Introduction

These stories were written nearly a quarter of a century ago, for the old Amazing Stories magazine. The essence of any magazine is not its name, but its philosophy, its purpose. That old Amazing Stories is long since gone; the magazine of the same name today is as different as the times today are different from the world of 1930.

Science-fiction was new, in 1930; atomic energy was a dream we believed in, and space-travel was something we tried to understand better. Today, science-fiction has become a broad field, atomic energy--despite the feelings of many present adults!--is no dream. (Nor is it a nightmare; it is simply a fact, and calling it a nightmare is another form of effort to push it out of reality.)

In 1930, the only audience for science-fiction was among those who were still young enough in spirit to be willing to hope and speculate on a new and wider future--and in 1930 that meant almost nothing but teen-agers. It meant the brightest group of teen-agers, youngsters who were willing to play with ideas and understandings of physics and chemistry and astronomy that most of their contemporaries considered “too hard work.”

I grew up with that group; the stories I wrote over the years, and, later, the stories I bought for Astounding Science Fiction changed and grew more mature too. Astounding Science Fiction today has many of the audience that read those early stories; they’re not high school and college students any more, of course, but professional engineers, technologists and researchers now. Naturally, for them we need a totally different kind of story. In growing with them, I and my work had to lose much of the enthusiastic scope that went with the earlier science fiction.

When a young man goes to college, he is apt to say, “I want to be a scientist,” or “I want to be an engineer,” but his concepts are broad and generalized. Most major technical schools, well knowing this, have the first year course for all students the same. Only in the second and subsequent years does specialization start.

By the sophomore year, a student may say, “I want to be a chemical engineer.”

At graduation, he may say, “I’m going into chemical engineering construction.”

Ten years later he may explain that he’s a chemical engineer specializing in the construction of corrosion-resistant structures, such as electroplating baths and pickling tanks for stainless steel.

Year by year, his knowledge has become more specialized, and much deeper. He’s better and better able to do the important work the world needs done, but in learning to do it, he’s necessarily lost some of the broad and enthusiastic scope he once had.

These are early stories of the early days of science-fiction. Radar hadn’t been invented; we missed that idea. But while these stories don’t have the finesse of later work--they have a bounding enthusiasm that belongs with a young field, designed for and built by young men. Most of the writers of those early stories were, like myself, college students. (Piracy Preferred was written while I was a sophomore at M.I.T.)

For old-timers in science-fiction--these are typical of the days when the field was starting. They’ve got a fine flavor of our own younger enthusiasm.