Masters of the Machines

mountain top thought transmitter
interior art by Frank R. Paul

 In my previous blog post, I discussed several science fiction stories published by Mary Wright between 1929 and 1935 and tried to imagine how they might have influenced Isaac Asimov's writing. Wright's story "The Brain of the Planet" was published in 1929 and it begins with the dramatic scientific discovery (in the year 1935) that humans have telepathic abilities.

Masters of the Machines. After the discovery of telepathy, Harry Maxwell, a professor of psychology and an inventor, soon constructs a thought transmitter (see the image to the right) and deploys it against the Evil™ Masters of the Machines who "control the means of production and distribution". In analogy to a radio transmitter that broadcasts radio frequency light waves, Maxwell's thought transmitter broadcasts "thought vibrations" and it functions as a "central brain" for all the people of planet Earth, liberating them from the Evil™ "tentacles of materialism". 

Figure 0. Text from page 15 of "The Brain of the Planet".

 Technology-Assisted Telepathy. When the thought transmitter is first activated, thousands of the most extreme radicals and conservatives around the world quickly die because their minds are not compatible with the new regime of thought being imposed by Maxwell. Then Maxwell begins to gradually increase the intensity of his well-intentioned thoughts that are being mechanically broadcast to the people of the world (see Figure 0, above). 

the power of positive thinking

 Just Think! Sadly, readers of "The Brain of the Planet" were given little information about the mechanism of Maxwell's thought transmitter. Mary Wright simply wanted readers to accept that capitalism, superstition and nationalism would soon collapse... shazam! In 1906, William Walker Atkinson published Thought Vibration or the Law of Attraction in the Thought World. Atkinson proposed that thought is analogous to radio transmissions and that people can accomplish great things just by having positive thoughts and desires.

I suspect that Mary Wright was inspired by the "new thought" movement to imagine a mechanical "thought transmitter" that could put on display Atkinson's "new thought" beliefs inside a science fiction story.

Figure 1. text from page 19 of "The Brain of the Planet"

By 1970, under a world government, a Golden Age is achieved and Maxwell destroys the thought transmitter; it is no longer needed.

Gernsback thought detector

 Under the influence of Maxwell's "central brain", human civilization has been transformed, including a universal enjoyment of much leisure time and perfect health. Readers are also told that "relations between the sexes became perfect" (see Figure 1, above). "The Brain of the Planet" suggests that before telepathy was scientifically demonstrated to exist, it was already used by some people (positives) to control the behavior of others (negatives). Strangely, once the new Golden Age of Humanity is achieved, there is no more mention of telepathy in the story.

into the future

It is interesting to ponder the origins of Mary Wright's interest in telepathy and also Hugo Gernsback's willingness to publish "The Brain of the Planet". In Gernsback's novel Ralph 124C41+ (A Romance of the Year 2660), he included the idea of a "menograph", a device that could convert thoughts into a printed form of communication that could then be read by others. The device required electrodes placed on the temples to pick up a person's thoughts. Published in book form in 1924 and republished in Amazing Stories Quarterly, in 1929, it seems possible that Mary Wright was aware of Gernsback's novel about future times. 

E. E. "Doc" Smith published his novel Skylark Three in 1930 and his story also featured technology-assisted communication between brains. 

cover art by John Solie

Here is how Smith described the power of a futuristic education device that could transfer thoughts between the alien Orlon and the human crew of Skylark Three: "from his mind into theirs there flowed smoothly a mighty stream of comprehension". This was some form of technology-assisted telepathy which required the use of special headsets worn by the learners.

I conclude that by the late 1920s, science fiction fans and story tellers were probably quite comfortable with the idea of technology-assisted telepathy. Mary Wright also seemed to take seriously the idea that humans might have a form of telepathic communication that can function without the aid of any mechanical amplifying device.

image source

For some of his science fiction stories, Issac Asimov adopted the idea that some humans had a form of telepathic ability by which they could influence the behavior of others. Asimov published several stories (example) in which some people had the inherited ability to make others like them. In the last science fiction novel written by Asimov (Forward the Foundation) Wanda inherited her telepathic ability from her father and it was possible for her, and others like her, to form the Second Foundation and a new human society composed of skilled telepaths.

Why were so many science fiction story tellers so eager to invent stories about telepathy? The history of psychology as a science of the mind includes people such as William James who treated the possible existence of human telepaths as a worthy topic for scientific investigation. Among some psychologists, telepathy seemed more likely than the idea that people could obtain information from past lives by reincarnation or communication with the dead.

When I was about 12 years old, I broke my foot and my sister, who was about 150 miles away, felt that something bad had happened to me. Similarly, in 1893, Hans Berger fell off a horse and his sister had a bad feeling about her brother. 

Figure 2. image source

That experience provoked Berger to wonder if there had been telepathic communication between himself and his sister. Berger went on to become a psychiatrist and did research on electroencephalography and is now credited with having made the first successful recordings of electrical signals from a human brain. For some of his science fiction stories, Isaac Asimov suggested that it might be possible to achieve telepathy by means of having a brain that could pick up electrical signals coming from another person's brain.

Asimov did not stop at telepathic "mind reading" by humans; he also wrote stories about telepathic robots (see Daneel). Asimov also suggested that powerful telepaths could use their mental powers to "reach" into another persons brain and exert "mind control" (see the Mule).

I've previously mentioned "The Tissue Culture King" by Julian Huxley (1927). Some people have traced the idea of a "tin foil hat" (to protect against telepathic thought control, see Figure 2, above) back to Huxley's story. Sadly, most scientists can't imagine how the jumble of weak electrical signals emitted by a brain could allow for "mind reading".

What was the general academic environment in the late 1800s when the physician-scientist Berger seriously considered the possibility of telepathic communication between people? In 1884, William James became one of the founding members of the American Society for Psychical Research. It was not unusual for scientists to be interested in the possibility of some as-yet-undiscovered way to send telepathic signals between people. Even in the 1900s, Joseph Rhine became famous for his claims about telepathy. Sadly, we got the book Extrasensory Perception in 1934, not the proof of telepathy that Mary Write envisioned for 1935.

 Related Reading: "The Machine Stops"

Also: eloptic energy

Next: a telekinetic experiment

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Future Chemicals

Rip Van Winkle (source)

In my previous blog post I mentioned Randall Garrett's story "Blank?", in which the fictional chemical diazotimoline is used to shift minds through time. However, when Bethleman self-administers some diazotimoline, he is also quite drunk, so Dr. Kamiroff must wonder if the "mental time travel" experienced by Bethleman is due to the combined effects of ethanol and diazotimoline. 

The Chemistry of Time Travel. First published in 1800, "Peter Klaus" or "Peter the Goatherd" featured wine drinking and a 20-year-long sleep for Peter. This story was followed in 1819 by Washington Irving's "Rip Van Winkle". While squirrel hunting in the mountains, Rip finds an odd troop of men and samples their liquor. He falls asleep and wakes up 20 years later.

Fourth Dimension Powder. In the Winter 1930 issue of Science Wonder Quarterly was another story of chemically-induced time travel, "Into the 28th Century" by Lilith Lorraine, pen name for Mary Wright, a poet and author of several science fiction tales.

Dream Dimensions. Part of "The Acolytes" (1946), a poem by Mary Wright (source)

Gravity control; interior art by Frank R. Paul

 Alternatives. Not being a fan of Howard Lovecraft, I had to look up the meaning of Yuggoth. Ever since I read Jack Vance's novel Trullion, I've been intrigued by science fiction story tellers who include "dead stars" or "dark stars" in their fiction. Vance described Alastor Cluster as having 30,000 "live stars", but also dark stars and "planetary oddments of iron, slag and ice" which were available sites for the bases of space pirates. I love the idea of "dark matter" which might point towards the existence of non-baryonic, as-yet-undiscovered particles. Maybe most of the universe is made of hierions and sedrons. In any case, it is part of the science fiction lifestyle to always be looking for alternatives to conventional ideas and thought processes. However, I'm not sure that I can join Lilith Lorraine in her apparent enjoyment of an alternative fantasy world without our familiar stars.

Figure 0. In the 28th century: Anthony and Iris.

 "Into the 28th Century" begins in 1932 when the happiness of the protagonist, Anthony, depends on a "fourth dimension powder" that was developed by Professor Peter Holden, a chemist. Anthony gets caught in a strange kind of time loop. Mary lived in Corpus Christi and she made that city a part of her tale of the future. 

Motor-boat Time Machine. "Into the 28th Century" is told from the perspective of Anthony, who served in the Navy from 1928 - 1932 and then returned home to Corpus Christi. He buys a motor-boat and while out motoring he is suddenly sent into the future about 800 years. Arriving in the future, Anthony is told that he was accidentally plucked out of the past. 

Anthony is sent into the future; page 1 illustration for  "Into the 28th Century" by Frank R. Paul

 

Figure 1. Why nobody in the 28th century grows old.

 President Therius. Two people of the 28th century who Anthony soon meets are Therius and Iris. Therius explains that "thought-transmitters" were developed soon after the age of radio. Another story published by Mary Wright in 1929 was "The Brain of the Planet", which begins in 1935 when Harry Maxwell builds a "thought wave" transmission station and quickly transforms the world into a social and economic utopia (see the next blog post). 

the battleship returns to Corpus Christi, A.K.A. Nirvania

 The new materialism. Other future inventions included a disintegration ray, a re-integration ray and, Therius further explains, the "summit of human achievement was attained in the so-called 'creation of matter' through the materialization of thought". Therius casually notes that 28th century life is powered by thought-focusing crystals of the Orient which perfectly unify science with metaphysics. 

"The Worship of Mammon" (1909)
by Evelyn De Morgan

Therius looks like a young man, but he is the 95-year-old president of Nirvania University which uses a well-preserved 1980s battleship to give students a tour of the world. Science of the future eradicated all disease-casing germs and repaired all genetic defects, leaving only mental problems to plague Humanity. But even those problems were solved, as shown in Figure 1, above. 

At this point, Iris, a student of history, takes over the story, explaining to Anthony that by 1955 a Great Revolt had been completed by means of a Disintegration Ray that was used by the younger generation to kill everyone in the older generation who was a supporter of Mammon. Then, under the benevolent sway of Socialism, a sexual revolution was accomplished, liberating women. This was aided by the "new immortality", which freed women from the hardship of childbirth.

28th century history: the triumph of eugenics

 Race to the Future. Iris merrily mentions in passing that removal of genetic defects from the human population involved removing "undesirable racial strains by wholesale sterilization". It would be interesting to know how Mary Wright felt about eugenics in later life after seeing how it was implemented in Germany.

Figure 2. Anthony has the future vibration

 Space Age Vibe. Iris casually mentions in passing that Earth of the 28th century has recently "established communication with Mars and Venus". Anthony is infatuated with Iris, but he is worried that he might be too primitive for her futuristic refined tastes in men. 

Figure 3. Trouble in paradise.

Iris assures Anthony (see Figure 2) that the device which plucked him from the past and brought him into the 28th century used a "thought-net" that can only capture people already having the correct "thought vibration rate" that is suited for the future. Iris takes Anthony to one remnant of the past, the castle of the Mad Inventor (see Figure 3).

Fig. 4. The secret of Peter's Fourth Dimensional Powder!

 Vibrations of Thought. Inside the castle (see Figure 0, above), Anthony discovers the museum-like laboratory of Professor Peter Holden. 

Soon enough, Anthony opens a metal vial and takes a sniff of Holden's great chemical discovery, the Time Powder™. Then, POOF! "exactly 48 hours" after arriving in the 28th century, Anthony is returned to the past and he meets Holden. Professor Peter explains the secret of his great chemical discovery, the Fourth Dimensional Powder (see Figure 4, to the right).

interior art on page 1 of
"Into the 28th Century".

 Back to the Future. Peter will need three weeks to synthesize enough of the correctly formulated time travel chemical that is needed to send Anthony back to the waiting arms of Iris in the future. Anthony writes an account of the 28th century and gives it to his aunt (presumably she is Mary Wright), expecting her to get the story published, maybe in a science fiction magazine, if nothing else.

I have to wonder if a young Isaac Asimov read "Into the 28th Century" and if it influenced his later stories about the imaginary chemical "thiotimoline" that was able to "move" along the Time axis in an unusual way. As described in my previous blog post, Randall Garrett used diazotimoline in a 1957 story to "project" a man's mind 2 weeks into the future, which seems tame compared to "Into the 28th Century" where a mere whiff of the 4th Dimensional Powder moves Anthony hundreds of years through time.

Immortal Ameboid Alien. Interior art by Gould.

Mary Wright also published a story called "The Jovian Jest" in the May 1930 issue of Astounding Stories. In "The Jovian Jest", an ameboid alien arrives on Earth and explains that in most of the universe, life is quite different than Earthly life. Through his career, Asimov often explored the idea that the way life had developed on Earth might be unusual or unique. For example, in "What Is This Thing Called Love?", an asexual alien visits Earth and discovers that the complex organisms on Earth reproduce sexually, but the alien scientist is not able to convince his fellow aliens that sexual reproduction is possible.

editorial blurb for "Into the 28th Century"

 

in the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by Frank R. Paul

In the September 1983 issue of "Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine", Asimov had an essay called "Nowhere!" in which he stated his opinion that stories about both utopias and dystopias were boring. Mary Wright's "Into the 28th Century" (described above on this page) concerned a future utopia and the only drama in the story is the unanswered question: can Anthony get back to his beloved Iris in the future? To do so, Anthony needs the help of Professor Peter Holden, the inventor of the Fourth Dimensional Powder. While asking for this favor, Anthony diplomatically tells Peter, "...you'll send me back or I'll kill you!"

At the end of 1935, Mary Wright published "The Isle of Madness" in Wonder Stories. For this story, Wright depicted a kind of alternative Reality in which "Edson" was the last inventor of the early 20th century. His great invention was the thought-machine "whose vibrations played upon human minds and moulded them to the will of the Iron Masters".

visi-sonor | image source

Asimov once suggested that it might be possible to trace many of his story ideas to the stories of other writers that he read while growing up. Try to imagine a young Isaac Asimov who might have read about Mary Wright's "thought-machine" in 1935 and then later wrote his own stories about devices like the the visi-sonor.

Machine Men of Machine World. As told in "The Isle of Madness", some time after 1940, the world split into two cultural divisions. Most of Earthly civilization was dominated by those with their Higher Brain disconnected from their Lower Brain by the "thought-machine". These people behaved like machines and lived as "machine men" within the "machine world". The remaining free-thinkers of Earth were all exiled to an island, where after 10 generations, Ulthor (he frequently hears a voice in his head) leads the Party of Expansion. 

Figure 5. Mary Wright on "feminine intuition"

When the Expansionists finally leave their island, they find that the civilization of the Machine World has collapsed. I've long been puzzled by the many Asimov stories that feature characters who have mysterious powers of intuition, even without hearing mysterious voices.

in the Ekcolir Reality

 Oriental Drugs. Figure 5 shows a sentence from "The Isle of Madness" which may have influenced Asimov's thinking about intuition. I have not been able to find out very much about Mary Wright's education. It would be interesting to know if she studied any science subjects such as chemistry. What were her sources of information about "Oriental drugs" (see Figure 4, above)? 

I have no idea if Wright ever read "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" however, this article describes the influence of Edgar Allan Poe on the science fiction genre and on other writers such as Howard Lovecraft. "A Tale of the Ragged Mountains" implies a morphine-fueled time travel trip experienced by Augustus Bedloe (or maybe Bedlo) during which he goes from 1827 to 1780.

Related Reading: time crystals

Next: the thought wave transmitter

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Blank Time

3 blanks

As described in my previous blog post, I've been reading old time travel stories by Isaac Asimov. This exercise in summertime reading (it is 103 ℉ here) is motivated by my high regard for Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity.

In the June 1957 issue of Infinity Science Fiction, there were three short stories called "Blank!", "Blank?" and "Blank". "Blank!" is a time travel story by Asimov. For The End of Eternity, Asimov had imagined an elevator-like time travel machine with "stops" at each century through Time. What might happen if such a time travel machine got stuck between "floors"?

interior art for "Blank!"
it takes 2 to time travel

In "Blank!", August Pointdexter is nervous about time travel. For The End of Eternity, Asimov had created a quirky character named August Sennor who suggested that all human efforts directed towards space travel are useless, a waste of effort and a distraction from more important Earthly affairs. Sennor also argues that time travel paradoxes can't happen.

Pointdexter's problem. Pointdexter's problem is that Dr. Barron needs a helping hand piloting his time travel machine into the future. Oh, sure, the two men have already sent test animals backwards and forwards in Time, but Pointdexter can't escape the uneasy feeling that something might go wrong. He worries that while traveling through Time, he and Dr. Barron might become stranded and unable to return to their proper place in Time.

interior art for "Blank?"

 Trapped! In The End of Eternity, there is a scene in which the main character (Harlan) is traveling between the centuries of the far upwhen, but suddenly, he crashes into a temporal barrier and is unable to move further into the future, past the 100,000th century. Similarly, in "Blank!", Pointdexter and Barron get only about one day into the future when their time machine goes off the rails and comes to a dead stop. Due to some unexplained problem with their time travel machine, they have fallen out of the flow of Time and are now in some alternative domain of the universe that appears to be a complete blank. 

What's going on? Dr. Barron carefully explains that according to his expert mathematical analysis, the flow of Time is invariant. Nothing that a time traveler does can ever alter the course of history. Dr. Barron is certain that there can be no temporal paradoxes arising from time travel. I think readers are supposed to assume that the universe always finds a way to "protect itself" and prevent time travel paradoxes. In the case of Pointdexter and Barron traveling through time, before they can start altering the timeline, their time machine "malfunctions" and they are trapped in a "blank" compartment of the universe where they can do no harm to the historical timeline.

Figure 1. one paragraph from "Blank?"

 Project Project. According to this source, Randall Garrett studied chemical engineering while in college. He apparently grew up reading science fiction and at the age of 16, he published a short "probability zero" story in Astounding. Isaac Asimov published a series of short stories about the fictional substance "thiotimoline", including his 1953 "The Micropsychiatric Applications of Thiotimoline". In Randall Garrett's story "Blank?", the fictional chemical diazotimoline is used to "project" Bethleman's mind into the future (see Figure 1).

time travel by concussion

 Mental Time Travel. Bethleman is a New York City newspaper reporter who remembers having gone to Boston to conduct an interview with a biologist, Dr. Elijah Kamiroff at Boston University School of Medicine. However, at the start of "Blank?", Bethleman's recent memory is "blanked out" and he can't remember anything from the past two weeks. Bethleman investigates the past two weeks of his life and discovers that during that time period he made $50,000 dollars gambling and trading stocks. 

Figure 2. perfect symmetry

For two more weeks, Bethleman's consciousness stays in N.Y.C. and he is the recipient of mysterious messages that contain tips for additional ways to increase his wealth.

Figure 3. Mind-body dualism.

  After those two weeks in N.Y.C, Bethleman's mind shifts again, "automatically" returning his conscious self to Boston, and the day after having interviewed Kamiroff. In "Blank?", mention is made of someone named "Dunne" (see Figure 3, to the left) who has proposed a theory of the mind featuring the idea that minds "just follow the body". I suspect that Garrett was referring to John William Dunne and his book An Experiment with Time.

From Garrett's 3 page ode to R. Daneel and Elijah Baley.

In the March 1956 issue of Science Fiction Stories, was a poetic parody of Asimov's 1953 novel The Caves of Steel. The parody composed and published by Garrett as part of a series of such things.

image source

 Garrett wrote and published one other item of time travel fiction that I know of, "On the Martian Problem" (1977). In that story, Garrett "explained" the "fact" that the wise savants of Helium were able to learn how to travel between Earth and Mars simply by wishing to do so. During such a "wish trip", a person moves faster than the speed of light and also travels in Time approximately 50,000 years. When going from Earth to Mars, you go backwards 50,000 years, but when going from Mars to Earth, you go 50,000 years into the future. Thus, the Mars of Dejah Thoris and John Carter was 50,000 years in the past. 40,000 years ago an asteroid struck Mars, obliterating Martian civilization.

In that same issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine was a story called "The Missing Item" by Isaac Asimov. Asimov's story concerns a cult of Tri-Luciferians who believe in "astral projection" across interplanetary distances. According to the cult, Mars is the Tri-Luciferian planet because it has three "morning stars", Earth, Venus and Mercury. The leader of the cult claims to have visited Mars and seen Earth in the night sky of Mars.

Moon and Earth. image source

"The Missing Item" is terribly long-winded and rambling, but eventually the Tri-Lucifer cult is debunked. The cult leader failed to mention the fact that Earth's Moon would be visible from Mars. This is taken as proof that the cult leader never visited Mars by astral projection. In passing, Asimov mentioned "Bridey Murphy" and the idea of reincarnation as an example of another weird idea comparable to astral projection.

interior art for "Blank"

 Blank. The third story on the theme of "blank" that got published in the June 1957 issue of Infinity Science Fiction was by Harlan Ellison. Ellison was a science fiction fan in the early 1950s, about the same time the Garrett began publishing regularly. Ellison did not really try to become a full-time writer until 1955.

Figure 4. Into inverspace!

 Inverspace. Rike Amadeus Akisimov has just been sentenced to a life term to be served at the Io penal colony. He escapes from police custody, evades the telepathic psycops, kidnaps a psioid Driver and steals an invership from the spaceport. 

psioid Driver

The psioid Driver has the ability to put spacecraft into inverspace for interstellar travel (see Figure 4, above), but ships of SpaceCom are in hot pursuit as the hijacked spaceship approaches the "snap point" for entry into inverspace.

Time Loop. The Driver sends Akisimov into a kind of time loop, a "moebius whirl", that will endlessly make him keep blanking out of the material universe and slipping into inverspace.

in the Ekcolir Reality
original cover by Frank Kelly Freas

In 1957, Ellison published another time travel story called “Soldier from Tomorrow”. A soldier from the future named Qarlo is sent into the past by a powerful explosion on a battlefield. After hearing Qarlo's stories about the terrible wars of the future, all the nations of Earth pass new laws designed to make it impossible for wars to be fought in the future. However, nobody is sure if the future can actually be changed.

Future Wars Trilogy. Maybe in an alternate Reality, the analogues of Asimov, Garrett and Ellison were asked to each write a time travel story about a war of the future. I imagine that Asimov might have written something like "The Machine That Won the War".

in the Ekcolir Reality

In the March 1960 issue of Analog Science Fact & Fiction, Garrett published a story called "In Case of Fire". A future interstellar war is grinding to a halt and a rag-tag band of diplomats must negotiate with the alien Karna.

Karna Time Loop. I like to imagine that in the Ekcolir Reality there were many important roles for female characters in science fiction stories. Maybe after the events described in "In Case of Fire", Miss Drayson got a promotion and became a field agent for the Diplomatic Corps. After the next Human-Karna war, agent Drayson was given the assignment of trying to find a way to achieve a permanent peace with the alien Karna.

Related Reading: "Psioid Charley" (1956)

Next: more future chemicals

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Time to Button Down

in the Ekcolir Reality
original cover by Gerard Quinn

Along with stories about telepathy and teleportation, I find it difficult to resist a science fiction story that includes time travel in its plot. I've long been a fan of Isaac Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity (1955), but I recently read several of his short stories that were published shortly before the novel, including "Button, Button" (1953) and "The Immortal Bard" (1954).

"The Immortal Bard" is very short and I probably first read it in Earth Is Room Enough back in the 1970s. Now I finally read it as it first appeared in Universe Science Fiction with an illustration by Lawrence Stevens (see the image below).

Dr. Welch has a time travel machine.
internal art by Lawrence Stevens

I like to imagine that in an alternate Reality, the science fiction genre developed slightly differently. In the Ekcolir Reality, many of the early science fiction story writers were women and even Asimov included more female characters in his stories. 

The alternate New England in the Ekcolir Reality

 Joke Story. "The Immortal Bard" is a kind of joke story. In our Reality, Asimov imagined poor William Shakespeare being brought into the future and failing an English course that was all about his own writing. 

In the Ekcolir Reality, Anne Hathaway was also a time traveler and her brief presence in the 20th century along with her husband led to an unexpected alteration to the course of history in England and the New World.

Ham the Astrochimp

In that same issue of Universe Science Fiction was "Testing, Testing" by Otto Binder. Yes, it was the 1950s, when UFOs were falling from the skies with regularity. A spaceship from Mars falls into the backyard of Major Mack at Space Medicine Labs where the poor suffering Major has girl problems: Dr. Alice. 

Dr. Alice is studying the effects of cosmic rays on experimental animals who have been sent up into outer space... and also studying the behavior of the Major. Major Mack is in love with Dr. Alice and her cute freckles, but she won't even explain why she has not fallen for the Major and resists his persistent amorous advances. Through shrewd psychological analysis, Alice discovers that the crew members of the Martian spaceship are chimp-like experimental test subjects, sent on the first dangerous spaceship ride from Mars to Earth.

in the Ekcolir Reality
original cover by Alex Schomburg

 Another Otto. In "Button, Button", Asimov again imagines a university professor who invents a time travel machine. Dr. Otto Schlemmelmayer works alone in his lab and he is only interested in time travel if it will provide a source of ca$h to fund construction of the flute factory that he longs to build. However, his time machine has serious limitations.

In some sense, Asimov's first love was history. In "The Immortal Bard", Dr. Welch uses his time machine to bring famous people from the past into the present, including Archimedes, Newton and Galileo. However, poor Otto's time machine can only bring about one gram of material into the present from the past. As part of his money-making $cheme, Otto decides to bring out of the past the prized signature of the provisional president of Georgia, Button Gwinnett.

Otto Schlemmelmayer's Viewer

Sadly, Otto's dream of the flute factory is dashed when his irreplaceable time machine is turned into melted circuitry after it is used to bring a fragment of the Declaration of Independence out of the past and into the present. The fragment of paper really has Button Gwinnett's original $ignature on it, but the shrewd experts of the $ignature marketplace think it is fake because the paper is not 200 years old.

Contrived. As shown in the image to the left, Otto's time machine can view documents in the past and then he can select a specific one gram piece of the document to bring into the future. It is rather amazing how hard Asimov worked to assemble this silly and contrived plot.

interior art for Three-Legged Joe by Peter Poulton

In the same issue of Startling Stories that held "Button, Button" was a story by Jack Vance. Three-Legged Joe is an alien who makes it difficult to mine valuable mineral resources from the planet Odfars.

Recent graduates of Highland Technical Institute, Milke and Paskell set off for Odfars. They are able to stun the meddlesome Three-Legged Joe with a jolt of electricity. Similarly, in "Hard Luck Diggings" (1948), Magnus Ridolph was able to use an electric shock to protect himself from other Evil™ aliens. After a series of silly short stories about mines on exoplanets, eventually Vance was able to write an amusing novel about mining on a planet; see The Face.

interior art for "Time's Arrow"

 Dinosaur Time. I also read "Time's Arrow" (1950) by Arthur C. Clarke which was published several months before Asimov's "Day of the Hunters". For "Day of the Hunters", Asimov imagined a professor who used his time machine to investigate the demise of the dinosaurs. He finds that there was an intelligent species of lizard that developed advanced technology and exterminated all the dinosaurs. "Time's Arrow"  is tedious and involves the use of time travel to investigate the dinosaurs, but the investigation goes bad when a dinosaur eats the investigators. 

Harry catches a scene-shifter (source)

I've previously blogged about "A Statue for Father", another time travel story in which some dinosaur eggs were brought from the far past to modern times. I wonder how many silly time travel stories have been written about dinosaurs? Speaking of silly time travel stories, "Time's Arrow" was collected in "The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century" along with "Yesterday Was Monday" (1941) a goofy story by Theodore Sturgeon in which Harry, an automobile mechanic, wakes up on the wrong day and gets to observe an army of "scene-shifters" who are at work preparing for Wednesday. Each and every day is a "scene" that has to be built in preparation for the arrival of its "actors". Sturgeon's silly story of a slip in time was taken to the next level in "A Matter of Minutes" which imagines that a whole new world has to be built for each minute of time.

1950 in the Ekcolir Reality (original)

 All the World's a Stage. What if the "scene-shifters" from Sturgeon's imagination could slip into "our" world? In some sense, Asimov's Eternals are like "stage-setters" in that they exist outside of Time and are responsible for "working behind the scenes" to prepare the world as we know it for the people who live in Time.

Viewers. One of my favorite parts of Asimov's The End of Eternity is how the Eternals use devices that allow them to view any particular time and place in Reality. Asimov's depiction of a "viewer" in the short story "Button, Button" was published in the same year that Asimov began writing The End of Eternity. Maybe in an alternate Reality, Asimov wrote some additional short stories that involved characters like Noÿs who suddenly arrive in Time.

in the Ekcolir Reality
Dell Davison travels to the past.
original cover by Alex Schomburg

 Time Travel Institute. Isaac Asimov had the Robotics Institute, but for his time travel story "Stitch in Time" (1952), James Murdoch MacGregor depicted Olive Ettingham as having to direct the Time Travel Institute in order to have a chance to inherit her father's money. Olive invents a Viewer that can allow anyone to view past events, but for some reason it only works back to the invention of the "olivet" Viewer in the year 2002. Not only that, there is also a way to send yourself back through time, but only as far as the "downwhen terminus" in 2005. Asimov included the idea of a "downwhen terminus" in The End of Eternity.

Like The End of Eternity, "Stitch in Time" is also told in a non-liner way, starting with Dell Davison and her brother Fred in the year 2132. Fred is puzzled by the fact that during the past 127 years, there is no record of anyone ever having traveled back in time. 

An excerpt from "Stitch in Time" explains what must be happening... but why?

 

interior art for "Stitch in Time"

 Switcho-Chango. In the 22nd century, everyone casually uses the olivet Viewer to observe past events, but why hasn't actual time travel to the past even been attempted? Or has it? Fred goes into the past and he becomes Olive's time travel research assistant. And in the future, Dell's entire life instantly warps; she never had a brother. Then she decides to travel back in time and then she is suddenly Fred's sister again, in a newly created timeline where she knows Olive. I suppose the idea is that time travel paradoxes are not possible because whenever someone travels in time, the timeline is "automatically" re-arranged so as to accommodate the change, and nobody can ever remember that time travel even took place.

It would be interesting to know if Asimov read "Stitch in Time" before writing The End of Eternity.

Next: more old time travel stories

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