Seekers of Tomorrow

by Sam Moskowitz

  The turning point unquestionably came with Greater than Gods, in the July, 1939, astounding science-fiction. Con-tact is made with a man by two probable future worlds, with powerful pleas that he take the course that will ensure their reality. The theme is mature and moving, the writing strong and direct. The vitality of the story rests in its emotional conflict, which is not diminished by the ending in which the protagonist takes a third course that wipes out the possibility of either of the two "worlds of if." Whatever the reason for her lack of production between 1936 and 1940, the infrequency of the Moore name on stories after the turn of the decade rested in the writing relationship that sprang up between her and her husband. One story told of them most graphically illustrates the meth-od. Henry Kuttner, who became somewhat of a recluse when on a writing binge, had fallen asleep from exhaustion without finishing a story he was working on. Catherine came into the room, read the manuscript, and by the time he awoke the story was completed and on his desk.

  He was strong on beginnings, she was powerful on endings, and so a specialization grew up where each compensated for the weakness of the other. Some nineteen pen names were used, among them Lawrence O'Donnell, Lewis Padgett, C. H. Liddell, and Kelvin Kent. Collaborations were so involved that after a while both parties found it impossible to tell where one broke off and the other began. Still, an occasional story appeared that was nearly 100 per cent C. L. Moore. There Shall Be Darkness, in astounding science-fiction, February, 1942, was one such story, written in a style that was a throwback to the C. L. Moore of Northwest Smith. The potent Venusian drink . segir-whiskey appears in this tale, which parallels the fall of the Roman empire, of Earth retreating from the last of her colonies to face the onslaught of interplanetary barbarians. Moore was an early comer to a trend that within a few months would find leading new writers A. E. van Vogt and Isaac Asimov popularizing the concept of interplanetary and interstellar empires.

  The most dramatic and potent transition story by Moore was unquestionably the short novel Judgement Night, serial-ized in two parts in astounding science-fiction beginning in the August, 1943, number. A galactic empire is beginning to crack up, and a princess of the controlling realm courts romance and death on an artificial pleasure satellite which circles her world. The description of the operation of the pleasure satellite Cyrille can only be termed inspired. The story is composed with a richness of imagery reminiscent of Jirel of Joiry and the plot is carried by action instead of cerebration, but it introduces an antiwar message of noble effectiveness and presents an alien creature, the liar, with the adroitness of a Weinbaum. From here on there would be very few stories that would not have at least a trace of Henry Kuttner in their composi-tion. Nevertheless, of those she could call her own, Children's Hour, published under the pen name Lawrence O'Donnell (astounding science-fiction, March, 1944), concerning the man who discovers that the girl he is engaged to marry is the chaperoned child of some immeasurably superior race and he is but an educational playmate to be discarded when the time comes, is a masterpiece of sensitivity in its handling and memorable in its originality. Few stories in modern science fiction rank above it. Shortly afterward, No Woman Born, the tale of the mental adjustment of a beautiful television star who has been nearly cremated by fire to the shiny metal machine which is now her body (astounding science-fiction, December, 1944) was a most difficult attempt, which, despite the fact that it did not entirely succeed, is the most ambitious story written to date on that theme. Both The Children's Hour and No Woman Born eliminated physical action as the prime method for furthering the plot. When the war ended, the Kuttners decided they wanted a very special house at Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. With only $50 between them, they knuckled down and made $1,-000 in writing in one month to provide a down payment. It was at Hastings-on-Hudson that what many consider to be C. L. Moore's greatest story and one of the most brilliant stories in modern science fiction was written, Vintage Season. When it was published under her pen name Lawrence O'Donnell in the September, 1946, astounding science-fiction, acclaim was spontaneous. In Vintage Season, tourist observers from the future return incognito to periods in the past just before great events are to occur. They are strictly forbidden to interfere with events. One such group rents a house in the United States, and their purpose is discovered by the owner. Realizing that some tremendous event, possibly a tragedy, is about to occur, he does his best to get them to alter events, to no avail. One of the observers, Cenbe, is a creative genius of the future, who takes back to tomorrow the impressions for a great symphonia, blending pictures and sound. The fundamental plot line of this superb story has been copied repeatedly since its first appearance. With stories like The Children's Hour and Vintage Season "Lawrence O'Donnell" was being classed among the hierarchy of new science-fiction giants, along with Robert A. Heinlein, A. E. van Vogt, Theodore Sturgeon, and Fritz Leiber. Rising with it was the name Lewis Padgett, whose work contained a preponderance of Kuttner. Revelation of the true identities behind these newly famous names elevated Henry Kuttner's name to the pantheon, because in effect he had proved himself, but that C. L. Moore could accomplish literary feats was taken for granted. Therefore, except among the cognoscenti, she suffered a net loss of incalculable extent. Through neglect of its use, the C. L. Moore name was known primarily to veteran readers. Lawrence O'Donnell had not been around long enough to establish a comparable reputation and, be-sides, it was a name only partly employed for her efforts. A heart condition developed by Henry Kuttner forced them to move to the gentler climate of Laguna Beach, California, in 1948. In 1950, under the GI Bill of Rights, he decided to get the college degree he wanted. He began attendance at the University of Southern California in 1950 and managed to graduate in 31/2 years. Not subsidized by the GI Bill of Rights, Catherine took a bit longer and obtained her B.A. in 1956. Henry was working for his M.A. and had everything completed but his thesis when his heart gave out on Feb. 4, 1958, and Catherine was left alone. They had both made Phi Beta Kappa and Catherine's degree had been magna cum laude, but the titles seemed rather empty now. Toward the end, they had decided to label their stories correctly as individual efforts or collaborations. However, science fiction was already an unprofitable venture. In the late 1950's they had turned out four novels about a psy-choanalyst detective, with Henry writing the first draft and Catherine the final draft. After Henry's death, C. L. Moore had published the already completed novel of the strange sociological tyranny of the America of the near future in Doomsday Morning (written in a semi-tough-guy style) as a Doubleday hardcover book, but her efforts were predominantly devoted to television. There were westerns and detectives as well as scripts for such famous shows as Maverick and 77 Sunset Strip. She took over a writing class which Henry had been teaching at the University of California and taught two mornings a week for four years.

  Most of the students probably never realized the true stature of their instructor in the field she had so early chosen as her own. The young girl who blasted herself to fame overnight through the good right gun arm of Northwest Smith matured to become one of the most perceptive literary artists the science-fiction world has ever known. Perhaps because she brought to the field a rare feminine insight, her contributions were unique, enriching the field out of propor-tion to their numbers.

  For herself, the 18 years of her marriage, though stranger than most fiction, had been rewarding and happy ones. Her ability in writing had carried her into a promising career. Commenting on the strange twists that life sometimes takes, she said: "No, I never really have meant to do full-time writing. I don't know quite what happened."

  18 HENRY KUTTNER

  Select in your mind any of today's science-fiction writers you consider third-rate, and imagine what the effect might be on you if he suddenly confessed to being the real genius behind the published efforts of Theodore Sturgeon and Clif-ford D. Simak, and, for good measure, coyly owned up to responsibility for the Mark Clifton, Cordwainer Smith, and Christopher Anvil stories, and you will appro
ximate the im-pact when Henry Kuttner admitted for publication that he was Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O'Donnell, and was also willing to accept credit for Keith Hammond, Kelvin Kent, Paul Edmonds, and sundry other names that had been re-garded as science-fiction writers to bear watching.

  The identity of Lewis Padgett had been leaked by John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of astounding science-fiction, back in the summer of 1943, and a single sentence reflecting that revelation had appeared in the August 11, 1943, issue of fantasy fiction field, a weekly news magazine devoted to information about fantasy and science fiction, published by an old-time fan and book dealer, Julius Unger; a more complete story followed in the February 7, 1944, issue. This information was picked up on faith by Arthur L. Widner, then conducting a popularity poll on various aspects of science fiction, and he lumped the Lewis Padgett votes for the best author of the year in with those for Henry Kuttner. Henry Kuttner, who had never even as much as "also ran" on any previous reader survey, and who had been regarded as a rather mediocre journeyman professional, abruptly moved into 13th spot in the final tabulations published in the September, 1943, le zombie, a journal of news and commen-tary published by Wilson Tucker and E. Everett Evans (both of whom would eventually become prominent professional authors).

  Within two years, as the news traveled through the science-fiction world, Kuttner rose to first place in other surveys over such competition as A. E. van Vogt, Isaac Asimov, Murray Leinster, and Fritz Leiber, Jr. Many writers had catapulted to overnight fame on the strength of a single outstanding story. Kuttner was the first in the science-fiction world to rise to glory incognito.

  Unlike his close friend, Ray Bradbury, who has bared endless anecdotes concerning his tender years, Henry Kuttner in personal conversation and in print studiously bypassed the subject. He was born in Los Angeles in 1914 of parents who were of German, Jewish, English, Irish and Polish extraction. He boasted of one grandfather who was a rabbi. His father, who ran a book shop, died when he was five. The early years were spent in San Francisco, where his mother strove to support him and two older brothers, at one period operating a boarding house. They moved back to Los Angeles about the time Henry entered high school, and upon his graduation he went to work in a literary agency operated by a cousin through marriage. His interest in fantasy followed traditional lines. He began with the Oz books, graduated to Edgar Rice Burroughs, and, at the age of 12, found himself "hooked" when the first amazing stories appeared in 1926. As the years passed his interest shifted from science fiction toward weird-fantasy and as a devoted reader of weird tales he became a correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft and other members of the "Lovecraft Circle," particularly Robert Bloch.

  Kuttner's first professional sale was a poem Ballad of the Gods, done in the pulsating rhythms of Robert E. Howard, published in the February, 1936, issue of weird tales. Kuttner is best remembered for his immense versatility, but in all evaluations his verse has been forgotten. True, most of it worshipped at the shrine of Robert E. Howard and some of it made obeisance to H. P. Lovecraft, but all of it is eminent-ly readable and the acrostic titled H. P. L. and published in the September, 1937, weird tales, opening with the lines:

  Here in the silent places, and the caverns beneath the world,

  On the great black altars carven from the stones that the gods have hurled, Where the gray smoke coils and shudders through the eery purple gleam

  And the shadows of worlds beyond our worlds fall over

  a dreamer's dream—

  culminates with talented discipline in its tribute to Lovecraft's imagination: Facing the gates of the universe, breasting the mighty stream

  That bursts from the roots of Yggdrasil, in the splendor of a dream.

  Kuttner's fictional debut, The Graveyard Rats, in weird tales for March, 1936, marked the appearance of what is undoubtedly one of the half-dozen most truly horrifying short stories in the entire gamut of literature, all of literature. A ghoulish cemetery caretaker in New England's old Salem crawls after immense rats through underground tunnels to reclaim a newly buried body they have dragged from the coffin. His nightmarish struggle against the rats and an an-cient cadaver still instinct with the reflexes of life build to a denouement of such revolting terror that the reader must almost drive himself physically to complete it.

  In background, theme, buildup, style, and intent the story owes everything to H. P. Lovecraft. While no evidence has been uncovered to show that Lovecraft helped in the writing of the story, it would be hard to conceive that he had not read it and offered suggestions before publication. The Graveyard Rats is so powerful an exercise in fear, so basic in striking the chord of all that man holds abhorrent, and it rears so monstrously in effectiveness above any other weird tale that Henry Kuttner subsequently had published (indeed, when the final evaluation is made, it may be the best thing he ever wrote), that one finds it difficult to attribute it to a fledgling 21-year-old, his first time out.

  For this reason the identity of the author was questioned. Replying to a reader in the May, 1936, issue of weird tales, editor Farnsworth Wright said: "No, Henry Kuttner is not a pen name. He is a young writer, for whom we predict real achievement; for he possesses genuine merit." It is ironic that a writer who would owe his reputation to his pseudo-nyms would initially be suspected of being one. In later years, Kuttner grew literally to hate The Graveyard Rats. He resented requests for reprint rights and contemplated violence when an endless parade of readers kept telling him it was the best thing he had ever written. He regarded praise of the story as an insinuation that the dec-ades had taught him nothing about the technique of story-telling. (Rachmaninoff felt the same way about his "Prelude in C# minor.") In The Secret of Kralitz (weird tales, October, 1936), a young baron becomes a member of the living dead; the theme of It Walks By Night (weird tales, December, 1936) involves the dead who feed on the bodies of the dead. Both of these tales were outright imitations of Lovecraft, and The Eater of Souls (weird tales, January, 1937) imitated Lovecraft's imitation of Lord Dunsany!

  Early readers, judging Kuttner's personality by the cata-logue of horrors he had printed in weird tales, were in for a shock when he joined the Los Angeles chapter of The Science Fiction League late in 1936. A short, slight, dark-complexioned man, unhandsome and sporting a small, almost round moustache, he was timid and self-effacing, but from him flowed a seemingly inexhaustible stream of humor, dis-pensed in a dour, unsmiling fashion. His friends characterized him "as one of the funniest men alive." Of him as a person, descriptions like "the kindest, gentlest, most considerate hu-man being it has been my pleasure to know" come from many of those who knew him closely.

  Fritz Leiber, Jr., reporting on a 1937 meeting with Henry Kuttner in Henry Kuttner: A Memorial Symposium, published by Karen Anderson in August, 1958, said: "Hank (his favorite nickname) was already breaking sharply with the Lovecraft tradition."

  This was evidenced by I, the Vampire (weird tales, February, 1937), where the vampire is portrayed sympatheti-cally, a tragic victim of circumstance, capable of self-sacrifice. Hoffman Price, a close friend of Kuttner's, adopted the viewpoint several years later in writing Spanish Vampire (weird tales, September, 1939), a light and moving master-piece.

  In We Are the Dead (weird tales, April, 1937), the ghost of the Unknown Soldier deters a senator from promot-ing legislation that may lead to war. The young Kuttner wasn't up to the job, but polished veteran Seabury Quinn picked up the idea with elaborations and scored a hit with Washington Nocturne in weird tales for May, 1939.

  But, there would, nevertheless, be other Lovecraft imita-tions, The Salem Horror (weird tales, May, 1937) and The lest of Droom Avista (weird tales, August, 1937), for while Kuttner wanted to change he seemed unable to bring to bear any qualities that were fundamentally his own. One of the most interesting and successful stories of this period was his collaboration with his close friend Robert Bloch, The Black Kiss (weird tales, June, 1937). A tale of a sea creature that lures a man in his dreams to partake of its ki
sses, resulting in a transfer of bodies, this story em-ployed a combination of the methods and styles of H. P. Lovecraft and C. L. Moore, the girl Kuttner was destined to marry. Another literary collaboration, in which Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore united in one story her two famous characters Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry ( Quest of the Star Stone, weird tales, November, 1937), symboli-cally anticipated their marriage some three years later.

  During the thirties an outgrowth of the mystery magazines were publications like thrilling mystery, horror tales, and terror tales, which specialized in stories of sadism, torture, flagellation, and satanism, heavily flavored with sex. These stories were developed as though they related super-natural events, but it was the policy of the magazines to have normal, logical explanations for the erotic and sometimes debased content of the stories. Henry Kuttner sold regularly to thrilling mystery such tales as Laughter of the Dead, The Dweller in the Tomb, and Lord of the Lions. It is likely that he used pen names for stories in horror stories and terror tales, for these publications were the most blatantly titillating of the group. Julius Schwartz, his agent, convinced Kuttner that he should divert some of his energies toward science fiction. Kuttner was reluctant at first, because though he liked science fiction his scientific background was so skimpy that he felt inadequate to the job.

  When the Earth Lived (thrilling wonder stories, Nov. 1937) is said by Schwartz to have been the first science fiction written by Kuttner, though Raider of the Spaceways (weird tales, July, 1937) was published before it. When the Earth Lived employed the fairly original idea of rays, pro-jected by scientists in the macrocosmos, bombarding the earth and investing such unlikely objects as automobiles, boats, coffee pots, and jewelry with life, thereby raising hob. The treatment was corny, the writing amateurish, and the idea unbelievable, but Kuttner had launched his science-fiction career.