Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  After the June 1933 issue, Wonder Stories became bimonthly too, and with the November 1933 issue, it returned to the pulp size—this time permanently. Wonder Stories Quarterly, after fourteen successive issues at three-month intervals (the first three having been called Science Wonder Quarterly) came to a final end with the winter 1933 issue.

  As before, Amazing Stories held out best, but even there, there were signs of trouble. For one thing, it changed its appearance.

  Ever since it had begun publication, the phrase “Amazing Stories” had appeared on its cover as a series of block letters, with a giant initial A followed by the other letters in rapidly and progressively diminishing size. In 1933, that vanished, and, in an apparent attempt to gain readership by a greater appearance of respectability, “Amazing Stories” became a series of equal-sized letters printed diagonally across the cover. The cover illustrations became more nearly monochrome and more nearly modernistic.

  I hated it at the time, and when I received the issue containing “Tumithak in Shawm” from Sam Moskowitz and found that it had such a cover, I hated it all over again.

  Then, in mid-1933, Amazing Stories skipped an issue for the first time in its seven-and-one-half-year history. It put out an August-September 1933 issue. This did not mean a shift to regular bimonthly publication, however. With the October 1933 issue, Amazing Stories was on a monthly basis again, but it, too, had now gone pulp size. By the end of 1933, then, the large-size science fiction magazines were gone. (In later years, there were several attempts to produce science fiction magazines in large size again, but they were uniformly unsuccessful.)

  As for Amazing Stories Quarterly, that was coming out with increasing irregularity. There were only three issues in 1932, only two in 1933, and one, last issue in 1934.

  Amid all this disaster, there were signs of hope. Wonder Stories, having gone pulp size, also restored itself to a monthly schedule. And as for Astounding Stories, it was, surprisingly, reborn.

  What happened was that Street & Smith Publications, Inc., bought Astounding Stories from the bankrupt Clayton people and began to publish it themselves, the first issue under the new regime being that of October 1933.

  At first, it didn’t seem that this meant much. The first issues used up the stories that had been at hand before the Clayton Astounding had died, and they did not please me, either.

  But the new editor, F. Orlin Tremaine, was to be in charge for four and a half years (the period of the so-called “Tremaine Astounding’’), and he had bold ideas. The result was to become apparent soon.

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  * * * *

  Part Five

  1934

  * * * *

  IN February 1934, I entered “sixth term” at Boys High. As a startling innovation, the school offered a special course in creative writing for those who chose to take it, and I jumped at the chance. I had been writing, on and off, ever since I had worked on the Greenville Chums. I don’t remember any of the details at all, except that I remember being occasionally driven to attempt to write poetry.

  Now there seemed a chance for me to demonstrate my literary prowess. (Somehow I saw the class only as a chance to shine. It never occurred to me that I might learn something. I felt I already knew how to write.)

  The result was utter fiasco. Surely few young men have had so marvelous a chance to make fools of themselves and then took advantage of the chance as liberally as I did. Everything I wrote was laughable, and it was all laughed at thoroughly, both by the teacher and the other students.

  I mentioned this in The Early Asimov and mentioned further that the one useful result of the course was that I wrote a humorous essay entitled “Little Brothers,” which was published in the Boys High School literary semi-annual.

  Until I mentioned the essay, I had never thought of it particularly, but once The Early Asimov appeared, I began to wonder if I ought to try to get a copy. In February 1973, I gave a talk to a group of librarians from the New York metropolitan area, and attending was the present librarian of Boys High School. When she introduced herself, I asked at once if there was any chance she might perhaps locate a copy of the literary semi-annual in some of the dusty storage bins of the school.

  In June 1973, she succeeded, and sent me a copy. This book had already been put together but was still in an early stage of production, so I could make the necessary revision.

  When the magazine came—its name was Boys High Recorder, incidentally, and the issue was spring 1934—I turned to “Little Brothers” at once and read it eagerly. I was sure I would find in it the clear signs of writing talent.

  Alas, I didn’t. It sounds exactly as any essay would that was written by a precocious fourteen-year-old. How disappointing! And yet, in order to keep the record complete and to prevent myself from receiving a horde of letters demanding to see it (presumably in order that all my readers have the same chance to laugh at me that the members of the damnable writing class did), here it is:

  * * * *

  LITTLE BROTHERS

  My mission in life right now is to express the venomous feelings that we “big” brothers have for the bane of our lives, the “little” brothers.

  When I first received the news that I had a little brother, on July 25, 1929, I felt slightly uncomfortable. As for myself, I knew nothing about brothers, but many of my friends had related at great length the inconveniences (to say the least) of attending babies.

  On August 3, my little brother came home. All I could see was a little bundle of pink flesh, with apparently no ability to do the slightest mischief.

  That night, I suddenly sprang out of bed with gooseflesh all over me and my hair on end. I had heard a shriek apparently made by no earthly being. In response to my frenzied questions, my mother informed me in a commonplace manner that it was just the baby. Just the baby! I was almost knocked unconscious. A puny, nine-pound baby, 10 days old, to make such a scream! Why, I was convinced that no less than three men together could have strained their vocal cords to such an extent.

  But this was only the beginning. When he began teething, the real torture came. I did not sleep a wink for two months. I only existed by sleeping with my eyes open in school.

  And still it wasn’t all. Easter was coming, and I was feeling joyous at the prospect of a trip to Rhode Island, when that kid brother of mine got the measles and everything went up like smoke.

  Soon he reached the age where his teeth were already cut and I hoped to obtain a little peace, but no, that could not be. I had yet to learn that when a child learns to walk, and talk baby-language, he is rather more of an inconvenience than a cyclone, with a hurricane thrown in for good measure.

  His favorite recreation was that of falling down the stairs, hitting each step with a resounding bump. This occurred on the average of once every other minute and always brought on a scolding from my mother (not for him, but for me for not taking care of him).

  This “taking care” of him is not as easy as it sounds. The baby usually shows his devotion by grabbing generous fistfuls of hair and pulling with a strength that you would never have thought possible in a one-year-old. When, after a few minutes of excruciating torture, you persuade him to let go, he seeks diversion in hitting your shins with a heavy piece of iron, preferably a sharp or pointed one.

  Not only is a baby a pest when awake, but is doubly so when taking his daily nap.

  This is a typical scene. I am sitting in a chair next to the carriage, deeply immersed in The Three Musketeers and my little brother is apparently sleeping peacefully; but he really isn’t. With an uncanny instinct, in spite of his closed eyes and inability to read, he knows exactly when I reach an exciting point and with a malicious grin selects that very moment to awake. With a groan I leave my book and rock him till my arms feel as if they will fall off any minute. By the time he does go back to sleep, I have lost interest in the famous trio and my day is ruined.

  Now my little brother is 4½ years old and most of these aggravating h
abits have disappeared, but I feel in my bones that there is more to come. I shudder to think of the day when he’ll enter school and place a new burden upon my shoulders. I feel absolutely sure that not only will I be afflicted with the homework which my hard-hearted teachers will give me, but I will also be responsible for my little brother’s.

  I wish I were dead!

  * * * *

  Needless to say, this essay is completely fictional except that the dates of my little brother’s birth and his arrival home are correct. Actually, my brother Stan was a model child, who gave me very little trouble. I did wheel him about in his carriage an awful lot, but that was always with a book open on the handlebar, so it didn’t matter to me. I also sat by the carriage when he was sleeping, but again I invariably read—and he rarely disturbed me. What’s more, he always did his own homework when it came time for that.

  I am most thunderstruck by my reference to “the prospect of a trip to Rhode Island.” What a lie! There was never a prospect of a trip anywhere. Never! Not while we had the candy store.

  One more thing about the Boys High Recorder: All through the four decades since that writing class, I have wondered about the kids who laughed at me in that class. Are any of them aware that they laughed at the wrong person? That I was destined to become a successful and prolific writer? And what have they accomplished? Anything? (Don’t get me wrong. I don’t hold a grudge. It’s only forty years. Any decade now, I’ll forget.)

  Unfortunately I didn’t remember any of the youngsters in the class, and I decided, rather uneasily, that I had better not try to find out. For all I knew, their names would now be recognizable to me as those of great writers. For all I knew, for instance, men of the caliber of Norman Mailer had been in that class. (Not Norman Mailer himself, of course. He was only eleven at the time.)

  When I got the Boys High Recorder, therefore, I looked at the tide page, all set to wince badly. Every piece had been written by members of that class and only the best had been taken. ... So I went down the list and not one name was familiar to me. Not one! Except my own, of course.

  What a relief!

  What I wrote in that traumatic creative-writing class, by the way, was never science fiction, and a good thing, too. Had I written science fiction and been laughed at, it might conceivably have inhibited me from writing more of it for a long time.

  What saved me was that I still didn’t think I was capable of writing science fiction. At the age of fourteen I might have dreamed of writing at the old Amazing/Wonder level, but the Tremaine Astounding in its first astonishing half year had kicked matters far out of my reach again.

  In that half year, Astounding Stories took a clear lead over the other two magazines, which were now fellow pulps. With the backing of the affluent Street & Smith chain of magazines, Astounding Stories flourished and expanded, while Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories were visibly stagnating.

  Astounding Stories had the best stories, the most interesting artwork, the liveliest letters column. With the March 1934 issue, it increased the number of its pages from 144 to 160, so it became the largest of the magazines, and it charged only twenty cents, to the twenty-five cents of the others.

  This all had its effect on me. After five years of allegiance to Amazing Stories as the best of the magazines, I switched instantly and massively to Astounding Stories and so did nearly everyone else. Beginning in early 1934, Astounding Stories became the dominating magazine in science fiction and has remained so, through a couple of changes in name, a couple of changes in editor, and many changes in competition, for forty years.

  * * * *

  One thing Tremaine introduced was what he called “Thought-Variant” stories. These were stories that advanced new ideas, unlike any that had been seen in science fiction before (or, at least, any that had become clichés). In general, the thought-variants pleased me and pleased other readers as well.

  Consider “Colossus,” by Donald Wandrei, for instance.

  * * * *

  COLOSSUS

  by Donald Wandrei

  “Their (certain astronomers) picture is the picture of an expanding universe. The supersystem of the galaxies is dispersing as a puff of smoke disperses. Sometimes I wonder whether there may not be a greater scale of existence of things, in which it is no more than a puff of smoke.”

  —Sir Arthur Eddington,

  The Expanding Universe; Macmillan & Co., 1933.

  * * * *

  Like a flame in the sky, the golden-red stratoplane circled Mount Everest and dipped toward its crest. Not so many years ago that peak had been unclimbed, almost unknown, a challenge to man. Wintry gales tore across this top of the world, and cold rivaled precipices to defeat assault. The bitter winds still blew, but a man-made tower rose higher than the old peak, and a landing field which was a triumph of engineering audacity and genius stretched over sheer space beside the tower.

  The circling stratoplane landed and rolled to a stop. The man who climbed out—Duane Sharon—seemed distinctive even in his heavy flying clothes.

  His hands were powerful. No one would have admired any single feature of his, the hair of casual brown, a weathered face, a nose far from classic, and eyes of gray that glittered or softened as occasion required. But the general effect was good. He had a kind of loose rhythm, and a genial personality.

  He sauntered toward the great observatory of the WLAS—World League for the Advancement of Science. Fifteen years had been required to build and equip this observatory which had been planned as long ago as 1960.

  Once inside the tower, he identified himself and tossed a cheery word to the guard before sauntering into the observation room.

  Probably the 400-inch reflector of Mount Everest Observatory would never be surpassed. Man, on Earth, could go no further toward conquering the limitations of atmosphere, metals, and optics. Through this gigantic mirror, underlying a telescope in whose construction the efforts of dozens of great minds had been united for years to produce an instrument of unrivaled accuracy, intricacy, and range, equipped with every device desired by and known to astronomers, study of the universe had reached a climax.

  A man of ascetic features was studying the reflector. His speculation must be idle, since the Sun had not set. Calculations and symbols, equations and reductions covered a blackboard near him. A sheaf of scribbled pages lay on a table beside a heap of photographs, charts, and books. Professor Dowell had his own quarters, but he usually worked in the observation room itself. Here the temperature always remained constant, at thirty below zero, but special clothing warmed him and nonfrosting goggles permitted vision.

  Dowell did not look up until Duane stood beside him. Even then, consciousness of another’s presence was slow to dawn.

  “Hello! Am I intruding?” Duane asked.

  Dowell blinked. A far-away look in his eyes faded. “Not at all; I’m glad you came. Here, have a chair—sit down!”

  “Thanks, but I’ve been sitting in a plane for the last hour. I’d rather stand around for a while. Anything new? What’s on your mind?”

  The astronomer motioned toward the calculations. “You remember when you were here the day before yesterday? And I showed you photographs we made of the thirty-first magnitude nebulae in the Orion group?”

  “Of course! You said they marked a milepost in astronomy.”

  “Did I? Yes, yes; to be sure. Just to think that only eighteen magnitudes were visible until we built this telescope, and now there are thirty-one, while the known universe has been expanded to nearly a billion light-years.”

  “Don’t!” protested Duane. “That’s too much!”

  The professor did not hear him. ‘I’m puzzled about a phenomenon of the thirty-second magnitude.”

  “What is it?”

  “There is no thirty-second magnitude!”

  Duane reflected, lit a cigarette. “That’s very interesting,” he remarked. “I don’t understand.”

  Dowell fretted. “Neither do I. Several nights ago, we pho
tographed nebulae of the thirty-first magnitude. According to Jeans’ theory and Valma’s equations of the expanding universe, there should be nebulae up to about the fortieth magnitude.”

  “And there aren’t?”

  “Right.”

  “What’s the reason?”

  “I don’t know. There are only two possible answers. Either Valma made an error, which is inconceivable, or our whole theory of the universe is wrong.”

  Duane thought this over. “How?”

  * * * *

  Dowell paced back and forth nervously. “You know the three main theories of the universe, of course. There’s the old one that space is limitless and extends forever in all directions. There is the theory elaborated by Einstein early this century, that space is affected with a curvature which makes it return upon itself. After Einstein, a group headed by Jeans advanced the idea of an expanding universe which might be said to create space as it expanded.”