Seekers of Tomorrow (19 page)

A 20,000-word effort,
Trumpeter, Sound the Recall!
"a story of future warfare in which 100 million men get killed because one man throws away a banana skin," suffered a like fate.
Submicrowave Hypnosis,
"showing how thought control is put on a business basis," was discarded two thirds of the way through when someone beat Russell into print with the plot.
The Atompacker,
a tale in which the "menace from outer space" theme is treated lightly, couldn't seem to find a home in any of the magazines.

All these represented a substantial amount of time and effort that could have been spent by Russell with his family or in just plain pleasurable reading. Writing began to look much less attractive to him. Nevertheless, he persisted and a very brief and poetic story titled
Mana
in the December, 1937, astounding stories proved to have influence beyond its immediate popularity, which was negligible. It told of the last man on Earth, who steps up intelligence in ants to the point where they are on the road to civilization with little wheelbarrows, bows and arrows, and fire. The similarity to Clifford D. Simak's cart-pulling and ore-smelting ants in
Cen-sus
(astounding science-fiction, September, 1944), second in the famed "Cities" series, is obvious.

George Newnes Ltd., the periodical publisher who had been postponing plans for years, finally placed fantasy on sale July 29, 1938, competing with tales of wonder. Again Russell had the distinction of appearing in the first issue of a new British science-fiction magazine, this time with
Shadow-Man,
a brief short of a criminal who is caught despite his power of invisibility because his shadow betrays his presence. This was the first Russell story utilizing the surprise or "O. Henry" ending and it was to become a standard trick in his repertoire.

At almost the same time, his short story,
The World's Eighth Wonder,
appeared in the Summer, 1938, tales of wonder. Russell sardonically speculates that if the Martians were ever to land on Earth and were to look anything like humans, no one would believe them and they would be placed in a circus as side-show freaks. The idea was not original with him, having been reworked from
The Martian
by Allen Glasser and A. Rowley Hilliard (wonder stories quarterly, Winter, 1932), and the "Americanese" of Russell's dialogue looked strange in the British publication in which it appeared. Where Russell had picked up his American idiom (possibly from U.S. pulps) is not quite certain, but his style was definitely American, as were most frequently his locales and heroes, and this was to remain constant.

Substantiation of his very friendly feeling toward England's former colony was to be found in his later philosophical sketch in tales of wonder for Autumn, 1940, where he eulogized: "A temporarily suppressed gland America com-menced to function coincident with mass humanity's need. Twin rails crawled across virgin desert like nerves creeping through the new flesh of a growing thing." However, his only appearance in the United States in 1939 was with
Impulse
in the September issue of astounding science-fiction. It was a very weak effort concerning "pos-session" of a cadaver by an intelligence from outer space and reflected some of the elements of the living dead in Paul Ernst's
The
Incredible Formula.

The evidence up this point was overwhelming that Russell showed much greater promise stylistically than creatively.

Most of the stories he had sold were derivative in plot or method from other authors or were collaborations where the idea was supplied to him and he "put the flesh on the skeleton." Russell's obvious weakness may have come from his philo-sophical outlook. Dissenting to a reviewer's opinion of a book he characterized himself in a letter dated June 24, 1937, and published in the July, 1937, issue of novae terrae, a British science-fiction fan magazine, as "another young rationalist of 32 years of age." "Rationalism" is an outlook that recognizes only what is demonstrable to the human intellect. Its adher-ents believe reason is the best means of attaining ultimate knowledge. It accepts nothing on faith and rejects the emo-tions and imagination as means of intellectual advancement. It does not, automatically, deny the existence of God or the immortality of the soul, since St. Thomas Aquinas is consid-ered one of the great rationalists. It is a philosophy of skepticism, which urges its adherents to doubt everything. The weakness of the rationalist viewpoint is that it promul-gates no ideas of its own; it waits to be shown. Stubbornly waiting to be shown, Russell was retarded in conceiving plot deviations and depended for intellectual nutrient completely on others.

Paradoxically, the two greatest influences on his thinking were men noted for their attempts to shatter complacency and broaden the scope of men's thinking. The first of these was Olaf Stapledon, a respected philosopher of this century, who, in his book,
Last and First Men
(1930), supplied many of the basic concepts on which the latter-day school of science fiction is founded. Stapledon had sent a letter of in-quiry to the British Interplanetary Society the summer of 1936 (he eventually joined). Russell saw the letter and the proximity of Stapledon, who was then Professor of Philoso-phy at Liverpool University, prompted him to visit the man. He introduced Stapledon to the science-fiction magazines, bringing over a stack to read. Stapledon had not intended to write science fiction but merely to find the proper vehicle to convey his philosophical ideas. The two men saw one another at long intervals some six more times before Stapledon's death.

The second and more obvious influence was a strange little Bronx, New York, man named Charles Hoy Fort, who spent a lifetime assembling 40,000 clippings on seemingly inexplicable events; poltergeists; red rain; rains of frogs, fish, stones; strange lights in the sky; disappearances; levitation; and related bizarre and unusual phenomena. He was not satisfied with documenting such notices, but offered his own interpre-tation, displaying so vast an imaginative resource as to be-come a seemingly bottomless reservoir of science-fiction plots. Many of his clippings and observations were presented in four books, the first of which,
The Book of the Damned,
was published in 1919 by Boni & Liveright. The most famous of the four was
Lo!
issued in 1931 by C. Kendall and reprinted in full in astounding stories, April to November, 1934, inclusive. Together with his other two volumes,
New Lands
(1923) and
Wild Talents
(1932), these were collected by Henry Holt and issued in 1941 as
The Books of Charles Fort.
This volume became the bible of The Fortean Society, a group of acolytes organized by novelist Tiffany Thayer who edited a periodical titled doubt, dedicated to continued pres-entation of Fortean-type material. Russell had read
Lo!
in astounding stories, but it had made no impression at the time. However, when he stumbled across a British edition of
Lo!
in a secondhand book shop he went quietly mad. His lifelong ambition became the resolve to obtain the three other books. He wrote to American antiquarian dealers and secured all but
New Lands.
For
Wild Talents
he paid $27, an amount which represented two weeks' pay for the average Britisher in the 1930's; in terms of today's purchasing power this amounted to paying $270

for a book published in the not-too-distant past.

From
Lo!
he took the plot nucleus for
Sinister Barrier,
and from Olaf Stapledon's
Last and First Men
he acknowledged taking the theme of symbiotic relationship—two intelligent life forms interdependent as the humans and Vitons were on earth.

The $600 he received for
Sinister Barrier
added to $100 of his own enabled him to visit America with his wife in May, 1939. He mortgaged his vacations for the next two years with his employers so that he could make an extended stay of six weeks. He urgently wanted to come because he was convinced that war was imminent and that this might be his last opportunity for some time. In the United States, he spent most of his visit in and around the Greater New York area. He spoke at the May 7, 1939, meeting of the Queens Science Fiction League, where he expressed his disappointment at the lack of support given science-fiction projects both amateur and professional in England. His talk left no question that he was a

"fan" of science fiction as well as a professional author.

Talkative and likeable, he would thread his conversation with four-letter words, the shock value of which appeared to amuse him. If permitted to introduce himself he could prove direct to the point of rudeness! For example:

"You're a Jew, aren't you?"

"Quite evidently you're on the dole."

In America he met Edmond Hamilton. The two had in common, in addition to an interest in science-fiction writing, membership in The Fortean Society. Hamilton gave him his own copy of
New
Lands,
completing Russell's Fort collec-tion, as well as a letter from and a photo of Charles Fort. This remained the high spot of the American visit in Russell's memory.

The Atompacker
was sold to and appeared in the undated (1939) second issue of fantasy as
Vampire
from the Void.
The final and third issue of that magazine, before the war-time paper shortage caused it to fold, carried Russell's tale
Mightier Yet,
apparently influenced by war psychology in its theme of the Nazis using a machine capable of hypnotizing soldiers over a distance of a number of miles. The only other published Russell item during 1939 was an article describing newly reported Fortean phenomena which appeared in the September, 1939, unknown as
Over the Border.

Whether wartime responsibilities now limited his time (he took radio courses at Northern Polytechnic, London, and the Marconi College, Chelmsford) is not known, but 1940 saw the appearance of only two items,
Spontaneous Frognation
(un-known, July, 1940) (non-fiction) and
I
,
Spy
in the Autumn, 1940, tales of wonder, superbly handled novelette of a Martian capable of simulating any living form—plant, ani-mal, or human being—who is loose on Earth. The tale evolves into an adroit detective story, reminiscent of Camp-bell's
Who Goes There?
but distinctive enough not to be considered an imitation. The story ends in an ingenious burst of inspired writing.

One of Russell's author friends in England was Maurice G. Hugi, a writer of modest ability who had sold a few stories to tales of wonder. One of his stories just couldn't make the grade. He showed it to Russell, who liked the plot and offered to rework it. The actual writing is said to have occurred in the fall of 1940

during a bombing raid on Liverpool, with Russell on the floor beneath the bed or the table (versions differ) pounding away on a typewriter.

What emerged was
The Mechanical Mice,
published under Maurice G. Hugi's name in the January, 1949, astounding science-fiction. The story involves a man who extracts from the future the idea of a machine, which when built, mothers tiny mechanical mice which steal materials necessary for it to reproduce itself. The story is brilliantly told and is considered one of the small masterpieces of science fiction, quite proba-bly the inspiration of Lewis Padgett's
Twonkey.

The birth of the most famous character created by Russell came about, he recalls, "when I was seeking a plot and realized I had never attempted a robot yarn." The result was Jay Score, outwardly having the appearance of a giant hu-man, who first appeared in a story appropriately titled
Jay Score
(astounding science-fiction, May, 1941). The space-ship crew in the story, including a group of many-tentacled Martian chess masters, provided a cast of characters as engaging as any seen since the entourage of the Doc Savage stories. The heroic efforts of Jay Score, together with the special talents of the Martians, save the spaceship from a fiery death in the bosom of the sun in a rather routine adventure.
Seat of Oblivion
(astounding science-fiction, November, 1941) was a third attempt at the plot of
Impulse
and
I
,
Spy. A
device is used by a criminal to take possession of successive individuals for ulterior motives. He finally is trick-ed into entering the body of a notorious killer minutes before the killer is apprehended by the police.

An attempt at fantasy,
With a Blunt Instrument
(un-known, December, 1941), involving the use of Australian native magic to kill men for insurance purposes, proved a dud. The same month, the pen name of Webster Craig was used for
Homo Saps
in astounding science-fiction (De-cember, 1941), in which Martians tip the protagonists to the fact that camels are telepathic and smarter than people. The cast of
Jay Score
returned in a sequel,
Mechanistria
(astounding science-fiction, January, 1942), to engage in an exciting adventure on a planet dominated by a civilization of diverse machinery, ruled by a computing machine. The plot was reminiscent of
Paradise and Iron
by Miles J. Breuer, M.D. (amazing stories quarterly, Summer, 1930), but with an element of humor.

The most influential of the Jay Score stories was
Symbioti-ca
(astounding science-fiction, October, 1943). Stapledon's concept of interdependent life forms was utilized to show a world where humanoids lived in symbiosis with trees and indirectly with other life forms on their planet. Great imagi-nation was displayed and the vividness of the narration would seem to have been the inspiration of Harry Harrison's novel
Death
World.
Beyond that, the story appears to have been the springboard from which the writers of most of the important science-fiction stories involving symbiosis as the basis of their plots have taken off. Only a single Russell story appeared in each of the next three years.
Controller
(March, 1944, astounding science-fiction) and
Resonance
(July, 1945, astounding science-fiction), both inconsequential war stories aimed contemptu-ously at the Japanese. The war in Europe finally ended with Russell dogging General Patton's army in command of a Royal Air Force mobile radio unit.