Science Fiction Goes to War

I've been spending a lot of time in 1941. By which I mean I've been reading the old Astounding Science Fiction magazines, faithfully preserved and rebroadcast by Archive.org. It really was a great year for Science Fiction, with Asimov writing Robot stories and Heinlein adding some of his best, along with others of the greats.

You know what else was happening in 1941? Within the year Pearl Harbor would be attacked, drawing America into World War II. Almost incidental to anything else, I've been drawn into the question of how America felt about the war, what they thought of what's going on over there, and what dreams may come. Let's take a look, shall we?

For starters, even if America was legally neutral, well, there's a certain bend to the stories. One might be forgiven for not noticing that the dictators of various futures all come with German names, seeing as we still do that in our fiction. Other stories weren't quite so subtle.

“I said this was the history of our alternate,” Rollins answered. "At any rate, the few Americans who held out and fought a guerrilla war became known as Readers because of their respect for learning. That’s why the mere possession of books got you into trouble with the Swasts [...]

Still too subtle for ya? There's a story about a gangster with a gadget. Here's how it ends:

“That Hitler’s just like Max,” said Willie. “He’s got a lot of heels workin’ for him. Two of ’em tried to pull a clip racket on me. It’s about time somebody put th’ old bounce on him.” Willie paused, hefting the black bag. “Yeah,” he said, and a thoughtful shine came into his eyes. “It’s jus’ about time.”

“Well?” said Legless Joe.

“Which way’s London from here?”

Legless Joe pointed. “That way.”

“O. K,” said Willie. “I’ll see yuh around.”

America wasn't at war yet. There are always plenty of good reasons not to get involved in a war, especially someone else's war. But Americans were foursquare behind democracy and against dictatorship.

The future of warfare is always an interesting question, and it produces fun stories. Perhaps even more so during that day because the line between possibility and technology was blurred. I read one fantastic (nonfiction) article about what they knew of viruses even though no one had ever seen one. It was rife with dramatic irony because I knew that the technology to photograph those viruses --- the electron microscope --- already existed. Perhaps it hadn't been turned to that purpose yet, or perhaps the author hadn't heard of it.

Yeah, nonfiction. Astounding wasn't just stories. Every issue contained an article or two of fact, stuff to inform and spur the imagination of the readers. To that end too, editor John Campbell added a page of his own thoughts about the future of technology in every issue. He went on a thought experiment about what we might learn from the warplanes of tomorrow.

I’ve been wondering recently how much good it would do a man if he had a time machine capable of a sort of one-shot dredging operation. Suppose the machine could pick up any one desired object of fifty years hence and bring it back, but, by some reason of inherent limitation, could never operate again or be duplicated. What to pick up? What class of thing to aim at?

Well, a fighting plane of fifty years hence might make a good bet, things being as they are. But let’s consider, first, before making our one available collection. What sort of thing are we apt to drag back? From present knowledge, there’s a fair-to-middling chance that it may not have atomic power, but it’s practically certain it will. That would be a help?

No, that would be completely infuriating in all probability. It would be an atomic engine designed for a highly refined, blended atomic fuel, probably composed of pure isotopes, and probably not using U-235. If it did, we’d know how to make a U-235 engine — interesting, but useless until we learn how to make U-235. If it used some other pure isotope, the knowledge of the possibility would be equally academic and impractical.

Ah, yeah. Atomic power. They all knew something was up, and everyone expected big things to come. They were right, and wrong. Campbell here would be gratified to know of a plane's jet engines, but probably disappointed that we didn't use some type of atomic fuel for it. The nuclear reactors we use these days are quite crude compared to what 1941 anticipated. They also tended to underrate the destructiveness of atom bombs and the energy density of atomic fuel.* But everyone, every author and reader of these magazines, knew that something was coming.

I find this thought experiment fascinating in part because I can look back to the 1990s and see what kind of fighting planes were available. Campbell had the idea for jet propulsion**, and perhaps could have worked out the engineering from a B-2 bomber, but he would have been confused how the thing flew without any tail fins (this being the result of stabilization requiring a computer, which they could also imagine on the horizon but, if anything, more dimly than atomic power.)

Nevertheless, if he couldn't figure out how the plane flew with computer-assistance, he stood a good chance of figuring out why they wanted that shape. I'm going to give you an extended quote from a letter written to the magazine. In it, the correspondent carefully explains radar to a public which may not have heard of it before. He gives the theory of the thing, not just how it works but why the British use it. I'll cut out the bit about dodging meteors, but I'll leave the rest of the letter in...because the way the stuff is explained is interesting. You're welcome to skip ahead if you find it less so.

From the results the R. A. F. have been obtaining with their electrical enemy-airplane detectors, it looks as though spaceships, when, as and if, won’t have to worry about developing meteor-detecting devices.

The Nazis were outstandingly successful in practicing their theory that the best way to fight an enemy air force was to catch it on the ground and bomb it — until they tackled England. In Poland and France, what air force the opposition had was almost entirely destroyed before it could get into effective fighting position by surprise bombing raids that caught them with their pants down — “pants” being the term for those streamline housings put on retractable landing wheels.

In England, however, it was no dice. Every time the bombers arrived they were met by a highly active air force very much in the air, and not at all bombable. The Nazi force, having run heavily to bombers and not so much to fighter planes on the basis of the catch-’em-on-the-ground theory, was rendered unhappy.

A radio-electrical widget seems to have been largely responsible. It was quite capable of detecting the approach of enemy bombers while they were still some fifty miles deep in France, on the other side of the Channel. It detected them and, furthermore, plotted their course, approximate number, and speed of approach. Opposition could, then, be gotten into the air, put on their route to intercept them, and sent in appropriate numbers before the raiders arrived. And that ended daylight bombing. Night bombing remained possible because night fighting remained impossible.

Basically, the detector seems to consist of an ultrashort-wave transmitter and a series of receivers. I’hey work on about the wave length used by television sets. The radio waves are so short that they can “illuminate” the enemy planes. A situation curiously parallel to that of the optical microscope arises in this radio detection.

Normal broadcast waves lengths are so great that they simply go around a plane, unimpeded, much as long-wave light goes around, without illuminating, very minute microscopic subjects. In the microscopic world, electrons have been used in the electron microscope to give the illumination where light misses. In using short-wave radio, the same effect is attained; the ultrashort waves “illuminate” and are reflected from the planes. Then, a “telescope” capable of “seeing” planes so illuminated readily picks them up.

The telescopes are specially designed receivers with carefully balanced circuits that are unbalanced when a plane enters their field of activity — a very large field indeed.

[...] Sincerely — Arthur McCann.

You also get glimpses of what life is like as more and more folks are snapped up by the army. One of the illustrators stops producing work, and the editor has to explain he's in the army now. Or you get bits like this:

Incidentally, Asimov tells me there’s one thing the current war has done for him. He can now tell people where he came from. He left Russia at the arthritic age of two years; previously it’s been difficult to explain just where he started. Now he can just say, “A few miles south of Smolensk,” and it makes sense. And he’s probably the only Asimov of military age who is neither in the Red Army nor playing dumb all day and sniping Nazi supply trains all night. His home town is full of Asimovs, and technically in German hands. Our local Asimov’s still undrafted, due to his chemical work here.

Perhaps you notice when the man in the cigarette ad has a jaunty infantry cap on, or the correspondence courses seem to target more industrial lines of work.

Today, the trained man in industry marches shoulder-to-shoulder with America’s armed forces in defense of his country! The man who wilfully neglects his training is a slacker-for Uncle Sam expects every one of us to “get in step,” and help out-produce the gangster nations of the world!

And then, of course, the big one actually hit. A date which will live in infamy. The realities of publishing being what they are, it took 'em a month or two for the editor to respond. First in a notice about the service status of some of the favorite authors:

Robert Heinlein is Lieutenant Robert Heinlein, U. S. N., as has been mentioned before in this magazine. His station is not yet determined, and I do not know whether he will be able to do any further writing; I greatly doubt that he will. He had been taking a vacation from writing since completing “Methuselah’s Children.” There are no Heinlein manuscripts on hand.

Anson MacDonald is in Navy service equally; it is practically certain that we will have to wait until the end of the war before he will be able to write for us again. For small blessings, give praises; MacDonald had completed and sent into the magazine a new long novel [...]

That bit makes me smile. Unknown to his readership, 'Anson MacDonald' was a pen name of Lieutenant Robert Heinlein. Small wonder then that you'd find readers unable to decide which author they liked more. And then when they find themselves equally in Navy service. Good thing, though, that MacDonald was still writing while Heinlein was on vacation.

And in March 1942 we get Campbell's editorial, addressing the war directly:

War has long been a favorite theme in science fiction; we are now engaged in a war that is no fictional theme, but a bitter reality. We don’t like it; we didn’t want it. We approach the unpleasant reality with a viewpoint no warlord of the Axis can appreciate — something best described as a cold fury.

They started it on the wrong basis, from their point of view — a scientific, mechanized war. To attack the United States with a war of that order is a terrible error.

With the benefit of hindsight, it's easy to see some things he gets right, and some things he doesn't. America: the best nation for research? Yes. Auto-targeting guns? No. The American boy as better suited to mechanized infantry because our nation is a nation of auto mechanics? Possibly, I don't know enough to judge.

Where the magazine, the readership, and the culture went from there, I don't yet know. Astounding introduced a new, larger size in the January 1942 issue. It was good for them, good for their readers, good for everyone, except me. Holding my monitor constant, the larger magazine comes with smaller font. I'm more likely to continue my reading backwards into 1940 than forward through the war.

*Though Not Always:

But the big purple light on the forward bulkhead was something different again.

It was a very bright and a very pretty shade of purple and it said, in effect, “Somewhere around here is an atomic power plant whose U-235 is just at the ticklish point where the disintegration will be too fast for its ordinary energy output. There is about to be an explosion that will make a light bright enough to read a postage stamp by from here to the moons of Mars; and if there is anyone around here just now he’d be foolish to loiter.”

**In fact, on Jet propulsion, here's a bit from a separate editorial about 'rocket planes':

When the rocket plane does come in, it will not use compressed or liquid oxygen, however. [...] What will probably be used will be a rocket burning gasoline and air compressed from the local atmosphere. A portion of the hot, compressed gases of combustion can be bled off and used to powder a supercharging turbine,[...] Such a plane, at speeds about 700 miles an hour, would be more efficient than any internal combustion engine-powered ship.