BATES, Harry

   Working name of US editor and writer Hiram Gilmore Bates III (1900-1981), who began his career with the Clayton chain of PULP MAGAZINES in the 1920s, working as editor of an adventure magazine. When William Clayton, the owner, suggested that HB initiate a period-adventure companion to it, he successfully counterproposed a magazine to be called Astounding Stories of Super-Science, which would compete with AMAZING STORIES. HB edited the magazine - whose title was soon abbreviated to Astounding Stories (ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION) - for 34 issues, Jan 1930-Mar 1933. (He later started a companion magazine, STRANGE TALES - intended as a rival to WEIRD TALES - which lasted for 7 issues, Sept 1931-Jan 1933.) His was the first true sf pulp magazine, paying four times as well as its competitors and impatient with the static passages of PSEUDO-SCIENCE characteristic of Hugo GERNSBACK's magazines. As Jack WILLIAMSON put it in The Early Williamson (coll 1975): "Bates was professional . . . [he] wanted well constructed action stories about strong, successful heroes. The 'super-science' had to be exciting and more-or-less plausible, but it couldn't take much space." HB contributed stories to ASF in collaboration with his assistant editor, Desmond W. HALL, the two sometimes writing together as H.B. Winter but more famously as Anthony GILMORE, under which name they produced the popular Hawk Carse series, which reached book form as Space Hawk (coll of linked stories 1952); the first of these stories, "Hawk Carse" (1931), was HB's first publication.After the Clayton group went bankrupt in 1933, Strange Tales ceased publication and ASF was bought by the STREET \& SMITH chain, which appointed F. Orlin TREMAINE editor. This ended HB's editorial connection with sf, though over the next 20 years he wrote a few short stories. Although he used the pseudonym A.R. Holmes on occasion, it was mainly under his own name that he published such notable stories as "A Matter of Size" (1934), a story on the then popular GREAT-AND-SMALL theme, and "Alas, All Thinking" (1935). "Farewell to the Master" (1940) was later filmed as The DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (1951), although the film lost the story's ironic twist, which demonstrated the pitfalls of interpreting nonhuman relationships in human terms - in this instance, the relationship between a huge ROBOT and its ALIEN "master". HB died in unfortunate obscurity.

   MJE

   See also: ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM IN SF; EVOLUTION; SF MAGAZINES.