[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astonishing Stories, June 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With all kinds of plots twisting in my head, I hadn't slept well thenight before. For one thing, I'd worked too late on a yarn that wasn'tworth it. For another, there'd been a high wind howling through thestreets. It made me restless and did a lot more damage than that. WhenI got up I found it'd blown a lot of paper and junk in the window andmost of the story out—only a part of the carbon was left. I wasn'tespecially sorry. I got dressed and hustled down to the luncheon.
That luncheon's something special. We meet every Tuesday in asecond-rate restaurant and gossip and talk story and editors and mostlybeef about the mags that won't pay until publication. Some of us, thehigh-class ones, won't write for them.
Maybe I ought to explain. We're the unromantic writers—what they callpulp writers. We're the boys who fill the pulp magazines with storiesat a cent a word. Westerns, mystery, wonder, weird, adventure—you knowthem.
Not all of us are hacks. A couple have graduated to the movies. A fewhave broken the slicks and try to forget the lean years. Some get fourcents a word and try to feel important to literature. The rest come tothe luncheon and either resign themselves to the one cent rate or nursea secret Pulitzer Prize in their bosoms.
There wasn't much of a turn-out when I got there. Belcher sat at thehead of the table as usual, playing the genial host. He specializesin what they call science-fiction. It's fantastic stuff about timemachines and the fourth dimension. Belcher talks too much in a Southerndrawl.
As I eased into a chair he called, "Ah, the poor man's Orson Welles!"and crinkled his big face into a showy laugh.
I said, "Your dialogue's getting as lousy as your stories!" I don'tlike to be reminded that I look like a celebrity.
Belcher ignored that. He turned to Black, the chap who agents ourstuff, and began complaining.
He said, "Land-sake, Joey, can't you sell that Martian story? I thinkit's good." Before Joey could answer, Belcher turned to the rest of usand said, "Reminds me of my grand-daddy. He got shot up at Vicksburgbefore his father could locate him and drag him back home. Grannyused to say, 'All my life I've believed in the solid South and theDemocratic Party. I believed they were good; and if they aren't, Idon't want to know about it.'"
Belcher laughed and shook his head. I gave Joey a frantic S.O.S. WhenBelcher gets going on the Civil War, no one else gets a word in forsolid hours.
Joey didn't move, but he said, "What story?" very incredulously, andthen he glanced at me and winked.
"That Martian story," Belcher said. "The one about the colony on Marsand the new race of Earth-Mars men that springs up—I've forgotten thetitle. They say Fitz-James O'Brien never could remember the titles ofhis stories either."
Joey said, "You never gave me any such yarn," and this time he reallymeant it.
Belcher said, "You're crazy."
Down at the other end of the table someone wanted to know who O'Brienwrote for.
I said, "He's dead. He wrote 'The Diamond Lens.'"
"He was the first pulp writer," Belcher said. "Most folks believe Poeinvented the short story. Land-sake! Poe never wrote a short story. Hewrote mood pieces. O'Brien was the first. He wrote great short storiesand great pulp stories."
I said, "If you're looking for the father of the pulp industry, whydon't you go back far enough? There was a boy named Greene in the lateSixteenth Century."...