Retro Review: "Unsung Hero" by Ruth Washburn

Lester Brant encounters neither murderous space walrusses nor women in brass bikinis in this story.

"Unsung Hero" is a humorous science fiction short story by Ruth Washburn, that was published in the Spring 1944 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories and would have been eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugo Award. The story may be read online here.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point.

When I embarked on the Retro Review project, one of my goals was to spotlight the works of the forgotten women SFF authors of the golden age. And so I reviewed not just stories by the big name female authors of the era such as Leigh Brackett and C.L. Moore, but also by lesser known and largely forgotten women such as Allison V. Harding, Dorothy Quick, Alice-Mary Schnirring and E. Mayne Hull. However, there was one woman publishing science fiction in 1944 who is so obscure that even I, who was explicitly looking for women authors of the time, overlooked her, namely Ruth Washburn.

During the early forties, Thrilling Wonder Stories ran an amateur story contest and published the winning story in their magazine. Ruth Washburn was the winner of the story contest for the Spring 1944 issue. Almost nothing is known about Ruth Washburn except what she herself wrote in the short biographical blurb that ran alongside her story (and the child psychologist Ruth Wendell Washburn who comes up on Google is definitely not the same person as the author of "Unsung Hero").

According to the brief biography she provided, Ruth Washburn was born between 1901 and 1909, i.e. during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, in Vermilion, South Dakota. She seems to have been a rebellious youngster who repeatedly ran away from home and amassed a remarkable resume of odd jobs ranging from farmworker, factory worker and cook to cosmetics saleswoman and carnival worker. By the time she wrote "Unsung Hero", Ruth Washburn was living in Chicago with her husband and working as a dressmaker, even though she always dreamed of being a writer.

I really wish we knew more about Ruth Washburn, since she seems to have had a fascinating life. "Unsung Hero" is her only published science fiction story, at least under that name. I did come across a 1932 cookbook for Old-fashioned Molasses Goodies by one Ruth Washburn Jordan who may have been the same person. At any rate, our Ruth Washburn worked in the food industry and molasses are briefly mentioned in the story.

"Unsung Hero" opens in a newspaper office Washburn's hometown Chicago during WWII. In addition to "war on a dozen fronts", as a journalist character puts it, Chicago is experiencing a homegrown crisis, for an invisible barrier is blocking the Chicago River and impeding the war effort.

The news also reaches a would-be inventor named Lester Brant in his private basement laboratory. Lester is trapped in an unhappy marriage with Matilda who places no trust in his abilities as an inventor and would rather that Lester keep earning money as a lensmaker. I wonder whether this is a gender reversed commentary on Washburn's own position as a woman who wanted to write, but had to work as a dressmaker to support the family. Was Ruth Washburn's husband as unsupportive of her writerly ambitions as Matilda is of Lester's inventor spirit?

Lester theorises that the unseen barrier is due to a parallel world colliding with ours. And so he grabs one of his apparatuses, which allows him to look into other dimensions – at least in theory. But before he can take off for the Chicago River to test his theory, Lester is interrupted by Matilda banging on the door of his lab. Determined not to let Matilda stop him now, Lester switches on his device and promptly sinks through the floor in front of the eyes of a stunned Matilda.

Lester finds himself in an alien world, where he meets beings with large saucer-like eyes, which look like cartoon ghosts and can project random tentacles from their bodies. The beings, called Tnn and Mmmm, are telepathic and Lester begins to communicate with them. However, he has problems making Tnn and Mmmm understand his plight, while the two aliens are incredibly fascinated by Lester's clothes and proceed to strip him to his underwear.

Eventually, Tnn and Mmmm teleport Lester to see their leader, one Ool. Ool, it turns out, is having problems, for he is trying to create a force dome by combining the mental powers of a large group of aliens. However, the alien minds generate too much power and so the force dome won't close, but the power just projects outwards, eventually piercing the dimensional barrier and blocking off the Chicago River.

Lester decides to test his theory by turning his device off and promptly materialises – in striped boxers – on a bridge across the Chicago River near the barrier. Lester's suddenly appearance startles the onlookers and attracts the attention of a young female news photographer in a scene which is also charmingly illustrated in the interior artwork by M. Marchioni.

Lester quickly turns his device on again and returns to Tnn and Mmmm, who are in the process of dissecting (quite literally) Lester's clothes. Lester gets angry, accidentally telepathically blasts Tnn and Mmmm's house and then returns to Ool to explain that he must switch off the force wall, because it is causing problems and impeding the war effort in Lester's home dimension. Ool certainly has sympathy for Lester's problem, but points out that his people need the wall to shield themselves from stray thoughts in order to solve complicated problems.

The situation is unknowingly resolved by Tnn, who is trying on Lester's hat and finds that it blocks out all stray telepathic thoughts. This gives Lester an idea. If felt and leather, unknown to Tnn's people, can block out stray thoughts, then there is a solution to Ool's problem that doesn't involve invisible force walls blocking off the Chicago River.

Lester asks Ool how many people there are in his colony and then returns to his own dimension, only to promptly be arrested, because men in underwear suddenly appearing out of thin air is frowned upon in Chicago. And as if getting arrested for disturbing the peace wasn't bad enough, Matilda also appears waving a newspaper with Lester's portrait – in striped boxers – on the front page.

Lester and Matilda are taken to the police station, where Lester tries to make everybody understand that he alone knows how to solve the problem of the invisible barrier blocking the Chicago River. But of course no one believes him. And so Lester is about to be thrown into jail with bail set at fifty dollars, which must have been a significant sum indeed in 1944.

Matilda has no intention to bail him out, but Lester, who has finally found his courage, threatens her with divorce and tells her to hand over the money, since he knows that she has quietly embezzled money from him. Grudgingly, Matilda does so.

Lester once more tries to explain that his device allows him to travel to other dimensions and once more no one believes him. The police sergeant wants to try out the device. Lester lets him and the police sergeant promptly vanishes, only to reappear a few seconds later, now convinced that Lester is telling the truth.

All of a sudden, the police are a lot more helpful. They escort Lester to a sporting goods store, where he buys football helmets for all the beings in Ool's colony. Lester returns to Ool's dimension to drop off the football helmets, whereupon Ool switches off the force field and the Chicago River is free again.

Lester is now the hero of the hour and even Matilda grudgingly promises to make him pork chops, when Lester threatens that next time he'll disappear for good. So Lester gets his happy ending. Not only is Matilda a lot nicer to him, he also has a limitless number of strange worlds to explore.

Okay, so it's not SFF and it may not even be the same author, but it is a cute cover and the recipes apparently are good as well.

This is a charming little story reminiscent of Henry Kuttner's humour pieces such as "A God Named Kroo" and the Gallegher stories. In many way, "Unsung Hero" is a science fiction screwball comedy.

The henpecked husband and overbearing wife dynamic between Lester and Matilda grates a little, because it's very much a cliché by now. Not to mention that I wonder why the threat of leaving or divorcing her works on Matilda. She clearly has no respect for Lester, so why would it bother her, if he left her? It's briefly mentioned that Matilda primarily views Lester as a meal ticket, but I don't think a woman would have had problems finding a job in Chicago in 1944. For that matter, why doesn't Lester leave Matilda? Surely, he could find someone to make him pork chops who doesn't steal from him and is a lot easier to get along with.

Honestly, the gender dynamics in this story are not great, especially for a story written by a woman. Though it is notable that the random news photographer who gets a snapshot of Lester in his underwear is a woman.

Even though this was Ruth Washburn's first and only published story, she clearly had talent. It doesn't feel like a debut story and I have certainly read far worse SFF stories published in 1944.

Stylistically, "Unsung Hero" is closer to what was published in Astounding Science Fiction than the grab bag of adventure focussed pulp science fiction that was found in the likes of Thrilling Wonder Stories and its sister magazine Startling Stories. Did Washburn originally submit this story to John W. Campbell at Astounding, only to have it rejected? Or was she a reader of Astounding and unconsciously mimicked the style of the stories therein, but it never occurred to her to try to submit to Campbell?

At any rate, I wonder how Ruth Washburn's writing career would have gone, if she had sold "Unsung Hero" to Campbell at Astounding rather than to Oscar J. Friend at Thrilling Wonder Stories. After all, we know that Campbell for all his flaws did nurture the careers of new writers, including some women.

But unlike Lester Brant, we cannot peer into the alternate universe where Ruth Washburn became a popular science fiction author of the golden and silver age with a lengthy career. And in our universe, this is the only story of hers that we have. I for one find that a pity, because based on "Unsung Hero", I wouldn't have minded reading more of Ruth Washburn's work.

Retro Review: "Exile" by Edmond Hamilton

Now that we're waiting for the finalists for the 1945 Retro Hugos to be announced, let's take the time to look at some of the finalists for previous years of Retro Hugos. I'll start off with "Exile", a science fantasy short story by Edmond Hamilton that was published in the May 1943 issue of Super Science Stories and was a finalist for the 1944 Retro Hugo Award. The story may be read online here.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point.

"Exile" begins with four science fiction writers – Madison, Brazell, Carrick and the narrator – sitting around the fireplace, sipping whiskey and talking about hunting, baseball and science fiction. The narrator remarks that all four of them are trying very hard to seem like ordinary, solid citizens, even though they don't feel at home in this world and never will. They all want something different, something more, that's why they became science fiction writers in the first place.

Brazell points out that the fact that they get paid for it is a large part of the reason why they all write. The narrator agrees that yes, the money is important, but that they nonetheless all dreamt up stories and new worlds long before they were paid for it, even long before they started to write down their stories, because none of them fit in the real world.

"We'd feel a lot less at home in some of the worlds we write about," Madison says, whereupon Carrick pipes in, "That happened to me. I once wrote about an imaginary world and then I had to live in it."

Of course, everybody is eager for the story, so Carrick delivers it. It happened, he says, after he moved out to the edge of the city right next to a new power station, because it was quiet there and he needed the quiet to write. Carrick was about to start writing a new series of stories all set in the same world, so he began to create the world and its inhabitants. He made the inhabitants human, but he also made them and their world less civilized and more superstitious and barbarian than the real world, because that would provide conflict and fiction needs conflict.

Carrick is so engrossed in his worldbuilding that he suddenly experiences a click in his brain, as if the world he created and its people had crystallized into existence in another reality, likely due to the energy generated by the power station next door. Then Carrick wonders what would happen if he imagined himself living in that world and creates a character and history for himself.

There is another click and Carrick suddenly finds himself in his imaginary world, as if he'd been born there and always lived there. Carrick is excited at first, as he goes out and walks the streets of the world he created and looks at the people he dreamt up. But eventually, he becomes unhappy, because the world he created is just too barbarian for him and all the things that had seemed exciting from a distance are repulsive and unpleasant close-up.

So Carrick tries to imagine himself back into his own world, only to find that it doesn't work. He's stuck. He considers killing himself, but eventually he adapts. Brazell asks Carrick what he did in the other world. Carrick explains that he didn't have the skills or the knowledge to do most of the jobs in the other world, so he did the only thing he could do. He wrote stories. He wrote stories about his own world, which seemed like science fiction to the inhabitants of the other world and made him popular.

Madison wants to know how Carrick got back in the end. "I never got home," Carrick says sadly, "I'm still here."

"Exile" is very short, only two and a half pages long in magazine format, but it sure packs a punch. It is an example of the "twist in the tale" stories that were so popular during the golden age, stories which exist only to deliver the final punchline. "Exile" wasn't even the only "twist in the tale" story on the 1944 Retro Hugo ballot – "Death Sentence" by Isaac Asimov and "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper" by Robert Bloch, both finalists in the same category, are "twist in the tale" stories as well.

"Exile" is however an excellent example of a "twist in the tale" story. It is a lot more effective than "Death Sentence" and on par with "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper", which is remarkable, because unlike the Robert Bloch story, "Exile" doesn't have much of a plot. It's merely a story about four people sitting around the fireplace, drinking whiskey and telling stories. "The Man Who Wouldn't Hang" by Stanton A. Coblentz is probably the closest comparison. But "Exile" is much better. In fact, it is remarkable how well this little story works.

I suspect part of the reason why "Exile" works so well is that it perfectly captures the sense of alienation that many writers and fans of speculative fiction feel. Like the unnamed narrator of Hamilton's story, a lot of us don't feel at home in the real world, so we dream up imaginary worlds. And while getting paid to write about adventures in imaginary worlds is a nice side-effect, many of us dreamt up stories and worlds long before we were ever paid to do it and would continue to do so, even if we didn't get paid for it.

But even if we don’t really fit into the real world, would we truly want to live in the worlds we create or could we even survive there? I guess, as with poor lost Carrick, the answer is no.

Even though there is a pseudoscientific explanation for Carrick's predicament, "Exile" is more portal fantasy than science fiction. It's not even the only portal fantasy on the 1944 Retro Hugo ballot – "Doorway into Time" by C.L. Moore, which was nominated in the same category, is also a portal fantasy. Furthermore, travel to parallel worlds/other planets by the power of imagination has been a common trope in speculative fiction ever since John Carter wished himself upon Mars in A Princess of Mars back in 1911. Edmond Hamilton himself would also revisit the idea of imaginary space/time travel via pseudoscientific means in his 1947 novel The Star Kings.

Considering that "Exile" is essentially a story about four science fiction writers sitting around and talking, the question is which real science fiction writers of the golden age, if any, do the four characters represent. When I read the story last year for the Retro Hugos, I assumed that Madison was a stand-in for Edmond Hamilton and that Brazell was a stand-in for his future wife Leigh Brackett due to the vaguely similar names. And indeed, I named the Hamilton and Brackett stand-ins in my Silencer novelette The Heavy Hand of the Editor, in which my fictional 1930s pulp author Richard Blakemore locks horns with John W. Campbell (or rather a Campbell stand-in called Donald Angus Stuart) and interacts with several real authors of the golden age, Ed Madison and Liz Brazell in homage to this story. However, Leo Morey's interior art for "Exile" shows only white men in suits (and reminds me visually of the Dover reprints of selected pages from old Sears catalogues more than anything), no women anywhere in sight. So is Brazell a stand-in for Ray Bradbury, who was after all friends with Hamilton and Brackett? Or am I completely mistaken and it's someone else?

What's even more interesting is who Carrick is supposed to be? Cause I would really like to know which science fiction writer of the golden age dreamt our world into existence. For that matter, I'd also like to know which author of apocalyptic fiction is responsible for our current reality. However, I really cannot come up with any SFF writer of the golden age who'd fit what little we learn about Carrick. Though Carrick does put in a cameo in The Heavy Hand of the Editor, if only because paying homage to obscure golden age science fiction stories is fun.

But even though "Exile" appeared in Super Science Stories, which was one of the lesser science fiction magazines of the early 1940s, it's not exactly an obscure story. At any rate, it's less obscure than some of the other stories I have reviewed for the Retro Reviews project. "Exile" has been reprinted several times and was selected for the Best of Edmond Hamilton collection that Leigh Brackett edited as well as for the anthology The Great SF Stories, Vol. 5, 1943, edited by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg. And of course, "Exile" was well enough regarded that it won a nomination for the 1944 Retro Hugo Awards, even if it lost out to Ray Bradbury's excellent "R is for Rocket" a.k.a. "King of the Gray Spaces" in the end.

A fine story about alienation and the power of imagination and also a great example of the "twist in the tale" stories that were so popular during the golden age.