[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astonishing Stories, June 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
With all kinds of plots twisting in my head, I hadn't slept well the
night before. For one thing, I'd worked too late on a yarn that wasn't
worth it. For another, there'd been a high wind howling through the
streets. It made me restless and did a lot more damage than that. When
I got up I found it'd blown a lot of paper and junk in the window and
most of the story out--only a part of the carbon was left. I wasn't
especially sorry. I got dressed and hustled down to the luncheon.
That luncheon's something special. We meet every Tuesday in a
second-rate restaurant and gossip and talk story and editors and mostly
beef about the mags that won't pay until publication. Some of us, the
high-class ones, won't write for them.
Maybe I ought to explain. We're the unromantic writers--what they call
pulp writers. We're the boys who fill the pulp magazines with stories
at a cent a word. Westerns, mystery, wonder, weird, adventure--you know
them.
Not all of us are hacks. A couple have graduated to the movies. A few
have broken the slicks and try to forget the lean years. Some get four
cents a word and try to feel important to literature. The rest come to
the luncheon and either resign themselves to the one cent rate or nurse
a secret Pulitzer Prize in their bosoms.
There wasn't much of a turn-out when I got there. Belcher sat at the
head of the table as usual, playing the genial host. He specializes
in what they call science-fiction. It's fantastic stuff about time
machines and the fourth dimension. Belcher talks too much in a Southern
drawl.
As I eased into a chair he called, "Ah, the poor man's Orson Welles!"
and crinkled his big face into a showy laugh.
I said, "Your dialogue's getting as lousy as your stories!" I don't
like to be reminded that I look like a celebrity.
Belcher ignored that. He turned to Black, the chap who agents our
stuff, and began complaining.
He said, "Land-sake, Joey, can't you sell that Martian story? I think
it's good." Before Joey could answer, Belcher turned to the rest of us
and said, "Reminds me of my grand-daddy. He got shot up at Vicksburg
before his father could locate him and drag him back home. Granny
used to say, 'All my life I've believed in the solid South and the
Democratic Party. I believed they were good; and if they aren't, I
don't want to know about it.'"
Belcher laughed and shook his head. I gave Joey a frantic S.O.S. When
Belcher gets going on the Civil War, no one else gets a word in for
solid hours.
Joey didn't move, but he said, "What story?" very incredulously, and
then he glanced at me and winked.
"That Martian story," Belcher said. "The one about the colony on Mars
and the new race of Earth-Mars men that springs up--I've forgotten the
title. They say Fitz-James O'Brien never could remember the titles of
his stories either."
Joey said, "You never gave me any such yarn," and this time he really
meant it.