After my NATO trips for Litton I remained in Operations ... this led to a job opportunity at Scientific Data Systems in El Segundo... Unfortunately, business slowed down for the Data Systems Division, and in 1969 I was caught in the layoff.
Taxes, mortgage payments and the price of bread were still
the immutables of life to be faced. ...But when I combed the field for tech writing
jobs I ran into the oldie about being "over qualified."
...In two days I received a
call from Forrie Ackerman's wife, Wendayne.
She wanted to
know if I'd like to try some German translation. She and Forrie were agents for Ace
Pocketbooks, who were publishing English translations of the famous German
science-fiction series, Perry Rhodan.
Owing to popular demand in America, she and her brother could not keep
up with the number of 30,000-word novelettes to be translated, and they needed
help. I started translating two per
month at $400 each. This was exactly the
$800 per month I had sought to manifest.
[Five years later] Ace Pocketbooks and the Germans fell out of
agreement concerning money exchange control, and the Perry Rhodan translations
came to an abrupt end. This sent 4000
mail-order readers into an uproar, so I proposed to Forrie and Wendy that we
might be able to satisfy such a clientele with a science-fiction series of our
own – based on an old novel of mine, Power Metal (Other Worlds,
1953).
Out of this came my Star Man
series, which some of the fans said were better than Rhodan. Forrie and Wendy published them through their
own company, Master Publications. So the
magic still seemed to be holding, until Forrie and Wendy could not keep up with
the publishing costs.
So far I had
produced 13 Star Man novelettes. Whether
or not that old devil's number 13 tried to kill the magic, the cold fact
remained that I was once more out of work.
Or had the magic really been defeated?
One day Forrie, who was my agent, called me up and said I was rich. Dell Books had just sent him an advance
royalty check of $15,000 for the first five Star Man stories.
(In another post at this blog Stuart J. Byrne tells what happened next in "How Dell Books Paid Me $15,000 for the Star Man Edition that Never Was.")
(In another post at this blog Stuart J. Byrne tells what happened next in "How Dell Books Paid Me $15,000 for the Star Man Edition that Never Was.")
Click here to get the first two Star Man novels Free from Kindle or iTunes!
FROM FUTURESPASTEDITIONS.COM
FROM FUTURESPASTEDITIONS.COM
