This is a teasing story, intriguing but only suggestive, the details too murky.
Paul H. Klingbiel was born 3 November 1919 to the Lutheran pastor Herman and his wife Elsa in Wisconsin. His brother Carl joined the family in 1927. Paul served in the army signal corps during World War II. Almost everything else known about Klingbiel’s early life is from his activities in science fiction fandom. And a lot of this will repeat from the story of Donn Brazier, as the two were closely connected.
Klingbiel was director of the Wisconsin-based Fortean club “The Frontier Society,” which in the early 1940s put out the clubzine “Frontier,” edited at first by Brazier, one late issue by Klingbiel himself. The Society was rooted in Klingbiel’s conflicted skepticism about science. Harry Warner, Jr., the fan historian who had access to the first issue of Frontier, wrote,
“Paul described at great length in one article his changing opinions about science through high school, and his difficulties when he attempted to discover the identity of the things which science does not know. I would probably have asked my science teacher for a brief outline of this, but Paul did it differently:
“The answer suddenly emerged in complete detail. I whooped with joy! Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Had I not collected a few quotations from books I had read, and did not those quotations, in the final analysis, show what science did not know? Obviously the thing to do was to was to expand this idea. What I needed was not a passive recognition of thought-provoking material, but an active search for such material. Since there was no one book I had found that could tell me what science did not yet know, I would attempt to make such a book myself.
“One year later I proudly pointed to 25 typewritten pages of quotations, all of which told what science did not know about as yet. This collection, which I titled “Think It Over”, Volume 1, settled the question completely to my satisfaction. There was still much that science did not know; in fact, it sometimes appeared as though science had only begun. I had not been born too late!”
Paul got a new idea then. For the next year, he collected quotations which cast doubt on the topic of whether science knew anything. He finally decided that “Science may demonstrate, it is true, that absolute truth and reality do exist, but science itself is not that reality and that truth.”
Satisfied he had a direction, Klingbiel, with Brazier, announced the Frontier Society to the fen in a couple of science fiction prosiness (although Astounding, which would soon publish a glowing review of The Books of Charles Fort, refused to print their call to arms). Klingbiel was 20 at the time, Brazier two years older. They had jobs as, respectively, a salesman and a teacher. Their announcement won them thirteen members, and the first issue of Frontier served as a manifesto. Again quoting from Warner:
“The Frontier Society...is composed...of science-fiction and fantasy fans who are interested in science and philosophy, and who have the desire to probe the unknown frontiers of these fields in so far as they are able... The frontiers of science are changing at an accelerated rate. We feel that the time is ripe for a group of fans to devote their energies to the better understanding of this eternal change.
“The Frontier Society is that group, and Frontier is the bulletin dedicated to the dissemination of the society’s research into this eternal change in science and philosophy.
“This, then, is our relation to science; and we are not ‘just another fan club.’ We believe we are a unique effort in the science-fiction world; and there is no tried and true path which we must follow. We have a clear, exciting field ahead of us. We travel through virgin territory.
“Watch us!”
Frontier continued to publish for two years, its original Fortean influences slowly dwindling, although there was still promises to do something grand. The fanzine “Futurian War Digest,” (issue 16, Jan. 1942, p. 6) noted
“The FRONTIER SOCIETY is a semi-stf organisation interested in probing into some of the secrets on the frontiers of mans knowledge. Sited at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it publishes an organ "Frontier" and has of late, been tending to indulge more and more in fan activities. The early support the society offered to the National Fantasy Fan Federation was a sign of this.
Latest news, via Fantasy Fiction Field, is that the Frontier Society headed by Paul Klingbiel, is commencing the "Future History" project which has been talked about in fandom for the past year or so. Members of the society will be assigned groups of magazines to read and report upon. The reports will contain descriptions of the types of civilisations shown in the stories, the historical events that take place, and of course the historical time in which the story takes place. These reports will be placed in chronological order, and the results will be a complete picture of the various futures which science fiction has predicted for us. Final editing will be done by Milton Rothman.”
In the meantime, the fannish articles—especially on H.P. Lovecraft—were supplemented with Forteana: on clairvoyance, life-after-death, curses, and coincidences. And there was philosophy: discussion of Omar Khayyam (one of Thayer’s favorites, by the way), the sure-coming of Esperanto’s universal adoption, and Klingbiel’s description of Spengler’s theory of history. Klingbiel also provided material for the South Carolina-based Southern Star ‘zine.
Presumably, the war made it too difficult for the Frontier Society to continue. Klingbiel, though, like Brazier, continued to keep up with the Fortean Society. Thayer referred to him in his 1943 paean to science fictioneers as the progeny and proselytizers of Fort:
“Before Fort, any fiction making more or less free with ‘Science’ was classified always, as of the Jules Verne school. and there wasn’t a great deal of it, but in the past twenty years, what its exponents and admirers call Scientifiction, has grown like something in a dream. Millions of fans prefer these tales t either whodunits or horror, and the number of publications devoted to the imaginative extension of ‘scientific laws’ and the enlargement of human attributes (Wild Talents, so to speak) has become legion.
“The band is almost unanimously Fortean and some of our most prized members come from its ranks, all whooping up Charles Fort’s fame. To name but a few--we have James Blish, Robbert Spencer Carr, Donn Brazier, Claire P. Beck, Jesse Douglass, Paul H. Klingbiel, R. DeWitt Miller, and Nelson Bond.”
In the late spring of 1944, he also bought a book from Donald Bloch through the Fortean Society.
Returned from war, he also returned to his unusual intellectual pursuits—and seems to have channeled these into a conventional career, although here is where the details fail. In 1946, Brazier started “Ember,” another ‘zine that mixed the fannish with the Fortean. Klingbiel was a frequent contributor, sending in stories about, for example, idols that could not be photographed and the way the Chinese used rice on their mousetraps rather than cheese; as well as notes on sources for H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction.
By this time—if not earlier—Klingbiel was also exhibiting an interest in the relationship between language and mathematics. According to Brazier, he was translating words into mathematical formulae, which he would then solve and translate back into words, revealing some surprising results: although what those results and Klingbiel’s exact method are not described. He also had become a fan of Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics. Despite its name, General Semantics was not really about semantics as it is known today, but a way of correcting thought—indeed, it was the seed for L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics.
In the fall of 1946, Klingbiel left Wisconsin for the University of Chicago, where he took a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. Chicago was also home to the Institute of General Semantics, and at the time Korzybski was still there, along with some of his most ardent supporters. Every Saturday night, Klingbiel attended a large lecture on General Semantics; on Thursday nights, he attended a smaller, shorter discussion group on the same subject. In 1948, he wrote an introduction to General Semantics for fans that was published in the Oregon-based ‘zine “Fanscient.”
The connection between mathematics and General Semantics is through the application of a system of logic to solve problems. It is tempting to see—though impossible to prove with the current evidence—that General Semantics may also have influenced Klingbiel’s graduate education. For after his time at Chicago, he took a master’s degree in linguistics at American University. He then took a job with the government studying machine-indexing—research that was the basis for library sciences and the development of computers. In the 1970s, he went to work for NASA, continuing to study the same problems.
There’s something very Fortean (and unFortean) about the work. On the unFortean side, he was creating stable categories of thought. On the Fortean side, to create such categories, he had to think about them, break them down and rebuild them: they were not natural states, but invented ones. How much Klingbiel thought of his work in Fortean terms, though, is unfortunately unknown.
Paul H. Klingbiel was born 3 November 1919 to the Lutheran pastor Herman and his wife Elsa in Wisconsin. His brother Carl joined the family in 1927. Paul served in the army signal corps during World War II. Almost everything else known about Klingbiel’s early life is from his activities in science fiction fandom. And a lot of this will repeat from the story of Donn Brazier, as the two were closely connected.
Klingbiel was director of the Wisconsin-based Fortean club “The Frontier Society,” which in the early 1940s put out the clubzine “Frontier,” edited at first by Brazier, one late issue by Klingbiel himself. The Society was rooted in Klingbiel’s conflicted skepticism about science. Harry Warner, Jr., the fan historian who had access to the first issue of Frontier, wrote,
“Paul described at great length in one article his changing opinions about science through high school, and his difficulties when he attempted to discover the identity of the things which science does not know. I would probably have asked my science teacher for a brief outline of this, but Paul did it differently:
“The answer suddenly emerged in complete detail. I whooped with joy! Why hadn’t I thought of it before? Had I not collected a few quotations from books I had read, and did not those quotations, in the final analysis, show what science did not know? Obviously the thing to do was to was to expand this idea. What I needed was not a passive recognition of thought-provoking material, but an active search for such material. Since there was no one book I had found that could tell me what science did not yet know, I would attempt to make such a book myself.
“One year later I proudly pointed to 25 typewritten pages of quotations, all of which told what science did not know about as yet. This collection, which I titled “Think It Over”, Volume 1, settled the question completely to my satisfaction. There was still much that science did not know; in fact, it sometimes appeared as though science had only begun. I had not been born too late!”
Paul got a new idea then. For the next year, he collected quotations which cast doubt on the topic of whether science knew anything. He finally decided that “Science may demonstrate, it is true, that absolute truth and reality do exist, but science itself is not that reality and that truth.”
Satisfied he had a direction, Klingbiel, with Brazier, announced the Frontier Society to the fen in a couple of science fiction prosiness (although Astounding, which would soon publish a glowing review of The Books of Charles Fort, refused to print their call to arms). Klingbiel was 20 at the time, Brazier two years older. They had jobs as, respectively, a salesman and a teacher. Their announcement won them thirteen members, and the first issue of Frontier served as a manifesto. Again quoting from Warner:
“The Frontier Society...is composed...of science-fiction and fantasy fans who are interested in science and philosophy, and who have the desire to probe the unknown frontiers of these fields in so far as they are able... The frontiers of science are changing at an accelerated rate. We feel that the time is ripe for a group of fans to devote their energies to the better understanding of this eternal change.
“The Frontier Society is that group, and Frontier is the bulletin dedicated to the dissemination of the society’s research into this eternal change in science and philosophy.
“This, then, is our relation to science; and we are not ‘just another fan club.’ We believe we are a unique effort in the science-fiction world; and there is no tried and true path which we must follow. We have a clear, exciting field ahead of us. We travel through virgin territory.
“Watch us!”
Frontier continued to publish for two years, its original Fortean influences slowly dwindling, although there was still promises to do something grand. The fanzine “Futurian War Digest,” (issue 16, Jan. 1942, p. 6) noted
“The FRONTIER SOCIETY is a semi-stf organisation interested in probing into some of the secrets on the frontiers of mans knowledge. Sited at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it publishes an organ "Frontier" and has of late, been tending to indulge more and more in fan activities. The early support the society offered to the National Fantasy Fan Federation was a sign of this.
Latest news, via Fantasy Fiction Field, is that the Frontier Society headed by Paul Klingbiel, is commencing the "Future History" project which has been talked about in fandom for the past year or so. Members of the society will be assigned groups of magazines to read and report upon. The reports will contain descriptions of the types of civilisations shown in the stories, the historical events that take place, and of course the historical time in which the story takes place. These reports will be placed in chronological order, and the results will be a complete picture of the various futures which science fiction has predicted for us. Final editing will be done by Milton Rothman.”
In the meantime, the fannish articles—especially on H.P. Lovecraft—were supplemented with Forteana: on clairvoyance, life-after-death, curses, and coincidences. And there was philosophy: discussion of Omar Khayyam (one of Thayer’s favorites, by the way), the sure-coming of Esperanto’s universal adoption, and Klingbiel’s description of Spengler’s theory of history. Klingbiel also provided material for the South Carolina-based Southern Star ‘zine.
Presumably, the war made it too difficult for the Frontier Society to continue. Klingbiel, though, like Brazier, continued to keep up with the Fortean Society. Thayer referred to him in his 1943 paean to science fictioneers as the progeny and proselytizers of Fort:
“Before Fort, any fiction making more or less free with ‘Science’ was classified always, as of the Jules Verne school. and there wasn’t a great deal of it, but in the past twenty years, what its exponents and admirers call Scientifiction, has grown like something in a dream. Millions of fans prefer these tales t either whodunits or horror, and the number of publications devoted to the imaginative extension of ‘scientific laws’ and the enlargement of human attributes (Wild Talents, so to speak) has become legion.
“The band is almost unanimously Fortean and some of our most prized members come from its ranks, all whooping up Charles Fort’s fame. To name but a few--we have James Blish, Robbert Spencer Carr, Donn Brazier, Claire P. Beck, Jesse Douglass, Paul H. Klingbiel, R. DeWitt Miller, and Nelson Bond.”
In the late spring of 1944, he also bought a book from Donald Bloch through the Fortean Society.
Returned from war, he also returned to his unusual intellectual pursuits—and seems to have channeled these into a conventional career, although here is where the details fail. In 1946, Brazier started “Ember,” another ‘zine that mixed the fannish with the Fortean. Klingbiel was a frequent contributor, sending in stories about, for example, idols that could not be photographed and the way the Chinese used rice on their mousetraps rather than cheese; as well as notes on sources for H.P. Lovecraft’s fiction.
By this time—if not earlier—Klingbiel was also exhibiting an interest in the relationship between language and mathematics. According to Brazier, he was translating words into mathematical formulae, which he would then solve and translate back into words, revealing some surprising results: although what those results and Klingbiel’s exact method are not described. He also had become a fan of Alfred Korzybski’s General Semantics. Despite its name, General Semantics was not really about semantics as it is known today, but a way of correcting thought—indeed, it was the seed for L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics.
In the fall of 1946, Klingbiel left Wisconsin for the University of Chicago, where he took a bachelor’s degree in mathematics. Chicago was also home to the Institute of General Semantics, and at the time Korzybski was still there, along with some of his most ardent supporters. Every Saturday night, Klingbiel attended a large lecture on General Semantics; on Thursday nights, he attended a smaller, shorter discussion group on the same subject. In 1948, he wrote an introduction to General Semantics for fans that was published in the Oregon-based ‘zine “Fanscient.”
The connection between mathematics and General Semantics is through the application of a system of logic to solve problems. It is tempting to see—though impossible to prove with the current evidence—that General Semantics may also have influenced Klingbiel’s graduate education. For after his time at Chicago, he took a master’s degree in linguistics at American University. He then took a job with the government studying machine-indexing—research that was the basis for library sciences and the development of computers. In the 1970s, he went to work for NASA, continuing to study the same problems.
There’s something very Fortean (and unFortean) about the work. On the unFortean side, he was creating stable categories of thought. On the Fortean side, to create such categories, he had to think about them, break them down and rebuild them: they were not natural states, but invented ones. How much Klingbiel thought of his work in Fortean terms, though, is unfortunately unknown.
