Cool thing I saw today: MR SQUIGGLE
Supanova (Brisbane 2011)
Love the dress.
Tanks had their most famous early science fiction outing in Well’s “The Land Ironclads” (1903). So it is fitting that a report on the first tanks not only refers back to sci-fi but some of the first appearances of tank-like vehicles dating back to 1892 (like the one above from the very first story featuring Frank Reade jr.), as discussed by Jess Nevins:
From the North-China Herald, 18 November 1916, in which the author is describing the debut of the tank during World War One:
The land-ship—it heaves and rolls like a ship—sailed on into the village and made the way easy—or at any rate much easier for an assault with the bayonet. You may judge of its weight and power from the fact that it “charged” and brought to ruin a house loop-holed and occupied by the enemy. It sounds rather like “Frank Reade’s” famous invention—a great steel car speeding across the wildest west demolishing cities and brushing away tribes of Indians like so many flies.
The “Frank Reade” referred to here is the Edisonade Frank Reade, Jr., who used a armored “landrover” in the story in question.
What’s most of interest to me here is the article writer’s use of a fictional sf creation to describe an actual piece of technology.
Frank Reade Jr.’s “landrover” was a theme he’d return to a number of times, becoming more tank-like (this, from “Frank Reade, Jr., With His New Steam Man in Texas: or, Chasing the Trainrobbers,”, also dates to 1892):
His “Electric Van” from “Frank Reade, Jr.’s new electric van, or, Hunting wild animals in the jungles of India” (1893), seems like a development of this and a very practical tiger hunting platform:
The second article by Jess Nevins on the Continental pulps is well-worth reading in full and I have dipped into some of the stranger aspects of the parade of oddities that tickled my fancy:
However, the science fictional crept into the pulps of other genres, for the most part in Germany, regularly enough to make it debatable whether those pulps were purely detective (or western or adventure) or a combination of detective and science fiction. Numerous Nick Carter and Nat Pinkerton stories (two of the three most popular pulp characters of the era) had large amounts of fantastic material. Roughly half of the stories of the German detective pulp Detektiv John Spurlock (36 issues, 1915) were science fictional; in one story Spurlock discovers the formula responsible for turning Dr. Jekyll into Mister Hyde, and in issues 18 and 19 Spurlock leads the fight against a second invasion of H.G. Wells’ Martians. The anonymously-written Jürgen Peters der Schiffsjunge (#1-448, 1914-1923), about a ship’s boy on a sailing ship in the 1870s and 1880s, encounters everything from the Grampus (from Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket”) to the Curupuri (from A. Conan Doyle’s The Lost World) to kaiju-sized giant pigs.
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One popular type of science fiction pulp was the “fantastic machine” pulp, about vehicles similar to Hans Stark’s submersible airship. The most popular of the fantastic machine pulps, and one of the most popular science fiction pulps of the decade, was the anonymously-written Phil Morgan - Der Herr der Welt #1-171 (1920-1922, reprinted in Poland in 1925). The titular adventurer uses the wonder element “morganite” to fuel his “Phaenomen-Apparat” vehicle, which can fly, go underwater and even travel into space. Morgan uses the Phaenomen-Apparat to fight Robur-like sky pirates and Lost Race Inca who wield advanced science. Another pulp in this mode is the anonymously-written Jim Buffalo, Der Mann mit der Teufelsmaschine #1-29 (1922-1923). “Jim Buffalo” is actually Horst Radichow, a German laborer who uses the Testament of Calgiostro to create “Devil Machine,” a black, cylindrical, six-wheeled vehicle which is armored, has a retractable roof, and is covered with paintings of devil faces. The Machine can act not only as automobile, airplane, and submarine, but can even travel in time. Radichow uses the Devil Machine to become “Jim Buffalo,” vigilante adventurer and rescuer of kidnaped maidens. He finds a techno-utopian domed city on the bottom of the ocean, and he travels back in time, helping the Greeks at the Battle of Marathon and solving historical mysteries such as the fate of a lost Egyptian city.
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The two most popular superhero pulps were the French Fascinax and the German Sir Ralf Clifford, Der Unsichtbare Mensch. The anonymously-written Fascinax (22 issues, 1921), which was popular enough to be reprinted in Italy in 1924, is about an English doctor who saves a yogi while working in the Philippines and as a reward is given the ability to see the future, to dominate other men with a look and to be alerted to imminent dangers via marks on the body. Leicester decides to use his new powers to fight evil as the mysterious “Fascinax.” He also uses an array of technologically advanced items, including the fascine, a car that can change into an airplane, a seaplane which also operates as a submarine, and a deadly, silent “electrical gun,” Fascinax fights a variety of evils, including a super-hypnotist, a water-breathing female master criminal, a murderous gnome, and a Martian invasion.
Martin Winfried’s Sir Ralf Clifford (192 issues, 1921-1925), which was reprinted in Italy in 1929 and 1930, is about an American who, after instruction from an Indian fakir, is given the mummified head of a cobra. When Clifford presses the cobra head against his breast, he is injected with a poisonous fluid which scars him but also leaves him invisible for seven minutes. If Clifford should be dosed 217 times, he will die. (Fortunately, the series was cancelled before the 217th dose was applied). Clifford takes on secret cults, vampires, subterranean masterminds, werewolves, and living Buddhas.
Of course, this period covers the darkening of the skies and minds across Europe:
However, the rise in fascism in the German pulps made them less acceptable to foreign publishers. As the decade progressed German pulps became increasingly pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist, and anti-foreigner. Jörn Farrow changed from a straightforward science fiction pulp to one in which Germany’s involvement in World War One was repeatedly justified and Jews were routinely blamed for German’s defeat. By 1934 the most popular science fiction pulp in Germany was Paul Alfred Müller-Murnau’s Sun Koh, Die Erbe von Atlantis (150 issues, 1933-1936), about a superhuman Aryan descendant of the Mayan kings and his involvement in the genocide of the lesser races.
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Jess Nevins has a fascinating article over on io9 looking at the history of the pulps from Continental Europe up to 1914 and it is a parade of odd ideas. Somehow I suspect these are much more interesting in the précis-form but what précises they are, you really have just got to kick back and let them wash over you as too many thoughts of “really?” or “did I read that right?” or “evil albino big-headed dwarf geniuses?” rather disrupt the effect). So here is a quick selection that caught my eye:
But the most popular science fiction pulps of these years were Robert Kraft’s, another German. He wrote three best-sellers, none of which have aged well but all of which were quite popular during their time: Aus dem Reiche der Phantasie #1-10 (1901), about a paraplegic German boy who is taken by a fairy to visit various fantastic sights, including the last living caveman, the Atlantis of Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, “the country of the living dead,” and an island of invisible immortals; Detektiv Nobody’s Erlebnisse und Reiseabenteuer #1-12 (1904-1906), about the titular detective’s world-spanning duel with the Japanese Yellow Dragon organization, which has, among other things, a subterranean headquarters under the pyramids, a Nautilus-like submarine, and a hollow mountain full of dinosaurs; and Atalanta #1-60 (1904-1905), about the Mohawk woman Atalanta, who possesses superhuman abilities. While searching for her legacy Atalanta fights a mad scientist who wants to conquer the world, discovers a lost race of Mayans, and visits Lemuria, which is ruled by evil albino big-headed dwarf geniuses.
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In Germany, two anonymously-penned and one pseudonymously-penned series appeared: Thomas Alva Edison - Der Grosse Erfinder #1-5, about a heroic Thomas Edison using his wonderful new inventions—homunculi, advanced radio sets, and the like - to vanquish benighted natives and wicked men, from yacht pirates to Indian gold thieves to Chinese pirates to radium thieves; Minx der Geisterbeschwörer #1-10 and Minx der Geistersucher #1-10 (1908), about a tuxedo-clad ghostbreaker and exorcist who uses a “spirit camera” and scientific principles to defeat occult villains; and Der Luftpirat und sein Lenkbares Luftschiff #1-165 (1908-1911), a space opera about Captain Mors, a German inventor who uses a variety of armored, technologically-advanced airships and spaceships to fight evil men and then evil aliens.
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The most popular pulp during these years was Der Luftpirat, which was reprinted in Poland (twice), Russia, and Italy. The second most popular pulp was Sâr Dubnotal, about a Rosicrucian occult detective known as the “Napoleon of the Immaterial.” Sâr Dubnotal appeared in the German pulp Sâr Dubnotal, der Große Geisterbanner #1-9 in 1909. The series was translated and then expanded by the French author Norbert Sévestre in Sâr Dubnotal #1-20 (1909-1910), and the French version was reprinted in Portugal and Spain.
In some ways I’d love to investigate them further, fortunately the problems with availability mean I can easily avoid disappointment.
If you are interested though Jean-Marc Lofficier has not only been doing a fine job with Wikipedia entries on some of the early French material (like the Sâr Dubnotal one) but his Black Coat Press has been busy translating (often done by Brian Stableford) and publishing them, like the Sâr Dubnotal vs Jack the Ripper book whose image starts this piece. Only the teetering tower of the “to read” stack of books prevents me from scooping up a wheelbarrowful of their books.
NB: If you are having trouble making the io9 article appear, try refreshing the page, as that did the trick for me.
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