The science fiction of Evan Hunter

I forgot March 21 was Ed McBain Day at Friday’s Forgotten Books over at Patti Abbott’s blog Pattinase. Since it was too late to read and review any of the dozen mothballed 87th Precinct mysteries in my office cabinet (where I keep them), I decided to turn the spotlight on the genre that launched the writing career of Evan Hunter, the real face behind McBain.

Man will someday leave the Earth. No one witnessing the marvels of today's science can really seriously doubt this mild premise. As certain as Man learned to cross the seas, as certain as he learned to build wings with which he left the ground, he will leave the Earth for Space.

The question then is not, "Will he?"

It is, "When will he?"
— From the preface to Rocket to Luna, 1953, by Evan Hunter

Eight years later, in 1961, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin answered Evan Hunter’s question by becoming the first human to go into outer space.

© Wikimedia Commons

The American author and screenwriter, it'd seem, wrote science fiction well before he wrote crime fiction, most notably his 87th Precinct series. He penned some two dozen sf stories and at least four sf novels. I confess to not having read any.

In 1951, Hunter wrote his first sf story Welcome Martians under his birth name Salvatore Albert Lombino. The following year he published his first sf novel Find the Feathered Serpent. He wrote sf until 1956, under a cavalcade of names like S.A. Lombino, Richard Marsten, D.A. Addams, Ted Taine, and Evan Hunter too.

In 1956, he penned his first 87th Precinct mystery, Cop Hater, where he used the name of Ed McBain. For the next fifty years, he backed it up by nearly sixty books in the series. It was to become one of the most famous pseudonyms ever.

On March 19, I discovered two of his four sf novels online—Find the Feathered Serpent by Evan Hunter and Rocket to Luna by Richard Marsten—at Archive.org. Click here and it’s yours. 

The two novels are published by John C. Winston Company of Philadelphia and Toronto. Find the Feathered Serpent was Hunter’s first novel, sf or otherwise, and he dedicated it to his wife Anita. A year later, he wrote Rocket to Luna, dedicated to all his sons. 

I liked the Winston Company's sf logo. Between 1952 and 1961, Winston published "35 science fiction juvenile novels" by famous authors that included Hunter. The covers were illustrated by artists such as Ed Emshwiller, Virgil Finlay, Mel Hunter, and Alex Schomburg. Of these, I'm only familiar with Finlay having written about him in 2012.

As I've not read either of the two novels, I cannot comment on them. But, here’s what the publisher has to say about the author and why he wrote them.

“Evan Hunter's varied background probably helped him devise the varied cast of characters—ancient Mayan citizens, bold Vikings and twentieth-century explorers—people who Find the Feathered Serpent. For this author, at one time or another, has been an English teacher, telephone dispatcher, lobster salesman, and now occupies an editor's chair. A graduate of Hunter College, he also served with the military during World War II in Cuba, Hawaii, and Japan. Though Evan Hunter found study of the ancient Maya hieroglyphics the most fascinating bit of research necessary to write Find the Feathered Serpent, he prefers the more usual forms of relaxation of piano-playing and sketching.
— Find the Feathered Serpent

“Richard Marsten doesn't call any one part of the country "home." This author's wanderlust has led him to every corner of the United States, and he intends to see Canada, Mexico, Europe, Asia and Africa before settling down. After that, he hopes to be among the first to apply for passage to the Moon—a probability beyond dispute, as far as the author is concerned. The three-stage rocket that Mr. Marsten writes about in Rocket to Luna was discussed with his boyhood friends during bygone Fourth of July celebrations. Plans had even been made to equip a tin can with firecrackers to test the theory. But the youngsters never got around to it, and it wasn't until the author started investigating recent scientific advances for background material for Rocket to Luna that he realized how near the truth he had been twenty or so years ago.”
— Rocket to Luna

At the start of his writing career, Evan Hunter worked with authors such as Arthur C. Clarke, P.G. Wodehouse, and Richard S. Prather. In his acknowledgements for Rocket to Luna, Hunter, or Richard Marsten, says, “My thanks, too, to Arthur C. Clarke, who graciously answered several tricky questions about the Moon.”

I’m hoping sf veterans like Todd Mason at Sweet Freedom and Bill Crider at Pop Culture Magazine will shed more light on Evan Hunter’s science fiction. In fact, writer Bill Crider has written about Find the Feathered Serpent more than once on his blog (click on the above link).

This illustration appears in both the novels.