Astounding Stories of Super Science
first appeared in
1930, later becoming a “Clayton
Magazine” when that company took over the original publisher a year later. Initially considered by some to be an
imitator of Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing
Stories, the publication underwent several name changes over the following
decades. The title was shortened to Astounding Stories, then became Astounding Science-Fiction by 1938.
Under
the able and visionary leadership of John W. Campbell, the magazine became
immensely influential as the Golden Age of Science Fiction unfolded in the late
1930s and 1940s. In 1960 the magazine
took the name of Analog Science Fact and
Fiction, which it retains to this day. It is considered to be longest running
genre magazine of its type.
But in
1930, the first year of publication, Astounding
Stories of Super Science was different in tone and quality than its later
incarnations. It published the stories
of several early pulp science fiction writers like Ray Cummings and Murray
Leinster, but also included shudder pulp masters like Paul Ernst and Hugh B.
Cave. Cave had an interesting story in the
second issue of the magazine, The Corpse
on the Grating. It is more of a
shudder pulp tale than science fiction, though there is a slight nod to the importance of scientific credibility. (See also A
Weird Menace from Hugh B. Cave.)
The Corpse on the Grating concerns three old friends who
have known and aggravated each other for years.
“M.S.” and Professor Daimler are older men, described as students of
mesmerism and spiritualism, gentleman occultists of the type to be found in
similar stories of the time by Robert E. Howard or H.P. Lovecraft. Howard’s The
Children of the Night (1931) contains several examples of this kind of
character. On the other hand, Dale, the
narrator, is the practical man of science.
“I am a medical man, and my own profession is one that does not sympathize with radicals”, he says of himself.
Not to
over glorify the material, but it appears that M.S. and Professor Daimler may represent
“old school” stock characters from horror and supernatural fiction circa the
1920s and early 1930s, while Dale symbolizes the “thinking man” attracted to
the science of the then emerging field of science fiction.
In the beginning
of The Corpse on the Grating, Professor
Daimler has invited the two others to his laboratory one dark night.
"I've
summoned you, gentlemen," he said quietly, "because you two, of all
London, are the only persons who know the nature of my recent experiments. I
should like to acquaint you with the results!"
In
keeping with the title of the magazine, some science is presented at this
point. Whether it constitutes super science may be debatable. Readers are reminded that a dead frog can be reanimated
by attaching parts of it to “a common dry cell battery with enough voltage to
render a sharp shock.” The three friends
debate whether this constitutes a true re-animation. (It doesn’t.)
Under
some conditions, an apparently deceased individual can be revived via a
thorough application of heat, which is Professor Daimler’s approach. Finally, it is known that epileptics who have
not been prematurely entombed—at least for long—can be revived from their
deathlike catatonic states through mechanical procedures involving warmth. This last observation is possibly derived
from that famous scientific treatise on the subject, Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher (1839).
This is
pretty much all the science that readers of The
Corpse on the Grating, need to know.
The professor shows off a table full of test tubes and other
paraphernalia, and admits that he has recently failed to revive a dead man by
applying his technique—it involves “acid heat.” The narrator is dismissive of
all of this and mocks the other two gentleman.
Perhaps Dale also represents the reader, who may have some questions,
too. Such as, where is the body of the experimental
subject, the titular corpse?
So this
is the set up: science suggests that the
dead can be revived, if only temporarily, through a relatively straightforward
process involving extreme heat. And something needs to be done about the
narrator’s annoying skepticism. Dale and
his friend M.S. leave the disappointed professor and walk down the street,
arguing and mocking each other.
This being
a shudder pulp story, a horror is encountered in just under five minutes. It is only a block away, in an old warehouse
the two reach on foot. M.S. and Dale find a corpse attached to the wrought
iron grated doorway of an old warehouse.
It is a corpse, but not the corpse. The dead man’s posture and
facial grimace suggest that he was trying to escape from something that
frightened him to death. He apparently
was the night watchman in the warehouse.
With the body count increasing in the neighborhood, shouldn’t someone
call the police?
Instead,
M.S. dares Dale to spend the night in the warehouse, and Dale rises to the
challenge—he has to, because he is a man.
(A similar motivation can be found in the effectively spooky
collaboration between H.P. Lovecraft and Hazel Heald, The Horror in the Museum, published in 1932).
There
is an amusing scene, near the end of The
Corpse on the Grating, when Dale finds the dead night watchman’s flashlight
and a book the man had been reading on his long shift. This creates literally a story within a
story, for Dale passes the time by reading the dead man’s anthology of horror stories.
Cave is having some fun with his readers here.
It
was a book of horror, of fantasy. A collection of weird, terrifying,
supernatural tales with grotesque illustrations in funereal black and white.
And the very line I had turned to, the line which had probably struck terror to
that unlucky devil's soul, explained M. S.'s "decayed human form, standing
in the doorway with arms extended and a frightful face of passion!" The
description—the same description—lay before me, almost in my friend's words.
Little wonder that the fellow on the grating below, after reading this orgy of
horror, had suddenly gone mad with fright. Little wonder that the picture
engraved on his dead mind was a picture of a corpse standing in the doorway of
room 4167!
As he reads
a description of the approaching menace in the story, he perceives some of the same
sights and sounds as the lead character, but they are coming from just outside
in the hallway. Readers may get the
impression that Cave took pleasure in concocting his story for the same reason
people enjoy constructing haunted houses or elaborately decorating the yard for
Halloween. Certainly this is a noble and
adequate motivation for horror writers today, to throw something together with
the minimum believability needed to give someone a bad dream or insomnia.
Cave
and his colleagues in the shudder pulps wrote like H.P. Lovecraft—if Lovecraft
had replaced all his adjectives with verbs.
There is a lot of action, and not a lot of time before the horrible or
appalling makes an appearance. The convention
also involved including an explanation for the terrifying phenomena. (One is
supplied by his triumphant friend M.S.)
In some
respects, The Corpse on the Grating
can be seen as a 1930s version of flash fiction, though at about 5,000 words it
would probably qualify more as a “short short story.” However, Cave was able to
keep this swift moving tale fairly brief, often omitting explanatory passages and
allowing the reader to fill in the blanks.
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