began to think in terrms of lifetime careers and Making a Buck. We also began to think in terms of nest-building.
So a few of us decided to rent a house, to serve as a sort of primitive commune. Doë and I were slated to be house-parents. The occupants were to be Dick Wilson, Don Wollheim and Joseph Harold Dockweiler. In the event Doë and I didn't move in, but the other three went ahead and, with that innate sense of concinnity so characteristic of science-fiction writers, at once perceived a pattern emerging: DW, DW and—JHD? No, that would never do. So on the spot Joseph Harold Dockweiler rechristened himself Dirk Wylie.
The house episode lasted a couple of months, and the survivors fled to an apartment on Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, which they named the Ivory Tower. Cyril Kornbluth had turned up by that time, an evilly bland, precocious fifteen-year-old. So had Robert W. Lowndes, migrating to the big city from Connecticut. Some of us lived there, some only visited, but one way or another the Ivory Tower was our center of activities for a couple of years. It was where we talked and partied. It was where we put together fan mags and plotted strategies against other sf fan groups. It was where Dick Wilson and I kept our common car. (We used a common driver's license for a couple of years, too. His. We matched up almost exactly on height, color of eyes, weight and everything else on the license.) And it was where we kept our still.
That was Cyril's contribution. I did say he was precocious? He took up a collection, went off to a chemical supply store and returned with a glass water-jacketed distillation rig that turned cheap, bad red wine into cheap and even worse brandy at the rate of about ten drops a minute. With half a dozen Futurians waiting their turn at the business end of the still, it rationed our liquor consumption better than A.A.
* Donald and Elsie still are married, and jointly run the sf publishing firm of DAW Books.
The Ivory Tower is where we began to do our collaborative writing in earnest. I was a market for much of it. A little later, Wollheim and Lowndes got their own magazines, and then the typewriters were kept smoking. It wasn't all very good science fiction—some of it was pretty terrible—but it was better than we could buy on the open market at the rates we were paying.
It was not, however, the best we could possibly write. I think we all began to be aware of that at around the same time. In my case, when I began seeing the fan mail that came in to my magazines I perceived that Being a Writer was not enough. Even Being a Published Writer was something short of the ultimate. What I really wanted was to be a published writer of whom the audience wrote enthusiastic letters to the editor.
So I resolved to try to write better stories.
I didn't resolve to write masterpieces. Heaven knows, I was simply neither mature enough nor skillful enough as a writer to be Great. But I was capable of writing better than I had been doing. Capable of writing something that was uniquely my own, and not a piece of yard goods that any hack could rattle off as fast as he could type. And the story that came out of that resolve was It's a Young World, which appeared, under the James MacCreigh pen name, in the April 1941 issue of Astonishing Stories .
It's a Young World
JAMES MacCREIGH
1
In the Enemy's House
I don't think there was anyone in the universe that shot better than my Tribe, but I brought down the average a lot. Though I'd been a hunter all my life, I never became really proficient. Even the babies of the tribe were better than I when it came to shooting at a moving target with a light bow, and I was never allowed to participate in the raids on enemy camps for that reason.
Hunting was all right. There my natural gifts for being inconspicuous and very quiet helped me. I could be more motionless than even the rocks I sat upon. When the wood's life came close to me I didn't have to be a
So a few of us decided to rent a house, to serve as a sort of primitive commune. Doë and I were slated to be house-parents. The occupants were to be Dick Wilson, Don Wollheim and Joseph Harold Dockweiler. In the event Doë and I didn't move in, but the other three went ahead and, with that innate sense of concinnity so characteristic of science-fiction writers, at once perceived a pattern emerging: DW, DW and—JHD? No, that would never do. So on the spot Joseph Harold Dockweiler rechristened himself Dirk Wylie.
The house episode lasted a couple of months, and the survivors fled to an apartment on Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, which they named the Ivory Tower. Cyril Kornbluth had turned up by that time, an evilly bland, precocious fifteen-year-old. So had Robert W. Lowndes, migrating to the big city from Connecticut. Some of us lived there, some only visited, but one way or another the Ivory Tower was our center of activities for a couple of years. It was where we talked and partied. It was where we put together fan mags and plotted strategies against other sf fan groups. It was where Dick Wilson and I kept our common car. (We used a common driver's license for a couple of years, too. His. We matched up almost exactly on height, color of eyes, weight and everything else on the license.) And it was where we kept our still.
That was Cyril's contribution. I did say he was precocious? He took up a collection, went off to a chemical supply store and returned with a glass water-jacketed distillation rig that turned cheap, bad red wine into cheap and even worse brandy at the rate of about ten drops a minute. With half a dozen Futurians waiting their turn at the business end of the still, it rationed our liquor consumption better than A.A.
* Donald and Elsie still are married, and jointly run the sf publishing firm of DAW Books.
The Ivory Tower is where we began to do our collaborative writing in earnest. I was a market for much of it. A little later, Wollheim and Lowndes got their own magazines, and then the typewriters were kept smoking. It wasn't all very good science fiction—some of it was pretty terrible—but it was better than we could buy on the open market at the rates we were paying.
It was not, however, the best we could possibly write. I think we all began to be aware of that at around the same time. In my case, when I began seeing the fan mail that came in to my magazines I perceived that Being a Writer was not enough. Even Being a Published Writer was something short of the ultimate. What I really wanted was to be a published writer of whom the audience wrote enthusiastic letters to the editor.
So I resolved to try to write better stories.
I didn't resolve to write masterpieces. Heaven knows, I was simply neither mature enough nor skillful enough as a writer to be Great. But I was capable of writing better than I had been doing. Capable of writing something that was uniquely my own, and not a piece of yard goods that any hack could rattle off as fast as he could type. And the story that came out of that resolve was It's a Young World, which appeared, under the James MacCreigh pen name, in the April 1941 issue of Astonishing Stories .
It's a Young World
JAMES MacCREIGH
1
In the Enemy's House
I don't think there was anyone in the universe that shot better than my Tribe, but I brought down the average a lot. Though I'd been a hunter all my life, I never became really proficient. Even the babies of the tribe were better than I when it came to shooting at a moving target with a light bow, and I was never allowed to participate in the raids on enemy camps for that reason.
Hunting was all right. There my natural gifts for being inconspicuous and very quiet helped me. I could be more motionless than even the rocks I sat upon. When the wood's life came close to me I didn't have to be a
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