In Raider of the Spaceways, Kuttner used Stanley G. Weinbaum's Lotus Eaters as a model. In The Lotus Eaters, a male and female adventurer discover an intelligent talking plant in the twilight zone of Venus. In Raider of the Space-ways, a male and female adventurer discover an intelligent talking plant in the twilight zone of Venus. Kuttner gave it "his own" twist, however: Weinbaum's plant was friendly, Kuttner's wasn't
For no apparent reason, the next Kuttner story appeared under the Standard Magazines house name Will Garth, The Bloodless Peril (thrilling wonder stories, December, 1937). It proposed as thesis that plant life, given the intelli-gence, would be as warlike and destructive as man. Then Kuttner got his first big writing break in science fiction, thrilling wonder stories' editor, Mort Weisinger, asked him to write a series of novelettes based on the motion picture industry of the future. The first Hollywood on the Moon, appeared in the April, 1938, issue. Hollywood was something Kuttner knew, so he could write with some au-thenticity, but the stories were to be formularized Stanley G. Weinbaum. The principal characters, Tony Quade and Gerry Carlyle, were copied from Ham Hammond and Pat Bur-lingame of Weinbaum's Parasite Planet, Lotus Eaters, and Planet of Doubt. Each story featured strange, weird, lovable, or outre alien creatures of the type popularized by Wein-baum, and each story attempted to imitate the modern, swift dialogue characteristic of Weinbaum's writing. In a magazine oriented toward the juvenile market, Kuttner's series on the Hollywood of the future had the virtue of being readable and mildly entertaining. No one realized it then, but the single element that enabled Kuttner to lift those yarns out of the cellar was that they required humor, an ingredient he had in abundance.
Almost simultaneously with Hollywood on the Moon, Henry Kuttner started another series for weird tales. Robert E. Howard, a gifted storyteller, especially renowned for the creation of a character named Conan who fought and wenched in a mythical era called the Hyborian age, committed suicide in 1936. His popularity was such that Clifford Ball attempted to create a character similar to Conan, called Duar, but he dropped the idea after three stories. Kuttner now tried his hand at it with a heroic character titled Elak, brawling and loving in the manner of Conan (and in the style of Robert E. Howard), but with supernatural settings from H. P. Lovecraft and stylistic hyperbole a la C. L. Moore. The first in the series was Thunder in the Dawn, a two-part novel beginning in the May, 1938, weird tales. It was good fun, but in Howard's stories the character of Conan was bigger than life. Elak, however, was overshadowed by the events of the story. The series terminated after four widely spaced stories. When marvel science stories' initial issue, dated Au-gust, appeared on the newsstands in May, 1938, it was the first new science-fiction magazine in seven years. Henry Kutt-ner had been writing sex-horror stories for its companion Mystery tales. The editor of marvel science stories, Robert O. Erisman, had decided to experiment with a little sex in science fiction. Up until then, sex was taboo, probably unwanted by the readers. Even a thread of love interest was just about tolerated and most stories got along without ac-knowledging the existence of women. Since Henry Kuttner was experienced at both the writing of science fiction and the horror magazine concept of what constituted sex, he was a logical man for the task. Kuttner took two unsold short novels, Avengers of Space and Time Trap, and inserted a few "racy" passages involving nude women and monsters with high libidos. The stories were fast-action science fiction and the "sex" by today's standards was rather tame, but they elicited a symphony of reader protest. Kuttner's never high reputation skidded to a new low. Kuttner had two other decidedly second-rate stories in the first issue under pen names, Dark Heritage as Robert 0. Kenyon and Dictator of the Americas as James Hall, the latter the most sex-laden story in the issue.
The only defender Kuttner had was Dr. Thomas S. Gard-ner, whose article Sex in Science Fiction appeared in the December, 1945, issue of fantasy times, seven years later. "A visitor to the Queens SFL in the winter of 1939 intimated that the author had a trashy mind because he enjoyed Kuttner's Avengers of Space in the first issue of marvel science stories," Gardner wrote. "When men do not keep women clothed under such conditions, how can you expect alien minds to do so? The story of Kuttner's was real, men and creatures act like that in life."
Kuttner's best story of the year, Hands Across the Void, a poetic tale of the self-sacrifice of a Titanian to save Earth-men from destruction at the hands of their giant "servants," appeared in the December, 1938, thrilling wonder sto-ries under the Will Garth name, so he received no credit for it. His lack of popularity, combined with circumstance, forced Kuttner further and further into adopting pseudonyms as 1939 progressed. "Keith Hammond" originated as a device for running two stories in the same issues of strange stories, a magazine similar to weird tales, published as a companion to thrilling wonder stories. Most of the sto-ries under the Hammond name were imitations of Lovecraft and may even have been rejects from weird tales.
"Kelvin Kent" was used at first in collaboration, then al-ternately, with Arthur K. (for Kelvin) Barnes for a series of humorous stories in thrilling wonder stories. The stories revolved around Pete Manx, sideshow concessionaire in an amusement park, whose consciousness is shunted back in time into the bodies of ancient Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, and other residents of historical and legendary lands, where through his crude but native cunning he cons his way to success. The first, Roman Holiday, in thrilling wonder stories for August, 1939, was the most popular story in the issue, ensuring a fairly long run for the series. The name "Paul Edmonds" was first used in the June, 1939, issue of science fiction, a new magazine of that period edited by Charles D. Hornig, and was used to cover up the fact that Kuttner was selling his rejects at half the rate he received from thrilling wonder stories. Most of the stories under this name possess little merit.
Kuttner had visited New York occasionally on business and detested the city. On June 14, 1939, he had written to Julius Schwartz: "I don't intend to visit New York. I can get the same effect as I do in New York by crawling into the dirtiest corner of the garage and screaming at the top of my voice, blowing the auto horn, and energetically sniffing the exhaust. Once you visit California, me lad, you realize that New York is Satan's privy."
On December 3, 1939, Henry Kuttner showed up at a meeting of New York's Queens Science Fiction League in tow of Mort Weisinger, editor of thrilling wonder sto-ries, and Julius Schwartz, his agent. He announced that though the city repelled him, the variety of markets he was selling to, including many in the adventure field, made it increasingly important that he live closer to his source of income. He had quit his job with a Los Angeles literary agency and was taking up residence in New York with his mother. More than a year earlier, Henry Kuttner had made the acquaintance of Virgil Finlay, renowned weird tales artist, at a Times Square bar. They became fast friends and their frequent elbow bending was eventually enshrined in a short story Kuttner wrote around the cover of the May, 1943, issue of super science stories, Reader, I Hate You, with himself and Virgil Finlay as the main characters. Finlay had married his childhood sweetheart in 1938 and moved to New York at the invitation of A. Merritt, editor of the American weekly, to accept a position on that magazine. He was visited at his one-room Brooklyn apartment during Easter, 1939, by Henry Kuttner and Jim Mooney, an aspiring Los Angeles artist who had illustrated a few of Kuttner's stories. They brought with them, as a gift for Finlay's wife, a live rabbit. In return, Kuttner was served his favorite dish, fried chicken.
When Henry Kuttner brought Catherine Lucille Moore to New York, the only guests at the marriage ceremony at City Hall the morning of June 7, 1940, were Henry's mother and Mr. and Mrs. Virgil Finlay. Virgil paid the Justice of the Peace $10, bought the bride a dubonnet and soda, and the career of the most famous writing team in science-fiction history was launched.
Catherine then learned what every woman must, that you don't know a man until you've lived with him. Henry had his own little peculiarities. When he was cloistered in his room on an assignment, his clo
sest buddy, returning from a three-year trip to Tanganyika, would not be admitted if his arrival was unexpected. An excellent driver, he hated to drive. He worked off nervous energy by pounding the piano insistently, horribly, and loudly. Shaving was a chore he indulged in as infrequently as possible, and the age and condition of the clothes he wore was enough to make the most jaundiced publisher compulsively reach for his checkbook.
It would be nice to say that Kuttner's transformation to a top-rank author began at the moment of matrimony, but the evidence indicates that his ability was growing immediately before that. Thrilling wonder stories, in its April, 1940, number, ran the memorable Beauty and the Beast, which tells of an intelligent creature from Venus who is killed because of his monstrous appearance, as he attempts to deliver a message that would have saved Earth from disaster from lovely but deadly alien plants.
The May-June, 1940, issue of famous fantastic mys-teries carried his touching, well-told fantasy Pegasus, con-cerning a boy who catches and tames a flying horse. Though possibly inspired by Edmond Hamilton's masterpiece, He That Hath Wings, in the July, 1938, issue of weird tales, both stories dealing with attempts to earthbind the winged creature, Kuttner's story has sufficient difference and quality to stand on its own.
unknown for April, 1940, contained Kuttner's humorous fantasy All Is Illusion, whose subject is revealed by the title. In combining humor and fantasy Kuttner was in his element, but the speed at which he wrote divested this story, and a majority of his subsequent fantasies for unknown, of all believability. Even the flashes of cleverness and the author's increasing skill at turning a phrase failed to rescue them. Most of his science fiction, though based on tenuous prem-ises, was momentarily believable. Virtually none of his deliberate fantasies possessed this essential.
After a year of New York, both Catherine and Henry Kuttner decided that they were not cut out to live in "Bag-dad on the Hudson" and moved to Laguna Beach, California. More and more, writing became a symbiotic relationship. They frequently wrote in relays, one taking over sometimes in the middle of a sentence, helping the other past a writing block. Often one supplied the idea and the other wrote the story. Just as frequently Henry Kuttner would write the first draft and C. L. Moore would put it into final form. Kuttner was better than Moore at plotting, but Moore was a far more accomplished stylist. Pearl Harbor played an unexpected role in their lives. For his magazines astounding science-fiction and unknown worlds, John W. Campbell, Jr., had developed a crack team of writers. Now, what with military service and war work, he lost Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Theodore Sturgeon, L. Sprague de Camp, and L. Ron Hubbard. He had to develop a new team of authors who would continue to produce the quality and style of fiction his readers had come to expect. His bright young men were in the Army. The only answer was to recruit and work with some of the second stringers.
Henry Kuttner was one of those approached, but because of his tarnished reputation a pen name was considered essen-tial. He chose "Lewis Padgett." Lewis was Kuttner's mother's maiden name, and Padgett was Moore's grandmother's maid-en name.
The first story under the Padgett name, Deadlock (as-tounding science-fiction, August, 1942), obviously was in-tended to emulate Asimov's highly popular series of amusing robot stories, but it barely passed muster. The Twonky, in the September issue, struck a highly original note; a radio which is really a robot censors reading matter, drinking habits, and other things possibly harmful to its owner, while obligingly pitching in to wash the dishes. The style, reading like some-thing new to the science-fiction audience, was actually simu-lated John Collier. The result was widely praised. This story could have been the inspiration of "With Folded Hands ..." and ". . . And of Searching Mind," the Jack Williamson stories about robots which never, under any circumstances, will permit humans to do anything that might be harmful to themselves.
The third story, Piggy Bank, in the December, 1942, issue of astounding science-fiction, reverted to the Asimov robot formula, but the fourth, Time Locker (astounding science-fiction, June, 1943) was not a robot story and was a small masterpiece involving a locker that emptied into the future, and the man who killed himself using it. It was slickly written with an adroit twist that could not have been antici-pated by the readers. Kuttner's own name appeared on a second story in that issue, ". . . Nothing but Gingerbread Left," the title from a verse of Lewis Carroll. No one linked it with the Padgett story in the February issue carrying the Carrollian title, Mimsy Were the Borogoves. It dealt with toys from our future projected back in time to the present; they are found by youngsters who devise from them a formu-la for entering a non-Euclidean universe, disappearing for-ever from the sight of their parents. Immediately recognized as a classic in the field, it is quite obvious that this story served as the inspiration for The Veldt by Ray Bradbury, and possibly for his whole series of childhood-centered stories. At that time, Kuttner was personally helping Bradbury on his career, even to the extent of rewriting some of his stories. Later he would help Richard Matheson in the same way.
Shock, in the March, 1943, astounding science-fiction, about a genius out of time who develops to be an escapee from a padded cell of the future, set the pattern for similar tales to come, including Gore Vidal's TV and stage play Visit from a Small Planet.
The same issue saw Lawrence O'Donnell's debut with Clash by Night, plot derived and expanded from Clifford D. Simak's Rim of the Deep dealing with a Venusian culture where all civilization survives in the
"keeps," giant domes beneath the seas. This one Kuttner wrote on his own, but he had the help of Moore for the novel-length sequel Fury (1947), dramatizing the conflict between the long-lived and short-lived Venusians. Though primarily action stories, both proved very popular.
When the news eventually broke that Henry Kuttner was both Lewis Padgett and to some degree Lawrence O'Donnell, all past transgressions were forgiven if not completely for-gotten by the readers. Their enthusiasm was partially predi-cated on superior craftsmanship, partially on the desire to see the underdog come out on top, but predominantly because Kuttner usually reminded them of someone they liked. A superbly proficient literary mimic, Kuttner usually wrote like whoever was in demand at the time. He left the Medical Corps in 1945 and for a while the Kuttners lived in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York. He moved back to Laguna Beach, California, and, in 1950, entered the University of Southern California as a freshman under the GI Bill of Rights. He felt acutely that he needed to find himself. Always weak in science, he included physics among his cours-es. His wife, too, went back to school. In 1954 he received his B.A. He had finished his thesis for his M.A., but died from an acute coronary on February 3, 1958. In 1957 the Kuttners had been hired by Warner Bros, to do a screenplay for Nathaniel Hawthorne's science-fiction masterpiece, Rappaccini's Daughter. Work had been started when a depression hit Hollywood and the idea was canceled. A month later they signed a contract to do a TV show and were in the midst of a revision when Henry died. As she had so often in the past, Catherine finished the script. In the cold light of critical appraisal, detaching oneself from a man's likability as a human being, the introduction of the John Collier type of sophisticated fantasy into the science-fiction magazines was Kuttner's major contribution. Presenting Moonshine by Collier, published by Viking in 1941, comprising dozens of artistically superb fantastic iro-nies, had taken the literati by storm. Its popularity resulted in a Readers Club Edition in 1943 under the title of A Touch of Nutmeg. Like Mimsy Were the Borogoves, the almost-as-popular Call Him Demon (thrilling wonder stories, Fall, 1946, published under the pen name Keith Hammond), in which the children realize their "Uncle" is the physical mani-festation of an extradimensional monster and sacrifice their grandmother to feed its appetite, is a variation of Collier's Thus I Refute Beelzy.
Kuttner felt, and many agree, that his best story in this vein was Don't Look Now (startling stories, March, 1948), in which a man at a bar warns his drinking companion to be on the lookout for Martians, who can be recognized by a thi
rd eye in their forehead. As he walks away the listener opens his third eye and stares at him. The story has since been done frequently on television.
The Shock, The Twonky, and Time Locker (converted into a robot story to fill out the collection Robots Have No Tails, Gnome Press, 1952) are essentially in the same catego-ry with the addition of a diverting potpourri of fantastic elements, too rich for the blood of the uninitiate but grist for the mills of the science-fiction fans.
Kuttner's A. E. van Vogt kick, most obviously apparent in his well-done "Baldies" series, of which he wrote all but Beggars in Velvet (collectively published as Mutant by Gnome Press in 1953), are variations on Slan. The Fairy Chessman and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, though creditable, are also attempts to duplicate the methods of van Vogt
The Kentucky Hogben series which ran in thrilling wonder stories in 1947-49 (the last of which, Cold War, was completely written by Moore from a plot supplied by Kuttner), dealing with a family of hillbilly mutations, were ludicrously unbelievable comedies blatantly drawn from a series which Murray Leinster wrote under the name William Fitzgerald in the same magazine, about a character called Bud Gregory. The popular A. Merritt imitations, beginning with Earth's Last Citadel, serialized in argosy in 1943, reached a height of popularity with Dark World in the Summer, 1946, star-tling stories, with its obvious echoes of Dwellers in the Mirage. The group obtained a note of authenticity from the contributions of Moore, whose colorful style at times was reminiscent of Merritt.
Who was the real Henry Kuttner? We will never know. The man had discipline, technical brilliance, immense versa-tility, and ingenuity, and these betrayed him. Lured by oppor-tunism, suffering from an acute sense of inadequacy, he refused to stand alone, but leaned on others for support: H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Stanley G. Weinbaum, A. Merritt, John Collier, A. E. van Vogt, and, of course, C. L. Moore.
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