Short Story Wednesday: the first will be last: "Time Enough at Last" author Ms. Lyn Venable's first published short story (known to indexers), "Homesick", GALAXY SCIENCE FICTION, December 1952

Lyn, short for Marilyn, Venable, some of us have just learned (thanks to a Facebook post by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, which was cited in a discussion group by Gordon Van Gelder), died in March: 3 June 1927 to 31 March 2025, not quite 98 full years. A few years back, I read most of her published stories and wrote a SSW survey review of those I was aware of, but didn't get a chance to also read her first published story, "Homesick", so wrote about her most famous story (mostly due to its The Twilight Zone adaptation starring Burgess Meredith) "Time Enough at Last" and all her other stories known to have been published in fantasy and sf (and adjacent) magazines in the 1950s. I made a point of finally reading "Homesick" last night (as this is published), and it's not bad for a "first story", in Galaxy in 1952, when that magazine had become the best-selling and most influential sf magazine at that time; as it was the property of an Italian magazine publisher trying several new titles in its first attempt to crack the US market, it also appeared in translation in international editions. Venable would've been 25 at time of publication.

SSW: short stories by Lyn Venable (Marilyn A. Venable, 3 June 1927-31 March 2025): "Time Enough at Last" (the Twilight Zone favorite) and others: Short Story Wednesday

It involves a small, relatively elderly crew of US astronauts, caught in a bind once returned to Earth, and coping as best they can with apparently necessary confinement. The story can be read in the Galaxy issue here; it was illustrated (as were several other stories in the issue) by Edmund Emshwiller, and appeared along with the first installment of Clifford Simak's novel Ring Around the Sun; a story by Isaac Asimov, "The Deep", that remained one of his favorites among his own work (it also might be noted that Asimov notes in his memoirs that Simak was probably the most significant non-editorial influence on Asimov's fiction among all writers); another "first" story, by Howard L. Myers, which would remain his only story in a fantastic-fiction magazine (after a nonfiction feature in Astounding SF a few months earlier) till he began publishing again, as "Verge Foray", in 1967, and would continue to publish under both names in a productive if relatively short career; two notable stories by the still very new writer Robert Sheckley, one of them under the pseudonym "Phillips Barbee". The issue is rounded out by the usual columns: H. L. Gold's editorial, Willy Ley's nonfiction science column, and Groff Conklin's book reviews.

Gold was a US World War 2 veteran, who had gone through some awful battlefield experience which left him an agoraphobe for much of the next two decades, very much including his entire tune editing Galaxy; that the Venable story involves the necessary segregation of its astronaut crew, to some extent cut off from the rest of the world, was probably among the aspects that most thoroughly interested Gold about the story. And, like most editors, he was never averse to discovering new talent, with Venable being one of three new writers to have begun publishing in the last year or so in this issue.

A not necessarily fully effective cover, credited to a kind of photo process

--ISFDB credits the cover to Jack and Bob Strimban, and Sam Willig.

From the FictionMags Index:

Galaxy Science Fiction [v5 #3, December 1952] (35¢, 160pp, digest, cover by Camerage) []
• 2 · What’s New? · H. L. Gold · ed
• 4 · Ring Around the Sun [Part 1 of 3] · Clifford D. Simak · n.; illustrated by Sibley
• 73 · Homesick · Lyn Venable · ss; illustrated by Emsh
• 80 · The Reluctant Weapon · Howard L. Myers · ss; illustrated by Emsh
• 97 · For Your Information: Cause of the Ice Age · Willy Ley · cl
• 106 · The Leech · Phillips Barbee · ss; illustrated by Connell
• 124 · Galaxy’s Five Star Shelf · Groff Conklin · rc
• 124-125 · The Heads of Cerberus, Francis Stevens; Reading, Pa.: Polaris Press, 1952. 191 p. 52-27268. · Groff Conklin · br [Ref. Francis Stevens]
• 125-126 · The Creation of the Universe, George Gamow; New York: Viking, 1952. 147 p. 52-9319. · Groff Conklin · br [Ref. George Gamow]
• 126-127 · The Haploids, Jerry Sohl; New York: Rinehart, 1952. 248 p. 52-5571. · Groff Conklin · br [Ref. Jerry Sohl]
• 126-127 · Eidolon, Julius David Stern; New York: Messner, 1952. 246 p. 52-7410. · Groff Conklin · br [Ref. J. David Stern]
• 127 · Ship of Destiny, Henry J. Slater; New York: Crowell, 1951. 187 p. 52-817. · Groff Conklin · br [Ref. Henry J. Slater]
• 128 · Cost of Living · Robert Sheckley · ss; illustrated by Emsh
• 138 · The Deep · Isaac Asimov · nv; illustrated by Ashman

The ISFDB index of the same issue.

For more of today's short fiction, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

SSW: Fred Chappell's 3 (earliest published?) short stories, in Robert Silverberg's SPACESHIP, April 1952, April and October 1953: Short Story Wednesday

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.