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Early del Rey

LESTER DEL KEY

DOUBLEDAY & COMPANY, INC. GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

Astounding Scltnct Fiction. April 1938

Octo-btr 1939

Science Fiction. November 1939

Astounding Scttnci Fiction, January 1940

for Astounding Science Fiction, August 1940

Unknown, January 1940

Astounding Scltnct Fiction, April 1940

Unknown, February 1941

for Astounding Science Fiction, August 1940

Astounding Science Fiction, June 1942

for Unknown Worlds, August 1942

Astounding Science Fiction, October 1942

Astounding Science Fiction, May 1943

Astounding Science Fiction, June 1943

for Astounding Science Fiction, February 1944

Fiction Quarterly, November 1951

Astounding Science Fiction, May 1945

World Adventures, July 1950

Combined with Science Fiction Stories, July-August 1950

Future Science Fiction, July 1952

Future Combined with Science Fiction Stories, May 1951

Astounding Science Fiction, November 1949

Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1951

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to

actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

To the memory of

John W. Campbell, a great editor, who taught me to -write.

And to Howard DeVore, who proved himself a friend.

Contents

Parti

1. THE FAITHFUL

2. CROSS OF FIRE

3. ANYTHING

4. HABIT

5. THE SMALLEST GOD

6. THE STARS LOOK DOWN

7. DOUBLED IN BRASS

8. REINCARNATE

9. CARILLON OF SKULLS

10. DONE WITHOUT EAGLES

11. MY NAME IS LEGION

12. THOUGH POPPIES GROW Part II

13. LUNAR LANDING

14. FIFTH FREEDOM

15. WHOM THE GODS LOVE

16. THOUGH DREAMERS DIE

17. FOOL'S ERRAND

18. THE ONE-EYED MAN

19. AND THE DARKNESS

20. SHADOWS OF EMPIRE

21. UNREASONABLE FACSIMILE

22. CONDITIONED REFLEX

23. OVER THE TOP

24. WIND BETWEEN THE WORLDS

APPENDIX

Part I

The Early del Rey

I never had any serious intention of being a writer until I found that I was

one by a sort of slip of the lip. And for thirteen years after I made my first

sale, I never considered myself a professional writer. Putting words on paper

was just a (sometimes) lucrative hobby to fall back on when I wasn't doing

something else. Even today, after thirty-seven years of selling stories, with

about forty books and several million words in print, I can't get as

compulsive about writing as I ihould.

I am a compulsive reader, however, and always have been. That began during my

first year of schooling when a marvelous teacher taught me to read well before

I could even pronounce many of the words correctly. There were no extensive

magazine stands or good libraries in the little farming community of

southeastern Minnesota where I grew up. But I was lucky. My father had an

excellent home library. I ploughed my way happily through the complete works

of Darwin, Gibbons' Decline and Fall, and the marvelous works of Jules Verne

and H. G. Wells. I learned to enjoy Shakespeare without really knowing the

difference between a play and a novel. And I spent about equal time going

through the Bible several times and reading the collected works of Robert

Ingersoll.

By all the standard criteria, I should have had a miserable childhood. We

often moved from one poor farm to another—acting as northern sharecroppers, if

you like—and there were plenty of times when we didn't have much to eat. I was

expected to do most of a man's hard manual labor in the woods and fields from

the age of nine. But the truth is that I look back on it all as a very happy

period. And reading had a lot to do with that, along with a deep sense of

emotional security given by my father. Also, there were many times when the

dollar-a-day wage I earned when working with my father was supplemented by the

kind loan of some popular work of fiction from the farmer for whom we worked.

I read a lot of books after I should have been sleeping, with no light other

than full moonlight! People also saved their used magazines and gave them to

me.

In 1927, when I was barely twelve, my father moved to a small town where I

could have a chance to attend high school, and my horizons were suddenly

broadened by the availability of books and magazines from quite a good local

library. It was there I discovered the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as well

as quite a few

early works that could be called science fiction. Then when a friend lent me a

1929 copy of Wonder Stories Quarterly, I became a total addict to that branch

of literature. I left the familiar Earth behind and explored the craters of

the Moon and walked the dead sea bottoms of dying Mars—and I never fully

returned from those trips.

This isn't going to be a biography. I intend consistently in these

introductory and commentary passages to skim over things and avoid a lot of

names and events that aren't relevant to my purpose—which is to show the

development of a writer of science fiction. But I have to state that my life

wasn't all introverted seclusion and reading; that pattern seems to fit a

number of those who did become science fiction fans and writers, but it never

applied to me. I had my circle of friends, and sports were as much a part of

my life as reading and working. I was always small and thin, but I managed to

be chosen pitcher in baseball or quarterback in football for our informal back

lot games. In winter, skating and skiing were constant sources of pleasure.

And I managed to indulge in at least the normal amount of damfool youthful

follies!

In the last year of high school, I began writing—but hardly for the usual

reason. I had managed to save up ten dollars for an old Remington #2

typewriter—the kind that required the typist to lift the cylinder to see what

was written underneath. And the company that sold it had graciously included a

ten-cent manual of touch typing, which I mastered in a few weeks. That left me

with the problem of finding something to do with the machine I'd coveted so

long. I solved it by inventing stories to type out—including a very long

novel. But I never took them seriously, or bothered to submit them. I'd read

too much good fiction not to know that my results were pretty dreadful,

despite what my friends dutifully told me. The stories were fun and they

improved my typing. That was enough reward.

But they led to some surprising other results. I never expected to go to

college. Few people from my background in those days went beyond high school.

Besides, while my grades were good, they weren't exceptional. But my old

friend, the librarian, had seen some of my fiction. She was determined that I

must go on to further education. I have no idea how long she worked at her

project, but she succeeded. She traced down a long-forgotten uncle of mine who

edited a weekly labor newspaper in Washington, D.C., and secured his ready

promise that I could live with him. Then she managed to secure a partial

scholarship for me at George Washington University. So, in 1931, at the age of

sixteen, I headed eastward in search of higher education. I never went back,

as it turned out.

I'm afraid the eventual outcome must have disappointed that rather remarkable

lady. Living with my uncle was an altogether happy experience, and I enjoyed

being in Washington—particularly when I discovered that the Library of

Congress had all those books that had been only titles to me before. There

were also newsstands near me where I could get all the gaudy, marvelous

science fiction magazines. But my college education fizzled out.

I simply dropped out after two years. Except for the science courses, I found

most of the studies just a repeat of what I'd learned in high school. And

generally, I discovered that it took me a year in school to learn what I could

master by myself in a few weeks. So I quit and went to work as a junior

billing clerk for a plumbing company —a decision which I still regard as one

of the best I've ever made.

I wasn't exactly a success as a billing clerk. I got along fine with the use

of the Comptometer, as with any machine; I wasn't as seriously devoted to the

rest of the job. But I coasted along for a few years before the company caught

up with me and let me go. Then I drifted along, selling magazines, working in

restaurants, and so on. My major achievement was becoming a well-known science

fiction fan, for whatever that was worth. I wrote long letters to the editors

of the magazines, pointing out the errors in science and criticizing the

stories, and had the joy of seeing them all printed and commented on by other

fans. Thus I achieved my first taste of petty fame!

So we come at last to December 1937—a period of hiatus between the Great

Depression and World War II. I was twenty-two years old and feeling a lot

older, since my health had been miserable for some time, though it was now

finally improving. I was living in a tiny rented room near Washington Circle,

for which I paid three dollars a week. My closet was outside the room, the

bathroom was down the hall, and my typewriter had to sit on a makeshift desk

on the window-sill. My income was erratic; I made perhaps ten dollars a week

on the average, mostly from research on the history of music at the Library of

Congress.

But I had a lot of leisure for all the things that I most enjoyed. (I think my

chief hobby at the time was working on a system of machine shorthand which

would produce notes that could be read by almost any typist—unlike Stenotypy.

Eventually, I perfected it, too, though I never did anything with it.) I also

managed to get all the science fiction magazines as they came out.

I was busy reading one of those a few days before Christmas when my girl

friend dropped by to see me. She lived a couple of blocks away, and the

landlady knew her and liked her enough to let her go

up to my room unannounced. So she appeared just as I was throwing the magazine

rather forcibly onto the floor. I still do that sometimes when a story

irritates me, though I'm somewhat more tolerant now.

I can't remember why I was so disgusted. The story was one by Manly Wade

Wellman, "Pithecanthropus Rejectus," in the January 1938 issue of Astounding

Stones, in which normal human beings were unsuccessfully imitated by an ape; I

suspect my dislike was at the unsuccessful part of the idea. (Sam Moskowitz,

in a profile of me, listed an entirely different story by the same writer,

though I told him the correct title. I suspect he assumed it couldn't have

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