Ray A. Palmer is best remembered as the dictatorial editor of Amazing Stories and Fantastic Adventures who fostered the Shaver Mystery and later UFOs. What people forget is as part of the Ziff-Davis chain of Pulps he edited many other Pulps as well. Mammoth Adventure, Mammoth Detective, Mammoth Western, and, of course, Mammoth Mystery. This was very important for the Science Fiction Mystery because Palmer was key to its birth.
Isaac Asimov complained in the early 1950s that a true Science Fiction Mystery had not been written until he penned The Caves of Steel (Galaxy, October-December 1953). His complaint is based on writers not using “fair play” rules such as including all the clues. While this may be true – I am continuously on the hunt for a story that proves him wrong – the groundwork for all SF Mysteries starts in 1939, with Ray Palmer and Eando Binder.
As you will see, Dr. Asimov will come into this again.
The January 1939 issue of Amazing Stories featured a story, “I, Robot” by two brothers, who wrote under the pseudonym “Eando” Binder. The opening story stars the now famous robot, Adam Link, and his personal narration of events. This was groundbreaking in that no one had ever told the story of a robot from the machine’s point-of-view before. It was also the first Science Fiction themed crime story. The story unfolds so that it looks like Link has done what all “killer robots” do in Pulp stories, murdered his creator. But Link is innocent. The story ends with Adam headed for destruction and him lamenting: “Ironic, isn’t it, that I have the very feelings you are so sure I lack?”
The Adam Link series did not stay in the Mystery groove. The sequel “The Trial of Adam Link” (Amazing Stories, July 1939) is the second half of the crime drama, with the final death sentence (which gets repealed) and another sequel and another. Eventually “Adam Link, Robot Detective” shows up in Amazing Stories, May 1940. This tale is filled with clichés from the Mystery Pulps like crime bosses and “being taken for a ride”. The dressing is there but not any actual puzzle.
Here’s where knowing something about Ray Palmer becomes helpful. He was always looking for an angle to exploit. If military stories were in then some titles had an army or navy flavor. It was like that for 1940. Mystery was hot after “I, Robot” so a list of titles shows how Palmer tailored his contents lists:
“John Hale Convicts a Killer” by Ed Earl Repp
“Mystery of the Collapsing Skyscrapers” by Harl Vincent
“The Case of the Murdered Savants” by Thornton Ayre
“Murder in the Time-World’ by Malcolm Jameson
“Mystery of the Mind Machine” by Don Wilcox
“X-Ray Murder” by Milton Kaletsky
“The Accidental Murders” by Robert Moore Williams
“Murder in the Past” by John York Cabot
“Killer’s Turnabout’ by William P. McGivern
“Mystery on Planetoid Ten” by James Norman
“Mystery on Base Ten” by William P. McGivern
“The Case of the Mesozoic Monsters” by Thornton Ayre
Again, we have to remember that Ziff-Davis like any other Pulp chain was not a literary club but a money-driven machine. Writers like William P. McGivern and Robert Moore Williams wrote for all the Z-D Pulps. Contributions for any month would include Westerns, detective stories and Science Fiction titles by Palmer’s regulars. After the Pulps, these writers focused on the genres they liked best, such as McGivern writing mystery novels like The Big Heat (1953) and The Caper of the Golden Bulls (1966). Robert Moore Williams would not make that transition but is best remembered for his Edgar Rice Burroughs knock-offs he wrote for Palmer, the Jongor series.
After Pearl Harbor, the Mystery flavored titles slowly disappear for more and more that featuring words like “Convoy”, “Bomb” and “Marines”. Palmer’s focused had shifted with the war. Later he would take the strange ideas of Richard Shaver to drive Amazing Stories’ sales to record highs. But the idea that Science Fiction could, at least in appearance anyway, be a Mystery was cemented. The Pulps would bring us such SF detectives as Frank Belknap Long’s John Carstairs as well as SF crime stories by Robert Leslie Bellem, Robert Bloch and Mickey Spillane (well, Howard Browne).
As I promised, Isaac Asimov is back before the end. Ike would pen what is certainly the best SF Mystery series with The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sky and The Robots of Dawn, all featuring robots and vetted by the “fair play rules” but he would have one more connection with Eando Binder too. When the good doctor collected his robot stories, he borrowed the title I, Robot from that original Adam Link story. He did so with Otto Binder’s permission. As for Palmer, despite the fact that he published Asimov’s very first story, “Marooned Off Vesta”, Ike wrote:
On October 21, 1938, there came a letter of acceptance from Raymond A. Palmer, who was then editor of Amazing and who has since achieved his greatest fame as a leading figure in the flying saucers craze and in other forms of occultism. To this day I have never met Mr. Palmer personally.
