Unknown, Mar '39: F B Long, H L Gold & R M Williams

In our last episode we looked at three stories that appeared in the very first issue of Robert A. W. Lowndes' The Magazine of Horror, and today we investigate three stories printed in the very first issue of John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Unknown.  Frank Belknap Longapalooza continues with a story from the man H. P. Lovecraft called "Sonny," "Dark Vision," and we also have a widely admired story from the future editor of Galaxy H. L. Gold, "Trouble with Water," and from Robert Moore Williams "Death Sentence," a story that seems never to have been reprinted.  This inaugural issue of Unknown also includes a story by Weird Tales stalwart Many Wade Wellman, "'Where Angels Fear....", but while I was reading it for this blog post I realized I had already read and blogged about it back in 2022.  

"Dark Vision" by Frank Belknap Long

In 1975's The Early Long, Long describes how he sent this story to Campbell for Astounding, and Campbell called him on the phone and told him "Dark Vision" didn't fit Astounding but that he was starting a new magazine and "Dark Vision" would be perfect for it.  Long also tells us that Campbell changed a line in the middle of the story, and that he is pleased to thus be a collaborator of Campbell's.  A lot of writers seem to have loved working with Campbell. 

(N.B.: I'm reading "Dark Vision" in the aforementioned The Early Long.)

This is a pretty good story that, for most of it, seems to be taking a very dim, cynical, even misanthropic view of human nature, though things turn out quite all right in the end.

Ronald Horn is a journalist looking for copy at the power plant his friend manages.  While poking around he manages to fall off a height and into a hazardous area where he suffers a serious electric shock.  By some freak chance, he isn't harmed by the electricity that courses through his body, but gains a superpower!  He can read minds!  But this is no blessing--it is a curse!  He can't help but hear people's thoughts, and everybody is an absolute monster of lust, greed, murderousness and/or suicidality!  Horn can't relax, can't rest, because everywhere he goes in New York City he can sense people's animalistic sex desires, their envy and jealousy, their plans to steal and to kill--even the thoughts of Horn's fiancé push his sanity to the edge, for she has contempt for him, finds him exasperating, wishes he had as much money as some other guy she knows!  Long does a good job coming up with evil thoughts for ordinary people in various walks of life; it is a little strange to read text by Long which is competent and even good after reading so much work by him that is terrible--I guess "Francis, Lord Belknap" put some real work into this one.  One wonder if the prestige of Astounding and/or Campbell, or the amount of money Astounding could pay compared to other magazines, had anything to do with this.

The ending of the story is disappointing for those of us who might savor a story about how terrible people are.  His fiancé offering no comfort, Horn visits another female he knows.  This woman's thoughts are not as beastly as everybody else's, and Horn's telepathic powers reveal that she is in love with him.  She suggests they go visit their other friend, America's greatest psychologist.  This guy puts Horn's mind at ease, theorizing that Horn is not reading people's conscious thoughts, but their subconscious ones.  Citing Freud, the shrink tells Horn that everybody has wild and crazy subconscious thoughts of rape, murder and suicide, but almost every person has a censor that keeps these subconscious desires from surfacing--the people whose minds Horn read with horror are all in fact normal healthy individuals extremely unlikely to commit the foul deeds their subconscious seems to be plotting out.  Of course, hearing these horrific thoughts all day will drive Horn insane, so the doctor whips up a treatment for Horn based on curare that will deaden his telepathic ability and permit him to live an ordinary life, presumably married to this sweet girl and not his fiancé whom he irritates.

Personally, I would have preferred a cynical ending in which Horn killed himself or something like that, but this happy ending that vindicates humankind and tries to teach you Freudianism does not sink the story.  I think it is noteworthy that Campbell refused to put this story in Astounding but was happy to print it in Unknown because it is not really a fantasy story with magical elves like the Gold story we are about to discuss or inexplicable ghosts like the Wellman tale we read two years ago or whatever but a science fiction story.  Maybe Campbell just thought the science shoddy, either the Freudianism, the pharmacological speculation or the comic-book-style fashion in which Horn got his superpowers.

"Dark Vision" was included in the Long collection Hounds of Tindalos, which was reprinted in Britain as a two volume set of paperbacks; "Dark Vision" appeared in the second volume, titled The Black Druid.  Readers of French can experience "Dark Vision" in a Belgian collection with a similar name and even similar cover but somewhat different contents.

"Trouble with Water" by H. L. Gold 

Editors love "Trouble with Water," and it has appeared in a mountainous pile of anthologies edited by almost every editor of SF you can think of: Campbell, Knight, Asimov, Silverberg, Carr, Dann, Dozois, and others.  (Wollheim and Merril seem to be chief among the few abstainers.)  I was afraid that this was going to be a joke story, but I forged ahead anyway and read, in its original magazine form, this story which has been almost universally hailed as a classic masterpiece.

Greenberg works beach concessions--selling hotdogs, soda pop, ice cream, etc.--in New York in the summer and Florida in the winter.  He has a nagging and violent wife and an ugly daughter whom his wife is obsessed with marrying off, to the point that wifey insists any spare money be devoted to a dowry.  Tomorrow Greenberg's busy season begins so today he is on a little boat fishing with the rod he had to tape together because his wife broke it in a fit of rage.  He reels in a hat and the hat turns out to belong to a water gnome.  The water gnome casually informs Greenberg that he controls the rain on the East Coast and his preference is to schedule rain on the weekend--this two-foot-tall freak is responsible for the weather that for years has kept customers away from Greenberg's business!  Wifey isn't the only Greenberg with a temper and our hero rips up the gnome's hat and the gnome takes disciplinary action, putting a curse on the long-suffering small businessman.

The meat of Long's "Dark Vision" is scene after scene of Horn seeing into people's thoughts and finding them horrible, and similarly the meat of Gold's "Trouble with Water" is a series of scenes in which Gold tries to take a bath, shave, eat soup, etc., only to find water refuses to touch him or any tool he wields--his boat actually hovers over the water.  Greenberg makes a terrible mess in the apartment and a family catastrophe ensues when a suitor--Sammie Katz, a young doctor, yet!--calls on ugly daughter Rosie.

The wikipedia article on Gold says "Gold was born Jewish" and quotes Anthony Boucher as saying that Gold was perhaps the only SF writer who could write a convincing lower-middle-class milieu, and the dialogue and interactions of the Greenbergs certainly have a lower middle-class Jewish feel to them.  This ethnic angle might today be considered racist (the Greenbergs are all constantly talking about money) but it feels authentic and adds a layer of plausibility and interest to the story.  (I could say the same for the stereotypical behavior of the women in the story--violently angry one second, oozing with comfort and affection the next.) 

Unable to drink, Greenberg fears death, and goes to a doctor, who thinks Greenberg is insane and tries to have him committed.  Luckily a friendly cop comes by, and being an Irishman he believes Greenberg's story about a Little Person and arrives at the solution to Greenberg's thirst--Greenberg can drink beer and he and the cop get drunk together.  (The stereotypes in this story are not confined to the fair sex or the chosen people but strike the sons and daughters of Erin as well.)

The cop and his mother, who knows all about the Little Folk, help Greenberg get the gnome to lift the curse, even though Greenberg's wife sort of wishes her husband would allow the curse to persist for the season, as the fact that rain does not fall around it has made their concession stand very attractive to customers and substantially boosted profits. 

I generally don't like these kinds of trifling joke stories about funny supernatural beings (it feels like just last week I was savaging Robert Silverberg's 1963 joke story about a demon trying to collect a soul for Satan) but this one is actually well-written and I liked the ethnic and class angles so we'll call it acceptable.

"Death Sentence" by Robert Moore Williams

OMG, it's links time.  We've read five short stories and three novels by Robert Moore Williams, and you can find my blog posts about them by clickety-clicking below; for you TLDR folks, I have provided a brief precis of the verdict meted out to each work by the merciless court that is MPorcius Fiction Log:

"Robot's Return"                     "Not bad."

"The Counterfeiter"                 "Smooth and economical...solid plot and philosophical core"

"The Red Death of Mars"        "...not actually bad...pedestrian in plot and style" 

"Sudden Lake"                         "isn't bad"

"I Want to Go Home"               "acceptable; I liked it until the muddled ending."

Zanthar at Trip's End               "bad in almost every way."

Jongor of Lost Land                 "an acceptable Tarzan pastiche...some half-baked science fiction ideas"

The Return of Jongor               "I have to call this one bad."

     

The Robert Moore Williams story that squirms before the steely eyes of The Honorable Judge MPorcius today is "Death Sentence," a story that it seems was never reprinted--not a good sign.  However, justice is blind, and I think this is actually a well-written story with interesting ideas, even if the ideas are not new to me, being standard sort of SF ideas--at least since I was born--and even if I am skeptical of some of the reforms the story may be recommending (though maybe it is not recommending them, just illustrating them.)

(Like Long's "Dark Vision" this is a science fiction story rather than a fantasy, and also features psychological speculation.)

It is the early 21st century and a gangster, Blackie Riordan, age 27, is dragged into court.  This guy has been trouble since he was a kid and has recently murdered a fellow creep, Pinkie Schwartz.  Riordan finds no jury in the courtroom, and over the course of the story we learn not only about Riordan's youth and his career as a criminal but how the justice system has been radically reformed so that, among other things, a jury trial is no longer guaranteed.  The judge seems to know all about Blackie's crimes, even minor ones like shoplifting committed when Blackie was just a kid, and we readers soon figure out and Blackie eventually is told that law enforcement has scanned Blackie's brain and read his memories so they know all about his crimes.

Blackie is sentenced to "obliteration."  This is what in other SF stories might be called a "brain-wipe" or something.  Blackie's memories are erased, to the point that he doesn't even know how to walk!  He's a baby in an adult body!  He is given a new name, Edward Finnegan, and is to be educated.  He learns to walk in just a few minutes, so it won't be too long before he can talk and read again.  By reading his memories the government knows that as a kid he was fascinated by automobiles and other machines and hung around a garage while skipping school, and so the authorities plan out an education and career for new citizen Finnegan as a car mechanic.  The story seems to suggest that some character traits--like Riordan's interest in machines--are genetic, but others--like Riordan's willingness to break the rules and trespass against other people's property and lives--are the result of a bad environment.  (Mere wishful thinking, I'm afraid.)  The authorities plan to make sure Finnegan has no knowledge of his past as Riordan, and will tell him he lost his memories due to a blow to the head and I guess invent a fake past for him.

"Death Sentence" deserves a mild recommendation.  Looking through my old blog posts about Williams, he seems to have been a capable writer who could produce good short stories with good ideas but that he sometimes churned out shoddy novels, presumably due to a need for money.  I will continue to read short stories by Williams and avoid the novels.

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I think we'll call an end to Frank Belknap Longapalooza today, seeing as with "Dark Vision" we can conclude on a positive note.  But don't worry, Long fanatics, there is a lot more work by Long for us to examine, and we'll get back to him at some point.  And we can all look forward to the next thrilling episode of MPorcius Fiction Log, which will feature another weird author recommended to us by Robert Weinberg, author of The Weird Tales Story and Horror of the 20th Century: An Illustrated History.