(listen to episode on Spotify)
(music: Chrononauts opening theme)
opening sketch
(radio tuning sounds: AM)
JM:
Hello! Welcome to Chrononauts Radio. As usual, I'll start with a list of our frequencies. You can find us at chrononautspodcast.blogspot.com, and you can write us at chrononautspodcast@gmail.com, or find us on Twitter at @chrononautsss, or on our facebook page, Chrononauts Podcast. The true meaning of all that I just said, of course, can be unearthed in your Chrononauts codebook. A reminder to all lisnteners: Don't share the Chrononauts codebook with anyone -- not even the nation's government! Especially not them!
Now, I'm speaking with you en route to the Chrononauts clubhouse, where my fellow brodcasters, nate and Gretchen, are waiting. Boy oh boy do I have a surprise for them. here under my arm I have with me the July 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, which I just bought at a nearby newstand along with a packet of peanuts. I don't have anything left over for dinner, but that's ok. I hope they have a bottle of something waiting for me in the clubhouse.
Ah, here we are: The secret entrance to the Chrononauts clubhouse, right at the end of this darnk, trash-choked alley. Now for the secret knock: (raps in sequence on wooden door)
Gretchen: (Tinny voice through crappy little speaker):
Who goes there?!
JM:
The Future!
(Door squeaks/rattles open. Inside clubhouse. It's a cramped room with crates and a ratty sofa, and pictures of rockets, robots, bug-eyed monsters and scantily clad humanoids and other creatures on the walls. A radio quietly plays big band music.)
Nate:
Ah, there you are at last! Come in! have a seat! Bourbon?
JM:
You bet!
(Glass is filled with whiskey)
Gretchen:
Well? Don't just sit there with the Mattingly & Moore. Did you bring it?
JM:
Oh yeah, of course.
(hands over the packet of peanuts)
Gretchen:
We're here for science fiction, not snacks! Give me the mag!
JM:
Hey, hey, I paid 20 cents for this, and I don't have a two bits to spare -- don't ruin it! here. I admit, I've already taken a peak. But look, there's some writers names I recognise. And check out that cover!
Nate:
I don't know, I'm allergic to cats.
JM:
It's definitely not a nice cat. You'll see! And, the editorial is about atomic research! There's also something in here about sophisticated calculating machines. What an exciting time to be alive!
Gretchen:
That all sounds great!
Nate:
But guys. JM isn't the only one who came here with something swell to show off. have a look at this?
JM:
What the hell's that?
Gretchen:
Some ugly spectacles!
Nate:
These are no ordinary glasses! These are psychotemporal resonators! This will allow you to commune with another time. The guys at the MIT Rad lab charged them up for me so there's enough power in the induction circuits to put you in touch with the future. When you wear these, and you turn this switch here, you'll see the world, and think, as your potential future self would. I was able to calibrate it for approximately 85 years.
Gretchen:
This sounds like some kind of evil mind control scheme. Are you working an evil mind control scheme to control the future of science fiction literature history podcasting?
Nate:
As if I would! Put on the glasses, it'll be really cool. I promise.
JM:
Well ... OK, OK. We've been through enough adventures together. I don't know how you came up with this and I don't know if it's some kind of trick, but let's try this. Ok, i got the glasses on.
Nate:
Now when you throw the switch, you'll be able to see and think of the world from a 21st century perspective. You'll know about the great inventions, the social mores, the history, the terrible memes.
JM:
The what?
Gretchen:
Will there be air cars? Vacations on Venus? Sentient plantlife? Planet-sized supercalculators?
Nate:
...Not telling. Just ... put 'em on!
Gretchen:
Allright. I'm ready. Here we go.
(music: "Sweet Kentucky Lady")
1939 "Union Leader Tobacco" ad read
JM:
Some Things, Son, Just Can’t be Beat!
You young fellers are proud as Columbus, when you discover Union Leader Tobacco! You praise its fragrance. Its freedom from bite. The mellowness of its hill-grown Kentucky Burley. The economy of its big 10 cent tin... either in a pipe or “roll your owns.”
All true! But it isn’t news to an old-timer who’s enjoyed Union Leader for more than 30 years. What you’ve really discovered is this: — There are some things — like deep- dish apple pie, steak broiled over charcoal, and a pipeful of Union Leader— that have never been topped! And I’m hopin’ they never will be!
Astounding 1939 cover, contents, ads, non-fiction piece on atomic power
JM:
What year is it guys?
Nate:
I think we're now in 2024, aren't we?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Oh, wow.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Happy New Year.
Nate:
Happy New Year everybody.
Gretchen:
Happy New Year.
JM:
We're back on Chrononauts. It's been a while and we are happy to be examining the July 1939 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. We talked about this magazine quite a bit in a previous episode and now I think we decided basically the best approach was just to look at a single issue all the way through and talk about each thing that's in it one after another.
What can you tell us about the cover and the layout of the magazine?
Nate:
So the cover is actually a really well done cover.
It illustrates the first story that appears in the magazine which is "Black Destroyer" by A.E. Van Vogt and the, I guess, striking thing about it is the silhouette of a very large predatory cat beast. And in the background, there's like a futuristic looking spaceship with some men, but it's certainly very ominous and, you know, in big letters we get "Astounding".
It's definitely one of the better pulp magazine covers that I've seen in doing the podcast. It's very effective at, I guess, making you want to see exactly what this creature is up to.
Gretchen:
Yes.
JM:
Yeah, it definitely seems like in the 30s they had a few more, well, I mean, we're not looking at Amazing anymore, but there were a few more artists in different styles being tried and stuff like that, and some of them were actually pretty commendable.
Gretchen:
I imagine readers probably enjoyed this more than the illustration for the last issue that is talked about later in the letters here, because it seems like a lot of people didn't really enjoy the cover of, I think it was May's issue.
JM:
Oh, yeah.
Nate:
Yeah, that's like a running theme of some of the letters in these magazines is people just complaining about the covers in the artwork a lot.
But this one is good.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I like this one.
JM:
Yeah, it's definitely really interesting looking at the letters section, and we'll get to that in a little while, actually.
Nate:
Yeah. When you open up the cover of the magazine, you're greeted by two large full-page advertisements, and we'll, of course, post a link to the archive.org scan of the magazine so you could take a look at it yourselves, because we really recommend you do. The entire thing is just a lot of fun taking a look at. But we get two full-page ads, one for Listerine, Dandruff Prevention, and the other for radio training so you could be like a radio technician or whatever, a technical radio course. So kind of neat time capsules.
JM:
Yeah. I do think, well, the stories in the magazine are pretty cool. In a way, I almost feel like it's the whole package that makes this special, because it does feel like looking into a window into 1939, which kind of inspired me to come up with the intro for this segment, just because, you know, it's, well, why not look through a window to 2024? So there's some really interesting stuff with the nonfiction pieces as well, especially the one of the ones that's coming up.
Nate:
So after the advertisements, we get the table of contents, which tells us that a single issue costs 20 cents, but a yearly subscription is a full $2. We get the usual stories and where they are as well as who's involved with the publication, so that's pretty neat.
Then on the other page, we get the tobacco ad, which you heard read for you just before this.
And then we get into the actual content of the magazine, which is our first nonfiction piece, and it's credited to just "the editor", whom I'm assuming is Campbell, but I'm not entirely sure exactly who wrote this piece.
JM:
I believe it is him.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
The editorial was mentioned in Alec Nevala-Lee's "Astounding" book, and he credits it to Campbell certainly. And it couldn't have been anybody else really, he wrote all the editorials pretty much.
Nate:
So it's basically about the exciting possibility of atomic power on the horizon, as in January there was an announcement made of the first uranium fission atomic reaction. This is, of course, an instrumental step in harnessing the great power of atomic energy, which I think is pretty interesting in that this has been a science fiction concept for much longer than 1939. The story that I'm working on next for the translations was written by an Yelyzaveta Kardynalovska, a Ukrainian, but it's from 1926, and that kind of has a brief offhand mention of a civilization that harnessed the power of atomic energy. So even in obscure titles like that, the idea has been kicking around for some time now.
But here, it's getting closer to reality, and we get a brief, it's only two pages long, the entire article, so the discussion isn't that long. But it's a brief discussion on the physics and what is known up to this point. Fermi is namechecked, but I think one interesting thing about it is that while he notes that it's very destructive in power, he almost describes it in like enthusiastic terms as an engineering problem to be solved.
JM:
Oh yeah.
Nate:
He says, "for sheer violence, the fission of the uranium atom is unmatched. The heart of a star does not equal it. The explosion of a radium atom yields an energy measured by some 10 million electron volts, the energy of an electron falling through a 10 million volt field, as compared to the four electron volt energy of carbon burning to carbon dioxide, or the five volt energy of a molecule of TNT exploding."
And nowhere in this article does there seem to be any hint of concern for its use as a weapon, despite the fact that the entire Manhattan Project and the idea of an atomic bomb is like almost hidden in plain sight in this article and astounding here, with the physics just entirely laid out in rather plain English for the reader six years before the bomb was dropped. And I just find it interesting that the military is almost always the first adapter of new and emerging technologies. And this certainly found military use before it had any kind of use in generating power for civilians, as this article speculates as it being the prime usage of.
But when the atomic bomb was dropped, that would be obviously a massive shift in the political landscape in the later half of the 20th century, which is very, very much reflected in science fiction after that, which probably represents a, well, I would say it would represent a major turning point in the history of the genre.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
And it's very like, it's kind of bittersweet how optimistic it is about the power, you're just kind of thinking about what's right on the horizon.
JM:
It's pretty normal, though, like it until a disaster happens, nobody really talks about the disaster that might happen, right? And if they do, nobody wants to listen to them, right? So I don't know, it seems like the enthusiasm in general would have been pretty high all around. But now, of course, we harness atomic reactions on a regular basis for power and not for weaponry. So right.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
It's interesting, though, because yeah, I mean, we do see that also in the computer stuff where it is the military that really leads the way to making the technology more sophisticated. I guess, I guess also providing the basis for funding, which is a big deal.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah. Especially with something as complex as an atomic bomb or an electronic digital computer, which in 1945 would be the size of like an entire house.
JM:
Yeah. More on those in a bit.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely.
JM:
Campbell apparently did visit Columbia University somewhat later, which I think he was talking about how they had acquired this large amount of pure uranium. And I guess they had a working cyclotron at that time. So I don't know. I mean, it's interesting. It's a really big, significant time for sure. I don't know. So many things seem to be happening. And obviously, somebody like Campbell would probably, you know, you can imagine. Well, you don't really have to imagine because he tells us about how excited he is about all this, you know, this new prospect and everything.
So it's a cool editorial. Like you said, it's short. It could have been a lot longer and some of the certainly some of his later editorializing doesn't go down so good these days, as it just seemed like he got more and more pedantic and weird as he got older and kind of controlled the magazine for maybe a bit too long. But this is like the beginning of a new age and you can feel the excitement in the air.
So what's next?
Nate:
Next, we have an ad for Mattingly & Moore bourbon, long on quality, short on price.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Apparently they still make the stuff. I don't know if I've seen in a store, but if I do, I'll have to procure myself a bottle. And then on the next page after that, we have the first story, which is "Black Destroyer" by A.E. Van Vogt.
JM:
Yeah. At first, part of the time capsule aspect was the ads and I just wanted to comment on them in general a little bit briefly before we do this story. I always hate advertising, just a little anecdote, but over a Christmas time, I was in a house where the TV was on all the time and it drove me pretty bad. I'm just not used to that. And when I'm on the internet, I always have my ad blocker on and probably I just started a lot when I was a kid because my dad was very anti ads as well and he would like turn the TV off when the commercials came on. And half the time now, especially I have no idea what's even what they're even trying to sell to me. Like it's just a lot of noise.
But I do think that there's something sort of fascinating looking at really old advertising. It feels like you're stepping into a different place and even the attitude of the ad seems a little different. Like, I don't know if it's just advertising as a medium has changed and grown or whatever, but it just seems like the ads are a bit guileless in a way.
Nate:
Yeah. The language has definitely changed the phrasing, how they put their pitch out to the potential customer.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
And it's definitely a another fascinating snapshot in time, I think.
JM:
I was just kind of enjoying them in a way, but then by the end of the magazine, I did get a little bit crossed because there seemed to be a lot in the middle of one story in particular.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Poor Moore.
JM:
Yeah. And my reading experience in particular is quite linear. So sometimes, especially if the OCR isn't the best, it's hard for me to tell where one thing ends and another thing begins and just kind of like, well, all right, all right, that's finished these now and they're coming one after another. And so at first I was like, hey, let's see if we can have some fun with this Mattingly & Moore ad. But I don't know. It was a bit too much, even for me. So I don't know if it's supposed to be a song or what, but yeah, whiskey brand, still around apparently.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah. So that's probably our cover story. "Black Destroyer".
Let's talk about that one then.
(music: sweeping phasers from a broken C64 chip)
A.E. Van Vogt background, "Black Destroyer" non-spoiler discussion
So Alfred Van Vogt was born in Edinburgh, Manitoba in 1912, which is a small farming community, it actually no longer exists, somewhere in the Manitoba vastness. So he'll be our first Canadian writer. Don't think we'll see too many, but we might do a few. So I don't know. But it's this kind of, for me, that's a little bit special, I suppose. I have a bit of a history with Van Vogt, so I'll happily share that later. But he was born to a Russian Mennonite family and only spoke Plattdeutsch, which is a Germanic language spoken by some people all over the world. But it's pretty endangered, I guess, and there's no written variant apparently. So I guess it's very like German, but slightly different. So it's not called a dialect, but actually considered its own language. It's kind of interesting.
His father was a lawyer, and they moved around a bunch of times in Western Canada between Saskatchewan and Manitoba. And the plan was to send Alfred to college, but the stock market crash of 1929 hit the family hard, and this was no longer possible. So Alfred took jobs as farmhand and truck driver and eventually moved to Ottawa to take up a government job in 1931, and it was here that he took correspondence course to improve his writing.
So he actually submitted some stories earlier on in the 30s to various magazines and newspapers, and apparently they were mostly in what's called a "true confession" style, and most of these were anonymous, but they purported to be written by various people, especially women, experiencing great upheavals and extraordinary life changes. And I guess you can kind of see a variant of this kind of stuff nowadays on the internet. I don't know if it's still around, but I remember a site called "Daily Confession" where you used to go and you could read all kinds of weird stories from people. A lot of the time I'm sure they were not true, but like they were just so far out sometimes and you know, you're just like, they were all organized into different categories and stuff like that. And I don't know, I kind of picture something a bit like that, kind of sensational.
He moved back to Winnipeg, which is the capital of Manitoba, and there he worked at a newspaper and local radio station doing interviews and also writing some radio dramas, which I'd certainly be curious to have a listen to if they're still available anywhere, but I have a feeling it might not be, although some of the golden age radio stuff is well preserved. It looks like this was a small Canadian station, so it may not be possible to find this stuff. But if anybody knows, send us a message. I'd be curious to hear these.
One of his pieces was published under his own name in 1937 in the Toronto Star, though they spelled it wrong. In 1939, he submitted to Campbell, in Astounding, and he wanted to write science fiction because it was a genre he really enjoyed reading, and he said he was particularly inspired by the August 1938 issue, which featured the story "Who Goes There?".
Apparently he says he read the whole magazine cover to cover while standing at the newsstand, and you can tell that that story was a pretty big influence on the one we're about to read.
This was actually his second submission to the magazine. His first was a story called "The Vault of the Beast", which Campbell rejected, but with encouragement, and that story they'd eventually get published after some revision.
He married Edna Mayne Hull, another Manitoban in 1939, and they apparently did some collaborating, and she was a science fiction writer herself. We have another writing team that's perhaps not that celebrated, it doesn't really seem like she wrote as much, and for a while there was some debate because apparently her stories were a lot like his and people were wondering if he actually wrote them, but I don't know. It seems unkind, I personally don't know, but unfortunately, well, both their writing output pretty much stopped by the early 50s, and the reason why was that they both got really heavily into Dianetics, and this pretty much killed the impetus for everything, and it was arguably doing damage to Astounding as well.
He did make a return to writing in the 60s, and published a political thriller in the early 60s, but returned to science fiction with his renaissance in the 1970s, although much of that stuff doesn't seem that well regarded. I did read the book "Battle of Forever", I think I mentioned it on the podcast before, I quite enjoyed it, but you kind of have to realize some things about Van Vogt, and it maybe helps actually before you even start reading his stuff, but interesting thing is in the 1940s, he actually wrote a lot for Campbell, mostly in Astounding, but also in Unknown, and part of the reason for that was that he was actually contracted to do so, he was the only writer to have that honor, and I think the reason was in part that during the Second World War, a lot of Campbell's main staple of writers were simply unavailable, so he basically told Alfred, who by 1940, 1941 I think it was, he actually decided he wanted to emigrate to the United States, so he moved to California, and got his American citizenship, and officially became Alfred Elton Van Vogt.
Campbell basically said I'll give you $200 or $300 a month for anything you write, and he did, so this was a very active period for him, he wrote over 50 short stories, and several novels serialized by Campbell.
So Van Vogt's tales are characterized by supermen, monsters, invincible secret societies, obscure futurist philosophies with unfathomable rules, and ancient space empires, and his heroes are often lonely even in their triumph. His prose can be dark and dreamlike, and he had a reputation for abrupt plot complications, and was occasionally parodied as by Ray Bradbury, who wrote a story entitled "Doodad", which was deliberately in his mold, Damon Knight, who will be also hearing a little bit from later, ruthlessly lambasted him for his "bad plotting, poor style, and bad politics," which basically came down to believing that Alfred was supporting social elites, and especially monarchy, which is just such a Canadian thing that it's frankly kind of hilarious, like yeah, monarchy is cool.
But he called Van Vogt's "The World of Null-A" from 1945 one of the worst allegedly "adult" science fiction stories ever published.
Knight wrote this essay in the 40s, and it was supposedly published in a fanzine called Destiny's Child. I don't actually remember coming across that name in our look at the fanzines, do you remember that one, Nate?
Nate:
No, we really only looked at the stuff from the 30s.
JM:
Okay, there were a few of them.
Nate:
Yeah, there's definitely a lot, for sure. And when the 40s rolls around, there gets so much, so much more.
JM:
Moskowitz probably brought it up somewhere. But this was a pretty famous essay, and apparently it actually did hurt Van Vogt's reputation somewhat. Damon Knight was one of the first real science fiction critics, and he had a real desire for people to take science fiction seriously, and so he kind of had a reputation for taking people to task for what he thought of as bad writing. His book in 1956 was one of the first kind of assemblages of critical essays and reviews in this genre.
Time manipulation was also prevalent in some of his work, and his best known longer work is probably "Slan", which recently won a Retro-Hugo and was published in serial form in 1940. This book was picked up by Arkham House in the early days, and this was the publisher that August Derleth, and I think it was Donald Wandrei, started up mostly, but not exclusively, to popularize the works of HP Lovecraft.
So from what I've read, though, I'd say at his best, Van Vogt can evoke a sense of fantastic wonder and grandeur, and there's something intriguing about his alien points of view and the power depicted by some of his characters who must also contend with strange and sometimes unfathomable limitations. At his worst, it's possible that he tends towards over-complication and incoherence, with bizarre last-minute twists and impossible MacGuffins, and there are a few people that I was reading about some of their analysis of Van Vogt, and I was kind of gratified to see that a lot of his things I kind of thought about his style, because I had read a lot of his shorter work, not so much of the longer stuff, but they kind of said the same thing.
In the book Age of Wonder, David Hartwell says that "Van Vogt developed a system for writing science fiction stories in blocks or chunk, and he had a goal for introducing a new speculative idea in each chunk."
So this is pretty weird and eccentric thing that not any other writers would really even try to codify or describe. But you can sort of see the influence of his work on somebody like Philip K. Dick, especially I think. So, actually I'm going to read what Van Vogt wrote.
"Think of it, the story in scenes of about 800 words. If you find that you have solved your scene purpose at the end of 300 words, then something is wrong. A scene isn't properly developed. There are not enough ideas in it, not enough detail, not enough complication. Ever since I started writing in the science fiction field, it has been my habit to put every current thought into a story I happen to be working on. Frequently, an idea would seem to have no relevance, but by mulling it over a little, I would usually find an approach that would make it usable."
So yeah, I mean that's kind of wild when you think about it, and it's probably not great writing advice, but I don't know, I kind of enjoy it. It's just there's something about it, and other writers have kind of noticed this too, and that's the ones that have, I guess, more complimentary things to say about Van Vogt's. But he was pretty much mocked and praised in equal measure, and his name perhaps because of that reason seemed to last longer than some of his golden age contemporaries. He really did love to play with scale, starting out with something small and simple and gradually expanding, or sometimes really suddenly, into something that just knocked you off your feet.
In his 1977 introduction to "The Worlds of Null-A", the British writer Charles Platt said, "the tangled web of shifting motives, suspicions, and loyalties grows ever more involved against a canvas of galactic scope until the whole picture becomes too large to be held in the reader's imagination all at one time."
Again, it's so true, I mean, you don't see a lot of it in this because this is pretty short story, but, and still kind of hitting the mark, Don D'Ammassa in his Encyclopedia of Science Fiction also kind of gave him a roundabout compliment, and I'll skip that, but I think that what I want to do when I do want to mention is a book that I have come to have some, a certain weird affection for since starting this podcast, and that is Brian Aldiss' "Trillion Year Spree", he's just so, he's cantankerous but good natured, very British critic as well as writer, and I found the book just to be very lively and entertaining look at the genre, even though it's occasionally quite acerbic, and he's sort of pretty gung-ho about taking down some of the giants, there's nothing good to say about Hugo Gernsback for example, and doesn't really care for Isaac Asimov, but he kind of likes Van Vogt, which I think is kind of interesting because he seems to be one of those writers who values the more literary qualities of science fiction.
But about Van Vogt, he said "then there was A.E. Van Vogt, hardly a typical Campbell man, your typical Campbell author put you right about this or that, Van Vogt proceeded to beat your brains into scrambled egg."
So that's our author basically in a nutshell, pretty much had the bulk of his career in the 40s, and it's interesting, I mean I definitely enjoy the sort of wild slapdashery of his stuff, both Aldiss and Adam Roberts maintained that Van Vogt was more popular in Europe than in North America, especially in France, his work was translated into French by the surrealist writer Boris Vian and was quite successful.
So the fix up for this story was "The Voyage of Space Beagle" in 1950, and it includes "Black Destroyer" as well as a couple of other stories that are essentially about the same craft and the same very large spaceship investigating outer space, the follow up was called "Discord in Scarlet" and it was published in December, and that original set of stories in the magazine didn't have the linking material that he put it in the "Space Beagle".
Fix up by the way is a term that Van Vogt himself is supposed to have coined and it really became a sort of a popular venue for some of the older American sci-fi writers to sort of get into the paperback business, apparently when publishers noticed that, hey this science fiction stuff is really popular, give us some stuff, and there just wasn't enough new material to go around, so they started taking bits of their old stories and kind of smushing them together into novels, so Van Vogt added this whole thing about the he calls it "nexialism" and it seems to be some kind of mix of psychology, history and various applied physical sciences and there's definitely a shadow of dietetics in this and this certainly reflects Van Vogt's interest in using science, or maybe pseudoscience to awaken dormant talent in trained individuals.
You can kind of see this a little bit in Asimov too and I think that this was an agenda that Campbell was mostly pushing and Van Vogt kind of fell into it, he seems to have been the right kind of person maybe in a certain bent for the mystical and weird that just worked for him in a way that it didn't entirely for Asimov, who's much more of a rationalist and basically didn't really subscribe to any of this stuff, and even later on he just said well I basically put psychohistory into the "Foundation" books because Campbell wanted it there. That's the big problem that I have with the opening books of the series is that that whole thing doesn't sound, it doesn't sound plausible, it doesn't even sound like something Asimov would have thought up honestly, so that's something we might talk about later, maybe not today but I mean I would like to do at least one of the "Foundation" novellas at some point so I think it's kind of interesting but
Nate:
We'll certainly have a lot of stuff to cover him by later.
JM:
Oh yeah, yeah. This story "Black Destroyer" was quite a popular one and apparently when Alfred saw the movie "Alien" in 1979 he was kind of upset because he thought they ripped off his story and he sued I guess it was Ridley Scott and Dan O'Bannon and apparently they settled outside of court, and Alfred got a ton of money.
Which I think is weird like it's weird because the Cambridge companion to science fiction rightfully points out there are other things that came out earlier that could have been even more influenced by "Black Destroyer".
Nate:
A lot of things, yeah.
JM:
Sure, and one that immediately they mentioned and as soon as I saw that mention I was like yeah yeah you know I get it it's the original Star Trek episode "The Man Trap" which features something that you know it's kind of pretends to be submissive and harmless and is actually draining the crew members of, in this case it's salt and not phosphorus which we'll see in a moment but still pretty similar concept and apparently Van Vogt wasn't bothered by that he did actually write some outlines for Trek episodes. Apparently he just wasn't really suited to the constraints of television and film there was a notion of him working on the script for "A Thing From Another World" as well but that didn't pan out so he never really did any film or TV writing.
This story I originally read in the "Space Beagle" version, and I don't know I can't really say which one is better I kind of glanced at the "Space Beagle" version prior to doing this and kind of reread certain bits of it it does seem like he changed a few things here and there we'll get into that a little later maybe when we talk about this story.
So what do you guys think of this one?
Gretchen:
I enjoyed this one and I see where "Who Goes There?" is an influence one thing that I was thinking comparing the two, J.M. and I we were talking a little bit about the way Vogt depicts the crew, and something that I enjoyed about this story is that the crew is a lot more nuanced than I feel like they are in other stories including "Who Goes There?" where usually you have protagonists and like more of the ideologies of certain crew members you're supposed to root for, much more so than others, where I feel like in "Black Destroyer" it feels much more like all the members have like their own faults and their own strengths, and I really liked that more so than sometimes the other depiction like when you have a bunch of people as a crew.
JM:
Yeah it's just like it's just like Brian Aldiss said, most of the other writers want to set you right about one thing or another and Van Vogt just wants to make scrambled eggs out of your brain, so yeah.
Nate:
Yeah, I don't know. I first read this one in "The Voyage of the Space Beagle" version. It was a book that had just kind of appeared in the bathroom of the college house I lived in, and I had grabbed it after I moved out of the house and it sat on my shelf for a while. And I never finished the book. The story just kind of annoyed me and I put it down, and it was kind of harsh on it when we recorded our episode zero. And I thought maybe I was being a little unfair and maybe a little immature, but you know when I re-read this, the same things kind of did annoy me about the story.
And I really wanted to like this because it has a lot of good characteristics too, like I think the horror aspects are really awesome. I don't know, I just wanted to like it more than I actually did. I think it just kind of annoyed me is that while I do appreciate that the crew is more diverse and their interest, it just seems like they're all kind of almost naive and like foolish as to what the actual scenario is. I just kept saying to myself like, oh come on guys, this entire time. But the other thing is, I don't know, JM had mentioned a couple episodes ago being immature about Leslie Stone's use of the word "dick". And I thought maybe I was being immature about his use of the word "pussy" over and over again in this one, but it just does feel like a bad double entendre.
I mean, unfortunately "dick" the vulgar meaning and the name didn't link together in the 1930s where this was used as the vulgar form back in the 1930s. And just the way some of these sentences come together, it just makes me think that maybe he was going for that. He definitely has some awkward phrasing and uses it a lot.
Gretchen:
He could have cut back on the usage of it a couple of times.
Nate:
Yeah, he could have for sure.
JM:
Nate, you're not a cat person.
Nate:
No, I'm not.
JM:
I didn't see, I mean, I did kind of register that a little bit, but not nearly as much. To me, it was relatively normal. Not that I really call my cats "pussy", but like, I don't know, it just didn't seem, yeah, it didn't seem uncalled for to me.
Nate:
I don't know, those two things just kind of stuck out and I think overall I do like this one. It has a lot of really good things going forward, but those things kind of annoyed me. And I forget what happens in the stories afterwards or how many stories after "Black Destroyer" I got in the "Voyage of the Space Beagle" version, but I don't think I've reached a halfway point. So I don't know, something in the later stories probably annoyed me even more.
Gretchen:
I haven't read "Voyage of the Space Beagle". So this was like my first ever experience with Voyage, so I can't speak for the other stories in that. But yeah, there's some, definitely the crew is a little more naive as Nate was saying, but I feel like it sort of counters some of the sometimes, you know, hasty actions you see with other characters in other stories. But it definitely doesn't come off as well.
Nate:
Yeah, and I think little blemishes like that for an otherwise really good story tend to stick out more. It's not like some of the stories will be reading later where instantly you're like, oh, okay, this is going to be a stupid pulp adventure. And that's pretty much what you're expecting the entire time. "Black Destroyer" does kind of set the expectations pretty high because I mean it is theoretically like a scenario of a story that I would really like. I really like "Who Goes There?" and there's obviously some similarities to "Night of 21 Hours", which I really liked as well. But I don't know, this one just had a couple minor issues with it that prevented, for me anyway, being as high as those other two.
JM:
I think that's fair. I enjoyed this. I like this story, but I think it's mostly just because I kind of like Van Vogt. I just kind of think he's cool. I like the weird, every damn thing one after another kind of approach to storytelling and it's a little bit more subdued here than in some other places, but it's still there. I mean, he just keeps introducing new complications and it's just fun.
I don't know. It's he can occasionally be pretty atmospheric. I really like what he often does with his stories too is the point of view is always shifting. So it's never the same character you're with all the time. And a lot of time it's the weird alien creature. And you definitely get that here right from the start with Space Pussy. Sorry, I won't do that again. It just being really kind of beastly, but also a very intelligent and ravenously hungry.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
And I think this is a sometimes I don't like this technique, but I think this is a case where the fact that the audience knows a lot more about the alien character than the crew does is really cool because we know that something really bad is going to happen. And they suspect or some of them do, but they don't really do anything about it. They're pretty passive about the whole thing. And they just kind of let this creature on board their vessel. And I get it though. I mean, think about those Star Trek episodes where they're like, oh, you know, here's a cool alien and let's let's talk to it. And they don't realize that it has its own agenda. And sometimes that turns out all right. But sometimes it doesn't. And so I don't know.
I mean, I will say yes, I agree. The story has some flaws and some of them are kind of funny. Like there's dumb stuff with the crew later on that I just that made me laugh. And it is stuff that he kind of fixed a little bit in the "Space Beagle" version, I think he he made the, I guess, the mission have more purpose. The ship, the size and scale of the ship and the stuff that's on it is more evident in the book version. And there's more interpersonal stuff between the crew. It's not the most interesting thing ever. But there's definitely, you know, a lot of a lot of politics between the different departments and stuff like that.
And a lot of it has concerning this thing that's not even mentioned in this story, which is the nexialism, which seems to have really germinated around the same time as his interest in general semantics and dietetics and sort of trying to create this weird multi disciplinary science/mystical holistic thing.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
And there's more of that in the book for sure. And I don't I don't love that. But again, it's kind of part of the weird Van Vogt thing where it's like a lot of the hero characters especially have some weird philosophy or weird idea. And it gives them great power, but it also might have strange limitations that don't allow them to use it in the way that they might want to. I don't know. It's interesting. I definitely think the alien POV stuff is probably the coolest thing about this story.
Nate:
Yeah, it's definitely a cool monster. And the horror imagery is really well done. It's pretty gory for a story in Astounding. I was like, I was kind of surprised reading this. You know, how bloody it does get.
JM:
Yeah. There's one moment where it does get pretty dark. And I mean, we don't really know any of these people, but still, yeah, it's pretty gory. And I like that part too. So yeah, I'll just quickly go through what happens in the story then and we can talk a bit more about it.
Nate:
Sure.
(music: bubbly dark ambiance)
"Black Destroyer" spoiler summary and discussion
JM:
Coeurl, the seething, angry, intelligent presence is alone on the planet. And it's very atmospheric opening. There's nothing left to eat. Nothing left to kill. It's already done it all. And there are suggestions here that he's the last of his kind. At least that's what I kind of read into it, but it turns out that that might not be true. There's not really an explanation for that. So I was kind of a little bit confused with my certain plotting elements of this story, because it really seems at the beginning like he's the only one.
Nate:
Yeah, it could be a big planet, you know.
JM:
Yeah. So he needs the precious id to survive something which can no longer be found anywhere. He looks like an enormous cat with razor claws and tentacles sprouting from his middle. And he's been hunting for centuries and now seemingly traveled all the way back to his starting point, which is a ruined city. And he can't pick up anything with his senses. The food supplies totally wiped out and the thoughts of past victory and tasty meals don't aid him one bit.
But then, lo, a great ship comes from the starry depths, and on board, id everywhere!
Coeurl must get to it.
These two-legged creatures come out and they obviously want to know about the dead metropolis all around them. And so for a bit they chatter, and Coeurl is smart, and he remembers the powers guns used to have. And he also understands that the things on the ship must come from elsewhere in space. Once his people considered space travel, but they apparently abandoned the project, and are probably too busy wiping themselves out. So he can hear their radio communication, but of course not understand a thing. And he signals to them with his vibrating ear tendrils, which they of course can't hear, but they pick it up on their radio as weird staticky noise. And the creature is pretty intimidating in size and appearance, but tries to make himself appear submissive.
The men examine him, describing the tentacles and finger appendages, and pondering how communication might be possible. And they think the atmosphere in the ship would probably kill him. The one on the planet is 30% chlorine. He wants to come in though, and he looks like a big friendly kitty, so they say aye. And of course that's a big mistake because they have no idea just how hungry he is.
The chemist is wrong about the air. It makes no difference to Coeurl at all. And he just blithely steps on board, and the biologist is baffled since all higher forms of life are either chlorine or oxygen breathers, and they can't be adapted to both. They try to send him in an elevator up to a higher level, but that's when he freaks out. He smashes everything all around him, and causes quite a mess, and shows that he's quite a formidable beast when cornered.
Morton, who has expressed some sympathy for the creature, says he thought that they'd double crossed him, and that's why he got mad. Again though, nobody suspects how hungry he is, and he's angry with himself, but he pretends submission and lies down in the corner on a rug, just like a cat, fooling you into thinking it's domesticated. He plots to kill them all, and take the ship back to their world, where there'd be so much to feast on. So he watches the men work, prodding and digging at the rubble of the city, and he understands how their machines work now, and he has contempt for the two-legged beings.
He follows the guy out alone into the city, and dismembers him, sucking the id substance from his bones. The scientists all give their opinions, especially on what might have become of the civilization. There is a Japanese fellow, an archaeologist named Korita, who speaks grandly about their proximity to the soil in the grand sense of destiny. And it's a little bit stereotypical, but I don't know, I guess it's not too bad, but it's just kind of a funny sort of stereotype of a wise Asian character, I guess. I don't know. There's a bunch of weird philosophizing, and some existential dilemmas, all of them apparently, have now been solved by science. So I don't know, this whole thing was a bit Star Trek to me, which was neat, I guess. It's sort of a thing in all the "Space Beagle" stories as well, so yeah.
This civilization plunged suddenly at the height of their ability. Their minds reached the wrong way for some reason, and they devoured themselves. And I think it's Korita who's going on about all these civilizations and the discovery of existentialist thought and science, and how the intersection of things is so important. And then concludes that Coeurl is probably a cold-blooded murderer and an instinctive deceiver.
Two of the men argue about whether to kill the cat or not, with one volunteering to be an executioner, and another saying they should save it for science. A biological treasure house.
A man named Kent is going to find out what the missing thing is, that is, what did Coeurl take from the man that he killed?
So they'll let him live for now, but they're on to his game and think they can outsmart him.
Well, it turned out the missing element, the id, is phosphorus. Not a spare millimeter loose on the planet, and it's been drawn from the bones of the dead man, Jarvey.
So there's a random story about a guy who's building a spare ship falling into liquid metal and getting killed. That a tired Kent, after working nonstop for hours, shows up with a bowl of... Well, I don't know what it is exactly, I guess it's raw phosphorus material, and Coeurl throws it in his face, literally. And he throws Kent onto a couch like a misbehaving cat, and their atomic vibration guns have no effect on him. He can just neutralize them with his ear tendrils.
Kent really hates the creature and Morton is going to punish him for it. He broke the rules, no voting for a year, and again, this is something that comes up in the "Space Beagle" book, but the ship has elections to determine the positions of the various men and directors of the departments. So Kent's kind of being punished for his, I guess, violent behavior, and it's not really followed up on, I guess, maybe if you read the next story, it might come into it, but again, I think that... Yeah, I mean, I think this might be, again, something that he fleshes out more in the "Space Beagle" version a bit.
But Kent makes an impassioned speech. He says they're all fools blinded by reason to feel and their bones. The murderous intent of Pussy.
Ultimately, Smith, the biologist, sides with him, surprisingly, because he was the one who said they should save Coeurl for science. And they decide to cage him up for real.
Again, this is something that Van Vogt changed in the "Space Beagle" version, because they can see right away that the cage will not be sufficient to keep him trapped. But here they're fools, and Coeurl is contemptuous as they try to take pictures of his insides and Kent. Coeurl doesn't need to sleep. He only hears two watchmen pacing the ship, and when it's quiet, you can bust out of there any time. So that's exactly what he does, his vibratory emitters triggering the lock. And he can hear all the hum of power in the ship on every level, and the sense of pride overtakes him.
And I really love this part. There's so much atmosphere, and he really does that haunted house in space aspect really well in this part.
But he envisions a race like him conquering the entire universe. And he knows they could do it. He must not fail. So he pads through the crew quarters on the ship, and quickly and efficiently kills a dozen men, seemingly by stabbing them all in the throat with his tentacles. And halfway through, he can't resist, but slurp up their phosphorus, which probably takes them a bit longer. And finally, after 12 people died, the crew realizes something weird is happening.
Yeah, it takes them a while. They're really not on the ball with this stuff. But again, you know, I mean, I kind of don't blame them. I mean, it's, I guess, not a military ship, and they don't seem to be aware that some of the life out here might be really, really hostile. So, I mean, that's kind of something that I'm sure later than now, people who have read stories like "Black Destroyer" and write, you know, more military-oriented SF would be like, yeah, that would never happen. They'd have him guarded 24-7 and with atomic disintegrators and everything, but not here.
So he kills the watchmen by the cage and then slinks back in as if nothing had happened. Again, very cat-like. I didn't do anything wrong.
Gretchen:
Act casual when they come in.
JM:
Yeah, the men hilariously don't really seem to have figured out what they don't seem to have known what's happened. And they're like, is it space madness? We've got to consider every possibility, I guess. So Smith finally puts together the evidence about the abilities to control and emit vibrations that Coeurl has. And the fact that Coeurl didn't kill them long ago must mean he's not invincible, I guess.
And Smith tries to electrocute him with a switch on the cage. That's a pretty neat feature, but it doesn't work. And all that happens is a whole bunch of fuses blow. And they can't look in the cage now or hear anything. But they do hear a noise and suddenly the sound of the elevator and it takes them quite a long time again to realize that Coeurl has gotten out.
Within moments he's at the engines and blasting the ship way out into space. Morton brings spacesuits to everyone and the acceleration is really insane. Coeurl's power comes in part from his ability to expertly manipulate electronic vibrations. So if they can neutralize that, they have him. And it's pretty dire though, and they can't even get to the machine shops. The thing has utterly dominated them. But they still have access to the control room and can apparently isolate the engine room.
So Morton thinks they have other advantages too. They're going to use atomic disintegrators to burn down the door. Coeurl knows about these and they're the only thing he seems to be afraid of. So they cut most of the power and use the atomic things to start blasting the door, which works for a while. But then Coeurl starts up a dynamo inside and exerts some kind of force field.
So we have an example of each man doing his part in subduing the creature. And their competence and expertise is emphasized from the perspective of Morton, the commander. So Smith knows life, Pennon knows his engines. Sadly they've lost their metallurgist and many others in Coeurl's attack. And Pennons, the engineer, is going to start and stop the engines and rhythmic grinding vibration. This should bewilder Coeurl, quite effectively.
So there's funny random personality quirks of the men that are mentioned here. And there's this guy Gourlay, who looks and acts lazy, but isn't. And there's various other weird things he throws in, but there's other funny bits though, because like at one, at a couple of points actually. He says something like, the man, a member of the crew, did this. And it's like, well, I'm glad he told me he was a member of a crew. I mean, maybe Coeurl could actually, maybe he really was the thing and could change into one of them. So I'm glad that's not the case. He's just like.
Gretchen:
Not some stranger who walked off from across the street.
JM:
Yeah. Well, I'm so glad he's really a member of the crew. There's these things, the anti-accelerators that Coeurl is really confused by. And I guess they help to, they're probably atomic powered and they help to slow down the ship. So among all this electrical vibratory uproar, the men are about to, they cause, Korita, the archaeologist, does some more psychological analysis of the alien. He calls it low cunning, primitive plans of the brute, almost despite its knowledge and apparent mastery of many things.
So then he starts talking about some weird stuff with history. And I get it. It's like, it doesn't make any sense. He's talking about the sack of Rome, not really being true history because it was an aberration. Like what? I don't know. I don't know, man.
So let's just in and win, though, he says, and to their credit. Not everyone actually falls for this stuff that Korita is spouting anyway.
Meanwhile, Coeurl is leaving away in the machine shop, actually building what looks to be a small ship for himself. So again, this is very much like "Who Goes There?". The men keep trying to overwhelm him and he's getting tired. And eventually, though, he's able to block their attempts using his mind and a force field generated by the dynamos. But they still get in and Coeurl blasts off in his ship just ahead of him straight through the well. And he tries to turn around and go back to the planet where he suddenly thinks he can raise an army or something. And there's some weird technobabble explanation for why Coeurl couldn't manage it.
So he doesn't know about the anti-accelerators and I don't know, I don't know. What do you think happens at the end? Because I'm a little confused. He turns around, he sees what he thinks is the son of his home planet. And it's his only landmark. But instead of getting bigger, it starts getting smaller. And then there's nothing there and he's really worried. And then he sees another thing coming up in the distance. And it turns out it's the ship he just left which got ahead of him because of the anti-accelerators somehow. But I don't get why he was apparently going away from his son instead of toward it.
Gretchen:
I was also confused by that. So that was something when you had mentioned that one of his flaws is that he sometimes throws in very strange, usually twists, but this one also just felt very... not really get the specifics of what happened there.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess so the idea seems like the raw atomic power is one thing that unnerves him and he can't really directly control. And it seems like that is the source of the ship's ability to control its flight. And maybe Coeurl's ship doesn't really have that. But because the "Space Beagle", which is not named here by the way, but we'll just call it that, has that, they're able to actually get ahead of him and wait for him to catch up to them. I don't really, I don't know, I still don't really get it.
Nate:
Yeah, odd physics.
JM:
So when he realizes he seems to have made a little circle, his mind basically snaps and he goes nuts and breaks everything and decides to commit suicide because he knows that the atomic disintegrators will now be aimed on him.
So, "poor Pussy" says one of the guys, apparently they do think there are other inhabitants after all. So we have to kill every cat, says the one guy, and Korita thinks it'll be easy. They'll saddle up to them, pretending to trick them. And Korita says it was their knowledge of history that helped them defeat him, somehow.
And that's how we end this story.
Gretchen:
Sure, we'll go with that.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah, it's really funny because even like, I think it was D'Ammassa or something, you know, he kind of said like, well, oh no, it was Aldiss, he's like talking about "The World of Null-A" and it's like, well, one of the reasons people like it is that it gives these hints that he's kind of pointing towards some really grand vision of something. And he's like, to this day, nobody's able to figure out what it is.
And yeah, I mean, I don't know. I can see that is objectively maybe a sort of flaw, but I can't help but be kind of endeared by it. And I think that's why I like him. I like him, despite being able to acknowledge that, yeah, there's some things that don't seem to work. Even about this story, which is, you know, considered, I guess, a pretty seminal work.
I mean, it is his first published science fiction story.
Nate:
Yeah, and apparently it was very well-loved from the start.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
One thing I was going to bring up a little later when we talk about some of the analytical laboratory stuff that is in this magazine. I'll say it now in the September 1939 issue when these stories are rated, "Black Destroyer" is number one.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah. Apparently he got like super celebrity status pretty much right off the gate. And I think this one had a lot to do with it. And it's easy to see why. I mean, I think we can easily point at his flaws, but there is a lot of really cool stuff going for it.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
Like you said, the horror imagery and the gore is a lot of fun. The ending scene where Coeurl's in the control room and they're trying to like figure out, you know, how to get him out. And they're trying like different things with their electrical apparatuses and whatnot is really neat. And I don't know, I've just like always liked that scenario of a monster loose on a crew somewhere out in space. I mean, I think "Who Goes There?" is better. And you can obviously see the influences between that and this, but you can certainly do a lot worse than this one. And we certainly will do a lot worse later on in the magazine.
JM:
Yes. One thing I do want to add is I think I am part of that again, part of the reason why maybe this took off, is again, the alien point of view. And I think that even though science fiction was often, I guess, criticized like many authors were criticized for not having this kind of thing back then. When it did appear in stories like this and in like "Old Faithful" by Gallun.
Gretchen:
I was going to bring up that I was reminded of Gallun as well, reading this and that point of view.
JM:
Right. And the thing is, you can tell that the audience back then really, really liked that. So they wanted more of that. And I think that Campbell was very happy to give it to them. And, you know, when he found somebody like Van Vogt who liked doing this and was really good at it, he's like, yeah, yeah, give me more of this stuff. And that's something that, for example, Asimov almost never did. Didn't really give you too much alien point of view. And he said he had a reason for that. And that was he would have done it more. Again, I think if he'd started writing for somebody other than Campbell, but I don't know, it's so weird, the relationship Asimov and Campbell had. And we'll get to that a little bit, but it's like, he really respected and admired him and appreciated. And like many of the writers did, he appreciated him giving him a lot of advice on how to make his stories better and giving him a venue for publishing a lot of his stuff when he was pretty young. But in a lot of senses, they didn't see eye to eye on stuff.
One of the things that Campbell was pretty dead set on was the superiority of the human race. So he was very much like, well, yeah, you can portray an alien in a very nuanced way and give it a point of view and everything. But in the end, mankind still has to triumph.
And Asimov didn't necessarily agree with that. So his solution was just, yeah, I'll just write about people in space. And that's pretty much what he did.
Nate:
Or robots. Yeah, I don't know, alien biology is just cool to get into and speculate on. And there's a lot of neat things about the monster, aside from its monstrous capabilities of the giant claws on the tentacles and all that. Radio antenna are pretty neat. And I was like that kind of weird aspects of what path of evolution could take.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah, I really like that too. And I like the fact that they can hear it attempting to communicate with them, but it just sounds like noise on their radio. So that's pretty cool. Yeah.
If we do one more Van Vogt work, it'll probably be "Slan". I didn't mention that that book was actually very, again, if he has a superstar status, it probably comes from that too. Because "Slan" is one of the stories that he did about mutant humans, basically, with powers, mental and physical. And they're outclassed in society and they're hunted down and treated very badly, sometimes exterminated. And somebody came up with the phrase, "fans are Slans". And this got started getting used a lot. And it was the sort of this idea that some of the fanbase had that they were pariahs a little bit just because of the stuff they liked.
And to us now, that sounds kind of funny, I think, like, of all the problems you could have in life. But at the same time, yeah, I mean, even when I was a kid, it seemed more so than now. I mean, now it seems like there are so many niche things and people are welcome to them, right? People are welcome to enjoy all the nerdy stuff they want, pretty much. But in 1939, yeah, maybe not so much. I guess. I get it, kind of. It just still seems a little bit like your problems are not that serious. I mean, I know, especially if you like how I was when I started getting to a lot of this stuff. I knew that nobody else was into it, but I actually liked that. I thought that was cool. It was fun to be the only person that knew about stuff.
And but I think that for a lot of people, a sense of community does become really important. And certainly many of the science fiction fans would have felt this, especially if they lived in more isolated places. And yeah, there was probably nobody to talk to about this stuff. I mean, like we have the Internet, which makes things a lot easier. You know, absolutely.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
I mean, how you and I, Nate met because of music and Gretchen and I because of books and "Sapphire and Steel" and stuff. And it's like, hey, we have a lot of stuff in common. That's really cool.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
It's not easy to find people like that all the time. And I guess especially back then, there's a real challenge. And that's probably one of the reasons why the letters columns were so vibrant too.
Nate:
Yeah. And we take a look at all that stuff in the last episode we did on fanzines and the 1930s fan culture where all this stuff really coalesces around this point. This is the month that the first WorldCon happens. Science fiction conventions are starting to be more of a thing. And it's just really starting to become an actual community, not just kind of a loose, disparate collection of authors writing stuff that we now call science fiction. But this is actually a large group of people who are talking to one another, considering themselves science fiction fans and authors. And often, as we'll see in the letters column, the line is blurred between the two categories.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah, I recommend this. I think I like that it's possible to go in with these caveats about Van Vogt, you know, and I think that maybe people can consider it a warning perhaps that they should tailor their expectations to somebody who's dreaming, basically. And just like coming up with all this stuff and throwing it at you. And just, you know, you just kind of have to accept it to enjoy it. I have no problem with that in this case, because I think he's fun enough to make it cool.
Gretchen:
Yeah, maybe a bit of a spectacle, but it's a fun spectacle.
Nate:
Yeah, it is fun that it is.
JM:
Yeah. That's our first Canadian writer, even though he went to the United States, but he was a monarchist in the end. So, yeah.
Nate:
Well, I did dig up some Québécois science fiction recently so maybe we'll cover some of that on the podcast for some real obscurities.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Мaybe Judith Merrill in the future.
Nate:
Yeah.
Bibliography:
Aldiss, Brian and Wingrove, David - "Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction" (1986)
Astounding Science Fiction, July 1939 issue https://archive.org/details/Astounding_v23n05_1939-07_dtsg0318/mode/2up
D'Ammassa, Don - "Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction" (2005)
Hartwell, David G. - "Age of Wonders: Exploring the World of Science Fiction" (1984)
James, Edward - "The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction" (2003)
Panshin, Alexei - "The Early Stories of A.E. van Vogt" https://www.panshin.com/articles/vanvogt/vanvogt1.html
Platt, Charles - introduction to "The World of Null-A" (1977)
Music:
in order of appearance in opening sketch:
Hirsch, Louis A. - "Sweet Kentucky Lady" (1914) https://www.loc.gov/resource/music.musihas-100006686/?sp=1&st=image
Dodge, Mr. & Mrs John Wilson - "Moon, Moon, Moon" (1910) https://www.loc.gov/resource/musm1508.10020387.0/
Bayes, Nora and Norworth, Jack - "Falling Star" (1909) https://www.loc.gov/item/ihas.200004367/
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