In the thread on Astounding/Analog authors through the decades, Extollager mentioned the existence that Nat Schachner wrote some of the "thought-variant" stories in the magazine in the 1930's. This was quite right - in fact Schachner wrote the first such story. I thought maybe I'd go back in time, and read the first issue or two in which these stories featured as an interesting exploration of the stories, seen in context with the regular stories of the time. I hope this may be of interest to some.
Astounding Stories - December 1933
In the early 1930's Astounding Stories was edited by Harry Bates and then F. Orlin Tremaine, and the generally accepted wisdom is that they published a pre-'golden age' magazine of space adventure, that lacked the ideas and thought that would characterise John W. Campbell's editorial impact on the magazines from 1939 onwards. However, once F. Orlin Tremaine took over from Bates in late 1933, he also took steps to advance SF writing and introduce more variety into the stories. At the end of 1933, Tremaine started to publish 'Feature Stories', which he also referred to as Thought-Variant stories.
The idea behind 'thought-variant' stories was to publish works that would each develop an idea that "has been slurred over or passed by in many, many stories". The aim was to shift the focus of the magazine slowly away from action-adventure and space-opera (a pejorative term at the time) and more toward ideas-based speculation - a clear preface to the advances undertaken later by John W. Campbell.
The first of these 'thought variant' stories Tremaine published was Ancestral Voices by Nat Schachner (Dec '33), and the second was Colossus by Donald Wandrei (Jan '34). Tremaine would go on and publish these 'thought-variant' stories for the remainder of his tenure as editor. I thought it would be interesting to read these two issues back-to-back, especially as there is a two-part story by Charles Willlard Diffin published across the two issues.
Before getting into the stories, an interesting addition to the covers of Astounding during 1933, and seen here, was the logo indicating 'NRA Member'. This has nothing to do with guns, but refers to The National Recovery Administration, set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in '33 as part of his 'New Deal', with the aim to encourage industries to get together and write "codes of fair competition."
Land of the Lost - Charles Willard Diffin
Diffin's two-part serial story starts in this issue and was concluded in the following Jan '34 issue. It offers unrelenting adventure, in a plot that's a bit daft, and yet is moderately compelling. This is a 'transportation to another world'-type tale and the first installment is a fun and entertaining read, with quite nice characterisation. I went ahead and read the second part of this serial from the next issue, and found the story, now set on the 'world' surrounding Earth, got sillier in the second part, though it did offer explanation of the set up. The essential idea of another world encircling our own, but with a different set of physical laws and 'neo-atoms' seems quite original. It became less based on character as it went on though and more on hyperbolic drama as the novella progressed. Ray-guns! Daring-do! Giants and pterodactyls! Ultimately it was a bit so-so, with its constant action and unwillingness to draw breath.
The Machine that Knew Too Much - A. T. Locke
This short story was a nice change of pace from Difford's action-packed, serialised novella. An old man in a creepy New England house has a machine that can hear the voices of the past. He employs a young linguist to help him listen in to ancient conversations for clues to the whereabouts of lost historical treasures. It's a nice idea, and the story is well told, with a satisfying conclusion. Locke only ever published 2 SF stories - this one and another in Astounding in 1930 (the third ever issue) - which seems a shame as this was great.
The Invading Blood Stream - Paul Starr
This novelette was the only SF story Starr ever had published. It's quite inventive and fun, as it happens, and like the Locke story, also better then the Diffin serial. A scientist affiliated with the evil Central European Confederacy has invented a method of atomic miniaturisation, and conceives a plan to miniaturise hundreds of thousands of CEC troops and inject them into the blood stream of a few unfortunate hosts, who can then be smuggled into the USA and once there, be brought back to size for invasion. While there are plot holes, and daft coincidences upon which the plot relies, it's nonetheless a neat idea for the time and was rather fun.
The Purple Brain - Hal K. Wells
Harold Wells (1899-1979) wrote twenty or so SF short stories, almost all before the 'golden age'. This is an alien monster story, in which the alien being from the planet Zaas exists as a large, purple parasitic brain. Yes, it is as pulpy as it sounds, and would have made an amusing B-movie monster flick - perhaps it did. There is little if any literary merit to this short story, though it's harmless enough entertainment if you're in the mood for such things.
Ancestral Voices - Nat Schachner (Thought-variant feature story)
And so we come to the first thought-variant feature story F. Orlin Tremaine published in Astounding. Nat Schachner was a prolific author who featured heavily in Astounding between May 1931 and November 1941 (57 stories), and who was one of Isaac Asimov's favourite authors, in his youth. This is a time travel tale, and may be one of the first to look at causality of changing the past. It's also by some margin the most literary and interesting story in this issue so far. Schachner writes well, and there's some depth and humanity here. Schachner quotes Edward Fitzgerald's 1859 translation of the poem The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, refers ironically to the state of the world and prevailing xenophobia and uses an engaging prose structure to spin his yarn. At its heart, the 'thought-variant' here is to challenge the myth of 'racial purity' and in so doing celebrate the mixed heritage we all doubtless share. If Tremaine had a mind to raise the quality of the magazine with the introduction of thought-variant feature stories, he succeeded significantly at the first attempt. The story was illustrated on the cover (illustration by Howard V. Brown, see above)
The Last Sacrifice - J. Gibson Taylor, Jr
This is another story that represents the entire published SF output of the author. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, in this case. This is a fantasy tale - a ghost story really. Set in Haiti, a white immigrant man wakes and becomes invested with the ghost of a Haitian general, who leads a sacrificial voodoo ceremony. The man feels impelled to 'black-up' for the act to look more like the ghost, and kills a young innocent girl. It's not very appealing!
Farewell to Earth - Donald Wandrei
A sequel to Wandrei's novelette A Race Through Time (Astounding Oct '33), this novelette is set in the far future, after the protagonist time travels to the year 1,001,950. This is a dying Earth tale, not one where everything is shiny and improved. Life has been mostly obliterated by natural disaster, and little exists of the old world. The protagonist, Web, finds the descendent of his lost love in the ancient ruins of New York, but does the planet hold any future for them? It's a superior tale, with some '30's style action, but mainly its a somber piece, in which it's proposed that humans are not here forever. Wandrei writes pretty well, and along with Nat Schachner's thought-variant piece, this stands out as a quality story in the issue.
Terror out of Time - Jack Williamson
Williamson was writing frequently for Astounding at this time, and would continue to have work published in its pages for the next 6 decades. In this engaging tale a young man's mind is thrown forward in time to the end of days, though the use of a machine built by his fiancée's father. Four hundred million years in the future he inhabits the mind and body of the last human: a short white-furred pitiful creature, living under the thrall of a tall dark Martian, in a frozen, dying, world under attack from cold, gaseous beings called Ku-Latha. That's bad enough, but things don't go to plan with the experiment either, and the young man loses control and habitation of his present-day body. I'm not sure it makes complete sense, but some latitude generally has to be applied to SF stories of this era if you're to enjoy them.
The Demon of the Flower - Clark Ashton Smith
This short story, by the famed author Clark Ashton Smith, sits here in Astounding Stories as a bit of a misfit. It's written with Smith's dense, wordy, almost archaic language, heavy with other-worldly description, low on action, but steeped in evocative weirdness. If you like Smith, I'm sure it would appeal. Its a fantasy, set on another planet. A king must regularly offer a sacrifice to a demonic flower in his kingdom, but when the next victim is his betrothed he seeks a way out. It's very good, though one does have to switch gears from the pace and style of the preceding stories to enjoy it fully.
I'll be going on the read the next "thought-variant" story shortly and will post on Wandrei's contribution to the project in due course.
Anyone else have any thoughts on thought-variant stories or the authors and stories here, specifically?
Astounding Stories - December 1933
In the early 1930's Astounding Stories was edited by Harry Bates and then F. Orlin Tremaine, and the generally accepted wisdom is that they published a pre-'golden age' magazine of space adventure, that lacked the ideas and thought that would characterise John W. Campbell's editorial impact on the magazines from 1939 onwards. However, once F. Orlin Tremaine took over from Bates in late 1933, he also took steps to advance SF writing and introduce more variety into the stories. At the end of 1933, Tremaine started to publish 'Feature Stories', which he also referred to as Thought-Variant stories.
The idea behind 'thought-variant' stories was to publish works that would each develop an idea that "has been slurred over or passed by in many, many stories". The aim was to shift the focus of the magazine slowly away from action-adventure and space-opera (a pejorative term at the time) and more toward ideas-based speculation - a clear preface to the advances undertaken later by John W. Campbell.
The first of these 'thought variant' stories Tremaine published was Ancestral Voices by Nat Schachner (Dec '33), and the second was Colossus by Donald Wandrei (Jan '34). Tremaine would go on and publish these 'thought-variant' stories for the remainder of his tenure as editor. I thought it would be interesting to read these two issues back-to-back, especially as there is a two-part story by Charles Willlard Diffin published across the two issues.
Before getting into the stories, an interesting addition to the covers of Astounding during 1933, and seen here, was the logo indicating 'NRA Member'. This has nothing to do with guns, but refers to The National Recovery Administration, set up by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in '33 as part of his 'New Deal', with the aim to encourage industries to get together and write "codes of fair competition."
Land of the Lost - Charles Willard Diffin
Diffin's two-part serial story starts in this issue and was concluded in the following Jan '34 issue. It offers unrelenting adventure, in a plot that's a bit daft, and yet is moderately compelling. This is a 'transportation to another world'-type tale and the first installment is a fun and entertaining read, with quite nice characterisation. I went ahead and read the second part of this serial from the next issue, and found the story, now set on the 'world' surrounding Earth, got sillier in the second part, though it did offer explanation of the set up. The essential idea of another world encircling our own, but with a different set of physical laws and 'neo-atoms' seems quite original. It became less based on character as it went on though and more on hyperbolic drama as the novella progressed. Ray-guns! Daring-do! Giants and pterodactyls! Ultimately it was a bit so-so, with its constant action and unwillingness to draw breath.
The Machine that Knew Too Much - A. T. Locke
This short story was a nice change of pace from Difford's action-packed, serialised novella. An old man in a creepy New England house has a machine that can hear the voices of the past. He employs a young linguist to help him listen in to ancient conversations for clues to the whereabouts of lost historical treasures. It's a nice idea, and the story is well told, with a satisfying conclusion. Locke only ever published 2 SF stories - this one and another in Astounding in 1930 (the third ever issue) - which seems a shame as this was great.
The Invading Blood Stream - Paul Starr
This novelette was the only SF story Starr ever had published. It's quite inventive and fun, as it happens, and like the Locke story, also better then the Diffin serial. A scientist affiliated with the evil Central European Confederacy has invented a method of atomic miniaturisation, and conceives a plan to miniaturise hundreds of thousands of CEC troops and inject them into the blood stream of a few unfortunate hosts, who can then be smuggled into the USA and once there, be brought back to size for invasion. While there are plot holes, and daft coincidences upon which the plot relies, it's nonetheless a neat idea for the time and was rather fun.
The Purple Brain - Hal K. Wells
Harold Wells (1899-1979) wrote twenty or so SF short stories, almost all before the 'golden age'. This is an alien monster story, in which the alien being from the planet Zaas exists as a large, purple parasitic brain. Yes, it is as pulpy as it sounds, and would have made an amusing B-movie monster flick - perhaps it did. There is little if any literary merit to this short story, though it's harmless enough entertainment if you're in the mood for such things.
Ancestral Voices - Nat Schachner (Thought-variant feature story)
And so we come to the first thought-variant feature story F. Orlin Tremaine published in Astounding. Nat Schachner was a prolific author who featured heavily in Astounding between May 1931 and November 1941 (57 stories), and who was one of Isaac Asimov's favourite authors, in his youth. This is a time travel tale, and may be one of the first to look at causality of changing the past. It's also by some margin the most literary and interesting story in this issue so far. Schachner writes well, and there's some depth and humanity here. Schachner quotes Edward Fitzgerald's 1859 translation of the poem The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam, refers ironically to the state of the world and prevailing xenophobia and uses an engaging prose structure to spin his yarn. At its heart, the 'thought-variant' here is to challenge the myth of 'racial purity' and in so doing celebrate the mixed heritage we all doubtless share. If Tremaine had a mind to raise the quality of the magazine with the introduction of thought-variant feature stories, he succeeded significantly at the first attempt. The story was illustrated on the cover (illustration by Howard V. Brown, see above)
The Last Sacrifice - J. Gibson Taylor, Jr
This is another story that represents the entire published SF output of the author. I'm not sure that's a bad thing, in this case. This is a fantasy tale - a ghost story really. Set in Haiti, a white immigrant man wakes and becomes invested with the ghost of a Haitian general, who leads a sacrificial voodoo ceremony. The man feels impelled to 'black-up' for the act to look more like the ghost, and kills a young innocent girl. It's not very appealing!
Farewell to Earth - Donald Wandrei
A sequel to Wandrei's novelette A Race Through Time (Astounding Oct '33), this novelette is set in the far future, after the protagonist time travels to the year 1,001,950. This is a dying Earth tale, not one where everything is shiny and improved. Life has been mostly obliterated by natural disaster, and little exists of the old world. The protagonist, Web, finds the descendent of his lost love in the ancient ruins of New York, but does the planet hold any future for them? It's a superior tale, with some '30's style action, but mainly its a somber piece, in which it's proposed that humans are not here forever. Wandrei writes pretty well, and along with Nat Schachner's thought-variant piece, this stands out as a quality story in the issue.
Terror out of Time - Jack Williamson
Williamson was writing frequently for Astounding at this time, and would continue to have work published in its pages for the next 6 decades. In this engaging tale a young man's mind is thrown forward in time to the end of days, though the use of a machine built by his fiancée's father. Four hundred million years in the future he inhabits the mind and body of the last human: a short white-furred pitiful creature, living under the thrall of a tall dark Martian, in a frozen, dying, world under attack from cold, gaseous beings called Ku-Latha. That's bad enough, but things don't go to plan with the experiment either, and the young man loses control and habitation of his present-day body. I'm not sure it makes complete sense, but some latitude generally has to be applied to SF stories of this era if you're to enjoy them.
The Demon of the Flower - Clark Ashton Smith
This short story, by the famed author Clark Ashton Smith, sits here in Astounding Stories as a bit of a misfit. It's written with Smith's dense, wordy, almost archaic language, heavy with other-worldly description, low on action, but steeped in evocative weirdness. If you like Smith, I'm sure it would appeal. Its a fantasy, set on another planet. A king must regularly offer a sacrifice to a demonic flower in his kingdom, but when the next victim is his betrothed he seeks a way out. It's very good, though one does have to switch gears from the pace and style of the preceding stories to enjoy it fully.
I'll be going on the read the next "thought-variant" story shortly and will post on Wandrei's contribution to the project in due course.
Anyone else have any thoughts on thought-variant stories or the authors and stories here, specifically?
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