Tag Archives: Astounding Science Fiction

Being Faithful to Old Raymond Z. Gallun

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Raymond Z. Gallun

Raymond Z. Gallun (rhymes with “balloon”; his family was Dutch) was born on this date, January 22, in 1911.  Gallun passed away in 1994.)

This post is going to serve triple duty.  First, it’s a birthday post. Second, it’s going to be a 90th Anniversary of Astounding post. Third, it’s also a pre-Campbell SF post.

Gallun  is largely forgotten now, but he was pretty prolific from 1929 through the early fifties. If he is remembered at all, it’s for his story “Old Faithful”, which was first published in the December 1934 issue of Astounding. Continue reading →

Algis Budrys Isn’t Bothering Gus

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“Nobody Bothers Gus”
First published in Astounding, November 1955 as by Paul Janvier

Algis Budrys was born on this date, January 9, in 1931. He passed away in 2008.

Budrys was was a prolific short story writer in the 1950’s, with many of his stories appearing in Astounding.  So this post is doing double duty as a birthday post and an Astounding/Analog 90th anniversary post. Continue reading →

Astounding/Analog 90th Anniversary: F. Orlin Tremaine

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Editor F. Orlin Tremaine was born on this date, January 7, 1899. He passed away at the age of 57 in 1956.  Tremaine worked at the Clayton pulp company, although he had no editorial duties with Astounding.  He left to pursue other publishing ventures which didn’t pan out and returned to Clayton in 1932. When Clayton went belly-up, Street and Smith bought the company. It was this time Tremaine was editing responsibilities for Astounding along with other titles. Tremaine edited Astounding from 1932 until late 1937, at which time he hired John W. Campbell, Jr to edit the magazine. Tremaine was promoted to Editorial Director.

Among the authors Tremaine published were H. P. Lovecraft (At the Mountains of Madness and The Shadow Out of Time), L. Sprague de Camp, Raymond Z. Gallun, Jack Williamson, Murray Leinster, and Eric Frank Russell. Oh, and some guy named Campbell.

Eric Frank Russell’s “Hobbyist”

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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. Continue reading →

“Nightfall” and Isaac Asimov’s Centennial

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Today, January 2, marks the centennial of the birth of Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). I’m going to try to read/reread some of his major works this year. I read a lot of Asimov in middle school and high school, but I not much after I got my undergraduate degree.

Like him or hate him, there is no denying that Isaac Asimov was one of the most influential science fiction authors of the 20th Century.

I also am reading through The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology right now.   (See this post.) In addition to this being a birthday post, it will also be Part 2 of that read-through. Continue reading →

The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology, Part 1

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So, as part of Astounding/Analog’s 90th anniversary, I’m going to be reading through The Astounding Science Fiction Anthology over the few months.  I’ll read one or two stories, and post on them here, mostly in order.

Edited by John W. Campbell, Jr., the anthology was first published in 1952 by Simon and Schuster.  For more on the backstory behind the anthology, see this excellent post at Black Gate.  The stories are presented in the book roughly in the order of publication, beginning with Heilein’s “Blowups Happen” from 1940 and ending with “Protected Species” by H. B. Fyfe, which was published in 1951. The complete table of contents is listed in the picture below. Click to enlarge. Continue reading →

Astounding/Analog at 90

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Next year will mark the 90th anniversary of Astounding Science Fiction, known these days as Analog.  To mark the occasion, editor Trevor Quachri will be reprinting one story from each decade, starting with the 1940s and going through the 1990s.  Anything later than the nineties, Quachri says, is too recent. More time will be needed to determine what the true classics will be.  All right, I can go along with that, no problem.

There will also be no stories reprinted from the 1930s. The reasoning here is that the identity hadn’t really formed yet.  That sounds a lot like John Campbell hadn’t yet put his imprint on the magazine.  Considering Quachri was in full support of changing the name of the Campbell Award earlier this year, I find this an interesting position to take.  It’s his magazine, and he’s the editor, so I’m not going to make an issue of it. There are some writers from the Clayton days in the 30s who went on to have successful careers after Street & Smith took over the magazine, such as Clifford D. Simak, Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, and Campbell himself. Continue reading →

Kuttner’s Baldy Series: “The Lion and the Unicorn”

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“The Lion and the Unicorn”
Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, July 1945

This is the third installment of the Baldy series, written by Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore under their joint pen name of Lewis Padgett.  The reviews of the preceding two stories can be found here and here.

Spoilers to follow.

“The Lion and the Unicorn” opens only a few decades after “Three Blind Mice”.  Barton, the protagonist of the previous tale, is still alive.  He’s in his sixties, and while a key player, he’s not the central figure in this story.  Barton managed to kill the Baldies who had developed the alternate wavelength, but there are others.  It turns out the ability to send and receive telepathic messages on this alternate wavelength is a new mutation on the Baldy mutation.  And all the Baldies who have it are paranoid. Continue reading →

Kuttner’s Baldy Series: “Three Blind Mice”

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“Three Blind Mice”
Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, June 1945, as by Lewis Padgett

This story takes place about a generation, maybe two, after the events of the first story, “The Piper’s Son”.  The stories in this series present the highlights of the history of the Baldies for the first two hundred and fifty or so years after their mutation brought them forth.  As in the last post, there will be spoiler below the READ MORE link.

David Barton is a big game hunter who captures animals and brings them back to North America (the US no longer exists as we would recognize it) for various zoos.  It’s how he has managed to adjust and adapt to his mutation.  He’s channeled is aggressiveness into something product, an accomplish necessary for a Baldy to survive.

The story opens with him bringing a load of animals to a town in the rocky mountains.  He’s flying in, looking forward to having catfish at a restaurant he knows, when he’s contacted telepathically by a woman he’s not met before.  Her name is Sue Connaught, and she wants to meet him in person. Continue reading →

Kuttner’s Baldy Series: “The Piper’s Son”

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“The Piper’s Son”
Originally published in Astounding Science Fiction, Feb. 1945

Henry Kuttner wrote a series of stories in collaboration with his wife C. L. Moore about a race of telepathic mutants called Baldies. This series consisted of five novelettes and ran under the Lewis Padgett byline in Astounding Science Fiction in the 1940s. This post will look at the first of them. I’ll look at the rest every Friday and Tuesday until I’ve covered the entire series and the fix-up novel containing them all.

First a bit of backstory.  The setting is about one generation, maybe two, after a nuclear war.  Chicago, among other cities, was destroyed.  There are strict limits on how large a municipality can grow.  Any town that gets too large is destroyed.

The radiation blast created a number of mutants.  Among them are a race of hairless telepaths known as Baldies.  They wear wigs and do their best to blend into society.  Understandably, they’re feared and hated by a large segment of the population. Continue reading →