Schachner, Nat
Entry updated 28 July 2025. Tagged: Author.
(1895-1955) US chemist, lawyer and author, known mainly for biographies of US historical figures, who began publishing work of genre interest with "The Tower of Evil" with Arthur Leo Zagat (it was also his first publication) for Wonder Stories Quarterly, Summer 1930. His collaboration with Zagat lasted over a year, all Schachner's first eleven stories being done with him, including a novel-length tale, Exiles of the Moon (September-November 1931 Wonder Stories; 2016). After they ceased collaborating, Schachner continued to write very prolifically for the Pulp magazines, publishing at least seventy stories under his own name and as Chan Corbett and Walter Glamis. His output included the novel Emissaries of Space (Fall 1932 Wonder Stories Quarterly; 2015 dos); the Revolt of the Scientists sequence appeared in Wonder Stories in 1933; and the Past Present and Future series appeared in Astounding 1937-1939. His "Ancestral Voices" (December 1933 Astounding) was the first so-called Thought-Variant story to feature in the magazine. A remarkable allegory, "The Shining One" (May 1937 Astounding), unusually for American Genre SF refers back to the horrors of the trenches in World War One, but is distinct from a normative Scientific Romance in that those horrors are permanently resolved through the Invention of a genius Scientist, whose spoof Angel of Mons (see Arthur Machen; Scientific Hoax) brings immediate worldwide peace: the survivors of an insane battle "shook hands and clambered out of the trench, out of the darkness, into the paean of happiness that had once been No Man's Land."
Horror and fantasy from the 1930s have been assembled as The Devil's Nightclub and Other Stories: The Weird Tales of Nat Schachner (coll 2011). He published only one sf novel in book form, Space Lawyer (June, August 1941 Astounding as "Old Fireball" and "Jurisdiction", plus new material; fixup 1953), a humorous set of legal adventures in space. His style was rough, but he was a sharp and knowledgeable writer; his inattention to the field after about 1940 is regretted. [JC]
see also: Astounding Science-Fiction; Future War; Politics; Time Paradoxes.
Nathan Schachner
born New York: 16 January 1895
died Hastings-on-Hudson, New York: 2 October 1955
works
- Space Lawyer (New York: Gnome Press, 1953) [fixup: first appeared June, August 1941 Astounding as "Old Fireball" and "Jurisdiction"; plus new material: hb/Ric Binkley]
- Emissaries of Space (Medford, Oregon: Armchair Fiction, 2015) [dos: first appeared Fall 1932 Wonder Stories Quarterly: pb/Frank R Paul]
- Exiles of the Moon (Medford, Oregon: Armchair Fiction, 2016) with Leo Zagat [first appeared September-November 1931 Wonder Stories: pb/]
- 20,000 A.D. (Medford, Oregon: Armchair Fiction, 2017) with Arthur Leo Zagat [fixup of two stories: dos: first appeared September 1930 Wonder Stories and March 1931 Wonder Stories: pb/Frank R Paul]
collections and stories
- Pirates of the Gorm (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2009) [novelette: ebook: first appeared May 1932 Astounding: na/]
- Slaves of Mercury (place not given: Project Gutenberg, 2009) [novella: ebook: first appeared September 1932 Astounding: na/]
- The Devil's Nightclub and Other Stories: The Weird Tales of Nat Schachner (Vancleave, Mississippi: Ramble House/Dancing Tuatara Press, 2011) [coll: pb/]
about the author
- Sam Moskowitz. "The Science-Fiction of Nat Schachner" (Spring 1992-Winter 1993/1994 Fantasy Commentator #43-#45) [pp160-179, 292-303, 52-73: mag/]
links
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