This is an ongoing sporadic series, in which I explore classic fantasy and science fiction works. Appendix N is the bibliography of Gary Gygax's original Dungeon Masters Guide, and lists a range of classic SF and fantasy authors that influenced his interest in the fantastical. See the first part of this series for more information.
Stanley Weinbaum
Weinbaum is perhaps one of the lesser-known authors on this list. He was born in Kentucky but moved to Wisconsin to attend university (where he was apparently kicked out after he took an exam for a friend as a bet). He died aged only 33 from lung cancer, and his writing career only spanned a couple of years, mostly providing short stories to magazines like Astounding and Wonder Stories.
Appendix N (1st Ed.) has no specific recommendations, while Appendix E (5th Ed.) recommends The Valley of Dreams and Worlds of If. Archive.org and Gutenberg have collections of his tales online for free, and so I grabbed one of these and, as usual, read beyond the recommended list. Because each story is short, and it didn’t take me very long to get through.
A Martian Odyssey and Valley of Dreams
The Valley of Dreams is a strange one to recommend without recommending A Martian Odyssey, as Valley is a direct sequel to Odyssey. They are told from the point of view of Jarvis, chemist on the first manned mission to Mars, relating his story to Putz (German engineer), Leroy (French biologist) and Harrison, captain of the mission whose function in the stories is to be a boorish interlocutor, relegated to grunting such words of curiosity as “Sounds nuts”.
In Odyssey, Jarvis has just been rescued from a scouting mission where his craft crashed. He tells of how he trekked across the Martian wilderness and the strange creatures that he met, foremost an intelligent creature somewhat like a bird, that he calls “Tweel” after an approximation of its apparent name. Jarvis and Tweel encounter a harmless silicone lifeform that forms pyramids from its brick-like waste products, a hypnotic plant-creature that entices victims into its tentacular fronds using mirages of their heart’s desire, and a hive-race of barrel-like semi-intelligent creatures engaged in mysterious industry. Jarvis and Tweel unwittingly invoke the ire of the barrel-creatures and end up fighting for their lives. Jarvis is rescued by his crewmates, while Tweel leaps away to freedom.
In Valley, Jarvis and Leroy set out to find Tweel, surmising that he must have come from near the South Pole. Here they find the ruins of an ancient city, inhabited by Tweel’s people who it turns out are called the Thoth and who once travelled to Earth to become immortalised as the Egyptian god of the same name (Holy Stargate, Batman!). They learn how the barrel-creatures have a symbiotic relationship with the Thoth, and the eponymous valley is a dangerous place filled with the hypnotic plant-creatures.
By itself, Valley doesn’t make much sense without Odyssey, together they form an enjoyable bit of planetary romance with a dose of scientific realism, kind of mid-way between Edgar Rice Burroughs and Arthur C Clarke. There are some mysteries left at the end, to be resolved in a never-completed trilogy, such as why the autotrophic Thoth that derive everything from air and soil require the complex of canals that channel the polar ice. There's also an enticing mural that suggests some kind of demonic-looking foe creatures.
The Dixon Wells Stories
Worlds of If is the first in a series of stories set in the near future (2015). The narrator is Dixon Wells, heir to the NJ Wells engineering company and source of disappointment to his father. Dixon is forever late for things – a fact that saves him at the beginning of the first story when he misses a flight that crashes with massive loss of life. He prefers socialising with young women of stage and screen, and with his old mentor, the arrogant but brilliant scientist Herkel van Manderpootz (who likes to refer to himself in third person).
Each of the three Wells/van Manderpootz stories centre around one of van Manderpootz’s inventions based on his theories that the fundamental particles of matter, energy, time, space, and thought are all interconnected and interchangeable. In The Worlds of If, the invention is the “subjunctivisor” that enables a viewer to see what would happen if they had made other decisions in the past. Wells uses it to find out what would have happened had he not missed his flight, discovering that he would have sat next to a woman with whom he falls an instant rapport, but that the two of them were destined to die in the crash. He later discovers that in his current reality she survived because she had a more competent rescuer than Wells, but that she married her rescuer.
This running theme of Dixon failing to meet the girl of his dreams continues in The Ideal. Here, van Manderpootz’s invention is the “idealiser” that allows the viewer to see an idealised version of whatever they imagine. Van Manderpootz only sees himself when imagining the ideal scientist, but Wells, being Wells, imagines a girl and then becomes infatuated with the phantom (who blends elements of real women that has dated). Here van Manderpootz is uncharacteristically kind and discovers for Wells that his ideal woman was real – a famous model seen in adverts during Wells’ childhood – and that all of Wells’ paramours have been women that have features close to this ideal.
The model is dead, but fortunately has a descendant who is a close match; she and Wells get along well until she decides to use the Idealiser to imagine the “perfect horror” and Wells clumsily manages to imprint his face in the vision.
Finally in The Point Of View, van Manderpootz creates the “attitudinizor” that allows the wearer to perceive the world through the point of view of another person. Once again he uses Wells as his guinea pig, who ends up viewing van Manderpootz’s unassuming secretary through the eyes of his lab assistant that is in love with her, and becomes obsessed with trying to absorb this attitude so that he can see the mousy Miss Fitch in another light and so finally obtain his perfect girl. This time it’s van Manderpootz who sees through this rather selfish and unethical scheme and thwarts Wells once again.
Weinbaum explores this concept in an unrelated story, Pygmalion's Spectacles. In this story, the Wells character is Dan Burke, and the van Manderpootz character is the gnomelike Professor Albert Ludwig. His invention is a kind of virtual reality device that also brings to mind Vance’s Eyes of the Overworld, as well as Margaret St Clair’s glimpses of Overworld in her stories. Burke finds himself in a paradise and meets the beautiful woman Galatea, but his very presence there threatens the existence and harmony of the paradise. Unlike the Dixon Wells stories, however, this one has more of a promising ending for Burke.
In general, Weinbaum’s stories are fairly standard in terms of their writing style, but I liked the ongoing twists and desperations that Dixon Wells experiences, as well as his combination of clumsy tardiness and romantic longing coupled with van Manderpootz’s intellectual narcissism; they make a pair not unlike Pinky and the Brain, or Rick and Morty, seen through a very 1930s view of the early 21st Century. “2015 will be remembered as a very stupid year” says van Manderpootz, because he has missed out on a prestigious science prize. One year out, I’d say. And there's a growing darkness through the trilogy - Wells' quest for the perfect woman starts out like an endearingly boyish charm, but becomes manipulative and obsessive, with the seemingly self-absorbed and arrogant van Manderpootz stepping into a concerned parental role. The Mars stories are a bit more perfunctory, perhaps because Weinbaum had yet to find his slightly wry authorial voice, but the Martian life-forms he describes are pleasingly plausible.
Inspirations
The only thing from Weinbaum’s stories that I thought could have been a direct inspiration are the tunnelling barrel-creatures that bear a passing resemblance to the Xorn, especially when combined with the silicone-based pyramid builder. Any and all of the creatures from here could be used as inspiration for D&D creatures, and elements of the setting could also be modified. Tweel and the Thoth are a good example of making a non-human creature that’s weird and quirky, but also believable.
The Dixon Wells stories, less so perhaps. Maybe you could convert van Manderpootz’s inventions into magical items for fun, but they’d be difficult to adjudicate unless you had players who were more into the improv side of gaming than the mechanical side.
Weinbaum is perhaps one of the lesser-known authors on this list. He was born in Kentucky but moved to Wisconsin to attend university (where he was apparently kicked out after he took an exam for a friend as a bet). He died aged only 33 from lung cancer, and his writing career only spanned a couple of years, mostly providing short stories to magazines like Astounding and Wonder Stories.
Appendix N (1st Ed.) has no specific recommendations, while Appendix E (5th Ed.) recommends The Valley of Dreams and Worlds of If. Archive.org and Gutenberg have collections of his tales online for free, and so I grabbed one of these and, as usual, read beyond the recommended list. Because each story is short, and it didn’t take me very long to get through.
A Martian Odyssey and Valley of Dreams
The Valley of Dreams is a strange one to recommend without recommending A Martian Odyssey, as Valley is a direct sequel to Odyssey. They are told from the point of view of Jarvis, chemist on the first manned mission to Mars, relating his story to Putz (German engineer), Leroy (French biologist) and Harrison, captain of the mission whose function in the stories is to be a boorish interlocutor, relegated to grunting such words of curiosity as “Sounds nuts”.
In Odyssey, Jarvis has just been rescued from a scouting mission where his craft crashed. He tells of how he trekked across the Martian wilderness and the strange creatures that he met, foremost an intelligent creature somewhat like a bird, that he calls “Tweel” after an approximation of its apparent name. Jarvis and Tweel encounter a harmless silicone lifeform that forms pyramids from its brick-like waste products, a hypnotic plant-creature that entices victims into its tentacular fronds using mirages of their heart’s desire, and a hive-race of barrel-like semi-intelligent creatures engaged in mysterious industry. Jarvis and Tweel unwittingly invoke the ire of the barrel-creatures and end up fighting for their lives. Jarvis is rescued by his crewmates, while Tweel leaps away to freedom.
In Valley, Jarvis and Leroy set out to find Tweel, surmising that he must have come from near the South Pole. Here they find the ruins of an ancient city, inhabited by Tweel’s people who it turns out are called the Thoth and who once travelled to Earth to become immortalised as the Egyptian god of the same name (Holy Stargate, Batman!). They learn how the barrel-creatures have a symbiotic relationship with the Thoth, and the eponymous valley is a dangerous place filled with the hypnotic plant-creatures.
By itself, Valley doesn’t make much sense without Odyssey, together they form an enjoyable bit of planetary romance with a dose of scientific realism, kind of mid-way between Edgar Rice Burroughs and Arthur C Clarke. There are some mysteries left at the end, to be resolved in a never-completed trilogy, such as why the autotrophic Thoth that derive everything from air and soil require the complex of canals that channel the polar ice. There's also an enticing mural that suggests some kind of demonic-looking foe creatures.
The Dixon Wells Stories
Worlds of If is the first in a series of stories set in the near future (2015). The narrator is Dixon Wells, heir to the NJ Wells engineering company and source of disappointment to his father. Dixon is forever late for things – a fact that saves him at the beginning of the first story when he misses a flight that crashes with massive loss of life. He prefers socialising with young women of stage and screen, and with his old mentor, the arrogant but brilliant scientist Herkel van Manderpootz (who likes to refer to himself in third person).
Each of the three Wells/van Manderpootz stories centre around one of van Manderpootz’s inventions based on his theories that the fundamental particles of matter, energy, time, space, and thought are all interconnected and interchangeable. In The Worlds of If, the invention is the “subjunctivisor” that enables a viewer to see what would happen if they had made other decisions in the past. Wells uses it to find out what would have happened had he not missed his flight, discovering that he would have sat next to a woman with whom he falls an instant rapport, but that the two of them were destined to die in the crash. He later discovers that in his current reality she survived because she had a more competent rescuer than Wells, but that she married her rescuer.
This running theme of Dixon failing to meet the girl of his dreams continues in The Ideal. Here, van Manderpootz’s invention is the “idealiser” that allows the viewer to see an idealised version of whatever they imagine. Van Manderpootz only sees himself when imagining the ideal scientist, but Wells, being Wells, imagines a girl and then becomes infatuated with the phantom (who blends elements of real women that has dated). Here van Manderpootz is uncharacteristically kind and discovers for Wells that his ideal woman was real – a famous model seen in adverts during Wells’ childhood – and that all of Wells’ paramours have been women that have features close to this ideal.
The model is dead, but fortunately has a descendant who is a close match; she and Wells get along well until she decides to use the Idealiser to imagine the “perfect horror” and Wells clumsily manages to imprint his face in the vision.
Finally in The Point Of View, van Manderpootz creates the “attitudinizor” that allows the wearer to perceive the world through the point of view of another person. Once again he uses Wells as his guinea pig, who ends up viewing van Manderpootz’s unassuming secretary through the eyes of his lab assistant that is in love with her, and becomes obsessed with trying to absorb this attitude so that he can see the mousy Miss Fitch in another light and so finally obtain his perfect girl. This time it’s van Manderpootz who sees through this rather selfish and unethical scheme and thwarts Wells once again.
Weinbaum explores this concept in an unrelated story, Pygmalion's Spectacles. In this story, the Wells character is Dan Burke, and the van Manderpootz character is the gnomelike Professor Albert Ludwig. His invention is a kind of virtual reality device that also brings to mind Vance’s Eyes of the Overworld, as well as Margaret St Clair’s glimpses of Overworld in her stories. Burke finds himself in a paradise and meets the beautiful woman Galatea, but his very presence there threatens the existence and harmony of the paradise. Unlike the Dixon Wells stories, however, this one has more of a promising ending for Burke.
In general, Weinbaum’s stories are fairly standard in terms of their writing style, but I liked the ongoing twists and desperations that Dixon Wells experiences, as well as his combination of clumsy tardiness and romantic longing coupled with van Manderpootz’s intellectual narcissism; they make a pair not unlike Pinky and the Brain, or Rick and Morty, seen through a very 1930s view of the early 21st Century. “2015 will be remembered as a very stupid year” says van Manderpootz, because he has missed out on a prestigious science prize. One year out, I’d say. And there's a growing darkness through the trilogy - Wells' quest for the perfect woman starts out like an endearingly boyish charm, but becomes manipulative and obsessive, with the seemingly self-absorbed and arrogant van Manderpootz stepping into a concerned parental role. The Mars stories are a bit more perfunctory, perhaps because Weinbaum had yet to find his slightly wry authorial voice, but the Martian life-forms he describes are pleasingly plausible.
Inspirations
The only thing from Weinbaum’s stories that I thought could have been a direct inspiration are the tunnelling barrel-creatures that bear a passing resemblance to the Xorn, especially when combined with the silicone-based pyramid builder. Any and all of the creatures from here could be used as inspiration for D&D creatures, and elements of the setting could also be modified. Tweel and the Thoth are a good example of making a non-human creature that’s weird and quirky, but also believable.
The Dixon Wells stories, less so perhaps. Maybe you could convert van Manderpootz’s inventions into magical items for fun, but they’d be difficult to adjudicate unless you had players who were more into the improv side of gaming than the mechanical side.
Since they're all short stories and quite straightforward, you could do worse with your time and give them a go, though.
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