research reveals that the sparkles are a huge negative energy space (there is another Dirac positron mini-lecture here, similar to the one inserted by Campbell into Kent Casey’s story last issue). If the cloud continues on the same course the Earth will be annihilated.
The Planetary Council ignore Jerry when he warns them. Thereafter it is just a matter of waiting until the Council’s science expedition gets fried before they give him dictatorial powers to sort the problem out. The rest of the story describes the seemingly losing battle they fight firing massive rockets into the cloud to annihilate the positrons. When no more suicide volunteers are available (spoiler), Space Commander Dan Garin forsakes his boozy retirement in the pulque-caves to make the Final Sacrifice.
The last part is marginally better than the beginning but, overall, it is pretty bad.
The Faithful by Lester del Rey is his first published story, and it is a pretty impressive début. Written in response to Manly Wade Wellman’s Pithecanthropus Rejectus in the January issue,3 it is narrated by an intelligent dog called Hungor in a future where mankind—after a nuclear war, plague and poison gas attacks—appears to have died off.
After the fighting stops, Hungor becomes the leader of his people. They eventually meet another group and, when they hear that the poison gas covering Chicago has dissipated, Hungor leads an expedition to the city. Once the wild dog packs are dealt with they set it in motion again.
While engaged on this project—problematical because of the dogs’ lack of proper hands—a man called Paul Kenyon arrives: he has survived because of the biological experiments he performed on himself before the war. He suggests to Hungor that the hands they want are in Africa: men were creating intelligent apes there, although they had not gone as far as they had with dogs. Hungor agrees that they should send an expedition and, after they have trained pilots and repaired aircraft, Kenyon and a team leave.
In Africa they search for the apes and eventually meet their leader, Tolemy. Nine hundred or so of the thousand apes eventually agree come to Chicago (attracted in part, no doubt, by the coffee and cigarettes they are given!)
Time passes, and matters progress successfully. In the last few pages Hungor talks of changing the apes to become more like men:
Today I have come back from the bed of Paul Kenyon. We are often together now—perhaps I should include the faithful Tolemy—when he can talk, and among us there has grown a great friendship. I laid certain plans before him today for adapting the apes mentally and physically until they are men.
Nature did it with an ape-like brute once; why can we not do it with the Ape-People now? The Earth would be peopled again, science would rediscover the stars, and Man would have a foster child in his own likeness.
And—we of the Dog-People have followed Man for two hundred thousand years. That is too long to change. Of all Earth’s creatures, the Dog-People alone have followed Man thus. My people cannot lead now. No dog was ever complete without the companionship of Man. The Ape-People will be Men.
It is a pleasant dream, surely not an impossible one. p. 84
A mature, sober, and affecting work.
Iszt—Earthman by Raymond Z. Gallun starts with the alien Iszt climbing into a human-like robot and going to Earth—the planet is going to be used by his race to prevent two suns crashing into each other and imperilling the galaxy. The rest of the first half has him driving a car to his base. Sitting next to him is ‘his’ girlfriend Anne (Iszt has previously put the original Curt Shelby, who the robot was built to replace, in suspended animation). A farmer takes a pot shot at the car as they are driving along (don’t ask) and Iszt’s robot shell is damaged. They only just make it to the underground lair, where Anne learns that her boyfriend is an alien-controlled robot. She is given an amnesia drug.
The second half starts with descriptions of a variety of natural catastrophes that Earth is undergoing. Iszt has caused these so humanity will appoint him world dictator (that’s two world dictators in this issue so far). When he is successful he starts his plan to save the Galaxy, although by now he has decided to protect the cities and give Earth a second chance.
The final act has Earth and two hundred worlds being moved through space to stop the suns colliding (this requires burning off the top two hundred feet of the surface of the Earth). Iszt threatens to wreck the plan unless the rest of his kind help him give Earth a second chance after the collision is averted.
There is a glimmer of some super-science sense of wonder in the last part, but it is smothered by all the badly written and unconvincing pulp nonsense that precedes it. This story is even worse than the Schachner.
The second and last part of Jason Sows Again by Arthur J. Burks actually improves somewhat in quality (from the preceding dismal level) about a chapter in, by which time Jarl Strang has made ten copies of himself. They all depart by aircraft with the plan of photographing the newly arrived Emperor with the replication machine atom-cameras. The next part has some interesting, and prescient, comment about the enemy they are facing (and some boilerplate ‘Yellow Peril’ material, it must be said):
Hopelessness hung over the fortifications of the American army, as Jarl Harvey and Daryl Strang faced each other behind locked, soundproof doors, in a room off Strang’s headquarters office. The arrival on American shores of His Majesty Hetira had turned every Yellow Girdle soldier into a starry-eyed, invincible fanatic. To die for his Emperor was the greatest glory a member of the Yellow Girdle could attain. Thousands, receiving the word that their God-Emperor had landed, raced to die on American bayonet points, before American bullets, in the midst of bomb-bursts, from sheer exuberation—from sheer exaltation.
Their God-Emperor had landed! The Godhead under whose inspiration Japan, China, all the races of color in the Orient, had been welded together into one vast whole, that whole the Empire of the Yellow Girdle.
Napoleon, long ago, had fired men to great deeds with a little piece of red ribbon on their left breasts. Hetira, copying everything that conquerors before him had used to inspire men and make themselves great in history, caused his followers to wear belts of yellow. And thousands went into battle and died, because they believed that while they wore the yellow girdles they would not die.
And those who wore them saw men die all around them, and still believed in the efficacy of the yellow girdle. Those men died, perhaps, because their hearts were weak, or evil, or their faith in the yellow girdle faltered. If a man died, sure of his faith, and his belief in the girdle, he could not tell the living that the girdle had betrayed him.
If the girdle itself, a mere yellow strip of cloth, could inspire men to such deeds, all America realized what the actual physical presence of His Majesty Hetira would do to them.
Nothing could stop those soldiers! p. 129-130Harvey thought, as he flew, how the chickens of many white powers were coming home to roost.While Japan had been fighting China, white nations had furnished China with their best scientific brains, in a vain effort to keep Japan from winning. Japan had won over and subdued China, and with her had conquered the fruits of white man’s teachings. And while Japan almost never created or invented anything, she could take anything invented by others, and adapt it, or advance it, to a state of marvelous perfection.
Give Japan a plane, and she would develop that same plane into one of her own that could fly twice as fast and far, twice as high, and on half the fuel the original would have needed. Then she could further develop her own plane—
Well, there seemed no end to it. And after conquering China, Japan had taken all other nations of color in her stride, because her Chinese vassal had the manpower she had always lacked. And so—the army of fifty millions which Hetira could expend without thought p. 132-33Bombs burst, and where they burst clouds of mist came forth, to creep along the ground. It caught at those who fled, and they were gone. So that everywhere were the thousands and millions, fleeing from the creeping mist.
And the Yellow Girdle varied its attack. In many places, especially in cities, where “regional strongholds” had been more carefully constructed, and so withstood assault for longer periods, the Yellow Girdle released bombs which exploded—and freed in the crisp air the horror of disease!
Disease which was worse than any gas. Disease of which medical authorities knew nothing. Disease bred in Oriental tarns and swamps, in eastern slime, from the bodies of eastern carrion. Disease which mottled bodies of babies and women, and ate them slowly away— p. 136
While Jarl Harvey and his copies fly towards the Emperor, the war continues around them, and the men eventually parachute down on to enemy soil. Shortly after they land, and when the Yellow Girdle soldiers realise they all look the same, the Emperor arrives. The surviving Jarl Harveys are granted an audience, and manage to convince him to let them build replicator machines to produce gold.
What they actually do, of course, is (spoiler) make four copies of the Emperor who, with the original, descend into civil war. Nonsense, but quite a clever ending.
This isn’t a good story, but there are parts of this instalment that are interesting, compelling, and clever, and I came away with an inkling of why Burks was such a popular writer.
At first glance, the Cover by Howard V. Brown for Three Thousand Years! didn’t really appeal, but when you look at a larger cleaned-up image it is striking to say the least. It depicts the ‘resurrection’ scene: look at those apparently elongated fingers, which look that way due to three-thousand-year old nails!
The Interior artwork is by Howard V. Brown (uncredited, but the illustrations for the serial are presumably his as he did the cover—and the figure in the ‘drowned city’ scene matches), Jack Binder (again uncredited but it looks like his work for the Palmer), Elliott Dold, Charles Schneeman, and H. W. Wesso. Hard to pick a favourite this issue but probably Brown (for the previously mentioned underwater scene) followed close behind by Wesso/Schneeman/Dold.
In Times to Come trails a new three-part serial starting next issue, Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Probability (retitled The Legion of Time on publication). Campbell says it will be “our first mutant, new-concept story,” and that Williamson’s story embodies “a completely new fundamental idea, an idea that permits of dozens of other plots.” He also mentions a science article from ‘Doc’ Smith. The closing section has Campbell reiterate that the ‘mutant’ tag is only used for new concepts and ideas, and that he thinks it may be as long as six months before the next one.
Of the 500 Known Elements is a chemistry filler which states that isotopes are “different physical elements”.
Detail—But Immensely Important to Engineering is the second science filler, which is about new electrical motors and their glass tape insulation.
Radiation in Uniform by Herbert C. McKay is a science article on polarised light. I gave up on it after a few pages: it is unintelligible (and I say that as someone with a degree in physics and chemistry).
In this month’s editorial, Democracy, John W. Campbell, Jr. states “a magazine is not an autocracy” but a “democracy by the readers’ votes”. Mmmm . . . for now, maybe. He adds that, while he can’t print all the letters he receives, he will publish a representative selection, and that the letters received are helpful in “forming and directing” the magazine’s expansion.
Ignition Point is another short pseudonymous science filler by Campbell which examines the energies required to produce atomic reactions.
A pseudonymous Campbell also contributes a ridiculous letter about the evolutionary pressures of modern living on man to Science Discussions:
Man had prehensile toes once, and he probably had a nice prehensile tail. I’ve seen worker in a steel-mill who worked controls on a special open-hearth furnace loading machine by using both hands, both feet, and by pushing controls with the side of his head. Just think how darned handy a man with prehensile, individually controllable toes, and a really useable monkeylike tail would be!
And eyes! Not a few creatures have eyes capable of individual operation. Give a man eyes that could at will, operate either as two separate units of vision or in stereoscopic cooperation, and you’d have something. A little development of brain tissue already available, and he’d be watching indicating meters, and the operations he was performing at the same time.
That is, if a change does occur in Man so that a slightly variant type arises, he’s apt to get his chance pretty quickly. That little thing like the two-way eyes, for instance. A workman who developed that knack would get a pretty good salary, because his efficiency would be higher.
A man with two-way eyes would probably not do that well on Tinder, and thus fail to reproduce and pass on his mutation.
After another letter about evolution, there is a request for an astronomical cover of Earth as seen from the Moon. The final letter is about escape velocity.
Brass Tacks has letters from a couple of names I recognise (Robert A. Madle, the long-time bookseller, and Langley Searles, the future editor of Fantasy Commentator). As well as the usual comments about the stories4 there are quite a few that mention the artwork, and their like or dislike of various artists.
An interesting issue, with the appearance of del Rey the highlight. ●
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1. Ray Palmer was just about to start, or had just started, at Ziff Davis, taking over the editorship of Amazing Stories from T. O’Conor Sloane (Palmer’s first issue was the June 1938 issue).
2. De Camp’s first story for the magazine was The Isolinguals (Astounding, September 1937). He would become an important contributor to the magazine.
Alexi & Cory Panshin’s The World Beyond the Hill (Chapter 12) (Amazon UK; ebook on iTunes) has three or so pages about Campbell meeting de Camp and their early relationship. It includes this:
It didn’t take Campbell long to see that de Camp had a highly developed sense of a universe of interconnection, a universe in which all things hang together. And Campbell was able to recognize this as the same in essence as the universe of his own vision—the universe of underlying operating principles.
De Camp became Campbell’s right-hand man. In 1938, Campbell would publish only three short stories and one article by de Camp. But in 1939, the figures would be two two-part articles, two novels, and six stories, and Campbell would also use de Camp as a script doctor to do a complete revision of another author’s not-quite acceptable novel.
It would be hard to overstate the value de Camp held for Campbell in those early years. It was a complex and interrelated program of change that Campbell was attempting to engineer in Astounding through 1938 and 1939, and the writing that best exemplified the modern science fiction that Campbell was striving to bring into being was the work of L. Sprague de Camp. Until other writers finally showed up with their own versions of the new Atomic Age vision, it was de Camp who served as Campbell’s corroboration and proof.
3. Del Rey describes how his first story came to be written in The Early Del Rey by Lester Del Rey, Doubleday, 1975:
I was busy reading [Astounding] a few days before Christmas [1937] when my girlfriend dropped by to see me. She lived a couple of blocks away, and the landlady knew her and liked her enough to let her go up to my room unannounced. So she appeared just as I was throwing the magazine rather forcibly onto the floor. I still do that sometimes when a story irritates me, though I’m somewhat more tolerant now.
I can’t remember why I was so disgusted. The story was one by Manly Wade Wellman, “Pithecanthropus Rejectus,” in the January 1938 issue of Astounding Stories, in which normal human beings were unsuccessfully imitated by an ape; I suspect my dislike was at the unsuccessful part of the idea.
[. . .]
Anyhow, my girlfriend wanted to know what all the fuss was about, and I responded with a long and overly impassioned diatribe against the story. In return, I got the most irritating question a critic can receive: “What makes you think you have the right to judge writers when you can’t write a story yourself?”
My expostulations on the great critics who couldn’t write fiction got nowhere.
“So what makes you think I can’t write?” I wanted to know.
“Prove it,” she answered.
That was something of a stopper. But I couldn’t back down at that stage. So eventually, I talked her down to admitting that maybe even successful writers couldn’t sell every story, and that if I could get a personal letter from the editor, rather than a standard rejection slip, I would win the bet.
When she left, I sat down to do a little hard thinking. I was pretty sure I could win, partly because I knew that John W. Campbell had just been made editor of the magazine; I’d written some very nice things about his stories in my letters to the editor, and I was sure he’d remember my name, which would help. That was cheating, a bit, but I still didn’t think the challenge was fair, either. Anyhow, I’d stuck my lip out, and now I had to make good: I have always enjoyed challenges, and I meant to enjoy this one.
Well, I’d read an amazing number of articles on how to write fiction in the old Writers’ Digest—splendid articles by many of my favorite pulp writers. I’d read them because it helped me to enjoy their fiction even more, but I must have learned something out of them. And I’d also come up with a number of ideas for stories during the years of reading. I hadn’t written any of them down, even in notes, but I remembered the best of them.
In the end, however, I decided that the best idea was to rebut the story I’d disliked by writing one in which man failed and some other animal took over. Wellman had used an ape, so I chose dogs as my hopefuls. So far as I could remember, few science fiction stories had used dogs, though a lot had messed around with the apes.
During that evening and the next day, I figured out what I hoped was a plot. Then I sat down at my old three-row Oliver and began writing steadily. It took me about three hours to finish. And looking at the results, I wasn’t at all happy. It was too wordy in style, and too long. I knew that editors get too many long stories and are usually most interested in fiction that is under five thousand words in length. Mine ran to eight thousand. So I sat down with a pencil and began slashing out and shortening. When I finished, I had only four thousand words left, but the results were much better. I’d also learned a tremendous amount about the art of writing fiction—so much that I never had to resort to that business of slashing again; thereafter, I slashed mentally as I went along.
So I shoved the old 1909 Oliver under the bed and dragged out my modern four-row Woodstock. (There was something about the old machine that suited it for composing; but the Woodstock made much neater copy.) I retyped the story neatly in approved form, put it in an envelope with the required stamped, return-address envelope, and mailed it off to John W. Campbell the day before Christmas, 1937.
The story was entitled “The Faithful,” and I thought it a little too simple to sell, but good enough to get a personal letter.
[. . .]
I’d read enough about manuscripts from unknown writers to expect a long delay before I received any notice of my story. But to my surprise, there was an envelope from Astounding Stories in the mail of January 8. And it was a small envelope, instead of the large return one I had sent to hold my manuscript. There was no personal letter from the editor—but there was a check for $40.
It’s a little hard to find the right word to describe my reaction. Perhaps ecstatic delight is the best description; and from other writers, I’ve heard that this is a sort of standard, normal feeling. There seems to be something about having one’s first work of fiction accepted for publication that is not equaled by any other success on earth!
Naturally, I called the girl friend, who agreed that I’d won the bet—and who never again questioned my right to throw a magazine across the room! Then I called my uncle, who had sold a lot of pulp fiction himself; I think his reaction was fully the equal to mine when he finally figured out what I was saying.
But I was far too practical to frame the check; that got cashed at once, leaving me with more money in one lump than I’d had for several months. And then the second reaction began. How long had all this been going on? Forty dollars was a lot of money in those days; and I’d earned it for only a couple of days of fairly easy work that had been fun. Aha! Mr. World, here I come!
I’ve read very little of Del Rey’s work, but the early stories of his that are always mentioned are Helen O’Loy (Astounding, December 1938) and Nerves (Astounding, September 1942). That said, The Faithful placed fifth in the 1939 Retro Hugo short story awards (Helen O’Loy placed second behind Arthur C. Clarke’s How We Went to Mars).
4. The Analytical Laboratory (a story-rating feature that begins next month) in the June issue reveals what readers thought of the stories in this one:
The pecking order is close to my own: I would swap the del Rey/McLeary and the de Camp/Burks. It is interesting to note that the readers of 1938 also clocked the Palmer, Schachner and Gallun stories as the weak material in this issue. ●
Edited 15th November 2019: formatting, archive.org link.
