Flaming Atom |
Backstory. Graham was in a plane crash which damaged his feet, apparently leading to infections, amputations and permanent damage to his heart. According to the SFE, Cloukey died of typhoid fever in 1931, just before the modern age of antibiotics.
interior art by Leo Morey |
Evil Elmer. There in the image to the left are Graham, Flaming Atom, Hermann von der Konz (known as "Von", Graham's friend and the narrator of the story) and Elmer Calvroom, who stands to inherit the Secret of Life if Graham dies.
Too Complex to Kill. Elmer is an inventor who tries to kill Graham using an evil sound-generating device (ESGD™) that will synchronize with Graham's weak heart and drive it to destruction. However, Elmer's complex plot to kill Graham and make it look like natural heart failure is foiled by the fact that Graham was born with an unusual sense of hearing. He's unable to hear the low-frequency tones produced by Elmer's ESGD and so he sleeps through the attempted murder and then awakens suddenly, pops Elmer on the chin and calls the police.technology in 2000: electric plane interior art by Leo Morey |
It looks like Cloukey's story had to be split into two parts, the second of which was called "Synthetic". Set about one year after the events in "Rhythm", Graham, Flaming Atom and Von der Konz are relaxing at the "palatial" Greene family beach house near Atlantic City when Graham casually mentions that the Evil™ Elmer recently broke out of prison. Flaming Atom, a test pilot, rushes off to prepare for an upcoming airplane speed competition.
Building on his father's work, Graham's crack scientific team has synthesized some rabbit cells from atomic constituents and grown those cells into an adult bunny. Graham shares with Von some startling findings from the biology research lab... Firstly, the bunny grew to adult size in just three hours. Second, Thornton apparently used a Super-Duper™ microscope to determine, atom by atom, the genomes of both a rabbit and a human 🔬. So far, only a rabbit 🐇 has been made in the lab, but experiments with synthetic human cells have begun.
"Paradox" interior art by Walitt |
In the middle of that discussion, word arrives that Flaming Atom was in a plane crash and is now blind. Graham asks Von to go collect his fiance, but on the way to her crash site, Von is attacked by a mysterious electric plane ❊ equipped with a heat ray weapon. Von learns that it was that heat ray that blinded Flaming Atom. Evil™ Elmer sends along a note, admitting that it was he who blinded Flaming Atom and he demands that Graham turn over the Secret of Life or be killed.
Synthetic Life. Three weeks later, Flaming Atom has a pair of new eyes and Graham has two new feet. Also, the first synthetic man (he's given the name Bob Nelson) is already fully grown and has been educated using "hypnotic machines" (he speaks not only English but also French).
Figure 1. A city in the year 2930; interior art for "Paradox" by Walitt |
Apparently, Cloukey was a young science student when he died and I have to wonder how his science fiction writing might have progressed had he lived a long life. I also wonder if Isaac Asimov was influenced by any of Cloukey's stories. Cloukey published another series of stories about time travel to a future era when the people of Earth are at war with Evil™ Martians.
Back from the Future. The story begins inside an "exclusive" Philadelphia club with Sherman and Preston discussing the paradoxes of time travel stories such as Wells' The Time Machine. Raymond Cannes then casually tells Sherman and Preston that time travel will be invented in the year 2806 and that he has just returned from a visit to the future. Raymond's trip to the future was made possible by the mysterious appearance of detailed instructions for how to make a time machine. Sadly, after Dr. Hawkinson builds the time machine and uses it to send Cannes into the future, Hawkinson is killed in a laboratory accident 🔥.
Time Loop. Upon arriving in New York of the year 2930, Cannes is quickly sent off to Australia by automated airline delivery. In Australia, Cannes meets Dwar Bonn, the greatest scientist of that age, who has just built the first time machine capable of time travel into the past. Cannes uses the portable time travel device to deliver the instructions for building a time machine to Dr. Hawkinson in 1928 and then he returns to the year 2930, completing a time loop.
80,000 ton airplane of the future |
The Thrilling Conclusion. Of course, Cannes falls hopelessly in love with Dwar Bonn's cute daughter, Greta. However, Cannes bungles his chance for romance by impulsively trying to kiss Miss Greta. 💔 Then an Evil™ Martian spy appears and tries to steal Dwar Bonn's time travel machine. Cannes captures the Evil™ Martian who has murdered Dwar Bonn. However, the Martian's are on the verge of killing everyone on Earth, so Cannes returns to 1928, only to die in an accident.
hopeless; interior art for "Paradox" (1929) |
All is lost. Nothing remains of the time machine because upon returning to 1928, there was a slight miscalculation. Cannes fell out of the sky over Philadelphia, smashing the time machine. Cannes threw the broken device into the Delaware river.
All is not lost. However, apparently readers of "Paradox" asked for a sequel story and so Cloukey could not let matters rest there... eventually two sequel stories were published, continuing this time travel adventure.
Editorial blurb for "Paradox +"; July 1930 |
interior art by Frank R. Paul |
Paradox Plus. There were actually two time travel machines in "Paradox". The "fancy" one from the future was destroyed, but at the start of "Paradox +" readers are told that the original primitive time travel machine that was built by Dr. Hawkinson was not destroyed when the good doctor's lab burned down.
1929. For the sequel, two friends (Preston and Sherman) at the Philadelphia gentlemen's club, who heard Cannes' story about the future, now use the time machine to go off to the future on an adventure of their own, returning to the day that Dwar Bonn was killed by the Evil™ Martian spy. They meet up with a co-worker of Dwar Bonn (Vanon) and arrive at just the right moment to rescue Greta. As shown in the image to the right, Greta and the other passengers all jump out of their airplane just before it is destroyed by the Evil™ Martians.
interior art by P. Muller for "Anachronism" (1930) |
And lucky for Earth, there are now artificial islands in the Pacific Ocean where robots grow wheat. The wreckage of the airplane lands on a wheat island and Vanon finds a sample of un-exploded neonoglycerine. Additional Martian spaceships are arriving with more neonoglycerine and the Evil™ Martians are also ready to release a deadly bacterium into Earth's atmosphere. Lucky for Earth, the physics lab of Dwar Bonn is still open for business and his scientists soon build a Ray Projector that can detonate neonoglycerine. If you are wondering about the state of Earthly rocket science in the year 2930... see Figure 2, below.
Figure 2. A "brief" explanation; edited for brevity |
the invisible Martian spy |
The war against Mars grinds to an end. The Martian germ warfare agent was found in the vault at the South Pole before it could be released into Earth's atmosphere. A powerful radio wave projector was used by Earth to detonate vast amounts of neonoglycerine on Mars, disrupting Martian civilization and ending the war. After Greta marries Vanon, Sherman decides that he wants to return to 1929. Working from Dwar Bonn's notes, Ben Yun obligingly builds a time machine and sends Sherman back to 1929.
in the Ekcolir Reality |
And Teleportation, too. And now, in revenge for the defeat of the 2930 Martian Invasion force, the sneaky Martian spy begins to terrorize Philadelphia by killing Earthlings. He uses a devious teleportation device from the future that materializes lumps of iron inside people's brains.
in the Ekcolir Reality |
How can Earthlings with primitive 20th century technology defend themselves against this Evil™ Martian from the future? Before his own death, Sherman called into the case the brilliant scientist, Bradley Bowman Blake. By noticing that the locations of all the victims in Philadelphia define an ellipse, the brilliant Blake deduces the locations of the two beam projectors.
Damsel in Distress. After locating the teleportation equipment, what remains in the story for Cloukey to relate is the inevitable demise of the Evil™ Martian who is holding Mary Sherman as his prisoner and threatening to blind her with concentrated acid. However, the clumsy Martian spills acid on his hand and then drops dead from a heart attack.
interior art for "Sub-Satellite" |
The Right Stuff. Dr. Javis hired a young dare-devil and stunt-flier (Mr. Brown) to pilot the rocket to the Moon. During its flight to the Moon, the rocket was protected by a computerized radar system (built by Clankey) that allowed the rocket to detect and avoid meteors.
Cloukey did not give any dates in "Sub-Satellite", but in the follow-on story "Super-Radio" we are told that sometime after the year 2072, Clankey had invented a Super-Radio, a kind of teleportation device.
cover art for "Super-Radio" by Frank R. Paul |
A Super-Radio device was used to send the diamonds out from their vault, evading conventional means of detection. Suspecting that this crime was perpetrated by his arch-enemy known only by the initials M.W., Harris quickly determines the direction that the Super-Radio was pointed. Now hot on the trail of the Evil™ criminal mastermind known as M.W., investigator Harris is flown by Mr. Brown out into the Atlantic Ocean where they quickly find the artificial island of M.W. where Clankey is being held. The Evil™ M.W. is preparing to perform brain surgery that will erase Clankey's memories when Harris and Brown arrive on the island. Clankey is soon liberated from M.W.'s evil clutches and awakened.
Interior art for "Super-Radio". |
Happy Ending. Mr. Brown requests that surgeons operate on the brain of Margaret Walters so as to remove her criminal tendencies. As Margaret recovers from the operation, readers are led to believe that she is no longer criminally insane and might now be capable of returning Mr. Brown's affections. 💕
Cover art for "In the Spacesphere". |
Back in the 1970s when I read all of the Lensman novels by Edward Elmer Smith, I was not impressed by the way he depicted trafficking in the illegal drug "thionite". The plant that made thionite grew on only one planet of the galaxy. Similarly, I don't understand why Cloukey depicted the ruler of Mars as a drug trafficker. There is also a thread in the story about the Martian ruler's daughter which leads nowhere. The other female in the story is an undercover agent of the World Secret Service who is killed by the drug smugglers.
interior art by Frank R. Paul |
Invisibility. For "In the Spacesphere", Cloukey introduced bineon, a chemical substance created by Martian chemists of the future and used to create invisible structures such as that "shown" in the image to the right. A human arm mysteriously appears from inside an invisible cylinder and the Martian drug ring member is shot.
interior art for "Swordsman of Sarvon" |
in the Ekcolir Reality |
In the Ekcolir Reality. Catherine prevented Charles from writing stories about Martians and humans living on Venus. They collaborated on a series of science fiction stories about alien visitors to Earth from distant exoplanets and became major figures in the "UFO craze" of the mid-20th century in the Ekcolir Reality that led up to first contact with the alien Fru'wu.
In his stories, Cloukey fully adopted the strategy of having Evil™ Badguys who must be defeated by devilishly clever, scientifically-trained Goodguys. Also, Cloukey seemed completely devoted to the absurd idea that Mars and Venus are hospitable planets for human or humanoid life. When he started writing science fiction stories, Cloukey apparently had no clear idea how a rocket works and his infatuation with propeller-driven airplanes was profound. He imagined 80,000 ton propeller airliners that could stop in mid-air, turn their propellers and hover like a helicopter. Another astounding Cloukey idea for advanced futuristic technology was using a sphygmomanometer as a fool-proof lie-detector device.image source |
Last Words. I've previously blogged about Stanley Grauman Weinbaum and his science fiction. I also wrote a science fiction story (Let's Make a Genre) about how Stanley's analogue in an alternate Reality was used by Interventionists to provide Earthlings with information about the future. I'm tempted to include Cloukey in the science fiction story that I'm currently writing; "The Cythyrya Investigation". Maybe like Stanley, Cloukey was able to tap into the Sedron Time Stream...
Coming Soon: Part 4 of "The Cythyrya Investigation"
Next: Space 2019
visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers |
No comments:
Post a Comment