Seekers of Tomorrow (6 page)

A high point in his dramatic bid was securing the third story in E. E. Smith's "Skylark" series,
The
Skylark of Valeron.
The logical next step was to obtain Campbell, the leading contender for Smith's popularity. Tremaine wrote to Campbell, asking if he had a superscience story along the lines that had established his popularity. In 1933 Campbell had placed
The Mightiest Machine
with Sloane at amazing. Over a year had passed and Sloane had not published this story, nor had he yet scheduled another Campbell novel,
Mother World.
Campbell got Sloane to return the story and submitted it to Tremaine, who purchased it immediately.

Heartened, Campbell dusted off
Twilight
and sent it in.

Tremaine went quietly mad about it and couldn't get it into print fast enough.
Twilight,
rushed into the November, 1934, issue, a month before
The Mightiest Machine,
could not be published under Campbell's own name for two reasons. First, most obviously it would destroy the build-up in progress for
The Mightiest Machine.
Secondly, it was so different in approach that it would disorient the readers accustomed to a certain style of story from Campbell. The problem was solved with a pen name, Don A. Stuart, derived from the maiden name of Campbell's wife, Dona Stuart.

"A new writer," Tremaine blurbed, "a profoundly different and beautiful treatment of an always fascinating idea—
Twilight
by Don A. Stuart. A story of the far, faint future, of the fabulous cities and machines of man—and of his slow decline into eternal sleep."

H. G. Wells'
Time Machine
possessed, in its description of the decadent civilization of the Eloi, certain elements of
Twilight.
The concept of automatic, near-perfect cities, func-tioning long after man has forgotten how to repair them, was superbly delineated in
The Machine Stops
(1928) by E. M. Forster. Similarly, the lonely, magnificent, nearly eternal, but deserted cities of Bronson Beta are described movingly by Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie in
After Worlds Collide
(blue book, 1933). Yet mood had never been the primary purpose in the presentations of the civilizations and cities of these other authors. Nor had anyone so completely attempted to canonize the machine. Over and over again, Campbell's message remained clear: The machine is
not
the enemy and ruination of man; it is his friend and protector. Don A. Stuart bid fair to eclipse Campbell in popularity as a result of this single story,
Twilight.
Its appearance was to alter the pattern of science-fiction writing. Warner Van Lorne's immensely popular
Strange City
(astounding sto-ries, December, 1935) and
World of Purple Light
(astound-ing stories, December, 1936) were unquestionably inspired by it. Arthur C. Clarke, in both
Rescue Party
(astounding science-fiction, May, 1946) and
Against the Fall of Night
(startling stories, November, 1948), displays his debt to
Twilight.
Lester del Rey's inspiration for intelligent dogs in
The Faithful
may derive from a brief section in
Twilight.

Stuart appeared again with
Atomic Power
in the Decem-ber, 1934, astounding stories, a story in which men pre-vent the structure of our solar system from being blown up by atomcrackers in the macrocosmos. The lead story of the issue was the first installment of
The Mightiest Machine,
and a third story by Campbell in the same issue,
The Irrelevant,
resulted in months of debate in the readers' column, since he presented a theoretical evasion of the law of conservation of energy. This was published under the pseudonym Karl van Kampen, the name of a Dutch great-grandfather on his father's side.
Blindness
(astounding stories, March, 1935), by Stuart, was a poignant sketch of a scientist who loses his sight in space to bring the world the blessings of atomic energy, only to learn that inadvertently another discovery of his provides a cheaper power source. He dies embittered because the world does not want his atomic energy.

One of the most remarkable and underrated performances under the Stuart name was
The Escape
(astounding stories, May, 1935), written as the result of an argument with a would-be writer as to whether or not it is impossible to write a successful love story in the framework of science fiction. A girl who runs off with a boy she loves to escape marrying the selection of the Genetics Board is finally captured and brought back and psychologically reconditioned to "love" the "right" man. This remains one of the finest love stories science fiction has yet produced.

With
The Mightiest Machine
receiving reader accolades, Campbell thought sequels were in order. He wrote three, continuing the adventures of Aarn Munro and his compan-ions. The first, a 15,000-word novelette,
The Incredible Plan-et,
utilized the well-worn device of losing his characters in space thus enabling them to stumble upon a world whose inhabitants have remained in suspended animation for 400

billion years; a second sequel,
The Interstellar Search,
finds the earthmen aiding a planet whose sun is about to become a nova; and in the final story,
The Infinite Atom,
they arrive home in time to block an invasion by creatures whose previ-ous visits to earth gave rise to the centaur legends. Tremaine rejected all three. He felt that the day of the superscience epic was past and insisted that Campbell stick strictly to Stuart-style stories. Another augury was the mild response to
Mother World,
a story of the revolt of the oppressed working groups against their fiendish masters, with the planet as the prize, serialized at last in the January, February, and March, 1935, issues of amazing stories as
The Contest
of the Plants.
The three sequels to
The Mightiest Machine
eventually were published as a Fantasy Press book,
The Incredible Planet,
in 1949.

Campbell was forced to give full emphasis to Don A. Stuart in a series which he called "The Teachers," but which never was so labeled, beginning in the February, 1935, astounding stories with
The Machine.
In this story, a think-ing machine that has provided every comfort for man leaves the planet for their own good, forcing them to forage for themselves. This story inspired Jack Williamson's
With Fold-ing Hands
and its sequel ".. .
And Searching Mind,"
con-cerning robots that overprotect man from every possible injury or error, and from himself.

The Invaders
(astounding stories, June, 1935), a sequel to
The Machine,
describes a mankind reverted to savagery, easily enslaved by the Tharoo, a race from another world.

Rebellion
(astounding stories, August, 1935) finds the human race, through selective breeding, growing more intel-ligent than the Tharoo, driving the invaders back off the planet. The foregoing were not primarily mood stories, but they were adult fare—the predecessors of an entirely new type of science fiction.

In
Night,
a sequel to
Twilight,
published in the October, 1935, astounding stories, Campbell stirringly returned to the mood story. A man of today moves into the inconceiv-ably distant future, when not only the sun but the stars themselves are literally burnt out. At his presence, machines from Neptune move to serve him, but he recognizes them for what they are: "This, I saw, was the last radiation of the heat of life from an already-dead body—the feel of life and warmth, imitation of life by a corpse," for man and all but the last dregs of universal energy are gone.

"You still wonder that we let man die out?" asked the machine. "It was best. In another brief million years he would have lost his high estate. It was best." Campbell had matured. A civilization of machines, he now understands, is but parody, movement without consciousness. It is not and can never be "the last evolution."

Campbell returned to his home state of New Jersey, in 1935, working at a variety of jobs: the research department of Mack Truck in New Brunswick; Hoboken Pioneer Instru-ments; and finally Carleton Ellis, Montclair, in 1936, setting up residence at Orange, New Jersey, to be near his work. Carleton Ellis, namesake and founder of the firm, had more chemical patents than any man in the world and was a consultant on the subject. He is credited with making the first paint remover that worked. Campbell was able to toler-ate only six months of writing and editing textbooks and technical literature for Ellis, but nevertheless the position gave him discipline in editing and publishing that would soon prove invaluable. Out of work, Campbell accepted the assignment of writing a monthly article on astronomy for Tremaine, plus an occa-sional Stuart story. These activities barely kept food on the table. Campbell's most successful story in 1936 was
Frictional Losses
(astounding stories, July, 1936), under the Stuart byline, in which a method of eliminating friction proves the ultimate weapon against invaders from outer space. wonder stories had been sold by Gernsback to Standard Magazines and now appeared as thrilling wonder stories. Campbell arranged with the editor, Mort Weisinger, for a series of stories under his own name, built around the charac-ters of Penton and Blake, two fugitives from Earth. The best of the group was the first,
Brain Stealers of Mars
(thrilling wonder stories, December, 1936), concerning Martians capable of converting themselves into an exact replica of any object or person. They provide a knotty problem for the visitors from Earth. This story and those that followed had the light note of humor and the wacky alien creatures which Stanley G. Weinbaum had recently made so popular. Closest in quality to
Night
and
Twilight
proved to be
Forgetfulness
(astounding stories, June, 1937), in which earthmen landing on a distant planet assume that a race is decadent because it has deserted the automatic cities and mighty power devices that man, in his current state of pro-gress, associates with civilization.

Influential as well as entertaining was his novelette of the Sam,
Out of Night
(astounding stories, October, 1937). A matriarchal society of aliens who have conquered the earth and have ruled it for 4,000

years are challenged by Aesir, a black, amorphous mass vaguely in the shape of man, ostensi-bly personifying humanity's unified yearnings past and present. This device was picked up by Robert A. Heinlein in
Sixth Column,
where it helps to route the Asiatic con-querors.
Cloak of Aesir,
a sequel, demonstrated the use of psychol-ogy in driving the "people" of the Sam from their domination of Earth, and terminated the short series in astounding science-fiction for March, 1939. Tremaine's duties had been expanded to cover editorial directorship of top-notch, bill barnes, romance range, clues, and a number of other Street & Smith periodicals. To assist him, he hired an editor for each of the magazines. Campbell's availability, his skill as a writer, and his intensive if limited editorial experience with Carleton Ellis put him in line for the position with astounding. He was put on the payroll of Street & Smith in September, 1937. Inevitably his writing, except for special occasions, had to cease. F. Orlin Tremaine left Street & Smith in May, 1938, as the result of internal politics. Campbell was completely on his own, and there would be less time than ever.

Few authors ever made their literary exit more mag-nificently than did Campbell. From the memories of his childhood he drew the most fearsome agony of the past: the doubts, the fears, the shock, and the frustration of repeatedly discovering that the woman who looked so much like his mother was not who she seemed. Who goes there? Friend or foe? He had attempted the theme once before, employing a light touch, in
Brain Stealers of Mars.
This time he was serious.
Who Goes There?

(astounding science-fiction, August, 1938) deals with an alien thing from outer space that enters the camp of an Antarctic research party and blends alternately into the forms of the various men and dogs in the camp. The job is to find and kill the chimera before, in the guise of some human being or animal, it gets back to civilization.

An impressive display of writing talent,
Who Goes There?
is in one sense one of the most thrilling detective stories ever written. The suspense and tension mount with each para-graph and are sustained to the last. Reading this story inspired A. E. van Vogt to turn to science fiction with
Vault of the Beast,
a direct take-off on the idea. In Europe, Eric Frank Russell picked up the notion in
Spiro,
one of his most effective stories. RKO, altering the story considerably, pro-duced it as a profitable horror picture called
The
Thing
(1951).

A few more Stuart stories would sporadically appear.
The Elder Gods
(unknown, October, 1939), a swiftly paced sword-and-sorcery tale, was written as a last-minute fill-in when a cover story by Arthur J. Burks proved unsatisfactory. Together with
The Moon is Hell,
a short novel of stark realism drawing a parallel between the survival problems of Antarctic and moon explorers, it made its appearance as a Fantasy Press book in 1951.

Fifteen years after he had quit writing for a living, Camp-bell still displayed excellent technique in
The
Idealists,
a novelette written expressly for the hard-cover anthology, 9
Tales of Space and Time,
edited by Raymond J. Healy for Henry Holt in 1954. Scientists aren't always "good guys," was the point he made, and a high degree of technical development does not necessarily carry with it maturity in dealing with different cultures.

But for all practical purposes, Campbell's writing career ended at the age of 28 with
Who Goes There?

As one of the first of the modern science-fiction writers, he had a profound influence on the field. As editor of the leading, best-paying magazine, he taught, coerced, and cajoled his type of story. As a result, for the more than a quarter-century since he ceased writing, older readers have been haunted by half-remembered echoes in the plot structure of hundreds of stories and in the lines of scores of writers. It is not strange if sometimes readers shake the hypnotic wonder of the wheel-ing cosmos from their minds and demand: