Utah Valley University
From the SelectedWorks of Jacques d'Emal
August, 1994
ANTICIPATING THE ATOM: POPULAR PERCEPTIONS OF ATOMIC POWER BEFORE HIROSHIMA Jacques d'Emal, Utah Valley University
Available at: https://works.bepress.com/jacques_demal/1/ i
ANTICIPATING THE ATOM: POPULAR PERCEPTIONS OF ATOMIC POWER
BEFORE HIROSHIMA
A Thesis
by
JACQUES-ANDRE CHRISTIAN D'EMAL
Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
August 1994
Major Subject: History
i
ANTICIPATING THE ATOM: POPULAR PERCEPTIONS OF ATOMIC POWER
BEFORE HIROSHIMA
A Thesis
by
JACQUES-ANDRE CHRISTIAN D'EMAL
Submitted to Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
Approved as to style and content by:
______Roger Beaumont Thomas R. Dunlap (Chair of Committee) (Member)
______Donald H. Dyal J. Blackwelder (Member) (Head of Department)
August 1994
Major Subject: History
iii
ABSTRACT
Anticipating the Atom: Popular Perceptions of Atomic Power before Hiroshima.
(August 1994)
Jacques-André Christian d'Emal, B.A., University of Utah
Chair of Advisory Committee: Professor Roger Beaumont
Before Hiroshima made the Bomb an object of popular concern, possible implications and applications of atomic physics had been discussed in the public forum.
The new science of X-rays and radium promised the possibilities of unlimited energy and the transmutation of elements in the two decades leading up to World War I. During the twenties, as scientific method struggled to keep pace with atomic theory, discussion centered on the feasibility of atomic disintegration as an energy source and the many uses of radium. The 1927 case of the New Jersey Radium Dial Painters, who sued their employers for compensation after contracting radium poisoning, revealed a dark side to the new science, that, along with the development of artificial radioactive isotopes by the
Joliot-Curies in Paris, and, in Italy, Enrico Fermi's neutron bombardment experiments, sobered attitudes toward the ever-increasing probability of atomic power. When Otto
Hahn finally split the atom in 1938, it opened the way to the practical industrial use of atomic fission, and stimulated a flurry of newspaper and magazine articles before World
War II brought about censorship.
Popular entertainment through 1945 reflects the extent to which atomic power had entered the public awareness. Atomic themes and motifs appeared in English language fiction as early as 1895, as did discussions of the social implications of the new science.
Such popular culture imagery, including motion pictures and comic book superheroes,
iv that presented the atom to mass audiences provide insight into the popular perceptions at the time, and to the shaping of attitudes toward the Bomb after Hiroshima.
v
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ANTICIPATING THE ATOM...... 1
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 29
Annotated Bibliography of Atomic Fiction...... 31
Chronological Checklist of Atomic Fiction...... 115
Chronological List of Atomic Films...... 121
Atomic Superheroes in Comic Books...... 124
NONFICTION WORKS CITED...... 130
Primary Sources...... 130
Secondary Sources...... 133
NONFICTION WORKS CONSULTED...... 134
Primary Sources...... 134
Secondary Sources...... 135
1
ANTICIPATING THE ATOM
The 7 August 1945 headline of the New York Times , "First Atomic Bomb
Dropped on Japan; Missile is Equal to 20,000 Tons of TNT; Truman Warns Foe of a
'Rain of Ruin'," shocked the nation. That day's editorial noted the bomb's "implications for good or evil are so tremendous in so many directions that it will take months before our minds can really begin to envisage them," and another the following day by Anne
O'Hare McCormick declared the bomb "has caused an explosion in men's minds as shattering as the obliteration of Hiroshima....The Earth is no longer solid. Out of the
1 forces that hold it together human genius has summoned the forces that tear it apart."
Americans, in the following days, struggled to understand what the atom bomb was and what it would mean. Time and Newsweek described, with journalistic detachment, how the bomb worked, who built it and how, and what it did to Hiroshima.
The following Sunday, the twelfth, the War Department released, the Smyth report, their official story of the bomb's development. Life magazine waited until their August twentieth issue to report the news but their editorial summarized the situation as well as any by noting that "the atomic bomb answers no questions...it rearranges the
2 questions...and throws on all of them a blinding new perspective."
1 New York Times, 7 August 1945, p.1. "Heard Round the World," New York Times, 7 August 1945, p.22. For a overview of the immediate reactions to the new see Donald Porter Geddes ed., The Atomic Age Opens (Cleveland: The World Publishing Company, 1945) and Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985). Anne O'Hare McCormick, "The Promethean Role of the United States," New York Times, 7 August 1945, p.22. 2 "Atomic Age," Time, 20 August 1945, 29-36. "Awesome Force of Atom Bomb Loosed to Hasten Jap Surrender," Newsweek, 13 August 1945, 30-33. "The Greatest Weapon: Conquest by Atom," Newsweek, 20 August 1945, 22-23. Henry D. Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes: The Official
2
Contrary to current perceptions, and despite some initial sense of shock, few were surprised by news of the bomb's development. For half a century, the open discussion of its implications and uses, for war, power, and medicine, had placed atomic physics in the public eye. In fact, dramatic developments had been visible well before World War I. In
December 1895, William Roentgen announced his accidental discovery of X-rays to the world, and in Paris the following February, Henri Becquerel noticed that the uranium salts in pitchblende produced similar rays. His student, Marie Curie, earned her doctorate by describing the phenomena as radioactivity. Ernest Rutherford, in London in 1898, discovered that radiation consisted of two different types of rays which he named alpha and beta rays. While, Marie Curie and her husband isolated minute quantities of a
3 miraculous element, radium, that seemed to spontaneously generate light and heat.
Theory chased research after the turn of the century. Rutherford and his partner
Frederick Soddy, in Montreal in 1902, noticed that the heaviest radioactive elements were slowly changing into lighter elements, throwing off pieces of themselves, as alpha and beta rays, as they disintegrated. Three years later, although seemingly unrelated at the time, Einstein published his first paper on relativity and posited the equivalence of matter and energy. Meanwhile, the indivisible atom had fallen apart and in 1911 Rutherford described its internal structure as a positively charged nucleus orbited by negatively charged electrons, like a star orbited by planets. As the Great War began in 1914, atomic physics was established as an independent field of science, and the literate world knew of
Report on the Development of the Atomic Bomb of the United States Government, 1940-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1945). "The Atomic Age," Life, 20 August 1945, 32. ______The journal is The Journal of Military History. 3 For an overview of the early history of atomic physics see Lennard Bickel, The Deadly Element: The Story of Uranium (New York: Stein and Day, 1979) and Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986).
3 its mysterious rays, radium, and ever-changing atom.
The products of the new physics, especially radium, quickly entered the public eye and captured the general imagination. In 1903 a journalist felt confident enough to write, "The average man ... knows as much about radium as do the most advanced physicists, and [research] is watched with interest by the well-informed newspaper reader..." In fact, physicists wrote for the popular press. For example, the distinguished
Cambridge professor, J.J. Thomson contributed an article summarizing the state of atomic physics to Harper's Monthly Magazine, Rutherford published several pieces describing his work, and Sir William Ramsey frequently promoted the new science, alluding to the potential transmutation of the elements. Even Madam Curie contributed an article that appeared alongside the first installment of Jack London's "The Sea-Wolf"
4 in The Century Magazine.
The public became most aware of the new science through reading descriptions of its medicinal applications. Doctors began using X-rays as a diagnostic tool immediately, and soon after began experimenting with radium. Articles described research into the effects of radium rays on small animals, their effects on a variety of cancers, and as a stimulant to plant growth. The experiment of J. Butler Burke, in which he combined an apparently (but not actually) sterilized bouillon with radium to produce a culture showing evidence of life, made front page news and generated speculation on the connection
4 "Women and Radium," New York Times, 6 September 1903, 6. Joseph John Thomson, D. Sc., F.R.S., "Becquerel Rays," Harper's Monthly Magazine, January 1903, 289-293. Ernest Rutherford, F.R.S. "Disintegration of the Radioactive Elements," Harper's Monthly Magazine, January 1904, 279-284. Sir Ernest Rutherford, F.R.S., "The Constitution of Matter and the Evolution of the Elements," The Popular Science Monthly, August 1914, 105-142. Sir William Ramsey, "Mystery of Radium," New York Times, 23 December 1903, 10. Sir William Ramsey, K.C.B., F.R.S., "Radium and its Products," Harper's Monthly Magazine, December 1904, 52-57. Sir William Ramsey, K.C.B., F.R.S., "Atoms," Harper's Monthly Magazine, August 1913, 363-369. Mme. Sklodowska Curie, "Radium and Radioactivity," The Century Magazine, January 1904, 461-466. Also see Lawrence Badash, Radioactivity in America: Growth and Decay of a Science (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1979), 24-32.
4 between radiation and the genesis of life. Some scientists even tried radium as a
5 treatment for insanity, which was the subject of the film By Radium Rays in 1914.
Radium also promised to revolutionize industry as a source of power. By 1903, authorities such as Professor William Crookes could state that, "one gram [of radium gives off enough energy] to lift the whole British fleet to the top of Ben Nevis," or that four pounds could propel a fast liner across the Atlantic. More importantly, in 1908, the final chapter of Frederick Soddy's The Interpretation of Radium, a collection of six free popular lectures given at the University of Glasgow, speculated on the possibility of controlling the rate of atomic disintegration, resulting in the transmutation of elements
6 and the harnessing of the released energy, which Soddy considered the world's wealth.
Concurrent with the growth of atomic physics and directly responsible for the public's awareness of it was the growth of the popular magazine. Before 1890, "quality magazines" sold for 35 cents and catered to a well-to-do, conservative, and literary audience. With the coming of widespread literacy and national advertising, as manufacturers as well as retailers began promoting their products, low-priced magazines proliferated, and after 1890, magazines such as Century, Harper's, and Scribner's
5 "Internal Effects of Radium" Harper's Weekly, 20 August 1904, 1348. "Cancer Cured By Radium," New York Times, 4 July 1903, 7. "Radium as Pain Killer," New York Times, 22 April 1904, 8. "War on Skin Cancer Waged with Radium," New York Times, 24 July 1904, 5(III). "Radium Benefits Cancer--Sometimes," New York Times, 25 January 1913, 4. "Find Radium Cures Some Cancer Forms," New York Times, 9 February 1913, 4(IV). C. Stuart Gager, "The Influence of Radium Rays on a Few Life Processes of Plants," The Popular Science Monthly, March 1909, 222-232. "Generation by Radium," New York Times, 20 June 1905, 1. William Bayard Hale, M.A., S.T.D., LL.D., "Has Radium Revealed the Secret of Life," New York Times, 16 July 1905, 7. C.W. Saleeby, M.D. F.R.S.E., "Radium and Life," Harper's Monthly Magazine, July 1906, 226-230. "Radium Cure for Insanity," New York Times, 9 January 1914, 2. By Radium Rays, 2 Reels, Gold Seal/ Universal, 1914. See also Badash, Radioactivity in America, 125-134. 6 "Radium," New York Times, 22 February 1903, 6. "Radium as Fuel," Harper's Weekly, 15 August 1903, 1348. Frederick Soddy, The Interpretation of Radium, 3d ed., (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1912.) see also Frederick Soddy, "The Energy of Radium," Harper's Monthly Magazine, December 1909, 52-59.
5 lowered their price to 25 cents. In January 1891, The Strand Magazine debuted in
England selling for sixpence and gained lasting popularity by printing six Sherlock
Holmes stories later that year, while imitators, priced at 10 cents, such as McClure's,
Cosmopolitan, and Munsey's, followed quickly and found great success. While in 1885, four general interest magazines in the United States with a circulation of over 100,000, and a combined readership of 600,000, by 1905, there were twenty with a circulation of over 100,000, and combined sales of 5.5 million. These popular ten-cent magazines were well illustrated, printed fresh nonfiction covering a variety of subjects and contemporary
7 issues, and featured new inventions and major world events.
Typical of the popular magazines interest in progress was the "future war" genre of fiction. Popular in Europe since the publication of George Chesney's "The Battle of
Dorking" in Blackwood's Magazine in 1871, such works examined the effects of new technology on war, and usually urged preparing for the next war from a heroic and aggressively nationalistic viewpoint. Not surprisingly, such stories featured the new atomic science as a plot device. Atypical among these for its very unromantic tone,
Frank Stockton's The Great War Syndicate speculated on the effects of an incredible new weapon, similar to an atomic bomb, and concluded war would be reduced to mass slaughter and thus would become impossible. The atomic disintegration and radium bombs of George Griffith's The World Peril of 1910 and The Lord of Labour merely escalated the level of destructive inventiveness. In Roy Norton's The Vanishing Fleets, a radioactive metal defied gravity giving America a weapon with which to enforce world
7 Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines 1885-1905, Volume 4, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 4-6, 8, 20-32. see also Sam Moskowitz, Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911 (Westport: Hyperion Press Inc., 1968)
6 peace and revolutionizing transportation. Similarly, a radium-powered flying machine, the "Miracle," in J.U. Giesy's All For His Country, saved the US from conquest by
8 Mexico and Japan.
Stories about scientists and inventors proved more enduring than the "future war" fictions. The "slapstick inventor" genre, also a favorite of the popular magazines, focused on absent-minded scientists whose impractical inventions had comic results.
Julian Hawthorne's "The Uncertainty about Mr. Kippax" anticipated the new science when its inventor worked on the forces holding atoms together, and disappeared as a result. William Alden's Professor Von Wagener used radium to restore his lost youth but
9 became radioactive with fatal consequences.
The heroic adventurer-scientist , however, dominated the formative field of speculative fiction. Garrett Serviss' scientists traveled to Venus in an uranium-powered rocket and used atomic power to rebuild civilization after a world-drenching flood.
Similarly, Professor John Silver built a radium-powered rocket ship in Stacey Blake's
"Beyond the Blue." Such heroic scientists were not always the "good guys," and sometimes went outside the law to achieve noble ends. The renegade scientist in Hollis
Godfrey's The Man Who Ended War, in order to force world disarmament, used a radioactive gas to destroy the world's battleships. In "The Man Who Rocked the Earth,"
8 For a broad ranging discussion of "future war' fiction see I.F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), currently being revised. Frank R. Stockton, The Great War Syndicate (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1889). George Griffith, The World Peril of 1910 (London: F.V. White, 1907) George Griffith, The Lord of Labour (London: F.V. White, 1911) Roy Norton, The Vanishing Fleets (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908) J.U. Giesy, "All For His Country," Cavalier, 21 February-14 March 1914. 9 Julian Hawthorne, "The Uncertainty about Mr. Kippax," The New York Ledger, 12 March 1892. William Livingstone Alden, "Wagnerium," London Magazine, November 1906. For an overview of speculative fiction at the time see Moskowitz, Science Fiction by Gaslight. see also Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove, Trillion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (London: Victor Gollancz LTD., 196)
7
10 PAX utilized his atom-powered flying ring to force an end to World War I.
Other fictional scientists had evil motives, such as Robert Cromie's nihilistic villain who planned to destroy the world with an explosive that released the energy frozen in matter, and the more mundane villain of Edward Crosby's Radiana, who used a
11 formula to manufacture radium to get rich.
While other writers were content to fight wars with radium bombs and fly in atomic rocket ships, only H.G. Wells speculated on the direct social implications of atomic physics. Wells dedicated The World Set Free to Frederick Soddy and borrowed
12 heavily from the final chapter of The Interpretation of Radium as the basis for his vision.
Wells' atomic motors revolutionized industry, transportation, and economics, stratifying society into those who could afford the benefits of the new technology and the masses who could not. War followed, and after atomic bombs, a term first used by Wells, destroyed the world's cities, an authoritarian world government stepped into the resulting chaos, giving mankind a chance to reorder its social institutions to fit the new technology.
While the Great War halted atomic research, physicists served their countries by working on more practical war-related efforts, like poison gas. Throughout the 1920s, scientists developed research methods and tools to test the boundaries of their theories, and to explore the atom's nucleus and its bonds. Public fascination with the atom continued despite the slow pace of research, and general interest periodicals, like The
10 Garrett Putnam Serviss, "A Columbus of Space," All-Story, January-June 1909. Garrett Putnam Serviss, "The Second Deluge," Cavalier, July 1911-January 1912. Stacy Blake, "Beyond the Blue," London Magazine, December 1914-May 1915. Hollis Godfrey, The Man Who Ended War (Boston: Little, Brown, 1908) Arthur Train and Robert W. Wood, "The Man Who Rocked the Earth," Saturday Evening Post, 14 November-28 November 1914. 11 Robert Cromie, The Crack of Doom (London: Digby, Long, and Co., 1895). Edward Harold Crosby, Radiana. A Novel (Boston: Ivy Press, 1906) 12 H.G. Wells, The World Set Free (London: Macmillan, 1914).
8
American Magazine, continued to print stories detailing the latest findings of science. In
September 1923, the BBC broadcast on all channels Rutherford's presidential acceptance speech before the British Scientific Association as he described the internal structure of the atom but expressed doubts regarding the practical utility of atomic energy. Later that year, the New York Times reported Neils Bohr's Yale lectures in detail, and Edward Free
13 attempted to explain Bohr's quantum theory to the readers of The Forum.
Several scientific authorities had continued to speak of the promise of atomic energy. Although Sir Oliver Lodge, in 1919, saw an inexhaustible supply of energy in the atom and predicted an end to the use of coal, Rutherford cautioned against such speculation, pointing out that only heavy elements such as uranium held such potential and there was too little available to be practical. Hopeful speculation persisted, nevertheless. Both Dr. James F. Norris, in a presidential address to the American
Chemical Society, and Dr. Arthur Goodspeed, in a University of Pennsylvania commencement address, predicted the use of atomic energy in the near future, while
Dean G.L. Wendt of Pennsylvania State College School of Chemistry and Physics promised light without heat. At the same time, Popular Mechanics advised their readers
14 that transmutation was inevitable.
13 Owen McLean, "The Most Amazing Story Science Has Told Us," The American Magazine, June 1924, 18. "Pictures Electrons Speeding in Atoms," The New York Times, 13 September 1923, 2. "Dr. Bohr Expounds Theory of Atoms," New York Times, 7 November 1923, 3. "Elements of Atom Described by Bohr," New York Times, 8 November 1923, 19. "Bohr Discusses Bombarding Atoms," New York Times, 9 November 1923, 17. "Discusses Atom From New Point," New York Times, 14 November 1923, 17. "Shows Vast Spaces Within Atom," New York Times, 15 November 1923, 7. "Bohr Demonstrates Action of the Atom," New York Times, 16 November 1923, 11. Edward Free, "Exploring the Atom: With Dr. Bohr's Quantum Theory," The Forum, October 1924, 505-514. 14 "New Force Predicted by Sir Oliver Lodge," New York Times, 18 September 1919, 3. "Sir Oliver Lodge Sees World Scorning Coal," New York Times, 12 December 1919, 19. "Atom's Storehouse of Energy Locked," New York Times, 3 August 1924, 22. "Sees Power in Atom Making New Life," New York Times, 8 September 1926, 1. "Forecasts Harnessing of Energy of Atoms," New York Times, 13 February 1927, 17[II]. "Predicts Cold Light by Atomic Vibration," New York Times, 15 November 1927,
9
The public was most especially made aware of radium's uses, both practical and bizarre. Its medical applications had been professionalized by 1920, and newspapers and magazines explained where the magic element was found, how it was processed and utilized, and safety precautions required in its handling. On the bizarre side, the planned opening night of the Ziegfield Follies in 1922 was ruined when another show first used gowns made luminous by radium. Scientific American placed glowing radium spots on mediums to detect fakery during seances, while in Britain, Mr. Grindell-Matthews attempted to sell a radium-powered ray that he claimed could cause automobile and
15 aircraft motors to seize up.
During and after the war, atomic physics appeared in a broad variety of popular entertainment. Movies picked up the war theme and extremely powerful explosives were portrayed in such films as War O'Dreams, The Greatest Power with Ethel Barrymore, and The Eleventh Hour. Atom-powered death rays appeared in The Intrigue, The
Invisible Ray, Story Without a Name, Laughing at Danger, The Code of the Air, and The
Last Hour. The discovery of radium on his land provided a lucky rancher the means to go to the big city in Broadway or Bust. Many authors also used the atom in their works, and previously unpublished works by Mark Twain and Upton Sinclair found their way into print. Best-selling romance novelist Marie Corelli treated atomic power in spiritual terms in The Secret Power. Detective author Eden Phillpotts, writing as Harrington Hext, depicted a terrorist using atomic inventions in Number 87, while Hercule Poirot foiled a
12. "Solving the Secrets of Life," Popular Mechanics Magazine, October 1928, 563-567. 15 For the professionalization of medicine see Badash, Radioactivity in America, 146-149. "Bad Mouth Ailments Remedied by Radium," New York Times, 18 August 1924, 6. "The Story of Radium," New York Times, 15 May 1921, 2[VII]. "Handling Invisible but Deadly Rays," Popular Mechanics Magazine, June 1925, 985-987. "Claims Luminous Process," New York Times, 5 June 1922, 16. "Radium to Light Mediums in Test," New York Times, 11 February 1923, 8[II]. "'Diabolic Ray' Makes Scientists Wonder," New York Times, 1 June 1924, 3[VIII].
10 plan to conquer the world with an atomic explosive in Agatha Christie's "The Man Who
Was Four." And, explorers found Atlantis had survived by using atomic power in Sir
16 Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Maracot Deep."
New authors also picked up old themes. The renegade scientist, in Swiss playwright Noelle Roger's The New Adam, created a superman who destroyed himself and his creator in an atomic blast. Mystery writer E. Charles Vivian had his benevolent, gold-producing scientist killed by threatened Jewish financiers in Stardust, while mystery writer Rufus King's scientist dematerialized his girlfriend in The Fatal Kiss Mystery, and detective writer Arthur Reeve's heroic scientist saved America in an economic war with
Europe by inventing atomic power in Pandora. Terrorists planned to blow up New York,
Paris, and London with an atomic explosive in travel writer Ganpat's The Three R's.
Atomic weapons enforced world peace in Victor MacClure's The Ark of the Covenant and
Reginald Glossop's The Orphan of Space. Pierrepont Noyes used his unique perspective as US Rhineland Commissioner to write The Pallid Giant warning against the
17 development of advanced weapons while men are still ruled by fear.
16 War O'Dreams, directed by E.A. Martin, 2 reels, Selig, 1915. The Greatest Power, directed by Edwin Carewe, 5 reels, Metro, 1917. The Eleventh Hour, William Fox, 1923. The Intrigue, Paramount , 1916. The Invisible Ray, directed by Harry A. Pollard, 15 chapters, Forham Amusement Corp., 1920. Story Without a Name, Paramount, 1924. Laughing at Danger, directed by James W. Horne, 6 reels, FBO, 1925. Code of the Air, directed by James P. Hogan, 5700 feet, Bischoff, 1928. The Last Hour, directed by Walter Forde, 75 minutes, Nettleford Films, 1930. Broadway or Bust, Universal 1924. Mark Twain, "Sold to Satan," in Europe and Elsewhere (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1923). Upton Sinclair, The Millennium: A Comedy of the Year 2000 (Pasadena: Upton Sinclair, 1929). Marie Corelli, The Secret Power (Garden City: Doubleday, Paige, & Company, 1921). Harrington Hext [Eden Phillpotts], Number 87 (New York: Macmillan, 1922). Agatha Christie, "The Man Who Was Four," The Sketch, 2 January-19 March 1924. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "The Maracot Deep," The Strand Magazine, October 1927-February 1928. 17 Noelle Roger, The New Adam, trans. P.O. Crowhurst (London: Stanley Paul, 1926). E. Charles Vivian, Stardust (London: Hutchinson, 1925). Rufus King, The Fatal Kiss Mystery (Garden City: The Crime Club, Doubleday, & Doran, 1928). Ganpat, The Three R's (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930). Arthur B. Reeve, Pandora (New York: Harper, 1926). Victor MacClure, The Ark of the Covenant: A Romance of the Air and of Science (New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1924). Reginald Glossop, The Orphan of Space: A Tale of Downfall (London: G. MacDonald and Co., Ltd., 1926). Pierrepont B.
11
Authors of higher literary standing also used atomic themes. While German satirist Alexander Moszkowski linked heart and mind in The Isles of Wisdom, renowned
Czech playwright Karel Capek conjoined the destructive power of an atomic explosive to human sexuality in Krakatit, then released God from its prison in matter with an atomic engine in The Absolute at Large. In a more distant view, atomic power was depicted as merely one stage in long cyclical evolutionary history of man in English philosopher Olaf
18 Stapledon's Last and First Men.
While books and general interest magazines continued to feature such speculations, atomic physics came under increasing focus in the pulp magazines, the first all-fiction variants of which, like The Argosy and The Black Cat, appeared before the turn of the century. They stressed action and adventure in an outdoor setting, and before
World War I had begun to focus on specific genres like western, detective, romance, and adventure. Since their writers were paid by the word and had to write thousands of words a day to make a living, most wrote to a formula. None did this better than Edgar Rice
Burroughs, who shrewdly and deliberately analyzed the pulp fiction market and wrote stories to a formula that appealed to the widest possible audience by adding a more-than- casual love interest and highly exotic settings to typical adventure plots. His first story,
"Under the Moons of Mars" in 1912, which mentioned radium bullets, led pulp writers to use atomic motifs in their stories after the Great War, for example, Bertram Russell's
"The Bat-Men of Thorium." An atomic explosive prevented an European invasion of
Noyes, The Pallid Giant: A Tale of Yesterday and Tomorrow (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1927). 18 Alexander Moszkowski, The Isles of Wisdom, trans. H.J. Stenning (London: Routledge, 1924). Karel Capek, Krakatit, trans. Lawrence Hyde (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1925), Karel Capek, The Absolute at Large, trans. Sarka B. Hrbkova (New York: Macmillan, 1927). Olaf Stapledon, Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future (London: Methuen, 1930).
12
America in Fred MacIsaac's "World Brigands." And, in Otis Adelbert Kline's "Maza of
19 the Moon," a scientist, using atomic weapons, started and ended a war with the moon .
Atomic physics also provided the most exotic of settings. Because atoms were then seen as resembling small solar systems, some authors concluded adventurers might visit tiny worlds orbiting nuclear suns. Ray Cummings first described such a visit to a microcosmic world in "The Girl in the Golden Atom" in 1919, and less than a year later with "The People of the Golden Atom." Austin Hall reversed the situation and had travelers from a sub-microscopic world visit Earth in "People of the Comet." A chemical experiment in a macroscopic universe tore the Earth from its orbit in Clare Winger
Harris' "A Runaway World," and a sub-microscopic world fought a macroscopic world
20 using Earth for a battlefield in Edmond Hamilton's "The Atomic Conquerors."
The most important "real world" industrial use of radium, apart from medicine, was in luminous paint, which as early as 1909, was used to illuminate watch dials. By the beginning of World War I, half the radium produced was used by luminous paint companies. During the war, such paint was applied to aircraft instruments, ship's compasses, and gunsights. These demonstrations of utility showed that radioactivity was more than just a novelty, and raised popular consciousness of atomic power at a practical level, but in the Spring of 1927, the darker side of its effects were dramatized when five
19 Mott, American Magazines, 114-117, 417-423, 428-431. Sam Moskowitz, Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "The Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970). Edgar Rice Burroughs, "Under the Moons of Mars," All-Story, February-July 1912. Bertram Russell, "The Bat-Men of Thorium," Weird Tales, May-July 1928. Fred MacIsaac, "World Brigands," Argosy-All Story, 30 June-4 August 1928. Otis Adelbert Kline, "Maza of the Moon," Argosy, 21 December 1929-11 January 1930. 20 Ray Cummings, "The Girl in the Golden Atom," All-Story, 15 March 1919. Ray Cummings, "The People of the Golden Atom," All-Story, 24 January-28 February 1920. Austin Hall, "People of the Comet," Weird Tales, September-October 1923. Clare Winger Harris, "A Runaway World," Weird Tales, July 1926. Edmond Hamilton, "The Atomic Conquerors," Weird Tales, February 1927.
13 women brought suit against the United States Radium Corporation in New Jersey.
Several of those who worked as watch dial painters during and after the war and had suffered or died from a number of ailments variously diagnosed as syphilis, angina, or anemia. Since the women had shaped their brushes to a sharp point with the tips of their tongues, evidence pointed to radium as the source of their troubles. The courtroom drama unfolded in the papers as bodies were exhumed to test the levels of radium in their bones and the court ruled the statutes of limitations did not apply. A year later, the plaintiffs settled out of court, each receiving roughly $10,000 and three husbands
21 receiving nominal sums for the loss of their wives' services.
Public concern did not vanish with the settlement, and industrial safety experts sought ways to prevent any further cases. Although the Curies and other researchers endured radiation burns and sickness as an unavoidable hazard of their work, but such hazards in the public domain was a different matter. As children of afflicted women came down with symptoms of radium poisoning, and women continued to die or tell the
22 public of their plight, radium lost some of its luster.
As the twenties drew to a close, a new attitude toward science began to appear in fiction. Eric Temple Bell, a distinguished mathematician, under the pen name John
21 Badash, Radioactivity in America, 146-149. "Radium-Illuminated Watch," New York Times, 7 November 1909, 4[III]. For an overview of the case and its lingering effects into the fifties see Daniel Lang, "A Most Valuable Accident," The New Yorker, 2 May 1959, 49-92. "New Radium Disease Found; Has Killed Five," New York Times, 30 May 1925, 13. "Radium Killed Woman, Relative Declared; She is Seventh Watch Dial Painter to Die," New York Times, 19 June 1925, 1. "Radium Poisoning Takes Seventh Life," New York Times, 27 December 1925, 26. "New Issue Raised in Radium Poisoning," New York Times, 19 July 1927, 1925. "Body to be Exhumed in Radium Poisoning Test," New York Times, 10 October 1927, 9. "Doctor Seeks Radium in Dead Girls Bones," New York Times, 15 December 1927, 12. "Radium Suit Ended," New York Times, 14 June 1928, 9. 22 "75 Experts Meet on Radium Disease," New York Times, 21 December 1928, 14. "Boy Said to Inherit Radium Infection," New York Times, 8 November 1929, 4. "Boy's Ills Laid to Radium," New York Times, 9 November 1929, 40. "Autopsy Performed on Radium Victim," New York Times, 9 December 1929, 22. Katherine Schaub, "Radium," The Survey, 1 May 1932, 138.
14
Taine, published Green Fire in 1928. Its central character, the all-too-human mad genius
Javic, attempted to destroy the universe as a monument to his own greatness. The same year, a bored dilettante undid creation when he split an atom and started a chain reaction in William Gerhardi's Jazz and Jasper. The atom had found its way into stories of the dark side of science, balancing the promise of enormous benefits in energy and medicine
23 against the potential for great harm.
Thus, during the thirties, the mood had already changed as science began its assault on the atom and scientists rapidly closed on their goal of unlocking its power.
The turning point came in 1932 when Chadwick identified the neutron, a heavy uncharged particle that shared space in the nucleus with protons. After physicists began using the new Cavendish accelerator and cyclotron to throw neutrons at atoms, in Paris, the following year, Irene Joliot-Curie, the daughter of Marie Curie, discovered that when some atoms caught neutrons in their nucleus, they changed character, thus creating the first artificial radioactive isotopes. With transmutation more possible than ever, in Italy,
Enrico Fermi systematically followed up Joliot-Curie's experiment by bombarding each element in turn and recording the results. The heaviest element, uranium, reacted strangely, producing an odd combination of elements, none of which should have been there. Fermi called these transuranic elements and from 1934 to 1938, Joliot-Curie in
Paris, and the team of Otto Hahn and Lise Meitner in Berlin raced to discover their true
24 nature.
23 John Taine [Eric Temple Bell], Green Fire (New York: Dutton, 1928). William Gerhardi, Jazz and Jasper: The Story of Adams and Eve (London: Duckworth, 1928). 24 See Bickel, The Deadly Element and Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb also Robert Jungk, Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists, trans. James Cleugh (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1958)
15
The public was kept abreast of these developments in science. In 1931, the
Columbia radio network carried Sir Oliver Lodge's speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science in which he described the evolution of atomic theory.
Cockroft and Walton's experiments with the new Cavendish accelerator made front page news promising atomic energy. William Lawrence and his cyclotron became minor celebrities and appeared in newspaper and magazine articles throughout the thirties.
Radioactive isotopes returned the Curie name to the papers, and everyone knew when
25 Fermi created a new element.
More exotic consequences also continued to be reported. Dr. Goodspeed found exposure to radium rays caused abnormal growth and "damage to hereditary material" in tobacco plants. Naval inspectors found flaws in cast parts of warships by using radium to
26 X-ray them, while physicians employed the cyclotron "death-ray" to treat leukemia.
As science neared its target, stories using atomic plot devices reached a relatively small audience. The increasing specialization of the pulps led to the creation, by Hugo
Gernsback, of a magazine that carried nothing but science fiction. He had been running short fiction - what he called "scientifiction" - in his popular science magazines, Science and Invention and Electrical Experimenter, and in 1926 he decided to publish a magazine
25 "Lodge on Air, Traces Atomic Theory's Rise," New York Times, 16 September 1931, 16. "Atom Torn Apart, Yielding 60% More Energy than Used," New York Times, 2 May 1932, 1. "Hail New Approach to Energy of Atom," New York Times, 3 May 1932, 8. "Atomic Energy," New York Times, 4 May 1932, 18. "To Speed Hydrogen to Break up Atoms," New York Times, 20 September 1930, 5. "25,000,000-Volt Ray May Disrupt Atom," New York Times, 8 August 1931, 15. "Cyclotron Man," Time, 1 November 1937, 51. "Putting the Atom to Work," Popular Mechanics Magazine, May 1938, 690. "Radioactivity is Produced Artificially By Daughter of Curies and Her Husband," New York Times, 2 February 1933, 19. "Artificial Radioactivity," New York Times, 3 February 1933, 12. "Italian Produces 93d Element by Bombardment of Uranium," New York Times, 5 June 1934, 25. "Element 93," New York Times, 6 June 1934, 20. 26 "Effects of X-rays on Tobacco Plants," New York Times, 2 July 1929, 46. "Radium Finds Flaws in U.S. Cruiser," Popular Science Monthly, October 1931, 62. "Tests of Death Ray Aim at Saving Lives," New York Times, 2 February 1936, 2[II].
16 wholly dedicated to science fiction, Amazing Stories. After it met with some success, imitators soon followed, most importantly Astounding Stories of Super-Science in 1930.
Although after this, atomic fiction appeared mainly in the science fiction magazines there were some notable exceptions. In the off-Broadway play Wings over Europe in 1929, a special cabinet committee in England was forced to decide what to do with the gift of an atomic explosive. In 1932, in Public Faces, a diplomat and future member of Parliament,
Harold Nicholson, decided such a weapon should enforce universal disarmament. The last-second discovery of an atomic rocket allowed a handful of humans to escape certain doom in When Worlds Collide, published in 1933 and later made into a Hollywood movie. An atomic explosive in the hands of a small Balkan country threatened to upset the European balance of power in Eric Ambler's 1936 spy thriller The Dark Frontier, and a fanatic cult planned to end mankind's futile existence in an atomic blast in J.B. Priestly's
27 The Doomsday Men.
The August 1928 issue of Amazing Stories defined the science fiction magazine genre. It contained the first installment of "The Skylark of Space," and the first appearance of Buck Rogers. Edward "Doc" Smith's Skylark series extended the boundaries of the adventure story. His heroes rocketed about the galaxy in an atom-
27 For a history of the early science fiction magazines see Lester del Rey, The World of Science Fiction 1926-1976 (New York: Garland Publishing Inc., 1980), Isaac Asimov, Before the Golden Age: A Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930's (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1974), and Jack Williamson, The Early Williamson (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1975). Astounding was initially published by Clayton publishing in 1930, was sold to Street & Smith in 1933, and changed its name four times before 1945. They are Astounding Stories of Super-Science (January 1930-January 1931), Astounding Stories (February 1931-November 1932), Astounding Stories of Super-Science (January 1933- March 1933), Astounding Stories (October 1933-February 1938), and Astounding Science-Fiction (March 1938- ). Hereafter referred to as Astounding. Robert Nichols and Maurice Brown, Wings Over Europe: A Dramatic Extravaganza on a Pressing Theme (New York: Cobici-Friede Publishers, 1929). Harold Nicholson, Public Faces (London: Constable, 1932). Edwin Balmer and Phillip Wylie, When Worlds Collide (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1933). Eric Ambler, The Dark Frontier (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936). J.B. Priestly, The Doomsday Men (New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1938).
17 powered ship, fighting monsters and villains on dozens of different planets at a breakneck pace, overcoming every new obstacle with a feat of scientific wizardry. Phillip Nowlan's
Buck Rogers saved America in the twenty-fifth century after awakening from a radiation- induced slumber, and appeared daily as a newspaper comic strip for almost thirty years
28 and in a film serial in 1939.
As science fiction magazines expanded and evolved, the writers reworking old themes increasingly relied on an atomic motif. The sub-microscopic story gained in popularity with stories such as "Beyond the Vanishing Point," Out of the Sub-Universe,"
"Prisoners on the Electron," and "Microcosmic Buccaneers." Captain S.P. Meek's
"Submicroscopic" and its sequel, "Awlo of Ulm," epitomized the type as his hero journeyed to a land within an atom and braved a series of adventures to win the hand of the heroine, Awlo. In contrast, the scientist in Donald Wandrei's "Colossus" sought refuge from war on Earth by expanding himself into a macrocosmic universe, while
Henry Hasse condemned his protagonist to an eternal existence of shrinking through one
29 universe into the next in "He Who Shrank."
Some authors depicted atomic weapons. Disintegration bombs kept the world at peace until the Soviet Union developed a defensive screen in "The Red Peril" of 1929. In
"The Triple Ray," an atom-destroying twin-ray ended a European war, but a new triple-
28 E.E. Smith, "The Skylark of Space," Amazing Stories, August-October 1928. E.E. Smith, "Skylark Three," Amazing Stories, August-October 1930. E.E. Smith, "Skylark of Valeron," Astounding, August 1934-February 1935. Phillip Francis Nowlan, "Armageddon 2419 A.D.," Amazing Stories, August 1928. Phillip Francis Nowlan, "The Airlords of Han." Amazing Stories, March 1929. 29 Ray Cummings, " Beyond the Vanishing Point," Astounding, March 1931. R.F. Starzl, "Out of the Sub-Universe," Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1928. Robert H. Leitfred, "Prisoners on the Electron," Astounding, October 1930. Harl Vincent, "Microcosmic Buccaneers," Amazing Stories, November 1929. Cpt. S.P. Meek, "Submicroscopic," Amazing Stories, August 1931. Cpt. S.P. Meek, "Awlo of Ulm," Amazing Stories, September 1931. Donald Wandrei, "Colossus," Astounding, January 1934. Henry Hasse. "He Who Shrank," Amazing Stories, August 1936.
18 ray destroyed the world. The hero of Charles Diffin's "Holocaust" used tritonite bullets to save America from a Soviet invasion, while in Carl Spohr's "The Final War," World
War I was refought in the twenty-first century, ending with atomic bombs destroying civilization. In Nat Schachner's "The World Gone Mad," when the next war started, both sides had radite bombs, and aliens used a radioactive gas that drove people insane to
30 conquer Earth in Jack Williamson's "Legion of Space."
In the early 1930s, atomic energy usually provided a means to attain a greater end.
In "Atomic Fire," it saved the Earth when the sun died. In "The Power Planet," a renegade country attacked the world's energy sources - orbiting solar energy converters - confident they could survive without them since they had just discovered atomic energy.
In "Power," the discovery of atomic energy by an underclass technician ended the power monopoly of the ruling caste, resulting in social upheaval. Aliens gave atomic energy to man in "Emissaries of Space," but at the price of becoming a vassal state. An atomic- powered ship carried human colonists in "Proxima Centauri," but, in Nat Schachner's
"Orb of Probability" man had grown dependent on atomic machines which provide for
31 every need and want.
In view of the frequent references to transmutation in popular science, it is not surprising that authors explored the possibilities of turning lead into gold. In "The Stolen
Element," a scientist discovered the secret only to be killed by a greedy businessman who
30 Cpt. S.P. Meek, "The Red Peril," Amazing Stories, September 1929. R.V. Happel, "The Triple Ray," Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1930. Charles W. Diffin, "Holocaust," Astounding, June 1931. Carl W. Spohr, "The Final War," Wonder Stories, March-April 1932. Nat Schachner, "The World Gone Mad," Amazing Stories, October 1935. Jack Williamson, "The Legion of Space," Astounding, April-September 1934. 31 Ray Gallun, "Atomic Fire," Amazing Stories, April 1931. Murray Leinster, "The Power Planet," Amazing Stories, June 1931. Harl Vincent, "Power," Amazing Stories, January 1932. Nat Schachner, "Emissaries of Space," Wonder Stories Quarterly, Fall 1932. Murray Leinster, "Proxima Centauri," Astounding, March 1935. Nat Schachner, "The Orb of Probability," Astounding, June 1935.
19 stole it, while in a similar situation, the scientist in "Gold" used an alpha ray floodlight to
32 kill the gangsters seeking his secret.
The effects of radiation on life interested a few authors. John Taine's mad scientist planned to expose the human race to hard a radiation that caused genetic material to regress back upon evolution in "Seeds of Life." A rich radium deposit caused small animals to grow to an enormous size in "Giants of the Ray," and, in "The Man Who
Evolved," a scientist submitted himself to concentrated cosmic rays to experience the
33 future of mankind.
Writers also gave more attention to what happened when science went wrong. In
"The Revolt of the Atoms," a experiment created an atomic vortex that slowly increased in size, destroying all in its path as winds blew it about Europe. An atomic digging machine ran out of control in "The Laughing Death," and cut the world in two. An experiment destroyed a valley in "The Atom Smasher," while in "The Power and the
Glory," a professor warned his student against experimenting with atomic energy lest it
34 be used as a weapon.
By 1935, the science fiction magazine genre was well enough defined for writers to engage in self-parody. Isaac Nathanson's "World Aflame" began with a slightly mad scientist destroying a building with an uncontrolled atomic experiment. The hero, the scientist's research assistant, married the scientist's beautiful daughter and later saved the world. Meanwhile, spies stole the scientist's notes and, to end the war, built an atomic
32 Paul Ernst, "The Stolen Element," Astounding, September 1934. H.L. Gold, "Gold," Astounding, June 1935. 33 John Taine, "Seeds of Life," Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1931. Tom Curry, "Giants of the Ray," Astounding, June 1930. Edmond Hamilton, "The Man Who Evolved," Wonder Stories, April 1931. 34 V. Orlovsky, "The Revolt of the Atoms," Amazing Stories, April 1929. Stephen G. Hale, "The Laughing Death," Amazing Stories, April 1931. P. Schuyler Miller, "The Atom Smasher," Amazing Stories, January 1934. Charles W. Diffin, "The Power and the Glory," Astounding, July 1930.
20 bomb that acted like those in The World Set Free, but worse. Missing its target, New
York City, it sat burning and ignored in the Catskills until it burned a hole through the
Earth's crust causing worldwide disaster. Fortunately, the hero's new atomic rockets
35 allowed humanity to colonize Mars and Venus.
Movies carried some of the magazines' themes to a broader audience. Boris
Karloff used radium rays to kill his enemies in The Invisible Ray. When Atlantis attacked
America using an atomic disintegrator ray, in Undersea Kingdom, Crash Corrigan saved the day. Bela Lugosi threatened a city with disintegrating gas in SOS Coast Guard. Dr.
Cyclops appeared in the theaters and a magazine simultaneously, and most notably,
Universal Pictures made Buck Rogers into a serial starring Olympic swimmer Buster
36 Crabbe.
Arguably the most important individual in the history of science fiction magazines was John W. Campbell, Jr. An early reader of Amazing Stories, he began submitting stories while still a physics student at MIT. In his early works, he copied the style of "Doc" Smith with whom he developed a friendly rivalry as each tried to outdo the other in their next story. Early on, Campbell was enthusiastic about atomic science. In
"When the Atoms Failed," a scientist defeated a Martian invasion with superior atomic science, and it was the first story to make a clear distinction between controlling the energy released in atomic disintegration and that released in the complete and instantaneous conversion of matter to energy. An atomic motor, controlling the latter sort
35 Isaac Nathanson, "World Aflame," Amazing Stories, January 1935. 36 The Invisible Ray, directed by Lambert Hillyer, 82 min., Universal, 1935. Undersea Kingdom, directed by Breezy Easton and Joseph Kane, 12 chapters, Republic, 1936. SOS Coast Guard, directed by William Whitney and Alan James, 12 chapters, Republic, 1937. Dr. Cyclops, directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack, 75 min., Paramount, 1939. Henry Kuttner, "Dr. Cyclops," Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1940. Buck Rogers, directed by Ford Beebe and Saul Goodkind, 12 Chapters, Universal, 1939.
21 of energy, allowed a scientist to save New York from destruction in "Beyond the End of
Space." Campbell even brought a new twist to the submicroscopic world theme, in
"Atomic Power," by having an atomic power generator save the earth from being the
37 atom consumed in a macrocosmic atomic generator.
As Campbell matured, he found a desire for a more adult style of science fiction.
Realizing his audience expected a certain kind of story to follow his name, he adopted the pen name "Don A. Stuart," derived from his wife's maiden name, Donna Stuart, and began writing stories designed to evoke a mood. In "Twilight," a time traveler visited the distant future and found mankind dying a lingering death, its spirit smothered by a dependence on atomic-powered machines that provided for every need and want. In
"Blindness," a scientist lost his sight while perfecting atomic power near the sun, only to return to an Earth that didn't need or want his life's work. By the mid-thirties, Campbell
38 and "Stuart" were two of the magazines' most popular authors.
Campbell became, in December 1937, editor of Astounding, and the prime shaper of magazine science fiction until his death in 1971. Recruiting and shaping authors to write more mature stories, he included an increasing number of scientific articles, especially those related to rocketry and atomic physics, and he wrote editorials explaining his vision of science and science fiction. When in 1938, he wrote that he felt confident that, "the discoverer of the secret of atomic power is alive on Earth today," he didn't
37 John W. Campbell, "When the Atoms Failed," Amazing Stories, January 1930. John W. Campbell, "Beyond the End of Space," Amazing Stories, March 1933. John W. Campbell, "Atomic Power," Astounding, December 1934. 38 Don A. Stuart, [John W. Campbell], "Twilight," Astounding, November 1934. Don A. Stuart, [John W. Campbell], "Blindness," Astounding, March 1935.
22
39 know how right he was.
Atomic science and technology progressed rapidly from the winter of 1938 to
August 1945. After Hahn's experiments with uranium and transuranic elements produced curious results, his old partner Lise Meitner had a hunch. After she conferred with her nephew Otto Frisch at Christmas time in Copenhagen, they checked their findings with
Neils Bohr, and found that the numbers held, proving Meitner's insight correct, that uranium atoms, when bombarded with neutrons, split into smaller atoms, a process Frisch named "fission".
World events now engulfed science. Jewish physicists, driven from Central,
Southern, and Eastern Europe by fascism, who saw atomic fission's destructive potential and, feared it would be used by Hitler, and worked feverishly in Britain and America to urge those countries to develop it first. In England, in May 1940, Sir Henry Tizard formed the M.A.U.D. Committee, a subcommittee to the Committee for the Scientific
Survey of Air Warfare, to deal with the problems presented by uranium. A year later,
Churchill appointed Sir John Anderson to head the new Tube Alloys Directorate and work toward an uranium bomb. In the United States, The Advisory Committee on
Uranium, formed in response to Einstein's famous letter to President Roosevelt, first met on 21 October 1939. The National Defense Research Committee was formed in June
1940, with Vannevar Bush as Chairman, and began coordinating and consolidating research efforts under its authority. Two years later, the Army Corps of Engineers received authority to oversee the research and development of uranium, and in September
1942 General Leslie Groves was given command of the Manhattan Engineer District.
39 John W. Campbell, "Fantastic Fiction," Astounding, June 1938, 21.
23
When Enrico Fermi oversaw the first self-sustaining atomic reaction at the University of
Chicago on 2 December 1942, he overcame the last major hurdle in the development of the atomic bomb.
Leo Szilard, a Hungarian-born physicist and an important figure in the development of the bomb, provides an excellent example of the interconnection of science, popular entertainment, and politics. His early recognition of the serious possibility of an atomic weapon was due to his having been an avid fan of H.G. Wells.
World Set Free sensitized him to the potential consequences. Szilard and his fellow
Hungarian physicists, Edward Teller and Eugene Wigner, all witnesses of the anarchy following the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after World War I and the cruelty of a fascist government, pushed for voluntary secrecy in atomic research, and convinced
Einstein to write his letter to Roosevelt. Having seen the potentially disastrous consequences of Soddy's work through Wells' vision, and hoping to prevent them, Szilard
40 inadvertently helped bring some of them about.
In January and February 1939, news of the splitting of the atom excited the press.
As newspapers and magazines reported the event , and attempted to explain it to their readers, some science writers, like Waldemer Kaempffert of the New York Times, wondered whether a chain reaction might destroy the world. A year later, scientists generally recognized that only the separating of the U-235 isotope from normal uranium
U-238 was needed to make atomic power a reality. In May 1940, William Laurence explained this in the New York Times, noting U-235's explosive potential, and warning
40 Rhodes, Making of the Atomic Bomb, pays close attention to Szilard's role. see also Spencer W. Weart and Gertrud Weiss Szilard ed., Leo Szilard: His Version of the Facts (Cambridge and London: The MIT Press, 1978).
24 that the Nazis were working toward a solution. Popular magazines, like Harper's,
Collier's, and The Saturday Evening Post, ran long articles explaining the possible uses and abuses of atomic power. Popular Mechanics told its readers how the heat given off by a uranium reaction could be used to drive a steam turbine, and the Independent
Woman noted the coming of the atomic age, and expressed concern about research in
41 Germany and Japan.
With the war came censorship. John O'Neill, the President of the National
Association of Science writers in an address to the Housatonic Valley Conference in
August 1941, charged that scientists had discovered a means of making a U-235 bomb and that the government was censoring the laboratories. While such censorship was then self-imposed, the government had begun to censor publications, and very little appeared in print the next four years. The Fortnightly made note of the uses of radioactive tracers in medicine, as did The Nation. Newsweek reported the destruction of the Ryuken electrochemical plant in Norway in 1943, and noted that the Germans might be using its heavy water production to build an atomic bomb. And, in November 1944, Time printed a report from London that the Nazis might be working on a V-2-like rocket carrying an
41 "Atom Explosion Frees 200,000,000 Volts; New Physics Phenomenon Credited to Hahn," New York Times, 29 January 1939, 2. "Vast Energy Freed by Uranium Atom," New York Times, 31 January 1931, 23. "6 Elements Found in Uranium Atom," New York Times, 25 February 1939, 17. "Uranium Bombardment," Newsweek, 13 February 1939, 35-36. "Great Accident," Time, 6 February 1939, 21. "Big Game," Time, 13 March 1939, 46. Waldemer Kaempffert, "When Uranium Splits," New York Times, 5 March 1939, 9[II]. "Vision Earth Rocked by Isotope Blast," New York Times, 30 April 1939, 35. "Tapping Atomic Energy: Uranium Shoots Off Neutrons after Bombardment Ceases," Newsweek, 27 March 1939, 32. Waldemer Kaempffert, "Atomic Energy from Uranium," New York Times, 22 October 1939, 7[II]. "Vast Atomic Power Possible-If Enough Uranium is Isolated," Newsweek, 13 May 1940, 41. "Atomic Power in Ten Years?" Time, 27 May 1940, 44-46. William L. Laurence, "Vast Power Source in Atomic Energy Opened by Science," New York Times, 5 May 1940, 1. "U-235 Power Held of No War Use Now," New York Times, 6 May 1940, 19. John J. O'Neill, "Enter Atomic Power," Harper's Magazine, June 1940, 1-10. Dr. R.M. Langer, "Fast New World," Collier's, ^ July 1940, 18. William L. Laurence, "The Atom Gives Up," The Saturday Evening Post, 7 September 1940, 12. J.G. Crowther, "Is Atomic Power Near," The Fortnightly, June 1941, 47-53. "Harnessing the Atom," Popular Mechanic's Magazine, September 1940, 402. "Atomic Power at Last," Independent Woman, October 1940, 316.
25 atomic bomb, that would use an implosive charge to compress uranium until it blew up,
42 much like the one dropped on Nagasaki..
In spite of censorship, everyone who could read had some idea that atomic power was imminent partly due to popular culture. The comic strip character Superman had burst into the public eye just as Hahn split the atom, creating a new form of entertainment, the fantastic superhero. Comic books became increasingly popular during the war, and during 1944, publishers printed 25 million copies a month. One out of four
43 magazines shipped to servicemen overseas was a comic. The atom quickly made its way into the genre since they were mostly written by pulp-writers. One diminutive hero called himself the "Atom," the American Crusader gained his powers in an accident with an atom-smashing device. and even Superman had X-ray vision.
In the popular culture arena, however, atomic physics was most openly and intensively examined in Campbell's Astounding, including his editorials "Jackpot,"
"Isotope 235," and "Atomic Power vs. Coal," until censorship prevented it, and he encouraged his writers, in their fiction, to focus on both the social implications as well as
44 the technical aspects of the atom.
Unlike previous visions, writers no longer saw atomic energy as a panacea for speculative worlds. Theodore Sturgeon saw Earth becoming desperately dependent on
42 "Writer Charges U.S. with Curb on Science," New York Times, 14 August 1941, 15. Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, 45-46. C.H. Waddington, "The Use of Atom-Smashing," The Fortnightly, May 1942, 377-383. Orlando Aloysius Battista, "Atoms at Work," The Nation, 26 February 1944, 247-248. "Atomic Explosive?" Newsweek, 19 April 1943, 71-72. "V-3?" Time, 27 November 1944, 88. 43 Mike Benton, Superhero Comics of the Golden Age: The Illustrated History (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Company, 1992). 44 John W. Campbell, "Jackpot," Astounding, April 1939, 6. Arthur McCann [John W. Campbell], "Isotope 235," Astounding, August 1939, 70-71. John W. Campbell, "Atomic Power vs. Coal," August 1941, 6.
26
Mars for U-235 to power their reactors in "Artnan Process." In A.E. Van Vogt's "The
Weapon Shop," the Automatic Atomic Motor Repair Company embodied the impersonal automated corporate world that crushed the spirit out of the individual. Atomic energy, in Clifford Simak's "City" series, freed man from the drudgery of daily existence and the threat of war, and from the bonds, both good and bad, of society and community. The responsibility of controlling an atomic reactor, which could explode at any second, taking thousands of people with it, slowly drove technicians, and the psychologists assigned to
45 work with them, mad, in Robert Heinlein's "Blowups Happen."
More often, writers described atomic weapons. In "Fifth Freedom," a Central
European country attacked America using atomic rocket planes carrying highly radioactive bombs, while atomic wars brought on a new dark age and super-science enforced general ignorance lest wars return in "Gather, Darkness" and "Renaissance."
Cleve Cartmill, in "Deadline," described an atomic warhead design close enough to one being developed at Los Alamos, which led the FBI to investigate Campbell and Cartmill.
And, in "Solution Unsatisfactory," Heinlein described the difficult political problems of keeping the workings of a new weapon secret, of keeping the peace in a world where everyone had atomic weapons, and of resisting the temptation to misuse the weapon by a
46 sole possessor.
45 Theodore Sturgeon, "Artnan Process," Astounding, June 1941. A.E. Van Vogt, "The Weapon Shop," Astounding, December 1942. Clifford Simak, "Lobby," Astounding, April 1944. Clifford Simak, "City," Astounding, May 1944. Clifford Simak, "Huddling Place," Astounding, July 1944. Clifford Simak, "Census," Astounding, September 1944. Robert A. Heinlein, "Blowups Happen," Astounding, September 1940. 46 John Alvarez [Lester del Rey], "Fifth Freedom," Astounding, May 1943. Fritz Leiber, "Gather, Darkness!" Astounding, May-June 1943. Raymond F. Jones, "Renaissance," Astounding, July-October 1944. Cleve Cartmill, "Deadline," Astounding, March 1944. The FBI found that the bomb described in the story was the product of John Campbell's well-informed imagination. See Albert I. Berger, "The Astounding Investigations: The Manhattan Project's Confrontation with Science Fiction," Analog Science
27
Writers also took an increasing interest in biological implications. A scientist, in
"The Blue Giraffe," refused to have children after being exposed to radiation and seeing its effects on animals. Lester del Rey focused on the medical dangers of an accident at a plant making artificial radioactives and how one radioactive could prevent poisoning by another, in "Nerves." Exposure to the radiation of an atomic weapon mutated unborn children who grow up to be the ruling class in "With Flaming Swords." Similarly, in the
"baldy" series, atomic radiation spawned a sub-race of mutant telepaths who had to fight
47 the prejudices of normal humans and their own renegades to survive.
Although the news of 6 August 1945 shocked the publics of the major industrialized nations, they had been well prepared. Even before William Roentgen saw the bones in his hand, writers like Cromie had dreamed of the explosive power within the atom. Atomic physics began in an era in which an increasingly literate society fed its fascination for things new and scientific with popular magazines. Writers picked up the new science, with its rays and radium, and assimilated it into existing fiction genres, giving it a vague, non-rational, but real place in popular consciousness. Yet, during the
Great Depression, as scientists methodically worked closer to their goal and fiction magazines targeted narrow audiences, the atom fell away from the general public's view to the more limited realms of science and relatively sophisticated enthusiasts. Hahn's
Fiction/Science Fact, September 1984, 125-137. Anson McDonald [Robert A. Heinlein], "Solution Unsatisfactory," Astounding, May 1941. Heinlein's weapon, a radioactive dust, received careful consideration by scientists organizing the Manhattan Project. Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes, 65. Also, the English had given some attention to the problem of securing hospital's radium during an air raid, worrying that a bomb hit might scatter the poisonous material over a wide area with disastrous consequences. "Air-Raid Shelter for Radium," Popular Science Monthly, May 1940, 96-98. 47 L. Sprague de Camp, "The Blue Giraffe," Astounding, August 1939. Lester del Rey, "Nerves," Astounding, September 1942. Cleve Cartmill, "With Flaming Swords," Astounding, September 1942. Lewis Padgett [Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore], "The Piper's Son," Astounding, February 1945. Lewis Padgett, "Three Blind Mice," Astounding, June 1945. Lewis Padgett, "The Lion and the Unicorn," Astounding, July 1945.
28 splitting of the atom brought the old impressions back to the forefront of the public's consciousness, but only momentarily. Enthusiasts, speculating in Astounding before and during World War II on the possibilities of an atomic age, shaped a new, atomic genre, contributing to the post-war nuclear discourse. In spite of the impressions of many since then, many literate Americans had been anticipating the harnessing of atomic power for half-a-century, and Hiroshima was far less a surprise to them than to the general public.
29
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
The annotated bibliography is divided into four sections. The first, and most extensive, a bibliography of English-language fiction published before August 1945, deals with the possible uses and implications of atomic physics. The criteria for inclusion in the bibliography are subjective. Early works, such as Frank Stockton's The Great War
Syndicate, which makes no direct reference to atomic physics but to a weapon that acts like an atom-bomb, are included, while later stories with a similar plot device are excluded. Entries are arranged alphabetically, by author, with each's publications in chronological order. Biographical information, when available, is provided for each author along with any pseudonyms. Two sources proved invaluable in the compilation of the bibliography: Paul Brians' Nuclear Holocausts: Atomic War in Fiction, 1895-1984, which deals specifically with atomic weapons in literature, and Everet Bleiler's Science
Fiction: The Early Years, without which the pre-1930 fiction would have been inaccessible.
The second is a chronological checklist of the works included in the bibliography.
A chronological bibliography of English-language films, premiering before
August 1945, with an atomic element comprises the third section. Again, inclusion is subjective, with criteria for entry being much looser than in the fiction bibliography. This list is not intended to be comprehensive, only to demonstrate how broad an audience was exposed to atomic themes. Mick Broderick's Nuclear Movies and Donald Willis'
Variety's Complete Science Fiction Reviews provided most of the information here.
The final section is a list of those comic book "superheroes" that debuted before
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August 1945, which featured atomic themes, arranged alphabetically by character and followed by a publishing history. Like the film list, criteria for inclusion is subjective and intended to demonstrate the breadth of exposure to atomic themes. The publishing information is drawn from Mike Benton's Superhero Comics of the Golden Age.
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Annotated Bibliography of Atomic Fiction
Abernathy, Robert. (1924- ) Linguist, Ph.D. Harvard 1951, Professor at University of
Colorado.
1. "When the Rockets Come." Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1945, 158-178.
Harsh conditions on Mars have reduced the first human colonists to small tribes
living by a warrior code. Rockets using atomic bombs and death rays remove the
tribes clearing the way for a new wave of colonization. The Martians' strong
martial spirit compares favorably with the soft people of Earth who conduct push-
button war.
Alden, William Livingstone. (1837-1908) Born in Massachusetts. Worked in New
York, Italy, and France, Consul General at Rome. Lived in England after 1893.
Author of general fiction, and popularizer of canoeing.
2. "Wagnerium." London Magazine, November 1906.
One of a series of "slapstick invention" stories featuring Professor Van Wagener
of the University of Berlinopolisville (later the U. of New Berlinopolisville,
Illinois). The Professor discovers radium and radioactivity twenty-nine years
before the Curies. After his wife divorces him for neglect, Van Wagener
experiments with radium as an elixir of youth. He begins to glow in the dark, emit
heat, and his clothes rot on his body. Finally, he disappears in an explosion that
destroys his lab.
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Allhoff, Fred. (1904-1988) American journalist and writer.
3. "Lightning in the Night." Liberty, 24 August-16 November 1940.
Hitler, after winning the war in Europe, turns his attention, in 1945, toward the
U.S. announcing his scientists have developed a process for isolating pure,
weapon grade U-235 from ordinary uranium. But, the United States, having
already secretly developed the technology, beats Hitler to the punch, creating a
world order through a monopoly of the bomb.
Ambler, Eric. (28 June 1909- ) Born in London. Attended London University.
Engineer's apprentice and advertising copywriter. Served in Royal Artillery
1940-1946. Author 1936-present; credited with creating modern spy story with
his series of pre-WWII novels. Best known works include The Mask of Dimitrios
(1939) which was filmed by Warner Brothers in 1944 with Sidney Greenstreet
and Peter Lorre, and The Light of Day (1962) which United Artists filmed as
Topkapi in 1964.
4. The Dark Frontier. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936; revised, New York: The
Mysterious Press, 1990.
A physicist is caught in intrigue as an arms manufacturer attempts to steal an
atomic explosive secret from a genius in the small Balkan country of Ixania,
where corrupt politics has the peasants on the edge of revolution. His device can
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shift one thousand tons of rock with a charge the size of an ordinary grenade. The
physicist, helped by an American reporter, destroys the secret, preventing it from
upsetting the balance of power and starting a European war.
Bacon, Edgar Mayhew. (1855-1935) Teacher and writer. Best known for illustrated
regional guidebooks.
5. "Itself." The Black Cat, May 1907.
After a flood washes away their home, a hill country family awakes to find a new
house washed aground where their old house stood. The house's master bedroom
contains a huge wooden frame bed with a picture of a saintly woman gazing
heavenward hanging from its headboard. Spending a night in the bed rejuvenates
the grandmother, curing her of minor ailments. As word of the miraculous bed
spreads and people come from miles away to use its miraculous healing powers, a
local doctor visits the house and immediately recognizes it as one he lost to the
flood. Experimenting with the restorative properties of radiation, he lined the bed
frame with radium. Satisfied, he leaves without disturbing the locals.
Balmer, Edwin and Phillip Wylie. Edwin Balmer (26 July 1883-21 March 1959) Born
in Chicago. B.A. Northwestern 1902, M.A. Harvard 1903. Engineer and editor
on Redbook 1927-1949. Phillip Gordon Wylie (12 May 1902-21 October 1971)
Born in Beverly, Massachusetts. Son of a Presbyterian Minister. [Read Jules
Verne, H.G. Wells, and E.R. Burroughs as a child, and Amazing Stories as a
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young adult.] Attended Princeton 1920-1922. Successful commercial writer from
1925-1971, known for his penetrating surveys of American society. Coined the
term "momism," referring to the American habit of sacralizing motherhood, in
Generation of Vipers (1942).
6. When Worlds Collide. New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1933.
Two planets have enter the solar system on a collision course with Earth. Arks,
propelled by atomic disintegration engines, carry human colonists to the smaller
intruder . The larger planet destroys the Earth, leaving the smaller, with its
human survivors, in Earth's orbit.
Bartel, Philip Jacques. pseudonym of M.M. Kaplan
7. "The Infinite Eye." Future Fiction, November 1939, 94-112.
The Earth, faced with disaster as carbon-based fuel sources near exhaustion, sends
a representative to the Solar Congress on the Moon to ask Lia, Chieftainess of the
Helites, for the secret of inter-atomic energy. He wins the secret and the love of
Lia.
Bartlett, Landell. Editor and author.
8. The Vanguard of Venus: Presented with the Compliments of Amazing Stories.
New York: Experimenter Publishing Co., 1928.
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Venusians plot to conquer Earth. Their agents infiltrate important positions and
prepare for invasion, and reveal their plans to a captured scientist whom they then
release, knowing he will be considered crazy.
The Venusians use venusite, a highly radioactive element, to power spaceships
and atomic explosives.
This booklet was distributed as a subscription premium for Amazing Stories.
Bester, Alfred. (18 December 1913- 1987) Born in New York City. Son of a shoe
merchant. B.Sa. in Science and Fine Arts at University of Pennsylvania 1935.
Writer and editor. Worked in comic books, radio, and television.
9. "The Push of a Finger." Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1942, 108-129.
A Thirtieth Century government has maintained stability with the
prognostications of an integrating machine that derives the most probable future
from all available data. When it predicts an atomic experiment a thousand years
hence will destroy the universe, technicians trace events leading up to the
experiment to an innocent conversation later that day.
Binder, Otto. Otto Oscar Binder (26 August 1911-14 October 1974) Born in Bessemer,
Michigan. Son of an Ironworker. Attended Crane City College, Northwestern
University, and the University of Chicago. Free-lance writer 1930-1974, mostly
of comics, including co-authorship of much of the Captain Marvel series.
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10. Gordon A. Giles (pseud.). "The Atom Smasher." Amazing Stories, October 1938,
30-41.
A scientist has finds a way to use atomic energy to drive a steam engine and
generate electricity ten times more efficiently than coal. After sending in a patent
application, he dies in an explosion.
The patent agent, grasping the device's potential, steals the application, and sells
copies to a business firm and an Oriental power. Atomic Power Inc. upsets
Western economies with cheap power, and the Orientals depopulate Seattle with
an atomic death-ray.
The scientist had foreseen the potential problems and left an instrument with a
friend that simultaneously destroys all atomic devices in large explosions.
Blake, Stacy. British writer of boys' thrillers.
11. "Beyond the Blue." London Magazine, December 1914-May 1915.
Professor Johnathan (John) Silver discovers a small planet orbiting the earth that
maintains a position directly between the earth and the moon and that had
previously been mistaken for a feature of the moon. Criminal intrigues disturb
efforts to build a radium-powered ship to visit the new satellite.
Burroughs, Edgar Rice. (1 September 1875-19 March 1950) Born in Chicago, Illinois.
Son of a distiller and battery manufacturer. Attended the Michigan Military
Academy 1891-1895. Began writing in 1911 after failing in his other career
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choices. Best known as the creator of Tarzan.
12. Norman Bean (pseud.). "Under the Moons of Mars." All-Story, February-July
1912.
Trapped by hostile Indians, John Carter finds himself mysteriously transported to
Mars. There, he has a series of adventures with the local people and romances the
Princess Dejah Thoris.
Martian rifles fire radium projectiles which explode on impact.
The story was published unedited, in book form, and under his own name as A
Princess of Mars (Chicago: McClurg, 1917.). Burroughs continued writing Mars
stories for thirty years.
"The Gods of Mars." All-Story, January-May 1913.
"The Warlord of Mars." All-Story, December 1913-March 1914.
"Thuvia, Maid of Mars." All-Story, 8-22 April 1916.
"The Chessmen of Mars." Argosy-All Story, 18 February-1 April 1922.
"The Mastermind of Mars." Amazing Stories Annual, 1927.
"A Fighting Man of Mars." Blue Book, April-September 1930.
"Swords of Mars." Blue Book, November 1934-April 1935.
"The City of Mummies." Amazing Stories, March 1941.
"Black Pirates of Barsoom." Amazing Stories, June 1941.
"Yellow Men of Mars." Amazing Stories, August 1941.
"Invisible Men of Mars." Amazing Stories, October 1941.
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"John Carter and the Giant of Mars." Amazing Stories, January 1941.
"Skeleton Men of Jupiter." Amazing Stories, February 1943.
Campbell, John W. John Wood Campbell Jr. (8 June 1910-11 July 1971) Born in
Newark, New Jersey. Son of an electrical engineer. Attended MIT. B.S. in
physics at Duke University 1932. Free-lance writer 1932-1937, editor of
Astounding Science Fiction 1937-1971.
13. "When the Atoms Failed." Amazing Stories, January 1930, 910-925, 975.
Martians invade Earth using atomic energy to propel their spaceships and to
power heat rays, and atomic bombs. A scientist defeats them with superior
science, then imposes world disarmament and inter-planetary cooperation while
allowing industrial use of his technology. His calculating machine performs the
calculus necessary to derive the ultimate equation of matter, giving him complete
control of matter and energy resulting in: a ship that moves by warping space;
atomic bullets; the transmutation of matter; and the complete conversion of matter
into energy.
14. "The Black Star Passes." Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1930, 492-523, 574.
An ancient declining race on a wandering black star depends on atomic power to
provide the radiant energy their star lacks. A miscommunication while passing
near a yellow star leads to war with its inhabitants. Defeat at the hands of the
Terrans rejuvenates the ancient race.
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15. "The Last Evolution." Amazing Stories, August 1932, 414-421.
In the far future, man has built machines as intelligent as himself. "Outsiders"
invade the solar system, all but wiping out man in the first attack. The machines
fight back, building even more intelligent machines. The next to last evolution of
machine uses the energy of annihilated matter for power and creates the last
machine, a being of pure energy.
16. "Beyond the End of Space." Amazing Stories, March 1933, 1096-1112; April
1933, 26-45.
A scientist invents an atomic power generator that completely converts matter
into energy. While the scientist journeys beyond space, an unscrupulous
businessman steals the patents and attempts a military takeover of the U.S. with
atomic weapons. The scientist returns before New York is destroyed and saves
the day.
17. Don A. Stuart (pseud.). "Twilight." Astounding Stories, November 1934, 44-58.
A time traveler lands in Nevada in the thirties. Hitching a ride into Reno, he tells
the driver of man's twilight. Atomic powered machines, far in the future, provide
for all human needs. Humanity, its inquisitive spirit lost, dies a lingering death.
18. "Atomic Power." Astounding Stories, December 1934, 88-97.
To explain the decrease in gravity, a scientist postulates that a macrocosmic
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atomic generator has the solar system in its breach. The scientist finds a way to
counter the mysterious effect with his own atomic generator. Oddly, some atoms
in his generator refuse to break down, causing the generator to stop.
19. Don A. Stuart (pseud.). "The Machine." Astounding Stories, February 1935, 70-
82.
An atomic-powered machine comes to Earth and provides for all man's needs,
then leaves after ten generations, forcing man to relearn how to provide for
himself.
(Part one of "The Teachers")
20. Don A. Stuart (pseud.). "Blindness." Astounding Stories, March 1935, 99-109.
A scientist spends three years in close orbit around the sun, blinding himself, to
fulfill his life's work on atomic power. He returns to an Earth that doesn't want or
need atomic power. A thermal conductor he developed for his ship provides
energy cheaply and abundantly.
21. Don A. Stuart (pseud.). "The Invaders." Astounding Stories, June 1935, 54-67.
The Tharoo land on Earth 3,500 years after the departure of the machine,
disturbing the idyllic society that has developed. Tharoo eugenists breed
efficient, docile human slaves to support the new colony.
(part two of "The Teachers")
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22. Don A. Stuart (pseud.). "Rebellion." Astounding Stories, August 1935, 64-85.
The Tharoo teach their slaves too well, becoming dependent on them. A human
eugenist secretly breeds a highly intelligent type that leads the rebellion.
Atomic energy powers the society and acts as a weapon and digging tool.
(part three of "The Teachers")
23. Don A. Stuart (pseud.). "Frictional Losses." Astounding Stories, July 1936, 44-64.
Humanity uses atomic bombs to defeat the first Granthee invasion fleet, but only
two million people remain. The survivors prepare for a second invasion fleet.
24. "Uncertainty." Amazing Stories, October 1936, 14-40; December 1936, 19-50.
Heisenberg's uncertainty principle confounds a human scientist working on
atomic power until he turns the uncertainty upon itself. His breakthrough allows
humanity to use atomic power to repel a Sthar invasion fleet. The two races
decide to work together peacefully.
25. Don A. Stuart (pseud.). "Forgetfulness." Astounding Stories, June 1937, 52-71.
A Pareeth exploration vessel, propelled by atomic engines, lands on Rhth. A
member of a nearby pastoral community gives the explorers a tour of the
abandoned great city of the City-Builders. The guide tries but can't explain the
secrets of the city. The Pareeth decide to colonize Rhth but the guide sends their
colony ships across five light-years of space in a few seconds. His people have
forgotten the secrets of the city as the Pareeth have forgotten how to start a fire
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with two sticks.
26. Don A. Stuart (pseud.). "Out of Night." Astounding Stories, October 1937, 10-38.
The Sarn conquered Earth using atomic power and bombs. After four thousand
years, humanity tires of its subservience. Only the appearance of a figure of
blackness, called Aesir, saves the rebellion from being crushed.
27. "Who Goes There." Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1938, 60-97.
An Arctic expedition finds an alien frozen in the ice. The alien thaws, revives, and
begins replacing members of the expedition with duplicates. While the expedition
attempts to learn which of its members are human and which are not, the alien
builds a portable atomic generator to aid his escape to the outside world.
28. Don A. Stuart (pseud.). "Cloak of Aesir." Astounding Science-Fiction, March
1939, 9-42.
Sequel to "Out of Night."
Aesir, with his cloak of anti-energy that absorbs atomic energy, leads the human
rebellion against the Sarn.
Capek, Karel. (9 January 1890-25 December 1938) Born in Male Svatonvici, Bohemia.
Son of a Physician. Studied in Prague, Paris, and Berlin. Received Ph.D. in
Philosophy from University of Prague. Internationally renowned for his 1921
play R.U.R., which introduced the world to the word "robot".
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29. Krakatit. Prague: Aventium, 1924; reprint, translated by Lawrence Hyde. London:
Geoffrey Bles, 1925.
An explosives chemist develops a formula for an atomic explosive. The plot
revolves around his relations with a series of women and his efforts to prevent
weapon manufacturers, heads of state, and revolutionary anarchists from learning
his secret. In the end, a single explosion destroys a village of 5,000 and the
chemist forgets the secret.
30. The Absolute at Large. Translated by Sarka B. Hrbkova. New York: Macmillan,
1927.
Originally published in 1922 as "Tovarna na absolutno" in 30 weekly installments
of the Lidove noviny newspaper.
A scientist invents a "Karburator" that completely transforms matter into energy.
An industrialist hurries them into production and they soon power all manner of
machines. However, conversion of matter to energy releases "the absolute", or
"God". An air of religious fervor surrounds each engine, as small groups claim
their engine the one true earthly manifestation of God. As the long dormant
"absolute" needs a release for its creative energies and finds it in industrial
production, factories produce round the clock, without human aid or supervision,
using raw materials rent from the earth. Economic chaos follows overproduction
and religious zealotry, then, a war, like the Thirty-Years war, begins. Private
armies wander the globe, fighting for their "absolute", against someone else's
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"absolute", against the "absolute" in general, or just to fight. Eventually, after all
"karburators" are destroyed, people forget why they were fighting and life
continues as if "karburators" never existed.
Cartmill, Cleve. (1908-11 February 1964) Born in Platteville, Wisconsin. Journalist,
accountant, and radio-operator. Co-inventor of the Blackmill system of high-
speed typography.
31. "With Flaming Swords." Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1942, 109-130.
A major war ends when a single L-ray shot from an electron cannon causes
terrible destruction over a large area. People nearby have their germ plasm
mutated and bear sons with a glowing aura. In the anarchy following the war, the
mutant children found the Religion of the Saints, establish a theocracy, and rule
benevolently for centuries using advanced science to reinforce their divine
authority and enforce their will. One Saint scientist discovers the truth of their
origin and reveals it to the world
32. "Deadline." Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1944, 154-178.
The Seilla develop a method for separating the U-235 isotope knowing that it can
produce an explosive, but, fearing a world-ending chain reaction, refrain from
using it in their war against the almost beaten Sixa. Learning that a Sixa scientist
is building an atomic bomb, the Seilla send a spy to stop him.
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Chamberlin, Phillip D. Phillip Dennis Chamberlin.
33. "The Tale of the Atom." Amazing Stories, January 1935, 132-135.
A macrocosmic atomic experiment destroys the sun. Earth scientists see the end
coming and use atomic rockets to move the planet to another solar system.
Chambers, Dana. pseudonym of Albert Leffingwell. (1895-1946)
34. The Last Secret. New York: Dial Press, 1943.
Nazis attempt to negotiate a peace by demonstrating an atom smashing ray.
American witnesses see through the hoax.
Chapin, Ernest K.
35. "Unlimited Destruction." Science and Invention, August 1922.
An international crisis brews in the Pacific and the world prepares for war.
Suddenly, a mysterious Captain Ray begins disintegrating the world's navies with
an atomic beam, then threatens to destroy their armies. Faced with this threat, the
world's governments agree to his demands and outlaw war.
Christie, Agatha. nee Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller. (1890-12 January 1976) Born in
Torquay, Devonshire, England. Studied singing and piano in Paris. Full-time
writer 1920-1976. Giant of the detective genre.
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36. "The Man Who Was Four." The Sketch, 2 January-19 March 1924.
Hercule Poirot outwits a gang of four international villains planning to dominate
the world with an atomic explosive.
Corelli, Marie. (pseudonym) (?-24 April 1924) Best-selling British romance author,
books sold over 100,000 copies per year from 1886-1900. Of mysterious origin,
possibly illegitimate, probably born Mary Mackey in 1855.
37. The Secret Power. Garden City: Doubleday, Paige & Company, 1921.
Two scientists, one male and one female, work on the secrets of radioactivity.
The woman's research, filled with a mystical reverence for creation, leads to
spiritual knowledge, the building of an aircraft that flies at 300 mph by using its
radioactive muscles to flap its wings, and entry into the fabled Brazen city of St.
John. The man's research, and an arrogant and hubristic desire to master nature,
leads to personal madness and an earthquake that kills thousands.
Crawford, Isabell C. Also published a book of poetry, The Redman's Prayer (1929).
38. The Tapestry of Time. Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1927.
In 1000 BC, Atlantis has atomic power and an Egyptian High Priest wants it.
After a series of intrigues, the Egyptian learns the secret and uses it on the
Atlantean palace defenses. Ignorant of its true power, he causes island to sink,
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taking him with it.
Cromie, Robert. (1856-1907) Belfast banker. Turned to journalism and writing in his
forties.
39. The Crack of Doom. London: Digby, Long, and Co., 1895.
Set in the year 2000, a nihilistic villain and his secret organization plot to destroy
the world by releasing the energy frozen in matter. A hero intervenes and the
villain only succeeds in blowing up himself, his followers, and an island in the
South Pacific.
Crosby, Edward Harold. (1859-1934) Massachusetts author.
40. Radiana. A Novel. Boston: Ivy Press, 1906.
A shady character has developed a formula for manufacturing radium which he
uses as a power source for his submarine, and as an elixir of youth. After much
criminal intrigue, the villain blows himself and his formula up, leaving his now
wealthy daughter free to marry the hero.
Cummings, Ray. Raymond King Cummings (30 August 1887-23 January 1957) Born
in New York City. Attended Princeton. Worked on a Puerto Rican orange
plantation, on Wyoming oil wells, and as an editor for Thomas Edison before
turning to pulp writing.
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41. "The Girl in the Golden Atom." All-Story, 15 March 1919.
42. "The People of the Golden Atom." All-Story, 24 January-28 February 1920.
A chemist develops a microscope that allows him to look inside an atom where he
finds a complete world. He develops a shrinking serum and has adventures in the
microscopic world.
43. "Brigands of the Moon." Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930, 306-
348; April 1930, 60-100; May 1930, 195-227; June 1930, 352-367.
In the twenty-first century, a radium-powered motor promises to revolutionize the
automobile industry. Earthmen struggle with criminal Martians for control of a
massive radium deposit on the moon.
44. "Beyond the Vanishing Point." Astounding Stories, March 1931, 341-359.
The hero travels to a planet in an atom of gold to rescue his girlfriend. The
villain's radioactive drugs shrink or enlarge his minions.
Curry, Tom.
45. "Giants of the Ray." Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June 1930, 368-383.
A scientist mines an incredibly rich deposit of radium. Finding that small animals
and insects near the mine are greatly increased in size, he experiments on larger
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animals with mixed results. An accident in the mine leads to hundreds of huge
critters spilling out of the mine shaft and overrunning the camp.
De Camp, L. Sprague. Lyon Sprague de Camp (27 November 1907- ) Born in New
York City. Father in real estate and lumber. B.S. in Aeronautical Engineering at
California Institute of Technology 1930, M.S. in Engineering and Economics at
Stevens Institute of Technology 1933. Instructor and administrator in inventing
schools 1933-37. Writer of science fiction, heroic fantasy, biographies, historical
novels, and literary criticism, 1938-present.
46. "The Blue Giraffe." Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1939, 113-130.
An electronic tube emanates short-wave radiation that mutates the animals in a
South African wilderness park. The researcher who shuts the machine off doesn't
have children for fear his exposure to radiation will produce monstrous offspring.
Del Rey, Lester. (2 June 1915- ) Born in Clydesdale, Minnesota. Son of a carpenter,
tenant farmer, and northern sharecropper. Left home at age 12, after finishing
grade school. Held a variety of temporary jobs. Attended George Washington
University 1931-33. Science-fiction writer 1937-present. Editor of Del Rey
Books, a division of Ballantine Books, 1977-1991.
47. "The Faithful." Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1938, 78-85.
Atomic bombs, followed by a plague, a green mist that induces a slow death of
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violent cramps and vomiting, wipe out mankind. Intelligent dogs, created through
breeding, surgery, training, and X-ray mutation survive to rebuild.
48. "The Smallest God." Astounding Science-Fiction, January 1940, 43-68.
A failed experiment with a cyclotron produces a radioactive tar. When stuffed
into a miniature rubber gargoyle and mixed with alcohol, the tar becomes sentient.
49. "Reincarnate." Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1940, 100-122.
After an explosion, a scientist working on atomic power is given a mechanical
body.
50. "The Stars Look Down." Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1940, 9-36.
In a world of atom-powered cars, two scientists, one populist and egalitarian, the
other selfish and exploitive, race to build a rocket ship capable of traveling to
Mars.
51. "Nerves." Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1942, 54-90.
An accident at an artificial isotope manufacturing atomic reactor facility produces
an isotope that rapidly and violently decays into a highly explosive isotope. If
unchecked the explosion will destroy the facility and the nearby city. The nearby
swamp provides a convenient place to dump the radioactive material and arrest
the process.
During the crisis the plant's medical staff provides emergency treatment for
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radiation injuries, often using one isotope to treat poisoning by another.
52. "Lunar Landing." Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1942, 9-31.
During World War II, an independent scientist develops a process for isolating U-
235 and uses it to power a spaceship on a trip to the moon. When he doesn't
return, his wife inherits the patent and outright ownership of atomic power.
Thirty years later she finances an expedition to the moon to find her husband.
53. John Alvarez (pseud.). "Fifth Freedom." Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1943,
109-123.
Centralia launches a surprise attack on the United States using atomic rocket
planes and atomic bombs that use light elements rather than uranium. Radiation
is the primary killer.
Events persuade a conscientious objector that the right not to fight is worth
fighting for.
54. Phillip St. John (pseud.). "The One-Eyed Man." Astounding Science-Fiction, May
1945, 48-67.
Political intrigue in a totalitarian dictatorship threatens to start a war. The
development of an atomic pistol and its use on a schemer helps secure the power
of the dictator and peace for the state.
55. "Into Thy Hands." Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1945, 43-67.
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After war eradicates man, three atomic-powered robots recreate mankind.
Diffin, Charles W.
56. "The Power and the Glory." Astounding Stories of Super-Science, July 1930, 104-
108.
A student, seeing the promise of freeing man from labor, demonstrates his method
for releasing the energy in the atom to his old professor, who quickly modifies the
device into a death ray and advises the student not to publish. The device would
be used to destroy, not create.
57. "Holocaust." Astounding Stories, June 1931, 356-374.
The U.S.S.R. destroys Paris with radio-controlled flying bombs and threatens
New York and Washington. "Paul" intervenes on behalf of the U.S., persuading
the Soviet Union to allow the U.S. to turn their government over to the Central
Committee. Then, to demonstrate his power, he destroys the White House with a
bullet tipped with one grain of "tritonite", the key element to atomic power. The
Soviets betray Paul and invade North America killing his beloved. Enraged, he
destroys the Russian air armada, but is killed during the battle by a stray shell.
After the war, the world puts Paul's atomic power to good use.
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan. (22 May 1859-7 July 1930) Kt., M.D., LL.D. Born in
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Edinburgh, Scotland. Son of an architect. Studied at Stronghurst College and
Edinburgh University. Began writing to supplement income of failed
ophthalmology practice of 1882-1890. Best known as creator of Sherlock Holmes.
58. "The Maracot Deep." The Strand Magazine, October 1927-February 1928.
A scientist and his cohorts descend into the Atlantic in a diving bell. A giant
crayfish cuts the line to the ship above. They drop into a three mile-deep gorge,
and find Atlantis has survived using atomic power.
Ernst, Paul. Paul Frederick Ernst (1899-1985) American pulp writer.
59. "The Stolen Element." Astounding Stories, September 1934, 107-117.
A scientist bombards lead with neutrons transmuting it successively into gold,
uranium, then element 93. The highly radioactive product returns to lead,
regressing one step every thirteen and one-half minutes.
A businessman kills the scientist, transmutes a bar of lead, and sells it as gold, but
the radiation reacts with living tissue, turning his arm to gold.
Fearn, John Russell. John Francis Russell Fearn (8 June 1908-18 September 1960)
Born in Worsley, Lancashire, England. Son of a cotton salesman and a secretary.
Attended Charlton Grammar School 1919-1924. Full-time writer 1931-1960.
60. "Worlds Within." Astounding Stories, March 1937, 12-40.
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A fair-skinned subatomic race invade and conquer Mars, render it uninhabitable
to punish a rebellion, then colonize the virgin third planet.
Fezandie, Clement. Ernest Clement Fezandie (1865-1959) New York educator, writer,
and playwright.
61. "Dr. Hackensaw's Secrets." Science and Invention.
A series of 43 short stories appearing irregularly from May 1921-September 1925,
which feature a brilliant scientist and inventor loosely modeled on Edison and
expound on possible technology.
#2, "The Secret of the Atom." July 1921: The Doctor develops a microscope that
allows him to look at the structure of an atom.
#12, "The Secret of the Philosopher's Stone." January 1923: The Doctor
transmutes metal with radioactivity.
#17, "The Secret of the Walking Radiobile." June 1923: The Doctor builds an
erector set like vehicle powered by radium.
#30, "The Secret of the Flying Horse." July 1924: The Doctor builds a radium
powered flying horse.
#39, "The Mystery of Atomic Energy." May 1925: The Doctor drives a canal
from the sea to the Sahara using an atomic energy device. A villain steals the
device, tries to extort money from the U.S., and fails, but part of New York's
Central Park is blown up.
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#40-43, "A Journey to the Center of the Earth." June-September 1925: As the
Doctor uses atomic energy to tunnel through the Earth, atomic pistols save him
from subterranean perils.
Gallun, Ray. Raymond Zinke Gallun (22 March 1910- ) Born in Beaver Dam,
Wisconsin. Farmer's son. Attended University of Wisconsin 1929-1930, Alliance
Francaise 1938-1939, and San Marcos University of Peru 1960. Full-time writer
1931-present.
62. "Atomic Fire." Amazing Stories, April 1931, 64-69.
A nebula threatens to engulf the sun ten million years in the future. A scientist
works on atomic energy in hopes of saving humanity. As the sun goes out and the
earth begins to freeze, the scientist starts an atomic fire that burns out of control.
The scientist flings it into space, it strikes the moon, setting it on fire, creating a
new sun.
63. "Dawn-World Echoes." Astounding Stories, July 1937, 96-114.
Scientists build a device to read the history imprinted upon an atom's structure
and learn the truth about Atlantis.
64. "Magician of Dream Valley." Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1938, 12-22.
A lunar plant transmutes aluminum into radioactive rocket fuel giving off
energies that threaten the intelligent Hexagon Lights that live nearby.
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Ganpat. pseudonym of Martin Louis Gompertz (1886-29 September 1951) Anglo-
Indian soldier and writer. Officer in Indian Army. Wrote travel books and articles
about India.
65. The Three R's. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1930.
An international organization bent on mischief plans to destroy New York,
London, and Paris with an atomic explosive developed by a Russian chemist. An
English explorer and a French Secret Service agent foil their efforts to gain
control of the large radium deposit needed to manufacture of bombs.
Gerhardi, William. William Alexander Gaerhardie (21 November 1895-15 July 1977)
British author, born in St. Petersburg, Russia. B.Litt. and M.A. at Worcester
College, Oxford University. Military Attaché to British Embassy in St.
Petersburg during Russian revolution, attached to British Military Mission in
Siberia.
66. Jazz and Jasper: The Story of Adams and Eve. London: Duckworth, 1928.
Lord de Jones, an English socialite and amateur scientist, splits an atom and all
matter begins slowly dissipating into free energy. Learning that Eva, his
adulterous lover, is pregnant he blows a portion of the Italian Tyrol free from the
Earth and "vaccinates" it against dissipation. There, he, Eva, and a few friends
start a new world.
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Gernsback, Hugo. (16 August 1884-19 August 1967) Born in Luxembourg. Son of
wine wholesaler. Attended the Ecole Industrielle of Luxembourg and the
Technikum in Bingen, Germany. Emigrated to U.S. in 1904, owned electrical
supply business, started first mail-order radio house, published a number of
popular science magazines to which he contributed articles, and promoted using
fiction to speculate about new technology. In April 1926 began publishing
Amazing Stories, the first all-science fiction magazine.
The two entries are from a series of thirteen stories about the scientific adventures
of Baron Muenchausen.
66. "Muenchausen is Taught Martian." Electrical Experimenter, December 1915.
Muenchausen learns the history of the Martians including their use of radioactive
solar rays as a power source along with atomic power.
67. "How the Martian Canals are Built." Electrical Experimenter, November 1916.
Atomic power drives the Martians' excavating ray machine.
Giesy, J.U. John Ulrich Giesy (6 August 1877-1948) American physiotherapist. Popular
for his series of occult-detective stories published in the Munsey pulps from 1914
to 1934.
68. "All For His Country." Cavalier, 21 February-14 March 1914.
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A scientist offers the U.S. government a radium-powered anti-gravity flying
machine but an unscrupulous Congressman schemes to have it rejected. After
Japan and Mexico invade and nearly conquer the U.S., the scientist's son builds
the machine, "The Miracle," and saves the day.
Glossop, Reginald. (1880-?) British soldier. Served in the Boer war and W.W.I.
69. The Orphan of Space: A Tale of Downfall. London: G. MacDonald and Co., Ltd.,
1926.
Just before dying, a tenth century Chinese alchemist discovers atomic power. He
gives the knowledge to the Earth spirit, who takes it and promises to return with it
in one thousand years, then dies.
In 1935, good and evil scientists compete for knowledge and mastery of the Earth.
The Earth spirit returns and gives the secret to a good scientist and promises to
concentrate the evil of the world in Moscow where the scientist can destroy it in
an atomic explosion. Cleansed of evil, the Earth becomes a paradise, no longer an
orphan in space.
Godfrey, Hollis. (1874-1936) Educator, engineer, management consultant, and author of
boys' books.
70. The Man Who Ended War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1908.
An inventor forces peace on the world by destroying, one by one, the world's
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battleships with an intensely radioactive gas that dissolves metal into its
component electrons. The world disarms but the inventor, hiding on a submarine
and oblivious to events, continues to destroy the ships. Finally, his task complete,
he destroys the secret of the gas and commits suicide.
Gold. H.L. Horace Leonard Gold (26 April 1914- ) Born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
Moved to Bronx, New York at age 2. [Read The Wizard of Oz, E.R. Burroughs,
and Amazing Stories as a youth.] Free-lance writer 1934-1939. Editor of various
science fiction magazines 1939-1961.
71. Clyde Crane Campbell (pseud.). "Gold." Astounding Stories, June 1935, 51-61.
A reclusive scientist working on atomic energy finances his research by
transmuting lead into gold and selling it on the black-market. When confronted
by gangsters wanting his secret, he turns an alpha ray floodlight on them, killing
them and blowing up the laboratory.
Gratacap, Louis Pope. (1851-1917) New York naturalist and writer. Critic of Tammany
Hall.
72. The New Northland. New York: Thomas Benton, 1915.
An Arctic expedition finds a valley lit and heated by a perpetual nimbus of clouds
reflecting the rays of an extremely large open vein of radium. The valley contains
a city of Hebraic dwarves who use the radium to transmute base metals into gold
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and use hand-held tubes that emit concentrated X-rays with painful effects.
Griffith, George. George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones (1857-4 June 1906) English writer.
Son of a country clergyman. As popular and influential in England in his time as
H.G. Wells.
73. The World Peril of 1910. London: F.V. White, 1907.
In a war of Anglo-American and Franco-German alliances, the latter invade
England using a bomb that destroys molecular cohesion, but the former counter
with their own new technology, radio-controlled bombs. The war ends when a
runaway comet threatens the earth and the powers must cooperate to avert
disaster.
74. The Lord of Labour. London: F.V. White, 1911.
(Griffith dictated this, his final story, on his deathbed.)
In a war between Germany and England a German inventor develops a ray that
demagnetizes metal, reducing it to dust. An English machine shop owner
organizes a private citizen's Craftsman's Army and counters the German ray with
wire-controlled drone planes which drop radium-helium bombs of stupendous
explosive power.
Hale, Stephen G.
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75. "The Laughing Death." Amazing Stories, April 1931, 42-57, 90.
A scientist builds tunneling machines that dig subway tubes by using atomic
energy to fuse the earth as they burn their way through. One of the "metal
worms" gets out of control and digs an ever expanding tunnel around the globe
causing serious geologic catastrophes. Eventually it repeats upon its course and
splits the globe in two.
76. "Worlds Adrift." Amazing Stories, May 1932, 158-179, 183-184.
In this sequel to "The Laughing Death", one of the survivors uses a "metal worm"
to push the two halves of the Earth back together, but misses.
Hall, Austin. (ca. 1882-1933) Newspaperman and author. Prolific writer of pulp
westerns in the 1920's.
77. "People of the Comet." Weird Tales, September 1923; October 1923, 32-37,84-
89.
An astronomer receives a surprise visit from two people from a sub-microscopic
universe, who explain every solar system is merely an atom in a larger universe
proceeding from the infinitely small to the infinitely large, with each level
differing only in its moment in time relative to the others.
The visitors use an atomic-powered vessel to travel through space.
Hall, Desmond Winter. (1909-1992) Writer and editor. Assistant editor of Astounding
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1930-1933 under Harry Bates. Continued under F. Orlin Tremaine until being
promoted to editor of Mademoiselle.
78. "A Scientist Rises." Astounding Stories November 1932, 165-170.
A government agent attempts to steal a scientist's method for expanding and
contracting atoms. The disillusioned scientist, after killing the agent, turns the
device upon himself. He rapidly grows out of existence confident that immature
men won't have his knowledge.
Hamilton, Edmond. Edmond Moore Hamilton (21 October 1904-1 February 1977)
Born in Youngstown, Ohio. Son of a newspaper cartoonist and a school teacher.
Finished High School at 14, attended Westminster College 1919-1922. [Read
Argosy as a youth.] Yard Clerk for the Pennsylvania Railroad 1922-1924. Full-
time writer 1925-1977.
79. "The Atomic Conquerors." Weird Tales, February 1927, 163-180, 282-285.
A macrocosmic race saves the Earth from an invasion by a microscopic race.
80. "The Man Who Evolved." Wonder Stories, April 1931, 1266-1277.
A biologist uses concentrated cosmic rays to accelerate evolution. Experimenting
on himself, each fifteen minute exposure advances him fifty million years along
the path of human development. Each stage produces a greater brain capacity
until he is nothing but brain, then, finally, formless protoplasm.
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Happel, R.V.
81. "The Triple Ray." Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1930, 529, 570-573.
Dr. Raymond's "twin ray", which disintegrates matter by separating electrons
from the nucleus, ends a European war. In its first test, his new "triple ray" blows
the top off a mountain. After a few more experiments, the Doctor finds the ray is
self-sustaining, consuming all the matter it chances upon as it speeds through
space. The horrified Raymond determines that the ray will eventually return to
earth as it travels through curved space.
Harris, Clare Winger. (1891-1968) The first woman to publish in the 1920's adventure
pulp magazines..
82. "A Runaway World." Weird Tales, July 1926, 113-124, 141-142.
The Earth's solar system is an atom used in a chemical experiment. The chemical
reaction rips the Earth and Mars from their orbits and hurls them through space
where they find a new sun.
The story follows the efforts to survive of a small group huddled in an
observatory and using atomic energy for heat.
Hasse, Henry. (1913-1977) American Science-fiction fan and writer.
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83. "He Who Shrank." Amazing Stories, August 1936, 13-56.
A mad scientist injects his assistant with "shrinx", causing him to spend eternity
shrinking through one atomic universe after another.
Hawkins, Willard.
84. "The Dwindling Sphere." Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1940, 99-111.
A twentieth century physicist, seeking atomic power, bombards light elements
with neutrons, inadvertently inventing a device that converts ordinary dirt and
rock into an useful material, plastocene. A century later, the leisure class depends
entirely on the plastocene converters for its sustenance, including food. The
continued conversion and consumption reduces the earth to the size of the moon
by the eleventh millennium.
Hawthorne, Julian. (22 June 1846-14 July 1934) Born in Boston, Massachusetts. Son
of writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne. Trained as an engineer. Author and editor from
1871.
85. "The Uncertainty about Mr. Kippax." The New York Ledger, 12 March 1892.
A sealed room mystery in which a scientist disappears while demonstrating a
method for removing the inter-atomic forces holding matter together.
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Heinlein, Robert A. Robert Anson Heinlein (7 July 1907-1988) Born in Butler,
Missouri. Graduate, U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis 1929. U.S. Naval officer
1929-1934. Retired with permanent disability. Attended University of California
at Los Angeles, 1934. Began writing in 1939 after a failed political campaign.
86. "Blowups Happen." Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1940, 51-85.
An atomic plant, called "the bomb," uses two tons of uranium-235 undergoing a
controlled and sustained chain reaction to provide power. The reaction requires
constant surveillance and one slip could cause an explosion capable of devastating
the surrounding Southwestern American desert and possibly the planet. The strain
of tending the reactor and being monitored by psychologists leads to problems
among the technicians. The situation becomes increasingly untenable but the
plant is to important economically and politically to be shut down.
A new combination of artificial isotopes provides a solution. They react with
each other, producing energy, without the threat of explosion, to power rockets
capable of moving "the bomb" into space.
87. Anson McDonald (pseud.). "Sixth Column." Astounding Science-Fiction, January
1941, 9-41; February 1941, 117-155; March 1941, 127-155.
Six men in a secret research facility in the Rocky Mountains lead the resistance,
after the Pan-Asians conquer the U.S., by organizing a new religion around the
magical powers of a new technology, the "Leadbetter effect," which allows secret
communication, transmutation, the ability to cure disease, and a race-specific
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death-ray.
88. Anson McDonald (pseud.). "Solution Unsatisfactory." Astounding Science-
Fiction, May 1941, 56-86.
In 1940, with war raging in Europe, the U.S. government gathers all the atomic
scientists together to conduct their research in secret. Atomic bombs and rockets
to carry them prove impractical, but, in 1943, a German-Jew refugee perfects a
technique for manufacturing artificial radioactives. In 1945, the project, under
Col. Manning, develops a lethal radioactive dust.
The President informs the world of the discovery and tells Germany and Britain to
cease fighting or else. Germany refuses and, after repeated warnings, the U.S.,
with British help, dusts Berlin, killing Hitler's successor and everything else in the
city. The rest of the world quickly agrees to surrender its uranium and aircraft,
and accept the American-enforced peace.
The Eurasian Union, under Stalin's heir, plays for time, and launches a sneak
attack on the U.S. using its own dust. The resulting war ends quickly, with luck
and better preparation favoring America.
Afterwards, the Committee for World Safety, under Manning and with the
cooperation of the President, is formed to enforce world peace with a Patrol of
jannissary-like pilots loyal only to the Committee. After the President dies in
1951, the new President seeks to use the Committee for U.S. profit, forcing
Manning to impose a world military dictatorship until the Patrol becomes a self-
sustaining, benevolent organization.
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Hext, Harrington. Pseudonym of Eden Philipotts. (4 November 1862-29 December
1960) Indian-born British author with a long career, produced 250 regional,
detective, and historical novels.
89. Number 87 New York: Macmillan, 1922.
Mysterious acts of terrorism and political assassination are connected to
appearances of a very large bat-like creature. Detectives unmask "The Bat" as a
scientific genius who has discovered element 87, an easily split atom that releases
enough energy to transmute metals, disintegrate objects, and power the bat-like
flying machine. The scientist realizes that assassinations are counterproductive,
worse men take their place. He destroys his notes and equipment, and flies off
into space.
Jameson, Malcolm. (21 December 1891-16 April 1945) U.S. naval officer 1916-1927.
Turned to writing after cancer forced retirement.
90. "The Giant Atom." Startling Stories, Winter 1943-1944, 15-71.
The General Atomics Company attempts to synthesize element 101 using a
cyclotron resulting in a highly radioactive atom that grows rather than decays.
The atom grows out of control damaging the countryside with radiation.
Fortunately, a heroic inventor develops an atomic rocket fuel in time to save the
day by grabbing the atom and hurling it into space.
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Jones, Neil R. Neil Ronald Jones (29 May 1909-1988) Unemployment insurance claims
examiner for New York State until retirement in 1973.
91. "The Jameson Satellite." Amazing Stories, April 1931, 334-343.
Professor Jameson preserves his body aboard an Earth-orbiting satellite that uses
radium fuel to reach space, and "radium repellent rays" to fend off comets.
Twenty million years later, cyborg explorers find it circling a dead world and
place Jameson's revived brain in an android body giving him the immortality he
sought.
Jones, Raymond F. (1915- ) Born in Salt Lake City. Writer, best known for his serial
"This Island Earth," (Thrilling Wonder Stories 1949-1950) which was filmed in
1954, also wrote a companion novel to the TV series Voyage to the Bottom of the
Sea (1965).
92. "Renaissance." Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1944, 6-83; August 1944, 65-98,
148-178; September 1944, 126-178; October 1944, 130-178.
A group of scientists, after a long devastating war, go underground to protect
knowledge from the popular anti-technology sentiment. Finding a method of
moving between parallel dimensions, they plant a colony, Kronweld, in one.
Using the general fear of technology, they construct an automatic "selector" that
sends artistically and scientifically gifted infants to Kronweld, hoping they will
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someday return to Earth with their wisdom.
After a millennia, the people of Kronweld are sterile, religious taboo restraining
them from investigating the mystery of the origin of life. The "selector' has bred
all creativity and imagination out of the people of earth and new children arrive in
Kronweld in smaller numbers.
A political group on Earth, the Statists, learn of Kronweld and drain it of its
knowledge to insure their own power. Fearing the Kronweldians' return, Statists
plan to destroy it after they learn its secret of atomic power.
The hero learns the truth, saves Kronweld and Earth, and solves the problem
posed by the ancient scientists: the secret of government is to teach and
administer, not govern.
Kateley, Walter.
93. "Beings of the Boundless Blue." Amazing Stories, May 1931, 130-141, 173.
A scientist working on enlarging the atom with ultra short wave vibrations
accidentally enlarges himself. He spends some time visiting the people of the
larger universe before reversing the process.
Kelleam, J.E. Joseph Everidge Kelleam (11 February 1913-1975) Born in Boswell,
Oklahoma. Physician's son. B.S. in English from Central State College at
Edmond, Oklahoma. Ranch owner and civilian contractor with the U.S. Army
Corps of Engineers.
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94. "The Eagles Gather." Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1942, 93-97.
Warlords fight interplanetary wars using uranium power. Four mercenaries meet
one night over a fire. They fear for their livelihood as the uranium supply is
almost exhausted, but one may know the location of an uranium asteroid.
Keller, David H., M.D. David Henry Keller M.D. (23 December 1880-13 July 1966)
Graduate of University of Philadelphia Medical School. Physician, psychiatrist,
journalist, and writer. Worked on "shell-shock" following W.W.I.
95. "The Revolt of the Pedestrians." Amazing Stories, February 1928, 1048-1059.
As man becomes increasingly dependent on machines, legs atrophy and people
take to personal automobiles. Eventually, Pedestrians, people who have legs and
use them, are seen as a menace to the lazy, socialist society of the Automobilists.
Three generations after the last of their number was thought killed, a small colony
of Pedestrians hiding in the Ozarks use an electro-dynamic ray that removes
atomic energy and turns off all power. The Automobilists, unable to move, die
slowly of hunger and thirst.
Kelly, Frank K. Frank King Kelly (12 June 1914- ) Born in Kansas City. Journalist.
Writer of science fiction 1931-1975, non-genre fiction and political histories
1935-present.
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96. "The Radium World." Wonder Stories, February 1932, 1058-1074.
Earth and Mars argue over a valuable radium deposit on Mars' moon Deimos.
King, Rufus. Rufus Frederick King (1893-1966) American mystery novelist.
97. The Fatal Kiss Mystery. Garden City: The Crime Club, Doubleday, & Doran,
1928.
A scientist, while working on stretching electronic bonds, accidentally knocks his
love into a beam that renders her immaterial and invisible. He tries to bring her
back, but one false step could cause an atomic explosion.
Kline, Otis Adelbert. (1891-24 October 1946) Born in Chicago. Author, songwriter,
and literary agent.
98. "Maza of the Moon." Argosy, 21 December 1929, 726-749; 28 December 1929,
51-72; 4 January 1930, 236-260; 11 January 1930, 403-424.
When a scientist shoots an atomic-powered projectile at the moon to win a prize,
an ancient underground Lunar civilization declares war on Earth. Fortunately, the
scientist has invented atomic motors to power an interplanetary battleship armed
with degravitor guns that negates the binding forces within atoms.
Kummer, Frederic Arnold., Jr. (1873-1943)
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99. "Blitzkrieg-1950." Amazing Stories, September 1940, 84-99.
Grom, leader of United Europe after the war of 1940, kidnaps the world's greatest
scientists and coerces them into developing war machines to further his plot of
world conquest. Coale, an American scientist, has the secret of separating u-235
and harnessing its power. Grom wants him to build atomic-powered rockets that
carry atom bombs. The scientists revolt and an atomic explosion kills Grom and
destroys his engines of war.
Kuttner, Henry. (7 April 1915-13 February 1958) Born in Los Angeles, California. His
father, a book dealer and seller, died when he was 5. His mother worked odd jobs
to support her three sons. Began reading science fiction at age 12. Full-time
writer 1936-1958. B.A. University of Southern California 1957.
100. "Dr. Cyclops." Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1940, 14-32.
As an experiment, a German scientist in a South American rainforest shrinks a
small party of scientists by using radium radiations to compress their molecular
structure. He plans to shrink German soldiers allowing them to infiltrate any
defense.
The short story was accompanied by photos from the soon-to-be-released film of
the same name.
Kuttner, Henry and C.L. Moore. Catherine Lucille Moore (24 January 1911-1987)
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Born in Indianapolis, Indiana. Her father designed and manufactured machine
tools. Free-lance author and script-writer 1933-1987. Married Henry Kuttner 7
June 1940, after which, they collaborated on virtually all of their work. B.A.
University of Southern California 1956, M.A. 1964.
101. Lawrence O'Donnell (pseud.). "Clash by Night." Astounding Science-Fiction,
March 1943, 9-39.
On Earth, two hundred years in the past, atomic power spreads out of control like
a flame, melting the continents and eventually rendering the planet into a small
star. On Venus, the undersea domed keeps prosper by hiring mercenary Free
Companions to settle their disputes without damaging the keeps.
During one battle, Starling's mercenary outfit uses outlawed atomic pistols.
102. Lewis Padgett (pseud.). "The Piper's Son." Astounding Science-Fiction, February
1945, 6-28.
In the "Blowup", atomic bombs release hard radiations introducing a mutation
into succeeding human generations. Hairless mutant telepaths come in three
types, the first, completely insane and institutionalized; the second, "Baldys," who
attempt to blend with non-telepathic society by wearing wigs and refraining from
reading non-telepathic minds; the third, Paranoids, fear persecution and believe
that telepaths, obviously superior should rule the world.
In this first "Baldy" story, a Paranoid broadcasts entertaining but thinly veiled
propaganda over a thought broadcaster to brainwash young "Baldys".
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103. Lewis Padgett (pseud.). "Three Blind Mice." Astounding Science-Fiction, June
1945, 68-97.
In the second "Baldy" story, Paranoids finding they have a thought band "Baldys"
can't sense, use it to organize, and plan sabotage and disinformation to provoke
war between the decentralized human cities.
An insane telepath warns the "Baldys" who quickly kill a small group of
Paranoids.
104. Lewis Padgett (pseud.). "The Lion and the Unicorn." Astounding Science-Fiction,
July 1945, 144-178.
In the third "Baldy" story, a telepath appears among the Hedgehounds, rustic
tribes living in the wilderness between cities. His telepathic children by a normal
mother show the mutation is genetically dominant. Also, a "Baldy" scientist finds
a way to mask thought from other telepaths without Paranoids learning of it.
Leiber, Fritz. Fritz Reuter Leiber Jr. (24 December 1910- ) Born in Chicago, Illinois.
Son of a Shakespearean actor. Ph.B. in psychology and physiology at the
University of Chicago, 1932. Attended graduate school and worked in his father's
road company before becoming a writer in 1939. Editor and drama teacher.
105. "Gather, Darkness!" Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1943, 9-59; June 1943,
109-159; July 1943, 118-162.
The Golden Age ends in an interplanetary war between the Earth and the colonies
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using atomic weapons. Scientists form the Hierarchy, a theocracy based on Great
God worship, using scientific magic to inspire faith in a medieval society. Now,
360 years later, an underground of rebel scientists uses a witchcraft cult to
overturn the Hierarchy.
106. "Destiny Times Three." Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1945, 6-55; April
1945, 141-177.
In 1900, a man finds the key to an alien space-time probability machine and
enlists seven others to help him operate it outside the space-time stream. They
manipulate Earth's future, creating multiple divergent time-paths striving for the
best possible world.
Development of subtronic power leads to three possible worlds. In the first, the
government suppresses the technology, causing a world catastrophe when the
power is accidentally unleashed without proper controls. The government of the
second world monopolizes it to support a totalitarian state, and the last and best
world government releases the knowledge to all, creating a happy distopia of
purposeless individuals. A crisis occurs when the second world plans to invade
the third.
Leinster, Murray. Pseudonym of William Fitzgerald Jenkins (16 June 1896-8 June
1975) Born in Norfolk, Virginia. Started working at age 13. Full-time writer
1915-1975.
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107. "The Power Planet." Amazing Stories, June 1931, 198-217, 227.
An artificial planet near the sun transmits solar energy back to earth providing
most of its power. A renegade nation kidnaps a scientist who has discovered
atomic power, then secretly makes war on the world. Relying on the scientist's
secret for energy, the nation sends a warship to destroy the unarmed power planet.
108. "Proxima Centauri." Astounding Stories, March 1935, 10-44.
Earth sends an atomic-powered colony ship on a seven year journey to Proxima
Centauri. The natives, highly intelligent carnivorous plants that obsessively crave
animal matter, seize the ship and plan to pillage Earth. When the colony ship
captain demonstrates the atomic reactors on the Proximan home planet, an
uncontrolled and unshielded reaction consumes the planet and its inhabitants.
109. "First Contact." Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1945, 7-35.
While exploring the Crab Nebulae, an atomic powered expeditionary ship from
Earth chances upon an alien vessel on a similar mission. After establishing
communications, both crews realize their predicament. They must learn as much
as possible about their opposite and return that information to their home without
revealing the location of their home for fear of surprise attack.
Leitfred, Robert H.
110. "Prisoners on the Electron." Astounding Stories October 1930, 75-93.
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An atomic ray machine shrinks a scientist and his girlfriend into a dinosaur-
populated submicroscopic world.
Long, Frank Belknap, Jr. (27 April 1903- ) Born in New York City. Son of a surgeon
dentist. Attended New York University School of Journalism. Free-lance author.
Editor 1959-1966.
111. "The Roaring Blot." Astounding Stories, March 1936, 12-29.
Strange blots of negative matter strike the Earth after a small cinder star passes
through the solar system. The mingling of the negative matter with the Earth's
core creates new matter. While investigating, a scientist is cured of radium
poisoning.
Lynch, Bohun. John Gilbert Bohun Lynch (1884-1928) British writer and artist. Oxford
graduate.
112. Menace from the Moon. London: Jarrolds, 1925.
A seventeenth-century expedition that secretly colonized the moon calls for help.
The messages become increasingly hostile, threatening then using a deadly heat
ray. Suddenly, the messages end. An Oxford physics professor deduces since the
messages took one year to travel to the Earth through the ether, and the last and
largest heat ray followed exactly one year after a bright flash seen on the moon's
surface, the Lunar colonists have destroyed themselves in an atomic explosion.
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Lynde, Francis. (1856-1930) Tennessee pulp writer.
113. "The Earthquaker." Popular Magazine, First February Issue 1930.
An old professor, working in a Louisiana bayou, builds a device for releasing
atomic energy. Thieves steal the device, use it to commit crime, but while being
pursued on a river, they mishandle it causing a huge waterspout to rise up and kill
them.
MacClure, Victor. (20 March 1887-7 April 1963) British writer, illustrator, and
gastronomic expert.
114. The Ark of the Covenant: A Romance of the Air and of Science. New York and
London: Harper & Brothers, 1924.
Economic rivalry drives Europe to the brink of war in the early 1930's. A daring
band raids large banks around the world, stealing gold and destroying securities
and bank records, and after five months reduces the world economy to chaos.
When the raiders reveal themselves to be The League of the Covenant, seeking to
outlaw war, world leaders gather in Washington D.C. to negotiate a disarmament
treaty to be enforced by the League, whose leader, a scientific genius, has
unlocked the secrets of atomic transmutation giving him the power to reduce any
element to a lighter element. He builds ray guns that can disable electrical
engines, detonate artillery ammunition, and disintegrate small islands, possibly
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the whole world.
MacIsaac, Fred. (22 March 1886-5 May 1940) Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Attended Harvard.
115. "World Brigands." Argosy-All Story, 30 June 1928; 7 July 1928; 14 July 1928,
347-366; 21 July 1928, 553-573; 28 July 1928; 4 August 1928, 821-831.
In 1940, Europe fears bankruptcy from paying its war debt to the United States.
A faction of business leaders prefers waging war on the nearly defenseless U.S. to
receivership to American financiers. An American businessman prepares a
complex bluff to scare the Europeans. Fortuitously a young chemist discovers a
way to cause atomic explosions and make the bluff a reality. Demonstration of
the explosive convinces the Europeans that invasion would be suicidal, and they
agree to accept a few more loans and reorganization of their governments by
American businessmen.
The secret test site is built in the Nevada desert by a General Groves and the
description of the explosion strongly resembles the Trinity test.
Meek, S.P., Cpt. Sterner St. Paul Meek (8 April 1894-10 June 1972) Born in Chicago,
Illinois. Sc.A. University of Chicago 1914. S.B. University of Alabama 1915.
Attended University of Wisconsin 1916 and MIT 1921-1923. U.S. Army
Ordnance Officer 1917-1947. Retired with rank of Colonel. Full-time writer
1947-1972.
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116. "The Red Peril." Amazing Stories, September 1929, 486-503, 521.
The Soviet Union declares war on the world relying on a new defensive screen
against the world's weapons; radite, vecite, and uranite which use atomic
disintegration with varying effects. The Russian airfleet drops bacteriological
bombs on New York and threatens to bomb other major cities if their
governments don't capitulate. An American scientist devises a means to
circumvent their defenses and destroys the Russian airfleet. Soon after, the
corrupt Soviet government collapses.
117. "The Last War." Amazing Stories, August 1930, 438-457.
A decade after the war in "The Red Peril", the exiled Russian leaders return with a
new plan for world conquest. They plan to detonate several "solvite" bombs that
poison the air with a substance that dissolves everything it touches. One solvite
bomb's poison carried on the wind will destroy mankind in two years. The villains
plan to repopulate the world by growing new people from tissue samples. Once
again, the American scientist saves the day.
118. "Submicroscopic." Amazing Stories, August 1931, 390-401.
A scientist uses an "electronic vibration adjuster" to shrink himself by
compressing the particles in his atoms. He finds the Kingdom of Ulm on a
submicroscopic world.
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119. "Awlo of Ulm." Amazing Stories, September 1931, 486-509, 526-527.
The scientist continues his adventures in Ulm, seeking to rescue his bride, Awlo.
Miller, P. Schuyler. Peter Schuyler Miller (21 February 1912-13 October 1974) Born in
Troy, New York. Son of a chemist and a school teacher. Raised on a farm. B.S.
Union College, Schenectady, New York, 1931, M.S. in chemistry 1932. Lab
assistant 1933-1934. Worked in Adult Education 1934-1952. Technical writer
1952-1974.
120. "The Atom Smasher." Amazing Stories, January 1934, 127-130.
A recluse smashes an atom, devastating a valley and driving himself insane.
Moszkowski, Alexander. (1851-1934) German satirist, poet, and editor.
121. The Isles of Wisdom. Translated by H.J. Stenning. London: Routledge, 1924.
[Die Inseln der Weisheit. 1922]
In an imaginary voyage through an archipelago, where each island represents a
philosophical extreme, the first island visited mimics Plato's Republic, the second
is Buddhist and the third a paradise of sexual hedonism.
The highly mechanized Isle of Sarragalla uses atomic energy for all sorts of
mechanical marvels. The people, extreme workaholics, have developed a
synthetic speed language to conserve time when communicating. The Isle of
Vorreia, a land of Rousseauian individualists, posses the sole source of the
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radioactives, thorium and uranium, that fuel Sarragalla's atomic power plants. A
minor dispute severs trade between them and threatens the collapse of the
excessively mechanized society.
Nathanson, Isaac
122. "World Aflame." Amazing Stories, January 1935, 44-87.
Professor Mendoza succeeds in accelerating atomic disintegration but can't
control it. The resulting fire destroys his research building and ends his university
funding.
Years later, the Association of Central and Southern Nations, or ACSN, in
Europe and the Japanese Empire go to war with the world. Only the Soviet Union
remains neutral. ACSN agents steal Mendoza's research notes and their scientists
use them to build an atomic bomb. In a desperate attempt to win the war, the
ACSN fires an atomic bomb from Europe at New York City, hitting the Catskills.
The second shot detonates before firing leaving a two thousand foot diameter
crater.
The bomb, a large mass of disintegrating matter giving off enormous amounts of
energy, burns untended sinking deeper into the earth and spreading slowly
outward. Tomlinson, the late Mendoza's assistant and son-in-law, warns of the
danger, but is ignored by his colleagues and every level of government. One year
later, the war over, the bomb blows the top off a mountain creating a volcanic
eruption that spews radioactive matter. The bomb spreads out of control causing
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earthquakes and floods.
World disaster imminent, Tomlinson, backed by the wealth of the United States,
perfects an atomic engine for space flight. Humanity colonizes Venus and Mars
while the Earth dies.
Nichols, Robert and Maurice Brown. Robert Nichols (1893-1944) British poet,
dramatist, educator, and journalist. Oxon graduate. Taught at Imperial
University, Tokyo. Maurice Brown (1881-1955) Cambridge graduate. Dramatist,
poet, and businessman.
123. Wings Over Europe: A Dramatic Extravaganza on a Pressing Theme. New York:
Cobici-Friede Publishers, 1929.
A three act play first performed in December 1928.
The nephew of the British Prime Minister, a reclusive scientist, announces to a
special cabinet committee that he controls the power locked in the atom, and he
can make or unmake things as he likes. He offers his knowledge to them and
gives them one week to form a plan of action. The committee decides that it
would be best if the knowledge were lost, since humanity isn't ready for life
without want. Their decision shocks the scientist who gives them one day to
reconsider or he will destroy England. He returns the next day, thoroughly
disillusioned, and says he plans to destroy the world in fifteen minutes, at noon.
He parts for a final walk in the park near #10 Downing Street leaving the
ministers to make their peace. Just before noon, a lorry strikes and kills the young
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man. The ministers determine that the man's watch remotely controls the
destructive instrument and that the world is safe.
Then, a telegram arrives from a group of scientists in Geneva. They too have the
secret of atomic power and airplanes loaded with atomic bombs now fly over the
world's capitals. Governments will recognize the authority of the scientists or be
destroyed. The play ends with one of the ministers grabbing the watch and racing
off to Geneva.
Nicholson, Harold. Sir Harold George Nicholson (21 November 1888-1968) Born in
Tehran, Persia. Son of Arthur Nicholson, First Baron Carnock and English
diplomat. Attended Wellington College and Balliol College, Oxford University.
Diplomat 1909-1929. Member of Parliament 1935-1945. Governor of BBC
1941-1946.
124. Public Faces. London: Constable, 1932.
A British minister imposes universal disarmament with rockets carrying atomic
bombs.
Norton, Roy. (1869-1942) New York writer of westerns and adventure stories.
125. The Vanishing Fleets. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1908.
As war brews between the United States and Japan, an inventor offers the U.S.
government a new metal alloy. After the offer is accepted, the inventor's
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manufacturing of the alloy causes a mishap that creates a highly radioactive metal
which, properly configured, defies gravity.
When war comes, the President seals the U.S. borders and dissolves Congress to
keep secret the power of the new radioplanes being constructed at a secret,
purpose-built, city. The Japanese, sensing U.S. weakness, send an invasion fleet
toward the West Coast. after it promptly disappears, mounting tensions in Europe
along with curiosity lead the British to send a fleet across the Atlantic as a show
of force, which also disappears. Soon after, the King of England and the German
Kaiser are abducted by American agents and given an explanation for the
vanishing fleets: the radioplanes fly over a vessel, attach themselves to its
superstructure, and literally lift it from the sea and carry it away. At one point, a
radioplane, under cover of fog, drops the H.M.S. Dreadnought into the Thames.
Realizing their helplessness, the world powers make peace and set up an
international tribunal to resolve disputes with U.S. backing. As radioplanes,
owned and operated solely by the U.S. government, revolutionize transportation,
railroads continue to operate but at little profit to their excessively wealthy
owners.
Nowlan, Phillip Francis. (1888-1 February 1940) Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Graduated from University of Pennsylvania 1910.
Note: the following two stories became the basis of the "Buck Rogers" newspaper
comic strip which ran daily from 7 January 1919 to 8 July 1967.
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126. "Armageddon-2419 A.D." Amazing Stories, August 1928, 422-429.
When in 1927, a mine shaft collapse traps Anthony Rogers, an American
Radioactive Gas Corporation employee, he is overcome by the gasses he came to
investigate, and a gust of fresh air awakens him, perfectly preserved, in the year
2419.
While he slept, Mongols conquered the world using airships equipped with a
disintegrator ray. Americans fight back relying on their synthetic elements, ultron
and inertron, and Roger's knowledge of W.W.I battle tactics.
127. "The Airlords of Han." Amazing Stories, March 1929, 1106-1136.
Continuing the adventures of Anthony Rogers, the Americans lead a world wide
rebellion against the Mongols who are revealed to be aliens.
Noyes, Pierrepont B. Pierrepont Burt Noyes (8 August 1870-15 April 1959) U.S. civil
servant, diplomat, and writer. Served as U.S. Rhineland commissioner after
W.W.I. Son of John Humphrey Noyes, the founder of the Oneida community.
128. The Pallid Giant: A Tale of Yesterday and Tomorrow. New York: Fleming H.
Revell Company, 1927.
Three minor functionaries at the Paris Peace Conference find an ancient book in
the mythical "Grotte Glorieuse" while exploring the prehistoric cave dwellings of
the Aurigniac region of France. The book, written by the last man on Earth, tells
of an ancient race which discovered a "death-ray" that kills by breaking down
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living atoms into their component particles. The Sra nation, discoverers of the
ray, use it, out of fear, to annihilate all other nations. Then, internal dissent sets
competing groups to destroy one another until only one man remains.
Meanwhile, one functionary is the contact for an American chemist who spied on
the Germans as a double-agent for the British, during the war, and now aids
French monitoring of German progress on a "death-ray". In the final scenes the
spy seeks refuge in the United States. The French have discovered the "death-
ray" and he fears they will kill him to keep it secret.
The story draws its title from a passage in the ancient book:
If man unsheathe too far that flaming sword-
The power of life and death-
The Pallid Giant Fear will seize
And plunge its blade into man's breast.
Orlovsky, V. Vladimir E. Grushvitsky. Soviet science-fiction writer.
129. "The Revolt of the Atoms." Amazing Stories, April 1929, 6-17, 37.
A German scientist starts an atomic reaction producing an "atomic vortex" that
slowly increases in size. Giving off all manner of radiant energy, the vortex
grows to an enormous size. Carried on the wind, it destroys much of Europe. All
efforts to contain it prove futile. Finally, it causes a volcanic eruption in Italy,
creating a typhoon that ejects the vortex from the Earth's atmosphere and into
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orbit.
Peril, Milton R. pseudonym of Francis A. Jones.
130. "The Radium Doom." Amazing Stories, December 1937, 90-113.
Martians invade Earth with ships powered by a super radioactive element.
Priestly, J.B. John Boynton Priestly (13 September 1894-1984) Born in Bradford,
Yorkshire, England. Schoolmaster's son. M.A. Trinity College, Cambridge
University. Professional writer, first published at age 16.
131. The Doomsday Men. New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1938.
Three men follow separate mysteries; a beautiful woman, a missing physicist, and
a fanatic cult, to the California desert outside Barstow where three brothers plot to
end mankind's futile existence with an atomic blast. An act of self-sacrifice
prevents the explosion from doing more than destroying the brothers.
Reeve, Arthur B. Arthur Benjamin Reeve (15 October 1880-9 August 1936) New York
editor and writer. Princeton graduate. Wrote the Craig Kennedy series of
scientific detective stories for Cosmopolitan, 1910-1918.
132. Pandora. New York: Harper, 1926.
Centrania, a European power, wages a covert war on the U.S. They begin by
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subsidizing jazz musicians and the well-meaning American Liberal Party. Later,
they disseminate birth control (abortion) information. Centranian synthetol, a
mass-produced synthetic chemical, a cheaper and more efficient fuel than
gasoline or coal, useful in making textiles, renders oil and coal worthless
wrecking the U.S. economy.
A Centranian agent has seduced and holds enthralled America's only hope, a
young chemist. Pandora, his childhood sweetheart, persuades him to give up his
lover, his jazz music, and his home-brewed hooch, and go to work for the benefit
of the country. Within days he develops atomic energy which renders synthetol
obsolete. In the final scene, his atomic device, pocket sized and powered by a
flashlight battery, destroys the headquarters of the Centranian spy ring in a huge
explosion.
Roger, Noelle. pseudonym of Helene Dufour Pittard (1874-1953) Swiss writer and
playwright. Worked with the Swiss Red Cross in France during W.W.I.
133. The New Adam. Translated by P.O. Crowhurst. London: Stanley Paul, 1926.
[Le Nouvel Adam 1924]
A doctor saves a man's life by transplanting an experimental combination of
glands into the man's brain, artificially stimulating his intelligence. Now a genius,
the man works single-mindedly on scientific research and doesn't hesitate to
experiment on people. He causes an earthquake by atomically exploding a small
bit of lead, then plans to set off a larger explosion in the Netherlands. The doctor
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plans to shoot the man but the man's atomic process explodes the lead bullets in
his pistol. The atomic blast kills them both.
Rousseau, Victor. Victor Rousseau Emanuel (1879-5 April 1960) Born in London.
Moved to America during W.W.I.
134. "The Atom Smasher." Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May 1930, 234-276.
The controlled release of atomic energy allows for travel through the fourth
dimension and time. The hero must rescue his fiancé from an evil scientist in the
past.
Russell, Bertram.
135. "The Bat-Men of Thorium." Weird Tales, May 1928, 582-598, 714-720; June
1928, 807-818; July 1928, 85-96.
A professor explores the bottom of the Pacific in a special submarine. A strong
current hurls the vessel down a passage into a huge cavern where bat-winged
humans use atomic power.
Schachner, Nat. Nathan Schachner (16 January 1895-20 October 1955) Research
chemist for New York Board of Health before W.W.I. Lawyer. Wrote
biographies of Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson.
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136. "Emissaries of Space." Wonder Stories Quarterly, Fall 1932, 6-59.
In the midst of the depression, the "Emissaries", immaterial beings from beyond
space-time, give an unscrupulous businessman insight into the building of an
atomic generator. After the businessman sets up a Power Council using the
generator to establish economic and political control over the Earth, a golden age
dawns built on cheap, abundant energy.
The "Emissaries" demand a price, too high for some. After much fighting and
scheming, all the generators are destroyed and the "Emissaries" leave the Earth in
peace, forever. From the collapsing civilization comes a new and more promising
golden age.
137. "The Orb of Probability." Astounding Stories, June 1935, 110-134.
Atom-powered machines in the ninety-seventh century tend for humanity's every
need. A young man overcomes the unimaginative inertia of the time and relearns
all science. He builds an orb that extends Heisenberg's indeterminacy theory to a
universal scale, causing random improbable disturbances, and altering the flow of
time.
138. "The World Gone Mad." Amazing Stories, October 1935, 122-135.
Sixty years after the Great War, the world thinks itself too civilized for war, its
weapons too terrible. When war comes, however, past horrors are forgotten, for
the same reasons and with the same results. New weapons include radite bombs,
one of which can destroy a city.
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139. "Past, Present, and Future." Astounding Stories September 1937, 60-89.
An Alexandrian Greek, finding himself stranded in Central America, hibernates in
a pyramid using a radium gas. An American adventurer finds his way into the
pyramid's central chamber and, trapped there, joins the Greek in slumber. The
two awake eight thousand years later in Hispan, a self-contained city, with a rigid
caste society divided into "olgarchs," technicians, and workers, that runs on
atomic power. They find a kindred spirit in a disillusioned "olgarch" and escape
the hostile city.
Serviss, Garrett Putnam. (24 March 1851-25 May 1929) Studied science at Cornell and
law at Columbia. After passing the bar went into journalism. Wrote and lectured
extensively as a popularizer of science, especially astronomy.
140. "A Columbus of Space." All-Story, January-June 1909.
An inventor kidnaps his friends and takes them on a trip to Venus in a spherical
ship that travels through space at 20 miles per second powered by an uranium-
fueled atomic engine.
141. "The Second Deluge." Cavalier, July 1911-January 1912.
In a retelling of the flood myth, a scientist builds an ark to preserve life on the
planet. A Romanian scientist's theoretical work on inter-atomic forces helps
rebuild civilization after the flood subsides.
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Simak, Clifford. Clifford Donald Simak (3 August 1904-1988) Born in Millville,
Wisconsin. Son of an immigrant farmer from Prague. Attended the University of
Wisconsin. Worked on newspapers after high school until retirement in 1976.
Free-lance writer 1931-1988.
142. "Lobby." Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1944, 144-158.
When political and economic means fail, the power lobby sabotages the one
experimental atomic reactor to prevent its development and protect their
economic empire. The World Committee, an international body similar to the
League of Nations formed after World War II, uses evidence of foul play to
blackmail the lobby into opening the way for cheap atomic power for all, under
the control of the Committee, which uses its monopoly to create a scientifically
organized world government.
143. "City." Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1944, 136-157.
The World Committee's atom-powered planes and helicopters, which allow
anyone to commute over a great distance, combined with hydroponics, which
renders farming obsolete, allow people to move out of the cities and into cheap
country estates. Ironically, dispersion ends the threat of atomic war, since cities
are the only good targets of atom bombs, yet the threat of war alone wasn't
enough to drive people from the cities.
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144. "Huddling Place." Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1944, 133-149.
Five generations after the move out of the cities, the idyllic life made possible by
cheap atomic power and robot servants leads to intense agoraphobia in the aging.
145. "Census." Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1944, 6-28.
The dispersion and individual isolation of the human population leads to the loss
of the social instinct and an increase in mutant genius which was previously
suppressed by social conformity.
Also mentioned is an atomic sidearm capable of lighting a cigarette, or killing a
human.
Simonton, Russ.
146. "The Ray of Hercules." Science and Invention, June 1922.
A terrorist, calling himself Hercules, controls atomic energy sent over telephone
lines and threatens to destroy New York City. The terrorist, a prominent scientist,
has trained Hercules, an ape, to carry out his plan.
Sinclair, Upton. Upton Beall Sinclair (20 September 1878-25 November 1968) Born in
Baltimore, Maryland. Traveling salesman's son. A.B. City College of New York
1897. Graduate student at Columbia University 1897-1901. Full-time writer 1898-
1968. Muckraking journalist and social theorist. Wrote The Jungle (1906) about
Chicago meat-packing industry.
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147. The Millennium: A Comedy of the Year 2000. Pasadena: Upton Sinclair, 1929.
The preface claims the story was written as a four-act play in 1907 and sold to
David Belasco but never produced.
A professor discovers a new element, more radioactive than radium, that emits a
virulent gas. After he isolates in a jar an amount sufficient to kill all humans on
the planet, he goes insane, and before he can be stopped, breaks the container
releasing the gas with predictable results. Fortunately, a group sought refuge high
in the atmosphere in a superplane.
Skidmore, Joseph W. Joseph William Skidmore.
148. "The Romance of Posi and Nega." Amazing Stories, September 1932, 512-523.
Posi, a proton, romances Nega, an electron, by explaining the nature of the atom.
149. "Adventures of Posi and Nega." Amazing Stories, January 1934, 67-86.
Posi explains human nature to Nega from a subatomic perspective.
150. "The Epos of Posi and Nega." Amazing Stories, January 1935, 112-131.
The romantic couple adventures in the ocean then, with the help of other protons
and electrons, kill a mad scientist to prevent him from completing an atomic
disintegration device.
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151. "A Saga of Posi and Nega." Amazing Stories, May 1935, 93-114.
The pair spend time in a diamond, then in an ant exposed to radium.
152. "A Legend of Posi and Nega." Amazing Stories, October 1935, 13-35.
The hesitant lovers fight a bacterium while in a white blood cell. Later,
hydrofluoric acid attacks their silicon atom.
Smith, E. E. "Doc." Edward Elmer Smith Ph. D. (7 May 1890-31 August 1965) Born
in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. Son of an ex-whaler. Ph.D. George Washington
University 1919. Food chemist, professional doughnut mix specialist.
153. "The Skylark of Space." Amazing Stories, August 1928, 390-417; September
1928, 528-559; October 1928, 610-636, 641.
A fortuitous accident leads to the release of intra-atomic energy useful for
interstellar travel, industrial power, and explosives. An amoral scientist kidnaps
the scientist hero's fiancée to learn the secret, leading to a chase across the galaxy.
154. "Skylark Three." Amazing Stories, August 1930, 388-414; September 1930, 540-
564; October 1930, 606-633, 657-658.
The scientist hero and his friends have more interstellar adventures attempting to
keep the secret of element "X" from the amoral scientist.
155. "Skylark of Valeron." Astounding Stories August 1934, 8-33; September 1934,
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20-41; October 1934, 58-85; November 1934, 120-142; December 1934, 132-153;
January 1935, 62-78; February 1935, 136-154.
The heroes save the universe from a warlike race.
Spohr, Carl W. German artillery officer in W.W.I
156. "The Final War." Wonder Stories, March 1932, 1110-1129, 1187-1189; April
1932, 1266-1286.
In the twenty-first century, political, business, and military interests divide the
world into two armed camps, despite a lack of ideological or economic difference.
During routine military maneuvers, a bomb falls on the wrong side of the lines,
killing some citizens. War begins.
Both sides' attempts at quick victory fail and the war settles into a stalemate with
stagnant fronts. After three years, both sides stage large air raids to destroy enemy
cities. After six years, a scientist develops an atomic explosive. Enemy agents
steal the secret, leading to an exchange that destroys civilization. Reduced to
small tribes, survivors struggle for existence.
Stapledon, Olaf. William Olaf Stapledon (10 May 1886-6 September 1950) Born in
Wallasey, Cheshire, England. Shipping manager's son. Attended Abbotsholme
School. M.A. at Balliol College, Oxford University. Ph.D. in Philosophy at
University of Liverpool. Pacifist, served with Friends' Ambulance Service in
W.W.I. Lectured extramurally for University of Liverpool.
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157. Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future. London: Methuen, 1930.
From tens of millions of years in the future, one of the Last Men communicates to
one of the First Men, in the early twentieth century, an overview of the long
future history of man. Man discovers and forgets the secrets of the atom many
times in civilization's periodic cycles of growth and decline.
In the near future, with Europe and the United States preparing for war, a Chinese
scientist discovers a method of starting and controlling a chain reaction of atomic
annihilation. He arranges a demonstration for a group of scientists in which he
destroys a small island off the English coast with an explosion that includes a
fireball and a mushroom cloud. The scientists beg him to destroy his knowledge,
fearing man is too immature to use it wisely. Just then, a fleet of American
bombers flies overhead. The Chinese scientist destroys it at the urging of his
comrades, then commits suicide. Europe is only temporarily saved from
destruction.
Thousands of years later, the American-led world state collapses when it exhausts
its energy resources and science can't duplicate the efforts of the legendary
Chinese scientist. A few millennia later, the Patagonian civilization discovers the
secret and puts it to industrial use. A mining labor dispute accidentally sets off an
atomic explosion causing a chain reaction of explosions around the world
destroying their civilization.
Starzl, R.F. Raymond Frederick Starzl (10 December 1899-1976) Iowa newspaper
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publisher and writer.
158. "Out of the Sub-Universe." Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1928, 378-381.
A scientist shrinks his daughter and son-in-law assistant into a sub-atomic
universe using cosmic rays. Moments later, he reverses the process but brings
back several hundred of his very remote descendants. His children had populated
a sub-atomic world and thousands of generations had passed in the blink of the
scientist's eye.
Stockton, Frank R. Francis Richard Stockton (5 April 1834-20 April 1902) Born
Philadelphia. Contributed fiction, usually juvenile, to major periodicals. Best
known tale is "The Lady or the Tiger" (1882). Editor on Scribner's Magazine and
St. Nicholas.
159. The Great War Syndicate. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1889.
A dispute over fishing in territorial waters leads the United States and Britain to
war. A syndicate of American businessmen offers to prosecute the war quickly
and favorably, for a price. The U.S. government agrees and the syndicate puts
their new weapons to use. After several demonstrations, the British military,
government, and citizenry realize the futility of resistance and come to terms.
The syndicate attacks Britain at sea with two types of vessels. The "crab" travels
just under the surface and disables ships with its crablike pincers by pulling off
their screws and rudders. The "repellor", with its impenetrable armor, carries a
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gun that fires "instantaneous motor" bombs, which have an effect similar to the
shock wave of an atomic blast.
The novel has a decidedly unheroic and anti-military tone. The unnamed, but
numbered, syndicate vessels carry scientific advisors and refuse to recognize
military conventions. The only developed human character, the captain of the
H.M.S. Adamant, exhibits foolish pride and tenacity fitting his vessel's name. The
syndicate even refuses to harm anyone, causing some initial difficulties as the
British can't understand why, if the syndicate is causing these tremendous
explosions, it doesn't simply destroy the British fleet.
In coming to terms, the U.S. and Britain form an alliance, charging all war
making functions to the expanded Anglo-American syndicate. The militaries of
both states futilely resist. Now war threatens battles of annihilation without glory,
guaranteeing peace.
Sturgeon, Theodore. Theodore Hamilton Sturgeon (26 February 1918-1985) Born
Edward Hamilton Waldo in St. George, Staten Island, New York. Took English
instructor stepfather's name at age 9. Attended Overbrook High School,
Philadelphia but didn't graduate. Ship's mate 1936-1939. Professional writer
1939-1985.
160. "Microcosmic God." Astounding Science-Fiction, April 1941, 46-68.
Kidder, a biochemist, creates miniature intelligent life forms, the Neoterics, using
their accelerated life span to solve scientific problems, including atomic
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disintegration of uranium and a power generator that uses the forces that create
suns and crush atoms. Kidder's greedy banker wants the power generator for
himself and tries to kill the biochemist. The Neoterics save Kidder with an
impenetrable screen of force.
161. "Artnan Process." Astounding Science-Fiction, June 1941, 50-68.
Mars controls Earth through a monopoly on uranium power. The people of Artna
supply the Martians with uranium fuel in return for Earth's boron. Both Earth and
Mars want to learn the Artnan's secret to break their monopoly.
Taine, John. pseudonym of Eric Temple Bell (7 February 1883-20 December 1960)
Born in Aberdeen, Scotland. M.S. University of Washington 1908. Ph.D.
Columbia University 1912. Professor of Mathematics at California Institute of
Technology. President of American Mathematical Society.
162. Green Fire. New York: Dutton, 1928.
Javic, a scientific genius, seeks world domination by controlling energy. After
making a fortune with his own discoveries, he lures promising scientists into his
employ with exaggerated salaries and freedom to research. Soon he controls the
scientific brain power of the world.
Not content, Javic works on controlling atomic energy. The solution to the
complex mathematical formulae, however, eludes him and, out of haste and
arrogance, he makes an error in his experiments. He disintegrates a single atom,
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beginning a chain reaction that spreads, wavelike, from a starting point at a far
edge of the galaxy, converting all matter in its path into energy. He delights in his
accomplishment, the destruction of the material universe.
A Scottish mathematical genius who refused to work for Javic solves the formulae
at the last moment and saves the Earth. The wave, however, has already
destroyed much of the Milky Way and severely damaged the Earth.
[A long section of Soddy's eleventh chapter is quoted, the inspiration is obvious]
163. "Seeds of Life." Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1931, 434-505, 520.
A Scandinavian technician, Neils Bork, accidentally exposes himself to the hard
radiation produced by a two million volt X-ray tube. Physically and mentally
transformed, he loses all knowledge of his former life. Searching for a clue to his
identity, he enters a diner. Disgusted by the stupidity, he finds there, he resolves
to elevate man or destroy him.
Supremely intelligent, he quickly learns all currently known science and gains a
position with his prior employers. Within six months, he revolutionizes industry
with cheap power transmission and makes himself wealthy. Next, he works on the
atom, quickly learning to tap its power and transmute the elements. Completely
contemptuous of humanity, he plans to transmit radiation around the globe,
mutating the unborn into reptilian evolutionary throwbacks.
Before he completes his preparations, another accident exposes him to hard
radiation and he slowly reverts to his former self. At the last moment, his plan is
discovered and thwarted.
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Temple, William F. William Frederick Temple (9 March 1914-1989) Born in
Woolwich, London, England. Engineer's son. Attended Woolwich Polytechnic
1930. Stock exchange official, London Stock Exchange 1930-1940, 1946-1950.
Field artillery gunner, British Army 1940-1946.
164. "The 4-Sided Triangle." Amazing Stories, November 1939, 6-22.
A woman marries one of two scientist friends who love her. The spurned man
creates a duplicate of the woman, then dies in an explosion while working on
atomic power.
Tofte, Arthur R. (1902-1980) Business executive 1938-1969.
165. "The Power and the People." Future Fiction, November 1940, 61-70.
When Dr. Gunderson announces he has perfected an atomic power machine, a
mob of laborers, fearing for their jobs, attack his lab. A compromise between the
Doctor and the labor leader sets things right with the promise of an end to poverty
and depression.
Train, Arthur and Robert W. Wood. Arthur Cheney Train (1875-1945) Harvard
educated lawyer. Assistant D.A. in Manhattan 1901-08,13-15. Robert Williams
Wood (1868-1955) Professor of Physics at Johns Hopkins, prominent for his
work in optics.
104
166. "The Man Who Rocked the Earth." Saturday Evening Post, 14 November 1914,
3-5, 57-63; 21 November 1914, 12-15, 49-54; 28 November 1914, 18-21, 32-38.
In July of 1915, the war has spread throughout Europe, Asia, and Africa with
casualties averaging 1000 a day. While new inventions render battlefields little
more than slaughterhouses, and the strain has forced abdication of Europe's
monarchs and crippled the world's economies, no state is willing to offer peace to
end the stalemate.
The United States receives a mysterious message from an individual calling
himself PAX, who threatens great destruction if the world doesn't disarm. He
uses atomic energy to power a flying ring, in which he travels effortlessly about
the globe, and a disintegrating ray. Individuals indirectly exposed to the ray
suffer no immediate harm but die days later of internal burns. As a show of force,
he slows the rotation of the earth by five minutes, then diverts the Mediterranean
sea through the Atlas mountains flooding the Sahara. The warring states begin to
disarm but not quickly or obviously enough for PAX, who tilts the Earth on its
axis, exchanging the positions of the poles and the equator, then mysteriously
dies.
After disarming, the world unites into a loose confederation with free trade, open
borders, and great prosperity as governments spend their money on butter rather
than guns. Soon, everyone forgets their nationality.
167. "The Moonmaker." Cosmopolitan, October 1916-February 1917.
105
In this sequel to "The Man Who Rocked the Earth", a scientist finds and uses
PAX's flying ring to divert the path of an asteroid on a collision course with
Earth, creating a second moon.
Twain, Mark. pseudonym of Samuel Clemens (30 November 1835-21 April 1910) Born
in Florida. Raised in Hannibal, Missouri. Major American writer and humorist.
168. "Sold to Satan." in Europe and Elsewhere. New York and London: Harper &
Brothers, 1923.
A failed businessman contacts Satan with the usual proposition. During their
polite conversation, Satan reveals that his body is pure radium coated in
polonium. The businessman quickly calculates the stunning cash value of Satan's
carcass. Impressed by this display of business acumen, Satan reveals the location
of a large deposit of radium and explains that scientists will soon learn to control
the energy in radium that has powered Hell for an eternity.
Van Vogt, A.E. Alfred Elton Van Vogt (26 April 1912- ) Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba,
Canada. Son of a Barrister. Professional writer 1932-present. Began writing
science fiction in 1939.
169. "Slan." Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1940, 9-40; October 1940, 9-42;
November 1940, 119-160; December 1940, 119-162.
For centuries telepathic mutant humans or Slan, non-telepathic Slan, and normal
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humans have struggled for political dominance. A Slan scientist, before dying,
entrusts his nine year old son with the secret of true atomic power, that unlike
commonly-used atomic bombs, is constructive.
170. "The Weapon Shop." Astounding Science-Fiction, December 1942, 9-27.
A highly patriotic small town craftsman has his motor repair business swindled
away from him by a government-owned bank and sold to his automated
competitor, the Automatic Atomic Motor Repair Company. He finds help at the
local Weapon Shop. Under their slogan, "The Right to Buy Weapons is the Right
to be Free," the Weapon Shops sell guns, only usable in self-defense, and provide
an idealistic balance to the corrupt Isher Monarchy.
171. "The Weapon Makers." Astounding Science-Fiction, February 1943, 9-39; March
1943, 95-130; April 1943, 94-130.
The Immortal founder of both the Isher Dynasty and the Weapon Shops reappears
and forces the reluctant Empress to release the secret of an interstellar drive,
allowing social pressures to be directed toward colonizing space rather than
revolution.
Vincent, Harl. Harold Vincent Schoepflin (1893-5 May 1968) Born in Buffalo, New
York. Steam power generation engineer. Part-time writer 1928-1968.
172. "Microcosmic Buccaneers." Amazing Stories, November 1929, 678-695.
107
A scientist and his assistant use the fourth dimension to alter their time-space
relationship and visit a microcosmic planet. They aid the human inhabitants there
in a rebellion against evil telepaths.
173. "Power." Amazing Stories, January 1932, 872-897.
The authoritarian Power Syndicate controls a highly stratified society through its
monopoly on cosmic ray energy. An underclass scientist develops atomic fusion
power, overturning the social structure and instituting a meritocracy.
Leftover "needle guns" from the last war use atomic energy projectiles that burn
and induce paralysis.
174. "Power Plant." Astounding Science-Fiction, November 1939, 129-154.
A saboteur threatens the first atomic power plant which uses the heat from an
uranium oxide atomic chain reaction to drive steam-powered electric generators.
Vivian, E. Charles. Evelyn Charles Vivian (1882-1947) British editor and writer. Wrote
series of occult mysteries as Jack Mann.
175. Stardust. London: Hutchinson, 1925.
An eccentric scientist succeeds in splitting the atom, allowing the disintegration of
matter with an N-ray and the creation of any element from pure energy. Deciding
to solve the world's ills, he mass produces gold, hoping to upset the world
economy. Jewish financiers poison him and his secrets die with him.
108
Wandrei, Donald. (1908-1987) Writer and editor. Founded Arkham House Publishers
with August Derleth in 1939.
176. "Colossus." Astounding Stories, January 1934, 40-72.
Japan begins a world war by launching huge radio controlled bombs at New York.
Britain joins Japan in a war against the Soviet Union and the United States, which
is described as an industrial capitalist socialist dictatorship where the unfit are
retired, the insane euthenized, and criminals sterilized.
A scientist fears for the world and his mind snaps when the initial attack kills his
lover. He flees the Earth in a vessel that draws on the surrounding radiant energy
and accelerates to millions of times the speed of light. Distorting space and time
the vessel stretches itself until it bursts out of the universe into a larger one where
it comes to rest on a microscope slide.
177. "The Atom-Smasher." Astounding Stories, April 1934, 85-86.
An inventor demonstrates a teleportation device seeking a prize for the wireless
transmission of matter. The machine bombards objects with neutrons
disintegrating them, then captures the loose atoms in a reintegrator. The scientist
falls into the disintegrating chamber and reintegrates as a dark bloody pudding.
178. "Colossus Eternal." Astounding Stories, December 1934, 50-87.
The Earthly refugee of "Colossus" is caught in the middle of an interstellar war
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that ends when the ultimate monatomic force destroys the superuniverse. Again
he escapes by expanding out of the universe but this time finds himself trapped in
a universe at the moment of its birth.
H.G. Wells. Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866-13 August 1946) Born in
Bromley, Kent, England. Shopkeeper's son. Studied biology under Thomas
Henry Huxley at the Normal School of Science in London. Writer, historian, and
social theorist.
179. The World Set Free. London: Macmillan, 1914.
After development in 1953 of a small, cheap, efficient radioactive engine, atomic
power transforms the world. Airplanes become the preferred means of personal
transportation, railroads use atomic traction engines, atomic smelting
revolutionizes the steel industry, and atom-powered electrical generators produce
practically free power. However, atomic engines doom the oil and coal
industries and the new, highly efficient machinery leaves the unskilled and
underskilled unemployed. Cheap transportation and low cost of building
materials de-populate cities. The sudden abundance of gold, a waste product of
the atomic engines, upsets securities and currencies leading to bank failures and a
stock crisis. Violent crime sharply increases as classes become even more
stratified. In 1958, Europe goes to war for indeterminate causes.
The Germans drop the first atomic bomb on the French War Control building in
Paris. A large mass of carolinum, a normally inert metal which when caused to
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decay is intensely radioactive, the bomb gives off great quantities of light and
heat. It imbeds itself in the earth and the extreme heat causes soil, rock, and water
around it to melt, boil, spit, and flow with an effect resembling a volcano. With a
radioactive half-life of 17 days, the carolinum continues to cause damage
indefinitely.
In a state of panic, nations go to war in order to use their bombs before their
enemy. By 1959, most large cities in the world have been attacked and are the
center of atomic volcanoes. World industry and economy have collapsed and
entire nations starve.
The bombs cause a "moral shock" and realization of the incompatibility of old
social systems with the new power of science. Ninety world leaders meet and
form a world republic with a monopoly on carolinum. Atomic machinery helps
rebuild the depopulated cities and feed the masses. The unemployed and
unemployable are given busy work and the young are given a paid education. The
redistribution of wealth and lack of scarcity make economy and politics
anachronistic. The new prosperity, however, doesn't alter sexual inequalities, the
next problem to overcome.
Williams, Robert Moore. (19 June 1907-February 1977) Born in Farmington,
Missouri. B.A. in journalism at University of Missouri 1931. Professional writer
1937-1972.
180. "Missing: Millions in Radium." Amazing Stories, November 1939, 116-130.
111
A technician hunts for a thief stealing radium from a plant that extracts minerals
from sea water.
181. "The Incredible Slingshot Bombs." Amazing Stories May 1942, 130-141.
Tommy Sonofagun stumbles into the future and returns with pea-sized atomic
bombs, just right for his slingshot.
Williamson, Jack. John Stewart Williamson (29 April 1908- ) Born in Bisbee, Arizona
Territory. Son of a farmer. Impoverished childhood on isolated New Mexico
farmstead. Began writing after reading the March 1927 issue of Amazing Stories.
Free-lance author 1928-present. B.A., M.A. Eastern New Mexico University
1957. Ph.D. University of Colorado 1964. Professor of English 1957-1977.
182. "The Cosmic Express." Amazing Stories, November 1930, 752-757.
An author couple, tired of the comforts of the twenty-fifth century civilization,
long for a return to nature. Learning of a new means of transportation, the
"Cosmic Express", that converts matter into energy, sends it across space, and
reforms it into matter at its destination, they bribe its operator to send them to
Venus, where they quickly learn the hardships of survival. The management
retrieves them from their predicament thinking it a gross error and begging their
forgiveness.
183. "The Pygmy Planet." Astounding Stories, February 1932, 151-167.
112
Scientists create a miniature world with a ray that compresses and decompresses
atoms, and observe its rapid evolution.
184. "The Electron Flame." Wonder Stories Quarterly, Fall 1932, 84-94.
A thief murders a scientist and steals his secret of atomic annihilation that spreads
like fire. The thief holds the interplanetary government hostage until he is found
out.
185. "Salvage in Space." Astounding Stories of Super-Science March 1933, 6-21.
Prospectors in the asteroid belt use controlled atomic explosions to propel their
personal rockets.
One miner finds a derelict spaceship whose crew has been hunted and killed by an
unseen alien.
186. "The Legion of Space." Astounding Stories, April 1934, 10-29; May 1934, 99-
118; June 1934, 113-132; July 1934, 102-122; August 1934, 123-140; September
1934, 118-136.
Only one person knows the secret of the superweapon AKKA that has kept peace
in the solar system for three centuries. The alien Medusae kidnap the individual
and bombard the earth with an insanity inducing radioactive dust.
187. "The Legion of Time." Astounding Science-Fiction, May 1938, 4-31; June 1938,
33-53; July 1938, 118-139.
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The hero invents an atomic converter that generates enough power to look and
travel through time. Looking into the future alters the probabilities of one future
over another and the scientist must fight to prevent a destructive autocracy from
becoming inevitable rather than a possible utopia.
188. "Backlash." Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1941, 148-162.
Levin, the Eurasian totalitarian leader, and his Yellow Guard conquer the world
using uranatomic bombs. Technicians in Pantechnicon, a hidden American colony
in Antarctica, use uranatomic energy, powering a time machine to alter the past.
When they first kill Levin as a boy, the Eurasians lose the war, but a killer virus
wipes out mankind. Returning again to the crucial moment, the technicians save
Levin, who escapes to America rather than being imprisoned in Eurasia,
preventing his rise to power, the founding of Pantechnicon, and the discovery of
time travel.
189. Will Stewart (pseud.). "Collision Orbit." Astounding Science-Fiction, July 1942,
80-160.
The Interplanet Corporation politically controls the inhabited planets through their
monopoly on uranium power, and suppresses all innovation or expansion that
might threaten their position.
A scientist, Drake, seeking a safe place to build a lab for research on contraterrene
matter, with his partners catches an unclaimed asteroid on a collision course with
a terraformed asteroid, moves it into a stable orbit, and name it Freedonia.
114
190. Will Stewart (pseud.). "Minus Sign." Astounding Science-Fiction, November
1942, 43-79.
Drake, Jr., seeking money to save Freedonia from the tax collector, finds
diamonds on an asteroid moving in negative time to pay the taxes and finance the
construction of his father's lab.
191. Will Stewart (pseud.). "Opposites-React." Astounding Science-Fiction, January
1943, 9-33; February 1943, 95-129.
Representing Earth in the High Space Mandate government, the Interplanet
Corporation monopolizes uranium power, keeping a tenuous peace between
Earth, the Martian Reich, the Jovian Soviet, Venusian orientals, and Free-Space
Asterites. Drake's contraterrene research threatens the monopoly and the
Mandate's authority.
A drifting contraterrene artifact draws competing forces eager to learn its secrets.
Williamson, Jack and Miles Breuer. Miles John Breuer (1889-1947) Born in Chicago,
Illinois. Physician's son. Graduate of the University of Texas and Rush Medical
School. Physician in Lincoln, Nebraska. Did important work on tuberculosis.
192. "The Girl from Mars." Science Fiction Series #1, 1929.
Earthly spectators conclude the release of intra-atomic energy destroyed Mars.
Three radium-powered egglike vessels fall from the sky carrying children. Years
115 later, the two male Martians fight over the Martian female with atomic weapons, killing all three.
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Chronological Checklist of Atomic Fiction
1889 Frank R. Stockton The Great War Syndicate
1892 Julian Hawthorne "The Uncertainty about Mr. Kippax" New York Ledger March
1895 Robert Cromie The Crack of Doom
1906 Edward Harold Crosby Radiana William Livingstone Alden "Wagnerium" London Magazine November
1907 Edgar Bacon "Itself" The Black Cat May George Griffith The World Peril of 1910
1908 Hollis Godfrey The Man Who Ended War Ray Norton The Vanishing Fleets
1909 Garrett Serviss "A Columbus of Space" All-Story January-June
1911 George Griffith The Lord of Labor Garrett Serviss "The Second Deluge" Cavalier July-January
1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs "Under the Moons of Mars" All-Story February-July
1914 H.G. Wells The World Set Free John U. Giesy "All For His Country" Cavalier Weekly February-March Stacey Blake "Beyond the Blue" London Magazine December-May Arthur Train and Robert Williams Wood "The Man Who Rocked the Earth" Saturday Evening Post November
1915 Louis Pope Gratcap The New Northland Hugo Gernsback "Muenchhausen is Taught Martian" Electrical Experimenter December
1916 H. Gernsback "How the Martian Canals Are Built" Electrical Experimenter November Arthur Train "The Moonmaker" Cosmopolitan October-February
1919 Ray Cummings "The Girl in the Golden Atom" All-Story March
1920 Ray Cummings "The People of the Golden Atom" All-Story January-February
1921 Marie Corelli The Secret Power Clement Fezandie "Dr. Hackensaw's Secrets" Science and Invention May- September 1925
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1922 Ernest K. Chapin "Unlimited Destruction" Science and Invention August Harrington Hext Number 87 Russ Simonton "The Ray of Hercules" Science and Invention June
1923 Austin Hall "People of the Comet" Weird Tales September-October Mark Twain "Sold to Satan" Mark Twain, Europe and Elsewhere
1924 Noelle Roger Le Nouvel Adam Victor MacClure The Ark of the Covenant Alexander Moszkowski The Isles of Wisdom Agatha Christie "The Man Who Was Four" The Sketch January-March
1925 Karel Capek Krakatit (Czech 1924) Bohun Lynch Menace from the Moon E. Charles Vivian Stardust
1926 Arthur Reeve Pandora Reginald Glossop The Orphan of Space Clare Winger Harris "A Runaway World" Weird Tales July
1927 Karel Capek The Absolute at Large (Czech 1922) Pierrepont B. Noyes The Pallid Giant Isabell C. Crawford The Tapestry of Time Sir Arthur Conan Doyle "The Maracot Deep" Strand Magazine October-February Edmond Hamilton "The Atomic Conquerors" Weird Tales February
1928 William Gerhardi Jazz and Jasper John Taine Green Fire Rufus King The Fatal Kiss Mystery Landell Bartlett The Vanguard of Venus David H. Keller M.D. "The Revolt of the Pedestrians" Amazing February Bertram Russell "The Bat-Men of Thorium" Weird Tales May-July Fred MacIsaac "World Brigands" Argosy-All Story June-August R.F. Starzl "Out of the Sub-Universe" Amazing Stories Quarterly Summer Phillip Francis Nowlan "Armageddon 2419 A.D." Amazing August E. E. Smith "The Skylark of Space" Amazing August-October Robert Nichols and Maurice Brown Wings Over Europe
1929 Upton Sinclair The Millennium Jack Williamson and Miles Breuer "The Girl From Mars" Science Fiction Series #1 P.F. Nowlan "The Airlords of Han" Amazing March V. Orlovsky "The Revolt of the Atoms" Amazing April Cpt. S.P. Meek "The Red Peril" Amazing September Harl Vincent "Microcosmic Buccaneers" Amazing November Otis Adelbert Kline "Maza of the Moon" Argosy December-January
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1930 Martin Louis Gompertz (Ganpat) The Three R's Olaf Stapledon Last and First Men John W. Campbell Jr. "When the Atoms Failed" Amazing January Francis Lynde "The Earthquaker" Popular Magazine February Victor Rousseau "The Atom Smasher" Astounding May Ray Cummings "Brigands of the Moon" Astounding March-June Tom Curry "Giants of the Ray" Astounding June Charles Willard Diffin "The Power and the Glory" Astounding July Cpt. S.P. Meek "The Last War" Amazing August E.E. Smith "Skylark Three" Amazing August-October Robert H. Leitfred "Prisoners of the Electron" Astounding October R.V. Happel "The Triple Ray" Amazing Stories Quarterly Fall John W. Campbell Jr. "The Black Star Passes" Amazing Stories Quarterly Fall Jack Williamson "Cosmic Express" Amazing November
1931 Ray Cummings "Beyond the Vanishing Point" Astounding March Raymond Z. Gallun "Atomic Fire" Amazing April Stephen G. Hale "The Laughing Death" Amazing April Edmond Hamilton "The Man Who Evolved" Wonder Stories April Walter Kateley "Beings of the Boundless Blue" Amazing May Charles W. Diffin "Holocaust" Astounding June Murray Leinster "The Power Planet" Amazing June Neil R. Jones "The Jameson Satellite" Amazing July Cpt. S.P. Meek "Submicroscopic" Amazing August Cpt. S.P. Meek "Awlo of Ulm" Amazing September John Taine "Seeds of Life" Amazing Stories Quarterly Fall
1932 Harold Nicholson Public Faces Harl Vincent "Power" Amazing January F.M. Kelly "The Radium World" Wonder Stories February Jack Willliamson "The Pygmy Planet" Astounding February Carl W. Spohr "The Final War" Wonder Stories March-April S.G. Hale "Worlds Adrift" Amazing May J.W. Campbell "The Last Evolution" Amazing August Joseph W. Skidmore "The Romance of Posi and Nega" Amazing September Nat Schachner "Emissaries of Space" Wonder Stories Quarterly Fall Jack Williamson "The Electron Flame" Wonder Stories Quarterly Fall Desmond W. Hall "A Scientist Rises" Astounding November
1933 Phillip Wylie When Worlds Collide Jack Williamson "Salvage in Space" Astounding March J.W. Campbell "Beyond the End of Space" Amazing March-April
1934 P. Schuyler Miller "The Atom Smasher" Amazing January J.W. Skidmore "Adventures of Posi and Nega" Amazing January
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Donald Wandrei "Colossus" Astounding January Donald Wandrei "The Atom-Smasher" Astounding April Jack Williamson "The Legion of Space" Astounding April-September E.E. Smith "Skylark of Valeron" Astounding August-February Paul Ernst "The Stolen Element" Astounding September J.W. Campbell "Twilight" Astounding November J.W. Campbell "Atomic Power" Astounding December D. Wandrei "Colossus Eternal" Astounding December
1935 H.L. Gold "Gold" Astounding January Philip D. Chamberlin "The Tale of the Atom" Amazing January Isaac Nathanson "World Aflame" Amazing January J.W. Skidmore "The Epos of Posi and Nega" Amazing January J.W. Campbell "The Machine" Astounding February J.W. Campbell "Blindness" Astounding March Murray Leinster "Proxima Centauri" Astounding March J.W. Skidmore "A Saga of Posi and Nega" Amazing May J.W. Campbell "The Invaders" Astounding June Nat Schachner "The Orb of Probability" Astounding June J.W. Campbell "Rebellion" Astounding August Nat Schachner "The World Gone Mad" Amazing October J.W. Skidmore "A Legend of Posi and Nega" Amazing October
1936 Eric Ambler The Dark Frontier Frank Belknap Long Jr. "The Roaring Blot" Astounding March J.W. Campbell "Frictional Losses" Astounding July Henry Hasse "He Who Shrank" Amazing August J.W. Campbell "Uncertainty" Amazing October-December
1937 John Russel Fearn "Worlds Within" Astounding March J.W. Campbell "Forgetfulness" Astounding June Ray Gallun "Dawn-World Echoes" Astounding July Nat Schachner "Past, Present, and Future" Astounding September J.W. Campbell "Out of Night" Astounding October Milton R. Peril "The Radium Doom" Amazing December
1938 J.B. Priestly The Doomsday Men Lester del Rey "The Faithful" Astounding April Jack Williamson "The Legion of Time" Astounding May-July J.W. Campbell "Who Goes There" Astounding August Ray Gallun "Magician of Dream Valley" Astounding October Otto Binder "The Atom Smasher" Amazing October
1939 John W. Campbell "The Cloak of Aesir" Astounding March L. Sprague De Camp "The Blue Giraffe" Astounding August Harl Vincent "Powerplant" Astounding November
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William F. Temple "The Four-Sided Triangle" Amazing November Robert Moore Williams "Missing: Millions in Radium" Amazing November Philip Jacques Bartel "The Infinite Eye" Future Fiction November
1940 L. del Rey "The Smallest God" Astounding January Willard Hawkins "The Dwindling Sphere" Astounding March L. del Rey "Reincarnate" Astounding April L. del Rey "The Stars Look Down" Astounding August Henry Kuttner "Dr. Cyclops" Thrilling Wonder Stories June Fred Allhoff "Lightning in the Night" Liberty August-November Robert A. Heinlein "Blowups Happen" Astounding September Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr. "Blitzkrieg-1950" Amazing September A.E. Van Vogt "Slan" Astounding September-December Arthur R. Tofte "The Power and the People" Future Fiction November
1941 R.A. Heinlein "Sixth Column" Astounding January-March Theodore Sturgeon "Microcosmic God" Astounding April R.A. Heinlein "Solution Unsatisfactory" Astounding May Theodore Sturgeon "Artnan Process" Astounding June Jack Williamson "Backlash" Astounding August
1942 J.E. Kelleam "The Eagles Gather" Astounding April Alfred Bester "The Push of a Finger" Astounding May Robert Moore Williams "The Incredible Slingshot Bombs" Amazing May Jack Williamson "Collision Orbit" Astounding July L. del Rey "Nerves" Astounding September Cleve Cartmill "With Flaming Swords" Astounding September L. del Rey "Lunar Landing" Astounding October Jack Williamson "Minus Sign" Astounding November A.E. Van Vogt "The Weapon Shop" Astounding December
1943 Dana Chambers The Last Secret Jack Williamson "Opposites-React" Astounding January-February A.E. Van Vogt "The Weapon Makers" Astounding February-April Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore "Clash by Night" Astounding March L. del Rey "Fifth Freedom" Astounding May Fritz Leiber "Gather Darkness" Astounding May-July
1944 Malcolm Jameson "The Giant Atom" Startling Stories Winter Cleve Cartmill "Deadline" Astounding March Clifford D. Simak "Lobby" Astounding April Clifford D. Simak "City" Astounding May Clifford D. Simak "Huddling Place" Astounding July Raymond F. Jones "Renaissance" Astounding July-October Clifford D. Simak "Census" Astounding September
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1945 H. Kuttner and C.L. Moore "The Piper's Son" Astounding February Robert Abernathy "When the Rockets Come" Astounding March Fritz Leiber "Destiny Times Three" Astounding March-April L. del Rey "The One-Eyed Man" Astounding May Murray Leinster "First Contact" Astounding May H. Kuttner and C.L. Moore "Three Blind Mice" Astounding June H. Kuttner and C.L. Moore "The Lion and the Unicorn" Astounding July L. del Rey "Into Thy Hands" Astounding August
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Chronological List of Atomic Films
X-rays. Directed by G.A. Smith. 54 feet. G.A. Smith, 1897. An X-ray machine shows the skeletons of lovers embracing.
The Battle in the Clouds. Directed by Walter Booth. 1350 feet. Charles Urban, 1909. A fleet of invading airships is destroyed by an aerial torpedo.
By Radium Rays. 2 Reels. Gold Seal/Universal, 1914. Radium is used as a cure for insanity.
War O'Dreams. Directed by E.A. Martin. 2 Reels. Selig, 1915. A scientist withholds the formula for a powerful explosive from the War Department after dreaming of its horrible effects.
The Nation's Peril. Lubin, 1915. A spy drama revolving around an aerial torpedo.
The Flying Torpedo. Fine Arts, 1916. An aerial torpedo saves America from an invasion in 1920.
The Intrigue. Paramount, 1916. An American inventor has an X-ray gun with a 25 mile range.
The Greatest Power. Directed by Edwin Carewe. 5 reels. Metro, 1917. Ethel Barrymore plays the assistant to a chemist whose new explosive can destroy an entire village.
The Craving. Universal 1918. War, lust, drink, and hypnotism plague a chemist who develops a high explosive.
The Great Radium Mystery. Directed by Robert F. Hill and Robert Broadwell. Serial, 18 chapters, 36 reels. Universal, 1919 An adventure about a supertank.
The Invisible Ray. Directed by Harry A. Pollard. Serial, 15 chapters, 31 reels. Forham Amusement Corp., 1920. A criminal syndicate seeks a lethal atomic ray.
The Eleventh Hour. William Fox, 1923. Spies vie for the formula for the most powerful explosive in history.
Story Without a Name. Paramount, 1924. A scientist invents a radio death ray.
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Broadway or Bust. Universal, 1924. A rancher strikes it rich when he finds radium on his land.
Laughing at Danger. Directed by James W. Horne. 6 reels. FBO, 1925. A death ray nearly destroys the Pacific fleet.
The Power God. Directed by Ben Wilson. Serial, 15 chapters, 31 reels. Vital Exchange, 1925. A melodrama concerning an atomic-powered engine.
Code of the Air. Directed by James P. Hogan. 5700 feet. Bischoff, 1928. Desert bandits use a death ray to bring down passing airplanes.
The Last Hour. Directed by Walter Forde. 75 minutes. Nettleford Films, 1930. A foreign prince steals death ray plans and attempts to send them to the continent.
Danger Island. Universal, 1931. Radium is discovered on an island off Africa.
Chandu the Magician. Fox, 1932. The villainous Roxor, played by Bela Lugosi, plans to conquer the world using a death ray.
The Tunnel. Directed by Kurt Bernhardt. Bavaria Film, 1933. A 50 foot "radium drill" digs a transatlantic tunnel. Simultaneously filmed in Munich in both French and German, the French version starred Jean Gabin. The film was later remade in England (Gaumont, 1935).
Gold. Directed by Karl Hartl. 80 minutes. UFA, 1934. Scientists use atomic reactor to transmute lead into gold.
Air Hawks. Directed by Albert Rogell. 66 minutes. Columbia, 1935. Agents fight for a motor-interrupting ray.
Phantom Empire. Directed by Otto Brower and Breezy Easton. Serial, 12 chapters. Mascot, 1935. Gene Autry fights off crooks who want his radium mine, and finds underground civilization.
Queen of the Jungle. Directed by Robert Hill. Serial, 12 chapters. Screen Attractions, 1935. The eyes of an African jungle idol emit radium rays.
Ace Drummond. Serial, 12 chapters. Universal, 1936.
124
The villains use atomic ray guns.
Ghost Patrol. Directed by Sam Newfield. 58 minutes. Puritan, 1936. Western crooks use a radium ray to stop the engines of mail planes.
The Invisible Ray. Directed by Lambert Hillyer. 82 minutes. Britain: Universal, 1935. 72 minutes. United States: Universal, 1936. A scientist, played by Boris Karloff, is contaminated by a new isotope of radium, goes insane, then uses the radium to kill his rivals. The film also features Bela Lugosi.
Undersea Kingdom. Directed by Breezy Easton and Joseph Kane. Serial, 12 chapters, 25 reels. Republic, 1936. Crash Corrigan saves America from the evil Unga Khan of Atlantis and his atomic disintegrator ray.
SOS Coast Guard. Directed by William Whitney and Alan James. Serial, 12 chapters, 25 reels. Republic, 1937. Bela Lugosi stars as the mad inventor of a disintegrating gas, ten 2 to 3 pound bombs of which can destroy a large city.
Flight to Fame. Columbia, 1938. A villainous pilot uses a death ray to kill his rivals.
Buck Rogers. Directed by Ford Beebe and Saul Goodkind. Serial, 12 chapters, 24 reels, 384 minutes. Universal, 1939.
Q Planes. Columbia, 1939. Spies on a salvage vessel use a ray to disable aircraft engines. The film stars Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, and was released in the U.S. as "Clouds Over Europe".
Dr. Cyclops. Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack. 75 minutes. Paramount, 1939. A mad scientist uses radium rays to shrink animals and humans.
Batman. Directed by Lambert Hillyer. 15 chapters, 30 reels. Columbia, 1943. Axis spies plan to steal Gotham City's radium supply.
Madam Curie. MGM, 1943 A biography of the famous Polish/French scientist.
125
Atomic Superheroes in Comic Books
The American Crusader
Thrilling Comics 19. Better/Standard Publications, August 1941.
A science professor gains Superman-like powers after exposure to the rays of an atom
smasher.
Thrilling Comics 19-35, 37-39, 41.
The Atom
All-American Comics 19. DC Comics, October 1940.
A physics professor, taunted as "Atom Al" for his short stature, trains himself to top
physical condition to win the heart of his girlfriend, and after rescuing her from villains
takes up costumed crime fighting.
All-American Comics 19-46,48-61,70-72; 10/40-4/46.
All-Star Comics 3-26,28-35,37-57; Winter 40-2/51.
Big All-American Comic Book 1; 12/44.
Blue Bolt
Blue Bolt 1. Novelty Press, June 1940.
A college football player is struck twice by lightning and saved from death by a
scientist's radium treatment all of which combine to give the football player lightning
powers.
Blue Bolt 1-27; 6/40-8/42.
126
Captain America
Captain America 1. Marvel Comics, March 1941.
A sickly delivery boy volunteers to be turned into a super soldier by taking a secret serum and exposure to "vita-rays".
Captain America 1-74; 3/41-10/49.
All-Winners Comics 1-19,21; Summer 41- Winter 46.
Young Allies 1-5; Summer 41-Fall 42.
USA Comics 6-17; 12/42-Fall/45.
All-Select Comics 1-10; Fall/43-Summer/46.
Captain Future
Startling Comics 1. Better/Standard Comics, June 1940.
A scientist gains superpowers whenever he exposes himself to crossed gamma and infrared waves.
The Comet
Pep Comics 1. MLJ/Archie Publications, January 1940.
A chemist discovers a gas fifty times lighter than hydrogen, injects it into his bloodstream, and gains the ability to leap great distances and shoot beams from his eyes which disintegrate objects.
Pep Comics 1-17; 1/40-7/41.
Cosmo Mann
127
Bang Up Comics 1. Progressive Publishers, December 1941.
The scientist hero invents a "G Ray" which dissolves whatever it hits.
Doc Strange
Thrilling Comics 1. Better/Standard Publications, February 1940.
A physician gains amazing strength from the drug Alosin, a "distillate of sun atoms".
Thrilling Comics 1-64.
The Human Bomb
Police Comics 1. Quality Comics Group, August 1941.
In order to prevent its theft by enemy agents, a physicist swallows the capsulized formula to a new super explosive. Immediately he begins to glow and whatever he touches explodes.
Police Comics 1-64.
Miss America
Military Comics 1. Quality Comics Group, August 1941.
The Statue of Liberty grants the heroine the ability to alter the shape of matter at will.
Military Comics 1-7.
Miss America
Marvel Mystery Comics 49. Marvel Comics, November 1943.
An electrical overload caused by a thunderstorm gives the heroine superman-like
128 powers, including X-ray vision.
Marvel Mystery Comics 49-85; 11/43-2/48.
Miss America 1-2; 1944-11/44.
The Ray
Smash Comics 14. Quality Comics Group, 1941.
During a balloon accident in the upper atmosphere, a reporter gains light-based powers through exposure to intense radiation.
Smash Comics 14-40.
Starman
Adventure Comics 61. DC Comics, April 1941.
An amateur astronomer develops the gravity rod/cosmic rod which harnesses infra rays/cosmic rays enabling him to fly, create solid energy fields, and fire beams of star energy.
Adventure Comics 61-102; 4/41-2/46.
All-Star Comics 8-23; 12/41-Winter/44.
Sub-Zero Man
Blue Bolt 1. Novelty Press, June 1940.
While flying in an atom powered ship, a crew of Venusians are quick-frozen in a collision with an asteroid of frozen mist. Crashing on Earth, the lone survivor struggles
129 to the nearest building where he is thawed by a scientist working with gamma radiation.
The alien takes up crime fighting with his ability to instantly freeze things.
Blue Bolt 1-37,39,44.
Superman
Action Comics 1. DC Comics, June 1938.
The orphan from the planet Krypton has X-ray vision and eventually he is said to gain some of his powers from solar radiation.
Action Comics 1-; 6/38-.
New York World's Fair Comics 1-2; 4/39-1940.
Superman 1-; Summer/39-.
World's Finest 1-; Spring/41-.
All-Star Comics 7; 10/41.
TNT
Star Spangled Comics 7. DC Comics, 1942.
TNT and his kid sidekick Dynamite fight crime wearing gloves and boots which radiate explosive atomic energy.
Star-Spangled Comics 7-23.
White Streak
Target Comics 1. Novelty Publications, February 1940.
An android, created by an ancient South American civilization, has X-ray vision and
130 fires electron beams from its eyes that can both create and destroy solid objects.
Target Comics 1-22.
131
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