This is another post that’s going to do double duty as a birthday post and an Astounding anniversary post.  It’s also going to be out of order in respect to the ToC.

Eric Frank Russell was born on this date, January 6, in 1905. He passed away in 1978. Russell was British, and although he was well-known in the US during his lifetime, he has sadly slipped into obscurity these days.  None of his short fiction is in print in electronic format in the US.  Only the NESFA collection Major Ingredients is in print.  His novels are doing a little better, with several being available in print and electronic formats.Eric Frank Russell wrote some of the best short fiction of the mid-Twentieth Century.  His short story “Alamagoosa” won one of the first Hugo Awards. It a terrific comic take on military bureaucracy.

Eric Frank Russell

“Hobbyist” is the first of two stories by him in The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology.  Only two other authors have double entries, Murray Leinster and Henry Kuttner (appearing under the pseudonyms Lewis Padgett and Lawrence O’Donnell.) My understanding is that Russell was a favorite of Campbell’s.

“Hobbyist” was first published in the September 1947 issue of Astounding.  It’s a different story, and one in which Russell shows off his skill as a writer.

Steve Ander is flying a Probe Service ship when he gets flung across the galaxy.  Russell engages in lot of jargonesque gobbledygook in a fdew lines to explain this part. The important thing is that Steve is lost, almost out of fuel, and stranded on a planet with only a macaw for company. The Probe Service uses macaws in a way similar to the way miners used canaries.

And this where Russell shows his skills. There is enough interaction between the man and the bird to prevent the story from becoming a running description, even though there’s no real dialogue.

Steve quickly realizes that there is only one of each type of plant and animal on the planet. On the first night, he wakes up for no apparent reason.  Looking out his observation bubble, he sees a bright column of light moving in the distance but can’t make out what is.

Exploring a day or two later, he reaches a place where the forest ends and a field of crystals begins.  Each crystal is different. The demarcation between the two regions is a sharp, straight line.  He continues on and as he crests the top of the last hill before he turns back, he finds an area covered with jelly-like objects, each different and alive. On the other side of the valley is a giant structure.

Steve returns in his ship the next day. Exploring the structure he discovers clear containers containing animals, most unknown to him but a few familiar and Terrestrial. Near the back are some machines that today would be called 3D printers. They are producing animals, although these animals are missing “the breath of life”.

Then the light column returns…

Russell managed to keep my interest in this novelette even though there’s not a lot of interaction between characters. The setting was unique and interesting, and the ending, although perhaps a bit contrived, satisfying. And the last few paragraphs are especially intriguing.

I first read “Hobbyist” in (I think) the 1947 volume of Isaac Asimov Presents the Great Science Fiction Stories. I don’t think I had managed to get my hands on a copy of The Best of Eric Frank Russell yet.

So, another story from the first decade of Campbell’s Astounding that has held up well.  If you can find a copy, I recommend it.