Given the ongoing flurry of news about the (increasing?!) number of unexplained drone sightings across the United States – and elsewhere – I can’t help but wonder about the parallels between this event (generously assuming it’s even a real event), and the innumerable reports of unidentified airships – from all points across the country – at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Though I believe the drone panic shares similarities with prior “mass” episodes, the singular difference today is the pervasiveness and immediacy of communications technology, and its ability – in a sense prefigured by Philip K. Dick and indirectly anticipated by Neil Postman – to alter human cognition and perception, let alone shorten attention, in ways that were simply not possible in the media of prior eras.
So, below are three videos which are apropos to the focus on this December’s skies. While I’m fully “on board” with the analyses and conclusions of the first three videos, I do not agree with the conclusions of the fourth … regarding the true origin about the Phantom Airship of 1897 … though the great mystery airship saga of over-a-century-ago truly merits a feature film. Regardless, We Travel by Night’s video is extremely impressive from the standpoints of research involved, quality of animation, narration, and the clear way that information, analysis, and conclusions are presented.
(December 20…
I’ve added a fourth video, this one by Dr. Todd Grande: “Do Mass Hysteria and Conspiratorial Thinking Explain New Jersey Drone Scare? | Update & Analysis”)
(January 22, 2025…
I’ve added a link to an article from TheWarZone: “FBI’s New Jersey Drone Scare Investigation Has No Suspects”)
But, first…! …a quote from a short story by Cyril M. Kornbluth: “The Marching Morons”…
“Elsewhere there was the usual run of traffic accidents. A three-way pileup of cars on Route 66 going outta Chicago took twelve lives. The Chicago-Los Angeles morning rocket crashed and exploded in the Mo-have – Mo-javvy – whatever-you-call-it Desert. All the 94 people aboard got killed. A Civil Aeronautics Authority investigator on the scene says that the pilot was buzzing herds of sheep and didn’t pull out in time.
Hey! Here’s a hot one from New York! A Diesel tug run wild into the harbor while the crew was below and shoved in the port bow of the luck-shury-liner S.S. Placentia It says the ship filled and sank taking the lives of an es-ti-mated 180 passengers and 50 crew members. Six divers was sent down to study the wreckage, but they died, too, when their suits turned out to be fulla little holes.
And here is a bulletin I just got from Denver. It seems –“
I’ve had this copy of Galaxy for a long, long time: I purchased it from the late Robert A. Madle in the 1980s. (!) Now I show it to you, here. (It’s been sitting around all these past decades, but I was confident it’d come in handy some day, even if it took a little time!)
A former fighter pilot, YouTuber since 2018, and published author, C.W. Lemoine’s videos are in equal measure enlightening, entertaining, and highly informative, focusing on such topics as the intersection between popular culture military aviation and technology, military life, and aviation – both civilian and military – “in general”. Particularly interesting are the regular guest appearances of and interviews with other military aviators, such as “The Mover and Gonky Show” with Trevor “Gonky” Hartsock.
Time for a true confession: I’ve not read Damon Knight’s “The Visitor at the Zoo” from the April ’63 issue of Galaxy. However, both the cover and interior illustrations, by Edmund “EMSH” Emshwiller, are intriguing, and beautifully representative of his presentation of action combined with detail, let alone his sense of originality.
A closer look. The violet and green work well. EMSH’s logo is in the electrical-circuit-like-schematic-as-well-art along the upper left of the painting.
Normally, I’d provide you with an interior edited from my own (Epson V600 Photo) scan of the magazine. However, my own copy is so very tightly bound that placing and flattening the interior – to eliminate image distortion – would irreparably damage the magazine. No, go, that just will not do. So, I resorted to downloading the magazine from the Luminist Archive, and editing the somewhat-lower-resolution (less than 400 dpi) after converting the PDF to a JPG, which results in a conversion to 300 dpi. At this size, not much of a difference in resolution. (Alas, aaaargh, gadzooks, the Internet Archive remains “down” as of the creation of this post, on October 17, 2024. Thankfully the Luminist Archive, which seems to share many / most / almost all? (many more?) of the digitized science fiction and fantasy pulps at the Internet Archive, remains unaffected.)
I can’t get into steampunk – the very idea – but I can still appreciate the significance of a steampunk story by virtue of its having appeared in the final issue of Galaxy magazine.
The copy shown below was purchased from the late Robert Madle, from whom I obtained the December, 1942, and November, 1946, issues of Astounding Science Fiction. This was back in the former, now-perhaps-unknown, world of the 1980s. (I suppose this “dates” me, but then again, the passage of time eventually dates all men!) By virtue of having been one of the first pulps that ever came into my possession, and equally, by the sense of wonder and ambiguity inherent to A.E. van Vogt’s story – “The Weapon Shop” (an aspect of Van Vogt’s oeuvre panned by Damon Knight, and praised by Philip K. Dick … I go with PKD on this one!), and the soft mystery of Hubert Rogers’ cover art, the December ’42 issue has for me a special significance.
But, back to the final Galaxy… As described at Wikipedia, subsequent to October of 1979, …“Rights to the title were transferred to a new company, Galaxy Magazine, Inc., owned by Vincent McCaffrey, proprietor of Avenue Victor Hugo, a second-hand book store in Boston; UPD [Universal Publishing and Distribution Corporation] retained a ten percent interest in order to receive income from future sales to pay off their debts. Stine had compiled two more issues, but neither ever appeared; McCaffrey, who had also launched a separate magazine, Galileo, had cash-flow problems that prevented him from distributing the magazine as he had planned. One more issue did finally appear from McCaffrey, in July 1980, in a large format; it was edited by Floyd Kemske. A subsequent issue, to be dated October 1980 [edited by Floyd Kemske], was assembled, but never distributed.” As shown in the magazine’s issue grid at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, “A brief revival as a semi-professional magazine followed in 1994, edited by H. L. Gold’s son, E. J. Gold; this lasted for eight bimonthly issues.”
And more: “The last few years of Galaxy‘s life were marked by stories of unpaid contributors. John Varley, for example, reported that he was still owed money for his stories five years after they appeared. Submissions from well-known writers fell away, and the lack of financial support from UPD meant that the pay rate was an unattractive one cent per word. Higher postal rates, higher paper costs, and continuing competition from the paperback science fiction market all added to the pressure on Galaxy. These problems were not resolved by the sale to McCaffrey, who did not even have enough money to pay for circulation postage, with the result that not every Galaxy subscriber received a copy of the final issue. Frederik Pohl places the blame for Galaxy‘s demise on Arnie Abramson, who, Pohl contends, “simply did not perform [the] basic functions of a publisher”: paying the authors, ensuring subscribers received copies, and meeting other obligations.”
Ita gloria publicationis transit
While oddly unavailable at the Pulp Magazine Archive, the issue is available at the Luminist Archives, and can be downloaded in PDF format here.
Notably, there’s a substantial degree of non-fiction content:
“Son of Calculator and the Electronic Lifestyle”, by Steve North, anticipating personal computing and the Internet
“Your Car and Your Computer”, by Ed Teja
“Words” – Computer acronyms and lingo
“If You Don’t Talk to Your Stereo, I Will”, by Eric Blair
“Defending the Empire: Intelligent [computer] Games”, by Ed Teja
“Careers” [in computing]
“Michael Kaluta: Storytelling Fantasy Artist”, by Floyd Kemske
“Projections – Galaxy Looks at the Making of Fritz Lang’s Classic Film Metropolis”, by Robert Stewart
Plus, an ad for the first four issues of Galileo, featuring Larry Niven’s “The Ringworld Engineers”
Cover art by Larry Blamire, for “In The Days of the Steam Wars”
Illustration by Tom Barrett, for “The Colony”, by Raymond Kaminski (p. 21)
Illustration by Larry Blamire, for “In The Days of the Steam Wars” (p. 35)
Illustration by Barclay Shaw, for “Jem”, by Frederik Pohl (part 5) (p. 49)
Illustration by Tom Barrett, for poem “Mapping the Island in Images – The Four Shores, Beta Bernal, resonant orbit, 2080”, by Robert Frazier (p. 59)
Untitled Illustration by Cortney Skinner (p. 73 – interior of rear cover)
This cartoon, by The New Yorker cartoonist George Price, is hilarious, for it takes a commonplace idea – a literary idea – and carries it to an (il)logical conclusion. More than the merely weird idea of assembling all the authors of a anthology’s collected works for a single book signing, the appearance, facial expression, and attire of every individual is unique, exaggeratingly embodying the life experience of every author. It’s this, combined with the hilarity of a collective book signing, makes the cartoon work so well.
____________________
____________________
Price’s cartoon reminds me of the cover of the October, 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, which featured depictions of twenty contributors (excluding “Bug-Eye”) who were making the by then two-year-old magazine a success. A very clever idea. The magazine leads with a report to its readers touching upon its successes, challenges, and plans for the future, and mentions upcoming works by Isaac Asimov and Clifford Simak, and, includes a key – reproduced below – identifying the authors and contributors shown on the cover.
____________________
Annual Report to our Readers
The twelvemonth between our first annual report and this, which marks the beginning of our third year, was rammed full of activity for GALAXY. It all boils down to this one astonishing fact, however:
GALAXY has acquired the second largest circulation in science- fiction and is pushing hard toward first place.
For a magazine to achieve this record in so short a time is a tribute to its unyielding policy of presenting the highest quality obtainable; to its readers for their loyalty and appreciation; to its authors for helping it maintain those standards and even advance them.
During the turbulent first year of GALAXY’s existence, other publishers thought the idea of offering mature science fiction in attractive, adult format was downright funny. They knew what sold – shapely female endomorphs with bronze bras, embattled male mesomorphs clad in muscle, and frightful alien monsters in search of a human meal.
• We have the biggest promotion campaign mapped out that any science fiction magazine has ever had. • We are working out the broadest circulation possible. Note that we reach the stands regularly on the second Friday of each month. (Subscribers, however, get their copies at least five to ten days before.) • Better printing, paper and reproduction of art lie ahead. • These new art techniques I mentioned in the past are on their way. They were stubborn things to conquer, but you’ll be seeing them soon. • If you want to find WILLY LEY in a science fiction magazine henceforth, you’ll have to buy GALAXY. As our science editor, he will work exclusively for us in this field. • Last and by far the most important, the literary quality of GALAXY will continue to be a rising curve – as steeply rising as we can manage. Coming up, for example: • November: THE MARTIAN WAY by Isaac Asimov, a novella, that introduces problems and situations in space travel that I have never seen before,. • December: RING AROUND THE SUN by Clifford D. Simak is a powerful new serial with a startling theme and one surprising development after another. • March: After the conclusion of the Simak serial, we have THE OLD DIE RICH by a chap named Gold. Naturally, the story was read by impartial critics – no writer can judge his own work – and they report it’s GALAXY quality. I hope you’ll agree with them.
Yes, it’s been a fine year. Next year looks even better.
– H.L. GOLD
____________________
1 – Fritz Leiber (“Gonna’ Roll the Bones”) 2 – Evelyn Paige 3 – Robert A. Heinlein 4 – Katherine MacLean (Dragons and such) 5 – Chesley Bonestell 6 – Theodore Sturgeon 7 – Damon Knight (“To Serve Man”) 8 – H.L. (Horace L.) Gold 9 – Robert Guinn 10 – Joan De Mario 11 – Charles J. Robot 12 – Cyril Kornbluth 13 – E.A. (Edmund A.) Emshwiller 14 – Willy Ley 15 – F.L. Wallace 16 – Isaac Asimov 17 – Jerry Edelberg 18 – Groff Conklin (anthologist) 19 – John Anderson 20 – Ray Bradbury (“The Fireman” (“Fahrenheit 451”)) 21 – Bug Eye
____________________
____________________
But, where did Horace Gold get the very idea to acknowledge people instrumental to Galaxy’s success, in such a clever way?
I don’t know.
But, while perusing the contents of other, lesser known magazines at the Luminist Archive, I came across the November, 1951 issue of Marvel Science Fiction, which features cover art by Hannes Bok, in his own immediately recognizable style…
____________________
…and this two-page cartoon of the members of the by then four-year-old “Hydra Club”, an organization of professionals in the field of science fiction. Though far more “busy” than the scene depicted on the cover of Galaxy, the design is remarkably similar, right down to the number key at the bottom of the cartoon, and, the accompanying diagram of “who’s who” at lower right, the names of “who” are all listed below.
Was this the inspiration for Horace Gold, or, art director W.I. Van Der Poel? Given the timing, could be!
An organization of Professional Science Fiction Writers, Artists and Editors.
Article One: The name of this organization shall be the Hydra Club.
Article Two: The purpose of this organization shall be…
PUZZLED silence greeted the reader as he lay down the proposed draft of a constitution, and looked hopefully at the eight other people in the room.
“The rest of it was easy,” he explained, “but we spent a whole evening trying to think of something for that.”
“Strike out the paragraph,” someone said. “We just haven’t got a purpose.”
And so we did. The Hydra Club was, officially, and with no malice in the forethought, formed as an organization with no function at all. It was to meet twice a month; it hoped to acquire a regular meeting place and a library of science fiction; its membership was to be selected on no other basis than the liking and approval of the charter members, who organized themselves into a Permanent Membership Committee for the new club.
That was in September, 1947. In four years of existence, the club has increased sevenfold. Its roster now lists more than sixty members, and the number is that low only because of the strict stipulation that admission to membership is by invitation only. There is no way for a would-be member to apply for admission; and invitations are issued only after the holding a complex secret-ballot blackball vote.
Of the nine charter members of the club, five are still active on the Permanent Membership Committee. Lester del Rey, who had been absent from the science fiction field entirely for several years, when the club was started, is now once again a leading name in the field. Dave Kyle and Marty Greenberg, who first met each other in the organizational days of the club, have since become partners in a publishing firm, Prime Press. Fred Pohl, who was then still writing an occasional story under the pen-name of James MacCreigh, has developed the then still-struggling Dirk Wylie agency into the foremost literary agency in the science fiction field. And yr. humble correspondent, who had just a few months earlier written her first science fiction story, has since become, among other things, Mrs. Frederik Pohl.
There are half a hundred other names on the rolls, many of which would be completely unfamiliar to science fiction fandom. The Club has never attempted to limit its membership to professionals working in the field. It has endeavored only to gather together as many congenial persons as possible. In the four years of its existence there have been many changes in character, constitution, solvency, and situation. A considerable library has been acquired by gift and donation, but no permanent meeting place or library space has ever been found. Meetings are now held only once a month, sometimes in the studio apartment of the Pratts’, or that of Basil Davenport, more often in a rented hall. From time to time, under the impetus of an unwonted ambition, the club has even initiated major endeavors, and less frequently has actually carried them through.
The single exception to this renewed enthusiasm for purposelessness is the annual Christmas party … perhaps because we have found it possible for all concerned to have a remarkably good time at these affairs in return for an equally remarkably small output of work. The success of the annual parties has rested largely on the willingness of member talent to be entertaining (and the dependable willingness of the guests to amuse themselves at the bar). At such times, there is little holding back. Why watch television, after all, or empty your pockets for a Broadway show, if you can have Willy and Olga Ley explain with words and gestures the structure of the Martian language – or watch your best friends cavort through a stefantic satire devised in the more mysterious byways of Fred Brown’s Other Mind – or listen yearly to a new and even funnier monologue delivered by Philip-William (Child’s Play) Klass-Tenn?
Between this yearly Big Events, club meetings very considerably in character. A member may arrive, on any given meeting date, to find a scant dozen seriously debating the date of publication of the second issue of Hugo Gernsback’s third magazine – or to find seventy-off slightly soused guests and members engaged in the most frantic of socializing, to the apparent exclusion of science fiction as a topic of interest. At these larger meetings, it takes a knowing eye to detect the quiet conversation in the corner where a new line of science fiction books has just been launched, or to understand that the clinking of glasses up front center indicates the formation of a new collaborating team.
Perhaps one of the most unlikely and most pleasant things about the Hydra Club is the way it manages to contain in amity a membership not only of writers and artists, but also of editors and publishers. We like to think that it is due to the “by invitation only” policy, and to the profound wisdom of our P.M.C., that the lions and the lambs have been induced to lie down so meekly all over the place. Even rival anthologists and agents are seen smiling at each other from time to time, and the senior editor of a large publishing house is always willing to pass on advice to newcomer specialist publishers. There are thirty-odd magazine writers in the crowd, and ten or more magazine editors – and still not a fistfight in a barload!
Hydra members are selected for interest, individuality, intelligence, and an inquiring mind, a combination unique among science-fiction organizations in my knowledge, we have now achieved four years of existence without a single major internal feud. What difficulties have arisen in relation to the club, from the outside, appear to be entirely due to the fact that, without trying, Hydra has become an increasingly important group in the professional field. But the business that takes place in and around the Hydra Club remains incidental.
When bigger and better purposes for clubs are found, the Hydra Club will still point happily to its nonexistent Article Two.
____________________
1 – Lois Miles Gillespie 2 – H. Beam Piper 3 – David A. Kyle 4 – Judith Merril Pohl 5 – Frederik Pohl 6 – Philip Klass 7 – Richard Wilson 8 – Isaac Asimov, Ph.D. 9 – James A. Williams 10 – Martin Greenberg (anthologist) 11 – Sam Merwin, Jr. 12 – Walter I. Bradbury 13 – Bruce Elliott 14 – J. Jerome Stanton 15 – Jerome Bixby (Twilight Zone!) 16 – Basil Davenport 17 – Robert W. Lowndes 18 – Olga Ley (Willy’s wife) 19 – Oswald Train 20 – Charles Dye 21 – Frank Belknap Long 22 – Damon Knight 23 – Thomas S. Gardner, Ph.D. 24 – Harry Harrison 25 – Sam Browne 26 – Groff Conklin 27 – Larry T. Shaw 28 – Lester del Rey 29 – Frederic Brown 30 – Margaret Bertrand 31 – Evelyn Harrison 32 – L. Sprague de Camo 33 – Theodore Sturgeon 34 – George C. Smith 35 – Has Stefan Santessen 36 – Fletcher Pratt 37 – Willy Ley (Olga’s husband) 38 – Katherine MacLean Dye 39 – Daniel Keyes 40 – H.L. (Horace L.) Gold 41 – Walter Kublius
____________________
____________________
For your amusement…
Here’s the book where I found George Price’s cartoon…
Price, George (Introduced by Alistair Cooke), The World of George Price – A 55-Year Retrospective, Harper & Row, New York, N.Y., 1989
My recent posts about the reality of space warfare – as imagined in Astounding Science Fiction in 1939 – present articles by Malcolm R. Jameson and Willy Ley, and, readers’ responses. That Willy Ley would figure so prominently in this topic is hardly surprising, for by profession he was a science writer with a lifelong focus in rocketry and space exploration, though his interests did extend further, encompassing the pseudoscience of – *ahem* – cryptozoology. The true scope of his enormous output can be fully appreciated by even the quickest glance at his biographical profile at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. He body of work was quite multi-faceted, for it comprised a novel, letters, book reviews, interior art (primarily in 1948 issues of Astounding), twenty-two perhaps-more-better-known non-fiction books, as well as – well, primarily! – essays and articles for mid-twentieth-century science fiction pulps. An example of the latter is his oeuvre for Galaxy Science Fiction, whichbetween 1952 and 1969 published over 150 of his articles under the heading “For Your Information”.
His straightforward science journalism was accompanied by four (or five, depending on how you count?!) works of fiction. The “first” four are…
“At the Perihelion” (1937) “Orbit XXIII-H” (1938) “Fog” (1940) “The Invasion” (1940)
…the first three of these having been published in Astounding, and “The Invasion” in Super Science Stories.
Having read “Fog” (while preparing this post, and my posts about Space Warfare), I have to confess that I found it to be utterly underwhelming. Except for being placed in a metropolitan setting in post-1940s America, it’s much more a tale of totalitarian surveillance (hmmm…!) and political chaos (hmmm…?) in a dystopian future, I think inspired by Ley’s own experiences in Nazi Germany, from which he fled in early 1935. So, the simple title – it is apropos! – connotes the constant sense of uncertainty that pervades daily life in such a situation. (Once again, hmmm…!!) Otherwise, Charles Schneeman’s two illustrations for the story were better than the mere story itself!
Given Willy Ley’s huge body of work and influence in popularizing rocketry and space exploration, the abundance of information about him is entirely unsurprising. However, while delving into his biography amidst my posts on space warfare, I came across the following poignant news item by New York Times science writer Walter Sullivan: It’s Willy Ley’s obituary, published after his passing on June 24, 1969. While the obit doesn’t necessarily present information not already known and available elsewhere, it’s still of historical interest in terms of the details of Ley’s personal life, and, how a figure so significant in the worlds of science and journalism (like Walter Sullivan, himself!) was perceived in the popular press.
Here it is:
____________________
Willy Ley, Prolific Science Writer, Is Dead at 62
Prophesied Travel in Space in Book Issued in 1926 Fled Germany in ‘35 – Tested Rockets in Westchester
By WALTER SULLIVAN
The New York Times June 25, 1969
Willy Ley, who helped usher in the age of rocketry and then became perhaps its chief popularizer, died yesterday morning at his home In Jackson Heights, Queens. His age was 62.
Mr. Ley, the author of more than 30 books in English and German, was a frequent lecturer as well as teacher and industrial consultant.
His death, apparently from a heart attack, came suddenly. About a week ago a medical checkup had disclosed a circulatory disorder and he was taking digitalis.
Earlier in the day, in a telephone conversation with a book publisher, Mr. Ley spoke of the possibility that he might have to follow man’s first flight to the moon by television from his home, instead of from the Manned Spacecraft Center in Texas. It was a disappointing prospect, for Mr. Ley had been one of the earliest protagonists of such a flight.
He was born in Berlin in 1906 and his early studies, at the Universities of Berlin and Konigsberg, were in astronomy, physics, zoology and paleontology (the study of fossils). Some of his most successful books were on exotic beasts of fact and myth.
However, in 1927 he and his German colleagues were inspired by the writings of Hermann Oberth to found the Society for Space Travel. A punctilious registrar in Breslau at first refused to permit the group to incorporate under the title Verein fur Raumschiffahrt because, he said, the last word of the title (meaning “space travel”) did not exist in the German language.
Collaborated on Films
Mr. Ley’s first book on space travel appeared in 1926 and during that period he collaborated with Fritz Lang in several German science-fiction films, including one entitled “Frau im Mond” (“Woman in the Moon”).
(Here’s “Frau im Mond”, from Daily Motion.)
(And, a sort-of-counterpart to Lang’s film, from a decade later: Vasili Zhuravlov’s “Cosmic Voyage” (Космический Рейс – Kosmicheskiy reys) from 1936.
Among those whom he recruited into the Society for Space Travel was a young man named Werner Von Braun who ultimately became a leader in German military rocket development. After World War I, when Dr. Von Braun had begun working with the American rocket program, he and Mr. Ley collaborated on several books including “The Exploration of Mars.”
As the Nazis rose to power they were determined to take over rocket research from the society. The latter, through a series of flights with primitive liquid-fueled rockets from an abandoned ammunition dump on the outskirts of Berlin, had shown that rockets could be used to circumvent provisions in the Versailles Treaty forbidding German development of artillery.
In 1935, Mr. Ley got word to Dutch and British friends that he was in trouble with the Gestapo. He had been ordered to cease writing on rocketry for foreign publications and did so, but some of his earlier articles being held in reserve by British newspapers appeared after this edict.
Mr. Ley left for Britain and then was brought to the United States under the auspices of the American Interplanetary Society (which about this time changed its name to the American Rocket Society). Members of this group put up bond to permit his entry into the country.
Built Test Stand
Mr. Ley lived for half a year with G. Edward Pendray, head of the American Rocket Society, and the two men built a test stand for small rockets near Mr. Pendray’s home in Crestwood, N.Y. It was in a swamp between Scarsdale and Bronxville.
Mr. Pendray recalled yesterday the alarm of neighbors at the roaring of rockets on their test stand. However Mr. Ley’s activities as an experimenter gave way to concentration on writing.
He turned out a steady stream of books and articles. Interest in rocketry and space travel was low at the time and his titles ran to such subjects as “Salamanders and Other Wonders,” “Dragons in Amber” and “The Lungfish, The Dodo and the Unicorn.”
However when the rockets developed by his former colleagues in Germany began flying across the English Channel, there was a dramatic change. The demand for expert writing on rocketry became insatiable.
Meanwhile, Mr. Ley in 1940 joined the newspaper PM as science editor and soon met a Russian-born ballet dancer, Olga Feldman [Feldmann], who was writing a column on physical fitness for the newspaper. They were married in 1941.
Soon afterward, Mrs. Ley was doing research for her husband at a public library and read to him, over the phone, certain information on rockets that she had uncovered there. Someone in the next phone booth overheard transmission of this information in a Russian accent and reportedly notified the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
It took a certain amount of explaining to convince the Federal authorities that nothing untoward was going on.
In 1944 he became a United States citizen and left PM. He became further identified with space travel with such books as “Watchers of the Skies,” “Conquest of Space” and “Rockets, Missiles and Men in Space.” He also developed a powerful lecture style.
One close acquaintance noted yesterday that Mr. Ley’s big frame and German accent conspired to give him an impressively authoritative manner. Perhaps, he suggested, that was why Mr. Ley unconsciously retained the accent, even though he became fluent in his spoken and written English.
One of those who knew him well said he was a natural lecturer, “not only on the platform, but in private.”
“If you asked him a question you got a lecture,” he said, adding that Mr. Ley’s knowledge was “encyclopedic.”
Mr. Ley enjoyed good food, good drink and good conversation and belonged to a small convivial group of writers and scholars known as the “Trap Door Spiders,” who met once a month. The name, members say, is based on the practice of such spiders in closing a trap door to escape their mates.
He was a great admirer of Wagner operas and could accompany himself on the piano as he sang- Wagnerian arias.
Publishing associates said yesterday that Mr. Ley had at least six books under contract. He had told Scribners that next Monday he would deliver the final section of “Man and the Moon,” a major work, in preparation for five years. It deals with the role of the moon in music and literature.
Mr. Ley, one of his book editors said, was “like those 19th-century natural scientists who were up on every field of science.” He had been on the faculty of Fairleigh Dickinson University for many years.
While Mr. Ley was an ardent promoter of trips to Mars and other distant bodies, his earliest passion was for the moon.
“The moon is still silvery in the night sky,” he wrote in The New York Times last year, “but it is no longer unreachable.”
“In 1930 I introduced a number of aeronautical engineers in Berlin to the first liquid fuel rocket they had ever seen,” he said. “It stood about 5 feet tall and, even when fueled, was light enough to be lifted with one hand. It could climb about 1500 feet and was brought back by parachute.
“What, the engineers wanted to know, was the aim of all this? Eventually, I replied, rockets of this type will carry men to the moon.”
Mr. Ley lived to within one month of the scheduled fulfillment of his prophecy.
Besides his widow, he is survived by two daughters, Sandra Ley and Mrs. Xenia Parker of 252 East 61st Street. Since World War II Mr. Ley had lived at 37-26 77th Street in Jackson Heights
The funeral will take place tomorrow at 1 P.M. at the Walter B. Cooke funeral home, 1504 Third Avenue.
____________________
Despite Willy Ley’s prominence in the history of science journalism, oddly, no information is available about his place of burial. However (!), if we’re talking biographical details, here’s the Declaration of Intention for American citizenship that he filed on June 22, 1937, five months after he reached Miami – from Havana – on February 2 of that year. Note that, appropriate to his current and future career, he listed his profession as “Scientific Research Writer”. (This document’s from Ancestry.com.)
A Reference or Two, or Three, and More, for Willy O.O. (Otto Oskar) Ley, at…
…Archive.org – Publications (262 scanned works – includes monographs, but primarily comprised of issues of science-fiction pulps featuring his articles.)
…Project Gutenberg (7 books. These appear to be juvenile or young adult fiction, all authored by Carey Rockwell, with Willy Ley as “Technical Advisor”.)
The cover of the June, 1967 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, displays a painting by Gray Morrow inspired by a scene from Roger Zelazny’s “The Man Who Loved the Faioli”.
Yes, there are skeletons in the story, which is set upon a planet which is “the graveyard of the worlds”. Yes, there are robots in the tale (the scene takes place in the Valley of the Bones), but their appearance is left entirely undescribed. But they, like the valley, like the bones, really play an incidental role in the story, which features only two characters: Sythia, a Faioli, and, John Auden, the events being told through the eyes of Auden. And, the narrator.
The story – only seven pages long and the shortest tale in this issue of Galaxy – is unusual, and lies far more in the realm of fantasy than science fiction, with elements of the latter being incidental to the theme and plot.With that, while I cannot say that I particularly enjoyed the tale, neither can I deny its originality.
“To Avenge Man”, the inspiration for Richard McKenna’s cover art of the December, 1964, issue of Galaxy, is a brief, but well-written story. The protagonist is the robot who is depicted on the cover kneeling amidst the ruins of a desolate and abandoned moon-base, his pensive gaze directed somewhere between the earth overhead and, the flaccid remnants of a discarded spacesuit lying before him. Though the scene doesn’t exactly parallel the events of the story, in symbolism and setting it well captures the meaning of Del Rey’s tale.
As to the story itself, after an introduction which will hint at its eventual outcome, the first part builds slowly and in a straightforward fashion, but with a meaningful twist: It’s a tale of isolation, solitude, and survival: Specifically, the survival – mechanical and electronic such as it is, but survival nonetheless – of “Sam”, a unique, singular, and entirely sentient robot, after a scientific expedition has abandoned a lunar settlement to return to the Earth, during a time of war. Then, amidst a global war, all contact with men, from men, by men, and between men, completely vanishes. However, the actual nature and origin of the war is deliberately left ambiguous, and touched upon only slightly.
And, though Sam is by definition and design an artificial being – does he have a soul? – Del Rey does a fine job of showing the evolution and eventual creation of Sam’s personality, which is characterized by a combination of naïveté, a complete and altruistic devotion to humanity, and unrelenting intellectual curiosity – the latter quality manifested in Sam’s reading of science-fiction (yes, seriously) from the 1930s and 1940s. Eventually, perhaps inevitably, Sam comes under a kind of monomaniacal spell which compels him to return to Earth to find men, contact men, aid men, determine the nature and origin of the war, and, defend men against all enemies. Enemies, that is, as Sam has perceived, interpreted, and fully anticipated through the tales of Edward E. Smith and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Enemies which, he believes, are entirely real.
Sam eventually cobbles together a one-robot spacecraft (hey, life support is of no consideration here!) and does return to Earth. And from this point on, Del Rey’s tale rapidly moves from a story of endurance and survival to one of slightly mythic tones. The final direction of the story soon becomes apparent, and its ultimate conclusion – apparent through a careful reading and contemplation of the above-mentioned introduction – while not wholly unexpected, is wholly well told.
Here’s work by an artist whose compositions have thus far not appeared in this blog: Walter Brooks, probably Walter H. Brooks, concerning whom there’s relatively little information, or at least, vastly less than for other book illustrators, his primary genre was not actually being science fiction, per se. His painting is a straightforward and effective illustration for Clifford D. Simak’s “Time And Again”, which was first published in the October (first volume, first issue), November, and December issues of Galaxy Science Fiction, under the title “Time Quarry”, reviews of which can be found at GoodReads.
I read this novel some time ago (!), and was impressed by both the plot and style of writing, which was entirely consistent the high standard of Simak’s work as established in tales published in Astounding Science Fiction in the 40s and 50s, and, subsequent issues of Galaxy Science Fiction. Notably among these stories is July, 1944’s “Huddling Place” in Astounding, which – paralleling Paul Callé’s illustration for Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” in the November, 1950 issue of Galaxy, in retrospect was eerily (…and, unintentionally…) prescient about would become of “Western Civilization” in the year – the world – of 2021. As for Simak’s later work – of the late 1960s and beyond – while it was characterized by the same quality of quietude and introspection as his earlier stories, I found the plots and overall “pacing” of his stories far less appealing, of not slowly paced, if not tedious. Still, my feeling his work certainly remains very positive.
Now here’s something interesting: The back cover carries an announcement about a certain science fiction writing contest held by Galaxy, Dell, and Simon & Schuster. (“Veritably! By jove, what gives?!”) I didn’t really take note of this until editing the image for this blog post.
So, here’s the blurb about the contest, which appears in the book’s last page:
____________________
DELL BOOKS, GALAXY MAGAZINE, SIMON and SCHUSTER
Announce
THE RICHEST SCIENCE FICTION NOVEL CONTEST in HISTORY!
$6500.00 Minimum
Guaranteed to the author of the best ORIGINAL Science Fiction Novel Submitted.
The author of the prize-winning novel will receive at least $6500 in outright cash gifts, payments and guaranteed advance royalties.
The award novel will appear as a serial in Galaxy Science Fiction. It will afterward be published in book form by Simon and Schuster. And Dell Books will publish it as a reprint.
The prize-winning author will thus receive a GUARANTEED MINIMUM of $5500 for the purchase of First World Serial and T.V. rights by Galaxy Science Fiction Magazine, and advance royalties from Simon and Schuster and Dell Publishing Co. … Plus an outright gift of $1000.
FOR DETAILS AND RULES WRITE TO
NOVEL CONTEXT GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION 421 Hudson Street New York 14, New York
____________________
Like I said,“What gives?!”
As discussed in detail by Matthew Wuertz at the Black Gate and Charlie Jane Anders at Gizmodo (quoting from Matthew Wuertz, and, author Michael Ashley in Transformations: The Story of the Science Fiction Magazines from 1950 to 1970), the contest, if not characterized by a level of disingenuousness from the start, certainly eventuated in that direction: The actual submissions received by Horace L. Gold, editor of Galaxy, were deemed of poor quality. Instead, the chosen (as it were) novel – Preferred Risk, by Frederik Pohl and Lester del Rey; not even an actual entry – was “entered” under the pseudonym Edson McCann and declared the winner, and was serialized in Galaxy from June to September of 1953.
And with that, here’s the cover of Galaxy Science Fiction for March, 1953, wherein the “announcement” for the contest – * ahem * – is carried: A composite of photographs rather than “art”, per se. (The names of the lady and gentleman aren’t listed in the table of contents.)
Contest “rules” (!), as explained on pages 80 and 129 of the March issue. (These two images were made from a PDF version of the magazine, one of the several formats typically available for download at Archive.org’s Pulp Magazine Archive, rather than by scanning my own copy: I didn’t want to break the somewhat brittle, now seventy-seven-year-old binding!)
____________________
Here’s the cover of the 1955 Simon & Schuster edition of Preferred Risk, presently (August, 2021) on sale at L.W. Currey, Inc. Note the cover blurb – as ironic as it was cynical – “Winner of the Galaxy – Simon and Schuster contest for 1955’s best work of science-fiction.” The specific copy illustrated is described as having been signed on the front free end-paper by Lester Del Rey and Frederik Pohl as: “To Bob / Lester Del Rey / (1/2) Edson McCann / and also / Fred Pohl.”
So I see simplified figures – flattened, two-dimensional figures – of human beings superimposed on a graph. And…
Why do I think of ‘Acebook? (To be clear, not “Ace Books”!) Why do I think of ‘Witter? Why do I think of ‘Oogle? Why do I think of ‘Napchat? Why do I think of ‘Nstagram?
____________________
…while here’s the cover of Dell’s March, 1962 paperback edition of the book, with cover art by Richard M. Powers – immediately recognizable as such. Though slightly worn and chipped, this still-intact cover (it’s my own copy) clearly displays the central qualities by which Powers’ compositions can be recognized: An absence of realistically portrayed human figures; the presence of objects that are at once vaguely mechanical and vaguely organic, yet retaining a clearly anthropomorphic, elongated appearance; the presence of symbols and objects that are vaguely “techy” and “sciency” in appearance, such as – in this case – an undulating Cartesian graph with human skeletons superimposed upon it; a vaguely defined background (“Is that a horizon, or isn’t it?!”) comprised of shades of the same color.
From Heritage Auctions, here are two images of Powers’ original art for the book’s Dell paperback edition. The composition is described as “Mixed media on board. 16.25 x 21.75 in. Signed lower right.” Part of the Bob and Diane Yaspan collection, the painting was reportedly sold on October 31, 2017, the sale including (bonus!) a copy of Dell’s 1962 printing.
A close-up of the composition, showing Powers’ signature, and, two uh – strange – uh – objects. People? (I don’t know!) Buildings? (I surely don’t know!) “Things?” (Most definitely!)
And, the painting’s backing board. Is that Powers’ signature on the back? Hmmm… …could be.
____________________
As seen above, the final interior page of Dell’s 1953 paperback edition of First He Died -the book’s final page lists the postal address to which submissions for the (supposed!) contest were to be sent: “421 Hudson Street, New York, N.Y.” which unsurprisingly was the address – at least, in 1953! – of the main office of Galaxy Science Fiction.
That made me a little curious. What? – where? – exactly was 421 Hudson Street?
It turns out that the answer is readily available. The building, very much standing and in good condition today (well, it should be – it’s a condo) was constructed in 1911, and goes by the name of The Printing House Building. As you can see from the map below, it’s located in the West Village of Manhattan.
Here’s an undated, sligthly sepia-toned image of the building, from NYCBlogEstate. According to CondoPedia, “…the Printing House began life as a commercial space that appropriately enough housed industrial printers. It was in 1979 that the building was first co-opted into use as a residential building, although it wasn’t until 1987 that the Printing House experienced its first big renovation and began to offer units for sale as condominiums.”
This image of 421 Hudson, ever-so-slightly-more-recent than above (!), originally (quite literally, a few weeks ago, this being mid-August of 2021) appeared at Halstead.com. While no longer a home to printers and publishers, the building’s external appearance has remained largely unchanged for over a century.
Where I Got All These Details n’Stuff
Cover of Simon and Schuster’s 1955 edition of Preferred Risk…
“Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl G. Jung ‘to describe circumstances that appear meaningfully related yet lack a causal connection.’ Jung held that to ascribe meaning to certain acausal coincidences can be a healthy, even necessary, function of the human mind – principally, by way of bringing important material of the unconscious mind to attention. This further developed into the view that there is a philosophical objectivity or suprasubjectivity to the meaningfulness of such coincidences, as related to the collective unconscious.”
____________________
So I was perusing; leafing through; skimming; wandering within, the pages of my copies of Galaxy Science Fiction, and chanced upon the issue of November, 1950, which features Don Sibley’s cover art for Fredric Brown’s short tale “Honeymoon in Hell”. The issue also contains part two of Clifford Simak’s three-part serial “Time Quarry” (retitled in novel form as Time and Again) and notably, Damon Knight’s “To Serve Man”, which was the basis for Twilight Zone Episode # 89, adapted for television by Serling himself and broadcast under the same title on March 2, 1962.
Remarkably for its cultural significance, Knight’s story is only six pages long. It also features David Stone’s illustration of a Kanamit, the tale’s extraterrestrial protagonist (or, one of the protagonists, for those Kanamits seem to be pretty indistinguishable from one another) which portrayal is utterly unlike the aliens as depicted in the Twilight Zone adaptation.
____________________
Close-up of Don Sibley’s cover art.
Red uniform? Soviet Cosmonaut, Anna Borisovna.
Blue uniform? American Astronaut, Captain Raymond F. Carmody.
____________________
Interesting. But, for all its prominence in pop culture, “To Serve Man” has never been one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, for the plot, though ending with a twist that’s as disturbing as it is clever – o k a y, I’ll grant it t h a t – is really quite simple in concept. Unlike many ‘Zone episodes, “To Serve Man”, though obviously and easily adaptable to television because of the simplicity and brevity of the original story, is one of the series’ more middling episodes because it simply does not have anywhere near the psychological and even moral depth of the numerous other, more complex episodes. The best of these involve individuals confronting and often (but not always!) overcoming their moral, psychological, and even spiritual “ghosts” in settings where themes of science fiction, the paranormal, and occasionally the supernatural – alone, or in combination – while inherent to plot and setting, are actually incidental to themes of personal transformation. And if not transformation, at least an epiphany.
So, suppose that every aficionado of the series has their own (!) favorite episodes, here are mine:
A story of great complexity, based upon an extraordinarily simple premise, with an excellent near-solo performance by Joe Mantell.
Outstanding, by all measures.
__________
But, getting to the subject at hand. Or more accurately, the image at hand.
Within the November, 1950 issue of Galaxy is another short story; one by Fritz Leiber, Jr., entitled “Coming Attraction”, (You can listen to Atomic Julie’s audio version here.) As summarized (in greater depth) at Wikipedia, the tale is set within a mostly uninhabitable Manhattan – rendered so by a Soviet “Hell Bomb” – amidst an ongoing war between the United States and (former) Soviet Union. The protagonist, British citizen Wysten Turner, has ventured to New York City to obtain grain in exchange for electronic equipment which may be intended for an American military installation on the moon.
The story, however, features none of the standard science fiction tropes, such things as transformative technology, extraterrestrials, space voyages, time travel, and genetic engineering being quite absent. Instead, the plot focuses on social interactions between men and woman, through the experience of Turner himself, in a society that has the air of a social dystopia – albeit a bland, soft, depressing sort of sociological dystopia rather than one characterized by material want or technological regression – where women have taken to wearing masks as a taken-for-granted accoutrement of everyday attire.
Unsurprisingly, given Leiber’s extraordinary literary skill, the story is well constructed; it’s “tight”, moving forward at a steady pace with no extraneous detail, tedious digressions, or slack. Yet with that, I still don’t think it’s one of Leiber’s best efforts, and I find it very odd that it was deemed worthy of inclusion in volume one of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame, published two decades later. While certainly interesting in concept and well executed on a technical level, it’s just not one of Leiber’s strongest tales, or really, that strong of a tale at all. Though it was included in Ballantine Books’ The Best of Fritz Leiber, it’s easily outshown by most of the other tales in that anthology, particularly “Gonna Roll The Bones” (1967), and “A Deskful of Girls” (1958), the latter showing Leiber’s originality at its best.
So much for words.
And pictures?
The story is illustrated by single thematic image, created by Paul Callé, which – soon after you begin reading the tale – leaves no room for ambiguity.
Well, if these were “average” times (but there are no more average times, and I doubt if any era has ever been “average”, anyway) the reader would take a look, think “hmmm, interesting,” and much for any story, flip the page and move on.
Alas, times are no long average, and they may not be so again in our lifetimes. I wish that were not so, but so it is; so may be. (But, for how long?)
Did Paul Callé’s art, of a mask as a fashion statement (in the story, it serves no other function), in some unanticipated way portend the year 2021? And beyond?
She just sat there. I couldn’t even tell if she was trembling. I tried to read a message in her eyes through the mask.
“I’ll take you away,” I said to her. “I can do it. I really will.”
He smiled at me. “She’d like to go with you,” he said. “Wouldn’t you, baby?”
“Will you or won’t you?” I said to her. She still just sat there.
He slowly knotted his fingers in her hair.
“Listen, you little vermin,” I snapped at him. “Take your hands off her.”
He came up from the seat like a snake. I’m no fighter. I just know that the more scared I am, the harder and straighter I hit. This time I was lucky.
But as he crumpled back, I felt a slap and four stabs of pain in my cheek. I clapped my hand to it. I could feel the four gashed made by the dagger finger caps, and the warm blood oozing out from them.
She didn’t look at me. She was bending over little Zirk and cuddling her mask to his cheek and crooning: “There, there, don’t feel bad, you’ll be able to hurt me afterward.”
There were sounds around us, but they didn’t come close. I leaned forward and ripped the mask from her face.
I really didn’t know why I should have expected her face to be anything else. It was very pale, of course, and there weren’t any cosmetics. I suppose there’s no point in wearing any under a mask. The eyebrows were untidy and the lips were chapped. But as for the general expression, as for the feelings crawling and wriggling across it…
Have you ever lifted a rock from damp soil? Have you ever watched the slimy white grubs?
I looked down at her, she up at me. “Yes, you’re so frightened, aren’t you?” I said sarcastically. “You dread this little nightly drama, don’t you? You’re scared to death.”
And I walked right out into the purple night, still holding my hand to my bleeding cheek.
No one stopped me, not even the girl wrestlers. I wished I could tear a tab from under my shirt, and test it then and there, and find I’d taken too much radiation, and so be able to ask to cross the Hudson and go down New Jersey, past the lingering radiance of the Narrows Bomb, and so on to Sandy Hook to wait for the rusty ship that would take me back over to seas to England.
[This post, created on May 8, 2017, is pretty simple: It shows the cover (by Dember) of the October, 1966 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, and interior illustrations by Virgil Finlay for Larry Niven’s “How The Heroes Die”, and one illustration by Jack Gaughan for Arthur C. Clarke’s “A Recursion in Metastories”. I’ve updated the post to include an image of Finlay’s original art for the second of his two pieces for Niven’s story. Just a black and white image, but it shows his work with much better crispness than even the best scan from the actual magazine. Even when limited to a vertical / rectangular format, his art was stunning.]
____________________
Finlay’s illustration for Larry Niven’s story “How The Heroes Die” (p. 59).
Finlay’s illustration for Larry Niven’s story “How The Heroes Die” (p. 71).
…Virgil Finlay’s original art, from Heritage Auctions. The original is described as “pen and ink on paper, 9.5 x 6.5 inches, signed lower right, from the Jerry Weist Collection“.
Jack Gaughan’s illustration for “A Recursion in Metastories”, by Arthur C. Clarke (p. 87).
Reference (…well, just one reference…)
“Two Spacemen Fighting, science fiction pulp interior story illustration”, at Heritage Auctions May 8, 2017
