Seekers of Tomorrow (43 page)

In
We Are the Dead
(weird tales, April, 1937), the ghost of the Unknown Soldier deters a senator from promot-ing legislation that may lead to war. The young Kuttner wasn't up to the job, but polished veteran Seabury Quinn picked up the idea with elaborations and scored a hit with
Washington Nocturne
in weird tales for May, 1939.

But, there would, nevertheless, be other Lovecraft imita-tions,
The Salem Horror
(weird tales, May, 1937) and
The lest of Droom Avista
(weird tales, August, 1937), for while Kuttner wanted to change he seemed unable to bring to bear any qualities that were fundamentally his own. One of the most interesting and successful stories of this period was his collaboration with his close friend Robert Bloch,
The Black Kiss
(weird tales, June, 1937). A tale of a sea creature that lures a man in his dreams to partake of its kisses, resulting in a transfer of bodies, this story em-ployed a combination of the methods and styles of H. P. Lovecraft
and
C. L. Moore, the girl Kuttner was destined to marry. Another literary collaboration, in which Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore united in one story her two famous characters Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry (
Quest of the Star Stone,
weird tales, November, 1937), symboli-cally anticipated their marriage some three years later.

During the thirties an outgrowth of the mystery magazines were publications like thrilling mystery, horror tales, and terror tales, which specialized in stories of sadism, torture, flagellation, and satanism, heavily flavored with sex. These stories were developed as though they related super-natural events, but it was the policy of the magazines to have normal, logical explanations for the erotic and sometimes debased content of the stories. Henry Kuttner sold regularly to thrilling mystery such tales as
Laughter of the Dead, The
Dweller in the Tomb,
and
Lord of the Lions.
It is likely that he used pen names for stories in horror stories and terror tales, for these publications were the most blatantly titillating of the group. Julius Schwartz, his agent, convinced Kuttner that he should divert some of his energies toward science fiction. Kuttner was reluctant at first, because though he liked science fiction his scientific background was so skimpy that he felt inadequate to the job.

When the Earth Lived
(thrilling wonder stories, Nov. 1937) is said by Schwartz to have been the first science fiction written by Kuttner, though
Raider of the Spaceways
(weird tales, July, 1937) was published before it.
When the Earth Lived
employed the fairly original idea of rays, pro-jected by scientists in the macrocosmos, bombarding the earth and investing such unlikely objects as automobiles, boats, coffee pots, and jewelry with life, thereby raising hob. The treatment was corny, the writing amateurish, and the idea unbelievable, but Kuttner had launched his science-fiction career.

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 closest 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.