When you don’t have plenty of money, sometimes you just have to settle for second best. Or you have to be more creative. Certainly this is the philosophy that Ted White had when he published Fantastic in the 1970s. But White wasn’t the first editor to work under such difficulties. One of the first was Fred Pohl, as editor of Super Science Stories and its sister magazine, Astonishing Stories. Since Fred knew everybody in Science Fiction (remember it was a very small world in 1939) he could cajole his friends and acquaintances into sending him their rejects, fanzine stuff and pity offerings. From these he created two magazines that, though not brilliant, feature many pleasant surprises, including stories that were written under pseudonyms.
Some were Gabriel Barclay (Manly Wade Wellman and a different story, C. M. Kornbluth), Paul Edmonds (Henry Kuttner), Ivar Towers (C. M. Kornbluth and Dirk Wylie and in another case, Richard Wilson), Lee Gregor (Milton A. Rothman), S. D. Gottesman (Fredrick Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth), Hugh Raymond and Alan Barrister (John B. Michel), Lyle Monroe (Robert A. Heinlein), Paul Dennis Lavond (Frederick Pohl, C. M. Kornbluth and Robert A. W. Lowdnes), Arthur Merlyn (James Blish), Wilfred Owen Morley (Robert A. W. Lowdnes), Robert Willey (Willy Ley), Martin Pearson (Donald A. Wolheim), Dean D. O’Brien (Earl and Otto Binder). It is fun to try and figure them out after you read the stories. In one case (“The Outpost at Altark), Donald A. Wolheim used his friend, Robert A. W. Lowdnes’s name as a pseudonym. Now that gets complicated!
There are many reasons to use pseudonyms but I think only in Heinlein’s case was it done to protect a name in a better market. Heinlein was willing to sell his duds but not to allow them to tarnish his reputation at Astounding. Other Astounding writers (or future ones) did not have this problem, such as L. Sprague de Camp, Isaac Asimov and L. Ron Hubbard.
In the case of writers like Wellman and Kuttner, they often chose a certain pseudonym for a certain magazine, since they wrote so prolifically. At Planet Stories, Kuttner was C. H. Liddell while at Thrilling Wonder he was Kelvin Kent. Oddly, both Wellman and Kuttner appeared in the Pohl magazines under their own names as well. In other cases, a name was created for a writing jam involving two or more writers. These collaborations would lead to later classics like The Space Merchants (1953) by Fred Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth. Fred Pohl would appear as James MacCreigh to hide the fact that the editor was contributing to his own magazine. Pohl would use the pseudonym again in Weird Tales when he and Isaac Asimov published “Legal Rites” (September 1950). “Pendulum” by Ray Bradbury and Henry Hasse (Super Science Stories, November 41) is unusual as Bradbury collaborated rarely. (This one is actually a fanzine reprint, from Bradbury’s Future Fantasia, 1939). The most famous example of a Bradbury collab was “Lorelei of the Red Mists” with Leigh Brackett (Planet Stories, Summer 1946). Bradbury did not use pseudonyms though.
Other surprises come about without the duplicity, writers clearly under their own names. These surprises might have been ignored back in the day but are great fun for today’s reader. These include:
Isaac Asimov’s first series, the Tweenies, with “Half-Breed” in Astonishing Stories, February 1940 and its sequel (his first! and his first cover), “Half-Breeds of Venus” in December 1940. Several of the Good Doctor’s first sales appear in Pohl magazines, like “Strange Playfellow” in Super Science Stories, September 1940. Pohl had changed the title, but Asimov changed it back and it has gone done in history as “Robbie”, the first of his famous Robot series. Asimov had a tendency to discount these stories since they weren’t sold to John W. Campbell, but I find them fun and fascinating. No doubt, these first sales, even though small, were essential in getting Asimov to that higher level of writing. “The Weapon” (Super Science Stories, May 1942) must not have been one of these because Asimov actually used an alias, H. B. Ogden.
The second issue of Astonishing Stories, April 1940, features Clifford D. Simak’s “The Space-Beasts”, an early effort that has a charm that differs from his Astounding stuff. The third issue has “The Devil’s Pocket” by F. E. Hardart. Hardart was not a pseudonym but one of those obscure writers who could have gone on to do more. He wrote only one other tale, “The Beast of Space” the following year in Comet, July 1941. August of 1940 featured “The Deadly Swarm” by Edwin K. Sloat, his final Science Fiction tale before veering off into the Western Pulps. It’s a fond farewell. This issue also saw the return of Neil R. Jones’ Zoromes from Amazing Stories. The series ran a dozen stories in Amazing before Ray Palmer took over the editing and must have given Jones the boot. The Zoromes would appear nine times in Astonishing and Super Science Stories, beginning with “The Cat-Men of Aemt”. He also published stories in his Durma Rangue series. Super Science Stories, September 1940 saw “The Radium Bugs” by Helen Weinbaum, by the sister of one of SF greatest writers.
Jones was not the only old pro finding it hard to publish in the new magazines. Fred Pohl also got stories from Harl Vincent, Raymond Z. Gallun, Otis Adelbert Kline, Ray Cummings, Ralph Milne Farley and J. Harvey Haggard and E. E. “Doc” Smith’s “The Vortex Blasters”. More importantly was the Pohl magazines provided a market for new writers like James Blish, Leigh Brackett, Harry Walton, Alfred Bester, Chad Oliver and Wilson Tucker, all names locked in history now but back then shiny and new. He also used several by the British author, John Russell Fearn, under that name and pseudonyms like Polton Cross and Thornton Ayre.
A word should be given here to the artwork. While there is much that looks fanzine-worthy there are examples of excellent pieces by Hannes Bok, Damon Knight, who would become a writing and editing powerhouse, who began his career drawing. He did the illustrations for “Herbert West, Reanimator” in Weird Tales. He appears here too. As the magazines went on there was work by Leo Morey of Amazing Stories fame and the master, Virgil Finlay. Jack Binder, brother of Earl and Otto, also appears. The Gabriel Mayorga covers have an airbrushed look that isn’t to my taste but they did give the magazines a look that wasn’t recycled Frank R. Paul or Wesso. Fred Pohl stepped down from editing at the end of 1941, becoming an agent, the first to sell exclusively Science Fiction. Both mags continued on under a new editor, Alden H. Norton, (and later by Ejler Jakobsson) who would publish “Tumithak and the Towers of Fire” by Charles R. Tanner (Super Science Stories, November 1941), another sequel from Amazing Stories. Also of note is “Mimic” by Donald A. Wolheim (Astonishing Tales, December 1942), was turned into a movie, Guillermo Del Toro’s 1997 Mimic. This is just a small sampling of what you’ll find in these magazines of old. I hope you find other treasures as well and tell me about them.
