{"id":10514,"date":"2019-06-05T12:41:38","date_gmt":"2019-06-05T12:41:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=10514"},"modified":"2019-06-05T12:41:38","modified_gmt":"2019-06-05T12:41:38","slug":"astounding-science-fiction-v42n05-january-1949","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=10514","title":{"rendered":"Astounding Science-Fiction v42n05, January 1949"},"content":{"rendered":"

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ISFDB link<\/a>
\nArchive.org link<\/a><\/p>\n

Other reviews:1<\/sup>
\nAlva Rogers, A Requiem for Astounding<\/a><\/em>\u00a0 p. 172<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

Editor, John W. Campbell Jr.; Assistant Editor, Catherine Tarrant<\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nPrivate Eye<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett] \u2217\u2217\u2217\u2217\u2217<\/strong>
\nExpedition Polychrome<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Joseph A. Winter, M.D. \u2217<\/strong>
\nHow Can You Lose?<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by W. Macfarlane \u2217<\/strong>
\nDeath Is the Penalty<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Judith Merril \u2217<\/strong>
\nThe Red Queen\u2019s Race<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Isaac Asimov \u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>\u2217<\/strong>+
\nThe Players of \u0100<\/em><\/strong> (Part 4 of 4) \u2022 serial by A. E. van Vogt (unread)<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCover <\/em><\/strong>\u2022 by Hubert Rogers
\nInterior artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 by Hubert Rogers (x10), Edd Cartier (x5), Paul Orban (x3)
\nGleep and Bepo<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 editorial by John W. Campbell, Jr.
\nThe Analytical Laboratory: September & October 1948<\/em><\/strong>
\nModern Calculators<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 science essay by E. L. Locke
\nBrass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 letters<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

I ended up reading this issue as I have been working my way through The Great SF Stories 11: 1949 <\/em>(edited by Marty Greenberg & Isaac Asimov, 1984), and realised that I\u2019d read two of the stories here (the Kuttner\/ Moore and the Asimov)\u2014so I thought I may as well finish it off. Apart from that I wanted to talk at greater length about Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore\u2019s story Private Eye<\/em><\/strong>, which is probably the best thing I\u2019ve read in Astounding<\/em> so far.<\/p>\n

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In their anthology Asimov and Greenberg both describe Kuttner and Moore\u2019s piece as a murder mystery, but this rather misdescribes the story as it is much a psychological portrait of the main character as anything else. However, that said, it begins with a forensic sociologist and a \u201ctracer\u201d engineer watching Sam Clay kill, perhaps murder, a man called Vanderman:<\/p>\n

The tracer engineer twirled a dial and watched the figures on the screen repeat their actions. One\u2014Sam Clay\u2014snatched the letter cutter from a desk and plunged it into the other man\u2019s heart. The victim fell down dead. Clay started back in apparent horror. Then he dropped to his knees beside the twitching body and said wildly that he didn\u2019t mean it. The body drummed its heels upon the rug and was still.
\n\u201cThat last touch was nice,\u201d the engineer said.\u00a0 p. 8<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The pair watch via a device that can see into the past by using the \u201cfingerprints\u201d of light and sound waves imprinted on matter (although the machine can only go back fifty years), and their job is to investigate Clay\u2019s timeline to find out if the killing was premeditated. In this future world only intent enables a charge of murder to be brought, otherwise killers usually go free, or receive some lesser punishment.
\nOne of the first things the pair discover is that Clay was dumped by Bea, his dominating girlfriend, for Vanderman eighteen months earlier. What isn\u2019t apparent from their observations is that Clay has decided to murder Vanderman because of this, and plots how to kill him without leaving any evidence for the all-seeing temporal eye that will examine his historical actions afterwards.
\nClay decides to pick a fight with Vanderman:<\/p>\n

Anywhere you sat in the Paradise Bar, a competent robot analyzer instantly studied your complexion and facial angles, and switched on lights, in varying tints and intensities, that showed you off to best advantage. The joint was popular for business deals. A swindler could look like an honest man there. It was also popular with women and slightly pass\u00e9 teleo talent. Sam Clay looked rather like an ascetic young saint. Andrew Vanderman looked noble, in a grim way, like Richard Coeur-de-Lion offering Saladin his freedom, though he knew it wasn\u2019t really a bright thing to do. Noblesse oblige<\/em>, his firm jaw seemed to say, as he picked up the silver decanter and poured. In ordinary light, Vanderman looked slightly more like a handsome bulldog. Also, away from the Paradise Bar, he was redder around the chops, a choleric man.
\n\u201cAs to that deal we were discussing,\u201d Clay said, \u201cyou can go to\u2014\u201d
\nThe censoring juke box blared out a covering bar or two.
\nVanderman\u2019s reply was unheard as the music got briefly, louder, and the lights shifted rapidly to keep pace with his sudden flush.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s perfectly easy to outwit these censors,\u201d Clay said. \u201cThey\u2019re keyed to familiar terms of profane abuse, not to circumlocutions. If I said that the arrangement of your chromosomes would have surprised your father . . . you see?\u201d He was right. The music stayed soft.
\nVanderman swallowed nothing. \u201cTake it easy,\u201d he said. \u201cI can see why you\u2019re upset. Let me say first of all\u2014\u201d
\n\u201cHijo<\/em>\u2014\u201d
\nBut the censor was proficient in Spanish dialects. Vanderman was spared hearing another insult.
\n\u201c\u2014that I offered you a job because I think you\u2019re a very capable man. You have potentialities. It\u2019s not a bribe. Our personal affairs should be kept out of this.\u201d
\nAll the same, Bea was engaged to me.\u201d
\n\u201cClay, are you drunk?\u201d
\n\u201cYes,\u201d Clay said, and threw his drink into Vanderman\u2019s face. The music began to play Wagner very, very loudly. A few minutes later, when the waiters interfered, Clay was supine and bloody, with a mashed nose and a bruised cheek. Vanderman had skinned his knuckles.\u00a0 p. 11-12<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After this Clay buys a gun and threatens Vanderman, but does not follow through. Later he feigns remorse, but is secretly pleased that he has established an alibi against premeditation by giving the impression that his anger has dissipated.
\nThe next section details an elaborate plot that Clay sets in motion, wherein he befriends Vanderman\u2019s personal secretary, Josephine, and later guilts Vanderman into giving him a job. Over the next year and a half he slowly insinuates himself into Vanderman\u2019s good graces, a process helped by the announcement that he intends to marry Josephine. Vanderman and Bea\u2019s relationship eventually hits a rocky patch, and it is then Clay chooses to act: he goes to her and Vanderman\u2019s apartment when the latter isn\u2019t there and breaks the spy camera in the wall so Vanderman will not know what transpires between them.<\/p>\n

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The murder occurs when Clay next sees Vanderman in his office: the latter toys with the \u201cstingaree\u201d whip that Clay has previously planted (Vanderman habitually fingers objects while at his desk). When Vanderman finally snaps, he lashes out with it, causing Clay immense pain. In a supposedly reflexive retaliation, Clay picks up the scalpel that Vanderman uses as a letter opener and stabs him.
\nIn the subsequent trial the forensic sociologist offers no evidence of premeditation, so the court acquits Clay and he walks free.
\nI\u2019ll admit that this plot synopsis does not sound convincing, but what it doesn\u2019t fully convey is the length of time that elapses (eighteen months), or the gradualist development of these interlocking plot pieces, or that this is only the first three quarters or so of the story. Moreover, what I\u2019ve described so far is only a skeleton over which much, much more is laid, in particular the evolving psychological portrait of Clay, the submissive role he played in his relationship with Bea and, more pivotally, what happened to him as a child:<\/p>\n

The engineer had a free period. He was finally able to investigate Sam Clay\u2019s early childhood. It was purely academic now, but he liked to indulge his curiosity. He traced Clay back to the dark closet, when the boy was four, and used ultraviolet. Sam was huddled in a comer, crying silently, staring up with frightened eyes at a top shelf.
\nWhat was on that shelf the engineer could not see.
\nHe kept the beam focused on the closet and cast back rapidly through time. The closet often opened and closed, and sometimes Sam Clay was locked in it as punishment, but the upper shelf held its mystery until\u2014
\nIt was in reverse. A woman reached to that shelf, took down an object, walked backward out of the closet to Sam Clay\u2019s bedroom, and went to the wall by the door. This was unusual, for generally it was Sam\u2019s father who was warden of the closet.
\nShe hung up a framed picture of a single huge staring eye floating in space. There was a legend under it. The letters spelled out: THOU GOD SEEST ME.
\nThe engineer kept on tracing. After a while it was night. The child was in bed, sitting up wide-eyed, afraid. A man\u2019s footsteps sounded on the stair. The scanner told all secrets but those of the inner mind. The man was Sam\u2019s father, coming up to punish him for some childish crime committed earlier. Moonlight fell upon the wall beyond which the footsteps approached showing how the wall quivered a little to the vibrations of the feet, and the Eye in its frame quivered, too. The boy seemed to brace himself. A defiant half-smile showed on his mouth, crooked, unsteady.
\nThis time he\u2019d keep that smile, no matter what happened. When it was over he\u2019d still have it, so his father could see it, and the Eye could see it and they\u2019d know he hadn\u2019t given in. He hadn\u2019t . . . he\u2014
\nThe door opened.
\nHe couldn\u2019t help it. The smile faded and was gone.\u00a0 p. 27-28<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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There is much more psychological observation and comment in the story, albeit most of it from the viewpoint of the forensic sociologist and, to a lesser extent, the engineer.
\nAs well as all this there is also some world building going on in the background\u2014we\u2019ve seen the futuristic bar in the passage above, but there are also quirky details like this:<\/p>\n

It appeared as though Andrew Vanderman had, during a quarrel, struck Clay across the face with a stingaree whip. Anyone who has been stung by a Portuguese man-of-war can understand that, at this point, Clay could plead temporary insanity and self-defense, as well as undue provocation and possible justification.
\nOnly the curious cult of the Alaskan Flagellantes, who make the stingaree whips for their ceremonials, know how to endure the pain. The Flagellantes even like it, the pre-ritual drug they swallow transmutes pain into pleasure.\u00a0 p. 9<\/p>\n

And the curious upshot of this imbalance came when the act of homicide was declared nonpunishable, unless intent and forethought could be proved. Of course, it was considered at least naughty to fly in a rage and murder someone on impulse, and there was a nominal punishment\u2014imprisonment, for example\u2014but in practice this never worked, because so many defences were possible. Temporary insanity. Undue provocation. Self defense. Manslaughter, second-degree homicide, third degree, fourth degree\u2014it went on like that. It was up to the State to prove that the killer had planned his killing in advance; only then would a jury convict. And the jury, of course, had to waive immunity and take a scop test, to prove the box hadn\u2019t been packed. But no defendant ever waived immunity.\u00a0 p. 8-9<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These glimpses of this dark future, combined with a psychologically driven and flawed character, recall Alfred Bester\u2019s novels The Demolished Man<\/em> and The Stars My Destination<\/em>, and more than once it felt like I was reading one of that writer\u2019s better mid-50\u2019s short stories.
\nAll of the plot elements and psychological observations are drawn together in the final section, when Bea and Clay meet after the trial. She wants him back, but he tells her he plans to marry Josephine. She laughs and mocks him, and they argue, and then Clay blurts out that he planned Vanderman\u2019s murder. Almost immediately he realises that this puts him at risk of a retrial and conviction.<\/p>\n

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Clay reflects on the peril he has put himself in, and also what he was hoping to achieve by murdering Vanderman. From his inner turmoil comes to a pivotal moment of self-realisation: he wasn\u2019t defying the eye after he murdered Vanderman, but has been hiding from it. The last few lines provide (spoiler) a shockingly violent end where Clay transcends the psychological trauma of his childhood (although not in a good way), and the Eye appears as a final image.
\nIt\u2019s hard to overstate how powerful an ending this is\u2014for the most part I thought the story oscillated in quality between good and very good, but those last few sentences pull all the elements into alignment. I can\u2019t remember the last time I finished a story and was left staring at the page open-jawed, and thinking, \u201cWow.\u201d
\nAn excellent piece, and the best thing of theirs I\u2019ve read.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

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Expedition Polychrome<\/em><\/strong> by Joseph A. Winter, M.D. is the sequel to an earlier \u2018Expedition\u2019 story (Expedition Mercy<\/em>) which appeared in the November issue. Both stories take place on an alien planet called Minotaur.
\nThe story is breezily told but feels amateurish and clunky, and it is full of talking heads:<\/p>\n

No doubt about it\u2014Edwards was feeling quite pleased with himself.
\nAnd it was well-deserved. The medical expedition under his direction to the planet Minotaur had just solved a most unusual problem involving the death of all members of Expedition I.
\nHe tilted back in his chair in the control room and continued.
\n[. . .]
\n\u201cTo give you another example: the body is capable of only certain color changes. The skin might turn brown, due to the presence of melanin, one of the normally found pigments. Or it might turn any one of the colors seen in the degradation of hemoglobin. You know, those fascinating hues which change from dark blue to green to yellow, which we all saw adorning your left eye last year.
\n\u201cNo,\u201d he continued, without giving Tom a chance to explain how he got that shiner, \u201cwe could never expect to see a man turn, say, an aquamarine blue. There just isn\u2019t a precursor for that color in the body. So we\u2019ll never see an exotic disease where the skin is aquamarine or we\u2019ll never see a disease where a man reacts outside of the normal limitations of response.\u201d
\n\u201cSo that\u2019s it,\u201d mused Tom. \u201cYes, what is it ?\u201d He turned around as a knock came at the door.
\nIt was one of the crew members. \u201cSorry to interrupt, sir, but I\u2019d like to have Dr. Edwards take a look at me. My skin is kind of a funny color.\u201d
\nEdwards turned around. Like the Bay of Naples on a sunny day, or Lake Superior in July, the man\u2019s skin was a beautiful vivid aquamarine blue.
\nBob\u2019s jaw dropped. He had just said that such a color couldn\u2019t possibly occur, yet here it was!\u00a0 p. 34<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

After much medical discussion, the patient\u2019s problem (spoiler) is traced to a plant he sniffed while wandering around on the planet\u2019s surface (yes, yet another Darwin Award candidate). When another crew member goes to get a sample of the plants he observes a new alien life form:<\/p>\n

Picture a four-legged animal with a body the same size as a St. Bernard dog, with disproportionately short, bowed legs like a dachshund. Give him a hairless, wrinkled graygreen skin, and a long, graceful neck dike a camel, emerging from powerful shoulders. Put a head with long jaws on that neck; large yellow eyes, no external ears and a placid expression, for features. And finally, on the anterior surface of the long neck, imagine a rugose, lobulated mass of flesh reminiscent of the wattles of a turkey. There you will have, at first glance, the dominant inhabitant of the planet Minotaur.
\n[. . .]
\n\u201cLook at the color changes in that gadget on his neck! What do you suppose that\u2019s for?\u201d asked Schultz.
\nAnd the colors were changing; various shades of red were playing over the surface. A broad, horizontal band of scarlet, followed by a light pink, would travel down the length of the colored area. This would be replaced by a vermilion, which would seem to pulsate, gently, alternately deepening and lightening in shade.\u00a0 p. 42<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

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

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

And then how impossibly perfect it was when he did begin to talk. He listened gravely. He didn\u2019t say anything; he nodded, but in the nod she saw he knew about all the years and all about the men who were just a little silly, a little juvenile, who came running when she smiled, but backed off in fright when she talked.\u00a0 p. 59<\/p>\n

She knew he had understood, from the beginning, so she poured out to him now all the lonely years. She told him how the exams in Secondary had just barely passed her by for Restricted work, how she was left among men who were pleasant, friendly, good at their work. But always, when she met someone, he stayed a little while, then went away.
\nShe was too good\u2014too smart, too quick. A man doesn\u2019t want a woman who is greater than he is.
\nJanice had subjected them, one by one, to the hot inquiring searchlight of her intellect, probed at their minds, and, when she was not herself discarded, she had discarded them, each in turn. Because a woman doesn\u2019t want a man who is less than she is.\u00a0 p. 61<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Throughout this (and from an initial bookend section) we find out that they work in different areas and are not supposed to meet. At the end of the story (spoiler) security turns up and, while they embrace, they are turned into \u201cdark shapes\u201d:<\/p>\n

By the side of the stream, the two black figures have made an island of quiet for themselves. The area inside the unrepaired old fence is filled with the calm inwardness of their tender cold embrace.
\nThe guide will stop here and wait, until everyone is in the clearing, until each face has turned questingly toward the dark mystery. And when he speaks, the guide\u2019s voice will be quiet. Under the great trees he shouts, but in the presence of the black lovers, a man does not speak too loudly.\u00a0 p. 56<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The SF part of the story is never explained, i.e., what ultimately happens to the pair, or what their work is about, and I wasn\u2019t interested in the emotional yearning in the rest of it. I\u2019m somewhat surprised that Campbell bought this, and suspect he only did so as a future investment in the writer who had previously sold him That Only a Mother<\/em> (Astounding<\/em>, June 1948).3<\/sup><\/p>\n

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The Red Queen\u2019s Race<\/em><\/strong> by Isaac Asimov starts with an incident at a nuclear power plant, where all of the fuel has been converted to energy by means of an abnormal process that caused no explosion or released any gamma rays\u2014although the temperature of the immediate surroundings was slightly raised. A Professor called Tywood is found in the reactor, dead from apoplexy, and the strange equipment beside him is a fused mass.
\nThe story continues from the point of view of an agent who is at the university questioning the other staff and students. Initially the agent talks to the other professors but gets nowhere, so he decides to interview the dead man\u2019s research assistants. One of them reveals that Tywood was researching \u201cmicro-temporal translation\u201d\u2014sending material back in time.
\nWhen the agent then researches the magazine articles that Tywood wrote he discovers something that he takes to his boss:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe article,\u201d I went on, \u201cis entitled: \u2018Man\u2019s First Great Failure!\u2019\u201d
\nRemember, this was just before the war, when the bitter disappointment at the final failure of the United Nations was at its height. What I will read are some excerpts from the first part of the article. It goes like this:
\n\u201c \u2018Then Rome came, adopting the culture, but bestowing, and enforcing, peace. To be sure, the Pax Romana<\/em> lasted only two hundred years, but no like period has existed since . . .
\n\u201c \u2018War was abolished. Nationalism did not exist. The Roman citizen was Empire-wide. Saul of Tarsus and Flavius Josephus were Roman citizens. Spaniards, North Africans, Illyrians assumed the purple. Slavery existed, but it was an indiscriminate slavery, imposed as a punishment, incurred as the price of economic failure, brought on by the fortunes of war. No man was a natural slave, because of the color of his skin, or the place of his birth.
\n\u201c \u2018Religious toleration was complete. If an exception was made early in the case of the Christians, it was because they refused to accept the principle of toleration; because they insisted that only they themselves knew truth\u2014a principle abhorrent to the civilized Roman . . .
\n\u201c \u2018With all of Western culture under a single polis, with the cancer of religious and national particularism and exclusivism absent; with a high civilization in existence\u2014why could not Man hold his gains?
\n\u201c \u2018It was because technologically, ancient Hellenism remained backward. It was because without a machine civilization, the price of leisure\u2014and hence civilization and culture\u2014for the few, was slavery for the many. Because the civilization could not find the means to bring comfort and ease to all the population.
\n\u201c \u2018Therefore, the depressed classes turned to the other world, and to religions which spumed the material benefits of this world\u2014so that science was made impossible in any true sense for over a millennium. And further, as the initial impetus of Hellenism waned, the Empire lacked the technological powers to beat back the barbarians. In fact, it was not till after 1500 A.D. that war became sufficiently a function of the industrial resources of a nation to enable the settled people to defeat invading tribesmen and nomads with ease . . .
\n\u201c \u2018Imagine then, if somehow the ancient Greeks had learned just a hint of modem chemistry and physics. Imagine if the growth of the Empire had been accompanied by the growth of science, technology and industry. Imagine an Empire, in which machinery replaced slaves; in which all men had a decent share of the world\u2019s goods; in which the legion became the armored column, against which no barbarians could stand. Imagine an Empire which would therefore spread all over the world, without religious or national prejudices.
\n\u201c \u2018An Empire of all men\u2014all brothers\u2014eventually all free . . .
\n\u201c \u2018If history could be changed. If that first great failure could have been prevented\u2014 \u2019 \u201d
\nAnd I stopped at that point.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The agent says that he suspects that Tywood has sent a translated science book back in time to change the past and improve the present. The pair calculate that, if this is the case, they have two and a half weeks until any change \u201cripples\u201d forward through time. In the meantime they decide to track down the Ancient Greek translator, Professor Boulder, only to find that he has already come to them, and is outside in the anteroom.<\/p>\n

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The final interrogation reveals that Professor Boulder was aware of Tywood\u2019s plan to change the present but was scathing about the possibility of success. There is then an extended conversation\/lecture about a variety of subjects\u2014the history of scientific progress, how man progresses, etc.\u2014until Boulder (spoiler) reveals a critical piece of information:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn other words, gentlemen, while you are right that any change in the course of past events, however trifling, would have incalculable consequences, and while I also believe that you are right in supposing that any random change is much more likely to be for the worst than for the better, I must point out that you are nevertheless wrong in your final conclusions.
\n\u201cBecause THIS is the world in which the Greek chemistry text was sent back.<\/em>
\n\u201cThis has been a Red Queen\u2019s race, if you remember your Through the Looking Glass<\/em>. In the Red Queen\u2019s country, one had to run as fast as one could merely to stay in the same place. And so it was in this case! Tywood may have thought he was creating a new world, but it was I who prepared the translations, and I took care that only such passages as would account for the queer scraps of knowledge the ancients \u00a0apparently got from nowhere would be included.
\n\u201cAnd my only intention, for all my racing, was to stay in the same place.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Despite the fact that the story contains virtually no action or characterisation, and the narrative almost entirely involves talking heads (it reads like a fictionalised version of one of the writer\u2019s later science columns) Asimov nevertheless manages to make an engrossing story out of all this. If you don\u2019t mind lecture-type stories, and are interested in the history of scientific progression (with a nod towards atomic state security and the guilt of A-bomb scientists), you should find this of interest.
\nI note in passing that the general quality of this story is markedly better than some of Asimov\u2019s early-1940\u2019s work.<\/p>\n

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Normally I wouldn\u2019t leave a magazine unfinished but, at the moment, I didn\u2019t want to read the previous three parts of A. E. van Vogt\u2019s The Players of \u0100<\/em><\/strong>, or reread the prequel, The World of Null A <\/em><\/strong>(Astounding<\/em>, August-October 1945). I\u2019ll revise this when I\u2019ve eventually done so. Meanwhile, here is some of Rogers\u2019 artwork:<\/p>\n

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(I hope this idea of posting pictures without any text doesn\u2019t catch on or I\u2019ll be out of a job.)<\/p>\n

The Cover <\/em><\/strong>by Hubert Rogers is a striking effort for the Kuttner & Moore story, but I don\u2019t know what the skull is doing there. If you ask me, he missed a trick by not replacing the latter with an image of a boy in a cupboard .
\nRogers also contributes most (and the best) of the Interior artwork<\/em><\/strong>, although I also liked Edd Cartier\u2019s \u2018two dinosaurs\u2019 drawing. I don\u2019t think the latter\u2019s light style was a good match for the Merril story. Paul Orban draws some people from the 1940s.
\nGleep and Bepo<\/em><\/strong> by John W. Campbell, Jr. is an editorial that discusses early atomic piles (these were used for making radioisotopes rather than producing power it seems, primarily plutonium for bombs). He focuses on two British reactors, Gleep and Bepo,4<\/sup> and ends with this:<\/p>\n

In the field of peacetime atomic energy, therefore, the British are doing a first-rate job, and have every reason to do so. They are, in fact, quite apt to establish commercial atomic power plants before we do.
\nBe it remembered that the United States has unlimited coal reserves, and completely adequate coal production; we don\u2019t need atomic fuel. Britain, on the other hand, is severely pinched by lack of fuel power; they want and need a new source of energy for energy\u2019s sake. The United States wants and needs atomic energy for special purposes, special situations, but not for the sake of simple bulk energy.\u00a0 p. 6<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Analytical Laboratory: September & October 1948<\/em><\/strong> will be discussed in those issues if and when I read them. Campbell gives explanation of how the AnLab<\/em> scores are calculated \u201cfor those who wonder\u201d.5<\/sup><\/p>\n

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Modern Calculators<\/em><\/strong> by E. L. Locke is a very dry article about computers (binary and analog) that I struggled to get through. I did learn where \u201cbits\u201d came from though:<\/p>\n

Thus, if we wish to express a 12 decimal digit number in the binary notation, we will need forty binary digits. Incidentally, some wag proposed to refer to these as bigits. Happily, this term has been contracted to \u201cbits.\u201d\u00a0 p. 98<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Brass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> is rather dull this month, leading off with a letter about the dynamics of the Weissacker Theory (I hadn\u2019t read the original R. S. Richardson article, it was late, and I started skimming). In among the letters there are two half-page adverts for books. I can\u2019t recall seeing these in Astounding<\/em> before\u2014they are no doubt a result of the burgeoning book market of the late 1940\u2019s.<\/p>\n

A must get issue for the Kuttner & Moore story, with the bonus of the Asimov.\u00a0 \u25cf<\/p>\n

_____________________<\/p>\n

1. Alva Rogers, in A Requiem for Astounding<\/em>, concentrates (like Greenberg and Asimov) on the murder mystery aspects of Private Eye<\/em> but adds that Kuttner and Moore tell their story in \u201ctheir usual masterful manner and [throw] in a lovely twist at the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

2. A straw poll of less than a handful of people on the Great SF Stories<\/em> group (groups.io<\/a>) suggests that Kuttner & Moore\u2019s three best stories are: Mimsy Were the Borogoves<\/em>, Vintage Season<\/em>, and Private Eye<\/em>. The general feeling is that Vintage<\/em> is mostly Moore, and Private Eye<\/em> is mostly Kuttner, but see the quote below from C. L. Moore\u2019s introduction to Fury<\/em> (1947):<\/p>\n

We collaborated on almost everything we wrote, but in varying degrees. It worked like this. After we\u2019d established through long discussion the basic ideas, the background and the characters, whichever of us felt like it sat down and started. When that one ran down, the other, being fresh to the story, could usually see what ought to come next, and took over. The action developed as we went along. We kept changing off like this until we finished. A story goes very fast that way.
\nEach of us edited the other\u2019s copy a little when we took over, often going back a line or two and rephrasing to make the styles blend. We never disagreed seriously over the work. The worst clashes of opinion I can remember ended with one of us saying, \u201cWell, I don\u2019t agree, but since you feel more strongly than I do about it, go ahead.\u201d (When the rent is due tomorrow, one tends toward quick, peaceful settlements.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

James Blish adds this in his introduction to the story in The Mirror of Infinity<\/em>, ed. by Robert Silverberg (Harper & Row, 1970):<\/p>\n

Some of the strengths you will find in this story, however, are not actually his. Almost all of his mature work was written in collaboration with his wife, Catherine L. Moore. There seldom seemed to be much foreplanning in this collaboration, especially in its last years; one of them would simply leave a story in the typewriter, so to speak, and return to find that it had been advanced several thousand words by the other. Viewing stories written individually by each of them, one can see what each of them gave the other: Henry by himself had no particular eye for sensory detail, while Catherine had a relatively weak plot sense and could not write clean, pointed dialogue.
\nThe combination was ideal, and resulted in some of the best science fiction ever written by anybody (as well as an excellent suspense novel, Man Drowning<\/em>). Their <\/span>productivity <\/span>was <\/span>enormous, <\/span>too; <\/span>at <\/span>one <\/span>time <\/span>the <\/span>Kuttners operated <\/span>so <\/span>many <\/span>pen <\/span>names <\/span>that <\/span>almost <\/span>any <\/span>new <\/span>writer <\/span>was <\/span>automatically suspected of being <\/span>ano<\/span>ther <\/span>of <\/span>their <\/span>masks. <\/span>I <\/span>myself <\/span>in <\/span>1948 <\/span>received <\/span>a <\/span>letter <\/span>which, <\/span>once <\/span>out of <\/span>the <\/span>envelope, turned out <\/span>to <\/span>begin, <\/span>\u201cDear <\/span>Mr. <\/span>Kuttner.\u201d <\/span>I <\/span>forwarded <\/span>it <\/span>to <\/span>him, <\/span>thus <\/span>beginning <\/span>a ten-year <\/span>correspondence <\/span>from <\/span>which <\/span>I <\/span>learned <\/span>more <\/span>about <\/span>writing <\/span>than <\/span>I <\/span>have <\/span>ever learned <\/span>from <\/span>any <\/span>other <\/span>person.\u00a0 p. 97-98<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The bulk of Blish\u2019s piece focuses on Kuttner\u2019s plotting skills, and has several quote-worthy passages:<\/p>\n

The <\/span>old <\/span>pulp <\/span>magazines <\/span>cared very <\/span>little <\/span>for <\/span>style <\/span>or <\/span>character<\/span>ization, <\/span>but they <\/span>absolutely <\/span>required <\/span>that <\/span>their <\/span>authors <\/span>know <\/span>how <\/span>to plot. <\/span>This <\/span>is <\/span>a craft that <\/span>is <\/span>viewed <\/span>with <\/span>indifference, <\/span>if <\/span>not with <\/span>outright scorn, <\/span>by most <\/span>publishers of the <\/span>art story, <\/span>though <\/span>there <\/span>is <\/span>no <\/span>objection <\/span>to <\/span>it <\/span>in <\/span>the <\/span>slick <\/span>magazines. <\/span>Even <\/span>in <\/span>science <\/span>fiction, <\/span>we <\/span>have <\/span>today <\/span>a <\/span>whole <\/span>generation of <\/span>writers <\/span>which <\/span>has <\/span>grown <\/span>up unexposed <\/span>to <\/span>the <\/span>rigorous <\/span>plotting <\/span>demands <\/span>of the <\/span>(now <\/span>ex<\/span>tinct) <\/span>pulps, <\/span>considerably <\/span>to <\/span>their <\/span>loss, <\/span>and <\/span>the <\/span>readers\u2019.<\/span>\u00a0 p. 95<\/p>\n

These <\/span>days <\/span>it <\/span>is <\/span>considered equally <\/span>unsatisfactory for the <\/span>omniscient author <\/span>to <\/span>lay <\/span>out <\/span>the <\/span>precedent <\/span>material, <\/span>a <\/span>la <\/span>Trollope. <\/span>Kuttner, <\/span>however, <\/span>never took <\/span>any <\/span>of <\/span>the <\/span>technicalities <\/span>of <\/span>writing for granted, <\/span>and <\/span>after <\/span>close <\/span>examination <\/span>of <\/span>the <\/span>machinery, he <\/span>worked <\/span>out <\/span>a <\/span>way <\/span>of <\/span>rehabili<\/span>tating the <\/span>omniscient <\/span>author. <\/span>His <\/span>method was <\/span>to <\/span>start <\/span>the story <\/span>not with <\/span>the <\/span>usual <\/span>narrative <\/span>hook <\/span>(\u201cAutumn <\/span>was <\/span>descending <\/span>on <\/span>U.S. <\/span>Highway <\/span>66 <\/span>when <\/span>John <\/span>met <\/span>the <\/span>naked <\/span>princess\u2019\u2019) <\/span>but with <\/span>a <\/span>genuine <\/span>sub-crisis, <\/span>and <\/span>within <\/span>the <\/span>space of about <\/span>a <\/span>thousand words <\/span>develop <\/span>it <\/span>into a <\/span>resounding paradox. <\/span>While <\/span>the <\/span>reader <\/span>is <\/span>wondering what <\/span>the <\/span>answer <\/span>to the <\/span>paradox <\/span>could <\/span>possibly <\/span>be, <\/span>Kuttner <\/span>drops <\/span>the story for <\/span>about <\/span>a <\/span>thousand words <\/span>of straight lecture <\/span>on <\/span>the <\/span>back<\/span>ground <\/span>of the <\/span>situation, <\/span>confident <\/span>that the reader, <\/span>captured <\/span>by <\/span>the <\/span>paradox, <\/span>will <\/span>sit still <\/span>for <\/span>it.<\/span>\u00a0 p. 96<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If you can find a copy this essay it is worth a read (there is currently one at archive.org<\/a> that you can borrow for 14 days, but you\u2019ll have to join the queue).<\/p>\n

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

4. There is information about the Bepo (British Experimental Pile) here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I suspect that Private Eye<\/em> did not top this poll as it was too complex, too dark. A pity. \u00a0\u25cf<\/p>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ISFDB link Archive.org link Other reviews:1 Alva Rogers, A Requiem for Astounding\u00a0 p. 172 _____________________ Editor, John W. Campbell Jr.; Assistant Editor, Catherine Tarrant Fiction: Private Eye \u2022 novelette by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore [as by Lewis Padgett] \u2217\u2217\u2217\u2217\u2217 Expedition Polychrome \u2022 novelette by Joseph A. Winter, M.D. \u2217 How Can You Lose? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astounding"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pcj7-2JA","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10514"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10584,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10514\/revisions\/10584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}