(listen to episode on Spotify)
(music: electric flow shimmering)
Nat Schachner background, non-spoiler discussion
Nate:
Good evening and welcome to Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast. This month, we're taking a look at the July 1939 issue of Astounding. Our previous two segments, we covered the first two stories in the magazine, A. E. Van Vogt's "Black Destroyer", and Isaac Asimov's "Trends".
And after the Asimov, we get a little brief nonfiction piece on random numbers, just describing what they are and how they can possibly be used. So in particular, the Bell System Telephone Company uses it to calculate how many units of crossbar dialing switching apparatuses will be needed to handle demand that is going to be placed on the system by thousands of telephone stations. So it's kind of neat.
JM:
Yeah, you know what, I don't like that the magazine included little things like this. Yeah, it's really cool because like, I know, you know, when I was reading magazines and stuff in the early 90s, you know, every now and then I get like Popular Mechanics magazine in Braille or something, and read about this like cool thing, and it would kind of get my mind going. And we're like, yeah, what could you use that for? That would be cool. But like, there's a science fiction magazine, so it's it's perfectly fitting, right?
Nate:
Yeah, and it breaks it up. I mean, these little like, I don't know, 150 word maybe pieces that just kind of explore a simple idea. And yeah, it gets you thinking in between the the main content of the magazine, which is the stories.
JM:
Yeah, but maybe it gives you an idea for a story that you might want to submit to one of the science fiction magazines.
Nate:
True. Yeah, right. Yeah, we also get an ad for Listerine shaving cream. Maybe that would also inspire you to submit a story to the magazine.
JM:
Yeah, like "The Stuff".
Nate:
Yeah, right. Certainly, there's no shortage of strange oozes and various other substances that we've seen in these kind of stories.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
But then it's on to the third story of the magazine, which is "City of the Cosmic Rays" by Nat Schachner. Nat Schachner is somebody who was definitely known in his day, but is certainly nowhere near well recognized as Asimov and Van Vogt.
JM:
No, I don't believe I read any Schachner before this, but I could be wrong just because I've read a lot of random pulp sci fi stories. But the name doesn't suggest to me any stories that I'd read before. With that said, I did read another one after this one. So I'll mention that later. But yeah.
Nate:
Yeah, we were just talking about Asimov in the last segment, but he published an anthology called "Before the Golden Age". And that includes the story "Past, Present, and Future" by Nat Schachner, which is the first in the series of the story we're reading tonight.
JM:
Yeah. So in a way, I wish we'd gotten that one. But like I kind of one reason why I specifically chose this issue, too, is that there are no serials.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
But this kind of felt like a serial to me. Like even though it's not one, it felt like I was being dropped into the middle of something. I'm not really sure or what the deal was. Exactly.
Nate:
Yeah, I didn't realize it was the fourth installment in a series at first. So I was like, wow, these are just like kind of a lot of information being thrown at you at once.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
And it was kind of weird. I was like, huh, that's an interesting way to do it. But yeah, apparently there's a reason for that.
Gretchen:
Yeah. It reminds me of this one time when I read "To Say Nothing of the Dog" by Connie Willis before I knew it was a sequel to "The Doomsday Book". So I also just thought that, you know, I was just being dropped into the middle of this world and I was just supposed to kind of intuit what was going on.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah.
JM:
Yeah. I mean, I think that the way he does it kind of works. But I also felt like, yeah, there's a lot of random stuff here that I don't understand. It feels like there were stuff that happened before this. And indeed, there was.
Nate:
There definitely was. Yeah. And we'll get into that in a bit. But he not only wrote a fair amount of these "Past, Present, and Future" stories, there's five in total, he wrote a lot of stories in general. And Sam Moskowitz speculates that he might be the single most prolific writer in the field of 1930s science fiction, which is itself is a pretty incredible achievement.
JM:
That is an impressive feat. Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah, right. Moskowitz himself has written probably the most comprehensive biographical material of Schachner and really the only one that has any substantial information and analysis. It's in a three part article published in the fanzine Fantasy Commentator in issues 43, 44 and the 45/46 double issue, which is a nice tie into our last episode on fanzines. 43 and 44 you can read on the fanac.org website. I was actually able to find a physical copy of 45/46. So I'm going to try to scan that and send it to them. (Later note: This was indeed scanned, sent to them and posted online there.)
JM:
Yeah, that's really cool.
Nate:
So you can have the complete set if you are so interested in reading about him. But yeah, I would like to fill in gaps in their archive where I can. A little interesting aside about Sam Moskowitz and Isaac Asimov is there is a pretty funny quote in his autobiography where Isaac Asimov is talking about Sam Moskowitz's "The Immortal Storm", which we talked about in our last episode.
JM:
Oh, yeah.
Nate:
And he says, "in that book, endlessly, and forgive me, Sam, unreadably detailed are all the feuds and quarrels of the period among people known only to themselves over issues unexplainable to others."
JM:
I'm so glad that we weren't the only one. Oh, man. I feel vindicated.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Other people found it similarly esoteric.
Nate:
Yeah. And I mean, as much as Sam Moskowitz can be, I guess, unreadable and go into a lot, a lot of detail at times, it's good that he does because sometimes just the only source of substantial information on these subjects out there.
JM:
Yeah, true.
Nate:
And while it does read like a reference work like his three part article on Nat Schachner definitely does, it contains a lot of information. And it's definitely cool that Moskowitz was doing this even on a fanzine level that late, because these were published in the 1990s. They were not like fanzines from the 30s or 40s. This was quite late in Sam Moskowitz's career.
JM:
Oh, it was pretty interesting. It did seem to actually do the first real discovery work on a number of authors like his work on William Hope Hodgson is actually very highly regarded. And then there's Edward Page Mitchell, who he seems to have almost single handedly rescued from obscurity.
Nate:
Yeah. And it seems like that's what Fantasy Commentator did is publish biographies of these early obscure, weird and science fiction pulp authors who might otherwise be forgotten to the ages. Stuff gets lost over time. Sometimes it's good to dig up information where you can just as a historical preservation tool. And it's pretty awesome that Moskowitz was basically doing that his entire career. He's really done an incredible, incredible amount of work in science fiction, bibliography and historiography.
But taking a look to Schachner himself, he was born on January 16th, 1895 in New York to a Jewish family, though like Asimov's, it was not a particularly observant or strict one in the household. He was very well educated and took up early interest in science. And at the City College of New York became friends with an Arthur Leo Zagat, who was the one who got him into science fiction. Zagat found an issue of amazing and was so impressed with it that he showed it to Schachner and was basically like, check out this cool science fiction stuff.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Nat said to himself, well, I bet I could write this stuff too.
JM:
Zagat was quite prolific in his own right. Yeah. I don't know. I haven't read much by him, but it seems like he's actually done some really good stuff.
Nate:
The two wrote a lot together.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
So they wrote the "Menace from Andromeda" as a way to challenge themselves, which was then published in April 1931 of Amazing. So they didn't go through this like lengthy rejection period, like Asimov and some of the other authors did, I guess, working together and being educated people in their 30s basically, and not kids just out of high school like some of these authors are, probably does help with the quality of writing and some of the ideas that go into these, which I imagine would lead to an easier time in getting stories sold and accepted into magazines.
They actually had an earlier sale together, which was the "Tower of Evil" that appeared in the summer 1930 issue of Wonder Stories. So I guess there' issues of different publishers and when they actually publish things.
JM:
That sounds interesting. Pulp stories have such great titles.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
They just always manage to make you go, "I wonder what that's like".
Nate:
Yeah. I can go for a Tower of Evil. That sounds pretty cool. But Schachner had a scientific background in chemistry. His undergraduate degree was in chemistry and he had two years of working experience as a chemist for the city department of health. And during the war, that is World War One, he served in the Gas and Flame Division of the Chemical Warfare Service, which is quite the position.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
And while he was doing all of this on the side, he was studying law and took the Bar in 1919. So this confluence of interest and education impressed David Lasser, who was then the editor of Science Wonder Stories and the impetus behind the forming of the American Interplanetary Society who asked Schachner for help. And Moskowitz notes that science fiction fans thought that the society at the time was a bunch of farfetched dreamers with their head literally in the clouds. But over the years, it transformed into an actual technical society and is one of the predecessor societies of what eventually became to be known as the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, which is the major American Society for Aerospace Engineers. So that's a pretty neat real world tie-in with science fiction there.
Schachner himself was very involved in the society serving in various officer positions, organizing meetings and delivering papers. And they even organized a 2000 person event in the form of a screening of Fritz Lang's "Woman in the Moon" at the American Museum of Natural History. It's a pretty good film. It's not great, I would say. Certainly nowhere near on par with some of his other films from the 20s like "Metropolis" or the two Nibelung films or even the Mabuse film. But one very, very notable thing about it, especially to a science fiction audience, is that it basically shows the function of a multi-stage rocket, which is what the design was that made it to the moon in real life 40 years later was. And when World War II broke out, the Nazis even banned screening of the film, not for its objectionable moral content or political overtones or whatever, but because they thought the rocketry scenes were so realistic and too similar to classified information on their V2 rocketry project. So when they screened this in 1931, I'm sure a bunch of rocket enthusiasts were just bursting with excitement about this film. It must have been a major deal for them interfacing with the public. I mean, the 2000 person screening is pretty big at a serious museum.
JM:
Willy Ley, I guess, was probably still in Germany at that time.
Nate:
1931? Yeah, I think so. Definitely before the war and all that.
But it was during this time and out of his Interplanetary Society work that he starts getting involved with writing and publishing nonfiction, which he's probably most known for to the outside world, namely biographies of Aaron Burr, Alexander Hamilton, and Thomas Jefferson, as well as a history text entitled "The Founding Fathers" that covers the Revolution and the period afterward. Bleiler certainly speaks much higher of his Revolutionary era nonfiction stuff than his science fiction output. But it's his science fiction output that we're here to talk about. And like we said before, there is a lot of it. As Moskowitz noted, he was extremely prolific publishing what I think is around 114 individual stories, at least by my count on the ones listed on ISFDB, either written by himself or in collaboration with Zagat, all from 1930 to 1941, and then four novels from 1941 to 1944. The novels look like they're more mainstream historical fiction and revolve around figures like Dante and Bacon.
JM:
Yeah, and I definitely got the sense that he could probably do historical fiction if he wanted to. Yeah, I don't know if it would be the best historical fiction necessarily. But I don't know, I actually, it's just, we'll talk about it when we get there. But I'm really glad that I read the other story that was not this one. And I'm sorry, Gretchen, you probably didn't. And like, it helped put this one in perspective a little more, I think. And I liked that I got the origin of this whole situation. There were things about the story that I didn't like that much. And since we're not really talking specifically about that story, I don't know how much I want to go into it. But yeah, yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's interesting. I thought this was really interesting. I kind of enjoyed it on some weird level, even though I felt like I didn't really understand what was going on. And parts of it were sort of unsatisfying. But at the same time, I felt there was an originality here somehow, like the concept of getting all these people together was really cool, I thought.
Nate:
Yeah, there's definitely some stuff I liked about it. And he does have a interest in history that you can see from one of the characters. But Moskowitz says that his historical fiction sold rather modestly, but it brought in still a substantial amount of income as selling a novel was like the equivalent of 10 or so stories that he could sell to a magazine like Astounding.
JM:
That makes sense. And pretty much that is the trend for a lot of these writers. If they can survive as writers, they go on to writing novels that get published in paperback form or hardcover. Like paperbacks were pretty new. But Edgar Rice Burroughs was like, like, that was where his real claim to fame lies is being one of the first authors of that pulp generation to actually get hardcover science fiction books into the market.
Nate:
Right, right.
JM:
And Isaac Asimov didn't publish his first book novel till 1950. So it took a while for some of these writers.
Nate:
It definitely did.
JM:
Van Vogt was 1946 with "Slan."
Nate:
Yeah. And Schachner himself shifted more to the nonfiction stuff. Apparently, his Revolutionary War era stuff is still very well acclaimed by Revolutionary War scholars. That's not really my area.
JM:
Certainly not mine.
Nate:
Yeah, apparently, they're still well respected in their field, which is itself an impressive feat.
Gretchen:
I went through a phase where I was really interested in the Revolutionary War. And I'm wondering if, you know, I were to look through like the bibliographies of some of the books that I read that are more recent. Maybe he's influenced them.
Nate:
Well, certainly the biographies of Jefferson, Hamilton and Burr, I mean, those are all major figures. So I'd imagine they probably would get referenced in some way, especially if they were popular biographies that were historically significant when they were published.
JM:
Yeah, it's definitely an area I know very little about.
Nate:
Yeah, it's not my area at all. But it's cool. It's definitely there's definitely some neat stuff going on in that era of American history. Not too much science fiction, I don't think.
On his own work and experience as an author, though, Schachner says in the September 1939 issue of Fantastic Adventures, "Back in 1930, wrote my first story on a bet. Had never read a pulp before that. And much to my surprise, it was accepted. The magazine was Amazing. Liked the idea and wrote more and more and tell my stenographer objectived. Typing manuscripts she had no time for law briefs. I decided therefore to drop the law. But even in writing, I can't say put. I alternate Fantastics, Detectives, etc., with such stuff as a biography of Aaron Burr, a deadly serious volume on the medieval universities, articles or magazines like American Mercury, etc. And I'm now involved in a book on Alexander Hamilton. But all along, what I really wanted to be was an astronomer."
JM:
That's a very science fiction thing to say.
Nate:
It is, yeah. Moskowitz notes that his early work up to around 1933 or so had a decidedly socialist left wing bent to it. But afterwards, he largely drops any political overtones in his work. And he also states that Schachner was the pioneering force behind what Astounding was branding as its thought variant stories, where the story features some kind of novel idea not used before in science fiction stories. The pilot of this line was Schachner's "Ancestral Voices", which was published in the December 1933 issue. And possibly the other major thing he's noted for in his science fiction writing are two of his final science fiction stories, "Old Fireball" and "Jurisdiction", which involve a law firm dealing with the legal issues of space or space law, which as Moskowitz notes, was driven at the behest of Campbell, possibly his idea in the first place, possibly thinking to himself, you know, this Schachner guy has got a legal background, and maybe that could be a good angle for a science fiction story. These were later put together along with a third installment in a fix up novel called "Space Lawyer", published in 1953. So pretty thrilling title for you.
Gretchen:
Sure, that's a big hit, "Space Lawyer".
Nate:
But by this point in Schachner's life, he wasn't really interested in science fiction. And the fix up novel itself was initiated by Martin Greenberg, who ran Gnome Press, which also published the first edition of Asimov's "Foundation". So interestingly enough, Moskowitz himself personally called up Schachner in 1953 before this to get him to try to write more science fiction stories. But presumably Greenberg's actual offer of money was more tempting than Moskowitz's trying to encourage him to contribute more to the great volume of the science fiction art, as Moskowitz says that his conversation with Schachner didn't really go anywhere.
He died a little bit shortly afterwards in October of 1955 from a heart attack, which cut his career writing short. When he was publishing science fiction, though, Schachner appeared a lot in Astounding, although as he himself notes, he was quite a varied author. So he also appears in a lot of horror and detective pulps. And as we mentioned before, tonight's story is itself part of a series the Past, Present and Future" series, which first appeared in the September 1937 issue of Astounding. And this is the fourth one in a series of five stories total. "City of the Cosmic Rays". And the premise as the series title may indicate is that there are three characters, one from the present time, one from the distant past, and one from the far future who got caught up in this massive temporal journey.
And yeah, I didn't know this was a series when I first read this. So I was confused about a lot of things at first. And I thought it was a strange way to end it. And thinking about it, I wasn't really sure how I felt. But then I was like, Oh, yeah, okay, this is a series that makes more sense now. So this ongoing adventure thing, it makes things make a little more sense. And that is kind of one thing thinking about it more that I do like about this story. And in some ways, it does remind me a bit of like a Doctor Who precursor with in some ways, but not really the far future guy fulfilling the role of the Doctor and the present and distant past character who in this case, he's from Ancient Greece, being like companions.
JM:
Yeah, I definitely got that sense as well. And it was pretty neat. I'd never, I don't know, I feel like I hadn't read anything like this quite like this from this time before where it's like, yeah, it's it is actual temporal meeting of these three characters. And unfortunately, I do think that their origin story is much better at really describing all this. And I don't know, I mean, I don't have any regrets about what we did this month with like reading the whole magazine. But if there's any of these stories I wish we'd read, it's that one. Because this really does feel like in media res, like I was so it made sense to me by the end, but I'm kind of like, well, who are these who are these evil people that are after them and like why I had like, also,
I don't know, there's there's weird. I mean, I think it's of its time. I don't think it's like Schachner necessarily making definitive statements, but there's weird racial shit.
Nate:
There is in both of these stories. For sure.
JM:
Yeah. But he does try to in his defense, he does try to show the other side like in the other story, like it's this Greek god, Kleon, basically, who's described in such loving detail that it is 100% homoerotic feeling, but describing how he's like, lording it over these Egyptians and Mayans, and how he's like, you know, this great white God kind of, and it's a little bit uncomfortable. And then he'll show the other side to and be like, yeah, but meanwhile, the Egyptians thought he was just fucking crazy, basically.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
You know, I mean, it was like, I don't know, it's, it's not too uncomfortable, but it is a little weird. And this one has a little bit of that too. But it's just very odd, like, I don't know, reading this was an odd experience, but I kind of liked it. Yeah, like, it had that feeling where again, it's the title, "The City of the Cosmic Rays" and I'm kind of thinking, that sounds cool, I want to know what that is. And you read it, and it's like, kind of weirder than you expect. And it's trying to say some things, but you're not quite sure what, yeah, it's got all this like it feels in a way like an older story, like it feels like almost like one of those weird 1800s traveler kind of stories.
Gretchen:
Yeah, kind of one of those like tour guide kind of stories they did with like the utopias where it's like, yeah, take a look at this place, look at all of our stuff here.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
But meanwhile, we're like, we're in this utopia, but there are all these weird people and like, the Greek guy is getting really pissed off.
Nate:
Yeah. He does remind me of Jamie from Doctor Who in some ways of, you know, always wanted to charge into battle with a sword or whatever.
JM:
Yeah, a bit less, a bit less like youthful. Yeah. Yeah. And in the other story, it's basically implied that he was like a soldier fighting in some, I forget what war was, and like, they ended up shipwrecked on this island and all the people on his ship are his slaves, basically.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
And he's like trying to whip them into shape. And they're like, they're really into staying on this island. And it's almost like reminds me of something out of the Odyssey or something like that, where they're like, but there's all these really nice women here. And it's like paradise here. Why would we want to leave and go to war with you? You great white Greek God. And like, he's he's like getting really self important about it.
And yeah, I'm sorry. I this was a weird situation for me because yeah, this story, it does feel like story number five of something. And I really did prefer the origin story. I can't really not say that.
Nate:
Yeah. So a lot of stuff does happen before this story. The first story, we kind of get our three heroes all together in one place. And then the second story, "City of the Horde", we meet the Harg and Vardu who are two of our villains here.
JM:
And I didn't read that one. I knew I was still missing some things.
Nate:
Yeah, I kind of skimmed through the the first three. But the other villain we meet, Ras, we meet in story number three, who makes an alliance with Vardu and the Harg. So by the time that this one starts, you know, our heroes have been together for a while. And pretty much the people they met in the previous two stories are on their trail. And according to Moskowitz, apparently the last story leaves at someone open ended for a continuation. But it sounds like it does end on a rather satisfying note. And Moskowitz does like all the entries in this series. He doesn't think that the later ones are bad or anything like that. But the first one "Past, Present and Future" does seem to be more widely regarded and recognized overall, Asimov did include it in his anthology. And I think others have cited it as one of the better stories that deal with these kind of weird time travel narratives from the 1930s.
Gretchen:
Yeah, like you were both saying it definitely it feels unique and it has like a different quality to it than I was expecting from a story of like a similar subject matter. I suspected it was from a series, but I didn't really confirm it myself. I did read it more as just a standalone. I think it is interesting to see it as a standalone, you know, that idea of being thrown into it. So I'm not disappointed by it by thinking, you know, the about the other stories. It is a very, I enjoyed the story, not as much as some of the other works in the in the magazine.
JM:
Yeah, I definitely started out reading this as a standalone. I mean, I didn't know it was part of a series either. So I started reading it that way. And I don't know, I just I finished it and I felt like, yeah, I'm missing too much context. Like I just felt like I needed more. And so and when I saw that Asimov had included "Past, Present and Future" in "Before the Golden Age", I'm like, yeah, I should read this. And I just had time to remember sitting here on my couch just before Christmas time. And I was waiting for my hardware computer guy to come by. And yeah, like just read this story and it made a lot of what was happening here a little bit more clear and like kind of understand why all these characters work together a little bit. Although it still kind of got this ambiguous weird quality to it, which I think, I don't know, I would be surprised if I don't know, did you see anything about Schachner writing anything for Weird Tales, Nate?
Nate:
I think he did. I don't know if it was Weird Tales specifically, but he was definitely in...
JM:
That kind of story. Yeah, I think I could see him writing that kind of story because there's so much like weird societies and ancient civilizations and like, again, to mention the other story, like the beginning of that one especially starts out like feeling like a Robert E. Howard epic, like a venture almost sword and sorcery story or something like that. And there's a little bit of that here too. But I don't know, this one like just throws you right in at the beginning. There's that was also kind of like Doctor Who, especially those Troughton stories, where it's like, you start in the TARDIS and everything is shaking and everything, everybody's falling all over the place. "And Doctor, can't you control this thing?"
Nate:
Right. And everybody's chasing you right off the bat. Yeah.
Gretchen:
And especially as someone whose first second Doctor story is "The Mind Robber", and it starts with them nearly dying by volcano, you know, it's just.
Nate:
Yeah. And that's pretty much the way this one starts. You know, we're we're on the run right off the bat. And it's one of the fun things about this story is there's there's always a sense of like, danger, incoming dread. And while a lot of it is that kind of weird traveler narrative where we do get a tour of the society and it is a pretty weird place.
JM:
Yeah. And it doesn't overstay its welcome. Like it's pretty short as well.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Although I do think like the events at the end happen kind of quickly, like, you know, we'll get there when we get there. But it just seems like like it was kind of and then this happened and then it happened and then they laughed and it's just sort of like, wow, oh, that sucks. Okay.
Nate:
Yeah. One thing that this reminded me of was the Harry Bates story that we covered a couple of episodes "Alas, All Thinking" where humanity just takes a really weird direction. And people from a different era are just kind of disgusted at the way it's gone.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
It sounds like one of the civilizations they don't encounter, but like mentioned, I think it sounded like the same sort of beings that are in "Alas, All Thinking".
Nate:
Right. Right.
JM:
So are they going further and further into the future? It seems like that's what what's happening.
Nate:
You know, I don't know.
JM:
They're traveling in space, but they're also...
Nate:
I think they're also traveling in time. Yeah.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
I didn't read all five of the stories. I kind of skimmed through the first one more than the others. Whereas the others, I was just looking at the plot summary and what characters were involved. But yeah, the the time travel element, I didn't really get a handle of it felt that way, like they were traveling through time, but I'm not entirely sure.
JM:
It seemed like that the future guy...
Nate:
Beltan.
JM:
Beltan. Yeah. He knew about some of the things, but some of the things the things they were encountering were new to him. Like, like it was even worse than in his time or something like that.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Because in his time, things had already taken a pretty weird turn. Right. And that's kind of gone into in "Past, Present and Future". But in this one, this is an even further it's even further along the path. But it's also in this weird spatial location.
Nate:
It is. Yeah. It's like, yeah. Yeah. I'm not entirely sure where Beltan, Olgarch of Hispan is from. Again, I maybe should have noted it down from the first story. I don't know if they really got into it on on there, but it's definitely in the far future for where we end up in this one.
JM:
Beltan's time is like 3000 years in the future from Sam's time.
Nate:
Okay. So yeah. So this would be like several thousand years after.
JM:
So this would be, yeah, way more than that.
Nate:
Yeah. Okay. Now, it's something interesting. And again, it very much feels like elements of this, like a lot of elements of this would factor in later in Doctor Who. Not necessarily that the writers of this maybe would have been familiar with that. But there are definitely a lot of elements here that would appeal to a Doctor Who fan and kind of feel at home here.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, this was this was really, I don't know, it felt different somehow that that all of the other stories in a way that was pretty cool.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Even though, yeah, this one, this one kind of dislocated me a little bit. Like I didn't really, I don't know, it was hard to connect with a little bit. But now that I sort of know what the series is about, I actually want to read all of them. So I might just do that.
Nate:
Yeah. Moskowitz likes them. So I couldn't find Bleiler's commentary on these. He comments on a lot of other Schachner stories, but doesn't have any of his quips on these ones, which are always kind of fun to read.
JM:
"Routine".
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
"Below average".
Nate:
Yeah. But they, yeah, they do get the Sam Moskowitz stamp of approval, if that means anything in your books. So yeah, give them a try.
Gretchen:
I would try them, although I do kind of like the jarring quality of reading this as a standalone.
Nate:
So you could maybe read them all out of order, like start with number five and then read number two or something.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Set up a randomizer and let's see which one comes first.
Nate:
Use the random number generator that the magazine provides for you in the beginning of the issue.
JM:
I mean, I've definitely done things like that. And like, when I read the Dying Earth books from Jack Vance, I actually read "Cugel's Saga" before "Eyes of the Overworld" and like "Eyes of the Overworld" is supposed to come first. But the, the funny thing is they're both like journeys completely around the world of the Dying Earth. So it's like either one, they both kind of start out pretty similar. And it could be, you know, it almost doesn't matter which one you read first, although "Cugel's Saga" does kind of provide an end to all his crazy adventures. But yeah, I don't know. More on Jack Vance later, I'm still wondering which Jack Vance to choose for a future Chrononauts host choice episode. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know what else to comment about this until we finish the plot, but I don't know. It was cool in its way. It's a strange middle of a story kind of cool, but cool.
Nate:
Right.
(music: sparse bitcrushed splashing)
spoiler summary and discussion
Nate:
Yeah. So I guess let's check out what happens in this one, which is number four out of five. So here we have three men from three different times. Sam Ward from the present of the 1930s. Kleon from ancient Greece. And Beltan, Olgarch of Hispan from the far future. And they are rushing in a rocket ship over a destroyed India. And they need to find someone on earth who could help them make a stand against the Harg rocket horde and Ras, who are close in pursuit.
The sun, however, looks kind of strange, which indicates that there might be something out there, almost like a mirror. And they start to be pulled upwards into space. After Beltan performs a quick save with the oxygen tanks, they're able to see where they're headed and it looks like they're going towards the sun.
But suddenly they crash land on what appears to be an island in space and are surrounded by these very strange looking creatures. No two of them are alike. And they're all chattering in like some monkey-like language. And Kleon, of course, goes for his ancient weapons because he's an ancient Greek guy and that's all he knows to do. He's our brawn, not our brains. But he is frozen along with Sam. And Beltan is more diplomatic, which provokes hearty laughter from the crowd. The speech and the appearance of these three to the group that they're greeted by appears totally ridiculous, as the three of them all look the same, which the group, again, no two of them alike find ridiculous and totally hilarious. And here's where we get some racist comments in the story that all Asian people look the same. You know, it's unfortunate and not out of character with the time of the 1930s, but it is still a little jarring to read and it does take you out of the story.
But Dag and Pol, two of the beings there who look totally different from one another and why wouldn't they be radically different as after all, they're two different individuals, they bring the party to a quartz crystalline city palace type place. And this is for scientific purposes. The residents of Dadelon, the name of the City of the Cosmic Rays. And they're the ones that brought the spacecraft there. They are quite surprised to learn that the earth is inhabited. And the three time travelers fill the residence of the city in on the Harg.
Pol and Dag say that the city here is the last survivors of humanity. Six thousand years on and they had assumed that they were the only ones left. Since the city is outside the atmosphere, cosmic rays affect them, causing this great genetic variance that the time travelers see before them. Pol and Dag aren't sure who maintains the city. Maybe it's tech. As here, no two intellects are the same, just as no two physical appearances are. As such, it's possible that there are gaps in engineering knowledge. Beltan suggests that it's synthetic quartz that helps keep them on autopilot.
JM:
So didn't, I don't know, it almost struck me as, even though it's probably not like the bulk of the story didn't appear to be entirely satirical. But this almost seemed like a satire on like super libertarian societies or something like that, where like, nobody works together because they're all like, Oh, I'm going to do my own thing. And I don't really like support any of this group thing shit.
Nate:
That's kind of hard to get the political leanings from this. At least it was for me on my first reading. I wasn't really sure what he was going for when I first read this. I mean, thinking about it a little more when Moskowitz says that his early stuff was more socialist left leaning...
JM:
I don't know. I don't know. Sometimes, yeah, but one might tend to overthink political motivations.
Nate:
Exactly.
JM:
I kind of try to avoid that. But yeah, I just couldn't help but think a little bit of that. It's like, yeah, like, none of these people can work together. They even do really important things, but they do them entirely out of self interest. It's like, almost, I don't know, I feel like so "Atlas Shrugged" hadn't been written yet. But I don't know. I kind of feel like, yeah, maybe Schachner read Ayn Rand and was like, yeah. I don't know.
Nate:
Yeah, I mean, it wouldn't surprise me that time travel characters who were our look into the world here and who presumably were supposed to sympathize with definitely are disgusted at the state of humanity and what it's turned into. So this inefficiency and very strange way of doing things in addition to the physical, what would appear to them as being very horrific and strange. I mean, the people are like almost looking like monstrous creatures in the way that they diverged on the evolutionary path. It definitely is not a positive portrayal of this city.
JM:
No, not really, I guess. Yeah.
Nate:
Even if they have their quirks and they are charming characters. I mean, they're always laughing at everything.
JM:
And at the end, he gets quite serious. And he's like, he does. Oh, like, I can't solve this problem.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah.
JM:
It's actually a really sad moment, in a way, because he's like, not jovial anymore. Now it's like, this is beyond nor ken.
Nate:
Yeah. And the final scene, which we'll get to in a little bit, while this was classified as a novelette, and not really that much happens in the story, it kind of goes by at a quick pace, if that makes sense.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Again, the themes and political overtones and things like that really don't stand out in a way that like the Asimov do. So there's not a lot to discuss necessarily with that. But it's still kind of interesting how it plays out. And I think the last scene, final scenes in particular, make it really worthwhile.
But at this point in the story, Sam feels like they're just like wasting their time in the face of the incoming Harg horde, talking to these like, weird genetic mutant people. And his head starts to feel heavy and dizzy. And Ras, who has these great psychic telekinetic powers or whatever. Apparently, we'll learn more about him in story number three, has found them out and he's come for them. And yes, Dag is just laughing out their fear because he just laughs at everything as something of a bygone era. And this is what makes Beltan really discuss that at the state of humanity.
The rocket horde is definitely on its way. And Sam was very correct to feel worried that they're just wasting their time screwing around on the court's palace or whatever. And this stops Dag's laughter a bit. And the three of them are unsure of what to do next. As javelin and electroblaster alike will be useless against Ras and Vardu. And the population of Dadelon, though, just can't seem to be bothered.
If the outer wall of the city is pierced and the hull breached, they're totally done for. Maybe the city will collapse. Maybe all the atmosphere will shoot out. Either way is going to be a lot of destruction and death and not good for anybody. The walls and integrity of the space station seem kind of strongish. And maybe if some of the residents fight back, they'll prevail. But they all have their own individual capabilities. So it's not like they can kind of mobilize force and unison. Every individual on this station city, whatever we want to call it, has the conceptual awareness of the situation as well as how they can react to it in their own way. So a lot of people can't perceive that there's a problem at all, whereas this person Tek can use his mind powers and there's a woman with shovel hands who can use a parabolic mirror.
JM:
Yeah, that was kind of cool. I mean, people can be physically fit to form whatever they need to do in life, whatever they, yeah. So she's got shovel hands.
Nate:
Yeah. And some people are more naturally suited to the fighting than others. And the people obviously more suited to the fighting are the people that do the fighting. And it comes quickly and the fighting is intense. And there is destruction all around. And they're not sure if the walls of the city are going to hold if the whole thing is just going to collapse on them. Beltan has the idea they attack Vardu and Ras that their robot soldiers might stop, you know, cut the head off the chicken and it'll thrash around and won't be a problem anymore.
And they break into Dag's chamber and tell him to use the gravity intensifier on their ship. And Ras is able to resist the gravity intensifier. And there's like this force battle almost out of like Star Wars or something.
JM:
Totally. Yeah.
Nate:
The two powers. And it appears that doom is certain, but it's like almost like at the last second their ship is visible. They're one ticket out of here. So naturally the three travelers make their way for it. And Dag insists that he not come with them and that he stay with the city. And there's a certain humor in this whole grim situation. The three travelers have to pass through vacuum to get to the ship. And it's an incredible struggle. And this part is awesome. And probably the coolest part of the story. And they barely, barely make it to the ship. And they look back as they're blasting off to see the city destroyed. Ras had won. And fortunately their ship is faster than any of the horde as they need to leave and find somewhere more hospitable, if such a place even exists.
And that's how our story ends. And when I first read this, you know, I didn't realize that this was a serial. And I was like, huh, that's a pretty grim way to end this story. Like, wow, you know, that's pretty cool. And then I found out, you know, they have an adventure after this, and they've had several adventures before. And it's just like, all right, yeah, that makes a little bit of sense now.
JM:
Yeah, I mean, it's part of a series, but it's not really a serial, though.
Nate:
Yeah, yeah.
JM:
It's not. I mean, it is true that this issue of Astounding doesn't feature any serials. But I guess, I mean, like Gretchen said, the story does function kind of as a standalone.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah, like you don't necessarily need the rest of the context for it to have it make sense. Like you can sort of intuit things and even the things that that doesn't really make sense outside of not knowing the other stories kind of adds to how odd and bizarre it is.
Nate:
Yeah. And in a sense, there's a lot of value in writing a story that way that's part of a series, whereas, you know, you have a magazine format where this goes on the newsrack every single month. So not everybody who picks up the magazine may be familiar with the earlier stories in the series. So you don't want to lose every potential reader, you want to make it accessible for people who are coming to this for the first time. And I think we all came to this for the first time reading this and didn't realize that this was number four. And it worked for me. It wasn't my favorite out of this issue. I wouldn't say it's a great story, but it's one that I did overall like. And I think he did do a good job of just putting you right in the middle of the story, even though people who had read the earlier issues of Astounding would know, all right, the rocket horde is chasing them. And, you know, I remember that story, that was pretty cool, you know, it was pretty cool when these three time travelers all came together and all that. But just being thrown into it, it works well as its own adventure. And I like how it does not end on a positive story where they solve the situation, they thwart the rocket horde, and, you know, Dage his weird friends are okay.
JM:
But at the same time, though, it seems like they destroyed the society. If they hadn't been there, the Harg wouldn't have been after them.
Nate:
Yeah, which makes it even darker. They led them directly to the city of cosmic rays, which presumably had been undetected, though I don't know who they would have been possibly detected by, as it seems like they are unaware of any other life in the solar system, even if there is life in the solar system at this time, as I guess it is implied that they did travel from some point in the past into this weird, far future.
JM:
Yeah, I think so. I mean, that's certainly the impression that I got anyway, because it wasn't familiar to Beltan either.
Nate:
Right, right.
JM:
It was some new weird permutation that they were in now. So I didn't read story number two or three. So Harg and the rocket horde were not something that like, even in this story, you know, I'm just kind of, I don't know who these people are or what they're like. Yeah, there's nothing, right? Like, I don't know. I did find the ending a little bit, not disappointing exactly, but just kind of like, I feel very disconnected from what's happening. Like, I don't know, it's just suddenly, all this is ending and they have to get away. Yeah, it's like, it's a part of the conflict that I don't really know anything about. So apparently Harg is evil, and he's got all this telepathic power and stuff. And he's teamed up with this other guy who's a scientist or something. And they have, I don't know, their plan is to dominate somehow. I can't even remember, right? Like, he kind of explains it a little bit. And you know, it's kind of one of these things, right, where I think he does okay in the sense that he does try to explain what's been happening, more or less, right? So you have kind of a vague idea of what's been going on, but it is pretty vague. I get that too, because like, why fill the story with exposition of past events, like, that would be boring, right? So I mean, he keeps it going at a pretty good pace. But yeah, like, I felt disoriented.
And I guess like, it's weird, because I mean, I love stuff like the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories from Fritz Leiber and their, you know, sword and sorcery stories set in the lives of these two characters. And the story could start at any point during their lives. And these stories were originally published in magazines, I think a lot of them. So I was like, yeah, people would be coming in, in the middle, but it always feels like I get the rules. There's just these two guys, their buddies, usually, although sometimes they're not, but usually their buddies, one of them is like a big barbarian guy, and one of them is a little wiry black-haired dude who's like sneaky, and they have all kinds of really fun adventures together. And it's the greatest thing ever. And there's no real like, I feel lost kind of feeling, even though you could pick up in the middle. Whereas here, I kind of felt like I'm missing so much context that I kind of feel like I was a little disconnected from the story. But when I read the origin story, it definitely helped fill me in a little bit. And I'm just kind of thinking like, for somebody like Asimov, who maybe, maybe read the stories in order. I mean, I guess we don't know for sure.
Nate:
I would say so. I would say he definitely probably did.
JM:
Yeah, I mean, he was really into these apparently.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I mean, for someone who would go down to check to see that his order was going through and make sure it wasn't closing, you know.
Nate:
Yeah, as well as developing his own indexing system for the stories in the magazines. Yeah, he probably would have read all of them as soon as they came out. But yeah, no, this definitely feels different than a Conan type story or something like that, where you can just jump in and not have a lot of the backstory coming at you. The villains in here definitely feel very like off-screen pulp villainy. Like, yeah, we recognize the rocket horde, you know, that's bad and this telepathic powers, you know, that's something...
JM:
That sounds scary, bad.
Nate:
Right. I mean, but they're not really like fleshed out here. And we don't really have a reason to care at this point in time. We just know that they're kind of on our heroes trail and that's something to be afraid of. But, you know, not having story number two or number three going into this kind of diminishes the threat, I think, of the two villains that are in here, unlike a story like Conan installment or something like that, where the villains are self-contained and the threats that the heroes face are unique to that story.
JM:
Yeah, they're often very convincing.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
They're like very, very, like you get into them right away and you're kind of scared by them because they're evil and like, yeah, this is very, it feels too abstract, like you don't know who they are or what they want or anything. So there's no confrontation.
Nate:
Right, right. It just all happens and stuff starts blowing up and he's pretty good at describing stuff blowing up. I mean, the vacuum scene is great. I mean, you know, I talked about an early pulp sci-fi action scene, you know, that's one of the best that I've read in doing this.
JM:
Yeah, that was really cool.
Nate:
It is a small part of the story. And while I wouldn't say that this drags at any point, there are points where it feels like, you know, nothing is really happening. And it's just kind of like almost like, filler in a sense, like I think he could have like cut this down a little bit. It's one of the three novelettes that appear in this issue. And while it's not like super overlong, I think he probably could have like chopped a good 20% out of the story and made it a little tighter and concise. But yeah, it's fine where it is.
JM:
So my other pick for this episode is coming up later. It's Amelia Reynolds Long's story "When the Half Gods" go. I would have happily had that story be much longer than it was.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
A couple of the others a little shorter. I don't know what you guys feel, but we can discuss that more when we get to that story. But yeah, like this, I don't really feel bored during this. But yeah, like the ending just kind of left me a little bit like, yeah, all this stuff is happening and it's bad. And like, they're going to move on now, right? And they do. And it just kind of felt it felt weird to me. And I don't know, while I really think that the series aspect is cool. And if you're looking at this, like we do, where we're just seeing the historical aspect of the magazine, this story is still cool. If you're just going to read like a cool pulp sci fi series by Nat Schachner, I would probably suggest starting from a beginning.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
It's so much better when you get the context, I think. And even though I didn't get the full context, because I still didn't really know what the deal was with the rocket horde. I did feel like, yeah, I kind of get this a little more now. And there's some weird things about it, like the weird historical 1930s, racial perspectives and everything. But at the same time, I can tell that he's trying to be sort of open ended about it and be like, yeah, but like, you know, you understand why these people feel that way. I mean, there's some stereotypes like Sam, how he gets into it all. Kleon's people apparently knew the secret of radium imposed cryogenic suspension.
Gretchen:
The thing that is very briefly mentioned in "City of the Cosmic Rays".
JM:
So Kleon was upset that he couldn't go to war because all his slaves were like, yeah, we like this paradise island much better. And we're going to hang out here with our new wives and like have a good time. So you can fuck off. And that's pretty much what he does. He puts himself into cryogenic suspension for 3000 years. And then when he wakes up, there's this American dude. And the American dude has been in the, so the all of it basically takes place in the Yucatan area. And the slaves of Kleon were both Egyptians and Mayan people. And Hispan, which is in the far future of Beltan's time is what became of the, I guess, the people around that area of the world. They went into these underground cities and became like super technicians and all this crazy stuff. And in the present time, Sam has met up with this Mexican, I guess, mestizo guy. And he's like showing him the secret burial chamber of Kleon. And he's the only one that knows the secret. And of course, he's this very greedy guy who's like, yeah, give me more, give me more dollars. And I'll tell you the secret. And it's a little bit like silly, like it kind of feels like pulp stereotypes. But it's also kind of fun. I don't know.
I guess like the reason I liked the origin story more again is just that it gave me a lot more, I don't know, it just felt like maybe by story four, it had gotten a little bit routine, maybe, I don't know. And like I said often before, that I'm very attracted to the beginnings of things.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
But I mean, the real beginnings, like not, not like some movie franchise going, Oh, we're going to show you the real origin of Michael Myers now, because that's what you really want to see. I mean, the real beginnings of like when they actually start, like the demos of bands and stuff like that, you know, Nate, I know you feel the same way about that.
Nate:
Oh, for sure. Yeah.
JM:
Because you have a lot of demo stuff. So I don't know, like, the idea is just so cool. And reading the fourth story just felt like, yeah, I've missed too much. And I can tell why Asimov was like really taken by, especially the first story, because yeah, it's this cool idea. These people meet under the most unlikely circumstances and you have this like 20th century American guy, this Greek bloodthirsty God, like he's like so he's so handsome and so utterly imposing with his physical stature and might. And then you have this guy from the future who's sort of like a little bit decadent. And he's a little bit like softer than the others. But at the same time, he's got this hardcore of wisdom and power of all this future knowledge. And it's just so cool. It's so exciting and great. And I don't know, we haven't really done anything like this on Chrononauts before, where we like dipped into a old series like this. So this feels kind of exciting, actually, just just to be dipping into these kind of waters, in my opinion.
Nate:
And they published a lot of these type of things too, where they weren't necessarily a serialized novel, which they also published those as well, but series of related characters that go on adventures and all that.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I mean, even when, you know, looking through the Bleiler and seeing all the different series and you know, different recurring characters that show up in certain pulps, like, especially with like Amazing and now Astounding.
Nate:
And Nat Schachner definitely wrote a lot of them. So very impressive that Moskowitz, who was certainly very well learned on 30s science fiction, would consider him the most prolific author of the time, considering how much some of these authors really churned out.
JM:
Yeah. And really something that I'd never actually heard of him. I don't think his name never registered with me before thinking about this episode, I don't think. Not that I remember anyway.
Nate:
Yeah, this was a new one to me too.
JM:
So yeah, completely new to me. Even Ross Rocklynne and Nelson Bond were not new to me. So the former mostly because of his name, because he has such a cool name that I wanted to read something by him.
Nate:
Well, I guess with that said, shall we get into Bond and Rockland? Take a little break?
Bibliography:
Asimov, Isaac - "Before the Golden Age" (1974)
Moskowitz, Sam - "The Science-Fiction of Nat Schachner", Fantasy Commentator, #43, #44, #45/46 (1992) https://fanac.org/fanzines/Fantasy_Comment/
Schachner, Nat - "Introducing the Author", Fantastic Adventures, September 1939
No comments:
Post a Comment