That Old Science Fiction: A Look Back on Classic SF

By Sourdough Jackson

•Who coined the term “sci-fi”?
•What widely-read 1930s non-SF novel inspired a series of stories about flying, space-traveling cities?
•Was there really a Communist front organization that produced nearly two dozen of the best science fiction authors, editors, and publishers, almost none of whom were Communists?

Perhaps the “Cliff’s Notes” of classic science fiction, writer Sourdough Jackson’s essays keep alive the books, authors, editors, publishers, magazines, and movies that made science fiction the successful subject and industry it is today.

Jackson’s love and deep knowledge of SF is obvious in That Old Science Fiction, originally published as a monthly column in DASFAx, the newsletter of the Denver Area Science Fiction Association.

That love is brought to you here, complete with a forward by Robert Vardeman, author of The Cenotaph Road and dozens of other science fiction novels.

About the author:
Sourdough Jackson, a transwoman, began reading science fiction with a Jules Verne novel at age six, found SF fandom in the early 1970s, and has been deeply involved with it ever since. Early on, she met longtime Denver fan Gail Barton at a convention, and they married in 1978. This lasted until 2018, when Gail passed away.

Sourdough has been involved with convention committees, fanzine publishing, and the Denver Area Science Fiction Association, serving as that group’s secretary for twelve years. She currently edits DASFAx, the club’s newsletter. With Gail, she accumulated a huge library of SF and fantasy books. Since 2008, she has written a monthly column for DASFAx on classic science fiction, originally titled “That Old Science Fiction” and now called “Writers of the Purple Page.”

Sourdough’s own debut novel, Torpedo Junction: Rommel the Ocean Fox in the Pacific, melds a lifelong study of naval history with a love of science fiction as an alternate history of World War II.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DX Varos Publishing
• Release date: Jan 24, 2023
• ISBN: 9781955065498

Sourdough Jackson

Sourdough Jackson, a transwoman, began reading science fiction with a Jules Verne novel at age six, found SF fandom in the early 1970s, and has been deeply involved with it ever since. Early on, she met longtime Denver fan Gail Barton at a convention, and they married in 1978. This lasted until 2018, when Gail passed away.Sourdough has been involved with convention committees, fanzine publishing, and the Denver Area Science Fiction Association, serving as that group's secretary for twelve years. She currently edits DASFAx, the club's newsletter. With Gail, she accumulated a huge library of SF and fantasy books. Since 2008, she has written a monthly column for DASFAx on classic science fiction, originally titled "That Old Science Fiction" and now called "Writers of the Purple Page."Sourdough's own debut novel, Torpedo Junction: Rommel the Ocean Fox in the Pacific, melds a lifelong study of naval history with a love of science fiction as an alternate history of World War II.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Preface

Dec. 2008: RIP, 4SJ

Jan. 2009: Possible Worlds of Science Fiction

Feb. 2009: Burroughs of Barsoom I

Apr. 2009: Burroughs of Barsoom II

Jul. 2009: The Futurian Society

Aug. 2009: The Golden Galaxy

Sep. 2009: James Blish and the Grapes of Wrath

Oct. 2009: The Rim of Space

Nov. 2009: The Venus that Never Was

Jan. 2010: The Early Williamson

Feb. 2010: Duplicators, Enchanted and Otherwise

Mar. 2010: Cordwainer Smith and the Rediscovery of Man

Apr. 2010: Rod McBan and Old North Australia

May 2010: A Visit to Grand Fenwick

Jul. 2010: Eric Frank Russell

Aug. 2010: Commando Cody (and Other Boxes of Serial)

Sep. 2010: The Heinlein Biography

Oct. 2010: The Early SF of Lester del Rey

Nov. 2010: JFK and If

Dec. 2010: If

Jan. 2011: Jack Williamson Revisited

Feb. 2011: Hospital Station

Mar. 2011: Ace Double Your Fun

Apr. 2011: John W. Campbell, Amazing Author

May 2011: John W. Campbell, Astounding Editor

Jun. 2011: One Fan and the Mule

Jul. 2011: The Hermit of Hagerstown

Aug. 2011: Hugos There?

Sep. 2011: First Landings on the Moon

Oct. 2011: From Fan to Pro

Nov. 2011: Fritz Leiber and the 64-Square Madhouse

Dec. 2011: The Great Recruiter and the IFirsttory Program

Jan. 2012: The Witches of Karres

Mar. 2012: You Called, Cthulhu?

Jul. 2012: That Hideous Trilogy

Aug. 2012: The Phantom Tollbooth

Sep. 2012: Danny Dunn

Oct. 2012: The First Conventions

Nov. 2012: Poul Anderson

Dec. 2012: Reteif, Jaime Reteif

About the Author

Forward

People will not look forward to prosperity, who never look backward to their ancestors. Edmund Burke said that, and it applies science fiction fandom. If we don’t know where we came from, who our stfnal ancestors were, it makes our future less vibrant and choosing fiawol versus fijagh more difficult.

So, it is with great delight that I read Sourdough Jackson’s collection of essays on pre-1965 science fiction, fandom and the people who built the foundations on which we live and read. I got into fandom in 1965 as Sourdough points out, but as a neofan there was a lot happening in this notable year which was unknown to me. E.E. Doc Smith died, and Skylark Duquesne was published. Doc Smith’s passing marked the end of the pulp era because the newer writers, Samuel R. Delany and Roger Zelazny among others, were of a more literary bent. Roger’s stories set on Mars and Venus were done knowing those planets weren’t really like those of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Oris Adelbert Kline, but he wanted to get in A Rose for Ecclesiastes and the fishing in the oceans of Venus story The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth before the pulp era was entirely consigned to the mists of history. He wanted to dip into the Golden Age before it disappeared—and he did. Things were never the same afterward.

Sourdough does a wonderful job of showing newcomers to science fiction the people and events responsible for creating our field—and nudges us oldtimers to harken back once more. Ask readers who their favorite writers are and Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke show up—still. Be we forget A. Bertram Chandler, James Schmitz, Fritz Leiber (a fantasy fan who hasn’t read Leiber’s fabulous Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories is a fake fan!), John Campbell and Jack Williamson at our peril, the peril being loss of entertaining stories that have done so much to shape current stories. We owe their authors a debt of gratitude. Sourdough reminds us why.

Along with the professional writers and editors, Sourdough also delves into significant fans and their impact on science fiction, Was there ever a fanzine that didn’t have a loc from Harry Warner? Whathell did I just write? Check out the article on The Hermit of Hagerstown.) Migration of fan to pro? The earliest science fiction conventions? You’ll find it all here in engaging articles I trust you will find memorable.

You don’t have to have been there during the good old days to enjoy them in That Old Science Fiction. Savor this glimpse into our past. I did.

Bob Vardeman

www.centaphroad.com

Editor’s note’s:

stfnal = Scientifictional

fiawol = fandom is a way of life

fijagh = fandome is just a God-damned hobby

Preface

Gimme that old science fiction,

Gimme that old science fiction,

Gimme that old science fiction,

It’s good enough for me!

This collection of essays grew out of a column I wrote for DASFAx, the club newsletter of the Denver Area Science Fiction Association (DASFA), from 2009 through 2012. I was once its editor (Jan. 1997 through Jan. 2001), and I sometimes wrote articles for it when pressed for something to fill the space. As DASFA’s secretary from 2002 to the present, I wrote Thirty Seconds Over Denver Fen every month, each meeting’s half-minutes (in the jargon of SF fandom, fen is the plural of fan). From time to time, I found myself writing obituaries for well-known old authors and fen, a grim task.

When Forrest J. Ackerman (4SJ) passed away at the end of 2008, I wrote yet another obituary. While writing it, I realized the majority of the fen in the club had either never heard of Forry Ackerman or had forgotten who he was. There was a time when every fan knew who Forry was, had read some Edgar Rice Burroughs, and had at least heard of Jack Williamson and Eric Frank Russell, even if they hadn’t read any of their stories.

That time was some forty years ago, when I was a neofan, and when fandom was a much smaller town. SF was a far less extensive field back then, and it was easier to know the classics of the genre. Star Trek was a sweet memory of three vintage seasons, but Star Wars was yet to come, and publishers thought no fortunes could be made in science fiction. It was a good field to sow if you wanted to reap a steady crop of book sales, but bumper crops (as in best-sellers) simply didn’t exist.

In the early 1970s, classic science fiction usually meant before 1945, the year in which one particular SF trope, atomic energy, literally and figuratively exploded upon the world. Classic science fiction encompassed the earlier part of the Golden Age (the 1938-1950 period, when John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction dominated the field), as well as all prior 20th-century SF.

Because publishers, with few exceptions (such as the NESFA Press), aren’t bothering to keep old science fiction in print, most of it is being forgotten. Granted, Sturgeon’s Law (90% of everything is crap) has always held, and such authors as David Keller, John Russell Fearn, Paul Fairman, and Richard S. Shaver are best left in the mists of time. However, there were plenty of really good authors back then, and too few of them are known to readers who came to fandom in recent years.

To address this forgetfulness, I began writing a monthly column for DASFAx, with the title That Old Science Fiction. I set a cutoff date of the end of 1965 for material which I would discuss. That year marked the end of E.E. Doc Smith’s career; that grand old master died while his final novel, Skylark DuQuesne, was on the newsstands in serial form in If. This was also considered by many to be the peak of Robert A. Heinlein’s career. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, his last Hugo-winning novel, began its serialization in December of that year, also in If.

With one exception, my review of William H. Patterson’s biography of Heinlein, I have stuck to that cutoff date. I have also mostly avoided covering anything regarding that really famous trio, Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. I also wrote nothing about Doc Smith, as one of the editors of DASFAx, Ivan Geisler, had written a couple of pieces on that author himself. When I broke my own rule, I discovered our club newsletter contained two reviews of the Heinlein biography. The other was by Fred Cleaver, whose SF book reviews for the Denver Post are frequently reprinted in DASFAx. Luckily, Fred and I took totally different approaches to Mr. Patterson’s work, so no harm was done.

After a while, I began reading my columns at my weekly writers’ group. Karen Morrissey, one of our two hostesses, formed a small-press company called Thursday Night Press, after our customary meeting schedule, with the purpose of professionally publishing the works by various members of the group. She invited me to collect my existing columns, four years’ worth, into a book, and this is the result.

I hope you will enjoy these essays and find them informative. As they were intended to be newsletter columns, they do not go very deeply into any particular topic or author; I leave depth of coverage and real literary criticism to the serious academics. They are intended mainly as introductions and/or summaries, a sort of Cliff’s Notes approach to classic science fiction. Fair warning: Sometimes they contain spoilers. When possible, I have mentioned availability of the books discussed, as of the original publication date of the column. As a rule, most works can be purchased online via Amazon.com, most often from its used-book associates.

I continue to write essays on classic SF for DASFAx, but with a new cutoff date, 1975, and under a new title. This field is both broad and deep, so in two or three years, there ought to be a second volume, Writers of the Purple Page. Until then,

Clear ether!

Sourdough Jackson

The Micro Cosmic Hall

Wheat Ridge, Colorado

August 31, 2013

December 2008: RIP, 4SJ

Forrest J. Ackerman is dead. He passed away December 4, 2008, of what amounted to old age. With his passing, fandom has lost one of its last living founders, that is, fans who were active in the early to middle 1930s.

Forry Ackerman (aka 4e, 4SJ, Sgt. Ack-ack, the Ackermonster, and other nicknames and noms de plume) began his fannish career in 1930 by starting the Boys Scientifiction Club. It is not so much that he found fandom at that time, it is more that he helped found fandom; hardly anything organized existed prior to that time. The Boys part of his club name is easily explained. He was a youth of fourteen, and as he once said, girl-fans were as rare as unicorn’s horns in those days.

In 1932, he collaborated with Julius Schwartz, Mort Weisinger, and Allen Glasser to produce The Time Traveller, widely considered to be the very first fanzine. He also contributed much to Siegel & Shuster’s The Science Fiction Magazine, the other likely candidate for first fanzine (The Comet of 1930 is sometimes mentioned as the first fanzine, but it was mostly an amateur scientific journal).

By 1939, he was an old and well-established fan when he attended Worldcon 1 in New York. It was at that con that he wore the first futuristicostume, as he called it (he loved coining neologisms—more on that later), starting up fandom’s enduring costume custom. After that, he made a habit of attending Worldcons; he is known to have missed only two since then (it is not known which two, alas). While attending the 1953 Worldcon, he received the very first Hugo Award, for #1 Fan Personality.

He was best known in fandom for his love of SF films and for his collecting. He saw his first science fiction movie (imagi-movie, as he sometimes called them) at age five (One Glorious Day) and acquired his first scientifiction magazine in 1926. His movie penchant developed into a livelihood; he often worked as a projectionist in his younger days and published the magazine Famous Monsters of Filmland from 1958 until 1983. He also made cameo appearances in scores of grade-B SF and fantasy films.

Forry Ackerman’s collection was legendary. By the 1970s, it filled the Ackermansion, his large Los Angeles home. He was what is called a completist, a fan who tries to collect all science fiction ever published. In his youth, this was feasible; nowadays, successful completism is quite impossible. Gail and I visited the Ackermansion during our honeymoon, thirty years ago. To say it was astounding or amazing would have left out all the other prozines he collected. I have never seen so much SF&F all in one place, and I doubt I ever will again. He also displayed a number of movie props with the books and magazines; I recall seeing the original Time Machine from the George Pal movie of the H.G. Wells classic. I think Robbie the Robot from Forbidden Planet was also there. Forry was quite friendly, hospitable, and informative. When I noticed all the Vol. 1 No. 1 issues of the prozines were missing, he pointed me to the large glass case containing them (and a large case was needed for this!).

Ackerman was also a literary agent; over the years he represented some two hundred authors. He was instrumental in boosting the early writing career of Ray Bradbury. In company with his German-born wife, Wendayne, he published translations (mostly done by his wife) of the popular German SF Perry Rhodan series.

Not all of his efforts met with complete success in the SF world. He was a major booster of the synthetic language Esperanto in fandom; it never caught on. Perhaps his efforts were premature; later on, the Elvish (Tolkien) and Klingon (Star Trek) languages gained quite a following in various corners of fandom.

I mentioned neologisms. His most famous addition to anyone’s lexicon is sci-fi. In 1954, he heard the term hi-fi, and sci-fi clicked into his head. He later said that, had he been a fan of soap operas or secret agent novels, it would have come out cry-fi or spy-fi instead. To many fen, particularly older ones, sci-fi refers to poorly-written (or poorly-filmed) science fiction. Many other fen, especially younger ones, cheerfully use the term for all SF (while the rest of us cringe). For good or ill, though, sci-fi is part of modern world culture.

Whatever his legacy to world culture might be, though, 4SJ’s lasting legacy to fandom is—fandom. He was one of our very few founders. Had he not been, fandom would be less than what it is, and might not even exist.

January 2009: Possible Worlds of Science Fiction

Science fiction, as we now know it, has been around for perhaps a century or so, perhaps a century and a half, if one pushes it back to Jules Verne’s first stories. However, if one visits the SF shelves of Borders or Barnes & Noble, one largely finds recent material. With few exceptions (most notably Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, and the elder Herbert), most science fiction in print is by authors who are currently producing new fiction. Modern fans are not always aware of the older science fiction that has been written; for the most part, it isn’t being reprinted.

A case in point: Connie Willis is now considered by some to be one of the old masters of SF. The master part is indisputable; she has earned ten Hugos. The old part is downright silly. She only began publishing stories in 1978. To be an old master means, to me, that a major author’s career should have begun at least forty years ago. Larry Niven, for example, qualifies as such, since his first story was published in the December 1964 issue of IF.

In this column for DASFAx, I would like to discuss some of the older SF which Gail and I have read and collected over the years. I am using a somewhat fuzzy cutoff date of 1964-67 to mark what is old. During that period, several pivotal events happened in the SF world: Heinlein and Herbert reached the peaks of their careers (and Niven began his), Lord of the Rings was first published in paperback (thus igniting an explosion of fantasy novels), and the New Wave began its noisy, mostly unsuccessful campaign to transform the genre (isn’t it odd that we still call it the New Wave, some forty years later?).

I will be discussing books, magazines, authors, and sometimes events and personalities in fandom. I may even stray into movies and TV on occasion. When possible, I will try to give some idea as to how one might obtain copies of the books in question. A general hint is: Try http://www.amazon.com/ or http://www.abebooks.com/. Both of these have extensive listings of out-of-print books that can be purchased used from third parties listing books with them.

I begin with an old anthology that has been a favorite of mine since childhood: Possible Worlds of Science Fiction, edited by Groff Conklin. This was first published in 1951 by Vanguard Press and contained 22 stories. It can be found at either Amazon or Abe Books, although what is most common is the abridged paperback edition, with over half the stories missing.

Groff Conklin was the great anthologist of the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s. He did not edit the first SF anthology (that was The Pocket Book of Science Fiction, edited by Donald A. Wollheim in 1943), but with 41 anthologies by his death in 1968, he probably put out more of them than anyone else in the field.

Possible Worlds of Science Fiction is based around the theme of Life on Other Worlds. It is divided into two parts. The Solar System is a twelve-story tour of the planets of our system, omitting Pluto but including the Sun. The ten stories in The Galaxy