Seekers of Tomorrow

by Sam Moskowitz

  To survive, he sold magazines door to door, worked in restaurants, and did research for a man working on a WPA bibliography of music in the United States. All told, del Rey averaged five to six dollars a week and somehow managed to subsist, though the future appeared anything but bright. During this period del Rey was not without his literary interests and literary aspirations. He had a deep love of poetry, his favorite being Algernon Charles Swinburne, whom he enjoyed for "making the right sounds in the right order." Others he read carefully were Robert Browning, Robert Burns, John Milton, and Rudyard Kipling. Among American poets, Stephen Vincent Benet was his favorite. Although he decried Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a number of the titles of his stories are quotations from that poet, for example, The Day Is Done and The Wings of Night.

  During 1933, he began writing verse and says he sold twenty poems under pen names to magazines as prominent as ladies' home journal and good housekeeping. Then he abruptly decided he wasn't a poet and quit writing poetry for good in 1936.

  When he picked up the August, 1932, amazing stories, which included W. Campbell's The Last Evolution, he resumed buying science fiction regularly. His interest in fantasy was wide enough to include weird tales. But, by all odds, the science-fiction magazine that was his favorite was astound-ing stories, which included Campbell's mood stories under the name of Don A. Stuart, Raymond Z. Gallun's superbly sentimental offerings (Old Faithful, December, 1934, Davy Jones Ambassador, December, 1935), Jack Williamson's sus-penseful space operas, and Stanley G. Weinbaum's delightful-ly refreshing alien tales (Parasite Planet, February, 1935; The Lotus Eaters, April, 1935). The influence of all these writers is clearly revealed in his early fiction, but in the efforts of his relatively more mature years no influence is as evident as that of Clifford D. Simak, who made an enduring impression on del Rey with The Creator, a novelette pub-lished by the semiprofessional magazine marvel tales (March-April, 1935), in which the universe is said to be the experiment of a creator of macrocosmic size rather than the handiwork of God. During this period in the development of science fiction, science-fiction fan magazines were few and its followers gained renown by the frequency of their letters in the read-er's columns of the magazines. Del Rey was among the most prolific of the letter writers. The readers' correspondence section of astounding stories was called "Brass Tacks" and, beginning in the March, 1935, issue, letters signed Ramon F. Alvarez del Rey became a regular feature of the section, winning him a place in the "inner circle" and leading to his discovery of the science-fiction fan magazines.

  While del Rey enjoyed seeing his letters in print he had felt no compulsion to become a writer. The transition occurred as a result of an argument with a girl friend. In the course of a discussion he had strongly criticized Manly Wade Wellman's handling of the story of a near-human ape in Outlaws of Callisto (astounding stories, April, 1936).

  "If you think you are so much better, let's see you write one that astounding will take," she taunted.

  "Will you settle for a reply from the editor saying he liked the story?" del Rey asked. The girl agreed.

  Del Rey figured that on the strength of his letter-writing reputation he might be able to swing that much. He sat down and wrote The Faithful, a tale of intelligent dogs made nearly human by the experiments of the last human survivor of a plague. The dogs remain instinctively loyal to him, for after 200,000 years of domestication the dogs need someone they can serve. Before the man dies, he brings them together with semicivilized apes who will serve as their "hands." Del Rey had kept to the task of rewriting Wellman's story in his own manner.

  Originally 8,000 words in length, The Faithful was slashed to 4,000 before it was submitted. Instead of a letter, a check for $40 arrived in January, 1938, which del Rey triumphant-ly showed his girl. Understandably enthusiastic about writing, he plunged into another story which grew into a 12,000 word novelette about mining ice on Mars. Campbell rejected it, and the story has since been lost. Feeling that possibly the novelette was not his forte, del Rey returned to the short story with a second-person yarn in future tense on the circle-in-time theme. Campbell didn't like that one either and rejected it. Years later it was rewritten from memory for galaxy science fiction (February, 1951) as It Comes Out Here.

  Now discouraged, del Rey gave up on fiction and turned to other pursuits, but when The Faithful appeared in the April, 1938, astounding science-fiction, reader reaction placed it second only to Three Thousand Years, a new novel by Thomas Calvert McClary, author of the all-time science-fic-tion classic, Rebirth (in 1934). As a result, del Rey received a letter from Campbell urging him to do more. Once again encouraged and determined to please, del Rey consulted writer's yearbook for Campbell's requirements. Among them he found: "Even if the story is about a robot, there should be a human reaction." Translating the suggestion into fiction, del Rey displayed a technical craftsmanship which at the age of twenty-three made him the equal of any contemporary writer in his field. Helen O'Loy was the story of an atom-powered thinking machine, made of metal with spun plastic exterior fashioned minutely to resemble a woman. Feminine impulses were electronically built into the device. Upon being motivated, the mechanism falls in love with the man who owns her and through a tender series of circumstances succeeds in getting him to accept her as his wife.

  Such a plot obviously provided quicksands of bathos that were not avoided but bathed in by the author, whose facility at handling sentiment with empathic realism proved virtually unsurpassed in the history of science fiction. The idea was not new; a robot vamp plays an important part in Thea von Harbou's novel Metropolis, from which the famed German motion picture was made by UFA in 1926. Del Rey's con-tribution in Helen O'Loy was artistic and stylistic.

  While the immediate reaction to the appearance of that story in December, 1938, astounding science-fiction was very good, particularly among the authors of science fiction it rated in reader's approbation below two other stories in the issue: A Matter of Form by H. L. Gold and The Merman by L. Sprague de Camp. Its standing in science fiction as one of the masterpieces on the robot theme results from second looks by the readers. Actually it was the tale's second appear-ance in Lester del Rey's first hard cover collection, "... And Some Were Human," published by Prime Press, Philadelphia, in 1948, that won it critical acclaim.

  In retrospect, The Faithful was far more influential than Helen O'Loy. It is almost a certainty that Clifford D. Simak's poignant development of the dogs in City took its cue from The Faithful. While the notion that a canine civilization can be developed to replace that of humanity played a role in the space epic Invaders of the Infinite by John W. Campbell (amazing stories quarterly, Spring-Summer, 1932), it was del Rey's treatment that popularized this concept. Quite probably, also, L. Sprague de Camp's popular series about Johnny Black, the intelligent book-loving bear, may have received some of its ideas from The Faithful. Similarly, the civilized monocled apes of L. Sprague de Camp and P. Schuyler Miner's novel Genus Homo (super science stories, March 1941), conceivably may have obtained some substance from those described in The Faithful.

  When del Rey decided to test how well he could do as a full-time writer, Campbell suggested that he take the theme of de Camp's The Gnarly Man concerning the problems of a Neanderthal man in adjusting to modern civilization and see if he could find a different approach. The result was The Day Is Done (astounding science-fiction, May, 1939), in which the last Neanderthal man, living off the charity of the early tribes of "modern man," dies of a broken heart, a minor masterpiece. astounding science-fiction's companion magazine was unknown, whose stock in trade was "fairy tales for grown ups." Del Rey tried to make its pages with A Very Simple Man, a story about a man who fishes up a Nereid (a lake spirit) and is granted three wishes. He eventually decides to return the wishes and paddles off in his boat. The story was rejected and del Rey has since lost it. His next attempt, Forsaking All Others, a tender poetic tale of a little dryad who falls in love with a man and sacrifices her immortality and the life
of her tree to consum-mate their union, did get into the May, 1939, issue of UNKNOWN.

  Del Rey's opportunity to sell a longer story came with The Luck of Ignatz (astounding science-fiction, August, 1939, a novelette in which an intelligent Venusian reptilian pet brings ill luck to a space pilot and anyone close to him. Originally it had been a dog instead of a Venusian, but the more Weinbaum-like creature was substituted during revision. The story line was hackneyed, but a lengthy sequence where the space engineer redeems himself by running the ship manually for sixty hours, after the automatic controls are knocked out, possessed elements of the tense drama that would later make Nerves a hit. The humanistic qualities of del Rey at their finest came through in The Coppersmith (unknown, September, 1939), as the adventures of a proud and industrious elf to find a place for himself in a world where his solder and tools are no longer effective on the modern metals used in pots are sympathetically presented. A sequel, Doubled in Brass, ap-peared in unknown, for January, 1940. Growing in confidence, del Rey began to experiment with themes and techniques. In Habit, (astounding science-fic-tion, November, 1939), he wrote a straight sports story of the future about racing rockets; The Smallest God (astound-ing science-fiction, January, 1940) was an entertaining tale of a rubber doll that turns into an animated creature when stuffed with a by-product of atomic fission, and how this new intelligence yearns for and finally attains a full-sized, near-human body. Reincarnate (astounding science-fic-tion, April, 1940) was based on an idea suggested to Camp-bell by Willy Ley. Dealing with the transference into a mechanical body, of a man whose limbs are lost and whose body is charred, it may well have served C. L. Moore as the inspiration for her masterpiece, No Woman Born. Dark Mis-sion (astounding science-fiction, July, 1940) was con-cerned with a Martian who comes to earth to delay the first flight to that planet until the germs of a deadly plague have dissipated. The most successful story of that period of del Rey's career was The Stars Look Down (astounding science-fic-tion, August, 1940) in which two opponents, one with liquid rocket fuels, the other with atomic engines, race to be the first in space. Like Moses in the Bible, the "winner" finds that because he has a bad heart he can never pilot the ship into "the promised land." Even at that time it was recognized as a variant of Robert Heinlein's Requiem, and the passage of years has badly dated it. In the same issue, del Rey used the pen name Philip St. John for a short story, Done with Eagles, in which a blind space pilot and a four-armed mutant set a spaceship safely down on Mars without any scientific guidance. Another pen name, Philip James, was employed for Carillon of Skulls, (unknown, February, 1941), a weird tale of incantations and spells based on an idea supplied by James H. Beard, who had previously been responsible for feeding two ideas to Theo-dore Sturgeon. Del Rey's special magic infused the story with a touch of pathos.

  Del Rey's first anthology recognition (The Other Worlds, edited by Phil Stong, and published by Wilfred Funk in 1941) was for his story The Pipes of Pan (unknown, May, 1940), in which the last disciple of the ancient god Pan dies, forcing the deity to make a living playing his pipes for a jazz band. Of this story Stong said: "Numbers of people have written modernizations of myths, or myths translated to mod-ernity; of these, the most sympathetic in immediate writing seems to me to be Mr. del Rey's 'Pipes of Pan.' " The middle of 1940 marked the end of a phase in del Rey's career. He began to lose interest in writing as he became involved in photography, spending most of his time in the darkroom. Soon he was earning his subsistence money by making enlargements of five-and ten-cent photos which he hand-colored himself. Only one story other than Carillon of Skulls appeared in 1941, and that was his ironic fantasy Hereafter (unknown, December, 1941), about a little man whose circumscribed lifelong philosophy converts his heaven into hell after death.

  Campbell tried hard to get him to write more, but del Rey would only come through with a story when he needed money for a special project; otherwise he puttered happily in his darkroom. One of these infrequent stories was The Wings of Night (astounding science-fiction, March, 1942) con-cerning the last living moon

  "man" who needs copper in order to reproduce his race. Told in del Rey's most sympa-thetic vein, it proved very effective and variations on the theme have shown up periodically since then. Del Rey was particularly fond of My Name Is Legion (astounding science-fiction, June, 1942) in which he thought up a hellish circle-in-time fate for Adolf Hitler, but his banner story for the year and one of the best he ever wrote, Nerves, grew from a suggestion of John Campbell's, who gave him a bonus for the story. The results of the readership poll which were published two issues later showed that it had been rated first in the issue by 100 per cent of the respondents. The story was lengthened from 34,000 to 57,-000

  words for the Ballantine Books paperback published in 1956, the expanded version heightened by a superb character sketch of the key scientist, Jorgenson, before he is enveloped by an atomic miscalculation. The original version, however, had been reprinted in Random House's 1946 anthology Adventures in Time and Space, edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas.

  Ignoring the impact created by Nerves, del Rey traipsed from Washington, D.C., to St. Louis to be near a girl who had been transferred there. He completed Lunar Landing in St. Louis, on commission for the cover of the October, 1942, astounding science-fiction, in which a rescue operation for the first earth ship on the moon finds others there ahead of them. In St. Louis, del Rey went to work at McDonald Aircraft Co. as a sheetmetal worker and handformer and stayed on the job until April, 1944. The desire for anonymity must have burned bright in 1943 for of the three short science-fiction stories del Rey produced that year, two were published under pen names. The Fifth Freedom (astounding science-fiction, March, 1943) by "John Alvarez" was a plea for more enlightened treatment of conscientious objectors. Much more effective was Renegade, published under the nom de plume "Marion Henry" (as-tounding science-fiction, July 1943), a moving and tender story of the affection of a community of civilized apes in Africa for an ex-playboy who has tutored them. Whom the Gods Love (astounding science-fiction, June, 1943), a mystical story of a World War II Pacific fighter pilot given a second chance to justify his dead buddies, had del Rey's name attached to it.

  Almost unknown is the fact that del Rey sold a short-short and a short love story to collier's in 1943, neither one a fan-tasy tale.

  St. Louis was the home of Robert Moore Williams, much admired by del Rey for his story Robot's Return (astound-ing science-fiction, September, 1938), in which robots return from space to a deserted earth to discover that they were originally created on that planet. Del Rey, in apprecia-tion, wrote a prelude to it titled Though Dreamers Die (as-tounding science-fiction, January 1944). Back east in New York in 1944, del Rey took a job as a counterman selling hamburgers in a White Tower restaurant. He succeeded in selling Campbell one story, Kindness (astounding science-fiction, October, 1944), which despite an unconvincing ending, is a superior effort, depicting the plight of the last normal boy on earth, raised in a world of kindly supermen.

  Now 30 and lonely, he dated Helen Schlaz, a Lithuanian girl who worked in another White Tower. Repeating the pattern that led to his first marriage, he proposed on their first date and they set up housekeeping in 1945. He quit the White Tower chain to make another try at science fiction when Nerves was anthologized in Adventures in Time and Space. But six stories in a row were rejected by Campbell, reducing del Rey's confidence in his writing ability to its nadir.

  His flagging spirits were raised when Prime Press contract-ed for a collection of his stories for hardcover to be titled ". . . And Some Were Human." The publication of the book in 1948, containing some of his best work, bolstered a fading reputation. Though the sale was modest, the book was widely hailed in science-fiction circles.

  Attending the Fifth World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia, August 30 - September 1, 1947, at the invita-tion of Prime Press, del Rey was introduced to Scott Meredith, a science-fiction fan, who had set up a literary agency in N
ew York. Meredith took him on as a client.

  Shortly afterward, while aiding in the formation of the Hydra Club (an organization composed primarily of profes-sional science-fiction writers, editors, and authors) with Fred Pohl and Robert W. Lowndes, he was informed by the latter that Meredith was looking for someone to work in the agency. He applied for the job and went to work for Meredith, grinding out sports stories for the pulp magazines in his spare time. His second marriage broke up in 1949, his wife marrying another science-fiction writer, Damon Knight. The same year, the del Rey name came back into the spotlight in another manner. A 21-year old biology major at Canisius College, Buffalo, Richard I. Hoen, had sent a letter, published in the November, 1948

  issue of astounding science-fiction, proposing authors and as yet unwritten sto-ries for an all-star November, 1949, issue of that magazine. Campbell surprised his readers by undertaking to make that issue a reality.

  Among the stories requested was one by Lester del Rey to be titled Over the Top. Del Rey wrote this story to order and, though it was a rather mediocre tale of the first space explorer stranded on Mars, it proved professionally impor-tant by placing del Rey's name in the company of Robert A. Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, L. Sprague de Camp, and other prominent authors in the issue. There was a "boom" in science fiction underway. Del Rey dug his rejects out of the trunk and began offering them around. They sold with astonishing speed. Encouraged, he decided to leave Scott Meredith and try his luck again at free-lance writing.

  Some of his old skills began to return. Among the stories he sold in 1951 was one to argosy, The Monster, a remark-ably effective statement of the mental agony endured by an intelligence that discovers it is actually a robot which is to be animated for a brief period of usefulness and then elimi-nated. That year he sold the first of a series of science-fiction teenage novels to Winston, Marooned on Mars, which won the 1951 Boys Award for Teen-Age Fiction.