Ross Rocklynne Science Fiction Short Story: Distress Signal - The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast

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Marooned! On the cold satellite of a dying sun, light-years away from home.... For Rex there was only one escape. But Carl called it murder! Distress Signal by Ross Rocklynne, that’s next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.

Born in 1913 in Cincinnati, Ohio, Ross Rocklynne said his love of science fiction began at the age of 12 when he said a Black janitor introduced him to the genre. Rocklynne remembered the story that turned him into a life-long fan, it was the first installment of E.E. Smith’s "The Skylark of Space" in the August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories.

In 1939, he attended the first World Science Fiction Convention in New York City where met and became life-long friends with Ray Bradbury, among others.

Rocklynne’s professional writing debut, “Man of Iron” was published in Astounding Stories magazine in August 1935. He was 22. He followed that up with 7 more stories in the 1930s. The peak of his writing career occurred in the 1940s when he had 60 short science fiction stories published. There were 15 more in the 50s.

Rocklynne stopped writing in 1954 because he developed an extremely painful affliction of the face and jaw. He found that he could forget the pain only when he was involved in some kind of physical activity or when socially engaged with others. When he was alone the pain tended to monopolize his attention and thus made writing very difficult, if not impossible.

So, what do you do when you can’t do what you love? Well, Ross Rocklynne supported himself as a cab driver and dispatcher for the next 15 years. He resumed writing with about a dozen stories in the late 60s and early 70s.

Today’s story was his first and only offering in 1947. It appeared just before his friend Ray Bradbury’s story Rocket Summer in the Spring 1947 edition of Planet Stories Magazine. Turn to page 35 for Distress Signal by Ross Rocklynne…

Next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Homer was a shy Faderfield bachelor; his visitor was a beautiful Pleiades girl. At any rate she was a girl, and Homer had a problem—A Matter of Ethics by Russ Winterbotham

That’s next week on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.