_____________________
Editor, John W. Campbell Jr.
Fiction:
The Legion of Time (Part 1 of 3) • serial by Jack Williamson ∗∗∗+
The Incredible Visitor • short story by Clifton B. Kruse ∗
Island of the Individualists • novelette by Nat Schachner
Procession of Suns • short story by R. R. Winterbotham
Three Thousand Years! (Part 2 of 3) • serial by Thomas Calvert McClary ∗∗∗
Static • novelette by Kent Casey
Ra for the Rajah • short story by John Victor Peterson ∗∗
Niedbalski’s Mutant • short story by Clifton B. Kruse [as by Spencer Lane] ∗
The Brain-Storm Vibration • short story by Moses Schere
Non-fiction:
Cover • Charles Schneeman
Interior artwork • Charles Schneeman (3), Jack Binder, Elliott Dold, Jr. (5), C. R. Thomson (2), H. W. Wesso, uncredited (4)
Not ‘The’ But ‘A’ • editorial by John W. Campbell, Jr.
Catastrophe! • science essay by Edward E. Smith
Science Discussions • letters
Brass Tacks • letters
In Times to Come
The Analytical Laboratory: March 1938
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The first part of Jack Williamson’s The Legion of Time leads off this issue.1 It starts with Lanning, a college student, reading a paper on space and time in his shared undergraduate flat when a woman appears in his room:
A clear silvery voice had spoken his name. Dropping the book, he sat upright in his chair. He blinked, swallowed. A queer little shudder went up and down his spine. The door was still closed, and there had been no other sound. But a woman was standing before him on the rug.
A plain white robe swept long to her feet. Her hair, a glowing mahogany-red, was held back with a blue, brilliant band like a halo. The composure of her perfect, classic face was almost stern. But, behind it, Lanning felt agony.
Before her, in two small hands, she held a thing about the size and shape of a football—but shimmering with splendid prismatic flame, like a colossal, many-faceted diamond. p. 6
[. . .]
“I am Lethonee,” she said. Her voice, Lanning noticed, had an unfamiliar musical rhythm. “And I am not really in your room, but in my own city of Jonbar. It is only in your mind that we meet, through the chronotron,”—her eyes dropped briefly to the immense flashing gem—“and only your study of Time made possible this complete rapport.” p. 6
She shows him a vision of Jonbar, her city:
The lofty, graceful pylons of it would have dwarfed the skyscrapers of Manhattan. Of shimmering, silvery metal, they were set immensely far apart, among green park-lands and broad, many-leveled roadways. Great white ships, teardrop-shaped, slipped through the air above them. p. 7
Lethonee explains to Lanning that he will have a pivotal role in ensuring the future existence of the city, and that he should guard himself against other forces:
“There is the dark, resistless power of the gyrane, and black Glarath, the priest of its murderous horror. There are the monstrous hordes of the kothrin, and their savage commander, Sorainya.”
The white beauty of Lethonee had become almost stern. A sorrow darkened her eyes, yet they flashed with a deathless hatred.
“She is the greatest peril.” It was a battle-chant. “Sorainya, the Woman of War! She is the evil flower of Gyronchi. And she must be destroyed.”
[. . .]
“Or,” she finished, “she will destroy you. Denny.”
Lanning looked at her a long time. At last, hoarse with wonder, he said: “Whatever is going to happen, I’m willing to help—if I can. Because you are—beautiful.” p. 7-8
Before she leaves him she warns him not to go to the flying club the next day with Halloran, his friend and flatmate: the latter is killed in an accident.
The second chapter continues at an equally brisk pace. Lanning graduates and takes a job reporting in Nicaragua. He travels to his new post by ship and, while on deck one night, he receives another visit:
Velvet night had fallen on the tropical Pacific. The watch had just changed, and now the decks were deserted. Lanning, the only passenger, was leaning on the foredeck rail, watching the minute diamonds of phosphorescence that winged endlessly from the prow.
[. . .]
And it startled him strangely when a ringing golden voice [. . .] called: “Denny Lanning!”
His heart leapt and paused. He looked up eagerly, and hope gave way to awed wonderment. For, flying beside the rail, was a long golden shell, shaped like an immense shallow platter. Silken cushions made a couch of it, and lying amid them was a woman.
Sorainya—Woman of War!
Lethonee’s warning came back. For the long-limbed woman in the shell was dad in a gleaming, sleeveless crimson tunic of woven mail that yielded to her full lissom curves. A long, thin sword, in a jeweled sheath, lay beside her. She had put aside a black-plumed, crimson helmet, and thick masses of golden hair streamed down across her strong, bare arms.
The white, tapered fingers, scarlet-nailed, touched some control on the shell’s low rim, and it floated nearer the rail. Upraised on the pillows and one smooth elbow, the woman looked up at Lanning, smiling. Her eyes were long and brilliantly greenish. Across the white beauty of her face, her mocking lips were a long scarlet wound, voluptuous, malicious.
Flower of Evil—Lethonee’s words again. Lanning stood gripping the rail, and a trembling weakness shook him. Swift, unbidden desire overcame incredulity, and he strove desperately to be its master. p. 9-10
If Lethonee is Good Girlfriend then Sorainya quickly reveals herself to be Bad Girlfriend. Sorainya tries to lure him on to the craft but Lethonee arrives just as he moves towards Sorainya and tells him to look below: there is a shark is in the water, and as his hand passes through Sorainya’s he realises that she is a projection too, and that he would have fallen to his death in the water. With a final warning Sorainya departs.
Lethonee tells Lanning that if he ever yields to Sorainya then Jonbar will never exist, and explains why:
“The World is a long corridor, from the Beginning of existence to the End. Events are groups in a sculptured frieze that runs endlessly along the walls. And Time is a lantern carried steadily through the hall, to illuminate the groups one by one. It is the light of awareness, the subjective reality of consciousness.
“Again and again the corridor branches, for it is the museum of all that is possible. The bearer of the lantern may take one turning, or another. And so, many halls that might have been illuminated with reality are left forever in the darkness.
“My world of Jonbar is one such possible way. It leads through splendid halls, bright vistas that have no limit. Gyronchi is another. But it is a barren track, through narrowing, ugly passages, that comes to a dead and useless end.”
The wide solemn eyes of Lethonee looked at him, over the slumberous flame of the jewel. Lanning tensed and caught his breath, as if a light, cold hand, from nowhere, had touched his shoulder.
“And you, Denny Lanning,” came the silver rhythmic voice, “are destined, for a little time, to carry the lantern. And—yours is the choice of reality.”
It’s a breath of fresh air to find a story that explains the maguffin in such a concise and elegant way—most other stories of this period would have a lone inventor banging on about etheric potentialities for a page and a half. This part is the cherry on the top of two crackingly paced chapters.
After this eventful beginning, Williamson uses the next section to rearrange the furniture. Years pass. He is visited once more by Sorainya, who tries to make him kill himself. He receives another treatise on time from his old college roommate McLan, and then one from Chan, the fourth of his roommates, after which he leaves to join him in China.
There, Lanning and Chan work as pilots in an unspecified war. During one raid they get their aircraft airborne but it is badly damaged. As they plummet towards the surface a spectral ship—with the dead Barry Halloran aboard—materialises beside them. They are plucked from the aircraft and Lanning later wakes on board to find Halloran watching over him.
Lanning finds out he is on the Chronion, a time-ship, and meets other military men plucked from various years to fight Sorainya. He then meets the ship’s captain, who is his old friend Will McLan, but finds him much changed:
Lanning climbed metal steps. Standing behind a bright wheel, under the flawless shell of crystal, he came upon a slight, strange little man—or the shattered wreck of a man. His breath sucked in to the shock of sympathetic pain. For the stranger was hideous with the manifold print of unspeakable agony.
The hands—restlessly fumbling with an odd little tube of bright-worn silver that hung by a thin chain about his neck—were yellow, bloodless claws, trembling, twisted with pain. The whole thin body was grotesquely stooped and gnarled, as if every bone had been broken on a torture wheel.
But it was the haggard, livid face, cross-hatched with a white net of ridged scars that chilled Lanning with its horror. Beneath a tangled abundance of loose white hair, that face was a stiff, pain-graven mask, terrible to see. Dark, deep-sunken, the eyes were somber wells of agony—and of a deathless, brooding hatred.
Strangely, those dreadful orbs lit with recognition.
“Denny!” It was an eager whisper, but queerly dry and voiceless.
The little man limped quickly to meet him, thrust out a trembling hand that was thin and twisted and broken, hideous with a web of scars. His breath was a swift, whistling gasp.
Lanning tried to put down the wondering dread that shook him. He took that frail dry claw of a hand, and tried to smile.
“Wil?” he whispered. “You are Wil McLan?”
He choked back the other, fearful question: What frightful thing has happened to you, Wil?
“Yes, Denny,” hissed that voiceless voice. “But—I’ve lived forty years more than you have. And ten of them in Sorainya’s torture vault.”
The rest of this section details McLan’s torture at the hands on the Gyronchi. Lanning is also shown their brutal world, and the civil war that has destroyed humanity leaving the Gyronchi and their ant warriors in control.
McLan also tells a Lanning of his temporal work (undoing the earlier elegant explanation a little), and how atomic power eventually let him build the Chronion and travel in time. At the end, Lanning goes and swears the rest of the men to the service of Jonbar.
A pretty good start to the novel.
Most of the rest of the fiction is, sadly, not up to the standard of the Williamson. The Incredible Visitor by Clifton B. Kruse, the first of two stories from this writer in this issue, is about a tiny, incredibly dense spaceship which comes to Earth from Sirius and causes a certain amount of turmoil, including the capture of two humans. The aliens, after their observations, decide they want to communicate with us.
One of the human scientists tries to tell the military that this is what the aliens are attempting, but (spoiler) he is overruled and, when the aliens attempt to return the two captives, they are attacked with a neutron ray. The ship is unaffected, but the humans (spoiler) are only saved by being recreated with alien bodies. They will be brought back to consciousness after the long journey back to Sirius.
Island of the Individualists by Nat Schachner is the third (of five stories) in the ‘Past, Present and Future’ series. I was going to read the first two but, after reading this one, I was glad I didn’t bother. This has three characters in a rocket ship running out of fuel over the Pacific. Fortunately, there is a data dump that brings us up to date:
“How far is it to land?” asked Beltan.
“As near as I can calculate,” said Sam, “almost a thousand miles. Too far to swim, as friend Kleon has justly remarked.”
The Greek shrugged. “I never did like the sea,” he declared. “I prefer solid ground underfoot, where I can brace myself and charge the enemy with my good sword flashing. It is my fault. Had I not remarked about the sleeping Gymnosophists in the mountains of Tibet, this would never have happened.”
“No more your fault than mine,” Sam Ward told him warmly. “They were our last chance. We ranged over most of North America seeking evidences of other cities, other civilizations. Aside from Hispan we could find nothing. And always behind us, hemming us in, hunting us like rabbits, were the rocket hordes of Harg, headed by Vardu. Our only chance lay in escape across the Pacific, to find the sleepers who had given you the life-immobilizing formula.”
“It is a pity that there was a leak in the tank,” observed the Olgarch with calm indifference. “Otherwise we could have made it. As it is, I regret nothing. I have lived more completely this past six months with you two as comrades, than in all the prior years of purposeless luxury within the neutron walls of Hispan.” He smiled reflectively. “A strange thing, our association. A Greek from the time of Alexander—an American from the twentieth century—and I, an Olgarch of Hispan, who once thought myself the proud apex of the ninety-eighth century.” p. 44
They see a strange island in the distance, and are scanned as they come into land. They find a race of men with really big heads who spend their time in contemplation.
One of the Heads talks to the three but, bored, retreats behind his force screen. Another Head talks to them, and feeds them before doing the same. A third speaks but then disappears. This one returns with the pursuing forces of Harg. There is a climactic battle on the island.
A poor pulp potboiler.
In Procession of Suns by R. R. Winterbotham a female pilot lands in an isolated mountain valley where a man is hiding from the rest of the world. After he destroys her plane (to stop her escaping and revealing his whereabouts) they become engrossed in an astronomical puzzle.
“I fled to these mountains and made my home in this crater of an extinct volcano. It was here that I found among some old books I had rescued in your land, certain vague references to a science called astronomy—the study of stars.”
Banna nodded. “I know,” said she. “It was the stars and astronomy that caused the latest upheaval—the stars that promised the end of the world.”
“You mean those twenty flaming suns up there?” asked Fao with a smile, pointing to the sky. Although the sun had not set, a long streamer of stars was visible, trailing across the heavens behind the Earth’s primary—twenty flashing stars of more than first magnitude. p. 65-66
The rest of the story is little more than a lecture, ending with Fao’s deduction that the Earth is acting like an ion in a capacitor—or some such scientific nonsense, I forget. This is an awful non-story.
The second part (there are overlapping serials in this issue) of Three Thousand Years! by Thomas Calvert McClary provides a temporary respite from the dross.
This section details the first attempts by Drega’s group at organising themselves in the post-apocalyptic world into which they have awakened. Food is short, and an attempt by the mob to eat a horse is stopped when a sailor turns up with a three-pound fish. Drega starts organising the men:
The fish pools had been stretched for two miles, with lengthy necks reaching into the river. At high tide the necks were bottled up. Birch and some sugar maple had been found. A poor grade of clay yielded a few pots which did not leak too badly. Birch and maple tea were the camp drink, both made by steaming twigs. There was no way to boil as yet. The inferior clay pots couldn’t stand it. A little coal had been discovered buried beneath hard packed mud. It was dug out with sticks and broken laboriously with heavy stones.
Drega’s clan had grown to two thousand, but increasing deaths from colds and infection threatened to reduce the number. The meager diet of fish and roots and dandelion greens was not sufficient to build up starved bodies. There had been an attempt to eat green berries which proved almost fatal. Some oysters and clams had been discovered. For the first time, a bird had been caught with enough meat on its bones to eat.
No dogs had come to this camp, but five cats were protected by Drega’s order. An onslaught of rats had threatened the camp’s very existence, and not until the arrival of the cats had this menace been curbed. p. 77-78
Some of the men go out to scout, and they later return on two elephants, with grim tales of colleagues lost in accidents and to huge bands of savages. There are also reports of widespread cannibalism, including one episode among their own expedition when they were desperate.
Some of the scouts do not return and Llewelyn goes out to find them, discovering Steve trapped in an underground tunnel with a group are living there. Steve and the eight hundred survivors go back to the camp.
Drega meantime has organised food for the winter, and the defence of the camp. Lead tokens are made by a smelting pit process for use as currency. For all his planning food starts to run short as winter approaches, and riots are only just supressed.
At the end of this instalment, Gamble (who caused the three thousand-year ‘sleep’) turns up with the offer of a better life:
Passionately, [Gamble] gave them a picture of the world science could create for them—corn high as their wall in five days from planting. Clothing in such quantity they could throw it into refabrication when it grew shoddy. Cars and private baths for every member of the family, luxuries for all and poverty for none. It was a beautiful picture. It left them silent and stunned.
“It will take a little time,” Gamble said. “But not long. There is only one condition. You all work and there is no money. At least money of the kind you know. In return, you get everything you can wish for. There will be no need for money.”
A cheer rose and fell dead into stunned silence. There could be no doubt Gamble spoke at least some truth. Look at his shining boots and the presents he had brought! Even bolts of silk and woolens!
“Mr. Drega,” Gamble went on, “does not agree with my views. He will probably wish to withdraw from any part of them.”
If Gamble had expected Drega to capitulate, he was disappointed. Drega was white but firm. He said to his people, “A world cannot exist without money! There must be trade.”
His clan was silent. p. 93
Most go with Gamble but a few decide instead to go with Drega to set up their own society.
This part doesn’t have the startling events of the first instalment and is a more traditional post-apocalypse piece with some interesting parts.
Static by Kent Casey is the second of the ‘Dr. von Theil and Sgt. John West’ stories. I had hopes for this one as I liked aspects of the previous tale, but this just recycles it in another conflict with the Uranians. This time the latter’s spaceships are impenetrable to the weapons used by Earth, so the General summons von Theil to find out how their shields work. Von Theil picks up the now Lieutenant West (promoted for valour after the opening space battle scene), and they head off for Mars with one of von Thiel’s inventions. This is a very long setup for a weak and unconvincing ending that involves (spoiler) a thought scrambler. The story doesn’t really make any sense (how did Von Thiel’s thought scrambler work away from Mars?), and it has an uncomplicated and straightforward ending. The cornball humour is very weak.
Ra for the Rajah by John Victor Peterson2 is narrated by Ward Jetland, the Freshman President at Royal Astrotech College in 2039 A. D. When he is introduced to a new student who is Martian royalty, his Royal Highness Ianay Fonay, it does not go well:
I was Freshman President by virtue of what was termed brilliance in prep school polo when the exclusive Coloe Palus prep Godsped the Rajah across to Royal.
His knee bent in homage, a Sophomore Martian introduced us: “Frosh prexy Ward Jetland, this is his Royal Highness Ianay Fonay, eldest son of Lanay Fonay, Over-Rajah of Syrtis Ma—”
“I-am-a-phoney!” I punned softly and chuckled. Consciousness was concurrent with the discovery that my aching mouth tasted of Martian knuckles and the realization that even a Martian can be insulted.
Tradition went smash! For a common frosh can’t sock the prexy, even if he is a Rajah’s heir-apparent. It’s worse than mutiny on a space-trajectory; it’s worse than a privately tutored youngster prancing innocently into the Blaster’s Dive on Ganymede and asking for milk!
Naturally, I promptly recovered my pugilistic prestige, and for three years afterward we had secret rendezvous behind the polo hangars and nurtured black eyes, skinned knuckles, acid burns and whatnot. We rounded the final pylon sound-limbed and going strong. Then radium, atomic energy, rockets, thrust-dispersion, polo, and—last and most important—Rosalie Ames, came cometing into our bittersweet lives and things really got serious! p. 110
The last sentence telegraphs the arc of the story. While they are working in the same lab on a rocket thrust dispersion problem they are both introduced to Rosalie Ames, a beautiful heiress:
She swept in like a queen, surveyed the Rajah and me haughtily and then swooped to our level with an even, white smile that made my heart surge like a hypoed jet-blast and keep going faster than a Perseid. I ogled at the Rajah; he ogled at me.
“Canal frogs peeping on a June night!” he sighed, which, if you’ve been to Mars, is a beautiful thing, “a vision!”
Of course, he said it just loud enough to hear—
She dimpled prettily and I decided that those telepix didn’t do the darling justice; then Widdlemere introduced us. Simultaneously something short-circuited in the unattended cyclotron—atoms disrupted in a hot, white, snapping flash—the durite vacuum tank cracked in twain.
“Damnation!” I yelped. “Voila: my next month’s allowance gone with the proverbial wind!”
“I will pay all,” sighed the Rajah ecstatically. “It is as nothing compared with meeting the famous and beauteous Rosalie—”
Shakespeare really had nothing on Fonay! p. 110-111
After she leaves, their truce ends:
“Listen, Rajah Phoney,” I growled, “all hands clear. The deck’s mine and you’re just a third-grade blaster. She gave me the orbs first, so just arc for Callisto and keep your unlovely proboscis clear of the heart-shiverin’ until I slap an I-do around the pretty’s fin—
“Listen, Vacuity Jetland,” he snapped back, “the dame’s mine. But if you must fight over everything, I’ll make you a bargain. Seeing that you’re Captain of the Royal American Varsity and I’m Cap of the Martian Varsity—well, when the annual Commencement Game comes off, the winner takes the spoils. In other words, the beauteous Rosalie is to be escorted to the Reception by the winning Captain, and the age-old custom of the engagement announcement will be preserved, all parties willing. Okel-dokel ?” p. 111
The rest of the story is about their rivalry, and concludes with a game of rocket polo.
The story is enjoyable but a little unclear at times due to its unusual and colourful style: one wonders what readers of the time thought of passages such as those above.
Niedbalski’s Mutant by Clifton B. Kruse is his second (and pseudonymous) story in the issue, and it is narrated by a sentient plant that can ‘hear’ the thoughts of its scientist creator and later matches this to his speech. The plant teaches itself to speak and attempts to communicate, only for the scientist to react with horror and leave, never to reappear. This plot loop is repeated with a woman who comes into possession of the plant. With its third owner, a botanist, the plant remains silent until it comes into bud, at which point it needs a viola tricolour for pollination. Once again the owner disappears but this time the plant learns that its attempts at communication are blanking the minds of the recipients.
There are some interesting aspects to this story, but its tragic arc is overlong and a bit pointless.
The Brain-Storm Vibration by Moses Schere occurs after the events of his earlier story Anachronistic Optics (Astounding, February 1938), but is independent of it. This one has Joshua the handyman becoming the subject of an experiment to increase intelligence (or “ratiocinative ability” as the story puts it). After they retire to the library a burglar breaks into the house; he is subdued and later used as a test subject which, of course, turns him into a criminal mastermind. There is a lot of explanatory dialogue and hand waving science explanation in the final act of this weak piece.
The Cover by Charles Schneeman (it is uncredited but is a colour mirror image of the first internal illustration) is for Williamson’s serial and is okay, I suppose, but not as good as his internal work which is probably the best in the issue. I note in passing that the coloured banners at the top and bottom of the previous covers are absent in this issue but will be back in the next. The rest of the Interior artwork is by Jack Binder, Elliott Dold, Jr., C. R. Thomson, and H. W. Wesso. A few are uncredited (I suspect the illustrations for McClary’s serial are by Brown, as they are similar to last issue’s, which were in turn similar to the credited cover). After Schneeman’s illustrations I like Wesso’s best. They look old-fashioned but are nicely detailed. The longer I look at all the different parts of the picture (look at those immaculately drawn skyscrapers in the background, the arches under the far stand) the more I think it is the best illustration in the issue. I have a grudging appreciation of Dold’s work (who illustrates three of the stories) even though it is rather crude.
John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Not ‘The’ But ‘A’ is an editorial that focusses mainly on the time-travel plot variant in Jack Williamson’s serial:
Jack Williamson has opened up another field for time-travel plots. The Legion of Time is itself a memorable story. It has a new plot. But more than that—it has a new concept—a mutant plot. If the future can follow either of many paths—and that, I feel, must be so, if our modern science is reasonably sound—then there is a new possibility. In the year 5938, for instance, either of two civilizations might exist. A time-traveler going down the paths to Tomorrow might reach either one or the other.
But, as Williamson points out, those two cannot be real to each other. If either can exist, and if they have the power, the knowledge to see through Time—then they may struggle for existence! But they cannot attack each other! p. 107
I don’t see why the latter should necessarily pertain, or why Campbell is getting so excited about Williamson’s twist; he goes on to say that this “completely new idea” “can give rise to a hundred plots.” I hope not, I don’t want to read the same story a hundred times. 3
Catastrophe! is a science article by Edward E. (‘Doc’) Smith about the formation of our solar system. As with most of these pieces it is outdated—the nebular theory it discounts (because of angular momentum concerns) is the one that is now supported.4 Smith finishes with a lively description of another theory—a wandering star striking or coming very close to a binary system, where one of the two stars was our sun.
Science Discussions has three letters, the first from Arthur C. Clarke (Hon. Treasurer of the British Interplanetary Society) which takes issue with the rocket flight equations in Leo Vernon’s article in the January issue.
Brass Tacks has letters defending ‘Doc’ Smith’s Galactic Patrol against comments made in an earlier issue, including a letter from Doc Smith himself:
What broke through my customary lethargy is not the mere fact that these sprightly and courteous gentlemen did not like “Galactic Patrol”—I cannot even hope, and certainly do not expect, to please everybody; and their tastes are their own. Nor is it the tone of the communication, the weapons they have chosen—I have been bawled out before, by experts, without undue or unseemly urges to violence.
What got my dander up to writing pitch is the accusation—by inference, it is true, but none the less clearly connoted—that I am sailing under false colors by using the Ph. D. Since Edward E. Smith is my real name, the thing is of course on record.
He goes on to give details, and challenges the original correspondents to state which passages of this novel show scientific knowledge incompatible with holding a Ph. D.
As for the other letters, there a couple who thought (as I did) that the ending to Galactic Patrol was abrupt, and there are the usual comments about the artwork. One of the readers, Mary Rogers of Muskogee, OK, compliments Smith’s novel and the new mutant cover, and finishes with “Keep up the good work and next time I’ll send orchids.”
Campbell’s reply is, “We’ll expect orchids when the May Astounding appears.”
In Times to Come announces a new feature, the Analytical Laboratory,5 and goes into matters in some detail—I’m not entirely sure what all the symbols mean:
Once again we have an issue that has a few items of note, and a lot of what can only be described as dross. ●
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1. In Campbell’s letter of 28th February 1938 to his friend and correspondent Robert Swisher (in Fantasy Commentator #59/60—recommended, and available at Lulu.com), he talks about the writers and material of this period:
“You know. I swear….we ought to get an appreciable and real circulation increase during the next three months. I think we’ve gotten some damn good stories, along with the ones that are just a bit weak. ‘Three Thousand Years and ‘Legion of Time’ are good yarns. Those Kent Casey shorts are good and (Clifton B.) Kruse has dropped his lousy W62 series (space adventure stories) for some rather nicely handled pieces. The competition from the author’s viewpoint, is getting fierce. I’m betting a number of those who appeared begin to drop out. Eando Binder has been in a bit of a slump, and his beat was never too strong. He may be retired gradually. (R.R.) Winterbotham is improving gradually and just fast enough to keep up. But he may not.
“Gallun’s a funny one. Once in a while he hits a high-spot like ‘Old Faithful’ and deserves a lot. Most of the time he rides along. He’s gotten three accepts in the last three weeks. One weak, hut not too weak. One medium good. One that almost reaches ‘Old Faithful’, ‘Seeds of Dusk’ is the latter. p. 82-83
Later on in the same letter Campbell has this to say about the artwork the magazine uses:
“By the way, any originals (covers and interior drawings) you’d like? We pass ’em out fairly liberally because they just get thrown out. You can even get a cover original after it’s about three months old—provided you don’t ask for an astronomical cover. Schneeman’s work is really neat in the originals. Binder’s originals aren’t as good as the reproduction—because he draws for the reproduction, not the original. The April cover is already bespoke—by Tom McClary. He can have it when we have the June cover to hang in the office. Wesso is doing that original astronomical plate. p. 82
2. I couldn’t find out much about John Victor Peterson. According to his ISFDB page, he wrote eight stories (one a collaboration) in the late-1930s/early-1940s and was then out of the field for over a decade, returning in the mid-1950s with another eleven works. There was a final novel in 1970, Rock the Big Rock.
I did find one snippet in Space, Time, and Infinity: Essays on Fantastic Literature by Brian M. Stableford, Borgo Press 2007, (Amazon) which has this:
I have before me as I write a battered copy of the first-ever issue of New Worlds—not the one which Ted Carnell and Frank Arnold persuaded Stephen Frances (alias Hank Janson) to launch under the Pendulum Publications imprint in 1946, but the March 1939 issue, the first of what turned out to be a run of four produced by means of a primitive duplicator. It contains a story by John Victor Peterson, a British writer who had already made five appearances in the American SF pulps, and a discussion of his writing methods by one “Thornton Ayre.” p. 94
3. Sam Moskowitz mentions one story that may have been inspired by Williamson’s in Fantasy Commentator #59/60:
The identical plot would be used with great effectiveness and poignancy in C.L. Moore’s ‘Greater Than Gods’ (Astounding Science Fiction, January, 1939), possibly urged upon her by Campbell. It was the ‘Branches of Time’ plot used several times previously, even as early as Edward Everett Hale and Mark Twain (‘Hands Off, Harper’s, March, 1881 and ‘The Mysterious Stranger’, Harper’s, 1922, respectively). p. 68-69
4. Wikipedia’s Formation and evolution of the Solar System page.
5. The Analytical Laboratory results for this issue appeared in July:
I agree with the top two, but the next three are among the four worst stories in this issue; the Kruse stories are better, and Peterson’s definitely so, but I can see how the latter split opinion. ●
Edited 15th November 2019: formatting, archive.org link.
