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The Dual World (original blurb)
Gerry Carlyle Wants to Catch-'Em-Alive on the Lost Continent of Venus, but an Amazing Race of Twins Catapult Her Into Double Trouble!
(actually, the original mentioned only Tommy Strike, so they wouldn’t turn off adolescent boys!)
From Thrilling Wonder Stories “The Story-Behind-the-Story) department:
CATCH-'EM-ALIVE CARLYLE
As a rule most sequels, we think, come the hard way. The characters have lost their freshness to the writer; he has lived with them too long and is likely to assume a similar familiarity in the minds of his readers, leading to careless characterization Nor is an inspiration-that strange thing that strikes writers occasionally and shouts aloud that it's bound to make a swell story-likely to prove helpful, because there's already a definite pattern of action to which the writer is committed by his previous stories. His plot must follow a predestined framework, more or less rigid, and just any old story idea won't fit. Sequels seldom write themselves.
But one swell story that seems to have written itself ' is THE DUAL WORLD, ARTHUR K. BARNES' sequel to "The Hothouse Planet." We think ot’s grand science fiction fun. We hipe good things like Gerry Carlyle last forever and ever. But first, a letter from Mr. Barnes explaining his story's genesis:
“THE DUAL WORLD is the result of many small items swelling the main river of the story. Chief of these was the-to me-amazing reader response to the first Gerry Carlyle yarn, for which I am duly grateful, indeed, and a good bit of that salad oil known as kind words and flattery by our editor. During two hilarious evenings while he visited me on his recent westward trek, we doped out much that will never, alas, see print, and some stuff that eventually went into the making of the story.
“A clipping concerning the artificial production of multiple births by inducing the eggcell to divide gave me the idea of an emanation creating a wholesale birth of twin creatures.
“A philosophies argument I once had with a prof in Psych. 1B-about the inter-relation of emotion and intelligence, what would happen If we could divorce the two-gave me e Intellectuals and Emotionals. That fitted, so, I dropped it in the pot and stirred.
“The Wadoscope was dignified by an article in the Los Angeles Times, no less, of some four years back.... These and other disparate items made the hodgepodge of material that took a lot of hard writing to smooth out into a presentable yarn against the familiar background of strange Venusian life-forms and our hardboiled huntress, Miss, Carlyle. My. how I'd like to meet that gal!
“As usual, the monsters have terrestrial counterparts which most of the readers will identify (the Atlas crab grew from the Herclules beetle, the sea-squirrel from the incredibly oily albatross. etc.). Except the bolasbird. That was just a bit of whimsy designed to give a chuckle to people whose sense of humor is as cockeyed as mine.... I sincerely hope some of the readers can find a few moments enjoyment In the yarn. That's my measure of success.”
Arthur K. Barnes
Los Angeles, Calif
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