The Best of Stanley G. Weinbaum Part 1

G. Stanley Weinbaum.

The Best of Stanley G Weinbaum.

The Second Nova.

THREE TIMES in the half-century history of magazine science fiction a new writer has burst into the field like a nova, cap-turing the imagination of the readers at once, altering the nature of science fiction and converting every other writer into an imitator. (Nor may there ever be a fourth time, for since 1939, when the third nova appeared, the field has surely grown too large and too diverse to be turned in its path by any single story by any new writer.) Let me tell you about the first and third novas, then, so that you can see the similarities between them and will have a better appreciation of the truly remarkable nature of the second and greatest of the three.

In the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories, at a time when magazine science fiction was only a little over two years old, there appeared the first installment of "The Skylark of s.p.a.ce," by Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins. It was E. E. Smith's first published science-fiction story.

For the first time in a science-fiction magazine, man was whirled off into the depths of interstellar s.p.a.ce, with all the Universe open before him. For the first time, the reader had the chance to visualize man as a creature of infinite capacity -man as G.o.d, almost.

The readers loved it. "The Skylark of s.p.a.ce" became a cla.s.sic at once, and other writers did their best to imitate it. The field was never the same again, and E. E. Smith was a demiG.o.d of science fiction for the remainder of his life.

E. E. Smith was the first nova.

In the August 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, there appeared the short story "Life-Line,"

by a new author, Robert A. Heinlein. It attracted attention at once for its low-keyed, naturalistic style, for the utter absence of histrionics or the cardboard att.i.tudes common in most science fiction.

The story did not, perhaps, instantly grab the readers and shake the field into a new form, for it was a little obscured by the nearly simultaneous appearance of the more spectacular and longer "Black Destroyer," by A. E. van Vogt, another new writer, in the July 1939 Astounding. But Heinlein con-tinued to write stories rapidly and Astounding continued to publish them. Within the year it became quite obvious that Robert A. Heinlein was the best living science-fiction writer.

Again readers demanded more, and again almost every writer in the field (including myself) began, more or less con-sciously and more or less thoroughly, to imitate Heinlein.

Robert A. Heinlein was the third nova.

In many ways, Smith and Heinlein were alike. Both, for instance, published their initial, attention-capturing pieces in what was at the time the foremost magazine in the field: Amazing published Smith's story, Astounding published Hein-lein's. (At the time of "The Skylark of s.p.a.ce," Amazing was, indeed, the only science-fiction magazine being published.) In both cases an important and seminal editor had created an exciting magazine within which the nova could show its l.u.s.ter to the full. It was Hugo Gernsback in Smith'

s case; John W. Campbell, Jr., in Heinlein's.

In neither case was the writer a born writer in the sense that he had been fiddling with pen and paper since he could toddle, had been submitting from the age of twelve and publis.h.i.+ng from the age of sixteen.

Both Smith and Heinlein had engineering backgrounds, and neither had any intention of becoming a professional writer until, more by accident than anything else, each discovered how "easy" writing was.

Both were past thirty when their first stories were published.In both cases, their fame was enduring. Each continued to produce for many years, so that there were always new stories to add to the canon and to their reputation in the hearts of new generations of readers.

The February 1948 issue of Astounding carried the fourth and last installment of "Children of the Lens," Smith'

s last important work. Twenty years after "The Skylark of s.p.a.ce," he was still read avidly.

As for Heinlein, he is writing and publis.h.i.+ng today, thirty-five years after the publication of his first story, and he has lost none of his reputation. In a recent fan-poll, he stilt fin-ished in first place as all-time favorite science-fiction writer.

The second nova appeared in 1934, just six years after Smith and just five years before Heinlein. In the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories, a short story ent.i.tled "A Martian Odyssey" appeared by a never-before-published writer, Stanley G. Weinbaum.

Observe the differences. At the time the story appeared, Wonder was not the foremost science-fiction magazine. It was, in my opinion, third in a field of three. Its publisher was indeed Hugo Gemsback, but Gernsback was no longer in the forefront of creative thinking in the field. The editor was Charles D. Hornig, who, in the history of science-fiction edit-ing, is utterly undistinguished and whose sole claim to fame, indeed, may be the recognition of the worth of this particular story.

Yet, hidden in this obscure magazine, "A Martian Odyssey had the effect on the field of an exploding grenade. With this single story, Weinbaum was instantly recognized as the world's best living science-fiction writer, and at once almost every writer in the field tried to imitate him.

The second nova differed in another important quality from the first and third.

Although E. E. Smith was a wonderful human being, beloved by all who knew him (including myself), the sad truth is that he was an indifferent writer, who developed only mod- erately with the years. Heinlein was a much better writer than Smith, but his first story, "Life-Line," is minor Heinlein and on no one's list of all-time great tales.

How different the case with "A Martian Odyssey." This story showed at once a writing skill as easy-flowing and as natural, not merely as Heinlein's, but as Heinlein's at its best. "A Martian Odyssey" is major Weinbaum.

In 1970, the Science Fiction Writers of America voted on the best science-fiction short stories of all time, and among those that proved the favorites "A Martian Odyssey" was the oldest. It was the first science-fiction story every published in the magazines to withstand the critical scrutiny of profession-als a generation later. And it did more than merely withstand the test. It ended up in second place.

Like Smith and Heinlein, Weinbaum was not a born writer. Like Smith and Heinlein, he had an engineering background (he was a chemical engineer, like Smith). Like Smith and Heinlein, his first story was published when he was over thirty.

And there the resemblance ends, for the tragic truth is that Weinbaum, even as he entered the field and became at once its leader, was a dying man.

On December 14, 1935, at the age of 33, and only one and a half years after the publication of his first story, Weinbaum died of cancer and his career was over. By the time of his death, he had published twelve stories; eleven more appeared posthumously.

Yet even without the advantage of decades of accomplish-ment and development, he remains alive in the memories of fans. Any new collection of his stories remains, and must remain, a major event in science fiction, Now what was most characteristic of Weinbaum's stories? What was it that most fascinated the readers? The answer is easy-his extra-terrestrial creatures.

There were, to be sure, extra-terrestrial creatures in science fiction long before Weinbaum. Even if we restrict ourselves to magazine science fiction, they were a commonplace. Yet before Weinbaum's time, they were cardboard, they were shad-ows, they were mockeries of life.

The pre-Weinbaum extra-terrestrial, whether humanoid or monstrous, served only to impinge upon the hero, to serve as a menace or as a means of rescue, to be evil or good in strictly human terms-never to be something in itself, inde- pendent of mankind.

Weinbaum was the first, as far as I know, to create extra-terrestrials that had their own reasons for existing.

He did more than that, too; he created whole sense-making ecologies.

Weinbaum had a consistent picture of the solar system (his stories never went beyond Pluto) that was astronomically correct in terms of the knowledge of the mid-1930s. He could not be wiser than his time, however, so he gave Venus a day-side and a night-side, and Mars an only moderately thin at-mosphere and ca.n.a.ls. He also took the chance (though the theory was already pretty well knocked-out at the time) of making the outer planets hot rather than cold so that the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn could be habitable.

On each of the worlds he deals with, then, he allows for the astronomic difference and creates a world of life adapted to the circ.u.mstances of that world. The super-jungle of the day-side of Venus as pictured in "Parasite Planet" is, in my opin-ion, the most perfect example of an alien ecology ever constructed.

In Weinbaum's stories, the plots, though tightly and well-constructed, exist in the reader's mind largely for the oppor-tunity they present for a voyage of discovery of strange worlds and of ever-fascinating life-forms.

Of all his life-forms, the most fascinating perhaps are Tweel, the pseudo-ostrich in "A Martian Odyssey," and Oscar, the intelligent plant in "The Lotus Eaters." In both cases, Weinbaum met the challenge of a demand John Campbell was to make of his writers in later years: "Write me a story about an organism that thinks as well as a man, but not like a man." I don't think anyone has done it as well as Weinbaum in all the years since Weinbaum.

And what would have happened if Weinbaum had lived? It is likely, sad to say, that he would have left magazine science fiction for brighter, greener, and more lucrative fields.

Yet what if he had not? What if he had stayed in magazine science fiction over the years as some other major talents have, talents such as Arthur C. Clarke, Poul Anderson, and even Robert A. Heinlein?

In that case, there would never have been a "Campbell revolution," I think.

In 1938, when John Campbell took over complete control of Astounding, he turned the field toward greater realism and, at the same time, toward greater humanism-a double direc-tion he had himself marked out with his story "Twilight," which had appeared in the November 1934 Astounding. In so doing, he developed a stable of authors, including Heinlein, Van Vogt, and many others--myself for one.

But Weinbaum was a Campbell author before Campbell. "A Martian Odyssey" appeared half a year before "Twilight," so Weinbaum is clearly one author who owed nothing to Campbell. Had Weinbaum continued producing there would have been no Campbell revolution. All that Campbell could have done would have been to reinforce what would un-doubtedly have come to be called the "Weinbaum revolutions".

And in Weinbaum's giant shadow, all the Campbell authors would have found themselves less remarkable niches. Wein-baum, who would be in his early seventies now had he lived, would surely be in first place in the list of all-time favorite science-fiction writers.

Isaac Asmov.

A MARTIAN ODYSSEY.

Jarvis stretched himself as luxuriously as he could in the cramped general quarters of the Ares.

'Air you can breathe,' he exulted. 'It feels as thick as soup after the thin stuff out there!' He nodded at the Martian landscape stretching flat and desolate in the light of the nearer moon, beyond the gla.s.s of the port.

The other three stared at him sympathetically - Putz, the engineer, Leroy, the biologist, and Harrison, the astronomer and captain of the expedition. d.i.c.k Jarvis was chemist of the famous crew, the Ares expedition, first human beings to set foot on the mysterious neighbor of the earth, the planet Mars. This, of course, was in the old days, less than twenty years after the mad American Doheny perfected theatomic blast at the cost of his life, and only a decade after the equally mad Cardoza rode on it to the moon. They were true pioneers, these four of the Ares. Except for a half-dozen moon expeditions and the ill-fated de Lancey flight aimed at the seductive orb of Venus, they were the first men to feel other gravity than earth's, and certainly the first successful crew to leave the earth-moon system. And they deserved that success when one considers the difficulties and discomforts - the months spent in acclimatization chambers back on earth, learning to breathe the air as tenuous as that of Mars, the challenging of the void in the tiny rocket driven by the cranky reaction motors of the twenty-first century, and mostly the facing of an absolutely unknown world.

Jarvis stretched and fingered the raw and peeling tip of his frostbitten nose. He sighed again contentedly.

'Well,' exploded Harrison abruptly, 'are we going to hear what happened? You set out all s.h.i.+pshape in an auxiliary rocket, we don't get a peep for ten days, and finally Putz here picks you out of a lunatic ant-heap with a freak ostrich as your pal! Spill it, man!'

'Speel?' queried Leroy perplexedly. 'Speel what?'

'He means 'spiel',' explained Putz soberly. 'It iss to tell.'

Jarvis met Harrison's amused glance without the shadow of a smile. 'That's right, Karl,' he said in grave agreement with Putz. 'Ich spiel es!' He grunted comfortably and began.

'According to orders,' he said, 'I watched Karl here take off toward the North, and then I got into my flying sweat-box and headed south. You'll remember, Cap - we had orders not to land, but just scout about for points of interest. I set the two cameras clicking and buzzed along, riding pretty high - about two thousand feet - for a couple of reasons. First, it gave the cameras a greater field, and second, the under-jets travel so far in this half-vacuum they call air here that they stir up dust if you move low.'

'We know all that from Putz,' grunted Harrison. 'I wish you'd saved the films, though. They'd have paid the cost of this junket; remember how the public mobbed the first moon pictures?'

'The films are safe,' retorted Jarvis. 'Well,' he resumed, 'as I said, I buzzed along at a pretty good clip; just as we figured, the wings haven't much lift in this air at less than a hundred miles per hour, and even then I had to use the under-jets.

'So, with the speed and the alt.i.tude and the blurring caused by the under-jets, the seeing wasn't any too good. I could see enough, though, to distinguish that what I sailed over was just more of this gray plain that we'd been examining the whole week since our landing - same blobby growths and the same eternal carpet of crawling little plantanimals, or biopods, as Leroy calls them. So I sailed along, calling back my position every hour as instructed, and not knowing whether you heard me.'

'I did!' snapped Harrison.

'A hundred and fifty miles south,' continued Jarvis imperturbably, 'the surface changed to a sort of low plateau, nothing but desert and orange-tinted sand. I figured that we were right in our guess, then, and this gray plain we dropped on was really the Mare Cimmerium which would make my orange desert the region called Xanthus. If I were right, I ought to hit another gray plain, the Mare Chronium in another couple of hundred miles, and then another orange desert, Thyle I or II. And so I did.'

'Putz verified our position a week and a half ago!' grumbled the captain. 'Let's get to the point.'

'Coming!' remarked Jarvis. 'Twenty miles into Thyle - believe it or not - I crossed a ca.n.a.l!'

'Putz photographed a hundred! Let's hear something new!'

'And did he also see a city?'

'Twenty of 'em, if you call those heaps of mud cities!'

'Well,' observed Jarvis, 'from here on I'll be telling a few things Putz didn't see!' He rubbed his tingling nose, and continued. 'I knew that I had sixteen hours of daylight at this season, so eight hours - eight hundred miles - from here, I decided to turn back. I was still over Thyle, whether I or II I'm not sure, not more than twenty-five miles into it. And right there, Putz's pet motor quit!'

'Quit? How?' Putz was solicitous.

'The atomic blast got weak. I started losing alt.i.tude right away, and suddenly there I was with a thump right in the middle of Thyle! Smashed my nose on the window, too!' He rubbed the injured member ruefully.'Did you maybe try vas.h.i.+ng der combustion chamber mit acid sulphuric?' inquired Putz. 'Sometimes der lead giffs a secondary radiation-'

'Naw!' said Jarvis disgustedly. 'I wouldn't try that, of course - not more than ten times! Besides, the b.u.mp flattened the landing gear and busted off the under-jets. Suppose I got the thing working - what then? Ten miles with the blast coming right out of the bottom and I'd have melted the floor from under me!' He rubbed his nose again. 'Lucky for me a pound only weighs seven ounces here, or I'd have been mashed flat!'

'I could have fixed!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the engineer. 'I bet it vas not serious.'

'Probably not,' agreed Jarvis sarcastically. 'Only it wouldn't fly. Nothing serious, but I had the choice of waiting to be picked up or trying to walk back - eight hundred miles, and perhaps twenty days before we had to leave! Forty miles a day! Well,' he concluded, 'I chose to walk. Just as much chance of being picked up, and it kept me busy.'

'We'd have found you,' said Harrison.

'No doubt. Anyway, I rigged up a harness from some seat straps, and put the water tank on my back, took a cartridge belt and revolver, and some iron rations, and started out.'

'Water tank!' exclaimed the little biologist, Leroy. 'She weigh one-quarter ton!'

'Wasn't full. Weighed about two hundred and fifty pounds earthweight, which is eighty-five here.

Then, besides, my own personal two hundred and ten pounds is only seventy on Mars, so, tank and all, I grossed a hundred and fifty-five, or fifty-five pounds less than my everyday earthweight. I figured on that when I undertook the forty-mile daily stroll. Oh - of course I took a thermo-skin sleeping bag for these wintry Martian nights.

'Off I went, bouncing along pretty quickly. Eight hours of daylight meant twenty miles or more. It got tiresome, of course - plugging along over a soft sand desert with nothing to see, not even Leroy's crawling biopods. But an hour or so brought me to the ca.n.a.l - just a dryditch about four hundred feet wide, and straight as a railroad on its own company map.

'There'd been water in it sometime, though. The ditch was covered with what looked like a nice green lawn. Only, as I approached, the lawn moved out of my way!'

'Eh?' said Leroy.

'Yeah, it was a relative of your biopods. I caught one, a little gra.s.s-like blade about as long as my finger, with two thin, stemmy legs.'

'He is where?' Leroy was eager.

'He is let go! I had to move, so I plowed along with the walking gra.s.s opening in front and closing behind. And then I was out on the orange desert of Thyle again.

'I plugged steadily along, cussing the sand that made going so tiresome, and, incidentally, cussing that cranky motor of yours, Karl. It was just before twilight that I reached the edge of Thyle, and looked down over the gray Mare Chronium. And I knew there was seventy-five miles of that to be walked over, and then a couple of hundred miles of that Xanthus desert, and about as much more Mare Cimmerium.

Was I pleased? I started cussing you fellows for not picking me up!'

'We were trying, you sap!' said Harrison.

'That didn't help. Well, I figured I might as well use what was left of daylight in getting down the cliff that bounded Thyle. I found an easy place, and down I went. Mare Chronium was just the same sort of place as this - crazy leafless plants and a bunch of crawlers; I gave it a glance and hauled out my sleeping bag. Up to that time, you know, I hadn't seen anything worth worrying about on this half-dead world - nothing dangerous, that is.'

'Did you?' queried Harrison.

'Did I! You'll hear about it when I come to it. Well, I was just about to turn in when suddenly I heard the wildest sort of shenanigans!'

'Vot iss shenanigans?' inquired Putz.

'He says, 'Je ne sais quoi',' explained Leroy. 'It is to say, 'I don't know what'.'

'That's right,' agreed Jarvis. 'I didn't know what, so I sneaked over to find out. There was a racket like a flock of crows eating a bunch of canaries - whistles, cackles, caws, trills, and what have you. Irounded a clump of stumps, and there was Tweel!'

'Tweel?' said Harrison, and 'Tweel?' said Leroy and Putz.