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Hansen bio/background and non-spoiler discussion
Hi everybody, this is Chrononauts. If you're just tuning in, this is our episode on Amazing Stories, the first American science-fiction pulp magazine. And now, we're going to be talking about an author, Lucile Taylor Hansen. And if you want some more background, please listen to installment number one, where we go into the history of Amazing Magazine. Gretchen, take it away.
Gretchen:
Lucile Taylor Hansen was born in Fort Niobrara, Nebraska, in 1897, but later moved to Los Angeles, where she lived with her mother and stepfather. She first attended the University of Illinois before continuing at UCLA, studying archaeology, anthropology, and geology, subjects that will come up a little bit in the story we're covering today.
In 1924, she married A. Fred Hansen, and though they divorced a few years later, she kept his name. During the 1930s, she would marry another man named Iwanne Pantazos, and have a daughter, Ione Athena Pantazos, which feels very Hansen-esque considering her interest in mythology and her work, and also is just a pretty cool name. I like that a lot. Athena.
Nate:
It is a very cool name.
JM:
It is. She also traveled extensively throughout the U.S. and Mexico during this period. Hansen's handful of science fiction stories were only one part of her contribution to Amazing, most written between 1929 and 1930, primarily it seems, to make ends meet. She would, a decade later, after her travels, return to the magazine and publish over 50 scientific essays between 1941 and 1949, under a section titled Scientific Mysteries. Her focus in these articles were on archaeology and anthropology, with a particular focus on comparing the myths between different cultures and trying to determine a common origin between them.
JM:
Yeah, so right away we're getting into some pretty fringy kind of science fantasy, almost like ancient aliens kind of stuff here.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's a couple of critics of her in letters that have some things to say about that as well, which I've kind of mentioned as well.
Nate:
Yeah, I think the proto-history or neolithic or whatever you want to call it, speculation, it's just a fantastic field, which again continues on to the present day, but things like the reconstruction of proto-Indo-European language or trying to figure out exactly what the Minoan civilization was doing or so on and so forth. There's just so much cool stuff that has yet to be uncovered and figured out. The fact that Hansen was poking at this in the 40s is really neat that Amazing was publishing it.
Gretchen:
And Hansen also deals with race science in some of her articles, but makes a less common claim that the white race is more primitive than black and Asian races. This comes up specifically in an article called "The White: Race Does It Exist?", which I find personally pretty amusing because Hansen starts with this really bold claim about there perhaps not being a white race at all and talks about how fluid classifications of race are before going skin color doesn't matter. But what does matter is skull shape. And it's like you were very close to something there, but you just missed the mark.
Nate:
Oh man, the skull shape pseudoscience is so good. It perpetuates again, till the present day, it's pretty astounding how weird skull shape claims has perpetuated themselves into the oddest areas of human culture.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And it was just for that article in particular, it's like you were going somewhere with that. And then it's like yeah, skin color doesn't matter.
JM:
We got lost somehow.
Gretchen:
Yeah, it's like we have to look deeper than the skin into the skeletal nature of people. It's like no, that's not where we should go. But I digress.
The theories Hansen proposes are brought up in some letters in the discussion section of Amazing as being far fetched, reasonably so at times, but Hansen does have a few letters of her own backing up her claims further and dismantling readers arguments with a good dose of sarcasm. Whether or not her critics were correct, Hansen's enthusiasm and knowledge of other works is still pretty impressive, often citing a good amount of references at the end of each of her articles. And I would also like to read the opening of one of them.
"The study of archaeology is like a fatal disease. It creeps upon one so slowly and casually that one does not realize what is happening. Then one day he awakes to find he is so entangled in its meshes that he will never escape. Or perhaps one might say that it is a habit as unbreakable as that of dope. Perhaps one begins as a lark, but one ends as its inveterate slave."
So I just thought that was a really fun quote from her.
Nate:
The fatal lure of academia, beware.
JM:
Science, it's great!
Gretchen:
Yeah, the siren of science. Highly notable about Hansen, however, is the lengths she went to to conceal her identity as a woman. Her works are attributed to an L. Taylor Hansen, though unlike other authors who used initials to obscure their true identity, Hansen took things further by also having a drawing of a male figure to represent herself in the 1930s story published in Wonder Stories, "The City on the Cloud". Hansen also during a conversation with fan Forrest J. Ackerman claimed that she did not do any science fiction writing, but simply handled the work of her brother. Her friend and editor Ray Palmer also promoted the illusion, referring to Hansen using masculine pronouns in comments on letters discussing her work, even writing after Hansen's sarcastic response to a critic "atta boy, Hansen", which was just a really fun line to read in that.
JM:
So that makes sense. So Palmer actually knew.
Gretchen:
Yeah, and it seems like now I was going to say that it was said in one of the sources, the Bleiler, that it was confirmed that it was Lucile who was the author, but it was relatively recently that that happened.
JM:
So I just also like to point out something that we brought up is kind of a tangent again, so please forgive me, but when we were doing the Hollow Earth episodes way, way back, we talked about the Richard Shaver business and the whole "I Remember Lemuria". That was something that was originally published by Ray Palmer and his editorship of Amazing. So this is probably something that he was interested in. So maybe he was quite happy to have her archaeological anthropological articles in the magazine. He kind of links in with some of that as well. Now this story is from much earlier.
Gretchen:
Yes, yes. That was during her time in the 40s.
JM:
But you can still see some of that same interest that she has here in this story. And it's kind of randomly integrated. We'll get to that. I feel like it didn't quite come together maybe, but you can tell that it's there. So something that she was interested in equally in the late 1920s.
Gretchen:
Yeah. That was really all I had about Hansen's biography, so I don't know if we wanted to talk a little more about the story or should we wait till Stone for that discussion of gender?
Nate:
Well, I think the fact that Hansen concealed her identity for so long is an interesting commentary on her herself. We have encountered authors in the past that have used pseudonyms, but they haven't gone through such lengths to conceal the fact that they're a woman. It just seems that either she had a lot of self-consciousness about it or she wouldn't feel anybody would take her seriously or something like that that seemed a little bit deeper than some of the other women that were publishing in either Amazing or Weird Tales.
JM:
So that's something that I really want to get into a lot when we get into Leslie Stone, but I think that the popular conception is that women did this because that, yeah, they wanted to hide their gender from the reading audience or perhaps from people who wouldn't be impressed that they were a woman. But it doesn't seem like that's as much the case as one might think. And it does seem like many of the magazines actually wanted and were quite happy to print stuff from women. And I mean, not to say that there wasn't some prejudice there necessarily. Well, I'll get into somebody later on, one of the scholarly commentators on this, who really, really argues very strenuously that there was no prejudice against women.
Nate:
Well, that's bullshit. Quite frankly.
JM:
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the truth as usual is somewhere in the middle, right? Like, it made me quite the way that people thought a lot of these magazines were eager to print women writers, but there were a lot of barriers against women writers at the same time. It wasn't necessarily the editors, but sometimes it might have been in a certain way. And it's just interesting to see that actually the current perception of the pups is that it's male dominated, which is true, but that's considered such a negative thing that when people say male dominated, the first thing you think of is something slightly toxic towards women, whereas like women would not be welcome. And from what I've been reading and what we've been uncovering, that doesn't really seem to be the case. Like women were welcome, but it doesn't necessarily mean they could continue to be career writers. And it seems like there are quite a lot of women writers, but most of them are not known today. And most of them were not favored well by the reprints of these stories in anthologies and stuff, which is how most people read them later on in decades following.
So something is happening here. There's a bit of revisionist history, I think, going on with the pulp era, where there are a lot of statements being made that are not really true. Like even some statements that basically said women were banned from writing, like women were banned from being anywhere on the bylines of some of these magazines. That at least is 100% untrue.
Nate:
It is, yeah. But I think there was a generally patronizing attitude towards women throughout the entire editorial comments and the letters, especially that come into the magazine. You even see that with Gernsback, how he mentioned Claire Winger Harris for that...
Gretchen:
I was going to bring that up. I was going to bring up that quote.
Nate:
Yeah. I mean, so I get the sense that that would turn off women who just don't want to be talked down to, you know, but they certainly weren't banned and they certainly didn't have any prevention of like crediting a woman as a woman.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And I did want to also, I know we had mentioned this before recording, but that out of all the four women that we're covering in our stories, L. Taylor Hansen is the one woman that really did hide her identity. Like absolutely. And I did see some conflicting theories as to why that is. Like there were some people who just claimed that I believe it was Bleiler who said she was a shy authoress.
JM:
And even that sounds a little bit condescending.
Gretchen:
Yeah, it was. That's kind of why I didn't. I didn't want to say that myself, but that is how Bleiler calls her. And I believe that someone did bring up, although this is one I'm not too sure about that it was because Hansen did want to separate her actual scientific work from the work she was doing in the pulps. I'm not too sure though, because she did write three books outside of the pulps that I believe are also just titled L. Taylor Hansen.
Nate:
Yeah, right. The same name, right?
Gretchen:
So I'm not sure about that.
JM:
This is something that was pointed out by the writer of "Partners in Wonder", Modern Electrics magazine, and Gernsback, other nonfiction publications did publish a lot of things by women as well. And he was also publishing articles about female engineers and so forth. So he was not hiding from that even early on, like in the 1910s.
Nate:
Yeah, the amount of female engineers who were active in the field is like proportionally way, way, way, way smaller than the amount of...
JM:
It's smaller.
Nate:
Like a lot smaller. Like there were almost none.
JM:
But he was trying to highlight those that existed, that's what I'm saying. So I think that even if you say, well, maybe there was a capitalistic motive behind that, maybe he actually was interested in courting women readers for the magazine, and that's why he did that. He was quick to do that, but he did do that. So it wasn't just the science fiction that he was interested in having female authors write for him. This is something that he was used to doing. I mean, we'll get to stone a little bit later. But she had, you know, there's some weird conflicting stuff going on there. She speaks very highly of Hugo Gernsback and Thomas O'Conor Sloane, but not so much of some of the later editors. And I don't know how much of that is a sexism thing, and how much of that is the editors perhaps not appreciating her style.
Nate:
It could go either way. I mean, I suppose we'll get more into that when we get into the 40s. But I mean, as far as women in practicing engineers and scientists goes, the amount of women that were professional members of the big engineering societies at the time, like the AIEE or the IRE was less than 20 by the 1930s. And "Partners in Wonder", I think, details something like what, 250 different women or something that wrote through all the pulps? It's something around that number. A lot of them in Weird Tales, but Amazing published a fair share more than a dozen. So I mean, just the kind of disparity between the engineering background versus the literary science fiction background is pretty quite stark.
JM:
Yeah, that's true. And even Stone said when she first talked about writing science fiction or scientifiction, as she probably called it, one of her friends sort of misinterpreted what she was saying and thought she was talking about like science writing and kind of said, oh, that's going to be really hard for you as a woman because people don't take seriously like women scientists and stuff like that.
Nate:
Right. Right.
Gretchen:
So, yeah, which of course, as a scientist, perhaps that is why Hansen was a little more reticent about revealing her identity, not just as a science fiction writer, but as a science writer.
Nate:
Yeah. And I think the anthropology stuff is what really captured her interest. And I think she really wanted to be taken seriously as far as that goes. And being taken seriously and being looked at as the great scholar or whatever is really how you get published in a lot of those journals or more prestigious publications. So I mean, again, I totally get why she would do that and not somebody like a Leigh Brackett, who is more focused on the fiction end and didn't really care too much about like publishing and science journals.
JM:
Right. That makes sense.
Gretchen:
I think it is interesting to focus on Hansen because the science fiction writing was more of an afterthought, which perhaps does kind of come through in her story.
Nate:
But I mean, it is charming when it does come through. I mean, there's some really funny dialogue in this that we'll get to when we get there. But no, this is a good one overall. And I thought it's again, a very fascinating pick as far as like how it fits into the whole picture as far as what is Gernsback was publishing and what shape the genre was taking really.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I think it is an interesting story. And I think it is more interesting considering Hansen as a person and kind of like getting to pick out those things that after knowing more about her, you can see what she is interested in writing about and you know, the kind of passion she has for very specific parts of this story.
JM:
Yeah. This is a good order of sequencing that we have here because this is the closest to the Wells I think in terms of overall messaging.
Nate:
And yeah, it touches on upon ethics, which yes, none of our other stories do.
JM:
Now I thought this was this was interesting. It definitely felt in some ways a little bit ahead of its time, but also of its time like that whole. So Atlantis comes into the story and it's just like...
Nate:
Еverybody's loves Atlantis in the 20s.
JM:
Yeah, everybody loves Atlantis in the 1920s. I guess that's all there is to it. Like, I don't feel like it needs to be there. There's this whole weird supernatural angle that's just so like randomly bolted on top of the story. It's very strange.
Gretchen:
It is. I will say that there's a lot going on in this story. And it's almost like every single thing, every aspect of it feels like an afterthought or something that isn't fully developed because it's almost like she wants to fit in so many different things that nothing gets the correct amount of coverage. But yeah, it is kind of interesting to still see or kind of run the gamut of all of these different topics.
Nate:
And I really liked it because of that exact reason. Like it's so weird how it fits all together. The juxtaposition of the Atlantis, like sunken city, going up in flames versus this like high tech train tube thing. It's just a crazy mental image. And the fact that she does go to those lengths to make it scientifically accurate because she's publishing in Amazing, it just adds on to it. I mean, like the diagram she adds into the text and all that.
JM:
Oh, yeah. Okay. I missed that part. There were a couple of diagrams in there.
Gretchen:
Yes. Yeah, there are two diagrams, two specific diagrams that show up.
JM:
Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I was like, this story was, I think this is the shortest one.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
Or maybe "The New Accelerator."
Gretchen:
I believe so. Yeah, I think this is shorter than the Wells. I think it's only like five pages.
JM:
So there's a lot happening in this.
Gretchen:
There's a lot that goes on. I had to read it twice to kind of really decide how I was going to structure my summary of it because it's almost jumps around to so many different things. It's hard to kind of grasp sometimes.
JM:
I didn't read the whole story twice, but there's definitely like one or two paragraphs that I had to read twice because it seemed like she just jumped there. And I was just like, wait, what? Did I miss something? Are there pages missing from this story? And I mean, when you do the summary, I'll probably have to interrupt with that because there was just this one part in particular where I read it like three times before I really understood, okay, there's nothing else. Like she just jumped to that. That's the way it was. And it's really interesting reading these stories in terms of pacing and how they decide to do the pacing. That's an issue with all of them and not necessarily always a negative issue, but it's just like, something that's like, I've noticed that a lot of pulp stories that we've been doing are very front loaded. Like they're very, they build up the atmosphere really, really well at the beginning. And then at the end, you're kind of like, oh, that last chapter threw in everything. And that was the resolution. That's that.
And like, I kind of find it interesting that this is the shortest story, but this has more going on than maybe a couple of the stories. Like, you know, there's definitely a lot happening here. This one could have been longer. This one could have been longer. It could have integrated its themes a little better, maybe. But I appreciate that. I don't know. Like it kind of reminds me of certain cases where you're like, again, it's the ethics thing. And this is another story of capitalism kind of taking control of things and being like, yeah, well, all these. There's basically a 1% chance that something really bad could happen. And that's not a very big chance.
Nate:
But then again, when you're having a system in regular use, 1% means one out of 100. And you're...
JM:
Actually, yeah, that's, that's actually not great odds really.
Nate:
Exactly. And I think we're going to see that she does talk about that a lot of people from the engineering community saying, hey, this really isn't great, but people from the business end saying, oh, that's nothing. Don't worry about it. You know, we get our money, you know, everybody's happy. And it doesn't work out really.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
There've been 99 safe trips. So what are you complaining about?
Gretchen:
Yeah. That last trip is pretty chaotic.
Nate:
Right.
Gretchen:
You'll see how destructive that is.
JM:
Yeah.
(music: John Philip Sousa - "Transit of Venus March" on brassy synth)
spoiler plot summary and discussion
"The Undersea Tube" was published in the November 1929 issue of Amazing Stories. The story starts with the narrator, a man named Bob, claiming he is the only survivor of the much-discussed Undersea Tube disaster, and that he is now ready to share his story with the public, but that he first must give some background into the engineering of the tube so the readers should bear with him.
It was at the end of the 20th century, according to the narrator, that the undersea railroad was completed, going between Liverpool and New York. However, during its construction, the English group of workers mining through the earth broke into, seemingly, an extinct volcano that was sealed off since the cavern they found contained air instead of water. While exploring the space, they discovered a jeweled casket holding a beautiful young woman, but when they opened the coffin to better examine her, she crumbled to dust, no longer preserved.
JM:
This is where it happened. So all of a sudden, she's speculating on whether this person was murdered, and how would this court-intrigue thing have might have happened, and I read this and I'm thinking, how did she, how did we get there? How do we know she wasn't just put there because this is a good place to put a body in state? She's assuming something really bad happened.
Gretchen:
There's also very strong assurances. People seem very sure about who left Atlantis. They really know the race of people who were part of Atlantis and they speak with, as though what they're saying is very accurate, and I don't know if that's...
JM:
It was so weird, it was like, yeah, this is a remnant of the lost civilization of Atlantis.
Gretchen:
Yeah, it's like we all know that the people from Atlantis were dark-haired, obviously.
Nate:
Yeah, so of course, that makes sense.
Gretchen:
Yes, and this person is red-haired, so she was obviously a slave captured by the Atlantis people and it's like, oh, all right, this is all said within a paragraph.
JM:
So I was reading that whole part where I'm like, I feel like I'm missing a whole chunk of the story here.
Gretchen:
Perhaps if you were familiar with maybe some of the more esoteric reads of Hansen, this would make a lot more sense.
JM:
Yeah, I mean, it's so weird, it's almost like the whole ethical story of the undersea tube and capitalism versus proper engineering and everything like that is juxtaposed with something like Francis Stevens' "Claimed".
Nate:
Right.
JM:
And like half that story is missing kind of thing where it's like, I don't know, you know, how do we get there kind of thing. It's weird, like she obviously loves the weird side as well. She loves that because it has its tie in with her interests in archaeology and anthropology, but it's just like the two elements of the story are grafted together in such a haphazard way that I had a little trouble with.
Nate:
It's a pretty strange juxtaposition, that's for sure. I love the imagery, like she doesn't really connect it too well at all, but it's such a weird picture that I just can't help but like it a lot.
Gretchen:
Yeah, it is still really interesting, I mean, that it's like all of these things, it's almost like a marathon sprint through these topics. And it feels almost like I think she really did want to talk about the weird stuff, but it's like maybe the requirements for the magazine, she's like, I guess I'll have to throw in this undersea tube and make it like a big part of the story.
Nate:
Because the Atlantis stuff would definitely feel right at home in a Weird Tales type of magazine where I guess Gernsback was trying to shy away from that. And this is like right around the time of the bankruptcy suit, like Gernsback had just lost control of the publication, but at the same time, the audience hadn't shifted and the editorial policy hadn't shifted. So they were more or less continuing under the same banner, just with you know, Sloane at the helm instead of Gernsback.
JM:
See, I don't really know that they were trying to shy away from that. That's the thing, like maybe, I mean, they published Abraham Merritt's stuff, they published a lot of stuff that had more of a weird feeling to it. Even if they did spend a little time on the science, I don't know, maybe this one just needed to be longer, I guess, like maybe then she could have explored everything fully. And certain magazines, they have certain requirements for like how many longer stories, longer form stories they fit in an issue or something. I just remember one of the comments that Jack Williamson got from Harry Bates for one of his earlier stories. Actually, I think it was even "The Prince of Space", which was coming up. They told him, Harry's rejection note just said, "already well stocked with longs." I don't know if it was so much that they were shying away from that. I think it was more like, maybe, I don't know. It's hard to say.
It doesn't seem like Amazing was the kind of magazine like Astounding would become later, where John Campbell would send the writers back their manuscripts with like a ton of comments basically saying like how they could change it to make it better. Like it kind of sounds like most of the writers for Amazing, they were either accepted or not. And I don't think there was a lot of oversight over trying to too much back and forth about changing their manuscripts and stuff like that. Like I don't get the impression that it was that kind of magazine, but I just don't know why I don't know why the elements in this story are not integrated together better. I can't, I can't really explain that. My tendency is to feel that they weren't shying away from the weird so much. But it definitely seems like she's juggling two things here that are not quite.
Gretchen:
I feel like maybe perhaps her interpretation of what the magazine would want from her is what she's trying to take into account. I don't think necessarily like criticism that was leveled towards her story or the rejection of another manuscript, but maybe she kind of realizes that there needs to be more of a scientific edge or she sees that maybe there is an expectation or an encouragement of that.
Nate:
And they definitely explicitly stated it many times. Like Gernsback stated it himself, this is what kind of story we want, this is what kind of story we don't want. And I think a pure like Atlantis like lost race story or whatever, it might be fine for a reprint where Gernsback can get it for free or not have to pay that much versus a new author or whatever would be less attractive than something that fits more of his like scientific bold style for his new discoveries rather than a reprint.
JM:
And to be fair, I do think that the scientific like the practical real world application of the undersea tube and these consequences are handled much better in this story than the Atlantis, weird Atlantis thing.
Gretchen:
Yes. And even that's something that is brought up in Bleiler's work talking about this where he mentions the undersea tube is like it's so interesting that this idea is just sort of an afterthought when it's like one of the most interesting ideas in the story.
Nate:
Yeah. I mean, when they are talking about the initial attempts to build the undersea tube, they talked about various different, you know, routes and things like that, but the, an actual undersea tube built under the English Channel, the Chunnel, it was discussed as early as 1802, but it wasn't actually built until 1994. So I mean, it's something that people have been talking about for a very long time, but it just was not feasible to actually do until, you know, much later over those great kind of distances. And we're still a very, very, very long way from a 3000 mile chunnel under the Atlantic. I mean, we can lay a data cable across the ocean floor, but a passenger train, it's not coming anytime soon, that's for sure.
JM:
No, she says it's late 20th century. So yeah, yeah.
Gretchen:
I mean, she was right at the end of the 20th century. She does mention the under the English Channel.
Nate:
Yeah, right.
Gretchen:
So she was right there.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yes. So as we had mentioned that there were arguments over who she was, this mysterious woman and what race she belonged to, which does feel reminiscent of something that might have been seen in the scientific mysteries column.
Nate:
Absolutely.
Gretchen:
Yeah. And the other less noted in the press was the fact that there was a leak from a crack in the cavern, which greatly concerned the engineers. After bringing in pumps to prevent more water from seeping in, the crack didn't grow. So the work continued and the undersea railroad was accomplished.
JM:
Yeah, kind of reminded me of stuff like that Dr. Who story "Inferno" where there's like, hey, there's this crack in the pipe. Oh, it's not a big deal.
Gretchen:
Just keep going.
Nate:
Keep drilling.
Gretchen:
Don't worry about it.
JM:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yes. And besides a few critics, engineers who, you know, are experts on this, most people were excited by the feet and the railroad operates for three years. It is at this point, the narrator turns to his own experiences. Having never taken the tube before, Bob decides to finally do so for a business trip to France. Before his trip, he has dinner with a friend of his, Dutch Higgins, one of the engineers behind the tube and tells him of his decision. Dutch tries to warn him against this action, much to Bob's surprise, who remembers how enthusiastic the engineer was during the railroad's construction.
JM:
This is definitely where some of the funny dialogue is.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
They call each other and it's like, golly. I can't remember what he says, but it's really funny. It's like, golly, gee, fancy, fancy talking to you again.
Gretchen:
Yeah, gee whiz.
JM:
It's been a while.
Nate:
They data dump at each other during the phone conversation. There's this one, I forget the name of the story, but it was written in the 90s or so that was kind of a send up of science fiction writing where the premise of what if a airplane flight was described as a science fiction story and, you know, when people go on trips or vacation or whatever, they think about how excited they are to go on vacation and all the places they're going to see and, you know, the new cultures you're going to experience or whatever. But the story is written about the narrator just data dumping at the reader about all the technical specifications of the airplane and how big the physical dimensions of the airport are and how like the material of the chairs are made. You know, that kind of stuff that like no living human would ever talk about like an actual conversation with somebody. That's how the conversation between Bob and Dutch feels about like the undersea tube, which just feels like very like stilted and unnatural, but at the same time data dumping a huge amount of technical science information.
JM:
I've seen worse though.
Nate:
Yeah, yeah.
JM:
I've seen much worse.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah.
Gretchen:
A little bit and perhaps the next story.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
No, it is very like because he's like, yeah, he draws the diagrams right for Bob. Yeah. And it's like because Bob's like, oh yeah, you haven't shown me how you did that in years and I don't remember it because I've gotten so into the textile business. I don't remember that. Yeah. Why don't you show it to me and he draws it like he's done it every day of his life.
Nate:
Yeah. And we get very nice labeled figures with everything, you know, so you get a very good idea of how this tube is going to work.
Gretchen:
Yeah. But yes, he learns that Dutch is concerned about the crack and he has tried to report his concerns, but it's out of his hands. He can't do any more than that. Bob wants Dutch to show him again like he had while working on the tube, how it works conveniently. So Dutch draws some sketches to explain the process. There are two tubes he explains going in the opposite directions and the cars are pushed forward using air which is regulated through pumps, both suction and air pressure pumps.
JM:
I actually really like the way that she has him describe it because it seems very logical and it seems to make sense the way it's done.
Nate:
Yeah. Giant pneumatic pump type system, yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I think it is a pretty logical design that she came up with for something that probably was one of the least interesting parts of the story for it.
After the demonstration, Bob still wants to know more about Dutch's concerns with his using the railroad. The engineer then reveals that the crack is more than just a crack but an earthquake fault and that he is worried there might be a shift while Bob is on his trip, resulting in the destruction of the tube. Despite this new information, Bob still insists on taking the risk, wanting to try the tube before this eventually happens.
JM:
Yeah, supposedly he's like the engineer has taken this to the top and just not been listened to.
Gretchen:
Yes.
JM:
That's the worst part, yeah.
Gretchen:
Yes, and he leaves Dutch who he will never see again since the latter also boards the railroad that night to present his case once more against the tube in Europe. Once in his compartment, a mysterious older man enters Bob's car asking if he could share the space with him. Bob is struck by his silver hair and remarks that he thought the man was a musician since, "only artists go in for such lovely hair," which is such a strange line. I don't know what that means. Like I guess only artists care about what their hair looks like.
Nate:
Yeah, I'm trying to picture 1920s hair fashion with musicians and I'm kind of drawing a blank on what she was getting at here.
JM:
So I don't know but there's definitely a lot of from the women authors this episode, especially Stone and I guess Hansen as well. There's certainly a lot of appreciation of the male body and anatomy, like more than you would expect from a magazine like this probably. So yeah, I don't know. I don't know quite what she was getting at with that either, but I mean it just seems like one of those weird things, like there's enough weird statements about women's bodies, I guess. Why not? Right? Like let her do it. I don't know what it means.
Gretchen:
It is just such a great line. I just love how cryptic it feels.
He is awakened a while after the tube's departure by a jolt that throws him against the wall of the car. He sees that the wall of the tube holding the cars has opened up and the other cars are wrecked and mangled. But in the cavern itself is a huge city which is now in flames, lava flowing down its streets. His eye catches on a statue of a man on horseback, then sees a child wearing a toga among the flames running from the destruction. This is also the image that is the issues cover page.
Nate:
Yeah, it took me a while to figure out like how that cover was connected with the story.
JM:
Oh, interesting. Okay.
Nate:
Yeah, but that's what the cover depicts and I thought it was also interesting that this story made the cover. Because it's a pretty short story and typically I guess the longer works might make the cover before it, but yeah, pretty cool.
Gretchen:
Yeah. There are quite a few images for this story it seems because there's also two images in the story along with the two diagrams.
Nate:
Yeah, right, the illustrations. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. But then the images seem to waver as water pours into the tube and Bob is knocked unconscious. He wakes up in a hospital and discovers that he is the only one who survived the disaster. Bob ends his account by wondering about what he had witnessed and whether it was all merely a strange dream and thus ends the undersea tube.
Yeah, quite a bizarre story that has so many different things happening.
Nate:
I know, I liked it though. I mean, some of the prose is a little clunky in places but it's definitely got its charm and its quirks. And I like the imagery a lot of the weird Atlantis stuff even though it doesn't kind of really fit in but the ethics stuff that she addresses I think is also like the main reason to read this story, she really goes for it.
JM:
And that's really important that people will bring up these kind of things and even though it seems like people don't listen like decades later people are still not thinking, hey, remember that story, "The Undersea Tube"? Remember that maybe we shouldn't build this thing and expect people to use it when it's not necessarily safe.
Gretchen:
Yeah, and it's like maybe we should listen to the experts and that's like it's different even from "New Accelerator" where the experts, the people who are creating this tube are the ones who are saying, hey, this isn't a good idea. And it's like those people will be pushed under the bus for profit and it's like as long as the public is happy, as long as the businessmen are making money, it doesn't matter what the actual people who know what they're talking about think.
Nate:
Yeah, and unfortunately the engineering community has taken a deliberate and intentional step to side with corporations and big business over ethical issues in the real world over the last 50 years. And there's a very noticeable and verifiable documentary trail of that, which we won't get into here, but again, it's involving around civil engineering projects like mass transit systems and things like that where if something's unsafe, well, we'll let it ride out until there's a big accident and then we'll pretend that we didn't know and defer all the lawsuits and all that.
JM:
Yeah, that's generally the way humans operate. It seems like it's until there's a really big accident, everything's fine, right? And the big accident happens, we deal with it as it comes, maybe a few people die, maybe in the end we have to spend a little money to come up with something else, but we'll cross that bridge when we get to it.
Nate:
Right.
Gretchen:
It's like there hasn't been a disaster yet. So I mean, it's nothing to worry about. Even the way he, the very main character Bob, it's like, I know that there's a possibility I could die going on this too, but I'm still going to do it because it might not happen.
Nate:
It's going to be so fun. I mean, imagine traveling under the ocean at 300 miles per hour. Yeah. What a thrill.
Gretchen:
It's like I've never taken that many risks in my life, so I guess I'll start now.
Nate:
Plus you get to see this weird Atlantis alcove that like it's just like carved out. That's pretty neat.
Gretchen:
Yeah. As long as you live to tell the tale, I think that's a pretty cool thing to see, you know?
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
A pretty neat experience to talk about.
Nate:
That one scene in particular of the whole thing going up in flames, it did remind me of "Claimed" a lot.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
So I'm kind of wondering how popular that was and like propagated through the community because there does seem to be that whole recurring thing of like a fiery Atlantis. This was published the same year as "The Maracot Deep".
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
Which again, you know, the same type of deal. But I think "Claimed" was a couple of years earlier.
JM:
"Claimed" was way back in 1920. Yeah.
Gretchen:
Yeah. 1920. I thought it was 26.
JM:
Yeah. It is still before this though.
Nate:
Yeah, definitely.
JM:
It's kind of funny that you mentioned that. Yeah. Arthur Conan Doyle was still writing at this time. Right. Yeah. And "Maracot Deep" was a hugely influential story that comes up later when we discuss Leigh Brackett.
Nate:
Yeah. She liked it a lot.
JM:
Yeah. But this one, yeah, like I think it just part of the 1920s, 1930s zeitgeist. Like everybody was just really interested in Atlantis. I don't really know. Even though, yes, it is reminiscent of "Claimed". I don't know that she necessarily would have had to have read it. I mean, she very well may have, but it just seems like that was a prominent theme at that time. So many people were writing about lost worlds and lost civilizations. That was Abraham Merritt's big thing. Like he was the lost world guy. Even more so than like somebody like Burroughs or something. Like he really brought that style to its apex. He certainly wasn't the instigator. But he, like, he brought it to its peak. To its end point where it was like bringing in all the science and the weird science aspects of things and, and try to link it to the modern era in some way. And I feel almost like, even though I've kind of come down hard on this story for it's not really tying all that stuff together. I kind of feel like maybe the Atlantis stuff is there just to illustrate. I mean, obviously it's part of her anthropological thing, but it's also, this is human hubris. Atlantis is, Atlantis fell is the common conception, right? Is that Atlantis fell because certain people in the elite, I guess, you know, somewhat say scientific core of Atlantis became too, I guess too presumptuous with their attitudes about science and overcoming the gods and stuff like that. And so they were punished.
Gretchen:
And as someone with anthropological backgrounds, you know, I think she would understand that more than anyone, she would understand that idea of Atlantis.
JM:
Yeah. And it seems like she's trying to say like, yeah, this is like, we're kind of like the Atlanteans at this point.
Nate:
Right. I mean, history repeats itself.
JM:
Right. How many people did she say died as a result of this? Like in...
Gretchen:
A couple hundred, I believe.
JM:
Yeah. She's like, yeah, it's maybe not as big scale a disaster as the destruction of Atlantis, but it still illustrates that we're on the same path pretty much. And we keep doing things like this. We maybe one day will like, unleash this great flood that will just overwhelm all our amazing cities like New York and London. And like, there won't be anything left.
Gretchen:
Yeah. So I guess it's on the surface that may seem like all these elements are just kind of thrown in there and don't really connect very well. But taking it through that theme, looking at it through that theme, like, it does make more sense that these two things would be juxtaposed.
Nate:
Yeah, it could perhaps be handled a little better in text, but yeah, they definitely fit the similar theme of human arrogance.
JM:
Yeah, human arrogance. And like, did the silver headed man serve any purpose at all?
Gretchen:
No. I mean, not really. I think that's just thrown in there to, because he seems to be quite taken back by.
JM:
She likes him.
Gretchen:
Yeah, maybe. Yeah. I'm not too sure what his purpose is, except to just be like, here's another weird occurrence that happened to me before we got to Atlantis.
Nate:
Like the woman in the tomb that crumbles to dust or whatever.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
I guess he was supposed to be like an ancient citizen of Atlantis or something?
Nate:
Maybe.
JM:
Yeah. I'm guessing so, because they never found any record of him and they didn't find his body or anything like that. Like it's just like he was gone. So he wasn't really there to begin with, but he was somehow, I don't know, he was somehow like an avatar of that ancient civilization just showing up in this train and being like, hey, can I sleep with you? Like, you know, yeah, sure. Why not?
Gretchen:
We have great hair, so of course. I think at least with like the woman, it feels, what I had, how I'd interpreted it was that that was the cavern that used to be Atlantis.
Nate:
Right, yeah.
Gretchen:
And then that cavern, he sees what did happen in the past through his vision. But yeah, I don't know what the silver haired man is supposed to serve. He just is there.
JM:
Yeah. I mean, it kind of does feel like something is like certain, certain things might be missing, I guess. Like if it was a little longer, she could have, I guess, explained a couple of things a little more or maybe like brought things together a little more clearly.
Nate:
Yeah, the connecting threads just don't seem to be there.
Gretchen:
Yeah. I mean, she does mention the boy that was running through the city. So is maybe that's the silver haired man?
Nate:
Yeah, growing up and escaping fire.
JM:
Growing up in like an ancient, now an ancient man who travels through the same air. I don't know. I don't know. I'm trying to figure it out, but I don't know.
Nate:
Well, still a mystery, 100 years later.
JM:
It is a mystery.
Nate:
Just like Atlantis.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Yeah.
JM:
Just like Atlantis and it's 1929, so we have to have Atlantis in here somehow.
Nate:
Yeah. Yeah. No, this is a good one. And again, like you can tell, a lot of interesting things going on here at once. But it really does emphasize the, I guess, science-y side of Amazing in that she goes through great levels to describe the technical details of the tube and how it works and provide figures for you, if you don't get it from her prose. I think more than anything else, this episode really gets into that angle.
JM:
Yeah. I think that was the most interesting side of the story and the how she linked it in with the ethics side that seems so important to us nowadays. Almost 100 years after this story was written.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
You think about that. That's amazing. Like 1929, 2022, here we are talking about these stories and it's just like, it's kind of an incredible feeling. I've had a really neat feeling going through this stuff for this episode. I mean, we've done stuff that's much earlier than this and looked into stuff that's earlier than this, but something about looking into this really, really feels like I feel like I'm stepping into a different time in a really cool way.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
And part of it is because I can relate it to now. Like even though it is a different time, it does feel like it's the beginning of something more modern.
Nate:
It does feel very modern.
JM:
But yeah, that's been a really interesting part of the journey, I think, that I think that was the most fun part about looking into this episode was like that kind of feeling and that's definitely something I'm going to get into a lot more later, but it just seems like really stepping into the 1920s and seeing how people thought and felt back then about things that are still concerning us now is really fascinating. So yeah, I don't know.
I mean, this is definitely one of the more unsung works and authors like considering nowadays not too many people seem to know who Hansen is. Not many people would necessarily gravitate towards a story like this, but I liked it too. I want to make clear when we talk about these stories and I mean, I can only really speak for myself, but I think that just does kind of apply to all of us. I will certainly when I cover a lot of my stuff coming up, I will be a little bit facetious and a little bit making fun of them a little bit from time to time, but I don't mean anything really harsh or bad by it. I think it was really interesting to do these stories and I think that.
Gretchen:
Yes.
JM:
Talking about something from the 1920s is really different from talking about like the latest fantasy novel from whatever, right? Like that that came out this year.
Nate:
Right, right.
JM:
It's just, I mean, I'm not saying that you should forgive stuff that's 100 years old more easily, but in another way, I am, I guess in a way, but because there's a certain interest historically in doing stuff like this where you're like, it doesn't really matter as much as there's a problem with the fiction. Like, you can't go back and tell that author how they might fix their work. Like there's no, there's no point in sitting here talking about how bad something is for like hours at a time. You want to kind of see it as a part of history and see the best parts of it and what you do like about it.
We're certainly going to get to some examples of not very good writing this episode and there were certain times where like, I like to read out bits of things that I think are particularly good. And there were certain points to this episode where I thought, maybe I'd like to read out something that's particularly bad, but then I changed my mind and I'm like, yeah, you know what, I don't really want to do that. I don't want to sit here and say, hey, Leslie Stone is not that great of a writer. I mean, we'll get to that. And like Hansen maybe doesn't tie her themes together perfectly. But when you think about how these stories were written, how most of them were probably written very quickly, sold for less than a cent a word and printed in a monthly magazine, that was maybe better looking than some of the pups of its time, but not that good looking with a very garish cover, probably with a lot of typographical errors that snuck through as in the case of some of the stories that we looked at already like Claire Winger Harris.
Nate:
Yeah, I have to say though, the Winger Harris was especially bad in that regard. I read all the stories this time in the magazine and I didn't spot anything that confused me nearly as much as the Claire Winger Harris misprints.
JM:
Okay, fair enough.
Gretchen:
Yeah, because I also read all the stories in the magazines and yeah, I didn't see anything like that.
Nate:
Yeah, it might have been an early thing, but yeah.
JM:
Maybe the editorial work did get better.
Nate:
Yeah. Possibly.
JM:
Yeah, I think it's basically like even though we might kind of mock some of these stories, I want to make clear that I do have a certain amount of respect for all of these authors and even the ones that were just a flash in the pan and they didn't really continue very long at doing what they were doing for one reason or another. There was something interesting about reading all their work. So that already I think puts it above, I mean in a sense like I don't want to be one of these internet commentators who's sitting here like just trashing stuff all day long and I don't think that like that can be a fun thing up to a point, but that's not really what we're here for. So I mean, we are going to try to see the best in these stories as much as we can, even if that's a little bit difficult sometimes. And we're also trying to have fun with it. So I think that's important to consider moving on. I think we certainly have the best of intentions and respect towards all these people because they're a part of history.
Nate:
Yeah, it's a bit different when the story's on the cutting edge versus when you're just following a formula that's like 90 years old or whatever. When you're just making a genre entry, it just feels different. It's not saying one's better or worse, but it comes across very, very differently from somebody writing at the very forefront of when fandom takes off versus when you have thousands and thousands of novels preceding you.
JM:
Yeah, and there's something, there's something good feeling about just being able to read something that's 96 years old where you're like, oh, I can see how that's very similar to stuff that we see nowadays. And I kind of like that.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
There's something cool about it that just feels nice to be digging into this part of history, even though we're not necessarily talking about well, universally respected, first rate literary authors, even in the field of science fiction.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I'm personally someone even with modern day fiction, I suppose I can't really get too upset most of the time by people who are putting their work out there for people to see. I have a respect for people even now doing that.
Nate:
Oh, absolutely.
Gretchen:
I think that is amplified by seeing authors like this who are doing that so early and are, like you said, on the cutting edge and just all of these new things that are emerging at that time. You can't really see it as something to be so strongly criticized. It is fun sometimes to maybe poke fun at certain aspects and to be lighthearted about it, but I do have a lot of admiration for the authors that we're covering.
Nate:
Yeah, I think overall I enjoyed everything this time around, even though some of them are clearly not masterpieces. But this one I had a lot of fun with and it didn't overstay its welcome at all.
JM:
All right. I think this has been a really interesting talk. I'd like to move on to our next author. And yeah, when we talk about something not perhaps being a masterpiece, this is definitely one of the things that we're talking about. So let's take a short break and then we'll talk about Leslie Francis Stone.
Bibliography:
Amazing Stories, November 1929 issue https://archive.org/details/Amazing_Stories_v04n08_1929-11_Missing_ifc-674ibcbc_AK
Bleiler, Everett - "Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years" (1998)
Davin, Eric Leif - "Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965" (2005)
Yaszek, Lisa - "Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction" (2016)
Music:
Sousa, John Philip - "Transit of Venus March" (1894) https://www.loc.gov/resource/ihas.100010997.0
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