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  Short Fiction

  Frank M. Robinson

  (custom book cover)

  Jerry eBooks

  Title Page

  About Frank M. Robinson

  Pseudonyms

  “Who’s Who in Science Fiction”

  “Introducing the Author”

  Bibliography

  Short Fiction Bibliography: chronological

  Short Fiction Bibliography: alphabetical

  1945

  THE NETHER GARDENS

  1950

  THE MAZE

  1951

  THE SANTA CLAUS PLANET

  THE RELUCTANT HEROES

  SITUATION THIRTY

  TWO WEEKS IN AUGUST

  BEYOND THE ULTRA-VIOLET

  “GOOD LUCK, COLUMBUS!”

  THE FIRE AND THE SWORD

  UNTITLED STORY

  GOT TO BELIEVE

  THE HUNTING SEASON

  1952

  THE GIRLS FROM EARTH

  1953

  VIEWPOINT

  MUSCLE MAN

  QUIZ GAME

  THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED

  DECISION

  GUARANTEED—FOREVER!

  THE SIREN SOUNDS AT MIDNIGHT

  PLANTED!

  1954

  THE LONELY MAN

  THE WORLDS OF JOE SHANNON

  THE OCEANS ARE WIDE

  ONE THOUSAND MILES UP

  THE DEAD END KIDS OF SPACE

  1955

  COSMIC SABOTEUR

  FOUR HOURS TO ETERNITY

  DREAM STREET

  YOU DON’T WALK ALONE

  WANTED: ONE SANE MAN

  1956

  THE POWER

  1972

  “EAST WIND, WEST WIND”

  1993

  MERRY CHRISTMAS NO. 30267

  1995

  THE PHANTOM OF THE BARBARY COAST

  2010

  THE ERRAND BOY

  Frank Malcolm Robinson was born on August 9, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois, U.S. Robinson was the son of a check forger. He started out in his teens working as a copy boy for International News Service and then became an office boy for Ziff Davis. He was drafted into the Navy for World War II, and when his tour was over attended Beloit College, where he majored in physics, graduating in 1950. Robinson could find no work as a writer, so he ended up back in the Navy and serving in Korea, where he kept writing, read a lot, and published in Astounding Science Fiction.

  After the Navy, he attended graduate school in journalism, then worked for a Chicago-based Sunday supplement. Soon he switched to Science Digest, where he worked from 1956 to 1959. From there, Robinson moved into men’s magazines: Rogue and Cavalier. In 1969, Playboy asked him to take over the Playboy Advisor column. He remained there until 1973, when he left to write full-time.

  After moving to San Francisco in the 1970s, Robinson, who was gay, was a speechwriter for gay politician Harvey Milk; he had a small role in the film Milk. After Milk’s assassination, Robinson was co-executor, with Scott Smith, of Milk’s last will and testament.

  Frank Robinson was the author of sixteen books, the editor of two others, and penned numerous articles. Three of his novels have been made into films. The Power was a supernatural science fiction and government conspiracy novel about people with superhuman skills, filmed in 1968 as The Power. The technothriller The Glass Inferno, co-written with Thomas N. Scortia, was combined with Richard Martin Stern’s The Tower to produce the 1974 feature film The Towering Inferno. The Gold Crew, also co-written Scortia, was a nuclear threat thriller filmed as an NBC miniseries and re-titled The Fifth Missile.

  He collaborated on several other works with Scortia, including The Prometheus Crisis, The Nightmare Factor, and Blow-Out. More recent works include The Dark Beyond the Stars, and an updated version of The Power in 2000, which closely followed Waiting, a novel with similar themes to The Power.

  In the 1970s, Robinson started seriously collecting the vintage pulp-fiction magazines that he had grown up reading. The collection spawned a book on the history of the pulps as seen through their vivid cover art: Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines (with co-author Lawrence Davidson). He attended numerous pulp conventions and in 2000 won the Lamont Award for lifetime achievement at Pulpcon.

  Frank M. Robinson died on June 30, 2014 in San Francisco, California.

  PSEUDONYMS

  Robert Courtney

  Frank Robinson

  Frank M. Robinson

  F.M. Robinson

  S.M. Tenneshaw

  WHO’S WHO IN SCIENCE FICTION

  Conducted by

  Robert E. Briney

  Like a lot of science fiction readers, I started with Poe and Wells and Verne and hit on the pulps when I was sent to a second tend magazine store by my brother to pick up some sports books. While browsing through the stacks and stacks of magazines, I ran across copies of Astounding containing the “Crucible of Power” and Simak’s “Cosmic Engineers.” Read a lot of Williamson, Simak, and Doc Smith then and still consider the three to be among the finest story tellers in the field.

  Met some of the local fans a year or so late:—Niel DeJack, Ronald Clyne, Walt Liebscher and Paul Klingbiel—and with them, helped found a remarkably short-lived local club called the Windy City Wampires. After I was graduated from high school, I worked for a time as copy boy for INS and office boy for Ziff-Davis, Made myself as useful as possible to Ray Palmer and Howard Browne and was repaid by being invited out to Palmer’s house for a poker party, where I promptly loot ten bucks—in those days, half a week’s pay. Indirectly got back at Ray by can pie ting my file of Amazings from the Ziff-Day is basement stock-room.

  During the early years of World War II, Ed Connor and I published a postcard sized newspaper titled Fanewscard, Ran photos, biographies, and news items on it. Gave it up to Walt Dunkelberger when I was drafted. Stationed for a while at Navy Pier and endeared myself to Bill Hamling and Chester Gier, then running a two man literary factory an Chicago’s North Side, by selling them my weekly rations of cigarettes. Stood in awe of editors and writers at that time, and oddly enough, I still do.

  Went to college at Beloit, Wisc., where I majored in physics and was graduated with a BS and a Phi Beta key in 1950. Started writing in the similar of 1949. Writing came hard to me and still does. First written and published story: “The Maze,” Have written 30 or so stories since then—not a very large output, compared to some writers. Have been in three or four anthologies, had a few on the radio. Tried writing S-F for a living but gave it up—primarily because of financial troubles, but partly, too, because the stuff was running thin under pressure. Called back in the Navy in ’51, got out in ’52, Like to read, like to write, like to swim, play handball, and work out with the weights. . . .wish I was better at all of them. Single Type-writer personality. Freeze up when I talk to editors. Lousy poker player.

  As to science fiction: I am inclined to think that science, not fiction. Kill change the world. I believe that science fiction itself has a great future as an entertainment medium as soar as it stops taking itself so seriously and gets on with the business of entertaining the public. To be blunt, I think that too many people in the field are engaged in blowing it up out of all proportion to what it actually is, rather than improving what is already there. It is sad commentary that when you mention the bulk of the better known stories in the field, you are talking about stories that were produced back in the early forties. To paraphrase Ed Wood and others, I art inclined to think that some authors are writing better a
nd better about less and less. Too maty stories are gimmick stories; too many stories are faked. Doc Smith, van Vogt, and others of the thirties and forties may not be the fine, slick craftsmen that some modern writers are, but they were superb at telling a story.

  S-F needs better ideas. It needs a sense of wonder. It needs the type of covers that Howard Brown and Hubert Rogers used to turn out that caught the reader’s eye and made him wonder what it was all about. It needs, oddly enough, more imagination.

  I like both S-F and fantasy. I liked the old Unknown Worlds best of all the magazines. Of the more recent writers, I like some of Anderson’s and Miller’s work, and a good deal of Richard Matheson’s. Of what I’ve written myself, I think I like “Good Luck, Columbus” about the best. For a few brief moments, during the writing of it, it seemed very real to me.

  Originally appeared in Destiny #9, Winter 1953

  Introducing the AUTHOR

  «

  Daniel F. Galyoue

  «

  Much as I might like to think so, there actually isn’t much that’s exciting or especially interesting to say about myself. I was born in Chicago some 28 years ago and have lived in and around there ever since, I went to college at Beloit, Wisconsin, collected a degree in physics, and am currently at Northwestern University for a Master’s degree in journalism.

  I started reading science fiction in 1939, cutting my teeth on Simak’s “Cosmic Engineers” and Doc Smith’s “Lensman” stories, which I still rate among the best. When I graduated from high school, I worked for a stretch as an office boy at Ziff-Davis publishing company, distributing towels and mailing out books and magazines. Most of my time I spent hanging around the Amazing Stories offices.

  Went into the Navy in 1944 and shortly thereafter found myself stationed at Navy Pier. It was about this time I struck up a friendship with a struggling young writer who was a ready market for my cigarette rations. The writer’s name was Bill Handing; he and Chet Geier had an office on Chicago’s north side.

  There’s not a great deal to say about me personally. Somewhat on the thin side, like individual sports and camping in the Wisconsin wilds. I think more people should know a good deal more about science. Think Oppenheimer got a raw deal and think that politicians who talk about any kind of existence other than “peaceful co-existence”—in other wards, war—are dangerous men and scientifically illiterate. Pet prejudice: supposedly intelligent men who believe the clap-trap in books like “Worlds in Collision”.

  My own tastes in science fiction are catholic, ranging from a good, taut “chase” story to the intricately woven “idea” tale. As a writer, I admire Heinlein’s ability to tell a story, Tucker’s flair for characterization, Kornbluth’s knack for satire, Bob Bloch’s humor, and Richard Matheson’s sheer ability at writing.

  Science fiction is about the last remaining outpost of the vanishing pulp magazines and if this page seems tear-streaked, there’s good reason. They served as a training ground for many excellent modern writers and they were good, clean entertainment. Hackneyed phrase though it is, it’s far more than can be said for most of the pocket- books, comics, and dime-sized magazines flooding the newsstands.

  I like the field of science fiction for many reasons. It’s one of the few really live and original entertainment fields left. It’s probably the only field where you can discuss social and political and scientific trends and make them vastly exciting.

  And besides, in what other field do editors have wives like Frances Hamling, who is not only charming and brainy but can cook like nobody’s business?

  —Frank M. Robinson

  Originally appeared in Imagination, June 1955

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Novels

  The Power (1956)

  The Glass Inferno (1974)

  The Prometheus Crisis (1975)

  The Nightmare Factor (1978)

  The Gold Crew (1980)

  The Great Divide (1982)

  Blow-Out! (1987)

  The Dark Beyond the Stars (1991)

  Waiting (1999)

  The Donor (2004)

  Magazine-published Novels

  The Hunting Season, Astounding Science Fiction, November 1951

  Cosmic Saboteur, Imagination, February 1955

  The Power, Bluebook, March 1956

  Collections

  A Life in the Day of . . . and Other Short Stories (1981)

  Through My Glasses Darkly (2002)

  Chapbooks

  Decision (2009)

  The Worlds of Joe Shannon (2010)

  Two Weeks in August (2016)

  The Fire and the Sword (2016)

  The Girls from Earth (2016)

  The Reluctant Heroes (2016)

  Omnibus

  Art of Imagination: 20th Century Visions of Science Fiction, Horror, and Fantasy (2002)

  Nonfiction

  Pulp Culture: The Art of Fiction Magazines (1998)

  Science Fiction of the 20th Century: An Illustrated History (1999)

  The Incredible Pulps: A Gallery of Fiction Magazine Art (2006)

  Not So Good a Gay Man (2017)

  SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY

  CHRONOLOGICAL

  1945

  The Nether Gardens, Chanticleer, December 1945

  1950

  The Maze, Astounding Science Fiction, June 1950

  1951

  The Santa Claus Planet, The Best Science-Fiction Stories: 1951, 1951

  The Reluctant Heroes, Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1951

  Situation Thirty, Astounding Science Fiction, January 1951

  Two Weeks in August, Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1951

  Beyond the Ultra-Violet, Imagination, June 1951

  “Good Luck, Columbus!”, Amazing Stories, July 1951

  The Fire and the Sword, Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1951

  Untitled Story, Astounding Science Fiction, September 1951

  You’ve Got to Believe, Amazing Stories, September 1951

  The Hunting Season, Astounding Science Fiction, November 1951

  1952

  The Girls from Earth, Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1952

  1953

  Viewpoint, Fantastic Story Magazine, January 1953

  The Night Shift, Fantasy Magazine, March 1953

  Muscle Man, Universe Science Fiction, June 1953

  Quiz Game, Astounding Science Fiction, June 1953

  The Day the World Ended, Beyond Fantasy Fiction, July 1953

  Decision, Space Science Fiction, September 1953

  Guaranteed—Forever!, Imagination, November 1953

  The Siren Sounds at Midnight, Fantastic, November/December, November 1953

  Planted!, Science-Fiction Plus, December 1953

  1954

  The Lonely Man, Astounding Science Fiction, January 1954

  The Worlds of Joe Shannon, If, March 1954

  The Oceans Are Wide, Science Stories, April 1954

  One Thousand Miles Up, Science Stories, April 1954

  Quarter in the Slot, Destiny, Summer 1954

  The Dead End Kids of Space, Universe Science Fiction, July 1954

  1955

  Cosmic Saboteur, Imagination, February 1955

  Four Hours to Eternity, Imaginative Tales, March 1955

  Dream Street, Imaginative Tales, March 1955

  You Don’t Walk Alone, Imagination, March 1955

  Wanted: One Sane Man, Imagination, June 1955

  1956

  The Power, Bluebook, March 1956

  1960

  A Rover I Will Be, Every Boy’s Book of Outer Space Stories, 1960

  1967

  The Wreck of the Ship John B., Playboy, June 1967

  1969

  A Life in the Day Of, Playboy, June 1969

  1972

  “East Wind, West Wind”, Nova 2, 1972

  1981

  Downhill All the Way, A Life in the Day of . . . and Other Short Stories, November 1981

  1993

 
The Greatest Dying, Dinosaur Fantastic, July 1993

  Merry Christmas, No. 30267, Christmas Ghosts, November 1993

  1994

  1969 Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll, Alternate Worldcons, September 1994

  Dealer’s Choice, Deals with the Devil, October 1994

  One Month in 1907, Alternate Outlaws, October 1994

  1995

  The Phantom of the Barbary Coast, Sherlock Holmes in Orbit, 1995

  1997

  Causes Title, Alternate Tyrants, April 1997

  2002

  Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll, Through My Glasses Darkly, May 2002

  2003

  Love Story, Men Writing Science Fiction as Women, November 2003

  2010

  The Errand Boy, Gateways, July 2010

  SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY

  ALPHABETICAL

  #

  1969 Hail, Hail, Rock and Roll, Alternate Worldcons, September 1994

  A

  A Life in the Day Of, Playboy, June 1969

  A Rover I Will Be, Every Boy’s Book of Outer Space Stories, 1960

  B

  Beyond the Ultra-Violet, Imagination, June 1951

  C

  Causes Title, Alternate Tyrants, April 1997

  Cosmic Saboteur, Imagination, February 1955

  D

  The Day the World Ended, Beyond Fantasy Fiction, July 1953

  The Dead End Kids of Space, Universe Science Fiction, July 1954

  Dealer’s Choice, Deals with the Devil, October 1994

  Decision, Space Science Fiction, September 1953

  Downhill All the Way, A Life in the Day of . . . and Other Short Stories, November 1981

  Dream Street, Imaginative Tales, March 1955

  E

  “East Wind, West Wind”, Nova 2, 1972

  The Errand Boy, Gateways, July 2010

  F

  The Fire and the Sword, Galaxy Science Fiction, August 1951

  Four Hours to Eternity, Imaginative Tales, March 1955

  G

  The Girls from Earth, Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1952

  “Good Luck, Columbus!”, Amazing Stories, July 1951

  The Greatest Dying, Dinosaur Fantastic, July 1993