Space Pioneers

by Hank Davis

“But that’s impossible! He’s dead!”

  “Remember the time dilation,” Mazundar replied. “He fell from the sky and perished swiftly, yes. But in supernova time. Not the same as ours. To us, the final stellar collapse takes an infinite number of years. And telepathy has no distance limits.” The physicist started walking fast away from that cabin. “He will always be with her.”

  AUTHORS’ BIOGRAPHIES

  Poul Anderson (1926-2001) was one of the most prolific and popular writers in science fiction. He won the Hugo Award seven times and the Nebula Award three times, as well as many other awards, notably including the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Writers of America for a lifetime of distinguished achievement. With a degree in physics, and a wide knowledge of other fields of science, he was noted for building stories on a solid foundation of real science, as well as for being one of the most skilled creators of fast-paced adventure stories. He was author of more than a hundred science fiction and fantasy novels and story collections, and several hundred short stories, as well as historical novels, mysteries and non-fiction books. He wrote several series, notably the Technic Civilization novels and stories, the Psychotechnic League series, the Harvest of Stars novels, and his Time Patrol series, In my not-all-that-humble opinion all novels and stories in his gigantic opus are worth seeking out, but then, they were written by Poul Anderson, so that really goes without saying. Which is why this story leads off the book, and another, much less obscure Anderson gem closes it.

  Fredric Brown (1906-1972) was a writer with towering reputations in both the science fiction and mystery fields. After writing many short stories for the mystery pulps of the 1940s, he won the Edgar Award of the Mystery Writers of America for his first mystery novel, The Fabulous Clipjoint in 1947. He also wrote many stories for the SF magazines of the 1940s, and was a fixture of Astounding Science-Fiction’s “Golden Age.” He was a master craftsman in both fields, with a wide range of solid characterization, a lean hard-boiled style, and a sneaky touch of humor. In particular, he was the unchallenged master of the short-short story, a story so short it would take up only one or two pages, yet would have a tightly controlled plot, and usually a surprise ending—often not a happy one for the characters. His sardonic sense of humor was also displayed at greater length in such darkly humorous SF novels as What Mad Universe and Martians, Go Home, but he also wrote deadly serious novels such as The Lights in the Sky Are Stars and The Mind Thing. His short story, “Arena,” was adapted into one of Star Trek’s first season episodes (though there was an episode of The Outer Limits a couple of years earlier which had a suspicious resemblance to the same story, yet gave no credit to Brown). He inserted into “Knock,” a story of more usual length a story which has become known as the shortest horror story ever told: “The last man on Earth sat in a room. There was a knock on the door.” While the pair of short-short stories which follow are not that brief (though they certainly are far pithier than this biography), each has its own sharp concluding punch.

  Tony Daniel is the author of seven science fiction and fantasy books, the latest of which are the first two novels in the Wulf Saga, The Dragon Hammer and The Amber Arrow. The total includes the award-winning short story collection, The Robot’s Twilight Companion. He also collaborated with David Drake on the novels The Heretic, and its sequel, The Savior, new novels in the popular military science fiction series, The General. His story “Life on the Moon,” was a Hugo finalist and also won the Asimov’s Reader’s Choice Award. Daniel’s short fiction has been much anthologized and has been collected in multiple year’s best anthologies. He has also co-written screenplays for SyFy Channel horror movies, and during the early 2000s was the writer and director of numerous audio dramas for the critically-acclaimed SCIFI.COM’s Seeing Ear Theater. Born in Alabama, Daniel has lived in St. Louis, Los Angeles, Seattle, Prague, and New York City. He is now an editor at Baen Books and lives in Wake Forest, North Carolina with his wife and two children.

  Lester del Rey (1915-1993) was a science fiction Grand Master (the Science Fiction Writers of America made him one officially) and a man of multiple talents—a writer, not just of SF and fantasy, but of many other forms of more mundane fiction, as well as many nonfiction books. He was editor of many SF magazines, from the early 1950s to the late 1960s, an authors’ agent, a book reviewer, and probably most influentially, an editor, with his wife, Judy-Lynn del Rey, for over two decades at Del Rey Books. (Incidentally, Del Rey Books, one of the strongest SF lines in the late 20th century, was named for the lady, not Lester.) He was also a sheet metal worker during WWII, but I can’t say what influence that may have had on his writing. In person, he was a superb, if contentious, speaker, an energetic debater, and if he didn’t have the entire history of SF and fantasy stored in his head, anything left out was probably unimportant. He also wrote either the third or fourth SF novel I ever read, while I was in the third grade: Marooned on Mars, helping to seal my fate as an SF addict. That you’re reading this book is at least partly his fault—and in more ways than one. That novel was one of the early titles in the celebrated Winston line of hardcover SF juveniles, a trail-blazing publishing program at a time when established publishers were afraid to take a chance on that crazy Buck Rogers stuff, and which Mr. del Rey had much more to do with than did the two prestigious editors listed on the books’ jacket flaps.) The man was diminutive in physical stature, but a titan in his influence on SF and fantasy, and I wonder how much of a self-portrait he made of the hero in the story which appeared here.

  David Drake, author of the best-selling Hammer’s Slammers future mercenary series, is often referred to as the Dean of military science fiction, but is much more versatile than that label might suggest, as shown by his epic fantasy series that began with Lord of the Isles (Tor), and his equally popular Republic of Cinnabar Navy series of space operas (Baen) starring the indefatigable team of Leary and Mundy, whose latest exploit, starring a new added character, is Though Hell Should Bar the Way. His latest novel is The Spark (Baen), and its sequel The Storm, will be a 2019 release. He lives near Chapel Hill, NC, with his family.

  James E. Gunn (b. 1923) is a man of many hats: science fiction and fantasy writer (of course), academic, editor, and a Grand Master of Science Fiction, pronounced so by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 2007, the title making him a member of a small select club that includes other names you may have come across, such as Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov, to name three Grand Masters. A native Kansan from a family of editors and publishers, he served three years in the U.S. Navy during WWII, then took a B.S. at the University of Kansas, then an M.A. in English at Northwestern in 1951, and he may be the only person who had his Master’s thesis, which was a critical appraisal of sf, published in a science fiction pulp as an article. Selling his first stories in 1948 under the pseudonym of “Edwin James” (his middle initial stands for “Edwin”), he has subsequently published nearly 100 stories, as well as writing 28 books, fiction and nonfiction, and editing 10 more. His novels began with Star Bridge (in collaboration with Jack Williamson) and This Fortress World, followed by The Joy Makers, The Immortals (which became a TV movie and series, The Immortal), The Listeners, and more. His Alternate Worlds: The Illustrated History of Science Fiction received a special award from the 1976 World SF Convention, and a 1976 Locus Award. A later nonfiction book, Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction won the 1983 Hugo for Best Non-Fiction Book. His series of anthologies, The Road to Science Fiction, originally six volumes, now expanded to eight, which combines classic stories (going back to Gilgamesh, the original pulp hero) with a running history of the field, and is still in print 41 years after the first volume’s publication. He is a past president of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and of the Science Fiction Research Association, as well as being a professor emeritus at the University of Kansas, where he is Director of the Center for the Study of Science Fiction. In 2015, he was inducted into the Science F
iction and Fantasy Hall of Fame.

  With all that, it’s surprising that he has had time for an impressive career writing science fiction, but he has.

  Edmond Hamilton (1904-1977) was one of the most prolific contributors to Weird Tales, which published 79 of his stories between 1926 and 1948. Unusually for a WT mainstay, most of his work was science fiction (or, as the magazine tagged it initially, “weird-scientific stories”) rather than fantasy, dark or otherwise He was also prolific outside the pages of WT, with stories in many other pulps, sometimes under pseudonyms. In the late 1940s, as interest in rip-roaring adventure SF waned, Hamilton developed a more serious style, with deeper characterizations, notably in “What’s It Like Out There?” included herein, and his 1960 novel, The Haunted Stars.

  During the 1950s, he was also a prolific writer for such D.C. comic books as The Legion of Super-Heroes. He continued writing into the 1970s, with stories in the SF magazines and new novels in paperback. He was a writer’s writer, with a gift for exciting tales of adventure. Some critics may have felt that such tales were insignificant, but that was and is their loss. Readers should be grateful for such a good and prolific writer.

  Robert A. Heinlein began his career with a competently-told, but not very striking story, “Lifeline,” which gave no clue that it was the first installment of the grandest saga in the history of science fiction, his “Future History” series, but soon, more substantial and vitamin-packed landmark yarns followed in those magical years when new Heinlein stories were regularly appearing in John W. Campbell, Jr.’s Astounding, making it known to all what untapped potential the SF field was capable of reaching. Sometimes, there would even be more than one Heinlein story in an issue, though the originator of some of those masterpieces would be concealed under pseudonym such as Anson MacDonald and John Riverside. (True, John Riverside’s byline appeared only once, in Campbell’s other classic pulp, Unknown Worlds, rather than Astounding, but as long as Heinlein and Campbell were remaking the shape of science fiction, fantasy had it coming, too.)

  Alas, it was much too soon to take a long pause, but, thanks to Hitler, Mussolini, and the Japanese warlords, it was utterly necessary. Heinlein’s incandescent writing career had to cool down while Heinlein and several million others around the globe pitched in to put Hitler and his pals out of business. Of course, Heinlein’s career resumed after the war for a bit more than four decades, bringing the classic juvenile novels, the sales to high-paying “slick” magazines, the trailblazing movie, Destination Moon, the New York Times best-sellers, and more. But “Delilah and the Space-Rigger” came early in that glorious resumption of the Future History series, with yarns such as the one which follows.

  This is, of course, an inadequate introduction to a Heinlein yarn; but, then, aren’t they all?

  Sarah A. Hoyt won the Prometheus Award for her novel Darkship Thieves, published by Baen, and has also authored Darkship Renegades (nominated for the following year’s Prometheus Award) and A Few Good Men, as well as Through Fire and Darkship Revenge, novels set in the same universe, as was “Angel in Flight,” a story in the Baen anthology, A Cosmic Christmas. She has written numerous short stories and novels in science fiction, fantasy, mystery, historical novels and genre-straddling historical mysteries, many under a number of pseudonyms, and has been published—among other places—in Analog, Asimov’s and Amazing Stories. For Baen, she has also written three books in her popular shape-shifter fantasy series, Draw One in the Dark, Gentleman Takes a Chance, and Noah’s Boy.

  Her According to Hoyt is one of the most outspoken and fascinating blogs on the internet, as is her FaceBook group, Sarah’s Diner. Originally from Portugal, she lives in Colorado with her husband, two sons and “the surfeit of cats necessary to a die-hard Heinlein fan.”

  While many sci-fi authors write short stories and novels about space travel and space settlement, Jeff Greason is taking another path: opening the space frontier as an aerospace engineer, space entrepreneur and commercial space consultant. Inspired by Star Trek, Robert Heinlein, and Gerard O’Neill, Jeff has dedicated more than 20 years of his career to space technology development and making space travel available to civilians. He leapt from engineering next-generation computer processors at Intel to rocket engine development at Rotary Rocket. At the turn of the century, he co-founded and led XCOR Aerospace, an early commercial space transportation firm that made history with dozens of manned rocket airplane flights. He helped Congress develop regulations to govern and foster the U.S. commercial human spaceflight industry and co-founded the Commercial Space Federation trade association. Jeff can currently be found innovating wireless-power technology and beamed-power propulsion at Electric Sky, and promoting smart investment in propulsion and energy technologies for solar system and interstellar flight as chairman of Tau Zero Foundation. Jeff is a popular speaker on space policy and commercial markets for space, and a TIME Inventor of the Year. To add that this CalTech alumnus holds 25 U.S. patents is almost anti-climactic, but there is nothing anti-climactic about the story included herein.

  William F. Jenkins (1986-1975) was a prolific and successful writer, selling stories to magazines of all sorts, from pulps like Argosy to the higher-paying slicks such as Collier’s and The Saturday Evening Post, writing stories ranging from westerns, to mysteries, to science fiction. However, for SF he usually used the pen name of Murray Leinster, and he used it often. Even though SF was a less lucrative field than other categories of fiction, he enjoyed writing it (fortunately for SF readers everywhere) and wrote a great deal of it, including such classics as “Sidewise in Time,” “First Contact,” and “A Logic Named Joe,” the last being a story you should keep in mind the next time someone repeats the canard that SF never predicted the home computer or the internet. Leinster did it (though under his real name, this time) in Astounding Science-Fiction in 1946! His first SF story was “The Runaway Skyscraper,” published in 1919, and his last was the third of three novelizations of the Land of the Giants TV show in 1969.

  For the length of his career, his prolificity, and his introduction of original concepts into SF, fans in the 1940s began calling him the Dean of Science Fiction, a title he richly deserved.

  Larry Niven is renowned for his ingenious science fiction stories solidly based on authentic science, often of the cutting-edge variety. His Known Space series is one of the most popular “future history” sagas in sf and includes the epic novel Ringworld, one of the few novels to have won both the Hugo and Nebula awards, as well as the Locus and Ditmar awards, and which is recognized as a milestone in modern science fiction. Four of his shorter works have also won Hugos. Most recently, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America have presented him with the Damon Knight Memorial Grand Master Award, given for Lifetime Achievement in the field. Lest this all sounds too serious, it should be remembered that one of his most memorable short works is “Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex,” a not-quite serious essay on Superman and the problems of his having a sex life. Niven has also demonstrated a talent for creating memorable aliens, beginning with his first novel, World of Ptaavs, in 1966. A reason for this, Niven writes, is that, “I grew up with dogs. I live with a cat, and borrow dogs to hike with. I have passing acquaintance with raccoons and ferrets. Associating with nonhumans has certainly gained me insight into alien intelligences.” While no aliens are present in this highly original story of the first expedition to a Venus realistically drawn up to Astronomers’ specs, it shows Niven’s talent for creating very realistic human characters is not lacking, either.

  Jerry E. Pournelle (1933-2017) was the first writer to use a computer to write a novel . . . a published novel, I should add, and while that might be a historical curiosity, the novels and short stories that poured forth, not to mention ones written prior to 1977 on stone age typewriter tech. The future history series, usually known as the Falkenberg’s Legion series (and one of the best is only a few pages away) alone would be a memorable reading experience (King David’s Spaceship and
The Mercenary are particularly recommended), but he also wrote such non-Falkenberg stories as Exiles to Glory and Janissaries, the latter novel being currently under development to be a movie, cross fingers. And his collaborations with Larry Niven—Lucifer’s Hammer, Footfall, and Fallen Angels, to mention three—have been runaway bestsellers.

  He also wrote columns and articles on the uses of home computers, particularly to write on, beginning when many in the pre-Internet era would say, “Why would I want a computer? To play games on?” And that remark about games alone sounds touchingly naïve nowadays.

  James Blish once complained that sf writers would write stories about galactic empires, and didn’t even know the name of their local town council rep. Not Dr. Pournelle, who has been an advisor to Sam Yorty (Democrat), Newt Gingrich (Rep-, oh you knew that) and the Reagan administration (you knew that, too). His string of degrees in psychology and political science were obviously put to good use. Closer to home, he has served as President of the Science Fiction Writers of America, and director of aNewDomain Media.

  Among the awards he received were the Bronze Medal of the American Security Council, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (1973), the Prometheus Award for Fallen Angels (shared with collaborators Larry Niven and Michael Flynn), and that novel also won the Seiun Award for Best Foreign Novel in its Japanese translation, the Heinlein Society Award (again shared with Larry Niven and Michael Flynn), and the National Space Society Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Award for lifetime achievement in promoting the goal of a free, spacefaring civilization.

  It’s sad to think that no more well-constructed, controversial novels or stories will be coming from his pen, pardon me, his PC, but you only need to read the story included here for a stellar sample of why he is going to be missed.