American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56

by Gary K. Wolfe

  The Galaxy and Ballantine texts of the novel vary considerably at many points, but it would be mistaken to assume—as Mark Rich does in C. M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary (2010)—that the earlier text was necessarily altered to produce the later one. It is more likely that both published texts were prepared independently from copies of Pohl’s final typescript—a typescript he would have used as he made multiple submissions to publishers, both before and after Gravy Planet appeared in Galaxy. Differences between the published Gravy Planet and The Space Merchants are most probably attributable to the varying editorial interventions of Horace Gold and Stanley Kauffmann rather than to either author’s subsequent changes. In the absence of the final typescript of Gravy Planet—which is no longer known to exist—it may be impossible to determine in a given case which published text, if either one, most closely reflects the final typescript. (The ending of the novel stands as one exception to this observation: Only the Galaxy text includes the “added chapters” Gold requested. These final Galaxy chapters are reprinted in the Notes to the present volume.)

  At Galaxy, Gold developed a reputation as a zealous and thoroughgoing reviser, and he is likely to have made extensive changes to the typescript Gravy Planet, beyond the suggestions he had offered while the novel was being written. (As the editor of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination a few years later, to cite a comparable case, Gold’s alterations to Bester’s typescript were far more extensive than those of Bester’s English and American book publishers. “He could not keep his fingers off his writers’ prose,” Pohl recounted in his memoir The Way the Future Was.) Gold may or may not have given Kornbluth or Pohl an opportunity to review his editing, to the extent that they cared to. At Ballantine, Kauffmann probably had a lighter touch and was more likely to have offered Pohl proofs for review. The Space Merchants was subsequently reprinted many times by Ballantine and appeared under the imprints of a number of other publishers as well, but neither Pohl nor Kornbluth made further changes to the novel. The text of The Space Merchants in the present volume has been taken from the 1953 Ballantine Books first printing.

  More Than Human.

  Theodore Sturgeon began More Than Human as a short story, “Baby Is Three,” in the spring of 1952. Inspired by a minor character in Pearl S. Buck’s novel Pavilion of Women (1946)—“a Chinese monk, who took care of a ragged passel of kids in a cave someplace in the wilderness”—he finished the story in “about eight days,” he later recalled, and sent it to Horace Gold, who published it in Galaxy in October 1952. Soon afterward, Ballantine Books proposed that Sturgeon publish a novel with them. Accepting their offer, he found that “the only thing I wanted to write about at that length was something about where the people in ‘Baby Is Three’ came from, and where they went to.” He “chuntered around with ideas for a few months” and then wrote the first and last sections of the novel, “The Fabulous Idiot” and “Morality,” in about three weeks, also lightly revising “Baby Is Three.” Farrar, Straus & Young, who had recently agreed to publish simultaneous hardcover editions of some of Ballantine’s paperbacks on a title-by-title basis, signed on as copublisher. By early August 1953, Sturgeon had revised his initial draft in response to comments from Bernard Shir-Cliff (of Ballantine) and Sheila Cudahy (of Farrar, Straus). In many cases he chose not to follow these editors’ suggestions: prepublication versions of the novel now among his papers at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas —including galley proofs and two typescripts—suggest that he retained considerable control over the form in which his novel finally appeared. More Than Human was published by Farrar, Straus & Young and Ballantine Books in November 1953 from identical plates, the Ballantine Books edition omitting the hardcover contents page. The novel was reprinted on many occasions during Sturgeon’s lifetime, but he did not alter the text. The present volume prints the text of the 1953 Farrar, Straus & Young first printing.

  The Long Tomorrow.

  Leigh Brackett’s husband Edmond Hamilton explained in his introduction to The Best of Leigh Brackett (1977) that her novel The Long Tomorrow began with her interest in the history of Kinsman, Ohio, near which they had bought an old farmhouse in 1950: “when she first came to Ohio, she was greatly intrigued by the Amish folk here who continue their old, simple way of life in the midst of the modern world. This led to her remark that if modern civilization disappeared, the Amish would be perfectly fitted to live in a non-mechanical world—and that remark grew into a novel.” The Long Tomorrow was published by Doubleday & Company, without prior serialization, in September 1955. A subsequent book club printing (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1956), paperback printing (New York: Ace, 1962), and first British printing (London: Mayflower, 1962) were prepared from the same plates, and Brackett did not revise the text for a later paperback edition (New York: Ballantine, 1974). The text in the present volume has been taken from the 1955 Doubleday first printing.

  The Shrinking Man.

  The basement in which Scott Carey finds himself gradually disappearing in Richard Matheson’s novel The Shrinking Man was closely based on the basement in which Matheson wrote the novel, over the course of about ten weeks in 1955, in his house in Sound Beach, Long Island. Matheson later explained that a scene in the movie Let’s Do It Again (1953) had given him his initial inspiration for the book (the actor Ray Milland mistakenly puts on a hat several sizes too large for him), and that his publisher had added The to his original title, Shrinking Man. (The Shrinking Man was further expanded as The Incredible Shrinking Man for the 1957 film version. Universal Studios purchased the film rights to the novel in September 1955, before it had appeared in print, and Matheson, with the uncredited assistance of Richard Alan Simmons, wrote the screenplay.) The Shrinking Man was first published in May 1956 as a Gold Medal paperback by Fawcett Publications in New York. It has been reprinted often since and has appeared in several new editions—sometimes as The Incredible Shrinking Man—but Matheson has not revised the text. A new introduction he contributed to a special limited edition (Springfield, PA: Gauntlet Publications, 2001) is included in the Notes to the present volume. The text of The Shrinking Man has been taken from the first Fawcett printing of May 1956.

  This volume presents the texts of the original printings chosen for inclusion here, but it does not attempt to reproduce nontextual features of their typographic design. The texts are reprinted without change, except for the correction of typographical errors. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are often expressive features and are not altered, even when inconsistent or irregular. The following is a list of typographical errors corrected, cited by page and line number: 24.20, get to; 56.10, 15, skiis; 59.14, Shocken; 64.34, Groby I; 89.18, the ike.; 89.26, noncommittally.; 91.10, minutes wait; 97.14, Sir, I; 98.34, me: Nobody; 106.12, ’way; 107.20–21, mike “Woman’s; 119.26, breath; 130.22, Shocken; 137.28, onto; 139.14, way.; 152.32, “Um.”; 154.31, “Uh.”; 207.18, Bonnie; 207.19, Beanie; 207.21, Bonnie; 208.22, latter; 217.2, sighed. I’ll; 261.26, hassel; 262.32, hassel; 270.33, said “I; 286.36, “Sure,” she; 312.17, lauged; 335.34, your’re; 344.35, What; 352.5, moisure; 366.14, to small; 374.4, projected; 410.22, plur; 495.3, “Hm?’ ”; 610.15–16, quater-mile; 620.6, He said.; 622.30, cobwedgauzed; 626.22, ease.; 640.20, apparantly; 645.17, firecely; 658.11, sowly; 669.13, twiched; 675.3, filled this; 676.17, he could; 683.33, throught; 684.8, thought But; 687.21, abberant; 702.35, Scott We; 707.17–18, he had Lou; 717.10, dog; (two; 760.2, if off; 762.5, respect,.

  Notes

  In the notes below, the reference numbers denote page and line of the present volume; the line count includes titles and headings but not blank lines. No note is made for material found in standard deskreference books. Quotations from the Bible are keyed to the King James Version. Quotations from Shakespeare are keyed to The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. G. Blakemore Evans (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). For additional information and references to other studies, see Rosemarie Arbur, Leigh Brackett, Marion Zim
mer Bradley, Anne McCaffrey: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982); Mike Ashley, Transformations: The Story of Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2005); John L. Carr, Leigh Brackett: American Writer (Polk City, IA: Chris Drumm, 1986); Lahna F. Diskin, Theodore Sturgeon: A Primary and Secondary Bibliography (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1980); Damon Knight, The Futurians: The Story of the Science Fiction “Family” of the 30s That Produced Today’s Top SF Writers and Editors (New York: John Day, 1977); Barry N. Malzberg, Breakfast in the Ruins: Science Fiction in the Last Millennium (Riverdale, NY: Baen Publishing, 2007); Lucy Menger, Theodore Sturgeon (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1981); Frederik Pohl, The Way the Future Was: A Memoir (New York: Ballantine, 1978); Mark Rich, C. M. Kornbluth: The Life and Works of a Science Fiction Visionary (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010); Robert Silverberg, Musings and Meditations: Reflections on Science Fiction (New York: Nonstop Press, 2011); and The Richard Matheson Companion, ed. Stanley Wiater, Matthew R. Bradley, and Paul Stuve (Colorado Springs, CO: Gauntlet Publications, 2008).

  THE SPACE MERCHANTS

  6.38 V-2’s] Rocket-powered ballistic missiles developed by Germany in World War II and deployed against England.

  8.30–31 the Clive . . . John Jacob Astor] Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive (1725–1774), credited with securing India for the British Empire through the East India Company; Simón Bolívar (1783–1830), Venezuelan political leader instrumental in winning independence for several nations from the Spanish Empire; John Jacob Astor (1763–1848), who established a major fur-trading empire following the American Revolution.

  9.25 Nash-Kelvinator] A corporation formed in 1937 by the merger of automobile maker Nash Motors and appliance maker Kelvinator; in 1954, it became part of American Motors.

  13.40 B.B.D. & O.] Batten, Barton, Durstine, & Osborn, a large advertising agency founded by merger in 1928.

  21.18 G.C.A.] Ground-controlled approach, a radar-based air traffic control system widely used in the Berlin Airlift of 1948–49.

  33.7 Power ennobles . . . absolutely.] A reversal of a famous remark (1887) by Lord Acton (1834–1902): “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

  36.10 Keats, Swinburne, Wylie] Poets John Keats (1795–1821), Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909), and Elinor Wylie (1885–1928).

  36.17–18 ‘Thou still unravish’d . . . slow Time—’] From Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1820).

  37.7 Tanagra figurine] A small, molded terra-cotta statue mass-produced in or around the village of Tanagra, near Athens, beginning around the last quarter of the fourth century bce.

  43.3 C.I.C.] The Counter Intelligence Corps, a U.S. Army espionage agency supplanted by U.S. Army Intelligence Corps in 1961.

  43.3 A.E.C.] The Atomic Energy Commission, established in 1946 to oversee peacetime development of nuclear energy; it was replaced by other agencies in 1974.

  43.21 O.N.I.] The Office of Naval Intelligence.

  45.3–4 Victor Herbert’s Toyland theme] The song “Toyland,” from the operetta Babes in Toyland (1903), by popular composer Victor Herbert (1859–

  1924).

  53.1 Thomas Cook and Son] Travel agency founded in England in the 1840s.

  53.17 R.D.F.] Radio Direction Finder, an instrument for assisting navigation by finding the direction of a radio source.

  72.8 “Porque no, amigo? ”] Spanish: “Why not, friend?”

  72.9 “tu hablas . . . la lengua? ”] Spanish: “You speak Spanish! When did you learn the language?”

  73.6 Como ’sta] Spanish: “How are you?”

  77.29 San Lázaro] St. Lazarus; see John 11.

  77.30 pobrecita] Spanish: Poor thing; pitiable.

  84.15–17 “Do You Make . . . in a Carload”] Headlines from two highly successful advertising campaigns. The first, for the Sherwin Cody School of English, ran with variations between 1919 and 1959; the second, for Old Gold cigarettes, began appearing around 1926.

  99.4 Albert Fish] Albert Fish (1870–1936), a serial killer, cannibal, and masochist, executed for kidnapping and murder.

  100.22 Gilles de Rais] Gilles de Montmorency-Laval (1404–1440), Breton knight and child-murderer executed by hanging; widely believed to be the inspiration for Charles Perrault’s 1697 fairy tale “Bluebeard.”

  155.15 It didn’t take that long.] When Pohl and Kornbluth’s novel first appeared in print—as Gravy Planet, in the June, July, and August 1952 issues of Galaxy magazine—it concluded with three chapters not subsequently reprinted in The Space Merchants (1953). These final chapters, presented below, had to be added after the authors submitted the novel for publication to bring it to the contractually agreed-upon length:

  for historians: it was completely unceremonious. We just went out the lock into the lee of the ship, anchored by cables. Nobody noticed who of the fifteen was first to step out—and be yanked by the burning wind as far as the cable slack would let him, or her.)

  20

  So we landed. After the wild excitement wore off, I felt like sitting and writing a postcard to the little man back in Washington:

  “Dear Mr. President, now I know what you mean. On special occasions they sometimes let me in, too. Sincerely, Mitchell (Superfluous) Courtenay.”

  We torpedoed the billowy cloud layer, roared incandescently down in the tangential orbiting approach, minced the final few hundred meters to the landing—and I was a bum.

  They were nice enough about it. They said things like: “No, thanks, I can handle it myself,” and, “Would you mind stepping back, Mr. Courtenay?” when what they should have said was: “Get the hell out of the way.” And I wondered how long it would take before they began to put it that way.

  You know what it’s like being a lost soul?

  It’s wandering through a spaceship with busy people rushing here and there carrying incomprehensible things. It’s people talking urgently and efficiently to each other and you understand maybe one word in three. It’s offering a suggestion or trying to help and getting a blank stare and polite refusal.

  It’s Kathy: “Not right now, Mitch darling. Why don’t you—” And her voice trailed off. The only appropriate, constructive, positive thing I could do was drop dead. But nobody said so. They would carry me on the books, a hero whose brief hour of service rendered, when balanced against the long years that followed, might or might not show a tiny net profit. You never could tell with ex-heroes, but you can’t just gas them . .

  They were nice about letting me come along when fourteen of the really important people donned spacesuits and set foot on Venus. (Note

  I reached for my wife and the wind sent her bobbing on the end of her cable out of my grasp. Nor did she notice me, a hulking and brutish figure in an oversized suit, trying to claw my way to her along the grab-irons welded to the hull. She had eyes only for the planet I had given her, the orange-lit, sandstorming inferno.

  When they reeled us in and we took off our armor, I felt as though I had been flailed with anchor chains from Easter to Christmas. Aching, I turned to Kathy.

  She was briskly rubbing her surgeon’s fingers and conferring with somebody named Bartlow in words that sounded like these: “—then we’ll clam the ortnick for seven frames and woutch green until sembril gills?”

  “Yes,” Bartlow said, nodding.

  “Splendid. When the grimps quorn with the fibers, Bronson can fline dimethyloxypropyloluene with the waterspouts—”

  I hung around and Kathy finally noticed me with a “Hello, dear” and plunged back into the important stuff. After a while I wandered off. I got in the way of the crews dismantling the ship’s internal bulkheads. Then I got in the way of the commissary women, then in the way of the engineers who were already modifying our drive reactor to an AC electric pile. When I got in the way of the medics who were patching up passengers banged around in the landing, I took a sleepypill. My dreams were not pleasant.

  Kathy was crouched over the desk when I woke up, p
awing through stacks of green, pink and magenta-covered folders. I yawned. “You been up all night?”

  She said absently, “Yes.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “No.”

  I rescued one of the folders from the floor. Medical Supplies Flow Chart,

  3rd to 5th Colony Year, No Local Provisioning Assumed was the heading. The one under it covered: Permissible Reproductive Rate, 10th Colony Year.

  “That’s real planning,” I said. “Got one covering forecasted lifeexpectancy of third-generation colonists born of blue-eyed mothers and left-handed fathers?”

  “Please, Mitch,” she said impatiently. “I’ve got to find the planning schedules for the first two months. Naturally we planned far ahead.”

  I dressed and wandered out to the chowline. The man ahead of me, still wearing soft padded undershoes that went with donning a heat suit, was telling his friends about Venus. Not more than a tenth of the