RADIUM AGE: 1925

By: Joshua Glenn
October 9, 2022

*The Death Ray* (Lev Kuleshov, 1925). Kuleshov’s science fiction thriller features a plot written by Vsevolod Pudovkin (based on a novel by Aleksei Tolstoy), and concerns the theft of a secret Soviet ray by a group of fascists.

A series of notes towards a comprehensive account of the science fiction genre’s Radium Age (1900–1935). These notes are very rough-and-ready, and not properly attributed in many cases. More information on Josh’s ongoing efforts here and here.

RADIUM AGE TIMELINE: [1900 | 1901 | 1902 | 1903] | 1904 | 1905 | 1906 | 1907 | 1908 | 1909 | 1910 | 1911 | 1912 | 1913 | 1914 | 1915 | 1916 | 1917 | 1918 | 1919 | 1920 | 1921 | 1922 | 1923 | 1924 | 1925 | 1926 | 1927 | 1928 | 1929 | 1930 | 1931 | 1932 | 1933 | [1934 | 1935]. (The brackets, here, indicate “interregnum” years — i.e., periods of overlap between sf’s Radium Age and its Scientific Romance and so-called Golden Age eras.)

1925

Proto-sf coinages dating to 1925, according to the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction: BLASTER (a weapon that fires a destructive beam of energy) | MATTER-TRANSMITTING (designating or relating to a matter transmitter) | ROCKET-SHIP (a spacecraft powered by rockets) | SPACE CRUISER (a spaceship).

CATASTROPHE

Radium Age CATASTROPHE fiction from this year includes…

BITE THE BULLET: See FUTURE WAR.

DECLINE & FALL OF (WHITE/WESTERN) CIVILIZATION

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “The Moon Men” and “The Red Hawk.” Parts of The Moon Men. Serialized here at HILOBROW in 2013.
José Moselli’s La Fin d’Illa (20 January-9 July 1925 Sciences et Voyages). In 1875 a ship discovers a previously unknown island, full of massive artifacts, including many ancient documents dating back to Gondwana, more than a hundred million years earlier. They described the conflict between the Cities of Illa and Nour, describing a civilization extraordinarily advanced in terms of technology – including nuclear weapons, force fields, flying saucers, solar power, and genetically engineered ape-like slaves. Fun fact: Moselli’s science fiction appeared exclusively in popular magazines like L’Épatant, L’Intrépide, Cri-Cri, etc. It was not until 1970 that any of his magazine publications were republished in book form.

DEEP TIME: See COSMIC AWE.

DIRTY OLD TOWN: See DYSTOPIA / UTOPIA.

DYING EARTH (or DEAD MOON)

TBD

ECO-CATASTROPHE / PANDEMIC

TBD

OVERREACH: See SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH.

COSMIC AWE

Radium Age COSMIC AWE fiction from this year includes…

ATOMIC SUBLIME: See DISENCHANTMENT / UNSEEN FORCES.

DEEP TIME:

TBD

DYING EARTH (or MOON): See CATASTROPHE.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN

TBD

IS THERE LIFE ON MARS

J.-H. Rosny aîné’s The Navigators of Infinity (1925). Astronauts travel to Mars in the Stellarium, a spaceship made of “argine” (an indestructible, transparent material), and powered by artificial gravity. On Mars, the explorers come in contact with two races: the peaceful, six-eyed, three-legged “Tripèdes,” who have ceased to reproduce and are dying out; and the invading “Zoomorphs.” Having fallen in love (!) with one of the human astronauts, a young Martian female — merely by wishing it — gives birth to a child. This joyous event heralds the rebirth — City of Men-style — of the Martian race. Fun fact: Sci-fi scholars claim that Rosny aîné [Joseph Henri Honoré Boex, whose nom de plume contains the word “elder” (aîné) because he and his younger brother used to write together under the joint moniker J.-H. Rosny], author of the seminal 1909 prehistoric-fiction novel Quest for Fire, coined the word “astronautique” in this novel. Rosny aîné, who began writing in the 1880s, is considered the second-most important pioneer in French science fiction, after Jules Verne.
Hemendrakumar Roy’s Meghduter Marte Agaman (The Arrival of the Messengers from the Skies, 1925-26). A Martian adventure. More info on this Bangla-language novel to come.

James K. Anthony (writing as “Christian Haugen”)’s Resan Till Ken. Journey to Ken is a popular sf novel by a Norwegian author. The space cruiser Tagan travels to the planet Ken. The story was adapted into a comic strip (written by Haugen and drawn by Arent Christensen) which ran in the magazine Arbeidermagasinet for Alle in 1933-1934, and was continued by the same team as “Den Tause Verden” in 1935-1936. Journey to Ken is one of the world’s earliest science fiction comic strips.

MATHEMATICAL SUBLIME: See FAR-OUT MATHEMATICS / FOURTH DIMENSION.

OVERVIEW EFFECT

TBD

STARS WHEEL IN PURPLE

TBD

DEHUMANIZATION

Radium Age DEHUMANIZATION art from this year includes…

CYBORG MANIFESTO

TBD

MECHANIZATION

TBD

THINGS ARE IN THE SADDLE: See NEW TECHNOLOGIES.

DISENCHANTMENT / UNSEEN FORCES

Radium Age DISENCHANTMENT / UNSEEN FORCES fiction from this year includes…

ATOMIC SUBLIME

TBD

CHROMATIC SUBLIME

TBD

DIAGRAMMATIC SUBLIME

TBD

GEOPHYSICAL SUBLIME

TBD

MICROSCOPIC SUBLIME: See SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGHS.

QUANTUM SUBLIME: See SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGHS.

RE-ENCHANTMENT

TBD

SCIENCE FANTASY

H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Temple” — appears in the 1980 anthology Science Fiction: The Best of Yesterday. A story about an arrogant German U-boat commander during World War I who is drawn into the abyssal depths by a supernatural curse. The crew is driven mad as their submarine plunges toward an ancient, sunken city.

Maurice Baring’s Half a Minute’s Silence. Collects twenty-five stories including the author’s outstanding horror story “Venus.” An unsettling science fantasy tale about a reclusive civil servant who is involuntarily transported to an alien, prehistoric world. The story follows a man who begins experiencing strange fits whenever he speaks on the telephone. During these episodes, his consciousness travels to the planet Venus, which Baring imagines as a sweltering world of vast jungles, gigantic mushrooms, and exotic, caterpillar-like aliens. s the story progresses, the astral visions become increasingly terrifying. On a subsequent visit, he senses an invisible, whistling predator from which all the local life flees in panic. The protagonist becomes terrified that these involuntary trips are destroying his sanity and health, and his attempts to avoid telephones ultimately end in a fatal lapse.

SOUL SEARCHING

TBD

STOP MOTION

TBD

TECHNOLOGICAL SUBLIME: See NEW TECHNOLOGIES.

DYSTOPIA / UTOPIA

Radium Age DYSTOPIA / UTOPIA fiction from this year includes…

BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN

TBD

BRAVE NEW WORLD

Berenice V. Dell’s The Silent Voice. A very long utopian romance set in the fortieth century. The book explores a world where North America has become an archipelago. Dell constructs a highly ideological and controversial conflict between two societies:The South: Ruled by “mongrel” women (a term used to describe those who have interbred with other races).The West: A male-centric, “Aryan” technocracy that claims to represent “True America”. The narrative heavily focuses on these contrasts, exploring extreme sex-role reversals and racial themes framed by the author’s ideological views on society, feminism, and culture. “Sex-role reversal in the far future.” – Sargent.

Erle Cox’s Out of the Silence (1925). Having stumbled upon the subterranean repository of a long-vanished, fantastically advanced civilization, Alan Dundas awakens a beautiful woman from a state of suspended animation. Earani’s amazing intelligence and abilities are the end result of her civilization’s worldwide eugenics program, which she intends to put back into practice, as soon as she conquers the planet. “This world of yours is full of pain and misery… Is any price too great that buys a perfect and wholesome humanity?” Earani demands of Australia’s prime minister. “You hold that to carry out my mission would be a crime. I hold that to fail in doing so would be a crime.” (Alan, who falls in love with Earani, is undisturbed by her plan to wipe out the “colored races” and inferior whites; one is not sure what the author himself thinks about this subject.) David Bowie’s synopsis: “Here she comes, here she comes again/The same old painted lady/From the brow of the superbrain/She’ll scratch this world to pieces/As she comes on like a friend.”

DIRTY OLD TOWN

Hugo Bettauer’s Die Stadt ohne Juden [“The City without Jews”]. Jews expelled from Vienna by antisemites are eventually recalled to restore the city’s prosperity. By a Jewish author. It was translated into several languages, and sold over a quarter of a million copies. Shortly after the premiere of the film adaptation, Bettauer was murdered by Otto Rothstock, a former member of the Nazi Party, who was lionized by the antisemitic Austrian masses and was released less than two years later after having been committed to a psychiatric institution.

FROM EACH ACCORDING TO HIS ABILITIES

Marietta Shaginyan’s Лори Лэн, металлист (Lori Len, metallist) [translated as “Laurie Lane, Metalworker”]. Sequel to Mess-Mend: Yankees in Petrograd (see 1924). Wikipedia erroneously gives the date for this one as 1924.

GEOMETRICAL UTOPIA: See FAR-OUT MATHEMATICS / FOURTH DIMENSION.

STATE BRUTALITY

TBD

FAR-OUT MATHEMATICS / FOURTH DIMENSION

Radium Age FAR-OUT MATHEMATICS / FOURTH DIMENSION fiction from this year includes…

GEOMETRICAL UTOPIA

TBD

MATHEMATICAL SUBLIME

TBD

NON-EUCLIDEAN GEOMETRY

TBD

QUANTUM SUBLIME: See SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH.

STOP MOTION: See DISENCHANTMENT / UNSEEN FORCES.

FUTURE WAR

Radium Age FUTURE WAR fiction from this year includes…

BITE THE BULLET

TBD

DEATH FROM ABOVE

TBD

WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

Vsevolod Ivanov and Viktor Shklovsky’s Iprit (Mustard Gas). Issued serially in nine parts. A satirical detective/sf novel. Ivanov (1895–1963) and Shklovsky (1893–1984) both had connections to the literary group the Serapion Brothers, who upheld the creed that art must be independent of political ideology. Iprit is a parody of Soviet science fiction, involving a deadly new gas designed for use in a future world war. Ivanov and Shklovsky both later capitulated to the Soviet demands of realistic art. Shklovsky was a Russian and Soviet literary theorist, critic, writer, and pamphleteer. He is one of the major figures associated with Russian formalism. Note that his Theory of Prose came out the same year as this book!

NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Radium Age NEW TECHNOLOGIES fiction from this year includes…

CYBORG MANIFESTO: See DEHUMANIZATON.

PLANES, TRAINS, AND AUTOMOBILES

William Wallace Cook’s Around the World in Eighty Hours. A race around the world in futuristic space-going aircraft.

TECHNOLOGICAL SUBLIME

Otto Willi Gail’s Der Schuss ins All. Gail’s first SF novel, a fictional treatment of mankind’s first step into space. The story was translated into English by Francis Currier and published as “The Shot into Infinity” in Hugo Gernsback’s SCIENCE WONDER QUARTERLY, Fall 1929.

THINGS ARE IN THE SADDLE

TBD

SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH

Radium Age SCIENTIFIC BREAKTHROUGH fiction from this year includes…

CHROMATIC SUBLIME: See DISENCHANTMENT / UNSEEN FORCES.

MICROSCOPIC SUBLIME

TBD

OVERREACH

Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog (1925). A comedic thriller that mostly takes place inside a Moscow apartment. Professor Filipp Filippovich Preobrazhensky and his assistant, Dr. Bormenthal, implant the sexual organs and pituitary gland of an evil man into Sharik, a well-behaved dog. The scientists believe that they are imposing a progressive scientific system upon the Russian people; indeed, the resulting creature, a lout who calls himself “Sharikov” — succeeds all too easily in Soviet society. (Is Bulgakov’s story a satire on Communist attempts to create a New Soviet man? No doubt. But it’s also an homage to H.G. Wells’s The Island of Dr. Moreau.) How will Dr. Bormenthal deal with the problematic Sharikov? Firmly. Fun fact: Written in 1925, the book was considered critical of the Soviet state — so until after the fall of the USSR, it circulated in samizdat only.
Karel Čapek’s The Makropoulos Secret (performed 1922: 1922; unauthorized translation by Randal C Burrell in novel format as The Makropoulos Secret 1925; authorized trans by Paul Selver of revised text titled The Macropoulos Secret 1927). Cloaks in comic routines the terrifying story of the alluring, world-weary, 300-year-old protagonist, the secret of her longevity, and her ambivalently conceived death. The work is most familiar as the basis of a 1926 opera by Leoš Janáček. Instead of a utopian blessing, the play frames immortality as a curse that drains life of purpose and joy.

J.C. Snaith’s Thus Far. “Murder mystery against a background of biological experimentation… The book must have impressed Stanley G. Weinbaum, two of whose stories seem strongly indebted to it.” – Bleiler.
Greye La Spina’s “The Remorse of Professor Panebianco.” In which a mad scientist sacrifices the woman who loves him for his ambition in a lethal experiment. Think Shelley’s Frankenstein in reverse: instead of discovering the secret to bringing the dead back to life only to abandon it, the horror is derived from the sacrifice of love in service of power.

Mikhail Bulgakov’s satirical science fiction adventure The Fatal Eggs. In a near-future (or perhaps alternate-history) Moscow, the zoologist Vladimir Ipat’evich Persikov discovers a ray that causes frogs and other organisms to mature and reproduce at a rapid rate. At the same time, however, a disease wipes out all of Soviet Russia’s domesticated poultry. Persikov’s equipment is confiscated by the authorities, and thousands of chicken eggs are sent to his laboratory… so that the ray can be used to regenerate the country’s chicken population overnight. Unfortunately, a mixup causes snake and crocodile eggs, instead of chicken eggs, to be treated with the growth ray. Catastrophe! Is the novel a satire — cf. Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita — of the leadership of Soviet Russia? Certainly, some critics at the time suspected as much. However, the novel (novella, really) is squarely in the tradition of western science fiction — from Frankenstein to H.G. Wells’s The Food of the Gods, say — which warns arrogant scientists not to meddle too deeply in nature’s mysteries.

1965 Czech poster for the movie The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin

Alexei Tolstoy’s Giperboloid inzhenera Garin (1925-1926; 1933; rev 1939; trans 1936 as The Death Box; rev edition trans 1955 as The Garin Death Ray). yotr Garin, a brilliant but eccentric and unscrupulous Russian engineer, invents the “hyperboloid,” a heat ray capable of destroying ships and slicing through steel using hyperbolic mirrors. After assassins target him and his laboratory is compromised, Garin flees across Europe to hide his invention. He ultimately takes over a decadently capitalist America using the threat of his weapon, funding a massive industrial empire. Garin’s ultimate goal is not just to defeat his rivals, but to subjugate the masses by performing a “little operation” on their brains. Another good example of the subgenre known as the “krasnyi detektiv” [“Red Detective Story”]: stories of adventures abroad often involving assistance to world revolutionary movements, and often with a fantastic element such as a new weapon. Vladimir Nabokov considered it Tolstoy’s finest fictional work. The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin is a black-and-white 1965 Soviet science fiction film based on Aleksey Tolstoy’s novel of the same name
Alexander Beliaev’s Golova professora Douela [“Professor Dowell’s Head”] (1925; exp 1938). Melodrama involving a severed head attached to a new body. It follows Dr. Kern, who illegally revives the disembodied, living head of his brilliant mentor, Professor Dowell. Kern uses the severed head for scientific experiments and to further his own ambitious career. The most prominent writer of pre-World War Two sf in Russia was Beliaev, author of more than 60 books. His Chelovek-amfibia (1928; The Amphibian), Golova professora Douela [“Professor Dowell’s Head”] and Ariel (1941) are known to all Soviet schoolchildren, being constantly reprinted. Most of his novels are set in capitalist countries whose social and scientific mores are fiercely criticized. The “Red Detective Story” theme of world revolution virtually disappears in Beliaev, doubtless as a consequence of Trotsky’s disgrace and exile in 1927.

Maurice Renard and Albert Jean’s Le Singe (curiously translated as Blind Circle, 1928). The author’s most detective-like sf narrative — perhaps patterned on Poe’s “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” First appeared in feuilleton format (in 62 episodes) in a Parisian pulp journal. Its plot concerns a police investigation of the mysterious presence of multiple dead bodies — all of the same person, a certain Richard Cirugue. After innummerable twists and turns in the narrative, the mystery is finally solved: Richard is actually still alive. Using his recent discovery of an electrolysis procedure to duplicate (but not animate) animal and human tissue, he had fabricated lifeless clones of himself and scattered them around Paris as a publicity stunt to attract investment capital for his scientific research. In an even more bizarre twist, Richard subsequently dies (for real) but his spirit manages to survive and ultimately inhabits the cloned body of his brother, whose wife he lusts after.

QUANTUM SUBLIME

TBD

UNKNOWABLE ALIENS / SINGULARITY

Radium Age UNKNOWABLE ALIENS / SINGULARITY fiction from this year includes…

ALIEN INVASION

J. Schlossel’s “Invaders from Outside” (Weird Tales). Schlossel was a pioneer contributor of space opera to the pulp magazines, ahead of Edmond Hamilton and E E Smith. He published just six stories. His first, “Invaders from Outside,” is set aeons hence in the solar system’s past when Earth carried only primitive life but where intelligent life exists on Earth’s Moon, Mars several of the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn plus a fifth planet between Mars and Jupiter which at the end of the story is destroyed and forms the asteroid belt. This life forms a confederation which is benign but which has to do battle with a violent parasitic alien planet that enters the solar system. Ashley says Schlossel is ignored today although his work in the twenties showed considerable originality. Serialized at HILOBROW.

CYBORG MANIFESTO: See DEHUMANIZATION.

HOMO SUPERIOR

TBD

I IS AN OTHER

TBD

IS THERE LIFE ON MARS: See COSMIC AWE.

POST-HUMANITY:

TBD

SCARY MONSTERS (AND SUPER CREEPS)

TBD

WATCHERS

TBD

OTHER FICTION

Some proto-sf ideas and obsessions that don’t fit easily into our categories include: time travel / viewing | gender reassignment | dinosaurs still live (unless we can connect this to “deep time”) | hollow earth | thought control via parasite | tinkering with / eradicating memories | silly inventions | the colonization [as opposed to merely visiting] of other planets | future politics. Also in the OTHER FICTION section, for the moment, I am lumping: Radium Age proto-sf that resists categorization, or which I haven’t read, or which I’m not even sure should be considered “science fiction” (I’m looking at you, “lost race” adventures).

Lady Dorothy Mills’s The Dark Gods. Probably not SF, set in Africa. See this list of Pre-1950 Utopias and Science Fiction by Women.
Lenore Chaney’s “White Man’s Madness” (January 1925) in Weird Tales. See this list of Pre-1950 Utopias and Science Fiction by Women.
G.K. Chesterton’s Tales of the Long Bow, tall tales of literalized figures of speech (the Thames, thanks to industrial pollution, is easily set on fire) which culminate in a near-future English revolution.
Gilbert Collins’s The Starkenden Quest (1925). An underground civilization is located somewhere north of Khmer, whose primordial dwarf inhabitants (they are not throwbacks, as evolution seems to have passed them by) are enthralled by an immortal blonde priestess. A great flood ends the tale.

Gastão Cruls’s A Amazônia misteriosa (1925; trans J T W Sadler as The Mysterious Amazonia. An adventure novel featuring a tribe of warrior women (descended from the Incas) and a German scientist who performs Moreau-like experiments on Indians.
Ivan Narodny’s The Skygirl, A Mimodrama. At its core, the play explores a utopian vision of life on Earth and in outer space 50,000 years in the future. It uses a mimodrama format to depict the evolution of humanity and the cosmos, projecting what advanced alien civilizations and the distant future of mankind might look like.
Berenice V. Dell’s The Silent Voice. See this list of Pre-1950 Utopias and Science Fiction by Women.
V. Torlesse Murray’s The Rule of the Beasts. See this list of Pre-1950 Utopias and Science Fiction by Women.
Salvador de Madriaga’s The Sacred Giraffe. Political satire in which black women don’t believe white people existed or that men ever ruled.

Publication of the Union Miniere du Haut Katanga, Brüssel, ca. 1925.

ALSO: Heisenberg, Bohr, and Jordan develop quantum mechanics for atoms. Millikan discovers cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere. Cecilia Payne’s PhD thesis provides spectral evidence that stars are composed almost entirely of hydrogen with helium, contrary to scientific consensus at the time. Burtt’s The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science is published. Baird successfully transmits the first television pictures. Scopes goes on trial for violating Tennessee law that prohibits the teaching of evolution. Hitler reorganizes Nazi Party and publishes Mein Kampf. Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Kafka’s The Trial (posthumously), Stein’s The Making of Americans. The New Yorker begins to appear. Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, Lloyd’s The Freshman. The Charleston becomes a fashionable dance; crossword puzzles come into vogue.

The 1925 adaptation of Conan Doyle’s *The Lost World* was one of the earliest examples of stop-motion animation.

In 1925, a New York Times article ran the headline, “New Radium Disease Found; Has Killed 5.” The new disease was called, “radium necrosis,” a polite term for the painful process of one’s jaw disintegrating and developing tumors. The five killed by this so-called “new radium disease” were a handful of the girls who were instructed to put radium in their mouths by way of paintbrush. “Trust in radium unjustified,” the article sources from a New York doctor. “Cancer called incurable.”

***

RADIUM AGE: 1925

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