The History of Science Fiction Part 9: 1940 — 1949

Brace your­selves, it’s a long one. Don’t for­get these are all posted to +The His­tory of Sci­ence Fic­tion.

The for­ties were of course dom­i­nated by World War II and its after-effects. Per­haps the biggest imme­di­ate influ­ence that had on sci­ence fic­tion was the peak and decline of pulp magazines.

Paper short­ages caused the can­cel­la­tion of some lower sell­ing titles, but also pushed pub­lish­ers and authors to look more towards other approaches. As the Golden Age came to a close, the more famil­iar cur­rent model of pub­lish­ing began to dominate.

Another aspect of WW II that clearly impacted on sci­ence fic­tion was The Man­hat­tan Project and the split­ting of the atom. Per­haps the sin­gle most impact­ful moment of sci­ence in mod­ern his­tory show­ing off both the good and the bad.

Sci­ence Fic­tion Arrives On TV

It’s per­haps not the most impres­sive of arrivals and cer­tainly wouldn’t help the masses to take sci­ence fic­tion more seri­ously, but the air­ing of  _Captain Video and Hist Video Rangers_ ( http://​amzn​.to/​X​u​A​MFe ) start­ing in June 1949 marked the start of sci­ence fic­tion on tv.

Heav­ily influ­enced by pulp and also by the cliffhanger movie seri­als, Cap­tain Video had a minis­cule bud­get and ini­tially the Cap­tain and his teen side­kick didn’t even have their own space­ship.  In fact one of the recur­ring char­ac­ters was a robot named I TOBOR. Rumor has it he was sup­posed to have been called ROBOT I, but they sten­ciled the name back­wards on the cos­tume and didn’t have the bud­get to fix it.

Later the bud­get would expand so that three space­ships were fea­tured and more than the ini­tial three Rangers appeared. The show was pretty much panned by crit­ics but pop­u­lar with kids and stayed on air for 6 years. It prob­a­bly had a lot to do with form­ing the public’s view of sci­ence fiction.

Cap­tain Video him­self was ini­tially played by Richard Coogan and can be seen in this archived episode from 1949 ( http://​archive​.org/​d​e​t​a​i​l​s​/​c​a​p​t​a​i​n​v​i​deo ) . He was replaced by Al Hodge, who played the role until the show ended in 1955.

Hein­lein

Robert A. Hein­lein is con­sid­ered one of the Big Three SF writ­ers. One of the peo­ple who really defined the mod­ern form. And he was extremely pro­duc­tive dur­ing the 40s, pub­lish­ing a lot of short sto­ries in pulp mag­a­zines, but also pub­lish­ing novels.

Methuselah’s Chil­dren was orig­i­nal pub­lished in Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion over three months and was later expanded into a novel for pub­li­ca­tion in the 50s ( http://​amzn​.to/​W​L​L​EkA ).  It is par­tic­u­larly of note per­haps for giv­ing us the first appear­ance of Lazarus Long.

Rocket Ship Galileo  ( http://​www​.ama​zon​.com/​g​p​/​p​r​o​d​u​c​t​/​B​0​0​0​M​T​E​8Q6 ) was Heinlein’s first pub­lished novel in 1947 and also the first of his juve­niles essen­tially young adult nov­els. It would be adapted in 1950 into the movie Des­ti­na­tion Moon.

Two fur­ther juve­niles were pub­lished this decade, Space Cadet  ( http://​amzn​.to/​X​u​F​uTv ) in 1948 and Red Planet ( http://​amzn​.to/​W​B​0​3lw ) in 1949. Space Cadet would serve as the inspi­ra­tion for the tv series Tom Cor­bett Space Cadet in the 1950s.

While clearly aimed at chil­dren, these books did con­tain hints of con­tin­u­ing Hein­lein themes. They are cer­tainly much more obvi­ously in the adult tar­geted Beyond This Hori­zon seri­al­ized in 1942 and then pub­lished in 1948 ( http://​amzn​.to/​X​u​F​sLg ) where he presents a soci­ety in which duel­ing is used to keep peo­ple civil (An armed soci­ety is a polite soci­ety), pro­motes eugen­ics as the way to improve the human race and yet simul­ta­ne­ously rejects racism.

Racism is at the fore­front of Sixth Col­umn  ( http://​amzn​.to/​V​M​H​0pG ) which was pub­lished in 1949 and is also known as The Day After Tomor­row. The story was actu­ally based on an unpub­lish­able story by John W. Camp­bell.  Hein­lein took the core idea, toned down some of the more extreme racism, pro­vid­ing an expla­na­tion for how the weapons in the novel worked and also filled out the rebels strat­egy. Despite this he appar­ently con­sid­ered the work an artis­tic failure.

Cer­tainly the racial ele­ments remain pretty in your face by mod­ern stan­dards, but it’s inter­est­ing to note that the racism does seem to exist on both sides. Also of note is Heinlein’s approach to reli­gion in this book where he has a group mak­ing up their own reli­gion and then start­ing to believe it.

A E. Van Vogt

Another par­tic­u­larly pro­lific author this decade was the Cana­dian author A.E. Van Vogt. Much of his work was seri­al­ized and then later fixed up into novel form. Van Vogt was sig­nif­i­cantly influ­enced by World War II. He had a par­tic­u­lar inter­est in explor­ing sys­tems of knowl­edge and his work has been crit­i­cised for being overly sym­pa­thetic to the sys­tem of absolute monarchy..

His ear­li­est pub­lished novel of the decade was Slan  ( http://​amzn​.to/​X​w​3​t4M ) which was orig­i­nally seri­al­ized in Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion in 1940 and then released as a novel in 1946.  A rel­a­tively straight­for­ward adven­ture SF adven­ture it does have some deeper aspects and some have com­pared the mutant Slans and their treat­ments to Jews in Nazi Germany.

Pub­lished in 1947, The Weapon Mak­ers was seri­al­ized in _Astounding Sci­ence Fic­tion _ 1943. The book was then sig­nif­i­cantly revised in 1952. There is a dis­tinctly lib­er­tar­ian slant to this work (The right to buy weapons is the right to be free).

The Book of Ptath was also pub­lished in 1947, another pre­vi­ously seri­al­ized work and is an unusual story about the casu­alty of a tank bat­tle who is rein­car­nated as a god figure.

The World of Null-A  ( http://​amzn​.to/​1​4​L​v​Stv ) pub­lished in 1948 in novel form is one of Van Vogt’s best known and most influ­en­tial works.  It throws together non-Aristotelian logic, gen­eral seman­tics, cloning and tele­ki­net­ics amongst other things. It’s sequel novel The Pawns of Null-A was seri­al­ized start­ing the same year.

Van Vogt had an unusual writ­ing method whereby he pre­sented scenes of roughly 800 words dur­ing which either a new com­pli­ca­tion was added or some­thing was resolved. While that might seem for­mu­laic, it does make sense given his work was orig­i­nally serialized.

His work was heav­ily crit­i­cized, par­tic­u­larly by SFWA founder Damon Knight. Though it should be noted the two had sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ences of ide­alog­i­cal posi­tion and the crit­i­cism may have been biased by this. Despite this crit­i­cism, the influ­ence of Van Vogt’s work should not be under­es­ti­mated. Major names like Philip K. Dick and Har­lan Elli­son have listed him as one of their influences.

E. E. Doc Smith

Smith con­tin­ued to work on the two series he is best known for seri­al­iz­ing the last two Lens­man sto­ries Sec­ond Stage Lens­man and Chil­dren of the Lens in Amaz­ing Sto­ries in 1941 and 1947.  The third of his Sky­lark books Sky­lark of Valeron ( http://​amzn​.to/​X​m​h​u8O ) was repub­lished as a novel in 1949

Other Books of Note

The Incom­plete Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt intro­duced the world to Harold Shea for the first time in 1940. He and his col­leagues travel to var­i­ous par­al­lel worlds where ancient myths and leg­ends are reality.

C. S. Lewis com­pleted his Space Tril­ogy with the release of Pere­landra ( http://​amzn​.to/​V​N​u​ctP )  in 1943 and That Hideous Strength ( http://​amzn​.to/​U​1​Z​QY9 ) in 1945.

Fritz Leiber, who would become best known for his sword and sor­cery sto­ries wrote what may be the first urban fan­tasy in Con­jure Wife ( http://​amzn​.to/​U​2​0​kNR ) in 1943 in which a col­lege pro­fes­sor dis­cov­ers that not only is his wife a witch, but so are the other wives at the col­lege. He also pub­lished Des­t­ingy Times Three  ( http://​amzn​.to/​U​T​u​DIe ) in 1945. A sci­ence fic­tion story in which the prob­a­bil­ity engine enables alter­nate real­i­ties to exist side by side.

Through­out the decade Isaac Asi­mov seri­al­ized eight of the nine sto­ries that would come to be the Foun­da­tion Tril­ogy in Astound­ing Sci­ence Fic­tion. The story names were changed when the books came out, but the orig­i­nal sto­ries that make up each book are:

Foun­da­tion ( http://​amzn​.to/​W​C​M​uSv )
- Foun­da­tion (1942) which became the sec­ond story The Ency­lo­pe­dists
- Bri­dle and Sad­dle (1944) which became the third story The May­ors
- The Wedge (1944) which became The Traders
- The Big and the Lit­tle (1944) which beame The Mer­chant Princes

Foun­da­tion and Empire ( http://​amzn​.to/​W​P​P​fOs )
- Dead Hand (1945) — As The Gen­eral
- The Mule (1945)

Sec­ond Foun­da­tion ( http://​amzn​.to/​Y​O​Z​yTu )
- Now You See It… (1948)  as Search By The Mule
- And Now You Don’t (1949) as _Search By The Foundation)

While the bulk of his work was to come in later decades, Arthur C. Clarke, the last of the so called Big Three also began pub­lish­ing in the 1940s. Start­ing in 1948 with Against the Fall of Night ( http://​amzn​.to/​V​N​A​gCK ) which appeared in Star­tling Sto­ries and would later be revised and expanded into The City and the Stars ( http://​amzn​.to/​X​y​K​vfD ) in 1956.

Ray Brad­bury, another of the Golden Age giants, also began his pub­lish­ing career in 1947 with his first short story col­lec­tion and first book Dark Car­ni­val.

And of course there was George Orwell who pub­lished two of the best known sci­ence fic­tion works ever dur­ing the 1940s, although they are pri­mar­ily seen as polit­i­cal satires. Ani­mal Farm ( http://​amzn​.to/​1​4​L​G​jgU ) in 1945 and Nine­teen Eighty Four ( http://​amzn​.to/​V​N​B​eik )in 1949. While they are indeed polit­i­cal satires, the satire is pre­sented in unques­tion­ably sci­ence fictional/fantasy tropes.
Sci­ence Fic­tion In Comics — Planet Comics

Of course there had been ele­ments of sci­ence fic­tion in comics from the begin­ning, but Planet Comics which pub­lished monthly from 1940 through to 1949 and then bi-monthly and even­tu­ally quar­terly until 1953 was a direct spin-off of the pulp mag­a­zine Planet Sto­ries.

Not sur­pris­ingly then to style of sto­ries and the art­work were very sim­i­lar. The empha­sis was on space opera and the so called good girl art which fea­tured buxom women scant­ily clad. The empha­sis on attrac­tive females did result how­ever in a lot of sto­ries fea­tur­ing strong female protagonists.

Sci­ence Fic­tion Movies

The pulp sen­si­bil­ity of the mag­a­zines was well rep­re­sented in cin­e­mas by cliff-hanger seri­als. Includ­ing another out­ing for Flash Gor­don in Flash Gor­don Con­quers the Uni­verse ( http://​amzn​.to/​1​2​H​j​r3D ) in 1940. Bat­man ( http://​amzn​.to/​1​5​7​j​XaG ) in 1943, Bat­man and Robin ( http://​amzn​.to/​V​c​1​S7n ) in 1949 and King of the Rocket Men in 1949. The Bat­man seri­als are of note, not just for being the first film appear­ance of Bat­man, but for actu­ally intro­duc­ing con­cepts like the Bat­cave into Bat­man mythos and defin­ing what Alfred looked like.

There were many hor­ror movies dur­ing the 40s and they cer­tainly con­tained fan­tasy and scifi ele­ments. But rel­a­tively lit­tle that would be con­sid­ered sci­ence fic­tion by mod­ern stan­dards. How­ever, through­out the decade H. G. Wells influ­ence was felt with a string of Invis­i­ble movies inspired by his Invis­i­ble Man: The Invis­i­ble Man Returns (1940); The Invis­i­ble Woman (1940); The Invis­i­ble Agent (1942); The Invis­i­ble Man’s Revenge (1944); ( http://​amzn​.to/​1​2​H​j​74L )

Also of note is The Mighty Joe Young ( http://​amzn​.to/​1​2​H​j​3SB ) released in 1949 and pro­duced by the same team who had pre­vi­ously done King Kong.  The sto­ry­line is quite sim­i­lar, but the spe­cial effects are con­sid­er­ably supe­rior and the movie is still worth watch­ing for the stop-motion.

Index:   https://​plus​.google​.com/​u​/​0​/​1​1​7​6​6​8​3​9​2​7​5​0​5​7​9​2​9​2​6​0​9​/​p​o​s​t​s​/​4​L​H​u​o​y​t​7​31B
Tag: #The­His­to­ry­Of­ScienceFic­tion

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