Futuria Fantasia, Fall 1939 - 2

Silver-Tongued and Godly Bryant appear the verbose addlepate he was,
beneath his platitudinous phrases, during the Scopes trial, said, to an
interviewer, "All my life I've been an Agnostic. But I am no longer an
Agnostic, I am now an Atheist."


THE PENDULUM

Up and down, back and forth, up and down. First the quick flite skyward,
gradually slowing, reaching the pinnacle of the curve, poising a moment,
then flashing earthward again, faster and faster at a nauseating speed,
reaching the bottom and hurtling aloft on the opposite side. Up and
down. Back and forth. Up and down.
How long it had continued this way Layeville didn't know. It might have
been millions of years he'd spent sitting here in the massive glass
pendulum watching the world tip one way and another, up and down,
dizzily before his eyes until they ached. Since first they had locked
him in the pendulum's round glass head and set it swinging it had never
stopped or changed. Continuous, monotonous movements over and above the
ground. So huge was this pendulum that it shadowed one hundred feet or
more with every majestic sweep of its gleaming shape, dangling from the
metal intestines of the shining machine overhead. It took three or four
seconds for it to traverse the one hundred feet one way, three or four
seconds to come back.
THE PRISONER OF TIME! That's what they called him now! Now,
fettered to the very machine he had planned and constructed. A
pri--son--er--of--time! A--pris--on--er--of--Time! With every swing of
the pendulum it echoed in his thoughts. For ever like this until he went
insane. He tried to focus his eyes on the arching hotness of the earth
as it swept past beneath him.
They had laughed at him a few days before. Or was it a week? A month? A
year? He didn't know. This ceaseless pitching had filled him with an
aching confusion. They had laughed at him when he said, some time before
all this, he could bridge time gaps and travel into futurity. He had
designed a huge machine to warp space, invited thirty of the worlds most
gifted scientists to help him finish his colossal attempt to scratch the
future wall of time.
The hour of the accident spun back to him now thru misted memory. The
display of the time machine to the public. The exact moment when he
stood on the platform with the thirty scientists and pulled the main
switch! The scientists, all of them, blasted into ashes from wild
electrical flames! Before the eyes of two million witnesses who had come
to the laboratory or were tuned in by television at home! He had slain
the world's greatest scientists!
He recalled the moment of shocked horror that followed. Something
radically wrong had happened to the machine. He, Layeville, the inventor
of the machine, had staggered backward, his clothes flaming and eating
up about him. No time for explanations. Then he had collapsed in the
blackness of pain and numbing defeat.
Swept to a hasty trial, Layeville faced jeering throngs calling out for
his death. "Destroy the Time Machine!" they cried. "And destroy this
MURDERER with it!"
Murderer! And he had tried to help humanity. This was his reward.
One man had leaped onto the tribunal platform at the trial, crying, "No!
Don't destroy the machine! I have a better plan! A revenge for
this--this man!" His finger pointed at Layeville where the inventor sat
unshaven and haggard, his eyes failure glazed. "We shall rebuild his
machine, take his precious metals, and put up a monument to his
slaughtering! We'll put him on exhibition for life within his
executioning device!" The crowd roared approval like thunder shaking the
tribunal hall.
Then, pushing hands, days in prison, months. Finally, led forth into the
hot sunshine, he was carried in a small rocket car to the center of the
city. The shock of what he saw brought him back to reality. THEY had
rebuilt his machine into a towering timepiece with a pendulum. He
stumbled forward, urged on by thrusting hands, listening to the roar of
thousands of voices damning him. Into the transparent pendulum head they
pushed him and clamped it tight with weldings.
Then they set the pendulum swinging and stood back. Slowly, very slowly,
it rocked back and forth, increasing in speed. Layeville had pounded
futilely at the glass, screaming. The faces became blurred, were only
tearing pink blobs before him.
On and on like this--for how long?
He hadn't minded it so much at first, that first nite. He couldn't
sleep, but it was not uncomfortable. The lites of the city were comets
with tails that pelted from rite to left like foaming fireworks. But as
the nite wore on he felt a gnawing in his stomach, that grew worse. He
got very sick and vomited. The next day he couldn't eat anything.
They never stopped the pendulum, not once. Instead of letting him eat
quietly, they slid the food down the stem of the pendulum in a special
tube, in little round parcels that plunked at his feet. The first time
he attempted eating he was unsuccessful, it wouldn't stay down. In
desperation he hammered against the cold glass with his fists until they
bled, crying hoarsely, but he heard nothing but his own weak,
fear-wracked words muffled in his ears.
After some time had elapsed he got so that he could eat, even sleep
while travelling back and forth this way. They allowed him small glass
loops on the floor and leather thongs with which he tied himself down at
nite and slept a soundless slumber without sliding.
People came to look at him. He accustomed his eyes to the swift flite
and followed their curiosity-etched faces, first close by in the middle,
then far away to the right, middle again, and to the left.
He saw the faces gaping, speaking soundless words, laughing and pointing
at the prisoner of time traveling forever nowhere. But after awhile the
town people vanished and it was only tourists who came and read the sign
that said: THIS IS THE PRISONER OF TIME--JOHN LAYEVILLE--WHO KILLED
THIRTY OF THE WORLDS FINEST SCIENTISTS! The school children, on the
electrical moving sidewalk stopped to stare in childish awe. THE
PRISONER OF TIME!
Often he thot of that title. God, but it was ironic, that he should
invent a time machine and have it converted into a clock, and that he,
in its pendulum, should mete out the years--traveling _with_ Time.
He couldn't remember how long it had been. The days and nites ran
together in his memory. His unshaven cheeks had developed a short beard
and then ceased growing. How long a time? How long?
Once a day they sent down a tube after he ate and vacuumed up the cell,
disposing of any wastes. Once in a great while they sent him a book, but
that was all.
[Illustration]
The robots took care of him now. Evidently the humans thot it a waste of
time to bother over their prisoner. The robots brot the food, cleaned
the pendulum cell, oiled the machinery, worked tirelessly from dawn
until the sun crimsoned westward. At this rate it could keep on for
centuries.
But one day as Layeville stared at the city and its people in the blur
of ascent and descent, he perceived a swarming darkness that extended in
the heavens. The city rocket ships that crossed the sky on pillars of
scarlet flame darted helplessly, frightenedly for shelter. The people
ran like water splashed on tiles, screaming soundlessly. Alien creatures
fluttered down, great gelatinous masses of black that sucked out the
life of all. They clustered thickly over everything, glistened
momentarily upon the pendulum and its body above, over the whirling
wheels and roaring bowels of the metal creature once a Time Machine. An
hour later they dwindled away over the horizon and never came back. The
city was dead.
Up and down, Layeville went on his journey to nowhere, in his prison, a
strange smile etched on his lips. In a week or more, he knew, he would
be the only man alive on earth.
Elation flamed within him. This was _his_ victory! Where the other men
had planned the pendulum as a prison it had been an asylum against
annihilation now!
Day after day the robots still came, worked, unabated by the visitation
of the black horde. They came every week, brot food, tinkered, checked,
oiled, cleaned. Up and down, back and forth--THE PENDULUM!
... a thousand years must have passed before the sky again showed life
over the dead Earth. A silvery bullet of space dropped from the clouds,
steaming, and hovered over the dead city where now only a few solitary
robots performed their tasks. In the gathering dusk the lites of the
metropolis glimmered on. Other automatons appeared on the rampways like
spiders on twisting webs, scurrying about, checking, oiling, working in
their crisp mechanical manner.
And the creatures in the alien projectile found the time mechanism, the
pendulum swinging up and down, back and forth, up and down. The robots
still cared for it, oiled it, tinkering.
A thousand years this pendulum had swung. Made of glass the round disk
at the bottom was, but now when food was lowered by the robots through
the tube it lay untouched. Later, when the vacuum tube came down and
cleaned out the cell it took that very food with it.
Back and forth--up and down.
The visitors saw something inside the pendulum. Pressed closely to the
glass side of the cell was the face of a whitened skull--a skeleton
visage that stared out over the city with empty sockets and an
enigmatical smile wreathing its lipless teeth.
Back and forth--up and down.
The strangers from the void stopped the pendulum in its course, ceased
its swinging and cracked open the glass cell, exposing the skeleton to
view. And in the gleaming light of the stars the skull face continued
its weird grinning as if it knew that it had conquered something. Had
conquered time.
The Prisoner Of Time, Layeville, had indeed travelled along the
centuries.
And the journey was at an end.


IS IT TRUE WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT KUTTNER?
OR
the man with the Weird Tale
by GUY AMORY
[Illustration]

The extremely interesting specimen to your right is not a head from a
formaldehyde jar, though at times we have seen it, or him, pickled. It
is I, Henry Kuttner, the laziest man who ever punched a typewriter and
got paid for it. Like several other L.A. natives he is too busy living
to do much worrying--and besides--what does it get him? (a check from
Weird Tales) Henry has just sold them a 20,000 word yarn about Elak of
Atlantis. At present he has finished a story headed for STARTLING, fifty
thousand words or more, and been working with C. L. Moore on a new
chiller.
Hank's first story for Astounding was a disappointment, but he fully
made up for that by turning in a sockerooo to Unknown called _the
misguided halo_, written after the fashion of his most highly cherished
author THORNE SMITH. What the fans don't know is that this little tale
had a different ending than the one used by Campbell. Kuttner's finis to
the halo was hysterically funny, but John W. thought otherwise and
tagged a new finish on it--spoiling it as far as this author is
concerned.
Kuttner is 24 years old. He's been writing most of his life--learned how
to type at the age of eight and hasn't left it alone since. Was born
with a type-bar in his mouth. Lives in a quiet catacomb called Beverly
Hills, the first cemetery I've ever seen with street lamps. At present,
though I have broached the subject on numerous occasions, Hank
steadfastly refuses to write for slick magazines. His best excuse being
his laziness.
Hanks is quiet-speaking, sincere. But he has a sense of humor, the kind
that hits you amidriff abruptly. He is the perfect dead-pan jokester.
His digs many times being too subtle for your correspondent to catch
until several moments have passed, Kuttner is always ready to rush in
mildly and put the immature fans to route. It is only when you see the
ghastly pictures that he takes out at his charnal cave that you realize
his true sense of comedy. He and Hodgkins and Shroyer, the fiends, get
together in outre garb, in horrifying pose, and bring forth films that
would shake the mind of even such a horror as Robert Bloch.
Kuttner likes the way C. L. Moore writes (and who doesn't). He wishes he
could write like her--but claims that when he tries imitating it comes
out so much trash. If you've read any of his stories you realize that
Hank is a master of the bingety-boom type of fiction--but with feeling!
He puts more Incident in ten pages of Elak than any other author in
WEIRD, and makes you feel it. He paints his picture with masterfully
abrupt dabs, while Moore lays on her horror with the touch of a mosaic
master, building up. Kuttner knocks you down and keeps you bouncing.
Moore swirls you in cobwebs and totes you away into infinity. Combining
their efforts in '37 for QUEST OF THE STARSTONE they turned out
something to remember ... with Hank's flair for lightning pace and
Moore's for description they went to town.
That's about all we can say about Hank, He doesn't like New York because
it's too dirty, noisy and big. He dotes on Thorne Smith. Rite now he's
trying to crash Argosy with a story--and in the future you can expect
some big things from this quiet author.
Oh, yes, and is it true what they say about Kuttner?
No, he doesn't use dope to get the effect in his stories. He has a
massive painting of Art Barnes on his desk and when he prepares to write
he squints once and once only at that painting to get gruesome
atmosphere. Then he starts typing!
Take a bow, Mr. Kuttner.
(Jus bend over a little more, Hank! A' K' BARNES)
WHUMP!
Ouch! (KUTTNER)
The End (of Kuttner)


ANALYSIS
[Illustration]

FROM J CHAPMAN MISKE: Pretty snappy cover on the 1st issue of fufa. At
least I like it. Simple stuff looks best on mimeod covers. By the way,
what, I'd like to know, is the sex of that Bokian creature? WHY MR.
MISKE! WE THOT U ABHORED SEX! TSK! TSK! I'm for Technocracy. Personally
I suspect Reynolds of being Kuttner NOPE.... TRY AGAIN, JACK. Your
poetry not so hot. U wandered a bit and were melodramatic.
DALE HART POSTS: Bok cover good. Yerke and Reynolds interesting.
Forrie's story unique. Yur poem full of thot but it didn't scan very
well. MAYBE IT'S BECUZ I'M MORE BRITISH THAN I AM _SCAN_-DIN-AVIAN.
(BRAD) How about an increase in pages--this issue much too small. HOPE
YU LIKE THIS BIGGER SIZE, DALE.
GERTRUDE HEMKIN MUMBLES: Cover startling, technocracy article sounds
sensible, ron reynolds satire amusing and contains a few kernels of
logic, at that. And where hav I red 4SJ's RECORD bee4?
(WE _Wonder_) HENRY HASSE TYPES: "Hans Bok steals 1st honors 4 his
cover. Hope yu can get Hans to do all yur illustrations each month."
YES; HENRY, WE'LL HAVE BOK ON THE COVER EVERY ISSUE FROM NOW ON EVEN THO
HE'S BUSY IN NEW YORK WITH HIS PANTING--SINCE THE EDITORIAL FOR FUFA WAS
STENCILED THE DECEMBER ISSUE OF WEIRD TALES HAS APPEARED ON THE STANDS
ALL OVER AMERICA WITH ITS COVER DONE BY BOK. IT WAS FUTURIA FANTASIA'S
PLEASENT DUTY, THIS SUMMER; TO BRING ABOUT THAT DEAL BETWEEN BOK AND
WEIRD AND WE ARE JUSTLY PROUD OF HANS AND HIS SUCCESS. HERE'S HOPING HE
HITS ASTOUNDING NEXT. HASSE CONTINUES: "Best written feature was yur
poem, Brad. Next is Reynolds piece and the one by Ackerman." DUE TO LACK
OF SPACE IN THIS ISSUE WE ARE CONDENSING THE ABOVE LETTERS. IN THE
WINTER EDITION THERE WILL BE A BIGGER LETTER DEPARTMENT--THAT IS, IF YU
WRITE IN. WE'RE ANXIOUS TO KNOW HOW YOU LIKED OUR SPECIAL _the
pendulum_. UNTIL THEN, FU, FAREWELL!


RETURN FROM DEATH
_by ANTONY CORVAIS_

They were seated in his parked, car, miles from the city, when Robert
told Ellen; "I'll always love you, darling, forever and ever. I just
can't help myself, and I don't want to."
The girl nestled closer without reply.
"And if something should happen to one of us, the other would
wait--because love like ours will never know death--it must go on--for
eternity," he continued. "I know that I'll love you even when I'm dead,
and if there are such things as spirits, I'll come back to you--somehow.
Or would it frighten you?"
Ellen pouted: "Don't be so funereal! It makes me feel strangely inside.
Of course nothing can separate us. It's a beautiful nite and we're
wasting it on--oh, dear!" Her eyes had glanced at the small clock on the
paneling. "It's late, Robert. You must hurry me home now or mother will
be furious!"
Sighing, Robert started the car. As they roared toward town over the
twisting roadway, suddenly the car swerved.
"Lookout, Bob! A man!" It was Ellen's high voice screaming.
The car skidded sickeningly on loose gravel, crashed thunderously
through the railing bordering the highway, and richocheted, turning over
and over, halting as wreckage. Robert was crushed under the metal bulk,
losing consciousness.
Thrown clear, Ellen scrambled to the man, bent over him. Something more
than pain filmed his eyes; he heard himself muttering: "I'll come
back?--you wait--" in a failing whisper as illimitable darkness swept
over him, accompanied by dreadful nausea. A point of light appeared in
the void, expanding into a dazzling rectangle which split into thousands
of lesser planes; these shaped a geometric pattern which whirled
dizzily, humming, the drone rising in pitch with every sickening
revolution, becoming incessant mechanical scream----
"And this is death. This is past human endurance." With sudden
omniscience he knew that he WAS dead and the meaning of the spinning
pattern. The knowledge ebbed and carried with it all of his memories
except for Ellen's face and her name.
The wheeling design parted like a curtain, and Robert observed beyond it
a branching path spreading before him like a flattened tree. At the end
of every fork was Ellen's face, wavering and blurred. He fixed his
attention upon the nearest furcation, aspiring toward it desperately,
and sensed himself hovering in space.
Shock, as of lightning coursing his veins, knotted him with agony.
Involuntarily his eyes squeezed shut. Icy air tortured his lungs. As he
raised his voice in weak protest, the pain ceased and he relaxed, spent.
His eyes continued shut, as though the lids were gummed down. Failing in
many attempts to open them, he quested food, found it, and consoled
himself with it.
Occasionally plaintive voices babbled unintelligibly, arousing him.
Always, if he listened, he heard a gentle murmur reply to the voices.
And then everything was quiet. He felt very sleepy. Finally he dropped
off into slumber, deep and restful.
Between periods of sleep, Robert struggled with his heavy eyelids.
Memories might have associated his sightlessness with blindness--but he
had none. There were only Ellen's face and her name which, when
expecially desperate, he called again and again.
Gradually his vision became clear, and he stared in awe at a world of
immensity which was peopled with Titans. The picture of Ellen in this
gigantic place troubled him, for the colossal beings looked upon him as
an animated toy. Often he was elevated to their reeking mouths, kissed,
and dropped aside; if he were insistent upon attention, inquiring for
Ellen, the giants beat him and thrust him from their presence.
Inert bare-surfaced looming things inclosed him, from some of which,
when he approached them, he was kicked away. Incredibly huge portals
barred egress to an outer world, from which seeped strange sharp odors.
By calling his one word to the world beyond the doors, Robert endeavored
to explain to the Titans that Ellen might possibly be outside. But they
hushed him with amusement, sometimes with abuse.
There had been others prisoned here like himself while he had not seen,
but they had vanished now, but this bothered him not in the least--his
thoughts were of Ellen, and finally the giants lifted him and put him
into a windowless room and clamped a fretted ceiling over it. The
chamber rocked gently; he realized that it was being moved from one
place to another. Leaping frantically he touched the ceiling's lattice,
clung to it, struggling to force himself through its interstices.
Unsuccessful, tiring, he fell back, crouched in a corner, weeping.
Motion of transit ended--the confining ceiling vanished. Robert
scrambled over a wall, dropped to the ground of the outer world, whose
heavy conflicting odors, dazzling lights and moving shadows alarmed him.
Dim with distance was the withdrawing form of a giant, which he pursued,
crying out his one word, "ELLEN!"
The giant vanished among weird wavering plants. Alone, Robert skulked
nervously through tall rustling things, was terrified at times by an
unexpected sound or motion. But the swaying things appeared unaware of
him and he became self-confidant. Discovering a stretch of damp earth
gemmed with puddles, he drank. His head cocked at a sound reminiscent of
Ellen: her soothing voice.
A giantess had appeared over him. She was--ELLEN! At sight of her,
Robert's pent memories burst free, overwhelming his consciousness with
turbulent pageantry. He thrust up his arms; gently indulgent, the girl
bent and drew him to her breast. She cuddled him, cooing to him. At the
moment her monstrous size did not concern him.
"I've found you! I've found you!" he cried. "Oh, Ellen, if only you knew
how lonely it has been--" He opened his glad heart to her in a
stammering urgency, bliss in his eyes, tears in his voice. Breathless,
he raised his face to the girl's; she hesitated. Then she kissed him and
set him down at her feet. She strode away. Crying with hurt amazement,
he followed. She shook her head. She kept walking swiftly. He could not
keep up with her and he stopped forlornly as she disappeared behind an
obstruction. He stared after her with unbelieving eyes. Tho mysteriously
stunted, he had returned to her from death, and she had not accepted
him. He stepped close to one of her prodigious footprints in the mud and
surveyed it grimly. His eyes sought an impression of his own foot. And
suddenly he cried in mingled grief and horror--for there in the mud was
his footprint--small--strange--the footprint of a half-grown cat!


CONVENTIONAL NOTES or the report on THE S.F.L. BALL GAME
by the editor
score: 27 sprained ankles to 3 cracked knees.

Ross Rocklynne: Tall, freckled, red haired, pleasent looking,
good-natured and humorous--that is Rocklynne--and, by the way, in real
life he spells it Rock_lin_. Makes the ideal traveling companion.
Continually clicking away with his candid camera. Is versed in many
subjects--likes plots about gigantic ideas, such as THE MOTH, giant men,
and THE MEN AND THE MIRROR with an amorphous reflector, while JUPITER
TRAP gave us a giant siphon. Rocklynne, 26, looks 22 or younger.
Favorite expression, when agreeing with anyone is, "That's right."
Spending most of my time after the convention with Ross, painting the
town a delicate pink, I found that he is now trying a bit of Weird
writing which has been unsuccessful, and some Western concocting--ditto.
Ross is quite different than his characters Deveral and Colbie. Somehow
I had imagined a Rocklynne with a sharp gaunted face and bulging
muscles--I found, instead, a good example of what mite be called typical
college species number #569Z, a cross between science and wit, well
mixed and jelled in an Empire State tall body. Lives in Cincinnatti. His
characters, Colbie and Deveral, are two of the most consistent and
popular guys in s.f. today, according to Campbell.
Charlie Hornig: The dark horse who says neigh to every manuscript I
write for him. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned fiend who deals from
the bottom of the manuscript pile over at _Science-fiction_. He has just
learned to speak English during the past week and now he finds it much
more fun picking out the manuscripts instead of leaping into a pile of
them and bobbing up with one between his teeth. Makes lousy speeches. Is
a human dynamo and expert guide to anyone in Manhattan. Makes money on
the side selling shoestrings on the I.R.T. between the Bronx and Coney
Island. Father was a toupee manufacturer which makes Charlie hair to a
big-wig's fortune. Thanx, Charlie, for your presence in New York to
guide me around. And I just LOVE Science Fiction! (paid adv.)
Impressions cawt short: John W. (werewolf) Campbell, a scientific theory
in a potato sack suit with high rubber boots to match.
Julius Schwartz and Groucho Marx look-alikes.
Mort Weisinger, a plump smile.
A. Merritt, the man on the billboards with a mug of Milwaukee beer in
his hand. Jovial, glasses, chubby. Not a bit mysterious.
Forrest J. Ackerman, dressed in future garb at convention, looking like
a fugitive from a costume shop.
Willy Ley, a pair of thick-lensed glasses with an accent.
Lowndes--moustache and gold tooth--double feature. Leslie Perry--Madame
Butterfly with bangs.
Henry Kuttner, a voice from a pile of cigarettes. Morojo, short and
sweet, commonly referred to as the VOICE OF MIDGE. Sykora, nervous
breakdown with hair. Moskowitz, human fog-horn: following his opening
speech New York gripped by earth tremors. Wollheim, Communist, born in a
revolving door, believes in revolutions, get it? Or do you? Sykora,
Moskowitz, Taurasi--three little pigs. Manly Wade Wellman--the human
JELL-O! Kornbluth, a well-padded belch. Swisher, massive literary Babe
Ruth, king of so-what! Robert J. Thompson, the leaning tower of Pisa
wired for sound.


LOCAL LEAGUE LIFE

Nite of Halloween the Paramount theatre found itself besieged with
members of the S.F.L. when 4Sj, Morojo, Pogo, Bradbury, Corvais, Rogers,
Amory, Eldred and others met there to enjoy special preview of Bob Hope
film CAT AND CANARY. Bradbury took along weird mask fashioned by
Harryhausen and, in spookiest part of film, scared hell out of innocent
blonde sitting alongside. Her scream was heard over in Pomona.
Chandeliers rocked. Bradbury then took off mask and laffed and the girl
tainted.
* * * * *
One month ago Bradbury stenciled and printed the editorial to this
second issue of FuFa, only to be delayed by various troubles, mostly
typewriter and stencil scourges, until now. In the meantime the December
Weird had come out and FuFa's artist Bok had a cover on it. We'd like to
take this opportunity to congratulate Bok on his splendid work and wish
him luck.
* * * * *
Yerke, in one of his britest moments, growled, "The little man who
wasn't there, certainly didn't take up lots of air, but just think of
the air he wouldn't take up if he were twins!"
* * * * *
Henry Hasse, now a regular writer for Weird again, according to late
reports, has one coming up in a short while. Hopes to have it
illustrated by Bok.
* * * * *
Last moment arrival of material from various authors thrust the
Technocracy article out of this issue. We suggest that all those
interested in Technocracy go to your nearest Section in your city and
save us the trouble of converting you. We will, tho, in the Winter
Edition, give you a few facts and predictions made by Technocracy.
* * * * *
ADDRESS COMMUNICATIONS:
FUTURIA FANTASIA
AN L.A. SFL PUB.
30 54 1/2 W. 12th St.
Los Angeles, Cal.
Ray Bradbury, Editor