We close out the first calendar year of
Amazing Stories with a milestone: This is the first issue of
Amazing Stories that does not include a Jules Verne story. Shocking, isn't it? Don't worry; he will be back eventually.
COVER
In another first, this cover has nothing to do with any story in the magazine. Rather, it's a contest worth $500 to the winner, that being whoever can write the best story based on this picture. There are details later on in the magazine, apparently.
So, what is the picture? Well, there's a floating ball of some sort up in the sky, big enough to have a large ocean liner hanging from two glowing magnets underneath, the whole thing floating above a towered city. Looking on are some naked alien women with hair or headdresses that resemble a swan's feathers.
It's certainly evocative, and I have no idea what kind of story was written to explain it. I look forward to finding out in a few issues. H.G. Wells and Garrett Serviss get cover billing again, and A. Hyatt Verrill (now with two Rs) joins them.
EDITORIAL
Ah, here we go. The editorial simply explains the cover-story contest. There will be three prizes, all of which will be paid when the stories are published. First prize is actually $250; second is $150, and third is $100, for a
total of $500 in prizes, not to mention the immortality of being published in the world's first scientifiction magazine. He describes the scene on the cover (for...those who didn't see it?) and puts a hard cap of 5,000-10,000 words for the story. And they want every detail from the cover art included. I'll guess they didn't mean the names of the writers, the title of the magazine, and the mention of the contest. There are the usual contest rules, like 'if you don't win but you want it back, give us return postage',
Amazing Stories gets all the rights, and if you or a family member work for the publisher, you can't enter.
It's a great idea; I just have to wonder, given Gernsback's well-known reputation, if the winners actually did get paid. After all, many of his regular writers had to fight, or even sue, to get paid for their work. We shall see what transpires.
THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON, Part I, H.G. Wells
First appearing in serialized form in 1900 in, of all things,
Cosmopolitan magazine, this story isn't the first tale of lunar exploration. Jules Verne sent men to the moon in
From the Earth to the Moon thirty years earlier. Nearly forty years earlier, Edgar Allan Poe sent a man to the moon on a balloon. So, it wasn't a new idea. In this 17-page installment, the first of three, Wells introduces us to Mr. Bedford and the scientifically-minded Mr. Cavor, Bedford is a businessman, and while he and Cavor aren't fast friends, they do come together in a partnership after Cavor invents a gravity-defying metal compound called, naturally enough, Cavorite. Bedford wants to make a lot of money, but Cavor has set his sights a bit higher than that. Together, they build a spherical capsule that can take them to the moon. The first installment ends with them landing on the moon and discovering that it has an atmosphere and is full of plant life that dies every sunset and is reborn by seeds every sunrise.
This book was hugely popular in the first couple of decades of the century, even being made into a movie in 1919. Jules Verne wasn't impressed; he preferred scientific accuracy to flights of fancy like anti-gravity metal. The story starts off slowly, as do a lot of stories of the day (when people had and took more time to read). There isn't a lot of action in this first episode, although the journey to the moon does have some moments of tension. The scene where the sunrise breaks over the mountains and the plants are reborn is very well written. I'm looking forward to reading the next part.
THE MAN HIGHER UP, Edwin Balmer and William B. MacHarg
First published in 1909, this story is another example of how genres were not remotely defined as they are today. It's a detective story, a murder mystery starring a 'psychological detective.' There is some technology in the story, but nothing extremely wild. The detective, Trant, uses a device that acts like a lie detector, reading people's emotional states under different circumstances. Of course, it's a crucial part of solving the mystery, which isn't a typical 'whodunit'; it's not hard to figure it out. But it still packs quite a bit in its ten pages, including a bit of action. There's a love triangle, a smuggling operation, and a happy ending. It doesn't hold up very well today, but for the time it would have been innovative for its use of the 'pneumograph,' the aforementioned primitive lie detector.
THE TIME ELIMINATOR, Kaw
An original story, this is the second (and last) short story from this author. There's no indication who 'Kaw' (or K. A. W.) actually was. This is a quick story, only three pages long. It feels incomplete, though. I imagine the story could have used a few more pages to develop its main idea.
What is the main idea? It's a 'radio' that actually works like a television, except that it can record pictures from anywhere, and any time. The inventor, Hamilton Fish Errell, isn't worried about scientific research or other such nonsense; he recognizes the invention's potential for espionage, and offers it to the government straight away. He demonstrates the device, exposing a European plot to start a trade war with the United States. The general is suitably impressed, as is his daughter; she wants to marry Errell on the spot.
And...that's it. That's the whole story. As I said, it could use some more development. However, Kaw didn't stick around to learn his craft; this was the last thing he ever published in the pulps.
THROUGH THE CRATER'S RIM, A. Hyatt Verrill
Verrill has replaced Verne as the cover highlight author. Another original story, this one is much better that the previous one. It's longer, too, at thirteen pages. There's a whole bunch of action here, anther entry in the 'lost world' genre that was very popular back in the first quarter of the twentieth century.
The narrator, whose name is never revealed, goes off to investigate an alleged lost city in the Amazonian jungle, described by his flying friend, Lieutenant Hazen. Back then, the Amazon still had a lot of undiscovered sites, so the setting is very plausible for 1926. However, the ambulatory man-eating trees aren't actually there. Still the narrator does manage to get to the lost city despite the best efforts of the trees to snack on him and his native bearers. The inhabitants of the lost city are truly weird, short as dwarves and walking on their hands, carrying objects in their feet.
The narrator's use of a tobacco pipe convinces the dwarves that he's a powerful wizard, which of course gets the local shaman angry with him. Eventually he's exposed as a mere mortal, and is scheduled to be sacrificed to the natives' god. Fortunately, Lieutenant Hazen flies by and rescues him just in time. To lighten the plane's load, the narrator tosses something out of the plane, which happens to be a bomb that destroys the aqueduct and floods the city, destroying it and the killer trees.
Some modern readers will see this as a racist screed, which misses the point of the story, which is a) that it was written in a different era, and b) it's an adventure story. The inhabitants of the lost city are clearly not fully human, and their Aztec-like religion that relies on human sacrifice is rightly treated as an abomination. Combine that with the carnivorous trees, the loss to mankind isn't worth mourning.
We also get a notice at the end of the story that Dr. Verrill is going to be a continuing contributor, as next issue we get his take on invisibility. That should be interesting, especially with H.G. Wells, originator of the concept, also a contributor at this point.
THE LORD OF THE WINDS, Augusto Bissiri
This original story is Mr. Bissiri's only contribution to the pulps. However, it certainly isn't his only contribution to pop culture. He was an Italian-born inventor who came up with a little device called a cathode ray tube, one of the primary components of the early televisions. He broadcast images across a room as early as 1906, and in 1917 sent an image from London to New York City. All hail the inventor Bissiri!
Now, on to the writer Bissiri. At just under eight pages, this is the story of a man who invents a weather-control device. His goal is to regulate the climate and seasons around the world, and to create a paradise. Needless to say, it doesn't work out as planned. Professor Matheson, the inventor, has developed a machine that will end both drought and war; if there's a lack of water, he can use his weather-controlling device to bring rain clouds. If any nation threatens war, he'll drop a hurricane on them. Rather drastic, but effective.
However, there are bad people in the world with bad motives. The one in this story isn't a nature fanatic, or a government assassin; he's just a robber looking to score off the gems that power Matheson's weather generators. In doing so, he activates the machines, causing massive tornadoes and hurricanes that devastate the region, and kill Matheson. And of course, the devices are destroyed as well, never to be built again.
All in all, it's an interesting 'what-if' story, speculating on how a world with such technology might operate before snatching the prize away in a tragic ending. It's not a bad story, and it would have been nice to see Bissiri continue in this field after his inventing career. But, like Professor Matheson, we'll never know what might have been.
THE TELEPATHIC PICK-UP, Samuel M. Sargent, Jr.
Samuel Sargent wrote several pulp stories, most of them in the action-adventure field. This is yet another original story, and Sargent's first appearance in the magazine. This one...yeah, it's science fiction, but it would definitely fit in the Poe catalog as well, under 'psychological horror.' Yikes. This is the definition of a 'short story,' being only two pages long.
In those two pages, we meet Dr. Spaulding, who has invented a telepathy radio, which can pick up thoughts and relay them to the device's operator. He plans to use it to find his long-lost brother. Unfortunately, his brother is not a nice man; he's being led to the electric chair, and Dr. Spaulding gets to hear his brother's thoughts as he's strapped to the chair and electrocuted...but not killed. No, the chair actually just paralyzes the victim, who then goes to the morgue for an autopsy. Oh, and Spaulding can hear his brother's thoughts while that starts, too. He then smashes the machine in a totally-understandable freak-out session.
Tightly-written and creepy as hell, this would definitely qualify as a good story, but not one I want to read multiple times. Sargent will appear in this magazine again in the near future. Hopefully, his future stories are a little less creepy and a little more action.
THE EDUCATED HARPOON, Charles S. Wolfe
This is Mr. Wolfe's second appearance in the magazine. This story, all three pages of it, first appeared in
The Electrical Experimenter in June of 1920. It's another murder mystery; someone was stabbed to death, but there's no murder weapon present and no way the murderer could have gotten in without being seen. It turns out that the murder weapon is a remote-controlled airplane with a sharp blade at the front. The detective, Joe Fenner, tracks down the murderer, and the police chief orders the weapon destroyed because it's so nasty. Well, it was a hundred years ago; we're much more creative in our nastiness these days.
THE DIAMOND LENS, Fitz-James O'Brien
Another old, nineteenth-century story,
The Diamond Lens first appeared in
The Atlantic Monthly back in 1858. And this is another genre-bender, encompassing ghost-stories, sci-fi, fantasy and crime all in one. God, I love the pulps. This story runs for nine pages. In it we meet Linley, who is trying to create the world's most powerful microscope. To do this, he needs a particularly large diamond, one hundred and forty carats in size. That's a heck of a diamond. His acquaintance, Simon, who is not at all a nice man (being involved with the slave trade), owns such a diamond. Linley tries to come up with a way to get the diamond from Simon, then cuts Gordian's Knot and just murders him for it. Well, Simon had it coming, I suppose.
Linley succeeds in building his microscope, but when he looks through it at a dewdrop, he is startled to discover that there be fairies in them waters. He becomes obsessed with one of them, which he names Animula, and he is chagrined beyond measure when he realizes the dewdrop is evaporating, and he watches his beloved Animula wither and die. He's so affected by this that he becomes a raving madman, shunned by the rest of the scientific community.
It's a good story, but as with many of the stories printed in this magazine, it has to be read in context of its time. Simon is a Jew, and gets some of the stereotypical features associated with Jews at the time. Money-grubbing, suspicious, you know the drill. It's not as over-the-top as Verne's Isac Hakhabut from
Off on a Comet, but it's not subtle, either. Again, product of its time.
THE SECOND DELUGE, Part II, Garrett P. Serviss
So, we bookend the issue with two serials, saving the best for last. The second installment of this serial runs for just over twenty pages, making it the longest story in this issue by a single page. In this installment, the world discovers just how wrong they were about Cosmo Versal's predictions about the new flood. Millions of people die, but there are some who did heed the warning. The French built an ark, or rather a submarine, which is obviously named
Jules Verne. A nice nod from the author there. Meanwhile, the President of the United States escapes aboard an airship along with Cosmo's antagonist from the first installment, Professor Pludder, who has undergone something of a sea change in his attitude since then.
Cosmo's ark also gets another visitor, the rejected billionaire Amos Blank, who tried to buy his way onto the ark in the first installment, then manages to get aboard anyway. I'm sure he'll be causing some kind of trouble in the last two installments. His kind always do in these stories. Unless they're the inventors, of course, in which case they're all noble and heroic, because science rules.
The multiple viewpoints in this installment give a good idea of what's going on in the world after the flood begins. It also makes a lot of sense, since twenty pages of Cosmo and his Arkonauts floating on top of a water-planet would not make for an exciting story, even if you do bring sharks and sea monsters into it. The President's airship escape is poignant as well, since he and Professor Pludder fly over the American Ocean, pointing out cities that now lie deep below the waters. Pludder's conversion is tough to read, since he feels tremendous guilt at having opposed Cosmo until it was too late.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I love Garrett P. Serviss' writing. This is a great story, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the second half turns out.
ASCENSION, Leland S. Copeland
I know, I know...I said
The Second Deluge was the bookend. Well, this is another poem, so I'll stand by my first statement. Here it is:
Age by age the sun is rising
Toward the apex of its way;
Seeking heights where Vega sparkles,
Many trillion miles away.
So the soul of man is climbing;
Wistful ever, mortals wind
Farther from the brute and caveman,
Dawn and morning of the mind.
Into dust fall kings and idols,
Superstition, ancient gear,
For the strength of thought is stronger
Than the curb of hope or fear.
Man is breaking vain traditions,
Old injustice, legal wrong;
Giving outworn good for better,
While he thinks and toils along,
Quelling plagues, controlling nature—
Losing zest for martial fame—
Winning on this little planet
Glory for the human name.
Smiling upward, sweeping onward,
Through the night and through the day,
Mounts the soul of man still higher
Toward the apex of its way.
CONCLUSION
Two noticeable changes appear in this issue: More original stories, and more short stories. Four original stories makes up almost half of the issue's contents (not counting the poem, which is also original), and only three stories were more than ten pages long. Serials continue to be an important part of the magazine, as you need to ensure people come back for the next issue. But I like the trend toward short stories, and the cover-art content should produce some interesting results, as well. All in all, I think the magazine is headed in the right direction. We'll see what happens next.
