This post is brought to you by Ships of Steel, a new anthology of Space Opera novellas in the Swords of Fire tradition. This new book features “The Hidden Heart” by G. W. Thomas. It is the longest story about Sudana & Zaar to date. Their earlier adventures can be found in Whispers of Ice and Sand. This exciting adventure begins with Sudana infiltrating a pirate base on Brandt’s Planet. She is searching for a clue to the lost treasure of Old Bill Clanton, the pirate king. She finds it in the form of a silvery android she names Todd. After escaping the pirates, the crew of the Boudicca are in for a betrayal that will take them to an unknown planet and Old Bill’s deadly secret.
A professional Science Fiction writer in the 1940s was a scarce thing. To write only in that genre meant a life of scant reward. You had to write Westerns or detective stories or shockers for the Shudder Pulps, something to keep the wolf from the door. Unless you were already dead, a ghost existing in an ethereal world of make believe. Paul Dennis Lavond was such a creature.
The only thing harder to find than a writer who lived on SF, was one who worked for incredibly low rates. This was Frederik Pohl’s challenge as editor of Astonishing Stories. Robert A. W. Lowdnes had the same problem over at Future. The good news was these editors were members of Science Fiction clubs (we won’t name them because they had a way of changing and morphing and factioning). It was possible to call on members of the Science Fiction League or the Futurians or whatever to offer their rejects, their dregs, their first attempts. That filled some pages, but sometimes– like in April 1941 for some reason–there were no scraps to be found. Then you had to write them yourself, or with a friend. But who gets the credit? The editor can’t have his name on the piece…. Enter Paul Dennis Lavond.
The first use of the name was a poem in John W. Campbell’s Unknown. Robert A. W. Lowdnes didn’t want to use his real name for some reason. “Lurani” (Unknown, February 1940) This one isn’t a collab. RAWL may have been flirting with the idea of writing poetry under another name. The poem talks of a woman of the sea, who is sexy but evil. The narrator is charmed by her but knows some day she will strangle him in his sleep.
Lowdnes remembered the pseudonym when he wrote “The Thing in the Pit” on his own for Spaceways, October 1940. So much for poetry! This fanzine is very obscure so I have no idea what the story is about.
But it was “Callistan Tomb” (Science Fiction Quarterly, Spring 1941) that really got things going when Cyril Kornbluth, Bob Lowdnes and Fred Pohl collaborated on their first Lavond. It’s hard to say who did what on these stories, though I think Fred was the last to go since he edited. This story is familiar in that it is about men trapped in a collapsed mine. What makes it an SF story is that the Callistan miners are gathering radium for medicine back on Earth where a plague is killing millions. Once the men realize they are doomed, Foley decides to open his lamp and ignite all the radium in the moon. This will be disastrous for the plague victims back home. The rest of miners manage to get rescued and a team is sent to fetch Foley before he can blow everything up.
“A Prince of Pluto” (Future Fiction, April 1941) was Kornbuth & Pohl this time. Lowdnes was happy to just be editor. This humorous tale stars Vernon Etsel, a middle-management smuck. He gets turned down for a promotion and goes on a bender at at futuristic Coney Island. He ends up sending a man to his death but saves him. This wins him the friendship of a stranger, Prince Gapatak Heig Itziz Heig Mamarat Heig Heig Nenlyok Heig Itz-Killikut of Pluto.
When the prince shows up at work, Etzel is instantly promoted but the prince is kidnapped and it is up to Etzel to save him again. The story ends with the prince setting up a gold corporation on Earth with Etzel in charge. It is all meant to be funny but I find these kinds of humorous SF tales dull. Robert Bloch wrote many of them about Left Feep, for instance.
“Exiles of New Planet” (Astonishing Stories, April 1941) is another trio story with Kornbluth, Lowdnes & Pohl. Earth has despotic control of the Solar System. A group of rebels use a newly arrived planet as a getaway from the rule of the tyrants. This one feels very much a Kornbluth piece with its political edge. The serial When Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer was a huge event back in September-December 1933 in the pages of Blue Book. The gimmick feels borrowed from that piece.
“The Doll Master” (Stirring Science Stories, April 1941) has Lowdnes working on his own again. A set of paper dolls get a fake voodoo ritual cast on them. But when one doll falls in water, the man it represents goes for a dive in a pond. And when a cocktail party tuns to a game of Murder…. Not a Science Fiction tale but more like something from Weird Tales. Maybe an Unknown rejection?
“Something From Beyond” (Future, December 1941) has a new trio with Lowdnes, Pohl & Dirk Wylie joining the fun. Three spacemen are found dead, frozen in some strange manner. We read the loge of the captain, Wallace Grey, to learn that a copy of the Song of Yste, an occult book belonging to the captain, was stolen. It has been taken by crewman Orloff who has been acting strangely since a trip outside the ship for repairs. Orloff is found frozen before the creature from beyond comes for the other two. This Lovecraftian piece is clearly a spacebound Cthulhu Mythos tale featuring mention of Lovecraftian’s great old ones. It reminds me a little of my own space Mythos tale, “Black Sun” (Nightscapes, April 1998). I love that the illos was done by two of the greats from Weird Tales, too.
“Einstein’s Planetoid” (Science Fiction Quarterly, Spring 1942) was Kornbluth, Lowdnes & Pohl again. No Dirk. Hartnett goes in search of his father who was lost with the Orion on the First Hartnett Expedition. He, along with other relatives of lost crewmen, find the ship after a long search on the planet Hastur. Only Hartnett Sr. has survived because the planet has strange radiations that have killed the others. Like the original ship, the Columbia can not pull off the surface of the planet due to its terrific attraction. Only a newer form of rocket fuel and a good understanding of Einstein’s theories gets them away.
The choice of Hastur is a nice Lovecraftian name for a terrible planet but the story is really a puzzle tale, with a smart solution to a strange problem. This should have been a winner with John W. Campbell (who no doubt rejected it).
“Star of the Undead” (Fantasy Book, Vol 1, No. 2, 1947) has Lowdnes, Pohl & Dirk Wylie is back and so is the Horror. Devlin is a spaceship pilot who is wondering what has happened to the Stark. On a routine patrol, the ship has disappeared. When it shows up, it appears lifeless. Devlin, in the Quirinus, goes to rescue the derelict. At the last second the Stark turned and collides with the rescuers. The Stark is ruined and a man without a spacesuit appears outside the ship! He is dead but has a swarm of glowing lights around his head.
The undead man comes aboard and causes the Quirinus to crashland on the planet of Langell’s Star. Devlin manages to land without too much destruction but he finds most of his friends have been killed. They have been attacked by a giant snake-like alien made of sparkling lights. Devlin is the last man as the alien snakes take over. He kills the one that attacks him using the Guissot Convertor, the machine that makes hyperspace possible. Defeating the aliens, he returns to Earth alone.
More shades of Lovecraft here with a plot that could have been an Alien film. (That 1979 movie wasn’t really that new, though it felt like it back then.) This one reminds me of Frank Belknap Long’s “The Stellar Vampires” (Science Fiction, July 1943). Too bad Hannes Bok didn’t illustrate it.
“The Mantle of Graag” (Crypt of Cthulhu, Michaelmas 1988) The last of their collabs was not used and ended up in Robert Price’s small press magazine, Crypt of Cthulhu, easily forty years later. The trio of Lowdnes, Pohl & Dirk Wylie wrote this one–not sure when– but never used it in any Pulp. Perhaps the editors had moved on or they simply felt it too poor to publish. I’m afraid I don’t have this one yet, either, so we can only guess what it reads like.
Conclusion
These authors kept the secret of Lavond’s actual origins during the days of Astonishing and Future but were honest about their collaborations later on. It was possible for a young reader to have said that Paul Dennis Lavond was their favorite SF writer for that busy period in 1941-42, though I don’t know that anyone ever did. I think most of the readers of these cheap magazines knew that pseudonyms and editor-written stories were prevalent. J. W. Pelkie (Ray A. Palmer), Martin Pearson (Donald A. Wollheim), James MacCreigh (Fred Pohl), Mallory Kent (Robert A. W. Lowdnes), Owen Fox Jerome (Oscar J. Friend), Stephen Grendon (August Derleth), Carter Sprague (Sam Merwin Jr.) and Anthony Gilmore (Harry Bates and Desmond W. Hall) are some of the other editor-writers of the SF Pulps. Sadly, many of the house names in all the Pulps were actually underling sub-editors who had to pound out stories in many genres to fill magazine holes at short notice. Their credits will never be known. At least Paul Dennis Lavond never had to write a Western.
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