Ten (Stories) to the Stars:
Another Collection of Short Fiction,
by Raymond Z. Gallun
Tom's eBooks June 2021 (c, ebook) - 109,100 words
Introduction, Tom Dean, (in) *
P.S.’s Feature Flash, (bg) Planet Stories Summer 1941
Meet the Authors: Raymond Z. Gallun, (bg) Amazing Stories June 1942
The Space-Dwellers, (ss) Science Wonder Stories Nov. 1929 - 6259
Avalanche, (ss) Astounding Dec. 1935 {as by "Dow Elstar"} - 3455
SFE3: basis for "Dawn of the Demigods", etc., unconfirmed
Terror Out of the Past, (nv) Amazing Stories March 1940 - 14590
Stepson of Space, (ss) Astonishing Stories Oct. 1940 - 5687
The Achilles Heel, (ss) Amazing Stories Nov. 1940 - 3093
Ten to the Stars, (na) Science Fiction Adventures March 1953 - 22030
Dawn of the Demigods [*Demigods], (na) Planet Stories Summer 1954 - 25287
later expanded, as People Minus X, Simon & Schuster 1957 / Ace 1958 - 52500
Trail Blazer, (ss) Fantastic Story Magazine Fall 1951 - 7218
A Step Farther Out, (nv) Super Science Stories March 1950 - 13225
Sort of Like Atlas, (ss) Astro-Adventures #7 April 1989 - 7007
Bonus Story:
Final Rite, (vi) Collier's Weekly July 6 1946 - 1294
Interview: Raymond Gallun, Jeffrey M. Elliot, (iv) Thrust #17 Summer 1981
Bibliography of Gallun collections
Contents:-
PS's Feature Flash
Meet the Authors:
The Space-Dwellers,
by Raymond Z. Gallun
Avalanche,
Terror out of the Past,
Stepson of Space,
The Achilles Heel,
Ten to the Stars,
Dawn of the Demigods,
Trail Blazer,
A Step Farther Out,
Sort of Like Atlas,
Final Rite,
INTERVIEW: RAYMOND GALLUN
Editors Note:
Introduction
Here's our third collection of short fiction from a long-neglected SF author, Raymond Z. Gallun. Perusal of the TOC will show a span of sixty years between the first story and the last. Sixty years! That is impressive as hell, ain't it?
We will probably be doing a fourth collection, but it will surely be a while. In the meantime, we've included two autobiographical sketches, as well as a lengthy 1981 interview conducted by Jeffrey Elliot.
Also included is Gallun's 1935 short story, "Avalanche." The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction claims that this story is the basis for "Dawn of the Demigods," et. al. Your editors can only see a marginal connection, at best....
Back to work....
Tom Dean
May 2021
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PS's Feature Flash
{from Planet Stories Summer 1941}
FLASHING you the highlights on one of the men you’ve met in the preceding pages — those cosmic-minded writers who help to nourish Planet Stories.
We liked "Invaders of the Forbidden Moon” so much, we thought it might be interesting to tackle Mr. Gallun for a short biography and a line or two on how he happened to hit upon his novel plot. Mr. Gallun crashed through beautifully with the following account of what makes him and his stories tick:
"Quite a few years ago a high school junior in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, wrote a science-fiction story for English comp. The story was The Crystal Ray. It sold for twenty-five bucks, lifted the writer’s ego into the rosy clouds, and started a habit which has given me plenty of ups and downs and pains in the neck, pulled me through the worst part of the depression, plus a period of ill-health, and has provided me with the freedom to visit some twenty of the United States, plus eleven foreign countries. It’s been worth it, I guess.
“My background is essentially Mid-West farm, glossed over, during those early years, with a lot of H. G. Wells, H. Rider Haggard, Jules Verne, Kipling, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the rest of them. Acquaintance with the people and places those boys wrote about made my childhood rather off-trail. Thus, when I should have been playing prosaic baseball with the rest of the kids, I was trying to learn Egyptian hieroglyphics, was building mud temples to Osiris in the neighbor’s marsh, or was out in the woods bellowing from the treetops, Tarzan fashion.
"A few words about the ‘Invaders of the Forbidden Moon.’ The story is an attempt to trace the future of science to its ultimate possibilities, and to point out some of the dangers that might turn up. Pure, physical science is one thing. Its relation to man, or to intelligences of any kind, whatever form they may take, is another. People must learn to adjust themselves to this future growth of science, which can benefit mankind, but which might very possibly ruin it, if an existing trend were carried too far. Ease and comfort provided by mechanical devices are nice things to have: but if psychologists are right, struggle of some kind is needed, too, otherwise weakness develops.
“Thus, there should always be new horizons. Perhaps science will constantly reveal them, always providing something to test human wits and energies. Maybe science will lead to a dead end of stagnation, where everything has been learned. Maybe evolution will produce a mental superman, who will know far better than we do how to limit supermachines, how to control himself, and how to handle coming trends. No one can say for sure what will happen.
"I try always to do a good job of work. There is nothing new in my hope that you will like the story."
— Raymond Z. Gallun.
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Meet the Authors:
Raymond Z. Gallun
{from Amazing Stories June 1942}
TWELVE years of it—a little better. Maybe that makes me an old-timer at science-fiction scribing. It wasn't a steady twelve-year job; it was interrupted a lot, sometimes by plot-paralysis, sometimes by necessary other jobs, sometimes by plain pessimism and laziness—I'll never get over the latter—sometimes by horizon-fever, personal upsets, and restlessness. But I always get myself back to trying. There are a lot of new writers, and I admire and envy them.
My own story begins quite a while ago. My mother was a poet in a minor way. There were always plenty of books around the house. The small Wisconsin farm where my family lived, had previously belonged to a teacher and inventor whom I never met, but whose personality was still somewhere around the place, cropping up every now and then in the form of a previously undiscovered bottle of chemical or part of a mysterious gadget, on some unexplored barn-rafter, or in the cellar, or in the various sheds. Maybe this sounds like storybook stuff, but it is nevertheless true. So perhaps I was haunted into my fate.
At least two of my kid-day mishaps nearly finished me. Once, when I was seven, I fell out of a tree, receiving internal injuries that were aggravated by the fact that I neglected to tell anybody about the incident. Two years later I broke the headlight out of a passing car—with my own head.
My favorite companion of those days was a brownish, smooth-haired mutt of about fifty pounds, who definitely didn't like anybody he didn't know. Both of us were kindredly shy of people, and both of us liked the woods.
I liked clay modeling. Once, for a hectic couple of months, I struggled to be a playwright. In my dialogue I used all the high-sounding adjectives I could find, and when I ran out I used them over. One of the plays was called "The Phantom Dahabeyeh," whatever that is.
During my sixteenth summer, under family pressure and outside razzing, I finally gave up the practice of going into town barefoot, and could be gotten into something besides overalls on Sundays. I began getting monthly haircuts, too, so that the bleached, albino-blond
stuff no longer crawled down into my collar. I was a big boy.
I already had a fairly well-established philosophy of life. I had decided that Ray Gallun was never going to be rich. "But what is the use of being rich, anyhow?" I argued. "Particularly when it's a personal impossibility? You couldn't think out a successful business deal to save your life. You hate bosses. You're irresponsible. You hate to get up in the morning."
I must confess that some of this philosophy has hung on with me through the years, modified by something which I wistfully call alarm-clock-glamor, which makes me feel like a damn lazy phony. Other people have frequently contributed to this opinion.
But there lingers that early stamp of flowers and fighting roosters at the farm, and the general leisurely movement of life. I've chased that mood around, here and there. Once I went to the University of Wisconsin for two semesters with only the vaguest of purposes—I liked the atmosphere. I know what it is like to sprawl on a tropic beach in the heat of January, and watch the vultures wheel over the mountains. I know what living in that little house under the palm-trees, overlooking the sea, is like. Wanderlust has permitted me to be within the borders of the United States ten months in the last four years.
I can look back to moments. There was the young chap who lived near the Surrey Docks in London, who took me all over the place, and his mother-in-law invited me and a couple of friends to tea that afternoon. There was the army doctor whose room I occupied in a quaint old house in Florence, Italy, when he was away on duty. There were the two little kids on the street in Munich, who started giving me the razzberry for eating oranges—evidently they considered it unbecoming a grown man. Of course I gave them the whole bag. And there was the red-headed girl at one little railroad station, who offered to make up the difference between what German money I had left, and the ninety pfennigs I needed to get to Kehl-Grenz and Strasbourg. And when I was writing "Terror Out Of The Past," in Paris, I helped a little Swiss hotel keeper carry bags of sand to the top floor. I wonder where he is, and how he is, now.
It's a funny, confusing, paradoxical world, particularly since, now, as I write this, the United States was treacherously attacked by Japan, almost exactly a week ago, to the minute. Our war with Hitler, and one of the worst regimes in history, is three days old.
The future? You tell me, and I'll tell you.—
Raymond Z. Gallun.
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The Space-Dwellers,
by Raymond Z. Gallun
Science Wonder Stories Nov. 1929
Short Story - 6259 words
OUR astronomers have always speculated as to the possibility of other worlds being inhabited. As a rule they base their assumption upon the facts that life as we know it cannot exist when the temperature falls below a certain degree or rises above a certain point. Having nothing to base their theories on, except what we know of terrestrial animal life, they cannot conceive that, after all, life may be possible at a temperature of absolute zero or even at a temperature above that of boiling water. Naturally, beings that could exist under such conditions would not be constituted in the same way as we are; but that does not preclude the possibility that there are in existence such beings right at this very minute.
As we all know, life is possible under the most adverse conditions and, as a rule, life will adapt itself to its environment. Thus, we have deep-sea fish that live under tons of pressure where scientists, fifty years ago, would have been certain life could not exist.
As we come to know our universe better and better, more surprising facts, such as illustrated by this story, will become known; and the impossible things of today will become the commonplace of tomorrow.
DOUGLAS BARCLAY had one characteristic for which he was remembered even after his disappearance. When he heard anyone denounce some apparently wild scientific theory or dream as being impossible, he had a habit of smiling a tolerant smile that, nevertheless, seemed to be tinged with a hint of pity or even contempt. All through his short but brilliant career he refused to tie himself down to any fixed standard of distinguishing possible from impossible. His imagination seemed completely elastic. It is partly because of this, that his friends who read the last letter that he wrote, have never ceased to be puzzled. They simply can’t believe what he wrote to be true. Yet there is his sudden disappearance—but let’s go on with the story.
It all happened on the night of July 17th and the early morning of July 18th 1941, when Hanley’s “false comet” approached its closest to the earth. The “false comet” was that queer marauder from outer space that broke all the rules of comets and acted always as though directed by some intelligent entity. It lost speed rapidly as it raced into the solar system, directed its tail straight toward the sun, and neglected entirely to swing around that body and to hurtle back from whence it came; instead it defied solar gravitation, held a perfectly straight course and vanished at last at a point among the stars opposite from where it was first seen.
At this time Barclay was working in his laboratory, which was situated on a secluded little island in a small lake of northern Wisconsin. The youthful savant sat before a paper-littered desk in a big-domed workroom, while outside a strong south wind sent moisture-laden thunderclouds racing across the night sky. He was alone with the greatest of his dreams; for it was late and Ching Loo, his Chinese servant, had retired.
Barclay was paying close attention to several dials on the control board of an enigmatic mechanism that buzzed and hummed directly in front of his desk. The machine was his super-press with which he hoped to tap the secret of intra-atomic energy. Since early youth he had felt certain that, if a substance were submitted to some titanic crushing force vastly beyond any yet in use, the well-nigh inexhaustible supply of power stored in the atoms of that substance would become available to mankind.
Suddenly a wicked flash of bluish light shattered the darkness outside the laboratory. Immediately there followed a deafening roar of thunder, then Barclay heard, or thought he heard, an unfamiliar sound, a low droning. However, it may have been just fancy. Through a screen door, which led into a neglected little flower garden, he saw a nebulous patch of bluish radiance beneath the trees. It wavered for an instant like a will-o’-the-wisp buffeted by the wind, and then vanished. The droning too had died out.
With a queer tingling sensation at the nape of his neck, Barclay walked to the door and peered out. He could see nothing but blackness. It was raining violently now. Save for the hiss of falling water and the tapping of the wind-driven waves against the shore, all was silent.
“The sound and the lingering glow must be new and unrecorded phenomena of the lightning,” he thought, “I’ll make a note of them—a limb off a tree is probably the only damage done.”
But somehow he had failed to reassure himself. What if there were something out there? Foolish thought! His nerves had never troubled him that way before.
In a queerly disconnected way Barclay wished that he might see the “comet.” Somehow he was morbidly fascinated by its gray ghastliness. Then as though some dark genie were up there to do his bidding, a little patch of cloud rolled back and the visiting orb shone down mistily upon the earth. The cold light revealed the island landscape dimly for a second and then was blotted out. Had Barclay’s imagination again played him a trick, or was it true that he had had a fleeting glimpse of something flat and strange out there?
“I guess this big experiment has made you a little unstrung, old boy,” he said to himself: “It was just a grotesque shadow, a fallen limb or something. When this downpour stops, you’ll be able to tell surely.”
Barclay returned to his desk. A minute passed, the screen door creaked as though a sudden gust of wind had moved it. It creaked again; but the young scientist did not notice, for he was absorbed with his work. Another minute flitted by, while a feeling of uneasiness that was almost dread crept into Barclay’s mind. He turned about; and then there was the strangest meeting in the history of two worlds!
/> The Strange Visitor
BARCLAY gasped in thunder-stricken astonishment. Had too-constant study driven him to madness, or was it true that some mysterious fiend had come to pay him a visit? His first impression of the creature that had entered, was that it was of heroic proportions—fully seven feet tall and black as jet. A fleeting idea that a huge negro, with malicious intent, had invaded his laboratory, quickly left Barclay when he saw the flawless perfection of his visitor’s features. Certainly they did not belong to any savage African. Straight black hair, cut square at the shoulder, framed the giant’s face; and was held in place by a thin band of platinum, on the forward portion of which a big ruddy jewel gleamed with all the malignant fire of some dying sun. Barclay’s visitor wore no clothing save for a breech-cloth of some snowy material; fastened to the belt that supported it was a small rectangular case of some greenish material. It bore a circular dial on the circumference of which were engraved many characters. A flexible metallic cord led from it to a sort of holster where reposed a weapon that looked like some quaint form of pistol.
For many seconds Barclay’s eyes lingered over the bulging muscles of this splendid being. Finally he managed to gasp: “In God’s name, who are you?”
The other smiled slightly and raising his hand he pointed upward. “I am Othaloma of the Stars,” he said in perfect English. “I come from the ‘comet’ which is now crossing your solar system. Truly, Earth Man, I am as surprised at your appearance as you are at mine; for never in all my wandering have I encountered a creature so closely resembling the members of my race. I have visited many planets and many were inhabited by monsters endowed with intelligence; but never was there a single human.”
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