The term "scientific romance" when applied to novels like Under the Moons of Mars or Darkness and Dawn meant science-fiction love stories. The love or romantic element is an integral part of the story, but the boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl formula is forwarded on a Jetstream of adventure and action, against immensely colorful backgrounds like the dry ocean beds of Mars or the unknown world of the future.
The novels of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells in the scientific vein have always had a preponderantly male audience. Since most science fiction is in the tradition of those two great writers, this fact is generally true for the entire literary history of science fiction. One great exception was Edgar Rice Burroughs, whose novels always enjoyed a substantial female following.
Jules Verne placed his stress on technical plausibility, travel, and action. There was little of a romantic interest in his stories. Garrett P. Serviss was in the Jules Verne tradition. His finest work, The Second Deluge, contains virtually no love interest, and where it appears in his other stories it assumes a minor place. Gustavus W. Pope, M.D., in Journey to Mars, added not only the romantic element but also more imaginative situations to what he admired in Verne. He therefore becomes much more a predecessor of Edgar Rice Burroughs than does Garrett P. Serviss, who immediately preceded him.
Some of H. G. Wells' stories anticipated the scientific romance that the Munsey magazines were to popularize, most notably The Time Machine. The debt George Allan England's Darkness and Dawn owes to it is obvious. In England's story there is a locale set in the future. We find a degenerate race of cannibalistic subhumans, as were the Morlocks in The Time Machine. There is the beginning of a love story in The Time Machine, but it is not fully developed. The love story in Darkness and Dawn is the story. As has been stated, it is Adam and Eve cast out of the Garden of Eden all over again.
What Edgar Rice Burroughs had to offer in Under the Moons of Mars was a degree of originality in his approach, and an imagination so inventive of alien objects, backgrounds, and philosophies that it transcended even works of such able writers as Serviss and England. They strove for verisimilitude, he strove for escape. As a storyteller he may very well have been a genius. Acknowledging everything that he might have picked up from others in the course of his prior reading, he nevertheless was an original. He created a school of science-fiction writing. Both Serviss and England followed another school of writing, though the latter, in Darkness and Dawn and the two sequels to follow, was ably making a transition to the scientific romance.
This is not to say that the scientific romance of the Burroughs school was a better type of science fiction. It was a different type that appealed to a much wider audience at the time of its appearance and therefore broadened the base of interest in the science fiction derived from Verne and Wells. It was story for the sake of the story and did not intend to educate or to preach.
The discovery of Edgar Rice Burroughs and the transition of George Allan England into a writer of enthralling fantastic romances occurred just when THE CAVALIER, THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE, and THE ARGOSY were in trouble. Infusions of science fiction must always have been circulation boosters, otherwise they would not have been so common in Munsey magazines, and Robert Davis would not have spent time working on way-out plots with able authors.
Like manna from heaven, Burroughs had arrived just when the order had been given to price THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE and THE ARGOSY at fifteen cents. To show that he didn't do anything by halves, Munsey even made "The Flagship of the Fleet," MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE, fifteen cents at the same time. To add more responsibilities to what Bob Davis already had, he was also given the editorship of THE ARGOSY with the orders to drop all serials and run a complete novel each issue.
Darkness and Dawn had given the new weekly the impetus it needed to survive the conversion. Few regulars were going to discard the magazine in the midst of so thrilling an adventure. It had also carried over unfinished novels by E. Phillips Oppenheim, Edgar Franklin, and Simeon Robertson from THE SCRAP BOOK, so it held some of their audience. It added the mystery-story writer Louis Joseph Vance to the lineup with the issue of January 6; Albert Dorrington, another popular mystery writer from THE SCRAP BOOK on January 13; Albert Payson Terhune, destined to one day become the world's most popular writer of dog stories, on January 20; and a short story by the highly promising woman discovery, Faith Baldwin, with the issue of January 27. The cumbersome name THE CAVALIER AND THE SCRAP BOOK was shortened to THE CAVALIER with the issue of February 3, which also led off with a seven-part posthumous novel by Philip Verrill Mighels, A Shipwrecked Venus, a love-story adventure of castaways on an island threatened by headhunters.
THE ARGOSY had started a first-rate readers' section titled "The Argosy's Log-Book" in the February, 1911, issue. It was undoubtedly inspired by a long editorial section that had run in THE POPULAR MAGAZINE since almost its first issue, but its combination of editorials and readers' comments made it from its inception far superior, and it became so popular that it was featured on the cover. Bob Davis decided to inaugurate one in THE CAVALIER. At first it took the form of a two-page section titled "Announcements for Next Week" (February 3). Then it was changed to "Heart to Heart Talks with Our Readers" (March 2) and was lengthened to four pages.
The vogue of "psychological" detective stories in the form of Edwin Balmer's and William B. McHarg's Luther Trant series in HAMPTON'S MAGAZINE and Arthur B. Reeve's tremendously popular Craig Kennedy stories in COSMOPOLITAN and THE POPULAR MAGAZINE, had led to a spate of out-of-the-usual-run detective characters. The February 17 issue of THE CAVALIER introduced The Occult Detector, the first of a long series of stories that would run in the Munsey pulps for the next twenty years. Written by a Salt Lake City doctor, J. U. Giesy, and a Cincinnati lawyer, Junius B. Smith, their detective, Semi Dual, utilized astrology, chirography, handwriting analysis psychic phenomena, crystal-ball gazing, and other questionable sciences to solve his criminal cases.
Pictorial covers disappeared, to be replaced by poster lettering beginning on March 16, and the legend "Issued Weekly" appeared under the magazine's logo, which had been redesigned to eliminate the capital C and make the entire title small capitals.
A banished Egyptian prince, who, with his followers, ends up in Arizona in 2000 B.C. and builds a civilization there, accumulating great treasure, which is guarded by his descendants, was the plot background of Red O'Rourke's Riches, by Katherine Eggleston and Frank H. Richardson, an eight-part novel which ran March 2 to April 20. The idea was good, but it was crudely handled.
A far more remarkable effort was The Ape at the Helm (April 6-27), by Patrick Gallagher, which was hailed by Bob Davis as "a combination of Edgar Allan Poe, Clark Russell, and Robert Louis Stevenson." The story deals with a ship that loses its first mate and finds the captain taking aboard a half-man, half-ape from an island, who nobly and efficiently fills the position, despite attempts to kill it. The author, an ex-sailor, portrays effectively the aloneness of this noble man-animal, despite the need of the humans for his services.
Three-color covers, bleeding out over the edges, returned with the opening installment of The White Waterfall (April 13-May 4), by James Francis Dwyer. Though borderline in its fantasy aspect, this novel involving the Wizards of the Centipede, a degenerate, centuries-old cult, it is superbly written and easily one of the best adventure stories THE CAVALIER was to publish.
Eventually Bob Davis admitted that the letters of praise regarding Darkness and Dawn were piling up so massively that a sequel had been ordered and was now being written. Tn the interim, George Allan England had submitted a novel titled The Golden Blight, of which Davis said: "Nothing like it has been written during this generation. Not only will it become sought for in each issue of THE CAVALIER, but is bound to become one of the best-sellers. Destiny has planned this kind of a reception. ..."
The Golden Blight was George Allan England's turn to deal with the incredible obsession writers had with gold during this period in American history. A
scientist discovers a means of turning the world's gold into gray ash. Economic chaos reigns as he proceeds with this task. A Jewish financier from Europe buys up the gray ash with silver, anticipating that it will eventually revert to its original form. He assembles it all in one place, with the other tycoons gathered about him, and as it turns back into gold, he screams with religious fervor that now the Jew has turned the tables on the Gentiles and will deal out justice for all the centuries of oppression. The chemical action of the gray ash converting back into gold turns it molten, and a great flow of tons of gold pours over the entire group of money men, destroying them all. Now that all international financiers are destroyed, the world becomes a near-Utopia, with socialism predominant.
England was a rabid socialist, and this book was one of the most extreme presentations any magazine ever permitted in print. If his understanding of socialism was no more reliable than his understanding of the relationship of gold to the world's monetary system, he was at best pathetic as a proselytizer for his cause.
The book was published in hardcovers by the H. K. Fly Company in 1916, with live rather poor illustrations by C. D. Williams. Bob Davis found himself a "fellow traveler" on the dedication page, listed with Socialist-party stalwarts for his role in conceiving this novel. A paper-bound edition also appeared.
THE CAVALIER readership's appetite for stories detailing the making or finding of gold seemed insatiable. In The Gold Deluge (September 21, 1912), by Gerald Villiers Stuart, a young man who has discovered a method of making gold is luxuriously imprisoned by leading financiers and then subjected to brain treatment to cause him to forget his formula, lest he disrupt the economy of the world.
Four installments were not too many to relate the every trial and tribulation of Tom Talbot, who has invented a magnet which is attracted to gold in The Gold Finder (October 19-November 9, 1912), by Annesley Kenealy.
THE CAVALIER made a number of attempts to engage reader interest above and beyond the entertainment value of the stories and the rapport established by the "Heart to Heart Talks with Our Readers" department. Crittenden Marriott, a popular mystery-story author and occasional science-fiction writer, had submitted a novelette concerning the discovery of an automobile fuel called Motorine, prepared in the form of small cubes. The disappearance of its inventor, mysterious explosions in the laboratory, and strange men involved inexplicably in the events prompted Bob Davis to publish the story, The Vanishing Cubes, without its ending in the issue of April 6, 1912, and offer one hundred dollars in cash prizes to the readers who came closest to the correct solution of the problem. The actual ending, revealing that the cubes were explosive when wired and that the inventor was being kept a prisoner by men trying to get the secret, was published along with the names of the prizewinners in the May 25 number. The author selected as the winner was E. G. Orbert, of Green Bay, Wisconsin, who received first prize of fifty dollars and was uncannily accurate in his anticipation of the solution.
Frank A. Munsey may have inspired a highly unusual literary experiment that appeared in the August 10 issue. A brief tale of the future, In 2112, by J. U. Giesy and Junius B. Smith (authors of the Semi Dual detective series), appeared, and immediately after it was a translation into Esperanto by Elmer E. Haynes, M.D. An introductory blurb advised interested readers that they could procure more information about the "international language" by writing the Esperanto Association of North America, Washington, D.C.
Munsey's genealogist was Dr. D. O. S. Lowell, who had been one of his teachers at Lisbon Falls, Maine. Dr. Lowell had been a contributor to the first twenty issues of GOLDEN ARGOSY with a series titled "Argosy Yarns," collected into book form as Jason's Quest by Leach, Shewell and Sanborn, Boston, in 1893. Having elevated himself to headmaster of Roxbury Latin School, Dr. Lowell now became a militant prose-lytizer of Esperanto. The language had been invented by Dr. L. L. Zamenhof, a Warsaw physician, in 1878, when he was just nineteen years old. The purpose was to create a language containing words that had no irregularities, exceptions, or duplications of meaning and thus would be comprehensible to everyone. Dr. Zamenhofs results were first published in 1887, and usage began in France.
Two articles by Dr. D. O. S. Lowell appeared in THE SCRAP BOOK for May and June, 1907, titled Learn Esperanto, the New Universal Language. In publishing a story both in English and Esperanto, science fiction was the obvious form because it could present a tale of tomorrow, when the whole world would speak the International Language. That was indeed the case in the short story, which also introduced moving hallways, concentrated sunlight, synthetic foods, radium pistols, and various other embellishments of a world two hundred years ahead.
During the late thirties, Forrest J. Ackerman, one of the world's leading science-fiction fans (today editor of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND), conducted an aggressive campaign to get readers of futuristic literature to take up Esperanto, even publishing amateur magazines in the language. His efforts aroused a limited enthusiasm, which has virtually disappeared in the intervening period.
THE CAVALIER'S experiment in Esperanto did not end with one story. Bob Davis announced that the international interest aroused by In 2112 had led to further experimentation. "I am not wise enough to know whether or not such a feature would be successful, but I haven't any hesitation about giving the readers of this magazine an opportunity to express themselves," he said. Starting with the January 18, 1913, issue, he began a new series of stories which would be presented both in English and in Esperanto. He left the question of continuance up to the readers. The translations were done by Dr. Lowell. The Lure of the Lavender Trees (January 18, 1913) told of a shipwrecked party whose captain is drawn to his death by the ominous purple trees of an unknown atoll; it was followed by The Fear of Life, by Harold Titus, a dramatic lumberjack tale (January 25); Marguerites told of a seventeen-year-old miraculously saved from a life of prostitution by a crippled baby (February 1); and The Spot Down Deep, by Fred Sweet, a sweetness-and-light bit of nostalgia falsifying memory (February 8), brought down the curtain on the Esperanto experiment, followed by shredding criticism from its adherents.
"Esperanto—A Closed Incident," Bob Davis headed an item in the February 22 issue. "... I stated at the outset that it was merely an experiment," he wrote, "one that I would continue if the majority approved. Well, the majority did not approve.
"That is the long and the short of it. If I published all the correspondence, the ensuing controversy would be interminable.
"If you will pardon me now, I will go back in my cage, pick a few porcupine quills out of my person, and get ready for the next issue, which will be in English."
One of Bob Davis' closest friends was the renowned humorist Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb. They had met at the tail end of Davis' newspaper days in 1904, and by 1911 Cobb was working on the staff of THE SATURDAY EVENING POST. His stories were so much in demand and so high-priced that they were beyond the budget of THE CAVALIER. But this was true primarily of Cobb's humorous stories. A horror story he had written in 1900 at the age of twenty four had been rejected by most of the leading magazines of America and had even been turned back by Bob Davis in 1911. The story was entitled Fishhead, and when Davis had refused it, he had written: "It goes past the powers of my pen to describe the effect Fishhead has upon me. It is inconceivable how one so saturated with the humors of life can present so appalling a picture as this. The moment in which Fishhead opened his trap of a mouth and sent out his skittering call summoning his avengers is absolutely terrifying.... It is quite the most remarkable demonstration of your power I have ever seen. . . . You are lucky to be able to write such an extraordinary tragedy while posing as a humorist and get away with it."
When Cobb was a beginner, magazines didn't want the story because of its utter gruesomeness. When he had become famous as a humorist, the contrast with his typical work put too much of a strain on the editor.
With the Cobb "endorsement" of "This is the only story I ever wrote that I could not sell," Davis worked u
p enough courage to run it in the January 11, 1913, issue of THE CAVALIER with three pages of quotes from editors who had previously rejected it, plus some background on the tale's history.
Fishhead, in retrospect, is certainly one of the great masterpieces of horror by an American writer. The title character is a mixture of Negro, Indian, and white, born with a face uncannily resembling a catfish's. He lives along Reelfoot Lake, where catfish grow six and seven feet long and weigh as much as two hundred pounds. Two "poor whites" wait for him in a dugout, ambush him outside his home, and kill him with a shotgun for having previously beaten them in a fistfight. Just before they pull the trigger, he sends a strange call over the water. Their boat is upset, and they are pulled under by tremendous catfish. When the three bodies float ashore, Fishhead's is unmarked except for the gunshot wounds, but those of the two "poor whites" are so "marked and mauled" that their identities could not be determined.
Reporting on reader reaction in the February 1 THE CAVALIER, Bob Davis asserted that seventy five percent were favorable and twenty five percent against the story. He ran two pages of letters, but significantly the most ardent praise came from fellow horror-story writers George Allan England, John D. Swain, and William Holloway.
Time has vindicated Bob Davis completely. In fact, most of Cobb's humor is out of print and unavailable, but Fishhead is repeatedly being reprinted or anthologized and may turn out to be Cobb's supreme achievement. That this would be the case was determined early, when George T. Delacorte, Jr., founded THE FAMOUS STORY MAGAZINE, devoted to "The World's Best Stories from Modern and Classic Literature," and the very first issue, October, 1925, had Fishhead featured as one of the major attractions of the issue.
Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of the Scientific Romance in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 Page 47
