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Raymond Z. Gallun
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 In the era of Gernsbackian science fiction, young
Raymond Z. Gallun was one of the big name writers.
He first began publishing science fiction as a teenager; by 1935, the date of "Davy Jones' Ambassador"
in Astounding Stories, he was one of the experienced writers in a genre not yet ten years old. Like the
"locked-room" mystery, the "first contact" (with an alien being) tale has become a special pleasure for sf readers
-- another example in sf is the "time paradox" story. Gallun's innovation was to locate the story not in outer
space but at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean (as James White did later in his novel
The Watch Below).
"Back in 1935, I couldn't find a statement anywhere about what the water pressure at the bottom of
the ocean actually was. So I calculated the weight of a column of water one square inch in a cross-section, and
two-and-a-half miles high. I added a little for the salt-content. The result was too much for me to believe, so
I cut it back some. Actually I was close to right in the first place." Those were the days when accuracy
to known science was established as part of the aesthetic goal of science fiction, laying the groundwork
for Campbell's Golden Age. "The more important purpose . . . ," says Gallun, "was to portray, with some
semblance of truth, the first meeting of two totally different sentient creatures from vastly different environments."
Aliens under the oceans are a central element still in the 1980s, in Gregory Benford's "Swarmer Skimmer." But it
was Gallun and his peers in the late 1920s and early 1930s who first claimed and settled the territory for
science fiction. Sea monsters have never been the same.
Like Poe's "A Descent into Maelström," this is a sea story told by a sailor. At one point, his behavior
is inspired by a volume of Kipling's poetry. But the visions of undersea creatures and the portrayal of the
alien scientist are all Gallun. This is an early, influential hard sf story by a writer who is still publishing in the
field in the 1990s.
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The Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1994 by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. |
Cramer: On Science & Science Fiction || Hartwell: Hard Science Fiction
David G. Hartwell || Kathryn Cramer || About Tor Books || Ordering Info
Interactive Intoduction to THE ASCENT OF WONDER copyright © 1995-1997 by Kathryn Cramer.