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There was a practical value to writing a “series.” For one thing, you had a definite background that was carried on from story to story, so that half your work was done for you. Secondly, if the “series” became popular, it would be difficult to reject new stories that fit into it.
I didn’t make it with Turner and Snead. In fact, I never tried. The time was to come, two years later, when I was to have a pair of very similar characters, Powell and Donovan, who were to be in four stories and who were to be part of a very successful “series” indeed.
By the end of August 1938, then, I had written five stories, of which three were eventually published. Not bad!
However, there followed a dry spell. I was finishing my third year of college and was trying, without success, to get admission into medical school. The situation in Europe was disturbing. It was the time of the surrender at Munich, and for a Jewish teen-ager there was something unsettling about the rapid, sure-fire victories of Hitler.
The next three stories took not one month, as had the previous three, but three months. And all were clearly well below the limits of salability even in the most permissive market. They were “The Weapon,” “Paths of Destiny,” and “Knossos in Its Glory.” Campbell rejected each one in very short order, and all made the rounds without luck. There came a time, nearly three years later, when Astonishing seemed interested in “The Weapon,” but that fell through and the other two didn’t even come that close.
All three stories are now gone forever. I remember nothing at all about two of them, but “Knossos in Its Glory” was an ambitious attempt to retell the Theseus myth in science fiction terms. The minotaur was an extraterrestrial who landed in ancient Crete with only the kindliest of intentions, and I remember writing terribly stilted prose in an attempt to make my Cretans sound as I imagined characters in Homer ought to sound. Campbell, always kind, said in rejecting it that my work “was definitely improving, especially where I was not straining for effect.”
By the time I was writing “Knossos in Its Glory” I had just received my check for “Marooned off Vesta” and I was a professional. My spirits rose accordingly, and toward the end of November I wrote “Ammonium,” which was another attempt (like “Ring Around the Sun”) at humor.
I had a pretty good notion that Campbell wouldn’t like it, however, and I never showed it to him. I sent it to Thrilling Wonder Stories instead. When they rejected it, I lost heart and retired it. It was only after Future Fiction had taken “Ring Around the Sun” that I thought I would chance this other one, too.
On August 23, 1939, I sent it in to Future Fiction , which took it, altering its name to “The Magnificent Possession.”