Sometimes, even within the single field of science fiction, particular writers wrote too many stories. They were so good that editors would cheerfully buy, let us say, eighteen stories from them in a particular year in which they only published twelve issues of their magazines. This meant (if you work out the arithmetic carefully) that it would be necessary to run more than one story by them in a single issue now and then, and editors generally have a prejudice against that. Readers would feel they were cheated of variety, or suspect that editors were showing undue favoritism, or who knows what. Therefore some of the stories would be put under a pseudonym.
The pseudonyms might be transparent enough. For instance, Robert A. Heinlein at the height of his magazine popularity wrote half his stories under the name of Anson MacDonald, but Bob’s middle initial A. stood for Anson, and MacDonald was the maiden name of his then-wife. Similarly, L. Ron Hubbard wrote under the name of Rene Lafayette, but the initial L. in Hubbard’s name was Lafayette, and Rene was a not-too-distant version of Ron. Still, as long as the readers were led to believe that not too many stories of one author were included in the inventory, all was well.
Sometimes, an author is so identified with a particular type of story, that when he writes another type of story, he doesn’t want to confuse the reader by false associations-so he adopts a new name. Thus, John w. Campbell was a writer of super-science stories of cosmic scope, and one day he wrote a story called “Twilight” which was altogether different. He put it under the name of Don A. Stuart (his then- wife’s maiden name was Dona Stuart, you see) and rapidly made that name even more popular than his own.
Sometimes, an author simply wants to separate his writing activities from his nonwriting activities, if they are of equal importance to him. Thus, a talented teacher at Milton Academy, who is named Harry C. Stubbs, writes under the name of Hal Clement. He’s not hiding. Hal is short for Harry, as all Shakespearian devotees know, and the C. in his full name stands for Clement.
Again, my dear wife has practiced medicine for over thirty years as Janet Jeppson, M.D. As a writer she prefers J. O. Jeppson. The earnings fall into two different slots as far as the I.R.S. is concerned and that makes it convenient for her bookkeeping.
In my own case, I have eschewed pseudonyms almost entirely; I am far too fond of my own name, and far too proud of my writing to want to sail under false colors for an y reason. And yet, in one or two cases…
Thus in 1951, I was persuaded to write a juvenile science fiction novel in the hope that it would be sold as the beginning of a long-lived television series. (Those were early days, and no one understood how television was going to work.) I objected, very correctly I think, that TV might ruin the stuff and make me ashamed of having my name associated with it. My editor said, “Then use a pseudonym.”
I did, plucking Paul French out of the air for the purpose, and eventually wrote six novels under that name. (Some people, with little knowledge of science fiction, assumed from this that all my SF was written under Paul French, a suggestion that simply horrified me.)
As soon as it was clear that TV was not interested in my juveniles, I dropped all pretense, and made use of the Three Laws of Robotics, for instance, which was a dead giveaway. Eventually, when it was time for new printings, I had my own name put upon it.
Again, in 1942, I wrote a short story for an editor who wanted it done under a pseudonym in order to give the impression that it was bya brand-new author. (The reason is complicated and I won’t bore you with it. You’ll find it in my autobiography.) I wrote it, reluctantly, under the name George E. Dale, but eventually included it in my book The Early Asimov as a story of my own.
Also, in 1942, I sold a story to the magazine Super Science stories which printed it under the pseudonym H. B. Ogden, for reasons I no longer remember. (Even my memory has its limits.) So little did I care for the story, and so unhappy was lover the nonuse of my name that I totally forgot about it, until nearly forty years later when I was going over my diary carefully in order to prepare my autobiography.
I was shocked to find there was a story of mine that I had forgotten and didn’t own in printed form. Fortunately, with the help of Forrest 1. Ackerman I got the issue and reprinted the story in the first volume of my autobiography, In Memory Yet Green, acknowledging it as my own. In 1971, I was persuaded to write a book entitled The Sensuous Dirty Old Man, in which I gently satirized sexual how-to books such as The Sensuous Woman. Since the latter book was written by a writer identified only as “1,” my editor felt the joke should be carried on by having my book written by “Dr. A.” Even before publication day, however, it was announced that I was the author and my identity was never a secret.
At the present moment, then, absolutely none of my writing appears under anything but my own name.
Which brings up one puzzle. The early pulps occasionally made use of “house names.” A particular magazine would use a pseudonym that was never used except in that magazine, but that pseudonym might be used by any number of different writers. I have never really understood why this was done and if any reader knows I would appreciate being told.
Dialog
Most stories deal with people and one of the surefire activities of people is that of talking and of making conversation. It follows that in most stories there is dialog. Sometimes stories are largely dialog; my own stories almost always are. For that reason, when I think of the art of writing (which isn’t often, I must admit) I tend to think of dialog.
In the romantic period of literature in the first part of the nineteenth century, the style of dialog tended to be elaborate and adorned. Authors used their full vocabulary and had their characters speak ornately.
I remember when I was very young and first read Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby. How I loved the conversation. The funny passages were very funny to me, though I had trouble with John Browdie’s thick Yorshire accent (something his beloved Matilda, brought up under similar conditions, lacked, for some reason). What I loved even more though was the ornamentation-the way everyone “spoke like a book.”
Thus, consider the scene in which Nicholas Nickleby confronts his villainous Uncle Ralph. Nicholas’s virtuous and beautiful sister, Kate, who has been listening to Ralph’s false version of events, which make out Nicholas to have been doing wrong, cried out wildly to her brother, “Refute these calumnies.”
Of course, I had to look up “refute” and “calumny” in the dictionary, but that meant I had learned two useful words. I also had never heard any seventeen-year-old girl of my acquaintance use those words but that just showed me how superior the characters in the book were, and that filled me with satisfaction.
It’s easy to laugh at the books of that era and to point out that no one really talks that way. But then, do you suppose people in Shakespeare’s time went around casually speaking in iambic pentameter?
Still, don’t you want literature to improve on nature? Sure you do. When you go to the movies, the hero and heroine don’t look like the people you see in the streets, do they? Of course not. They look like movie stars. The characters in fiction are better looking, stronger, braver, more ingenious and clever than anyone you are likely to meet, so why shouldn’t they speak better, too?
And yet there are values in realism-in making people look, and sound, and act like real people.
For instance, back in 1919, some of the players on the pennant-winning Chicago White Sox were accused of accepting money from gamblers to throw the World Series (the so-called “Black Sox” scandal) and were barred from baseball for life as a result. At the trial, a young lad is supposed to have followed his idol, the greatest of the accused, “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, and to have cried out in anguish, “Say it ain’t so, Joe.”