Today is June 21, the birthday of CleveCartmill (1908-1964).

Cartmill wrote science fiction in the forties and fifties. His first story, “Oscar”, was published in Unknown in 1941. His last was published in the mid-fifties. His most productive years were during teh Second World War. He didin’t have anything published from 1945 to 1949.

Cartmill would probably be completely forgotten these days if it weren’t for one particular story, “Deadline”, which was published in March 1944 issue of Astounding.

The story concerns the building of an atomic bomb.

One year before the first bomb was detonated. The Mahattan Project was going full swing at this time and was a very top secret project.

Legend has it that the FBI paid John Campbell a visit. Supposedly Campbell used a high school physics textbook to show them that everything in the story could be deduced logically from readily available information.

I don’t remember where I read it, but I saw something a number of years ago where a woman working for the ARmy at the time tried to check out that particular issue of Astounding from the base library and wasn’t allowed to because she didn’t have a high enough security clearance.

So, she went across the street from the base and bought a copy at a drug store or newstand or something.

That may not be a true story, but it’s a good story.

Sadly, Cartmill’s work isn’t easily available. There are a couple of ebooks, and that’s all I found. Darkside Press was going to publish all his short fiction about twenety years or so ago, but they only published one volume.