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Collected Tales
Leslie F. Stone
(custom book cover)
Jerry eBooks
Title Page
About Leslie F. Stone
Bibliography
Short Fiction Bibliography
Short Fiction Series
Men with Wings
Out of the Void (Part I)
Out of the Void (Part II)
Letter of the Twenty-Fourth Century
Through the Veil
Women with Wings
Across the Void (Part I)
The Conquest of Gola
Across the Void (Part II)
Across the Void (Part III)
The Hell Planet
The Man Who Fought a Fly
Gulliver, 3000 A.D.
The Rape of the Solar System
Cosmic Joke
The Man with Four Dimensional Eyes
When the Flame-Flowers Blossomed
The Fall of Mercury
The Human Pets of Mars
The Great Ones
Death Dallies Awhile
Gravity Off!
Leslie Francis Stone was born on June 8th, 1905, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There’s little known about her early life, but it seems as though she was keenly interested in science fiction early on: when Hugo Gernsback began publishing his science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, Silverberg picked them up and was relieved to see that she was far from the only woman to be reading the magazine. Writing as Mrs. L. Silverberg (it’s likely that Silverberg is her married name), she noted that “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,” as stated in the book The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction. While Gernsback might not have printed many letters from female readers before that point, other issues in 1928 show that there were a number of women picking up the magazine regularly, often writing in to praise the stories that they appreciated the most.
At some point, Stone was motivated to write her first story, and faced some barriers before even submitting. She indicated that “A friend [with no connection to the field and who therefore confusedscience fiction with the field of science] advised me that a woman writer . . . would probably be unacceptable, not only to an editor or two, but to some readers.” Nevertheless, she began to submit her stories to Gernsback under the name Leslie F. Stone. Upon learning that she was a woman, “Gernsback accepted [that first story] quite amiably . . . Nor did T. O’Conor Sloane, dear man, have any qualms about women writers in his stable when he took over the Amazing Stories editorship, never turning down any story I submitted,” as quoted in Partners in Wonder: Women and the Birth of Science Fiction. Stone’s submissions came on the heels of Claire Winger Harris, the first woman to publish in dedicated genre magazines with her 1927 story “Fate of Poseidonia” in Amazing Stories. Before long, Gernsback accepted one of Stone’s stories, “Men With Wings,” which appeared in the July 1929 issue of Air Wonder Stories. Later that year, a two-part serial titled “Out of the Void” followed in the August and September issues of Amazing Stories and closed out the year with “Letter of the Twenty-Fourth Century” in the magazine’s December issue.
Leslie Stone continued to publish in 1930 with a pair of stories, “Through the Veil” (Amazing Stories, May) and “Women with Wings” (Air Wonder Stories, May), followed in 1931 by a sequel serialization to “Out of the Void”; “Across the Void” appeared in the April–June issues of Amazing Stories. Stone’s most famous story, “Conquest of Gola,” appeared around the same time in the April issue of Wonder Stories. In it, Stone upends genre conventions by depicting Venus during an invasion from Earth. It’s a politically-charged story in which her Gola heroines fend off human men from Detaxal. In the Westleyan Anthology of Science Fiction, the story is described as one that “also addresses another early sf trope, the sex-role reversal story. From the pens of male writers, this trope has tended to result in stories about domineering women who are ‘tamed’ by brutally irresistible male protagonists. Stone’s telepathic women are not so easily seduced.”
Her work continued throughout the first half of the 1930s as she published stories like: “The Hell Planet” (Wonder Stories, June 1932); “The Man Who Fought a Fly” (Amazing Stories, October 1932); “Gulliver, 3000 A.D.” (Wonder Stories, May 1933); “The Rape of the Solar System” (Amazing Stories, December 1934); “Cosmic Joke (Wonder Stories, January 1935)”; “The Man With the Four Dimensional Eyes” (Wonder Stories, August 1935); “When the Flame-Flowers Blossomed” (Weird Tales, November 1935); and “The Fall of Mercury” (Amazing Stories, December 1935). By 1935, Stone began to slow down: she reported that her story “Cosmic Joke” was inspired in part by her 3-month-old son, and it’s entirely possible that demands from parenthood began to take their toll. She started publishing a single story a year: “The Human Pets of Mars” (Amazing Stories, October 1936); “The Great Ones (Astounding Stories, July 1937)”; “Death Dallies Awhile” (Weird Tales, June 1938); and “Gravity Off!” (Future Fiction, July 1940). In 1967, Avalon Books released Out of the Void as a single novel.
“Gravity Off!” marked the end of Stone’s career. She seems to have stopped writing for a couple of reasons, the first being that she simply ran out of ideas: “my own well had run dry,” she said, according to Eric Leif Davin in Partners in Wonder. Stone had two sons at this point, and being exhausted by writing is certainly one potential factor. Another seems to be the attitudes of genre magazine editors. In two examples, Stone indicated that John W. Campbell Jr., who had taken the helm of Astounding Stories in 1939, rejected one of her stories, “Death Dallies Awhile,” out of hand, stating that women had no place writing science fiction. Later, Stone appears to have made an attempt to return to genre writing in the 1970s, only to run into similar problems with Galaxy Science Fiction editor H.L. Gold. As Davin points out, however, each editor had track records of publishing female science-fiction authors, and speculated that Stone’s style of Planetary Romance simply wasn’t compatible with the direction each editor and publication were headed.
Nonetheless, Leslie Stone was part of the first important movement of women writing genre fiction: critic Jane Donawerth noted that authors such as “Leslie F. Stone, Louise Rice and Clare Winger Harris. . .envision revised roles for women along strict lines of equality between men and women,” as stated in Partners in Wonder. Indeed, Stone’s fiction is characterized by leading female characters, most notably in “Conquest of Gola,” “Men With Wings,” and “Out of the Void.” These authors didn’t just place women characters in their stories—they brought an entire counterpoint to the genre by adding a new perspective to the larger genre conversation that had, to that point, been entirely dominated by men.
Leslie F. Stone died on March 21st, 1991. Her brief career in science fiction decades before had been part of a much larger picture during the genre’s earliest days. Since her stories were published, thousands of women have continued to follow in her footsteps, adding to the larger genre conversation with each word published.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Novels
Out of the Void (1967)
Serials
Out of the Void, Amazing Stories, August-September 1929
Across the Void, Amazing Stories,
April-June, April 1931
The Space Terror, Amazing Stories, August-October 1939
Chapbooks
When the Sun Went Out (1929)
Omnibus
Planet of the Knob-Heads/Out of the Void (2016) with Stanton A. Coblentz
SHORT FICTION BIBLIOGRAPHY
When the Sun Went Out, Science Fiction Series, #4, 1929
Men with Wings, Air Wonder Stories, July 1929
Out of the Void (Part I), Amazing Stories, August 1929
Out of the Void (Part II), Amazing Stories, September 1929
Letter of the Twenty-Fourth Century, Amazing Stories, December 1929
Through the Veil, Amazing Stories, May 1930
Women with Wings, Air Wonder Stories, May 1930
Across the Void (Part I), Amazing Stories, April 1931
The Conquest of Gola, Wonder Stories, April 1931
Across the Void (Part II), Amazing Stories, May 1931
Across the Void (Part III), Amazing Stories, June 1931
The Hell Planet, Wonder Stories, June 1932
The Man Who Fought a Fly, Amazing Stories, October 1932
Gulliver, 3000 A.D., Wonder Stories, May 1933
The Rape of the Solar System, Amazing Stories, December 1934
Cosmic Joke, Wonder Stories, January 1935
The Man with the Four Dimensional Eyes, Wonder Stories, August 1935
When the Flame-Flowers Blossomed, Weird Tales, November 1935
The Fall of Mercury, Amazing Stories, December 1935
The Human Pets of Mars, Amazing Stories, October 1936
The Great Ones, Astounding Stories, July 1937
Death Dallies Awhile, Weird Tales, June 1938
The Space Terror, Spaceways, August-October, August 1939
Gravity Off!, Future Fiction, July 1940
SHORT FICTION SERIES
[SER] = Serial
[SF] = Short Story/Novelette
Mentor
Men with Wings [SF]
Women with Wings [SF]
The Void
Out of the Void [SER]
Across the Void [SER]
Men with Wings
THE present story is quite an extraordinary one, and aside from adventure, suspense and interest, it contains excellent science.
A well-known evolutionist once said that if it were absolutely necessary for humanity to have four arms and hands instead of two, the extra members would in time be evolved. Nature always keeps pace with necessity, particularly if this necessity is vital. Once a member is no longer vital, it promptly is discarded, such as for instance, tails in human beings. It may not be known generally, that among the human family, there are so-called “throw-backs,” which still have a prehensile tail.
The author has made use in this tale of an evolution of a most remarkable character and carries the reader on from chapter to chapter with never-ending suspense.
FOREWORD
IT was in examining the precious stack of documents that lay carefully wrapped and ticketed in the old-fashioned vault that our ancestors called a “safe” that I came across this manuscript, which in view of its great historical worth, I feel obliged to publish that all men may read.
We, today, being a race possessing wings, know the few facts of our peculiar evolution. But cold facts like a cold egg do not attract our attention or pique our appetite. And so in order to give more vivid understanding of what actually took place, I am presenting the story of my ancestor who, to use a quaint idiom of his day “typed” these chapters of the great and most picturesque period of world history.
Almost five hundred years have passed and the pages of the manuscript are yellowed by time, but it is possible in reading them for one to relive the tale in its colorful telling. One has only to lift his eye to the air above him and see his fellow-man flying as the birds fly with wings outspread, to become thankful that he is not like his ancestors of centuries ago who had to depend upon a poor sort of flying contraption that had been handed down to him. They did not know the pure joy of soaring above the eagles’ heads and adding voice to that of the meadow lark. And realizing this the world can bow heads in reverence to the Martyred President of America and send up a prayer of thanks to our common ancestor, Howard Mentor!
One could write at length on the advantage of having wings, in fact, our literature contains many such extravaganzas. In fact some of our humorous writers have pictured how we would have to live if we reverted back to our poor earth-chained ancestors of the early twentieth century. They must have lived a pitiful existence.
So our story starts in 1945.
CHAPTER ONE
Alarming News
IT was Harry Brent who made the “scoop” and The American came out on one fine morning with four-inch scare-heads devoting their entire front page to the news relegating the less important details of murders, robberies, gang-wars, stocks and floods to inside pages. The Warby father-daughter murder went begging for space. It was really hard on those concerned. Later, we reporters, condoled with Annabel Warby because the time was inauspicious for a first-class murder.
The American flaunted its news.
NORDIC FEMALES UNSAFE IN LATIN AMERICA!
MANY OF AMERICA’S FAIREST HAVE VANISHED WITHOUT TRACE!!
New Race of Men with Wings Believed Responsi-
ble for the Strange Disappearances of
Visiting White Women!
IT IS REVEALED THAT SOUTH AMERICAN
OFFICIALS HAVE PURPOSELY SUP-
PRESSED WORD OF ABDUCTORS FEAR-
ING LOSS OF TOURIST TRADE!!!
The newsboys made a bedlam of the streets with their ballyhoo voices interpreting the news as each saw it, and their papers went like hot-cakes.
In the editorial chambers of the New York News half-a-dozen or so of us reporters sat about discussing this latest tidbit, lamenting that it was Brent instead of us who had nosed out this delectable morsel. The wonder of it was that he had managed so adroitly to keep it all under cover until he had unearthed all the corresponding details and that no other paper had smelled it out.
The accounts described the strange abductions in detail, but the signed columns of Brent’s held the meat of the whole affair.
“In searching,” he said, “through the records of various South American cities I was startled in discovering that the old files held record of many unsolved woman-nappings as far back as two hundred years before, and that then, as today, only women of Anglo-Saxon, Celtic and Scandinavian blood appear to have been the victims!
“That fact in itself points to at least one clue, and it is evident therefore that all these strange disappearances can be laid to one person or ring working under one head. The South American police have naturally been baffled, for in all these years no other clue has ever come to the surface, and all the combined efforts of the various goverments of the Latin countries have not availed in discovering the culprits.
“What is hard to understand is how have they managed to keep these serious matters away from the world. Of course such news would be most injurious to the nations of South America who look forward to the in-pouring of tourists and wealthy visitors. In Brazil the Argentine, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia and in fact every country where white women have visited the toll has been taken. How many more than the four hundred and thirty-five recorded kidnappings have taken place, we have no way of telling. And perhaps our South American friends might have continued to hide the truth had not the abductors themselves become so careless in their actions as to give away more clues, forced themselves, in fact, on public attention, so that our friends below the equator were forced to admit what was happening!
“I might even say that the woman-stealers have become incensed by the attitude of the South American police, at the utter disregard of them by the officials, and are now making it a point to bring themselves to the notice of the world. On the other hand it may be that, so long unrestrained, they are merely becoming careless and with a spiri
t of bravado are indulging in wild escapades, in extravagant gestures.
“It was the disappearance of Marion Hally, daughter of the well-known Herbert Hally, sportsman and dilettante artist of New York, that first brought Rio de Janeiro to the realization that something had to be done. In two weeks’ time more information has come to light than in over two centuries.
“On March 4th the thing happened, but for almost two weeks the news was kept secret as there was hope of finding the missing girl. It was the father that exposed the truth to the public when he offered the munificent reward of one hundred thousand dollars for the recovery of his daughter or at least for word as to her whereabouts. The story was printed on handbills and distributed throughout the city as it was evident that Hally would not depend on the newspapers to make the announcement.
“The story says that Miss Hally had gone for a jaunt on her horse, followed only by an attendant by the name of Jose, through the winding paths of the vast estate of Senor Alvarez Ricardi y Murado at whose home the Hallys were visiting. The equerry kept a respectable distance behind his lady, speeding his horse as they rounded each curve so as to keep her in sight. The ride was, at first, anything but eventful; the sun was hot, the day warm. Gradually Jose fell farther and farther behind until suddenly awakened by the shying of his horse he recalled his responsibility and whipping up his horse was surprised to find his mistress riding in the company of a man who was likewise horsed.
“The stranger’s costume struck Jose as singular, since the equestrian was entirely wrapped in a black, completely enfolding cape. Under his wide-brimmed hat was a tanned hawkish face that reminded the equerry of a bird. Miss Hally appeared very much interested in her escort and the two were conversing with animation. Jose fell back again and was aroused from his lethargy only when a piercing scream brought him to attention. Spurring up his horse he raced ahead. The path took a wide curve, a hairpin curve in truth and although the voice was near at hand it was necessary for him to ride in a wide circle to reach the spot from where the voice had come. He saw the two horses grazing quietly beside the road but there was no sign of their riders!
Collected Tales (Jerry eBooks) Page 1
