(listen to episode on Spotify)
(music: ringing, rising, falling)
non-spoiler discussion
Gretchen:
Hello, you are listening to Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast. This month we are covering the July 1939 issue of Astounding. Please check out the other segments for the previous stories in this magazine, but this segment is covering the final work in this issue by C.L. Moore.
We have covered Moore previously on this podcast when looking at her story "Vintage Season". The discussion of that story and Moore's background can be found in the third part of our 34th episode covering three works that deal with time travel. This story, in the issue of astounding though, is "Greater than Gods", which I really enjoyed. I think I still prefer "Vintage Season", but this one was a really good story.
Nate:
Yeah, I think "Vintage Season" is slightly better, but I definitely like this one a lot too. She just has a really good prose style.
JM:
She does. I think that, yeah, that's kind of what makes this good, is that it's written really well. I do think it sort of falls into this overly deterministic mindset that I'm a little bit like not a fan of, but it's not necessarily that Moore is 100 percent on board with that either, I don't think, so I don't know. It works really well because of how well it's written, I think. This is probably, out of all the stories, she probably does have the best prose.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I mean, I think that the way Moore is able to convey emotion and the way that things affect people is really great.
JM:
Yeah, and she's able to convey emotions in a way that not many of the other authors do, or they maybe just chose not to. She just does it naturally, I mean, I don't mean to be like, oh, that's because she's a woman, but it just seems like there's this kind of tendency that she has to really focus on the emotions that the characters are feeling, more so than some of her contemporaries.
Nate:
Certainly, a good chunk of the story is spent with one of the characters in a state of emotional distress just racking his brains about what is he going to do.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah, there's a lot of that in this, it's pretty much all through, right? It's this emotional turmoil for this one poor guy who's in this literal impasse, and it's a very strange situation, but the way that she writes it definitely, it reminisces to some other, I guess, stories where somebody sort of gets shown two different alternative paths and they get to choose which one to take, and they don't necessarily know which one's better. I don't know, I feel like I've seen this in more recent science fiction movies and stuff like that. I can't really think of too many examples, but Gretchen, you were saying you watched Donnie Darko recently, and I sort of remember getting that feeling from it, I guess. It's been a long time since I watched it, but yeah, it seems more mystical too, like almost, there's no reason for these people to connect except that they are linked by biology somehow, and there's been this kind of telepathic or technological developments in the future that make it possible for them to connect, which is really interesting because it's like on one level, it's the kind of thing where I personally would balk at writing something where those kind of connections happen, but she's able to explain it in a way that makes it real true and you want to keep reading it.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I think besides the emotional distress, I also really enjoy the more positive emotions that are shown in this work, like we'll get into it a little more, but the love and affection that's kind of shown between characters in this is also just really well done and pretty touching, I think.
JM:
Yeah, for sure, and even whatever side of the coin that we might decide is less attractive than the other, and she kind of leaves it open actually as to which one is not as attractive. She makes it pretty clear that either one is a bit extreme, I think, but like whichever side you choose, Moore still expresses affection for the people in that framework, like both the distant son and the distant daughter, right, like he's kind of loves them both, but he can't help it somehow, and even though one may be, I guess, overly sibyllic, the other one overly militaristic, he still appreciates them both. So yeah.
Gretchen:
Thinking about a couple of comparisons, and I think it's a pretty interesting one to think about, "Alas, all Thinking" when reading this. It's one that really came to mind when I was going through the story.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Anything with that kind of future projection of humanity and the directions that it may take over. I guess it didn't say how many generations, but it certainly implied that it's like a lot.
JM:
A long time. Yeah. I do think the ending, it's kind of the decision that has to be made, but at the same time, it's a little funny, and I don't know if it's just funny to me, but we'll get there when we talk about that.
Nate:
I think she was definitely going with humor for that one, and I was not entirely sure of what twist she was going to put on at the end. We'll talk about it when we get there. I thought she might have gone in a different direction.
JM:
Oh, okay. Interesting. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I didn't expect the direction it took, but I'm sure she meant it to be a humorous ending, you know?
Nate:
Yeah, because it is.
Gretchen:
Yeah. It feels very similar to some of the other kind of zinger endings that you get in these pulps.
JM:
Yeah. Okay. I'm glad I'm not the only one that is. Yeah. Am I supposed to think that's funny? I'm not sure. Yeah. Okay. Cool.
Gretchen:
I think it does work. I think it's a funny ending. It does feel strange that it does, since you saw this very emotional story. Yeah.
JM:
After all this emotional tumult, it feels kind of... Yeah. Anyway, we better just... Now we're just sounding vague, so I guess we better... This is probably another one where it's best to talk about it more afterwards, because then you really... Yeah.
Gretchen:
It's a lot easier to talk about it once you have all the pieces.
(music: explosions and carbine ad read)
spoiler plot summary and spoiler discussion
Gretchen:
We open on 23rd Century Doctor Bill Cory, another Bill in the stories I'm summarizing, writing a letter to one of two women he can't decide between to marry. The two women are Dr. Marta Mayhew and Sallie Carlisle, the latter of whom he decides to address in his letter before he's interrupted by a visit from a friend.
JM:
Yeah, this guy's such a cad, isn't he? Yeah. It's like looking at the two women pictures, like, huh, which one?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
It's really funny. She makes it seem like it's not like the Rocklynne story where it's almost like a little bit. Okay, you're using like casually sexist language to describe this, but it's not really like that in this, even though it's that kind of situation, where you have like a really, I don't know, like a man who's just kind of like undecided and stringing multiple women along.
Gretchen:
Well, at least, you know, he does refer to their personalities and like who they are as people a bit more, which I think it makes it a little more palatable.
Nate:
And it never feels like gawking and leering, which is what the Rocklynne definitely did.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah, sure.
Gretchen:
Yes. He's addressing this letter before he's interrupted by a visit from a friend, Dr. Charles Ashley, who heads what's called the Telepathy House of Science City. Seeing Bill's romantic indecision, Charles muses on his possible futures with each woman and then about futures in general, calling the futures an infinite reservoir of an infinite number of futures, each of them fixed yet malleable as clay. He considers the idea of a possibility plane where all futures that result from every decision exist simultaneously and how powerful one could be if they could access that plane, like a god. Bill brushes off all the speculating, even as Charles leaves with it still on his mind. Still considering his dilemma, Bill starts to lean more towards Sallie, not a scientist herself, but fun and entertaining to be around. As he does, his vision blurs and he hears someone calling out for their father and calling to him, and when his sight is clear again, he finds the futuristic, three-dimensional photo of Sallie on his desk, now one of a woman with her resemblance as well as his own. The woman is calling him, and when he answers, confused, she tells him she's reaching out to him across the millennium.
Through the picture, he can see her surrounded by other people in a circle who appear tense with concentration. It is through these people's mental abilities, as well as her own, that the women can speak to Bill. Believing he's dreaming, Bill asks her questions, and in responding to why he was chosen, she tells him that he is the last male to be born in her family before what she calls the blessed accident that saved the world from itself, and wants to show him what lies in his future.
He receives memories of marrying Sallie, of Sallie's love of partying and fashion, causing financial strain and less effort in his own work, work on sex determination. As others in Science City took him less seriously with his lack of success, Bill moved from the city with his wife, just wanting to be with her and their two daughters, the first of whom is Sue, sharing the same features as the woman from centuries in the future. More girls were being born than boys during that time, and this trend continued even after Bill's death, not, Moore states, that it mattered much really.
Women in public offices were proving very efficient, certainly they governed more peacefully than men, though apparently women are not as overall drawn to the sciences. In this future there has been a decrease in mechanization and technological advancement, a trend towards the rural and an outlaw on war.
Bill meanwhile loses himself in these visions in the future past his own existence, but he starts to grow concerned, watching the coming generations become less concerned with science and technology. He wonders then if this future is fixed, if he didn't marry Sallie, could he present what he has just seen?
Tearing up the letter to her, he rejoices in having the will to reject this future, but feels regret not getting to spend his life with Sallie or raise their daughters.
He turns to Marta's picture, and after a flash of blinding colors, opens his eyes again to see her eyes in the face of a boy that resembled himself, wearing a cap of steel. Calling the boy his son, Bill is met with no emotion from him, only a cold greeting. Seeing Bill confused though, the boy slightly softens, explaining that he is revered in this future, and is surprised to learn they've contacted him before his great work is finished.
He also tells Bill that he is John Williams Cory IV, and Bill feels pride when John tells him of his position in his world. Bill accepts their request to show him his future, still holding the possibility he is dreaming. He sees his marriage with Marta, with whom he could work as well as play, and who encouraged his success. She was the one who wanted him to reveal his discovery, the ability to offer parents the choice of having a girl or boy. Even though Bill was still hesitant, he eventually did make it public, and people clamored to use it.
However, around this time, the dogs that Bill had experimented upon during his research were acting strangely, obeying each command while not being officially trained. Whether this was high intelligence, obedience, or something else was uncertain. Even as others praised Bill for his invention, he remained uneasy. The Cory System's use became widespread, but Bill soon had his mind taken off his misgivings about it.
JM:
It's so interesting that this, again, like one of the other stories we talked about earlier, was published in 1939, because I kind of feel like maybe in a few years, some people would have thought a little bit more strongly that one version of this future society is much worse than the other one, just because of what had happened in the world at that time. But I mean, when you think about it objectively, yeah, you can see why they both seem equally bad in some ways, I guess, like, depending on your perspective. But it's like, it just seems like that was on the cusp of such a significant time where so many people in the world's viewpoints about those kind of things changed due to really terrible firsthand experience.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah, like you can imagine that the response would be pretty different if this was just like a year or two later.
Nate:
For sure, and I mean, the male lineage that we're into here is very clearly based on the Nazis. I mean, they're all doing the Roman salute. They're hyper organized like a military, but the, I guess it just didn't have the association with aggressive warfare and death camps and things like that. I mean, certainly the racism and antisemitism and all that stuff turned a lot of people off very, very early.
JM:
Yeah, it was already known, obviously.
Nate:
But, you know, it didn't have a body count in the millions like it would just a few years later.
JM:
Right, exactly. And I think that's what I mean. Like it's just not, it's one thing to have a unpleasant ideology when you're not murdering millions of people, right? Anyway, sorry. I just, there's so many things to say about this and I'm not, I'm like worried that I'm not going to remember everything.
Gretchen:
Yeah, putting a pin in several things to mention after the summary. But yes, Bill soon had his mind taken off of his misgivings about it by the birth of his own son, who had not been subjected to his discovery. Bill Jr. was stubborn, making his own life choices, unlike those children who had undergone the Cory System. They instead lacked initiative and ambition. The first generation of children came of age as a general George Hamilton controlled the US, a man who believed in a world in which individuals are subjugated under the state. To achieve this world, he waged wars and encouraged the boys to be soldiers for them.
After the general died, other leaders were still able to take up this cause, which expanded over time from creating a united world to a united solar system as space travel developed, conquering Mars, Venus, and Jupiter. In this united solar system, it is mandatory for people to place the needs of the leader class above their own individual needs, creating a society of little emotional expression and hiding of true selves from others. Bill can see that this future is the result of working towards the opposite goal of the previous one.
At his descendants, or Billy's eagerness, Bill starts to think of how great man's achievements are in that future, but the thoughts waver when Sue calls to him again from the other picture. He realizes, as both figures in the photos reach out to him, that neither can see the other. They cannot exist together, and Bill must choose between them.
But how can he choose?
Bill then questions how both of them, out of all their generations, managed to contact him at this exact point in his life, and he sees that both of them are opposite poles, possessing qualities that they get that together make up himself. He tries to talk to both Sue and Billy, but they grow concerned, though Sue understands more with her mental abilities. The leader in Billy's world tries to talk to Bill, and gets upset when the scientist implies that the future isn't fixed. Sue does as well, asking Bill how he can believe that she and the world she lives in aren't real.
Eventually, Bill turns from both photos, finding faults with both futures but finding no alternative choice but to accept one or the other, happiness and extinction, or unhappiness and immortality. The leader in the latter future draws Bill's attention once more, threatening to destroy Bill, even if it means, as Bill reminds him, the elimination of himself and the rest of his world.
Rolling out the weapon, he instructs Bill to call Marta and propose to her.
Before he does so, Bill has an idea.
He pushes a button beneath his desk, which calls his secretary, Miss Brown, into the room. With a last look at Sue and Billy, he asks Miss Brown if she will marry him, and she accepts.
JM:
Wow.
Gretchen:
What a twist.
JM:
The one he wasn't thinking of all along, or at least he wasn't telling us that he was thinking about her the whole time. Maybe he was.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
I thought one direction he might go with this is the polyamorous "both" option.
Gretchen:
I thought he would swear off marriage.
Nate:
Yeah, that would be another way.
Gretchen:
The two futures vanish, and Bill knows that the future he has set, the course for will be better, more balanced. He knows he hasn't lost Sue and Billy since they are a part of himself.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Well, I mean, Miss Brown is the only other woman mentioned in the story, and he pretty much has to do something like this. He has to break away from the loop of paths somehow, right? So I mean, he could act indecisive, but then the longer he does that, the more likely he's just going to get shot. His future descendant who's like, I don't care if it wipes out all of us. Your weakness is going to be the undoing of the universe. It'll be your fault.
Nate:
And I love how he knows it's all empty threats because he seems to understand how time travel paradoxes work.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah. But then, I don't know, I was wondering about this recently, and Gretchen and I, you were and I were talking about this once, but how much are time paradoxes really a human construct of existentialism? How does the universe really respond to that? We don't know. Because we've never been able to time travel, it seems impossible. So we don't know exactly how the universe will respond to time paradoxes, but it certainly seems like he is at the cusp of one right now.
Nate:
He certainly is, yeah.
JM:
Never so literal was the decision to be made. And it's really, I guess, startling how extreme this story is with that in a way, like just presenting that so vividly and so clearly, and yeah, it is kind of funny that in the end he chooses to marry this other woman that's just like, oh, wow, not yet more women here.
Gretchen:
He had her in his back pocket for that whole time.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Three women at the office.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess things are different back then sometimes, but I just like, you never had any intimate relationship with somebody at all, and you're just asking them to marry you like this.
Nate:
Yeah. Hippies versus Nazis, and he chooses the third option.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah, which by the way, I feel like, I don't know, I'm sure the other, you both may have maybe different opinions, but I definitely would have gone with the first future.
Nate:
Yeah, I would. I like the hippies.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
I could hang out there. We're just reading literature all day, talking about nothing really in particular important, you know, it's a nice day out, just yeah, it's cool.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Explore your mind, you know.
JM:
I remember thinking the same thing, reading "Alas, All Thinking", right?
Nate:
Yeah, right.
JM:
Again, that was like the story where, again, I said, after 1939, would people think differently about this? And it's like, it's interesting because we're getting to that cusp now. And I think, like, I don't want to spend the entirety of Chrononauts talking about the American pulp magazine market, but I think it would be cool to look at, now look at stories from the late 40s and early 50s, not just in Astounding, but like especially Galaxy, which kind of has an opposite political viewpoint almost sometimes because of the editor.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I definitely would like to do a Galaxy episode or something.
Nate:
Yeah. And I think that would be another excuse to rope in some of this Italian stuff there because it was big in Italy and it was partially Italian co-founding and all that. But yeah, now we definitely have a lot of international stuff planned for our coming episodes and the American market does get a lot of recognition and, you know, attention because it really was the dominant market internationally during this time. Other stuff obviously existed, but this stuff was getting exported all over the world. And especially after the Second World War, it's really where we see the non-American science fiction scenes really like take off.
I think a lot of the histories we've looked at of various non-English science fiction materials after World War II is where a lot of them really, really start to get going. There's obviously early precursors for a lot of this stuff, which we've talked about on the podcast before, but as far as like an international movement where we're talking about fan involvement and conventions and...
JM:
Yeah, real science fiction community.
Nate:
Right, exactly. After World War II is really where it starts to get going.
JM:
Again, the first society described, supposedly female-oriented society does remind me of the Bates a little bit. But I'm kind of thinking like, so I don't know what I think about all that. I don't know what I think about all that, the fact the idea that like a society that's largely dominated by women, but she's not really leaning too heavily on that aspect of it, I think. Like, it's more like, it's the result of his union and he's just like a focal point in history. Like, there's not even any real necessary reason for him to be a focal point in history. He just is. And so if he marries this woman, things are going to go more this way, right? And it's like kind of suggested that I guess, yeah, like the military society is completely male-dominated and I guess the more pacifistic society is more woman-dominated. But it also could just be a result of the historical events that unfold around him. Like I don't really think she's hammering home the gender angle that much.
I don't know. What do you guys think?
Gretchen:
It's especially I think in that one segment that I kind of read a little from where she does say that about women being not disposed towards science and technology, which I have to wonder, you know, I'm sure that Moore maybe was a little tongue-in-cheek with that.
Nate:
She's obviously playing up on gender stereotypes in extreme ways in either direction. Her comments about women not wanting to be, "not scientists, not inventors, not mechanics or engineers or architects, there were men enough to keep these essentially masculine arts alive. That is as much of them as the new world needed."
JM:
It feels, yeah, it feels a little like she's satirizing maybe.
Nate:
I don't think she is necessarily, women while involved with all of those technical fields she mentioned were there. They definitely did not play a prominent role in the public perception of those industries. You look at any engineering or scientific banquet from 1939 and it is 100 percent without exception all men.
JM:
But how much of that was due to just expectations of the way people should be more than actual, the actual way that people are?
Nate:
Right.
JM:
I mean, we know that now that that's that's a big factor in it.
Nate:
It's not saying that women can't do these jobs, which they obviously can. It's that.
JM:
But they didn't. They did not at that time.
Gretchen:
It was just societal, like structural issues rather than individual.
Nate:
It actually is. There was really no path for the average woman to be in those fields at that time. There was obviously exceptions.
JM:
It was society in the way it was set up. It wasn't the nature of men and women. It was the way things have been set up that prevented women from gaining access at the ones who thought, hey, it would be really cool to be an explorer, which is what Willy Ley said in his high school assignment, and he was poo pooed by his teachers. But like if he was a woman, he would have probably been poo pooed a lot more.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
If he said, hey, I want to be an explorer and like, I don't know. Yeah.
Nate:
Yeah. The women that had the opportunity to make advancements or really any mark at all, they all had the commonality of being upper class and well connected in some way.
JM:
Well, yeah. And they had more opportunities because of that.
Nate:
Right.
JM:
I mean, yes, they were held back in other ways, but they had perhaps indulged these things that some of the stupider men in their lives were probably like, oh, it's just a foolish, foolish canard. You being interested in your microscopes. Yeah. I don't know.
So I mean, again, I think that, I mean, Moore herself, she definitely seemed to, I don't know, like to me, it definitely seems like she believes that artistry and things like that are very important and that women are very good at that and she herself is very good at that. I don't know if she herself couldn't imagine being in a technical field and maybe that creates a certain alieness to it where it's like, it seems very masculine or something like that.
Gretchen:
Well, I think it's also, J.M., you were saying at the beginning, like, when we were talking about how much emotion that she puts into her work and how it's different from like something that was written usually by a man.
JM:
Everybody's always feeling everything and very strongly. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And you have to wonder, was her own writing style influenced by this idea that she had and maybe she felt that that was how she should write as a woman or maybe she thought that the reason she wrote differently from her peers was because she was a woman.
JM:
But that, I mean, and then we come around full circle because now that we phrase it like that, I can't help but see that as a good thing, like, yeah, that's cool actually that she did that, right? But yeah, I mean, I don't know. She probably didn't know any women scientists, I'm imagining.
Nate:
No, there weren't many that were high profile at the time at all. In fact, I talked about the ENIAC being one of the first electronic digital computers in the world. Well, the people who programmed the ENIAC were all women and there's amazing photos of the women who worked with the ENIAC that are circulating now. But at the time in the 1940s, all the promotional photos were with the men and any women who appeared that were with the machine that day when they were taking those promotional photos that were going to be used in advertisements and stuff were airbrushed out of the photos.
JM:
What?
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Oh.
Nate:
Yeah. So, I mean, while women have been recognized for their achievements in the sciences and the engineering world that were doing things in the 1930s and before, they're recognized today, they were not at all recognized at the time. Nobody knew who Ada Lovelace was in 1939. And when they talk about Babbage in the article we read in this issue, Ada Lovelace has not mentioned in that. And she is arguably the most important part of that story as far as it applies to how computers function today and how forward thinking that was. But women were just written out of the narrative at that point in time. So while women did make contributions at that time through a number of obstacles and hurdles, when they did make those achievements, they were more often than not written out of the narrative.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I mean, you know, when talking about a lot of women in history, it's kind of more excavating history rather than taking it as it is.
Nate:
Right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
JM:
In all fairness, she does describe, oh no, what's the name of the more science-oriented woman that he might possibly marry.
Gretchen:
Oh, Marta?
JM:
Yeah. She describes her with some affection too, and that she's like a really cool person and it's really cool that she's into all this stuff. Like, she obviously likes that idea, so it's kind of a shame that it leads to what it apparently leads to. But at the same time, yeah, not a big deal is made of the fact that she is a female scientist either. Like, you know, it's kind of like, yeah, that's what she's really into and she's really serious about it and she's pushing him to do better at his work, and I don't know, and a part of me also kind of thinks, well, she's the more intellectual one, whereas Mary, she's more like obsessed with more frivolous things or things that could be considered frivolous, I guess. And it's that frivolity that is in the end, like, kind of the undoing of the human race on that end of the spectrum.
Again, like, I feel like if you're going to go down, you might as well go down in a period when people are enjoying themselves and feeling good rather than, like, burning in radioactive torment or something like that.
Gretchen:
Well, I think what's interesting about it is, I think this is the same with "Alas, all Thinking", there's this idea where human beings are not able to face the fact that they are not going to be around forever. And because he says either happiness and extinction or unhappiness and immortality, but what is the point of immortality? It's based on, like, colonization and something similar to what we're seeing in "When the Half-Gods Go", like, we're just completely overriding these other people that have as much right to prosper as we do.
JM:
And I'm willing to bet you that for most of the Astounding readership, the idea that humanity could just wither away and die and not, like, ever get into space and not do anything to spread the idea of human consciousness around the universe would be really depressing.
Nate:
Probably, yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
I mean, I'm sure the average age of the reader and the subscriber was closer to Isaac Asimov, you know, being, like, 18, 19 or so than people in their 30s and 40s.
Gretchen:
People who may not even think, I'm not going to die, you know, that sort of mentality.
JM:
Yeah, I was going to say, Gretchen, you're the right age to be, like, on fire with this stuff. I don't know, to me, maybe. Now that I've read a couple of these stories, including the Harry Bates that really made me think about this stuff, like, a lot, and this one, and, you know, I'm kind of thinking, like, yeah, but is the idea of winding down thousands of years from now peacefully and, like, contemplatively and intellectually, is it really that bad? I don't know. It doesn't seem that terrible. I mean, it's in the future, but...
Nate:
I don't think so. I mean...
Gretchen:
Yeah, I think it's a great way to go, personally. And I think, you know, like we were saying, with "Alas, All Thinking", there's the scene, you know, when he's about to kill one of the humans, and it's like, you know, he's having these thoughts that are honestly very poignant and meaningful, but it's like, oh, well, you know, it's not what I think is good, so I'm going to murder this man.
JM:
I mean, I can see how you'd be like, there's a little less brio to life these days, but I don't know. Yeah.
Gretchen:
I mean, it's not like we're going out exploring or anything, but does that have to happen if we're content?
Nate:
Yeah. I don't know. As someone who's spent several hundred hours poring over trying to make sense of Russian and Ukrainian sentences from the 1920s, I don't mind having my head buried in the clouds and in the academic works of the arts. I don't think that being a space Nazi is any good productive use of my time.
Gretchen:
So yeah, yeah, I would prefer not to colonize other planets.
JM:
Makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. I think we should still try, but I guess balance and having equal time for every side really seems important, but how do you achieve that and how do you reach that balance? I guess "Greater than Gods" doesn't really provide an answer to that. We don't really know what will happen when he marries Miss Brown. She might be more solid and dependable, but we don't really know that. So I don't know. I mean, I guess, again, I really think it's cool how she is able to make both seem like they have their attractive points, even though, yeah, the military society probably is based on Nazism.
Nate:
The illustrations definitely make it very clear it's based on Nazism.
JM:
But the son is still is a very admirable figure. He's still described with much love and affection. Maybe that's personal. It's not ideological, but it's like showing that, yeah, like, unfortunately, people are hiding themselves in that future and they're hiding who they truly are, and that seems to me a lot more sad than just like laying back and having a good time like, I don't know.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Hippies chilling out and it's like that versus 1984 scenario where no one can express their true feelings.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah.
Gretchen:
But that is the point that I do like is that no individual is at all villainized or anything in this story really. Even like when we were talking about, yeah, Sallie, she does like the party. She likes to have fun. She may be a little hard with finances, but you also see that she is someone that brings a lot of joy to Bill and like he doesn't really mind it at all. I think that's really nice because it could have gone like, here's this woman who's like leeching off of Bill, you know? And it felt like that at first, but then you see like, no.
JM:
It's not really like that. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. He's like, yeah, that's cool. I'm going to go party with you, you know?
Nate:
Yeah. And he legitimately loves his, I guess, hypothetical children and feels his deep emotional connection with them even though he feels that both of their futures are not good. Yeah. It's a really nice touch because he could portray his descendants as like awful people, but they're not. They're just products of their time and the environment that they were brought up in.
JM:
Right. As is anybody, as is the soldiers that so many will meet, you know, and have to think about as the enemy. Yeah. I don't know. It is definitely really powerful and like it's kind of crazy how, again, this is a story of people talking to each other very intensely, but it manages to be powerful and emotional.
I think Moore is definitely good at that. I remember reading this first and this is actually not the first time I read this story. I read this. Oh, I don't know. Probably close to 15 years ago now in the best of C. L. Moore collection. And this one kind of did strike me at the time as being very like, yeah, it's everybody keyed up to maximum pitch and being really emotional and like trying to argue their case and, and this guy being caught in the middle and having to choose between two possible futures and so many of her stories have this climax of intensity to them. I think it's actually really cool. You know, it's something that she just does and I don't know. I mean, "Vintage Season" arguably has a few of them, but like obviously at the end there where there's the, the big apocalypse moment and that it's what's his name sitting there alone with the composer and being told what's happening when he's dying of the plague and it's just like, yeah.
Nate:
Yeah, I think what I like about her, both in this and "Vintage Season" is that her pro style is just really inviting and good to read, even though like almost nothing happens in the course of the story. I mean, like we described the plot summary and, you know, what happens here, but it's much longer than it could be of a basic idea of, you know, here's your choice between two future paths. You know, what do you choose? She just has a very good way about plotting and pacing and her word choice and the whole mood and atmosphere.
JM:
And there's a real intensity to her writing. I think that not everybody has like, it's just like everything is charged up in a Moore story and like, you gotta figure like her Weird Tales stories, the Northwest Smith stories and the Jirel Of Joiry stories, like Jirel stories are a little different, but the Northwest Smith stories are basically all about space vampires and they're basically about how the bed feel when they're in proximity to these various space vampires of different kinds, like some of them are more literal than others. Sometimes it's a very like existential, weird thing. That's hard to explain, but that's basically being around them will enslave you to that. And it's, I think we've all read "Shambleau" now, right?
Nate:
No, no, I haven't.
JM:
Okay. So yeah, like that's, it's kind of, it's, it's interesting too, because I mean, I was gonna save this for actually commenting on "Shambleau", which I think maybe we'd like to do sometime.
Nate:
We have a penciled in somewhere. I mean, you know, who knows when we're going to get around to covering it. We have a lot of things.
JM:
Moore wrote all these, like she wrote these point of view characters like Northwest Smith, kind of like that space Western atmosphere, and he's encountering all these, these mostly vampiric kind of often feminine creatures from various worlds like Venus and Mars. And she, I guess you could say like this kind of story was sort of popular. I mean, there were a lot of stories about similar kind of themes, right? And normally you would think, yeah, we identify with the male protagonist and we identify with the person who's having to overcome these obstacles and these perhaps feminine evils. MoOre though, specifically said, and I can't remember where she was asked about this, but she was talking about "Shambleau" because it was her first published story. And even though I don't know that it's necessarily a best story, I mean, I love "Vintage Season". I think it's a masterpiece. To me, that's the best thing I've read from her, but I can't say for sure. I mean, again, like we were saying a few episodes back, I don't really feel the need to necessarily say that something is the best is just maybe my favorite.
But she said that she identified with Shambleau and she wanted to be more like her. And she thought herself as the space vampire. That is her perspective, I think, even though it seems like a very simple statement where she's just commenting on one of her stories, like it's her first published story, whatever. I think that that does say something that she did kind of identify with the monster, so-called and she wants to be that person. She thinks of herself as the mysterious woman with the mysterious snake hair and possibly very seductive, but also very powerful and with a deep intellectual bent. So I don't know. I mean, it's it's just interesting to think about the writers of these kind of stories are really into adventure and they really write adventure stories and often you must imagine that, yes, they sit there and think of themselves as an element in one of the stories that they write. So who do they think of them like? Are they Conan or are they one of the villains? I don't know, it's just interesting to read that. Or she was saying like, yeah, Shambleau is the the person that I want to be like, even though the Shambleau is the mysterious other in the story that seems kind of threatening an alien.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And thinking of other writers compared to her and thinking of what was mentioned about how engaging her prose is, like you said, Nate, thinking of this compared to like the other two that I summarized, "The Moth" and "Lightship, Ho!". And it's like, yes, these are action oriented stories. They have more plot wise, more things going on than Moore's story where like you can kind of just say it's a man who's sitting at his desk and he feels a lot of things.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
He sees things and he feels things, but that's the one that's more engaging and more interesting to read.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
And I bet it could be branded as one of those "thought variant" stories because, you know, it literally is a thought variant. But yeah, it was such a refreshing break to read this story. I like the Amelia Reynolds Long a lot, but the issue really does sag in the middle.
JM:
And yeah, I can see that. I mean, I pretty much liked everything in here, but the Bond, but I don't know. Yeah. I see what you mean. Yeah. I mean, the Rocklynne is not awesome.
Gretchen:
I find the Bond to be kind of charming. And I definitely, I don't absolutely hate "The Moth". I think that there's obviously a lot of flaws with it. You know, it's the weakest story here.
Nate:
Yeah. I wouldn't say I hate it. I definitely strongly dislike it. I think it might go in my bottom 10 of any Chrononauts story we've done.
JM:
Okay, yeah.
Nate:
But the Moore was great and definitely a great closer to the issue.
Nate:
Yeah. I mean, she's definitely two for two on Chrononauts so far.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
And I would like to come back to her, not because we're a podcast that sticks to doing things according to some kind of order or anything like that, but because we like to cover stories that we like, and we're going to do some more host choice and we're going to do some host choice specifically dedicated towards short stories where we each pick a couple. So there's a lot of cool stuff like that looking forward and we might be able to get in all kinds of cool stories. So I don't know, at least a few more Moore stories are certainly a good possibility.
Nate:
Yeah. We definitely have some penciled in and I just checked our list and that one might be penciled in sooner rather than later when we do more sort and planet type stuff. So stick around for that.
JM:
Yeah. There's some annoying I don't know, it seems like a bunch of ads were placed at the end of this story.
Nate:
Yeah. She got hit the hardest with all the authors for the ads.
Gretchen:
Which is, talking about how engaging the story is, like what a shame, you know?
Nate:
Yeah. I mean, it is the back of the issue and the back of the issue is typically where you stick the ads, but there are a couple of pages where it's just like literally one column of the story and then like four columns of advertisements.
JM:
Yeah. And, you know, they were doing pretty well before then, like it didn't seem like the ads were that pervasive and I was like, tolerantly amused by them and then they just all kind of showed up there with, I don't know, yeah, I don't really like that.
Gretchen:
They realize you're almost finished with the issue. So we got to throw as many of these in as possible.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah, that was weird. But I mean, I guess, again, that wasn't really anybody's fault. Like, I mean, this could have been the first story as easily as "Black Destroyer", but I'm not unhappy that it was the last story, you know what I mean? Like if I was reading the magazine cover to cover, I would want a really awesome story at the end.
Nate:
Yeah, totally. Yeah.
Gretchen:
And I think it has the right like mood to end on.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah. It makes you think more than "Black Destroyer" does. I mean, I guess we were all kind of confused by like the physics of the ending of "Black Destroyer", but this makes you think in a different way than that. Yeah.
JM:
So wait, Nate, what was that other thing you were thinking of? How did you think that it was going to end?
Nate:
Oh, that he was going to marry him both and do like a polyamory type deal.
JM:
Oh, yeah. Okay. I see what you mean. I guess so. That would have been, that would have been a lot more modern, I suppose, but yeah.
Nate:
I don't know.
Gretchen:
Maybe in Sue's future, you know, with all the hippies, that would have been it.
JM:
Yeah. Well, I mean, not that it wasn't a thing. Like one of our authors that we've talked about before, H. G. Walls, was very into that. So.
Nate:
And Charles Hinton.
Gretchen:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
JM:
But he was more, he was an asshole.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I don't want to think too much about Hinton.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
And Robert Heinlein was kind of into that too, I guess, but we haven't talked about him yet. So he has a way of annoying people. So I don't know how it's going to go talking about him, but we'll get there someday.
Nate:
Yeah. Well, he appears in the August 1939 issue of Astounding. So if you're checking out the collection of magazines that they have on archive.org, you could just go to the next issue. He's in the very next issue.
Gretchen:
Is that his debut?
Nate:
Yeah. His debut anywhere.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
So yeah. It's a pretty amazing time for these big science fiction authors, this very specific period in 1939 of Asimov and Heinlein's debut in Astounding being pretty much back to back.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Van Vogt right there.
JM:
Vаn Vogt's there. And Clarke was still a few years away, but he would eventually be in Astounding as well.
Nate:
He would. Yes.
JM:
I don't think that was his first publication, but it's pretty early on for him.
Nate:
It was his first professional publication, but he had a couple earlier fanzine publications.
JM:
Yeah. Yeah. So there's like 1940, the late later 40s sometime.
Nate:
Yeah. Early mid 40s. Yeah. Yeah.
(music: elastic chance)
Astounding July 1939 story ranking, general issue discussion
JM:
Do you want to just for fun write these stories in the magazine?
Nate:
Worst for me, definitely the Rocklynne did not like this one at all. Yeah. Yeah. Worst for me, it's, I think the worst story we've covered in a while. Not the worst story we've covered on the podcast is nowhere near as bad as "New Steam Man", but did not like it.
Second worst is the Bond. You know, it was not a good story, but to me it was at least like fun in some ways.
I would say after that is the Schachner. Kind of middle of the road, didn't dislike it, but it didn't really have anything aside from that really cool vacuum scene to really stand out.
Then I would say "Black Destroyer", overall I liked it, but it did have some flaws that I wasn't too wild about.
Then I would say "When the Half Gods Go," it has a lot going for it. Nothing I really disliked about it. Really cool atmosphere.
Then number two is "Trends". Really awesome debut from Asimov has some really cool themes that it goes over and he's just an engaging writer and this one didn't have any of the issues that I had found...
JM:
No, and I think in a lot of his short stories, you'll be okay, it's not... The ones that don't end up in fixed up novels. Generally, there's nothing to be upset about, in my opinion anyway.
Nate:
And I wasn't here.
And number one is this one, "Greater Than Gods". I thought this one was great. I really like Moore's prose style. Yeah. That's my rankings for this issue.
Gretchen:
Because I also just wrote mine down quickly. I kind of have, I mean, I think I have the same order.
Well, I will say, yeah, "The Moth", least favorite, just quite a few problems with it. Like I said, I didn't, I don't hate it. I think we've definitely read some worse works on this podcast, but it's not a good story.
Nate:
And you honestly picked the right time to join the podcast, because when we did that "New Steam Man", that was like awful, and I would have hated that would have been the first work you covered on the podcast.
JM:
I'm glad that didn't happen. I'm glad that didn't happen. But I'm also like "New Steam Man" is just so interesting because it's so old, right?
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
It's just like, oh, wow.
Gretchen:
I'm glad I got to start with an Edgar Allan Poe work, you know, that was nice.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
But yeah. And then "Lightship, Ho!", which I did find endearing, I find parts of it enjoyable. I think that in a better story, the dynamic between the two main characters would be fun to read.
Then, yeah, "City of Cosmic Rays", it's, I still don't mind it as a standalone, like I said, I think it's kind of fun to picture as a standalone, but it definitely, I'm sure, would be interesting to read as part of the series.
And then, yeah, "Black Destroyer", which I did enjoy. I think I did enjoy it more than you did, Nate. I kind of did like the crew a little bit more, I think. But yeah, the ending, like you were saying, is a little strange and there were some other issues with it.
Then I think "Where the Half Gods Go" and "Trends", I kind of want to tie them. I think they both have really interesting attributes together. I think they both kind of go together as we kind of were mentioning. Both about religion and both kind of thinking about similar topics, I think, with that, at least.
But yeah, "Greater Than Gods" is the best one. And I'm not surprised I kind of was thinking it would be just because I love Moore. So I was very happy that I got to summarize that one and lead on it.
JM:
Yeah. My turn. Well, at the bottom is Nelson S. Bond, "Lightship". The humor was not that funny for me, so I don't know, it didn't really work that well. There were some things about it that were charming, though. Honestly can't say that I really despise anything in the issue, so I don't know. It was definitely my least favorite, though.
Then was Rocklynne with "The Moth". I like the style, the hard boiled stuff, the kind of weird future fashion descriptions were cool. The industrial sabotage angle started out pretty well, and I was almost impressed because I thought we were going to get a really cool woman, scientist, engineer type person, and we didn't get that. But for a while it was a possibility.
Gretchen:
Well, you know, women aren't disposed towards science, so.
JM:
Yeah. I don't know. The humor was slightly on point, I thought, and the situation Felix's dilemma at the end was interesting, so I don't know, it wasn't that bad.
Then I got "City of the Cosmic Rays" because, yeah, it just felt like being dropped in the middle of something. There were seem to be some cool ideas, but they were not fleshed out enough for me, and I don't know, I read the origin story, and I kind of liked that one a lot better, even though there was tons of weird, racial stuff in it, and lots of, like, this guy is a Greek god that you would really want to have sex with, kind of stuff in it, but I don't know, yeah, the "Cosmic Rays" was just sort of being thrown into the middle of this ongoing thing, even though it wasn't a serial, so I don't know. I liked it, though. The style was kind of cool. It was really weird, which made it more enjoyable, I think.
Then I got "Trends". I like it a lot. I like Asimov. I think his short stories are some of the most influential things in my life, not just in terms of things that I've read, but, like, things that I thought about when I was a kid and still think about now, and, like, just, yeah. So I like the story a lot. I just, I don't know if it doesn't stand up to some of his best, but at the same time, yeah. When he's 19, he's very passionate about this. It's a problem story, so it's got a lot of the hallmarks of a really good Asimov story, I think, and the dialogues are cool. I mean, you may say that his characters are not so deep, and that is a general criticism that people love against him, but I don't really think that's fair. I think his dialogues of characters is really fun, and he manages to just convey a lot about them by the things that they say. He doesn't have to tell you a ton of background, and this and that, and the other thing, and I don't know. I will always stand up for Asimov. I like his ability to convey a lot of serious scientific concepts in a way that a lot of people will be able to understand and relate to. I think it's a gift, so anyway, "Trends" is a really good story.
Then I got "Black Destroyer", I guess I'm kind of hesitating between number three and number two. I don't know, it's hard to pick the top ones because I think in a lot of ways, I cannot help but feel that the writers I really like, are the ones that are going to be on the top, and because I've experienced Moore and Asimov and Van Vogt before, I'm going to place them highly. But in any case, "Black Destroyer" to me is a cool story that's got flaws, but the flaws are not to me that much of a deterrent. I personally am not too bothered by them in this, I don't know, in Van Vogt. I think it's okay. I'm all right with it if that's the wrong or hypocritical or something, so be it, but I don't know. It doesn't bother me. I enjoy this a lot. But I don't know that it's his best, I actually read a story recently that was in the "Science Fiction Omnibus", edited by Brian Aldiss, and as mentioned in our Van Vogt episode, Aldiss seemed to enjoy Van Vogt, even though he is one of those people who kind of likes to disparage the science fiction writers of the pulp era, especially who have little literary merit. But he seems to have time for Alfred, and I get it. It just got a lot of zeal and a lot of wonder in his sensibility. He writes like a dreamer, and I think that's cool.
So number two, yeah, it's "When the Half Gods Go", Amelia Reynolds Long, is weird because so little seems to be known about her, and I can't really unearth too much, and I'm kind of curious about the poetry, but like, I don't know, she seems unjustly forgotten perhaps and like, it's weird because yeah, I wouldn't say any of the stories I read by her were like, maybe top level in terms of writing, but at the same time, they always leave an impression. And this story really did, and I kept thinking about it for a long time, and at the end of the day, that has to be one of my criteria, one of the big ones is, when I finish the story, how am I going to think about it a lot afterwards? And this is one where I did, a lot of it was me trying to puzzle out what she meant. And she's enigmatic and doesn't entirely want to reveal that to you, which I respect a lot, so that's why.
And then, yeah, "Greater than Gods", again, it probably has mostly to do with the fact that I value, I think we all value good prose and style and Moore has that. But also, you know, because we've been talking about this story for a while already, and you can see it's sort of unearthed some feelings and some thoughts and made us want to talk about our, the way we all think about things and our ideologies and how we might perceive the world and how people perceive the world in 1939, who are reading the American science fiction pulp magazines, and how that might be different from now, and stuff to do with genders and what's expected of the various genders in society, and I don't know, it's just there's there's a lot packed into it. It's maybe not the best Moore story, but I'm still going to say it's the number one story in Astounding July 1939. That's my opinion.
So I think we're all in unison about that, which is cool.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Next time on Chrononauts. Last month or actually, I guess a couple months ago now, we talked about fandom, and we talked about the early fandom magazines of the 1930s, but we also covered a Star Trek story. And now we're going to talk about how science fiction, televisual media basically spawned the growth of fandom. But not only that, professional books published under the byline of these properties, licensed properties, licensed to publishing companies in Britain and the United States specifically. And we're going to talk about two things that we like very much, Doctor Who and Star Trek. And so we're going to be talking about one Doctor Who novel and one Star Trek novel.
So the Doctor Who novel I have chosen is "The Eye of Heaven" by Jim Mortimer. And it is a novel featuring the fourth incarnation of the Doctor and his companion Leela. And it was published in 1998. The main reason that I picked "The Eye of Heaven" was that it is not connected to any of the arcs of stories that feature the Doctors that were current when the novels were written. So in a sense, that's a weakness for some of the books because the ones that dwell on past incarnations could tend to descend into a kind of rote, this is what we expect from a Doctor Who story sort of thing. And I guess you could say that about the Star Trek novels too. I mean, of the TOS novels written in the 1990s, like the series is long over. So how much could they possibly do? But the thing is, some writers found ways around this. And I think it was really important to choose something that didn't tie into anything else. And I really liked this book, so that was why I chose it pretty much.
And Gretchen, you have picked us a Star Trek novel. What is that?
Gretchen:
Yes, I have picked the Star Trek TOS novel, "The Wounded Sky" by Diane Duane. I chose that because Diane Duane is quite a prolific writer, especially with Star Trek, but also just in general seems to be connected with a lot of fandoms, including other sci-fi fandoms that hopefully we'll get to talk about it. Blake 7, she seems to have experience with as well. It was her first novel for the TOS series of novels, so that was the one I decided to go with.
JM:
Yeah, so I hope you are looking forward to that. I know I am. It should be really fun to talk about those things. I know we're going to use the time to not just talk about those books specifically, but our relationship with the respective, I guess, fandoms and media, Doctor Who and Star Trek specifically, and how we feel about those things. We've certainly hinted at a lot of those before on the podcast. Everybody who's been listening for a while probably knows that we like those things, especially Doctor Who, because we always seem to sneak in references.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely. We initially planned this as part of the episode we did last time on fanzines and fan fiction, but we quickly realized that it became way too big and too much to do into one episode. So we kind of decided to split it up in the staggering order of going between the Astounding episodes because we think that all four of these episodes really tie together into one cohesive whole that kind of forms the basis for American science fiction.
JM:
Yeah, and yeah, after that, we're probably going to do some host choice stuff, so it'll be cool.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Everybody who's listening in, feel free to like and subscribe and do all that cool stuff that you're supposed to do. If you're listening on the YouTube channel, definitely subscribe. Write us a comment. We've been getting a few nice comments lately, which is cool.
Nate:
Yeah. Thank you for everybody for listening. We definitely got a lot of views recently on YouTube. So if you've made it this far, we're happy to have you here.
JM:
We'd love to talk. So if you want to leave us mail at chrononautspodcast@gmail.com or YouTube comments or comments on the various podcast platforms, please do that. We would love to hear from you.
closing sketch
JM:
And so, now, it's late, and while we sincerely hope you've enjoyed your time here with us on Chrononauts...
(STRANGE DISTORTED SOUND RESOLVES, AFTER A FEW SECONDS, INTO AGGRESSIVE POUNDING ON THE DOOR OF...
Gretchen:
What happened?
Nate:
The external environment has developed a LOW-LEVEL IMPINGEMENT event which is interfering with our cross-temporal psychometric channeling! We can no longer interact with the world of the future!
Sheriff:
All right! Allright! Open up in there! Kids up to no good, I tell ya, they oughta be put to work until they beg for mama!
Sheriff:
What's the game here anyway. (LOOKS AROUND ROOM DISAPPROVINGLY) You three JOKERS don't own this joint now do ya?
Gretchen:
Well, no, but...
Nate:
We're holding it -- guarding it, for the owners, you know. here (OFFERS GLASSES) Would you care for some psycho-temporal resonators? Put them on and see the world better than ever BEFORE! YOURS FOR A SONG!
Gretchen:
Some bourbon? Goes down real smooth! This stuff is famous down in Kentucky! ... ... No?
Sheriff:
All right, you best not act like a buncha wiseguys, or I'll have to book ya. Give you some time in the tank with the drunks! See long you last. Don't let me see you round here again, or else! There's definitely gonna have to be some cleanup. Woudl'nt want anyone *respectable* to see the joint looking like this! Say, this one looks kinda pretty! Nice silky blonde hair, great big ... hey wait a minute! Tentacles? AAAARGH!
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