Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (74 page)

IF

James Quinn of Quinn Publications first published
If
in 1952, but it wasn’t until Quinn sold it to Robert Guinn at Galaxy Publishing that it came into prominence. The already-esteemed Horace L. Gold edited both
If
and
Galaxy
for two years before turning
If,
in which he had less of a vested interest, over to Frederik Pohl. Pohl ushered it to great success and won three Hugo awards for Best Professional Magazine in the process. During its heyday,
If
published some of the most impressive short stories ever written in SF, including Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” Pohl also had an eye for new talent, and published the first short stories by giants Larry Niven and Gardner Dozois.
If
also included columns that appealed to broader science fiction fandom outside of print fiction, which drew many younger readers. By 1967,
If’s
high circulation numbers were only rivaled by
Analog
. When Guinn sold Galaxy to UPD Corporation in 1969, he also sold
If
, and Pohl elected to step down from his editorial duties at both magazines. Pohl fondly reminisced in a recent interview that editing was like, “Being a twelve-year-old boy playing with a brand new train set.”

If
followed nearly the same trajectory as its sister publication, failing to thrive under the new editor. Just as things were looking up with the hiring of Jim Baen to edit both
Galaxy
and
If
in 1974, the rising cost of paper forced UPD to decide which magazine to continue.
If
lost that roll of the dice and was folded into the senior publication,
Galaxy
.

ISAAC ASIMOV’S SCIENCE FICTION MAGAZINE

The modern age of science fiction magazines has seen the rise and decline of many publications, including short-lived efforts like editor Charles Ryan’s acclaimed
Galileo
and his longer-lived
Aboriginal
. Two stand out from the crowd, however, and are deserving of closer attention. I begin with the third of the Big Three, today known simply as
Asimov’s
.

In 1977, Joel Davis of Davis Publications published a new science fiction digest that maintained his already-successful habit of tying a big name to his publications (e.g.,
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
).
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
bore the name and cover image of one of the Golden Age greats, drawing instant recognition and reader interest. However, Asimov didn’t want to be the regular editor (being a wee bit busy with his writing career, no doubt) so Davis tapped George H. Scithers to shepherd the magazine day-by-day, while Asimov became the “Editorial Director.” This basically meant he contributed a column, answered reader letters and, of course, regularly contributed stories to his namesake publication.

Scithers went on to discover such (science fiction fan) household names as Barry Longyear, who later won the Hugo and the Nebula for the same story in Asimov’s, “Enemy Mine.” Scithers won his own share of Hugos for Best Editor, beginning in 1978. Davis Publications then added the already-venerable
Analog
to its family in the early 1980s, making it and
Asimov’s
sibling publications.

In 1982, Scithers stepped down and, after a brief interim, Shawna McCarthy took over, with future editor-in-chief Sheila Williams brought on as an editorial assistant. Shawna, one of the earliest, distinguished female editors in charge of a science fiction magazine, earned her own Hugo for Best Professional Editor in 1984 and brought even greater acclaim to the magazine, which now regularly published Hugo and Nebula award-winning fiction.

In 1986, editorial great Gardner Dozois, already a well-established fixture in the science fiction community, took over and
Asimov’s
reached a new level of respectability and success. Dozois collected an unprecedented number of Hugo awards from the mid-Eighties on, winning the Best Professional Editor category every year from 1988 forward, save for 1994 (when another distinguished female editor, Kristine Katherine Rusch of
Fantasy & Science Fiction
snuck in and nabbed one).

Though the world sadly bid farewell to Isaac Asimov in 1992, his namesake publication remains one of the giants in the field, currently under the auspices of Sheila Williams, who took over for Dozois in 2004. It has expanded in these modern times to include an e-zine version, which Williams tells me has been a “very successful” addition.

OMNI

Omni
, though not strictly a “fiction” magazine, published some of the great science fiction stories of the modern era, has the distinction of being both founded and later edited by women, and racked up enough awards for its original fiction to evidence its impact on the field.

Omni Science Fiction and Fact
first took the stage in 1978 thanks to its unlikely founder, Kathy Keeton, wife of
Penthouse
magnate Bob Guccione. With a successful mainstream publisher’s money behind it,
Omni
was able to draw the top writers of science fact and fiction, including luminaries Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, and William Gibson, who contributed early works that became the foundation of the cyberpunk subgenre.
Omni’s
first significant editor was Ben Bova, who stayed with the magazine until 1981. A variety of editors filled the position, including the highly respected Robert Sheckley, until Ellen Datlow took over fiction editing responsibilities in the early 1980s and remained until the magazine folded.
Omni
was also noteworthy for having featured striking, original artwork, unique in the field at the time.

Omni’s
first issue sold 850,000 copies, an incredible statistic when you consider that the majority of science fiction magazines were already experiencing a decline in circulation during the late 1970s on into the 1980s.
Omni
’
s
fiction won several Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy awards, provided science fiction to a new, mainstream audience, and, to quote Ellen Datlow, “Introduced a whole new generation of science fiction and fantasy writers to the largest audience they’d ever had before, or would ever again.”

By 1996, as circulation numbers for all magazines continued to spiral downward and production costs began to significantly increase, the print version of the magazine ceased publication. In a bold move that, in hindsight, was made too early, Omni transformed into a wholly online e-zine. It was still unclear to publishers how to monetize content in this still-nascent market, and Omni’s publisher was unable to effectively capitalize upon the “early adopter” readers who made the switch from print. Before long, the site was deemed unprofitable and removed.

THE RISE OF THE E-ZINE

Today, prompted by continually rising costs associated with the production of print magazines, more science fiction periodicals are originating or moving online. Unfortunately, the comparative ease of publishing stories on the Web has allowed many less-than-qualified publications to proliferate, which has led many readers to assume everything presented in an e-zine format is substandard and to be avoided. However, just like there were trashy, low-quality print magazines published in tandem with great publications, there are diamonds shining through the detritus on the Web.

A few examples (some still in existence, some defunct) include:

Sci Fiction
(ed., Ellen Datlow)

Strange Horizons
(ed., Mary Anne Mohanraj)

InterGalactic Medicine Show
(eds., Orson Scott Card and Edmund R. Schubert)

Clarkesworld
(ed., Neil Clarke)

Apex Magazine (ed., Jason Sizemore)

Abyss and Apex
(ed., Wendy Delmater)

Many of these e-zines pay professional or above-professional rates (a minimum of five cents per word, according to SFWA standards), feature work by top names in the field, and are regular nominees/winners of top industry awards. Even the Big Three now offer online subscription options and have experienced positive growth from such diversification.

Paper-based magazines continue to experience drops in circulation numbers, rising paper and shipping costs, and other challenges that make publishing online an increasingly attractive alternative. The e-zine is not a harbinger of death, but rather a viable option for continuing the traditions begun by Gernsback and his compatriots. Additionally, e-readers, Smartphone applications, and other delivery systems that were once considered science fiction are being recognized by forward-thinking publishers as opportunities to deliver even more quality science fiction to future generations of readers.

While traditional science fiction magazine publication may indeed be on the decline, science fiction itself retains a passionate audience. There are markets for both paper and pixels, and they will continue to demand science fiction stories presented in
all
available forms. The science fiction magazine is experiencing change, not extinction, and we proud members of the community should embrace it. After all, aren’t the unknown and the innovative what we’re all about?

* * * *

Hildy Silverman
took over as publisher of
Space and Time Magazine
(www.spaceandtimemagazine.com) from its founder, Gordon Linzner, in early 2007.
Space and Time
, which started in 1966 as a mimeographed high school fanzine, published some of the earliest short fiction by Jeffrey Ford, Charles de Lint, Josepha Sherman, and many others. Hildy also writes short stories, which have appeared in anthologies from Baen Books and other fine publishers. When not reading, editing, or writing she develops corporate training, marketing communications materials, and search engine–optimized articles for websites. She serves as the co-chair of literary programming for the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and as vice-president of the Garden State Horror Writers.

(1910-1971)

Because he became so well-known as the iconic editor of
Astounding
, and because he stopped writing fiction almost entirely by his late twenties, it’s easy to forget how successful Campbell was as a writer. Both under his own name (mostly for space opera) and under the Don A. Stuart pseudonym (for more literary SF, named for his then-wife Dona Stewart) Campbell was one of the field’s most popular authors.

Campbell was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1910. His father was cold and aloof. His mother had an identical twin sister who mistreated Campbell while pretending to be his mother; Campbell couldn’t tell them apart. After being kicked out of MIT for failing German, Campbell went to Duke University, where he graduated with a degree in physics in 1932. By then he was married and selling stories and articles to SF magazines. (Campbell’s first published story appeared in
Amazing Stories
in 1930, but he’d sold a story to them previously only to have the editor lose the manuscript.)

Once Campbell was named editor of
Astounding
in 1937, his fiction output dropped to almost nothing, though his nonfiction output remained considerable. Campbell dominated the Hugo voting once the award was established, winning Best Editor eight times from 1952–64. The John W. Campbell, Jr. Award for Best New Writer and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award were both established after his death to honor his contributions to the field.

Along with the lyrical end-of-the-world story “Twilight,” “Who Goes There?” is probably Campbell’s most frequently anthologized story. It was adapted into the 1951 horror movie
The Thing from Another World
and its 1982 remake,
The Thing
.

First published in
Astounding Science Fiction
, March 1938 by “Don Stuart”

I

The place stank. A queer, mingled stench that only the ice-buried cabins of an Antarctic camp know, compounded of reeking human sweat, and the heavy, fish-oil stench of melted seal blubber. An overtone of liniment combated the musty smell of sweat-and-snow-drenched furs. The acrid odor of burnt cooking fat, and the animal, not-unpleasant smell of dogs, diluted by time, hung in the air.

Lingering odors of machine oil contrasted sharply with the taint of harness dressing and leather. Yet, somehow, through all that reek of human beings and their associates—dogs, machines, and cooking—came another taint. It was a queer, neck-ruffling thing, a faintest suggestion of an odor alien among the smells of industry and life. And it was a life-smell. But it came from the thing that lay bound with cord and tarpaulin on the table, dripping slowly, methodically onto the heavy planks, dank and gaunt under the unshielded glare of the electric light.

Blair, the little bald-pated biologist of the expedition, twitched nervously at the wrappings, exposing clear, dark ice beneath and then pulling the tarpaulin back into place restlessly. His little birdlike motions of suppressed eagerness danced his shadow across the fringe of dingy gray underwear hanging from the low ceiling, the equatorial fringe of stiff, graying hair around his naked skull a comical halo about the shadow’s head.

Commander Garry brushed aside the lax legs of a suit of underwear, and stepped toward the table. Slowly his eyes traced around the rings of men sardined into the Administration Building. His tall, stiff body straightened finally, and he nodded. “Thirty-seven. All here.” His voice was low, yet carried the clear authority of the commander by nature, as well as by title.

“You know the outline of the story back of that find of the Secondary Pole Expedition. I have been conferring with Second-in-Command McReady, and Norris, as well as Blair and Dr. Copper. There is a difference of opinion, and because it involves the entire group, it is only just that the entire Expedition personnel act on it.

“I am going to ask McReady to give you the details of the story, because each of you has been too busy with his own work to follow closely the endeavors of the others. McReady?”

Moving from the smoke-blued background, McReady was a figure from some forgotten myth, a looming, bronze statue that held life, and walked. Six feet four inches he stood as he halted beside the table, and with a characteristic glance upward to assure himself of room under the low ceiling beams, straightened. His rough, clashingly orange windproof jacket he still had on, yet on his huge frame it did not seem misplaced. Even here, four feet beneath the drift-wind that droned across the Antarctic waste above the ceiling, the cold of the frozen continent leaked in, and gave meaning to the harshness of the man. And he was bronze—his great red-bronze beard, the heavy hair that matched it. The gnarled, corded hands gripping, relaxing, gripping and relaxing on the table planks were bronze. Even the deep-sunken eyes beneath heavy brows were bronzed.

Age-resisting endurance of the metal spoke in the cragged heavy outlines of his face, and the mellow tones of the heavy voice. “Norris and Blair agree on one thing; that animal we found was not—terrestrial in origin. Norris fears there may be danger in that; Blair says there is none.

“But I’ll go back to how, and why we found it. To all that was known before we came here, it appeared that this point was exactly over the South Magnetic Pole of Earth. The compass does point straight down here, as you all know. The more delicate instruments of the physicists, instruments especially designed for this expedition and its study of the magnetic pole, detected a secondary effect, a secondary, less powerful magnetic influence about eighty miles southwest of here.

“The Secondary Magnetic Expedition went out to investigate it. There is no need for details. We found it, but it was not the huge meteorite or magnetic mountain Norris had expected to find. Iron ore is magnetic, of course; iron more so—and certain special steels even more magnetic. From the surface indications, the secondary pole we found was small, so small that the magnetic effect it had was preposterous. No magnetic material conceivable could have that effect. Soundings through the ice indicated it was within one hundred feet of the glacier surface.

“I think you should know the structure of the place. There is a broad plateau, a level sweep that runs more than 150 miles due south from the Secondary Station, Van Wall says. He didn’t have time or fuel to fly farther, but it was running smoothly due south then. Right there, where that buried thing was, there is an ice-drowned mountain ridge, a granite wall of unshakable strength that has dammed back the ice creeping from the south.

“And four hundred miles due south is the South Polar Plateau. You have asked me at various times why it gets warmer here when the wind rises, and most of you know. As a meteorologist I’d have staked my word that no wind could blow at -70 degrees; that no more than a five-mile wind could blow at -50; without causing warming due to friction with ground, snow and ice and the air itself.

“We camped there on the lip of that ice-drowned mountain range for twelve days. We dug our camp into the blue ice that formed the surface, and escaped most of it. But for twelve consecutive days the wind blew at forty-five miles an hour. It went as high as forty-eight, and fell to forty-one at times. The temperature was –63 degrees. It rose to -60 and fell to -68. It was meteorologically impossible, and it went on uninterruptedly for twelve days and twelve nights.

“Somewhere to the south, the frozen air of the South Polar Plateau slides down from that 18,000-foot bowl, down a mountain pass, over a glacier, and starts north. There must be a funneling mountain chain that directs it, and sweeps it away for four hundred miles to hit that bald plateau where we found the secondary pole, and 350 miles farther north reaches the Antarctic Ocean.

“It’s been frozen there since Antarctica froze twenty million years ago. There never has been a thaw there.

“Twenty million years ago Antarctica was beginning to freeze. We’ve investigated, though and built speculations. What we believe happened was about like this.

“Something came down out of space, a ship. We saw it there in the blue ice, a thing like a submarine without a conning tower or directive vanes, 280 feet long and 45 feet in diameter at its thickest.

“Eh, Van Wall? Space? Yes, but I’ll explain that better later.” McReady’s steady voice went on.

“It came down from space, driven and lifted by forces men haven’t discovered yet, and somehow—perhaps something went wrong then—it tangled with Earth’s magnetic field. It came south here, out of control probably, circling the magnetic pole. That’s a savage country there; but when Antarctica was still freezing, it must have been a thousand times more savage. There must have been blizzard snow, as well as drift, new snow falling as the continent glaciated. The swirl there must have been particularly bad, the wind hurling a solid blanket of white over the lip of that now-buried mountain.

“The ship struck solid granite head-on, and cracked up. Not every one of the passengers in it was killed, but the ship must have been ruined, her driving mechanism locked. It tangled with Earth’s field, Norris believes. No thing made by intelligent beings can tangle with the dead immensity of a planet’s natural forces and survive.

“One of its passengers stepped out. The wind we saw there never fell below forty-one, and the temperature never rose above -60. Then—the wind must have been stronger. And there was drift falling in a solid sheet. The thing was lost completely in ten paces.” He paused for a moment, the deep, steady voice giving way to the drone of wind overhead and the uneasy, malicious gurgling in the pipe of the galley stove.

Drift—a drift-wind was sweeping by overhead. Right now the snow picked up by the mumbling wind fled in level, blinding lines across the face of the buried camp. If a man stepped out of the tunnels that connected each of the camp buildings beneath the surface, he’d be lost in ten paces. Out there, the slim, black finger of the radio mast lifted three hundred feet into the air, and at its peak was the clear night sky. A sky of thin, whining wind rushing steadily from beyond to another beyond under the licking, curling mantle of the aurora. And off north, the horizon flamed with queer, angry colors of the midnight twilight. That was Spring three hundred feet above Antarctica.

At the surface—it was white death. Death of a needle-fingered cold driven before the wind, sucking heat from any warm thing. Cold—and white mist of endless, everlasting drift, the fine, fine particles of licking snow that obscured all things.

Kinner, the little, scar-faced cook, winced. Five days ago he had stepped out to the surface to reach a cache of frozen beef. He had reached it, started back—and the drift-wind leapt out of the south. Cold, white death that streamed across the ground blinded him in twenty seconds. He stumbled on wildly in circles. It was half an hour before rope-guided men from below found him in the impenetrable murk.

It was easy for man—or
thing
—to get lost in ten paces.

“And the drift-wind then was probably more impenetrable than we know.” McReady’s voice snapped Kinner’s mind back. Back to the welcome, dank warmth of the Ad Building. “The passenger of the ship wasn’t prepared either, it appears. It froze within ten feet of the ship.

“We dug down to find the ship, and our tunnel happened to find the frozen—animal. Barclay’s ice-ax struck its skull.

“When we saw what it was, Barclay went back to the tractor, started the fire up and when the steam pressure built, sent a call for Blair and Dr. Copper. Barclay himself was sick then. Stayed sick for three days, as a matter of fact.

“When Blair and Copper came, we cut out the animal in a block of ice, as you see, wrapped it and loaded it on the tractor for return here. We wanted to get into that ship.

“We reached the side and found the metal was something we didn’t know. Our beryllium-bronze, non-magnetic tools wouldn’t touch it. Barclay had some tool-steel on the tractor, and that wouldn’t scratch it either. We made reasonable tests—even tried some acid from the batteries with no results.

“They must have had a passivating process to make magnesium metal resist acid that way, and the alloy must have been at least ninety-five percent magnesium. But we had no way of guessing that, so when we spotted the barely opened lock door, we cut around it. There was clear, hard ice inside the lock, where we couldn’t reach it. Through the little crack we could look in and see that only metal and tools were in there, so we decided to loosen the ice with a bomb.

“We had decanite bombs and thermite. Thermite is the ice-softener; decanite might have shattered valuable things, where the thermite’s heat would just loosen the ice. Dr. Copper, Norris and I placed a twenty-five-pound thermite bomb, wired it, and took the connector up the tunnel to the surface, where Blair had the steam tractor waiting. A hundred yards the other side of that granite wall we set off the thermite bomb.

“The magnesium metal of the ship caught of course. The glow of the bomb flared and died, then it began to flare again. We ran back to the tractor, and gradually the glare built up. From where we were we could see the whole ice-field illuminated from beneath with an unbearable light; the ship’s shadow was a great, dark cone reaching off toward the north, where the twilight was just about gone. For a moment it lasted, and we counted three other shadow-things that might have been other—passengers—frozen there. Then the ice was crashing down and against the ship.

“That’s why I told you about that place. The wind sweeping down from the Pole was at our backs. Steam and hydrogen flame were torn away in white ice-fog; the flaming heat under the ice there was yanked away toward the Antarctic Ocean before it touched us. Otherwise we wouldn’t have come back, even with the shelter of that granite ridge that stopped the light.

“Somehow in the blinding inferno we could see great hunched things—black bulks. They shed even the furious incandescence of the magnesium for a time. Those must have been the engines, we knew. Secrets going in blazing glory—secrets that might have given Man the planets. Mysterious things that could lift and hurl that ship—and had soaked in the force of the Earth’s magnetic field. I saw Norris’ mouth move, and ducked. I couldn’t hear him.

“Insulation—something—gave way. All Earth’s field they’d soaked up twenty million years before broke loose. The aurora in the sky above licked down, and the whole plateau there was bathed in cold fire that blanketed vision. The ice-ax in my hand got red hot, and hissed on the ice. Metal buttons on my clothes burned into me. And a flash of electric blue seared upward from beyond the granite wall.

“Then the walls of ice crashed down on it. For an instant it squealed the way dry ice does when it’s pressed between metal.

“We were blind and groping in the dark for hours while our eyes recovered. We found every coil within a mile was fused rubbish, the dynamo and every radio set, the earphones and speakers. If we hadn’t had the steam tractor, we wouldn’t have gotten over to the Secondary Camp.

“Van Wall flew in from Big Magnet at sun-up, as you know. We came home as soon as possible. That is the history of—that.” McReady’s great bronze beard gestured toward the thing on the table.

II

Blair stirred uneasily, his little, bony fingers wriggling under the harsh light. Little brown freckles on his knuckles slid back and forth as the tendons under the skin twitched. He pulled aside a bit of the tarpaulin and looked impatiently at the dark ice-bound thing inside.

McReady’s big body straightened somewhat. He’d ridden the rocking, jarring steam tractor forty miles that day, pushing on to Big Magnet here. Even his calm will had been pressed by the anxiety to mix again with humans. It was lone and quiet out there in Secondary Camp, where a wolf-wind howled down from the Pole. Wolf-wind howling in his sleep—winds droning and the evil, unspeakable face of that monster leering up as he’d first seen it through clear, blue ice, with a bronze ice-ax buried in its skull.