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Harry Bates started Astounding Stories of Super-Science in January 1930 with only a vague idea of what Science Fiction was. He hadn’t written any yet (though he would pen classics like “Farewell to the Master” after leaving the editorship). He relied on his authors knowing what they were doing, many of which had written SF for Argosy such as F. Van Wyck Mason. (Ray Cummings, Murray Leinster, Victor Rousseau could all be consider veterans of this genre.) Arthur J. Burks, Charles W. Diffin and S. P. Meek were new but gaining ground quickly in Astounding. What lured them all was Bates’ budget that allowed the magazine to pay two cents a word at a time when most SF Pulps paid less than a penny. It was good money while it lasted, until mid-1933 when the Clayton Pulp chain went belly up. During those three and a half years, Astounding produced a number of serialized novels and novella, some reaching a level of some fame. None are classics that survived the Golden Age that was coming in 1938, but a few did get a second life as ACE Doubles in the 1950s.
Personally, I find all of Bates’ Science Fiction a ton of fun. You don’t get the long diatribes of Hugo Gernsback or the dullness of the 1950s. This is early SF with an intention to entertain, not preach or bore. Sure there’s plenty of Pulp cheese but there is also action and color and excitement. The serials were perhaps a little more sedate than the stories but they still have plenty of pluck. Harry Bates demanded that SF meet a least the same level of writing quality as a Western. (That may sound like a low-bar but read some Westerns and you’ll see it is not.) The Clayton Astounding added a much needed drive to entertain that early SF under Gernsback, Sloane and Wright was missing.
1930
“The Beetle Horde” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, January February 1930) by Victor Rousseau begins with an expedition to the South Pole. The explorers are sucked into a vortex that is filled with giant beetles. The beetles are intelligent and keep an unknown race of humans for slaves and food. The beetles are controlled by a lost scientist, Bram, who has plans for world conquest using the Beetle Horde!
“Brigands of the Moon” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March April May June 1930) by Ray Cummings has the Terrans and Martians jockeying to take a large radium deposit from the Moon. Gregg Haljan, Third Officer of the Planetara is our hero. Haljan is forced by Martian marauders to pilot the ship to the Moon but crashes. Cummings ends the novel with a space battle between the planets. This novel was made into an ACE Double in 1958.
“Murder Madness” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May June July August 1930) by Murray Leinster has a South American genius, who calls himself The Master, invent a drug that increases brain power but also causes insanity as it wears off. South America falls to the Master’s plan “to take over the world!” but an American agent brings him down. Very similar to the kind of stuff he was doing for Argosy and may have been meant for that magazine when Bates showed up offering two cents a word.
“Earth, the Marauder” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, July August September 1930) by Arthur J. Burks supposes an intriguing idea. Earthmen as invaders! Humanity is overpopulated because of immortality. No one dies and there is little room left. The Earth masses decide to usurp the Moon. The lunar inhabitants resist, with a battle in space with help from Mars. Two Earth heroes are meant to be executed by radiation and evolve into super-beings. They lead Earth to victory and new colonies on the Moon and Mars. Burks’ politics may be a little distasteful these days.
“Jetta of the Lowlands” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, September October November 1930) by Ray Cummings has new countries created when the oceans dry up. One such country is Nareda, with its lowlands where Jetta comes from. The plot is pretty pedestrian stuff with mercury smugglers and cops. Jetta is a sixteen year-old beauty who becomes the hero’s gal.
“The Pirate Planet” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November December 1930 January February 1931) by Charles W. Diffin begins with Venus invading earth, dropping poisonous gas on its cities. Lt. McGuire is kidnapped by the Venusians but discovers the true Venusians are a super-race and the bad guys are descendants of rats. McGuire manages to phone home and sends the army to an inventor who builds a space fleet for Earth. You can guess the ending.
1931
“Phalanxes of Atlans” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February March 1931) by F. Van Wyck Mason has a sunken land at the North Pole. The hero goes there to rescue a captured friend. Atlans is peopled by redheaded Atlanteans and a lost race of Hebrews. (Mason’s anti-semitism is distasteful, making the Jarmuthians worshipers of Moloch and cannibals.) There are dinosaurs, at least.
“The Exile of Time” (Astounding Stories, April May June July 1931) by Ray Cummings is a time travel tale with a crazed madman using robots to invade New York. This one is interesting for its use of a robot as a central character. Adam Link was popular over at Amazing Stories at this time. For more on this story, go here.
“Brood of the Dark Moon” (Astounding Stories, August September October November 1931) by Charles W. Diffin is a sequel to “Dark Moon” (Astounding Stories, May 1931). Harkness and his friends are kidnapped by the villain of the previous story. They are taken to the second satellite, the Dark Moon. The boys must rescue Diane from all the giant bug monsters there. She defeats the villain by coming of age and firing him from the company! This story was followed by another sequel, “The Finding of Haldgren” (Astounding Stories, April 1932).
“Giants of the Earth” (Astounding Stories, November December 1931) by S. P. Meek has the Jovians taking over Earth. The Terran rebels against Glavour, the Jovian ruler, plan to go to Mars for weapons. The Jovians have not been able to conquer Mars because of their weaponry, which the humans get. They thrown down the Jovians. Like Meek’s “Submicroscopic”, this one has plenty of Edgar Rice Burroughs appeal.
1932
“The Mind Master” (Astounding Stories, January February 1932) by Arthur J. Burks is a longer sequel to “Manape the Mighty” (Astounding Stories, June 1931). In the first tale, the hero, Lee Bentley, and heroine, Ellen Estabrook, end up on an island where an insane scientist is putting human brains into gorilla. Lee has his brain transplanted then undone. The sequel sees the mad scientist, Professor Barton, bring his science to New York City. Bentley must return to an ape body to stop him from his crusade of terror.
“Wandl, the Invader” (Astounding Stories, February March 1932) by Ray Cummings is a sequel to Brigands of the Moon. It also got an ACE Double. Gregg Haljan is back but as a policeman. He and his pals investigate the criminal Set Molo, who has been plotting with the inhabitants of a newly arrived moon, Wandl. This moon is actually a space station equipped with powerful tractor beams that will pluck planets out of the Solar System. It is up to Haljan and friends to get on board and destroy the tractor equipment. The Star Wars parallels are striking. Was there ever a more Star Wars named as Set Molo?
Astounding went bi-monthly with June 1932. This was the beginning of the end. Bates also had to drop his two cent rate before it was over in 1933. Despite the longer break between issues, he did not change his serial policy, taking eight months for the next tale.
“Two Thousand Miles Below” (Astounding Stories, June September November 1932 January 1933) by Charles W. Diffin has a drilling project in Nevada taken over by mole men. The invasion is on as flame-throwing, heat-ray armed troglodytes take over the state. Airplanes and ground troops fail. Rawson, a human engineer, is taken captive and discovers another race, The People of the Light, living in an utopia underground. Using poison gas from the Light People, Rawson leads a counter-attack that saves everyone. Very similar plot to “The Pirate Planet’ with the same deus ex machina savior.
Conclusion
The Clayton Astounding would end in early 1933 but F. Orlin Tremaine would resurrect it months later. Tremaine would avoid serials for the first few issues but by December 1933 he would use Charle W. Diffin’s “Land of the Lost”, an Edgar Rice Burroughs style lost world tale that clearly followed in the Clayton tradition. Tremaine did not feel bound by anything Bates had done in his new version of Astounding, so in 1934 he would serialize Jack Williamson’s classic The Legion of Space in six parts and The Skylark of Valeron by Edward E. Smith in seven. Bates never went over four sections in his serials. (The first two parts would get double splash illos with the rest receiving only single panel art.)
Neither Bates nor Tremaine invented the SF serial, since Hugo started those from the very first issue of Amazing Stories in April 1926 with Jules Verne’s Off On a Comet in two parts. Serials had been a publishing tradition long before Pulps came along so even Gernsback wasn’t an originator. Magazine had been serializing novels well back into the 1800s.
What intrigues me is how the serial shaped the form of an SF story. An editor does not simply slice a novel into four parts mathematically. The magazine reader expects some kind of minor climax at the end of each segment. It was this lack that kept H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Shadow Over Innsmouth” (Weird Tales, January 1942) out of print for so long. (There was no logical spot to cut the tale. In the end, August Derleth edited it down and it appeared in one issue.) A good Pulp novelist keeps this in mind the same way television writers used to create with the commercial breaks in mind. You can feel the format when you read the novel in a paperback later.
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