As Amanda's book led me to think of giant squids as a sort of personal emblem, it made sense that the next book I read be John Wyndham's The Kraken Wakes. Of course, at the time I thought there was an actual kraken in the story, there isn't.
This was my third Wyndham novel. The first was, unsurprisingly, The Day of the Triffids, which I read for English in Year 9. I loved it and I'd say it was an important novel in shaping my fictional tastes. Years later I read The Midwich Cuckoos, which I enjoyed but is a much slower story that relies heavily on a sense of wrongness and foreboding.
The Kraken Wakes falls somewhere between the two. It follows a couple and their adventures in a bizarre and world-changing alien invasion. This is probably the only alien invasion story I've read where no-one on Earth knows it's been invaded till over halfway through the book. The narration is made by the husband and starts with an introduction that establishes that the invasion is over but not all is right.
From there he goes back to what he believes is the beginning, a mysterious series of meteorites, then progresses through a number of other mysterious phenomena that baffle experts and the media - of which the narrator and his wife are a part. The state of the shipping market is discussed several times and the resultant increase in air transport around the world is also detailed. The pace picks up when the aliens make their first appearance.
It's an interesting take on the invasion theme, and uses the idea that because the aliens - who live in the deepest parts of our oceans - live in very different ways to us we weren't aware of them straightaway and couldn't understand their motives or actions. Nor, presumably, could they understand human reactions to them. The one thing that was clear was the Earth wasn't big enough for the two of us.
There's some debate in the Goodreads reviews about Brian Aldiss's description of Wyndham's novels as 'comfortable disasters'. As I read this one I definitely understood the term. There's undeniably a disaster unfolding, on a global scale, and there are scenes of very uncomfortable action and emotion. Huge numbers of people are killed. However, it unfolds gently, from the perspective of a remarkably cool-headed and rational Englishman and his wife (whom I'm glad to report more than holds her own, it's a real partnership). There are discussions on markets and how events affect such things.
So, while it is a disaster novel worthy of the name and equal to any more dramatically presented member of the genre, there is a certain calmness to the whole proceedings. Then there's the framing device of knowing the disaster is over and that the narrator is presenting his version of events for future generations to consider. We know who wins.
All in all, it's an enjoyable read with some interesting SF ideas and some classic Wyndham action scenes amidst his more thoughtful scientific mystery business. It probably has less appeal than Triffids, it's certainly not its equal in terms of writing or story, but worth a look for fans of the genre.
Keep dreaming!
Tuesday, 8 September 2015
Thursday, 20 August 2015
The Art of Asking - or how I came to embrace my giant squid
I remember the first time I met Amanda Palmer. It was at a signing (for context here's a blog I wrote at the time), so it was over fairly quickly. All I said was thank you, and I smiled. She smiled back and looked me straight in the eye.
At the time I couldn't comprehend that she could be interested in me as much more than another face in a line of fans. The look in her eye said otherwise. Yes, she was in a daze, but in the moment she was searching me, looking for a connection, trying to see if I'd enjoyed the show - her Fraud Police were in force that night.
She talks about eye contact and communicating by making these connections with people in her book, The Art of Asking. She also talks about the Fraud Police which I'll get to in a minute. For her, these connections are easy to make, second nature really. She's been making them since she was fresh out of college earning money as a living statue (and yes, earning is the right word, it's not a job I envy).
For me, it was startling and unlooked for, almost unnatural. My learned behaviour is a reflexive wall to keep people out, or myself in I don't know which. So when she reached out in that moment ...
Her book also made me look back at my writing and theatre careers that weren't. I was trying to make theatre, but it all stopped. I stopped. I stopped asking, I stopped making connections. I started listening to the Fraud Police.
The Fraud Police are those voices we hear in our heads saying we're not really what we seem, people will soon realise we can't do what they think we can etc.
I did make one big connection some years ago however, when I met my now wife. And she believed in me when I didn't, and that was enough for me to start writing again. It's even been enough for me to start putting some writing out there - this blog for instance - and ask in a general way for people to read it. But there's still Fraud Police.
Symbolic of all this is the giant squid. Yes, I said that. There's a scene in The Scarlet Ring with a giant squid, and when I've told people of the book I often end up feeling apologetic about describing a book that has that scene. Which is ridiculous when I would never hold it against anyone else's book and even count it as a good reason to read it. But there it is. And my wife is aware of that, and bought me a kraken bottle opener. She even forced me to tell someone about it - there was context - and the person in question thought it was cool.
Amanda's book showed me that if I'm going to find my audience I have to ask the question - will you read my book? To ask the question I have to accept that no is an answer and so, more frighteningly, is yes. I have to connect with people, to be honest and open with them. Even if that simply means letting people read about the giant squid.
Amanda's honesty and openness have inspired me. I will release the kraken!
Keep dreaming!
At the time I couldn't comprehend that she could be interested in me as much more than another face in a line of fans. The look in her eye said otherwise. Yes, she was in a daze, but in the moment she was searching me, looking for a connection, trying to see if I'd enjoyed the show - her Fraud Police were in force that night.
She talks about eye contact and communicating by making these connections with people in her book, The Art of Asking. She also talks about the Fraud Police which I'll get to in a minute. For her, these connections are easy to make, second nature really. She's been making them since she was fresh out of college earning money as a living statue (and yes, earning is the right word, it's not a job I envy).
For me, it was startling and unlooked for, almost unnatural. My learned behaviour is a reflexive wall to keep people out, or myself in I don't know which. So when she reached out in that moment ...
Her book also made me look back at my writing and theatre careers that weren't. I was trying to make theatre, but it all stopped. I stopped. I stopped asking, I stopped making connections. I started listening to the Fraud Police.
The Fraud Police are those voices we hear in our heads saying we're not really what we seem, people will soon realise we can't do what they think we can etc.
I did make one big connection some years ago however, when I met my now wife. And she believed in me when I didn't, and that was enough for me to start writing again. It's even been enough for me to start putting some writing out there - this blog for instance - and ask in a general way for people to read it. But there's still Fraud Police.
Symbolic of all this is the giant squid. Yes, I said that. There's a scene in The Scarlet Ring with a giant squid, and when I've told people of the book I often end up feeling apologetic about describing a book that has that scene. Which is ridiculous when I would never hold it against anyone else's book and even count it as a good reason to read it. But there it is. And my wife is aware of that, and bought me a kraken bottle opener. She even forced me to tell someone about it - there was context - and the person in question thought it was cool.
Amanda's book showed me that if I'm going to find my audience I have to ask the question - will you read my book? To ask the question I have to accept that no is an answer and so, more frighteningly, is yes. I have to connect with people, to be honest and open with them. Even if that simply means letting people read about the giant squid.
Amanda's honesty and openness have inspired me. I will release the kraken!
Keep dreaming!
Thursday, 13 August 2015
A Song of Ice and Fire - Finally I'm Up to Date
Last night I stayed up later than was wise because I was so close to my destination and I had to reach it. And reach it I did, I finished A Dance of Dragons and am finally up to date with George R.R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Now I join the throngs waiting for the next book.
It's called an epic fantasy and it really is in every sense, and reading it is certainly a journey. There are many fantastic vistas, especially when you get into the later books (which I guess will end up being the middle books by the time this thing is done), and I've loved visiting them and learning of the cultures and histories which are all vividly painted.
The characters are equally strong and Martin alters the writing to fit each perspective well, which can make the text read in troubling ways at times, but these are troubling characters and disturbing times.
The saga is certainly dark, with sometimes shocking violence and of course plenty of sex which is often quite twisted itself. However, I don't feel Martin has truly earned the reputation he has for killing off everyone's favourite characters. There are many, many deaths but very few characters that I actually care about have died so far. Some have appeared to die in one book only to turn up in the next - something I'm not ruling out come book six.
Finally, I'll just say, I'm happy in my decision to stick to reading the books and not watching the series. I did watch the first season and it was good television, but it felt like a Reader's Digest version of the story. There's no way to give the same depth to the characters and cultures in the show as in the books and for me that's what makes A Song of Ice and Fire so good. I also want to stick to one version of the story. There were two many unnecessary and quite odd changes in the first season, from what I've heard they only increase as it goes on.
Anyway, that's my very brief opinion on what is a vast story of considerable complexity. The journey is not always pleasant but it is worth taking if you can find the time.
Keep dreaming!
It's called an epic fantasy and it really is in every sense, and reading it is certainly a journey. There are many fantastic vistas, especially when you get into the later books (which I guess will end up being the middle books by the time this thing is done), and I've loved visiting them and learning of the cultures and histories which are all vividly painted.
The characters are equally strong and Martin alters the writing to fit each perspective well, which can make the text read in troubling ways at times, but these are troubling characters and disturbing times.
The saga is certainly dark, with sometimes shocking violence and of course plenty of sex which is often quite twisted itself. However, I don't feel Martin has truly earned the reputation he has for killing off everyone's favourite characters. There are many, many deaths but very few characters that I actually care about have died so far. Some have appeared to die in one book only to turn up in the next - something I'm not ruling out come book six.
Finally, I'll just say, I'm happy in my decision to stick to reading the books and not watching the series. I did watch the first season and it was good television, but it felt like a Reader's Digest version of the story. There's no way to give the same depth to the characters and cultures in the show as in the books and for me that's what makes A Song of Ice and Fire so good. I also want to stick to one version of the story. There were two many unnecessary and quite odd changes in the first season, from what I've heard they only increase as it goes on.
Anyway, that's my very brief opinion on what is a vast story of considerable complexity. The journey is not always pleasant but it is worth taking if you can find the time.
Keep dreaming!
Monday, 13 July 2015
Shiny Aliens, Atlanteans and Serendipitous Exiles from Space
Most of my reading lately has been taken up with George RR Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire as I try to catch up with the TV series and avoid spoilers (I'm into A Dance of Dragons), but a couple of events recently saw me in need of my e-reader as opposed to thick epic paperbacks. As a result I read two short stories from old pulps.
One was pretty dreadful if vaguely amusing. It was Hal K Wells' Cavern of the Shining Ones which appeared in Astounding back in 1932. The Shining Ones turn out to be a highly advanced alien race which came to Earth 10,000 years ago and went to war with the Atlanteans. They destroyed Atlantis but not before the Atlanteans had made the planet uninhabitable for them for 10,000 years. They went into suspended animation except for a small number who fled home so someone could come back one day and wake up the rest.
It has some moments of suspense early on, not highly effective but they're there. It also has a quite blood-thirsty battle, but it doesn't really fire and the plot is pretty weak.
The other story was more interesting; Judith Merril's Exile from Space. It was published in 1956 in Universe as a 'short novel' but I'm not sure it would even qualify as a novella these days. Regardless it was a well told story of the 'other' with some nice satire and social commentary. The exile of the title is the main character, a woman who comes to Earth for unknown reasons, sent by unknown others she just refers to as 'them'.
Much of the plot is taken up with rather mundane human experiences, most prominently a romance, but the exile's approach and insights are handled really well and make the piece a fun read. Merril also keeps a good level of intrigue as to who the woman is and neatly plants the suggestion that the whole story is true with some direct from the author narration.
I admit I also found reading this one slightly serendipitous as the observational style in some of the early passages reminded me of my City Sketches (shameless plug and link to the published copy of Sketch No 1 here). I find serendipity encouraging, so the City Sketches idea is certainly continuing. Eventually I'm hoping to put out a collection of them, interspersed with some photos and maybe some longer stories. The beauty of them is they're so short they don't take away from my bigger projects, particularly Hierophants' Fall which reached another milestone recently so progress continues.
Meanwhile, don't trust rude enigmatic scientists who wear goggles - they're probably shiny alien slugs hellbent on conquest - and keep your eyes open as you go about life, you never know what or who you're really looking at.
Keep dreaming!
One was pretty dreadful if vaguely amusing. It was Hal K Wells' Cavern of the Shining Ones which appeared in Astounding back in 1932. The Shining Ones turn out to be a highly advanced alien race which came to Earth 10,000 years ago and went to war with the Atlanteans. They destroyed Atlantis but not before the Atlanteans had made the planet uninhabitable for them for 10,000 years. They went into suspended animation except for a small number who fled home so someone could come back one day and wake up the rest.
It has some moments of suspense early on, not highly effective but they're there. It also has a quite blood-thirsty battle, but it doesn't really fire and the plot is pretty weak.
The other story was more interesting; Judith Merril's Exile from Space. It was published in 1956 in Universe as a 'short novel' but I'm not sure it would even qualify as a novella these days. Regardless it was a well told story of the 'other' with some nice satire and social commentary. The exile of the title is the main character, a woman who comes to Earth for unknown reasons, sent by unknown others she just refers to as 'them'.
Much of the plot is taken up with rather mundane human experiences, most prominently a romance, but the exile's approach and insights are handled really well and make the piece a fun read. Merril also keeps a good level of intrigue as to who the woman is and neatly plants the suggestion that the whole story is true with some direct from the author narration.
I admit I also found reading this one slightly serendipitous as the observational style in some of the early passages reminded me of my City Sketches (shameless plug and link to the published copy of Sketch No 1 here). I find serendipity encouraging, so the City Sketches idea is certainly continuing. Eventually I'm hoping to put out a collection of them, interspersed with some photos and maybe some longer stories. The beauty of them is they're so short they don't take away from my bigger projects, particularly Hierophants' Fall which reached another milestone recently so progress continues.
Meanwhile, don't trust rude enigmatic scientists who wear goggles - they're probably shiny alien slugs hellbent on conquest - and keep your eyes open as you go about life, you never know what or who you're really looking at.
Keep dreaming!
Monday, 6 July 2015
ERB - Master of Adventure
One thing I did during the period I wasn't blogging was go to Hobart to see some of Dark MoFo, which I hope to blog about soon. While there we (my family and I) of course went to the Salamanca Markets, and, of course, I looked at a lot of second-hand books. I managed to resist many temptations but there was one old paperback that caught my eye. I tried to resist - I told my wife I'd leave it and if no-one had bought it before we came back that way, then I would buy it.
The book, which you have guessed I bought, is Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure by Richard A Lupoff. It caught my eye because of the cover illustration which was clearly a Frank Frazetta painting and I can't resist any work by that man. If it was just a Burroughs' novel I could have resisted but this is much more.
It's a scholarly look at the collected works of ERB considering them individually and as series and as a whole in terms of their success both on their own terms and in terms of their influence on the genre.
Burroughs seems almost forgotten now, although his major creations are remembered. Tarzan is of course the most famous and Lupoff does a good job pointing out how the Tarzan most of us are familiar with is not the one Burroughs wrote. For one thing he never spoke in the "Me Tarzan, you Jane" style, it was more a "My name is Tarzan, pleased to meet you Jane." Although, he had to learn English from a Frenchman, since he spoke French first. Yes, Tarzan was trilingual if you include 'beast', bilingual if you don't.
His second most famous series were his Barsoom novels, Barsoom being the name Martians have for Mars. These have recently suffered through the horrible Disney film John Carter, which I can see no justification for. There are scenes in it which prove the people behind the film had read the book so why they proceeded to ignore its heart, rip out its soul and mutilate its corpse is beyond me.
But, once you get to what the real Tarzan and Barsoom stories are you still don't come away with literary brilliance. These are unapologetic adventure stories written primarily to entertain. ERB himself said he didn't write because he wanted to be a novelist or create great art. He was poor, he had a family, so in the evenings he wrote on the back of envelopes and managed to sell the result for a few hundred dollars to one of the pulps of the day - a big sum in 1912.
As such ERB wrote slavishly, but didn't spend hours and hours poring over his work refining it. This led to a high output, most of his books took him a couple of months to write, but also many flaws. There is no contention that Burroughs was a particularly skilled writer. His stories are full of plot holes and rely heavily on coincidence to turn out. But, for the most part, they are exciting adventure stories filled with outlandish beings and lost civilisations.
And where his plots may be full of holes, his civilisations are full of detail with rich histories and cultures. Outlandish yes, but rich.
Lupoff also places ERB in a chronology, looking at some of his sources and considering some of the influences he had - suggesting that even sword and sorcery is deeply indebted to Tarzan, despite it not being the genre of Lord Greystoke. I think there could be debate on how strong the influences Lupoff discusses were but it's always interesting to consider the development of genres over time.
Lupoff finishes by pondering the longevity of ERB's works and suggests that, as a character, Tarzan had a good chance to outlive the other modern 'supermen' of literature - Superman and Sherlock Holmes. Back in the 60s maybe that was possible, but clearly it hasn't come true. Maybe if his film incarnations hadn't been such pale reflections of their source material he'd have done better. And the abovementioned disgrace to John Carter certainly won't help ERB's reputation.
But Lupoff has encouraged me to read more of these adventures, and I hope the adaptations can be forgotten without us losing the source material completely. There are fantastic vistas to visit within those pages, let's do some travelling.
Keep dreaming!
The book, which you have guessed I bought, is Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure by Richard A Lupoff. It caught my eye because of the cover illustration which was clearly a Frank Frazetta painting and I can't resist any work by that man. If it was just a Burroughs' novel I could have resisted but this is much more.
It's a scholarly look at the collected works of ERB considering them individually and as series and as a whole in terms of their success both on their own terms and in terms of their influence on the genre.
Burroughs seems almost forgotten now, although his major creations are remembered. Tarzan is of course the most famous and Lupoff does a good job pointing out how the Tarzan most of us are familiar with is not the one Burroughs wrote. For one thing he never spoke in the "Me Tarzan, you Jane" style, it was more a "My name is Tarzan, pleased to meet you Jane." Although, he had to learn English from a Frenchman, since he spoke French first. Yes, Tarzan was trilingual if you include 'beast', bilingual if you don't.
His second most famous series were his Barsoom novels, Barsoom being the name Martians have for Mars. These have recently suffered through the horrible Disney film John Carter, which I can see no justification for. There are scenes in it which prove the people behind the film had read the book so why they proceeded to ignore its heart, rip out its soul and mutilate its corpse is beyond me.
But, once you get to what the real Tarzan and Barsoom stories are you still don't come away with literary brilliance. These are unapologetic adventure stories written primarily to entertain. ERB himself said he didn't write because he wanted to be a novelist or create great art. He was poor, he had a family, so in the evenings he wrote on the back of envelopes and managed to sell the result for a few hundred dollars to one of the pulps of the day - a big sum in 1912.
As such ERB wrote slavishly, but didn't spend hours and hours poring over his work refining it. This led to a high output, most of his books took him a couple of months to write, but also many flaws. There is no contention that Burroughs was a particularly skilled writer. His stories are full of plot holes and rely heavily on coincidence to turn out. But, for the most part, they are exciting adventure stories filled with outlandish beings and lost civilisations.
And where his plots may be full of holes, his civilisations are full of detail with rich histories and cultures. Outlandish yes, but rich.
Lupoff also places ERB in a chronology, looking at some of his sources and considering some of the influences he had - suggesting that even sword and sorcery is deeply indebted to Tarzan, despite it not being the genre of Lord Greystoke. I think there could be debate on how strong the influences Lupoff discusses were but it's always interesting to consider the development of genres over time.
Lupoff finishes by pondering the longevity of ERB's works and suggests that, as a character, Tarzan had a good chance to outlive the other modern 'supermen' of literature - Superman and Sherlock Holmes. Back in the 60s maybe that was possible, but clearly it hasn't come true. Maybe if his film incarnations hadn't been such pale reflections of their source material he'd have done better. And the abovementioned disgrace to John Carter certainly won't help ERB's reputation.
But Lupoff has encouraged me to read more of these adventures, and I hope the adaptations can be forgotten without us losing the source material completely. There are fantastic vistas to visit within those pages, let's do some travelling.
Keep dreaming!
Wednesday, 1 July 2015
Catching Up
So it's been half a year since I wrote anything in here. That's deplorable. Anyway, it also leaves a lot of things uncovered. I don't think I'll ever be able to fully catch up in any detail so I'll try to put some things in here.
In terms of my writing the past six months have been pretty good. I've had two very short works published by Grouch - an online literary journal that aims to promote new writing/writers. The first actually came out in December last year, and I'd written it a few years before that. The second came out last week. The newer piece is very different for me, it's real life for one thing. It can be found here.
I've also been working slowly but surely on Hierophants' Fall, but in the meantime I entered Chapter One Blitz through Freshly Squeezed. This was a sort of competition where the first chapter of a YA novel was submitted and read by teens, peers and professionals. All of whom then gave feedback - so winning was a bonus, not one I got but I won through the feedback.
I submitted part of the first chapter of The Scarlet Ring, although I left the prologue out which I had to take into account when I got some of the feedback about how books open. Overall the feedback was positive and the criticism all agreed so it gave me a clear direction to go in. So that was a great experience and one that deserved a blog entry or two on its own.
There's been a lot of reading I haven't mentioned as well. Too much for this blog but I will mention two books: Last House Burning by Katy Scott and Unwanted by Amanda Holohan. Disclaimer - Katy and Amanda are friends and former co-workers. Amanda was a fellow subeditor and Katy was one of the writers who happily didn't need much work done subediting wise.
Amanda was already a published author when I met her; her first book was The King's Fool, which she nicely gave me a copy of when she left work. It's a great fantasy novel with some amazing characters and a vivid world. The sad part is, it's book one of a trilogy and books two and three are not published, so I remain hanging on that one.
Unwanted similarly left me hanging but thankfully in this case the publisher is running with the series. It's a dystopia with a teenage heroine, which may sound familiar to fans of the Hunger Games and Divergent series, but it's very much its own world and story so don't get any silly notions of bandwagons or anything like that. For one thing, there's a rich vein of alien invasion in it as well. The world is very detailed and has a strong mythology and history, which runs counter to truth so the world of our heroine is turned on its head.
Katy is self-published, for which she has my strong admiration. Last House Burning is also YA but in the urban fantasy genre. It's actually a mix of comedy and drama with some delicious satire. It has an Australian setting which I loved, and most of the action takes place in a fictional suburb of the Blue Mountains - where I grew up, so it had a nice homey feel for me. Not that I've met one of the Sentenced, St Peter or any employees of the devil. It's a fun ride with characters you can genuinely feel for and invest in. You can buy it here.
Hope to hear more on these pages more often!
Keep dreaming!
In terms of my writing the past six months have been pretty good. I've had two very short works published by Grouch - an online literary journal that aims to promote new writing/writers. The first actually came out in December last year, and I'd written it a few years before that. The second came out last week. The newer piece is very different for me, it's real life for one thing. It can be found here.
I've also been working slowly but surely on Hierophants' Fall, but in the meantime I entered Chapter One Blitz through Freshly Squeezed. This was a sort of competition where the first chapter of a YA novel was submitted and read by teens, peers and professionals. All of whom then gave feedback - so winning was a bonus, not one I got but I won through the feedback.
I submitted part of the first chapter of The Scarlet Ring, although I left the prologue out which I had to take into account when I got some of the feedback about how books open. Overall the feedback was positive and the criticism all agreed so it gave me a clear direction to go in. So that was a great experience and one that deserved a blog entry or two on its own.
There's been a lot of reading I haven't mentioned as well. Too much for this blog but I will mention two books: Last House Burning by Katy Scott and Unwanted by Amanda Holohan. Disclaimer - Katy and Amanda are friends and former co-workers. Amanda was a fellow subeditor and Katy was one of the writers who happily didn't need much work done subediting wise.
Amanda was already a published author when I met her; her first book was The King's Fool, which she nicely gave me a copy of when she left work. It's a great fantasy novel with some amazing characters and a vivid world. The sad part is, it's book one of a trilogy and books two and three are not published, so I remain hanging on that one.
Unwanted similarly left me hanging but thankfully in this case the publisher is running with the series. It's a dystopia with a teenage heroine, which may sound familiar to fans of the Hunger Games and Divergent series, but it's very much its own world and story so don't get any silly notions of bandwagons or anything like that. For one thing, there's a rich vein of alien invasion in it as well. The world is very detailed and has a strong mythology and history, which runs counter to truth so the world of our heroine is turned on its head.
Katy is self-published, for which she has my strong admiration. Last House Burning is also YA but in the urban fantasy genre. It's actually a mix of comedy and drama with some delicious satire. It has an Australian setting which I loved, and most of the action takes place in a fictional suburb of the Blue Mountains - where I grew up, so it had a nice homey feel for me. Not that I've met one of the Sentenced, St Peter or any employees of the devil. It's a fun ride with characters you can genuinely feel for and invest in. You can buy it here.
Hope to hear more on these pages more often!
Keep dreaming!
Thursday, 22 January 2015
Rays of Life - some stories in Astounding from 1930
I'm about halfway through the second issue of Astounding (February 1930) and there's been an interesting common thread in a three of the stories so far. While vastly different in approach and atmosphere, they all feature the discovery of a 'Life' ray at their heart. There are some spoilers ahead so if you want to read the stories first they can be found here.
The first was Harl Vincent's Old Crompton's Secret. This story didn't go anything like I expected. The blurb describes a rejuvenated old man with the memory of a crime, the illustration is of a fight scene between Old Crompton and a younger man. Then the story opens with a description of the enigmatic town hermit - Crompton - who has been there so long even the old folk can't remember when he arrived or why he's such a grouch. So at this point I was assuming his dark secret/remembered crime was why he was a hermit. But no, the crime happens three-quarters of the way through the story and turns out to not actually have happened ... as in the murder victim isn't dead.
So from that angle I wasn't a particular fan of the story but in other ways it was an intriguing setup. The old hermit gained a new neighbour, a young scientist who turns as hermetic as he is, and the nature of his experiments result in a three-foot-tall rooster. It is finally revealed that the young scientist has discovered the secret to life itself - which he funnels through electric rays in a particular configuration. Most interesting is his motivation. Having discovered this world-changing technology he immediately thinks of all the money and influence he will make offering the use of his rejuvenating machine to old rich people. It's possibly the most mundane motivation for such a scientist I've encountered. Mad ideals, world domination, saving lost loved ones ... nope, just getting rich and influencing people.
The next story's scientist was less materialistic and was probing the mysteries of life and death for the sake of doing so more than anything else. Interestingly he was also a side character in what was, in the end, a form of locked-room horror story. The story was The Corpse on the Grating by Hugh B Cave and is a first-person account of a mysterious night a doctor has when he and a famous scientist are called to visit a professor who proceeds to explain that he was on the verge of discovering the secret of life itself and restoring it to a dead man. He claimed mild success on a corpse but when the narrator called on him to prove it he said it hadn't proved as successful as he'd hoped so he'd dumped the body.
On their way home the doctor and scientist argue over the possibility of the professor being right, then they discover a dead man in a warehouse gate. It's the watchman and he appears to have died of fright. From here the story becomes the haunted house type, the doctor goes inside on a dare and ends up encountering the corpse the professor had disposed of. It turns out the professor should have been more patient.
The third 'life ray' story in the issue is an altogether different affair again. It's Creatures of the Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis. It follows the adventure of another young scientist with incredible intellect and stunning looks. He is led to discover another scientist's great work. This scientist is an expert in electricity and has discovered the ray of life. He used that ray to create a tropical paradise in a hidden valley in the Antarctic where he has through use of his ray and a eugenic breeding program, advanced human evolution to the point of 'perfection'.
The story has our hero declaim the ideals of the scientific tinkerer of humanity revolting, primarily because of the manipulation of breeding people and using the ray to fast-track growth and development - at 20 years of age 'Eve' had spawned five generations. Indeed, the central villain is one of the 'perfect' humans who despises the lesser humans, except one woman, and his equals who are perfect and thus boring, so he aims to destroy them all. Of course, that doesn't quite pan out, but the paradise is most certainly lost in the end and shown as a foolish quest.
So three very different stories, all within the Frankenstein galaxy if not solar system. Fascinating concepts. In the middle of these three stories was a very different tale of alien invasion by Charles Willard Diffin, Spawn of the Stars. It had monstrous protozoa in near-perfect flying saucers with hydrogen-based attacks that precede the Manhattan Project by a decade which is interesting in itself. In the end the world is saved by sunlight - and good-old American military bravery and self-sacrifice of course.
Keep reading, keep exploring and thinking. And most of all - Keep dreaming!
The first was Harl Vincent's Old Crompton's Secret. This story didn't go anything like I expected. The blurb describes a rejuvenated old man with the memory of a crime, the illustration is of a fight scene between Old Crompton and a younger man. Then the story opens with a description of the enigmatic town hermit - Crompton - who has been there so long even the old folk can't remember when he arrived or why he's such a grouch. So at this point I was assuming his dark secret/remembered crime was why he was a hermit. But no, the crime happens three-quarters of the way through the story and turns out to not actually have happened ... as in the murder victim isn't dead.
So from that angle I wasn't a particular fan of the story but in other ways it was an intriguing setup. The old hermit gained a new neighbour, a young scientist who turns as hermetic as he is, and the nature of his experiments result in a three-foot-tall rooster. It is finally revealed that the young scientist has discovered the secret to life itself - which he funnels through electric rays in a particular configuration. Most interesting is his motivation. Having discovered this world-changing technology he immediately thinks of all the money and influence he will make offering the use of his rejuvenating machine to old rich people. It's possibly the most mundane motivation for such a scientist I've encountered. Mad ideals, world domination, saving lost loved ones ... nope, just getting rich and influencing people.
The next story's scientist was less materialistic and was probing the mysteries of life and death for the sake of doing so more than anything else. Interestingly he was also a side character in what was, in the end, a form of locked-room horror story. The story was The Corpse on the Grating by Hugh B Cave and is a first-person account of a mysterious night a doctor has when he and a famous scientist are called to visit a professor who proceeds to explain that he was on the verge of discovering the secret of life itself and restoring it to a dead man. He claimed mild success on a corpse but when the narrator called on him to prove it he said it hadn't proved as successful as he'd hoped so he'd dumped the body.
On their way home the doctor and scientist argue over the possibility of the professor being right, then they discover a dead man in a warehouse gate. It's the watchman and he appears to have died of fright. From here the story becomes the haunted house type, the doctor goes inside on a dare and ends up encountering the corpse the professor had disposed of. It turns out the professor should have been more patient.
The third 'life ray' story in the issue is an altogether different affair again. It's Creatures of the Light by Sophie Wenzel Ellis. It follows the adventure of another young scientist with incredible intellect and stunning looks. He is led to discover another scientist's great work. This scientist is an expert in electricity and has discovered the ray of life. He used that ray to create a tropical paradise in a hidden valley in the Antarctic where he has through use of his ray and a eugenic breeding program, advanced human evolution to the point of 'perfection'.
The story has our hero declaim the ideals of the scientific tinkerer of humanity revolting, primarily because of the manipulation of breeding people and using the ray to fast-track growth and development - at 20 years of age 'Eve' had spawned five generations. Indeed, the central villain is one of the 'perfect' humans who despises the lesser humans, except one woman, and his equals who are perfect and thus boring, so he aims to destroy them all. Of course, that doesn't quite pan out, but the paradise is most certainly lost in the end and shown as a foolish quest.
So three very different stories, all within the Frankenstein galaxy if not solar system. Fascinating concepts. In the middle of these three stories was a very different tale of alien invasion by Charles Willard Diffin, Spawn of the Stars. It had monstrous protozoa in near-perfect flying saucers with hydrogen-based attacks that precede the Manhattan Project by a decade which is interesting in itself. In the end the world is saved by sunlight - and good-old American military bravery and self-sacrifice of course.
Keep reading, keep exploring and thinking. And most of all - Keep dreaming!
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