As for myself, my chief fear was that my father would become aware of this. Instinctively, I was certain that my friend’s tales would come under the heading of “cheap literature” and that I would be forcibly rescued from their baneful influence. This I most earnestly did not want to happen, and, in so far as I recognized that my friend’s stories were akin in spirit to the tales to be found in sensational magazines, my hunger for those magazines sharpened.
Ah, well, it didn’t last long. The storytelling spree could not have gone on for more than a few months when my friend’s family moved away from the neighborhood and, of course, took my friend with them. He never returned; he never visited; he never wrote. I never knew where they had moved, and shortly my family moved, too. Contact was broken forever.
It seems to me now that my storytelling friend could not possibly have gotten the pleasure he clearly got out of telling stories that he (to all appearances) made up as he went along, without having tried to be a writer as he grew older. I know something about that particular compulsion, and I am certain he would have tried. And if he tried, it would seem to me that he must have succeeded.
And yet I remember his name and I am certain that there is no writer by that name. Can he have used a pseudonym? Is he dead? I don’t know; I wish I did.
On a less personal note, and for the sake of statistics, 1928 was also the year of our citizenship. My parents had completed their five-year residency requirement, and in September received their papers. As minor children, my sister and I were mentioned on my father’s citizenship papers and automatically became American citizens in consequence. (After I married and left home, I got citizenship papers of my own, dated 1943, so that I need not be forced to send my father to his safe-deposit box every time I needed proof of citizenship. To any future biographer who may find documentation of the 1943 citizenship, however, this is to inform him that I have been a citizen since 1928.)
The year ended with another change of residence. My father, having increased his savings, thanks to the candy store, felt it was time to sell it and buy another. Partly, I suppose, he felt he would welcome a change, and partly there was always the hope that another candy store would be more profitable.
In December 1928, therefore, we moved to 651 Essex Street, on the corner of New Lots Avenue. There the second candy store was located. I had to transfer from P.S. 182 to P.S. 202, something that involved another traumatic readjustment of friendships.
* * * *
Then came the crucial summer of 1929, in which everything seemed to conspire to change the direction of my life. (It was the last summer of the Roaring Twenties, the last merry spark before the stock-market crash and the beginning of the Great Depression, but no one knew that, of course.)
For one thing, it was a time of crisis for Amazing Stories. Though it had been doing well, there were business machinations of a kind that go beyond the capacity for understanding of my essentially simple mind (Sam Moskowitz knows the story in detail), and Gernsback was forced out of ownership of the magazine.
The last issue of what we can call the “Gernsback Amazing” was the June 1929 issue, I believe. (I may be wrong by one or two months here.) It had gone thirty-nine issues. The magazine was taken over by Teck Publications, so with the July 1929 issue we can speak of the “Teck Amazing.”
Gernsback, a man of considerable resource, had no intention of leaving the magazine field or, for that matter, of abandoning science fiction. Without missing a step, he founded another science fiction magazine, which was thereafter to compete with Amazing Stories and was to double the supply of reading matter for the science fiction public. Gernsback’s new magazine was called Science Wonder Stories, and its first issue was dated June 1929.
Gernsback went further indeed and started a companion magazine called Air Wonder Stories, which began with the July 1929 issue. The supply of science fiction was thus tripled, and the existence of these new magazines was to prove of crucial importance to me.
The June in which those two new magazines were both on the stands for the first time, I was completing my stay in the fifth grade. The teacher of the course had offered to take a selected group in the class on a post-term trip to the Statue of Liberty. I did not qualify, since my marks in “Deportment” did not meet the minimum standards. I looked so stricken, however, that the teacher (presumably recalling that I was the brightest student in the class) asked the class permission to include me. The nice kids gave it and I went.
The trip was on July 2, 1929. I remember because I was nine and a half years old that day. It was exciting in itself, but the most remarkable thing about it was that for the first time in my life I had gone a considerable distance without my parents. The fact that the teacher was along didn’t count. She did not have parental authority. It gave me an extraordinary feeling of having reached manhood.
The third event of the period was the fact that my mother had entered a third pregnancy (this one, I have reason to believe, unplanned) and, in July, was nearing term. It meant she couldn’t help much in the store, and my poor father with only a nine-year-old assistant was terribly harried.
Now observe the concatenation of events.
Not long after my trip to the Statue of Liberty, I noted the new magazine Science Wonder Stories on the newsstand. It was the August 1929 issue, the third of its existence. I noticed it, first, because it had a cover by Frank R. Paul, the artist Gernsback always used, a man who painted in primary colors exclusively, I think, and who specialized in complex, futuristic machines.
But I also noticed it because it was a new magazine and my eye hadn’t grown dulled to it. Finally, I noticed it because of the word “Science” in the title. That made all the difference. I knew about science; I had already read books about science. I was perfectly aware that science was considered a mentally nourishing and spiritually wholesome study. What’s more, I knew that my father thought so from our occasional talks about my schoolwork.
Well, then, the loss of my storytelling friend had left a gnawing vacancy within me; my trip to the Statue of Liberty filled me with a desire to assert my independence and argue with my father; and the word “science” gave me the necessary leverage.
I picked up the magazine and, not without considerable qualms, approached my formidable parent. (It is hard for me to believe that at the time he was only thirty-two years old. I took it for granted he was infinitely old—at least as old as Moses.)
I spoke rapidly, pointed out the word “science,” pointed to paintings of futuristic machines inside as an indication of how advanced it was, and (I believe) made it plain that if he said “No” I had every intention of throwing a fit. And that’s where the final item in the concatenation of events came in: my father, driven to distraction by the new baby that was on its way, was in no mood to concern himself with trivia. He granted me permission.
I then scanned the newsstand for any other magazine of the same type, planning to maintain with all the strength at my disposal the legal position that permission for one such magazine implied permission for all the others, even when the word “science” was not in the title.
Promptly I found the August 1929 issue of Amazing Stories and, of course, the August 1929 issue of Air Wonder Stories. I girded myself for the battle. It never came. My mother went to the hospital and my father conceded everything. On July 25, my brother, Stanley, was born.
I wish I could remember the stories in the very first science fiction magazines I ever read, but I can’t. The nearest I can come to it is the fact that I remember the cover story in the August 1929 Amazing Stories to be “Barton’s Island” by Harl Vincent, but I don’t remember the plot.
* * * *
One of the factors that surely must have helped induce my father to let me read the science fiction magazines was their respectable appearance.
At that time, there were two types of magazines on the stands. There were the smaller magazines, 7 by 10 inches in size, which were printed on cheap paper made of wood pulp, unglazed and with
ragged edges. These “pulps” featured action stories in different categories, one magazine being devoted to Westerns, another to mysteries, still another to jungle stories, another to sports stories, yet another to air-war stories, and so on.
My father read some of the pulps himself (to improve his English, he said), but nothing could have induced him to let me read them. We quarreled over The Shadow and Doc Savage for years, and eventually, in my mid-teens, I began to read them defiantly without his permission. He would look at me sorrowfully whenever he caught me reading one of them, too; but though those looks stabbed me to the soul, I kept on reading them.
There were, however, also large-size magazines, 8½ by 11 inches or larger, published on glazed paper of good quality with smooth edges. These were the “slicks.” I doubt that very many of them were any higher in literary quality than the pulps, but they looked better.
Well, Amazing Stories, Science Wonder Stories, and Air Wonder Stories, though printed on pulp paper and sometimes featuring authors who wrote regularly for the pulp magazines, were large-size and had smooth edges. They were kept with the slicks on the newsstands, not with the pulps (oh, what a kiss of death that would have been), and they therefore were to be found in respectable company.
What’s more, where the pulp magazines usually charged ten cents an issue, the three science fiction magazines charged a lordly twenty-five cents, and, as always, high charge was equated with high quality.
In 1927, Gernsback had been faced with an overflow of stories and had put out a special issue of Amazing Stories, which he then still owned, made it thicker than an ordinary one, and called it Amazing Stories Annual. It was a success, and from then on he put out such issues at quarter-year intervals. This Amazing Stories Quarterly continued under the Teck regime, too, and Gernsback, when he started his new magazines, also began Science Wonder Quarterly.
The quarterlies were magnificent. Whereas the ordinary issues of the science fiction magazines contained 96 pages and about 100,000 words of fiction, the quarterlies contained 144 pages and about 150,000 words. The ordinary issues ran novels as serials (usually in three parts), but the quarterlies could run novels entire. Of course, the quarterlies cost fifty cents, an enormous price for those days, and my father didn’t always receive them from the distributing companies, so I missed some copies. When I saw them, though, what an enormous feast they were!
(It occurs to me that if my father had not had a newsstand, there would not have been the slightest possibility of my ever reading science fiction magazines at that time except for such issues as I might—a very unlikely supposition—have borrowed. There was no way on Earth that I could have afforded quarters and half dollars for something as unessential as reading matter. . . . Pardon me while I overcome my trembling fit at the thought, and then I will continue.)
* * * *
Toward the end of 1929, still another science fiction magazine hit the newsstands, with its first issue dated January 1930. It was called Astounding Stories of Super-Science. The final phrase was soon dropped and it became Astounding Stories. It was published by Clayton Publications and is now referred to as the “Clayton Astounding” to differentiate it from later incarnations.
The Clayton Astounding was clearly a poor relation. For one thing, it was the size and quality of the pulp magazines and was placed with them on the newsstands. I was taken aback, and almost hesitated to try to read it, thinking that I would surely be stopped. However, my father said nothing. Having retreated, he was not prepared to renew the battle.
Astounding Stories published tales that were heavy on adventure and that seemed, to my boyish mind, to be less sophisticated than those in Amazing Stories. In fact, though I read every issue of the Clayton Astounding, all thirty-four, there was not one story in any of those issues that has remained with me to this day, and none are included in this anthology.
The very early stories that I still remember almost all appeared in Amazing Stories, which called itself “The Aristocrat of Science Fiction.” And so it was, in my opinion. During the first four years of my science fiction reading, it was Amazing Stories all the way with me.
And it was the novels that were most impressive. The plots were most intricate, the adventures most detailed, and, most of all, there was the cliff-hanger with which each installment ended. You then had to wait the length of an arid month for the next installment. Some readers, I later discovered, saved their issues so that they could read the serials all at once, but I couldn’t do that, of course. I had to return each issue to the newsstand.
The earliest serial I remember reading and slavering joyously over was Cities in the Air, by Edmond Hamilton, which ran in two parts in Air Wonder Stories, in the November and December 1929 issues. [I have a marvelous memory, but it is not so marvelous that I can remember exact issues for all the stories that I quote, or the exact date for the various items of historical interest I refer to in connection with early magazine science fiction. Actually, I am making liberal use of Donald B. Day’s Index to the Science-Fiction Magazines, 1926-1950 (Perri Press, Portland, Ore., 1952), which I bought twenty years ago and which has paid me back a hundredfold in its constant usefulness as a reference book to the early history of magazine science fiction. There have been a number of supplements put out for the period since 1950 by computers at M.I.T., but they lack the taste and flavor of the Day Index.] I still remember the dramatic Paul cover illustration for that serial, with skyscraper cities shown on huge circular slabs in mid-air.
The next serial I remember is The Universe Wreckers, a three-parter in Amazing Stories, in the May, June, and July 1930 issues. This one was also by Edmond Hamilton. Considering that, and the fact that Ed is the best-represented in this anthology (three stories) of any of the authors included, I can only deduce that Ed was my favorite author in those very early days.
I have met Ed and his charming wife, Leigh Brackett—also a writer —on many occasions in my grown-up days, and I’ve never thought to tell him this. I guess I didn’t really realize it myself till I began sorting out my memories for this book.
Then, too, there was The Drums of Tapajos, by Capt. S. P. Meek, another three-parter in Amazing Stories, the November and December 1930 and January 1931 issues. Also The Black Star Passes, by John W. Campbell, Jr., published complete in the fall 1930 Amazing Stories Quarterly.
These stories, which are full-length novels, can’t be included, alas, in this anthology, which is restricted to stories of fewer than forty thousand words.
* * * *
In my first couple of years as a science fiction reader, I was given an unexpected bonus of time in which to read. When my brother was an infant, I was freed of some of my candy-store chores because I was put in charge of his welfare.
Watching Stanley was much better than standing behind the counter, because virtually no work was required. Aside from giving him his bottle if he cried (or shaking the carriage) and making sure that he didn’t fall out or that no eagle swooped down to carry him off, I had only to sit there. I remember the warm summer days of 1930 when I was counting the hours till the Monday after Labor Day, when I could start the adventure of junior high school. I would be sitting next to the carriage, my chair tipped back against the brick wall of the house, and reading a science fiction magazine, dead to all the world except for my automatic response to any wail from the carriage.
Sometimes, to avoid being cramped, I would wheel the carriage sixty or seventy times around the block with the science fiction magazine propped against the handlebar.
Of course the nation as a whole was not going through my own idyllic experience that summer. The stock market had crashed in October 1929, and the economic situation had grown steadily worse ever since. The Great Depression was on. My father’s customers had less money, so less money was spent in the candy store. Things grew tighter, and the second candy store, after half a year of moderate promise, showed clearly that it was to be no more a highway to riches than the first.
The s
cience fiction magazines suffered along with everyone else. Amazing Stories and Science Wonder Stories, which never paid their authors very much, paid them more and more slowly. (The grim joke was that they paid a quarter cent a word on lawsuit.) Astounding Stories, for all its lower quality, paid higher rates more quickly, and it began to draw the authors its way, which made things harder than ever for the large-size magazines.
Amazing Stories withstood the strain stolidly and continued without apparent alteration. The Gernsback magazines, however, underwent ominous changes.
Air Wonder Stories was simply too specialized. Its stories dealt with futurized air travel in one way or another, and that did not allow for sufficient variety. I presume its circulation suffered, and the May 1930 issue, its eleventh, was also its last. With the next issue, that of June 1930, it was combined with Science Wonder Stories and the combined magazine was given the logical name of Wonder Stories.
After five issues, however, the combined magazine found that matters were still too tight for it and it attempted to improve its competitive stance by more closely imitating Astounding Stories. With the November 1930 issue, Wonder Stories went pulp size and left Amazing Stories as the only large-size science fiction magazine.
Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s Page 3