Are these from your collection? If so, cool! If not, wow!
No, I don't own any issues of
Unknown and don't even know very much about the magazine; I hope to learn something from people who comment on this thread.
If anyone's interested, here is a column I wrote on the novel that appeared in the first
Unknown issue. The column is one in an ongoing series about C. S. Lewis's reading. His friends and his wife called him Jack, hence the title of the series.
Jack and the Bookshelf #2
Eric Frank Russell’s Sinister Barrier
And so humans strike back at the Vitons, who are usually invisible to humans but perceptible to prepared eyes as “ultra-blue vampire” spheres. But now the Vitons have been exposed, these powers who have exploited humans for ages, promoting rumor and hysteria, inflaming race hatred and violence in the name of religion, subtly provoking humans to make war, so that the strong emotions that Vitons feed on will be stimulated. Many odd, unaccountable events, such as mysterious disappearances, sightings of fireballs, etc., turn out to have been due to Viton activity. At last, however, humans can rebel against these hidden masters.
Eric Frank Russell’s
Sinister Barrier originally appeared in print in the first issue of the American magazine
Unknown, dated March 1939. The author (1905-1978) was British, despite his “Yank” pulpster style.A British book version appeared in 1943 from the very obscure house of World’s Work. The American specialty house Fantasy Press released a version of the story in 1948.
Sinister Barrier was issued as a British paperback, undated but probably published around 1952. A list of the books in Lewis’s personal library prepared in 1969 includes
Sinister Barrier, but describes it as “n.d.” (no date). It’s possible that whichever edition Lewis owned had belonged to his wife, Joy Davidman Lewis. Lewis’s copy is not owned by Wheaton College. My guess is that the missing book was the British paper edition.
In a letter to I. O. Evans, dated 31 [sic] Sept. 1957, published in the third volume of Lewis’s
Collected Letters, CSL says he’s read
Sinister Barrier and finds it the “best of its kind.” What kind was that? Presumably, Lewis refers to science fiction stories in which human beings are secretly controlled or influenced by inhuman creatures.
Lewis’s own
Screwtape Letters is, of course, something similar. In that book, Lewis writes from the point of view of the devils. They are invisible; they are aware of, and influence, the thoughts of human beings; they have subtly promoted conflict throughout the centuries; it’s generally in their interests to remain undetected - - all of which is true of the Vitons. Screwtape says, “We want cattle who can finally become food” (Letter 8); the Vitons feed on violent human emotion. The devils despise the “hairless bipeds” (Letter 14), while the Vitons are “‘cruel and callous sultans’” and humans their “‘half-witted slaves.’”
Is it possible that Lewis’s
Screwtape Letters owes something to
Sinister Barrier? Lewis did read American pulp magazines,* and it could be that copies of that issue of
Unknown crossed the Atlantic soon after U. S. distribution occurred, and one of these copies came his way in time to suggest the
Screwtape idea. In a letter to Warren Lewis that CSL began on 20 July 1940, Lewis describes the origin of what became
The Screwtape Letters. He had been sitting in church that morning and his mind wandered. It occurred to him to write a book of supposed letters from a senior devil to a less experienced tempter. (See Lewis’s
Collected Letters, Vol. 2.) The possibility of influence isn’t ruled out by this chronology.
Lewis acknowledged the stimulus of other science fiction authors, such as David Lindsay, but doesn’t seem to have admitted to conscious influence from Russell. Probably, then, it would not be true to say, “Screwtape was a Viton!” Perhaps one reason Lewis was impressed by
Sinister Barrier whenever he did read it, was its thematic affinity, despite
Barrier’s slam-bang pulp-mag style, with his own book, already written.
-- Dale Nelson
*See my article "Is Lewis' Ransom Trilogy Indebted to 'Yank Magazine' Science Fiction?"
CSL: The Bulletin of the New York C. S. Lewis Society 37:4 (July-August 2006; Whole Number 414): 18-19.
