Stanley Mullen
Stanley Mullen was a multifaceted figure in the world of science fiction and fantasy, born in 1911 and primarily associated with Colorado. He is known for his contributions as both an artist and an author, notably publishing a fanzine called *The Gorgon* from 1947 to 1948. Mullen's literary work includes a collection of short stories titled *Moonfoam and Sorceries* and various stories featured in notable magazines such as *Planet Stories* and *Weird Tales*. His most recognized story, "Space to Swing a Cat," was published in *Astounding Science Fiction* and was nominated for a Hugo Award in 1958, showcasing a positive theme of human cooperation with mutated creatures.
Mullen's writing often reflects influences from other authors, and his style has been characterized by a tendency to overwrite. His only novel, *Kinsmen of the Dragon*, blends elements of fantasy and dimensional warfare. Although he ceased writing fiction around 1958 due to personal and professional challenges, Mullen's work remains a curious mix of imaginative adventure and the fantastical, marked by vivid characters and alien worlds. Mullen passed away in 1973, leaving behind a legacy that hints at the evolving landscape of science fiction in his era.
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Stanley Mullen
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- Born: 1911
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- Died: 1973
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Biography
Stanley Mullen was born in 1911 and has been associated as both an artist and an author with the state of Colorado. Like many other science-fiction authors, he published his own fanzine, The Gorgon, from 1947 until 1948, when he published a collection of short stories, Moonfoam and Sorceries. Mullen printed an enthusiastic article about writer Clark Ashton Smith in The Gorgon, and Smith’s rococo style and science fiction that bordered on fantasy would have a profound influence on Mullen’s own fiction.
Many of Mullen’s stories appeared in Planet Stories, a much-beloved outlet for the works of writers of more impressionistic science-fiction, such as Ray Bradbury and Leigh Brackett, although Mullen’s work rarely rises to their level. Mullen’s fiction also appeared in Weird Tales, and his more scientifically rigorous science fiction was accepted by John W. Campbell, Jr., for his magazine Astounding Science Fiction. That magazine published Mullen’s most famous story, “Space to Swing a Cat,” which was nominated for the Hugo Award in 1958.
That story reveals Mullen’s weaknesses all too clearly, particularly his compulsion to overwrite, although compared to some of his other stories, “Space to Swing a Cat” seems restrained. The theme of the story, that humans can learn to coexist and cooperate with artificially mutated superbeasts (in this case, a tiger) to conquer the solar system, is pleasantly positive, and an underlying frisson of menace hints that this cooperation will not be easily won. Mullen’s other, more turgid fiction often replicates themes from other writers. For example, “Moonworm’s Dance” (1949) combines the shape-shifting alien of Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” (1938) with the menacing shipboard alien of A. E. Van Vogt’s “Discord in Scarlet” (1939).
Mullen’s science fiction generally takes place in a solar system two or three centuries in the future that is constructed so that Mullen can populate it with his own bizarre bestiary of grull-cats, needle-fliers, and seven-limbed bat-noses. Mullen’s most characteristic story—and the most derivative of Smith’s fiction—is “The Pit of the Nympthons” (1951), in which a human girl is transformed into a nubile temple priestess of prehistoric gods in a radioactive, sentient forest on Venus. Mullen’s only novel, Kinsmen of the Dragon, has been classified as dimensional warfare, but it seems more firmly rooted in fantasy, with characters named Sir Rodney Dering and the Black, Red, and White Archdruids.
Mullen was a museum curator as well as a writer. He stopped writing fiction around 1958 for personal reasons of health and the professional reason that his brand of planetary romance, already dated when he began writing, had become passé. He died in 1973. At its best, Mullen’s fiction, with its fleshy damsels, hard-bitten heroes, and outré flora and fauna, has a lurid appeal, but it would take authors such as Cordwainer Smith and Jack Vance to take the planetary adventure to its next level.