Early Reviews

The first book review John D MacDonald ever received was for his third novel, Wine of the Dreamers. Tellingly, the title was a hardcover release and -- even more tellingly -- it was a science fiction story. For while having a novel published in hardcover definitely increased the odds that it would be reviewed in one of the thousands of periodicals published in the mid-Twentieth Century, having as its content speculative fiction almost guaranteed its review, at least in the magazines that specialized in such content. For no other group of fiction readers was as passionate and as comprehensive as the science fiction community of the last century.

Unlike most other pulp or digest magazines, many science fiction periodicals contained regular non-fiction features that were standard fare in the slicks: editorials, a letter column, and a book review section. Wine of the Dreamers was reviewed in no less than four sf magazines, as was JDM’s second such effort, Ballroom of the Skies. The fact that these two books were both hardcovers (MacDonald’s first and second hardcover novels) also got them reviews in several major newspapers and magazines, such as the New York Times and Herald-Tribune, the San Francisco Chronicle and Saturday Review. (I’m speaking here of reviews contemporaneous with the initial publication, not ones for later editions.) MacDonald wouldn’t get a review of a non-science fiction novel until Dead Low Tide, his eighth book.

I thought it would be fun to look at the reviews of these two novels, to see what critics thought of the author back in the beginning, and to adduce MacDonald’s standing in the science fiction community of the time. The reviews are generally favorable it is is clear that JDM was thought of as “one of them,” a member of the sf culture, and one in good standing. I’ve also included two reviews of his third and last science fiction effort, The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything, even though it appeared long after MacDonald had left the (extra terrestrial) building.

In 1964 MacDonald wrote “I don't believe I’ve ever received a considered, thoughtful review of anything I’ve written. I’ve had a few compliments, like being called a master story-teller, but considered reviews -- never.” These reviews (with the exception of Judith Merril’s piece on the third book) don’t belie that judgement, but they appeared with assessments of works by authors such as Ray Bradbury, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein and were no less respectful or serious than the considerations given these science fiction luminaries.

Galaxy: December 1951, reviewed by Groff Conklin

WINE OF THE DREAMERS, by John D. MacDonald. Greenberg: Publisher, New York, 1951.

219 pages, $2.75

A GOOD example of the "we're property" type of science fiction which assumes that an extraterrestrial, extrahuman race is able to make us do more or less what it wants.

In this well-written novel, many of the accidents, crimes of violence, and unexplained tragedies of the world, and in particular the failure of every attempt at launching a spaceship, are due to the machinations of a group of individuals numbering fewer than a thousand, called the

Watchers.

These Watchers, who inhabit a planet several star systems away, are able to enter the bodies of Earthians at will and make these bodies do anything they choose to. This is accomplished by super-hypnotism machines. The irony of the situation revolves around the fact that the Watchers are sublimely convinced that we are mere dreams created for their pleasure, and have no actual reality.

The story is woven around the final discovery by the Watchers that we are "real," and by us that

most of our Earth’s miseries are caused by these utterly remote aliens, who turn out to be descendants from our own ancestors of at least tens of thousands of years ago.

That the plot and the concepts are not simon-pure originals, both being reminiscent, of Eric Frank Russell's famous "we're property" novels, is unimportant. The skill and the imagination

with which the tale is developed are genuinely satisfying.

Amazing Stories: January 1952, reviewed by Sam Merwin

WINE OF THE DREAMERS, by John D. MacDonald, Greenberg: Publisher, New York ($2.75).

The finest science-fiction effort to date by one of the country's ablest all-around young writers, this is a fascinating story in which a pair of far-distant worlds (and two others) become inextricably interinvolved.

The Dreamers are at the dead-end of a former interstellar civilization, live in a single building which they have come to consider the entire cosmos and pass their adult lives for the most part lying on comfortable pallets and, with the aid of devices left them by their more energetic forebears, living strange visions of life on three highly-varied planets they consider entirely imaginary.

One of the three is Earth in the very near future and, since the Dreamers can actually possess whomever they choose to and have them do the most dreadful things, their existence is far from the harmless idyll they hold it to be. Ultimately it is discovered the Dreamers, unaware of the harm they do, are actually responsible for much of the insanity, crime and suicide that plague our world today.

Happily, among them is a born rebel, named Raul, who is born with a nasty, suspicious turn of mind and decides there is more to the universe than the Dreamers have any idea of. His sister, Leesa, is rebellious, but in a different way. She doesn't want her love-life in dreams and doesn't care who gets hurt as long as her frustrations stay with her.

Between the two of them and some of their elders they manage to make a fine hash of things for Bard Lane, in charge of construction for what should be Man's first successful space ship, and Sharan Inly, the comely psychiatrist who loves him. Ultimately the Dreamers even manage to sabotage the ship and get Bard locked up in a quilted booby-hatch.

From then on it's every man for himself, with the reader coming out well ahead, thanks to the clarity of Mr. MacDonald's concept and the crisp, continued excitement induced by his fine writing. One of the better jobs of the year.

Astounding Science Fiction: April 1952, reviewed by P Schuyler Miller

WINE OF THE DREAMERS, by John D MacDonald. Greenberg: Publisher, New York. 1951. 219 pp. $2.75

Here is another science-fiction novel which, like several of the publisher's previous books of science fiction and fantasy, has not previously been serialized -- and it's good.

Here on Earth a group of scientists headed by Bard Lane and watched over by beautiful psychiatrist Sharon Inly are trying to build the first ship powered by an interstellar drive. Obstacle after obstacle is put in their way, and it begins to appear that they are somehow "possessed" by hostile hypnosis when the reader learns that the possessing minds are those of a dwindling race of Watchers, stars away across the Galaxy, who believe that the minds they invade telepathically are those of dream creatures of their own invention, and who take childishly -- or senilely -- cruel delight in smashing these dream-creations when they wake.

How Bard and Sharon learn the truth, and how two of the Dreamers, atavistic Raul Kinson and his sister Leesa, uncover the history of their own bleak planet and their three "dream" worlds and fight against the law of their kind to bring reality out of dreams, is the story, It is well and smoothly told, with likable characters a bit beyond the cardboard stage.

Science Fiction Adventures: November 1952, reviewed by Damon Knight

WINE OF THE DREAMERS, by John D. MacDonald. Greenberg, 219 pages, $2.75

Psychiatry returns full circle to the devil theory in this tightly-knit science-adventure novel, first published in Startling Stories two years ago. Pointing to the incessant newspaper reports of persons afflicted with sudden homicidal insanity (see the first three pages of your local tabloid), MacDonald suggests a fantastic but almost water-tight explanation: Degenerate descendants of the extra-solar race which colonized this planet 10,000 years ago, using hypnotic thought-projectors originally designed for benevolent surveillance, invade our minds, force us to cruel or absurd acts for their own pleasure.

Also, obeying a law whose purpose is long forgotten, they sabotage our every attempt to achieve space-travel. This is the peg on which MacDonald hangs a plot which is routine but workmanlike, and occasional passages of mood-writing or social comment that are a little more.

Like all stories that postulate an extra-solar origin for humanity, this one neglects such thorny acts as homo sap's resemblance to Neanderthal, Piltdown Man, the anthropoid apes and other vertebrates not likely to have been carried along on a colonist's vessel. This is the only major flaw in the argument, (though a minor one,- the number of the "Watchers" - 800 - is inadequate to account for all the damage they are supposed to do), and the careful, substantial detail-work is more than good enough to offset it.

MacDonald, a writer with an unusual combination of traits -  industry and talent - has been selling heavily to the slick magazines and other highpay markets of late; this novel is probably one of the last science-fiction stories we'll see from him for some time.

Galaxy: June 1953, reviewed by Groff Conklin

BALLROOM OF THE SKIES, by John D MacDonald. Greenberg, New York. 1952. 206 pp. $2.75

It looks as if it has been decided that the next war will eliminate most if not all of the U.S.A., Russia and Europe.

As noted below, Sprague de Camp [in The Continent Makers] makes Brazil the center of his new era. [H. Beam] Piper, in his novelette in [the anthology] The Petrified Planet ["Uller Uprising"](above), believes that South America, Africa and Australia will be the scenes of future greatness. In John MacDonald's new one, India is the "new colossus," the rich and arrogant "U.S.A. of tomorrow," with the original U.S.A. nothing but a rundown tourist trap.

Pessimism or prophecy? Who knows?

Ballroom is an exciting and effective alien invasion novel, a bit reminiscent of Eric Russell's Sinister Barrier. The problem: why is Earth always warring? Why do the "good people" never take control? The answer, when it comes, is both silly and defeatist; but in the process of getting there, MacDonald unreels an enthralling tale, full of parapsychological gadgetry and wonderful supermen from another galaxy in our midst, etc.

Worthwhile, despite the unsatisfactory ending.

Astounding Science Fiction: October 1953, reviewed by Groff Conlkin

BALLROOM OF THE SKIES, by John D MacDonald. Greenberg, New York. 1952. 206 pp. $2.75

Again, we're owned. Again, a superman is found to use his un-understood dark talents for humanity. But this time it's a little better done than it has been of late.

By 1967 the United States has been reduced to second-rate status by World War III. Dake Lorin is idealistically trying to work for an international balance which will save his Country from total submersion, and the world from another war. The man who is his ideal seems to betray everything for which they have been working. He tries to reveal the sellout -- finds himself referred to a crime-baron -- is involved with a beautiful girl of remarkable mental powers -- and finds himself a student in a strange school among the stars.

Since the secret of this school of worlds, the importance of certain Earthmen to galactic civilization, and the philosophy behind the plot and counterplot on Earth are the theme of the book, they cannot be revealed here. Enough to say that the motives involved are at least as controversial as the ending of [Jack] Williamson's Humanoids. Maybe there'll be discussion over them.

Startling Stories: January 1954, reviewed by Damon Knight

BALLROOM OF THE SKIES, by John D MacDonald. Greenberg, New York. 1952. 206 pp. $2.75

It is our sad, but civic, duty to report that Ballroom of the Skies is a potboiler which impressed us as being unworthy of the talented typewriter which turned out Wine of the Dreamers and "Shadow on the Sand." Mr. MacDonald seems to have caught a slight case of obfuscation, circa van Vogt and attempted the same stunt of having his story gallop off in all directions.

The result is confusion, as it always is. Moreover, the attempt to create menace and an eerie "other world" atmosphere by style alone is forced and unconvincing.

We are resisting manfully the temptation to say something nice about the book merely because we have, under normal circumstances, so high an opinion of Mr. MacDonald's capabilities. It is our conviction that this is a book which should never have been written or published. It is pretentious and empty.

The theme is the now familiar "we are owned by superior beings" who live among us and guide our destinies and fight over us with other inimical superior beings -- all unknown to us. The hero is a crusading newspaper man, the girl is an alien disguised as a chippy for the purpose of -- who knows?

Buy it if you must. If you're a MacDonald fan you might even like it!

Analog: September 1963, reviewed by P Schuyler Miller

The Girl, The Gold Watch & Everything by John D MacDonald. Gold Medal Books, N.Y. No. S-1259. 1962. 207 pp. 35¢.

This yarn starts like one of the author's highly professional mystery-action books, with the "ninny" hero -- the term is his own, and frequently justified -- stumbling along amid the ministrations of assorted people who are convinced that he has inherited the secret of his late uncle's success. Then he finds that he does indeed have that secret, and how to use it, and the action takes on a touch of Thorne Smith.

The secret is a kind of time-machine disguised as a gold watch. Rather, it is a device like Wells' "new accelerator," that plunges its holder into a red-lit limbo in which he can live an hour's time while the unaffected world passes fractions of a second. He likewise acquires the Girl, an uninhibited hillbilly nightclub singer named Bonny Lee Beaumont who meets him in bed and thereafter proves useful in other ways, not the least that of livening the action by her antics after borrowing the watch on a Miami beach.

There are other girls in passing: a sort of westernized Dragon Lady who leads the opposition and is at one point likened to a pack of Gabors, her TV-actress niece, and an underrated office drudge who has a couple of opportunities to be rated before the skulduggery is over.

The author's smooth hand with a word makes it all quite plausible and a lot of fun.

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction: November 1965, reviewed by Judith Merril

See my previous posting: Judith Merril on JDM.

"School for the Stars"

In September 1964 John D MacDonald wrote an article for The Writer titled “How to Live With a Hero,” where he recounted his long-fought and grudging agreement with his agent and publisher to create a series hero. It’s a fascinating account of the whys, hows and wherefores of MacDonald’s reluctance, gradual acceptance and difficulties in inventing a form and a character he could “live with” over many different titles. This was, of course, Travis McGee, and I think most of us will agree that we can live with him just fine.  But nowhere in the article does MacDonald mention that McGee was not his first attempt at a series character. He had done it before, not once, not twice, but three times before giving up on each attempt.

It began all the way back at the end of the first year JDM was published, in the December 1946 issue of Doc Savage. At the behest of that pulp magazine’s editor, Babette Rosmond, he created Benton Meredith Walters, a war vet who quits his dull bank job and takes on an improbable career as a cold war spy. Walters’ physical appearance and background are interesting for what they would presage: six-foot-two, 200 pounds, can handle himself in a fight, played football in college and one year in the pros… But after the second installment of this series MacDonald quit, writing Rosemond, "Honest to God -- I'm never going to start another series. They are limiting and I hate them."

Four years later the author created Park Falkner for Detective Tales. A fabulously wealthy playboy and resident of his own island off the coast of west Florida, Falkner relieves his constant boredom by digging into the pasts of people he believes have done some great wrong and are hiding it, then devises a clever and complicated ruse to smoke them out. But like Benton Walters, Falkner appeared in only two stories before disappearing forever.

Falkner was MacDonald’s third series character. Between him and Walters, there was a second attempt, one that was unknown to me and, as far as I can tell, has never been written about before.

Back in January of 2010 I wrote a piece on a MacDonald science fiction short story titled “Dance of the New World,” which originally appeared in the September 1948 issue of John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction. “Dance” takes place in a future where the men and women of Earth are beginning to explore areas of space outside of the solar system. Venus has been colonized and its ant-like people forced into slavery working the vast plantations of corporate herb farms. Shane Brent, an investigator and recruiter for the Central Assignment section of Space Control, has been sent here to try and convince a reluctant pilot to sign up for the agency's next exploratory mission to an Earthlike planet four light years away. Shane is eventually successful in convincing the pilot to join the mission and they celebrate the decision by heading out to a nightclub where a particular female dancer performs, one the pilot hopes will agree to accompany him on the long flight through space as his wife. Shane is instantly smitten by Caren Ames, and [SPOILER ALERT] when the pilot collapses into a drunken stupor, it is he who is successful in getting her to join up, travelling together as husband and wife.

Five years after posting my piece on “Dance of the New World” Trap of Solid Gold reader Eric Gimlin submitted a comment to the essay which contained what was, to me, a major revelation. Eric, who has an expertise in science fiction of the period far superior to mine, and who has aided me greatly filling in some of the gaps in my JDM collection, wrote the following:

I'm re-reading all of JDM's Science Fiction in order right now. One thing you don't mention: This story is the debut of one of MacDonald's rare early attempts at a serial character. Shane Brent pops back up in the very next issue of Astounding in "School for the Stars", which is set about a month after this one and continues the preparation for Project Flight 81. Taken together they feel like the first two parts of a much longer story about Flight 81 that never got any further.

The reason I didn’t mention the subsequent story in the article was because I didn’t own a copy of the October 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction and had never read “School for the Stars.” Heck, I didn’t even own a copy of the issue where “Dance of a New World,” appeared, but wrote from the version that eventually appeared in MacDonald’s 1978 science fiction anthology Other Times, Other Worlds. “School for the Stars” didn’t make the cut for that collection, so I had to wait until I was able to purchase a copy of the original magazine before making its acquaintance.

(Before discussing the early portions of the plot of “School for the Stars,” please note that since it is a followup to “Dance of a New World,” I will, by necessity, be revealing the outcome of that earlier story. If you try to avoid SPOILERS, you can skip to the end of this essay before reading it. And while Other Times, Other Worlds is one of the very few JDM books that has not yet made its way to eBook form, used copies of the original paperback are cheap and easy to find.)

In “Dance of the New World,” field representative Shane Brent, while recruiting on Venus, made several reports via closed circuit telescreen to his superior at Central Assignment, a man by the name of Frank Allison, and we meet him in person in the early paragraphs of “School for the Stars”. We are back on Earth, on the campus of Central Assignment, which consists of  "three blond stone buildings scattered with random care among the soft folds of the Hill Country seventy miles northwest of San Antonio, and fifteen miles east of VME Triangle Port 8.” Allison, who started out as a recruiter for CA, is now the executive in charge of the Requirements Section of Colonization Projects. As such, he is the person responsible for deciding who goes on the flights and who stays home. He is a small man with a florid face and a headful of gray hair, a testimony to the many years he has spent with Space Control. He is going through paperwork on the personnel for Flight 81, which is set to take off for its destination in sixty-two days. Hiram Lee, the pilot Shane was sent to Venus to recruit will man the helm, a man by the name of Walker Howe is the Commanding Officer, and Shane, accompanied by his bride of two weeks, will fill the position of Executive Officer.

Allison has been working tirelessly on Flight 81 for many months and it is getting to him. With all of the positions now filled he agrees with his secretary that he take a week off before beginning the work on Flight 82, and at her behest heads back to his apartment for some rest. He is walking along the dusty streets of the compound toward his one-bedroom apartment (also on the campus) when he stops suddenly in front of another residential building. His "face oddly slack, his mouth open slightly," he turns and enters, no longer conscious of what he is doing, "the last shred of volition disappearing as he walked down the hall." He enters a room, sits in a chair facing a blank wall and hears a "soft masculine voice" instructing him to "give technical details of Flight 81."

In a flat dead tone Allison said: "Project Flight 81 from VME Triangle Port 8 to Planet L. Target planet is .9663 Earth weight, mean temperature approximately 1.14 times that of Earth. Circle's a sun rated Class G on Harvard Spectral in a 521 Earth day orbit. Hoffman Identification proves an oxygen atmosphere and probably plant life of a low order. Distance 4.91 light years."

After being instructed to give the technical details of the flight and the specific flight plan, the voice pauses for a moment before stating: "Here are your instructions--" Then Allison is back on the street in front of the unit.

He wavered and touched his hand to his forehead, looked uncertainly at the setting sun. Just dizzy for a moment or two, he thought. I really must be bushed. That sun seems to have gone down pretty fast. Warily he walked to his own unit, up to his room, yawned as he undressed, and, in a few minutes he was sound asleep.

The scene shifts to the quarters of happy newlyweds Shane Brent and Caren Ames, now Caren Brent. Their meeting and courtship on Venus has taken all of a single night. After saving her from a drunken patron at the club where she was dancing and, managing to get her to come to his table for a drink, the initially icy Caren began to open up to Shane (especially after the drunken Hiram Lee was taken away). She reveals to Shane her reasons for living and performing on a distant planet: at nineteen she married "a very rich and very weak young man," and after two years "life became impossible." After divorcing, the vindictive ex-husband managed to get her fired from every dancing job she was able to get. Since the man had a weak heart and was restricted from space travel, Caren left Earth and found employment where the man could no longer reach her. As their conversation turns to deeper things, they take a walk through the darkened city and come to realize that “it just had to be.”

In their apartment Caren is studying for the flight ahead and having difficulty retaining it all. Their exchanges are of the typical JDM mock-seriousness he uses when a man and a woman are comfortable in each other’s company.

She turned around suddenly, her face full of mock woe. "I hate you, Shane."

"And I hate you too, darling. Why the sudden rush of affection?"

She hit the book with her small fist. "The trouble is to get what's in here," she said, "into here." She tapped her forehead with her knuckles. "I trained to be a dancer, honey -- not a colonist. Can't Central Science think of some better way to do this than by studying?"

He grinned at he. "You haven't got much to learn. A little botany and nutrition so that you can cook for me. A little medicine so that you can take care of me and yourself and the dozen or so kids we'll have. A few handicraft items. Weaving and stuff like that."

She looked at the ceiling. "Why, oh why, did I let myself be talked into marriage?"

He laughed. "I thought you talked me into it."

When they serious up Caren offhandedly mentions that she saw her ex-husband on the compound. He is working in the Education Branch of CA and knew all about Flight 81 and that both Shane and Caren were to be onboard. She says she told him to keep away from her but the information arouses Shane’s jealousy.

The next day Shane meets with Allison and is told that Walker Howe, Flight 81’s commanding officer, is being replaced by another man. No explanation is given and Allison is uncommonly abrupt with his friend and subordinate...

Frank Allison gets zapped

Although it takes several pages to be established, Shane Brent is definitely the protagonist of this story, so one has to wonder: was MacDonald writing these stories with the intention of establishing a singular series character, or, as Eric surmised in his comment, was this the second installment in a longer, closed-ended story that MacDonald intended to carry forward onto Planet L? I think the later is more likely, although it is uncertain just how far the author was prepared to carry this saga. Just as he clearly established the character of the ex-husband (in absentia) in “Dance of a New World” before having him appear him in the second story, so too in “School for the Stars” does he seem to prepare a bit of background for the couple’s time on Planet L  And of course there was  the four-plus years living aboard Flight 81 where he could have come up with some interesting business to carry the story forward.

But he didn’t, and the reason is anybody’s guess. He probably just got bored with the characters and couldn’t come up with anything new that interested him. And he probably knew what every reader of “School for the Stars” knew: it just isn’t a very good story. Even excepting the obvious and clichéd mind-control scene summarized above, the ending and motivations by the bad guy are something straight out of Operator #5. It’s not MacDonald’s finest moment, and he probably knew it, and if he didn’t then Campbell surely did. Maybe it was Campbell who pulled the plug on the Shane Brent “series”. After having four stories published in the magazine since February of that year, MacDonald didn’t appear again in Astounding until August of the following year with the excellent novella “Trojan Horse Laugh.”

The MacDonald family was living in Clinton, New York when “School for the Stars” was written, and they were in the process of packing up some belongings to head for Mexico following the death of Dorothy’s mother. A year and a half earlier they had made their first trip south, leaving Utica to spend the winter in Texas. Initially headed for Santa Fe, New Mexico, they only made it as far as the hill country of Texas, seventy miles northwest of San Antonio, where they spent a very happy winter. Exactly where MacDonald would later place the campus of Central Assignment in “School for the Stars.” (You can read MacDonald’s account of that season in my post JDM in Texas.)

“School for the Stars” has not been reprinted or anthologized, as far as I am able to determine. It was also the only JDM story published in Astounding that was not reprinted in the magazine’s British edition.

"Cosmetics"

John D MacDonald’s very first sale to a science fiction pulp took place in late 1947 when his story “Cosmetics” was purchased by John W. Campbell for the February 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. It was not MacDonald’s first science fiction sale -- as regular readers of this blog no doubt already know -- for the author had already published three sf or fantasy tales in other types of magazines, ranging from Doc Savage to Liberty to Bluebook. But the real cutting edge of modern science fiction was happening in the sf pulps, where this kind of writing was currently going through what we now refer to as its Golden Age, spearheaded in large part by Campbell and his magazine. Indeed, at the time of “Cosmetics” publication Astounding Science Fiction was probably the premier sf pulp in circulation, with Sam Merwin’s Startling Stories a close second. (Galaxy and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction were yet to come.)

The fact that MacDonald was able to sell a story in a genre he hadn’t really mastered yet to the premier magazine of its type says a lot about his talents as a writer, even this early in his career, before the novels, before the move to Florida, and before Travis McGee. Still, “Cosmetics” is a bit rough around the edges, with lots of pontification and science details which probably appealed to Campbell but doesn’t sit that well in the modern ear. Tellingly, when the author, late in his career, published an anthology of his best sf work -- well, what he thought was his best sf work, a list some, including me, have issues with -- he omitted this early work altogether. Perhaps he thought it too long winded, too didactic, too poorly written and, perhaps, too derivative. He would be guilty to some extent on all of these charges, yet “Cosmetics” is an enjoyable read and a telling view of a future where one of mankind’s greatest desires could finally be fulfilled and, importantly, how that fulfilment changed society.

Set about one hundred years in the future, the Earth of “Cosmetics” seems a beautiful place. And why not? Thanks to a device called the autocosmeton, every man and woman can, through a combination of drugs, hypnosis and machinery, alter their appearance to any physical ideal they wish for. The cities and towns of the world are peopled with men who were “tall and incredibly handsome," and "long-limbed women [who] were the apex of the dream of beauty which had existed through the ages." The process, called autocosmetics, is primarily a “concentration of the psychic process” aided by drugs and mechanics. Every home has a autocosmeton and there is no limit to the number or kinds of appearances one can produce using the device. The first inclination is, naturally, to become a physical ideal, but many people alternate between beautiful and ugly, “frequently shifting to the grotesque, making life a succession of masks -- the lovely and the horrible, a spiced cookery of flesh and outlook.” But it is the beautiful that is chosen and kept most often, leading society to require that everyone carry an identification medallion pinned to their tunic. It’s the only way to keep track of who is who.

The story’s protagonist is one Jason Blood, a man who has joined with a small group of rebels who have decided not to change into the beautiful. As the story opens he is reading a letter from his wife, telling him that she is leaving. She writes:

“Do you remember when we were first married? You had none of these silly scruples about autocosmetics at that time. Our love was freshened by the rhythm of variety. Remember how I'd leave you a note telling you how I wanted you to look? Darling, you were such a wonderful succession of tall, strong men -- and I tried so hard to make myself into all the types of beauty that you wanted to possess... But now these things which you mysteriously label 'principles' have come between us. You have made no change in four years, and you talk about 'solidification of personality' instead of about what you can do to please me. Jason, darling, I don't like the form you selected for yourself four years ago. By retaining it, you are not living up to your responsibilities as my husband. I hate that lean, ascetic face, the thinning hair, the knobbed knuckles, the harsh look in your eyes.”

She goes on to reveal that she is having an affair with “a man who is something like what [Jason] used to be," but promises to return when he decides that he has "been wrong."

Enter Karl Dane, “a big man with pads of flesh around his small eyes, a mountainous belly and fat, freckled hands. He was an atrocity in a city of beauty.” He is the intellectual leader of this peaceful group of “ugly” rebels, and he begins by telling Jason that their group has lost another member. "He got tired of fighting... He turned himself into a pretty boy this morning and now he's out roaming the city, beaming foolishly at the rest of them." Then he proceeds to launch into a lengthy diatribe against autocosmetics and outlines the long history of the process, which began as far back as 1933. He then goes into the unintended effects of this mass process and what it has done to society.

“The best part of the human personality is conditioned by the face we present to the world. Our actions are in part a compensation for this static impression that we give. Thus, in a world where you can have a new face tomorrow and a new figure... there [is] no incentive to force changes on society in compensation for the static impression that you gave to all people... Much of our great art and literature were created by people who were seriously and hopelessly ill-- conscious of their illness and striving for some sort of immortality... We are in an era where the entire ego of the common man -- and woman -- is built around the idea of eternal change in outward appearance. Thus we have achieved a norm in personality that is deadly. There is no sublimation of dissatisfaction into creative channels. No invention, no art, no creative thought. Just maintenance. That's all. The Age of Maintenance."

When Dane is done pontificating he departs to go visit with a possible new recruit, leaving Jason alone. As he sits thinking of his estranged wife, unbenounced to him two figures stealthily enter his apartment…

This story can be split into three parts: the exposition, Dane’s long speech, and the final bit, which I won’t reveal for would-be readers. What is most interesting to students of MacDonald’s work is the middle section. It is a fictional polemic that is nothing less than the genesis of that form which the author used in his final work, Reading for Survival, where Meyer and McGee (primarily Meyer) explore societal problems at great length through the mouth of a fictional character. (This device was also used in the Travis McGee short story, “Terminal Cases.”) Karl Dane even looks a bit like Meyer, and he certainly sounds like him. And while “spindly” Jason Blood is no Travis McGee lookalike, he plays the exact same role that McGee did in both of those later two works. It’s always fascinating to discover just how uniform MacDonald’s work can sometimes be.

John D MacDonald went on to write a lot of science fiction, and from 1948 to 1952 he produced over 45 stories and two full novels (both based on works that first appeared in the pulps.) It could be said that during this period he was a major force in science fiction, as assertion I’m sure a lot of sf fans might argue with. When the author collected what he deemed to be his best work in the field for Other Times Other Worlds in 1978, he wrote an afterword that seemed dismissive of both his work in particular and science fiction in general, and it pissed a lot of people off. But back when he began he was as enthusiastic as the wildest fan, evidenced by a newspaper column he wrote a few months after “Cosmetics” was published, titled “Fantasy, Unlimited,” which you can read on this blog. MacDonald would go on to write better stories than “Cosmetics,” exploring many different “subgenres” of sf, including space opera, time paradox, alien invasion, dying Earth, and lots of social science fiction. For me, I’d rather read a JDM sf story than one by anybody else, but then, I’m extremely biased.

As far as I can tell, “Cosmetics” has never never been anthologized.

Fantasy, Unlimited

John D MacDonald's first effort in the world of science fiction is generally dated to February 1948 with the publication of his short story "Cosmetics" in Astounding Science Fiction. And although this 4,000-word tale had been preceded by two other stories that contained aspects of unreality -- they were more fantasy than s-f -- "Cosmetics" was his first such entry in a science fiction pulp magazine. It marked the beginning of a relatively brief torrent of such works that produced ten stories in 1948, sixteen in 1949 and fourteen in 1950 before dwindling off to a mere handful. He then penned two early s-f novels before giving up on the genre almost entirely.

MacDonald was living in Clinton, New York when he wrote "Cosmetics," and during that same period he authored a weekly newspaper column in the local newspaper. The following excerpt comes from the March 25, 1948 edition of The Courier, a month after "Cosmetics" appeared and two months before his second s-f story -- "The Mechanical Answer" -- was published. Reading between the lines, one can detect JDM's interest in a new market for his work, now that he had actually been published in an s-f magazine, and now that the field was -- as he termed it -- turning away from the "world of wooden men and steel space ships" and toward more "believable" stories with "oddly prophetic situations."

Fantasy, Unlimited:

Frequently these days we come face to face with the staggering platitude that this is indeed an odd world and an odd time to be in it.

While little men in laboratories are concerning themselves with the chore of exploding our planet with all the thoroughness of a dynamite stick jammed through a decayed apple, certain segments of our population are avidly collecting science fiction which makes such a catastrophe as impressive as the blast from a cap pistol on the Fourth of July.

The intense interest in science fiction has grown as quickly and as impressively as a certain odd-looking cloud over Hiroshima. (Accent on the second syllable, please.)

For many years science fiction was published without attracting much attention. Wells, A. Huxley and Verne fathered the breed. In the pulp magazines, the science fiction story became nothing but a Western with space ships instead of horses, heat pistols instead of 44's and far galaxies instead of the red-rocked mesa.

This world of wooden men and steel space ships rightly deserved the obscurity it achieved.

But now and again a story would be published in which the writer managed to make his characters human. The more gifted writers, gifted both scientifically and artistically began to put believable people into oddly prophetic situations.

In fact, one imaginative character during the peak secrecy of the Manhattan Project published a story wherein somebody fiddled around with uranium and made a bomb. If he had gotten two cents a word for every word he said to the FBI after that story was published, he would be a wealthy man.

A city went up in smoke, with a flash as bright as the sun. Science fiction suddenly became yesterday's news flash. A few hundred thousand fans were acquired.

The Saturday Review of Literature for February 28th, this year, carries a long editorial by Harrison Smith on this current phenomena in the publishing world.

The new fans of science fiction have dug through the files of old copies of various pulp magazines, and have found therein stories for their collections.

The Saturday Evening Post has published five science fiction stories within the past year by Robert Heinlein and Gerald Kersh.

Good publishing houses have come out with anthologies of merit. We strongly recommend, for the curious, one called Adventures in Time and Space published last year by Random House, edited by Raymond J. Healy and J. Francis McComas.

In addition five new publishing houses have recently been born, with the object of handling only science fiction and fantasy: Arkham House, Fantasy Press, Prime Press, Hadley Publishing Company and Fantasy Publishing Company.

And they all sell every copy of every book!

Circulation of pulp magazines in the science fiction field has grown. Sam Merwin, Jr. edits two pulps for Standard Magazines, Inc. and John W. Campbell, Jr., edits one for Street and Smith. (For the citizen who picks his magazines off the news stand arid cares what thinkle peep, the titles are the kiss of death: Astounding, Thrilling Wonder, Startling.) There are others in the field, but these three are the toppers.

But In addition to this crescendo of Interest, there is one very special manifestation which could only exist in the science fiction field.

The readers, the fans themselves, have banded together in groups and they publish their own magazines—called fanzines. They are usually mimeographed and they contain criticism, offers to buy and sell science fiction and some fiction. There are nearly forty of these 'fanzines' being published. There are additional ones in England. Letters to the editors of the pulp magazines come from all over the world.

No other aspect of American letters Is expanding as rapidly as science fiction.

So, we say, this is a strange, strange world. We are in the atomic age. If we get sharp enough with the atom, we may arrange to make this planet uninhabitable. Maybe that fear is deep in the hearts of all of us.

Maybe science fiction is like the comforting words of a wise parent:

"Don't worry, little man. When you bust up this planet, I'll buy you a new one. A nice new green one. Two hundred light years away."