Julia Boynton Green (1861-1957)

Poet, Writer, Artist, Public Speaker
Born May 25, 1861, South Byron, New York
Died July 10, 1957, Los Angeles, California

Julia P. Boynton was born on May 25, 1861, in South Byron, New York, to James T. Boynton, a farmer, and Emily L. Boyton. She was descended from Maj. Gen. Nathaniel Greene of Revolutionary War fame. Her education was off and on. She studied at Ingham University, Le Roy Academy, and Wellesley College, as well as at the Art Students League in New York City and in London. I'm not sure that she ever received a college diploma. Nevertheless, she lived a life of accomplishment in an accomplished family.

Julia married Levi Worthington Green (1858-1932) in June 1890. The couple lived in Rochester, New York, then in Redlands, California, where L. Worthington Green was an orange grower. He was also an author. His works include two juvenile novels, Boy Fugitives in Mexico (1914) and Two American Boys in the War Zone (1915), as well as a number of poems and articles published in newspapers and magazines. Green was also a special agent for the Pala Indian Reservation in California. The Greens had three children, Gladys Green, Boynton M. Green, and Norman G. Green. Gladys was a librarian at Los Angeles Junior College and the University of California at Los Angeles, while Boynton was a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University and Norman was a structural engineer in San Francisco.

Julia Boynton Green wrote three volumes of verse, Lines and Interlines (1887), This Enchanted Coast: Verse on California Themes (1928 or 1929), and Noonmark (1936). According to a description of her papers at Huntington Library, she also had three unpublished books.

Holidays, seasons, and special times of year appear to have been of special interest to Julia. She was also a lover of her adopted home state of California. She read her poems and spoke in front of clubs and groups and was a member of the Southern Branch of the League of American Pen Woman.

From 1893 to 1925, Julia had poems in Argosy All-Story Weekly, The Atlantic Monthly, the Boston Transcript, The Century Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, The Cosmopolitan, the New York Times, The Pacific Monthly, The Smart Set, Sunset, and other titles. Then she began something new.

Julia turned seventy in 1931. In that same year she began writing verse for fantasy and science fiction magazines. It's one thing for a poet born out the outset of the Civil War to write for Weird Tales. It was after all an old-fashioned magazine. But Julia Boynton Green also wrote for Amazing Stories! I would like to read her poems and to put them together in a little book.

Here are Julia Boynton Green's magazine credits from the Internet Speculative Fiction Database:

• "The Evolution of an Ace" in Amazing Stories (Mar. 1931)
• "The Night Express" in Amazing Stories (July 1931)
• "Evolution" in Amazing Stories (Aug. 1931)
• "This Mechanical Age" in Amazing Stories Quarterly (Fall 1931)
• "Radio Revelations" in Amazing Stories Quarterly (Fall/Winter 1932)
• "The Return" in Weird Tales (Sept. 1934)
• "Painted Cave" in Weird Tales (Apr. 1936)
• "Science and the Saucepans" in Amazing Stories (June 1936)

Two of these were reprinted in Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction, edited by Patrick B. Sharp and Lisa Yaszek and published in 2016. It might be well worth it to look for other science fiction and fantasy-related poems in her earlier work.

Julia Boynton Green died on July 10, 1957, in Los Angeles, California. She was ninety-six years old.

Julia Boynton Green's Poems in Weird Tales
"The Return" (Aug. 1934)
"Painted Cave" (Apr. 1936)

Further Reading
Julia Boynton Green's papers are at the Huntington Library in California. You can read a description by clicking here.

Julia Boynton Green (1861-1957), from the Los Angeles Herald, May 28, 1905, page 26.

Original text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Richard Presley Tooker (1902-1988)

Aka Richard Tooker, Dick Tooker, Dick Presley Tooker, Henry E. Lemke

Author, Reporter, Editor, Publisher, U.S. Marine, Cowboy, Musician, Farmer, Deputy County Clerk, etc.
Born July 3, 1902, Farina, Illinois
Died September 28, 1988, Phoenix, Arizona

Richard Presley "Dick" Tooker had a really interesting career as an author of pulp fiction. His output wasn't great, but he wrote and published steadily for thirty years. Science fiction and fantasy seem to have been his specialties, but he also wrote detective stories and Westerns. Tooker had three hardbound novels to his credit. He was also a prizewinning essayist and a writer of letters to magazines. He wrote an early zombie story as well, and an early essay on the Superior Man-type story. Because of his stories in Astounding Science-Fiction and other magazines of the 1930s and '40s, he can be considered an author of the Golden Age of Science Fiction.

Tooker came into the world on July 3, 1902, in Farina, Illinois. His parents were George Latimer Tooker and Laura Jane (Switzer) Tooker. As a boy, he lived in Illinois and North Dakota. In the 1920s, he served as a private in the U.S. Marine Corps. From the 1930s onward, Tooker lived in Phoenix. In the 1950s and '60s, he worked as a deputy county clerk in that city. One of his duties was to issue marriage licenses. After seven years in that business, he took out his own license and on June 11, 1964, married Jane Katherine Adams. They had a son and, at Richard Tooker's death, three grandchildren.

Tooker was near retirement age when he married. The last writing credit I have found for him was an article entitled "What Do You Really Know About Sex?", published in the men's magazine Cad in March 1969. I know nothing more on his life and career after that except the date and place of his death, September 28, 1988, in Phoenix. A Marine veteran, Richard Presley Tooker was buried at National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona in Phoenix.

* * *

From 1923 to 1953, Richard Presley Tooker had dozens of stories and a few letters and essays in:

Science fiction and fantasy magazines: Amazing Stories, Astounding Stories and Astounding Science-Fiction, Famous Fantastic Mysteries, Science-Fiction Plus, Strange Tales, Thrilling Mystery, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Unusual Stories, Weird Tales, and Wonder Stories.

Mystery, crime, and detective magazines: Hardboiled, Popular Detective, and Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories.

Western magazines: Street & Smith's Western Story Magazine and 10 Story Western Magazine.

He wrote three stories for his series character Zenith Rand, Planet Vigilante, in Mystery Adventure Magazine. His first published works in the pulps were a letter to "The Eyrie" (Sept. 1923) and the short story "Planet Paradise" in Weird Tales (Feb. 1924). He had written "Planet Paradise" at age fifteen and revised it for publication. The online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls it "an unsophisticated Planetary Romance." I sense the influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Some other interesting points on Tooker's career:

According to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, "He wrote one of the prize-winning essays in the contest launched by Hugo Gernsback, 'What Science Fiction Means To Me' (June 1929 Wonder Stories)."

As Harry E. Lemke, he wrote "Last of the Swarm," published in Wonder Stories in October 1933.

Tooker greatly admired John Martin Leahy's novel Draconda, serialized in Weird Tales from November 1923 to May/June/July 1924. Tooker wrote his own story called "Darcondra" for Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1937.

Tooker wrote an early zombie story, "Zombies Never Die," published in Thrilling Mystery in November 1937.

He also wrote an early essay on what I presume to be the topic of the Superior Man in science fiction, "Toward the Superman," published in Astounding Science-Fiction in March 1939. I would like to read his essay. It might help me understand more about the science-fictional Superior Man.

Tooker wrote three novels published in hardbound editions:

• The Day of the Brown Horde (New York: Payson & Clarke, 1929)
• The Dawn Boy (Philadelphia: Penn Publishing, 1932)
• Inland Deep (Philadelphia: Penn Publishing, 1936)

Inland Deep is a Lost Worlds-type story.

Tooker also had six letters in Weird Tales from 1923 to 1943. As a boy he lived in North Dakota. In 1923, he was in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We can imagine a young man, an aspiring author, fascinated by stories of science and fantasy but living in the middle of America, discovering a new kind of magazine, a unique magazine, seemingly specially made for his interests. He wrote two letters published in "The Eyrie" in the first half-year or so that Weird Tales was in print. He wrote again and again over the next two decades. It must have been a great thrill for him for Weird Tales to publish his first story, "Planet Paradise," in February 1924. He must have been in heaven.

By the way, H.P. Lovecraft also had his first letter in Weird Tales in September 1923.

Richard Presley Tooker's Letters & Story in Weird Tales

• Letter to "The Eyrie" (Sept. 1923)
• Letter to "The Eyrie" (Oct. 1923)
• "Planet Paradise" (Feb. 1924)
• Letter to "The Eyrie" (Feb. 1924)
• Letter to "The Eyrie" (Aug. 1932)
• Letter to "The Eyrie"--"A Magazine for Skeptics?" (Aug. 1934)
• Letter to "The Eyrie"--"Don't Be Funny" (July 1943)

Further Reading
"Tooker, Richard" in the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, here.
Also, from the Internet Book Database of Fiction, presumably from an earlier source, possibly "Meet the Author" in Amazing Stories, November 1938:

Author Biography: Richard Presley Tooker, the author of The Day of the Brown Horde was born in Farina, Illinois, in 1902 and is of English and Pennsylvania-Dutch parentage. He inherited a flair for adventure from his father's people, who were sea captains, soldiers and adventurers; while from his mother came a literary bent from her relationship to Maurice Thompson, author of Alice of Old Vincennes. His first story was published in magazine form when he was 15 years old. After leaving preparatory school he held several editorial positions with various Western publications. He served for two years with the United States Marine Corps, and for one of his years has had an unusually broad experience, including being an editor, a reporter, soldier, musician, cowboy, railroad clerk, bank cashier, dairyman and farmer, but always has been a believer in his own literary ability. He is a profound admirer of Jack London and oddly enough his own life largely parallels, from a psychological and philosophical angle, Mr. London's Martin Edin. He is at the moment engaged in writing his second novel, tentatively called The Atavist.

Richard Presley Tooker with his soon-to-be wife, Jane Katherine Adams, from the Phoenix Gazette, 1964.

Original text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Recent Losses

A correspondent has let me know about two recent losses in the worlds of science and science fiction:

Radio astronomer Frank Drake died on September 2, 2022. He was ninety-two years old. Born on May 28, 1930, in Chicago, Illinois, Dr. Drake studied at Cornell University and Harvard University. From 1958 to 1963, he worked at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia. In 1960, he began Project Ozma, a search for extraterrestrial intelligence by way of radio waves. Frank Drake followed Otto Struve (1897-1963) and was followed by Carl Sagan (1934-1996) in a line of scientists who have speculated on the existence of extraterrestrial intelligence and who carried out a Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence or SETI. Science fiction author James E. Gunn (1923-2020) fictionalized their efforts to some degree in The Listeners (1968-1972, 1985).

Horace Chandler Davis, known as Chan Davis, died on September 24, 2022, at age ninety-six. Dr. Davis was born on August 12, 1926, in Ithaca, New York. He received his doctorate at Harvard University and taught mathematics at the University of Michigan and the University of Toronto. Science fiction fans know him better as an author of a-dozen-plus-one short stories that appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, Planet Stories, Star Science Fiction, and other titles from 1946 to 1994. His first was "The Nightmare," published in Astounding Science Fiction in May 1946. That credit surely made him one of the last living authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, calculated to have run from 1938 to 1950. Dr. Davis' widow is the historian Natalie Zemon Davis.

We send condolences to the families of both men.

An early example of the destruction of the Statue of Liberty in science fiction, William Timmins' cover for Astounding Science Fiction, May 1946, illustrating Chan Davis' story "The Nightmare." I was going to make a catalog of such images but someone has done it before me and has done it well. Look for Joachim Boaz's blog Science Fiction and Other Suspect Ruminations: Reviews of Vintage Science Fiction (1945-1985) and an entry called "Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: The Statue of Liberty on Pre-1968 Magazine and Novel Covers" from October 1, 2012, here.

Thanks to my correspondent.

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

William F. Temple (1914-1989)

Author, Science Fiction Fan, Fanzine Editor, Clerk, Soldier
Born March 9, 1914, Woolwich, Royal Borough of Greenwich, England
Died July 15, 1989, Folkestone, Kent, England

William F.J. Temple was of or close to the same generation as British science fiction authors and fans Stafford Aylmer (1907-1965), A. Bertram Chandler (1912-1984), H.S.W. Chibbett (1900-1978), Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), Rex Dolphin (1915-1990), Leslie J. Johnson (1914-?), Eric A. Leyland (1911-2001), Eric Frank Russell (1905-1978), E.C. Tubb (1919-2010), and John Wyndham (1903-1969). All but Arthur C. Clarke were also in Weird Tales, and almost all had their stories published in that magazine after World War II. I sense a pattern.

William Frederick Joseph Temple, called "Bill," was born on March 9, 1914, in Woolwich, England. He became a clerk on the London Stock Exchange at age sixteen. During the 1930s, he was involved with science fiction fandom in his native country as a member of the Science Fiction Association (SFA) and the British Interplanetary Society. He served as chair of the Writer's Circle for SFA and on the editorial staff of its publication Novae Terrae. He was also editor of the Bulletin of the British Interplanetary Society. Living in London, Temple shared an apartment (or flat) with fellow fans Arthur C. Clarke and Maurice K. Hanson (1918-1981). He wrote about his experience in Bachelor Flat, which was finally published in 2000 as 88 Gray's Inn Road: A Living-Space Odyssey, and Other Stories.

Temple's first professional story was "The Kosso," published in the book Thrills: A Collection of Uneasy Tales (1935). He had dozens more stories and letters in science fiction magazines and fanzines from 1937 to 1978, though his output dropped off considerably after about 1959. Temple is probably most well known for his novel Four-Sided Triangle (1949), originally the short story "The 4-Sided Triangle" in Amazing Stories, November 1949, and adapted to a British film in 1953. Temple's lone story for Weird Tales was the somewhat similarly titled "The Triangle of Terror" from May 1950 and reprinted in the Winter issue, 1985. By the way, Four-Sided Triangle had a twisted road to publication. Temple worked on the novel version of his story while serving in the British army during World War II. His manuscript was lost or destroyed not once but twice in battle, the first time at Takrouna, Tunisia, the second at the Battle of Anzio. Temple finished his novel in the Alps after the war and submitted it to four different publishers before it was finally accepted.

Temple married Joan Gertrude Nellie Streeton (1917-?) in September 1939. They had three children, Peter Temple, who died as a child, Anne Katherine Temple Patrizio (1940-2019), and Cliff Temple (1947-1994), who died by suicide after being unjustifiably smeared. William F.J. Temple died on July 15, 1989, in Folkestone, England, at age seventy-five.

William F. Temple's Story in Weird Tales
"The Triangle of Terror" (May 1950; reprinted Winter 1985)

Further Reading
There are entries on William F. Temple in:

• The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• The FictionMags Index
• The Internet Movie Database
• The Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Wikipedia

"The 4-Sided Triangle" was originally in Amazing Stories in November 1939. The theme of the illustration is the ever-popular Woman-in-a-Test-Tube. The artist was H.W. McCauley.

Temple's story/novel has been reprinted again and again, as in this Italian edition with cover art by C. Caesar. Richard Shaver might have had something to say about the tero in the title.

I like to show foreign-language editions of works originally in English. Here is a Spanish edition of The Three Suns of Amara by William F. Temple, originally from 1962. I don't know the name of the artist.

Text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Summer Reading List No. 1-The Listeners by James E. Gunn

Four years ago, on the day after Flying Saucer Day, I wrote about James E. Gunn and his novelette "The Listeners," originally in Galaxy Magazine in September 1968. Since then I have looked for the book version, which collects all of Mr. Gunn's stories in the series, originally published from 1968 to 1972. I finally found it this summer in one of my trips to Half-Price Books, a store that I hope stays in business forever. And this summer I read it.

First I should let you know that James E. Gunn died at the end of last year, on December 23, 2020. He was ninety-seven years old, another of that interwar generation who did so much, accomplished so much, overcame so much, even unto the end. We send condolences to his family and friends and I guess to the world of science fiction in general. James E. Gunn was born in the same year that Weird Tales began, 1923. Surely he was one of the last of the authors first published during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, 1938-1950. His first story was called "Communications" and it appeared in the September 1949 issue of Startling Stories. Communications would seem to have been a theme in his work.

The Listeners is episodic. Like Mr. Gunn's life, it is spread over nine decades, from 2025 to 2118. It is set mostly in Puerto Rico, at the site of a great radio telescope, an ear directed at the heavens, waiting to hear words from on high. The main character is Robert MacDonald, a middle-aged (and older) administrator and head of the listening project. (Yes, his surname is Scottish and, yes, he is an engineer.) MacDonald is hanging on, hanging on, waiting for the communications he's sure must come. He carries the Project on the back of his faith.

James Gunn was completely conversant in the history and culture of Listening. In his book, he referred to Carl Sagan, Frank Drake, Otto Struve, and other figures in the what is now called the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). He quoted from some of them, too, in his inter-chapter "Computer Run" compilations, which were, I think, new to the book version, first published in 1972. (They remind me of the "Newsreel" sections in John Dos Passos' U.S.A. Trilogy.) He and Dr. Sagan seem to have formed a mutual admiration society, in fact. Dr. Sagan's blurb on the cover of the Ballantine edition reads: "One of the very best fictional portrayals of contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence ever written!" In his turn, Carl Sagan seems to have lifted Mr. Gunn's religious leader straight out of The Listeners and plopped him into the movie Contact (1997). The radio message returned to Earth in order to get our attention is also seemingly from The Listeners.

The depiction of that religious leader is a flaw, I think, in Contact, less so in The Listeners. I don't know what things were like in 1968 or 1971-1972 when James Gunn first wrote, but his character Jeremiah (cute name) verges on stereotype. Carl Sagan called him Joseph and was far less understanding. I think what both authors failed to understand is that Christians are far more tolerant of the idea that there may be other people in the universe than are the Listeners that there are not. It is, after all, the core belief of Christianity that we are not alone. It would be intolerable for the Listener to learn that we are, though. As James Gunn wrote:

And then maybe Adams was right. Maybe nobody was there. Maybe nobody was sending signals because there was nobody to send signals. Maybe man was all alone in the universe. Alone with God. Or alone with himself, whichever was worse. (Ballantine, 1985, p. 3)

MacDonald may or may not be an atheist. I think only Jeremiah calls him that. I'm not sure that he ever thinks or speaks of these things himself. Curiously, his ghost seems to keep appearing to people after his death, curiously, that is, for a story that is otherwise what I would call hard science fiction and in which the tone is essentially agnostic.

I gather that James E. Gunn was a midcentury American liberal. As that and as an author of science fiction, he seems to have believed in progress, perhaps especially in material and scientific progress. His story is set in Puerto Rico, at the site of a radio telescope. In his version of the story, that radio telescope and the listening project go on for decades, far into the twenty-first century. In the real-life version of the story, the radio telescope at Arecibo came crashing down on December 1, 2020. You could take that as emblematic of a kind of decline and decay of the American and/or scientific project. Maybe it doesn't mean anything like that at all. Anyway, science fiction author James E. Gunn died three weeks and a day later. (3 x 7) + 1: prime numbers all.

Science fiction is not prediction. But here is an excerpt from The Listeners. Take as much or as little of it as prediction or extrapolation as you want. Remember that Mr. Gunn wrote this in the early 1970s.

It is 2028. MacDonald is talking to Andrew White, the first black president of the United States (who would of course be played by Morgan Freeman in the movie version):

     "The function of government is 'to promote the general welfare,'" MacDonald said.

     "It is also a deliberate policy. Poverty and injustice are evils, but they are endurable evils in a world where other problems are greater. They are not endurable in a complex, technological society where cooperation is essential, where violence and rioting can destroy a city, even civilization itself."

     "Of course."

     "So we turned ourselves around and set this nation to the task of eliminating poverty and injustice--and we have done it. We have established a stable social system where everyone has a guaranteed annual income and can do pretty much what he pleases except procreate without limit or harm others in other ways."

     MacDonald nodded. "That has been the great accomplishment of the past few decades--the welfare movement."

     "Except we don't call it welfare anymore," White said. "It's democracy, the system, the way things are, what people are entitled to. What makes you think that science is not part of the system?"

     "It creates change," MacDonald said.

     "Not if it is unsuccessful," White said. [. . .] "The important task of government, you see, is to keep conditions stable, to hold down disturbances and unrest, to maintain itself, and the best way to do that is to give everybody the opportunity to do what they want--except change things. [. . .]" (p. 149)

I don't want to hit you over the head with this, but it's plain that the people of 2028 and before have tried to construct a kind of Utopia. Welfare, entitlements, a guaranteed income, happiness, democracy, and zero population growth are features of their Utopia, but the ultimate purpose is stasis.

Futurism is prediction. Here is another excerpt, from one of the "Computer Run" sections of The Listeners:

The year 2000 conditions could produce a situation in which illusion, wishful thinking, even obviously irrational behavior could exist to a degree unheard of today. Such irrational and self-indulgent behavior is quite likely in a situation in which an individual is overprotective and has no systematic or objective contact with reality. For example, there are probably many people for whom work is the primary touch with reality. If work is removed, or if important functions are taken from work, the contact these people have with reality will be to some degree impaired.  The results--minor or widespread--may become apparent in forms such as political disruption, disturbed families, and personal tragedies--or in pursuit of some "humanistic" values that many would think of as frivolous or even irrational.

Herman Kahn and Anthony J. Weiner, 1967 (p. 165)

Illusion, wishful thinking, obviously irrational behavior--Kahn and Weiner called it in the year before "The Listeners" went to print. Kahn was an atheist. Did that give him special insight into the problems of a future populated by non-believers?

One last excerpt. A second message comes from Capella in the year 2118. Before it is displayed for all to see, a short "Computer Run" section intervenes. From it, these lines of verse:

[. . .] somewhere in sands of the desert   
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   
The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
                                   --William Butler Yeats, 1921

The imagery here, from Yeats' poem "The Second Coming," stands powerfully on its own, but it also strikes me now as a counterpoint to Percy Shelley's "Ozymandias," about which I wrote last time. In "Ozymandias," the statue--and by extension the man and his power--lies in ruins. But in Yeats' vision, the statue, the power, the rough beast in the form of a half-man, awakens, moves, slouches to be born. In this vision, Apocalypse is our future.

Yet The Listeners ends in hope--hope at least for the Listeners.

The Listeners by James E. Gunn (1923-2020), published in 1985 by Ballantine Books, with cover art by Rick Sternbach.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Los Angeles Science Fiction League, Circa 1939

I have begun swinging back around to my series on Utopia and Dystopia in Weird Tales. Step One: Show group photograph of Los Angeles Science Fiction League, circa 1939.

Last week I stopped by Half-Price Books, one of my favorite stores and one of few commercial establishments that I will mention by name in this blog. (I have a policy against advertisements.) I planned mostly on selling books and buying only a little. The store I went to had a different idea, though, because it put out for sale a book called The Ray Bradbury Companion, written and compiled by William F. Nolan (b. 1928) and published in 1975. How was I supposed to pass that up? It may have some writing in it, but it's a book I have never seen before and may never again.

As you might expect, there are all kinds of things included in The Ray Bradbury Companion. One is a group photograph, shown below. Before getting to that, I'll tell you about the man who wrote in my new copy of this book.

I don't like it when people write in books. We think we own these things, but aren't we really just caretakers? Shouldn't we do the best that we can to ensure that every book makes it into the next generation with as little damage and wear as possible? And shouldn't we all want to avoid any comparison at all to Carlos Allende and his little personalities? Anyway, inside the front cover of my new book, a previous owner wrote his name, Max Westbrook, and the date, September 1975. Like Allende's Mr. A, Westbrook used green ink for his inscription, underlining, and marginalia. I sensed that he could have had some connection to Ray Bradbury, but after looking into it, I'm not sure that he did. I found out about Max Westbrook, though, and he was a literary critic and teacher of some note. So:

Max Roger Westbrook was born on April 6, 1927, in Malvern, Arkansas. He attended Pine Bluff High School in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and served in the U.S. Navy in the World War II era and again in the Korean War era. Dr. Westbrook received his bachelor's degree from Baylor University, his master's at the University of Oklahoma, and his doctorate at the University of Texas. He taught at the universities of Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Texas. His books included The Modern American Novel: Essays in Criticism (1966), Walter Van Tilburg Clark (1969), Country Boy (verse, 1979), and Oregon or Bust (1985). He was a longtime member of the Western Literature Association and won the association's Lifetime Achievement Award in 1988. His headstone reads like the title of one of his books: "Country Boy." Dr. Westbrook died on July 25, 2002, nineteen years ago next week.

Knowing that Max Westbrook owned my copy of The Ray Bradbury Companion before I did takes away some of the bad feelings I have about writing in books. Anyway, here is the photo, just as it appears on page 28:

And here is the caption, ditto:

The first thing I noticed about this picture is that it shows Leslyn MacDonald (1904-1981), the diminutive wife of Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988). The second is that she is sitting far away from her husband and next to an always-smiling Ray Bradbury (1920-2012). Others labeled in the photo include Forrest J Ackerman (1916-2008), Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013), Jack Williamson (1908-2006), Edmond Hamilton (1904-1977), and Heinlein himself. I have a feeling other well-known people are in there somewhere (Morojo and Hannes Bok are candidates), but I don't recognize any of them. Maybe you do. Maybe you recognize the art on display, too.

Ray Bradbury was friends with Forrest J Ackerman. Ackerman is in the book The Faces of Science Fiction (1984), about which I wrote not long ago. A discussion of that entry is Step Two in my return to Utopia and Dystopia.

To be continued . . .

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

A New Book by J.A. Lawrence

Judith Ann Lawrence, also known as J.A. Lawrence and Judy Blish, has just had a collection of her short stories published by Reanimus Press. It's called The Other Side of the Surface and Other Stories, and it includes not only her fiction but also some of Judy's artwork.

J.A. Lawrence is an author herself, but she was also married to an author and the daughter of not one but two authors. Her mother was Muriel Cameron Bodkin (1903-1994), who contributed to Weird Tales. (Click here.) Her father was the Canadian-American pulp writer John Frederick Brock Lawrence (1907-1970), better known as Jack Lawrence. Their daughter Judith was married to science fiction author James Blish (1921-1975) from 1964 until his death in 1975. Judy's new book includes a reimagining of James Blish's classic story "Surface Tension," originally published in Galaxy Science Fiction in August 1952.

I don't have advertising or provide links to commercial websites on my blog, but that's okay because you already know how to order books. Just head on down to your local megacorporation and pick up Judy's new collection The Other Side of the Surface and Other Stories today.

Original text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Katherine MacLean (1925-2019)

Aka Charles Dye, G.A. Morris
Author, Essayist, Artist, Teacher, Laboratory Technician
Born January 22, 1925, Glen Ridge, New Jersey
Died September 1, 2019, Arundel, Maine

Since the end of the world came, I have been cleaning, straightening, and organizing, including things on my blog. I'm still trying to catch up from last year, and I just learned that science fiction author Katherine MacLean died in 2019. She had just one story in Weird Tales. Called "Chicken Soup," it was a collaboration with Mary Kornbluth, and it appeared in the winter issue of 1973 under editor Sam Moskowitz. (1)

Katherine Anne MacLean was born on January 22, 1925. Her parents were Gordon Maclean, an engineer, and Ruth (Crawford) MacLean, both American-born but of English and Irish descent. Katherine was the youngest of three children. Although the MacLean family called Queens and Brooklyn, New York, home from as early as 1900 to as late as 1940, Katherine was born in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and baptized at All Saints Episcopal Church in West Orange, New Jersey. Something of a prodigy, she declined a position at a neuroscience laboratory at age fifteen, instead choosing to pursue a college education. (2) She received a bachelor's degree in economics from Barnard College. Later, she and her family lived in Maine.

Katherine MacLean started writing science fiction in 1947 while working as a laboratory technician. Her first published story was "Defense Mechanism," which appeared in Astounding Science Fiction in October 1949. She averaged two or three stories per year for the next quarter century or so, and her work was and is widely admired. In 1972, she won a Nebula Award for her novella "The Missing Man," originally in Analog, March 1971. Two of her stories, "Pictures Don't Lie" (Galaxy Science Fiction, Aug. 1951) and "The Carnivore" (Galaxy Science Fiction, Oct. 1953), have been adapted to film. Audiences heard an NBC-radio version of "The Snowball Effect" (Galaxy Science Fiction, Sept. 1952) on the show X Minus One on August 14, 1956. You can hear it today by clicking here. Her short story "Contagion" (Galaxy Science Fiction, Oct. 1950) includes a warning for us:

But the likeness of Earth was danger, and the cool wind might be death, for if the animals were like Earth animals, their diseases might be like Earth diseases, alike enough to be contagious, different enough to be impossible to treat.

God help us if disease ever jumps to us from an alien animal here on Earth.

Katherine MacLean taught English and writing at the University of Maine and had about half a dozen novels and collections to her credit. Her stories have appeared in many anthologies, too, especially of stories by women authors. In 2011, she won the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, "intended to honour [sic] notable sf [science fiction] and fantasy authors who in the view of the judging panel either did not receive or no longer receive as much attention as they deserve." (Quote from the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.) She was married three times, to science fiction authors Charles Dye and (Samuel) David Mason, finally to Carl West. She had one son, Christopher Mason, who announced her death, which came on September 1, 2019, in Arundel, Maine. Katherine MacLean was ninety-four years old.

Katherine MacLean's Story, with Mary Kornbluth, in Weird Tales
"Chicken Soup" (Winter 1973)

Further Reading
Introduction by Pamela Sargent to "Contagion" by Katherine MacLean in Women of Wonder: Science Fiction Stories by Women About Women (New York: Vintage Books, 1975), page 18.

Notes

(1) For my original article about her, dated July 1, 2013, click here.
(2) Katherine MacLean's interest in psychology may have led her to an early interest in L. Ron Hubbard's "new science of the mind," Dianetics. Hubbard's first version of what became his book Dianetics was published in Astounding Science Fiction in May 1950; Katherine had three stories in the same magazine between October 1949 and June 1950. "For a time," wrote a science fiction encyclopedist, "dianetics created a furore among readers and many writers. Katherine MacLean became immersed in auditing. James Blish expressed enthusiasm, but later opposed the theory. Van Vogt abandoned writing to run a West Coast dianetics institute." From "04.09 Fringe Cults," the very last entry in The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by Brian Ash (New York: Harmony Books, 1977), pages 341-342.

Katherine MacLean's novella "The Missing Man" first appeared as the cover story in Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact in March 1971. It won her a Nebula Award. An expanded, novel-length version followed in 1975. Frank Kelly Freas was the cover artist here.

Her first book was The Diploids and Other Flights of Fancy, published by Avon Books in 1962. The cover artist is unknown.

Revised May 3, 2020.
Original text copyright 2020, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

George Whitley aka A. Bertram Chandler (1912-1984)

Arthur Bertram Chandler
Aka Andrew Dunstan, S.H.M., George Whitely, George Whitley
Author, Poet, Essayist, Reviewer, Merchant Mariner
Born March 28, 1912, Aldershot, Hampshire, England
Died June 6, 1984, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

I thought I had covered most of the authors of the Golden Age of Science Fiction in previous articles, but then I find that the author called George Whitley was actually the well known Anglo-Australian author A. Bertram Chandler. I suppose I'll keep making these discoveries until I have written about all of the men and women who contributed to Weird Tales.

Arthur Bertram Chandler was born on March 28, 1912, in Aldershot, Hampshire, England. He served in the merchant marine in his native country and in Australia, to which he emigrated in 1956 after the breakup of his first marriage. According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database, his earliest science fiction story was "'This Means War!'" in Astounding Science Fiction for May 1944. His first and only story for Weird Tales was "Castaway" from November 1947, published under the byline of George Whitley. Chandler was a very prolific author. Much of his fiction has to do with life aboard ship.

You can read about A. Bertram Chandler at various websites. Just one more fact before the facts of his death: Chandler's daughter Jenny is married to Ramsey Campbell, who has also contributed to Weird Tales.

A. Bertram Chandler died on June 6, 1984, in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was seventy-two years old.

George Whitley's Story in Weird Tales

"Castway" (Nov. 1947)

Further Reading

Besides Wikipedia, see the following sources (and embedded links found therein):

A. Bertram Chandler

AustLit

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Astounding Science Fiction, July 1946, the British edition with "Special Knowledge" by A. Bertram Chandler as the cover story. Cover art by William Timmins (1915-1985).

Cosmo #170, a complete science fiction novel (or, in the Italian, "i romanzi del fantascienza") by Chandler, from June 1965. The Italian title is Nelle Immense, Profondita Spaziall, in English, The Deep Reaches of Space. Cover art by Luigi Garonzi.

Text copyright 2017, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Leslyn MacDonald (1904-1981)

Poet, Songwriter, Actress, Theater Director, Teacher, Science Fiction Fan
Born August 29, 1904, Boston, Massachusetts
Died April 13, 1981, Orange County or Stanislaus County, California

Leslyn M. MacDonald (also spelled, erroneously, McDonald) was born on August 29, 1904, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her father was a Canadian, her mother a Bostonian. Early in life, Leslyn moved to California with her family. That's where she lived and that's where she died. For some reason, as I write this, I sense a pall over her life. That may be just my imagination. But she was once young and beautiful. She had dreams of love and all the other things of which we dream. She wrote poetry, went to the university, acted on stage, and was married to one of the greatest of all science fiction writers. They slept together on the night they met, he proposed to her the next morning, and they remained together for a decade and a half before infidelity, heavy drinking, divorce, and other everyday dramas brought an end to it all. Leslyn remarried. Her second husband, like her father, worked in a hotel. (Correction (May 29, 2026): According to a commenter [below], her second husband worked in a tavern/gas station.) He died in middle age. She survived but has slipped from memory. Maybe we owe her something a little better than that.

Leslyn MacDonald's father, Colin MacDonald, was born in Sidney Mines, Nova Scotia, on October 17, 1873. He came to the United States sometime around the turn of the century and was naturalized as an American citizen on May 13, 1901, in Boston. A little more than a year and a half later, on September 3, 1902, he married Florence Caroline Gleason in Worcester city or county. Born on April 8, 1883, in Westborough, Massachusetts, she was ten years his junior and had just turned eighteen.

The MacDonalds had two daughters, Leslyn, born August 29, 1904, and Keith, born September 9, 1906, both in Massachusetts. (Yes, Keith was a girl.) I don't know how long the family lived in Massachusetts or where else they might have resided, but by the time Colin MacDonald filled out his draft card in 1918 (the day after Keith's twelfth birthday), they were in Riverside, California, and he was working as a clerk at the Glenwood Hotel. Here's a news item with the heading "Laguna Beach News Budget" from the Santa Ana Register, dated June 28, 1917, showing that the MacDonald family were calling California home for at least a year and a half before that:

I had no idea what the "large Cravath cottage" might have been, but I did a search for "Cravath" and "Laguna Beach," and I feel pretty confident in saying that the reference is to professional baseball player Clifford "Gavvy" Cravath (1881-1963), who was a real estate developer in Laguna Beach. The "two children" in the article were of course Leslyn, then aged twelve, and Keith, then aged ten.

So the MacDonalds were not short on means. In 1920, they were in Riverside, where Mr. MacDonald worked as an office manager in a chemical works. That same year, Leslyn had a poem published in the Los Angeles Times and reprinted in other papers:

When "Freedom" was reprinted (in the Concordia Blade-Empire of Concordia, Kansas) on September 20, 1920, Leslyn was barely past fifteen. I'm no critic of verse, but it seems to me a work of sophistication rare for a teenaged poet.

Leslyn matriculated at the University of California, Southern Branch, later known as the University of California, Los Angeles. There she was a member of Delta Tau Mu; Kap and Bells, Dramatics; and the Manuscript Club. One of her classmates and a fellow member of Delta Tau Mu and Kap and Bells was Agnes De Mille (1905-1993). Here is a photograph of the two, side by side as in the original:

Left, Agnes De Mille (1905-1993), and, right, Leslyn MacDonald (1904-1981) in the University of California, Southern Branch, yearbook, 1926.

According to the Wikipedia biography of Agnes De Mille, she was not considered pretty enough to be an actress, so she became a dancer instead. (1) Leslyn MacDonald, on the other hand, did become an actress, if only for a little while. In August 1924, she appeared in A Midsummer Night's Dream under the direction of Madame Margarita Orlova, a play staged at Madame Orlova's beachfront Woodland theater in Laguna Beach. (2) The Santa Ana Register observed that Puck was "very prettily played by Leslyn MacDonald of Laguna Beach" (Aug. 19, 1924, p. 14), while author and screenwriter Elinor Glyn remarked, "I have seen 'The Dream' on several occasions, but I have never seen a  more charming Puck" (Santa Ana Register, Aug. 22, 1924, p. 12). For a season at least, Leslyn was a star. She later acted with the Pasadena Playhouse (1927), directed experimental theater, and worked in the music department at Columbia Pictures. (2a)

Leslyn graduated from the University of California with a degree in philosophy and a minor in drama, presumably in 1926. She took her master's degree from the University of Southern California in 1930. Again, the subject was philosophy. The enumerator of the 1930 census found Leslyn living in Los Angeles with her cousin, engineer Chester S. Beard, and his family. She was then working as a teacher in the public schools. Meanwhile, another star was on a collision course with hers. His name was Robert Anson Heinlein, and in the early 1930s, he was married, soon to be divorced, still in the U.S. Navy, but before the decade was out, ex-Navy and a published writer of science fiction. He and Leslyn were introduced in January 1932 by Heinlein's friend Cal Laning. Despite the fact that she was Laning's girl, Heinlein took her to bed that first night, then married her on March 28, 1932. There is a wedding picture of the couple, with Heinlein in his regalia and a very slight Leslyn at his side, here. Heinlein had his peculiarities: he was a nudist and a wife-swapper. Leslyn cared for neither activity. But she was an inspiration to her husband and devoted to his career and interests. Her poem "Freedom" from 1920 may very well have been a prophecy of their lives together.

Heinlein and his wife were at Denvention, the science fiction convention, in 1941. He was the guest of honor. She wore "semi-oriental dress [representing] Queen Niphar in Cabell's Figures of Earth." (3) She was with him, too, in Philadelphia, where he worked at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard during World War II. She knew Isaac Asimov. I suspect she knew the other writers of the southern California science fiction scene, writers such as Ray Bradbury, Forrest J Ackerman, Henry Kuttner, and possibly L. Ron Hubbard. Anthony Boucher cast her as Mrs. Carter in his 1942 roman à clef, Rocket to the Morgue. John W. Campbell, Jr., and his wife Doña named one of their daughters for her. Later she wrote to Frederik Pohl, "sad, wistful, lonesome letters," he called them, reminding him "over and over of the wonderful times she and Bob [Heinlein] and I and other local science-fiction writers and fans had had sitting around her kitchen table in the old days." Pohl continued:

This worried me. You see, it had never happened. I had never been in her kitchen, nor indeed had I met Leslyn anywhere else, either. The woman clearly was not in close touch with reality. I could think of nothing to do about it other than to reply to her letters as pleasantly and noncommittally--and briefly--as I could. (4)

Those letters would have come, of course, after Heinlein and Leslyn had divorced. That unhappy event occurred in 1947 after fifteen years of marriage. In 1948, Heinlein remarried. Leslyn also remarried. Her second husband was Jules G. (or Jewel G.) Mocabee, born on February 10, 1919, and a U.S. Army veteran of World War II despite weighing only 117 pounds at his enlistment. Like Heinlein, he was a native Missourian (possibly from New Madrid County). Mocabee received only a grade-school education and seems not to have been very gainfully employed. If the abbreviation "pdlr" stands for "peddler," then he was a peddler. He also worked at a place called the Morningside Inn in Stockton, California. He only made it to age forty-seven, dying on October 10, 1966, in San Joaquin County, California. That very likely left Leslyn Mocabee alone, for she seems not to have had any children, and her only sibling, her sister Keith MacDonald Hubbard, had died on August 9, 1949, in Orange County, California. Her father, Colin MacDonald, had also been gone many years, having died of cirrhosis of the liver in 1929. I don't know when her mother, Florence MacDonald--nicknamed "Skipper" by the way, and a Theosophist--died, but I have a feeling it came in the 1940s as Leslyn's marriage to Heinlein was unwinding. Sad, wistful, lonesome. And though her life ended in 1981, a pall of sadness remains, even today.

So my feeling that Leslyn MacDonald lived an unhappy life has been borne out by the research I have done for this article. Described by Heinlein's biographer William H. Patterson, Jr., as "a very slim, intense dark-brunette with medium complexion, lively and attractive, not quite five feet, one inch tall" and as "an unusual woman--astonishingly intelligent [and] widely read," she deserved better. Some sources on the Internet suggest that her drinking and her purported separation from reality contributed to her failed marriage to Robert A. Heinlein. There was a history of drinking in her family to be sure. And her mother, being a Theosophist, subscribed to some pretty kooky beliefs. Leslyn must not have had a very good start. But what kind of husband is a nudist and wants to swap wives? And what effect must those things have on a woman who devoted herself to her husband? No one knows the mysteries of another person's marriage, but let's be kind to Leslyn MacDonald and give her at least some benefit of the doubt. Instead of remembering her as the distaff side and possible cause of Heinlein's second failed marriage, let's remember her as a poet and a woman, as a thinker and a muse, as a lover and a human being, and let's remember the behind-the-scenes contribution she made to science fiction in America.

Leslyn MacDonald's Poem in Weird Tales

"The Ballad of Lalune" (May 1941)

Further Reading

• Robert A. Heinlein: In Dialogue with His Century: Volume 1: Learning Curve 1907-1948 by William H. Patterson, Jr. (Macmillan, 2010), here.
• Robert A. Heinlein by Leon Stover (1987).

Notes

(1) Agnes De Mille, by the way, was the daughter of William C. De Mille, niece of Cecil B. De Mille, and granddaughter of Henry George, for whom Volney George Mathison was named (in part).

(2) Margarita (also spelled Marguerita) Orlova, was an actress and a self-proclaimed Russian princess. She was more likely just an American pretender to her title, name, and nationality. Madame Orlova later was half-owner of Sherwood Forest, an artist's colony located on the opposite coast, in Oakland, New Jersey.

(2a) Update (Apr. 8, 2021): Beginning in September 1928, Leslyn MacDonald played the half-child, half-fairy character Rautendelein in Gerhart Hauptmann's play The Sunken Bell, put on by the Pasadena Community Players at the Community Playhouse. The Los Angeles Evening Post-Record wrote that she had "created a role long to be remembered," adding: "Delicacy ran through every pattern of her acting." And: "Her art rose to superb poignancy in the tragic fourth act [. . .]." (Sept. 28, 1927, p. 6). Lloyd Nolan (1902-1985) was also in the cast.

(3) From All Our Yesterdays by Harry Warner, Jr., (Chicago: Advent, 1969), p. 103.

(4) From "The Wives (and Drives) of Robert Heinlein: Leslyn" by Frederik Pohl on his blog, The Way the Future Blogs, dated May 19, 2010, here.

Original text copyright 2016, 2023 Terence E. Hanley