Valley of Pretenders by John Russell Fearn

Author:John Russell Fearn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: science fiction, adventure, space opera, superhero, pulp fiction
ISBN: 9781479409525
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2013-07-28T00:00:00+00:00

FRIGID MOON

BY DENNIS CLIVE

From Future Fiction, November 1939

Originally entitled “Excelsior,” this story was sold to Hornig by Fearn’s agent in June 1939, along with three other old mss., appearing in the first issue of Future Fiction. The readers’ column in the next issue (March 1940) gave it a high rating. The noted fan critic and author Thomas S. Gardner wrote a careful analysis of all the stories, and of “Frigid Moon” he said:

“—good plot, action and characters. Written in the Weinbaum style. A good B.”

His views were echoed by Isaac Asimov:

“…Second honors go to ‘Frigid Moon.’ I know very well that it is what fans call a ‘Weinbaum imitation’ in that it contains the late S.G.W.’s favorite type oif character—a screwy animal in an alien environment. However, I have never really been able to work up any resentment over a Weinbaum imitation. My viewpoint is this. Weinbaum invented a new type of story—the most entertaining of any I’ve ever read, excluding the heavy super-super science of Smith and Campbell, but he has no copyright ownership of this type of yarn. He is dead now, poor fellow (and poor SF, too), and that is no reason why this very successful type of story should be allowed to die out. If there are authors who can think up screwy animals after the fashion of Weinbaum, why shouldn’t they? Perhaps they can do it as well as Weinbaum could, and wouldn’t that be a gain for science fiction? True, no one has yet turned up that even made a patch on the immortal Stanley G., but is that any reason to quit trying—and hoping? No—give us more Weinbaum imitations, provided they are good enough to print, and maybe some day if I’m drunk or filled with opium or for some other reason filled with wild over-confidence, I’ll write one myself—you can always reject it.”

On 13 November 1939, Fearn wrote to his friend William F. Temple in his ‘Frank Jones’ (Thornton Ayre) persona:

“Thanks for your praise for Frigid Moon. It was written three years ago and never sold until Hornig came into being with Science Fiction and Future Fiction. I wrote a lot of them, the remaining one being ‘Domain of Zero,’ which has not yet been accepted (and probably won’t be, since I understand Hornig is folding up). He hasn’t paid either Jack or I for our latest efforts.

“No, I have no explanation as to how Rope Trick disentangled himself from gas. Though it is unquestionably a true scientific question I do feel many a time that you give yourself needless worry in both reading yarns and in writing your own in your endeavours to find the accurate scientific way out. Be damned to that! Palmer has said ‘I want stories of action, not textbooks.’ What more do you want? Today, of course, I have abandoned the imitation Weinbaum technique and do either fast adventure or complicated webwork.”

FRIGID MOON

The hideous, inhuman zinrots of Ganymede cast icy spires of terrible coldness into the last

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