Short People

in the Ekcolir Reality

I'll count this blog post as part of a series that includes "Short vs Long" from last year. During 2021, I've been continuing my project of reading short stories from the early days of science fiction publishing. Exploring the origins of Isaac Asimov's story ideas provides my main motivation for expeditions into the pages of early pulp magazines that were explicitly catering to science fiction fans. Asimov once wrote that he hoped nobody would ever try to find and list all of the old Sci Fi stories that provided him with plot elements for his own stories. I don't have the patience for such a conceptual archeology project, so I try to keep my reading of old stories quite selective and centered on my favorite topics such as time travel, robots and telepathy.

More Sci Fi Archeology; Jack Vance. I've also been comparing the short fiction of Jack Vance to his longer stories. Given my general preference for long-format stories, it will surprise nobody that I much prefer Vance's novels to his short stories. Vance transitioned gracefully from pulp-era short stories to novels, but I can't say the same for Asimov. 

in Galaxy, Feb. 1961

 Isaac Asimov. To his dying days I think Asimov was more comfortable and competent writing short stories. However, I've read almost all of Asimov's novels and I have no regrets about that. There are still many short stories by Asimov that I just have not gotten around to reading. Those unread Asimov stories are like an old friend who I can keep visiting again and again, each time discovering a new piece of Asimov's vast body of works. I have no hesitation is recommending Asimov's short story "Cal" as a fun introduction to his robot stories. I would hesitate to toss a new reader of Asimov's works into one of his long robot novels.

The Search for Creamed Shorts. I've read far more short science fiction stories from the 1920s, 1930s, 1940s and 1950s than I've read from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and this millennium. I'm fascinated by the older science fiction stories and not a fan of newer stuff that might get labeled as "new wave" or "cyber punk". However, before I knew that printed science fiction existed, I was first exposed to science fiction in films and Star Trek.

The Uranium Age. I've previously blogged about the 1959 novel Level 7. A short blurb about Level 7 is shown to the left on this page. In case you are wondering, PBX officer X127 and his chums did not survive very many years in their underground city. They had a nuclear reactor for power and it malfunctioned. Nothing goes right for poor X127. After making the surface of Earth uninhabitable (the nuclear war depicted in Level 7 involves not only city-flattening H-bombs but also "dirty bombs" designed to widely spread highly radioactive dust over the entire planet) X127 is ready to find a girlfriend, make babies and propagate the human species into a distant future when the surface of the planet is once again habitable. 

bad taste: cream pie deleted scene from Dr. Strangelove

 Too Intense Reality. However, in the end, everyone in "Level 7" is killed by radiation from a nuclear reactor accident. Goodbye cruel world.

I'm surprised that Level 7 was never made into a movie or a television program. Instead we got films like Dr. Strangelove (1964). One of the great puzzles for me as a child growing up in the 1960s was that some movies were in color while others were black and white. I've seen the claim that one reason for making this particular movie on black and white film was so that viewers would have the feeling that they were watching a news program or a documentary. You know... the kind with a pie fight.

in the Ekcolir Reality

 Sci Fi and Black Humor. It is easy for me to view Level 7 as science fiction, given its extrapolation of nuclear weapons from where they were in the 1950s and on towards a future with increasingly destructive and suicidal atomic bombs and rocket-powered delivery systems. The fact that a peaceful power plant ends up killing X127 is an almost-humorous, sardonic twist. I've never been able to wrap my mind around the odd mixture of humor and horror in Dr. Strangelove. As originally conceived, the film was to end with a wild pie-trowing scene! In my own writing, I don't think I could ever find a way to mix a topic such as nuclear war with humor. Dr. Strangelove always makes me think of M*A*S*H.

I have a lot of fun imagining how the science fiction genre might have developed differently in an alternate Reality where women dominated science fiction early in the 20th century. Could there have been better female characters in the Ekcolir Reality than in our Reality?

cover art by Don Punchatz

 Female Characters. Here in our male-dominated Reality, I've long enjoy female characters such as Asimov's Susan Calvin, Noÿs Lambent and Bayta Darell and Jack Vance's Alice Wroke, Sessily Veder and Wayness Tamm, but what about female characters that were written by female authors? One of my favorites is the anthropologist Laarica Johns in Sydney Van Scyoc's novel Assignment Nor'Dyren. 

I've always imagined that it might be Bayta Darell there in the artwork for the cover of Foundation and Empire (image to the right) by Don Punchatz. Bayta was the hero who defeated the telepathic Mule when he was only moments away from learning the location of the Second Foundation, which would have lead to the mutant Mule destroying all of Seldon's plans for the Second Galactic Empire. But what about female characters in short science fiction stories, fictional women who flowed from the pen of female authors?

cold cream in the Ekcolir Reality

I'm amazed that anyone ever made a movie about nuclear war with a cream pie fight, but what about a science fiction story about cold cream? Look no further than "Birth of a Salesman" by Alice Sheldon, which was published in the March 1968 issue of Analog Science Fiction under the pen-name James Tiptree, Jr. However, I'm going to first discuss her second published story, "The Mother Ship" which has a more classical Sci Fi theme (First Contact with space aliens) and characters who work for the CIA. Alice worked in the Air Force then the CIA and earned a Ph.D. before publishing any of her science fiction stories.

the girls from Capella - Interior art by Joe Wehrle

I can't try to fathom a science fiction story about cold cream without also thinking about the 1958 film Indiscreet. Sadly, in our Reality, Ingrid Bergman did not get to meet any aliens... she had to content herself with Cary Grant. In the film, when she meets Grant, she is in the process of slathering her face with cold cream.

First Contact. Back in the 1970s, I read a strange type of First Contact story that was set in a far future time after the collapse of a great Galactic Empire. In that old story, a lonely space explorer makes contact with a "lost" planet with human residents, a world that has long been isolated. The humans of that planet have adapted to their world and have evolved to be very tall, but the space explorer does not realize this while communicating with the planet by videophone. 

excerpt from "The Mother Ship"

All the poor horny spaceman knows is that the woman he is talking to looks mighty cute. He arranges to land his spaceship on her planet and since he hopes to also also dock his penis with her vagina, he insists on meeting her in private at a remote location of her planet. Only when they are face-to-faceknee does he realize how much larger she is and how silly he would look hugging her knees. "The Mother Ship" is similar, except it is large women who arrive on Earth from the depths of space (Capella) and they can't resist grabbing each available opportunity to have sex with Earthmen.

"The Mother Ship" reminds me of John D. MacDonald's Sci Fi novel Wine of the Dreamers as originally published in the May 1950 issue of Startling Stories. I love stories about "ancient astronauts" who visited Earth long ago. In the case of "The Mother Ship", we are asked to believe that long ago, very tall female humanoids lived on an exoplanet of Capella and had a small problem: short mutant women who did not grow to be much taller than men. We are told that thousands of years ago, the Capellans exiled a bunch of their short women on Earth and that "explains" why CIA agent Tillie is the spitting image of the tall, sexy Capellans, as long as you ignore the fact that Tillie is only about half as tall as a typical Capellan woman.

Alice Sheldon's tutorial on rape.
excerpt from "The Mother Ship"

 Sex Slaves. In "The Mother Ship", Alice Sheldon tells us that The Capellan women keep their short men as sex slaves. Further, they now intend to start abducting human males from Earth and selling them as slaves on the Capellan home world. Alice hints in the story that Capellan women have vaginas that are rather like vacuum cleaners; that anatomical innovation along with their large size allows them to aggressively rape any man for their pleasure.

"The Mother Ship" is very contrived and Tillie's story arc is that before the arrival of the Capellans, she survived being brutally raped and left for dead. In the story, she plays the victim's role in a CIA film about an invading space alien raping the Capellan women. In the end, Tillie can now live happily with the narrator of the story, a man who got raped by the girls from Capella.

Figure 1. Interior art for "Birth of a Salesman" by Kelly Freas.

Got paint? Cover by Frank Kelly Freas

On a brighter note, I'll now describe "Birth of a Salesman", Alice Sheldon's short story about selling cold cream to aliens. While reading "Birth of a Salesman" I could not help but think of "The Big Front Yard". Simak's story was irritating because it seemed to suggest that one man would control all trade with the aliens. Similarly, "Birth of a Salesman" is irritating because the over-worked and always short-on-time Mr. Benedict of Xeno-Cultural Gestalt Clearance is depicted as having to deal with every aspect of galactic trade shipments.

It is just another typical day in the department of Xeno-Cultural Gestalt Clearance (XCGC) when in walks Miss Krupp, a tall gazelle-like woman, who runs Joanna Lovebody, Inc., which produces the fragrant Joanna Lovebody Cremes. Miss Krupp wants to start shipping her product to planet Sirloin Twelve where the aliens use Joanna Lovebody Creme as cooking oil. 

in the Ekcolir Reality

As shown in Figure 1, above, all new shipments of Earthly products that are destined for distant exoplanets must be carefully checked in order to be sure that they will cause no harm to sensitive aliens. The Joanna Lovebody Creme is cleared for shipment as long as it is in stink-proof packages. Somehow the crack team of analysts at XCGC failed to notice that bottles of Joanna Lovebody Creme play music when opened and now galactic civilization is at risk of being disrupted...

Science Fact. The ISFDB lists the full name of John Campbell's Analog magazine as Analog Science Fiction -> Science Fact. In the March 1968 issue was an editorial by Campbell in which he excitedly proclaimed that dowsing "works" and that there would for the first time now be serious research into the phenomenon.

What had Campbell so excited was that in the middle of the Vietnam war, a few Marines were experimenting with dowsing as a means of detecting hidden enemy tunnels. In Campbell's mind, this equated to legitimizing dowsing, which would open the flood gates for scientific investigation of the phenomenon.

A new industry for plant emotions!
or, what will vegetarians eat now?

 Plant People. I'll also mention in passing that "Christopher Bird", like Alice Sheldon, was supposedly at one time associated with the CIA and also interested in fantasy. Along with an interest in dowsing, "Bird" helped write The Secret Life of Plants. I've previously commented on the strange popularity of science fiction stories about plant people (also see Asimov's "Each an Explorer"). Also, Jack Vance included dowsing in one of his stories: see "Parapsyche".

I wonder if it was painful for science fiction enthusiasts like Isaac Asimov to watch the proliferation of pseudoscience in American pop culture while subscriptions to Sci Fi magazines declined. Asimov liked to imagine that if enough people read science fiction then our society might be able to deal with changes arising from new technologies.

interior art for "The Fall of Mercury" by Leo Morey

One of the female writers of science fiction that Asimov read as a boy was Leslie F. Stone. I've complained about Sci Fi story tellers who populated every planet in our Solar System with intelligent natives. Some of the old stories about life on Mercury really pushed the limits of fantasy biology. 

In the December 1935 issue of Amazing Stories was "The Fall of Mercury" by Leslie F. Stone. How does "The Fall of Mercury" compare to other old science fiction stories about life on Mercury?

"the Whirlpool was not stationary"

"The Fall of Mercury" takes place in the setting of a Federation of Planets at a time when human space explorers have visited planets such as Venus, but everyone believes it would be a waste of time to explore Mercury. When our intrepid heroes Bruce and Mort set off from New York on a mission to Mercury they are warned to not fall into the mysterious Venerian Whirlpool. The Spacial Bureau on Venus constantly monitors that mysterious "whirlpool" or "spot" in space and warns spacecraft to stay clear. 

dangers to shipping: whirlpools and monsters

However, nobody in the Federation seems particularly surprised to have the Venerian Whirlpool shifting its position around, mostly inside the orbit of Venus but occasionally going closer to Earth Tellus than Venus. The Whirlpool can also suddenly change its size. In the imagined future of "The Fall of Mercury", the Venerian Whirlpool is just one of the risks to interplanetary shipping that merchants expect to occasionally lose a ship to.

alien contact (see)

We get a full page of dire warnings about the need to stay clear of the Whirlpool, but Bruce and Mort have cleverly decided to be the first humans to visit Mercury on a day when the Whirlpool is directly on the flight path from Earth Tellus to Mercury. Steering clear of the Whirlpool would lengthen their trip by a few hours (they have atomic motors), so as seems inevitable, Bruce and Mort and their spaceship, Victory, are caught in the Whirlpool and exclamation points begin to fly through "The Fall of Mercury" like flashing comets and meteors. 

Yes, dear reader, this is such a dangerous situation that Mort complains when his coffee spills due to Victory being buffeted by the Whirlpool. But then they are mysteriously extricated from the deadly Whirlpool and some external force carries them the rest of the way to Mercury. Fhew! 😥

the Venerian Water-flask

Arriving at Mercury, our explorers detect chlorine in the greenish-yellow atmosphere. This attracts little attention from Bruce since it is well know that "Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune all possessed an undue amount of chlorine". On the surface of Mercury there is a heap of debris and a lovely Venerian Water-flask. Since astronomers could see that Venus was covered by clouds, it had become popular in fiction to imagine oceans and jungles on Venus... not to mention native humanoids. Had explorers from Venus already reached Mercury?

in the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by Leo Morey

The Raxgeu of Raxge. Soon the Victory is pulled inside an underground cavern my a force beam and put into storage along with a bunch of other spacecraft from various planets (and the asteroid Ceres, where the natives are only 3 feet tall). One of these is the pleasure yacht of Tica Burno, reported missing one month previously. Now we are treated to the scene on the cover of the December 1935 issue of Amazing Stories as Bruce and Mort are carried down deeper into the inner world of Mercury, which is called "Raxge" by the pale, four-armed Raxgau, each less than one foot tall, who live inside Mercury (Raxge). After Bruce and Mort are informed that they are now the property of the Raxgau, Bruce and Mort are thrown into a chamber with the other captives from various worlds of the Federation. 

I can't help imagining how "The Fall of Mercury" might have been written in the Ekcolir Reality. Bruce and Mort don't have a fist fight with their Evil Alien™ captors and these explorers from Earth Tellus could have been written as female characters. But no 😔

Solar System 101 info dump

Luckily, Earth Tellus, Mars, all the many inhabited asteroids, the moons of Saturn and Jupiter as well as Venus have essentially the same kinds of oxygen-rich, chlorine-free atmospheres. Among the prisoners, Bruce finds his Venerian friend Burno who along with the other captives have been subjected laboratory experiments, interrogations and bodily probings by the Raxgau.

A coal-black Raxtau (named Chen-Chak) from Saturn (which the Raxtau call "Raxta"), 15 feet tall and with four arms, arrives among the prisoners. In the dark, Chen-Chak glows with a strange blue light and soon it becomes apparent that he needs light to survive.

Lola-Lyly. image source

It is real relief when Chen-Chak shows up on inside Mercury Raxge, because he can finally explain the backstory for "The Fall of Mercury". Long ago, the star Rax passed through the Solar System. Both Raxta and Raxge originated in the Rax star system and both the Raxtau and Raxgau originated on the planet Raxta, but after long and destructive wars, the Raxgau went to live on the planet Raxge. Got that?

Through the ages, the Raxtau re-configured their bodies, becoming artificial lifeforms that were able to obtain everything they need to survive from light. In the process of ridding themselves from a need for food, water or air to breath, they also adopted a very cold body temperature... now the Raxtau can survive in the cold of space.

in the Ekcolir Reality

When Rax (an old, dying star) passed through the Solar System, Raxta became the planet that Earthlings call Saturn and Raxge became Mercury, now both in orbit around the Sun (Sol). Rax fragmented and formed the planets Jupiter, Neptune and Uranus. Also at this time, a planet orbiting the Sun was shattered, forming the asteroid belt. 

This all happened before humans evolved on Earth Tellus. The Raxgau moved underground and altered their bodies, shrinking themselves down to a height of less than one foot. But now, the interior of Mercury Raxge is full of Raxgau and they are ready to attack the Federation and take control of the Federation planets.

Super Hi Tek™

I like the very ancient aliens of "The Fall of Mercury", but the good Raxtau vs evil Raxgau theme seems lame. Chen-Chak has a device that he can use to send objects (including pesky Raxgau) into the future. Both the Raxtau and the Raxgau have sophisticated technologies for controlling gravity and they have telepathic powers. In the end, Chen-Chak sends Mercury Raxge sinking into the fiery interior of the Sun, putting an end to the Evil Alien™ Raxgau.

in the Ekcolir Reality

 The No Females Zone. Beyond the genocide in "The Fall of Mercury", we are left with this chilling warming news: when Mercury Raxge was dropped into the Sun by Chen-Chak, the rest of the Solar System was perturbed and Earth Tellus moved 14,000,000 miles closer to the Sun. Readers are told that this will have benefits for Earth, but we would now seem to be in need of a sequel to "The Fall of Mercury" in which Chen-Chak drops by Earth Tellus to help deal with the global warming problem. 

in the Ekcolir Reality

Maybe in the Ekcolir Reality such a sequel got published and Chen-Chak visited Earth Tellus along with a female Raxtau named Lola-Lyly. And maybe in such a sequel it could be revealed that some of the poor Raxgau were sent to Neptune rather than be exterminated. (I prefer happy endings)

Related Reading: "The Watery Place". A short joke story by Isaac Asimov in which well-dressed aliens from Venus visit Earth (First Contact) and describe their world as "the watery place". An Earthling thinks the alien says "Venice", not "Venus" and hilarity ensues.

Also: "The Last Flight of Dr. Ain" by James Tiptree, Jr.

Next: time loop fiction

Anti-gravity book. AI-generated image.

You Must be Joking

In the Ekcolir Reality.    Original
cover art by Frank Paul and see this.

I'm currently writing a new science fiction story called "The Alastor Network" which is part of my on-going effort to explore the origins of human telepathy. Why do I expend so much effort in this task? I blame Isaac Asimov. In the previous millennium, when Asimov wrote about his telepathic robots, he asked readers to accept the idea that robot telepathy arose by chance, as a kind of mutation in the positronic circuits. Actually, he loved that idea so much that he wrote at least two stories depicting two different chance events that resulted in robot telepathy. 

 

Mutation

Asimov's mind was shaped in the 1920s and 1930s. It can be argued that the origin of science fiction as a distinct literary genre began in the late 1920s. Also at that time, Hermann Joseph Muller became famous for his discovery that x-rays can cause genetic mutations and ever since, there has been no shortage of science fiction stories about mutants.

Intuition. A horse that Asimov could never stop whipping was the idea that some people have vast quantities of "intuition", a cognitive ability to simply know what should be done without even knowing why. The first time I encountered Asimov's infatuation with intuition may have been when I read Earth Is Room Enough, back in the 1970s. In that collection of stories was "Jokester", a fun little 12 page tale that is part of Asimov's Multivac series.

Originally published in 1956, "Jokester" is a story that I retained fresh and alive in my memory for almost fifty years. I recently read the story as it was first printed in the December issue of Infinity Science Fiction. I was saddened to see how poorly typeset that version of the story was and I can't recommend reading that version (PDF). Luckily the story has been widely anthologized.

click image to enlarge

The original version of "Jokester" was published with some internal magazine art provided by Robert Engle, which is shown to the right on this page. All but one of the characters in the story is shown in this illustration. The three men are: 1) the titular 'Jokester' himself, the Grandmaster Meyerhof, 2) the computer analyst Whistler and 3) an administrator named Trask. Also shown is Multivac, the ginormous computer that Asimov imagined for future times in a Reality where the transistor was never put onto lithographically-generated microscale computer chips.

Yes, Grandmaster Meyerhof has magical intuition and is one of only a dozen such Grandmasters of computing. Nobody on the Multivac project staff is allowed to question the Grandmasters' choices when they ask questions of the oracle-like Multivac. 

 

Feminine Intuition

Asimov wanted his readers to imagine a future time in which all of the obvious questions for scientific investigation had already been asked and answered. Now it is up to Meyerhof and his fellow Grandmasters to use their intuition to push forward scientific advancement. 

One of the best things about "Jokester" is that it is short. By making use of the "magical intuition" plot device, Asimov does not need to come up with a logical reason for anything that happens in the story. In fact, you could argue that "Jokester" is flat-out fantasy, not science fiction. In any case, the story is short and funny, so it is easy to forgive Asimov for how he constructed the story.

Nobody in the whole world is allowed to question the choices of the Grandmasters, so of course the story begins with Whistler questioning the decision of Meyerhof to question Multivac about the origins of jokes. Whistler advances the idea that Meyerhof wants to turn Multivac into a source of new jokes that he can tell to his buddies.

First Contact

Original cover art by Ed Emshwiller

I love science fiction stories about first contact with space aliens, particularly stories that avoid the usual Hollywood approach of depicting silly alien invasions. What I like most about "Jokester" is that it is a first contact story in which humans discover that they have long been under observation by aliens. That is the same premise used in my Exode Saga, and I certainly owe a lot to Asimov for the unusual ways that he found to include space aliens in his stories.

I don't really want to reveal anything more about "Jokester". Read it for yourself and I suspect you will still remember it 50 years from now.

Related Music: “The Making of Pelham 1933”.

                                (song lyrics by Claude)

Related Reading: Telepathy and Humor

   See also: fictional mutation by cosmic rays

    and: on old Asimov telepathy story from 1941

Next: part 5 of "The Alastor Network"

visit the Gallery of Movies, Book and Magazine Covers

Short vs Long

Short story idea: Grean the Kac'hin
and Fengtol (a positronic robot) at
the ball park.         image source

Short Format Fiction. The first science fiction story that I ever read, as a hard-cover novel, was The Gods Themselves. At the time, as a young school boy in a rural community, I had no idea that science fiction short stories existed. I also had no idea that The Gods Themselves had originally been published in a serialized magazine format. Thus began my infatuation with long-format science fiction and novels. However, nobody can completely ignore short format science fiction and back in 2014 I had a blog post called "Short Stories".

In the six years since 2014, I've read more short science fiction stories than I had read in the previous 50 years of my life. The old science fiction magazines have increasingly become available to readers via the internet. I usually seek out short stories that were written by my favorite authors, but while prospecting through old Sci Fi magazines you always bump into some authors that you never knew existed. 

Nine Tomorrows

In this blog post, I discuss the short science fiction stories that were published by "Kent Casey" in 1938 and 1939.

Not long after I discovered the existence of science fiction novels, I found and read my first science fiction short story anthology. The first anthology of Sci Fi stories that I bought was either Nine Tomorrows or The Science Fiction Hall of Fame volume IIA or IIB. I don't believe that I ever bought Vol. I of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, but I'm sure I read some of its stories while standing in bookstores.

 

Eventually, I actually saw some science fiction magazines in book stores, but I had a problem with both anthologies and magazines. While there might be a story that I enjoyed in among a collection of stories, there were always some other stories there that I did not enjoy. Why should I pay for science fiction stories that I did not enjoy reading?

cover by Robert Schulz

The most intriguing "anthology" that I ever bought was I, Robot. Asimov put some effort into linking together a set of short stories (published originally in magazines during the 1940s) about robots, creating a kind of "future history" of the development of positronic robots. This is the only "anthology" that I ever bought and still have on the shelf.

Later in life, Asimov wrote novels (such as The Robots of Dawn and Prelude to Foundation) that included robot characters and additional short stories about robots (such as "Cal"). All of those diverse robot stories by Asimov, when taken together as a whole, create an amalgamation that is vastly more satisfying than any single story, short or long. Thus, I started as a science fiction fan who enjoyed novels and grew into a lover of epic-scale fictional universes that sprawl over multiple novels. Isolated short stories seldom interest me.

My Path to Casey: Rockets, Receptors and Robots

Selling science fantasy stories.
1961

One of the short stories that I read in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame while standing in a book store was the 1938 story "Helen O'Loy" by Lester del Rey. This story has been widely anthologized, so I assume that someone once liked it and maybe some people still do. I did not like "Helen O'Loy" for several reasons. My first problem with the story is that I don't like the robot character named Helen O'Loy. I don't accept the entire fictional science premise behind how Helen was programmed and became a simulated woman. Readers are asked to believe that any human male would impulsively want to marry the robotic Helen O'Loy.

 

Problem #2. I also dislike "Helen O'Loy" for reasons that are not specific to this one story but rather, are problems inherent in the short story format. To be published in pulp science fiction magazines there were a few standard formulas for success.....

 

Phil is surprised by Helen.
interior art by Charles Schneeman

Thus, even good story ideas had to be adapted to formulaic story telling patterns in order to sell to magazine editors and be published. Short stories were expected to have some cute twist the end that would put a nice satisfying bow on the whole package. At the end of "Helen O'Loy", we are told that Phil (who narrates the story) never got married because after having know Helen ("she" is the robot who married Phil's pal, Dave) he was never interested in any other woman. Also, when Dave dies of heart disease, Helen kills herself because she is so emotionally attached and devoted to Dave. That ending is just too sappy for my tastes.

 

In the Ekcolir Reality
cover art by Edmund Emshwiller

Problem #3. I've never enjoyed the whole "I'll build it in my basement" type of science fiction story. From the "I built an artificial man" in Frankenstein to "I built a spaceship" in Skylark to "I built a time machine" in The Time Machine. I despise the science fiction story that pretends some genius can accomplish in a few days what nobody else can do. That's magic, not science and it is the basis of "Helen O'Loy".

 

Problem #4. I also despise the amazing breakthrough that becomes a one-off event, never replicated, and which does not involve itself with the social change that would come from a major scientific advance or technological break-through. Fine, if all you want is to sell a bit of fluff to a magazine, go for it. Don't expect me to view it as satisfying science fiction. 

 

fictional chemistry

The future society depicted in "Helen O'Loy" is mostly unchanged from the 1930s with nothing added except a few technologies; 1) household robots, 2) some advances in molecular medicine, and 3) a very noisy rocketport in each town rather than an airport.

Fictional Chemistry. What is the secret of making a robotic female with emotions? According to Lester del Rey, you just put in an "adrenal pack"! This reminds me of a 1934 story called "The Hormone" by Milton Kaletsky. In "The Hormone", people can be magically "accelerated" by injecting the hormone "cortin". In addition to rockets and robots, Lester del Rey's imagined future also includes medical doctors such as Phil who specialize in endocrinology. Phil knows all the hormone receptors, so if your good-for-nothing son falls in love with the maid, Phil can provide a two-week-long course of "counter-hormones" that will reverse the boy's infatuation with the cute maid. 

 

Fictional chemistry.
image source

Unlikable characters. Phil has no scruples; for a big paycheck he even chemically erases the love being experienced by the poor maid (against her will).

 

Dave is a robot repairman of the future, so in order to make an emotional robot girl, all he has to do is learn endocrinology from his buddy Phil and then spend a few hours magically adding the electrical circuit equivalent of emotions to an unemotional robot that you can buy off the store rack. 

 

All things are possible in the future era depicted in "Helen O'Loy". This is the future where you have household atomic power packs, so it is a snap for Dave to give Helen emotions. Strangely, nobody else in the whole world ever had the same idea. And when Dave marries Helen the robot, nobody in the whole world suspects that such a thing is even possible.

the role of women in Sci Fi (source)

I first read "Helen O'Loy" after having already read Asimov's I, Robot and there was not much of a chance for me, as a budding scientist, to enjoy "Helen O'Loy". I can understand why "Helen O'Loy" was eventually marketed as science fantasy. 

 

I suspect that some other writers such as Isaac Asimov learned a lesson from stories like "Helen O'Loy". For example: that they should include at least one competent professional woman in their robot stories (see Dr. Susan Calvin).

I can't stop myself from wondering if Lester del Rey wanted readers to imagine a homosexual relationship between Phil and Dave (early in the story, they stop dating women and live together). Was the robotic Helen such a sexy "woman" that she could induce Dave and Phil to abandon their homoerotic relationship?

I suppose Helen O'Loy did have a vagina.
Handy rule for writers in the 1930s: substitute
"she was a great cook" for "she was great in bed".

It is tempting to imagine how "Helen O'Loy" might have been written had the author been a woman in an alternate Reality where women were not expected to be house wives. I like to imagine that in the Ekcolir Reality, the science fiction genre was developed by liberated women. Lester del Rey told his readers that men expect their wife to cook dinner and give birth to his sons. Helen O'Loy was a really great cook, so good old Dave was willing to marry her even though they could not have children.

Letter from Kent Casey in Amazing Stories

I recently took the time to dig the original version of "Helen O'Loy" out of the December 1938 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction. In that issue was a story called "They Had Rhythm" by Kent Casey. According to ISFDB, "Casey" wrote two sets of science fiction stories. One set of stories (including "They Had Rhythm") featured the recurring character Private Kelton, while the other set involved a Dr. von Theil and Sargent John West. 

 

According to this webpage, "Casey" was Captain Kenneth Casey McIntosh, retired from the Navy. I dislike early science fiction stories that warped a Western plot into a science fiction story by converting six shooters into ray guns. Similarly, the Private Kelton stories are silly bits of fluff about the future Space Navy. They remind me of Forbidden Planet where the crewmen of the futuristic interstellar spaceship act like they just stepped off an old Navy ship from 1940. Everyone writes what they know, but people with no interest in science often fail to write interesting science fiction.

I've previously commented on editor Campbell's skill at using pseudoscience to excite his readers. Over at Amazing Stories, editor Raymond A. Palmer was exploring fringe science topics that were even more far out than those offered by Campbell. In the July 1940 issue of Amazing Stories, Palmer published a long letter from "Casey" concerning the lost continent of Lemuria. See the image to the right on this page where you can read that Kent Casey letter.

 

Why did Campbell so quickly fall in love with the short stories that had been written by "Casey"? I blame Dr. von Theil, a fictional scientist. The first Dr. von Theil story was published in the March 1938 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, the issue that is famous for John W. Campbell's decision to put "science-fiction" in the title of the magazine.

Dr. von Theil

In "Flareback", Dr. von Theil has invented a new secret weapon for the Space Patrol. He cleverly allows some Evil Uranians™ to steal the new technology, which promptly destroys their spaceship. Sargent West flies the good doctor around the Solar System during their missions.

 

"Flareback" is interesting only in that Dr. von Theil's new weapon involves positrons and I must wonder to what extent "Flareback" influenced the young Isaac Asimov when deciding that his robots would have "positronic brains".

"Static" was published in the May 1938 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction. The war against the Evil Uranians™ takes a bad turn for Earth when the Evil Uranians™ start using a new "impenetrable screen" to protect their spaceships.

the new Astounding

In "Static", the glorious Fleet Commander calls on all his "absent-minded professors" of the Space Patrol scientific staff to solve the mystery of the "impenetrable screen". Dr. von Theil surmises that the Evil Uranians™ are capturing cosmic rays and using them in their "impenetrable screen".

To confirm the hypothesis, Theil and West must capture an enemy spaceship. West is positioned in an abandoned supply depot on Mars from which he sends a radio message that attracts an enemy spaceship. After West allows himself to be taken prisoner on the enemy ship, Theil incapacitates the Evil Uranians™ using a "mind static" device.

I wonder if Isaac Asimov was influenced by the idea of a "mind static" device that "Casey" included in the story "Static". Asimov later included such a device in some of his own stories.

Interior art for "The Ceres Affair"
by Hans Wessolowski

In case you were wondering, now with an enemy ship in hand, Dr. von Theil quickly deduces that the "impenetrable screen" of the Evil Uranians™ can be penetrated by exposing it to radium or uranium.

 

The October 1938 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction included both another Dr. von Theil story ("The Ceres Affair") and a fanish letter to the editor from Kent Casey. "The Ceres Affair" continues the silly science parade that distinguished the first two Dr. von Theil stories. When Theil and West visited Mars in "Static", it was a planet Mars with abundant plant life. In "The Ceres Affair" we are told that Ceres has coal deposits and at least one flowing stream feeding a lake full of water! 

 

in the Ekcolir Reality

The Uranian Death Star

Sadly, here in 2020, we now know that high temperatures on Ceres are about -180 Fahrenheit. However, that does not deter the Evil Uranians™ from making a base of operations on Ceres, well protected by powerful force-beams.

Luke Skywalker Dr. von Theil penetrates the Death Star Uranian Base on Ceres and saves the day. Theil uses the Force another quickly devised magic ray gun that chills the enemy power cable so much that it becomes a superconductor. The resulting power surge destroys the enemy defenses. Dr. von Theil refuses to reveal how he made his magic chill ray because this fantastic technology would be abused by other people. 😢

in the Ekcolir Reality

One more Dr. von Theil story was published in the December 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The best thing about the Kent Casey stories is that they are relatively short. In "Thundering Peace" we learn that the planet Uranus was colonized by settlers from Earth who had been attracted by the "huge lakes of petroleum". The atmosphere of Uranus can be as cold as -370 Fahrenheit, the planet's small rocky core is very hot and sandwiched in between is a water-ammonia ocean with pressures so high that there might be hail-like diamonds falling from above.

When ships of the Terran Space Patrol follow Uranian space pirates to Uranus, the enemy ships quickly drop from the stratosphere to the "ground" but the navigational instruments on the ships from Earth all go "haywire". What is hidden under the clouds of Uranus? A chilling mystery.

Meeting the dastardly Uranians.
interior art by Charles Thomson

According to Casey, rapid evolution over "several generations" has taken place on Uranus and now the Uranians are super-strong, allowing them to survive under high gravity conditions. Also, they have HiTek™ "atmosphere plants" that provide the oxygen gas that they need to survive.

Human survival on Uranus was made possible by the evil genius professor Ritzbaden who pioneered transmutation of elements. Theil surmises that the Uranian settlers converted the carbon atoms in methane into nitrogen and oxygen in order to make Uranus habitable by humans. 

 

in the Ekcolir Reality
Original cover art by Howard Brown

Dr. von Theil is itching to have a look at Uranus and asks to have a spaceship equipped with an "infrared cloud-breaker ray". Peering through the thick clouds of the upper atmosphere of Uranus, West and Theil can see giant towers of the oxygen plants where the transmutation of elements takes place. 

 

All the hydrogen gas that came from the methane originally present in the atmosphere of Uranus was free to rise into the upper atmosphere. 

 

In order to end the war and break the will of the Uranians, Theil uses another quickly-constructed super-special magic raygun to ignite the hydrogen layer of the upper atmosphere. The resulting explosion of the atmosphere so terrifies the Uranian military forces that they flee the planet in their spaceships, leaving the planet to the remaining peaceful Uranians who surrender to the fleet from Earth.

fantasy lifeforms; this week 4-armed
centipedes and gas creatures,
next week, unicorns and liquid life

I have no idea why "Kent Casey" decided to have Earth fight a war against imaginary Uranians, but in the March 1937 issue of Astounding Stories was "Clouds over Uranus" by Russell Winterbotham. 

 

"Clouds over Uranus" is a "chilling" story that featured native lifeforms from the icy atmosphere of Uranus who transformed themselves from their normal gaseous state into solid human form, after which they live happily inside an Earthly outpost on the surface of Uranus where the temperature is kept at 68 Fahrenheit.

 

I wonder if Stanisław Lem read "Clouds over Uranus" and took it as part of his motivation for writing Solaris. Maybe in an alternate Reality, the gaseous creatures of Uranus were accounted for by nanites or some other fictional technology. Russell Winterbotham made no attempt to explain how life could magically exist in a gaseous state.

 

a living ocean

Long and the short

I'm glad I discovered printed science fiction in the era when many science fiction novels were available to me. I can appreciate the importance of short stories in the history of the science fiction genre, but I'm glad I was not forced to feed my youthful addiction to science fiction by reading the pulp science fiction magazines.

 

World building. When science fiction was being created as a new literary genre, short stories were quickly crafted without the authors having time to think about the social implications of new technologies. Many of the short stories from the 1930s that were published in Astounding are like cotton candy. They gave the required sugar rush to magazine readers of those times, but they really were not substantial and satisfying food for hard-core science fiction fans.

cover art by William Timmins

Here in 2020, it is fun and interesting to prospect through the old magazines in search of the earliest versions of stories about telepathy, robots, aliens, teleportation and even chemistry. Those early stories were mostly science fantasy, with magical fantasy elements such as wizard Dr. Theil's magic wands rayguns, but they laid a foundation for the true science fiction stories that were yet to come when scientifically knowledgeable writers could start imagining how human society might be altered by technological advances and our entry into the age in which science and technology are central to human existence.

 

Related Reading: liquid life

                 "What Are Positrons?" by Robert D. Swisher 

Also:        "Dover Spargill's Ghastly Floater"; in 1951, Jack Vance transmutes elements and engineers an atmosphere for Earth's Moon.

Next: the 2020 SIHA goes retro

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