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

J. Allen St. John's Covers for Fate Magazine

I wrote the other day about Weird Tales and Fate magazine. Reader Carrington B. Dixon has reminded us that J. Allen St. John, who created nine cover illustrations for Weird Tales, also created two for Fate:

Fate, July 1950, with cover art by J. Allen St. John illustrating "Darius--Conqueror of Destiny" by Harland Wilson. Note the top title: "Lemuria Did Exist."

Fate, September 1950, again with cover art by St. John illustrating "The Ancient Rites of Pan" by Frank Patton. This could easily have been a cover for Weird Tales, but it was not meant to be a cover illustration at all . . .

According to Darrell C. Richardson (1918-2006) in his book J. Allen St. John: An Illustrated Bibliography (1991), the second piece of art shown above, then or later called "Áve Pan," was painted not for Fate but for the artist's own amusement. St. John told the late Mr. Richardson as much in 1949 when the latter visited the former in his studio. "The editor of Fate Magazine," Mr. Richardson wrote, "visited the studio some weeks later and was intrigued by the scene and bought reproduction rights." (p. 101) St. John's tableau was later reproduced as a poster by Russ Cochran.

So, one more connection between Weird Tales and Fate magazine.

Thank you, Carrington B. Dixon.

Thanks also to S.P., who was willing to part with Darrell C. Richardson's book, which may have come from the library of his late friend, Larry Ivie (1936-2014).

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

The Valley Was Still

In our weird fiction bookclub, we have been reading stories by Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986). One of them is "The Valley Was Still," originally in Weird Tales in August 1939. If you're a fan of The Twilight Zone, you will recognize this story, for it was adapted to that series as "Still Valley," first broadcast on November 24, 1961. Rod Serling wrote the teleplay.

"The Valley Was Still" is set during the Civil War, a conflict its author, a Southerner, might have called the War Between the States. (I have a friend from South Carolina whose father jokingly calls it "the War of Northern Aggression.") I think Wellman was a good writer in general. Some of his stories might be called merely serviceable. Others are inspired. I'm thinking here in particular of his tales of John the Balladeer, who wanders over his native land with his silver-string guitar in hand. "Sin's Doorway" (Weird Tales, Jan. 1946) isn't a John the Balladeer story, but you might call it a proto-John story. It's an excellent story in my opinion and one truly weird. The antagonist Levi Brett's "critter," called Parway, is a creepy and sinister monster. Being a forester, I will have to remember that a hazelnut branch makes an effective weapon against witches and other evil things.

The protagonist in "The Valley Was Still" is a Confederate cavalryman named Paradine. Leaving his spooked companion behind him on the hilltop above, he rides down into a town that has gone completely still. There he finds a large group of Union soldiers frozen in place. He also encounters the cause of this witchcraft, a sorcerer named Teague, who is a seventh son of a seventh son. Teague has cast a spell over the men. He is capable of far more. Teague offers Paradine, and by extension the whole Confederacy, a deal: if Paradine will sign his soul over to the devil (his name never spoken), the South may win the war. Paradine considers:

He imagined the Confederacy as a Faust among nations, devil-lifted, devil-nurtured--and devil-doomed.

And quickly reaches his conclusion:

Better disaster, in the way of man's warfare.

Paradine refuses the deal, and so his war will be lost.

In moral terms, "The Valley Was Still" is not a simple story. Some people might say that the South did in fact make a deal with the devil, that its cause was from the beginning immoral and unjust. Some might say that the Confederacy was not made up of godly men or of true Christians, that by continuing in the evils of slavery they allied themselves with the Enemy. But given a chance to make a true Faustian bargain, Paradine refuses, and so, again, the war is lost to him. (Instead of being a Faustian character, he becomes Quixotic.) In other words, Paradine has his guiding moral principles and moral constraints. He may go only so far and no farther. He proves himself in the end a Christian man and releases the frozen Union troops in the name of Christ "and through the word of God." He and they will soon war with each other once again.

* * *

Wellman's story was in the August 1939 issue of Weird Tales. A month after it appeared, Europe was at war. A year before--exactly a year before, in August 1938--William Butler Yeats wrote a poem called "Under Ben Bulben." The last lines of the poem would be Yeats' epitaph:

Cast a cold eye
On life, on death
Horseman, pass by!

In releasing the Union soldiers from their curse, Paradine echoes Yeats' words. I will convert Wellman's prose into verse form:

Ye horsemen and footmen,
Conjured here at this time,
Ye may pass on
In the name of Jesus Christ,
And through the word of God.

It's clear that Manly Wade Wellman was highly literate and widely read. I wonder if he could have read "Under Ben Bulben" before writing his story. The answer is probably not, as "Under Ben Bulben" wasn't published until July 1939 and then only in a limited edition. By then, William Butler Yeats had been six months in his grave.

* * *

I write about this today because of another moral issue that has come to the forefront in America this week. The difference between now and then--between 2022 and 1862--is that there no longer appear to be any moral principles or moral constraints on one side of this issue, which has so much in common with slavery. The people who oppose what is about to happen in our country have apparently made a pact with the devil, or they would if they could in order to keep it from coming about. They seem already to have signed their names in his book, literally in blood. They must fear that their lone, perverted anti-sacrament is at risk and that they will soon no longer be able to ride over the world, dealing death as they go and fully at will. In their words and actions, some of them would even appear demon-possessed.

It's ironic that these things would happen in the week leading up to Mother's Day. Or maybe it's happening at Mother's Day by intent. The people who array themselves against Life have their plans for this weekend. Call it an observance of the first Anti-Mother's Day, in which they will protest or disrupt the Catholic Mass on the true Mother's Day, and on the Sabbath. Maybe they will and maybe they won't. Maybe instead a light will go on before them, maybe the first of lights, maybe a beginning . . .

Original text copyright 2022 Terence E. Hanley