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Amelia Reynolds Long biography, non-spoiler summary
Hello, and welcome to Chrononauts. This is our episode on the July 1939 issue of Astounding, and we have recorded several pieces of this already, so if you want to listen to those, you should go and start with the first one where we talked about "Black Destroyer" from AE Van Vogt. We've also covered stories by Isaac Asimov, Nat Schachner, Nelson Bond, and Ross Rocklynne, as well as some interesting supplemental material like the nonfiction articles and letter columns in the magazine.
Now though, I want to talk about Amelia Reynolds Long. She is one of our less known writers today, and she was born in Columbia, Pennsylvania in 1904, near Harrisburg, where she seems to have spent all of her life. She got her master's in English and education and graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1932. She went through a few different writing phases, starting with her focus on weird fiction and the Weird Tales market, including at least one occult detective story, "The Thought Monster", and what is apparently a pretty good vampire tale in "The Undead". I've read "The Thought Monster", and it can be found in "The Fighters of Fear" anthology, which is a book that recently came out featuring various occult detectives, and I'm mentioning this because Amelia Reynolds Long just doesn't seem to have been reprinted very much. And I do think that is a shame. I think she's actually pretty good, and it would kind of be cool at this point if somebody put out a collection of her science fiction and Weird Tales work.
Nate:
Yeah, I agree.
JM:
I think that's definitely needed because such a thing doesn't exist. I would say that maybe the stories I read, I don't know, I think that "The Thought Monster" being more of a Weird Tales thing, like it could be that that's more appropriate for her, but I'm not sure. And that's what we're going to sort of try to figure out when we talk about this story.
Nate:
You do get the sense from the story that she does like the weird. Yeah, there have been a couple other authors like that. We did Sophie Wenzel Ellis when we covered our last episode on Astounding, and she was kind of the same way where she was more comfortable in the weird fiction stuff. And those elements of weird fiction do come out in her story in that episode, and just like Amelia Reynolds Long's has definitely come out in the story.
JM:
For sure, yeah. I do have an online friend who collects Weird Tales magazines. And when I mentioned that we were doing Amelia Reynolds long story, she said she hadn't read any, but she found two in the issues that she had. She read them and she said one of them was a little predictable and not that great, but that she was the one that mentioned "The Undead" and said that she really enjoyed it and it was a really good original atmospheric take on a vampire tale. So I'm kind of curious to read that one.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely.
JM:
"The Thought Monster" was the basis for the 1957 British film "Fiend Without a Face", which I really like. I really like that film. It's kind of one of my go to fifties weird sci fi monster movies, along with "The Crawling Eye". I think those two movies are pretty similar in some ways. And although I may have a slight preference for "The Crawling Eye", "The Fiend Without" a Face is certainly a memorable movie and apparently made quite an impression on people at the time. It's mentioned specifically in Stephen King's book, "It" as the film the kids are watching in the cinema.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
So yeah, pretty cool. I've also read the story "Reverse Phylogeny", which can be found in the book "Sisters of Tomorrow", which is a book that we've referred to a few times on the podcast, or at least once or twice. You can find a little bit of biographical information about her in that book as well. In the later thirties, she turned to more science fiction motifs, though, like we said, I think there was always the impression of the weird still present in these works. She said she got the weird impetus from her love of Shakespeare's "Macbeth" as well as Edgar Allan Poe. Some of her colorfully titled stories from this period include "A Leak in the Fountain of Youth", "Flapping Wings of Death", and "A Scandal in the Fourth Dimension".
In the late thirties, she was already getting into doing mystery fiction. She co-wrote a book with William Crawford, who is also an occasional published science fiction writer. And it was titled "Behind the Evidence", and it was based on a real life incident that happened in 1932, which was the kidnapping of Charles Lindbergh's son in Hopwell, New Jersey. Apparently pretty harrowing case. I'd never heard of this before, but it seems like somebody put this family basically through hell for almost an entire year, and it turned out that the kid was dead, like almost from the beginning. And he was trying to extort, like, hundreds of thousands of dollars from this family, right?
Nate:
Well, yeah, the Lindberghs were the famous aviators.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah. And Charles Lindbergh was an aviator, right? Yeah, so.
Gretchen:
I remember watching a special on TV a couple of years ago about that.
Nate:
Yeah, pretty wild story.
JM:
Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah, okay. I guess it looks to me quite a tale. I don't think I'd come across it before. I guess I'm not really somebody who follows real crime stories that much. It seemed to like the fictional ones better, but I guess for a while there, a few years ago, I was listening to a lot of like true crime podcasts and stuff, and I kind of stopped. I don't know. From what I was reading about it in the FBI's write up about it was that I could picture it on an episode of like Case Files or something like that.
Nate:
Well, I think it was actually adapted for those TV documentary several times. There's certainly a lot of popular culture references to it.
Gretchen:
I think the one that I saw was this show called like Mysteries at the Museum, which does some stuff like that.
JM:
Yeah, interesting. Well, apparently only 75 copies of Amelia and Crawford's book was printed. And the book was mostly given to friends. And then I think in 1936 was when Hauptmann or whatever his name was was given the electric chair. And I think, I don't know, maybe just the timing was not right. I don't know what she wrote in the book necessarily, but it's kind of a theme here. Unfortunately, I can't find much of her stuff. And that's, that's unfortunate.
But in the 40s, though, she published a ton of mystery novels. There were many of them and she was turning out these things, four or five a year. And I can find very little about these nowadays though, oddly, there seem to be a number of Spanish translations available. And most of these were published by a company called Phoenix Press. And some were published under other names like Patrick Laing and Adrian Reynolds. And given some of her comments that I'll get to in a minute, I think that's kind of weird, but I don't know.
But of her loss of interest in writing SF, she said, "I stopped writing science fiction and the weird story right around that time," meaning, I guess 1940 roughly or thereabouts, "because science fiction had hit the comic strips. And I felt that it was sort of degrading to compete with a comic strip."
Her mysteries were not in the American hard boiled style, which she was not a fan of, but more in the Agatha Christie tradition. And you can kind of tell that from the titles. There's actually a book called "Murder Most Foul", which I don't know who first said that.
Nate:
Shakespeare.
JM:
It's kind of like the cliche saying to describe like Victorian Holmesish murder mysteries. We must solve a case. It is murder most foul. And they have titles like that. "It is Death, My Darling". And I don't know. Some of them sound like they might be pretty fun. But again, these books seem like they're really hard to find, which seems to be true of a lot of her stuff. Things didn't seem to change for her in the 1950s. She became a textbook editor and her personal writing shifted slowly toward poetry. Apparently she edited, I guess there's one very small website in English dedicated to her. Apparently there's another one in Japanese, but I didn't really look at that. But her most notable contribution to pedagogy is this book called "The Outdoor Reference Guide", and it's basically a compendium of things about nature. Sounds like it'd be pretty cool to have around, I guess, especially if you're hiking and checking stuff out.
There's a poetry prize in Pennsylvania named after her, and she also became a curator at the William Penn Museum in Harrisburg, which is a position she kept until shortly before her death in 1978. One of her last works was to edit the 1977 Pennsylvania Poets Anthology Pennsylvania Poets, and she published a couple of chapbooks around then, which you can find on Amazon for about $250 if you so desire. There don't seem to be any digital editions of any of her poetry, but it is spoken of quite highly in some circles. So I was very curious to read some of it, but I couldn't find any. I don't know, I think that's really too bad.
Amelia didn't marry or have any children. In the 70s, the author Chet Williamson visited Amelia at her home and asked her about being a woman writing science fiction in the 30s. And Long said, "I don't think being a woman held me back with any of the science fiction magazines, but I'll tell you where it does hit you on the translation rights of certain countries, especially the Spanish American countries. If they know something is written by a woman, they'll simply give your initials and make believe you're a man. That used to annoy me. I know there was always that bugaboo of a woman writing for a man's magazine, but in Weird Tales in the science fiction magazines, I don't think it ever did make much difference."
But even though she did say that, she did write at least one story under the really cool byline, Mordred Weir. And quite a few of her mysteries were published under other names, specifically Patrick Laing and Adrian Reynolds. And I don't know, I find this weird because I just can't imagine, like, it was much harder to figure out who is who back then. And I just can't imagine, like, why would you do that if your fans are looking to read your work? They want to read your stuff. I guess she and many other writers have said that a reason they published under pseudonyms besides maybe that it was something that was different from their normal stuff. Although I don't get the impression that that was the case with Long's mysteries, but that they didn't want to glut the market with their things and they just wrote too fast, basically. And Stephen King basically said that about Richard Bachman is that that was one of the reasons. But there were other reasons for using Richard Bachman, too. And I don't know.
I mean, to be fair, yes, through the 1940s, Amelia Reynolds Long had this really prolific period and she was churning out these books really fast. So maybe she just thought, yeah, look, or her publisher even just thought, well, if we spread it around a bit, people will be more likely to buy them because it's not like, oh, I already bought a book by Amelia Reynolds Long this year. I don't know. It's just it's just weird to me to
Gretchen:
Not another Long. I guess I'll get a Lang instead.
JM:
Yeah, yeah. Again, publishers, if you're listening, please put out a compilation of at least the sci fi and weird stuff. It looks like she did publish a number of short stories in the detective magazines, too. I'd like to see those.
Nate:
Yeah, at least for the sci fi and weird stuff, you can track these down relatively easily as she got published in the big magazines like Weird Tales, Amazing and Astounding.
JM:
Yeah, as long as you can get those magazines, but yeah, sometimes they're just not very well scanned, not very... It's kind of a pain for normal people who are doing the kind of stuff that we're doing. Yeah, that is true. To get into it. I think I think that like, I mean, I thought there was a collection. I don't know why I thought that. I think I was maybe getting mixed up with some other writer who wrote for Weird Tales like Greye La Spina or something. But I'm like, I really, when I started this, I'm thinking, oh, there's Amelia Reynolds Long Collection, right? And then I couldn't find one. Then I even read a comment on a website where they were like, yeah, nobody has published Amelia Reynolds Long Collection. And in fact, I think where I read that was there was a Reddit thread about somebody a few years ago who found a whole bunch of or they were kind of given a bunch of her papers. And they were trying to figure out what to do with them. And apparently, yeah, they included rejection letters and drafts for stories and unpublished stuff and other correspondence. And yeah, it was noted somewhere there that there still hasn't been a collection and indeed I didn't find any.
So I don't know, that's something she certainly has enough stories. Like if you go to amelialong.tripod.com, you can find a bibliography of all her stuff. But there's no actual, actual Amelia Reynolds Long content on there. It's just references to when they were published, whether they were published under her real name or not, and where they could be found if you so desire to look for them. But you have to kind of do your own work to get them.
Yeah, this story, I want to save most of the discussion for after but start with the usual. What do you guys make of this weird little story?
Nate:
I liked it. Yeah, I definitely liked it. And there's a lot going on here that, again, might be better to save towards the end. But it does have a lot of themes of religion involved. And it reminded me a little bit of the Graal Arelsky story that we covered a couple episodes ago, "Two Worlds", where somebody just makes them, makes themself God. And, you know, it plays out differently there than it does here. While I think I liked "Two Worlds" maybe a little more than this one, just because the atmosphere that was so weird and it ties to the other stories in a different way than this. This one wraps itself up a little more neatly than "Two Worlds" did. "Two Worlds" just kind of leaves you hanging on that weird end, whereas this definitely has like an ironic little bit where it kind of ties everything together in a way that I really, really like.
Gretchen:
I didn't think about the "Two Worlds" connection until you mentioned it. "Two Worlds" it leaves a little bit more ambiguity than this. I mean, I think that there's still a case to be made for exactly what direction you're supposed to think, but it does feel like "Two Worlds" is maybe a little vaguer in its message.
Nate:
Yeah. The other thing that it reminded me of is, I guess, a more real world example. And I guess it's interesting. We've been saying this entire time of how like historically prescient some of these stories are about predicting the trends that would come about in the latter half of the 20th century. But the idea of like two superpowers playing against each other using this like proxy sphere of a culture where they can kind of impose their ideas on to work against the other power very much reminded me of how the United States and the Soviet Union were playing against one another.
JM:
Not only that, but there's this like little guy in the middle. It's like the small nation or whatever that's kind of being like manipulated for both sides.
Nate:
Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah, as someone who has been recently watching a lot of MASH.
Nate:
Yeah, right.
JM:
I've never seen mash.
Nate:
MASH is cool. Yeah.
Gretchen:
It's really cool. Yeah. It's about the Korean War. So it's definitely a prescient to think about that.
Nate:
Sure.
Gretchen:
Along with this story.
JM:
Yeah, I'd like to I guess I guess the fact that it was like a weird 70s comedy show maybe didn't really inspire me with much confidence that I would like it. But people keep saying there's a lot more to it than that and I kind of got curious to to check it out. But of all the stories in this magazine in this issue, this is the one that I wish was longer in some levels.
Nate:
Yeah, I could go for a novel of this for sure. I like her writing style. It has not only cool themes but cool imagery. And the fact that we get is on basically like a weird fantasy planet. I really like that setting and she does it well.
JM:
Me too. Yeah. I mean Leigh Brackett does that all the time. Yeah, for sure. So does Moore really but like it did kind of remind me more of Brackett. It's just because she writes like really well these like cultures that are kind of I guess they would be perceived as primitive to some outsiders, but they're aware of like people traveling from space and stuff like that. They're kind of like okay with it but they're either caught in the middle of it or they're trying to like use it to their advantage somehow and you get stories where people travel from other planets. But there's also swordplay and swashbuckling and you know, it's really cool. It's like the idea of the sword and planet right.
Nate:
Yeah, for sure.
JM:
There's a bit of that in this but I guess like so I'm so conflicted about this story and I like that like they just made me think about it ever since I read it and I just keep thinking about it because I don't really know. First of all, I'm not 100% sure what it's trying to say but the fact that I keep wondering about it is neat. Like it makes it maybe more effective than a polemic right where you know what it's trying to say and you're just like yeah okay like I get it right. The fact that it makes you wonder the fact that it's not very long so it has to kind of hint at a lot of things and you're not very sure of certain relationships and you're not really sure exactly what happened at certain points right and it's just like on the one hand I wish it was longer but on the other hand, maybe it's kind of ingenious that it's just short like this. I don't know.
Gretchen:
I was going to say that I do agree that it would be interesting to read this in a longer form and you know like a novellette or a novel. But I do kind of respect that it's this length and I think that it's still a good length for this story and the fact that it leaves some of those things sort of up to interpretation is interesting.
Nate:
It has a punch and I like that.
JM:
And the fact that she was so into poetry, I mean not that you can't have long poems but like it looks like the majority of her poems and the poem that she specifically refers to in this story is quite short. And it delivers something that makes you think and that gets out and maybe that's good because maybe even again like some of the audience of the time would have thought about this probably very differently than we think about it right now.
So in my summary of the story, which I'm about to do, I guess the question that I have, which I will pose to you guys is, is the story she's written the same as the story I had in my head? Like, am I kind of extrapolating things from a story that may not actually be there or did she mean them to be there? I kind of, I'm hoping for the latter but like I read the poem that she refers to in the story and while it seems to be a good poem, I'm not really sure how it connects to the story. So after the story, I'll read the poem because it's quite short and we'll see if we can figure it out.
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spoiler summary and discussion, "Geography for Time Travelers" non-fiction article
JM:
Venus is a planet of interest from both the Martian and terrestrial perspectives and they both got settlements there and both seem interested in the radium and perhaps other precious materials available and have successfully convinced the native people to mine for them.
The Venusians, blue people, live what seems to be a primitive tribal existence among all this technological imported splendor and they're technically under protection from Earth. But this is probably because of some treaty or other that maybe, who knows, maybe they didn't really know what they were signing. But they know the Martians can't be trifled with and our story opens with Spors, the Martian, trying a new scheme of exploitation.
Nate:
His name is Spors Rok, which is like an awesome name. Because they certainly do.
JM:
And this story has the best opening of the magazine, in my opinion, it's like you start reading it and you're like right away this guy's scheming and he's thinking about religion and how it can be used to control people and how it's really excellent for this purpose. And it's just so good, like it's so great of a hook to make you be like, yeah, I want to read more of this and it's like the opposite, even though I defended that story, it's kind of the opposite of the way I felt about the Ross Rocklynne where I was like, I mean, I kind of like the beginning because I like the beginning of things but like by the end I was kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, I'm going to finish this soon.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
It's good. This one is like, oh, I want, I want more of this, I want more of the world, I guess. So Ambella, the chief of this tribe of blue people, might be an even mightier king if he worshiped the new Martian God instead of their usual stone image, Lalu. At first, Ambella won't hear of this blasphemy, making the sign of the egg to protect both himself and his ignorant brother from the red planet who's come to visit him with this proposal.
And it's really awesome the way she describes both the encounter with the Martian and the encounter with the earth people because it's so like political scheming and...
Nate:
Тotally, yeah.
JM:
She makes it really clear that the chief is actually a really, really smart person and everything he says kind of has a double meaning. But he points out that Lalu kept the tribe fed when their neighbors crops failed and therefore he must be a real and good God. But Spors, the Martian, says, oh no, it's your own cleverness in industry that resulted in their good yield. And because of your cleverness, I have decided to reward you with a true thing. I am a God. In fact, all of us Martian people are really gods and obedience will be rewarded with power.
But first, Spors must prove himself because Ambella is no fool. So he tries various things and first he says, well, no Venusian has ever seen a dead Martian. Why do you think that is? And the counter that Ambella has is just because I haven't seen a thing that doesn't mean it doesn't happen, which is like very, very logical, right? And Spors says he will demonstrate by destroying Lalu the stone god while proving that the Martians can't be killed.
So meet me at the temple at noon tomorrow and that's exactly what they do. And Venusians come from many miles away to see the spectacle, expecting Spors to be killed and blasted to smithereens for his blasphemy. And this is really funny. So here is where the Martian Spors actually proves that he's a study of, he's been studying his 19th century American poets because he refers to a poem written by Ralph Waldo Elberson called "Give All to Love", although it's not named in the story. And I did have to look it up because I didn't have this knowledge, but I definitely was like, well, where did she get that from? Where did he get that from? I must find out, right?
But there's a terrestrial saying, "when the half gods go, the gods will arrive." And it's very unwise for Spors to be using this saying at this time because obviously he doesn't really understand the true implications because he views, I don't know, the stone idol as a half god, I guess. He's trying to set up that dichotomy.
So he takes out his little tube that makes goodbye forever and vaporizes the icon of Lalu, which is this really big towering stone thing. So the fact that it's vaporized is quite a significant event, causes quite a lot of chaos. And everyone is horrified. And then he turns the ray on himself and bathes in its killing fire, but nothing happens to him. So it must be true then.
Well, just so happens that Spors garments are made from Ethereum, the only known substance in the universe that can withstand disintegrator rays. And even though the way this was done and written was a little bit silly, it was still kind of awesome. I don't know. It's like, oh, you think you could kill me, but my clothes are made from Ethereum, you see? But it's kind of unusual because he's like turning the rays on himself, right? So he's trying to show how indestructible he really is.
But of course, Ambella doesn't need to know about the Ethereum. And indeed, he kneels before the Martian and pronounces him divine. So the Venusians then start changing their attitudes at the behest of their new overlords. There's no more trading with the terrestrials, and any human caught in their territory will be killed on site.
So now we get the perspective of some humans complaining about all this. We have a commander Fox and a sub-commander O'Connell, who's a wonderfully hilarious Irish stereotype. And sub-commander Schneider, whose first name is Adolf. O'Connell in this comical Irish brogue suggests dropping some itch bombs on the Venusians to keep them occupied for a while. And I don't know, I thought it was cool her making a reference to biological warfare and stuff. Again, not something that had really been used too much. I mean, obviously we had our muster gas and stuff like that in the First World War, which was like chemical weapons, but this sounds more like it's not really gone into in the story very much, but there's definitely lots of hints of biological achiness in this story, which is pretty cool.
And the commander then mirrors though, he says there is apparently an interplanetary court, and Earth might lose its protectorate status if they're not careful. And in that case, it would be ceded over to the Martians, because the Venusians clearly need protecting, obviously. And they've heard there's a new god in town, and while they don't know what it is exactly, they seem pretty sure that the Martians are behind it.
So O'Connell knows that the Venusians are now handing over all their radium to the Martians instead of to the humans, who used to buy it at what they thought was a fair price. Wow, the nerve. Schneider grumbles about religion being a huge pain in the ass all around, but O'Connell tells him to fuck off with your atheism pretty much. It's kind of amusing, like again, I wouldn't have minded if the story were longer and kind of got into these guys' relationship a little more, but it's pretty interesting that she sets them apart, as you know, there's the one guy who's like this cool rationalist almost, but he has some pretty good philosophical ideas, and then there's the kind of silly Irishman who's a traditionalist and smokes a pipe and believes in God, and then there's the commander who's trying to kind of deal with the two of them and regulate things, but he also gets sick, which we'll talk about in a minute, so he can't really do very much.
But yeah, that's why it turns out Venus is pretty dangerous for humans. There are a combination of weird fevers, creatures like brain-sucking anteaters that drop from the trees, giant lizards that fly around, and very Hodgsonian-fungal infestations that can turn a man into a stinking walking slime mold. So that's pretty gross. I wouldn't have minded seeing some of that stuff, but it's cool that she hints that it's there. It's this background, really. Yeah, the fungus people are called the dough-men, by the way, and it seems like the best thing you can do for them is to kill them on site, because I guess they're suffering and they'll never be properly human again.
But we do get an example of one of the Venusian fevers, which is contracted by Mr. Fox, and it's too bad, but he has to be confined to quarters since the fever makes everybody who suffers it believe they are winged lizards, and so they all try to fly off of buildings and such.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely one of her touches of humor with that one.
JM:
Yeah, it's like... It is kind of weird because I have no idea how many people are in this settlement, like we never see anybody else, so it really seems like there's just a three of them, but there must be more than that, it seems like it's just these three doing everything, in the story at least. But it seems like Schneider is the man for the job to go over to the Venusian village nearby, because O'Connell's too hung up about teaching these blue devils a lesson, and he must find out what the trouble is without antagonizing the Venusians. So these humans really care about their radium, or the Venusians don't seem to know what it is, which is interesting. It kind of reminds me of some stuff from Blake 7's Federation, and the kind of things that they would do, just like make people mine stuff and not give them even the knowledge of what it does or what it's for or why they could use it themselves.
You know, it's kind of one of these things that makes me wonder, like, are we supposed to be as mad at the humans for their particular exploitation? I kind of feel like some of Campbell's audience probably wouldn't have picked that, like they wouldn't have really thought that way, they would have probably thought, it's okay what the humans are doing because we're a little bit kinder and nicer, but I don't know, I think there's enough hints in here that it's kind of equal, but we still kind of, I think, are meant to favor the humans a little bit.
So O'Connell says, keep your tongue away from atheism, but while Fox is trying mainly to fly around his room, O'Connell's working to subdue him, and basically being a nurse, but Schneider flies to the village in the base's rocket plane. So after two weeks, they haven't heard from Schneider. Again, yeah, I don't know how big this colony is that O'Connell has to play a nursemaid, but during that time, they completely forgot about Schneider, and 15 days later, the commander was like, hey, what happened to Schneider?
In this really adorable detail that I just love, the plane that Schneider was on doesn't have any radio, but he did have a bunch of carrier pigeons. I don't know, I'm not coming down on Long for being silly. I just think it's cool kind of in a weird way. I'm not really fathoming it. Maybe, I don't know, maybe radios...
Gretchen:
I love picturing just where a radio would be just a cage, and there's a couple pigeons in there.
Nate:
Yeah, I don't know, maybe radio doesn't work properly in the atmosphere of Venus, but I don't know, I'd be kind of worried about these pigeons in the dangerous Venusian fauna coming around.
Nate:
Getting eaten by a fungus monster, whatever.
JM:
Getting swept up by a flying lizards. Your messages probably would never get through. But according to one of the terrestrial and trader sources, the Venusians have cut off trade with Mars now too. So what the hell's going on? Fox decides that they'll take the bigger plane armed with a disintegrator ray to investigate. Schneider's been the guest of the Venusians for two weeks, it turns out. But he doesn't seem to know much, just that there have been some meetings, including with Spors the Martian, who was by a couple of times, and since the most recent one was just last night, they haven't seen any Martian flyers take off, that means that they conclude he must be there now still. And they ask Ambella to take them to him, and he happily agrees.
But Fox is agonizing over tactical shit, and what's the right thing to say? And there's a manual for dealing with primitives, and they're trying to follow their proper directives here. But they're brought to a guest house and made to wait, and Fox thinks they will be forced to sign something, like sign over the rights of the human race. I guess the Martian will probably make them do that. And obviously the Venusians have already signed away all their rights a long time ago, but the humans sit there for hours eating the weird Venusian food and drinking their milk. And then they hear a sound. The Venusian rattle language, and Schneider pronounces it words of sacrifice. And he knows them of old days, when the Venusians were still cannibals. But there's something strange about them. Usually the rattles tell the name of the god the sacrifice is made to, but not this time. Of course the men think the sacrifice means them.
O'Connell is belligerent, and they decide to try to act subdued until two of them can make a break for the plane and the disintegrator. Fox is sure the Martian is still responsible, but that no matter what happens, he'll get off scot-free, that is the Martian, whether the men escape or not. But then, and by now it's night by the way, but then there's a scream in the night, and it's a terrible sound. And a while later, Ambella comes in looking all haggard, but acting with deference and respect toward the Terrans. And Fox thinks it must be alright. And they go to Ambella's hut for a meal. And he even pulls out the stash of pretzels, so his guests will feel at home.
It's here that Ambella explains what happened, and how they gave Spors the Martian, the Ultimatum, and the ultimate test of finally killing him. And this actually isn't revealed to the very end, but I don't know, I mean, no shit they killed him. I don't know, I read a review mentioning the story, and they said that was a twist, and I feel like that wasn't really, I don't know, I would have probably reorganized the ending a little bit if it were me, and just been like, we know that's what happened, right? I think the ultimate revelation is not necessarily that the Martian was killed, but the explanation of why, and that is the supposed atheism of Schneider that got Ambella to thinking, and he said that his Schneider was telling him either, I guess before, maybe, before he arrived two weeks ago, I'm not sure exactly when they had this conversation, but...
Nate:
Yeah, they would have had a while.
JM:
I guess so, I mean, it seems like Schneider spent some time among the Venusians, so even before that two-week period. Yeah, I mean, he knows their language, so... He knows their language, right, and he knows even the more secret religious language, which is the rattles. But he said there was no God that you can see or touch, and if God exists, it's not like that at all. And Ambella gets this, though maybe it took a while, and he's talking about natural law, and that's what he calls it.
So having either humans wait in the hut all day at night was really a political masterstroke, in my opinion. It just sets up the atmosphere of dread, and they don't know what's going to happen, and they think they're for the chopping block, right? And it's like, you know, Ambella is really, really cunning, and he knows what he's doing, and the thing is you can look at it this in two ways. You can say, oh, yeah, here's the settlers telling the Venusians that they should disregard their traditional ways and their religion, but I don't know, I would say as an atheist, maybe, I guess, but that kind of demonstrating that, yeah, if there is a God in the universe, it's not going to be like this thing that you can put your hands on directly or that you can, like, talk to and expect a response back. It's going to be something more abstract. In my opinion, that's not necessarily a, I don't know what's the word, like a manipulative thing to do. Like, I don't know, in my opinion, anyway. I mean, I suppose others might disagree.
Nate:
Well, I think it can be both for the Earth people who are the American stand-ins here where they're using it to political advantage, for sure. But at the same time, the Martians just showed up and started blowing up their idols and statues and probably trying to get them to do exploitative labor or whatever Spors Rok has planned for the Venetians. So when the little doubts are planted in Ambella's mind, I'm sure a test, you know, well, what happens if you just stab him in the chest? Sounds simple enough because, you know, if he's not a God, he's blown up your religion and disrespected your entire tribe and probably made you do bad things. And if he is a God, well, he won't die and it really won't matter.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I think that, you know, like you said, it could be a manipulative tactic on the human side to be like, oh, well, there isn't like a tangible God in order to get rid of Spors. But it's also used then by the Venusians to be like, well, now that we know that, you should watch your step because we're not going to fall for that kind of thing with you as well.
JM:
Yeah, it could be. I mean, maybe Schneider is just, again, like, if the story were longer, we might get a more, I guess, well-rounded sense of these characters. Like, I don't know how much Schneider is doing this kind of out of a sense of goodness or out of like altruism because, again, it seems like it's actually the sense of the natural law gives the Venetians a hell of a lot of power because now they could be like, yeah, see what happens to this guy from Mars, right? And the thing is, Amela is acting all like bowing and scraping, right? Like, it's a little bit embarrassing. It's a little bit over the top. But it's like he knows it, right? And it's like, again, that double meaning thing, like on the surface, he seems very obsequious. But underneath, it's almost like he's saying, yeah, by the way, you better not mess with us because we're smarter than you think and now we understand this. At least I do. And I'm the leader of my people. So if you dare to mess with us in a way that's remotely similar to what this guy was trying to do, this is what's in store for you.
Meanwhile, I mean, yeah, I'm sure he knows that the Earthlings have all these like weapons and stuff that they could turn against them. But it seems like there's some kind of interplanetary law system that they have to follow. So Commander Fox is not going to step too far out of line, I guess. And I don't know. This is really interesting political implications, I think.
Nate:
Definitely.
JM:
And again, you can really see, like, in all the obsequious bowing and scraping again, it kind of reads like, oh, it's the tribal chieftain and he's acting all contrite and everything like that. But like, why would he really be contrite? He's not. He's not. He's just acting. And again, it's part of the act and they act all day long. These people were sitting in this hut with this strange food that they mostly couldn't eat and like all these weird sounds going on and they didn't dare leave because they'd be breaching the protocol and you could just sitting picture them sitting there sweating and like getting more and more uneasy about their situation. Like, don't tell me he didn't do all that on purpose.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I mean, it's just like Ambella, the Venusians, they also have understood they've grasped that politics, you can say one thing and do another. Just like I'm sure the Earth people and the Martians do.
Nate:
And they're probably getting tired of all these foreign Earth people and Martians just showing up and making a mess out of their Venusian village.
JM:
Right. And making the mine radium like for what?
Nate:
Yeah, right.
JM:
So they can send it off.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Like, you know, it's not like, oh, you can use this to, I don't know, care cancer or something like that.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
It's just not, there's not even any thought about it. Like it's just, yeah, they're a primitive culture. They'll sell it to us for pretty much nothing.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
And even the humans take that for granted. As much as I think we're supposed to be sort of on their side. I'm just not sure how much, you know what I mean?
Nate:
Right. Right.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I mean, we're supposed to relate to them more than Spors, obviously, but I still think we're supposed to see what they're doing and come out on the side of Ambella the most.
JM:
Right. Yeah. I guess so. I mean, she definitely seems to be emphasizing how Ambella is always the smartest person in the room. And I don't think she would really do that if she wanted us to completely be like, yeah, it's better to be exploited by humans than Martians and that's that. Right.
Gretchen:
Yeah. You better hope that the people that colonize you are as nice as these people.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
Yeah. I'm going to read the poem by Emerson because I want to, I don't really know how this connects the story. And again, like, I think it's cool that her love of poetry is coming through here. I just don't know. I mean, I'll make a comment at the end, but I don't really, I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure. This seems like a transcendental kind of poem about, I guess, mysticism and religion.
Give all to love;
Obey thy heart;
Friends, kindred, days,
Estate, good-fame,
Plans, credit and the Muse,—
Nothing refuse.
’T is a brave master;
Let it have scope:
Follow it utterly,
Hope beyond hope:
High and more high
It dives into noon,
With wing unspent,
Untold intent:
But it is a god,
Knows its own path
And the outlets of the sky.
It was never for the mean;
It requireth courage stout.
Souls above doubt,
Valor unbending,
It will reward,—
They shall return
More than they were,
And ever ascending.
Leave all for love;
Yet, hear me, yet,
One word more thy heart behoved,
One pulse more of firm endeavor,—
Keep thee to-day,
To-morrow, forever,
Free as an Arab
Of thy beloved.
Cling with life to the maid;
But when the surprise,
First vague shadow of surmise
Flits across her bosom young,
Of a joy apart from thee,
Free be she, fancy-free;
Nor thou detain her vesture’s hem,
Nor the palest rose she flung
From her summer diadem.
Though thou loved her as thyself,
As a self of purer clay,
Though her parting dims the day,
Stealing grace from all alive;
Heartily know,
When half-gods go,
The gods arrive.
I don't know. I don't really, I think that's a really cool poem, but I don't really see a lot of love in the story. So I'm not sure. You know, I'm not sure if she just really liked the poem and wanted to work it in there.
Nate:
I think so. Yeah, I think that line probably just stuck out in her head. I mean, it's like murder most foul from "Hamlet". That line probably stuck out in her head and she probably thought, well, I'll make a good title for a story.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I don't know. Like I was kind of looking for a deeper meaning in that and I don't really find it necessarily because I don't kind of suggesting that you can sacrifice a lot of things for the sake of love. And even though they might be things that you're used to and things that you really like a lot and things that you thought were really important in your life, it'll be worth in the end not having those things because you'll have the love that's important.
But I don't really see what I don't see the connection to the story. I don't know.
Nate:
And I don't know if there is one, but.
JM:
Yeah, I guess not. I don't know. Again, maybe that's something that could have been worked out if she wanted to like this could have been a serial. Yeah, or at least one of the longer stories in the magazine. I would swap this out for the Schachner maybe. Yeah. Make it longer.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Even though that Schachner wasn't bad, but like, yeah, I don't know.
Gretchen:
I do enjoy this more than the Schachner.
Nate:
Definitely. Yeah, I would say so. Yeah. I like the ironic Twilight Zone type ending. I'm glad that it ended on that note.
JM:
Yeah. I mean, I just love that in the end this ended up being a story that I thought about a lot. And it's really interesting because like, it kind of reminds me of the Asimov in that it's posing a thought problem or something for you to ponder over. And I guess even though I can see why even from "Trends", like it's an early story, it's maybe not one of Asimov's very best, but I mean, I can see why he became a legendary story writer and especially short story writer. And maybe I don't get that sense quite from this, but at the same time, this story actually fascinated me a little more in a weird way, like, because I just kept coming back to it in my head and going like, well, what does she mean? Right.
Nate:
Yeah. Right.
JM:
And I just, I like that. Like, and in a way it can seem like vagueness from the author. If you're like, particularly picky, I guess, and like want more explanations. But I think there's something to be said for something that just gets you to think about something and doesn't necessarily give you a clear answer. Right. And this is something that the people who maybe are a little more like, I don't know, gong ho about space colonization and then like colonization in general and say like, oh yeah, well, if we have to step on some natives, so be it. This is something that they could read and not necessarily be offended by but still kind of think about and be like, well, that's kind of interesting that this chieftain is really that canyon perceptive, right? And he knows what's going on around him. Maybe more than the controlling powers do. The colonial powers, I guess.
The story "Reverse Phylogeny" that I also read does include a bit of an Indian chieftain stereotype as well. But it's kind of a funny story. It's actually a story about a guy who uses mesmerism to bring back memories of ancient Atlantis. And he believes that the native peoples of the Americas have the closest insight into what Atlantis actually was. So it's kind of, I don't know, it's interesting. It's definitely meant to be humorous. And I kind of think it succeeds at that. I can't remember if it's Mike Ashley who compiled "Sisters of Tomorrow". I think he was involved with it, didn't he? I don't know. He says that the stereotype is kind of regrettable. And I can kind of see what he's getting at.
And then, you know, there's a little bit of perhaps unfortunate language in this story too. Like Ambella is always referring to the humans, especially Fox anyway, as his white father. And so I guess, you know, the Venusians are blue, the Martians are red, and the Earthmen are all white, I guess. And that's, I don't know, I guess that's the thing. But I don't know, it's of its time, I guess. It doesn't seem malicious necessarily. It's just a thing that I guess one would have to be aware of. There's a ton of colonial language in this story. But I do think she's trying to provide some thought and nuance.
Nate:
Yeah, it's definitely not a pro-colonialism story, like the flag-waving stuff we saw in the dime novel era.
JM:
Right.
Gretchen:
Yeah, like there's definitely more nuance, more depth to what's going on. It's not unapologetically pro-colonialism.
JM:
Yeah, I mean, there's certainly enough ambiguity there. And I think, again, the shortness helps. Like, I don't know, maybe if it were longer, like, maybe I don't want to know exactly what Long thinks about this subject. But I don't know, it's just, it's an interesting, very specifically nuanced and pointed portrayal. And it is very short, which could be a weakness, but also a strength. So, again, I'm conflicted. But at the end of the day, I liked it a lot. I think it's really cool.
Nate:
Yeah, I did too.
Gretchen:
And of course, whatever Long was trying to say, there's always death of the author.
Nate:
Yeah, right.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
That's always something to fall back on.
JM:
So, Charles Hornig, in the book "Pioneers of Wonder", he gets interviewed and he talks about going to visit Amelia Reynolds Long. And it's just kind of a funny anecdote. I don't think it really means anything. But it seems like almost like the way we saw in the fanzines where, like, a bunch of people visited Sam Moskowitz and they were unannounced. And, like, he was kind of a little bit nonplussed because all these weird science fiction fans just showed up at his house.
So, I guess, Hornig and Julius Schwartz, I think, were hanging out in Pennsylvania, like, somewhere doing something. They decided that they were just going to stop him at the Amelia Reynolds Long household. And so they did. And he said she answered the door, looking like somebody out of the 1860s. She was dressed in a very old-fashioned way. And he's like, she looks like somebody out of Lincoln's era or something like that. She had these, like, buttoned-down shoes and she was wearing... I can't remember what he said she was wearing, but she wasn't prepared to admit them because she wasn't expecting any guests. And he said she wouldn't look them in the eye and she didn't let them in. And, I don't know, he thought that was strange. But, I mean, I get it. They're just showing up at your house, right? Like, you expect her to be nice to you.
Nate:
Right, yeah.
JM:
Just like random people showing up.
Gretchen:
I definitely don't like people showing up unannounced.
JM:
Me neither. Yeah. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Perhaps that describes her enjoyment of Emerson as someone who seems to appreciate the mid-1800s.
Nate:
Yeah, certainly.
JM:
Yeah. I'm glad that we all like this and we kind of come to a consensus about it. Like, it was kind of one of these stories that I was really wondering about, because, again, it's so short and it doesn't deliver a polemic, so it doesn't tell you how you're supposed to think about it. And I think that's the best thing about it, maybe, in the end.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
It's not a story I'm gonna forget, even though it might seem inconsequential in some aspects because of its brevity and because it's, like, tackling a very large subject in so few words. Again, sometimes that's the power of a short story, is that it can do things like that a novel can't necessarily do. So, good job. I'm sorry she stopped writing sci-fi not long after this. I wish she had, but people go through phases and they just do what they have to do, and I don't know, I'd be curious to read some of those mysteries. The titles are a little bit cliche, but they sound fun.
Nate:
Definitely.
JM:
Yeah, so... And, yeah, there's somebody who's kind of going against the grain as well of, like, what was popular. Although I shouldn't really say that because Agatha Christie was also very popular, really.
Nate:
Certainly, yeah.
JM:
It's just not, it's not very American, like, that the hardboiled style is what people know from this era. Because writers like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett were trying to set themselves apart from those kind of British mystery traditions. Raymond Chandler himself was famously not a fan of Agatha Christie and wrote this very long essay describing exactly why he wasn't. But... I love Raymond Chandler and, I don't know, I haven't read a lot of Agatha Christie, but she seems cool. So, it's just different, I guess. It's a different thing for different moods.
So, all right, well, I think we have one more nonfiction article before the last story.
Nate:
I guess we want to briefly talk about that.
JM:
Yeah, so let's talk about Willy Ley. He was a German scientist, really. He was born in 1906. And in the 1920s, he actually was the vice president of the amateur German rocket group. He has another name, the VFR, but it's German and I'm not going to try and say it right now because I didn't actually write it down. But, yeah, he was really into rocketry. He studied several different sciences from physics to various aspects of biology, including zoology.
The funny thing was one of the reasons he despised Nazism was that he thought that it was contributing to the rise of pseudoscience in Germany, but he was really into this cryptozoology stuff. Like, in 1949, he wrote a book called "Do Prehistoric Monsters Really Exist" or something like that. Or, "Do They Exist Now?" Like, kind of thing. And he was really, really into this. So, it just kind of goes to show that everybody has their little weakness, you know, they're like, you can talk about pseudoscience as much as you want and talk about how much it sucks, but you probably like some weird, kooky thing that not everybody is into.
But, in the early 30s, there was not as much interest in rocketry as in the 20s in Germany. And he had to deal with a ton of bureaucracy. He ended up working for a bank and when he was working there, he apparently fabricated some documents and just kind of left and went to England and then made his way to the United States where, over the next 20 years, he became a very popular, popular science guy. And if you look on YouTube now, you can see Willy Ley in a whole bunch of TV broadcasts from the 1950s. And he seems like the popular science guy from back then, people would have known his face for sure. Looks like he was all over.
Interestingly, he was also the advisor for the rocketry stuff in Fritz Lang's film, "The Woman in the Moon". And Fritz Lang spoke very, very highly of Willy's work and said that it was so realistic that the Gestapo showed up in 1937 to seize all the copies or something like that. And, yeah, interestingly, both Ley and Fritz Lang were both German emigres who pretty much fled the country when they saw Nazism was really taking over and ended up in the United States. And both had pretty successful careers there in their way.
Ley was a really big fan of science fiction and he was a guest of the Worldcon in, I believe it was 1958 or 59. And, yeah, kind of an interesting guy for sure. Interesting listening to his science broadcasts, like he's got the thick German accent and everything like that and the deep voice and just talking about rockets and all this cool stuff. And it's a 1950s. People are getting kind of more enthusiastic about this stuff. One thing that, so Isaac Asimov knew him and they were both part of this club in New York and it was all men kind of just, they would just hang out over dinner and talk about stuff. And Asimov actually created a series of mystery. It's basically a series of mystery short stories called the "Black Widowers Club". And these stories were stories about these guys who would get together, they would eat and usually somebody would show up, somebody would invite a guest, and the guest or one of the club members would have some kind of problem or mystery or a big thing that needed to be solved and the guys would sit around the table and argue about this stuff for quite some time until the waiter who's been quietly walking around setting the tables and clearing the tables and making sure their wine's filled and they've all got bourbon and whatnot clears his throat and solves the problem for them.
These stories were apparently based on this real life club. I'm sure there wasn't that particular mystery angle with the waiter and everything, but the type of people who were there were like, yeah, people like Willy Ley and he speaks about Willy with some affection and his big regret was that Willy died in 1969 less than a month before Mad Men landed on the moon. It's just like he would have loved to have seen that so much.
It just kind of reminds me of that scene in Mad Men where there's the big advertising guy who's like the old guy and he finally sees the moon landing and then he dies and it's like the apex of his life and what he was looking forward to and is like, it's kind of a funny moment in the show but it's actually quite poignant when you think about it. Somebody who has dedicated their whole life to science and rocketry in particular and space travel who wrote tons of books about this stuff and popular science articles all over the place and this is exactly what he would have lived to see and the fact that he didn't make it by such a short margin is a little bit sad.
Nate:
It is, yeah.
JM:
The article we have is "Geology for Time Travelers" and it is a response to L. Sprague de Camps, "Language for Time Travelers", which although I didn't end up reading it it seems like it is probably a more interesting article than this.
Nate:
Yeah, this is just an excessively detailed article explaining what continental drift is. I mean, it goes on for way, way, way too long.
JM:
Yeah. I do like the way it starts out, reading like a science fiction story.
Gretchen:
I was going to bring that up. That was an interesting way to start.
JM:
Yeah, like at first I thought I was wrong and I was like, oh, I thought this was an article. Isn't this an article? And it's like, it's a story. Oh, he's just setting up the, okay, I got it. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Looks like we missed a story.
JM:
Yeah, I mean, it's unfortunate. Like I appreciate his enthusiasm for the subject and everything but it is pretty dull. Yeah. I didn't really get anything from it.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah. I guess with that said, should we move on to Moore?
JM:
Yeah, so let's finally discuss the final story.
Bibliography:
Science Fiction Encyclopedia - "Amelia Reynolds Long" https://sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/long_amelia_reynolds
Simms, Richard - "A Tribute to Amelia Reynolds Long" amelialong.tripod.com
Yaszek, Lisa - "Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction" (2016)
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