Issue 1.3, June 1926

The Lure of Scientifiction editorial by Hugo Gernsback

A Trip to the Center of the Earth, chapters 16-35, by Jules Verne

The Coming of the Ice, by G. Peyton Wertenbaker

Mr. Fosdick Invents the “Seidlitzmobile”, by Jacque Morgan

The Star, by H.G. Wells

Whispering Ether, by Charles S. Wolfe

The Runaway Skyscraper, by Murray Leinster

An Experiment in Gyro-Hats, by Ellis Parker Butler

The Malignant Entity, by Otis Adelbert Kline

Doctor Hackensaw’s Secrets: Some Minor Inventions, by Clement Fezandié

OUR COVER ilustrates an episode in this month’s story, “A Trip to the Center of the Earth,” by Jules Verne. Here we see our intrepid explorers almost perish at the agency of one of the great sea monsters roaming the great Inner Sea.

Oh, Amazing Stories Is Just Getting Started

by K.W. Leslie

Amazing Stories editor Hugo Gernsback was mighty fond of extolling the virtues of science fiction by noting all the actual science in the stories, and how you might learn something new and valuable, and of course how it might inspire people to pursue science for themselves, and maybe invent some of the marvels in these stories.

Yet as I was editing A Trip to the Center of the Earth (1864) for this blog—instead of taking the text directly from scans of Amazing Stories, I’ve been lifting it from Project Gutenberg, then editing it to match what’s in the century-old issues—I notice Gernsback abridged Jules Verne’s novel by removing quite a lot of the actual science Verne included in his novel. Gernsback did it for Off on a Comet as well. When Verne wrote about astronomy, geology, meteorology, ancient plant life, ancient fish; when Verne went on about these subjects for six or seven paragraphs, Gernsback decreed this was too boring for his readers, and would therefore be a wasted space in his magazine. So he skipped it.

I mean, he’s not entirely wrong. Facts and figures require interesting prose to keep ’em interesting. Verne and his translators had a bit of a lapse there. Still, it seems a tad hypocritical to talk about how very scientific your sci fi is, then remove a bunch of the “boring” hard science.

Well. This month’s excerpt of Verne’s novel finally gets to some of the wild stuff Verne imagined below the crust of Earth, assuming none of that pesky magma is around.

“The Coming of the Ice,” first published here, tells of what happens if you live so long, humanity out-evolves you and Earth itself expires. Similar themes to G. Peyton Wertenbaker’s previous Amazing Stories contribution, “The Man from the Atom.”

“Mr. Fosdick Invents the ‘Seidlitzmobile’” (1912), previously published in Gernsback’s Modern Electrics, is the comic story of an inventor and his investor taking a ride in an automobile powered by Seidlitz powders—the Alka-Seltzer of the day. Works fine till they run out of Seidlitz powders and try a substitute.

“The Star” (1897) is H.G. Wells’s prediction of what might happen when a rogue star comes too close to Earth for comfort.

“Whispering Ether” (1920) tells of a safecraker who meets an odd inventor.

“The Runaway Skyscraper” (1920), previously published in Gernsback’s Science and Invention, tells of a New York skyscraper which falls through the fourth dimension into Manhattan’s distant past. Murray Leinster’s description of the Lenape Indians is inaccurate—seriously, tipis in New England?—and a little racist. But the story is mainly about the skyscraper’s occupants figuring out what to do next, and figuring how to get back.

“An Experiment in Gyro-Hats” (1910) tells of the invention of a hat which keeps drunks from staggering, but it turns out the man for whom it was invented was not drunk. Fortunately it helped him anyway.

“The Malignant Entity” (1924) is a murder mystery involving a scientist’s newly-invented artifical protoplasm.

“Doctor Hackensaw’s Secrets: Some Minor Inventions,” first published here, describes Hackensaw’s inventions of the autopen, electric typewriter, voice-activated and translating typewriters, stolen car detector, canned bread, “automatic judge,” and “gynaionometer.” Clement Fezandié describes how all these things might work, years before they were actually invented. Although we really oughta skip that gynaionometer.