The Pre-Campbell Challenge
Hot on the heels of the Pre-Tolkein Challenge, Keith West issued forth the Pre-Campbell Science Fiction Challenge, in which participants are encouraged to read 3 short stories published before John W. Campbell, Jr. took over the editing of Astounding Stories in 1938.
I figured I’d give it a go. After all, I love this stuff.
I found a couple of shorter pieces by writers I’ve never heard of, then dug a slightly longer one out of my perpetually-growing “I always meant to read” pile.
Ready? Here we go.
Space Flotsam
This comes from the February, 1934 issue of Astounding Stories. It’s by Raymond Z. Gallun. It’s not long enough to really weave a deep narrative, but it still packs some actual story into its few pages.
It open with the main character getting tossed out of a spaceship. He ruminates on what brought him to this point, then what to do about it. Finally, he does that thing. That’s all we have time for.
The actual science described was pretty light. I noted that authors apparently have always known that space boots should have magnetic soles. I liked it, though. The character had motivation and he had guts. Plus, I’m currently writing a space opera, so it’s good to get in the mindset.
The Educated Pill
I’ll give you a minute to guess what the second story is about, based on the title.
If you said “baseball” then you get a high five from me the next time we meet.
This one I downloaded from PulpGen, which has pdfs of individual stories from various pulps lovingly scanned into real text and corrected. The site seems to be having trouble right now, but check back. It’s really a great resource. As I’m posting this on the 31st of August, I’ll bet they just ran over their bandwidth or something. Someone really needs to help them get a mirror up. But I digress.
The Educated Pill was written by Bob Olsen and published in the July, 1928 Issue of Amazing Stories.
The story itself is a humorous tale of a baseball team playing for the pennant. After they win two games, the opposing team purposefully injures the pitcher. After taking it in the shorts for the next three games, an inventor shows up, having created a baseball that can fly around crazily and not be hit. The story is pretty silly, even if it misses modern humor ideals. The description of how the baseball works is laughably unfeasible, but hey, the story makes no bones about trying to be anything other than a comedy, so it doesn’t really trip it up.
Ultimately, the story has a neat little moral, as neither team wins because of cheating.
Its fun, and I don’t think it has aged pretty well, other than the fact that pro baseball apparently didn’t have all that many rules back in the day.
Armageddon 2419 A.D.
That’s right, I had never read the first Buck Rogers story, before they even called him “Buck.” I actually cheated a bit on this one and listened to a version on Librivox while I was driving to and from work and such. It’s by Phillip Frances Nowlan and first appeared in the August, 1928 issue of Amazing Stories.
In this novella Anthony Rogers, from 20th century earth, is in a mine during a collapse and is trapped, surrounded by radioactive gasses. The gasses knock him out and preserve him for almost 500 years. I guess people used to think that gasses would be a good way to do that, as this isn’t the first pulp story I’ve read with that basic premise. Anthony wakes up to a world where America has been torn apart by war for centuries, finally coming to be conquered by the Han Empire. The Han Empire is essentially the descendants of modern day China. When this is explained in the narrative, readers with paper-thin skin will likely throw up their arms in a fit of triggered sobs and run screaming from the room. Because as you know, the only acceptable bad guys in science fiction are greedy corporate white American dudes and Nazi stand ins. I would suggest to any easily offended readers that they just pretend the Hans are from another planet or something.
Good old Anthony Rogers doesn’t even make it into space by the end of the book. I guess that came when the creator changed his name and started the comic strip.
I enjoyed the crap out of this one. The plot never stops to navel gaze, there’s many differing types of action sequences, including foot chases, ground-to-air combat, and air-to-air engagements. There’s plenty of fun imagined technology, including what sounds to me an awful lot like a flip phone.
Conclusion
This little diversion was another great reminder that writers have know how to write great stuff since forever. Good writing will always hold up just fine. Especially those two shorter pieces could almost have been written last week.
One more good thing about these challenges is it reminds me how much great short fiction is out there. I don’t have time to tear through all the novels I’d like, but pick up a magazine, pick a crazy title, and a few minutes or a couple of hours later, I can be done having read a complete story and go back to the business of life.
