Weird Fiction versus Spiritualism

I have written before that Weird Tales was the first magazine in America devoted to fantasy fiction. Now that I have read whole issues and many individual stories from the first year and more of the magazine, I find that not to be true. Or if it is true, it wasn't true until there was an entire issue of Weird Tales devoted exclusively to fantasy fiction. In other words, every story in a given issue would have to be a fantasy of one kind or another for Weird Tales to have been the first fantasy magazine in America. And when did that happen? I'm not sure. I would have to keep reading.

As we have seen, weird fiction is not necessarily fantastic: weird is in the real world and in our lives. It is at work in both. Nothing supernatural, nothing based in fantasy need happen for it to be weird. So maybe Amazing Stories, which made its debut in April 1926, was the first American magazine devoted to fantasy, science fiction being a sub-genre in the larger and vaguely defined genre of fantasy. But that's assuming there wasn't a whole issue of fantasy fiction in Weird Tales between March 1923 and March 1926. That seems like a tall order, but it would take a lot of reading to confirm or deny the notion. I'm not there yet.

Weird fiction is about the past. I have lumped it with the other more conservative genres of romance, supernatural horror, adventure, historical fiction, and so on. Science fiction may stand alone as the only progressive genre, although not all science fiction is progressive. There is, after all, conservative science fiction, too. In recent decades, authors have tried to make weird fiction more progressive. I'll leave it to others to decide whether that works. I can't imagine, though, rooting for or sympathizing with a protagonist who is engaged in a Marxist struggle against his hated bourgeoisie, or who wishes to silence and oppress, if not murder, Jews or Christians or women (the original kind) or anyone else who disagrees with him, or who believes that we can and must save children from harm by cutting off their breasts and genitals, or on and on through the parade of horrible, naïve, or just plain idiotic ideas that make up progressivism. Edgar Allan Poe wrote from the viewpoint of men living in pathological states of mind, but I don't think we're supposed to identify with mad Montresor or the unnamed narrator of "The Tell-Tale Heart." Besides that, those two characters and others like them have only murder on their minds. They're not trying to lay waste to the past, or impose totalitarian systems upon the earth, or bring about an end to history. There isn't any ideological motivation behind their actions.

It's hard for us to imagine now just how close to the Victorian era was Weird Tales at its inception. We picture pulp fiction as part of the fast-talking, fast-moving culture of the 1930s and '40s. And yet, in 1923, there were still vast holdovers from the previous century and the pre-war era: twentieth-century America was still living in many of its old forms and not yet aware of all of its new ones.* Spiritualism was one of those old forms, a holdover from a previous time, not yet aware that it was itself as dead as its subjects, as dead as the concept in physics of the luminiferous ether. That concept was slain by Albert Einstein as well as by anybody. Maybe its date of death was in 1919, the same year in which J.C. Henneberger (a Victorian figure in his own right) arrived in Indianapolis, soon to issue, with his business partner, first, Detective Tales, then, in March 1923, Weird Tales.

But wait, you might say, you just said that weird fiction is about the past. Wasn't the nineteenth century part of that past?

The answer is, of course, Yes. But weird and an awareness of weird are older still. Spiritualism is comparatively new. You might even call it an innovation. It was certainly an outgrowth of nineteenth-century culture, which was, truth be told, very closely interested in science and the idea of progress. Weird lives apart from technology; spiritualism is tied to it. Spirit photography is as good an example of that as anything, but how many stories based in spiritualism have you read that include some scientific or technological means for detecting, proving the existence of, or even dispelling spirits? William Hope Hodgson's stories of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder are full of gadgets. There are also ghost-finding gadgets in early stories in Weird Tales, including in Otis Adelbert Kline's adventures of Dr. Dorp. We still see that kind of thing in the instruments that contemporary ghost-hunters use. Employing material instrumentation to find something that is supposedly not material at all--they are spirits after all--hardly makes sense, but here we are.

Spiritualism and all of its trappings were in early stories in Weird Tales. The first story to appear in the magazine, "The Dead Man's Tale" by Willard Hawkins, and the first serial, "The Thing of a Thousand Shapes" by Otis Adelbert Kline, both include elements of spiritualism. Hawkins' story is in fact a transcription from the dead, made possible only by automatic writing, the same trick that Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife tried to play on Harry Houdini in 1922. But spiritualism didn't have any legs and soon grew tired. There was going to have to be something else to take its place if Weird Tales was going to go very far in its field. I think an awareness of weird--weird, which predated spiritualism by more than a millennium--would do. So would H.P. Lovecraft's brand of cosmic horror or science fantasy, a twentieth-century--or at its earliest a nineteenth-century--development. I don't know whether Houdini helped to make spiritualism go away, but he sure didn't hurt the cause.**

Houdini's stance against spiritualism, mediums, séances, and so forth also goes against the premises of so many early Weird Tales stories. Like I wrote the other day, he was not a natural fit for the magazine. Readers loved their spirits and their séances. Witness the letters published in "Ask Houdini." But maybe we should look at him and his presence in another way. In old Westerns, the new sheriff comes into town ("The new sheriff is near!") and says to the bad guys, "This town ain't big enough for the both of us." They had to ride out, either on their horses or in a hearse. Either the boondocks or Boot Hill would be their destination. So maybe Houdini was like that sheriff, saying, in effect, weird fiction can have either spiritualism or something better, but it can't and shouldn't have both. And it can't have both me and spiritualism. Not that Houdini laid down any kind of ultimatum. Not that Houdini and Weird Tales parted ways because of any conflict or difference of opinion on these things. (I think it more likely that their arrangement simply fell apart as the magazine did at about this time of year, one century past.) It's just that there were two opposing world-views, and, in competition with each other, the superior world-view won and spiritualism was shown the door. Readers and writers still hung on to spiritualism for a long time to come--there are trappings of spiritualism in Weird Tales as late as 1938 when Manly Wade Wellman's three-part serial "The Hairy Ones Shall Dance" was published in the magazine. (Published under his pseudonym Gans T. Field, "The Hairy Ones Shall Dance" was in the January through March issues of 1938.) But if spiritualism was already worn out and creaky in 1923, it was way worn out, and creakier still, fifteen years later. Wellman's including elements of spiritualism in his story actually weakens it in my mind. It also shows him as not yet having matured as a writer or a thinker. In any case, I'm not sure that any writer or reader of weird fiction today would countenance the whole business. Leave spiritualism to TV ghost-hunters and their gadgets. Let us instead have weird in our weird fiction.

-----

*In 1923, the most recent winners of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction were Edith Wharton, born in 1862, and Booth Tarkington, born in 1869.

**Another weakness of spiritualism is that it can work only in small, dark, and enclosed spaces, the natural habitat of the psychic medium, without whom none of it is possible. Weird works everywhere and all the time, even--by way of cosmic thinking not easily attained before the twentieth century--into the vast physical universe, all the way to the most distant and trackless stars. And of course it works for everyone. You might say that spiritualism, requiring a medium, is elitist, while weird is thoroughly democratic. In spiritualism there are experts.*** Weird can happen to anybody, no intermediary needed.

***And now here's a note to my note. It occurs to me now that pulp-era spiritualism and technocracy may have run on parallel tracks, even if they weren't connected at all. The proto- and early science fiction of that same era may have been more closely technocratic than was spiritualism. A return to weird and the creation of weird fiction, then, may have been a reaction to nineteenth-century science and progress, reaction being characteristic of certain brands of conservatism.

 

Technocracy has to do with gadgetry and technology-based processes, of course, but the key ingredient in technocracy is the expert, the one who knows and the one to whom we are to defer. (Maybe in that respect, technocracy is a kind of gnosticism.) In spiritualism, the expert is the medium or the psychic investigator. In technocracy (or bureaucracy), the technocrat is the expert. In either case, the expert is unassailable. In any system based on expertism (my new word), questioning the expert is verboten. Skepticism, let alone criticism, is not permitted. So: the coronavirus is naturally zoonotic. It came from a wet market in China. It did not escape from a laboratory. It certainly wasn't manufactured. Vaccines are safe and effective. They prevent disease. You must receive at least one if you are to be safe and to keep others safe. Masking, six-foot distancing, lockdowns, and wiping down your groceries and mail work. They prevent the transmission of disease. Ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine are not effective against coronavirus. They are quack treatments. Only patented medicines work. (At this point, maybe we can call them--all of those things that are called vaccines--patent medicines instead. By the way, the spellchecker in Blogger doesn't even like the word hydroxychloroquine. That might just be a coincidence, but it could also indicate that we are not even to speak its name.) You may not question the experts on any of this. If you do, you're a xenophobe, a terrorist, an insurrectionist, a science-denier.

Now, an aside, an aside inside of a note to a note to a main article from which we are so far away that I can barely see it anymore: the concept of the expert might be related to the concept of the superhero or the superior man. Taken a little further, it might be related to the leader of a cult or to the cult of personality. Science fiction during the Golden Age of the 1930s and '40s, specifically the science fiction of John W. Campbell, Jr., and Astounding Science-Fiction, was caught up in the superhero/superior man idea. Very often, the powers of the superior man are psychic rather than physical. "Slan," by A. E. van Vogt, serialized in Astounding Science-Fiction in September-December 1940, is an example of a story about the psychic-superior man in science fiction. And we should remember that Campbell, reputed to be an exemplar of hard science fiction, began his career in college as a psychic investigator. I'm not sure that he moved very far beyond that, even late in life.

To return to the original topic, if spiritualism and technocratic or bureaucratic expertism have anything in common, it's that they don't and can't stand up to scrutiny. They can't stand the light of day and can operate only in the dark. And with spiritualism, it is literally only in the dark that it can operate. Anyway, the spiritualism craze and the technocracy craze ended a long time ago, but like TV ghost-hunting, technocracy and the cult of the expert are still with us. By the way, the advent of technocracy in America is dated to--guess when--1919.

Copyright 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Husbands & Wives-Part Three

John Wood Campbell, Jr., was born on June 8, 1910, in Newark, New Jersey. He attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and graduated from Duke University in 1934. As a student living in the Boston area, he met young Doña Stebbins. They were married in 1931, not long after she graduated from high school. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find the exact date or place.

Doña Louise Stuart Stebbins was born on November 27, 1913, in Ohio, possibly in Akron. Her mother, Mary V. Stebbins, was a Canadian-American and--in 1920 at least--a singer in a theater in Boston. Her mother was Martha Stuart, also born in Canada. So by a combination of a version of his wife's given name and her mother's maiden name, Campbell had his nom de plume, Don A. Stuart.

Doña Stuart, or Doña Campbell, was artistic, a singer, a cook, and a hostess in the Campbell home. Campbell called her "a kindly, gentle, and sweet person." (1) She was outgoing where her husband was not. According to Alec Nevala-Lee, she "changed his writing, although it took years for the full implications to emerge." She retyped his stories and corrected his grammar and spelling. "She became his first reader [. . .], and he submitted ideas and openings for her approval." According to L. Ron Hubbard, she was his "sounding board." (2)

In October 1937, Campbell was elevated to the editorship of Astounding Stories, published by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Within a year or two, he had set off what is now called the Golden Age of Science Fiction. He did this by gathering a stable of young writers, including A.E. van Vogt, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and Lester del Rey. We remember their names and read their stories even today. Doña, the woman behind the editor, is not so well known.

Campbell and Doña were especially close to Robert A. Heinlein and his wife, Leslyn MacDonald Heinlein. The Campbells' older daughter, Philinda Duane Campbell, called "Peedee" or "Peeds," was born on Leslyn's thirty-sixth birthday, August 29, 1940. Leslyn Heinlein became the namesake of the Campbells' younger daughter, Leslyn Stuart Campbell, born in 1945. The Heinleins were her godparents.

In 1949, Campbell got himself wrapped up in Dianetics. His partner in that work was of course L. Ron Hubbard. That was the end of the line for Doña Campbell, especially, I think, after her husband decided that he should audit their two daughters. She was resistant to Hubbard and Campbell's new brainchild. She warned the Heinleins that Dianetics "would be dangerous 'in the hands of a couple of crackpot world-savers.'" (3) Her insight at that very early date seems to have been rare among science fiction writers. To his credit, Lester del Rey also saw through this newest of pseudosciences.

As people used to say, Doña fled into the arms of another man. He was science fiction author George Oliver Smith. Born on April 9, 1911, in Chicago, Smith was one of Campbell's stable of writers at Astounding from 1942 to 1948. He and Doña were married in 1950. Again, unfortunately, I haven't found the exact date, although the place may have been in Philadelphia. Smith had been married before, too. His first wife was Helen Kunzler (1913-1996). They were married from 1936 to 1948. Smith did not return to the pages of Astounding until 1959. He also had one story in Analog.

John W. Campbell rebounded soon enough after his wife left him, for on June 15, 1951--exactly a week after his forty-first birthday--he married Margaret Winter Kearney. She had been married before. Her marriage to Everett W. Kearney had ended by divorce just two months before, on April 19, 1951, in Gogebic County, Michigan. Nicknamed Peg, she was the sister of Dr. Joseph A. Winter, who had also lent a hand in the development of Dianetics. Peg Campbell was involved in all of that business, too. By coincidence, Dr. Winter died on John W. Campbell's forty-fifth birthday, June 8, 1955.

Campbell remained editor of Astounding Science Fiction, later Analog, until his death, which happened at his home in New Jersey on July 11, 1971. It was Peg Campbell who found him in his chair. She wrote "Postscriptum" in The Best of John W. Campbell, published in 1976.

Doña Louise Stuart Stebbins Campbell White died in May 1974 in Rumson, New Jersey, this according to an undocumented source on the Internet. Margaret "Peg" Winter Kearney Campbell died on August 17, 1979, in Waterville, Maine. George O. Smith wrote a remembrance of the second wife of his second wife's ex-husband. Entitled "In Memoriam: Margaret Winter Campbell," it was published in the February 1980 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. He died a little more than a year later, on May 27, 1981, in Rumson, New Jersey. He was just seventy years old and the last of the main players in these three connected marriages--these three partnerships from which so much science fiction emerged.

Next: The Heinleins

Notes
(1) From a letter to Frank Kelly Freas, June 10, 1955, in The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume 1 (AC Projects, Inc., 1985), p. 286.
(2) These three quotes are from Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee, p. 60, a book that I have relied on and quoted from more than once in this series. I fully acknowledge Mr. Nevala-Lee's great job of research, analysis, synthesis, and writing, and I urge you to read his book.
(3) From Nevala-Lee, p. 273.

Cover art by Alex Schomburg. Note the byline of James Gunn.

Thanks to Carrington Dixon for corrections.
Revised November 15, 2022.
Original text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

An Anonymous Comment on LRH

I'm still playing catchup on comments left on this blog. I have two more to go.

First is a comment on Joseph A. Winter, onetime associate of L. Ron Hubbard and John W. Campbell, Jr., in their development of Dianetics in 1949-1950. Sometime during 1950, Winter and Hubbard had a falling out. Winter died suddenly four years later of a coronary thrombosis. He was just forty-four years old.

On Saturday, May 28, 2022, I published an entry called "Joseph A. Winter (1911-1955)-Part One." I completed my series on Winter and his sister, Margaret Winter Kearney Campbell (1907-1979), several days later, on June 5, 2022. Winter's sister, better known as Peg Campbell, was the second wife of John W. Campbell, Jr., and the one who was with him to the end.

On Sunday, June 19, 2022 (Father's Day), Anonymous left this comment on my entry on Dr. Winter:

Readers should remember that Joe Winter was related through marriage to John W Campell's wife, Joe's sister. They all socialised with the Hubbard group and Street & Smith and the Saint Elizabeth's Hospital staffers in the heady days of the Bay Head Group, HDRF and the Elizabeth Foundation. Hubbard later said that he had to distance himself from almost all of those people due to the alleged dubious communist party loose associations. Maybe Winter and the others did get the wrong end of the stick. They were not aware (I think) of Hubbard's proven intelligence officer connections under Ian MacBean and Joseph Thompson since 1927 China. I personally think Ledora-May Waterbury de Wolfe or her Husband Harry Ross Hubbard were more than just casual civilians in that respect. Hubbard had a good home education before George Washington and later Princeton University schools. I wonder just why Joseph Winter parted ways so suddenly with LRH. The CIA connection had not been establish in public at that time. Only after 1985 were the CIA connections proven. It all centred around using psychological methods to achieve workable solutions for the US and UK players. Hubbard had to keep his silence on his role for all his life. Only in the taped lectures would he offer thin anecdotal evidence. What if Winter reincarnated and remembered a lot?

There's a lot of information in that comment, some of it probably arcane to the non-Scientologists among us. For your information and mine, I'll write about some of it.

• Joseph A. Winter, M.D. (1911-1955) was a physician, originally from Michigan but who moved to New Jersey in January 1950 in order to assist Hubbard and Campbell in their "research" into Dianetics. A newspaper article on his move was the first mention in print that I have found of "Dianetics" as a noun specifically in reference to Hubbard's brainchild. As I have mentioned, Winter's sister, nicknamed Peg, was the soon-to-be wife of Campbell. Presumably, Dr. Winter introduced them sometime in 1949 or 1950.

• Street & Smith were the publishers of Astounding Science Fiction, edited by Campbell.

• St. Elizabeth Hospital presumably refers to a hospital in Elizabeth, New Jersey, now called Trinitas Regional Medical Center (or possibly a hospital in Manhattan), but there is another St. Elizabeth Hospital that figures in the history of Dianetics/Scientology. That one is a place where Hubbard is supposed to have studied psychiatry.

• The Bay Head Group were the earliest developers of Dianetics, including not only Hubbard, Campbell, and Winter, but also electrical engineer Don Rogers and publisher Arthur Ceppos. The group was based in Bay Head, New Jersey, where Hubbard made his temporary home. (Most of his homes appear to have been temporary.)

• The HDRF was the Hubbard Dianetic Research Foundation, incorporated in April 1950. Its members were Hubbard, Campbell, Winter, Rogers, Ceppos, lawyer C. Parker Morgan, and Hubbard's second wife, Sara Northrup Hubbard, you know, the one who didn't exist.

• Ian MacBean was Ian Gordon Macbean or MacBean, presumably a British military man born on February 24, 1892, and who died on June 29, 1944. To say that Hubbard had "proven intelligence officer connections" is to repeat, I think, a bit of fancy dreamed up by Hubbard and his followers in Scientology. In 1927, Hubbard was sixteen years old and on a trip with his mother to visit China. Can we even imagine him making "intelligence officer connections" on such a trip?

• Joseph Thompson was Joseph Cheesman Thompson (1874-1943), a wacky kind of character who served in the U.S. Navy, spied on Japan, studied herpetology, and bred Burmese cats, among other things. He is supposed to have known Hubbard, dating from early 1923 when Hubbard was eleven years old. Thompson was also a psychoanalyst and studied the insane at St. Elizabeth Hospital in Washington, D.C. Thompson had his own ideas about the mind, insanity, mental illness, and psychological trauma. One of his nicknames was "Crazy Thompson," and at least one of his fellow psychoanalysts considered him mentally ill or insane. In 1929, while in Hawaii, he was relieved of duty with the Navy and went into retirement. Whether or not Hubbard was actually one of his associates, he appears to have fit the mold. After all, Hubbard, too, served in the Navy--without any distinction I should add--and was almost certainly mentally ill, if not insane at one time or another in his life. And like Thompson, Hubbard was influenced by the works and ideas of Sigmund Freud.

• Ledora-May Waterbury de Wolfe (1885-1959) and Harry Ross Hubbard (1886-1975) were L. Ron Hubbard's parents. According to public records, her name was actually Ledora May Waterbury. The DeWolf part comes from her mother, Ida Corinna DeWolf Waterbury (1863-1944). L. Ron Hubbard's son, L. Ron Hubbard, Jr. (1934-1991), changed his name to Ronald DeWolf. Known as "Nibs" or "Ron," DeWolf cowrote the book L. Ron Hubbard, Messiah or Madman? (1987) with Bent Corydon.

As for everything that comes after in the comment above made by Anonymous, those are his or her thoughts and opinions, seemingly informed by Scientology. Joseph A. Winter may have explained or implied his reasons for breaking with Hubbard in his book A Doctor's Report on Dianetics: Theory and Therapy (1950), but I don't have a copy of that book, so I can't say. I also can't say whether Winter was ever reincarnated.

Anyway, I would like to thank Anonymous for writing. His or her comment has led me to learn a little more about Hubbard, Dianetics, and Scientology.

Further Reading

• Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction by Alec Nevala-Lee (2018, 2019).
• "The Spy Who Never Was? L. Ron Hubbard and 'Maj. Ian Macbean of the British Secret Service'" by Chris Owen on the website The Underground Bunker, July 29, 2022, here.

Original text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

The comment left by Anonymous is his or her own original work and should be considered his or her intellectual property and so protected under copyright. I have reproduced it here for informational purposes.

Margaret "Peg" Winter Kearney Campbell (1907-1979)

Aka Mrs. John W. Campbell

Teacher, Businesswoman, Amateur Researcher, Author

Born March 5, 1907, Negaunee, Michigan

Died August 17, 1979, Waterville, Maine

Margaret "Peg" Winter Kearney Campbell was born on March 5, 1907, in Negaunee, Michigan. She was the older sister of Dr. Joseph A. Winter (1911-1955) and the second wife of John W. Campbell, Jr. (1910-1971), longtime editor of Astounding Science Fiction/Analog magazine. She assisted both in their development of Dianetics and her husband in his later research into supposed psionic phenomena.

According to Alec Nevala-Lee, Margaret Winter graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a master's degree in English literature and philosophy. Her minor was educational psychology. (Astounding, p. 274) Someone on the website Find A Grave has written that she had six years of education after high school. I don't have any reason to doubt that, for the numbers add up just right. Mr. Nevala-Lee called her "strikingly intelligent." (p. 274)

Margaret Winter taught at Luther L. Wright High School in Ironwood, Michigan, in 1931-1932. On October 15, 1932, she married Everett W. Kearney (1898-1951), a merchant, in her parents' home in Negaunee, Michigan. The couple honeymooned in Chicago.

After marrying, Margaret Kearney gave up teaching but became involved in the business of knitting and selling yarn and items made from yarn. Those endeavors proved successful and she kept at it for decades afterward, even after she remarried.

Everett and Margaret Kearney had two children. Born in 1934, their son Joseph H. Kearney graduated from Luther L. Wright High School in 1951 and Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, on June 12, 1955. Five days later, on June 17, 1955, he was killed in a car accident while driving to Chicago for summer classes. It was a terrible and devastating loss, and my heart goes out to the family, even now, sixty-seven years after the fact. We should remember that Dr. Joseph A. Winter, brother of Peg, had died just eight days before.

Joe Kearney was to have studied sociology at Harvard University beginning in the fall of 1955. The soft sciences--psychology and sociology--seem to have been of special interest to members of the Winter, Kearney, and Campbell families. His mother and uncle studied these things, as did his stepfather and sister, as well as the husband of his cousin Mary.

Everett and Margaret Kearney were divorced on April 19, 1951, in Gogebic County, Michigan. Less than two months later, on June 15, 1951, she and John W. Campbell, Jr., were married in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Campbell had of course been married before. His first wife, Doña Stebbins Campbell (1913-1974), had left him while he was heavy into Dianetics. His involvement in that business seems to have been the last straw for her. Peg Campbell, on the other hand, "became involved with the movement at once, teaching classes and investing five thousand dollars in the [Dianetics] foundation." Mr. Nevala-Lee adds, "She also became Campbell's auditing partner." (Astounding, p. 274) Like L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986), Peg had red (or reddish) hair. Unlike his, her eyes were blue. If the supposed folkloric belief that red-haired, green-eyed people are demonic, then she escaped that influence by maybe only a few wavelengths. By the way, Everett W. Kearney died on October 3, 1951, in Gogebic, Michigan, less than seven months after their divorce.

The Kearneys' younger child was a daughter, Jane Kearney. She attended Wellesley College and the University of California, where she received a bachelor of arts degree in psychology in 1959. She married twice but was to have been married to another man before any of that happened. That man was science fiction author Gordon Randall Phillip Garrett (1927-1987), known as Randall Garrett. The Campbells announced their daughter's impending nuptials on November 24, 1956. Garrett was a friend and associate of other science fiction writers, including Robert Silverberg (b. 1935) and Isaac Asimov (1920-1992). He was also what used to be known as a bounder. Campbell found out about him and the wedding was called off.

John W. Campbell, Jr., died at home on July 11, 1971. It was his wife who found him in his chair. She survived him by eight years, dying on August 17, 1979, in Waterville, Maine. Perhaps she lived close to her daughter at the end. Peg Campbell was seventy-two years old when she died. It is that same number of years that separate us now from the beginnings in print of Dianetics.

* * *

Peg Campbell has the following credit in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb), as Mrs. John W. Campbell:

• "Afterword: Postscriptum" in The Best of John W. Campbell (1976)

She is also in Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee (2018, 2019) and in The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume 1 (1985), presumably, too, in its sequel. Science fiction author George O. Smith (1911-1981) wrote a tribute to her, "In Memoriam: Margaret Winter Campbell," in the February 1980 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. In completing this account of diverse family dramas, I should point out that George O. Smith was married to Doña Stebbins Campbell after she and Campbell were divorced. Actually she ran to Smith during her first husband's mad obsession with Dianetics in 1950-1951.

You can find photographs of Peg Campbell on the Internet. You might start with one entitled "John W. and Peg Campbell at Medieval Tourney event, Baycon" (1968), from the Jay Kay Klein Collection at UC Riverside, Library, Special Collections and University Archives, by clicking here. Note that in the picture, Peg is wearing a scarf. I wonder if it's one that she made herself.

The Best of John W. Campbell (Nelson Doubleday, 1976). The cover, by Chet Jezierski (b. 1947), illustrates Campbell's most famous story, "Who Goes There?", originally in Astounding Science-Fiction in August 1938. In that first publication, Campbell used a pseudonym, Don A. Stuart, a tribute, I guess you could call it, to his first wife.

"Who Goes There?" was of course made into a movie, The Thing from Another World (1951), and a remake, The Thing (1982). The first version was released on April 27, 1951. At the time, different kinds of dramas were being enacted in the lives of its original author and the people around him. Campbell was wrapped up in Dianetics. The woman who was to be his second wife was securing a divorce from her husband. And on June 15, 1951, she and Campbell were married.

Scientists don't come out very well in The Thing from Another World. It's no wonder that Isaac Asimov didn't like the movie. Campbell was more sanguine. Maybe he would have liked the remake better, as it is closer to his original conception than The Thing from Another World.

Note that the introduction to The Best of John W. Campbell is by Lester del Rey (1915-1993), who opposed Dianetics.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Joseph A. Winter (1911-1955)-Part Two

Joseph A. Winter, M.D., was first in Astounding Science Fiction in October 1948 with an essay entitled "Endocrinology in Tough" [sic]. His first short story, "Expedition Mercy," followed close on its heels in November 1948. His second, "Mission Polychrome," came along in January 1949. Later that year his life changed when first John W. Campbell, Jr., then, in July 1949, L. Ron Hubbard wrote to him. Campbell and Hubbard were already working on Dianetics by then. Both were also interested in endocrinology. (Hubbard claimed to have been conducting research in that field for the previous eleven years.) The two men were looking for a medical doctor to assist them, perhaps to lend credence or medical cachet to their work. Winter had his own interests, which seemed to align with theirs. He showed up in New Jersey in October 1949 and began working with Campbell and Hubbard. After one or two more trips back home, he made the move permanent in January 1950. It is in reference to Dr. Winter that the word Dianetics first appeared in newspapers, as far as I can tell.

* * *

I recently read Astounding, Alec Nevala-Lee's combination history of Astounding Science Fiction magazine and biography of its editor and leading contributors, Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and L. Ron Hubbard. Joseph A. Winter is in Astounding, too. I began writing this series before I knew of Mr. Nevala-Lee's book. As soon as I found out about it, I knew I had to read it. It is from that book that I have drawn a lot of the information I have used here. I fully acknowledge Alec Nevala-Lee's work. He has written a very thoroughly researched and very interesting and readable book. His prose is so good, in fact--so clear and smooth--that it seems to have come from another time, fitting for a book about the science fiction of the past.

When I started a few weeks ago, I thought that I had made a discovery linking J.A. Winter to John W. Campbell, Jr. As it turns out, Mr. Nevala-Lee made that discovery before I did. However, the Internet doesn't seem to have discovered it yet, including the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb). My hope is that what I write will bring the facts and the connection into the open. Solving the mysteries of biography, culture, and history is one of the reasons I began writing this blog. I hope you don't mind that I spend some time solving--or at least setting before you--a little of this mystery involving Dr. Winter, his sister, the editor Campbell, and the origins of Dianetics.

It becomes clear in reading Astounding (2018, 2019) that Joseph A. Winter was instrumental in the development of Dianetics. You can read about all of that in Mr. Nevala-Lee's book. Dr. Winter was also a friend to Campbell and Hubbard. He delivered Hubbard's daughter, Alexis Valerie Hubbard, born in silence on March 8, 1950, so as to avoid lodging engrams in her mind. Winter must also have introduced his own sister, Margaret "Peg" Winter Kearney, to Campbell. (The circumstances aren't made clear in the book.) The date was sometime in early June 1950. Alexis Hubbard dropped out of the Campbell-Astounding-Hubbard-Dianetics-Scientology picture. (Wherever she is, I hope she's safe.) Peg Kearney, on the other hand, became Mrs. John W. Campbell, Jr. I will have more on her in the next part of this series.

As everyone seems to have done, J.A. Winter fell out with L. Ron Hubbard. In late 1950, his book, A Doctor's Report on Dianetics: Theory and Therapy, was published by Julian Press. I haven't read Dr. Winter's book. From what I know of it, Dr. Winter seems to have believed still in Dianetics as a type of therapy, but evidently not in Hubbard's approach to it. Sometime after that, presumably in 1951, Campbell said that Hubbard was operating under the "conviction that Joe Winter, I, and the others who originally backed him are his worst enemies." (1) As we now know, personal conflict and paranoia were hallmarks of Hubbardism.

Dr. Winter went on to conduct research or practice psychotherapy of one kind or another in New York and New Jersey. He died suddenly on June 8, 1955, at Englewood Hospital in Englewood, New Jersey. He was just forty-four years old.

Four years before, in 1951, L. Ron Hubbard wrote to the FBI, detailing a supposed attempt on his life:

I was in my apartment on February 23, about 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning when the apartment was entered, I was knocked out, had a needle thrust into my heart to give it a jet of air to produce "coronary thrombosis" and was given an electric shock with 110-volt current. This is all very blurred to me. I had no witnesses. But only one person had another key to that apartment and that was Sara. (2)

Sara was Sara Northrup Hubbard, former girlfriend of Hubbard's demon-conjuring pal Jack Parsons and mother of Alexis Hubbard, the first Dianetics baby. Hubbard's letter reads like a detective story, a nice yarn for a man who conjured not only demons but also fantastic fiction and pseudo-nonfiction. I'm not sure how Hubbard survived all of that, especially the coronary thrombosis part. But then he was a Superior Man, that sturdy product of the Campbellian science fiction of the Golden Age. Joseph A. Winter didn't. Survive, I mean. According to his obituary, he was felled by the affliction that had failed to do in L. Ron Hubbard before him: two days after being stricken with a heart attack, J.A. Winter died of "acute coronary thrombosis." (3)

So I have to ask, where was Hubbard when Dr. Winter died?

And before you think that question flippant, consider this quote from L. Ron Hubbard:

There are men dead because they attacked us--for instance Dr. Joe Winter. He simply realized what he did and died. (4)

Next: Margaret "Peg" Winter Kearney Campbell (1907-1979)

Notes

(1) Quoted in Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee (2018, 2019), page 302.

(2) Quoted in "LRH: The Story of L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology" by Joel Sappel and Robert W. Welkos (of the Los Angeles Times) in the St. Petersburg Times, June 24, 1990, page 12.

(3) "Dr. Joseph A. Winter Dies in New York City" in The Herald-Press, St. Joseph, Michigan, June 10, 1955, page 12.

(4) Quoted in Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee, (2018, 2019), page 310.

A Doctor's Report on Dianetics by J.A. Winter, M.D. (1951). J.A. Winter was Joseph Augustus Winter (1911-1955), a writer of science fiction and an associate of John W. Campbell, Jr. (1910-1971) and L. Ron Hubbard (1911-1986). His book came out late in 1951, after he had fallen out with Hubbard. Note that the introduction was by Frederick Perls, M.D. Also known as Fritz Perls, Dr. Friedrich S. Perls (1893-1970), with his wife Laura Perls (1905-1990), developed Gestalt therapy, so popular in America in the late 1960s and 1970s. We should note, too, that Perls was at one time an associate of Wilhelm Reich (1897-1957), surely one of the wackiest people to have gained entry into mass culture during the twentieth century. All--Winter, Hubbard, Perls, Perls, and Reich--were or seemed to have been influenced by the work and ideas of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). Campbell may have been a different kind of case. I can't say for sure. But there was an influence of another European-American thinker on the Campbellian/Astounding brand of 1940s science fiction. He was Alfred Korzybski (1879-1950), originator of the field of general semantics, which lies somewhere on the scale of almost-science to pseudoscience. A.E. van Vogt (1912-2000) and Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988) are two examples of science fiction authors who employed Korzybski's ideas in their own work.

Original text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

Joseph A. Winter (1911-1955)-Part One

Joseph Augustus Winter, M.D.

Aka J.A. Winter, M.D.

Physician, Surgeon, Author

Born February 17, 1911, Negaunee, Michigan

Died June 9, 1955, Englewood Hospital, Englewood, New Jersey

Joseph Augustus Winter was born in winter, on February 17, 1911, and in a wintery place, Negaunee, in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. His father was Joseph H. Winter (1871-1956), a bank president and a mayor of Negaunee. His mother was Lucy MacKenzie Winter (1878-1949).

Joseph A. Winter attended the University of Michigan and the College of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1937, he received his degree as a medical doctor from Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Previous to that, on August 29, 1934, he had married Marjorie Roosen (1908-1999), a native of Ontonagon, Michigan. The place was Little Lake in Marquette County, Michigan. There is a chapel at Little Lake, established in the 1930s. I wonder if that could have been where the Winters were married.

Dr. Winter was a surgeon and a physician. He practiced medicine in Cheboygan, Michigan, for four years before serving in the U.S. Army, from June 24, 1942, to August 3, 1944. Winter returned to civilian life and again practiced medicine, this time in St. Joseph, Michigan, from 1945 to 1949. In January 1949, he moved himself and his family to Bayside, New Jersey, to take up a new endeavor.

Joseph A. Winter was an author, and that's where things get interesting for us, for he is listed in the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb) with the following credits:

• "Endocrinology in Tough" [sic] in Astounding Science Fiction (essay, Oct. 1948)
• "Expedition Mercy" in Astounding Science Fiction (short story, Nov. 1948)
• "Expedition Polychrome" in Astounding Science Fiction (short story, Jan. 1949)
• Letter in Astounding Science Fiction (Aug. 1950)
• "The General Adaptation Syndrome" in Astounding Science Fiction (essay, Nov. 1950)
• "What is Psychosomatic?" in Astounding Science Fiction (essay, Aug. 1952)
• "Thinking in Men and Machines" (essay, Aug. 1953)
• "The Reference Library: One More World," with P. Schuyler Miller, in Astounding Science Fiction (essay, Mar. 1954)
• Review of The Living Brain (1953) by W. Grey Walter in Astounding Science Fiction (Mar. 1954)

Note that all were published in Astounding Science Fiction. The ISFDb also lists two hardbound books by Dr. Winter that it calls non-genre works:

• A Doctor's Report on Dianetics (Julian Press, 1951)
• Are Your Troubles Psychosomatic? (Julian Messner, 1952)

Both were reviewed in Startling Stories.

There's that word again: Dianetics.

To be continued . . .

According to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb), J.A. Winter, M.D., had a grand total of two short stories published in the genres of fantasy and science fiction. Both have been reprinted in book form, "Expedition Mercy" in Great Science Fiction About Doctors (1963) and "Expedition Polychrome" in this book, Gates to Tomorrow, edited by Andre Norton and Ernestine Donaldy (1973).

"Expedition Polychrome" is set in the future on a distant planet where men from Earth have arrived in their expeditionary spacecraft. One of them is afflicted by a mysterious disease, which turns his skin an aquamarine blue, like "Lake Superior in July." (Remember that Winter was from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.) The main action in the story involves the crewman's treatment by onboard physicians, and there is a good deal of talk of medicine, chemistry, and even botany. Eventually the patient is cured not by Earth medicine but by the natives of the planet, who practice a kind of homeopathy. I wonder whether John W. Campbell, Jr., editor of Astounding, could have coached Winter in writing science fiction stories. Whether he was coached or not, Winter introduced a pseudoscience, homeopathy, into his story as a cure for the blue spaceman of the planet Minotaur, this from a medical doctor turned science fiction author. Interesting.

Cover art by Jack Gaughan.

Thanks to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb).

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Hubbard the Explorer

or, Expedition Dianetics

The first published version of Dianetics was not in Astounding Science Fiction nor in a hardbound book edition. Instead it was in The Explorers Journal, the organ of the Explorers Club of New York, in its issue of Winter/Spring 1950 (Vol. XXVIII, No. 1). Written by L. Ron Hubbard--but in the passive voice--this version is entitled "Terra Incognita: The Mind." You can read it yourself by clicking here. Hubbard's essay is only three and a half pages long, yet it includes some basics of Dianetics (the word is capitalized in the original). It also introduces the word and concept comanome, later to evolve into the engram.

Strangely, Hubbard was a member of the Explorers Club, his membership having dated to February 19, 1940. On June 27, 1940, he set off on what he called the Alaskan Radio Experimental Expedition. Sailing under Explorers Club flag number 105, he captained a yacht called--ironically or not--Magician. Hubbard was given to boasting and mock heroics. His great radio expedition turned out to be more or less a fiasco, and he returned stateside half a year after beginning.

Volney G. Mathison, who contributed to Weird Tales, was an oceangoing radio operator. I had thought that he and Hubbard might have crossed paths as early as 1940, on the West Coast or in Alaska. But what I have read since writing about Mathison leads me to think that he and Hubbard didn't meet until the early 1950s, or, at the earliest, the late 1940s. In any case, Hubbard went on to lead two more expeditions flying the flag of the Explorers Club (flag number 163), in 1961 for his Oceanographic-Archeological [sic] Expedition, and in 1966 for his Hubbard Geological Survey Expedition. By 1961, Mathison had long broken with Hubbard. By 1966, he was in his grave.

* * *

Dianetics is an old word. Originally spelled dianoetics, it was first used in print in 1677. Citing the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Jon Atack, author of the essay "Possible Origins for Dianetics and Scientology" (click here to read it), is the source of that piece of information. Mr. Atack also suggested that Hubbard derived dianetics from the name of the Greek goddess Diana, a prominent figure in Aleister Crowley's supposed magic. Hubbard went on to name one of his daughters and one of his vessels Diana.

Dianoetic was in newspapers before 1900. The first occurrences of the word dianetic in American newspapers that I have found are from 1923 and 1926. In these items, dianetic is used as an adjective and not a noun. The usage seems to me nonsensical and absurd, like someone is putting us on. It also seems to me that the spelling dianetic is just a simplification of dianoetic. It would have to wait until early 1950, as far as I can tell, for the word Dianetics as a noun to occur in print in reference to a kind of psychology or pseudo-psychology. Read on . . .

Newspaper columnist Walter Winchell gets the credit for breaking the story of a coming Dianetics. On January 30, 1950, he wrote:

     There is something new coming in April called dianetics. (1) A new science that works with the invariability of physical science in the field of the human mind. From all indications it will prove to be as revolutionary for humanity as the first caveman's discovery and utilization of fire. (2)

Note the phrase "the invariability of physical science." In that, I detect the influence of John W. Campbell, Jr., who was in fact a physical scientist and seemingly keen on applying scientific principles to "the field of the human mind." I have tried to figure out a possible connection between Winchell and Campbell, Winchell and Hubbard, or Winchell and science fiction in general but have come up empty. (3) It seems to me that in early 1950, Hubbard and Campbell were trying to hype their new invention. What better way than to drop a hint with one of the most widely read newspaper columnists in America? (4) And why wouldn't Winchell publish a bit of gossip? That was his coin. Better to be wrong than to lose a scoop . . .

Except that Winchell was scooped, for Dianetics was mentioned in a newspaper item published twelve days prior to his January 31 column. On January 19, 1950, an anonymous reporter wrote:

Move to New Jersey -- Dr. and Mrs. J.A. Winter and family left yesterday to make their home in Bayside, N.J., where Dr. Winter is to continue his work in dianetics. Their home at 1614 Forres [sic] avenue will be occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Phillip Malloy.

The source is The Herald-Palladium of Benton Harbor, Michigan, page 3.

And that's where my research for this series began.

To be continued . . .

Notes
(1) The publication of Hubbard's Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was delayed a few days, until May 9, 1950.
(2) From the column "Gossip of the Nation" in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 31, 1950, p. 19. Winchell's column was of course in many other papers that day.
(3) Robert A. Heinlein later referred to a fictional gossip columnist as a "winchell" in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961). It seems to me that Heinlein was in the habit of trying to immortalize contemporary things. It didn't often work, and it makes him sound like somebody's old grandpa who talks about things from long ago that nobody now understands.
(4) There were newspapermen and broadcasters in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), but not Walter Winchell. These were: Kenneth Kendall, who was later in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); Elmer Davis, previously editor of the pulp magazine Adventure; and H.V. Kaltenborn. Dorothy Kilgallen was also a gossip columnist. She wrote more than once about flying saucers. Some conspiracy theorists believe that her mysterious death is an example of the silencing of people who knew too much about flying saucers. On August 18, 1950, she wrote about Hubbard's brainchild:

     Dianetics, the new "scientific" parlor game which swept California recently, has begun to catch on in the Gotham set that likes to discuss its neuroses . . . (Ellipses in the original, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Aug. 18, 1950, p. 22.)

The Explorers Journal, Winter-Spring 1950. The photograph on the cover looks like it could have been taken in Alaska. Does it date from L. Ron Hubbard's radio expedition to that place in 1940? And could that be the silhouette of Polly Hubbard, first wife of the inventor of Dianetics? Or is it the silhouette of a man?

Original text copyright 2022, 2023 Terence E. Hanley

A Wretched Thing or Two

It was May 1950 and time to do a wretched thing or two. Astounding Science Fiction got the ball rolling by printing "Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science" by L. Ron Hubbard in that month's issue. On May 9, 1950, Hermitage House issued the book-length version, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. Astounding editor John W. Campbell, Jr., had a big hand in both of those works of pseudo-nonfiction. In 1949-1950, he and Hubbard had collaborated in the development of Dianetics, even if it was initially a product of Hubbard's diseased mind. Unlike inheritance or relativity, Dianetics was an invention--ultimately an artifice--rather than a discovery. Campbell might be considered Hubbard's co-inventor.

A few years before Dianetics arrived on the scene, Raymond A. Palmer had parlayed the Shaver Mystery into vastly increased sales for Amazing Stories. The publication of Hubbard and Campbell's new pseudoscientific bible led to a jump in sales for Astounding Science Fiction, too. In 1949, circulation was at 75,000 copies per month. In 1950, monthly sales neared 100,000 copies. (1) Maybe Hubbard and Campbell had paid attention while the Shaver Mystery raged in science fiction circles. Maybe they saw an opportunity in what they thought of as a far more significant discovery. Call it Dianetics as Mantong. In any event, Dianetics stormed into the popular imagination in 1950-1951.

In a chapter of his book Astounding (2018, 2019) entitled "The Dianetics Epidemic," author Alec Nevala-Lee writes that by the summer of 1950, the hardbound version of Dianetics was selling 1,000 copies per day. (2) Like our own coronavirus, it raced through the American populace. Some succumbed, like A. E. van Vogt. Others showed strong resistance. In a sort of colloquium published in Marvel Science Stories, May 1951, Lester del Rey began his con to Hubbard's pro position with this observation:

     The secret feeling that you're basically superior to your fellow man is probably more typically human than anything, except the related doubt that you're superior to anyone. Racism is based on the need to believe in superiority, and one of the basic factors underlying many neuroses is the doubt of even equality. (p. 116)

Philosopher and longshoreman Eric Hoffer--like del Rey writing just six years after the destruction of the Nazi regime--came to the same kind of conclusion in The True Believer, that the man who believes himself superior may hold in his secret heart a contrary feeling of crushing inferiority. That seems to have been a general feeling among certain readers, fans, and writers of science fiction from the 1920 and '30s onward. It became more specific in the Superior Man-type story so common in Astounding Science Fiction during the 1940s. Maybe by 1950 Campbell felt that what was needed was to move that concept from fiction into fact, thus Dianetics. Ten years later--in January 1960--Astounding Science Fiction became Analog Science Fact & Fiction. In explaining the name change, Campbell wrote: "The science fiction we run in this magazine is in actual fact a good analog of the science facts to come." (3) Never mind that he had moved on by then from one failed pseudo-quasi-science to another.

To be continued . . .

Notes
(1) According to a letter from Campbell to Eric Frank Russell, dated January 7, 1952, and cited in Astounding by Alec Nevala-Lee (2018; Dey Street, 2019), page 272.
(2) Ditto, page 272.
(3) Quoted in Mr. Nevala-Lee's book, page 326, from Analog, February 1960.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Piecing Together Separated Things

In his critique of Charles Fort, John W. Campbell, Jr., wrote that Fort had not done "the hard work of integrating [his data] and finding the pattern." Evidently that's what Campbell was looking for and what he tried to do in his own research: integrate the data and find the pattern.

Fort was a lifelong collector. His life's work consisted of collecting accounts of strange, unexplained, and anomalous phenomena from newspapers, magazines, journals, and other sources in print, then assembling them into four books published from 1919 to 1932. (His last, Lo!, came out two days after his death.) Fort may not have come up to Campbell's standards, but I'm not sure that he failed to integrate his data or to find a pattern, either. He famously concluded: "I think we're property." (The Book of the Damned, 1919, Chapter 12) That seems to me the result of an integration and the discovery of a pattern.

If we summarize the Fortean method, it might be that meaning, significance, or the establishment of patterns comes from the piecing together of data or information that is separated in both time and space. From "The Call of Cthulhu" (1926, 1928):

     The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. [. . .] The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

and:

But it is not from them [the Theosophists] that there came the single glimpse of forbidden aeons which chills me when I think of it and maddens me when I dream of it. That glimpse, like all dread glimpses of truth, flashed out from an accidental piecing together of separated things--in this case an old newspaper item and the notes of a dead professor. 

So it looks like Lovecraft's narrator availed himself of the Fortean method by piecing together "disassociated knowledge" and "separated things." And in examining these data, the narrator arrives at a correlation of contents, in Campbell's terms, perhaps, at integration and a discovery of patterns.

The novel Sinister Barrier was the headliner in the first issue of Campbell's fantasy magazine Unknown. The author was Eric Frank Russell, a confirmed Fortean. In his introduction, Russell in fact acknowledged Fort as a posthumous co-author of his story. He also acknowledged the Fortean Society of America and mentioned Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce, and other "imaginative and enquiring minds" who had "been 'removed' with expedition, and with subtle cunning." (Oh, those disappearing Ambroses!) Then comes a second introduction, a description of and speculation on a seemingly insignificant journalistic account: eight dead starlings falling from the sky in New York City, and a ninth so frightened that it flies into a restaurant window. What killed the eight and frightened the ninth? Only the integration of data, the correlation of contents allows for an answer . . .

Campbell wrote his critique of Fort in the form of a letter to Russell, dated October 1, 1952. In it, Campbell called for a piecing together, an integration of separate things. And from that integration, he wanted the making of patterns. Earlier that year, in March 1952, Robert A. Heinlein's story "The Year of the Jackpot" had appeared in Galaxy Science Fiction. Heinlein's hero is statistician Potiphar Breen. Like Charles Fort, Breen collects data from newspaper accounts of seemingly unrelated phenomena. In other words, Breen employs the Fortean method, but he takes it one step further: he answers Campbell's call for integration and pattern-making. It is through Breen's integration and analysis that a pattern emerges, a pattern of cycles that just happen to come together in a single year, the year of the jackpot. And what a terrible jackpot it is! There is also a parallel construction to Fort's I think we're property: Breen tells his girlfriend Meade, "I think we're lemmings."

So did Heinlein answer Campbell's call directly, meaning, did Heinlein get the idea for his story from Campbell in regards to what Campbell thought of as Fort's shortcomings? I doubt it. For one, "The Year of the Jackpot" was in H.L. Gold's Galaxy versus Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction. More importantly, I doubt that Heinlein would have needed any hints or nudges or ideas from anyone else at that point in his career. He was his own man and his own writer. He had plenty of imagination and almost certainly didn't need anything from anyone else.

I didn't go looking for "The Year of the Jackpot." In an almost occult coincidence, I just happened to read it the other night. (I write on April 27, 2022.) I had read the story before, I think. This time I found it in Nightmare Age, a collection of unpleasant or even terrible futures, edited by Frederik Pohl and published by Ballantine Books in 1970. Not to take anything away from anyone else represented in this book--there are some very good writers and very good stories in Nightmare Age--but Heinlein was simply a step ahead of the others, in his style, in his way of putting together a story, in his dialogue and characterization, finally in his way of conveying real feeling and what it is to live as a human being. A story that begins lightly turns serious and heavy by the end. And those are the final words of "The Year of the Jackpot": THE END.

Anyway, the Fortean method made its way into both fiction and nonfiction, as early as "The Call of Cthulhu"; certainly by the time of Sinister Barrier, in which it was placed in full view of the reader; in "The Year of the Jackpot," in which it was no longer necessary to mention any Fortean background to a story; more obviously in all of the nonfictional or pseudo-nonfictional accounts of Fate and other Fortean studies published after midcentury. Behind the Flying Saucers by Frank Scully (1950) and The UFO Annual by Morris K. Jessup (1956) are good examples. We should remember that the short story that uses or refers to newspaper accounts has precedence in the work of the Amazing Disappearing Ambrose Bierce (1842-?). So maybe Fort followed Bierce.

None of this is to say that Lovecraft or Heinlein wrote their stories with an awareness of Fort and the Fortean method in mind. We don't know that they did. In fact, Lovecraft seems to have worked in the Modernist method of assembling his stories from the things he found around him, like John Dos Passos or T.S. Eliot. (I guess Fort did the same thing. So was Fort a Modernist?) The case of "The Year of the Jackpot" seems more equivocal. That single parallel construction--"I think we're lemmings"--seems to give the game away, though. Maybe Potiphar Breen is a cross between Charles Fort and John W. Campbell, Jr.

"The year of the Jackpot" by Robert A. Heinlein was the cover story in the March 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. H.L. Gold (1914-1996) was the editor, Richard Arbib (1919-1995) the cover artist. There are mentions of Flying Saucers and Rosicrucianism in Heinlein's story. There is also a quote from this quatrain by Nostradamus:

XXIX

The Oriental shall come out of his Seat,

Shall pass over the Apennine Mountains, and see France,

Shall go over the Air, the Waters and Snow,

And shall strike every one with his Rod.

That sounds like a prediction of the coronavirus, which hit Italy and France hard before going by air, over waters and snow, to strike the United States and other countries. If the coronavirus were a rod-shaped bacillus rather than a virus, this would be a slam dunk for Nostradamus. Note that President Eleven's name is sandwiched between two Xs in the numerical designation of the quatrain. Xs mark the spot.

By the way, the endings of Melancholia (2011) and Star Wars: Rogue One (2016) are like that of "The Year of the Jackpot." Could the creators of those two movies have read Heinlein's story? Or did they arrive at their endings independently of him and each other?

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley

Campbell on Fort-Part Two

Charles Fort's third book, Lo! (1931), was serialized in Astounding Stories in eight parts, from April to November 1934. It seems certain to me that, as a young writer and reader of science fiction stories, John W. Campbell, Jr. (1910-1971) would have encountered it. Just three years after Lo! was in Astounding, Campbell became editor of the magazine. In March 1938, the title went from Astounding Stories to Astounding Science-Fiction and the Golden Age of Science Fiction was off to a start. The hyphen was later dropped.

Weird Tales was still going strong in 1938, despite having lost two of its top authors, Robert E. Howard (1906-1936) and H.P. Lovecraft (1890-1937). In March 1939, Campbell launched a magazine of fantasy as a companion to Astounding and in competition with Weird Tales. It was called Unknown, and the first issue, from March 1939, contained one of the most overtly Fortean stories that I know of, the novel Sinister Barrier by Eric Frank Russell (1905-1978). In August 1941, Campbell reviewed The Books of Charles Fort in the pages of Astounding Science Fiction. According to Sam Moskowitz, Campbell's review "heartily recommends it as a source book for plots." (1)

Thirteen years after the publication of Sinister Barrier, on October 1, 1952, Campbell wrote to Russell. His letter must have been in response to one by Russell, for Campbell addressed his correspondent:

    I'm trying to introduce the proposition of sciences beyond those currently known and accepted.

    But Eric PLEASE believe me; Charles Fort made a mistake. [. . .] (2)

Campbell then proceeded to explain just why and how Fort was wrong:

He insisted that the scientists understand him when he explained it all to them in Swahili. (p. 68)

Also, Fort began screaming at the scientists, and calling them names. (p. 69) 

Fort refused to take the trouble to translate his observations into coherent language--language of science. (p. 69) 

It counts when you can reach an understanding that is valid, and communicate that understanding to others. [¶ ] Fort couldn't. He did it wrong. He angered the best thinkers, the clearest, straightest-thinking minds who could have helped the most. His writing appealed largely to muzzy-minded people who went in for fortune telling, crystal-ball readings, and the like; they were the bulk of his audience. (p. 70) 

Fort's attitude was just as ineffective as Hubbard's; Hubbard angered the psychiatrists by his belligerence. (p. 70) 

Fort was insisting that someone else do the work of integrating them [presumably his data], and refusing to organize and interpret the data into intelligible stuff himself. [. . .] He was too lazy to do the hard work; he wanted it done for him [. . .]. (p. 70)

And then, after all of that, Campbell conceded:

     His data was valid. It contained important understandings, and important clues. In that, he was right. But why didn't he do some of the hard work of integrating it and finding the pattern, instead of frothing about how everyone else wouldn't do the work? (p. 70)

But maybe that concession was only towards Campbell's own extraordinary claim, which comes right after:

     For your information, Peg and I have done it. We have the basic understanding of what the psionic functions are, and how they work. It took us over two years of damned hard work. The reason why I'm now starting it in the magazine is that I do have some integrated understanding of what we're dealing with. I'm not yet ready to say a damned thing about it, either, because I recognize that Fort was wrong, and why he was wrong, and what the right answer is. Until I can demonstrate the phenomena myself, and communicate the exact nature of the mechanisms involved, with demonstrations of each step, I'm not ready to talk. When I've done that, though, by God the physical scientists will gladly pitch in and help. I know the general concept of teleportation, levitation, and a few other spontaneous psi phenomena--also telekinesis, etc. In addition, I know the general basic laws which can permit precognition, and an absolute barrier of pure force that will block passage of any force now known to physical science. The fundamental clues are to be found in many places; among the places are the sort of data Fort collected--but was too stinking lazy to dig into and integrate himself.

     I am not kidding.

     I am not cracked, either. (pp. 70-71)

I'll say it again: Extraordinary.

There are a few things to take from all of that:

First, I'm not sure that Campbell understood Fort very well. I'm not sure that I do, either, but it seems to me that Fort was a monist. To him, everything was already integrated. No process of integration was required. Also, it seems to me that Fort didn't want to speak the language of science. He dealt with data that were damned and excluded by science. Maybe he thought it was the scientists who had failed to communicate very well. He certainly had plenty of examples of their fumbling over explanations of his data. Put another way, maybe Fort took things on his own terms rather than theirs, for theirs seem to have failed.

Second, when I read what Campbell wrote about "muzzy-minded people who went in for fortune telling, crystal-ball readings, and the like," I thought of the advertisements in Weird Tales and one of its apparent successors, Fate magazine. I wrote about these things the other day. I also thought of a quote from The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell (1937):

In addition to this there is the horrible--the really disquieting--prevalence of cranks wherever Socialists are gathered together. One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words 'Socialism' and 'Communism' draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature Cure' quack, pacifist, and feminist in England. (Chapter 11)

I think the phenomenon is the same, no matter when and where it occurs: Belief systems from the fringes attract believers from the fringes. A corollary: Custom and tradition, specifically traditional religion, can be replaced only by religions (such as socialism and communism) of an equal (and frequently opposing) intensity. Or so people think. In fact, these religions, quasi-religions, and pseudo-religions almost always fail.

Third, Campbell wrote in late 1952, just two and a half years after publishing L. Ron Hubbard's quasi- or pseudo-nonfictional article "Dianetics: The Evolution of a Science" in Astounding Science Fiction, in May 1950. In reading about Campbell and his involvement with Hubbard, I get the idea that, for a time at least, Campbell was possessed by a kind of craziness when it came to Dianetics. Maybe by 1952, he, like the rest of the country, had cooled off and was not so crazy anymore. It's interesting, though, that Campbell would compare Hubbard's belligerence towards psychiatry to Fort's gadfly attitude towards conventional science. It sounds like Campbell had drifted from Hubbard--if he had not actually broken from him--by late 1952.

Fourth, Campbell claimed that after two years and more of "damned hard work," he and his wife, Peg Campbell, had "done it." They had made their world-changing discovery. I guess that means they began their explorations around the time Dianetics was either in the works or already out there in the world. In any case, Campbell sounds almost manic in that final, long quote from above. Put in terms I have used in this blog, it sounds like Campbell had found his gnosis, his special knowledge regarding the true and previously hidden nature of the universe or of some aspect of the universe. It's no wonder he would be so excited. He had found the key to unlock the door that would open onto all-understanding. "I am not kidding," he wrote. "I am not cracked, either." And yet we have nothing from his world-changing discovery. Seventy years have gone by and we have nothing.

Farnsworth Wright never made such claims.

Notes
(1) From "Lo! The Poor Forteans" by Sam Moskowitz in Amazing Stories, June 1965.
(2) From a letter by John W. Campbell, Jr., to Eric Frank Russell, dated October 1, 1952, in The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume 1 (Franklin, TN: AC Projects, 1985), pages 68-74. The quote is from page 68. All of the other quotes from Campbell above are from that same letter, with page numbers in parentheses.

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley