The Coming of the Ice
G. Peyton Wertenbaker
The Coming of the Ice by G. Peyton Wertenbaker
One of the gravest editorial problems faced by the editors of AMAZING STORIES when they launched its first issue, dated April, 1926, was the problem of finding or developing authors who could write the type of story they needed. As a stop-gap, the first two issues of AMAZING STORIES were devoted entirely to reprints. But reprints were to constitute a declining portion of the publication's contents for the following four years. The first new story the magazine bought was Coming of the Ice, by G. Peyton Wertenbaker, which appeared in its third issue. Wertenbaker was not technically a newcomer to science fiction, since he had sold his first story to Gernsback's SCIENCE AND INVENTION, The Man From the Atom, in 1923 when he was only 16! Now, at the ripe old age of 19, he was appearing in the world's first truly complete science fiction magazine.
The scope of his imagination was truly impressive and, despite the author's youth, Coming of the Ice builds to a climax of considerable power.
Wertenbaker, under the name of Green Peyton, went on to sell his first novel, Black Cabin, in 1933. He eventually became an authority on the Southwest with many regional volumes to his credit: For God and Texas, America's Heartland, The Southwest, and San Antonio, City of the Sun. But he never lost his interest in space travel, assisting Hubertus Strughold on the writing of The Green and Red Planet, a scientific appraisal of the possibilities of life on the planet Mars published in 1953. He also served for a time as London correspondent for FORTUNE MAGAZINE.
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