Our tireless exploration of 1930s pulp magazines continues with three stories from 1935 by our friend Edmond Hamilton. These are deep cuts--two stories from Hugo Gernsback's Wonder Stories that have never appeared in book form in the United States and one from Farnsworth Wright's Weird Tales that would wait until 1998 for book publication. As usual, I am reading these stories in scans of the original magazines at the internet archive.
"Master of the Genes"
(Seven years ago I read Kidd's satirical story "Balls" and thought it weak, and five years ago I read Kidd's 45-page story "Flowering Season" AKA "Kangaroo Court" and denounced it as "bad." In 2016 I read Wilson Tucker's novel Resurrection Days and found it pretty disappointing. Frank R. Paul, thou art avenged!)
Hugo Gernsback was seriously into using his magazines to teach people about science, and in his intro to "Master of the Genes" he tells us that Hamilton will be providing us an opportunity to learn about genetics, as well one to be chilled with fear!
Our story begins in a Brazilian prison! I am already chilled! Thorn Haddon and Jerry Lanham are Americans who became leaders in the revolutionary army trying to overthrow the Brazilian government, and were captured. They are scheduled to be shot at dawn, but then a geneticist convinces the government to pardon them so they can act as his bodyguards at his lab in an Indian village on the Amazon. On the canoe ride to the village the scientist gives a lecture on genes and chromosomes to Thorn and Jerry, and to us readers, and then explains that for years the Indians in the village have been giving birth to deformed babies, and he is trying to figure out what is causing this tragedy.
In the village Hamilton describes various deformed children, kids who lack various limbs or organs or who have extra limbs. Jerry immediately develops a crush on the scientist's daughter, Concepcion, but she has a boy friend, Thomaz, the man who manages her father's plantation. Thorn, on the other hand, gets busy doing a little detective work and figures out why the Indians of the village are giving birth to cyclops babies with one eye and blob babies with no bones and headless babies with eyes and mouths in their chests--the scientist is using a machine to bathe the whole area in dangerous radiation! This villain periodically alters the type of radiation he is projecting from his lab and keeps track of which radiation causes which deformities. A true mad scientist, Concepcion's father thinks that his atrocities are justified because they advance the cause of knowledge.
But then the tragedy gets personal! Concepcion and Thomaz were married secretly months ago, and Concepcion is pregnant! When she learns her baby will be deformed she shoots herself dead, and Thomaz runs to raise an Indian mob to destroy the geneticist and all his works. Thorn and Jerry escape, but the geneticist, after giving the Yankees his notes and imploring them to "get them to someone of scientific eminence," allows the mob to slay him.
In 1946, "Master of the Genes" was reprinted in a 36-page British pamphlet alongside a story by Harl Vincent; it seems that this has been the only additional appearance of the story.
"The Truth Gas"
John Daly is the assistant to chemist Jason Rand. One day Daly is late to work because he is chatting with his fiancé, Lois Lane (!). When Daly lies to his boss, blaming his tardiness on a subway break down, Rand catches him, having seen Daly with Lane from his cab. Oops! Rand declares that most of the trouble in the world is due to lying, and that if people could be stopped from lying, we'd be living in a utopia! Making conversation, Daly reminds the boss of those stories they saw in the papers a while ago about efforts to develop a truth serum.
Soon after this conversation, Rand tells Daly to man the lab for the next few months because he's going on an unexpected trip. A few weeks later everybody--in the world!--starts telling the truth, with disastrous results, as salesmen fail to conceal the shortcomings of their products and spouses admit they are sick of their husbands and wives and politicians openly admit their corruption and dishonesty and Hollywood stars express their true contempt for the cinema goers who lap up their lame films. Lois Lane asks Daly if he likes her new dress and he tells her the truth and the engagement is off!
The economy teeters on the brink of total collapse and international relations teeter on the brink of total war! Daly figures out Rand must be to blame, invents nose filters to protect himself from the gas Rand is producing and emitting up in Vermont, and hurries up to the Green Mountain State to outwit Rand, destroy his machine, and restore the dishonest status quo ante. Lois and Daly even get back together, and Rand lets Daly keep his job--no hard feelings!
This story is acceptable. The jokes don't make you laugh, being obvious, but they make sense, so you don't find them irritating. They also reflect, behind a light-hearted veneer, the sad reality of our lives, that we are all jerks who are constantly lying to each other; Hamilton addressed this same topic--with more death--in the 1933 tale "The Man With X-Ray Eyes" and the 1934 story "The Man Who Returned." "The Truth Gas" has never been reprinted. (Thank God for the internet archive!)
The issue of Wonder Stories that includes the one and only printing of "The Truth Gas" has an ad in its "The Science Fiction Swap Column" from Clark Ashton Smith:
We've blogged about the title story of the advertised booklet, "The Double Shadow," as well as two more of its half-dozen "imaginative and atmospheric tales," "The Devotee of Evil" and "The Voyage of King Euvoran." You can listen to people read the poems from Ebony and Crystal at the internet archive.
"The Great Brain of Kaldar"
It turns out that not every citizen of Corla is thrilled to have as their ruler a man who has no roots in their fair city or even on their planet! When Stu, accompanied by his beautiful wife Narna and his two closest advisors, sets out on a diplomatic mission to another city, the nativist anti-Stu faction makes sure the entire air boat's crew is of their number and when our four heroes are asleep they are bound and taken prisoner! Merrick and his two friends are thrown overboard while Stu's gorgeous wife is carried away for the obvious reason.
Stu and his two buddies survive their fall from on high because they have the great good fortune to land on a huge springy fungus tree. Before they were ejected from the flying machine, Stu and company were told by the braggadocious leader of the rebels that he and his traitorous crew were going to form an alliance with the rumored "great brain of Kaldar," said to lie to the northeast. So our guy Stu and his comrades, after loosing their bonds and fighting some oversized blob monsters, strike out in that direction. They meet some local humans, the Talas, people who are invisible and whose city is also invisible. There is some confusion and the Corlan delegation gets tied up and taken prisoner again, but the invisible people quickly realize they are cool dudes and release them and even invite them to their invisible walled town for a visit. Stu and his cronies can't stay long because Stu is eager to chase after Narna, but they tarry long enough to hear the transparent Talas' capsule history of the great brain.
Once there was a city in which everybody was very community-minded: "In that city co-operation for the good of all was the supreme aim." This collectivist spirit naturally led to them figuring out a way to remove their brains from their bodies and connect them all together into a single huge superbrain, which was ensconced in a great chamber in a tower. These efficiency-minded collectivists didn't just dispose of their bodies, but filled their vacant skulls with receivers so the super brain could control them remotely. Hamilton's characters compare the city of the great brain to a huge human body, with the amasses brain as the brain (of course) and these remote controlled meat drones as the hands and fingers.
Like revolutionaries throughout history, the superbrain was not content to call it a day after having revolutionized things at home--it desired further augmentation, additional brains and additional flesh robots! So for ages the brain has been sending its robot bodies afield to capture ordinary humans whose brains are harvested and added to the super brain and whose bodies join the brain's legion of mindless drones. It was in response to this menace that the Talas developed a means of rendering themselves and all their belongings permanently invisible.
Two Talas join our three Corlan heroes in their commando raid on the city of the great brain. They manage to sneak in and find Merrick's wife, but, horror of horrors, her brain has been removed and Narna is a mindless robot controlled by the collective consciousness that is the superbrain! (The Corlan traitors suffered a similar fate, the brain not being interested in an alliance with them.) Through her eyes the brain detects the intruders and a platoon of guards comes after them.
"The Great Brain of Kaldar" is an acceptable sword and planet story, largely reproducing the plot of the second Kaldar tale, "The Snake Men of Kaldar," in which a traitor seizes Narna and tries to join up with some monstrous foreigners and Merrick allies with a race of humans the Corlans have never met before to defeat the traitors and monsters and save Narna. Making a living as a pulp writer in the 1930s meant doing repeated variations on the same themes; at least that was Edmond Hamilton's experience.
In 1989 "The Great Brain of Kaldar" reappeared in the magazine Pulp Vault, and in 1998 was included in Haffner Press's Hamilton collection Kaldar: World of Antares.
**********
Unexpectedly, a thread runs through all three of these 1935 stories by Edmond Hamilton: the idea of honesty and "keeping your word," and how the man who tries to be an honest plain-dealer puts himself, and maybe his entire society, at risk. "The Truth Gas" obviously tells us that our every social interaction is lubricated by lies, and argues that civilization would collapse if we were all forced to speak our minds.
Both "Master of the Genes" and "The Great Brain of Kaldar" depict gentlemen who keep their word and give others the benefit of the doubt, to their peril. It seems crazy that the Brazilian government would think Thorn Haddon and Jerry Lanham, violent revolutionaries and foreigners, were so dangerous that they needed to be executed, and then just let them go, and it seems crazy that violent revolutionaries would follow the orders of a weak little scientist instead of dashing off to freedom in America or back to the jungle to continue fighting for their revolution. But Haddon and Lanham gave the Brazilian authorities their word that they would obey the geneticist, and they do it! When they find out the scientist is committing a crime against humanity, destroying the lives of a village of Indians in order to gain scientific data, they are full of a righteous desire to kill him, but stay their hands because they gave him their word.
Stuart Merrick, at the beginning of "The Great Brain of Kaldar," is told by one of his advisors that the pilot of the air boat is a leader of the faction that would prefer a native-born ruler, and so he should be reassigned, but Stu insists on treating this man fairly, as there is no hard evidence he is going to break any law, and even makes a show of publicly declaring his confidence in the pilot's loyalty. Later, he similarly gives his word to the brain--the invisible Talas, however, do not, and save the Corlans' bacon by murdering the brain.
**********
More 1930s genre literature in the next exciting episode of MPorcius Fiction Log.
No comments:
Post a Comment