Note: All the artwork in this article was created by the legendary Frank R. Paul.
Hugo Gernsback was a clever business man, even if he was a questionable Science Fiction writer. In the Spring of 1931 he created a contest where fans could offer up plots for professional writers to spin into stories. It was not his first contest, that had been a cover contest in Amazing Stories, where writers had to pen tales for pre-made artwork. This time, for a mere $110.00, Hugo added seven new stories to his Wonder Stories Quarterlies and achieved…. well, let’s see what he achieved, if anything.
In the editorial for the Spring 1931 Quarterly, Gernsback states: “…practically every reader of WONDER STORIES QUARTERLY, in his letters to the editor, has expressed ideas of what a good interplanetary story should be. In a good many cases, our authors come in for considerable criticism, the readers stating that they themselves could write better stories! Here, then is your chance to prove yourself as a creator of an interplanetary story and incidentally win a large prize.”
Hugo Gernsback can be credited with creating Science Fiction fandom, if by accident. He did this with the letter column in his first magazine, Amazing Stories, back in 1926. By publishing names and addresses of letter writers, fans could gather and collectively share their love of ‘Scientifiction’. Here with this contest, we can see Gernsback side with the readers over the writers. It was not this attitude so much as his extremely slow rate of pay that would force most of the professionals to flee his publications.
The rules of the plot contest were simple: create a short synopsis with a new plot and write it in less than 500 words. The manuscript had to be written legibly in pen or typed double-spaced. The contestant couldn’t be a published author. That was it. No fee. To make it even easier, Gernsback supplied a sample called “The Meteor Pest” about space insects who come from an asteroid and steal all the earth’s uranium. The Earthmen strike back with biological weapons and kill all the aliens, taking back their fissionable materials. Gernsback himself admits: “This simple plot is by no means a good one: and we are certain our readers will find much better material– far more detailed and complete, more intricate and far more original.”
The winners of the contest were as follows:
The first two stories appeared in the Fall 1931 issue. First place and $50.00 went to William Thurmond of Victoria, Texas who had his story “The Derelict of Space” written up by Ray Cummings. Of the stories in the contest, Gernsback points out: “It is noteworthy, and we are happy to say it, that it is not always the quantity that makes for success. In fact the first prize, awarded to Mr. Thurmond, was for one of the shortest plots published. By actual word count the entry contained only 137 words. But then, of course, it was because of the originality of the idea that the editors awarded Mr. Thurmond the first prize.”
By today’s standards the story is neither groundbreaking nor particularly interesting, being a love triangle in space. A scientist named Deely creates a time machine and takes his beautiful, young wife, Hilda, along, as well as the handsome pilot, Gerald Vane, and three others on the maiden voyage in time. Where Thurmond’s idea offers something new (in 1932) is that the machine is not a space machine as well. The time machine flies fifty years into the future to find empty space, for the Earth and the rest of the solar system have long since fled that location. It is here that Deely finds out he has been cuckolded and that everyone on the ship knew except him. He destroys the time mechanism, stranding them and they all slowly suffocate as the ship’s air leaks out. Before they meet their fate, Hilda reconciles with her husband to be frozen for all time in each other’s arms. The story contains an idea that H. G. Wells may not have considered back in 1896 then proceeds to present an earthly enough melodrama.
In the same issue, Second Place and $25.00 went to E. M. Johnston of Collingwood, Ontario who had Clark Ashton Smith to write “The Planet Entity”. A strange ship appears in a scene reminiscent of Harry Bates’ “Farewell to the Master” (written nine years later). A group of men enter the spacecraft and are shanghaied to Mars, where they find the canals are actually the branches of an enormous singular plant. This godlike creature has an offer for humanity, an exchange of knowledge for water. The inevitable war between the conservatives and the new converts shatters three worlds. Smith’s ending is oddly ambiguous as to who fought on the right side. Of all the pros included in the contest, Clark Ashton Smith is perhaps the most famous today with the possible exception of Jack Williamson and Manly Wade Wellman, both professionals who have won the Lifetime Achievement Award for Fantasy. Smith was part of the Lovecraft Circle found predominately in Weird Tales. E. M. Johnson may have enjoyed the $25.00 but he might have been more pleased to be a footnote in the career of such a famous poet/writer.
The Winter 1932 issue featured the Third Place winner and its $15.00 went to Allen Glasser of New York City. A. Rowley Hilliard, a writer little remembered today perhaps because he only wrote eight stories, turned the plot into “The Martian”. An unnamed Martian is exiled to Earth, where he has to make due. He works in a circus as a freak and all his schemes fail until he destroys himself. Glasser was an active fan, who later penned a handful of stories, but wrote many letters to the different SF pulps and even published his own fanzine called, The Planet.
Also in that issue was the Fourth Place winner who got $10.00, Everett C. Smith of Lawrence, Mass. His plot was written into a story by R. F. Starzl and was called “The Metal Moon”. This tale of Earth explorers who find a civilization beyond the Asteroid Belt, proposes two races of people descended from Earth. The First Race are supermen though dull-witted. The Second Race, the slave race, look more like regular humans but suffer terrible mutations because they have to work in the dark and radioactive under-belly. The Earthmen side with each race at different times (while forgetting to remain neutral), but are ultimately declared slaves. They escape in a rocket that is build in secret and finally head for home. The binary race is pretty obviously descended from H. G. Wells but the ideas used will surface again in SF in the stories of Cordwainer Smith as well as David Gerrold and Oliver Crawford’s Star Trek episode “The Cloud-Miners” (February 28, 1969). The metallic moon has haunting echoes in George Lucas’s Deathstar. Starzl was an important early writer who left the field to run a family newspaper.
The Spring 1932 held the Fifth Place story and the $5.00 went to Max Jergovic. Manly Wade Wellman wrote his synopsis into “Rebels of the Moon”. This story features a space super-agent, Lt. O’Grady, who has come to the Moon covertly to investigate suspicious activity. What he finds is a secret stash of rocket fuel, originally intended for an exploration to the planet Venus, but O’Grady is captured and brought into the scheme. Dr. Von Rickopf and his crew have discovered diamonds inside the Moon. The Venus project is being diverted to allow Rickopf to take the diamonds back to Earth, using a secret stockpile in the Amazon. O’Grady has to join them or die. With help from the radioman Manvel and some others who were forced to serve the villains, O’Grady steals the ship and intends to take it on its original course for Venus. Manvel uses a radio-controlled gun to detonate the remaining fuel and blow up Von Rickopf and his pursuit rockets. Wellman is perhaps better known for horror and fantasy but wrote an equal amount of SF as well as comic books. This story would have prepared him to write one of the few Captain Future novels not written by Edmond Hamilton, The Solar Invasion (Fall 1946).
Also in that issue was the Sixth Place story and its $2.50 prize went to Lawrence Schwartzmann. Jack Williamson, a later master of Science Fiction, wrote the plot into “Red Slag of Mars”. This story supposes a voyage to Mars that began an interplanetary war. Five years after the conflict, Dr. Nyland Eldred is dropped off in the Sahara by a Martian craft then arrested for his treason against humanity. Sidney Tancred, who was on that initial flight to Mars as cameraman, seeks out Eldred for an explanation, for Eldred refuses to testify in his own defense. We learn the story of the first trip to Mars that had Eldred discovering a Martian ruin that could unlock the vanished Martian culture. War breaks out on earth and the international crew take sides and begin to kill each other off. Eldred finds an underground city where the Martians still live. With their help he begins a daring plan to drive all humanity to work together against the Martians. Williamson ends the story with some first class writing, as Eldred, the man who saved all human kind, proudly walks off to the execution chamber. In my opinion, (Hugo can disagree with me), this was the best of the Contest stories.
The Summer 1932 included the final Seventh Place story and its $2.50 prize. The last spot went to John Michel of Brooklyn, New York. The story was written by pro Raymond Z. Gallun into “The Menace From Mercury”. Clive Torrence goes on a space cruise on the liner Thelon. Later he recaps the entire plot to a group of nervous student travelers so we’ll let him tell us: “…The Thelon was ordered to investigate flashes of light which were visible on this planet [Mercury]. Arriving here, we found in the valley, the strange race of beings and their machines. Our ship was trapped by the force shield which you can see overhead. Then a peculiar kind of radioactive fire was accidentally started in the valley….” To break down the force field, Torrence decides to drive a shuttle boat into the base of the machine that creates the shield. The captain of the Thelon, Patok, a gnome-like Martian who is fond of his alien yo-yo, wants to go but Torrence insists. While the Earthman drives his shuttle downward to crash, Patok shows up in another shuttle, and pulls him to safety with his yo-yo. The scene warranted the cover. It is the kind of plot that we would see in one form or another on Star Trek. Gallun was an important early Science Fiction writer, but his world-traveling gaps in his career and the lack of major novels have relegated him to the Age of Wonder. John Michel would become a writer in his own right as John B. Michel, penning two dozen stories as well as working in comics.
But the Seventh Place story wasn’t the end of the matter as you might think. In that issue Gernsback extended the contest with new $10.00 prizes. Gernsback is hopeful when he says: “…If the results warrant it, we will continue to award the $10.00 prizes at the expiration of the year set for this contest; and will continue it as long as we receive good plots.” In truth there were only two more Quarterlies to appear and neither included contest winners.
Gernsback furthers his rules for the contest by pointing out some examples of poor ideas based in part on a letter by George W. Race. Poor stories are those:
1. That pictures people of other worlds as being just like Earthmen, and (as some authors put it) speak English!
2. That shows our hero going to another world to rescue a fair princess from an evil priest;
3. That shows our hero going to another world to single-handed overcome a great army;
4. That shows our hero going to another world to conquer a horde of strange beasts;
From this I can only assume that many of the contestants had been sending in recycled Edgar Rice Burroughs stories. “Rebellion on Venus” by Edward Morris and John Bertin must have passed this test for it was the first and only tale to receive a prize. This story supposes a corporation having total control of Venus, much as the British ruled India under the British India Company. Dr. Harrington and his daughter, Sheila, go to Venus to finish his important work on nuclear engines, but the Allen family who owns the Company plans to also get rid of Harrington, after the work is done. Dr. H is suspected of being sympathetic with the rebels of Venus, pioneers who first staked the planet but have fallen out with the new owners (much as the Metis under Louis Riel responded to the Government of Canada in the 1880s). The ship headed for Venus is destroyed by a meteor storm and all the big players end up in the Venusian jungle, being lead by Bradford the Younger, a rebel leader who was headed home to be tried and executed along with his father. The castaways join up with the rebel forces but Allen bombs the mines until they accept terms. The Company has no intention of keeping the peace, but wiping out the rebels. It is only when Harrington saves the day with new nuclear weapons, that Bradford the Elder throws down the Company forever, leading a new independent Venus Nelson Mandela like, going from prisoner to President.
The political questions about colonization are intriguing in this story. Sadly, most SF sees the process as a glorious adventure, with little consideration for the locals. Later writers such as Leigh Brackett in “Citadel of Lost Ships” (Planet Stories, March 1943) and Ursula K. Leguin in “The Word For World is Forest” (Again, Dangerous Visions, 1972) would address colonization decades later. Another fun bit, Bertin makes the different types of positions aboard ship designated by color uniforms, an idea we know well from TV’s Star Trek.
With “Rebellion on Venus” the Interplanetary Plot Contest came to an end. Did it achieve what Gernsback had hoped? If improving Science Fiction, expanding its content and ideas, was the goal, then it failed. None of the contest stories was particularly important in the annals of SF. They are merely interesting footnotes. In this respect, Gernsback may have been more interested in the gimmick than the result. I suspect he wanted to build reader loyalty as he had done previously at Amazing Stories, a magazine that was now his rival.
If increased circulation had been the goal, then it failed. The Quarterlies ended with Winter 1933. Wonder Stories would go on without the companion magazine until March 1936, when Hugo would sell the title to Ned Pines, who would rebrand it Thrilling Wonder Stories and begin a new chapter in Science Fiction Pulp publishing.
So what did he achieve then? Again, more by accident than intent, he gave more power to the fans. This sense of entitlement would be a two-edged sword. While on the one-hand, young readers like Isaac Asimov and Fredrick Pohl would wonder, “Could I be a Science Fiction writer one day?”; but on the other you have writers like Fredric Brown hiding themselves away in Taos, New Mexico to avoid the readers who “want to own it all”. Brown would pen a scathing attack on fanboys everywhere in his 1949 novel, What Mad Universe? Not in Mystery circles, Romance circles, even Western circles, do fans have the power that Science Fiction fans do. This is in large part thanks to Hugo Gernsback, who knew he had to make them loyal if he was going to on publishing magazines. We call Gernsback the Father of Modern Science Fiction, but perhaps a more accurate title would be “The Father of Fandom”.
