Amazing

1934 - cover art by Howard Brown

Back when I decided to make Isaac Asimov a character in my Exode Saga, I faced the daunting task of learning about the life and times of Asimov. One particular mystery that needed investigation was how he decided that he wanted to become a doctor. In the end, I suppose we should all be happy that the doctor thing did not work out.

We know that Asimov grew up as an omnivorous reader; he read books that were available in the public library as well as the science fiction pulp magazines that were sold in the shop owned by his family. Many of those old magazines are now available to us by download over the internet, and one of the advantages of reading those old magazines is that they provide hints about the world beyond science fiction that Asimov was immersed in. One source of this cultural information is the advertisements that ran in the Sci Fi pulps.

1934

In the December 1934 issue of Astounding, there is an advertisement for Nacor. I don't particularly care about Nacor; there were many such frauds advertised in the old pulp magazines. I have to wonder if the science fiction genre could have come into existence without the financial support of scam artists. I've been able to determine that Nacor was being sold to people as far back as 1917. The "Nacor Medical Company" was eventually sent orders (by the FTC, in 1935) to stop their deceptive advertisements of this product (see this).

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sex sells, nicotine addicts

Previously, the same concoction was marketed to the gullible as "Nature's Creation" (see above) and had been investigated by the American Medical Association in 1910. While on the topic of money-making scams, I also must wonder to what extent Asimov's family was supported through the depression years by selling tobacco products.

Asimov's old stories are full of characters who smoked tobacco. I wonder if Asimov felt any guilt over the fact that while growing up, he was fed and clothed off the profits of selling tobacco products to folks who were addicted to nicotine.

The End of Eternity

In The End of Eternity, here is how Asimov's character, Andrew Harlan, describes the value of advertisements: "These advertisements tell us more about Primitive times than the so-called news articles..."

Harlan is teaching ancient (20th century) history to another character, Cooper, who objects, "Isn't it rather disgusting the way these people blow their own horn? Who would be fool enough to believe a person's boasting about his own products?"

Interior art by William Dold.

interior art by William Dold.

In the December 1934 issue of Astounding, there was a story by John Campbell called "The Mightiest Machine". Supposedly this story by Campbell was widely read and influenced the work of people like Arthur Clarke (as mentioned here), but reading it here in 2020, I find it quite painful to slog through.

Unlike Edward E. Smith, who assumed the existence of a form of atomic power to propel his spacecraft (such as the Skylark), Campbell depicts future physicists as having failed to solve the atomic power problem. So how does Campbell move spacecraft into hyperspace? Using power from the sun, which is the titular "mightiest machine").

Interior artwork for
Skylark of Valeron. Festival
of imaginary technology.

By the way, one of Smith's Skylark stories is in the December 1934 issue of Astounding. In Smith's fictional universe you could travel through space at the speed of thought and there was always a force beam ready to be deployed for every emergency.

In Search of Amazing Aliens
What interests me most about "The Mightiest Machine" is the ancient astronauts plot thread. In this case, the "ancient astronauts" are not aliens, they are former residents of Earth (from a "lost continent") who went off into some parallel universe. I've previously blogged about Asimov's struggle to write stories featuring interesting aliens, a struggle which can be traced back to Campbell's own hangups.

"The Incredible Planet"

Star Wars
A big part of "The Mightiest Machine" is an endless war between the humans of this parallel universe and their arch rivals. Yawn. I'm not a fan of military Sci Fi.

Campbell went on to write a sequel to "The Mightiest Machine" that was called "The Incredible Planet". This book was compiled from a series of stories that Campbell could not publish in the pulp magazines. Here, our traveling heroes from "The Mightiest Machine" return from the parallel universe and while attempting to reach Earth, they find and visit another planet populated by humanoid aliens who are the last remnants of a crumbling civilization. The Earthlings provide advanced technology to the aliens that will presumably allow the suffering aliens to survive.

Isaac Asimov (right) and his mentor (Campbell, left)

Eventually, after having grown up reading Campbell's Sci Fi stories, Asimov met Campbell and received tutoring on how to craft his own science fiction stories. Asimov rebelled against Campbell's insistence that humans should always be depicted as superior to space aliens.

I suspect that Campbell was an inspiration for the young Isaac Asimov in several ways. One is that Campbell never completed his education. There were many challenges that stood in Asimov's path towards higher education. He was rejected from medical school. He was only granted admission to graduate school on a probationary basis. Asimov's graduate studies were interrupted by World War II.

The Case of the Superfluous Sedrons

Eventually, Asimov earned a PhD and became a university professor and teacher of science. After Asimov became a science (non-fiction) writer, he may have taught more science to Americans then anyone else in history. In contrast, during his career, Campbell may have promoted more pseudoscience than actual science.

In the Asimov Reality.
Original cover art by Robert Jones.
Other art by Michael Whelan.

I like to imagine that in the Asimov Reality, a "copy" of Isaac Asimov impersonated Campbell and took over as the editor of Astounding. After this "copy of Asimov" retired, he was still much in demand, as described in this fun little story.

Here in our Reality,  Asimov never did go to medical school, but that can't stop us from imagining an alternate Reality in which he did become an M.D.
Related Reading: the lost world Ver'la.
                             and another alternate Asimov.
Next: Uranium 235 and Jack Vance

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Moore Kuttner Time

1949 cover art by Earle Bergey

At the ISFDB there are 314 entries for "Moore"! I suppose I should not be impressed by that; there are over 1000 entries for "Smith". I've previously blogged about C. L. Moore, but until today I had not read any of the stories that are usually attributed to her husband, Henry Kuttner. I'm intrigued by time travel stories, so I read 'The Time Axis'.

1943

I never read "Earth's Last Citadel", but from the plot descriptions I've read, that 1943 story written in collaboration with C. L. Moore seems to have covered similar ground as does 'The Time Axis'.

I've long been saddened by the silly hand-waving that so many authors have seen fit to place inside their time travel stories.

Book cover. Click image to enlarge.

I blame H. G. Wells for starting this tradition, and Kuttner seemed to run with it... in the direction of suggesting that in the 20th century Earth was ripe for contact with the future. I guess after the Manhattan Project, readers were ready to accept the idea that a secret government project might hold the key to time travel. That was just one of the many ideas tossed into the plotomatic mixer by Kuttner and never really explained in satisfactory detail. If you want a time travel novel that makes sense, I suggest Asimov's The End of Eternity.

I was horrified to discover that 'The Time Axis' uses the same "reasoning" as Arrival for why we primitive Earthlings would suddenly be contacted by super sophisticated folks from the far future.... they need our help! This sort of plot element was dismaying for me when I first saw it E. E. Smith's Lensman Saga. There, I was asked to believe that the hyper-advanced Arisians had brought humans into existence in order to defeat the evil Eddorians.

nekronic lifeform

In the 'The Time Axis', while humans are busily exploring new star systems in the far future, they stumble into the bad end of the galaxy and come upon "nekron", the last word in death and destruction.

For me, the best part of reading old stories such as 'The Time Axis' is when I suddenly find myself imagining that unexplained plot elements back in the Golden Age could now be explained in terms of new concepts like virtual reality and nanotechnology. The "nekron" that is haunting Humanity of the future in 'The Time Axis' is described as a "new form of matter", but it sounds like a form of gray goo. According to Kuttner, "nekron" is also some evil lifeform.

Similarly, the strange future world with "mechandroids", where the enchanting girl "Topaz" (that's her on the Earle Bergey cover, above) must go to the "Swan Garden" for a tune-up in order to once more have the stars put into her hair, is easy for me to imagine as a kind of virtual reality environment, a place where the last city of Mankind is a kind of museum where people no longer live.

More Time Travel
"Vintage Season" - 1946. This was the first story 'by Kuttner' that I ever read (back in the 1970s). I read it in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Time travelers from the future arrive, trying to get good seats for seeing a  meteor strike that will destroy a large city. Apparently this story was largely written by Moore.

"Time Locker" - 1943 - This is a silly fantasy in which a drunk invents a magic "time travel locker" that shrinks objects. A crook buys the locker for 6 credit$ and uses the locker to hide stolen money. He manages to kill himself before he learns that objects placed in the locker first disappear then re-appear in the future.

The Time Trap

"Mimsy Were the Borogoves" - 1943 - I have not read this story. Some children receive a box of toys from the future.

"The Time Trap" - 1938 - I have not read this story (finally read it in 2022), but apparently it was "sexed up" before publication and it has managed to offend many readers ever since.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Norman Saunders
and see this

Another Reality
Several times in the middle of 'The Time Axis' I thought Kuttner might tell us that we had slipped into an alternate Reality. If I read the story correctly, there was only one Reality Change, one that created the new universe at the end of the story. What if Kuttner, in our Reality, was just a remnant echo of an actual time traveler in an earlier Reality?

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the green "sedronite" who is in the image to the right.
Related Reading: "Mimsy Were the Borogoves" in 2021 and a startling story from 1949 by Vance
Next : future science fiction.

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Second Life, Again

Scientifiction. The end of the 1920s.

Isaac Asimov was not certain which day was his birthday. I'd also like to imagine that we can never be sure about exactly when he died... or if he died... or if he then got a chance to live a second life. But that's another story...

I have a previous blog post called "Second Life".

1929
This blog post is part of a series in which I've been looking back at some old short stories. Here, I pop into Amazing Stories at a time when Hugo Gernsback was trying to create the new literary genre that we know as science fiction. Supposedly, Asimov started reading pulp fiction magazines in 1929. What might he have thought about stories such as "The Moon Woman"? Ten years later, he published his first science fiction story in Amazing Stories.

The dream of Professor Hicks.
Interior artwork by Wallit.

You can read "The Moon Woman" online. Professor Hicks is the typical "genius inventor" type of character that was often depicted in superscience stories. His invention is a breakthrough in suspended animation (SA).

As the story is told, Hicks plans to stop all of his bodily functions for one year, then the SA serum will wear off and his great discovery will be made known to the world. Through experiments on test animals, he has perfected a suspended animation serum and he is now ready to try it on himself. During the experimental test of the SA serum on himself, Hicks has a dream...

2001

...In the dream, the experiment goes wrong and Hicks awakens not after one year, but rather, after 235 years have past. Hicks meets a "girl of the future", Ms. Rosaria, who demonstrates a few technological marvels of the future such as the use of bionic wings.

Rosaria confesses to being a mongrel, her mother being from the Moon, her father an Earthling. According to Rosaria, after the first rocket was sent from Earth to the Moon, aliens, including Moon people, began to openly visit Earth.

The Man Who Awoke (1933)

Hicks is delighted with his new life in the future. Then, sadly, he wakes up from his dream and learns that the first test of a small amount of his experimental serum is complete: he slept through the night... only one night. His assistant, Dr. Blinkman, reports that Hicks did not seem to have all of his bodily functions suspended... at times during the night he seemed to be dreaming.

In the Ekcolir Reality. Original
cover art by Allen Anderson and see this.

I don't know if Asimov read "The moon Woman" as a boy, but I've read that he was influenced by "The Man Who Awoke", published in 1933 by Laurence Manning.

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the "sedronite" who is in the composite image shown to the right.

Asimov later wrote his own "forward time travel" story (Pebble in the Sky), so I don't think he was philosophically opposed to stories that rather magically allow characters to have a 2nd life in the future. Asimov also wrote a masterpiece of time travel fiction, The End of Eternity.

2nd Lives

I, Asimov

The issue of second lives has been very much on my mind lately in the context of returning Asimov's replicoid to Earth.
___________
Previous blog posts in this series:
"Reason" by Isaac Asimov (1941)
 "Inheritance" by Arthur C. Clarke (1947)
Also, find a link here to an old (1950) Jack Vance story.
"Shock Treatment" (1952)
"A Million Years Ahead" (1937)

Next: simulating Deep Time

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Thrilling

New cover from old. Original cover
art by Edmund Emshwiller (1955),
Earle Bergey (1950) and see this.

Before today, the only story published in Thrilling Wonder Stories that I had read was "New Bodies for Old" by Jack Vance.

The Man Who Evolved

Evolution

We are Devo: the evolution of myth through time

Today I went back to April 1937 and read "A Million Years Ahead" by Edmond Hamilton.

It is fun to imagine the influence that such stories had on the young Isaac Asimov.

Related reading: "Cosmic Quest"
See also: "The Man Who Evolved"
and "Ten Million Years Ahead"

Future man!

Thankfully, "A Million Years Ahead" is short. Like many superscience adventure stories, we are "treated" to a brilliant scientist who has devised a fantastic new device in the back room of his house. Ross Sherill is a biologist, but he has created an electronic device of great power, a cosmic ray projector that can accelerate human evolution.

Lucky for Ross and the entire hapless human species, the cosmic ray projector has two modes, one of which can magically de-evolve an organism. This becomes important, because Ross soon discovers that our human descendants of a million years in our future will be telepathic supermen, able to exert hypnotic mind control.

In the Ekcolir Reality. Original
cover art by Howard V. Brown
and Lawrence Stevens and see this.

Hamilton's description of how such a superman from the far future can exercise telepathic mind control involves "glowing eyes" and reads rather like the account Asimov would later give for how the mutant Mule in his Foundation Saga was able to control the behavior of normal humans.

Audacity
In 1936, Max Delbrück published a note in Nature about the role of cosmic rays in causing mutations. In 1937, experiments were reported concerning mutations in fruit flies caused by cosmic rays. As early as 1934 it had been suggested that cosmic rays are mostly atomic nuclei from exploding stars.

interior art by Frank Paul

I marvel at the audacity of Hamilton to imagine a machine that could bombard a human being with cosmic rays, first driving the person to evolve at an accelerated rate and then, upon bombardment with a second type of cosmic ray (antimatter?) de-evolve back to their original form. A biologist never would have suggested such a thing since most mutations are damaging. Evolution requires mutation AND selection. Hamilton certainly did not care that his story was scientific nonsense, nor did his readers.

"Evolution" by Julia Boynton Green in the August 1931 issue of Amazing Stories

Big brains, like cosmic
rays were "in the air".

For me, the interesting issue is this: if humanoid life forms could have evolved far beyond the level of we humans, what biological features might such highly evolved space aliens display? Sure, it is fun to imagine telepathic people, but could telepathy actually evolve by mutation and natural selection?

In the 1930s, bigger was better. For the Exode Saga, I have the luxury of imaging "small brains" and the transmission of telepathic signals by means of imaginary hierions.

Next: The Moon Woman

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Tales of Alien Worlds

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In my previous blog post I discussed a short story that Isaac Asimov published in 1977. Let's now go back to 1950 when "Legal Rites" was published in Weird Tales. Apparently Fred Pohl resurrected this story from among Asimov's rejected works.

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I long ago decided to write Asimov into The Foundations of Eternity. Not satisfied to stop there, Asimov also appears as a character in the other two books of the Exode Trilogy. Starting with hints that I received from Ivory Fersoni, I've previously explored the idea that Asimov might have been one of the lucky Earthlings who was given a second life out there among the stars.

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According to Ivory, Asimov once met Trysta Iwedon and I've previously mentioned that the one time I met Asimov at a SciFi convention, Thomas Iwedon was also present, so I know that they met at least once. Apparently Asimov was upset by the many annoying attempts made by Thomas to contact him, so it is not clear that they had a later meeting. Apparently Parthney came close to meeting Asimov, but it seems that Asimov stayed working at his typewriter and left it to his wife to hand Parthney a copy of one of Thomas' books (Daveed the Luk'ie).

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I've previously suggested the possibility that a "copy" of Asimov might return to Earth. In Exode, the physical details of anyone who is ever teleported are kept preserved and available in the Sedronic Domain. Thus, it is trivial for copies of people to be instantiated. Ivory told me that there is a copy of Asimov that is still alive.

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Carl Sagan found it difficult to escape the feeling that he had some kind of contact with his dead parents. What if there is some basis in reality for human interest in the ability of people to live on after death?

If some Earthlings have a genetic endowment that provides them with an innate ability to use the Bimanoid Interface then maybe they can have some sort of limited contact with "dead" people. I say "dead" because, in the case of Asimov, there might be one dead Asimov and a living copy of Asimov. Who knows? Maybe Sagan's parents also had "copies" who achieved some limited contact with their son.

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What if my interpretation of Ivory's tales has been wrong? What if the "copy" of Asimov already returned to Earth? Maybe Ivory had met the "copy" of Asimov and she was protecting his privacy and working to conceal him from the prying eyes of the media.

I must also account for my own undying fascination with the idea that Asimov was taken from us too soon. I might be one of the Earthlings who can access the Sedronic Domain, thus I might have some personal knowledge of the "copy" of Asimov, although the "knowledge" seems to be embedded at a fundamentally unconscious level of my mind.

I've never read "Legal Rites", but I'm intrigued by Asimov's attempts to write fantasy stories. According to Elton Gahr, "Legal Rites", is "more satire than either science fiction or fantasy". It is fun to imagine Pohl and Asimov laughing to the bank (although apparently Weird Tales never paid authors very much $) while making fun of fantasy and ghost stories by publishing "Legal Rites" in Weird Tales.

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I've been working for several years to find a way to write a fantasy story and so far I've failed. I've only gotten as far as imagining that Thomas could have written a spoof fantasy novel in an effort to attract Asimov's attention (see the image to the left).

Asimov returns from the "dead".
(click the image to enlarge)

The whimsical magazine cover to the right is having fun with the idea that it might be possible for me to make contact with the "copy" of Asimov.

I'm amused by the idea that a "copy" of Asimov might have had the opportunity to travel to the Andromeda galaxy and visit many new worlds.

Kach went to Andromeda in search for the Creators of the human species, but she could not even make contact with the Nereids since they long ago crossed over into the Sedronic Domain. However, I suppose there must still be a few Grendels on the Nereid home world, so it is fun to imagine Asimov telling the tale of his encounter with the Grendels. I'd be particularly thrilled if the "copy" of Asimov could provide me with some tips for how to make more efficient use of the Bimanoid Interface.

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The 1941 Baseball Mystery

image source

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, I've been exploring fun ways to imagine how Grean the Kac'hin might show up in the popular media of 1930s of a previous Reality. My original thought was that since some very early use of live television was for broadcasting baseball games, why not say that Grean was captured on  T.V. while she was hunting down Fengtol, a positronic robot? Those early television broadcasts were not seen by many people, so I want to help "spread the word" about Grean's "baseball intervention" with a pulp magazine cover image.

The image to the right is the only 1930s Baseball Stories cover art that I've been able to find. I was originally imagining that Grean might chase Fengtol into a baseball stadium, with the robot hoping that Grean would not continue pursuit in such a busy public place.

More recently, I've been exploring ways that Hierion Tubes might be used to shuttle people (and robots!) between the Hierion Domain and the world that we inhabit.

Rather than have Fengtol go running onto the playing field of a stadium, she might simply materialize in such a public place, stepping out from the Hierion Domain, with Grean following behind. Grean is indifferent to the prospect of being seen capturing Fengtol because it is part of Grean's plan to use time travel to initiate a Reality Change.

the Summer 1941 Baseball Stories cover

I like the scene depicted in the Summer 1941 Baseball Stories cover art (see the image to the right on this page). I guess this poor player who lost his cap is in a "rundown". Picture a player in the middle of a ball game who suddenly finds himself caught up in a struggle between Fengtol and Grean who "magically appear for a few seconds on the field. Grean zaps Fengtol with her ray gun then, as quickly as they came, the two "ladies" pop back into the Hierion Domain and disappear from our world.

Sadly, in 1941 there is no video tape. Several tens of thousands of baseball fans saw Fengtol and Grean on the playing field for a few seconds, but what did they actually see? A few months later an article was published in Future Science magazine suggesting that time travelers from the future briefly appeared.

image source

So far I have made a first draft of a an imaginary Future Science magazine cover showing what television viewers would have seen in 1941 when Fengtol was trying to evade capture by Grean.

I've been using model Tori Calderwood to represent Grean in some imaginary pulp magazine cover images. For this baseball scene I used the image of Tori shown to the left. This photograph was taken by Cathleen Tarawhiti.

image source

As a representation of Fengtol's face I used a photograph of Katrina Chadwick that was taken by Cathleen Tarawhiti. See the image to the right.

I was tempted to use DAZ Studio to render the body poses that I wanted to use for Grean and Fengtol, but then I spent some time searching through the stock photography at deviantART and found two images that are satisfactory for a first draft of the scene I'm trying to create.

image source

I used an image from Sakky at deviantART to depict Grean jumping into Reality from the Hierion Domain. See this pose, shown to the left on this page. This photograph was taken by Jade Macalla.

image source

In order to depict Fengtol running away from Grean, I used an image called Ember8 from Jessica's faestock gallery at deviantART (image to the right).

For the background of the baseball stadium I used an image from Wikimedia commons.

Version 1.0
I'd like to give both Grean and Fengtol slightly more alien facial appearances. Also, I want to do some more work on Grean's clothing and maybe alter the appearance of her "ray gun".

First draft of the November 1941 cover of Future Science

This image, above, is an animated GIF. See the SWF.

Future Science Animated
I recently made my first swf file. The image to the left is an animated gif. The gif format is fine for small and simple animations, but the 256 color depth leads to annoying pixilation with large color gradients. I've long wanted to try swf animations as an alternative to gif.

The animated gif shown to the left has only 7 images. My first swf was made from a Macintosh .mov video file, so it has much smoother transitions between the 7 different images that I started with. I still don't know how to instruct a web browser on how to control how large an swf is displayed on the screen.

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