The Wyndham method was not lost on the new gener-ation. The brightest pupil of a number was John Christopher (pen name of Christopher Samuel Yond), possibly urged along by Michael Joseph, publisher of the Wyndham books. The most successful Christopher stories in the Wyndham vein were No Blade of Grass (serialized in the Saturday eve-ning post and sold to the films) and The Long Winter. Perhaps the most unexpected turn of John Wyndham's success, was that the moving picture approach to his novels, coupled with the reportorial believability of his writing approach, created a special type of terror—one based solely on a scientific buildup—that proved far more effective and memorable than any previous horror stories he had at-tempted utilizing stock fright devices.
8 ERIC FRANK RUSSELL
There are some tales so good that one hates to see them die. Amo ng them is the fiction that Eric Frank Russell's submission of the novel Sinister Barrier to John W. Campbell inspired the publication of a new magazine, unknown. It is easy to find circumstantial evidence to "support" the story. Immediately prior to the appearance of the first issue on February 10, 1939 (dated March), featuring Sinister Barrier, giant posters reproducing its covers were carried on the sides of the delivery trucks of the American News Company, a promotion if not unprecedented for a new pulp magazine at least distinctly uncommon. Sinister Barrier was billed in ad-vance by its publishers as "The greatest imaginative novel in two decades!"
"Swift death awaits the first cow that leads a revolt against milking," were the opening lines of Sinister Barrier. Quoting Charles Fort, "I think we are property," Russell built his story on the realization by humans that the planet Earth is "owned" by alien globes of light called Vitons, who "breed" us like cattle and influence our history for their own pur-poses.
The origin of the magazine and the publication of the novel seemed too happy a wedding to be fortuitous. Never-theless, it was.
The novel had been submitted to Campbell in 1938 as Forbidden Acres. He was enthralled by the first half but felt that the narrative lost all momentum as it moved to a close. He returned it to Russell for rewriting.
Russell, who had been selling science fiction intermittently for only a little over a year, accepted the challenge. He decided to rewrite the novel from end to end, utilizing as his technical model the Dan Fowler stories which ran in g-men, a popular pulp magazine of the period. Campbell, on accepting the revision, openly admitted that he was astonished that Russell, with his limited writing experience, had been able to do the difficult theme justice.
The novel was first scheduled for astounding science-fiction, then shifted to unknown when the plans for that magazine had completely jelled.
In retrospect, the major impact of the novel depended almost entirely on its daring concept. Unnecessary action extends the length of the story. The reader frequently finds himself losing track of the identity of the characters, so inadequately are they sketched. The logic becomes gossamer-thin at points. What was seemingly its great strength, its apparent origi-nality of theme, was exposed when Thomas S. Gardner, Ph.D., writing in the March 5, 1939, issue of fantasy news, pointed out: "The same plot was developed with an unusual twist that Russell's Sinister Barrier does not contain in a short story by Edmond Hamilton in weird tales. The story was The Earth Owners and was published in the August issue in 1931. Even the same quotation from one of Fort's books is used in both stories. In order to appreciate Sinister Barrier one should also read Hamilton's story and notice the dif-ference in the endings." Hamilton's plot has one group of radiant globes (similar to the Vitons) as protectors of the earth against raiding black clouds who feed on humans. The implication is that Earth is being shielded from harm until man achieves a state of development in which he can fend for himself. Hamilton's short story, extraordinarily off-beat for the period, made no reader impression, having had the misfortune to appear in the same issue with The Whisperer in Darkness, the wildly acclaimed H. P. Lovecraft science-fiction novelette.
Russell disclaimed any prior reading or knowledge of Hamilton's effort, attributing the plot similarity to both au-thors having read Charles Fort independently; both were mem-bers of the Fortean Society. It is the oft-repeated case of the first man to use the idea not always being the one to popular-ize it. As far as the science-fiction world is concerned, Russell and the "I think we are property" theme are synonymous. There is no question that the widespread use of Fortean material in science fiction begins with the publication of Sinister Barrier.
Eric Frank Russell, descended from Irish stock, was born January 6, 1905, in Sandhurst, Surrey, England, where his father was an instructor at the Military College. The family moved frequently, residing at various times in Chatham, Croydon, Bradford, Aldershot, Longmoor, Portsmouth, Wey-mouth, Pembroke Dock, Brighton, and Southport, and part of Russell's childhood was spent in Egypt, where he was close enough to the natives to learn Arabic (which he gradually forgot.). In Egypt and the Sudan he lived in Alexandria, Cairo, Khartoum, and Port Tewfik. His education was apparently a good one, predominantly obtained at schools for sons of British officers. The list of courses is impressive, including chemistry, physics, building and steel construction, quantity surveying, mechanical draughtsmanship, metallurgy, and crys-tallography.
So reticent is Russell about his parents that one is tempted to speculate, perhaps unfairly, on a personal application of the passage in his short story I Am Nothing (astounding science fiction, July, 1952) where he offers an almost ex-traneous background illumination of dictator David Kor-man's filial relationship: "When a child he had feared his father long and ardently; also his mother." Moves from place to place and intensive study did not stunt his growth. He grew to be six foot two, 180
pounds, with great hands and a cocksure smile. While in the process of finding himself he worked as a soldier, telephone operator, quantity surveyor, and government draughtsman. He met and married a nurse who bore him a baby girl which they named Erica, because she was born on his (Eric's) birthday, January 6, 1934.
Interest in science fiction was a lifelong process for Rus-sell, beginning with fairy tales, mythology, and English leg-ends and continuing to the discovery of the science-fiction magazines. The earliest science-fiction stories that appear to have made an impression upon him are The Gostak and the Doshes by Miles J. Breuer, M.D. (amazing stories, March, 1930), a truly remarkable precursor of Alfred Korzybski's General Semantics, and Paul Ernst's The Incredible Formula (amazing stories, June, 1931), a tale of the social implications of the living dead. Later the brief but influential talent of Stanley G. Weinbaum, the even briefer spark of youthful suicide David R. Daniels, as well as individual stories of Alexander M. Phillips and Norman L. Knight, left their mark on his mind. His preferences appear to run to specific stories rather than favorite authors.
When he took up a post as technical representative and trouble shooter for a steel and engineering firm in Liverpool, Russell set into motion the series of circumstances that would bring him into contact with the inner-circle group of the science-fiction movement and, through his association with them, make his bid as a professional writer.
Two men had been primarily responsible for the formation of the British Interplanetary Society in October, 1933. The first of these was P. E. Cleator, the multidegreed acting president, whose writing ability would prove a major factor in recruiting members to the society. The other was Leslie J. Johnson, a youthful Liverpool scientifictionist. A press story planted by Cleator attracted the attention of Russell. The May, 1953, issue of the journal of the British inter-planetary society not only lists Russell as a new member, but it acknowledges that the cover photo, an astronomical shot of the planet Jupiter, was used by his courtesy.
Johnson, upon meeting Russell, was fascinated by the self-assured demeanor, the direct and earthy personality of the older man. Russell was already contributing articles to trade magazines and house organs. In addition, he was placing poetry in the local newspapers, mostly anonymous shafts directed at topical subjects and politicians,
and he had done a series of articles on "Interplanetary Communications." (based on the writings of the Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky) for a private periodical of limited circulation. Impressed by Russell's writing skill, Johnson urged him to try science fiction, suggesting a plot for a story to be called Eternal Re-diffusion. Russell completed it and sent it to F. Orlin Tremaine, editor of astounding stories. When it was rejected as being too difficult for the reader to grasp, Russell started to tear it up, but Johnson, horrified, claimed the story and retained it as a souvenir. It has never been published. A second attempt, The Saga of Pelican West, a novelette done by Russell on his own, appeared in the February, 1937, issue of astounding stories. The influence of Stanley G. Weinbaum permeates the story, most obviously in the person of Alfred, a talking "Callistrian domestic ulahuala, or reticu-lated python," but also in the light air of humor and the boy-meets-girl banter which pervades the superficial plot. During a period when science fiction could best be de-scribed as "dull," The Saga of Pelican West was refreshingly sharp. Though the literary influence was obvious and the plot insubstantial, readers on both sides of the Atlantic instantly recognized the flicker of an unusual talent. The only adverse comments from readers referred to the weakness of some of the science. To these Russell replied, in the June, 1937, scientifiction, the British Fantasy Review, that plausibility rated higher than pure scientific accuracy in writing science fiction.
Russell immediately followed with The Great Radio Peril, a short story published in the April, 1937, astounding sto-ries, actually a social satire aimed at the mushrooming radio networks. The quantity and strength of radio waves stunt crops, threatening the world with starvation. An international code limiting the number of stations and the power of trans-mitters is forced upon the world. These restrictions are effected almost like a disarmament arrangement. However, television has since hopelessly outdated any physical or social "danger" from radio.
The only British science-fiction magazine published up to that time had been scoops, a juvenile weekly that ran for twenty issues from February 10th to June 23rd, 1934. When Walter H. Gillings announced early in 1937 that he would edit a quarterly periodical, printed on book paper, to be entitled tales of wonder, it was treated as a literary event and he was flooded with manuscripts from British authors. The appearance of the first issue on British newsstalls, June 29, 1937, found a Russell story, The Prr-r-eet, in the con-tents. Reader reaction made it the most popular story in the issue. Again, Russell had borrowed from Weinbaum, from whose famed Martian ostrich Tweel, so named because of the sound he uttered, "Trrweerrill," he created another acoustically named alien being, "Prr-r-eet." The story evoked a feeling of empathy for the
"humanity" of the creature, despite its bizarre form. Before it leaves Earth, it gives its Homo sapiens contacts a device for simultaneously blending color and sound into a new type of music. This idea was supplied by Arthur C. Clarke, who had met Russell at a Lon-don meeting of the Science Fiction Association, and he received 10 percent of the proceeds for his contribution, something under three dollars, but was the first money Clarke ever earned from science fiction.
Russell's greatest success of 1937 was a 17,000-worder written around an idea supplied by Johnson and titled Seeker of Tomorrow. As Johnson originally wrote it, it was called Amen. Later he succeeded in getting a professional writer of his acquaintance to revamp it as Through Time's Infinity. It still didn't go, so he showed it to Russell, who, impressed, rewrote it and sent it to Newnes, then contemplating a British science-fiction magazine. The idea of the magazine fell through, so Julius Schwartz, Russell's agent in the United States, took it to F. Orlin Tremaine, who bought it. The title appeared on the cover of the July, 1937, astounding sto-ries with the names of both authors beneath it. Somehow the magazine carried Johnson's middle initial as "T" instead of "J," which later brought up the question of whether there were two Johnsons. The story was a simple but absorbing retelling of H. G. Wells' The Time Machine, with two temporal technicians exploring the future in a series of fascinat-ing hops.
Russell made a working agreement with a Spanish author friend, Antonio Moncho y Gilabert, of Valencia, who wrote under the pen name of Miguel Gautisolo, to rewrite each other's stories in their respective languages and attempt to sell them. However, Gilabert disappeared forever in the mael-strom of the Spanish Civil War.
A sequel to The Saga of Pelican West was undertaken and submitted under the title of They Who Sweep. The story dealt with the adventures of Pelican, the lead character of Saga, on Pallas "where the air is so high explorers must wear nose plugs." The title was taken from a Russell poem of space travel. Rewritten three times, the story finally was literally consigned to the flames, and an incredulous Johnson castigated Russell as a "madman" when he found out.
A 20,000-word effort, Trumpeter, Sound the Recall! "a story of future warfare in which 100 million men get killed because one man throws away a banana skin," suffered a like fate. Submicrowave Hypnosis, "showing how thought control is put on a business basis," was discarded two thirds of the way through when someone beat Russell into print with the plot. The Atompacker, a tale in which the "menace from outer space" theme is treated lightly, couldn't seem to find a home in any of the magazines.
All these represented a substantial amount of time and effort that could have been spent by Russell with his family or in just plain pleasurable reading. Writing began to look much less attractive to him. Nevertheless, he persisted and a very brief and poetic story titled Mana in the December, 1937, astounding stories proved to have influence beyond its immediate popularity, which was negligible. It told of the last man on Earth, who steps up intelligence in ants to the point where they are on the road to civilization with little wheelbarrows, bows and arrows, and fire. The similarity to Clifford D. Simak's cart-pulling and ore-smelting ants in Cen-sus (astounding science-fiction, September, 1944), second in the famed "Cities" series, is obvious.
George Newnes Ltd., the periodical publisher who had been postponing plans for years, finally placed fantasy on sale July 29, 1938, competing with tales of wonder. Again Russell had the distinction of appearing in the first issue of a new British science-fiction magazine, this time with Shadow-Man, a brief short of a criminal who is caught despite his power of invisibility because his shadow betrays his presence. This was the first Russell story utilizing the surprise or "O. Henry" ending and it was to become a standard trick in his repertoire.
At almost the same time, his short story, The World's Eighth Wonder, appeared in the Summer, 1938, tales of wonder. Russell sardonically speculates that if the Martians were ever to land on Earth and were to look anything like humans, no one would believe them and they would be placed in a circus as side-show freaks. The idea was not original with him, having been reworked from The Martian by Allen Glasser and A. Rowley Hilliard (wonder stories quarterly, Winter, 1932), and the "Americanese" of Russell's dialogue looked strange in the British publication in which it appeared. Where Russell had picked up his American idiom (possibly from U.S. pulps) is not quite certain, but his style was definitely American, as were most frequently his locales and heroes, and this was to remain constant.
Substantiation of his very friendly feeling toward England's former colony was to be found in his later philosophical sketch in tales of wonder for Autumn, 1940, where he eulogized: "A temporarily suppressed gland America com-menced to function coincident with mass humanity's need. Twin rails crawled across virgin desert like nerves creeping through the new flesh of a growing thing." However, his only appearance in the United States in 1939 was with Impulse in the September issue of astounding science-fiction. It was a very weak effort concerning "pos-session" of a cadaver by an intelligence from outer space and reflected some of the elements of the living dead in Paul Ernst's The Incredible Formula.
The evidence up this point was overwhelming that Russell showed much greater promise stylistically than creatively.
Most of the stories he had sold were derivative in plot or m
ethod from other authors or were collaborations where the idea was supplied to him and he "put the flesh on the skeleton." Russell's obvious weakness may have come from his philo-sophical outlook. Dissenting to a reviewer's opinion of a book he characterized himself in a letter dated June 24, 1937, and published in the July, 1937, issue of novae terrae, a British science-fiction fan magazine, as "another young rationalist of 32 years of age." "Rationalism" is an outlook that recognizes only what is demonstrable to the human intellect. Its adher-ents believe reason is the best means of attaining ultimate knowledge. It accepts nothing on faith and rejects the emo-tions and imagination as means of intellectual advancement. It does not, automatically, deny the existence of God or the immortality of the soul, since St. Thomas Aquinas is consid-ered one of the great rationalists. It is a philosophy of skepticism, which urges its adherents to doubt everything. The weakness of the rationalist viewpoint is that it promul-gates no ideas of its own; it waits to be shown. Stubbornly waiting to be shown, Russell was retarded in conceiving plot deviations and depended for intellectual nutrient completely on others.
Paradoxically, the two greatest influences on his thinking were men noted for their attempts to shatter complacency and broaden the scope of men's thinking. The first of these was Olaf Stapledon, a respected philosopher of this century, who, in his book, Last and First Men (1930), supplied many of the basic concepts on which the latter-day school of science fiction is founded. Stapledon had sent a letter of in-quiry to the British Interplanetary Society the summer of 1936 (he eventually joined). Russell saw the letter and the proximity of Stapledon, who was then Professor of Philoso-phy at Liverpool University, prompted him to visit the man. He introduced Stapledon to the science-fiction magazines, bringing over a stack to read. Stapledon had not intended to write science fiction but merely to find the proper vehicle to convey his philosophical ideas. The two men saw one another at long intervals some six more times before Stapledon's death.
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