WARNING: SPOILERS
Did Eric Frank Russell plagiarize an earlier tale for his Hugo Award winning short story Allamagoosa?
Allamagoosa was published in the May 1955 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. Later that year, it won the very first Hugo Award for short fiction.
The starship Bustler is notified that they are due for a top to bottom inspection by an admiral with a strict reputation. During the preparations for the inspection, they find an item listed in inventory – an “offdog” – that not only can’t be found but no one seems to know what it is. In order to pass the inspection, they fabricate a replacement, guessing at its nature. The ploy works until they are ordered home for an overhaul. Fearing the deception will be uncovered, they report the item “came apart under gravitational stress,” which leads to a hilarious series of events, which ultimately unveils the true nature of the missing item: one “official dog.” (An adorable pooch is hanging around on the starship during the whole escapade.)
John W. Campbell called Russell his favorite writer; Russell was a frequent contributor to Astounding Science Fiction. Even though he was English, Russell followed the typical template of the 1930s era of new American science fiction writers: technically educated and emerging from fandom. He was known for his sense of humor in his stories, but he was also capable of writing serious science fiction.
In this case, I feel that this is little more than a gimmick story, undeserving of awards. There’s nothing essentially science fiction in it, it doesn’t contain any real ideas. It could just have easily been published in a military fiction magazine with just a change in locale.
In fact…it was published elsewhere, with a different locale. However, it was written by another author. “The Shovewood” was published in 1938 by The Patea Mail, a New Zealand newspaper. This is the earliest published version I could find. In this extremely similar story, the Shovewood stands for “Shovel, Wooden (one).” In both stories the protagonist finds the item listed on an inventory prior to an inspection by a high ranking official, can’t find it anywhere on the ship, and resorts to manufacturing a substitute.
Then there’s “Captain Bayonet and the Spa-Gas.” This is a story written by Anthony Armstrong in 1938. (Credit to David Langford) Once again, a strange item is noted in Royal Air Force inventory and chaos ensues. In this case the item turns out to be a Spade, G.S. (General Service).
A version was published in 1945 in “Roll on My Twelve: Short Stories of the Royal Navy” authored by David Bolster. Here we return to the Shovewood and the author even references “Recently, however, someone published a version of this yarn in a magazine.”
Russell served in the Royal Air Force in World War Two, so it is certainly possible that at some point he came across either of these two military versions of the story, planting the seeds for Allamagoosa.
Russell does add the twist that, to sustain their deception, they report the offdog “came apart under gravitational stress,” which results in the entire fleet being grounded. Maybe it’s this little bit of cleverness that charmed Hugo voters. It’s definitely a step above the other versions.
Russell faced a similar charge of possible plagiarism with his novel Sinister Barrier, which was alleged to be similar to a story by Edmund Hamilton, The Earth Owners. This accusation came mainly from fans, Russell later met and befriended Hamilton. Many of his stories throughout the 30s and 40s were based on ideas from the fabulist Charles Fort. Russell was widely regarded as one of the best science fiction writers of his era, perhaps he wasn’t as much of an original thinker as his contemporaries but a skillful re-worker of existing ideas.
However….
I did uncover a reference to a classic Naval tale called The Shovewood, all the way back in 1916. In the Northern Mists: A Grand Fleet Chaplain’s Note Book, by Montague Thomas Hainsselin, where the author relates: “There are some classic tales concerning paperwork current in the Navy. The gem of them all, of course, is the incomparable story of the Shovewood.” He then goes on to relate a very familiar version. It’s likely that there was no original author of this tale, that this was a very familiar British urban legend that was re-told by several authors over the decades.
I still think it didn’t deserve a Hugo.
