Episode 31.4 transcription - Minna Irving - "The Moon Woman" (1929)

(listen to episode on Spotify)

(music: atmospheric theremin and ocean like noises while Gretchen reads three of Minna Irving's poems)

Gretchen:

Sea Wind 

The sea-wind is a pirate bold 

Whose ghost will not be laid, 

But scourges still the sandy shores 

That once he used to raid. 

He left his bones in gibbit-chains 

To haunt the dark sea caves, 

And beaches bare, and stony cliffs, 

Far isles and stormy waves. 

His cutlass whistles to and fro 

His voice is in the gales; 

Of scuttled barks and drowning men 

He tells unholy tales. 

He cannot rest without a ship; 

So his uneasy ghost 

Goes seeking for his vanished crew 

From a lonely coast to coast. 

Legend of the Moonflower 

When gardens fair exhale perfumes 

Of attar, myrrh and musk, 

The moonflower by the porch unfolds 

Its blossoms in the dusk. 

With the glimmering discs of pallid pearl, 

The dark green vine is starred, 

As if a host of little moons 

Had risen in the yard. 

For when at her appointed time 

The moon withheld her light

The cricket cried: "I cannot see 

To pipe my tune tonight." 

The beetle blundered to and fro, 

The shadows were so black, 

The moth went out and lost her way 

And nevermore came back. 

So Nature, who's a Fairy Queen 

In robes of sun and snow 

And dewdrop crown, (as all of us 

Discovered long ago), 

Touched with her hazel wand a vine - 

A barren vine and soon 

From every spray and tendril shone 

A copy of the moon. 

Via the Ouija board 

Low from beyond the veil, where wander spirits pale, 

Via the mystic Ouija board a solemn message came 

From one whose dust in France lies where the poppies dance 

And weave around his wooden cross a ring of elf in flame. 

I who have given all, I who feared not to fall, 

Who made the sacrifice supreme, that nations might be free, 

Ask for no monument but that my bones be sent back to my own beloved land 

Across the Sundering Sea. 

Let me repose at home, where breaks the fragrant foam 

Of apple blossoms in the spring against the turquoise sky, 

Where on my grassy bed, the clover flowers red 

And golden banded honeybees all day go booming by. 

Not there where to my sleep the leaves of battle seep 

Do I desire my crumbling clay with alien soil to blend, 

But where I first drew breath, when I return in death, 

Mingling my ashes with the dust of many a dear old friend. 

Bare ye my broken form, o'er oceans calm and storm, 

To that green churchyard in my town and lay me there to rest, 

Where violets may start, blue-pedaled from my heart 

And where the flag for which I died may wave above my breast. 

Thus spoke the Ouija board, while in the chimney roared 

The unleashed northern rushing down from snow fields at the pole,

That was the fervent prayer out of the boundless air 

Spanning eternity, the cry of one dead soldier's soul. 

Irving background/non-spoiler discussion

JM:

Hello everyone, we are Chrononauts and this month we are discussing Amazing Stories, the first American science fiction pulp magazine. If you are just tuning in and you would like to hear a little bit of background please turn to episode installment number one where you can hear a bit of history of the magazine and what happened throughout its development and so on. For now though we are going to turn back to 1929 and Gretchen is going to lead us on discussing Minna Irving's story, "The Moon Woman". 

Gretchen:

Minna Odell, known as Minna Irving, the poetess of Tarrytown, New York, was born on May 17th, 1864. Tarrytown was also the home of Washington Irving, likely why Minna chose that particular last name in her alias. From a young age she began to write poems and songs and at the age of 17 described herself as an authoress for the 1880 census. Irving's first published poems would appear in magazines during this very year. In 1885 Irving would publish a poem called "The Haunted Heart" in the Century which would become the title poem of a collection of poetry released by her three years later, "Songs of a Haunted Heart". 

Unfortunately Irving's name would start to crop up in newspapers for reasons other than her writing abilities in the following years. Also in 1888 a scandal would break out between her and a man she was formerly engaged with, a Palmer B. Wells Jr. who, according to Irving, began sending her unwelcome indecent letters, exposing her own past love letters to the public and spreading lies about her plagiarizing two editors of papers she was writing for. 

In 1892 Irving would claim John A. Lant, an editor of Tarrytown's paper Record of the Times, had also sent her inappropriate letters. In between these two incidents she had married a man named Irving Hasbrouck De Lamater twice, because according to a fortune teller the day of the week they had been initially married on was bad luck. De Lamater and Irving were separated by the time of the case against Lant and he was on Lant's side during the incident. The two divorced in 1911 and stated in one article on Irving on such hostile terms she bought a revolver to protect herself against De Lamater. Now I should say I couldn't find the primary source for the last piece of information and as for the other incidents, while I found multiple newspaper articles through my university library's resources, I still have limited access to papers that might further illuminate these situations but I still thought I should mention these events even though I'm not too sure how I feel about them. 

Nate:

Yeah, no that's a rough situation to be in. I mean I can't envy her at all with this...

Gretchen:

Yeah, it's a pretty strange series of events. 

Nate:

To say the least, yeah. 

Gretchen:

It's really strange to see, especially for the second case with John A. Lant, it seems like the newspapers kind of took a much more hostile light towards her. I don't know if it was because they assumed she was lying after the first charge that she had against the first man so it was very strange to read that. 

Nate:

Yeah, and it's kind of weird, I mean we think of people's personal gossip and business being all over social media in the present day but they also printed this stuff in popular newspapers back then. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

Nate:

It'd be awful just like everybody reading about your business. 

JM:

Really terrible, yeah. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

JM:

I mean we take a lot of that stuff for granted now. It's still bad but it's like, oh whatever, right? I don't know, it feels almost like the fact that it was in print would have made it worse at the time. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, I reminded one of my friends once that it was like nothing was going on back then so people would just write about the personal lives of other people in newspapers. But it also seems like she was very well known as a poet, so I think it also feels kind of like how we treat celebrity gossip nowadays. 

On a much lighter note, her next marriage to a man named Harry Michener, a mine owner and race car driver, fortunately seemed to be a much better relationship than her last marriage. Despite these personal issues, Irving's writing career continued and she was quite prolific. Although the work by her we're covering tonight is the only one she submitted to Amazing Stories, she contributed numerous poems and other pieces to magazines and newspapers such as The Century, New York Herald, which she was on the editorial staff for, Putnam's Monthly, Breezy Stories, Munsey's and Peterson's. One poem of hers, "Sea Wind", was actually published in Weird Tales in 1937 and would be one of the last of her works. Besides their initial publications, her poems were frequently reprinted in newspapers across the US. She received several honors for her works, including earning a gold medal for a poem commemorating the USS Maine in 1899 and being commissioned to write a poem that was engraved on a plaque of the grave of Theodore Roosevelt's son Quinton Roosevelt. Irving would die on July 23, 1940 in a sanatorium after seems like a pretty long illness. She lived quite an interesting career. 

Nate:

Yeah, sounds it. 

Gretchen:

I think that it's very clear from her writing that she excelled more as a poet than perhaps as a prose writer. 

JM:

Yeah, it's a very unusual thing for Аmazing, I think. 

Nate:

It is. It's not surprising to hear that she wrote poetry for Weird Tales because this very much feels like a Weird Tales story. And while the plot elements maybe don't exactly come together in a perhaps satisfying way, I really do like her style. I mean, she's really good at this kind of evocative imagery. And it's a little more refreshing to read somebody like her that kind of takes these kind of jumbled plot points and doesn't really like fuse them together. Then somebody like a Stone whose prose style is a little more flat and dull and by the numbers. She's really good at the imagery and the mood and the vibe. And I would certainly like to read some of her poetry and be curious if she wrote any kind of like gothic fiction. 

Gretchen:

Yes, I did come across, I did not have a chance to read it, it seems that she did have other short stories that she wrote. She didn't just write poetry. She also wrote a couple of short stories. I couldn't find many of them when trying to find them through the newspapers I was looking for. But I did come across one that I think was called "The House of Dreams". That's what it was. So I didn't have a chance to read it myself, but I did see that she wrote that as well as other pieces. And I think they are sort of more gothic, which seems to be also the case in some of her poetry. 

Nate:

Oh yeah. And you definitely get this from the story too. But yeah, something to check out for the future off the podcast, because I did like the mood and the vibe of this one a lot. I don't know, ranking the stories, I would probably put the Brackett and the Wells ahead of this. But I think I like this one more than the other three, the Stone, the Williamson and the Hansen. 

JM:

That's cool. I mean, I always say that I appreciate style a lot. And I definitely appreciated the style of this one, but I was kind of frustrated by it. It just seemed every time I was really getting into it, it just stopped. You know, I mean, we'll get to the reason why, there's a reason why there's three separate parts to this really short story. And it's not really about any of the things that I thought it was going to be about. And I hate to be the plot centric person here, I guess, but I just the style was really cool. And I wanted, I guess I wanted more. I wanted more of both the story of, I mean, that's probably this comment is better saved for the end, but basically the two sort of separate elements of this story that don't really come together. I wanted more of either of them, one or the other or both. 

Nate:

Yeah, it's interesting with these kind of stories where this one felt like somebody took a full length novel and just like cut the first 10 pages out of it. And then that was the story. 

JM:

Yeah. And then a few pages and then like jumped ahead, a few more pages and then jumped ahead, a few more pages. It's really strange, really strange structure and really strange ending. And just, I don't know, it was a very weird story. I was very intrigued by it. I guess I found it a little frustrating though. 

In terms of ranking the stories that we've been doing this episode, I don't really know where this one would fit for me. I'm really torn because it had one of the best styles for sure. I wish more had come of it, I guess. It was certainly very interesting. And I don't think anything that makes me kind of want to read more of an author is probably doing a good thing, but it doesn't seem like she really has a lot of fiction that we can find. So not really much of a poetry person, but I guess I would check out some of her poems. Sure. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. It is interesting that it seems like the problem we've run into in these stories mostly relates to pacing. It seems like it's either a story that feels like there should be more to it or, you know, feels like it could be expanded upon or it's a story that kind of drags on a little too long or overstays its welcome. 

JM:

At first I was excited about what I thought it was going to be about. And then I kind of saw, oh no, it's about something else and here's the moon woman. This could be interesting. And then I kind of realized, wait. It's almost over. It's over. I don't really understand why she wrote this or why she wrote it like this. 

Nate:

Well, I think I have an idea, but we'll get to that at the end of the story because she kind of spells it out in a way that some of the other authors we've covered before who also go for that kind of ending also have spelled out. 

JM:

Yeah. Well, it is certainly an interesting contrast to everything else. 

Nate:

Oh, yeah. 

JM:

Everything else this episode. 

Nate:

Yeah. This does not feel like an Amazing Stories story. 

JM:

No, it doesn't feel quite like one. I mean, I'm glad we did it. I'm glad you picked this one, Gretchen. I mean, it is, it certainly seems to stand out. It's not like anything I've read in the magazine. Maybe we were saying earlier that some of the reprints like Abraham Merritt reprints and stuff have a bit more of a weird feeling to them. And even "The Undersea Tube" had the whole Atlantis thing, which is a bit of that. This was something else entirely. It could have been a Weird Tales story, although I think they would have probably asked her to flush it out more, I think. She probably only got paid a quarter of a cent a word for this, and it's pretty short. So she probably, I don't know, she just wanted to do it, I guess. Yeah. Why not? 

Nate:

Yeah, I think this one really contrasts perfectly with the Hansen emphasizing one side of the scientist and the other side being the poet. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

Nate:

And you could really tell that they're on kind of either extreme from one another. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. I mean, I did choose Hansen and Irving specifically because I found it interesting that these two people who had those different professions kind of worked on this same pulp. I kind of wanted to look at them also in relation with the other pieces that they created. So it was interesting to see that difference in style from both of them. 

Nate:

I mean, it definitely contrasts really well. I think out of the two authors we've covered in this episode, they're the ones that really most illustrate that difference between kind of the philosophies of writing. 

JM:

Yeah. Yeah, that's very true. 

Gretchen:

Yes. Well, I think I will get into the story. 

JM:

Yeah. Because there are only a few comments to make about it at the end, I think, so what happens in it? 

(music: Edward Woolf - "Mercury Polka" on brassy synth)

plot summary and spoiler discussion

Gretchen:

"The Moon Woman" is in the November 1929 issue of Amazing Stories, same as the Hansen story that we talked about. This was, though, completely unintentional. I picked both of them by looking through the Bleiler work, which groups together the works of authors who are arranged in alphabetical order. Only after I had chosen them did I realize the fact and found it a fun coincidence. 

Irving's narrative starts after Professor James Holloway Hicks has successfully created a serum that can cause suspended animation. He has tested it on various animals with positive results, but hasn't used it on a human subject yet. No one has come to try it, and Irving makes a pointed remark that not even the would-be suicides would take a chance on a mysterious drug. Since what if it paralyzed the body but kept the mind alive and alert? Truly a frightful condition to contemplate. 

So, Hicks, like any good scientist, decides to test it on himself. Having put his affairs in order, Hicks gives his friend and heir to his fortune a fellow scientist named Horace Blinkman the serum to inject him with. Injections he estimates will keep him in a state like death for a year. Blinkman, though, is nowhere near as successful in his work as Hicks. And since he will be given control of the professor's estate when he is suspended for the coming year, Blinkman decides to inject Hicks with several times the amount of serum that was originally planned, hoping to prevent the man's awakening by a few decades or even altogether. 

JM:

Yeah, this guy's a real piece of work, this assistant. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, he and the professor's attorney that helped arrange Hicks's affairs bring the now seemingly dead professor to a mausoleum built for this occasion. When they return with members of the press a year later to witness Hicks's resurrection, they instead find him to be still in the same death-like state and believe he is truly dead. They leave his body in the crypt, thinking that a second burial would be a mockery. 

The story's focus then shifts to a young woman who finds Hicks's mausoleum now in ruins after the passing of 200 years. The woman who wears a pair of wings, and is, I just have to mention, described at one point as 150 pounds of solid, healthy womanhood, is curious. 

JM:

She was really cute, I wanted more of her too. 

Gretchen:

She also mentions that she has very strong but delicate hands, which she has that kind of combination of strength and it seems grace, which is pretty cool. She is curious about what she calls the temple of the dead she's come across. She flies the top of the crypt and finds an opening in the roof, then drops down through the hole. She comes across Hicks finally waking from his suspended animation and is terrified to experience an apparently dead man coming back to life. 

Hicks, realizing she is there and that she is shocked, tries to reassure her. He is embarrassed, however, to find that his clothes have disintegrated and asks her to remain where she is for he is a very modest man. He learns that the woman's name is Rosaria and that the year is apparently 3014. So I guess Hicks is from the year 2814? 

Nate:

Yeah, I don't know what was going on with this, but I think this might be another Amazing date misprint because they mentioned another date later that like, it's like, wait a minute, did they meant to print like 2114 here or something? I don't know. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, I will mention the date because I found that to be, I'm pretty sure this is a typing error since... 

JM:

Well, I thought it was like 21 something when he went to sleep the first time, right? 

Gretchen:

I don't think they ever mentioned when he actually like goes to sleep and I don't think they ever, they never indicate, she never indicates that the date is different. I'm not... 

Nate:

She mentions a date later that would indicate that when they went to sleep, it would be in the present day, so 1929. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, it is a date that she says is 1930. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

Oh yeah, okay. 

Gretchen:

But I believe that would mean, that what I was assuming is maybe this is supposed to take place before the time she wrote this, where he awakes in 2014 and he had this sermon like 1814? 

Nate:

Maybe. 

Gretchen:

I assume. I don't know. Just a strange error on someone's part. 

JM:

Well, I thought he was just, he had been asleep for like that long a time because everything was ancient and stuff, so it was obviously much more than, I don't know, 28 whatever made sense to me at the time. 

Nate:

Yeah, it's just another thing where the dates don't line up. I mean, he could have very well slept for a thousand years in-story and it would have like made total sense. But I mean, just like the numbers that Rosaria is telling him about like what happened since he's been asleep, just like don't line up with one another. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. Because it seems like the narrative's very clear that he was asleep for 200 years. They mentioned that multiple times and then there's, the other dates are 3014 and then 1930. So I assume 2014 is when he wakes up. 

After being entombed and suspended for so long, Hicks is eager to leave his mausoleum, though again he won't leave his coffin without being properly dressed. Rosaria leaves him and returns soon with clothing, a set of wings and some food, which in the future are condensed into essences that one drinks from small vials. Hicks isn't too impressed by this, feeling that it seemed too much like taking medicines to be enjoyable. Rosaria also explains that the dead are now disintegrated using X-rays, which is why she was surprised to come across Hicks's mausoleum. 

The professor finds himself falling in love with Rosaria and feels that her knowledge of the world he's now a part of sets her above him, but she denies that she is wiser than him. She is merely familiar with this time. She then tells him of the Moon people, who humans encountered in 1930. They are the ones who rule Earth, though through the consent of humanity. Rosaria herself is part human and part moon person, the latter heritage from her mother's side. Hicks then gets down on one knee and proposes to her. Immediately following this, Hicks wakes to find himself with Blinkman in his study. The serum had only assured him a good night's sleep and nothing more, and thus ends "The Moon Woman". 

Nate:

Yeah, so I mean I never really liked the it was all a dream ending, but when the story itself reads like a dream and like you know "Arctiq" and things like that. 

JM:

Yeah, the answer is I'm asking her to marry him. It's pretty silly, but I just kind of wish why not go all the way with it. I mean you started it. So I mean there are certain cases where it was all a dream like maybe it's okay to do that. It was just so weirdly not anti-climactic, it's not even the right word. It's just kind of like the very last short paragraph just reveals that everything we've witnessed is not real. 

Nate:

Yeah, right. 

JM:

So I don't know. I kind of thought that was disappointing. I don't know. It was like it was so weird to read this story because at both moments I thought I'm really getting into this. Like first I'm thinking is this story going to be about this dilettante guy living it up on this other dude's money while he's asleep and like getting into trouble and then I'm like oh no it's not about that. It's about him, the doctor waking up and encountering the moon woman. Hey cool and then she's telling us about what's happened and they're going to go off together. Great. Okay, I'm all for that. And then she took that away too. 

So it was like having something cool snatched away from me like twice. Really odd to me that she kind of set up these two things like the whole idea of making the assistant such an utter bastard, right? And that really comes to nothing. I mean it's all there just so he sleeps longer. And then you know setting up this moon woman is like well he's kind of woken up in the best possible circumstance hasn't he? And she's friendly and maybe, I knew it was a pretty short story so I'm thinking okay it'll end soon but you know I guess they'll be happy or something and they'll go off together, and maybe not get married but hey whatever cool. And then she just sort of pulls the rug out. I don't know why. Why does she have to do that? Any ideas? 

Nate:

Yeah, I don't know. Maybe she just couldn't think of an ending. Maybe these are just kind of fragments she had that she didn't really want to piece together. I mean maybe it was an actual dream she had and she just wanted to get it down. 

JM:

Hey that could have been it.

Gretchen:

Maybe it's like "Arctiq". She kind of has her narrator of course have it be all a dream and we know that with that it was especially autobiographical, so yeah maybe she also did have a dream like this and decided to write it down. I do think this does work more than in other situations where it does have a sort of dreamy atmosphere to it, because I also kind of had read a small summary of this in the Bleiler so I did kind of know that it ended like this but I thought that what it would be sort of more like "300 Years Hence." 

JM:

Right. 

Gretchen:

And instead it does feel more like an "Arctiq" where it feels a little more deserved and a little more like it works. 

Nate:

Yeah, there's like small parts in this one like certain scenes that like I really like like the chauffeur and them going into the graveyard and like they're just the way she describes the mausoleum in the night time. 

JM:

Very atmospheric. 

Nate:

Yeah. And then after when he wakes up the mausoleum is in a state of decay and you know the moon is spilling in and all that stuff and the obvious similarities between Rosaria and the Vrilya from "The Coming Race", I thought was pretty striking and it wouldn't surprise me if that was deliberate on her part. 

JM:

Interesting. Yeah, yeah. And it was a weird absurdity, I kind of laughed the way she was describing the assistant and how like anxious he was and like you know I was like what am I going to do I have to make him sleep longer, and he's kind of in a rush and I'm kind of thinking like well I mean I guess that he's going to be in state and this mausoleum and maybe it's going to be hard for him to like break in and make him sleep for longer, but I kind of I was thinking to myself while reading why does he have to do it now, he's going to be asleep for like a decade or however long you know and it's just like pacing around getting all agitated. It's like kind of reminds me of some kid who's like spoiled and he's realizing like in 10 years he's going to be he's going to have to figure out how to fend for himself, and it's like 10 years from now so he's all worried about it even though it's a long way off, and so he starts poking the doctor with holes you know he's like jabbing him with the needle all over like indiscriminately. I don't know that was that was really funny, I guess like just poking him everywhere with the needle. 

Gretchen:

I do think it would have been interesting to see him living it up on Hicks's money. 

Nate:

Especially if she was able to connect the two plots and like his legacy or something like that affected the future 200 years from now. 

JM:

Yeah. 

Nate:

He stumbles upon some relic or something like that. 

JM:

That would have been really cool. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

That would have been awesome, and I thought that was where it was going, and like she just seemed determined to snatch away the symmetry of the story at every turn. 

Nate:

Yeah. I mean again it feels like the start of a 300 page novel that could go to all these places but it just kind of like abruptly stops. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

JM:

Yeah. And the time jump. Yeah. The time jump kind of throws you off and then you're like yeah you start getting into the next part. And very interesting thought experiment, though like it does feel a lot like a dream because, you know in dreams a lot of the time your sense of time is a little weird right. So you could jump 100 years into the future in a second. Not really think that much about it. You're like, oh it's the future now I can tell right. But that's beyond normal human experience to be able to do that. But that happens in dreams all the time. Weird time jump sometimes you can't tell what order things really happen in, even in your really vivid dreams. And I appreciated that and I appreciated her style very much like there was a lot of atmosphere. I felt like if she had written longer and more developed story the character work would have been really good. Like I got a sense of that you know the way she was describing the assistant, the way she was describing her and the way like it felt like she was capable of really taking this to some awesome places. I guess it was a little silly like the future speculation. I mean I'm guessing that's kind of why she published it in Amazing right was because of the speculation about what the future would be like under the... 

Nate:

Yeah I guess Amazing didn't really do that many of the like the weird serum type stuff, though I guess the Wells "New Accelerator" kind of counts for that but that's a reprint so maybe it's a bit different there. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. That was also in the first issue so they were still kind of working out probably what they were going to do in the pulp magazine. 

Nate:

Exactly, yeah, I mean I think they kind of shifted their editorial policy towards the more sciencey stuff as they went and they probably had to reject a lot of stuff that was too like Weird Tales and not sciencey enough. 

JM:

Yeah, I mean it seems later on though that they've loosened up about that, but I guess, I don't know it's, I mean when we get to the Brackett we can talk about that a lot more, but yeah I was definitely thinking like this feels the third part where she's about to take them up and she's explaining what society has become and everything. It definitely felt like the beginning of one of those sort of utopia things that we've read like "Herland and yeah "300 Years Hence" and stuff like that. And I thought okay it's pretty cool, I mean I keep imagining this story being longer and I keep thinking I'm glad that we read those things in the past but I don't necessarily need to read too many more stories like that, because it really is a lot of it just consists of somebody going on a tour you know being shown around and like there's no plot you know I was just like, well this is the way we do things now, and here's where babies are produced in test tubes, and here's what becomes of these kind of people on society, and here's how we build buildings now, and just being shown around the new society and going, wow we certainly didn't do things like this in my day. I don't know maybe it's good that I didn't go there, I don't know I just I thought her character work would was better than that though like...

Nate:

You could definitely see it developing into some kind of plot more than just like utopia where they're describing how the society works. 

JM:

Yeah yeah. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, because even in the, I obviously focused on that in my summary what the future is like, but it is told in between like them actually meeting and having like sort of a connection and there's definitely more going on between the characters in those moments, than just like her kind of giving a lecture about what the future is like. 

Nate:

Right and then the first part, I mean she sets up this like kind of over the top like murder plot in a very intriguing way. She pulls you right in.

JM:

Yeah it actually made me think of something out of like EC Comics, like the Tales from the Crypt almost. 

Nate:

Yeah right. 

JM:

Like it's like oh he's gonna get, somehow this guy's gonna get his just desserts and it's gonna turn out really bad, and then it turned into this playful moon woman thing and I'm like yeah cool alright I'm on board for that too. I like both aspects of it. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, I mean it is like one of those, the last few stories we've talked about, where it would be interesting just to focus on one of those aspects even on its own just to have a story that maybe expands on one of those different concepts that she explores altogether in this. 

Nate:

I certainly wouldn't mind having this be the 40,000 word work rather than the Stone. 

JM:

Yeah I would have been on board for that. So I think I mentioned this when we talked about Stone, but I'm thinking like what if she had a collaborator to help her out with the prose a little bit. What if Minna Irving and Leslie Stone collaborated on a story? That would have been cool. I would have been up for that. Stone could be like, I have all this really cool idea about a space opera come political intrigue court intrigue thing, and Irving could have sort of turned it into this really awesome well written piece. I don't know. Yeah. They didn't know each other. 

Gretchen:

Even with Stone it's funny because I know we didn't do it in the story we chose, but she does have quite a focus and a number of stories on like aerial people like people with wings. 

JM:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

I was thinking about the stories I had heard about that Stone had wrote when thinking about the way Irving kind of imagines the future. 

JM:

Right, so Stone has two stories published in Air Wonder Stories. One is called "Men with Wings" and the other one is "Women with Wings". 

Nate:

Yeah. Definitely have the women with wings here. 

JM:

Yeah. 

Nate:

I mean it's also kind of interesting because Irving I think is from a different generation than everybody else, right? She was like much older than all the others. 

Gretchen:

This would have been written much nearer the end of her life. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

I mean born in 1864 so. 

Nate:

Right so she would have been like 65 when she wrote this. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

JM:

We're really at an interesting point now in doing these because we're seeing the real, for the first time, when I could really envision it clearly in the podcast. We're kind of seeing the different generations of play and how this really does resemble a lot of stuff we've done earlier on in the podcast. 

Nate:

Right. 

JM:

In a lot of ways and it's in Amazing which is amazing. 

Nate:

Yeah but I mean I think a lot of the people we covered tonight aside from the Wells were much younger. I mean Williamson and Brackett were both quite young when they submitted their stories. 

JM:

Yeah, but those two were of two different generations as well. 

Nate:

Yeah, right, that's true. 

JM:

Which is interesting. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

We'll be talking about Williamson very shortly but either really interesting cross-generational case for sure. 

Nate:

But I guess when H.G. Wells' stuff came out Irving would have been almost in her 40s. 

JM:

Yeah. 

Nate:

So it's not something she would have grown up with. I mean she probably would have read like the Gothic stuff, or maybe some Jules Verne if she read any of the adventure stuff but it seems like poetry was more her thing, and definitely the Gothic fiction was much bigger in the 19th century than really any of the pulp stuff. 

JM:

Yeah. Definitely.

Gretchen:

It does seem like her publications though, she did at least submit to a wide range of magazines so I'm sure she picked up on a lot of the different genres that would later have their own pulp magazines. 

JM:

Yeah. 

Nate:

No, yeah, of course it's just kind of interesting when somebody comes to it in their life when you grow up with something from a very young age, versus when you encounter something like halfway through your life as an adult. It does have a different effect. 

JM:

So I wonder how she actually found Amazing. Like how did she come across it? I guess we'll never know. 

Gretchen:

I mean she seemed to be someone who, again, probably was very up to date on any sort of new publications that were coming out so she probably would have heard about it just through a more general knowledge of different publications. 

Nate:

And I think around this time they were circulating like 100,000 copies per issue on newsstands so if she was like going by train to places or like walking around the city or whatever, she probably would have seen the cover on a newsstand somewhere and been like oh what's this? 

JM:

I wonder what she thought of Frank Paul's awesome covers. Maybe she liked it. Who knows? 

Nate:

Yeah who knows? Because I don't think she wrote into the magazine right? She didn't do any of the letters? 

Gretchen:

No. 

JM:

We didn't find any. 

Gretchen:

Yeah I don't believe she did. 

Nate:

Yeah. It's too bad. It would have been kind of interesting to hear her views on some of the other stuff the magazine was publishing because it's so different from what she wrote. 

JM:

Yeah and that's kind of what makes me curious you know. I mean she wasn't, it's not like she was being getting paid that much to write this so she just wanted to do it right. I mean she could have, I'm not going to say because I just don't know how well she was doing with her poetry and everything but it's not like she was a struggling new writer. Like some of these people were talking about. She just wanted to do it, I guess. She did. I don't know this is really interesting. I honestly don't have a lot more to say about the story itself but just the fact that it exists is fascinating. 

Gretchen:

It really was interesting, this is a story that's sort of like the Hansen where it's more interesting going into it and knowing about the author and how that affected the way it was written. Even looking through the magazines and the newspapers that I found through my college where she wrote was an interesting experience. 

Nate:

You really get the feel for the sense of somebody doing that. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. I felt like, well it's even learning more about Anna Adolph and that kind of affecting the way that I feel about "Arctiq". I feel like that kind of affects the way that I feel about this work where I kind of respected more from looking at it and how her prose was impacted by her poetry. 

JM:

Definitely I can relate to that because there are some things that we've done and maybe even somebody we're about to discuss where it's like kind of reading about them and reading about their thoughts and about other aspects of their creativity and their life has made it more interesting to me. And so I can definitely relate to what you're saying there. I think that's a big thing that I've discovered with doing the podcast in general. Although in not all cases have I really looked that deeply into author backgrounds and stuff like that. It really depends I guess on how much information is out there. Sometimes we don't have very much. But we've been trying to dig into that as much as possible because it is pretty interesting actually. I used to be the kind of person that kind of said, well the art should stand for itself and looking into backgrounds and listening to what they have to say outside of that, is like, it can sometimes take away from the enjoyment of what they created. And I guess sometimes that's still true. But I gotta say it's been really interesting looking at things from the other angle and kind of getting more into their backgrounds and history and stuff. 

With this I think we'll close the chapter then on Minna Irving and it's been a really interesting little sojourn into the future and into dreams. So now I think we're going to talk about somebody who I think, I don't know if you guys will agree but I'll ask you at the end of our talk. I think that this guy, Jack Williamson, I think he's a real milestone in our podcast and he's a real milestone in terms of bringing science fiction into the modern era and he's been my big guy this podcast episode of just kind of looking into what he's all about. So I have a lot to talk about, without further ado, let us meet "The Prince of Space".

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)

The Daily Times, Mamaroneck, New York, August 2, 1962, page 12.

Hanley, Terence E. "Minna Irving" (2022) https://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2017/04/minna-irving-1857-1940.html

"Minna Irving Upholds History", New York Sun, October 9, 1894, page 6.

obituary, New York Times, July 7, 1940.

Times-Democrat of New Orleans, January 17, 1909, page 27.

"On the War Path", Yonkers Statesman, December 1, 1885, page 3.

Music:

Woolf, Edward - "Mercury Polka" (1851) https://www.loc.gov/item/sm1851.150610/ For Ralph.

Episode 31.3 transcription - Leslie F. Stone - "Out of the Void" (1929)

(listen to episode on Spotify)

(music: rhythmic driving synth over spaceshuttle like ambiance)

background, non-spoiler discussion

JM:

Hello, and once again, this is Chrononauts. We a the science fiction literature history podcast, covering Amazing Stories, the first American science fiction pulp magazine. If you want more background information, please listen to the first installment of this episode, because we're covering a lot of ground here, and we want people to know the context. So we definitely recommend that you do listen to that, even if you want to focus your attention on one of these particular authors. 

Our particular author right now is Leslie F. Stone, and we will be talking about her two-part serial, "Out of the Void", and it's my job to lead us on this weird journey that we're about to undertake. Oh boy, there's a lot to say. But let's start, I guess, in the beginning. Leslie Stone was born in 1905 in the city of Philadelphia. We don't know too much about her. She apparently started selling fairytale-type stories to newspapers at age 15, and then began to study journalism in college. She wrote 18 stories between 1929 and 1940, and I think one or two in the early 50s. And most of them were published in either Amazing or Wonder stories, with a few late-period ones going to Weird Tales. She married William Silverberg, no relation to famous science fiction writer Robert Silverberg as far as I know, in 1927, but always published stories under her maiden name, even if she appeared as Silverberg in the writers' column of the magazine. 

By 1940, Stone had pretty much stopped writing science fiction, and there can be a number of reasons perhaps for this. By this time, she was a mother of two sons, and to say the least, there is a lot of talk from many of the women science fiction writers, from pretty much the 30s to the 70s and beyond, of how society places certain demands on women, and creativity always takes a backseat. And this seems to be kind of one of the stories of Leslie Stone, in that she pretty much took on the role of housewife and mother, and that's pretty much something that took up all of her time. Her story, "The Cosmic Joke", is supposed to be inspired by her three-month-old son, and after that, her writing really started to slow down.

In the early stages, like 1929, 1930, 31, she was submitting several stories a year to Hugo Gernsback's magazines, but by the end of the 30s, pretty much people were lucky if they got one story a year from Stone. And apparently her stories were quite well liked at the time. She said that she had run into some other problems too, namely that she kind of ran out of ideas. But she also reported some extreme sexism from the editors that she attempted to deal with after Hugo and Thomas O'Conor Sloane, whom she seems to have liked very much. 

She reported an encounter with John W. Campbell in 1938, when he rejected her story "Death Dallies Awhile", which ended up going to Weird Tales. According to Stone, Campbell said that he did not believe women could write science fiction, and did not approve of them doing so. However, this is where I see some controversy. Campbell did publish quite a few women during his long tenure at Astounding, and he doesn't seem to have been that interested in hiding the fact that they were women, or disapproving of them in the slightest. I kind of wonder if perhaps his belligerent comment was more to the effect that he didn't really like her planetary romance kind of style of writing. 

Unfortunately, people do have negative things to say about Campbell and his editorship, but there's a lot of contradictory stuff going on, and many women did praise him. Now Samuel Delaney did comment that Campbell did not want to publish his early work. And by this time, it seems like a lot of the, and I've noticed this with it, certainly is this is a pattern early on, it seems like people are very happy to fall under his spell and go along with his kind of father ship of the golden age of science fiction and so on. But by the 1960s, he was looking kind of old and conservative, and people were kind of starting to see that maybe he wasn't all that. But at the time that we're looking at, which is the 1930s, really, he was a trailblazer, and I don't think he was necessarily against women. 

Now, his thing with Delaney was definitely very strange, Sam Delaney basically said that when Campbell talked to him on the phone, he had this very like shitty passive aggressive attitude about the fact that he didn't want to accept his story. It was kind of like, yeah, you know, I really like your story, but as a black author, I don't have a problem with it, but I think the audience is not ready for that. So I mean, a lot can be said about this man and how perhaps he had some unfortunate tendencies, but not publishing women doesn't really seem to be one of them. And Leslie Stone said she's had the same kind of treatment when she took a stab at writing for Galaxy magazine in the early 1950s. But yet again, the evidence seems contradictory. And this is where I have to point to "Partners in Wonder" written by Eric Leif Davin. He goes to great lengths to attempt to disprove that there was any real prejudice against women in the science fiction community, towards writers at least. And he basically maintains that editors, authors, fans, they wanted women on board and they liked that. And I can kind of see why he wants to vehemently assert this, but I think that probably, again, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. 

There was probably a fair bit of prejudice, but not all women felt that not all women were necessarily bothered by it and not all women were like, well, he's pushing me away. Some of them made me consider it a challenge. I don't know. 

Nate:

So I guess my feeling with the issue of somebody like Stone or Delaney or something like that, is when somebody like a Campbell doesn't like your story, he might use the sexism or racism angle to just kind of like further kick you with it. You know what I mean? 

JM:

Yeah. 

Nate:

He'd be perfectly happy to publish a story by a woman if he knew it fit exactly with the scope of the magazine and he knew it would sell and all that. But if he didn't like it, he just might be like a little bit more of a jerk, you know, and make a sexist comment towards you or make a racist comment towards you or something like that. I mean, I really don't know too much about Campbell and Astounding. I mean, we'll certainly get there in a later episode, but that's just kind of the sense I get from the editorial comments, the nature of how people talk about these issues in the letters. Like there's some really kind of condescending and patronizing language, not again, directly dealing with women authors. But there is one letter, somebody writes into Amazing and it's just like, I'm sick of all these women in our stories, you know, as I don't care about sex at all. And the editors of Amazing are like, oh, don't worry, Amazing will never become a sex magazine. And it's like, what is going through your mind here? Like, yeah, but I don't know that that's just the kind of cursory sense that I got from scanning the fan community letters and all that. 

JM:

I definitely think though, there's some layers to all this like Leslie Stone, she speaks very, very highly of the editors that first accepted her in Amazing. She has nothing bad to say about them. But all these later editors of like, you know, the later science fiction magazines, she has a real problem with them. And I'm going to go on to a mention Campbell who is a spotty figure with a spotty record in a way. But Horace Gold, who is the editor of Galaxy Magazine, generally was seen as a much more, like later on anyway, was seen as a much more open minded person who really wanted to have women on his magazine. And apparently she had a problem with dealing with him as well, where he basically sent her a note that said face up to it women should not be writing science fiction. 

And yet, in his very first issue, Katherine MacLean, who won the Hugo for her short story in 1958, I can't remember if it was "The Snowball Effect" or another one. She was a frequent contributor to Galaxy, and she in the very first issue, she said that Horace Gold particularly called her up and practically begged her to write a story for him. And Gold himself stated that he tried to find stories that would appeal specifically to women in every issue, which makes sense as he published over 41 stories by women during his editorship. And according to Damon Knight, author and historian and husband of writer Kate Wilhelm, who's also a science fiction writer, who got her start in the late 40s, early 50s, Horace Gold was desperate to include more women authors and wished he could find more. 

For some reason, I just can't square this. And I don't really understand whether Leslie really received these comments or whether she misconstrued something or whether whether these male editors were just not consistent, like they just did not, or they said what they didn't actually believe just to get her off their case or like what the deal really was. 

Nate:

No, I'm sure she really received these comments. I think the editors were more concerned about money and what sells. And I think in the case of Stone, this story we're going to be looking at tonight, to me anyway, it struck me as kind of an allegory for a women's sexual awakening. And like, that's probably not what Amazing Stories readers want to read. 

Gretchen:

It's not a sex magazine. 

Nate:

Right, exactly. They want to read the nerdy differential equations, you know, we replace resistor X with resistor Y. 

JM:

But she didn't have a problem with Amazing magazines. She liked writing for them. They always accepted her stuff. 

Nate:

Yeah. Well, I guess what I'm trying to say is that like, while they're cultivating this culture, the fan community might give them backlash in a way that the editorial, specifically Sloane, might not have. So when you get this community that expects one thing and Sloane is this kind of old guy, I mean, at the point that this is published, he's in his what, like late 60s, early 70s or something like that. 

JM:

80s. Yeah, he's 82 years old in 1930. I can't remember, but he was really old by this time. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

It's kind of incredible that he was still doing this. And he was doing this at, you know, editing the new scienti, scientifiction magazine at his age. 

Nate:

I'm amazed that I pronounced it correctly the entire time I've been saying it this episode because it's just such a bad word. 

JM:

We've been doing all right with it. But yeah, it's just a struggle sometimes. 

Gretchen:

Doesn't roll off the tongue very well. 

Nate:

No, it doesn't. But you know, after Sloan and amazing, Ziff Davis comes in and they're like, you know, the big corporate guys. And I could see them being way more dismissive and just kind of shitty to authors like Stone on sexist grounds. I don't think it was perceived on Stone's part. I think it was actual malice and bad intent and that comment that she received, even though it does seem contradictory. I think the bottom line is they gravitated towards women that they could sell stories of and kind of impress their readers versus some of the stuff that Stone would have written that encompasses other themes that maybe would make readers uncomfortable or turned off by the content. 

JM:

I don't know. I don't know. But the thing is, I don't think that some of those other women were avoiding those things. I mean, I think we talk about Leigh Brackett. I think she was she was kind of avoiding those things in that she was writing like very action oriented macho kind of space westerns. 

Nate:

Oh, yeah. 

JM:

It was just her thing. But I don't think all those like especially the women who wrote for Galaxy magazine, they wanted to be confrontational. I don't think they were trying to make people comfortable like necessarily. I don't know. I can't quite square this. I'm kind of frustrated by the fact that she's saying this and the evidence points to the contrary. I don't, like reading some of the background research with some of the books we have during this podcast has really helped make clear to me that everybody who writes has their own bias and Eric Leif Davin...

Nate:

The "Partners in Wonder" guy. Yeah. 

JM:

Yeah. He definitely has a point to prove. He wants to set out to disprove that there was heavy prejudice against women writers between the thirties and forties and fifties. 

Nate:

Yeah. I mean, that just seems like total nonsense. 

JM:

But I'm not 100 percent buying into it, but I'm buying into it a little more in this particular case because I don't really see how she could have got comments like that from editors that were more than happy to publish women who were not necessarily, hey, I'm writing like a man would write. See, like, I don't know. I just don't. There's something about this that doesn't sit right with me. I don't know. 

Nate:

I think further research is needed on our part and we'll definitely do an Astounding episode at some point and probably plug into some of the other big pulp names. 

JM:

Yeah. I definitely want to get into Galaxy because that was a really interesting magazine. I don't know how much we want to just definitely focus on the specific magazines. I'm sure we'll pull stories from them at various times, but it might be good to do specific episodes on those two magazines for sure. 

There's certain resemblance in this story. Probably more so than something we've done on the podcast in a while. This story reminded me of one that we have already mentioned on this podcast episode, "The Mummy!" by Jane Webb. This story gave me "The Mummy!" vibes on more than one occasion. Just in terms of the fact that the writing was very, it felt very amateurish, I guess, in a lot of ways. And the funny parallel was that it seems like in the 40s when Leslie Stone kind of turned away from writing science fiction, she wants some kind of prize for gardening. So I don't really know any details of this, but apparently that was a thing and that was also one of Jane Webb's things. So I just thought that was kind of a fun coincidence. 

Something that I notice about this, and again, I don't mean to put down Stone's serious commitment to like the sexual awakening of women and feminism and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, it seems like she was a very domestic person and the woman in her story ends up following the domestic path more often than not. And it just seems again like what we were saying about Jane Webb and why perhaps she's not really considered the trailblazer of science fiction that like Mary Shelley is, is that she kind of got tied up in these super domestic things and didn't really like, she didn't dedicate herself to writing the way Mary Shelley did and she didn't produce a masterpiece like Frankenstein or like some of Mary Shelley's other stuff. 

I don't know, like, I am interested in reading some of Stone's other stuff. Now, I have to say, I picked this one on purpose. Her most popular story seems to be "The Conquest of Gola", which was anthologized several times and ended up in "The Big Book of Science Fiction" as well, edited by the Vandermeers, along with Claire Winger Harris's "The Fate of the Poseidonia". Those were the two stories that showed up from Amazing Magazine. And I kind of thought, well, "Gola" is the more famous one, but this one is an interplanetary romance and I like those. And I also think we've already kind of covered feminist utopias, which is apparently the theme of "Conquest of Gola", not that we won't want to cover them again because we very well might, but I just kind of thought it might be more interesting to do this love or serial that's less well known. And well, I don't know. I don't know, guys, if this was the right choice. 

Nate:

No, I think it was. And I'll tell you why. This is not a good story, but it doesn't matter because it's a very interesting one. And it's an interesting one for several reasons. And I think like a lot of other works we've covered on the podcast that we could maybe gloss over these faults, but this really feels like three different short stories or so kind of loosely stitched together. This did not need to be a full length novel. This could have been a couple of stories broken apart. 

JM:

Yeah. And there is a sequel, too. 

Nate:

There is. 

JM:

That's even longer than this. 

Nate:

Yeah, I did not read the sequel. I know you said you were poking through the beginning of it. 

JM:

I started it. I didn't get very far. 

Nate:

The theme of kind of the, hidden woman's identity, I mean, it would almost make more sense if this was from a Hansen rather than a stone because the idea of a woman concealing her identity pretending to be a man and presenting that public persona for a while and living this underground life and having these, I guess, feelings and thoughts and trying to preserve a public image versus what you're doing in a private life is, I think, a very interesting dichotomy to play and interesting topic to write upon. And she does touch upon it in a pretty compelling way in some parts, but pacing and general plotting and connecting the threads, I think, is very, very much more of an issue with this one than the last story we were talking about. The individual pieces just do not gel and fit well together at all. 

JM:

So this is by far the longest of our stories this episode, and that's what made this the hardest to deal with. I have issues with, I guess, every story except the Wells and the Brackett. I don't really have any issues with that. I can kind of almost put in my head a ranking of in terms of just prose styling and in terms of actual story construction and how I feel about them. And this one would be at the bottom probably. 

Nate:

Yeah, I would agree. 

JM:

It's just like, this is the longest and it's like, it hurts more because it's the longest. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, because it is like, it's similar to Hansen's where it is like there's a lot going on and there's stuff that's like introduced, but it's almost like there's, this is where it's not fun to read. It's not like, at least with Hansen, she kind of like goes through these disjointed, more kind of afterthought things, but it feels like it's kind of like, like I said, like a sprint through it and it's kind of fun to read. In this, it's like a slog through things that don't really feel that connected. 

Nate:

It's an unleisurely stroll, if you will. 

Gretchen:

Yes. Yes.

JM:

She's trying to deal with a lot in this to be fair. Like there's things in this story that come up as being unpleasantly racist, but her actually attitude are the opposite of that. She wants to be good about it, but it's just like. 

Gretchen:

Oh yeah. I definitely think we should talk about that, the three races, and how that is handled. 

JM:

Yeah, we will. 

Nate:

Yeah, the whole issue of slavery that appears in the novel and it's just kind of dealt with this like casual haphazardness. It's like, oh, this is just how they do it here. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. It's strange that it's like there's because, you know, it is two installments. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

It almost feels like she changes her mind about it for the next installment. Yeah. And we'll get into that, but I really want to talk about that bit especially. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

Yeah. And the thing is like from what I've read, this is something she comes back to again, the racial thing. And she really does want to be progressive about it, but maybe because of how she feels at the time she was writing or the fact that she was kind of a domestic oriented person who maybe didn't really talk to that many people out in the world. I really don't know. I mean, apparently she and her husband traveled a lot. That's kind of something fun I want to get to a little later, but yeah, like she wanted to be revolutionary, I think in a way and not just about her portrayal of women, but in other stories. 

Gretchen:

She did write a story that has a black protagonist. Right? I believe so. 

JM:

Yeah. That's right. It's mentioned in "Partners of Wonder". I can't remember what the story name is. 

Gretchen:

Yeah. I just, I couldn't remember the story, but I do remember that being mentioned. 

Nate:

Yeah. She does have some interesting social commentary and this one especially, I mean the idea of concealing your identity as a woman and posing as a man for a while. In addition to this whole like sexual awakening thing, there is this recent-ish book that was like kind of a literary hoax called "Awoken" that was written by three YouTubers and like some ghostwriters. 

JM:

Oh, do tell. I don't know anything about this. 

Nate:

Okay. Yeah. So you know "Twilight", right? The idea of like a paranormal romance. It was them parodying the genre, but except in like a Lovecraftian sense, you know, so the woman falls in love with a sexy Cthulhu, right? That's basically the whole idea. 

JM:

Nice. C.L. Moore basically wrote that story in the early 30s. 

Nate:

Yeah. Right. They document the entire process of writing the novel on YouTube and they talk about the tropes and the history of all that stuff. And it's a really interesting thing how it goes through and the novel itself is very funny, but they talk about this one trope, "life begins at man". So when you have a woman character who might appear on the surface to be accomplished on her own merits, in the case of this, she's very well traveled. She's educated by the best scholars, but she just doesn't feel alive until she gets the kiss from Mr. Right or whatever. 

JM:

Yeah. And that's all over this. That's all over this. And even in the Williamson too a little bit. Like this is a thing for sure. 

Nate:

Yeah. And it just feels, I guess sexist when it would come from a male author, but I guess disappointing when it comes from a woman author, especially when she's kind of trying to make this commentary on like, you know, gender roles to begin with and stuff like that. It just almost feels like retrogressive in a way. 

JM:

Yeah. I get what you're saying. I kind of agree. And that's kind of one of the reasons why I paralleled her with Jane Webb as well. But I mean, I really do feel like we're dealing with so many different types of personalities here. Like even all the women that we're talking about this episode, they all seem very different in some ways. And you know, it's like, we normally would say that, right? I mean, we're talking about many different authors each episode, but it really does seem like we have to take a view that's as broad as possible and basically say, yeah, like these people were all different. They all believed in different things. 

I mean, I can't help but especially after reading her letter to the magazine in 1928, which I actually want to read a little bit of now. And then I'll read a little bit more at the end when we're finished with the story. But this is a letter she wrote. I don't know when she wrote it, but it ended up in the October 1928 issue of the magazine, which is before she submitted anything. She calls this a Lady Reader's Criticism. And this is what she says. 

"It is the letter of Mrs. H. O. De Hart in the June issue of your publication that is the cause of my writing my little say. For more than a year I have been a reader of this magazine, and this is the first time I have seen a letter from a woman reader. In fact, I was somewhat surprised as I had believed that I was the only feminine reader of your publication. However, it is with pleasure that I note that another of my sex is interested in scientifiction. 

"I feel that I owe my intense interest to this type of fiction to my mother, who from my baby days endeavored to develop my imagination. When I tired of my dolls, she would suggest that I play with imaginary kittens, dogs and children of my age, and you can see how easy it was for me to progress from kittens to more imaginative subjects. It seems as if, as early as I can recall, I was reading stories such as the tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells."  

So now I want to look ahead a little bit. I mean, I keep doing this, but we just can't help it because everything we do in these episodes is kind of a whole piece, but I want to compare what Stone is saying to Leigh Brackett's letter from 1941 and how much more like bold and just like, hey, I'm here, I'm going to get you all. How much more like that Leigh Brackett's letter is than Stone's letter. Like, even Stone's letter just feels, she feels very reserved and like maybe even though she might want there to be some kind of revolution in the future, she's very happy living her life and she's kind of not necessarily wanting to go against the status quo. And especially when she talks about the covers later on, which I'm going to get to at the end. 

Nate:

Oh, that part's great, yeah. 

JM:

Yeah, like it just kind of seems like she doesn't want to rock the boat that much. Like she's kind of like even when she's talking about her childhood, like it just seems very stayed and kind of a little bit like prudish and ultra normal almost. Like, again, I don't mean to look down on her that much, but like it just doesn't really seem like she's going to take the world by storm with her imagination kind of thing, where the way Brackett seems determined to try to do. And I don't know, like, I feel like maybe she was too easily discouraged. Like again, maybe she did receive some shitty comments. And if she had been somebody of a different character, maybe she would have just said, well, fuck it, that just gives me reason to keep on. But she doesn't seem to be that kind of person and she just decided to live a different life. 

Nate:

No, I get the sense that she was fairly socially conservative in the way she conducts herself I mean, just based on what she describes in that letter. It's just a fascinating sociological snapshot of the time and of her as a person. 

JM:

I have to say one of the best things about this episode was pulling out these letters. I'm so glad we decided to do that because I really, really feel like from reading what people had to say, the fans, but also the writers themselves who often wrote into the letter columns before they actually wrote a story, what they had to say about the magazine, what they had to say about how they perceive things and so on. And that makes it so much more interesting. That's the kind of background that we haven't had from any of our authors before, even the ones that wrote biographies of themselves. 

Nate:

Right, right. 

JM:

Yeah, I wanted to end off with that. I don't really have anything else to say about Stone's biography. If you guys have any more general thoughts about this particular story before we get into the summary, I guess now's the time to go into it. I kind of been pretty vocal about apologizing for the fact that I chose this one because this was a hard read at times. There's some really bad writing in this story. 

Nate:

So this wasn't my favorite that we've covered on the podcast, but at the same time, it's not my least favorite of all the stories we've covered. I mean, it's longer than it needed to be. It has some dismal pacing problems that I'm sure we'll cover shortly, but there's a lot of interesting ideas here, and there are some cool scenes. And I don't think it was a bad pick in that, again, it really does capture a certain aspect of the genre of the fandom and how the magazine was progressing at the time in many different ways in the way it covered longer stories and the way it covered gender issues in the way it covered interplanetary travel. There's a lot going on here, and I don't have any complaints with this one, even if it's not like a great or even good novel. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, I agree where this is definitely not the most egregious thing that we've read. I don't really think it's like the worst thing that we've read. I do agree that there are some good concepts in there that I don't think they connect. I think that's the problem is they don't connect very well, but besides that, I think that if they had been explored separately, there wouldn't have been as much of a problem. A lot of my comments relate more specifically to certain aspects of the text, so I think it would be better for me to hold those for when we get into it. 

JM:

Yeah, that's fair. I don't know, I kind of feel a little different. I almost feel like the idea behind this story is fine. It's the execution that I'm not fond of. I don't really like the way she strings things together, but not in terms of the plot, but just in terms of overall just constructing an appealing paragraph. It just seems like something is missing and sometimes it's really bad. 

Nate:

Yeah, I don't know. I feel way worse making you read that Frank Reade "Steam Man" novel than any of this, so don't feel bad about it. 

JM:

I guess so, you're right. I will say that and that is something that I did observe earlier that I do think on the whole this is certainly an improvement from those dime novel kind of things. Even the worst of this era is a little bit better than that, which is nice. I almost feel like, and again, this feels bad because it almost seems like I'm saying if she had just got a man to help her out, but I don't think it necessarily needed to be a man, it could be in anybody, if she had a collaborator who was a bit more more tuned to style and a bit more tuned to like just smoothing out some of the rough edges. This could have been more awesome than it is. 

Like I really think that the ideas are good, but the execution is faulty and I think that it really hurts this a lot for me. There are some bits that are unintentionally funny, but in general, like it wasn't funny enough to be like, yeah, I kind of, I don't know that I can really recommend this to the average person. Like, you know, if you're interested in the history of it, sure, read this, but like, if you're not, if you just want to hear me go to town on this a little bit, then or possibly all of us, then just listen to the podcast and don't read the story, I guess, because I can't recommend this. 

I sort of groaned my way through this a little bit. I sort of started with the best of intentions and there were definitely things that I liked about it. Like I said, I think the ideas are really sound. I just think that the way it was executed was just, it kind of, again, I have to think of somebody that Stone really liked because she mentioned Abraham Merritt in her letters as well. She wanted to see Merritt reprints and I just think I'm going to kind of think like, again, it feels bad because I'm like saying, well, the man had taken this over, but I'm not really saying that, but I'm just saying like, if somebody had liked Merritt had written this story, I think it would have been more colorful and more engaging and more like, yeah, I would have enjoyed, especially the second half a lot more. 

Nate:

Well, even somebody like Leigh Brackett, I mean, the difference between the two stories here is the pacing here with Stone is like dreadful and it just doesn't have any kind of sense of tension or building up those kind of elements where Brackett, she's got you hooked from like the first paragraph. 

Gretchen:

Yeah, I read Brackett immediately after finishing this and it did feel like a breath of fresh air. It was like being launched, like the pacing is like such a great speed and it just launches you right into the action. 

JM:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

It's such a remarkable change. 

JM:

Yeah. Brackett is like go, go, go. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

And she's like, I want everybody to think at every moment of this story, this is badass or these people are badass or like, there's none of that here. In fact, there's actually this, I should have mentioned this when we were talking about her possible social conservatism, but there's a religious thing in this story as well. There's a vein of Christianity and like kind of definitely throughout this. It's not like super, super blatant all the time, but she mentions God like many times. 

Nate:

Yeah. There's one weird thing at the very beginning that I was trying to figure out if it was a biblical reference. So there's a rocket ship called the Yodverl, right? And when we did the Nervo story, "Soul Giver", it spells out like these Hebrew letters in the text and one of the Hebrew letters is Yod. And I tried to look up if like Verl was another Hebrew letter, like if she's trying to say something with that and it's not, but it just seems..

JM:

The Y V. Yeah, yeah, I see what you're getting at. 

Nate:

Yeah. Like it seems like it's some kind of like she was trying to go for that with the either the imagery or the wording, but I don't know if that's exactly what she was getting at there. 

JM:

There's a few other things like that in this story where she's talking about like the aliens and the language that they use and stuff, where she talks about the names and she gives them names like the or something or other, which means like the greater, you know, the super thing, right? Where it's like, she's obviously thinking of like, Indo-European languages. And yeah, maybe Yodverl is a reference to Hebrew or something like...

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, Hebrew is not Indo-European, but it definitely has a biblical tradition throughout like Western names, I guess. And this weird like Kabbalah mysticism that Nervo picked up on. And I don't know if that was really Stone's thing. She doesn't really get into like the mysticism, spiritualism, weird angle here that much, even though there is like the whole telepathy thing, which is a thing in science fiction for several decades after, but it is one of those more like weird fiction elements of it that you would think the magazine would try to discourage if they're going...

JM:

I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of weird fiction stuff in this really. It's just not expressed that. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

It seemed like, well, we'll point them out when we get there, but it just seems like there's a lot of, she's really speaking to all three of the major categories in this story. 

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah. 

JM:

There's definitely an attempt to address all of them for better or worse. I mean, I don't know that it works that well, but it's all there. There's the science. There's the weird angle. And there's also the interplanetary romance, very much so. 

Nate:

Oh, definitely. 

JM:

And the whole second half has this weird like court entry. Kind of it almost reminds me of like "The Coming Race" by Bulwer-Lytton, like a little bit where it's like kind of getting into this like weird entry in between all the people on this planet and like how our visitor character from Earth is sort of intertwined with all this. 

Nate:

Yeah. You get the whole love parallelogram and all that. 

JM:

Yeah. 

(music: Auguste Davis - "Neptune Mazurka" on bright synth)

spoiler plot summary

JM:

Okay, well, let's see what's the story about our narrator describes himself as a simple man who knows and cares nothing about outer space, and he hints of a visitation from an alien spear and jokes about a fish story as it all began on a fishing trip. He embarked upon one day getting away from the hubbub of New York City.

Nate:

Somewhere in New Jersey.

JM:

Yeah, so we're in rural New Jersey.

Nate:

If you are at all up on your New Jersey geography, which why wouldn't you be, you will notice that the lands right outside of New York City is perhaps the same area that they filmed the Toxic Avenger in, so if you've ever seen that film, picture that.

JM:

Pretty close to where you live.

Nate:

Not that close but within a comfortable drive I would say but yeah picture The Toxic Avenger in the background for these early scenes. I think you'll have a good idea.

JM:

Well, he seems to like going on these spontaneous trips and he has a wife. And she's okay with him just phoning at night randomly and saying oh, I'll just be gone for two or three days. So he gets to his shack and finds someone's been there and stolen his suit of clothes. And they left this amazing ruby in his place. It's a reasonable exchange I guess. He also seems to have a new neighbor, there's this strange glass structure nearby that wasn't there before. 

So the new structure is a large cylindrical space ship torpedo thing, and it's landed there rather than being built there obviously and oddly the first thing he thinks to do is scratch or break it. It seems to be made of clear glass, but nothing will so much as scratch it. So there's not even a break or a weak point in any of the surface. But he finally gets tired of throwing shit at the cylinder and he resolves to ask about it in the nearby village. And he's just setting out when something leaps screaming out of the forest and tackles them. And he catches a glimpse of a weird face with cat-like eyes before something hits him in the head and he loses consciousness and he wakes inside a room with unfamiliar plants and artistic depictions of nature and cityscapes on the walls. He's inside the cylinder thing now And he freaks out and overworks himself and passes out again, and his collarbone is fractured. So he awakes being surveyed by a tall statue-esque man shape with silver skin and unfamiliar garments and he explains that his servant was overzealous in his duty, but comments that our man was a meddler. 

Nate:

Yeah, and I have to say I was really in the story at this point.

JM:

Yeah. 

Nate:

It's the mystery of the glass cylinder You know, where's this gonna lead and the way she does it is pretty cool, you know, she does draw you in and you get this like neat, but silly mystery But she really shifts gears on you pretty shortly and...

JM:

Yeah, I mean, I really thought that the opening of the story kind of followed some interesting tropes, and I kind of thought, oh there couldn't have been much before this that was like that and where it's like, here's the alien on earth. He's already here and this guy's kind of an interloper. And what's the alien gonna do with them and like, you know, it kind of feels ahead of its time a little bit, I think yeah, so I like that too and the host/captor announces that they come from a planet as yet undiscovered by humanity at the edge of the solar system. 

This is a spaceship or ship of the void and it's the stranger can speak perfect English because someone earth has already been out into the void before, and the aliens mission is secret. They need to make contact with a certain individual and we're hoping to be gone within a few days. They deliberately chose a secluded spot that was relatively close to New York City, and the narrator is the only person to have discovered the ship in the glade. They had to capture him to prevent him from bringing intruders upon them so the ship is indeed the Yodverl and there are the two silver skinned travelers and their gold skin servant, Sa Dak. The older of the silver men tells our man whom he treats like a guest that he may punish the servant for injuring him. No, that's okay says our narrator.

Gretchen:

I'm good.

JM:

I'm good. I don't need to punish you. 

Our man seems not only resigned to his fate, but very curious and content to remain among the aliens. The Abruians should say they'll return him to his place of origin when they are finished with their mission. 

Nate:

The whole tone that the whole slavery issue is presented throughout the entire story, even though it I guess does change to portray the slaves in a more positive light and kind of sort of maybe condemn slavery at the end, it just feels off. Kind of wonder what Leslie was thinking about when she was writing this.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

My personal feeling is that Leslie was very much against it, but that she perhaps, due to her upbringing and her own maybe slightly conservative mindset, she can't help but be very casual about it. She can't help but be kind of like, yeah, there's slavery. Even when she later on, she talks about them going to Africa and she's like, oh, and this is with the "Negro Quarter", and it's very casual and very like, I think she means better than that, but I think she just can't help herself. I think that's just kind of the way it is. 

Nate:

Definitely does not sit well in the modern day, that's for sure. 

Gretchen:

I think that it's in the second part there is this effort to kind of, yeah, like portray them in a sympathetic light and to kind of bring up that, hey, this is a bad thing, but because she starts out the story with this hint of slavery still continuing. 

JM:

Oh, that too, yeah. 

Gretchen:

It's like, oh, she can't really do anything about it because near the end of the story, there's an attempt at a revolt.

Nate:

And it takes her like a really long time for her to get there to portray the slaves in a sympathetic light.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

You know, like a really long time.

Gretchen:

Yeah, it does feel maybe like, like, again, it feels like she kind of like had this thought after writing a whole bunch of the story that she's like, wait, maybe this isn't a good thing. Maybe this is something that I should address and it happens too late.

JM:

I think she kind of has a kind of an inbuilt sort of thing where it's like, this is, it's not necessarily a good thing, but this is the way things are and she's fighting against it. But at the same time, when she starts out, she can't help but just be like, yeah, this is the way things are. And when she portrays the Abruians, she makes sure that we know and this is one of the things that I liked about the story. A lot of the stuff that I've read from this time, this kind of thing, which was like published in Amazing, not necessarily like Abraham Merritt Merritt was a little different. He was a little bit more, I don't know, more otherworldly, more romantic, I guess, like he kind of his stories came off differently. Like, there was weird science in the stories, but that was never the emphasis. 

But with some of these stories, I was talking about Harry Bates, who ended up being the editor of Astounding in like the early 30s. I think he contributed to Amazing early on too. But definitely like one of the stories that I read, it was kind of like this. These people are getting this weird, I can't remember if it's like some part of South America or Africa or something like that. And they find like a base of alien civilization. And this alien civilization is like awesome, they're the best alien civilization. They're very advanced, they're very sophisticated, they're pretty much better than humanity in every way. And we should follow their example because they're cool. 

Stone's not really saying that. She's actually saying the opposite. This is a fallen race. This is, again, going with her biblical thing, because she seems to have a little bit of a religious angle. The Abruians are in some ways they're to be respected and admired, but they're a fallen race. And they're an example of a race that needs to be sort of helped to pick themselves up again, which, again, could be considered condescending, I guess, because she's kind of including the gold-skinned people in that as well. Whereas they used to be in a position of greatness, but now they're not. And now they need this person from Earth to kind of help them along and get them back to where they should be.

Nate:

Yeah, the whole white savior thing.

JM:

Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I mean, didn't have to be a white person, but I guess so. Yeah, I guess it is basically an example of that.

Nate:

Yeah, it's coded that way, basically, I mean.

Gretchen:

Yeah. And I feel like they do kind of connect because on Earth, they mentioned that he's like there to help the African people. So it's almost like it parallels with what he was doing on Earth, where it's like, oh, yes, he's here to save this oppressed race. 

JM:

Yeah, the Abruians have some cool gadgets, but they're still in need, like even silver-skinned advanced people are also in need of help. They're the real fallen ones in this, which I think adds a little bit of an interesting extra twist to it is it's not just slave race that needs the help of the saviors. It's the everyday civilized people of Abrui as well. They might have the cool radium gadgets, but they've got a lot of problems that they need to deal with.

Nate:

And I do like how radium gadgets play a large part in this. I mean, they use it for everything.

JM:

Yeah 

Nate:

That was a big thing in real life, as people used radium for a lot of things. And it turned out it wasn't such a good idea.

JM:

Yeah, and she acknowledges that, but she says the Abruians know how to do it right.

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah. Still, we'll get to that. The whole Radium Girls was a very big, big thing.

JM:

Yeah. So our guy wanders around the ship and he finds Abruian books as well as something written in English. This is a message of sorts to a Professor Ezra Rollins from Dana Gleason about the Rollins' rocket having landed successfully on Abrui. Dana Gleason's name is familiar and we get a strange story about how this rich society man married into another wealthy family, but spirited away their son on a fancy yacht just before the wife was killed in an accident. And he brings up his kid to hate women. And this is definitely significant. So they seem to do every kind of adventure imaginable. And finally, they joined the British Army and Gleason Sr. is killed. It's like, whoa, all this stuff.

Gretchen:

And after you've done everything you could possibly do, you joined the British Army? 

Nate:

Yeah, die in World War one. 

JM:

Time to join the British Army. Yeah. 

Nate:

Yeah. It's just such a weird part in the story. And like, yeah, this puzzled me more than like, I think anything else in the novel. Like the whole, I guess, misogyny angle is, because at this point, you don't know, well, I guess I don't want to spoil it, but...

JM:

Yeah, because it's the one major surprise of the book. Yeah, right. I didn't see that coming. I was like, whoa, what? 

Nate:

But I mean, he's treating the kid to be like this total misogynist. And you're like, wait, that's a bit much, don't you think? Like, and I don't know, Mary Sue kind of trope where the kid's getting all of the best of tutors, the best of education, the...

Gretchen:

Maxing out all the stats. 

Nate:

Right.

JM:

Yeah. 

Nate:

Everything that money could possibly buy is going to be the most intelligent, charming person on the face of the planet. And then, yeah, Leo, marching against the Germans and get blown apart in World War One. It's like, what? Okay.

JM:

Yeah, really. And it comes in later, too, where I kind of question all that with some of the developments in the second half of the story. I'm just like, really? That's what... So the son does really well in the Air Force, but nothing has hurt him for quite a while.

Gretchen:

After that aside.

JM:

Yeah. So that was that. Maybe that'll be significant later. I mean, of course it will, right?

Gretchen:

Let's stick a pin in that. 

JM:

I don't know. I don't really know how to pick that up. There's no good segueway. It's just like the ship, the ship sets off.

Nate:

Yeah. She's a very awkward author. I mean, like the way she transitions between stuff and plot threads is just like not well handled at all. And I mean, it is kind of charming, but at the same time, this work is about 40,000 words versus like a 3,000 word short story. So it does kind of tend to hit you a little harder than some of the other things that we can maybe brush off.

JM:

And again, I feel like, again, I could have chosen something by her that was shorter. That was probably maybe better.

Nate:

No, don't blame yourself. I mean, I like talking about these works more than I like reading them in a sense, if that makes sense. Like I'm glad we read this work because it's fun to talk about. And even though it is awkward in places like this, I think it does have a lot of cool things going for it that are fun to look at.

JM:

Yeah, I do agree with that. 

So all the lights are extinguished and the Abruians can see in the dark. So they're going to Africa to deliver the report to Professor Rollins. This is the report of what happened to the previous expedition, I guess, that ended up on Abrui. So then there is a description of the ship's pilot room and their four hour trip. And there's vague talks of radium motors. And they settle in South Africa somewhere between Cape Town and Johannesburg. And it's the professor's house at one in the morning. But that's okay. It's not every night aliens come to call. 

So Sa Dak, the alien, shows off his unbreakable glass. And there's 40 layers of it to protect them from vacuum and stuff. And there doesn't seem to be mass production on their world, as he talks about doing this himself. So like initially my thought was, oh, this is a spaceship that was made that I guess he just got somehow. But apparently he built all this, possibly based on the model of Rollins' ship. Because this is again, this is a cool thing that I liked about this story was that the Abruians are not superior. Like they, they have some cool shit. And this seems to be part of the sequel as well. The little bit of I read of it was that they want to establish proper trade between Earth and Abrui, where the two cultures can kind of share things and benefit one another. And it seems like they're both in need of that, like they could use the other very much. So..

Gretchen:

Yeah, I also did want to say about this part that they do mention I just thought it was very fun that they were like, yeah, we were watching you when you were trying to scrape through our ship. And we were all like laughing about it. I thought it was really funny. I just liked that bit. I thought that was a fun bit.

Nate:

You can really put yourself in their shoes too. I mean, 40 layers of glass and somebody's on the outside, you know, trying to..

Gretchen:

Just like, you know, has like a rock.

Nate:

Yeah .

Gretchen:

Like this stone that they're trying to break your ship with, yeah. 

JM:

And I think this is kind of one of the, perhaps unintentionally funny things about this story is that a lot of the story is told by one of the Abruians and he's kind of like every now and then he'll pause to like explain something like the 40 layers of glass or like the super radium food heating dishes or something like that. But then when they ask him about like important details of the story, he'll be like, Oh, it's really late now. I don't really feel like getting into this.

Gretchen:

One of my favorites is after all this information is revealed and they're like, Well, what happened next? He's like, Well, let's take a swim first. 

JM:

Yeah, we'll get to that. So this story definitely has a lot of awesome gazing upon really well oiled sexy male bodies and like how great they look at it. And it's kind of one of the things where I didn't really expect to see this in Amazing magazine. Like I kind of thought maybe there would be some of that about the female body, but I didn't really expect to see so much like look at the awesome muscular male physique and like all the oil and yeah, like there's a lot of that in here.

Nate:

Yeah, I think this is really the only story this episode where sexuality has gone into and like any kind of meaningful degree and it's kind of present throughout, which is I guess interesting in the way that the culture of the magazine developed.

JM:

Yeah, I mean, we're also in the 20s here, which was a reasonably permissive time in terms of that, like compared to like, even the 40s or 50s, probably a little bit. 

Nate:

Yeah, especially if you look at the film at that time, I mean, pre-code stuff is definitely a lot more risque than 40s stuff or whatever.

JM:

Yeah. So Professor Rollins had sent two men to Mars, Dana Gleason and Richard Dorr. And they had reached Abrui instead. So how did this happen? Well, this is the message that the aliens came to deliver. 

The professor lives in the African outback with his niece. He had assumed the men were dead and was haunted by guilt. We get the story of the past imparted by the niece, apparently, though we don't see it like that. It's it's kind of weirdly told again, like it's, I don't know, there's like a million different angles that you could have chosen to tell the story with. And it's an interesting way to read this. Like this is what I always do when I read stuff. And it's so it's not like I'm picking on Stone in particular. But I'm always like, how would I like to tell this story? I think this is one of the most interesting aspects of reading or watching fiction is actually seeing how you might do it differently and how you might like, say, hey, this particular angle of the story is really, really interesting. 

Gretchen and I have been watching Blake's 7. And one of the cool things about that show is that I always find that there's other ways you could tell the story, not that the way they choose to tell the story is bad, but it's just like they're leaving it open for you to see a different way that you could write the story. And where you're like, yeah, I could focus on this particular angle. And there's a lot of that in this, like there's a lot of there's so much going on. And there's so much like I kind of want to focus on this particular aspect. But Stone's not going to do that. Stone's going to just kind of fly all over the place and do whatever. So..

Nate:

I'm glad you mentioned Blake's 7. And I'm glad you both are watching that again. I would like to watch that again. 

JM:

Yeah, well, probably, I want to bring up Blake's 7 again when we talk about "No Man's Land in Space".

Nate:

Yes, I was about to mention that because that could easily, easily be a Blake's 7 story.

JM:

Which is really cool. But yeah, we're a ways from Brackett yet. Yeah. We really have a lot to chew this episode.

Nate:

Yeah, I gotta say yeah.

JM:

Thank you guys for for putting up with this episode. This is a big one. 

But Rollins was laughed at when he said he could build a rocket to Mars. So he went into isolation to work in secret, and also questioned around to find the perfect astronaut. And he finds him and Dana Gleason, Jr., who has done everything that can be done on Earth at 26 years of age. Imagine that. So Dana had simple instructions. Get to Mars. Build a radio with a big antenna. Broadcast the receiver in Rollins attic. Mars probably intelligent life on Mars. They're just sort of assuming that.  

Nate:

That's another thing actually that I think is really interesting across all these stories is when they discuss other planets, including the moon, there's always the possibility of life and intelligent life on all of them. Like, it seems like virtually nothing is known about the atmospheres and the geology of the planets of the solar system during this time and that it was still an open question of what's out there.

JM:

And I don't think it can be overestimated how, when it kind of was revealed what the planets in the solar system were really like, how much disappointment there was. Like, how much it's lifeless rock, really? That really sucks. That means we're all alone out here. Yeah, like, it's really, and in a way, I think I'd like to cover that in a very specific way on a future episode, but it meant the death of a lot of these kind of planetary romance sort of stories. It's really unfortunate because there are a lot of fun to read sometimes. Like, there's a lot that's better than this one. And once you kind of discover that every planet in the solar system is probably pretty much incapable of supporting any kind of life, and then you kind of think, well, what's the likelihood of planets elsewhere in the galaxy supporting life? We're gonna come up against so much that's barren. It might be interesting from a scientific perspective, but there's no life here. It's a horrible thing to contemplate, you know, that just didn't really start getting contemplated seriously till like the 1950s or 60s. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

So all this that Rollins expects Dana to be able to do, it's weird, like it's weird that he expects all that, but I guess he does. And then there's really weird descriptions of Dana, his physicality, his moods, his temperaments changing with the weather, his anger. He looks like he's going to be the romantic lead of some awesome, I don't know, it's weird the way she takes a lot of time to describe this. It's quite interesting, especially what we discover about Dana later on. And out here at this point, I kind of very mislead about things. And I thought that Professor Rollins niece, whose name I still... 

Nate:

Elsie? 

JM:

Yeah. I kind of thought, oh, maybe she loves him or something like that. But then there's a very loving description of Richard Dorr as well, the Rollins' neighbor. And maybe it's Leslie Stone doing the loving, really. So he's quite a hunk of a fellow, like a big Viking. And there's some condescending language about his humanitarian deeds towards the people of Africa. Basically, like this guy's gonna help them sort themselves out, because they really need his help. And actually, I can see how I think she's trying to be positive about this. Like she's like, they've been exploited for so long. Of course, they need somebody's help, right? And I don't know. I get it. I think she's being well intentioned, but it just still comes off as a little bit condescending here. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

Elsie, yeah. So Richard. And here I'm thinking, like, again, I was very confused about what was what. I'm like, writing down in my notes, Richard loves Elsie. Elsie loves Dana. Is that what we're gonna get, right? Yeah.

Gretchen:

Yeah, just an average love triangle. Nothing too strange about that.

JM:

Yeah, that's definitely something that threw me. Like I had no idea where this part was going. 

So obviously, there's a problem with all this. The Earth rocket. So it's big. It's very big, this rocket and the description, some stuff inside the details very, very specific and very clunkily focused on weird things. We even get a mention of toothpaste. I don't know. It's her description of like how the rocket is stocked up just seems very strange, like her decision to focus again on very domestic things. Like it just, I don't know.

Gretchen:

Yeah, it feels like it is like just the inside of a house. 

JM:

Yeah, the perfect house where two people will be isolated for a very long time. And it's weird. And again, I had to highlight the focus on the toothpaste, like the toothpaste just seems so strange. 

There's a last supper for the man going out to the realm of the god of the void. I dig that it's very well done actually. So there's no sign of Richard though. And he's absent. Dana is provided with all the things including cigarettes, booze and stimulants. So at the last moment, Richard Dorr does show up on horseback and barges into the ship. The professor might not even notice as he presses the lift off lever. And it's like the explosion in "From the Earth to the Moon" as the ship is catapulted off into space. And several people are injured and two killed.

Nate:

Yeah, it's just like such an offhand comment. It's like, yeah, two techs were killed, you know, no big deal, whatever.

JM:

Whatever. Science.  

Gretchen:

Yeah, and it's like also Rollins has like such guilt over what happened to Dana and Richard. And it's like also other people died. I guess he doesn't really care about that.

Nate:

It's like literally never mentioned again, like, yeah, there's two techs, you know, we can replace them.

Gretchen:

Yeah, but we have to know what happened to Dana. I have to know that Dana is all right.

JM:

Yeah, it's really strange. But we go back to Rollins reading the manuscript. And in a nice touch, he's unsatisfied. He thinks the account should be more personal, more emotional. And he wants the real story. And here is where I start thinking that Bill from the "Prince of Space" needed to be in on this particular trip. But we're not there yet. So Sa Dak, the Abruian says that he has in his desk, he has Dana's diary. Well, that would indeed seem to be interesting to Rollins. And he wants to know how the two men are supposedly content now, which Sa Dak maintains is the truth. He says, yes, he'll explain beginning with some of the Abruian technology. So here's where he starts to show off some of that stuff. 

We begin with a domestic situation being described. He's describing the Abruian living room, complete with warning swim. And several scenes are described. The Abruians have slavery and they seem to think it's okay. And Tor, the younger pilot appears to wear women's fashion, for some reason. And there's description of cooking and eating vegetable type things. And they have cattle too. But they speak with them. They're like, I don't know, it kind of makes me think of that scene in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Actually, it's in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, the second part, where they meet the dish of the day. And the dish of the day is like telling them what parts are the best. And the girls like, really horrified. And she's like, do you mean this animal wants us to eat it? And the other guys are horrified that she says that because they're like, oh, you mean you would like the animal to be like not wanting to be that's, that's, that's just the worst. But I don't know, the Abruians are just more enlightened that way. 

So yeah, and Elsie responds just like that way, like she responds like Trillian, that's the girl's name in Restaurant at the End of the Universe. But wait, the Abruians don't eat their flesh, they just, they just drink the milk. And okay, so like at first I didn't realize that that was really what was happening. But I don't know, it was almost like she was setting that up. And then she's like, no, no, no, it's not as bad as you think. But the animals are euthanized when they can't provide anymore. And also they do this to humans too, by the way. But it's not called killing. It's just going to sleep by a certain ray. And she admits they don't know anything about the soul.  So again, it's because they're a fallen race, they need the help of humans, they need specifically the help of godly humans. And I think that that's a theme in this, even though it's not overly, overly stated, it's very much here. 

So now we finally get the diary excerpts read by Elsie. And it turns out that Dana is a woman. And this is where you find out. And Richard is with her. And everything we thought we knew is wrong. So it was actually a real surprise to me that this happened. I didn't read anything about this story ahead of time. I didn't know that this was going to happen. And I was like, Oh, wow, okay. Like all these things I was trying to pinpoint, I usually predict these stories pretty well. And I'm kind of like, trying to pinpoint it and going, Oh, so I think I know what's happening now. It's going to be this kind of love triangle. No, not really, not really. 

Nate:

This threw me off too. And I thought that like Elsie having a crush on Dana would play out in a different way. And like the way she reveals like her gender is like, Oh, she can have to deal with like this whole homoerotic thing as like a issue. And it just like never comes up again throughout the rest of the story. 

JM:

Not really. No.

Gretchen:

there is sort of this hint of homoeroticism between Richard and Dana, though, because there is this one line where Richard was like, even before I knew you were a woman, I was like attracted to you. 

Nate:

Yeah, right 

Gretchen:

I was kind of in love with you. And it's like only this really small like in passing line. But I was thinking like, that's, that's kind of interesting that that's a part of this.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

So it's still kind of a thing, but I was just once she kind of got it out of the way it was gone. But it was acknowledged a little bit, I think. So there's that. 

But Dana talks about this crazy guy also who was threatening, he was going to expose her nature. And he's like, marry me or like, expose you. You obviously really love me, right? 

Gretchen:

Yeah. 

JM:

We see that again later. But Richard guessed the truth and was concerned about her. And even earlier on, he was kind of asking if she would back out. And of course, she said no. And so now Richard and Dana are alone in space. And they're weightlessly tumbling in the ship. At first, she perceives funny results. And she's upset at first about this whole thing. But eventually grows to like the idea of him being there with her. It's a lot less lonely for one thing.

Remember they're headed for Mars at this point. And she takes stock of their supplies. And she writes in her diary about how she's never had a confidant except for her little book. And she hopes Mars doesn't know about yellow journalism, which I thought was a really amusing comment, actually. And I mean, as hard as I am on Leslie Stone here, I do think there's a lot of potential for her to be really good. And I kind of wish, I mean, I will maybe read some of her late period stories and see how they are and wish she continued because this isn't all bad. And like, we're going to get to an author later, again, Jack Williamson, who's just getting a start around that time, and who is generally considered to have improved a lot from his early days. So I mean, it does take time and practice to get better. And I think that we have to acknowledge that Amazing Stories in a lot of ways was a magazine for amateur writers in fiction, at least in a lot of cases. These writers were not established, well respected writers when they were writing for this magazine. Because if they would have been, they would have not written for this magazine. Pretty much. Yes. So the two of them sleep apparently fully clothed at each night. 

Nate:

I love how she specifies it.

JM:

Interesting descriptions of the domesticity involved there. So they smoke cigarettes in the rocket all the time. And they alternate cooking and dish doing very domestic arrangement all around. So 50,000 miles an hour is their speed at this point, and not going too fast considering the vastness of space. But the journey is supposed to take 23 days. And we obviously know something is going to go wrong. And Dana has a lot of time for reflection. And she maybe has been missing out on this womanhood thing, she decides. So maybe her father was wrong and his hatred of women. Richard's a great guy. More admirable that she, in some ways, she thinks, what does God think of them now? She also wonders. 

Now they're quickly approaching Mars and their speed keeps increasing much faster than estimated. This could be a problem. Indeed, the Martian gravity does not touch them and they totally overshoot the planet. They think they glimpse trees and grass, but it's uncertain. Much despair now. Maybe they can somehow land on another planet. So here's where we begin the second part of the story, which was published in the next month's October issue.

Nate:

Yeah, they leave it on the cliffhanger with them overshooting Mars. 

JM:

Yes. Now we're not certain how things are going to go for them.

Gretchen:

Doesn't it also end like the last bit is and then dot dot dot dot, or something, it's very cliffhanger typical language. 

JM:

You have to wait until next month.

Nate:

It's a cliffhanger as far as them overshooting Mars and like what happens between Dana and Richard they used a sentence "who could have said that Dana Gleason should be happy in discovering her womanhood." There's this whole sexual tension between the two, and it kind of plays out in per whole awakening, and we'll see in just a little bit.

JM:

And again, I can see how this could have been done really well. The situation, as it is, is quite fascinating. I feel the allure of the situation, but I also feel how it could have been done in a more engaging way. Or it's like, yeah, I really do feel the sexual tension, and I really do feel like these two, how are they gonna handle this? They've overshot the planet, what now, right? It's not quite as powerful as it could be, but it's there, it's there. So I gotta give it some credit for that.

So before we start part two, I'd just like to point out right here, because I think this is a good time to point it out. There's a lot of things we can complain about with this story, like the pacing and the length and everything like that. One thing I will say, the narrator character has nothing to do with anything. Has no purpose whatsoever, and totally 100% doesn't need to be here.

Nate:

Yeah, I was so frustrated with this, because like, I like the setup, I like the mystery, and then, yeah, the whole narrator plot line is completely ditched from this point onward. It serves no purpose whatsoever.

JM:

He's got nothing to do. He's got no name. He never goes to the planet. He never like, you know, there's no purpose for him being here. And the thing is, she sets up all these things where she's like, here's the diary, here's Elsie Rollins, here's like, any of those things could tell all of the story, but they just don't, right? Like, it's just, I don't know, it's, there's so much unnecessary stuff in here. And even going far back to early on, again, I have to highlight him because he's one of our authors, so we look for letters featuring him,  Jack Williamson was saying, I think some of the novel-length stories in this magazine are too long. I like the short stories. His entry in this podcast episode is the second longest, but it doesn't feel like it has as much wasted baggage as this story does. It does have one key narrative flaw that I will point out when we get to it, but I think that it really doesn't waste as much time as this story does, and there's a lot going on.

Nate:

So with a comparison between the two, this one is about 40,000 words, the Williamson is like 28,000, 29,000 words, so it's maybe like 75% of the length. The Williamson I read all the way through in one sitting, this one took me like five or six different sittings to get through, I want to say.

Gretchen:

This one took me, like all the other readings took me one sitting, this one took me like three.

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, again, it would have worked for like three or four different short stories, like the whole narrator introduction of the mystery of the rocket. Then this bit here where they overshoot the planet and they're stuck on the rocket and like, you know, what are we going to do now? You know, like our food's running out, like our supplies are running out, we only have a short time to live, and then we'll go into the next bit in a little bit. But I think they could have all been handled separately and explored different themes and worked on their own rather than just kind of being all shoved together in one narrative. Because like this part in particular, I think has a lot going for it, even if it's kind of incoherent in it's messaging and stuff like that. Like she really makes a lot of effort to ensure you that yes, they're fully clothed the whole time and no, they're not having sex at all. Why would you ever think that?

JM:

Despite what happens later.

Nate:

Yeah, right. And like that triggers this whole like psychological and like spiritual awakening in her. 

JM:

She finds God.

Nate:

Yeah, right. And it just, then the whole bit that happens on the planet, it just seems like, I don't know, I guess we'll get there. But it's very disconnected and disparate parts that just like just don't mesh.

Gretchen:

Yeah, yeah, it's like those would be interesting on their own.

Nate:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

I think that the part in the ship, yeah, like it has this weird confused messaging going on, but it still would be an interesting kind of psychological story or, you know, to look at character wise. And like you said, like the intro to this with the narrator, like would have been an interesting story on its own without introducing all these different aspects. And the part on the planet could be an interesting story too, but it's trying to fit all these together without really having a coherent thread throughout them that really drags the story down and makes it kind of hard to get through.

JM:

Yeah, a lot of this isn't the second half of the story. I mean, we're not quite there yet, but like there's a lot of names. This is kind of one of the things where one of the criticisms of this kind of fiction is they're just throwing random names of stuff at you. And you have to be like, I think I remember talking about this when we were talking about "Out of a Silent Planet" by C.S. Lewis. Like he's naming all these weird things and we have to keep track of them all because we're trying to describe the story. And it's just kind of at this point in this one, in part two of the story, there is a lot of that. And I just didn't really want to be too meticulous about that stuff because I knew it would start sounding weird and I'm just like, I don't want to really say all those words, but I don't know. We'll get to it, but that starts to pile on here. And but we won't see that till we get to the 

Nate:

"Out of the Silent Planet" was one of the things I actually was thinking of during this final arc thing, thinking of it in comparison with how like the linguistic and the culture thing is set up. And again, with like the Wells, you can really appreciate somebody who has a talent for setting things things up as it reads better in the hands of somebody who is a little bit more, I guess, skilled with the prose. Because she does throw a lot of not necessarily linguistic stuff, but she does do a little bit of the linguistics, not as much as the C.S. Lewis would get into. But you know, she gets a little bit into the geography and the other things of the alien planet. It just like feels a little like awkward and stilted compared to how C.S. Lewis or Tolkien would have done it.

JM:

I mean, I definitely like Tolkien was a master at that ,Lewis, maybe not quite as much. But I mean, I did get a lot of enjoyment out of "Out of the Silent Planet", even though I had had some problems with some of that stuff and the way it wrapped up and everything. Like, it was a very obviously, again, there was a big religious message.

Nate:

Oh, yeah, yeah. 

JM:

I still like that a little more than this in terms of just the writing and everything. I think it's sort of tying together.

Gretchen:

And I think the reason why it doesn't work as well in the story is because it's like we have to pause the story so that you can get this exposition. We have to pause the plot. It doesn't come naturally, which I think also can be compared to the Brackett where you get the situation of the story really well integrated into the plot where it's like you get everything quickly. Everything kind of falls into place very well in "No man's land".

 Nate:

I mean, we'll get the Brackett more when we cover the story, but she never data dumps on you.

 Gretchen:

No, it never feels like an info dump. It always comes very quickly and you get it and it doesn't have to be like let's plateau the story so that you can hear this.

Nate:

Yeah. And the thing with the Brackett is like she could data dump on you. Like there's this whole backstory.

JM:

The planets and the asteroids and everything 

Nate:

Exactly that we just like never get and we could get an entire novel out of it, but we don't.

JM:

But it's sort of worked into the, it's worked into the thought of the story and it's worked into it.

Nate:

Exactly.

JM:

And that's the best way to do it. So you don't have to, like your world building is integrated into the thing and you don't have to.

Gretchen:

And the stuff that you bring up is important to the story. 

Nate:

Yeah. 

Gretchen:

Sometimes there are things brought up that are never mentioned again or just like little asides, but they don't really have to be there.

Nate:

Yeah. And there's just like so many weird details like this in this story in particular, whereas like these things that feel like they're going to be significant, but they just like never appear again in the narrative.

JM:

Like toothpaste. 

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

I don't know. I don't know. That just really stood out to me as such a weird addition to like we make sure that there's toothpaste on the rocket ship.

Nate:

Well, like the whole thing that happened at the beginning, what happened to the ruby that was left in the narrator's fishing shack?

JM:

I guess he used it later. I think it was mentioned at the end, but I don't really remember it. I think because he came home to his wife, his wife was like smelling his breath and going, have you been drinking? I was like, no, but I got this really cool ruby. So it was mentioned, but yeah, I don't know. 

So Richard has fallen deeply in love with Dana and Dana is distressed that now they must die up here. And Dana is a bit more positive and comforting, saying they should have at least to have a year till their supplies run out. And things get quite romantic. He tells of how he first learned she was a woman when they were kids and she went swimming thinking she was alone and unobserved. But apparently he was spying on her. So there's that.

Nate:

That's another weird thing with the whole relationship between the two is like she's quite attracted to him, even though he just tells her he was like watching her undress. I don't know. Like this whole scene unfolds really like weird and uncomfortably, I think.

JM:

Some people have weird preferences. I don't know. I mean, I don't have to necessarily buy it 100%, but I guess I buy it enough. I don't know.

Gretchen:

Exhibitionism.

JM:

Yeah, right. Yeah, so they think they're going to die because they've shot out so far past Uranus now. But it turns out there is Abrui, a small planet on the edge of the solar system. It really sounds cold and uninhabitable, but there's actually a special sun that it has that's essentially for that part of the solar system alone. And there is a gravitational whirlpool that pulls them in and they think they're burning up due to impossible friction.

The speed meter shows near the speed of light, which is impossible. Indeed, Abrui has this other sun that kind of keeps it warm and temperate all the time, I guess. And there's some Abruian natives who see a falling meteorite that falls towards the ground and just observing astronomer thinks that it's a man-made object. It explodes in the air and on impact in a colossal fireworks display. But somehow, partially as a result of low gravity, the humans survive.

And they only pull Dana out at first, though they lift her. There's these two Abruians that come in with one of their flier contraptions and they rescue her. And the first word from Dana's lips is... "Dick!" And I'm sorry, I'm 12, I know, but this is just the funniest part of the whole story for me. Like, she's unconscious practically and she's like writhing around and she's going, "Dick! Dick!" At this point, I'm like, yeah, the diminutive him for Richard is a little bit unfortunate. I don't know who picked that. And he's just like referred to as Dick Dorr all the time now. And there's just some really unintentionally funny parts to this.

Nate:

There's definitely some very awkwardly worded lines.

JM:

I honestly meant to kind of look down this rabbit hole, but I didn't. But when like the word Dick became the euphemism that it is, because I think this is totally unintentional.

Nate:

Yeah, I would say so, yeah.

JM:

Yeah, it's just they made me giggle every time like a 12 year old idiot. And so they quickly realized that there's a Dick down there too. So they circle back, but some barbarians have shown up. And the one younger guy, Ubca, he looks for Dick, but finds what he thinks is a barbarian instead. It's the skin color, you see. That's how it gives it away. So they conclude that he's undesirable and they leave Dick behind.

And this is where Sa Dak says, and that's how they came to Abrui and he's ready to finish the story right then and there. But the other guys won't have it, but there's some really, really bad writing at this part. This is like where the writing definitely, definitely, definitely could use some polish like this part in particular. This whole section was just like, oh, like just trying to get through this part. And I again, I just kind of feel like maybe if somebody she had some beta readers or something, I don't know. I don't know, it just, she couldn't really done better with this. There's some really weird exposition. There's really weird like, pervercation where the Abruian guy doesn't really want to tell any more of his story, but there's no reason for him to hide anything. He's just kind of like, yeah, it's too late now and we should go to sleep. And I don't know, it's just, it's really bad.

Nate:

The data dumps here are not well done at all.

JM:

And Sa Dak, he's like, yeah, it's too late. We don't want to, we don't want to hear more of this.

Gretchen:

Yeah. Well, I think also, you may be, this is in defense perhaps, but we do find out his identity later on.

Nate:

Yeah.

JM:

Yeah, we do.

Gretchen:

And that could possibly like him not wanting to say anything.

JM:

That's a really good point.

Gretchen:

Could be like kind of him being ashamed of what he's done.

JM:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

But of course, it is like the thing is, is you don't know that going through it. So you kind of don't have that ability to connect it because the writing doesn't really have you connected.

Nate:

No at this point, not at all, yeah.

JM:

You're very right about that. That does seem to be like that. That is a good way of looking at it. And I almost didn't think of that. And I should have because.

Gretchen:

Well, I think that maybe if it had been executed better, it would have been more clear.

JM:

Yeah.

Gretchen:

I think that is still something that she was trying to attempt there.

JM:

It seems like that plays a big part in the sequel as well, because his thing comes back and his feelings of love for Dana. But anyway, we're spoiling the great revelations to come.

The narrator who never gets a name and Professor Rollins and Elsie and the Abruins go swimming in one of the pools the Abruian use and the men are described and the Abruian men are much finer specimens than the earth ones. Sa Dak reads the narrator's mind. I don't think I even mentioned before that they could do that, but they're telepathic. And I think, again, that's kind of mentioned in the story in a very like late kind of way, like it's like just kind of. Oh, yeah. Did I tell you they can read minds? They do.

Nate:

Yeah. Though it seems to be more of like a practiced skill. Like some are way better at it than others.

JM:

Yeah. Yeah. But it's just like the way it's introduced.

Nate:

Yeah, right. Yeah.

JM:

But this Sa Dak is apparently a master at reading minds. And so he reads his mind and he talks about how they like to oil up their bodies. And then they don't respect drawn skinned men and they say that the well oil body gives evidence of a well working mind. So that's a really important motto on Abrui. After the dip, the narrator feels amazing and refreshed and his shoulder injury is healed. And this is because there's radium in the water, just like there's radium in the sun of Abrui. It was thought to be a dead satellite at one point before the core turned into a giant furnace and began to provide the conditions for life to emerge.

Nate:

Yeah, I do like the fantasy cosmology here. 

JM:

Yeah, it's pretty cool. So we get some of the background of Abrui. And there's three races, the Tabora that those are the silver men who are civilized and dominant and the slave race, which is the Moata who provided the Tabora with all their culture apparently. And then there's the Gorans or the barbarians and they're fearless and superstitious. And they figure the Gorans will just kill Dick and this is what Moura-weit, who is the leader of the Taborans that have sort of rescued Dana from her fate of dying in the desert or whatever. He has ambitions of ruling a planet apparently.

So the rumors are that Moura is not born as normal men are born, but was created by an ancient order of scientists and one of the million things that she just kind of brings up out of the blue. So this is like random group of scientists. There's a reviled sect of scientists who are unethical and they're hunted down and destroyed, but they might have given their brains to this Moura before they were killed.

So he's the best mind reader around to sound familiar. Maybe. I just mentioned that, didn't I? So low in the rank of nobility, though, he's hated by his superiors, supposedly. And Moura stares into Dana's mind as she dreams of war and earth. She's thinking of the First World War, which of course she served in, which we shouldn't forget. Ubca-tor is the younger one and he's uncomfortable. Moura mesmerizes and attempts to implant things in Dana's brain.

Gretchen:

He also does use his powers to calm her down because he doesn't want to deal with a hysterical woman.

Nate:

Yeah, there's like a whole bunch of lines around this part where they're totally shocked that they would send a woman unsupervised on interplanetary voyage. And they have to like specifically point this out many times, like how crazy is that?

JM:

Yeah, it's kind of weird. I don't know, I think this was definitely something that interested Leslie Stone because it seems like the sexual liberation angle is something that she pursued later on. And not just in terms of that, but like "The Conquest of Gola" is supposed to be about Venus, which is ruled by women and which the earth men invade. And the women have to kind of counter that and their race of telepathic women and that's cool. It just seems like this maybe this whole thing was something that she wrestled with a little bit. I don't know.

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, like the role that Dana plays in the story, it definitely seems that way. There's something a lot of like awakening stuff with her and how her relationship with Dorr plays off as well as her relationship with the Abruian characters who are like constantly aggressively pursuing her against her will.

JM:

Yeah. So he's sort of able to convince her that Dick is dead, even though he knows now that the thing Ubca-tor was actually the thing he found was actually him. And he was the person that she's so eager to find.

So Dana seems resigned to her fate and she offers the alien men cigarettes and chocolate. And seems like a mistake maybe that she would do this because she doesn't know anything about them, but there's no fire on Abrui apparently. So their technology seems to have developed very differently from humanity's, but still makes us see that it's parallel in some ways. So Moura wants to bring Dana to their king and his ambitions and evil are unknown to Torah and unsuspected by Dana.

Nate:

It is a minor point, but I really do like how they pull apart the cigarette and send the tobacco to some kind of lab to analyze exactly what's in it.

JM:

Yeah, yeah, I thought that was cool too. And this guy, she's kind of describing how these people, how various members of the society react to her and the things she brought. And like, the one guy's like devoting all this land now to growing something that's like tobacco and selling it to the Abruians, I guess.

Nate:

Yeah, that's a good capital.

JM:

Right. Meanwhile, Ubca-tor seems to be developing a thing for Dana as well. So we talk about the houses at Doata, which is the main city where most of the key Taborans live, I think. And the houses are uniform, one story and glass roofed. And there's more descriptions of Taboran society and architecture and the plane they've been traveling in, which is kind of one of those like, yeah, here's the dimensions of the thing. It's like very, it's quite specific. And we are kind of what you were describing Nate, almost with the parody thing.

Nate:

Right, yeah.

JM:

Maybe not quite that bad, but it's still kind of like, oh, she's spending a lot of time talking about this plane, right? As they descend, Moura throws a bunch of flowers at the assembled people. Flowers that the Ubca-tor guy pulled from cupboards somewhere. So it's kind of funny, you know, it's like, hey, boss, here's a bunch of flowers. Your people are eager to see you. So she makes a point of that where like the underling is the one that's actually retrieved the flowers. It's not this guy.

Then we get the chapter of the movie on Abrui where everyone gets to see Dana's ordeal. And this really, really reminded me of "The Maracot Deep". Yeah, which was published the same year. I don't really know. I guess it's a coincidence, but this part was very, very similar.

Nate:

Yeah, pretty much the exact same thing. Yeah.

JM:

Yeah. So she's there in front of all these people and she's using her mind to display something on a projector that shows what happened. And all the people are watching and going, oh, you know, like that's incredible. And like, you know, and then this is what was happening in Atlantis in Arthur Conan Doyle's story. So I don't know. That was kind of cool. I mean, I don't know. "Maracot Deep" was sort of a more fun story than this one, I guess.

Nate:

Yeah, I would say "Maracot Deep" was a lot better.

JM:

Yeah. Well, that's kind of neat. So we get more about Abrui. It's kind of like random bits of information. Weird sounding place. Like there's only one bird species of bird apparently, and there's no audio transmission anywhere. There's no like radio audio transmission. They transmit pictures and texts, but no audio, which is a really interesting thing to focus on. I think.

Nate:

Yeah. No, she brings them the radio technology.

JM:

Yeah. Yeah. So there's also an island called Ora where all the thinking and academic stuff goes on and it's independent of all other nations. Of which Tawada or whatever is the strongest. I don't know.

Dana is held by the royalty and she's given her own palace and we're allowed to live there too. Somehow. So everyone wants to look at her and women because they want to see a woman from another planet and how she lives and men because they like her coloring apparently. The men form an earth club of sorts and there's some English learning, like learning of the English language. It's becoming a fascination and cigarettes are becoming fashionable and she gets her own cadre of female guards and Moura-weit wants to take her on a world tour. Well, she wants to work on a radio to contact earth and Mora is quite happy with her around and he's rising in stature.

So the tour that they go on is apparently a really long one and Dana makes it a particular point to talk to women and learn about them. And they seem fairly on equal status with men. Maybe they can do any work they want. And that's good. So Dana keeps in shape. And meanwhile we learn that the barbarian Gorans are uprising and they are raiding the civilized lands like Vikings and Moura is upset by all this and he tries to reason with the Goran King. But he's not that interested in doing much in terms of allying with them.

Now we discover that Richard Dorr is in fact alive this whole time as we thought he would be and he's been helping the Gorans. Moura wants to mate with Dana and he doesn't want her to know all about Richard and what he's been doing. So meanwhile the radio hasn't worked out and Dana is getting depressed and she doesn't want to marry any of them. And she's had many many propositions from the Taboran man. And she thinks all night of nothing but dick. Sorry. Moura plans to make her his bride and then lure Richard Dorr in to kill him. There's no more Earth fan club since all the men left disappointed because she wouldn't marry any of them.

Nate:

She even says something along the lines of like what's with all these men on this planet? 

JM:

Yeah it's kind of funny because I can kind of see what she's getting out here. Like it's almost there is a certain amount of legitimate social commentary and all this. I think you know but it's I mean not as well expressed as it might be but it's here kind of so.

Mora insists that Doatans have to take mates that's part of their social order. It's their duty to the state. Ubca seems to really love her and doesn't ask for anything in return. Just that she not marry Moura because he hates him now apparently even though he was like his disciple earlier. And for some reason this makes Dana respect Ubca more. So he also gives her hope that Richard might still be around somewhere.

And he goes to Gora to try and find out news of Richard while Dana goes to Ora the island of the educated people to try to escape Moura's prying mind. Dick indeed lives and Gora is making ready to war and Ubca has a serious conflict of interest on his hands. Don't worry says Dana. Dick will come to me and he does. He and the Gora have made plans and the Moata, the gold skin slave race, are about to be in revolt as well. So Richard wants to go back to Gora alone but Dana scoffs at this reminding him of her hardy hood and the fact that she's served in the British Army during the First World War, God damn it. So don't treat me like that.

Nate:

Yeah I love that she's gone through like the horrors of the First World War and... Yeah, I don't know. 

Gretchen:

Yeah like she was an actual soldier. So I think she knows how to take care of herself.

JM:

And so this is like this is kind of why again this is weird like because she's done all these things but now like she's kind of this like domestic going on this world tour. Like I almost think she should have been the one to be with the barbarians.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

JM:

I don't know. She should have been the one to me. Hey you guys have been treated like crap for all this time. We should join forces I can help you kind of thing but no. Yeah I don't know.

Gretchen:

It would have been interesting to see her leading a revolution.

Nate:

Yeah this whole arc of the story is just like really confused and it's in my opinion doesn't work at all. Again to come back to "The Mummy!" it reminds me of that and like it transitions into this like historical romance that is like kind of confusing and hard to follow at times because there's just like so many different factions and she doesn't really get into any of them or like why you should care about them. It's just like stuff that happens and this is like the final half of the book more or less and I just felt that this part was like very unsatisfying overall.

JM:

Well I mean I was okay with it when it wrapped up but I was eager to get to that point you know like I think I did everything it needed to do but I was just like yeah alright alright alright let's let's get to the end like that's it was just too much. I don't necessarily feel that it was unsatisfying I just think it wasn't very well written.

But what we learned now is that Dana has this slave girl called Dure who looks just like her almost except she's a different skin color and so they decide to paint her up and send her in Dana's place to Ora. Hopefully the trick won't be discovered. Indeed Moura shows up at Dana's in the morning and gets a glimpse into her unguarded mind and he has made a treaty with the king of Gora supposedly with food and clothes and luxuries for mining rights. So Richard is a renegade and it's like here's where we get this weird thing where it's like submit Dana, your lover's life, or your hand in marriage.

I don't doubt that this kind of thing could actually happen but it's just so funny. You marry me or I'll kill the person you love. Wow my future looks really great. Moura kind of makes like the grandstanding scenery chewing speech which I thought was pretty cool and the treaty is a kind of sham as the king of Gora was advised to accept any terms while they prepared for war and that was what Richard said. So but Moura and Dana are to be married the next day and Richard wants, he waits for her. I don't know I guess they made some kind of arrangement I think and he waits for her but she doesn't show up, and Mora has now stunned her with the power of his mind so she can't really do anything, but Dure the slave girl disguised herself as Dana and Dana is Dure. So there's that and just as the substitution is arranged and Richard is about to leave Moura shows up and starts taunting him and he said there's no such thing as divorce among Tabora by the way just so you know. So there'll be criminals under God if something happens.

Now Dure is appearing lifeless and Richard asked if she would die for her mistress and she said yes so at this point I kind of thought oh no like did she kill herself or something. But no suddenly though Moura is struck with grief and he seems honestly upset but never mind. Dick is captured, Dana revives and Dure is fine so Dure plays her part very well and Richard is taken before the king as a despicable spy and sentenced to death. But he hears words in French from Dure she waits for you and Mora spirits Dure off to a private estate somewhere thinking he's going to break Dana's will but he doesn't know he's got the wrong girl. And then Dana opens her eyes and they're the wrong color and then the slaves start their revolt just at that time it's perfect.

And they steal all the planes and airships right then and there and Dure threatens Moura with a revolver and escapes with the other slaves bound for Gora. Now, somehow although maybe unsurprisingly Moura gets the blame for all this and he is demoted back to being a white, which means he's not as good as a Tor which is like the upper class nobility of Tabora. And Richard discovered a solution somehow deep in the vaults of Doata it's a kind of substance that resists the death ray that the Taboran people have. So everyone and everything in their army is painted with this paint.

Nate:

It's so ridiculous.

JM:

It's like a paint that basically repels the death ray so it won't have any effect on it.

Nate:

It gives you the property of reflection, it's like in Nethack.

JM:

Yeah it's like refracting of a light I guess. And it's the only weapon that the Taboran people have. Meanwhile the Goran now have guns and cannons and hand grenades and stuff like that. So the battle is pretty quick Tabora is defeated and it sees most of its lands to Moata and Gora.

Gretchen:

At this point I was thinking then why is there still a slave, from the beginning of the novel with these two Abruians. Of course we get into like I guess some slaves just wanted to be slaves still so I guess that's why he's there.

JM:

So my feeling on this is that some of these stories were written so quickly and I don't really think that she knew. Like she submitted this in two parts and I think she had no idea where she was going to go with it in the second part. I think when she started it.

Nate:

It definitely feels that way. I mean it's so disjointed and this whole second half, it just really, really drags.

JM:

Yeah so Dick Dorr is some big leader now and Sa Dak, their tired host who didn't want to speak this entire time is in fact Moura-weit. He's free of the curse of his ambitions and now is good natured and Elsie and Ezra go off into space. Ezra doesn't make it far though dies soon after but Elsie seems to like Abrui. The narrator gets dropped off, no one believes the word of his story and his wife flames the whiskey and that's that.

(music: falling synth and bells)

spoiler general discussion

JM:

That's it guys that's the story. Radium Age, Radium tech.

Nate:

Yeah Radium Age is a good way to describe this. It's flawed in a lot of very obvious ways but it does have its charms and it does bring up some interesting things that of course they could have been better in the hands of a better author.

JM:

Right I mean I do think this is a good case for arguing that sometimes having a collaborator might be smart. Some writers did they work as a team and it seems like I don't want to see that Leslie couldn't write us a good story on her own. Maybe she does, but I don't know I just feel like a lot of the ideas here are cool but it just they need to be focused more and they need to be written with a little more patience and style and just kind of yeah.

Nate:

Yeah it just never comes together, and the way it shifts gears on you, like it just kind of kills any kind of sense of pacing or like tension building or anything like that, where nothing really feels like it gets going and when you get into like the main plot or so it's already like halfway through. They don't even land on Abrui until like literally the halfway point and then the rest of it focuses on this weird historical  medieval romance type plot.

JM:

Yeah I don't know I mean it's hard to imagine even like a lot of the Amazing readers being into that stuff but apparently a sequel was clamored for and so the following year she wrote one which was three parts long. Yeah, right? 

Nate:

Yeah well not on my list to read but you know it's what I'm it wasn't my favorite but I'm glad I read it and got some interesting stuff from it I think.

Gretchen:

Yeah I mean I'm glad that we got to discuss it I think that's this conversation was worth reading it. Yeah and I mean again the concepts in it would be interesting on their own if they were put together better I think it could have worked or it could have if it been structured differently I'm sure that it could have been a really interesting narrative but just the way that it was approached doesn't do it justice.

Nate:

Like I feel like there's like three distinct short stories in here.

JM:

Yeah.

Nate:

And they could have been better explored on their own I think rather than trying to cram them all together.

Gretchen:

Even if they had maybe just cut out like the narrator's part like yeah if they it could have been maybe a little better if it was like one less layer to deal with.

Nate:

Like the narrator feels so useless at the end it's like why do we even have this like.

JM:

He doesn't need to be there. Yeah yeah he doesn't do anything.

Gretchen:

Like I know that it's like that idea of like well a narrator usually is like the audience's double, the person that doesn't know anything going into the situation but like you could have just had the point of view maybe being from like the professor or Elsie or something.

JM:

That would have been perfect. 

Gretchen:

That's already knows what's going on but you just you just establish it better and with a lot more ease with that.

Nate:

But I feel like it also could have been a great short story with the narrator story.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

you know he stumbles upon this like weird structure and he goes in and has this incredibly strange experience and then goes home to his wife who just thinks he's a drunkard on his fishing trip or whatever.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

She could have made that like a really fun story on its own. And likewise a whole bit of them being like stranded in space that could have been like a really intense like thriller.

Gretchen:

Yeah.

Nate:

They're running low on supplies or running low on resources. There is this like weird sexual tension between the two parties. Like how are they going to smooth that out. But like the parts just don't link and it shifts gears on you when you feel like it's going to get going in some way or the other. And it just feels like it kills all the momentum of what's been built up to that point.

Gretchen:

Yeah. I feel like if like you severed each bit away from each other and maybe just added a little more to each one and had it be a complete narrative within itself it would have they would have been interesting stories.

Nate:

Yeah, definitely.

JM:

Yeah it's kind of weird for me because like the third part of the story with all the weird intrigue and stuff is almost like the part that I feel like I should really like but it doesn't really, it comes off worse than the other two parts.

Nate:

Yeah. That was like by far my least favorite part of the story and I was just like, ugh I couldn't wait until it ended. I don't know. Yeah. Like it wasn't like offensively bad or anything like that. It just felt like so dull and by the numbers. All right. I've seen this kind of plot a billion times before.

JM:

Yeah I mean like when that came into "The Coming Race" by Bulwer-Lytton at the end like it was very welcome. Yeah. A good addition to the story where it's like yeah it started to get like bogged down and nothing much is happening and then he kind of introduced that part and it was like oh that's kind of interesting. I want to read more about that and I want to know about that. I guess this kind of reminded me of that but it was yeah it was not really as good as that. I mean it was more triumphant and less sad which is cool I guess but I don't know. I had problems with this too.

Gretchen:

I think that if you hadn't already waded through two different stories.

Nate:

Yeah right.

Gretchen:

It would have been more interesting on their own. It would have been easier to read and it maybe would have been interesting but yeah.

JM:

Yeah she wrote this long ass sequel to it, "Across the Void", which Moura is a big part of it and Richard Dorr is back and coming back to the earth and I don't know I only read the beginning of it. So I think I read the first two or three chapters or something like that. That's it so far. I don't know if I'll continue with it. I kind of just wanted to see how much I would get through before we did the podcast just to see if I could comment on it a little bit. And it's really long and I can't really say that much about it. Like it seems to revisit some of the themes and characters but I don't know how much it really adds to the narrative. I guess Abrui is a part of it and there's some stuff about the sun and a lot of space travel and Moura-weit comes back.

I don't know but is this interesting that people apparently wanted the sequel? Like it was apparently sought after. So yeah I mean why not I guess. I can see that we all kind of struggled with the story and I think that again it's mostly a factor of the writing itself. Like I think that if it had been done a little better she could have tied all this together and made it into a really good novel. Again like it's just I don't know if it's the format that's conducive to the fact that a lot of stories are rushed and they don't quite seem like there's not a lot of the editors doesn't really take it upon themselves to be like, hey I really think you have a good idea here but I just want you to kind of concentrate on specific matters and flesh out these particular parts more. I kind of feel like that would have been something that came along later with Campbell, and that's kind of one of the reasons why people say the golden age is the golden age is because he actually wanted to take the writers in hand and be like, hey I think this is great but I want it to be even better and here's my suggestions. Can you write it like this instead?

The staff of Amazing didn't do that kind of thing and they were only paying so much which wasn't very much. And 40,000 words is a pretty long story for Amazing. I don't know how much the sequel is and I'm guessing it could be... I think it's longer. Yeah I mean it's three parts, three serial installments so it could be like 60,000 words. So she probably got paid like considering what that magazine was. She probably got a reasonable payment for that hopefully eventually.

Nate:

I hope so. It's kind of interesting how this one was fragmented versus something like "Reanimator" was fragmented because "Reanimator" definitely felt like it was six different short chunks because it was published in six different installments whereas this one like the line is kind of like split right in the middle. It interrupts the stranded in space bit a little bit but you have the narrator's story in the first half and then you have this weird medieval romance on another planet type thing like in the second half and the two don't really intersect but the only kind of connecting thread is them getting to the planet.

JM:

Yeah and Dick!

So I just want to read the end of the letter that I was quoting earlier from Leslie and she's very kind through this letter. It's very complimentary, very positive but there's one thing that she's not very positive about and I like the way... I mean I kind of like but also laugh at the way she builds up to this because again she starts out very kind about it and by the end she's like really really calling it for what she thinks it is. That is so funny. So here's what she says.

"Now about the magazine itself. Naturally, there are stories that appear from time to time that I do not care for particularly, but I have not found a magazine yet, that did not contain stories I do not like. I know other people must enjoy these stories, therefore I shall say nothing about that. The type of stories I enjoy most are those that deal entirely with scientifiction rather than the detective and stories of that ilk. However, I do note that the stories I like most are those that receive favorable criticism from the majority of readers, while those I do not enjoy are those that usually receive the slams. 

"Lots of people have commented upon the illustrations of Mr. Paul, and most of them seem to agree that his drawings are quite vivid and most often in keeping with the stories, but I do wish your covers were not quite so lurid. In the first place, your readers do not need these over brilliant covers to recognize their favorite magazine, and on the other hand strangers more often would hesitate in picking up a magazine so amazingly bound. He could expect nothing but trash in a magazine so glaringly covered. 

"I would suggest that Mr. Paul restrain his imagination slightly in dealing with the cover. Why not design a more subdued illustration in more sober colors, one that could be used monthly, somewhat in the manner of the Golden Book. I think that a solid color, a quiet shade of blue or green or something like that could be used with the name, etc., of the magazine printed upon it, with, if necessary, some mechanical or scientific form pictured as one might use a symbol or crest. 

"I truly wish you would do something like that. I always do feel a little sheepish when I carry my new issue of Amazing Stories through the lobby of a hotel, and I have been told that others suffer in the same manner as I do under a barrage of eyes, as they try to sneak unnoticed with that blatant pictorial atrocity under their arm. And were we to have a vote then I know that almost every reader of Amazing Stories would agree with me fully. Please, please tone Mr. Paul down. "

Nate:

It's an amazing letter and I love the image of her secreting the issue of Amazing under her arm or in her backpack like covering her face while she buys it in the newsstand like it's an issue of like pornography or something like that and like rushing to some deserted space to read.

Gretchen:

Folding it in with like a newspaper or something.

Nate:

You know, nobody can see that I'm reading this.

JM:

It's really funny too because she talks about like trying to get her husband to read the magazine and it's kind of like the opposite of what we kind of associate with this kind of thing is supposed to be what the boys read. I guess the opposite of the picture that we would normally have where it's like the husband kind of has to like try to convince his wife that it's cool that he's reading this stuff and these covers are nothing to worry about and stuff and it's like, I don't know. I kind of find that a little bit charming that she's kind of like, Hey, maybe you would be interested in this and he's kind of like, No, no, no, baby, you just you just read your magazine. Oh, my God. I don't know. It's funny.

Gretchen:

Yeah, because it's usually like, I got to get my girl into this when it's it's the opposite here where it's like, I know. No, thank you.

JM:

Yeah. And she's like, maybe these covers aren't helping.

Gretchen:

If it was something more subdued. 

JM:

Yes, a subdued shade of blue would be really nice.

Nate:

But I don't know, just like her rushing through a hotel lobby to like read the latest installment of the Jules Verne reprint or whatever.

JM:

Yeah, or like the weird cover with "The Fate of the Poseidonia" prize winning cover.

Nate:

Yeah, right.

JM:

It's exactly like that weird all that shit going on.

Nate:

That's a really ugly cover like...

Gretchen:

Yeah, it is.

Nate:

I mean, I going through some high class hotel in 1928 with that under your arm, I could, I could feel her pain there.

JM:

You feel her pain? Really? I don't know. I think it's, I think it's a little silly that she worries about this, but I guess I get what you're coming from.

I just find it very funny that she's like even trying to suggest a color scheme and everything and she's like trying to be like, make it something quiet and nice, please, like.

Gretchen:

Yeah, some nice pastels and, you know, something very gentle.

JM:

Pastel blue. With a little bit of green on the borders, perhaps.

Nate:

Yeah, poor Paul. I mean, he does have a place in science fiction history, but he's not a master of the art.

JM:

There would certainly be some future illustrators that are very well regarded. I don't know how many of them did stuff for Amazing, but like Virgil Finley worked with Weird Tales as well as with a bunch of the dedicated science fiction magazines. And supposedly he did some really good art. So maybe we'll talk about that in future episodes. I definitely like to sort of highlight some of that kind of stuff if we can a little bit going forward. Yeah, because it's interesting.

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, the illustrators of this episode, I think it was mostly Paul, though, later on the art department definitely expands in the forties. I think there's like five or six different credited artists by 1941. We'll get into that a bit later. But I don't know that kind of illustration style. It's cool, but like a lot of them don't like stand out as being like good art. And I guess some of my favorite illustration work in literature, not necessarily genre stuff is when like the artist does it themselves. So like Mervyn Peake's illustrations for "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast" series, as well as Thackeray's illustrations for "Vanity Fair" are just incredible stuff. And they really convey the spirit and tone of the works, I think more than somebody else possibly could. And it's not that often where somebody is talented at the drawing as well as talented as the prose.

JM:

I mean, yeah, but in both those cases, those are authors who are also illustrating.

Nate:

Yeah. 

JM:

I think there's a difference there too.

Nate:

And they're also incredibly talented authors. I mean, Thackeray and Peake are both masters of the English language. 

JM:

No question. Gretchen, you just got "Gormanghast", didn't you?

Gretchen:

Yeah, I did. 

Nate:

Have you read it? 

Gretchen:

I just bought it. I have not. I bought it. 

Nate:

It's so good Gretchen. It's so good.

Gretchen:

I got it for my birthday a couple weeks ago. So I have not had the chance to read it yet 

Nate:

You should, it's one of my favorite novels. Yeah, really good. 

JM:

It's pretty amazing. Yeah, I was trying to describe earlier how it's like fantastic without dealing with the fantastic. It's the style is more fantastic than the actual events in a way. Like it's just, it makes it seem like you're reading about something really, really strange, even when the setting and the characters might be described in a mundane way in a different book. It's really odd. It's an odd experience reading that for sure.

Nate:

Yeah, and I don't know if we could work it into the podcast. I mean, you'll see when you read all three of them that it's science fiction adjacent.

JM:

Yeah, by the third book.

Nate:

It's difficult to work in, but yeah, it's some of my favorite stuff. And Thackeray is also, again, in my very high top stuff.

JM:

Yeah.

Nate:

Of any novel. I mean, "Vanity Fair" is just incredible.

JM:

Well, I don't really have anything else to add about Stone. I wanted to conclude with her letter there about the magazine contents and the cover because I thought it was pretty funny. But I think, I think with that, we can wrap up the business with her. I don't really have anything else to add. I personally might read a few other stories just to see where she went. But it's kind of sad to me that she seems to have had that negative experience. And I don't quite know the way she describes it. It doesn't quite seem to match up with the actual evidence, you know, and I kind of do feel like Davin has a point there with that where he's, why is she saying that when, I don't know, I don't know. I mean, did she really get those comments when these particular editors were publishing dozens and dozens of stories by women and not, and like being really happy about it and actually advertising in the magazine like a positive thing.

John Campbell, I mean, we will be getting to Leigh Brackett, but Campbell actually published Brackett in Astounding before she made it to Amazing in "No Man's Land". And he was very quick to correct a reader who, I guess, called her Mr. Brackett or something like that. He was like, no, it's Miss, actually. And he was happy about that. And Horace Gold was happy to publish women writers.

So why would both those editors tell Leslie Stone, hey, women should not write science fiction. That doesn't seem to make sense to me. I don't understand how that could have happened. Are people really that inconsistent where they 100% say things that they don't necessarily believe or back up just to get a writer off their case or something? I don't know.

Nate:

I would say so, yeah. I mean, people are people. And when you're dealing with the publication industry and anything like that, there's always a human element to every aspect of the business dealing. And the magazine might not have an official policy of 'we don't accept women authors' on the books, but if somebody's a sexist jerk and they're in a position of power and they want to be a sexist jerk because they don't like you or for whatever reason, then they're just going to do that.

JM:

And so they like they basically they liked all these other women. But the thing is they were not necessarily women who are just toting the line. Like they probably had less social conservatism than Stone did. And yet they were happy to publish them. I don't know. It's weird. I guess you're right, though.

Nate:

I think the issue is more is, that they didn't take women authors seriously to begin with. And if they felt like a particular story written by a woman wasn't like up to snuff or wasn't like a literary masterpiece, they would use the sexist's excuse to dismiss them.

JM:

And Campbell and Horace Gold were definitely less into the planetary romance thing than I guess Gernsback would have been or where Leigh Brackett got her stuff published in Planet Stories, which was all about that. That was that was the domain of Planet Stories. And that's why kind of she became known as a writer for Planet Stories, because that was like the home for her. They were very, very happy with her. Everybody loved her stuff. And that was like kind of her home, you know, that she eventually found. And when we get to her shortly, Nate, you can read some of the letter that she wrote. But, you know, she was very happy to be writing for Amazing. But it didn't end up being her home any more than astounding was her home. She had a place where she ended up just like Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E. Howard kind of had their place in like Weird Tales, for example.

Nate:

Right.

JM:

That's where they did most of their best work, because that was where they could be accepted. And that was where their readers liked to read them.

Nate:

I guess the point that I'm trying to get across is that somebody like a Stone would have perhaps been judged by unreasonable standards that wouldn't have been applied to a second tier male author. You know, so like a second or third tier male author that is not a talented person might have gotten their story accepted in the magazine without having to deal with sexist comments as a brushback of why their story should not be accepted. You know what I mean? Like, you know, somebody from like a third tier author that gets rejected from Amazing, that's a man probably isn't going to get a sentence or a line back. You know, like we shouldn't feel like men should be writing science fiction. You know what I mean? And if you don't have like a natural talent for pacing or plotting like a Brackett does or something like that. And you're somebody like a Stone who, all right, maybe your stories aren't the greatest and you're just like kind of randomly patching ideas together. The added sexist rejection on top of quality concerns might make you a little more discouraged than if that wasn't there in that first place. Like, does that make sense?

JM:

Yeah, you make excellent points. I do kind of see that. Yeah, I mean, maybe it was just sort of an excuse in a way to kind of, I guess, get her off their case. I don't know if she was really pushy about submitting stories or what, but maybe she just wasn't doing the thing that they wanted. She wasn't, she didn't find her place in the 40s. And that's just the sad reality of it.

Nate:

Yeah, I mean, I guess like the sexism wasn't like an active like policy on the books, but rather like a background thing that permeated in like unconscious bias. In cases like that, I could definitely see that like working against somebody like a Stone, even if there were cases like the magazines publishing stories from women early on. And I mean, "Partners of Wonder" does a fantastic job of chronicling women's achievements.

JM:

Yeah, they list like hundreds of stories by women writers. And then here's the thing, 90% of them, I don't know who they are.

Nate:

Yeah. Yeah. 

JM:

And that in itself is an interesting phenomenon because maybe we should know who these women are, but we don't.

Nate:

Right.

JM:

They're there, but they weren't reprinted in the anthologies that came later, which is how everybody who did not read those pulp magazines, everybody came to know the history of American science fiction from those anthologies.

Nate:

And I think we're in an interesting, unique new age now where the everyday fan, like us here, our listeners, can have access to a great amount of archival research and primary information on these stories where we can read them and reevaluate the various histories and chronologies. You know, everything is accessible to us now in ways that it hasn't been before.

JM:

We have the archives of Amazing magazine, we can look at it.

Nate:

Yeah, pretty much everything right now at our fingertips.

JM:

Whereas people who discovered any of this stuff after the 1940s could not.

Nate:

Right.

JM:

People discovering this in anywhere from like the 40s to the 2000s would not have been aware of any of this and they would have probably assumed that "Partners of Wonder" mentions two big anthologies published in the 40s, which were the first anthologies of science fiction short stories published by major publishing houses. And they took all their stuff from the magazines of the time, and they were edited by two to four fellows who were around at that time but were not actually editors of magazines. So their experience was different and they did not publish that many women writers in those anthologies. C.L. Moore was one of the few, Stone's "The Conquest of Gora" did make it into one of those anthologies, which is probably how it managed to become a little bit more popular than all of our other stuff. And yeah, like that was seen as being representative. So people didn't know about L.T. Hansen, people didn't know about Stone. They didn't necessarily know about Claire Winger Harris. They didn't know about a lot of these other writers. Many of whose names are unfamiliar to me. That in itself is interesting.

That is actually like a more contemporary bias like it's a bias that comes from decades following, like starting in the 40s and 50s, where stuff was getting reprinted, but it wasn't these women stories that we're talking about now. It wasn't these stories that we can look at and maybe some of them were really good, maybe some of them weren't. Because of the pool that the anthologies drew from people just sort of assumed that those writers didn't exist when in fact they did exist and they were there all along.

All right, well, I don't really have anything else about Stone and I think that we have three more authors to cover. So let's take a quick break and we will next discuss "The Moon Woman" by Minna Irving. Also published in 1929.

Bibliography:

Amazing Stories, August 1929 issue https://archive.org/details/AmazingStoriesVolume04Number05

Amazing Stories, September 1929 issue https://archive.org/details/Amazing_Stories_v04n06_1929-09_jvh-sas

Davin, Eric Leif - "Partners in wonder - Women and the Birth of Science Fiction, 1926-1965" (2005)

Jerry eBooks - introduction to "Leslie F. Stone Collected Tales" (2020)

Music:

Davis, Auguste - "Neptune Mazurka" (1874) https://www.loc.gov/item/sm1874.14975/