The Power by Murray Leinster

Murray Leinster

First published in Astounding Science Fiction, September 1945.

One of the complaints in the article that inspired this series was the increasing influence of fantasy. Either the stories were fantasies dressed up in SF garb, or SF stories borrowing the language and structure of fantasy. I think this style of ‘historical SF’ is a variation on this approach.

There seems to be something similar going on. It’s an attempt to de-culture some of the standard SF baggage. So, an alien becomes a demon, technological vocabulary becomes words of power and technological processes become magical rituals.

More importantly, the historical variation is a chance to write about the silly past people and to remind ourselves that we’ll past people one day, too.

Wanderer of Time by John Russel Fearn

I love this cover!

First published in Startling Stories, summer 1944

This time travel story has the same basic idea as the first story in this volume, The Circle of Zero. If space-time is infinite then somewhere, our history must have repeated in the past, and it will repeat again in the future. The way of getting to these forgotten past lives is kind of similar, too. The Circle of Zero relied on hypnosis, this story relies on the memories being written into a mysterious ‘blind spot’ in the brain.

By attaching some kind of incredible invention to his head, Blake Carson is able access these memories and paradoxically remember his future. Naturally, the first thing he sees is his own death. We’re back in the land of rationalist fables.

A great video featuring Asimov, Ellison and Gene Wolfe!

I came across this brilliant video on i09. It's pretty interesting in regard to my argument about SF being dead. Much depends, of course on what we mean by science fiction. All three have interesting points to make on that topic, and there's a lot left unsaid, too.

I'd like to come back to the things said in this video a bit later, perhaps as part of my second quarter reading round-up, where I'll also be considering The History of the Science Fiction Magazine vol 2.

Plus, doesn't Isaac have a great voice!

Almost Human by Robert Bloch

First published in Fantastic Adventures, July 1943.

You can hear an audio version of this story from 1955 right here (thanks to ChthulhuWho1's Blog for posting the story!)

Robots make great subjects for thought experiments. Their naïve rationalism is a sharp light to shine on non-linear human doings, serving to highlight the way that humans rationalise away the contradictions of supposedly rational society. It’s no surprise that the most memorable character in I,Robot is the chilly, calculating Dr Susan Calvin.

With Almost Human, Robots make their first appearance in this series, but not in the shape of one of the famous Asimov stories was publishing at the same time this came out. I would guess, however, that these stories are sufficiently well-known to make inclusion here a bit unnecessary.

Instead get this neat little tale from Robert Bloch. It’s an interesting contrast – Bloch is a horror writer by inclination, and so this story has a far darker side.

Up There by Donald Wolheim

First Published in Science Fiction Quarterly, summer 1942.

The Futurians in 1938 - DAW is top row at the right.*

Coming straight after Lowndes, we have one of the most important editors in the later development of SF. Wolheim was already a seasoned pro at age 28 when this story was published, having made his first professional sale 10 years previously. He was an active SF fan and had been involved in one of the earliest of fandom’s schisms. 

In the 30s, Hugo Gernsback had used the pages of Wonder Stories to promote the official-sounding ‘Science Fiction League’ as a kind of rallying point for the growing fandom movement. Ashley observes that ‘For science fiction fans [emphasis in original] the fiction came secondary in Wonder Stories.’ One of SF’s biggest magazines had become a house organ for a social group, rather than being about stories at all.

Wolheim was expelled from the Science Fiction League in 1935. He’d been responsible for setting up the International Scientific Association which, in Ashley’s words, ‘opposed the Science Fiction League’ on the basis that fan organisations should be separate from commercial publishers. The feud lasted a few years and numerous splinter and fringe groups grew up in its wake, like protestant religious factions in the 17^th century. Wolheim was later a founding member of The Futurians, perhaps the most influential group in the history of SF, and certainly in the genre’s golden age.

In light of all this, this story becomes less an individual work and more like a rallying cry for certain types of fan.

The Abyss by Robert A.W. Lowndes

First published in Stirring Science Fiction, February 1941.

In my review of AlanMoore’s Neonomicon over on the Zone, I mention H P Lovecraft’s role in the early days of fandom. By the time he started publishing stories in Weird Tales he was already a stalwart of the American Amateur Press Association and related small-circulation pamphlets and publications, the equivalent of fanzines or these days websites like Lightspeed and Strange Horizons. For HPL, It was an outlet for Lovecraft-the-hermit’s bottled social instincts and in that controlled environment he thrived.

I’m sure all this was a key driver of the spread of the Lovecraft mythos. Seeing his ideas in other stories was a kind of a social reward for HPL, and so he encouraged it. He could be generous with time and encouragement, too, and that’s how the mythos story came in to being: HPL was the first SF writer to officially endorse fan fiction.

Hermit of Saturn’s Rings by Neil R Jones

First published in Planet Stories, Fall 1940.

This is an early example of one of sci fi’s hoariest yet most enjoyable genre mash-ups: Robinson Crusoe In Space. It’s a great way for a writer to explore a setting and the main character’s conflict against the environment provides constant spikes of suspense. At the same time, the hope of rescue gives the whole thing forward momentum. You can even have an alien Man Friday if you like.

SF fit right into a whole bunch of existing story types: the adventure thriller, the traveller’s tale, the western and the military novel. These are all genres of the frontier, of taming the fringe zones and keeping the lid on the natural world. These are all frontier genres and they fit with SF so well because SF is the ultimate frontier genre. This story is a great example of why.