The Age of Scientification

Figure 1. cover art by Frank R. Paul

While recently searching for interesting female characters in early science fiction stories I read "The Menace of Mars" by Clare Winger Harris. When I was about ten years old, one of my friends told me the idea that atoms were like tiny star systems, so the Solar System must be an atom inside some gigantic uberworld. I told my friend that it was a stupid idea, but I did not know that the uberstory for this idea was published in 1928. Extending the analogy that stars are like atomic nuclei, Harris imagined that the universe goes through a phase change from gas to solid and then from solid to liquid. "The Menace from Mars" is told from perspective of a man, but it is a female college student (Vivian) who figures out that the galaxy has gone through a magical phase transition and in so doing, now all the stars have become very much closer to Earth.

in the Ekcolir Reality

What does all this have to do with Mars? Here, the analogy breaks down because while stars are like atomic nuclei that are closer to each-other in the galactic solid phase than the galactic liquid phase, planets are not really like electrons in fixed orbitals. No, when the stars all move closer to Earth, so does Mars. And now the menace from Mars is much closer and much more menacing. At the end of "The Menace from Mars" I still had no idea what the menace was, but it seemed like Harris was trying to suggest that the entire planet Mars was a living system.

And not only does Mars get very close to Earth, Earth is now closer to the Sun, so all of Earth except the poles becomes too hot for Earthlings. Antarctica is now the "new Eden". But the equatorial deserts of Earth are just perfect for invading red protoplasm from Mars.

radio-controlled mechanical man
and his galactic liquid phase

The cover art for the October 1928 issue of Amazing Stories (Figure 1, above right) depicts the mechanical man from "To The Moon by Proxy" by Joseph Schlossel. You might wonder why a mechanical man would be wrestling a lion. After reading the story you will still be wondering why a mechanical man would be wrestling a lion. Or lifting up a milk delivery truck (see the image to the right). 

Spilt Milk. Seeing these images, you might suspect that this mechanical man has gone out of control, but NO, we are told that man who built this robot (Emil Peters) is in complete control of its actions by means of radio control signals. I guess the lion wrestling and truck lifting is probably how NASA tests its space robots before a mission.

promotional blurb for "To The Moon by Proxy"

Hugo Gernsback was quick to suggest that fiction writers were in danger of falling behind real world engineering: just look at Televox. I suppose it was a necessary part of the life of a pulp magazine editor to be constantly trying to provoke the readership.

in the October 1928 issue of Amazing Stories

 Emil Peters has not only constructed the first robotic man, but he also builds a spaceship that carries the mechanical man to the Moon. In "To The Moon by Proxy" Schlossel made the argument that while human spaceship passengers might suffer from exposure to environmental conditions encountered during space explorations, a mechanical man would be able to survive tough conditions. Emil gets to watch by television while the robot explores the Moon. 

the underground

I've previously commented on the popularity of stories about underground civilizations hidden under the surface of Earth, thus I was not really surprised when Emil guides his robot into a vast underground cavern below the surface of the Moon. The robot meets alien creatures who use a giant raygun drop big stones on the poor robot's head, knocking it off line.  

Emil laments not having designed his space exploring robot with the expectation of having to deal forcefully with anti-social Lunarians. The End.

see the November 1929 Amazing Stories 

Also in the October 1928 issue of Amazing Stories was an essay by Leslie F. Stone. What prompted her to write a letter to the editor of Amazing Stories was having seen a previous letter from another woman; a rare occurrence. Stone was pleased to have seen "The Moon Pool" re-published in Amazing Stories. One of the big surprises for me in looking back at Amazing Stories and other early Sci Fi magazines is the vast amount of reader commentary about the pulp magazine covers. Leslie Stone felt that the glaring colors of the Amazing Stories covers were not needed and might actually make it less likely for new readers to buy the magazine.

image source

Vivian was a good female character in "The Menace from Mars", particularly since Harris depicted Vivian as an accomplished science student. Take a look at the graph shown to the left. It was not until the 1970s that the barriers limiting participation of women in the physical sciences finally started to crumble.

R. Nyrtia using the Qway body template.

For The Historical Archive, I imagine an important role for women in the invention of time travel technology. Technically, Nyrtia, Dodaqowż and Ursyña are not human women. Nyrtia has the physical form of a woman, but "she" is a positronic robot. Dodaqowż and Ursyña are both human variants, what I call Nyrturians. 

As told in The Historical Archive, Nyrturians must reproduce artificially since there are only Nyrturian females. R. Nahan crafted the Nyrturians as a human variant that can share thoughts by means of a form of technology-assisted telepathy. R. Nyrtia's positronic brain was crafted from the template of a Nyrturian named Qway. 

The Escapists

Talkative by Nihil-Novi-Sub-Sole
available under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

For 34,000 years R. Nahan had worked to discover how to travel back through time. His efforts were continually aided by the fact that the brains of positronic robots could receive information from the future. The first breakthrough in the engineering of time travel devices was the Twitino Synchronizer which he began using to send information back through time to himself. 

Nahan knew that when he became able to travel back in time to rescue R. Gohrlay, he would use a disguise: the physical form of one of the Escapist Clan members who Gohrlay had befriended just before her death (see the image to the left).

Ancestor Worship. When Nahan brought into existence the Nyrturians as a new human variant, Nahan established a system for technology-assisted back-Time transmission of information that could be used by the Nyrturians. 

Trans-temporal communication with Nyrturian ancestors

In order for this system to be maximally utilized, the Nyrturians developed a culture that promoted obsessive tracking and remembrance of ancestors. That system eventually led to a few Nyrturians becoming temporal foci, recipients of useful information from the future that allowed those individuals (such as Qway) to be particularly successful and important. In fact, once such success was achieved, Nahan had to then "remove" those key heroes of Nyrturian society from the historical record in order to prevent too much confusing information being sent back to them from future Nyrturians.

interior art by Edd Cartier

 Neanderthals. This blog post began with my search for interesting female characters in early science fiction stories. Since Miss Gohrlay was a Neanderthal, I'll mention the 1939 story "The Gnarly Man" by L. Sprague de Camp. The story starts with Dr. Matilda Saddler, an anthropologist who discovers a 50,000-year-old Neanderthal man working as a side-show attraction (billed as "Ungo-Bungo" the ape-man; his "real" name is "Clarence") at Coney Island. Sadly, after Matilda falls in love with Clarence she is elbowed out of the "plot" for this short story. Since this was 1939, readers could not be treated to a steamy sexual relationship between Matilda and Clarence, but we are told that one time a few hundred years in the past, Clarence did produce a brood of offspring in Ireland.

Goblin Reservation

Of course, you want to know how Clarence lived so long. All he can suggest is that it may have had something to do having been struck by lightening one day. I have no idea if "The Gnarly Man" influenced Jerome Bixby and stimulated his thinking about immortal humans who might pop up on Earth from time to time. 

In any case, it seems like someone should write a sequel to "The Gnarly Man" that updates the story to include modern technology such as genome sequencing. I like to think that Matilda (known to her academic colleagues as "the Wild Woman from Wichita") would have been able to track down Clarence at his new hiding place home near Kansas City. I'm imagining that Matilda was known as "the Wild Woman" because she was part Denisovan.

Related Reading: "The Fall of Mercury" and Alley Oop the Neanderthal in The Goblin Reservation.

Next: Part 5 of The Historical Archive.

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