Seekers of Tomorrow by Sam Moskowitz Read Free Book Online Page A

a short period. Then he switched to exhaust fans for homes and stores in the summer. As a salesman, he found that his imagination was an asset. For example, he sold four 30-inch fans to a chain restaurant by suggesting that all the windows be open when they were in use so the establishment could carry the slogan: "Always a breeze."
    At the approach of winter he took to promoting gas heaters. The Boston utility company had a much lower rate for those who also used gas for heating. Campbell was able to show a restaurant chain that by converting their heating units to gas, they would pay for their cooking gas at lower rates and save $2,500 a year. It worked! Three other com-panies signed up for the change-over and he was out of a job. It would take his small company years to install all the business he had obtained, so they wouldn't be needing any salesmen for a while. So, as was to happen to E. E. Smith when the war years came, Campbell found himself looking for work despite—or perhaps because of—his efficiency.
    Subtly, though, a change was taking place in Campbell's thinking and writing. It was first evidenced in the introducto-ry passages of The Black Star Passes, where an atmosphere of hopelessness and sympathy was engendered for the great people of a dying planet now thousands of years on the decline. It began to take form in The Last Evolution (amaz-ing stories, August, 1932), in which the courageous battle of thinking machines to save their creators from a cosmic menace, climaxing in the evolution of the mechanisms into energy consciousnesses of pure thought, raises them to an allegorical heaven. Our machines will be our friends to the last, inevitably outlive us, progress beyond us, and possibly even go to their just reward, Campbell suggests.
    The Last Evolution marks the point of transition in Campbell's writing career, the change to stress on mood and writing technique from the superscientific action characteris-tic of past Campbell stories. Campbell credited his reading of The Red Gods Call by C. E. Scoggins for the change. Temporarily living in Wilson, North Carolina, he set out to write a story in which mood and characterization would predominate and science would play a secondary role. He had in mind a story that would "sing," that would figuratively serve as a symphonic mood piece in words set to a science-fiction theme. This was the story: Twilight.
    Seven million years from today, it is the twilight of man. A mighty civilization served by faithful automatic machinery continues to function: "When Earth is cold, and the Sun has died out, those machines will go on. When Earth begins to creak and break, those perfect, ceaseless machines will try to repair her—." No drive, no progress lies in the dwindling human race. Only stagnation. The man from our day, visiting this future, programs machines to work on the creation of a mechanism with built-in curiosity. The story suggests, as did The Last Evolution, that even if man goes, the machines can build their own civilization.
    Despite Campbell's popularity, every magazine of early 1933 rejected the story and it went back into his files. Then in late 1933, F. Orlin Tremaine assumed editorship of astounding stories and began a drive for leadership in the field.
    A high point in his dramatic bid was securing the third story in E. E. Smith's "Skylark" series, The Skylark of Valeron. The logical next step was to obtain Campbell, the leading contender for Smith's popularity. Tremaine wrote to Campbell, asking if he had a superscience story along the lines that had established his popularity. In 1933 Campbell had placed The Mightiest Machine with Sloane at amazing. Over a year had passed and Sloane had not published this story, nor had he yet scheduled another Campbell novel, Mother World. Campbell got Sloane to return the story and submitted it to Tremaine, who purchased it immediately.
    Heartened, Campbell dusted off Twilight and sent it in.
    Tremaine went quietly mad