Seekers of Tomorrow
Seekers of Tomorrow By Sam Moskowitz
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To
Christine who understood
Copyright © 1967, 1966, 1964, 1963, 1962, 1961 by Sam Moskowitz
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form
without written permission from the publisher,
except for brief passages included in a review appearing in a newspape
r or magazine.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 65-18007
This edition published by arrangement with The World Publishing Company
First Printing: October, 1967
Printed in the United States of America
BALLANTINE BOOKS, INC.
101 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10003
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
1 E. E. SMITH, PH. D.
2 JOHN W. CAMPBELL
3 MURRAY LEINSTER
4 EDMOND HAMILTON
5 JACK WILLIAMSON
6 SUPERMAN
7 JOHN WYNDHAM
8 ERIC FRANK RUSSELL
9 L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP
10 LESTER DEL REY
11 ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
12 A. E. VAN VOGT
13 THEODORE STURGEON
14 ISAAC ASIMOV
15 CLIFFORD D. SIMAK
16 FRITZ LEIBER
17 C. L. MOORE
18 HENRY KUTTNER
19 ROBERT BLOCH
20 RAY BRADBURY
21 ARTHUR C. CLARKE
22 PHILIP JOSE FARMER
23 STARBURST
EPILOGUE
INTRODUCTION
No one pretends that science fiction is the tail that wags the dog in the United States. No one pretends that science fiction is in the forefront in trend-setting, but facts require no pretense—or defense. It is no longer uncommon to visit a bookstore with a large paperback section and to see as many as one hundred science-fiction titles on display. The majority of these titles are reprints from science-fiction magazines and clothbound books, and they run the gamut of the range and history of the literature. But predominantly the books are those written by the "modern" science-fiction writers of the past few years. Science-fiction titles are a regular part of hard-cover book publishing. Significantly, an increasing number of "main-stream" authors are discovering that it is an effective way of presenting certain themes, particularly social criticism. The realization has dawned that Aldous Huxley in Brave New World and George Orwell in 1984 had made no mistake in adopting a science-fiction framework any more than had Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels. Pierre Boulle, French author of The Bridge Over the River Kwai, reverses the positions of man and apes on a distant planet around the star Betelgeuse to expose the weaknesses of man's behavior in Planet of the Apes; William Burroughs, fresh from the sensa-tionalism of Naked Lunch, takes his lurid satirical observa-tions into space in Nova Express; Anthony Burgess, exhilarated by favorable response to A Clockwork Orange, moves into the future in The Wanting Seed to warn of the social impact of the population explosion. Should there be doubt that these writers adopt the genre because they read modern science fiction, Burgess gives evidence to the point when he attaches the names Heinlein and Asimov to characters in his story.
Among the "angry" talented young stars on the literary horizon, ample evidence is present of fascination with science fiction. Kingsley Amis, highly regarded for such "comic" novels as Lucky Jim, gave a series of lectures on science fiction at Princeton University during 1958 and 1959 and collected and expanded these talks into New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction (Harcourt, Brace & World, 1960), concluding that "at least a dozen current practitioners seem to me to have attained the status of the sound minor writer whose example brings into existence the figure of real standing." He has also edited a series of science-fiction an-thologies (with Robert Conquest) underscoring his point. Colin Wilson, who caused a literary stir with The Outsider, displays high regard for science fiction. He very much likes the work of Robert A. Heinlein, of whom he states in his book The Strength to Dream (1962): "Among living writers of science fiction, he has the most consistently high quality and, together with Weinbaum, is the writer whose work most deserves to be considered as literature." His most laudatory view of science fiction itself is expressed in the lines: "Again one becomes aware that science fiction seems to have escaped the general sense of defeat, the cult of 'the little man' that pervades so much modern writing." One peculiarity of modern science fiction is that the same stories possess appeal for the teenage student and the literary intellectual. Of the former, the late Max Herzberg, nationally known educator and chairman of the Selection Committee of the Teen Age Book Club, writing in Scholastic Teacher for October 8, 1952, pointedly stated: "Teachers who continue to regard all science fiction as trash will do well to look into some of it and test their judgment against the claim of one devotee, for instance, that Robert Heinlein has done work comparable to that of John Erskine." He then announced selections for the Teen Age Book Club by A. E. van Vogt and Edmond Hamilton as well as Heinlein, and recommend-ed that, in addition, teachers sample Ray Bradbury, Murray Leinster, and Clark Ashton Smith.
The influence of science fiction is widespread. The comic books, spearheaded by superman, abound with its concepts. The current vogue for monster magazines, inaugurated by James Warren and Forrest J. Ackerman's famous monsters of filmland, owes as much to the science-fiction magazines as it does to the motion pictures their contents reflect. Even a large number of children's toys and games have evolved from popular elements of the science-fiction story.
The men and women who weave the fabric that forms the tapestry of modern science fiction should therefore be of more than casual interest to the thinking members of our society. The waves created by the notions they have dropped into the communal pool of world ideas have traveled to the four corners of the earth. Their influence may not be pro-found but it is slowly being recognized, even in the academic world, as undeniably significant. Term papers on science fiction are becoming increasingly numerous; a science-fiction library has been established in a temperature-controlled vault at Harvard College; a specialized space-fiction collection was begun at the university library in Syracuse, N.Y.; a credit course in science fiction has been inaugurated at Colgate University under the direction of Mark Hillegas; a scholarly biannual, extrapolation: a science-fiction newsletter, is being published by the Department of English, The College of Wooster, edited by Thomas D. Clareson. Fundamentally, though, the academic world, like the literary world, possesses no more than the most superficial and elementary informa-tion concerning the authors who are the movers of today's science-fiction advance.
This book is an effort to fill that void. Chronologically it follows the author's Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction (World, 1963), a synoptic history of science fiction to 1940. This volume is a webwork history of science fiction from then to 1965, told through the lives, works, and influences of more than a score of its most outstanding practitioners of the past twenty-five years. Each of the authors treated here was selected for his demonstrable contribution toward building the pattern of today's science fiction. It must be recognized that many of these men (and one woman) are still very much engaged in developing their careers. It is not possible, without historical hindsight, to wrap up an opinion about them wi
th finality, yet their status as leaders can be justified by reference to their accomplishments to date.
Two of the choices perhaps require brief explanation; they carried science fiction into new areas of mass entertainment. Mort Weisinger was not selected for his contributions as an author, but for his role in transferring the ideas of science fiction to the comic magazines, foremost of which is Super-man, which he edits. Robert Bloch, while a skillful and highly original writer of science fiction, has been included to indi-cate the debt that the motion picture and television world owes to science fiction in its handling of suspense.
The dominant status of the other authors in shaping the direction of modern science fiction can scarcely be chal-lenged. Yet there is another group of writers whose contribu-tions cannot be ignored. Those are the craftsmen who have written at least one major story so outstanding that it has already become a recognized science-fiction classic. Specific mention is made in the final chapter of this book of such notables. Brief reference is also made to authors who obvi-ously rank high, but who are just entering the summer of their careers.
This volume, therefore, while the most comprehensive dis-sertation yet published on modern science fiction and the authors who create it, is essentially selective. With the exception of Ray Bradbury, on whose career several monographs have been published, the material in this book represents the most complete biographical and critical treatment the several authors discussed have ever received. For all but two, it is the only serious appraisal in depth yet attempted.
Fundamentally, all material in this book is the result of basic research. Since all but one of the authors were alive at the time of writing, biographical material was obtained, in a majority of the cases, directly from the individual by inter-views and correspondence, and supplemented by material from relatives, friends, and other secondary sources.
The entire published science-fiction output of every science-fiction writer discussed in this book (the average career spans more than twenty-five years) was read, or rather re-read. With very few exceptions, all the books, periodicals, letters, clippings, and other related material referred to in the text of this book are owned by the writer and on file in his library. As a prelude to writing this book, every science-fiction magazine containing original material ever published in the English language was collected (as well as hundreds in foreign languages), and thousands of the key books, bulletins, newspaper clippings, and related items were assembled. Quite literally, it took thirty years of reading and collecting to make the writing of this book possible.
In the earlier volume, Explorers of the Infinite, which covered the first three hundred years of the history of science fiction, each major figure more or less cleanly represented an era or facet of the field. The authors covered in this second volume wrote mainly in the twenty-five year period between 1940 and 1965. Their works, in many cases, appeared contemporaneously. Therefore, this part of the history is a webwork, a reworking of the same period over and over again from the point of reference of each author, until the pattern of the era emerges.
In the process, the roles of all the major editors, particu-larly that of the tremendously influential John W. Campbell, Jr., are exposed in historical bas-relief. The part played by the science-fiction fan movement in shaping modern science fiction is acknowledged. The contributions of general fiction and specialized magazines to the development of the genre are revealed.
The first part of the book is devoted to six "bridge" authors, men who helped lay the foundation for modern science fiction and whose works spanned both the early and late periods of development. A second group, Eric Frank Russell, L. Sprague de Camp, and Lester del Rey, represent the precursors of the "mod-erns," pioneering techniques of storytelling.
With one exception, Clifford D. Simak, the heavy guns of the movement did not get their start until 1939; exemplifying modern science fiction in its purest form are Robert A. Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, Isaac Asimov, Fritz Leiber, as well as Simak.
A third group is characterized by the infusion of the fantasy element, since C. L. Moore, Henry Kuttner, and Robert Bloch were nurtured by weird tales and later turned to science fiction. The final group includes three authors who developed independently of the main movement and achieved success on their own terms: Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, and Philip Jose Farmer. These twenty-one are the masters of modern science fiction. They represent just one step in the history of science fiction, but a major one. What form science fiction may take in the future has not yet crystallized. Perhaps its internation-alization will see the rise of major writers in many nations. Predicting that trend, on the basis of present evidence, falls more in the province of science fiction itself than in literary surmise.
It is a particular source of satisfaction to the author that the definition of science fiction given in Explorers of the Infinite is beginning to gain circulation and acceptance. Gratifying were statements by reviewers such as August W. Derleth in the (Madison, Wisconsin) capital times, June 27, 1963, who said it was "perhaps the most satisfactory definition ever set down on paper." The definition is repeated here: Science fiction is a branch of fantasy identifiable by the fact that it eases the "willing suspension of disbelief" on the part of its readers by utilizing an atmosphere of scien-tific credibility for its imaginative speculations in physical science, space, time, social science, and philosophy. A note of appreciation is due Norman Lobsenz and Cele Lalli, editors of amazing stories, who published as special features much of the material that appears in this book. A real affection is expressed for Jerome Fried, who conceived this history as a two-volume project and took a personal interest in seeing that it was considered. Most especially, recognition must be given to Wallace Exman, who saw the potentials of this volume within the context of the new direction The World Publishing Company was taking, and carried it through.
Sam Moskowitz
Newark, N. J.
June, 1965
1 E. E. SMITH, Ph.D.
The hypothesis of an expanding universe was first formula-ted in 1912, when Vesto Melvin Slipher applied what is today known as the Doppler-Fizeau effect to the Andromeda nebula, establishing that it was one of only a few not receding into space. Despite this, the imagination of the science-fiction world stagnated within the confines of our solar system until 1928, when Edward E. Smith's The Skylark of Space lifted mental horizons to the inspiring wonder of the galaxy. Why the awakening had to await the coming of Smith is difficult to say. It should have occurred when Camille Flammarion, the famed French astronomer and author, popular-ized the theories of worlds around other stars in the nine-teenth century. It seemed to have arrived in 1904 when Jean Delaire's heroes outraced light on their way to the far places in Around a Distant Star (John Zony, London), or when, the following year, the Rev. W. S. Harris merchandised Life in a Thousand Worlds (G. Holzapfel, Cleona, Pennsylvania) into a best-seller by subscription.
It is possible that because Delaire and Harris were primar-ily intent upon expounding religious ideas their spotlight on the devil blinded men to a new approach to reverence. When The Skylark of Space, which began as a three-part serial in the August, 1928, amazing stories, reached its final install-ment, publisher Hugo Gernsback said: ". . . We are certain you will agree with us that it is one of the outstanding scientifiction stories of the decade; an interplanetarian story that will not be eclipsed soon. It will be referred to by all scientifiction fans for years to come. It will be read and reread." Eighteen-year-old John W. Campbell, Jr., on summer va-cation preparatory to entering Massachusetts Institute of Technology, would haunt the newsstands relentlessly, impa-tient at the wait between installments. Because of the impact that story would have on him and others like him, science fiction would never again be the same.
What were the elements that have caused writers as well as readers to cherish The Skylark of Space as the seedling of cosmic literature destined to burgeon limitlessly in awesome concepts? It was not that it stood alone. That
same month of August, Edmond Hamilton began a two-part novel on an extra-solar-system scale, Crashing Suns, in weird tales. Ear-lier that year, invasion and counterinvasion had criss-crossed the vastness between earth and the system of Sirius in J. Schlossel's The Second Swarm (amazing stories quarterly, Spring, 1928).
Perhaps it was the description of an atomic explosion perilously close to prophecy. More likely it was the suspense-ful presentation of scientific dilemmas solved by miracle men with bus bars and test tubes. Unquestionably, the marvel of distances and places which strained comprehension, unrolled in an enthralling odyssey, contributed.
Certainly it could not have been the plot line, involving cloak-and-dagger manipulations for scientific secrets or the "corny" kidnapping of Dorothy Vaneman, the betrothed of the almost superhuman scientist Richard Seaton, by the vil-lainous Dr. Marc "Blackie" DuQuesne. Surely the stilted love scenes and the use of ephemeral slang in the dialogue de-tracted more than they added.
Yet, despite the superficial Victorianisms of the plot, most likely it was the combination of these very elements with the superscience concepts that gave The Skylark of Space titanic stature in science fiction's hall of fame. The events described were happening to people, some of them stereotypes, others superhuman; but what happened in the novel was more than an attempt at prediction, it was a story. Characters reacted to mind-staggering situations.
Not all the characters were cardboard. No more remark-able villain has been depicted in the annals of science fiction than DuQuesne. He steals the show. Physically powerful, mentally a genius, distinctly amoral, he is the ultimate prag-matist: murder without compunction for an end, but do not lift a finger for mere sadistic satisfaction nor permit a prom-ise of pleasure to distract you from your purpose. Despite the fact that Smith had a Ph.D. after his name and his character Seaton was prone to semitechnical monologues with jarring frequency, such hard-to-accept notions as speed many times that of light and the manipulation of matter by the power of the mind were strongly challenged in the "Discussion" department of subsequent issues of amazing stories. These criticisms failed to alter the fact that apotheo-sis to the Olympus of science fiction was immediately in prospect for the author. This soon-to-be saint of the starways, the second youngest of five children, was born to Fred J. Smith, an ex-whaler working at shipping on the Great Lakes, and Caroline Mills Smith on May 2, 1890, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Both par-ents were of British extraction and staunch Presbyterians. They christened the boy Edward Elmer, and the same year moved to Spokane, Washington, where the father became a contractor in carpentry and cabinet work. A poor business-man, after many lean times he settled on a homestead of 160 acres on the Pend d'Oreille River in northern Idaho, raising baking potatoes for the dining cars of The Great Northern Railroad.