Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction

by Leigh Grossman

  At first I thought this was some kind of introduction. I was inexperienced in listening to popular speeches, lectures and sermons. I had spent most of my life in the study of physics and its accessory sciences. I could not help trying to figure out the meaning of whatever I heard. When I found none, I began to get impatient. I waited some more, thinking that soon he would begin on the real explanation. After thirty minutes of the same sort of stuff as I have just quoted, I gave up trying to listen. I just sat and hoped he would soon be through. The people applauded and grew more excited. After an hour I stirred restlessly; I slouched down in my seat and sat up by turns. After two hours I grew desperate; I got up and walked out. Most of the people were too excited to notice me. Only a few of them cast hostile glances at my retreat.

  The next day the mad nightmare began for me. First there was a snowstorm of extras over the city, announcing the sinking of a merchantman by an Engtalian cruiser. A dispute had arisen between the officers of the merchantman and the port officials, because the latter had jeered disrespectfully at the gostak. The merchantman picked up and started out without having fulfilled all the customs requirements. A cruiser followed it and ordered it to return. The captain of the merchantman told them that the gostak distims the doshes, whereupon the cruiser fired twice and sank the merchantman. In the afternoon came the extras announcing the Executive’s declaration of war.

  Recruiting offices opened; the university was depleted of its young men, uniformed troops marched through the city, and railway trains full of them went in and out. Campaigns for raising war loans; home-guards, women’s auxiliaries, ladies’ aid societies making bandages, young women enlisting as ambulance drivers—it was indeed war; all of it to the constantly repeated slogan: “The gostak distims the doshes.”

  I could hardly believe that it was really true. There seemed to be no adequate cause for a war. The huge and powerful nation had dreamed a silly slogan and flung it in the world’s face. A group of nations across the water had united into an alliance, claiming they had to defend themselves against having forced upon them a principle they did not desire. The whole thing at the bottom had no meaning. It did not seem possible that there would actually be a war; it seemed more like going through a lot of elaborate play-acting.

  Only when the news came of a vast naval battle of doubtful issue, in which ships had been sunk and thousands of lives lost, did it come to me that they meant business. Black bands of mourning appeared on sleeves and in windows. One of the allied countries was invaded and a front line set up. Reports of a division wiped out by an airplane attack; of forty thousand dead in a five-day battle; of more men and more money needed, began to make things look real. Haggard men with bandaged heads and arms in slings appeared on the streets, a church and an auditorium were converted into hospitals, and trainloads of wounded were brought in. To convince myself that this thing was so, I visited these wards and saw with my own eyes the rows of cots, the surgeons working on ghastly wounds, the men with a leg missing or with a hideously disfigured face.

  Food became restricted; there was no white bread, and sugar was rationed. Clothing was of poor quality; coal and oil were obtainable only on government permit. Businesses were shut down. John was gone; his parents received news that he was missing in action.

  Real it was; there could be no more doubt of it. The thing that made it seem most real was the picture of a mangled, hopeless wreck of humanity sent back from the guns, a living protest against the horror of war. Suddenly someone would say, “The gostak distims the doshes!” and the poor wounded fragment would straighten up and put out his chest with pride, and an unquenchable fire would blaze in his eyes. He did not regret having given his all for that. How could I understand it?

  And real it was when the draft was announced. More men were needed; volunteers were insufficient. Along with the rest, I complied with the order to register, doing so in a mechanical fashion, thinking little of it. Suddenly the coldest realization of the reality of it was flung at me when I was informed that my name had been drawn and that I would have to go!

  All this time I had looked upon this mess as something outside of me, something belonging to a different world, of which I was not a part. Now here was a card summoning me to training camp. With all this death and mangled humanity in the background, I wasn’t even interested in this world. I didn’t belong here. To be called upon to undergo all the horrors of military life, the risk of a horrible death, for no reason at all! For a silly jumble of meaningless sounds.

  I spent a sleepless night in maddened shock from the thing. In the morning a wild and haggard caricature of myself looked back at me from the mirror. But I had revolted. I intended to refuse service. If the words “conscientious objector” ever meant anything, I certainly was one. Even if they shot me for treason at once, that would be a fate less hard to bear than going out and giving my strength and my life for—for nothing at all.

  My apprehensions were quite correct. With my usual success at self-control over a seething interior, I coolly walked to the draft office and informed them that I did not believe in their cause and could not see my way to fight for it. Evidently they had suspected something of the sort already, for they had the irons on my wrists before I had hardly done with my speech.

  “Period of emergency,” said a beefy tyrant at the desk. “No time for stringing out a civil trial. Court-martial!”

  He said it to me vindictively, and the guards jostled me roughly down the corridor; even they resented my attitude. The court-martial was already waiting for me. From the time I walked out of the lecture at the church I had been under secret surveillance, and they knew my attitude thoroughly. That is the first thing the president of the court informed me.

  My trial was short. I was informed that I had no valid reason for objecting. Objectors because of religion, because of nationality and similar reasons, were readily understood; a jail sentence to the end of the war was their usual fate. But I admitted that I had no intrinsic objection to fighting; I merely jeered at their holy cause. That was treason unpardonable.

  “Sentenced to be shot at sunrise!” the president of the court announced. The world spun around with me. But only for a second. My self-control came to my aid. With the curious detachment that comes to us in such emergencies, I noted that the court-martial was being held in Professor Vibens’s office—that dingy little Victorian room where I had first told my story of traveling by relativity and had first realized that I had come to the t-dimensional world. Apparently it was also to be the last room I was to see in this same world. I had no false hopes that the execution would help me back to my own world, as such things sometimes do in stories. When life is gone, it is gone, whether in one dimension or another. I would be just as dead in the z dimension as in the t dimension.

  “Now, Einstein, or never!” I thought. “Come to my aid, O Riemann! O Lobachevski! If anything will save me it will have to be a tensor or a geodesic.”

  I said it to myself rather ironically. Relativity had brought me here. Could it get me out of this?

  Well! Why not?

  If the form of a natural law, yea, if a natural object varies with the observer who expresses it, might not the truth and the meaning of the gostak slogan also be a matter of relativity? It was like making the moon ride the treetops again. If I could be a better relativist and put myself in these people’s places, perhaps I could understand the gostak. Perhaps I would even be willing to fight for him or it.

  The idea struck me suddenly. I must have straightened up and some bright change must have passed over my features, for the guards who led me looked at me curiously and took a firmer grip on me. We had descended the steps of the building and had started down the walk.

  Making the moon ride the treetops! That was what I needed now. And that sounded as silly to me as the gostak. And the gostak did not seem so silly. I drew a deep breath and felt very much encouraged. The viewpoint of relativity was somehow coming back to me. Necessity manages much. I could under
stand how one might fight for the idea of a gostak distimming the doshes. I felt almost like telling these men. Relativity is a wonderful thing. They led me up the slope, between the rows of poplars.

  Then it all suddenly popped into my head: how I had gotten here by changing my coordinates, insisting to myself that I was going upward. Just like making the moon stop and making the trees ride when you are out riding at night. Now I was going upward. In my own world, in the z dimension, this same poplar was down the slope.

  “It’s downward!” I insisted to myself. I shut my eyes and imagined the building behind and above me. With my eyes shut, it did seem downward. I walked for a long time before opening them. Then I opened them and looked around.

  I was at the end of the avenue of poplars. I was surprised. The avenue seemed short. Somehow it had become shortened; I had not expected to reach the end so soon. And where were the guards in olive uniforms? There were none.

  I turned around and looked back. The slope extended on backward above me. I had indeed walked downward. There were no guards, and the fresh, new building was on the hill behind me.

  Woleshensky stood on the steps.

  “Now what do you think of a t dimension?” he called out to me. Woleshensky!

  And a new building, modern! Vibens’s office was in an old Victorian building. What was there in common between Vibens and Woleshensky? I drew a deep breath. The comforting realization spread gratefully over me that I was back in my native dimension. The gostak and the war were somewhere else. Here were peace and Woleshensky.

  I hastened to pour out the story to him.

  “What does it all mean?” I asked when I was through. “Somehow—vaguely—it seems that it ought to mean something.”

  “Perhaps,” he said in his kind, sage way, “we really exist in four dimensions. A part of us and our world that we cannot see and are not conscious of projects on into another dimension, just like the front edges of the books in the bookcase, turned away from us. You know that the section of a conic cut by the y plane looks different from the section of the same conic cut by the z plane? Perhaps what you saw was our own world and our own selves intersected by a different set of coordinates. Relativity, as I told you in the beginning.”

  * * * *

  Copyright © 1930 by Experimenter Publishing Co., Inc.

  AMERICAN SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINES, by Hildy Silverman

  Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Hildy Silverman and as I write this, I am the publisher and editor-in-chief of Space and Time, the oldest (since 1966), continuously-published-under-the- same-title, speculative fiction small press magazine still in existence. Yes, those are a lot of modifiers. Because of the twists and turns of magazine publishing, you will find that there are older magazines, but they’ve experienced interruptions in publication, magazines of the same age, but they now bear different titles, and so on. So many different science fiction ’zines (as they are affectionately called by fans) have risen and fallen between 1926 to the present that it is impossible to do more than touch upon the major players in this look at the birth of the science fiction magazine, its proliferation during the Golden and Silver Ages of science fiction, and its ongoing evolution into e-zines and new media platforms.

  WEIRD TALES

  Although Argosy established itself as the first pulp magazine in 1896 and began publishing a significant number of science fiction stories in the early 1900s, it was the 1923 debut of Weird Tales that first brought an entire magazine dedicated to fantastic short fiction to the public. Founded by ex-journalist J.C. Henneberger in Chicago, IL, its first editor, Edwin Baird, combined gothic fantasy, science and horror fiction, and is credited for launching the careers of such greats as H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and many others. Due to significant losses, attributed to Baird’s poor editorial oversight, he was replaced by Farnsworth Wright, an assistant editor who only got the job after Lovecraft refused to move to Chicago to take the reins. Wright is credited with publishing then-unknown playwright Tennessee Williams’ first story.

  Weird Tales struggled with comparatively low circulation figures throughout its initial run, never topping 50,000 per issue. While that number would have publishers jigging in the streets these days, keep in mind that competing magazines were regularly enjoying circulation figures in the hundreds of thousands (some claimed a million readers) back then.

  The magazine finally folded in 1954, only to be revived several times by various publishers and editors, including such noteworthies as George H. Scithers and Stephen H. Segal. Today, Weird Tales continues to publish some of the finest macabre fiction, under the auspices of Ann Vandermeer.

  AMAZING STORIES

  The first English language magazine to only publish science fiction was 1926’s Amazing Stories. It was founded by inventor and science buff Hugo Gernsback, after he received positive reader response to the occasional science fiction stories he published in Science and Invention, an otherwise fact-based magazine. Gernsback, often called the “father of science fiction” and for whom the prestigious Hugo award is named, is credited with having launched the science fiction genre of the pulps with Amazing Stories.

  Gernsback’s first fiction editor was T. O’Conor Sloane and, under his guidance, the magazine became an immediate success. Early circulation figures estimate 100,000 eager “scientifiction” (the term coined by Gernsback) readers digested each issue, prompting Gernsback to add a 1928 companion quarterly. During its 26-year run, Amazing published many notables like Manly Wade Wellman, E.E. “Doc” Smith, and Jack Williamson.

  Unfortunately, Gernsback was a known miser (and that’s being kind, or so Those In the Know tell me) and so often wound up publishing reprints and lower-quality material, while better writers stuck with the higher-paying Weird Tales and Argosy. Gernsback’s troubled finances eventually cost him Amazing Stories when lawsuits by his printer and paper supplier forced him into bankruptcy. The magazine survived under other owners and editors, through various formats and release schedules, all the way until 2006 when its last owner, Paizo Publishing, decided it was no longer worth releasing even in a simple .pdf format.

  ASTOUNDING STORIES

  In 1930, William Clayton founded Gernsback’s greatest (re: only) competition in the still-nascent science fiction market. Although more financially stable and higher-paying in the early years than Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories’ content, acquired by its original editor, Harry Bates, left a lot to be desired. The magazine was more focused on formulaic action than quality science fiction content.

  The Depression took its toll on Clayton. By 1933, he, like Gernsback, was forced to declare bankruptcy. However, this was hardly the end for Astounding Stories—in fact, its glory days still lay ahead. A new publisher took over and put experienced editor F. Orlin Tremaine in charge of content. Tremaine had an eye for new science fiction concepts and favored creativity over action. It was under him that such greats as Murray Leinster and Stanley G. Weinbaum became regular contributors. Circulation numbers quickly increased to 50,000 readers by the middle of 1934, nearly double the estimates for closest competitors Amazing Stories and another Gernsback effort, Wonder Stories. Now bearing a solid reputation for quality science fiction, Astounding dominated the market.

  It was Tremaine’s replacement in 1937 by the legendary John W. Campbell that ushered in the Golden Age of the science fiction magazine. Legendary author Robert Silverberg notes, “If Gernsback was Augustus—rather more of a Claudius—then Campbell was Hadrian.” An experienced science fiction writer, Campbell was pretty much given free rein by 1938 to remake Astounding Stories in his own image, which he proceeded to do by renaming it Astounding Science-Fiction. Campbell sought even more sophisticated stories than his immediate predecessor and, throughout the 1940s, launched the careers of future luminaries that included Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and Lester Del Ray.

  Campbell wanted to get rid of the “Astounding” in Astounding Science-Fiction for years, but it took until 1960 b
efore he was finally granted permission to change the name to Analog. It remains in publication under that name today, one of the top three science fiction magazines (along with Asimov’s and Fantasy & Science Fiction) to this day, making Astounding Stories/Analog history’s longest-running continuously published science fiction magazine.

  THE COMPANION MAGAZINES

  There were several magazines produced as “companions” to the Big Two, Amazing and Astounding, by their respective publishers. In 1929, despite already being on the verge of bankruptcy, Hugo Gernsback joined with his brother in publishing three other magazines: Science Wonder Stories, Air Wonder Stories, and Science Wonder Quarterly. Only Science Wonder Stories attracted an audience and so Gernsback rolled it and Air Wonder Stories together to form Wonder Stories. Gernsback sold it in 1936 but, though its title changed a few more times, it remained in print until 1955.

  Michael Ashley, author of the seminal volumes History of Science Fiction Magazines, states, “During the period 1931–34, mostly under (editor) David Lasser, Wonder Stories published the best SF available and turned the field around, preparing the ground for Tremaine and Campbell.” Indeed, until publication ceased in 1955, Wonder’s content arguably rivaled Astounding’s, thanks to groundbreaking stories from the likes of Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, and Philip José Farmer. Amusingly, while known as Thrilling Wonder Stories, the publication ran a series of stories by none other than John W. Campbell. In the end, the competition from Astounding Stories overwhelmed Wonder.

  Startling Stories debuted in 1939. It featured “science fantasy” and was intended as a companion to Thrilling Wonder Stories. Its format was unique, in that it featured a novel in each issue augmented by a couple of short stories, most of which were written by Henry Kuttner. Its most successful editor was Sam Merwin, Jr. and the magazine became quite popular from the late 1940s through the early 1950s. Startling became a casualty of the times, however, after the dual blows of the 1954 backlash against comics and the 1955 strike by American News Corporation badly damaged the pulp publishing industry.