Unknown Worlds of Science Fantasy
Unknown Worlds was an important magazine for Fantasy fiction. Before its run between 1939 and 1943, the fantastic genre was found in Science Fiction magazines like its sister, Astounding Science-Fiction and in Horror periodicals like Weird Tales. Both of these types of Pulps were of European origins in that Gernback based Amazing Stories on Verne and Wells, and Farnsworth Wright on the ghost stories of England, and classics like Dracula and Frankenstein, while the Shudder Pulps revived the Grand Guignol of France.
Robert E. Howard created Sword & Sorcery in the pages of Weird Tales, giving us another American style of Fantasy, closely allied to the private detective, the cowboy and the space captain, but its roots were also European. The tales of Conan began with a love of “the Northern thing”, or Scandinavian myths, the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf, and the tales of Ireland. John W. Campbell, in creating Unknown in 1939, gave us a truly American form of Fantasy.
Campbell’s Philosophy
Campbell’s editorial philosophy was similar to that which he used at Astounding. Magic is just a form of Science. Science has rules, so therefore Magic must too. Perhaps the only writer to begin this very American way of seeing Fantasy before him was L. Frank Baum and his Oz books. Baum wanted to create an American Fairy Tale with Dorothy and her companions. Those books, on a very small and early level, have a similar attitude to Campbell. Good old American pragmatism can put Magic in its place.
Unknown, later re-titled Unknown Worlds, featured many stories with this mind-set. The Harold Shea stories of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, beginning with “The Roaring Trumpet” (May 1940) and “The Mathematics of Magic” (August 1940) placed an ordinary man in the worlds of myth for some good old-fashioned Mark Twain style poking. They also penned The Land of Unreason (October 1941) together.
Others Follow
Other followed Campbell’s lead. Norvel W. Page produced a two volume series in the Conan vein about Wan Tengri. Campbell gave Fritz Leiber a home for his two rogues Fafhrd & Gray Mouser when Weird Tales made a format change and walked away from Sword & Sorcery. (This series never really embraced the Campbell philosophy but John knew a good thing when he saw it.) Other authors like Robert A. Heinlein, Robert Bloch, L. Ron Hubbard, Jack Williamson, Eric Frank Russell, Alfred Bester, Frank Belknap Long, even artist, Hannes Bok, produced works in this vein.
Unknown ran for thirty-nine issues, from March 1939 to October 1943. The Pulp was popular but wartime paper shortages forced Campbell to choose between his children. Astounding was his darling. He had every intention of reviving the title after 1945 but never did. Despite this frustrating demise, the spirit of Unknown lived on in a series of novels that appeared after 1943.
Fletcher Pratt
Fletcher Pratt was the logical choice for continuing Campbell’s approach. On his own he produced one of the more unusual fantasy novels of the Post War era (which was not particularly kind to Fantasy as authors often re-tailored Fantasy stories for SF magazines.) The Well of the Unicorn (1948) was published under the pseudonym George U. Fletcher. A book based on history, Pratt’s real passion, it offers a Fantasy world where the usual easy answers don’t work including the magical Well of the Unicorn. Those who drink from it gain magical peace. The book questions over and over the role of war and honor and ends with a very modern peace is hard-won through vigilance. This depth has made it a critics’ favorite but it has also proven popular as a reprint paperback, first with Lancer then later Ballantine/Del Rey Books.
L. Sprague de Camp
L. Sprague de Camp was equally qualified to continue in a Campbell mode. He, of course, had written for the magazine when it was still going. De Camp published The Tritionian Ring in 1951 along with a series of short stories. This novel follows Vakar of Lorsk as he locates star metal to make a sword that will bring the gods under control. Some have compared it to Conan the Conqueror but I found it was more of an expansion of John W. Campbell’s “The Elder Gods” (Unknown, October 1939). Both stories deal with how humans take control of their destiny from the gods.
De Camp wrote several series after Pusad that all share his and Campbell’s attitude. He and Pratt produced three more Harold Shea novels:
The Castle of Iron (1950)
The Wall of Serpents (Fantasy Fiction, June 1953)
The Green Magician (Beyond Fantasy Fiction, November 1954)
(Other authors penned new Enchanter tales after 1990.)
Novaria Series
De Camp uses several different characters in this series with a demon (basically an alien from another dimension) forced into servitude and a king, Jorian of Xylar, who was supposed to be beheaded but escapes and has adventures. All these stories are lightly humorous (not Zanth-level overkill) with a feeling that Science dwells somewhere behind everything.
The Goblin Tower (1968)
The Clocks of Iraz (1971)
The Fallible Fiend (Fantastic December 1972 February1973)
“The Emperor’s Fan” (Astounding: John W. Campbell Memorial Anthology, 1973)
The Unbeheaded King (1983)
The Honorable Barbarian (1989)
The Incorporated Knight series
Another humorous series told in short stories first like “Two Yards of Dragon” (from Flashing Swords #3, 1976). Despite the different locations, all of de Camp’s stories, Pusad, Novaria and this series, could exist in one big Campbell-esque universe.
The Incorporated Knight (1987)
The Pixilated Peeress (1991)
In a strange kind of schizophrenic move, L. Sprague de Camp would become the editor and leader on the Conan series for Gnome Press then later Lancer and ACE Books. When he wrote of Conan he clearly put most of his Campbellian feelings aside. He also had Lin Carter to keep him on the Robert E. Howard path.
Poul Anderson
Poul Anderson, like his pal, Gordie Dickson (below) made his living writing Science Fiction, a lot of Science Fiction. Occasionally he would pen a Fantasy. Sometimes Anderson would mine his Scandinavian roots and write a masterpiece like The Broken Sword or Hrolf Kraki’s Saga. He wrote a biography of Harald Hardrede in The Last Viking as well as series set in Roman Britain and Midsummer’s Tempest (1974) using Shakespearean elements. But he also wrote a few books that were more in the Campbell mode. Three Hearts and Three Lions (F&SF, September October 1953) is equally a classic though it is couched in SF. (Larry Niven would do the same thing in his Warlock series.)
It should be pointed out here that many of the series started as stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, edited by Anthony Boucher. Boucher was an Unknown author and had originally conceived F&SF as The Magazine of Fantasy. Commercial constraints require the SF to be included.
The Operation Chaos Series
This series supposes a world where the nature of God has been quantified by Science. Magic and Science are hard to distinguish. Operatives use magic to win the world war. Anderson ties this series with others by having characters cross over.
Operation Chaos (1971):
“Operation Afreet” (F&SF, September 1956)
“Operation Salamander” (F&SF, January 1957)
“Operation Incubus” (F&SF, October 1959)
“Operation Changeling” (F&SF, May June 1969)
Operation Luna (1999)
Later in his career, Poul did some straight S&S with Conan the Rebel (1980) as well as stories in the Thieves’ World series.
Robert A. Heinlein
Heinlein was one of Campbell’s top three authors (along with Isaac Asimov and L. Ron Hubbard). By 1963 he had left magazine publishing for the writing of SF juveniles and then onto paperback bestsellers. After A Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) and his last juvenile, Podkayne of Mars (1963) but before later books like The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, Bob took a break to write Glory Road (1963), a novel that straddles SF and Fantasy. On an almost Oz-like trip, Evelyn Cyril Gordon goes on a quest for the Egg, a cybernetic device, following the Glory Road. He faces many opponents including the swordsman Cyrano de Bergerac. Heinlein would take characters to an actual Oz in his controversial The Number of the Beast (1979).
Gordon R. Dickson
The idea for the dragon series was first used in “St. Dragon and the George” (F&SF, September 1957). Dickson returned to it during the fantasy boom of the 1970s to write his first full novel about the dragon Gorbash and his draconian culture that hates knights. Jim Eckert finds himself inside the scaly beast and has to learn how to be a dragon. The author uses the Unknown trick of reversing expectations to get a new look at something. The legend of St. George is well-known from stories like Kenneth Grahame’s “The Reluctant Dragon” (1898) which took the idea half way. Dickson goes all the way to seeing the world through dragon eyes. He returned to the series in the 1990s, basically writing a new book a year for a decade.
The Dragon and the George (1976)
The Dragon Knight (1990)
The Dragon on the Border (1992)
The Dragon at War (1992)
The Dragon, the Earl and the Troll (1994)
The Dragon and the Djinn (1996)
The Dragon & the Gnarly King (1997)
The Dragon in Lyonesse (1998)
The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent (2000)
Christopher Stasheff
The Warlock Series
Stasheff wasn’t the first writer to begin a series with Science Fiction before veering into something closer to Fantasy. Andre Norton famously began The Witch World series with an SF device of transferring Simon Tregarth to Witch World. The series quickly becomes a Sword & Sorcery style saga. Christopher Stasheff follows in her footsteps with a very obvious SF set-up, a man in a spaceship with a robot horse arriving at a planet where Magic is the deal. This allows Rod Gallowglass to use his scientific mind-set to deal with supernatural problems. Like when a werewolf attacks you, beat him with garlic sausage. The humor is light, never quite breaking us out of out suspension of disbelief. Stasheff made a career of this series, writing others but only occasionally.
Escape Velocity (1983)
The Warlock in Spite of Himself (1969)
King Kobold (1971)
The Warlock Unlocked (1982)
The Warlock Enraged (1985)
The Warlock Wandering (1986)
The Warlock Is Missing (1986)
The Warlock Heretical (1987)
The Warlock’s Companion (1988)
The Warlock Insane (1989)
The Warlock Rock (1990)
Warlock and Son (1991)
The Warlock’s Last Ride (2004)
Rogue Wizard
A Wizard in Mind (1995)
A Wizard in Bedlam (1979)
A Wizard in Absentia (1993)
A Wizard in War (1995)
A Wizard in Peace (1996)
A Wizard in Chaos (1997)
A Wizard in Midgard (1998)
A Wizard and a Warlord (2000)
A Wizard in the Way (2000)
A Wizard in a Feud (2001)
Warlock’s Heirs
M’Lady Witch (1994)
Quicksilver’s Knight (1995)
The Spell-Bound Scholar (1999)
Here Be Monsters (2001)
A Wizard in Rhyme
Her Majesty’s Wizard (1986)
The Oathbound Wizard (1993)
The Witch Doctor (1994)
The Secular Wizard (1995)
My Son, the Wizard (1997)
The Haunted Wizard (2000)
The Crusading Wizard (2000)
The Feline Wizard (2000)
Roger Zelazny
Wizard World
Roger Zelazny wrote many times in the Fantasy mode. His Dilvish the Damned begins as a Dunsany style series then becomes more modern in tone. His most famous series, The Amber Chronicles, also mix Science and Magic, as do Hugo Winners like Lord of Light (1968) but the books that most fall into a Campbell dichotomy are the Wizard World books. Here he directly sets Magic against Science.
Conclusion
John W. Campbell’s influence was wide-reaching. Fantasy, especially American Fantasy, would never be quite the same again. John clearly saw a connection between readers of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and his policy of “Magic versus Science” drew them even closer together. Whether you like to have Dorothy pull back the curtain and reveal magic is a humbug or not, is a matter of taste. I usually don’t care for it, but on occasion can buy-in long enough to enjoy this style of Fantasy fiction. When the writer is someone of talent like these authors mentioned here, the transition is much easier.
I am sure I haven’t included every author influenced by JWC in this way. Let me know who your Science versus Magic favorites are.
I enjoyed your review across the genre but I really expected to see you mention Jack Vance who created a very formal system of magic in his Dying Earth series. It is very suited to fantasy gaming because of its rigid system where magicians have to memorize a spell. Most can only manage one or two at a time but more advanced adepts could memorize three or more. That is why magical talismans are so important in his world as they serve as a backup if the wizard is involved in a battle and runs out of spells.
I guess in my mind I think of The Dying Earth as Sword & Sorcery more than SF though you can make the case.