Who Killed Cock Robin? by Henry Kuttner

Who Killed Cock Robin?

by Henry Kuttner

You, too, can become a murderer. In this article, I'll attempt to show how it may be done--in plain English, how to write whodunits.

My qualifications? Ever since I began to sell my stuff, I've sworn up and down that I couldn't write a murder mystery.

I sell regularly to other markets--adventure, fantasy, terror, science fiction. From time to time I tackled detective yarns. Comments ranged from "Not for us--sorry" to "It smells."

"It smells." Much as I hate to admit it, the editors were right.

"You're trying too hard to write a detective story," Leo Margulies finally told me. "Make a story first, not a chess problem. Make the problem a strongly personal one."

"I can't!" I wailed. "Every time I try--"

"That's it. You're trying too hard. You're too self-conscious. You keep saying, 'This is going to be a detective story, first, last, and always.' The result is mechanical. It just isn't interesting."

"But..." I said.

"Just do as I say. Write a story. Then let me see it."

"Well," I said sadly, "all right. But it won't be any good."

So I went home and read a batch of detective magazines. I analyzed the stories in them carefully. Some were good. Some weren't. The latter suffered from the same faults as my own previous ones.

They were too closely slanted to the formula. Technically, they were perfect in several cases. Like the girders of a building. But that's all they were--girders. Technique alone wasn't enough--I could see that. A corpse can be deadly dull. To paraphrase the old gag, no matter how you still slice it, it's still a corpse.

I listed three vital points, which I'll give here: (1) Necessity of immediately interesting the reader, (2) keeping that interest sustained, and (3) having a strong, satisfactory climax.

Under the first item I noted the following: (a) Through sympathetic characters, (b) Through problem vitally important to (a), (c) Through novel setup.

Let's glance at "Double Frame-up," by Richard L. Hobart in Thrilling Detective. Here's how it starts:

Johnny Mann, not very tall, thin, and with a fatigued droop to his shoulders, slipped like a ghost out of the misty rain into the haven offered by the narrow space between the two buildings. He was cold yt his overcoat and suit coat were unbuttoned and he wore no vest. And his right hand hung free, though the left was deeply buried in the pocket of his overcoat.

It was close to nine-thirty at night. The rain, swirling in from the river, had driven pedestrians off the streets, and only an occasional tax or private car disturbed the silence. Johnny Mann was hungry. There was a gnawing pain in his stomach and a sort of weakness in his knees that told him he was very tired--pretty well worn out.

He leaned his slim body against the wet and dripping bricks and sighed. But the damp coldness seeped through his thin coat and made a shiver run up and down his backbone. He straightened up, coughing softly.

That opening made Johnny Mann sympathetic to me. And it made me curious, too. Why would he keep his hand in his overcoat pocket? Well, you know the answer as well as I do.

I read on. Johnny's problem made him even more sympathetic. He was a detective, in a city flooded with dope, and "it was generally believed Rex Alaya was masterminding the smuggling...Johnny told his chief that if he could be discredited as a detective and kicked from the force it might put ideas into Rex Alaya's head." So he'd staged a sham fight with old Sam Bell, another detective, and the plan had gone through.

Everybody but those in on the plot thought Johnny a complete heel. So there it was. A game kid taking it on the chin in order to get a line on a gang of dope smugglers.

But there are other problems, too. The detective may himself be accused of murder. He may be put on the spot by a killer. He may fall in love with his feminine prisoner, as in W. T. Ballard's "Thirty Miles to Albuquerque," in Black Mask--a honey of a yarn, by the way. Or a particular pal of his may be killed, or faced with suspicion of murder. There are plenty of problems from which to choose, as long as they fit neatly into a murder mystery or a crime story.

"Thunder Jim Wade"

[Thunder Jim Wade] called himself a trouble-shooter. But he had a habit of seeking trouble, and smashing it with a cold, ruthless fury that had given him both name and reputation. His past was shrouded in mystery. Years before he had flashed on the scene like a comet—a comet whose mission was to destroy such men as Duke Solent.

Many had wondered whence Wade had come. But not even “Dirk” Marat and “Red” Argyle, Jim’s aides, knew that. Red was a burly giant with gnarled hands like knotted oak roots, and incredibly deft fingers. And Dirk was a small, innocent-looking chap with blond hair and black eyebrows, and one great passion. That was for cold steel. He could handle guns, but preferred to work with knives.

They helped Wade in his work—which was to smash crime and evil. Together they had wrecked opium rings, slave trades, pearl thievery, and a hundred other unscrupulous activities. 

Kuttner, Henry. Thunder Jim Wade: The Complete Series (pp. 11-12). Altus Press. Kindle Edition.

*     *     *      *      *

In his namesake novella, Thunder Jim Wade arrives at Singapore to discover the whereabouts of his missing agent. During his investigation, he discovers that the agent was kidnapped while snooping into the disappearance of an archaeologist. After freeing the agent, Wade learns that criminal mastermind Duke Solent had captured both men and is on his way to Africa to find a mythical city and a missing treasure. From the clues, Wade discerns that the city in question is his childhood home, the last city of Cretan civilization hidden from the world inside a lost valley. Now Wade and his friends must foil Solent’s designs before this lost city is destroyed.

The Shadow’s breakout success in the 1930s spawned a new genre, the hero pulp. Filled with incorruptible men of vengeance and adventure, these heroes quickly spread throughout the pulp magazines. Except one. When Weird Tales published the adventures of Paul Ernst’s Doctor Satan, the readership revolted, driving out any story with so much as a hint of the hero pulp to it. However, in 1941, Henry Kuttner, one of science fiction’s grandmasters, turned to the genre, penning five novellas about Thunder Jim Wade, a South Seas hero in the mold of Doc Savage, despite the cape and tights that Thrilling Adventures‘ cover artists depicted him in. Unfortunately, the audience of the time considered Thunder Jim Wade to be a cheap Doc Savage knock-off, and Kuttner’s hero never found the sales needed to justify further adventures. 

The “cheap Doc Savage knock-off” accusations are not entirely without merit. Like Doc, Thunder Jim Wade is a man of science, action, and justice. His pals Dirk and Red resemble Doc Savage’s close friends Monk, Ham, Long Tom, Johnny, and Renny, but while Doc’s team combine technical expertise with brawn, Dirk and Red are blue-collar bruisers by comparison. A Pacific island serves as Jim’s Fortress of Solitude, conveniently lifted from Doc’s inventory, alongside the treasure of a lost civilization that enables Thunder Jim Wade’s war on crime. And it is no coincidence that Thunder Jim’s first adventure, like Doc’s The Man of Bronze, sent him to a lost valley civilization.But the comparisons to Doc Savage are low hanging fruit, for Kuttner also mined The Shadow for material. Like Kent Allard, Thunder Jim spent time living among an isolated people, learning their ways and sworn to their protection from outside threats. Thunder Jim learned hypnosis and other mental arts from an exotic Asian people, employs disguises as convincing as The Shadow’s, runs an extensive network of named agents, and is as skilled an aviator as the Knight of Darkness. And Wade’s attitude towards the criminals he fights leans closer to The Shadow’s retribution than Doc’s rehabilitation.

But these strong resonances to these pulp heroes weighs lightly on Thunder Jim, little more than trappings instead of actual substance. Kuttner’s major innovation was to move his pulp hero out of New York, closer to the exotic lands of adventure of the Pacific, Asia, and Africa. In the process, Kuttner’s Singapore, likely no more real than a China Marine’s lurid sea stories, has a verisimilitude that the common underworld pulp tale–and the novella’s Cretan civilization–lacked. At the same time, Thunder Jim is diminished compared to his inspirations, merely human compared to the larger than life Doc Savage and the Shadow. Despite having a wide variety of knowledge and skills at his disposal, Thunder Jim relies instead on the direct approach and muscle-power. Among the many features emulated from Dent, Kuttner did not mimic the constant refrain of how peculiar and exemplary his hero is, and thus Thunder Jim seems to be ordinary for a pulp hero if not outright miscast, a two-fisted street detective that wandered into the wrong magazine. Also missing is the stage magic-inspired misdirection of the hero pulps; the realism and anti-Gothic tastes of Kuttner’s Campbelline circle of friends did not lend itself to the dramatic tricks that filled the hero magazines, as Babette Rosmund’s later editorial stints in charge of Doc Savage and The Shadow would prove.

But Thunder Jim Wade might not be entirely Kuttner’s creation. In 1941, he was newly wed to Catherine “C. L.” Moore, and, by merit of being the more prolific of the two writers, the breadwinner for their family. Thunder Jim Wade was not the first of his departures from science fiction to more lucrative writings, nor would it be his last, as science fiction in the 1940s was not a large enough market to support full-time writers alone. (Like many Campbelline era science fiction writers, Kuttner would turn to screenwriting, and eventually leave the genre entirely..) And entering the potentially lucrative hero pulps meant becoming a hired gun as a writer. Even Walter Gibson and Lester Dent worked with committees to develop their heroes’ adventures, and the editorial constraints of the lesser magazines could be even tighter. It is likely that the more derivative elements were editorial diktat.

Likewise, it is also probable that the contributions of his wife and frequent collaborator Catherine were minimal, too. Which is a shame. A touch of the stylings of Northwest Smith, akin to those in her story “Black Thirst”, would have livened both Thunder Jim Wade and his foster Cretan home.

Although competently written, as a hero pulp, “Thunder Jim Wade” adheres closely to the tropes and formulae of the genre but misses the spirit. As such, the novella satisfies neither fans of the genre or fans of Kuttner’s science fiction and fantasy. But it still occasionally shines with flashes of brilliance, and none more brightly than its opening setting of Singapore.

Sci-Fi Radio - The Twonky By Lewis Padgett

"Lewis Padgett" is one of the better-known pseudonyms for the husband and wife team of Henry Kuttner and Catherine "C. L." Moore.

More Brackett and Hamilton from Tangent Online

Last week, I linked to Tangent Online's 1976 interview with pulp and science fiction giants Leigh Brackett and Edmond "World Wrecker" Hamilton. While that excerpt described the treatment of women in science fiction and science fiction by women, the authors of the adventures of Eric John Stark and Captain Future had much to say about their inspirations, the science fiction genre, and John Campbell.

Regarding their influences:

TANGENT: What other influences did you have besides Burroughs and Merritt? 

BRACKETT: I'd say Burroughs of course was the first one. I was introduced to Edgar Rice Burroughs at a very young age. And of course I immediately took the plunge and that changed the course of my life right there. 

HAMILTON: That was true of nearly all of us of that generation. We sort of grew up on Edgar Rice Burroughs. I had read much other science fiction; I totally admired H. G. Wells. But Burroughs seemed to be the one we all tried to model after. I think Ray told us his first story was written because he couldn't―his family being hard-up at that time―he couldn't afford to buy the new Burrough's Mars novel that came out. He'd seen it in the bookstores but he couldn't afford to buy it, so he sat down and wrote it. 

BRACKETT: I think my first writing effort was somewhat the same. I was a great fan of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. I saw every one of his films over and over and over, and just loved Fairbanks. My favorite was The Mark of Zorro or something, and I wanted a sequel and there wasn't any, so I started writing one on little scraps of paper. Burroughs influenced me more―well, the Mars stories, all my Mars stories came out of Burroughs―I tried never to exactly copy his Mars, I tried to make it my own, but I think my fascination for Mars came from the fascination for his Mars. 

Now, Hammett and Chandler were very strong influences, and James Cain, whose style I greatly admired. I tried to use what I considered to be very good and very powerful in the detective story genre and use it in science fiction. “The Halfling” is very much in the detective story style, which seems to me to work out very nicely.

Notice that with the exception of Wells, all the stories, authors, and movies mentioned are found in the pulps. But not all of them were science fiction. Brackett in particular drew heavily from the detective pulps that inspired noir and the general adventure pulps like Zorro. Both drew from many wells, not just that of science fiction.

On the long term biases of science fiction awards:

TANGENT: What do you think of the different awards that have sprung up that they didn't have in the early days? Do you feel a sense of loss or anything since both of you have never won one? 

BRACKETT: No. I'm always happy for the people who get the awards. You know, I'd be delighted if I ever got one. I was up for a Hugo once on The Long Tomorrow. I don't know...I just don't worry about it.

HAMILTON: I'd be delighted to get one, too. I was also nominated for one, but most of our science fiction has been in the adventure/entertainment scene. If you don't have Big Thinks in it the people who vote on these things are not greatly impressed. If they can understand every word of it then it can't be great, you know? That's their attitude.

The more things change...

On working with John Campbell:

HAMILTON: Yes, he did try to do that, and that is one of the chief reasons I didn't like to work for John Campbell. I sent him one story and never again. He bought it, but I could not subordinate every idea I had into the Campbell formula. Added to which, he didn't particularly like his writers to be writing for the lesser science fiction magazines. Damn few could make a living writing for John Campbell. 

I admired Campbell. I testified to this the other night when we were talking about the old days. In fact, he was one of the great pulp magazine editors. Yet, science fiction did not begin with John Campbell. There were other editors, who may not have had as big an influence, although I think Tremaine was right up with Campbell there, in the early Astounding Stories. But, Campbell had kind of a dogmatic, rigorous mind; it has to be this way or that way, but it can't be that way. He was a difficult chap to work for. She sold her first stories to him. 

BRACKETT: And I still don't know why he bought them. They weren't very good stories. Unless he hoped he was discovering a new writer. Unfortunately I didn't go the right direction. I kept trying to sell him things because he was the top market, but when you wrote a Campbell-type story and it didn't sell then you had no place else to go with it.

They later pointed out that, despite all his efforts, Ray Bradbury never sold to Campbell. These comments, as well as those of Manly Wade Wellman's, require an article on their own.

On the pulps:

TANGENT: Were the pulps ever taken seriously by critics?

HAMILTON: They were, as a whole, cheap lowdown magazines and nobody cared much what was printed in them, but they gave science fiction a chance to expand its wings into all kinds of ideas. If you were writing for The Saturday Evening Post you found all kinds of taboos, whereas in the pulps, which few people cared about, anything went, just so long as it was effective. I think they were very good. 

The only time a serious critic paid any attention to the science fiction magazines was in 1930. A famous British essayist of that time, William Balitho (sp) came to New York to write articles for The New York World about the American scene. He was absolutely fascinated by the pulp science fiction magazines and he wrote a beautiful article, on that long ago day, on the pulp science fiction magazines. He was probably the first serious critic to mention Lovecraft's name. He said Mr. Lovecraft was a lot better than most of the serious novelists that they gave acclaim to. He added that a man who could read Galsworthy about society and Arnold Bennett about marriage and who can't read these crude little magazines is completely unliterary, without realizing it. And he ended up predicting; he said someday these magazines, or the tattered copies of them that remain, will sell for more money than the first editions of our most famous novelists of today. And that is true.

"Anything went, so long as it was effective."  This only serves to heighten the parallel between tradpub and indie with the old-fashioned slicks and pulps. But that, too, deserves another article.

On husband and wife collaborations in writing:

TANGENT: You mentioned this as your first formal collaboration. Why have you never collaborated before, in what ways were you an influence on each others work, and was there ever any feeling of competition between you? 

BRACKETT: No. 

HAMILTON: No, I don't feel that. Our collaboration has been more or less unofficial in this sense...she has done more for me than I have done for her. For years I worked on comics and I had a pretty heavy schedule. When I'd be trying to do a story I'd call her on over and say, “Leigh, nobody can do a scene like this but you.” (Laughing) But I never was as fortunate as Henry Kuttner. We were out visiting Henry and Catherine at Laguna Beach, and he was telling me he'd been having a hard time doing a novel; one chapter defeated him. And he sat there at his desk all day beating his brains out and couldn't get that chapter started, so he thought he'd go out and walk up and down the beach for several hours. The air was good but he got no ideas. So he walked wearily back to the house, got sat down, and there was the chapter, all written there beside his typewriter.(Laughing) I love to tell that story, so then I can accuse her. Actually, that was the best chapter in the book. It was a detective novel called The Brass Ring. When I talked to him just after the novel had been published, I said, “It was a good story, Henry, but the crowning point is the chapter where the man is murdered in the dark. You get the feeling of violence and sudden death in the dark. Terrific.” He said, “Thank you. My wife wrote it.” 

I said the same thing to Doc Lowndes up in New York years ago. He said there was one part in my Valley of Creation that was the highest point in the book. I told him the same thing, “Thank you for nothing. My wife wrote it.” She wrote just those three chapters.

Anyone know where I can find the modern version of Miss Moore?

Writing for the Pulps: Henry Kuttner

As far as science fiction is concerned, Henry Kuttner is one of the original Big Three of the Golden Age, alongside van Vogt and Heinlein. Not only did he write for science fiction magazines, he wrote comics, hero pulps, and other adventures, often behind any of a score of pseudonyms.

In the Writer's 1941 Year Book, he offered this example of writing advice.

Let's see if I can winnow out a few important items. Take a look at this quotation:

Throughout a lavish tropical diner, Morgan watched Harlean narrowly. The man scarcely touched hi food. He was blind drunk. He spoke little, save to order the boy to replenish his glass... 

Dave Vern, who was editing for Ziff-Davis at the time, stabbed the passage with his finger. "The reader doesn't see it. It could happen anywhere. But this yarn is supposed to be set on a South Sea island. Put youself in your character's places, Kuttner. What are they eating? What does Harlean look like? Visualize the scene for me."

It was good advice. Here's how the passage looked, in print:

They ate curried meat that night, with shark-fin soup and poi made from vegetables and breadfruit. Morgan polished off a tin of sardines with relish, but preferred to ignore the little pickled octopus in the lacquer bowl at his place, Munching the melon-like pulp of a papaya, he watched Harlean narrowly.

 The man had scarcely touched hi food. He was blind drunk. His thin face remained utterly impassive, but his eyes were feverishly bright. He spoke little, save to order the boy to replenish his glass... 

"Another thing ," Vern told me. "Your villain's too ordinary. Give him some tags that will stick in the reader's mind. Make him a Yankee - a red-haired New Englander who looks like a Puritan but acts like the devil himself. Maybe he carries a sword cane. Everybody on the island's afraid of him. But don't say so. Show it in action. When the man walks into the toughest dive in the island, everybody else shuts up. And parade those tags, too. It's a good way to keep the reader from getting confused."

The Secret of Kralitz, by Henry Kuttner

I awoke from profound sleep to find two black-swathed forms standing silently beside me, their faces pale blurs in the gloom. As I blinked to clear my sleep-dimmed eyes, one of them beckoned impatiently, and suddenly I realized the purpose of this midnight summons. For years I had been expecting it, ever since my father, the Baron Kralitz, had revealed to me the secret and the curse that hung over our ancient house. And so, without a word, I rose and followed my guides as they led me along the gloomy corridors of the castle that had been my home since birth. 

As I proceeded there rose up in my mind the stern face of my father, and in my ears rang his solemn words as he told me of the legendary curse of the House of Kralitz, the unknown secret that was imparted to the eldest son of each generation—at a certain time. 

"When?" I had asked my father as he lay on his death-bed, fighting back the approach of dissolution. 

"When you are able to understand," he had told me, watching my face intently from beneath his tufted white brows. "Some are told the secret sooner than others. Since the first Baron Kralitz the secret has been handed down——" 

He clutched at his breast and paused. It was fully five minutes before he had gathered his strength to speak again in his rolling, powerful voice. No gasping, death-bed confessions for the Baron Kralitz! 

He said at last, "You have seen the ruins of the old monastery near the village, Franz. The first Baron burnt it and put the monks to the sword. The Abbot interfered too often with the Baron's whims. A girl sought shelter and the Abbot refused to give her up at the Baron's demand. His patience was at an end—you know the tales they still tell about him. 

"He slew the Abbot, burned the monastery, and took the girl. Before he died the Abbot cursed his slayer, and cursed his sons for unborn generations. And it is the nature of this curse that is the secret of our house. 

"I may not tell you what the curse is. Do not seek to discover it before it is revealed to you. Wait patiently, and in due time you will be taken by the warders of the secret down the stairway to the underground cavern. And then you will learn the secret of Kralitz." 

As the last word passed my father's lips he died, his stern face still set in its harsh lines.

(Franz continues his investigation at Project Gutenberg...)