Otto was no artist, though he did show an affinity for music when he took up playing the accordion. Another of his pastimes—shared by his brother Earl—was playing cards. Pinochle and bridge were his favorites.
He was also keenly interested in the world of ideas and science. He attended Schurz High School on Milwaukee Avenue, named after German-born American journalist and political leader Carl Schurz. Otto’s affinity for science was reflected in top grades in biology and chemistry. He also got As in English, and was on the staff of the school paper, the Schurz High Weekly, where several of his stories saw print. He had enough credits to graduate from high school a semester early, in February 1929.
At eighteen, Otto Binder had reached his full height, topping out at five feet nine inches. He was slim, weighing only a hundred and forty pounds, and was quite handsome. Otto had a puckish smile and dark wavy hair. His eyes were hazel. The light irises around his pupils made them especially striking.
Unfortunately, it was his bad luck to graduate from school just as the nation’s economy was on the brink of disaster. The number of investors buying stock on margin (credit) had led to a bull market, but by spring of 1929, signs of instability were in evidence. Later that year came Black Tuesday, when the bottom fell out. The Great Depression, a period of great economic hardship, engulfed the nation.
For a young man considering his future, choosing a career was a daunting prospect in those tough times. Otto, however, knew by now what he wanted to become: either a chemical engineer or a research scientist. He enrolled in City College of Chicago, and began working toward that goal in earnest. He even persuaded his mother to allow him to set up his own experimental laboratory in their basement, but later admitted that all he ever produced were a variety of noxious odors.
Otto also nurtured a passionate interest in astronomy. He read voraciously on the subject, and found a way to purchase a telescope. The discovery of a new planet in 1930—Pluto—must have been an important event for Binder, who dreamed of making his own discoveries in space someday.
Earl and Otto Binder avidly read each issue of Amazing Stories (under new ownership in 1929), and Hugo Gernsback’s newly launched Science Wonder Stories when it joined Amazing on the newsstands. In an autobiography that appeared in the amateur fan journal Fantasy Magazine in 1936, written in dialogue form, the brothers discussed how they decided to try their hands at science fiction writing:
Earl: Pursuing the topic of how we happened to start writing, remember that evening you and I had just finished reading a copy of Amazing Stories, and got to talking about writing inspiring stuff like that? I think that was when it all started.
Otto: Right you are, Earl. That was in the winter of 1930. That same evening, all steamed up about it, we dashed out a plot, and even wrote a page or so. That was the story “The First Martian.” We used the locale of our old hometown up in Michigan. We brought in the town of Bessemer itself, the Black River in which you used to catch trout, and the Triple Bluffs where the town folks really had those picnics, just like in the story.5
The young writer (Otto) and artist (Jack) in their rooms in the family home in Chicago. Courtesy of the Julius Schwartz Collection.
Earl, whose previous writing had been restricted to love poetry, did his writing in longhand. Because he had learned English at an older age than his youngest brother, Earl’s grasp of syntax and sentence structure was lacking. Otto was not only more adept at English, but his experience on the high school newspaper had left him an expert—and fast—typist. Though they were a writing team, they decided to adopt a pen name rather than affix both of their names to each story.
Otto: I can still remember the day you came dashing up to my room and unfolded that name, formed by placing “and” between our two first-name initials. We tried to make a combination of our first names, but it wasn’t till you came up with Eando that we had something rational.6
Earl: But don’t ask me to explain how I thought of it. It just came to me out of the blue, like ideas for stories do.7
Eando Binder’s first story “The First Martian” appeared in Amazing Stories (October 1932).
Otto had never particularly wanted to be a writer, but he would do anything to try to earn some extra money. Not that the pulps paid much, often no more than one-quarter to one-half cent per word, and that was usually upon publication, or even later. They learned that lesson when their first story, “The First Martian,” was accepted for publication in Amazing.
The brothers rejoiced. They were on their way! Or so they thought … until issue after issue of the magazine appeared without their opus. It didn’t see print until 1932, and the brothers weren’t paid their quarter-cent-a-word until two years after that. While they gnashed their teeth with each succeeding issue of Amazing Stories that didn’t include their story, they were nevertheless encouraged to keep writing.
The only illustration accompanying Earl and Otto Binder’s first professional fiction sale, “The First Martian.” Art by Morey. ™ & © respective copyright holders.
Finally, the issue with their tale arrived (October 1932, Vol. 7, No. 7). The cover-featured story was “Space-Rocket Murders” by Edmond Hamilton. “The First Martian” was buried in the back. The first published work of Eando Binder began, “The American people have never clamored for a true, detailed account of the arrival of the First Martian. Yet the event, unheralded and unprecedented though it was, was one of the most important occurrences in human history.”
“The First Martian” is not a good story. The point of view shifts in a confusing way, and there is really no narrative. Large portions are simply a young Otto Binder showing off his incipient knowledge of chemical engineering. From a biographer’s standpoint, however, a couple of interesting points jump out: the Martians land in Bessemer, Michigan, and the scientists in the story are German. Also, there is a scene with UFOs, a subject that would fascinate Otto later in life. Still, one wonders why Amazing Stories bought “The First Martian.”
Maybe editor T. O’Conor Sloane, PhD, was impressed by the amount of pure science writing in it. Oddly, editor Sloane—who was about eighty years old at this time—didn’t believe space travel would ever be possible, yet he was producing a magazine that seemed dedicated to that notion.
The brothers’ second story, “85 and 87,” was also accepted by Amazing (appearing in the October 1934 issue). It represents a distinct improvement over their first. The title refers to two new elements that have been discovered by an eccentric scientist who uses one of them to develop a super-lens for a telescope that can give close-up views of Venus. When the professor demonstrates it to a group of scientists,
Exclamations of amazement fell from the lips of these famous men as they viewed scene after scene of Venus, twenty-seven million miles away. At various times the mist which covers the surface of the planet was broken to reveal scenes of trackless jungles, cities that towered high into its atmosphere, great cylinder-like air ships that traversed the spaces at terrific speeds.8
At the tale’s end, the scientist realizes that his assistant Karl has used all known quantities of the second new element to power a space ship to Venus. “Somehow, sometime—in the years to come—he felt that through his efforts he would see or hear of Karl. To that end, with undying hope, he labored.”
Though Otto and Earl sold their first two submissions, many subsequent manuscripts met with rejection, including an ambitious 130,000-word serial. “We toiled and sweated blood over that damned thing,” Earl recalled. “What a blow when Science Wonder, in rejecting it, commented that it seemed as though the first half of the story had nothing to do with the last half. The editor said if the first half was thrown away, and the second half condensed to 40,000, he’d like to see it again.”9 The brothers reluctantly made the cuts, only to have the shorter version also rejected.
Otto Binder, one-half of “Eando Binder.”
Photograph courtesy of the Julius Schwartz Collection.
Earl Binder, Eando’s o
ther half.
Photograph courtesy of the Julius Schwartz Collection.
Soon afterward, the brothers sold “The Moon Mines” and “Murder on the Asteroid” to Science Wonder. “Then a little later, when Charles D. Hornig became editor of Wonder, we were able to hit their market quite regularly,” Earl recalled, “through the exchange of many letters regarding their requirements.”10
In 1932, Otto was forced to put his higher education on hold. “I went to college for two and a half years, then had to get a job because the family was in danger of losing the house during the Depression,” he recalled. “I wanted to be a chemical engineer … but those hopes gradually eroded away. Things got so bad, the college I was going to went bankrupt!”11
Otto worked at any kind of job—clerk, office boy, salesman—making at most forty-five dollars a month. “Earl was in even worse shape. He was married and had a daughter, and no job. A single want ad in the newspaper would draw a thousand men. All over the city they would stand in long lines, waiting all day for a job. Earl was finally hired in an iron works. I remember it because he described it so vividly. He’d say, ‘All day long I forge, weld, and hammer those damn chains—miles of chains—for $14 a week!’”12 Earl and his wife Ruth lived at 3636 North Luna, just a few houses away from his parents’ home. He continued at the iron foundry, and over the next decade, fathered a total of five children.
Manuscripts under the Eando Binder byline continued to be produced, though Otto’s role became the greater one as time progressed. While Earl contributed less, Otto persisted, working late into the night, and gradually Eando began building up a good reputation in the pulps. They began selling on a regular basis. Plus, the younger Binder’s creative progress was being aided to a significant degree by one of the most dynamic, successful literary figures of the day.
3.
CONNECTIONS
Otis Adelbert Kline (OAK) was a colorful, larger-than-life individual who was first a songwriter and then broke into the pulps with stories in Weird Tales, as well as stories in the mystery, detective, and Western genres in the 1920s. A bit later, he began writing stories very much in the mold of Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB). Kline rivaled the creator of Tarzan for headlong plots, dynamic action, and a scarcity of character development. Like Burroughs, he wrote a Venus series (The Planet of Peril introduced his protagonist Robert Grandon) and a Mars series (Swordsman of Mars being the first), all originally serialized in Argosy in the late 1920s and early 1930s.
Writer E. Hoffmann Price wrote of his first impressions of Otis A. Kline when he met him at the Weird Tales office in 1926: “Though seven years and two days my senior—he was born July 1, 1891—and already showing signs of putting on weight, Otis [had] dark hair, ruddy-olive complexion, full-fashioned nose. His expression was open-faced, self-assured, hearty and cordial: a man who knew his way around, meeting life and the world with confidence and loving both.”13 Price goes on to describe an evening of dining and drinking at Kline’s house on 4333 Castello Avenue in Chicago, where at 3:00 a.m. Kline challenged him to a mock sword fight in his upstairs studio.
Otto Binder first met Otis Adelbert Kline at Chicago fan gatherings around the time “The First Martian” saw print in Amazing. The Binder and Kline homes were less than three miles apart as a crow flies, just a quick bus ride away. “Kline was a fascinating individual,” Otto said in a later interview. “He and E. Hoffmann Price and Seabury Quinn used to get together and dress up as Arabians. They had scimitars, and when he was in his cups, he’d pull out his sword and challenge them to a mock duel. He was a tremendous cook, especially of Arabian-type food.”14 Binder was invited to dine with Kline’s family often, so Otto could testify to Kline’s epicurean tendencies.
Otis Adelbert Kline. Copyright © 2016 by David Anthony Kraft.
It was OAK’s influence on Otto Oscar Binder (OOB) as a writer that left the deepest mark on the young man’s life. They helped each other with plots, and sometimes wrote in the same room. Otto told David Anthony Kraft, who became the agent for the OAK literary estate, “OAK did help me on various stories, and in fact was instrumental in helping me sell and become a professional. His facile mind, as keen as when he had written his famed Venus tales, battered down many a ‘plot block’ for me.
Argosy was the leading publication of popular adventure fiction when this August 2, 1930 issue, with Kline’s “Prince of Peril,” was published. ™ & © respective copyright holders.
“I have pleasant memories of a kindly man who could talk for hours and keep you spellbound,” Binder continued. “In my memory looms the genial and brilliant figure of Otis Adelbert Kline … a true gentleman in the fullest sense of the word.”15
In 1934, five more stories by Eando Binder appeared, including “The Green Cloud of Space,” “The Robot Aliens,” and “The Spore Doom.” There were also the long serials “Dawn to Dusk” and “Enslaved Brains.” Otto managed to save up enough extra money to attend a college course occasionally, at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago.
Meanwhile, the publication of Amazing Stories, with its letter column’s inclusion of full addresses, had facilitated contacts between its readers, which led to what came to be called science fiction fandom. The first true SF fanzine originated from a group of young New Yorkers. The Time Traveler #1 (1932) was edited by Allen Glasser, with a staff consisting of Julius Schwartz and Mortimer Weisinger.16 17 Issues #1 and #2 were mimeographed, with the first featuring a list by Forrest J. Ackerman of all the SF and “fantastic” movies. These marked Binder’s introduction—albeit on the printed page—to two people who would figure mightily in his future: Schwartz and Weisinger.
SF fandom historian Sam Moskowitz wrote in The Immortal Storm, “Weisinger was a jovial, rotund fellow, possessed of a slight lisp, who was later to make his mark as a columnist, author, literary agent and editor. By contrast Schwartz seemed sober, and was a steady person with a good sense of perspective.”18 Julie (as he was known to his friends) was a slim, bespectacled fellow with a dry sense of humor and a maturity beyond his years.
With issue #3, The Time Traveler was typeset and printed professionally by Conrad Ruppert, who was actually an editor for the publication before Schwartz. After nine issues, Ruppert, Schwartz, and Weisinger joined with Ackerman and others to start a brand new publication, Science Fiction Digest. Then, for its most long-lasting incarnation, they changed the name to Fantasy Magazine. These were the pioneer fanzines of early SF fandom. Otto Binder was a subscriber and avid reader.
Once they had broken into print, Otto and Earl became local wonders among the small but enthusiastic SF community, and were invited whenever Chicago fans gathered. At one of these early fan meetings, two young SF fans from Cleveland, Ohio, showed up. Their names were Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster.
Richard Lupoff, who would later count Otto Binder among his friends, wrote, “Otto was always friendly to fans, and told the story in later years of having met two young Midwesterners at a fan gathering in the 1930s, and suggesting a rough idea to them of a sort of interplanetary orphan with unusual powers. Siegel and Shuster … developed the idea into Superman.”19 While impossible to corroborate (both Siegel and Shuster have passed away), Otto’s story does ring true in at least one respect. We know that Jerry Siegel was in touch with just about all the leading figures in the newly forming science fiction fandom; therefore, it’s reasonable to believe that he corresponded with and/or met Otto Binder as early as 1932. (If Binder’s suggestion was adopted by Siegel, that doesn’t mean that Otto claimed or deserved credit as a co-creator of Superman. It merely means that he suggested some ideas that Siegel and Shuster wove into their evolving concept that became the Man of Steel.)
In 1934, Charles Hornig (editor of Wonder Stories) called for the formation of a national Science Fiction League (SFL). Sam Moskowitz, author of The Immortal Storm, the authoritative history of SF fandom’s first decade, deemed the SFL “more beneficial and important to fandom than any organization which prece
ded or followed it.”20 Chapters sprouted all over the United States.
“Undoubtedly the outstanding chapter of the time was that of Chicago,” Moskowitz wrote. “Authors and fans alike were represented on its roster, names such as Walter Dennis, Jack Darrow, William Dillenback, Harry Boosel, Florence Reider, Paul McDermott, Milton J. Latzer, Howard Funk, Neil de Jack, Al Fedor, and the three Binder brothers being prominent. The reports of their meetings printed in Wonder Stories eclipsed in interest those of all others. Moreover, they published an official organ called The Fourteen Leaflet which appeared regularly from November 1935 to the spring of 1937.”21 Otto was one of the executive directors of the Science Fiction League.
As stories under the Eando byline appeared with increasing frequency in the SF pulps, the authors began receiving a smattering of fan mail, as well as letters from prominent members of fandom. As early as 1933, Schwartz and Weisinger invited Eando Binder to contribute a chapter to Cosmos, a collaborative novel (done gratis) that teamed up eighteen authors, each writing a chapter running five to ten thousand words. The other authors included A. Merritt, E. E. “Doc” Smith, Ralph Milne Farley, Dr. David H. Keller, Otis Adelbert Kline, Arthur J. Burks, E. Hoffmann Price, P. Schuyler Miller, John W. Campbell, Jr., Edmond Hamilton, and Raymond A. Palmer, the top writers of the day.
In a letter to “Mr. Binder” in March 1934, Julius Schwartz asked if the author had any stories that he hadn’t been able to market, and offered to publish them in Fantasy Magazine. “Of course, we don’t pay for the stories,” Schwartz said, “but nevertheless it is better to see your ‘brain-children’ in print, no matter what type magazine, than to have them rot away in the back of some drawer.”22
Otto Binder: The Life and Work of a Comic Book and Science Fiction Visionary Page 4