thought-variant n.

Our purpose is to bring to you each month one story carrying a new and unexplored ‘thought-variant’ in the field of scientific fiction.

Through the Gates of the Silver Key is a thought-variant story of the highest degree.

The first story of travel between the planets was a true thought-variant. It was something never used before, it opened a field in which innumerable tales could follow.

Stanley G. Weinbaum’s death sorrowed the entire Stf world. His loss is and will continue to be deeply felt. Let’s hope that he’s happy, turning out thought variants for ‘Heavenly Stories’, wherever he is.

I should say that the first strong indication was in the ‘thought-variant’ (sicken you?) ‘ANCESTRAL VOICES’, featuring Mrs. Murphy and her famous children and baked beans. Then, with the first issue of 1934, came ‘COLOSSUS’, another ‘thought-variant’, and the rush was on.

There would be the ‘thought-variant’ stories and authors who consistently wrote stories of this type in which all that was important was a new idea of the universe or of cosmic implications, with just enough build of characters that you might sense the marvel with them.

The cover of the February [sc. 1935 Astounding] number was striking, if not artistic, a criticism which also applied to ‘The Ultimate Metal’ of Nat Schachner, the ‘thought-variant’ it illustrated.

The type of science fiction published in the first years of the Tremaine Astounding was not, actually, too much different from that presented by Bates. In spite of the thought variant policy, action was still very much in evidence.

Tremaine, in the ‘thought variant’ era, maintained Bates’s gains and pushed for genuinely imaginative concepts.