{"id":11839,"date":"2008-01-22T13:06:42","date_gmt":"2008-01-22T20:06:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2008\/01\/22\/we-are-lookink-for-nuclear-wessels.html"},"modified":"2008-01-22T13:06:42","modified_gmt":"2008-01-22T20:06:42","slug":"we_are_lookink_for_nuclea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2008\/01\/22\/we_are_lookink_for_nuclea.html","title":{"rendered":"“We are lookink for nuclear wessels!”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fascinating story (part 1<\/a>, part 2<\/a>) about a 1944 SF story by Cleve Cartmill published in Astounding Science Fiction that got military intelligence all a-twitter over its depiction of an atomic bomb … which, in turn, led to a big investigation that started tracking down a mysterious cabal of SF writers who seemed to Know Too Much.<\/p>\n

\n

Campbell provided the Military Intelligence man with Cartmill\u2019s address\u2013in Manhattan <\/em>Beach, California. The link to the top-secret Manhattan Project based in Los Alamos was too obvious to overlook. Riley sent word to the California branch office of Intelligence that Cartmill should be placed under immediate surveillance; plainly he knew too much about our hush-hush A-bomb research. Who had tipped him off ? Both Cartmill and Campbell would need further watching.<\/p>\n

And before long it began to seem as though a whole network of science fiction writers might be involved\u2013a chain of conspirators. For example, the report continues, “It is established that Cartmill is very friendly with [ ], Retired U.S.N.R., who is associated with [ ] at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. This [ ] formerly was doing research work at Columbia University, and he is said to have accepted some material thought to be atomic copper from [ ] in order to measure it in the mass spectroscope at Columbia University. [ ] was advised by [ ] that the device was broken. He never received the material back from [ ]. One [ ] who has written for [ ] Magazine is said to be working with [ ] also. The possibility of the transmittal through [ ] to Cartmill has not so far been resolved. . . .”<\/em><\/p>\n

Well, now it can be told, and you are quite familiar with the names of these sinister people. The retired naval man was Robert A. Heinlein. His Philadelphia Navy Yard associate, the former Columbia man, was Isaac Asimov. The one who sent the copper to Asimov and never got it back was Will F. Jenkins, who wrote science fiction under the pseudonym of Murray Leinster. The blanked-out magazine was Astounding, and the other writer working at the Navy Yard with Heinlein and Asimov was L. Sprague de Camp<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(I’m tickled that I actually knew enough to identify some of those folks by their wartime descriptions.)<\/p>\n

Of course, the idea of atomic power — and how it would work, generally — was, well, the stuff of both open research and science fiction in those days, and SF and comic books sometimes talked about atomic bombs and the like.  It’s not beyond the pale that an SF writer could come up with something that sounded very plausible (that being part of the trade, after all), based on openly available knowledge.  Still, it makes one wonder about how such a matter would be handled today …<\/p>\n

Fun stuff.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

(via BoingBoing<\/a>)<\/p>\n

<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fascinating story (part 1, part 2) about a 1944 SF story by Cleve Cartmill published in Astounding Science Fiction that got military intelligence all a-twitter over its depiction of an atomic bomb…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[36,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11839","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-books","category-homeland-security"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9811,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/10\/30\/astounding.html","url_meta":{"origin":11839,"position":0},"title":"Astounding","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 30-Oct-06 8:17am","format":false,"excerpt":"Faboo collection of covers from Astounding Science Fiction (now Analog), one of the great pulp SF magazines of all time (esp. under the long-time editorship of John Campbell), and...","rel":"","context":"In "Books"","block_context":{"text":"Books","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/media-books"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/astounding-sept41-nightfall.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3107,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/08\/08\/da_bomb.html","url_meta":{"origin":11839,"position":1},"title":"Da Bomb","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 8-Aug-02 1:48pm","format":false,"excerpt":"As we reach the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, James Carroll in the Boston Globe takes the opportunity to call it \"a mistake and a crime.\" He...","rel":"","context":"In "Geopolitical Brouhaha"","block_context":{"text":"Geopolitical Brouhaha","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/geopolitical-brouhaha"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1773,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/05\/01\/the_phantom_men.html","url_meta":{"origin":11839,"position":2},"title":"The Phantom Menace","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 1-May-02 8:00am","format":false,"excerpt":"The highly-publicized alleged meeting between 9-11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague probably never actually took place. 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