If you missed the last one…
This post is brought to you by Ships of Steel, a new anthology out at the end of the month. Using the Swords of Fire formula, this volume is for Space Opera and adventure SF fans. This gathering of novellas begins with “Rolling Stone” by M. D. Jackson, the first secret agent Steele story. (Jackson has already written a sequel that will show up in Ships 2). G. W. Thomas brings Sudana and Zaar back to fight space pirates in “The Hidden Heart”. (Their previous adventures can be found in Whispers of Ice and Sand.) T. Neil Thomas creates the fascinating world of JoJo Station, a gigantic sphere near Juipter. And working in the lower decks is Gideon Stormcrow, a man with a mission to find a stolen child. And finally, Jack Mackenzie offers us a prequel to his novel, The Mask of Eternity, in “The Price of Redemption” with Solis DeLacy a lowly grunt sent to work on an alien ship. This leads to a strange conflict that can only end in galactic war.
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In the 1930s, we had early SF writers using asteroids for all kinds of locations for stories. That hasn’t changed in the 1940s, though a newer sense of sophistication is growing. Some of the authors are the same with Edmond Hamilton, Manly Wade Wellman and Ray Cummings appearing again, though most are new writers like Leigh Brackett and Malcolm Jameson. We are now in John W. Campbell’s Golden Age, though only one story here is from Astounding Science-Fiction. Much more frequent are Ray A, Palmer’s Amazing Stories and Malcolm Reiss’s Planet Stories, both markets that sold to younger readers or those with an adventure bent. What has really changed?
1940
“Asteroid” (Astonishing Stories, February 1940) by Lee Gregor (Milton A. Rothman) begins on the planetoid Ansen where a mysterious asteroid brings monster death in the form of a radioactive sludge.
“Treachery on Planetoid 41” (Amazing Stories, June 1940) by Floyd Gale has an asteroid that is only big enough for one. Can a good man kill to survive?
“Asteroid H-227” (Planet Stories, Summer 1940) by Harry Walton has the pirate Akars aboard the Cinnabar and a fated crash with Asteroid H-227. Too bad he didn’t know what that ‘H’ stood for.
“The Prospectors of Space” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, September 1940) by Malcolm Jameson has Neil Allen join the space corp and a ship called The Klondike. His bonanza is about to be stolen by space pirates.
“Murder Asteroid” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1940) by Edmond Hamilton is a short two-pager from Hamilton, that came right out of an adventure magazine about gold miners.
“Exit From Asteroid 60” (Planet Stories, Winter 1940) by D. L. James has strange things happening on the asteroid Echo near Mars. A new Martian invention may be behind the events!
1941
“The Fate of Asteroid 13” (Amazing Stories, May 1941) by William P. McGivern has Philip Trent, secret agent, off to Asteroid 13 to rescue innocents from Big Bill Murdock. Only a desperate ploy can save them, of course.
“Old Fireball” (Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1941) by Nat Schachner brings the fight over a mine claim into space. No laser guns fights, just good old-fashioned conniving. This is the first of the Space Lawyer stories.
“The Devil’s Asteroid” (Comet Stories, July 1941) by Manly Wade Wellman has MMW returning to a favorite idea of Edmond Hamilton’s: Reverse Evolution. Landing on this rock could turn you into a caveman! (See “The Horror on the Asteroid” and Star Trek.)
“Mystery on Planetoid 10” (Amazing Stories, July 1941) by James Norman has a strange planetoid filled with winged Soors and jungle forests, then it all withered before their eyes!
“No Man’s Land in Space” (Amazing Stories, July 1941) by Leigh Brackett is part of Brackett’s solar system. Sark is pirate haven but when war between the planets comes, old allegiances are remembered.
“The Secret of Planetoid 88” (Amazing Stories, December 1941) by Ed Earl Repp has Dane Cabot, one of the oppressed under a dictator, find a secret in space. On an asteroid near Jupiter is the power to overthrow the evil one. That publication date is interesting. All the stories after this will be influenced by the War.
1942
“Monster of the Asteroid” (Planet Stories, Winter 1941-42) by Ray Cummings has a prison rock filled with Physicals (robots) and human slaves ruled by a one-eyed semi-solid nightmare.
“Asteroid of the Damned” (Planet Stories, Summer 1942) by Dirk Wylie (with Frederik Pohl) offers us the “sin asteroid” of Pallas where Mac turns junk into jewels.
“Einstein’s Planetoid” (Science Fiction Quarterly, Spring 1942) by Paul Dennis Lavond (C. M. Kornbluth, Robert A. W. Lowdnes and Frederik Pohl) has a second ship looking for the lost Hartnett expedition. The asteroid Hastur proves the villain. (The choice of Hastur for the name is nice Lovecraftian bit.)
Conclusion
These stories feature many of the same elements that the 1930s tales have: space pirates, lost gold mines, asteroids with strange lifeforms. What has changed is perhaps less definable. The confidence of the authors seems stronger to me, with a decade or more of practice and inspiration. For example, Manly Wade Wellman refers to shows on television. This is in 1941 when television was still seven years away. The mention is not germane to the over-all plot but Wellman doesn’t need to stop and explain like they did (including himself) in the old Hugo Gernsback days. There would have been a half page on TV. Wellman throws it off and keeps going. This is the future for SF. Certain ideas are well established, like space flight, robots, time travel, invisibility, etc. and don’t need to be explained every time. This trend tended to make SF seem like”that crazy Buck Rogers stuff” that Mundanes could not understand. An inherent vocabulary or background understanding, while alluring to young fans, created a wall of division for most mainstream readers. (I am too young to have experienced this myself but I did see a similar thing happen in the 1970s with Role-Playing Games.) This is the ghetto that later SF writers would cry about.
Next time 1943-1949
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