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--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FADEAWAY #37 is a fanzine devoted to science fiction and related fields of interest, and is produced by Robert Jennings, 29 Whiting Rd., Oxford, MA 01540-2035, email [email protected]. Copies are available for a letter of comment, or a print fanzine in trade, or by subscription at a cost of $18.00 for six issues. Letters of comment are much preferred. Any person who has not previously received a copy of this fanzine may receive a sample copy of the current issue for free by sending me your name and address. Publication is bi-monthly. This is the October-November 2013 issue __________________________________________________________________________________________ THE BEST LAID PLANS DEPT. My efforts to prune back the page count of this fanzine and by so doing, to also get the unit weight down so it falls below the kick-over point on the postal scales, have been reasonably successful. I managed to hold the page count this issue to a mere 40 pages. This publican seems to have an organic life of its own, and it resists mightily my efforts to get the page count down to below the 40 page mark. This issue would have been considerably longer if I had not reduced the type size of both my article and the entire letter column. In addition I dropped a buncha letters that I normally would have been happy to run, had the page count not threatened to run amok, again. This time round the editorial comments are also being severely cut back. Regular length editorial ramblings and a full length letter column will return next issue. OUR ESTEEMED ART STAFF & WHERE THEIR WORK MAY BE FOUND HEREIN: Front Cover---courtesy of Jeff Redman Dan Carroll---Page 40 Robert Cepeda---Page 32 Brad W. Foster---Page 2 Alexis Gilliland---Page 38 The People’s Cube---Page 31 Steve Stiles---Pages 36, 39 2 ALL THIS—AND SUPER SCIENCE, tOO! by John Purcell There is no question in anybody’s mind about John W. Campbell, Jr.’s influence on the science fiction field. As both writer and editor – especially as an editor – Campbell shaped the direction of the genre in ways that are still being felt. It is well documented how he published the first stories of Lester del Rey, Robert Heinlein, A.E. Van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, and others, while pushing established writers like Isaac Asimov, Clifford D. Simak and Jack Williamson in directions their fiction may not have taken without Campbell’s prodding. Some of these writers have told of their “conversations” with Campbell. Asimov described them more as lectures in which the editor would pontificate about whatever topic was on his mind at the time. All I can say is that we readers should be grateful that he began editing Astounding Stories in 1937. Even tho his classic story “Who Goes There” was published in the August 1938 issue of Astounding under the pen name of Don A. Stuart, and that story may have been one of the most significant pieces of fiction he produced, it was also one of his last. He instead devoted his energy to editing Astounding/Analog until his death in 1971. Along the way he also had a four year run as editor of Unknown (1939-1943). Much has already been written about John W. Campbell’s years of editing Astounding/Analog and Unknown. My focus in this article is to provide readers with an overview of the stories that placed him alongside E.E. “Doc” Smith and Edmond Hamilton as one of the premier writers of Super Science and Space Opera beyond the pale. These stories are generally known as the Arcot, Morey and Wade stories, and have been collected into an ominous volume titled “Arcot, Morey and Wade; The Complete, Classic Space Opera Series”, published by Leonare Press in 2008 and available on Amazon in both hardcover and paperback editions. Each of the stories is also available from many other publishers, notably the Ace Books editions in the early 1960s, which are now considered collector’s items by SF aficionados. Before going any further, perhaps it is a good idea to put a core definition to the genre of ‘Space Opera’ in place. After all, that is what this series is: good old-fashioned, Earth’s-future-is-in-the-balance-and-the- universe-needs-to-be-saved type of science fiction. One of the best definitions of this term comes from David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. They definite Space Opera as “colorful, dynamic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, [with] large stakes.” Well, the Arcot, Wade and Morey tales definitely match this description. The stories in this series include three novelettes and two novels; with the stories appearing in the following publication order: Piracy Preferred---Amazing Stories, June 1930 Solarite---Amazing Stories, November 1930 The Black Star Passes---Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1930 Islands of Space---Amazing Stories Quarterly, Spring 1931 Invaders of the Infinite---Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall-Winter 1932 3 During my research into these stories, it was interesting to learn that the editor of Amazing Stories, T. O’Conor Sloane, lost the manuscript to the first Campbell story he accepted; “Invaders of the Infinite”; but the first publication of a Campbell story, “When the Atoms Failed”, appeared in the January 1930 issue of Amazing, followed by five more Campbell stories during 1930 in both the monthly Amazing Stories and Amazing Stories Quarterly. Three of these five stories were part of a space opera series featuring the characters of Richard Arcot (whose father was a brilliant scientist), Robert Morey, Jr., (whose father was also a brilliant scientist-inventor), and Wade, whose father wasn’t a brilliant scientist. Wade was the antagonist in the first published story “Piracy Preferred”. Then came the ‘complete novel’ in the series, “Islands of Space”, the cover story of the Spring 1931 Amazing Stories Quarterly. During 1934-1935 a serial novel “The Mightiest Machine”, which did not feature Arcot, Morey and Wade, ran in Astounding Stories, edited by F. Orlin Tremaine. Several other stories featuring the heavier-than-lead characters of Penton and Blake appeared from late 1936 in Thrilling Wonder Stories. These early stories, as pulp-driven and formulaic as they could possibly be, established Campbell’s reputation as a writer of space adventure. When he began in 1934 to publish stories with a different tone, he wrote as John W. Campbell, at a convention in 1957 Don A. Stuart, a pseudonym derived from his wife’s maiden name. Under that nom de plume Campbell proved that he was a very capable writer who could create nuanced plots and realistic characters, unlike his earlier efforts or other projects. Then again, as with everything, even writers have to start somewhere. Campbell himself later alluded to those beginnings. In the introduction he wrote to the 1953 Fantasy Press edition of “The Back Star Passes”, Campbell states that “these early science-fiction tales explored the Universe; they were probings, speculations, as to where we could go. What we could do. They had a reach and sweep and exuberance that belonged. They were fun, too.” Indeed, much early science fiction possessed a seemingly limitless supply of optimism and a sense of unlimited possibility that all but vanished from the genre a couple of decades later. That is certainly the style of the first story in this series of adventures, “Piracy Preferred”, sequentially the first of the series and the first to appear in the book “The Black Star Passes.” This story opens with a million-dollar securities robbery from one of the huge transcontinental aircraft owned by Arcot Senior. The robbery involves an invisible pirate, suspended-animation gas, and landing a rocket-powered glider atop a monstrous plane that dwarfs a modern Boeing 767. This all happens within the first half dozen pages. The frantic pace doesn’t let up as the story continues either. The younger Arcot and his friend Morey figure out what’s happening and proceed to invent a whole new drive system, mostly involving molecular-motion, just to catch the pirate. Of course, it’s no problem for Arcot to solve the invisibility screen either. After all he is the world’s most brilliant physicist. Keep in mind that his friend Robert Morey, Jr. isn’t exactly a mental half-wit either. By the time the reader hits the third chapter there is no question that there is absolutely nothing that these two young men cannot do. Without question, this is one of the underlying themes of these stories, if not the vast majority of space opera pouring forth from the typewriters of Campbell, Doc Smith, Edmond Hamilton, Edward Earl Repp, and Jack Williamson as the 1930s began. This was the “can do” era, and in the science fiction pulps, this combination of the optimism of youth, science and technology found a natural home. 4 Thus, it is not surprising that the heroes of “Piracy Preferred” are young, technically-oriented men. Campbell himself was only about twenty years old when he wrote these three stories and still an engineering student, so naturally it follows that “Piracy Preferred” established a writing style that mirrored Campbell’s scientific interests and personal beliefs. As far as the science goes; in hindsight—eighty years after their publication---these stories require more than a modicum of a reader willingly suspending his disbelief.