New Plots

in the Ekcolir Reality

 Sci Fi Irony. Imagine that just when writers on planet Earth are struggling to establish a new literary genre featuring imaginative stories about adventures on the millions of diverse exoplanets of the universe, something goes terribly wrong. For some reason, almost nobody can imagine new life and new civilizations. 

The Scientifiction Bankruptcy. Poor suffering Hugo Gernsback had to beg readers for suggestions. He wanted new plot ideas that did NOT include four over-used story lines: 1) interplanetary war, 2) freakish and biologically implausible beasts, 3) travel across vast distances of empty space to a distant planet to rescue a damsel in distress and 4) aliens from other star systems who look and behave just like humans. Such was the state of affairs in 1931 when Hugo's editorial in Wonder Stories called for readers to suggest new plot ideas. Who were the innovative writers who could deliver stories based on interesting new Sci Fi plots?

in the Ekcolir Reality
The Vibrometer

I've previously commented on some old science fiction stories by Clare Winger Harris. "The Menace from Mars" (1928) was a space-warping saga featuring a young college student (Vivian) who struggles to understand what is happening to Earth as the Laws of Physics suddenly change. 

"The Diabolical Drug" and "The Artificial Man" (both 1929) were two stories by Harris that might have influenced the young Isaac Asimov, right when he began reading pulp science fiction magazines. I like to imagine that in an alternate Reality, the science fiction genre was formulated and pioneered by women who had their own concerns and special interests in futuristic technology that went beyond rockets and ray-guns.

Going ape in the Ekcolir Reality
Original cover art by Herbert Bruck
and see this.

"The Ape Cycle" by Clare Winger Harris was published in the Spring 1930 issue of Science Wonder Quarterly. Last January, I mentioned several science fiction stories such as Planet of the Apes that involve fictional timelines for Earth in which non-human primates are given starring roles (see also Sundiver by David Brin). 

The King. One of the mind-warping experiences of my youth was trying to make sense of films such as King Kong (1933). It is interesting that in 1931, Harris encouraged Sci Fi fans to write to film producers and ask that more Sci Fi movies be produced. One of the 16 categories of Sci Fi stories listed by Harris was "monstrous forms of unfamiliar life" and another was "unexplored portions of the globe". Both of these are found in King Kong. She also listed "giant insects", but King Kong only delivered dinosaurs and the enormous ape, Kong. 

interior art by Virgil Finlay

 Don't Bug Me! Giant insects in film were a big deal in the 1950s with Them! (1954) and Tarantula! (1955). The Fly did not arrive in theaters until 1958 and had no !. 😞

Majat

The $64,000 Question. However, which would you rather invite into your home, a primate or a big insect? As told in "The Ape Cycle", the answer to this question is a no-brainer for hard-working farmer Daniel Stoddart of Illinois. Daniel cleverly uses his son Ray as a mule to smuggle two young apes (named Adam and Eve) from England to the Illinois farm. Adam and Eve arrive inside a backpack, successfully hidden from both nosy neighbors and inquisitive customs officials. 

interior art by K. A. Winter

 No Robots. I've previously commented on the fact that the 1920s were a boom time for robot stories. The original robots of Karel Čapek (1920) were used as laborers. But why go to all the trouble of making artificial life-forms to man your farms and factories when you can breed and train apes to serve as workers? Why indeed! Take a look at the art work shown right at the start of "The Ape Cycle" (image to the left). This is not going to turn out well!

excerpt from "The Ape Cycle"

 

Daniel feels confident that there can be no moral objection to having apes do work for humans, so he sets out for the Near East with his son, Ray. On the banks of the Red Sea, they discover trained primates who are used to harvest fruit from tall trees. They take six of the primates to England where they perform breeding experiments on the captive primates.

Sadly, Harris provided no details on the primate breeding techniques that were used, but readers are told that Daniel quickly manages to produce some "very intelligent simians whose aptitude was nothing short of amazing." 

The first example of these advanced and trained worker-apes that is provided by Harris in "The Ape Cycle" is an ape named Beta who mows the lawn for Daniel. Another ape, Alpha, tends to housework and can even answer the telephone although his speech is hard to understand.

Ray goes to college and then after 30 years of work in his biology research laboratory, he isolates "the vital substance" that controls "mental growth". Using the "vital substance" and with continued breeding, "the speech organs of the brutes" were greatly improved.

Then the story jumps ahead to the year 2216 when trained apes are now used as workers all over the world. Ray's descendant begins to wonder if the servant apes are now so human-like that it is no longer morally acceptable to treat them like slaves. In this future era, some apes are licensed airline pilots and others drive their human masters around town in electric cars. However, some of the more intellectual ape servants have been reading books and dreaming of rebellion!

The end of "The Ape Cycle" has the ugly feel of having been written by the magazine's editor. It would be interesting to know how the story actually ended as written by Harris. You'll have to read "The Ape Cycle" to find out how it ended.

cover by Frank R. Paul

 Contest Winners.
I previously blogged about Jack Vance's first published novel, Vandals of the Void (1953). Another novel called Vandals of the Void was published in the early 1930s by James Morgan Walsh.

After ten years of working as a writer, Walsh tried his hand at science fiction story telling. Walsh's Vandals of the Void story was the lead story in the Summer 1931 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly. I discuss Walsh's science fiction stories, below, but first... what about Gernsback's contest?

new plot contest winners

The grand prize winner of the new plot idea contest was listed as "William Thurmond" but this may have been William Thurmond Rivière (1893 - 1973) who had a bachelor of divinity degree from Columbia Presbyterian Seminary, additional theological degrees from Washington and Lee University and was the pastor of a First Presbyterian Church in Victoria, Texas. In 1934, Rivière published a journal article called "The Philosophy Underlying Barth’s Theology" which explored Karl Barth's philosophical orientation. 

Later, Rivière published a book called "A Pastor Looks at Kierkegaard" (1941). His 1946 article in Christianity Today "Repentance Must Be Individual" is a short read. Apparently, in 1946 Rivière had a major stroke (see) that ended his career.

It is a bit of a puzzle how Rivière won the science fiction story plot contest in Wonder Stories. "The Derelict of Space" was written by Ray Cummings who had published "The Mark of the Meteor" in the Winter 1931 issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly. I suppose Gernsback simply asked Cummings to write a story based on Rivière's suggested plot.

editorial blurb for "The Derelict of Space"

cover art by Frank R. Paul

I can't look at that Frank R. Paul cover illustration for "The Mark of the Meteor" without thinking how Isaac Asimov responded when he saw it. Asimov's first published story (1939) was "Marooned off Vesta".

"The Mark of the Meteor" begins on Mars where there is a city graced with trees and a lake full of water, reflecting the stars. Then the spaceship Comet lifts off (apparently assisted by its "gravity plates"), carrying 30 passengers to Earth. One of the passengers is a Martian.

The second part of the story is headed "Romance!". Graham Trent, the radio/helio operator for Comet is smitten by one of the passengers, Alma, and he gushes, "I think you are the most beautiful girl I've ever seen." Five days into the flight, Trent invites Alma up to see his etchings helio room. Just then, Trent's eagle eye spots a speeding "derelict asteroid" just before it strikes the Comet.

interior art for "The Mark of the Meteor" 

Most of the interior compartments of Comet have been breached by the collision, but automatic doors closed and trapped Trent and Alma in a small bubble of air. Everyone else is dead except for Kol the Martian. The ship's radio won't work, but the "helio" is used to send a distress signal.

space walk

 The plot thickens. After Kol tries to murder Trent with a rifle, Alma explains that Kol wants her for his harem. From there, the "plot" is similar to Asimov's "Marooned off Vesta": Trent must leave the ship for a space-walk and try to sneak up on Kol from behind. Trent rescues the damsel in distress (Alma) from being forced into Kol's harem. A rescue ship arrives after Trent kills Kol.

 It is hard to see why "The Mark of the Meteor" was not condemned by Gernsback as just another space adventure about a damsel in distress. He must have been a fan of the space-walk. The "gravity plates" of the Comet only produce artificial gravity inside the spaceship. As soon as Trent passes out through the airlock, he is in free-fall. In the end, Trent opens an airlock and sucks Kol (who is not wearing a spacesuit) out of the spaceship.

interior art by Frank R. Paul

 Ship of Doom. Was "The Derelict of Space" any better? The story opens with the derelict Ship of Doom™, found drifting in interstellar space, beyond the orbit of Apollo. Pluto had just been discovered (1930) but that did not stop Cummings from imagining a 10th planet named "Apollo".

Time Travel. In an era when spaceships were crafted like submarines, the Ship of Doom ("a coppery metal disc") does not look like a spaceship (see the image to the right). It is a time machine that had been lost 40 years previously: the Deely time machine.

Along for the ride inside the time machine was William Mink, hoping to make a profit off of time travel into the future. However, his hopes are dashed; the time machine travels through both time and space. Soon the passengers inside the time machine find themselves in outer space and Mink cannot see events on the future Earth.

in the Ekcolir Reality

I suppose Rivière's plot idea must have been to depict a time machine that was also a spaceship. When Isaac Asimov wrote his time travel novel, The End of Eternity, he imagined a time machine that could give access to any time and place on Earth.

"The Derelict of Space" was written so as to imply that while traveling through time, the time machine stays at a fixed location in space... or something, depending on which page of the story you happen to be reading. 

We are told that it was the Earth that kept moving, leaving the time machine behind, but when Deely reverses the time machine (having gone 60 years into the future) they start returning to the Solar System, and they will soon be back at their starting place in both space and time, on Earth. In the end, none of the technical details matter. "The Derelict of Space" is yet another story in which a genius makes an amazing discovery that nobody else can ever replicate. You'll have to read the story to learn why the Deely time machine became the Ship of Doom™.

One of the first rules of the Super Scientist-Inventor should be: ALWAYS TEST YOUR TIME MACHINE BEFORE YOU USE IT YOURSELF. But no, Deely is there on the maiden voyage of his time machine along with his wife, Hilda. Actually, bringing Hilda along inside the time machine was the biggest mistake.

Editorial blurb for Vandals of the Void (1931)

Figure 0. interior art by Marchioni

Walsh's story Vandals of the Void was published in the issue of Wonder Stories Quarterly where Rivière was listed as the winner of the new plot contest. Three months later,  The Struggle for Pallas was published in the same magazine issue as The Derelict of Space. In October, "After 1,000,000 Years" was published by Walsh.

I was curious as to why Gernsback was so enamored of Walsh's work, so I read these stories, starting with the last one which is a relatively short time travel tale. 

The year is 1935 and John Harling is out for a hike when a time machine appears and out steps a girl; Leela. So far, this could almost be a scene from Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity, but the girl seems surprised that she has made an error in the targeting of her time travel machine... she wanted to arrive in 1985. But who can expect perfection when you leap across the gulf of a million years?

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Lucky for us, English is still spoken 1,000,000 years in the future. Harling is taken into the future where he and Leela discover that everyone on Earth is dead (see Figure 0, the image above and to the right). Earth is cold because the Solar System has moved into a region of the galaxy containing something™ that blocks the transmission of sunlight.

Faced with the prospect of Earth turning into an ice cube sphere, Leela invented time travel technology and searched back through time for a solution to the Big Freeze. However, that search took her a year and she was unable to return to the exact future time of her departure into the past. She was forced to return a year later, at a time after everyone on Earth had perished.

in the Ekcolir Reality

The other bad news is that Leela has learned that although she can travel into the past, she can't really change anything. Harling and Leela fall in love. She repairs the time machine and they return to 1935. However, while in the future, Harling learned that some humans were put into suspended animation and they may survive until the Earth moves out of the something™ that blocks the transmission of sun light.

I like to imagine that in another Reality, the science fiction genre might have been started by scientists who could write scientifically plausible stories. Maybe a scientifically-trained Joan Walsh of the Ekcolir Reality could have crafted a better time travel story. Having read "After 1,000,000 Years", I'm puzzled by what Gernsback must have seen in Walsh's fiction. Even if nothing in "After 1,000,000 Years" makes sense, I still wonder to what extent this story influenced Asimov and his choice to send his girl from the far future (Noÿs) back to the 1930s.

Figure 1. interior art by Marchioni

I've previously mocked early science fiction story tellers who imagined that every planet and asteroid of the galaxy is the home of alien life-forms. Walsh's The Struggle for Pallas adopts the assumption that every planet (and the Moon) not only has life, but also space-faring aliens (see the winged alien shown in the image to the left).

What's a Transistor? At the start of Vandals of the Void, readers are told that regular interplanetary travel began in the year 2001, after "the War of the Planets". Yes, you can tell that Walsh has transported us into the Hi Tek™ future of the space age because we get little details such as an explanation of the ticking sounds made by clocks on spaceships. Despite the ticking clocks, the spaceships have anti-gravity technology that makes it easy to blast off the surface of a planet, even though all the spaceships lug around printed documents and photographs of the passengers who are mostly Earthlings, but also some Martians and Venusians. 

in the Ekcolir Reality

 Future Technology. Oh, and don't forget the Roglar and Marsonite. Roglar is an amazing substance mined on the Moon that makes it possible for modern spaceships to easily cruise between the planets using the power of Roglar engines. And Marsonite is mined on Mars and allows for the production of a super-strong alloy used in spaceship hulls.

Our hero, James Bond Sanders of the I. P. G., is on a vacation trip to Mars, but then two interplanetary spaceships report having been attacked. The plot thickens when Sanders hears rumors that a weird-looking passenger on his space-liner is from Mercury. The whole setting of the story feels like were are on an ocean liner and getting ready for the start of World War I. Even with artificial gravity and no ocean waves, the spaceship passengers get sea space-sick.

interior art by Frank R. Paul

 The Derelict. On the way to Mars, a drifting space-liner is encountered with its passengers all unconscious; they are in some type of suspended animation. Then Sanders gets a break: one passenger saw strange see-through creatures on the ship (see the image below).

the see-through vandals of the void... the folks from Mercury have cloaking technology

Jansca the Martian

 Its a Small Solar System After All. The E22 (the Space Guard ship on which Sanders normally serves) shows up, but Sanders stays on the civilian spaceship and continues his "vacation". Soon he is sucking the blood of Jansca the Martian and has been initiated into Martian Society. This all goes down easy for Sanders because he has decided that Jansca is the most beautiful woman he's ever seen. Sanders starts making emergency plans to marry Jansca then their space-liner comes under attack.

Making use of a Martian chemical and the Super-Cool™ Ray-gun that Sanders has, Jansca and Sanders remain conscious during the vandal attack and drive off the vandal spaceship. Arriving on Mars, Jansca and Sanders are soon "mated", but since this is the 1930, we poor readers get no details about Martian mating rituals. 😞 Eventually, the Evil™ invaders from Mercury are driven off. Whew! Maybe the Mercurians are driven to Evil™ because they are too hot.

them's fightin' words...

 Poor Pallas. "The Struggle for Pallas" is mercifully short. Earth has lost contact with its colony on Pallas and Sanders must go investigate. The E22 lands on the "grassy upland" of the asteroid.

the great frontier in 2050

The Cohorts of the Damned. The crew of E22 open the spaceship ports and step out onto the surface of Pallas. Since it is just past sunrise, it is a bit cool, but the air is fresh.

asteroids in fiction

Having been settled for a year, the power stations of Pallas should be keeping the asteroid warm and comfy, but Sanders investigates a power station and discovers that it is not functioning. However, as shown in Figure 1 (above, left), an alien is sitting in the control room of the power station.

in the Ekcolir Reality

 The Coming of the Things. It turns out that eggs have been hatching out all over Pallas and the alien hatchlings grew to full size in three months. The aliens (A.K.A. the "cohorts of the damned") are quickly exterminated by Sanders and the crew of spaceship E22. The End. Related Reading: "Vampires of the Desert".

"The Struggle for Pallas" reads like a story outline for a novel. I suppose Gernsback wanted to publish short stories, so rather than tell Walsh to go ahead and write a new novel based on the outline, Gernsback simply re-wrote and published the outline.

The End of Eternity

I'm glad I read these stories by Walsh, simply because they probably influenced Isaac Asimov. The two time travel stories described above ("The Derelict of Space" and "After 1,000,000 Years") both feature 1) the annoying genius inventor and 2) the amazing technological advance that is lost and never replicated, but I like to believe that there is progress in science fiction. With a young Isaac reading these silly stories, better things were on the way.

Related Reading: Hoyle's cosmic sunscreen and "The Large Ant"

Next: Edison's Endosymbiont Experiments

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