Fred Chappell (born 28 May 1936/died 4 January 2024) and Robert Silverberg (born 15 January 1935) were teenaged fantastic-fiction fans in 1952, but were already showing some promise of the kind of writers (and editors) they would soon and continue to become...both had discovered the fiction magazines, among other reading, that would help shape a notable part of both their careers, and were involved in the (somewhat!) organized fantasy/sf/horror-fiction-fandom culture of the late '40s and early '50s...so much so that three issues of young New Yorker Silverberg's fanzine (or amateur magazine meant for other fans and any other interested parties) Spaceship (first published by Silverberg in 1949) would each offer one of three vignettes from young Canton, North Carolina resident Fred Chappell, in Starship's 4/52, 4/53 and 10/53 issues. Prof. Shirley Bailey Shurbutt, in the online "Kunstlerroman as Metafiction: The Poetry and Prose of Fred Chappell and the Art of Storytelling" misunderstands a line (she conflates professional fiction magazines with amateur fanzines) in John Lang's Understanding Fred Chappell in which Lang notes Chappell's statement that he had published two early stories under pseudonyms that Chappell insisted he would not divulge, and also notes that Chappell had two (rather than three) short stories in Silverberg's fanzine (almost correct, though under the byline "Fred Chappell") and Harlan Ellison's fanzine Dimensions (apparently untrue, but a closer look at Dimensions issues here will come soon)...if Chappell also had two early, pseudonymous stories in non-amateur magazines such as Weird Tales or the other sf and fantasy magazines of the early '50s, his attempts to keep them hidden have (as far as I know) succeeded, so far.
Chappell makes the claim about two hidden stories himself (with implication that they are to professional magazines) in the 2022 documentary Fred Chappell: I Am One of You Forever (which can be seen here, and should be--despite the documentarians choosing, when running a slideshow of fantasy and sf magazine covers over Chappell's soundtrack description of his first publications, throw in an issue of a monster-movie magazine, for no obvious reason other than their confusion, among the fiction magazines). Chappell's sister recalls that Fred first attended a convention, apparently the 1953 Philcon in Philadelphia (which she refers to as a national writers' conference, which is understandable, but not quite correct--so much as a convention of writers, editors, fans in the social sense [the fannish subculture, including those who published fanzines] and fans of the specific writers, et al.), the WorldCon for that year, when he was 14 years old, which Bob Silverberg (in correspondence) suspects is a memory-slip on her part, as Silverberg recalls meeting Fred for the first time face-to-face at the '53 convention, when Chappell would've been 17yo.
The three Chappell stories in Spaceship are juvenilia, but (unsurprisingly) relatively deft fiction for a promising teen writer. They are worth reading, certainly for any fan or would-be scholar of Chappell's work.
"The New Frontier", in Spaceship #17 (1952) (which can be read here, and features contributions by other notable writers and fans as well--not least western and fantastica writer and folk-music critic and magazine editor/publisher Ms. Lee Hoffman), is a bit of a psychodrama, as the widow of an astronaut will find herself triggered into fugue states of communication with her dead husband.
"The Tin Can", in Spaceship #21 (1953) is young Chappell in a somewhat comic mood, albeit also exploiting adolescent insecurities as they persist with his protagonist, who acutely feels his lack of sophistication and self-worth in the company of his fellow astronauts...even after he discovers what looks like an enormous tin can through one of their spacecraft's viewports. A bit of an anticipation of Pop Art here, too. The online reproduction of this story features some rather odd scanning, in (I suspect) an attempt to not damage the fanzine issue too badly, but it's legible. This might also be the least assured of the three Chappell stories in Silverberg's fanzine.
"Brother", in Spaceship #23 (1953) is a slightly more straightforward story of brothers' rivalry (in a sense), with the middle brother of three boys no little vexed by his elder brother's consistent recounting of the rigors of the elder's life as an astronaut, to the rapt attention of their parents and the youngest brother. Middle brother is both jealous and rather less invested in and actively questioning the glamor of the experience. (Though it had begun earlier, the 1950s were a good period inside and outside the sf community for considerations of how there might not be so very much glory in space exploration, for a number of reasons, most of them inherent in humanity.)
If these were the stories Chappell would rather not be seen, well, they are both promising efforts by a writer in his mid-teens, and are short enough as well as deft enough to make reading through the typewriter-layout of the fanzine issues worth the look (and enlarging the image on your computer, if necessary) for more than simply historical purposes.
Thanks to Robert Silverberg, Gordon Van Gelder and Rodrigo Baeza for drawing attention to these early Chappell publications.
For more of today's Short Story Wednesday items, please see Patti Abbott's blog.
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