Futuria Fantasia, Winter 1940 Part 2

[Ill.u.s.tration]

ASPHODEL:

by E. T. PINE

Down where skies are always dark, Where is ever heard the bark Of monstrous ebon hounds of h.e.l.l, In a dreadful fearsome knell, Never fading, ever bright, With a weird and spectral light, Blooms a flower of ancient days, s.h.i.+ning in a crimson maze; When the black bat shrilly screams Asphodel, you haunt my dreams--

From the lands of distant death Steals the perfume of your breath:

Some night soon the wind will blow Saffron seeds to fall and grow By my cas.e.m.e.nt window, where, Sleeps my loved one, still and fair; Then, the night you are to bloom I shall creep from out my room, From your blossom by the wall Shall I hear her dear voice call: Mournfully the wind will cry, And shadows cover all the sky-- My lips will touch the loved dead When where you nod I lay my head....

MARMOK

by Emil Pataja

Sleep that doth harbour a dream of dread, Whence come the fingers that beckoned and led My dream-stung soul from my canopied bed-- Whither dost take me, ere I am dead?

Beyond the skull-grinning mid-March moon Over the phosphorous-lit lagoon Out past the darkest pits of the night, Fast thru the stars in this evil flight; Lead thee me out past the rim of s.p.a.ce, Show me that ravenous, pain-black face, Marmok, whose myrmidons ever are questing For souls who wander at nite, unresting.

Then shall I know an ultimate bliss Tasting the fury of that cosmic kiss, Whilst my earth-cloak lies limply on the floor To waken and gibber forevermore.

What is the dim monstrosity that s.h.i.+mmers across the stars, what hand is that to cradle planets, earth and mars. What misshapen gargantuan of nebulous formed flesh, hurls out its flood of darkness, the systems to enmesh. What is it walks across the universes chanting cosmic choruses with endless verses--what thing unutterable has visited our Earth long years ago, and now, tonite, returns, in the shadows lurking glow. What ancient fear is with me, cold and terrible? Is that the shape of man upon the constellations, blotting out the light--or something gasping in hideous delight, plucking at the planets in insanity, at play, causing suns to boil like cauldrons, meteors to sing upon their way with mournful voices, lost ghosts upon lonely trails--wailing--wailing. Is tonight our rendezvous with the Cosmos Thing, the Colossus bigger than Andromeda that sits upon the throne of s.p.a.ce--or are these fantasies upon my aged eyes?

HADES

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Upon the sh.o.r.es of molten seas stand men, stand men alone,

And down below, in the molten flow, in the waves that cry and moan

Are women bare with flaming hair, whose pa.s.sions have no surcease.

And in the air, midst the scarlet glare, are more who will never know Peace.

THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND

I don't mean socially; I mean off the Earth and between the planets.

There are a few really good ways, as invented by perspiring authors in science-fiction magazines. And if I miss any, which is extremely doubtful, remember that I'm writting from memory, that I hadn't read _all_ the scientifiction magazines from 1926 and on, and that I am not going to go researching through the tremendous stacks of old scientifiction magazines that I now have in my possession.

Now, what DO I mean by THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND? Briefly, by the word BEST, I mean so pseudo-logical that you could almost leave off the "pseudo". See? (No)

For instance, Jack Williamson's geodesic machinery, wherein he warps s.p.a.ce around, appeals to me as being pure fairy tale stuff. He just gives a lot of verbal hocus-pocus, and runs off reams of litterary fertilizer until we throw up our hands in disgust and say; "O.K., O.K., Jack, to h.e.l.l with that, let's get on with the 'story'. We'll grant you that you _can_ get around."--And we're willing to grant E.E. Smith the same privilege. He _DOES_ get around--anybody disagree? The question is; how? Oh, by useing "X", and the inertialess drive. The same with brother Burroughs. What do we care if dear old John Carter "yearns" himself to Mars? He gets there, and we are happy, or were happy.

So, we exclude all those from THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. They are very nice and convenient to get people places; but, when we run across one of the "BEST WAYS" we often wonder if it REALLY WOULDN'T be possible, provided----. Of course, that word "provided" is the catch--the reason why we really aren't going around that way.

Again--So, way back there, Edmond Hamilton, and a hundred others, have used the idea of _light-preasure_ in an attempt to get away from rockets. But he didn't tell us how, scientifictionaly. In direct contrast to vauge statements made regarding the use of _light-preasure_ as propulsion, I remember the MOON CONQUORS, by R.H. Romans, in a 1931 (I think) (You're right, 4SJ) quarterly. You've seen radiometers. The things with black and white vanes placed in a vacuum. The theory is that the opposite shades cause unbalanced light preasure, so that the vanes go around and around. Romans invented a pseudo-scientifically logical way to use _light-preasure_, once he got his s.h.i.+p in s.p.a.ce. His scientist invented a compound of _absolute black_. (Which is also obtainable in a darkroom) A small square of darkroom--or, I mean, absolute black painted on the posterior of the s.h.i.+p, and regulated at will, gave the same s.h.i.+p quite respectable speeds. Certainly it won't work outside of a story--but, I'm talking scientifictionally. Romans used his imagination, and we all had fun.

In the same story, Romans used a swell device to get the s.h.i.+p off the earth. He used a mile-long tube, composed of circular magnets. It was a _magnetic gun_. Each magnet pulled the s.h.i.+p towards it, and then, as the s.h.i.+p pa.s.sed it, the magnet's poles were reversed, and made to repel the s.h.i.+p. With each magnet at maximum charge, either pulling or pus.h.i.+ng the s.h.i.+p, according to whether it was in front or behind the latter, the same erupted from the tube with the necessary 7 M.P.S. velocity of escape, and so was off on the way to the moon. What's wrong with the idea? I dunno.

John W. Campell (Jr.) used to have brainstorms: in fact, he invented _two_ of THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. One, in the first of the ARCOT, MOREY, and WADE stories, "PIRACY PREFERRED", was that of molecular motion. All the little molecules in a bar of metal go madly around in every possible direction. If you could invent, as Campbell did in the story, an electro-magnetic vibration that would force all the mollecules to go in the same direction, then the bar of metals would go in that direction, since it would be them. So Mr. Campbell hooked the thing up to his s.h.i.+p, and off he went to Venus, or some other planet. Well, it _would_ work, wouldn't it, _provided_ (ah yes!) you could make all the mollecules go into one directional flow.

And the other brainstorm was when Aarn Munro, in the MIGHTIEST MACHINE, decided that momentum and velocity were wave formations, and therefore, one should be able to _tune into them_! (Anyone should be able to think up a simple theory like that.) Not a bad WAY TO GET AROUND--in a science fiction story.

Back in 1930, or some such year, Charles R. Tanner wrote THE FLIGHT OF THE MERCURY, in the old WONDER STORIES. In that story he told you just how to go ahead and make an ETHERPROPELLER, provided there is such a thing as ether, and Osmium B. The theory is: you use water screws, air propellers, and so why not an ether propeller? Put a cork in motionless water. Start a wave motion in the water with your hand. If the length of the wave is greater than the diameter of the cork, the cork just bobs up and down and stays where it is. If the lengths of the waves are shorter than the diameter of the cork, the waves go around it, and the cork still stays right where it is. If the length of the wave is exactly the diameter of the cork, tho cork rides right off, in the trough of the wave, at the same speed as that of the wave formation. Now invent an electro-magnetic vibration--by useing the metal Osmium B--exactly the length of a Copper atom. Make your s.h.i.+p of copper, putting the ether propeller, that which causes vibration in the ether, at the end of the s.h.i.+p, and presto! all the copper atoms move along in the trough of the ether waves, at the same speed as the other waves, which is the speed of light. And, Mr. Tanner is off for Mars, in a super-plausibly scientifictional way.

h.e.l.l s.h.i.+P, in last year's ASTOUNDING, Arthur J. Burks put forth an idea which had been discussed by engineers before he had ever used It. They just didn't know how to do it. Mr. Burks did--didn't he write the story.

At least, the idea gave him more earthly benifit than it gave the engineers. Maybe he thinks he invented it--I don't know, nor does it matter: He used it, the idea of gravatic lines of force, forming a spider web throughout the solar system. With the proper machinery, which he ascribed with good attention to detail, you could crawl up those lines of force like a spider. This idea is so plausable that it might be placed in the same catagory as rocket propulsion, which is fact.

THE MOTH, in this year's ASTOUNDING, contains another of those ideas of interplanatary locomotion which I call one of THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. Don't worry, I'm not pointing to myself with pride. I just wrote the story, Charles R. Tanner conceived the idea. He tossed it off paranthetically one night, and promptly forgot about it. The idea----If all objects are in motion, according to the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction theory, lose length in the direction of motion, why couldn't an artificialy produced cause instantaneous motion, why couldn't an artificialy produced contraction cause instantaneous motion, proportional to length-loss? Not a thing in the world against it, my friends, all you have to do is to find a way to cause the artificial contraction of the s.h.i.+p in question. Of course, in my story, I invented a force-field----very handy when you're in a tight spot!----which caused tho electrons to flatten out. This force acted on the s.h.i.+p and everything within. Therefore, any speed up to a little below that of light could be obtained, and that bogey man so often ignored in scientifiction, acceleration, was disposed of at the start, since there was nothing that had a tendancy to stay behind. There is the real inertialess drive, which E.E. Smith talked of, but never used.

(Paranthetically: When Charles R. Tanner saw the story containing his idea in print, he became enthused, and promptly invented and named all machines used in the process, discovered a new and ultimate particle called the "graviton", that which makes the proton 1846 times heavier than the electron, and practically drew plans for the force field which caused the contraction. When he finished we knew exactly _how_ to obtain speeds far exceding both those of Smith and Campbell. Our inventions were plausable, and they'd work, provided----)

I've just about reached the end of the list, though there are one or two others that might be mentioned right here at the tail end of the article. Jules Verne, I suppose, has to be credited with the first s.h.i.+p fired from a canon, in ONCE AROUND THE MOON. Wells takes the bow for gravity plates, which w.i.l.l.y Ley so neatly disposed of, only he called it "cavorite" in THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON., and Roy c.u.mmings used it effectivly in AROUND THE UNIVERSE (and a hundred others). In a story in the old WONDER Donald Wolheim put his rocket s.h.i.+p on a huge wheel, rotated the wheel and flung it off into s.p.a.ce. Fair, except that the acceleration would be killing.

AND THAT'S ABSOLUTLY ALL THE BEST WAYS TO GET AROUND. Unless there are some of those which I haven't heard of. If you know of some, I would like to be enlightened.

--ROSS ROCKYLYN

--THE SYMPHONIC ABDUCTION--

"I suppose you've heard about what happened to my brother Jerry?" Ray Spencer asked me; I shook my head. "The whole family was worried about him for a while: couldn't tell whether he had sleeping-sickness, or what. All we knew was that he'd gone coma listening to some phonograph records when he was alone in the house. Perhaps the intense emotional effect of the music, plus its stentor, was the cause.

"When I returned home, he lay cold on the floor in front of the radio-phonograph. The automatic release had shut off the record, but the current was still on, and the volume dial was turned full strength.

Nothing I could do would rouse my brother, so--scared--I put him to bed and called a doctor, who had him taken to a hospital for observation. No one could determine what was the trouble, and since we couldn't afford to keep him at the hospital indefinitely, we brought Jerry back home.

And although it wasn't exactly appropriate, I couldn't help remembering the story of the Sleeping Beauty whenever I looked into his room and saw him, apparently only napping.

"Then one day I heard him--still in his trance--whisperingly singing.

The indistinct notes were reminiscent of one of Chaikovsky's ballet pieces. I tried vainly to wake him. He sighed on and on until the faint breath of a voice softened into silence....