Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "the Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (71 page)

Burroughs now began to worry about his image with the readers. He wrote Davis on September 19, 1914, wondering if
The Girl from Farris'
should not be run elsewhere, since the ALL-STORY CAVALIER WEEKLY readership had an antipathy to "smut." This again raises suspicions as to Burroughs' original motive in writing the story, which if not Machiavellian was at the very least capricious, in the sense that it seemed intended to intimidate Davis.

Davis, in accepting a sequel to
The Mad King
, titled
Barney of Custer
, on November 11, 1914, asked for a rewrite. Burroughs agreed, but requested a five-hundred-dollar advance on November 13, which was sent him. Burroughs always claimed to read very little fiction, but on November 14 he wrote to Davis highly praising E. Phillips Oppenheim's
Curious Quest of Mr. Ernest Bliss
.

As the magazine's first fantasy for 1915, Davis was able again to present Burroughs in his most effective format, with a sequel to
The Eternal Lover
, titled
Sweethearts Primeval
, a four-part novel appearing January 23 to February 13. When Victoria Custer disappears into the jungle on Tarzan's estate with Nu, the primitive man from one hundred thousand years past, they take refuge in a cave and are rendered unconscious by an earthquake. Victoria regains her senses, to find herself in the body of a prehistoric girl, with Nu as her mate. A series of thrilling adventures terminates where the story began, with Nu going out to hunt the sabertooth tiger, which will lead to his being trapped in a cave by an earthquake. Victoria, recovering after a faint at Tarzan's ranch, is told that all the adventures have passed through her mind in but three minutes. She refuses to believe it was only a phantasm and travels back to the site of the cave, where she finds "the crumbling skeleton of a large man. By its side rested a broken, stone-tipped spear, and there was a stone knife and a stone ax as well." A little beyond was "the grinning skull of a great cat, its upper jaw armed with two mighty, eighteen-inch, curved fangs."

Pellucidar
, the sequel to
At the Earth's Core
, was purchased January 20, 1915, and $1,522 was paid for its 60,900 words. The preciseness of the word count was due to Burroughs. He incessantly warred with Davis over even a few hundred words, and in this respect his letters read a great deal like Jack London's, with the exception that London was getting three times the rate of Burroughs, and a few hundred words could add up to a substantial sum.

Aggravated by these petty squabbles, Bob Davis quipped in his letter of September 29, 1914: "Believe me, Burroughs, you are one hell of a howler."

Burroughs was far more ingenious and imaginative than he has been given credit for. His stories arc not merely transposals to a primitive terrain to provide a landscape for battles with men and beasts. In Pellucidar, the dominant race are the Mahars, hideous reptiles who communicate telepathically through the fourth dimension and possess written records. Despite the fact that it is at the earth's center, Pellucidar has far greater land area than the surface, because the seas are smaller. The central "sun" has a satellite which tantalizingly offers evidences of water and vegetation. This satellite perpetually keeps a specified area in a twilight gloom, which causes it to be called "The Land of the Awful Shadow." With the aid of David Innes and Abner Perry, the savage tribes of Pellucidar are united and drive the Mahars from their territory. Guns and cannon are introduced, railroads built, the written word taught, and David Innes and his "mate," Dian the Beautiful, settle down to a satisfying life in their land of the central sun.

THE QUANTITIES of material demanded by the weekly schedule of what had been THE ALL-STORY MAGAZINE reduced the ratio of science fiction to the total fiction content of the publication during 1915. The science-fiction wordage of the fifty-two issues of 1915 did not greatly exceed that of the twelve issues of 1913. It was evident that even Burroughs, at his most prolific, could not have produced enough wordage to sustain sales for a
weekly
on the basis of his following alone. Issues without any fantasy content were frequent, and the four consecutive issues with August dating carried nothing in the vein of fantasy. By contrast, not a single 1913 issue had appeared without science fiction.

If there was a deliberate, planned reduction of the percentage of fantasy wordage in the contents, it was not a wise move, for the change in the title from ALL-STORY-CAVALIER WEEKLY to ALL-STORY WEEKLY with the issue of May 15, 1915, could have been interpreted as a sign of weakness, even though the simplified title was undoubtedly better. While Davis knew that the stories of Burroughs and England made significant differences in his circulation and reader response, was he actually aware of the differences between their type of scientific romance and standard science fiction?

There was one indication, at least, that he might be. On June 24, 1914, Bob Davis had bought from Charles Billings Stilson, a Rochester, New York, author, a fifty-nine-thousand-word novel titled
Polaris
for four hundred dollars. Why he held it for a year and a half, or nearly eighty issues, before publishing it can only be surmised. Perhaps the combination with THE CAVALIER had provided an excessive backlog of stories to be worked off. Perhaps the story on second reading raised certain doubts.
Polaris
was obviously directly inspired by
Tarzan of the Apes
, and its later situations were suggestive of Burroughs' Mars series.

Polaris is a man who has been raised in Antarctica and has never come in contact with any human being other than his father. He is in tune with his environment and possesses herculean strength and extraordinary intelligence. Upon the death of his father he sets north with a sledge and seven huskies. He rescues a girl who has been cast away on the antarctic shore, and on his trek across the icy wastes, kills great white bears with nothing more than his knife (the author was unaware that there are no bears at the South Pole, but alert readers did call the fact to his attention). Eventually they arrive in a valley, heated by a circle of volcanoes, in which an ancient Greek colony still survives. The population is kept under control by voluntary euthanasia. His adventures there were in keeping with Burroughs' Martian prototypes.

Polaris
was published as
Polaris of the Snows
in three issues of ALL-STORY WEEKLY, December 18, 1915-January 1, 1916. It was a milestone in the development of the scientific romance, because it obviously was entirely influenced by Edgar Rice Burroughs. It helped create the trend toward the scientific romance, which at times during the next twenty years would be the most popular form of science fiction.

It was evident that there was room for more than one author in the Burroughs vein. It was also evident that science fiction, which too closely predicted scientific or sociological developments, was becoming frightening rather than Utopian. The greatest war in the history of mankind was in progress in Europe, and as the weapons of science, such as the submarine, zeppelin, airplane, machine gun, and later poison gas and tanks, played a nightmarish role in the conflict. The widely held belief that science would cure all the ills of mankind was shattered. Preceding the entry of the United States into the conflict, the Munsey magazines followed an official policy of limiting war stories in their pages. They became the magazines of escape. The scientific romances of Edgar Rice Burroughs, George Allan England, and Charles B. Stilson ideally fitted this policy, though they were still a long way from replacing traditional science fiction or even significant science fiction. The year 1915 had seen a number of unusual stories. Perley Poore Sheehan had come through with a four-part novel,
Judith of Babylon
(February 6-27), that was a remarkable anticipation of the use of propaganda, public relations, religion, and hypnotism to gain control of the masses. In that story, New York City is converted to the worship of Baal, and a second Babylon comes into being, whose existence threatens the nation.

The concept of Lilliputian man was modernized in
Terror Island
(July 3, 1915) by Alex Shell Briscoe and might have been dropped into a magazine thirty years later, with its tiny humans fighting giant insects, and seemed acceptable.

J. U. Giesy had embarked on the first of a series of humorous invention stories, better handled than most, with a story submitted as
Bumb and the Bomb
and published as
The Indigestible Dog Biscuits
in the same issue as
Terror Island
. It told of a device that explodes gunpowder without wires or fuses.

George Allan England had returned with
The Fatal Gift
(September 4-25), a four-part novel of the effort to impart to a woman who has every other mental and physical attribute, supreme facial beauty. Though he had created a situation in which there were powerful human and moral consequences to explore, England literally permitted the story to degenerate into a squabble and sword fight, throwing away excellent serious possibilities.

A far more remarkable and historically important work of his was the short story
The Tenth Question
(December 18). A doctor is lured to the home of a mad scientist who has a grudge against surgeons, since one did him a grievous wrong through a diagnostic error. The doctor is locked in a cage and told he will be given his freedom only if he can guess what the scientist is thinking of and in the process asking not more than ten questions. If he succeeds, he will go free. If he fails, he will be killed. He succeeds in guessing that the thought in the mind of his captor is the symbol "zero," and is freed, but the scientist still tries to kill him, and is himself killed.

There was an unexpected "sequel."

After the death of Stanley G. Weinbaum, outstanding science-fiction writer of the 1930's, an unpublished short story was found among his effects, which was printed in the December, 1936, issue of THRILLING WONDER STORIES as
The Brink of Infinity
. It was about a mathematician lured to the home of a madman, who imprisoned him and said he would free him only if with the use of only ten questions he could determine the "mathematical quantity" he had in mind. If he failed, he would be killed, because an incompetent mathematician had been responsible for crippling his captor through an erroneous calculation. The first guess the mathematician makes is "zero," but when that proves wrong, he finally deduces it is "infinity minus itself and is freed, but the madman tries to kill him and is in turn killed.

It seems quite impossible that Weinbaum got the idea from any other source than England. But he never offered it for sale, and its publication posthumously was by chance. The most ironic thing concerning it is that, despite its derivation, it is a minor masterpiece.

The foregoing, together with a now-renowned cloak-and-dagger thriller titled
The Thirty-Nine Steps
, by John Buchan, published as a two-parter in the June 5 and 12 issues were well received, but it was
Polaris of the Snows
that best suited the mood of the readers.

The author whose method and character were Stilson's model, Edgar Rice Burroughs, had
The Son of Tarzan
, a six-part novel, running concurrently with
Polaris
(December 4, 1915-January 8, 1916). Korak, Tarzan's son, now a teen-ager, inherits the great strength and jungle instincts of his father. A series of circumstances causes him to revert to the primitive with Akut, a great ape who once fought by his father's side. He grows to manhood, achieves Tarzan's physical prowess and aptitude with the animals, and finally marries an "Arab" girl who is actually the missing daughter of a French officer.

Sensing that even the artist P. Monahan had completely caught the mood of the Polaris story, Charles B. Stilson wrote a letter from 30 Exchange Street, Rochester, New York, which appeared in the January 22, 1916, issue, complimenting: "The Polaris from Mr. Monahan's brushes is so true to the Polaris I have seen in my imagination that the likeness actually startled me when 1 first saw it at the magazine stand. I should like Mr. Monahan to know that."

The very issue publishing that letter included the last installment of a four-part novel by Victor Rousseau, which had begun in the January 1, 1916, issue,
The Sea Demons
, which closely fitted the new trend. A horde of invisible deep-sea men invade the land areas of England behind the weapon of deadly quantities of hydrogen gas. Their motivation is hunger. The beautiful, almost translucent queen of the invaders is captured, and her mating instinct is aroused by the presence of Donald, the hero of the story. She issues a strange whistle which causes the sea men to "swarm" back to the sea. The rest of the race is sterile without her, and by not mating at her appointed time she quickly ages and dies, and with her perishes the monstrous horde.

Both Charles B. Stilson, primarily a writer of western and adventure stories, and Victor Rousseau, whose last name was Emanual, were destined to become highly popular writers of the scientific romances in future issues of the Munsey magazines. Rousseau had the greater literary pretentions of the two. Born in London in 1879 of a Jewish father and French mother, the thought of being half Jewish tormented him most of his life, and he converted to Catholicism after having spent several years in South Africa, where he received his first journalistic training. He came to the United States and secured an editorial position on a magazine. "T was delighted when 1 found myself able to crash ALL-STORY and ARGOSY through the kindly interest of the god-father of so many writers in this country, that revered and almost legendary character, Bob Davis," he wrote in an autobiographical sketch published in 1931.

Victor Rousseau reached the high point in his literary career with the serialization of his novel
The Messiah of the Cylinder
in the June-September, 1917, issues of EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE. The novel was Rousseau's version of
When the Sleeper Wakes
(1899), by H. G. Wells, and many of the things that Wells lightly touches on in his world of the future, where a man in suspended animation for hundreds of years arises to find himself near owner of the world, are explored in more personal terms by Rousseau.