Seekers of Tomorrow (5 page)

Despite his appearance, the old man was anything but a stuffed shirt. Kindly, almost genial, he made the embryonic author at home and then owned up to the fact that the manuscript of
Invaders from the
Infinite
had been lost. Every corner of the office had been searched but it couldn't be found. Did the author, perhaps, have a carbon?

He did not?

Well, his career would have to be launched with
When the Atoms Failed,
to be scheduled soon. In retrospect, Campbell always felt that the lost story would have more aptly been cast as an article and it was better lost.

Sloane more than made up for the disappointment by carrying an illustration for
When the Atoms
Failed
on the cover of the issue in which it appeared and beginning the blurb of the story: "Our new author, who is a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, shows marvelous abil-ity at combining science with romance, evolving a piece of fiction of real scientific and literary value." The story did contain original ideas. First, though the idea of thinking brains in robots had been used frequently before, the concept of a stationary supercalculator, like today's Uni-vac, had not appeared in the magazines. Scientists in science fiction, never sissies, previously disdained to use even an adding machine in whipping together mathematical concepts destined to change the very shape of the cosmos. Not so Steven Waterson, Campbell's hero, who, improving on the Integraph, an electrical machine capable of calculus in use at MIT in 1930, built himself a pre-space-age electronic "brain" to aid in his problems. Secondly, it delved into the greater power to be derived from material energy—the actual destruction of matter—as opposed to atomic energy. This knowledge enables Steven Waterson to defeat a group of invading Martians, force the nations of the earth to scrap all their weapons, and set himself up as

"president" of the planet. The issue in which Campbell's first published story,
When the Atoms Failed,
appeared was dated January, 1930.

By one of those coincidences that seemed destined to gird the faith of doubting astrologers, just then a new magazine of science fiction appeared on the newsstands. The first issue of astounding stories of super science, too, was dated Janu-ary, 1930, and this was the magazine that Campbell was to make his literary monument.

A sequel to
When the Atoms failed, The Metal Horde,
appeared in the April, 1930, amazing stories. This at-tempted to show what would happen if calculators were refined to the point where they could reason. Scientist Steven Waterson, in the course of the story, defeats and destroys a thinking machine (originating on a planet of the star Sirius) that has traveled through space for 1600 years accompanied by a brood of obedient mechanicals intent upon setting up a world of machines on Earth. Elements of J. Schlossel's
The Second Swarm
(amazing stories quarterly, Spring, 1928) are apparent in this story and in
The Voice of the Void,
his next appearance, in the Summer, 1930, amazing stories quarterly. This novelette tells of a ten-billion-year-old civilization on Earth, confronted by the final cooling of the sun, which utilizes "phase velocity" as a means of going faster than light and escaping to another system. Campbell explained it this way:

Phase velocity is due to a wave traveling along the wave chain. A man can go faster than the train he is riding on by walking toward the engine, but practically speaking he cannot reach the station before the train. Similarly, the phase velocity cannot reach the station before the light or X-rays do. But for countless ages the light has poured forth from the sun, and a message sent down that long train would be able to go many, many trillions of miles at a speed far greater than that of light.

Utilizing this principle, earth ships, in an attempt to colo-nize planets around the star Betelgeuse, fight a series of battles with sentient force-creatures in that system. Though mindless, the force creatures adapt to a series of ever-more-potent weapons and give the earth men quite a tussle before they are exterminated. Few of the students at MIT during that period seemed to be interested in science fiction, but Campbell did secure the friendship of Norbert Weiner, professor of mathematics who is today hailed as the godfather of "thinking machines." Weiner helped the young author with the scientific back-ground of some of those early stories and may have been the inspiration of the "thinking machine" ideas. The names (Arcot, Wade, and Morey) of a group of characters in
Piracy Preferred
(amazing stories, June, 1930) provided the label for a major series that was to catapult Campbell to the top rank among science-fiction writers. In the world of 2126 a super criminal, Wade, with the technology to make his high-speed rocket ship invisible, uses a gas for his antisocial activities, that will penetrate metal and temporarily paralyze all who come in contact with it. He puckishly leaves stock certificates for Piracy, Inc., in the amount of money he steals.

A team of young geniuses—Richard Arcot, a physicist; William Morey, mathematician and son of the president of Transcontinental Airways—in company with John Fuller, a design engineer, chase the pirate into an orbital trap around the earth. The culprit is permitted to join the group instead of being punished. The sympathetic handling of the "evildo-er" may have been a holdover from E. E. Smith's creation of the popular

"villain" DuQuesne in
The Skylark of Space.

The group, in a ship powered by a new discovery which causes all molecules to move in the same direction and uses the power derived from the heat so created, takes off for the planet Venus in
Solarite
(amazing stories, November, 1930). There they find two warring races and side with one against the other, employing Wade's invisibility device and paralyzing gas in the process. When the enemy fathoms the secret of invisibility and uses it against them, pellets of radium paint are employed to locate them, whereupon they are finished off with a molecular-motion weapon.

amazing stories quarterly was an 81/2 by 11 pulp pro-duction, almost 3/4 of an inch thick, featuring 130,000 words of text and plenty of illustrations for 50 cents. This magazine would sometimes run three complete novels in a single issue and publication in it was a mark of prestige.
The Black Star Passes,
which received the cover of the Fall, 1930, edition, focused attention on Campbell and launched him on his first high wave of popularity, which was to challenge that of E. E. Smith, whose
Skylark Three
was running concurrently in the monthly amazing stories.

In
The Black Star Passes,
an ancient race of hydrogen-breathing creatures living on a planet circling a vagrant dead star sweeps close to our solar system and decides to transfer to a fresh planet, Earth. In thousands of words of thrilling action (and many thousand dull words of scientific gobbledy-gook) they are defeated by the team of Arcot, Wade, Morey, and Fuller and retire to their retreating star. Howev-er, the battle has instilled them with new spirit and they are determined that the next star they pass they will conquer.

The
Islands of Space
in amazing stories quarterly for Spring, 1931, was Campbell's first full-length novel and he let out all the stops. Exceeding the speed of light by bending the curvature of space, Arcot, Wade, and Morey in their good ship
Ancient Mariner
tour a succession of worlds, finding new wonders and challenges on each. Finally, lost in an infinity of light, they seek to find a race that can guide them, and in the process they help decide a war on a world ten-million light years away from earth. The novel that followed,
Invaders from the Infinite
(amaz-ing stories quarterly, Spring-Summer, 1932), represented the apex of approval for Campbell's super-science stories. This time, a tremendous ship manned by canines that have risen high on the evolutionary ladder lands on Earth to seek help against a universal menace. In the
ne plus ultra
of intergalactic ships,
Thought,
Arcot, Wade, and Morey search the far-flung star clusters for an answer to the danger, finally discovering it after as pyrotechnic a series of space battles as has ever appeared in science fiction. Especially gripping is one episode illustrating the power of suggestion on the course of a battle, when emotions are magnified and projected by a special device.

Campbell's preoccupation with writing might have had something to do with his standing at MIT for in 1931 he was asked to leave. He had flunked out in German.

While at MIT he had met Dona Stuart, a young girl attending a Latin school in Waltham. He married her in the summer of 1931, after leaving school.

Despite their differences, his father helped maintain him while he majored in physics for one year at Duke University and received his degree in science. Writing now became a welcome source of income as well as an avocation.

Trying to support a wife and himself while finishing college during the depths of the worst depression in the history of the United States, Campbell decided to try other markets. He sold
The Derelicts of
Ganymede
to wonder stories, where it appeared in January, 1932. The story is a satiric slap at the questionable ability of a business tycoon to come out on top if he lets a young man start on an even keel. This was followed by
The Electronic Siege
(wonder sto-ries, April, 1932), featuring Captain Don Barclay, a physical-ly powerful and mentally extraordinary Jovian prototype of Aarn Munro, who breaks up an illicit medical experimental station on a planetoid. He brought Don Barclay back again in
Space Rays
(wonder stories, December, 1932) to aid in the capture of a space pirate. Hugo Gernsback, the publish-er, was moved to write a special editorial instead of the customary blurb for this story. Titled "Reasonableness in Science Fiction," it offered the opinion that Campbell was obviously writing a science-fiction burlesque:

"If he has left out any colored rays, or any magical rays that could not immediately perform certain miraculous wonders, we are not aware of this shortcoming in this story. . . . We were tempted to rename the story 'Ray! Ray!' but thought better of it."

The truth was that Campbell wasn't burlesquing anybody. This was the way he always wrote. The combination of the left-handed compliment and the fact that wonder stories, in financial difficulties, was paying very slowly soured him on that market.

Average rates for amazing stories and wonder stories in 1932 was 1/2 cent a word on publication, amazing stories paid promptly on publication, but its editor, now heading for 90 years of age, tended to take the long view. One year after acceptance was a breakneck race into publication for him and instances where five years intervened were not unknown. wonder stories published quickly, but frequently paid a good time after publication. In these circumstances, Camp-bell was obliged to find a job. He tried selling Fords for a short period. Then he switched to exhaust fans for homes and stores in the summer. As a salesman, he found that his imagination was an asset. For example, he sold four 30-inch fans to a chain restaurant by suggesting that all the windows be open when they were in use so the establishment could carry the slogan: "Always a breeze."

At the approach of winter he took to promoting gas heaters. The Boston utility company had a much lower rate for those who also used gas for heating. Campbell was able to show a restaurant chain that by converting their heating units to gas, they would pay for their cooking gas at lower rates and save $2,500 a year. It worked! Three other com-panies signed up for the change-over and he was out of a job. It would take his small company
years
to install all the business he had obtained, so they wouldn't be needing any salesmen for a while. So, as was to happen to E. E. Smith when the war years came, Campbell found himself looking for work despite—or perhaps because of—his efficiency.

Subtly, though, a change was taking place in Campbell's thinking and writing. It was first evidenced in the introducto-ry passages of
The Black Star Passes,
where an atmosphere of hopelessness and sympathy was engendered for the great people of a dying planet now thousands of years on the decline. It began to take form in
The Last Evolution
(amaz-ing stories, August, 1932), in which the courageous battle of thinking machines to save their creators from a cosmic menace, climaxing in the evolution of the mechanisms into energy consciousnesses of pure thought, raises them to an allegorical heaven. Our machines will be our friends to the last, inevitably outlive us, progress beyond us, and possibly even go to their just reward, Campbell suggests.

The Last Evolution
marks the point of transition in Campbell's writing career, the change to stress on mood and writing technique from the superscientific action characteris-tic of past Campbell stories. Campbell credited his reading of
The Red Gods Call
by C. E. Scoggins for the change. Temporarily living in Wilson, North Carolina, he set out to write a story in which mood and characterization would predominate and science would play a secondary role. He had in mind a story that would "sing," that would figuratively serve as a symphonic mood piece in words set to a science-fiction theme. This was the story:
Twilight.

Seven million years from today, it is the twilight of man. A mighty civilization served by faithful automatic machinery continues to function: "When Earth is cold, and the Sun has died out, those machines will go on. When Earth begins to creak and break, those perfect, ceaseless machines will try to repair her—." No drive, no progress lies in the dwindling human race. Only stagnation. The man from our day, visiting this future, programs machines to work on the creation of a mechanism with built-in curiosity. The story suggests, as did
The Last Evolution,
that even if man goes, the machines can build their own civilization.

Despite Campbell's popularity, every magazine of early 1933 rejected the story and it went back into his files. Then in late 1933, F. Orlin Tremaine assumed editorship of astounding stories and began a drive for leadership in the field.