I did a cursory roll call as I prepared for this Episode, which concludes the year 1940. The list of authors that have appeared in the first 18 months of this Vacation brings up two curious facts:
- So far as I can tell (and please correct me if I am wrong) none of the authors whose stories appear in the first 18 months of this Vacation are alive today. Fiction or nonfiction.
- Of all the authors that have appeared so far, only 3 have been women: Leigh Brackett, Amelia Long, and C. L. Moore. And all three appeared in 1939. No women authors appeared in 1940.
The end of 1940 also brought to a close the 10th anniversary of Astounding. Overall, the issues wasn’t a bad one, but it was not one of my favorites, despite the conclusion of “Slan”.
I wanted to make a brief mention here to the sad news of the passing of Martin H. Greenberg. He, along with Isaac Asimov, collected many stories from the golden age in retrospective volumes organized by year. His passing is a big loss to the science fiction community, and especially to the world of short fiction. Greenberg was science fiction’s premier short fiction anthologist.