WHEN THE SUN WENT OUT (6)
By:
August 6, 2023
Leslie Silberberg, who wrote as Leslie F. Stone, was one of the first women sf pulp writers. She often worked with Hugo Gernsback in Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories. Gernsback published her 1929 story “When the Sun Went Out” as a chapbook. HiLoBooks is pleased to serialize it here for HILOBROW’s readers.
ALL INSTALLMENTS: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7.
LAST HOURS
Kuila repaired to the room given him—identical to all other living rooms in Central City. In measurement the room was fifteen by fifteen and twelve feet high. At first glance the walls were a buff color, but after a few moments in the room under the glow of the light that appeared to emanate from the walls themselves it was evident that they were changing color. A pink flush was creeping over them, a pink that deepened to a rose to be saved from red by the appearance of another hue, a delicate blue, that, from dark blue, became a light green and so through the spectrum of colors. Ages ago Man had discovered the effects of color upon his nervous system and knew that the monotony of any one shade would eventually drive him mad. Therefore, as one by one the colors of Nature disappeared around him, he set about producing a riot of color about him. Everything he made was colored with a pigment which in the light brought out the seven colors and all the delicate shades between them. Even clothes had the faculty to change minutely.
In shape the room was square, and yet the corners were built with a curve that gave the room a graceful line. Its furnishings were of the simplest. There were low couches padded with a soft felt-like material, and like the walls, it changed color continually. These couches, fashioned so as to give perfect ease to the body, were shaped to its curves and angularities, and were used both as beds as well as for relaxation, serving for the awkward chair of the ancient. Several low tables, hardly a foot high, served as desks or to hold a few simple though colorful ornaments.
One wall of the room was given almost entirely over to a large mirror-like surface that gave no reflection. But by touching a small lever on its side it gave the onlooker all the news of the world—like the newsreel of old, by which ages ago one might sit back and watch the progress of the world. A simple attachment gave forth sound so that music, lectures and various sound arrangements came to the listener. Now men seldom used this medium, for, in a world that comprised only two cities and a few outposts, there was little news to broadcast besides that which went by word of mouth or could be announced in the city streets and auditoriums.
Adjoining the single room was a small bathroom with all its necessary features, and on the far side of the room was a small closet. Herein were three faucets and a cupboard. One faucet gave water, and the other two faucets each emitted a liquid food that was the mainstay of the Earth’s thousands. Once man ate the flesh of animals, but animals, as well as leaves, fruits and roots of grasses and vegetation had passed away. Man had discovered thereafter that the food products of trees, and later of minerals, were even more highly efficient, and though Man lost taste of sense he gained a better store of body energy. The machinery that produced the tasteless liquids also brought forth cubes of highly concentrated food that was preserved in this manner for indefinite periods. And, as one cube a day together with a measure of liquid is sufficient for the human, it was possible to carry several months’ supply on one’s person without taking up much space. Consequently the pleasure of eating had been lost, but the tripled efficiency of the food overcame that loss.
Kuila Rei drew a glass of the colorless liquid that was hot to the taste; and then threw himself on a couch. He did not sleep immediately, dreaming rather ofthe girl he hadjustleft. Soon, however, sleep claimed him. He was awakened by a metallic voice near at hand, coming from a small instrument on one of the nearby tables, that informed him that the hour of meeting in the Auditorium was at hand.
He found Ramo Rei at the place they had named for their tryst, and together the pair took their places on the benches arranged to seat the several thousand the building was housing. They were addressed by an official who spoke of what the machines had been doing in the bowels of the Earth; of what they would find in their new home; of what would be the duty of every man and woman. It was not a beautiful prospect he painted for them, but then there was no reason to paint the picture any brighter than it was. He explained that everyone was to carry on the type of work that he was accustomed to atop the Earth, and for those whose type of employment would be of no use under the Earth’s crust, new work should be found.
Ramo and Kuila turned to each other with a question. What could they, the astronomers, do now? It would take years before shafts could be dug through the earth back to the summits of the mountains whereon stood the observatories. Well, whatever might come, it was certain that the twain would stick together.
They went into a conservatory and strolled there together for hours. Then, when the hour of dawn was again at hand, they repaired to the roof. Two more days passed in the same manner, and on the third day word was noised about that the last hour was at hand. The Sun was in its death throes.
The two went to their place at the parapet. The crowds were silent now, holding their breath. Gradually the sky was becoming gray, but a sickly gray, watery and pale. Nothing was distinct in the poor light. Eyes strained to catch the first glow of the single flame of light, and a volume of sound went up when at last it appeared.
Its light was very faint, so faint that it was no brighter than the glow of a distant star. Then suddenly it all changed. It grew brighter and brighter. That streak of red growing brighter, still brighter. It suddenly looked as if the whole star was aflame again. Who said the Sun was dying? A cry went up from the roof tops. The multitude could feel the warmth from that bright fire.
Brighter, ever brighter, a single flame pushed out, reaching out, growing, brighter and brighter. Some one screamed. “That flame … the Sun is coming to consume us! Hail O Sun, take us to your heart, devour us in your last burst of glory!”
The flame, however, appeared to have spent itself, it was dwindling once more. The Sun was dying. That burst of light had been the Sun’s last burst of glory. Low murmurings arose from the crowds, someone commenced to sing a dirge and all took it up as they watched the flame growing smaller, smaller. Then the light was gone. Only a faint grayness persisted, but that too died. Several minutes more and the darkness gathered in, a darkness that was never to be dispelled again.
RADIUM AGE PROTO-SF: “Radium Age” is Josh Glenn’s name for the nascent sf genre’s c. 1900–1935 era, a period which saw the discovery of radioactivity, i.e., the revelation that matter itself is constantly in movement — a fitting metaphor for the first decades of the 20th century, during which old scientific, religious, political, and social certainties were shattered. More info here.
SERIALIZED BY HILOBOOKS: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail (and “As Easy as A.B.C.”) | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt | H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook | Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins | William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land | J.D. Beresford’s Goslings | E.V. Odle’s The Clockwork Man | Cicely Hamilton’s Theodore Savage | Muriel Jaeger’s The Man With Six Senses | Jack London’s “The Red One” | Philip Francis Nowlan’s Armageddon 2419 A.D. | Homer Eon Flint’s The Devolutionist | W.E.B. DuBois’s “The Comet” | Edgar Rice Burroughs’s The Moon Men | Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland | Sax Rohmer’s “The Zayat Kiss” | Eimar O’Duffy’s King Goshawk and the Birds | Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Lost Prince | Morley Roberts’s The Fugitives | Helen MacInnes’s The Unconquerable | Geoffrey Household’s Watcher in the Shadows | William Haggard’s The High Wire | Hammond Innes’s Air Bridge | James Branch Cabell’s Jurgen | John Buchan’s “No Man’s Land” | John Russell’s “The Fourth Man” | E.M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” | John Buchan’s Huntingtower | Arthur Conan Doyle’s When the World Screamed | Victor Bridges’ A Rogue By Compulsion | Jack London’s The Iron Heel | H. De Vere Stacpoole’s The Man Who Lost Himself | P.G. Wodehouse’s Leave It to Psmith | Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” | Houdini and Lovecraft’s “Imprisoned with the Pharaohs” | Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Sussex Vampire” | Francis Stevens’s “Friend Island” | George C. Wallis’s “The Last Days of Earth” | Frank L. Pollock’s “Finis” | A. Merritt’s The Moon Pool | E. Nesbit’s “The Third Drug” | George Allan England’s “The Thing from — ‘Outside'” | Booth Tarkington’s “The Veiled Feminists of Atlantis” | H.G. Wells’s “The Land Ironclads” | J.D. Beresford’s The Hampdenshire Wonder | Valery Bryusov’s “The Republic of the Southern Cross” | Algernon Blackwood’s “A Victim of Higher Space” | A. Merritt’s “The People of the Pit” | Max Brand’s The Untamed | Julian Huxley’s “The Tissue-Culture King” | Clare Winger Harris’s “A Runaway World” | Francis Stevens’s “Thomas Dunbar” | George Gurdjieff’s “Beelzebub’s Tales” | Robert W. Chambers’s “The Harbor-Master”.