{"id":903,"date":"2016-02-28T15:17:05","date_gmt":"2016-02-28T15:17:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=903"},"modified":"2016-05-01T21:04:26","modified_gmt":"2016-05-01T21:04:26","slug":"astounding-science-fiction-v25n01-march-1940","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/?p=903","title":{"rendered":"Astounding Science Fiction v25n01, March 1940"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AST194003x600b\"<\/p>\n

Other Reviews:
\nJamie Rubin: Vacation in the Golden Age, Episode 9<\/a><\/p>\n

Fiction:
\nCold<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by Nat Schachner
\nIn the Good Old Summertime<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by P. Schuyler Miller \u2665
\nThe Emancipated<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 novelette by L. Sprague de Camp \u2665\u2665\u2665
\nA Chapter from the Beginning<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by A. M. Phillips \u2665\u2665
\nThe Dwindling Sphere<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 short story by Willard E. Hawkins \u2665\u2665
\nIf This Goes On …<\/em><\/strong> (Part 2 of 2) \u2022 novella serial by Robert A. Heinlein \u2665\u2665<\/p>\n

Non-fiction:
\nCold<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 cover by Gilmore
\nInterior Artwork<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 Frank Kramer, R. Isip, E. Hatcher, W. Kolliker, Hubert Rogers
\nNot-So-Dangerous Experiment<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
\nIn Times to Come<\/em><\/strong>
\nThe Analytical Laboratory: January 1940<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 story ratings
\nFuel for the Future<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by Jack Hatcher
\nAtomic Ringmaster<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 essay by John W. Campbell, Jr.
\nBrass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 letters
\nScience Discussions<\/em><\/strong> \u2022 letters<\/p>\n

This month\u2019s cover1<\/sup> is by Gilmore, and I now understand the negative comments in last issue\u2019s Brass Tacks<\/em> about his work. While this isn\u2019t a bad painting it is a rather crudely executed vision of an eclipse on Uranus. Of the interior art the best is from Kramer, who does a number of illustrations for the Schachner novelette.<\/p>\n

The fiction leads off with Cold<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0by Nat Schachner. This is fairly dire pulp fare set at an armorium mine on Ariel, one of the moons of Uranus. There is a data dump at the start that describes the miners, three Earthmen and two Martians, and the political situation that pertains between Earth and Mars. They mine this element\u00a0by the use of what seems like slave-labour, \u2018Troglos\u2019 from Venus. This is all told in very homey and slangy prose with plenty of \u2018swells\u2019 and the odd \u2018muchly\u2019. This is from when they discuss possible Earth-Martian tensions:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou suppose so!\u201d echoed Sar indignantly. \u201cWhy, you blithering idiot, look at me. Could you even dream of hating me, of blasting me down with a needle ray just because I\u2019m a Martian and you\u2019re an Earthman?\u201d
\nI jarred out of my abstraction. \u201cYou old son,\u201d I told him affectionately. \u201cI\u2019d cut off my own right arm first. You\u2019re more to me than a blood brother. Sure, patriotism is the bunk, an outmoded irrationality.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

When the story eventually gets going the main armorium seam suddenly and unexpectedly appears to be exhausted. This potential catastrophe\u2014Earth and Mars are dependent on armorium for all their energy\u2014leads Earth and Mars to send war fleets to secure what is left of the supply. There is also a breakdown of trust at the station. Later, the Troglos revolt and in the ensuing skirmish the Earthmen and Martians unite and manage to erect a force screen that will protect the mine from both fleets:<\/p>\n

We both squinted upward. The black sky, in which a dark, ominous Uranus hung like a huge black disk, with the Sun completely hid, began to shimmer. Flashing colors chased each other over the vast expanse, thin and pearly opalescent. Like a faint, jeweled haze an arching shimmer of force spread over the darkling planet.
\n\u201cThe impermo-screen!\u201d we said simultaneously.<\/em><\/p>\n

Unsurprisingly (spoiler) a new seam of armorium is also exposed by an explosion during the Troglo conflict, so all ends well. This story is another example of the on-going pulp filler that Campbell was still reliant on.<\/p>\n

The Emancipated<\/em><\/strong> by L. Sprague de Camp is the other novelette in this issue, and is the third of\u00a0the \u2018Johnny Black\u2019 series of stories.2<\/sup> Johnny is a black bear who has been injected with a substance that has changed the structure of his brain and increased his intelligence to that of a human\u2019s.\u00a0In this story Johnny takes up residence in a zoo as the modification program is extended to other animals:<\/p>\n

His den already contained two female American blacks, Susie and Nokomis, and a male, Ink. They looked at him warily as he toddled into the enclosure with his mattress rolled up and slung over his shoulder. Their smell excited him. They were the first members of his own species whom he had had an opportunity to know personally.
\n\u201cHerro,\u201d he said. \u201cMy name is Johnny Black.\u201d
\nThe three bears looked a trifle startled. Of course, he thought, they couldn\u2019t understand him, yet. So, with his claws, he cut the strings that held his mattress, unrolled it, and spread himself out on the mattress\u00a0in a sunny spot. He took the spectacles out of the case around his neck and opened the book he had brought along.
\nA spectator explained to his small boy: \u201cSure, that\u2019s a grizzly beh. No, behs can\u2019t read. He\u2019s just trained to do like he was reading. To make people laugh. No, I dunno why the other behs don\u2019t read. Sure, they eat people.\u201d
\nJohnny looked up sharply at this canard, and was tempted to contradict it. But, he thought, if he started an argument with the spectators he\u2019d never get time to read his book. So he said nothing.<\/em><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, after their treatment the apes and chimpanzees develop revolutionary tendencies and start trying to radicalise the other animals. A few inter-species skirmishes later they kidnap the mayor. Johnny Black starts doing some primate research with a view to rescuing him\u2026
\nThe difference between this and the Schachner could not be more marked. De Camp\u2019s novelette is smart, well written and amusing.<\/p>\n

In the Good Old Summertime<\/em><\/strong> by P. Schuyler Miller is from the same pulp paradigm as the Schachner novelette. An unpleasant man called Joe Guilder sets himself up on hot and swampy Venus and determines to be King of the amphibian like natives. When two other men come to complain about a matter they recognise him as a fugitive from Earth. Guilder has them shot by one of the natives as they depart.
\nAs summer arrives the planet heats up and this, and the native biology plus other factors, turn out to be his undoing. For what it is worth, the xenobiology used isn’t really alien but Earth-analogue.
\nYou could also say\u00a0that A Chapter from the Beginning<\/em><\/strong> by A. M. Phillips is a pulp story, and it is, but I found this an engrossing if uncomplicated read. Once you get past its clunky introduction about early species of man you get a story about a pre-human called Nwug being pursued through the jungle by another early form of man and his semi-domesticated dogs\/wolves. After a long and brutal pursuit (spoiler) Nwug manages to mount a pony and evade pursuit on the plains (there is also a spoiler illustration in the magazine to this effect before the event in the story). \u00a0As well as earlier work, Phillips had another story in Astounding<\/em> years later, as well as a couple in Unknown<\/em>: it\u2019ll be interesting to check them out.
\nThe Dwindling Sphere<\/em><\/strong> by Willard E. Hawkins is an \u2018if this goes on\u2019 story told in diary form about a scientist who discovers a way to make an infinitely variable substance called plastocene. As this can be used to replace\u00a0all sorts of materials it quickly changes society and the role of work for the majority of the population. The problem is that less matter comes out of\u00a0the process than is put in\u2014where the remaining energy goes is uncertain\u2014and soon large excavation pits appear all over Earth. The story then telescopes through time. Well enough worked out but not really convincing.<\/p>\n

The fiction is rounded out by the conclusion to If This Goes On …<\/em><\/strong> the novella serial by Robert A. Heinlein. This is a disappointing end to what had been quite a promising piece and there are several things that don\u2019t work, or don\u2019t work particularly well.
\nToo start with, the first couple of chapters where Lyle is on the run are a little flat, with quite a lot of travel and action achieving very little. Eventually he lands beside Phoenix where the resistance is headquartered and is reunited with Zeb. In fairly short order Lyle is made the General\u2019s ADC and there is a meeting where it is decided to start the revolution. However one Colonel dissents, arguing that matters would disintegrate into a civil war as the population is not psychologically conditioned. They subsequently hijack the news feeds on Prophet’s day with a fake message and the revolution begins:<\/p>\n

They had tried out the technique during the weeks before the miracle. Usually it had worked, and the subjects were semantically readjusted to a modern nondogmatic viewpoint, but if the subject was too old mentally, if his thought processes were too thoroughly canalized, it sometimes destroyed one set of evaluations without providing him with a new set. The subject might come out of the hypnosis with an overpowering sense of insecurity which usually degenerated into schizophrenia, involute melancholia, or\u00a0other psychoses involving loss of cortical control and consequent thalamic and subthalamic anarchy.<\/em><\/p>\n

After taking most of the country only New Jerusalem is left. There is then a titanic battle scene that is the climax of the whole novella but it is quite a boring one. Partly this is due to a lack of realism\u00ad\u2014compare the action here with any real war novel\u2014partly it is due to various gobbets of military theory or over-described and unrealistic technology:<\/p>\n

In an ordinary single-explosion gun the propelling gas pressure is highest when the shell is near the breech, and falls off rapidly as the shell approaches the muzzle. The booster gun has a series of firing chambers located along the side of the barrel in addition to the main firing chamber at the breech. The charge in each of these is fired through an electrical timing gear by the passage of the shell itself so that they fire in order as the shell passes them. Thus these booster charges maintain maximum pressure on the base of the shell right up to the time it leaves the muzzle, giving it an enormous muzzle velocity and terrific striking power\u2014and a terrific recoil as well!<\/em><\/p>\n

Even after the sonics failed, we were well enough off. The dead reckoners of a tread-driven cruiser are surprisingly accurate. It\u2019s like this\u2014every time the tread lays down it measures the ground it passes over. A little differential gadget to compare the speeds of the port and starboard treads, another gadget to do vector sums, and a gyro compass hook-in, to check and correct the vector addition, and you have a dead reckoner that will trace your course over fifteen miles of rough terrain and tell within a yard where you have ended up.<\/em><\/p>\n

Doctrine called for two different types of telepathic hookup; relay, in which each craft relays messages down the line; and full mesh, in which there is direct hookup down the full chain of command plus hookup between adjacent units in the battle line. In the first case, each sensitive carries just one circuit; that is to say, he is in rapport with just one other sensitive. In the second case, my sensitives would have to handle as many as four circuits each; I didn\u2019t want to put such an overload on them until I had to.<\/em><\/p>\n

There is quite a lot\u00a0of this.
\nFinally, at the very end of the story we have a page or two of \u2018prologue\u2019 with \u00a0Heinlein in full-blown political didacticism mode. What this has to do with the rest of the novella I\u2019m not really sure, but if it is about what has been happening over the last two episodes then\u00a0I’ve totally missed the point:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t anything wrong with the minds of the American people; they just suffer from a tendency to sell their birthright of freedom for a mess of pottage. Each one values liberty for himself but he is naively certain that his poor benighted brother needs protection. So we pass a lot of sumptuary legislation intended to protect the moral and spiritual welfare of our poor weak brethren. When it is too late, we find that in so doing we have surrendered our ancient liberties to a bureaucracy which tyrannizes us under the guise of protecting our souls.<\/em><\/p>\n

I haven\u2019t read a huge amount of Heinlein but rather wonder if this story illustrates all his virtues and vices in one compact\u00a0package.3<\/sup> Quite a disappointing end after such a promising start.<\/p>\n

The non-fiction this issue is unremarkable. Campbell\u2019s editorial, Not-So-Dangerous Experiment<\/em><\/strong> , is a partially prescient one about Uranium-235 and ends:<\/p>\n

Once a U235 atom is primed with a neutron, it lets go almost instantly, they now believe. The reaction is some millions of times more violent, and some hundreds of thousands of times more sudden that the breakdown of a molecule of TNT. If you could once get all the atoms in a few pounds of U235 primed at the same time, the results would represent one of those very rare instances where the word \u201cawful\u201d genuinely applies. Fortunately, there is no co-operation between the atoms; those first primed go off before the rest have any opportunity to collect neutrons. The neutrons released are moving with terrific velocity, and must be slowed down by collisions before they can be captured. Under such conditions, it will burn, but can’t blow up.<\/em>
\nWhich, considering Man\u2019s psychology, seems to be an example of foolproof engineering on the part of the Creator.<\/em><\/p>\n

In Times to Come<\/em><\/strong> trails L. Ron Hubbard\u2019s new serial, which has echoes the newly begun World War II:<\/p>\n

\u201cFinal Blackout\u201d is the story of a lieutenant and his brigade and the rotting remains of Europe\u2014a Europe in which 30,000,000 fighting men and 300,000,000 civilians have died.<\/em><\/p>\n

There are two science articles. Fuel for the Future<\/em><\/strong> by Jack Hatcher is an article about human nutrition and how this will need to be addressed on other planets and in space. It is overlong and\u00a0should\u00a0have been put on a diet.\u00a0 Atomic Ringmaster<\/em><\/strong> by John W. Campbell, Jr. is at the U-235 again in its discussion of mass spectrographs before moving on to describe a molecular separator developed by Dr Rabi of Columbia University. Campbell doesn\u2019t really explain why the radio field alters the behaviour of the atoms or molecules in a magnetic field but\u00a0I think he is describing the early NMR experiments which would get Rabi his 1944 Nobel Prize.
\nBrass Tacks<\/em><\/strong> is rather dull this issue, even with letters from a few well-known names. Arthur C. Clarke features (the British Interplanetary Society is shutting down as they have all been called up for military service), as does Manly Wade Wellman (should he keep a consistent future for\u00a0his SF stories?) and Milton A. Rothman. Campbell turns up again in Science Discussions<\/em><\/strong> as Arthur McCann (his science article pseudonym) with a letter about a visit to a cyclotron. I wonder if \u2018701 Scotland Road, Orange, New Jersey\u2019 was Campbell\u2019s real address.<\/p>\n

A rather disappointing issue.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Another edited image originally from Siren in the Night<\/a>.<\/li>\n
  2. There were four \u2018Johnny Black\u2019 stories published in Astounding<\/em>: The Command<\/em> (October 1938), The Incorrigible<\/em> (January 1939), The Emancipated<\/em> (March 1940), The Exalted<\/em> (November 1940). The first two are essentially well written stories but with standard pulp plots that make little of Johnny\u2019s modification, although he saves the day in both. The final story is played slightly more for laughs. The first two were anthologised by Moskowitz and the latter by a couple of different editors. Strangely, the one in this issue has never been reprinted.<\/li>\n
  3. I have been told that the magazine version of this is quite different from the one that finally appeared in book form, so perhaps that version is better. More on these differences from Heinlein\u2019s biographer, William H. Patterson Jr.\u2019s, website<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\"rss\"<\/a>\"rss\"<\/a><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Other Reviews: Jamie Rubin: Vacation in the Golden Age, Episode 9 Fiction: Cold \u2022 novelette by Nat Schachner In the Good Old Summertime \u2022 short story by P. Schuyler Miller \u2665 The Emancipated \u2022 novelette by L. Sprague de Camp \u2665\u2665\u2665 A Chapter from the Beginning \u2022 short story by A. M. Phillips \u2665\u2665 The […]<\/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-903","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-ez","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903","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=903"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3781,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903\/revisions\/3781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfmagazines.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}