S P A C E L I G H T
INDEX
Name: WEINBAUM, Stanley Grauman
Aged: 33
Born: Apr 4, 1902
Where: Louisville, KY
Died: December 14, 1935
Where: Milwaukee, WI
Interred: Greenwood Cem., Milwaukee, WI: Sec 4, B 3, Lot 2
Married: Margaret H. (d 1996)
When: _ _ _
Stanley G. Weinbaum
Robert Bloch: "In an era of rising racial, religious and nationalistic discord
soon to culminate in a global war, Weinbaum somehow found the courage and
creativity to present --- without plea or preachment --- the case for brotherhood.
And not just the brotherhood of man, but the kinship common to all living things."
Although born in Kentucky, Stanley grew up in Milwaukee and attended the University of Wisconsin, where he studied chemistry and literature but did not graduate, due to some personal misadventures. Driven to be a writer, Weinbaum worked at that continually in his spare time. By 1934, deep into the world's economic depression, Stanley had published one novel (a romance) under a pseudonym and written two science fiction novels that remained unpublished until after his death. The struggle for the few pennies a story brought was fearsome and the magazines existed by the thinnest of margins. (Later day critics...of what was published and why...miss the point.)
With only 18 months to live, Weinbaum saw his first science fiction story published in the July 1934 issue of Wonder Stories. This success changed his thrust to writing shorter work and he became quickly popular, selling his stories as well as anyone could or did. When throat cancer took his life in December of 1935, Stanley Weinbaum was cut down in mid-stride, producing stories until the end, growing by the day. His work is still a "must read" for any science fiction fan.
Subsequent American science fiction writers who read Weinbaum's stories considered Stanley to be one of the key shapers of plot, theme, and direction in science fiction's pulp history. Not that the editors or the competing writers changed, but the readers warmed to Weinbaum's work and the upcoming writers responded in kind. Stanley's novelet, "Martian Odyssey," is still acclaimed for its alien aliens and the work is often in print.
The writer/editor Horace L. Gold claimed that there was anti-semitism among the New York editors and publishing houses in the pre WW II era, forcing the use of pen names for Jewish writers. Gold credited Stanley Weinbaum's popularity as the major force in breaking down those religious barriers in the pulp fiction industry.
In 1993, Margaret H. Kay, the widow of Stanley G. Weinbaum, began making arrangements with Temple University for accepting the donation of the author's papers and books for their Library's Special Collections. The presentation was completed in 1994 with a supplement of $10,000 to insure the items preservation, microfilming, and conservation treatment.
In 1973, Stanley G. Weinbaum was honored (along with H. G. Wells & John W. Campbell) by having a crater on Mars named after him.
PEN NAMES: John Jessel and Marge Stanley
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.
BIOGRAPHY: Science Fiction Writers, Scribners 1982.
