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entertain, never ceases to amaze. His body of work isn’t just long and broad, it’s got depth. It isn’t self-consciously literary, and he eschewed pretentious-ness.”
He continued, “Fine dining is fine dining. On the other hand, sometimes you just want a plateful of chili, or a steak and baked, and that’s where you will find Leinster, complete with barbeque tongs and ‘Kiss the Cook!’ apron.
You know, comfort food, but without the preprocessed cheese.” In spite of his earlier comment, Knight said in his introduction to “The Eternal Now” in The Shape of Things (Popular Library, Inc., 1965) “Murray Leinster, it is safe to suppose, has been responsible for more reader hours of entertainment than any other living science fiction writer.” This is not surprising, for Gary K. Wolfe refers to “Leinster’s astonishing publication record — averaging something like a story every two weeks and a novel every nine months for better than a half-century” (“Twentieth-Century American Science-Fiction Writers,” David Coward and Thomas L. Wymer, eds. Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 8 (Detroit: Gale Research, 1981).
Foreign sales continued. In 1972, Will comments to Jo-an in a letter,
“The Italian and Japanese governments seem to be competing to see which can ask the more ridiculous amount of income-tax from me. I just got a cheque from Japan, remittance one hundred and sixty-six dollars. Income-tax, twenty-seven thousand yen. A little while back I got a notice of (I think it was) a payment of a little more than thirty thousand lira income-tax from Italy.”
About the same time, Ahrvid Engholm, a fan in Sweden, was becoming very active in the Swedish science fiction community. He edited the magazine Nova Science Fiction, published science fiction newsletters, organized science fiction conventions, and wrote short stories. He had been reading Murray Leinster since 1954 and shared this memory.
Murray Leinster died before I became active in science fiction, but as a young sf fan I remember reading him in the newsstand paperback series of sf and horror that existed in Sweden then, and that he was among the best authors in the often rather terrible selection these cheap book series had. I also discovered him in the 1954–1966 Swedish sf magazine Häpna!, e.g. “Proxima Centauri” which made the cover of one issue.
So I began reading him more and more, and when I began writing science fiction myself I was probably influenced somewhat by his idea-driven, elegant, clear-cut style of writing (because that’s at least the way I want to write).
I have also talked about Murray Leinster on a sf convention, in a program item about old, somewhat forgotten favourites.
We should especially remember the story “A Logic Named Joe,” which is a truly remarkable piece of sf-as-prediction, about personal computers, Internet, multimedia written-in the 1940s. No other early computer story comes close to Ten • After Mary’s Death
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this accomplishment by the writer I only later learned was named William F.
Jenkins.
Will continued to write, but he told Jo-an on June 7, 1973, how he was reluctant to travel:
I should go to New York and talk to some editors but I never did like New York. I feel particularly infirm when I think of Leo Margulies’ experience. He had offices for his magazines between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. His wife was mugged on that block at 3:00 in the afternoon, and he’s moved his business to the Pacific Coast ... I don’t think I’ll go.
Shortly after that, a letter to Jo-an shows he was still tinkering, “Quite without premeditation, just puttering around, I found I’d made a transparency which is positive if lighted from one side, and a negative if lighted from the other. I’m trying to imagine what could possibly make use of it.” When Jo-an planned to marry in 1973, he wrote to her on January 1: In marriage, simple good faith is incredibly important. People who are not passionately romantic about each other can get along reasonably well if they both practice simple good faith. And people who get along reasonably well because they have confidence in each other’s good faith — are very likely to be pretty damned romantic about each other.
This, you observe, is not advice. It is a statement of what I think is fact. And I think this is a good place to stop.
In the spring of 1974, Jo-an and her husband, Adrian Evans, visited from London. Will’s presence was still felt in Gloucester. Adrian liked to drive fast and was picked up by the local police for speeding. Preparing to use his British accent as an excuse for ignorance of the law, his plans were foiled when the officer immediately recognized Will sitting in the back seat, and said, “Hello, Mr. Jenkins.” Adrian got the ticket.
Early in 1975, his health failing, Will entered a nursing home. When Billee talked to him, just after he went in, he was, of course, very unhappy.
Betty, Bill and Beth lived close by, and Billee and Gail were able to visit. Jo-an, now expecting her first child, came over from England to see him for the last time. He did not live to see her son Benedict, who was born in September.
That spring, Billee attended a workshop in New Jersey, where Isaac Asimov was the main speaker. They had a nice visit with many reminiscences, and she told him Will was in a nursing home in Gloucester. She had brought along a photograph taken at Discon 1, in 1963 at the Statler Hilton in Washington, where Will was guest of honor, and Isaac was master of ceremonies.
Will and Mary are with Isaac at the head table. She asked him to sign it for Will, and he wrote, “To Will, the great dean of them all.”
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Will and Mary when he was guest of honor at Discon 1, Statler Hotel, Washington D.C. Isaac Asimov is master of ceremonies.
Will died on June 8, 1975, in Gloucester, Virginia, eight days before his 79th birthday. He was buried, as planned, next to Mary in Ware Church cemetery in Gloucester.
In a letter to Will’s daughters, his old friends Chick and Toni Fexas wrote the following:
We’ll remember him for his wit, his philosophical discussions into the night, his inventions, his anecdotes, including his “kitchen stories;” we’ll remember him on joyous occasions on the boat, at innumerable house parties, on holidays and graduations and during the saddest time of his life; we’ll remember him especially in his beloved “Ardudwy” where we saw him last.
After Will’s death:
• In the 1979 Italian film Starcrash the spaceship in the opening sequences is called the Murray Leinster.
• The Sidewise in Time Award for Alternate History was established in 1995 — named for the Murray Leinster story “Sidewise in Time.”
• The Retro Hugo, 1996, was awarded to Will for “First Contact.”
• June 27, 2009, was declared “Will F. Jenkins Day” in the State of Virginia.
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Murray Leinster was not only a very good writer, he was a pioneer. He invented the field of parallel-universe stories with his “Sidewise in Time,” and his ‘First Contact’ set the pattern for all the stories that followed of— well — of first contact with alien civilizations. The wondrous thing about his work is that those great, trend-setting stories read as fresh and timely today as they did all those years ago.
— Frederik Pohl in a credit on the cover
of Planets of Adventure, edited by Eric Flint and Guy Gordon and published by Baen in 2003
Will Jenkins did not die, nor will he as long as his work and mine are in print. I have and always will acknowledge my debt to John Campbell, who taught me so very much about science fiction, but it is to Will that I owe the very bones and sinews of my writing.
— Theodore Sturgeon, Locus, June 24, 1975
• ELEVEN •
On Writing
Will loved words. He loved the way they sounded, the way they felt in his mouth, the way you can use them to amuse or confound. He collected exceptional words and phrase
s in many languages. In addition to the Spanish phrases he used, he taught his daughters antidisestablishmentarianism, an English political term, as soon as they could pronounce it, explaining that they now knew the longest word in the English language. A favorite, frequently repeated Latin phrase was “de
gustibus non es disputandum”
meaning “there is no account-
ing for tastes.” He wrote to Jo-
an on September 9, 1969:
Years ago I marveled at
hearing the word “dichotomy”
used twice in conversation by
people I knew. Later it
became commonplace among
persons in the advertising
business. Sunday someone
used the word “univocal”
(accent on the second syllable)
for the first time I’ve heard it
in conversation.... Once I
wrote a long letter to get an
excuse to use the word “ton-
silectotomic.” A mild and
unimportant but cherished
triumph.
Purely for his own amuse-
ment, in 1939 he wrote a two
thousand-word essay on “The
Will in the mid–1940s.
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Speech Habits of Joan Patricia,” his year-old baby daughter. In it, he said:
However, the phonetics of less eccentric utterances are probably of greater importance, scientifically. It is remarkable that she confuses so few of the labial sounds. Words in which labials are necessary she utters with apparent correct-ness. “May-be,” “Da-da,” “Mum-mum” are examples of not only accuracy but also distinguished elegance in diction. Palatal sounds, combined with labials, are also correctly used. “Pi-tee”— very, very frequently used, to indicate not only
“pretty” but charm in objects as diverse as a cud-chewing cow and a dish of apple sauce — is an example. The R-sound still eludes her, but with that elision allowed for, “Pi-tee” (perhaps “pih-tee” would give the pronunciation more exactly) is an admirable example of correct and stately diction.
He loved nonsense verse. Lewis E. Carroll’s “Jabberwocky” was a favorite, and Will would often recite it to his children, wagging his finger in rhythm.
So imbedded did it become in at least one daughter’s mind that she could recite it from memory to this day.
When granddaughter Gail was in fourth grade and interested in trying to write some poetry, he shared a couple of pieces he had jotted down just for the children’s entertainment. He insisted they were not poetry.
“I do not write poetry” he told her, “I write verse.” RELATIVITY
Glsctr, VA by Will Jenkins
It is confusing when I think
My left hand is your right,
And when it’s morning here to me
Somewhere it’s late at night.
It’s also strange night doesn’t break,
Although I’ve seen it fall,
While day can break and break and break
Without a fall at all.
If you are big, a mile is short,
If you are little, long.
I think that everything that’s right
Sometimes, some place is wrong.
PHOOEY TO THE AGE OF PERICLES!
by W. F. Jenkins NY
No ancient Greek, not even Plato
Could see a Jet, or watch a JATO
But we can see these things, and soon
Perhaps a rocket to the moon.
The Age of Pericles possessed
Appreciation, Art and Zest,
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But did the time which owned Aspasia
Have Dali, Proust or euthanasia?
Did the dim race which built the Stoa
Have Constellations to Samoa?
And what Greek sage, wise and aloof
Had TV aerials on his roof?
(Not even Thebes’ Epaminandas
Possessed a platypus or pandas:
No ancient Greek, not even Milo
Could contour farm or build a silo!)
We may not have Praxiteleses
But we’ve found out what causes sneezes.
Perhaps we have no fair Agora
But we can hybridize our flora,
And we may lack peripatetics
But we’ve industrialized synthetics.
And who would trade the panorama
Of Hollywood, for Attic drama?
No Greek in all the classic ages
Paid group insurances from his wages.
No bold Hellene, it is quite certain
Could make a simple Iron Curtain
So what? So what indeed indeed
So what!
The Greeks had Art and Culture
But
Our Nuclear-mass-Neurosis-Money-
Civilization is a honey
Too!
In his own writing, Will loved to set himself challenges and delighted when one of his self assigned writing experiments worked.
In “Time Tunnel” I’m vain about the first page and a half of it. It’s a description of Paris in 1804, and there’s not a word of description of what was there. A page and a half of chapter seven of “Time Tunnel” is a technical trick. Instead of describing what Paris was like in 1804, I list all the things that weren’t there —
and it makes a nice picture.
Letter to Jo-an, November 27, 1974
He loved also to help others with their writing. In “A Personal Note” honoring Will in the program book for Discon 1, the 21st World Science Fiction Convention, held in 1963 at the Statler Hilton in Washington, Theodore Sturgeon said:
Will taught me, for example, to plot a story from character. Plenty of writing courses will tell you that, but I have never heard it described the way Will described it to me one day in 1945. Create a character, he said, preferably some-Eleven • On Writing
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one you know well, who is something to the marrow of his bones: a cobbler, say, or a prude, or a Catholic or a railroad man; it almost doesn’t matter what. Then put him in a situation where he isn’t permitted to be this one special thing. A gross example would be to put a man (who is, to the core, an oxygen breather) out into a vacuum. The plot, then, consists of his working his way out of his predicament by being what he is.
Aside from the breathtaking simplicity of this idea, I applaud the aim; for in this day and age, when so many people get paid off in one way or another for being hypocrites, there’s something rather wonderful about a man who repeatedly inoculates the public with the idea that it just might pay off to be yourself.
Theodore Sturgeon
To his daughter Jo-an in college he wrote:
Your story outline sounds ok. If you once get the first two paragraphs down, the rest will run out like water out of a tap. I’ve been tearing my hair out about that Gold story [Horace L. Gold, first editor of Galaxy Magazine]. All of a sudden it’s running smoothly. They do sometimes.
Letter to Jo-an, March 1957
Later, he told her:
To me, as you know, grammar and syntax are simply the means by which one says something so clearly that one’s meaning cannot be mistaken. It is the trick involved in complete lucidness. (And there I said “lucidness” because it is more lucid than “lucidity”) I think that, just as old Bill Shakespeare contributed more idioms to the English language than any man before or since, that completely lucid phrasing ought to be as effective now as then. Bill’s contribution to English idiom was simply that he said certain things so clearly that nobody could ever comfortably say the same things less clearly after him. If writing has clarity, it has everything.
Letter to Jo-an, January 9, 1963
In another letter to Jo-an that year, Will talked about writing in depth: A story begins when the reader knows that something is going to
happen; when a situation is pictured which cannot stay unchanged; when the state of things stated or implied at the beginning of a story is unstable.
Example: There’s a man looking at a wide expanse of smoke, filling more than half the horizon. Flames leap up. He says: “The wind’s changed. It’s coming this way.”
Example: A woman opens a letter. It begins “Dearest Eddie.” She’s surprised and looks at the envelope. It’s addressed to her husband. She opened it by mistake.
Example: A girl says defiantly, “It’s wonderful to be able to trust somebody nobody else can trust! And I can trust Joe.”
A story is never unemotional. It is always about something important to the protagonist. (The protagonist is almost always the person the reader follows around and watches and listens to — who is the person who has the experience which is the story.) Nothing is important to anybody unless it produces an emotional reaction, because we get emotional about everything that is important. So we arrive at:
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A story begins when something important to (almost invariably) the first person mentioned in it. This is a convention very nearly as definite as the convention that we will write the story from left to right. When somebody is mentioned in the first paragraph, it is assumed that this is the person that we are going to follow around and sympathize with.
Here comes another item; it is possible to write a story about somebody so unpleasant that we read on hoping for him to get his. It is much easier to write a story about a person we feel kindly toward; about whom we can feel solicitude; with whom in some sense we “identify.”
Murray Leinster Page 21
