Sam Moskowitz , proeminente fã dos velhos tempos e historiador da ficção científica, escreveu um ensaio sobre Philip Wylie . Intitulado "Philip Wylie: The Saccharine Cynic" , foi originalmente publicado em Fantastic Science Fiction Stories , setembro de 1960 , disponível em Internet Archive ; foi reimpresso (sem o subtítulo) em Science Fantasy , outubro de 1961 , também disponível no Arquivo da Internet .
De acordo com Moskowitz, Wylie considerou-se um defensor da precisão científica (seu colaborador Edwin Balmer nem tanto), e consultou alguns amigos não identificados no Caltech sobre a física de Quando os mundos colidem .
A bug on astronomy, Balmer had roughed out a sequence of events for a novel where two planets enter our solar system from outer space. One will strike the earth with resultant mutual destruction. The only chance man has for survival is to build space ships and transfer a few thousand men and women to the second invading world — which will take up an orbit around the sun — before it moves out of range. He presented this idea to Wylie and found a kindred spirit. Like a child with a new toy, Philip Wylie assembled his physicist friends at Cal Tech and mathematically mapped out the scientific elements by which this feat of [spacial] leap frog could be accomplished. The time lost in the advancement of atomics was unquestionably science fiction's gain.
The collaboration, written as These Shall Not Die, was retitled When Worlds Collide by Donald Kennicott and opened in the September, 1932 issue of BLUE BOOK.
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There seemed no question that a third book in the series, solving the riddle of the new planet's missing inhabitants was the next logical step, and indeed a plot was outlined by Balmer but vetoed by Wylie. Every word of When Worlds Collide had been written by Wylie and it had been published as written. Similarly, Wylie wrote all of the text of the sequel, but before press time Balmer made some alterations that affected scientific plausibility. Wylie, a purist at science fiction nurtured in the tradition of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Hugo Gernsback, was disturbed by these changes. Balmer's plot outline of the third book would have been difficult to validate on the basis of known facts. Wylie contended that the success of the first two volumes was predicated, to a large extent, upon the high degree of respect shown for scientific accuracy. Therefore, though he continued to collaborate with Balmer on adventure and detective novels, he refused to give literary substance to the projected third in the When Worlds Collide series.