Progress

interior art by Ed Emshwiller
Mirune and the Savage
from "Escape Me Never"

I'm intrigued by progress in fiction. In the past, early stories depicted fantasy space travel by magic (Somnium, 1608), but nobody living in those pre-industrial times had any idea how it might be possible to actually move people from Earth to the Moon or to other planets. 

In the industrial age, new materials were engineered that allowed the construction of powerful chemical rockets. An electronics industry arose that allowed for the creation of rocket control and guidance systems. Eventually, some story tellers adopted the idea of space travel by means of rocketry. A good example of an early rocketry story is "The Satellite of Doom" by Drury D. Sharp (1931), which discusses how to use rockets to put a man-made satellite into Earth orbit. Finally, humans achieved actual space travel by means of chemical rockets and reached the Moon (1969). 

cover art by Frank R. Paul

Even after the beginning of the science fiction era in which space travel by rocketry was an available plot element, some story tellers continued to imagine space travel by other more exotic means such as teleportation. For example, I recently mentioned Philip Farmer's 1953 story "The Biological Revolt" which has inter-planetary teleportation as a plot element. In this blog post I'll discuss "The Fatal Equation", a short story by Arthur G. Stangland, published in 1933. "The Fatal Equation" was an early science fiction story that took an interesting approach to teleportation.

Life after death. Another example of progress in fiction concerns "bringing people back from the dead". There is a long history of speculation about how people might die and then be returned to life. Most fantasy reincarnation involves mind-body dualism and the idea that some part of a person is non-material and can continue to exist after a person's physical body dies. Does science fictional teleportation convert people to a non-material form and then return them to life?

editorial comments for "The Satellite of Doom"

"Giants from Eternity" (1939) by Manly Wade Wellman was an early science fiction story that depicted a non-magical means of bringing people back from the dead. I'll compare that older story to another imagined recovery of a dead life-form (presented in "Escape Me Never" by J. T. McIntosh), which was published in 1953, just as DNA was being recognized as the key genetic storage molecule in humans.  These days there are some on-going efforts aimed at recovery of extinct animals (example). Even with these on-going real world efforts to "bring back the dead", science fiction story tellers continue to imagine alternative methods for recovery of extinct animals such as making use of time travel.

interior art by Frank R. Paul

Brain in a box. Arthur G. Stangland's first published science fiction story was "The Ancient Brain" (1929). "The Ancient Brain" was a strange kind of life-after-death story. William Golend was electrocuted, but his brain lived on for 10,000 years inside a platinum box. Scientists of the future spent centuries studying William's brain.

Brain Transplantation. Finally, surgeons in the year 12,000 placed William's brain into the body of a young chemist who while working with a newly-isolated element had inadvertently turned his own brain into a "gelid gelose". Suddenly, after a 10,000-year-long vacation, William regains consciousness and begins his new life in the future.

1950 cover art by
Edward Cartier

 Progress. In 1937, Otis Kline published "The Iron World", another story about a long-lived human brain. Kline must have felt that a 10,000-year-old brain was simply too crazy for readers to accept, so he set a limit of 1,000 years for keeping human brains healthy and functional inside glass skull cases.

Immortal Brains. Published in 1939, "Cosmic Engineers" by Clifford D. Simak depicted Caroline Martin's brain as magically being active and thinking for 1,000 years while the rest of her body was in some kind of suspended animation.

Equations. I've long imagined that a way to get published in old science fiction magazines such as Astounding was to include an equation in your story. Sometimes it is useful to include some equations in a science fiction story if your story is about a technical problem (examples: "The Synpaz of Seelie" and Time Portal).

interior art for "The Living Equation"

 Magical Equations. A good example of the magical power of equations is found in "The Dangerous Dimension" by Lafayette (Ron) Hubbard (1938). Simply by thinking about the correct equation, teleportation became possible! I prefer to view mathematics as a useful tool for helping people understand the world, but there has long been an alternative view suggesting that reality is at some fundamental level a mathematical construct. As an example of a science fiction story that pushed this view to an extreme, I'll point to "The Living Equation" by Nat Schachner which was published in September 1934 issue of Astounding Stories.

"The Living Equation" featured a mathematician named Hugh Wilmot who plays the role of the SuperGenius™ inventor working in his attic who invents an invention that can alter the entire structure of the universe. 

Wilmot's theory of a mathematical universe

Mystery of Thought. "The Living Equation" story is rather like The Time Machine in that it devotes much effort to elaborating a crazy hand-waving pseudo-science argument aimed at justifying the story's fantasy plot. Schachner's ode to "Eternal mathematical thought" seems to be a cousin to the classic science fiction plot element of depicting space travel at the speed of thought.

"The Living Equation" has similarities to John Campbell's 1932 story "The Last Evolution". In Campbell's story, intelligent robots of the far future have "absolute knowledge of all mathematics" and so they can calculate/simulate "all the Universe", and as imagined by Campbell, these robots become "eternal and omniscient". Schachner goes to the next level and imagines that the crafty Wilmot has spent seven years building a "thinking machine" that is omnipotent because it can alter and re-write the fundamental mathematical structure of the universe.

Sadly, writing in 1932, Schachner, had no idea how to make a "thinking machine" so he simply fantasized about slapping together a bunch of "steel parts and photo-electric cells" that would magically be able to identify and print out amazing new equations. And not satisfied to stop there, Schachner imagined those amazing equations taking on a life of their own and causing the physical laws of the universe to be changed. Under the control of the new equations, all kinds of strange events occur such as an ocean liner floating out of the ocean and drifting off into space, becoming a new asteroid.

"The Living Equation" also reminds me of one of Asimov's most famous stories, "The Last Question" (1956). In 1954 there was another story called "The Last Question" by John Todd. Todd's story is amusing in that he imagined two computers (Big Brain and Little Brain) that could talk to each-other. 

Integraph; interior art for "The Fatal Equation".

The Little Brain was just clever enough to come up with questions unimaginable to humans and the Big Brain was able to answer each of these questions in just a few minutes, at most. Eventually, the Big Brain is thinking such astounding concepts that it warps space-time and the Big Brain vanishes into some alternative dimension. Asimov ran with this style of story and took it to the extreme of saying that his all-powerful computer of the far future could simply create a whole new universe by uttering the magic words "let there be light".

Teleportation? Are stories such as "The Fatal Equation" and John Todd's "The Last Question" actually about teleportation? In both stories, there is a SuperDuper™ computer. In "The Last Question", Big Brain de-materializes and suddenly exits from our universe. 

Teleportation

In "The Fatal Equation", the computer (called an "electric integraph") is something of a distraction, but it is the tool used by a mathematician to work out a fantastic set of equations. Another scientist takes that set of equations as a starting place and builds a teleportation device; a portal to "another dimension". A third mathematician, MacMillan, steps into the teleporter device and disappears. 

In some sense, during teleportation, the transported person is sent into an alternate "reality" where they exist as a kind of mathematical code. 

returned from the teleporter buffer

Both Stangland and Todd might have denied that their story was about teleportation, but in neither case are readers of the story shown the mysterious destination of either the disappearing Big Brain or the disappearing mathematician, MacMillan. 

A teleportation system with a good memory system could "store" the "pattern" of a person who would then, perhaps much later, be re-materialized and come out of "suspended animation". This was used as a plot element in Star Trek.

Giants From Eternity. An alien life-form falls to Earth and begins to relentlessly kill and consume everything around it. Who can stop the red blight? All of Kansas is consumed by the alien blight! Yawn. The only reason I mention this very pulpish story is because defeating the alien invader only becomes possible when several great scientists from the past are brought back to life.

interior art for "Giants from Eternity"

Life Force. However, Earth is in luck, because soon on the scene are two scientists: DuPogue and Norfleet. Assisted by Caris Bridge of the Board of Science, they soon discover that the alien invader is not all bad. Norfleet pulls on rubber boots and walks to the center of the devastation where he finds a strange and mysterious "meteor". He obtains a small sample of that "meteor" and quickly discovers that it can restore dead protozoa to life.

Pink Gas of Life. The crack research team team of Bridge, DuPogue and Norfleet quickly discovers that people can also be brought back from the dead. Readers are told that living organisms have a "life pattern" that can be reconstituted by the mysterious alien "meteor". All you need is a small part of the dead person and a supply of assorted atoms as raw material and "the pink gas of life" can then cause a whole new person to be constructed, complete with all of their former memories!

from "Giants From Eternity"

 Shezam. Wellman's story reminds me of "Liquid Life". In that 1936 story, after a cat is absorbed by the alien liquid life-form, the "liquid life" soon "evolves" into a super-intelligent being.

For "Giants From Eternity", DuPogue gets absorbed into the alien life-form and is soon working to convert all of Earth to the alien way of life. Fighting valiantly against Dupogue and the blight are Bridge,  Norfleet and a team of resurrected scientists that includes Louis Pasteur, Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Marie Curie and Charles Darwin. I have to wonder to what extent Philip Farmer might have been influenced by "Giants From Eternity".

the dead scientists club

Eventually, Edison builds a rocket ship powered by an atomic engine and the red alien menace is defeated by means of a neutronium generator. Earth is saved and Norfleet and Caris Bridge live happily ever after. However, the re-animated scientists Pasteur, Newton, Edison, Curie and Darwin all soon dissolve back into a gas of their constituent atoms. 😞

Escape. For "Escape Me Never", an ancient human from the 20th century (called "the Savage") is resurrected from "a few dead fragments" using the advanced science that is available to the homo superior of our far future. However, after that success, the scientists of the future decide not to resurrect a female from the past.

bone memory

 Wings. The Savage is displayed in a cage, like a zoo animal. One day, a cute girl (Mirune) observes the Savage and he decides to break out of his cage and go visit Mirune and ask her to help him escape from his dreary life as a zoo specimen.

interior art by Ed Emshwiller

Sadly, James MacGregor was not really interested in trying to provide a fantasy science explanation for how to bring back to life a human from ancient times. Here in 2022, we can imagine that maybe some cells were stored in liquid nitrogen for thousands of years and then some sort of advanced cloning technology allowed the Savage to be brought to life. 

For "Escape Me Never", it is eventually revealed that efforts are underway to try to fully integrate the Savage into the society of the future. Each time he escapes from the zoo he makes some more progress in adapting to the society of the future. But if something goes wrong, such as the Savage attacking someone, then his memories are erased by the Psychiatric Bureau and he starts over, back at the zoo.

Jurassic Park

 The transformation of Magical Fantasy into Fictional Science. The strangest part of "Escape Me Never" is that it was written with no mention of the Savage going through childhood. He seems to have appeared in the future as an adult, exactly as depicted for the resurrected scientists in "Giants from Eternity". The only difference is that the Savage is not returned to life with his memories intact. He has to read books from the far past in order to try to learn about the long-lost 20th century.

resurrected dinosaur

Eventually, scientifically-trained science fiction story tellers such as John Crichton wrote stories about using advanced genetics technologies to bring extinct animals back to life.

in the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by Ed Valigursky

70 Years without Wings. I can't conclude this journey into the olden days of science fiction story telling without commenting on the fashion innovation that was included in the story "Escape Me Never". I recently blogged about "The Lovers", a story published in 1952, that has been credited with having helped bring down some of the barriers that had long been restricting sexual topics from being included in science fiction stories. James MacGregor depicted his futuristic character Mirune as often wearing "wings", clothing that covered her arms and shoulders but not her breasts. Sadly, this fashion innovation is still awaiting us in the future.

Next: The Prisoner of L2, a new science fiction story about inventing teleportation technology

An early teleportation story, “The World Without Name” (Wonder Stories, March 1931).