Transcribe
Translate
The Alchemist, v. 1, issue 5, February 1941
Page 17
More information
digital collection
archival collection guide
transcription tips
Science-Fiction Background 17 memory. I was playing a game with other lads which we called "Duck Off" and which consisted in trials of skill in knocking a small rock off a large one at a distance of fifty feet or so. One day I missed the "duck" and hit the heavy rock beneath it, whereupon, my favorite "shooter", a rock that was nearly round and somewhat larger than a baseball, broke in two. Inside it, exactly at the plane of fracture, I saw the fossil remains of a small-creature unknown to me. I took it to Dad, and he identified it as a trilobite, a small marine animal of the early Palaeozoic era. This evoked more questions, and I learned that the Mississippi valley, in which we lived, had once been the bottom of an ocean. I hunted for fossils after that, and found quite a few, most of th corals of various kinds, as well as more trilobites. Perhaps the greatest thrill of all was when Dad and I went together to look through the big telescope at Northwestern University We had splendid views of Jupiter and Saturn, but Mars, which we had wanted chiefly to see, was too low in the mists to be clear. Another science which greatly intrigued me was psychology. One of the old philosophers had said there were but three things in the universe, mind, force and mater. Mind controls force and force moves matter. Which, then, was the most important of the three. I felt that mind, which was in control, was the most important, and so began a stud of psychology and psychic phenomena. I read everything I could find on the subject, conducted numerous experiments, and eventually felt the urge to write. At first, I tried to write fact material and to present hypotheses based on these facts. However this placed too much restraint on my imagination. My first fantastic novelette, THE THING OF A THOUSAND SHAPES, was based on the material-
Saving...
prev
next
Science-Fiction Background 17 memory. I was playing a game with other lads which we called "Duck Off" and which consisted in trials of skill in knocking a small rock off a large one at a distance of fifty feet or so. One day I missed the "duck" and hit the heavy rock beneath it, whereupon, my favorite "shooter", a rock that was nearly round and somewhat larger than a baseball, broke in two. Inside it, exactly at the plane of fracture, I saw the fossil remains of a small-creature unknown to me. I took it to Dad, and he identified it as a trilobite, a small marine animal of the early Palaeozoic era. This evoked more questions, and I learned that the Mississippi valley, in which we lived, had once been the bottom of an ocean. I hunted for fossils after that, and found quite a few, most of th corals of various kinds, as well as more trilobites. Perhaps the greatest thrill of all was when Dad and I went together to look through the big telescope at Northwestern University We had splendid views of Jupiter and Saturn, but Mars, which we had wanted chiefly to see, was too low in the mists to be clear. Another science which greatly intrigued me was psychology. One of the old philosophers had said there were but three things in the universe, mind, force and mater. Mind controls force and force moves matter. Which, then, was the most important of the three. I felt that mind, which was in control, was the most important, and so began a stud of psychology and psychic phenomena. I read everything I could find on the subject, conducted numerous experiments, and eventually felt the urge to write. At first, I tried to write fact material and to present hypotheses based on these facts. However this placed too much restraint on my imagination. My first fantastic novelette, THE THING OF A THOUSAND SHAPES, was based on the material-
Hevelin Fanzines
sidebar
