Published in 1968, Sam Moskowitz's anthology Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911 opens with an essay titled "A History Of Science Fiction In The Popular Magazines, 1891-1911", after which it presents 26 stories from the "gaslight era", each with an introduction by Moskowitz describing the author and the periodical in which the story appeared in. The periodicals featuring these British and American short stories include The Strand Magazine, The Idler, Pearsons Magazine, Everybody’s Magazine, The Argosy, The Metropolitan Magazine, The New Broadway Magazine, The Red Book Magazine, The Blue Book Magazine, Hamptons Magazine, The Black Cat and The Ludgate Monthly. The stories included (and their science-fictional focus) are as follows:
- Earthquake: "The Thames Valley Catastrophe", Grant Allen (1897)
- Smog Asphyxiation: "The Doom Of London", Robert Barr (1892)
- Power Outage: "A Corner In Lightning", George Griffith (1898)
- NYC Sinks: "The Tilting Island", Thomas J. Vivian And Grena J. Bennett (1909)
- Earth Incinerated: "Finis", Frank Lillie Pollack (1906)
- Transatlantic Tube: "An Express Of The Future", Jules Verne (Michael Verne) (1895)
- Dematerialization Powers: "The Ray Of Displacement", Harriet Prescott Spofford (1903)
- Freezing Ray: "Congealing The Ice Trust", Capt. H. G. Bishop (1907)
- Ghost Train: "Lord Beden’s Motor", J. B. Harris-Burland (1901)
- Sewer Monster: "The Death-Trap", George Daulton (1908)
- Giant Flying Snake: "The Air Serpent", Will A. Page (1911)
- Dinosaur, Hollow Earth and Brain Transplant: "The Monster Of Lake Lametrie", Wardon Allan Curtis (1899)
- Mushroom People: "The Voice In The Night", William Hope Hodgson (1907)
- Tanks vs Cavalry: "The Land Ironclads", H. G. Wells (1904)
- Japan Invades America: "The Dam", Hugh S. Johnson (1911)
- Tactics Against Submarines: "Submarined", Walter Wood (1905)
- Dangling Carnivorous Vines: "The Purple Terror", Fred M. White (1899)
- Giant Pitcher Plant: "Professor Jonkin’s Cannibal Plant", Howard R. Garis (1905)
- Auto-Balancing Hat: "An Experiment In Gyro-Hats", Ellis Parker Butler (1910)
- Genetically-Engineered Ants: "The Hybrid Hyperborean Ant", Roy L. McCardell (1910)
- Projected Gas Weapon: "Where The Air Quivered", L. T. Meade And Robert Eustace (1898)
- Microscopic Blood Clues: "In Re State Vs. Forbes", Warren Earle (1906)
- Immortality Serum: "Old Doctor Rutherford", D. F. Hannigan (1891)
- Radioactive Cures: "Itself", Edgar Mayhew Bacon (1907)
- Dystopic Arranged Marriage: "Citizen 504", Charles H. Palmer (1896)
- Memory Manipulation: "The Mansion Of Forgetfulness", Don Mark Lemon (1907)
 |
| "The Purple Terror", The Strand Magazine, September, 1899, Art: Fred M. White |
Below are synopses of each of these stories.
 |
| "The Thames Valley Catastrophe", The Strand Magazine, December, 1897 |
A wave of lava erupts out of a volcanic fissure in the Thames Valley. The speaker, a bicyclist, spots the lava wave and flees, just barely able to keep ahead of the lava front. During his flight he tries to warn the people lying in the path of the lava wave but they do not believe his warnings (and are soon incinerated). In the end, London is completely destroyed, but not before the bicyclist successfully reaches his family and helps them escape to the highlands.
Grant Allen was a British-Canadian writer who also published under the name "J. Arbuthnot Wilson" and "Cecil Power". Earlier stories include "Pausodyne" (1881, about a chemist who discovers a drug that puts him into suspended animation in 1750 to awaken in 1881), and "The Child of Phalanstery" (1884, a story of an idyllic civilization with the harsh code of forcing a mother to destroy a child that has been born imperfect). His novel The British Barbarians (1895) was a satire about a man from the twenty-fifth century who visits the England of 1895.
THE DOOM OF LONDON by Robert Barr, The Idler, November, 1892
Narrated from the mid-20th century, the speaker describes how a week's worth of heavy smog and lack of wind half a century in the past had caused a sudden massacre in London. Some time prior to this event, the speaker had acquired an oxygen-generating machine for his office, given to him by a peddler. When the citizens of London are suddenly stricken down by carbon monoxide poisoning, the speaker is able to use the oxygen machine to make his way through the corpse-littered streets to the train station. As the train departs the region (carrying mostly dead bodies), the air quality improves. Before the out-of-control train crashes to a stop, the speaker leaps off, and is one of the only survivors of the disaster.
A friend of both Rudyard Kipling and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Barr (born in Glasgow, employed in Detroit and London) helped start The Idler in 1892. Barr popularized a form of science fiction as civic criticism, a concept soon picked up by other writers, including Cutcliffe Hyne, Grant Allen and Fred M. White (who wrote a series of six disasters for London in Pearson’s Magazine during 1903 and 1904). Some of Barr's notable other stories include "The Fear of It" (The Idler, May 1893, about an island Utopia whose people have never heard of England or the United States), "The Revolt of the—" (The Idler, May 1894, about the rise of women in business), and the novel From Whose Bourne (1896 - a murdered man recruits a great detective from the spirit world to help him clear his widow of suspicion in his death).
 |
| "A Corner In Lightning", Pearsons Magazine, March, 1898, Art Paul Hardy |
An industrialist named Calvert comes up with a scheme to construct a plant located at the magnetic north pole to "bottle up" the electrical energy of the world. In this way, he will "own" this energy and become wealthy by selling it to the rest of the world. A year later, his plans come to fruition and a massive power outage strikes the globe (which also affects the durability of metals as well as people's mental states - anything affected by electrical impulses). However, a massive lightning storm strikes Calvert's plant and destroys it, restoring power to the rest of the world.
George Griffith (George Chetwynd Griffith-Jones) was only preceded in popularity by H.G. Wells in the 1890s. A world traveler, his first big hit was Angel of the Revolution (1893), a novel about an attempted aerial conquest of England by Russia (followed by a sequel in 1894, Olga Romanoff; or, The Syren of the Skies). Other popular Griffith stories (most of them related to "future war") include The Outlaws of the Air (1895), The Romance of the Golden Star (1897), The Great Pirate Syndicate (1899) and A Honeymoon in Space (1901). The premise of "A Corner In Lightning" (an electric power outage) would have been impractical only a few years before its appearance, when many people still depended on gas for lighting.
 |
| "The Tilting Island", Everybody’s Magazine, September, 1909, Art: J.E. Jackson |
A massive crevasse opens up along 125th Street in Manhattan, with the section of the island south of that street tilting downwards (cause by the weight of the concentration of skyscrapers at the tip of Manhattan). As the borough begins to fall apart and become flooded, a reporter and a scientist race southward to witness the catastrophic event. The scientist fears that Manhattan will break off and slide into the sea, but a smaller part breaks off in the Financial District, allowing the middle section (north of that secondary fault) to stabilize and remain above water.
Founded in 1896, Everybody’s Magazine later carried Conan Doyle’s story of life forms existing at great altitudes, "The Horror of the Heights" (November 1913) and later serialized Victor Rousseau’s The Messiah of the Cylinder (June to August 1917).
 |
| "Finis", Fantastic Novels, July 1948, Art: Lawrence |
Scientists have theorized that the light from a distant star (possibly the central core of the universe) will soon reach the Earth. When the predicted date arrives, many people search the evening sky to get a view of this new star. However, the first thing they notice is rising heat, followed by a reddish glow in the east. As the Earth rotates towards the rays from this massive star, the part of the globe exposed to it begins to roast. In the upper floors of a Columbia University lab in New York City, a physicist named Eastwood and his lady friend Mrs. Alice Wardour seek shelter from the heat, as people on the street die from exposure. Soon a massive storm arrives, drowning those who sought shelter underground. Eventually Eastwood and Alice also succumb, but Alice uses her final moments to express a level of passion she had never been allowed to display before.
Frank Lillie Pollack gained immediate fame with "Finis", but he later also wrote Crimson Blight (The Argosy, May 1905, about an old eccentric who invents a heat ray to strike down visitors in a resort town) and The World Wrecker (The Cavalier, November 1908, a short novel of men who discover how to make gold artificially). The World Wrecker was originally intended for a magazine called The Scrap Book which sometimes featured new science fiction stories, among them The Sky Pirate by Garrett P. Serviss (1909, a novel of air piracy in the future), The House of Transformation by George Allan England (1909, about an ape invested with the intelligence of a man), and The Radium Terrors by A. Dorrington (1911, a tale of intrigue and the illicit uses of the then little-known radioactive substance, radium).
 |
| "An Express Of The Future", The Strand Magazine, January, 1895 |
A man describes journeying from Boston to Liverpool by way of an underground, underwater Trans-Atlantic tube system powered by compressed air. In the end he wakes up to realize it was a dream, inspired by a newspaper article on the subject.
Listed in Moskowitz' book as being written by Jules Verne, more recent scholars cite his son Michael as the true author. This story might have been inspired by Andre Laurie's novel New York to Brest in Seven Hours (Sampson, Low, 1890), which described a pipeline under the Atlantic designed to carry oil from the United States to Europe (and showed how a man in a capsule could be shot through it in an emergency).
THE RAY OF DISPLACEMENT by Harriet Prescott Spofford, The Metropolitan Magazine, October, 1903
The speaker invents a "Y-ray" which can move molecules apart, allowing people and objects under its influence to pass through solid objects and in some cases become invisible ("polarizing" them). When he is wrongfully sent to prison by a corrupt judge named Brant, the speaker declines to escape using his polarity powers, since he prefers to be lawfully exonerated. In the meantime, he takes trips outside his prison accompanied by the prison chaplain (who has also become polarized). The speaker eventually rigs a horse race so that Brant loses a great deal of money (he causes a horse to become immaterial so it can pass through its competition). Later at a gentleman's club, Brant drops into a chair already occupied by the chaplain (who is still immaterial). Somehow the chaplain is merged with Brant, and Brant becomes reformed.
Published since 1860, Spofford write this story when she was 68. Later stories describing humans passing through matter include "The Mole Pirate" by Murray Leinster (Astounding Stories, November 1934), "Exit" by Wilson Tucker (Astonishing Stories, April 1943) and "The Man Who Walked Through Walls" by the French author Marcel Aymé (1941, found in Across Paris and Other Stories, Harper & Brothers, 1950).
CONGEALING THE ICE TRUST by Capt. Harry Gore Bishop, The New Broadway Magazine, December, 1907
Yates, the owner of the Amsterdam Ice Company, corners the market on selling and distributing ice. He also gets rid of one of his plant managers, a man named Peters. One day, Yates gets an anonymous note claiming that the sender has invented a freezing machine (the Patent Heat Wave Synchronizer) which will put Yates' ice factory out of business. However, if Yates pays a large ransom, the inventor will give Yates the device. When Yates resists, his home is subjected to a winter freeze in the middle of the summer. When the press reports on this device and its effectiveness, the Amsterdam Ice Company's stock drops. Later, it is revealed that Peters had then bought up all of the stock and now owns the ice company. He is also the freezing machine inventor. He explains that the device works by focusing an "opposite" wave to the heat waves emitted in nature, thus causing absolute zero temperatures to appear.
The threat in this story could only have been realized in the gaslight era, when refrigeration technology had not yet been made available to the masses. Bishop's other known story is "On the Martian Way", written in 1909 and later reprinted in the February 1927 issue of Amazing Stories (below). It describes a future with passenger service between Mars, Venus, and Earth. In the narrative, heroism and self-sacrifice save a spaceship from plunging into the sun. Even in 1927 this was a pretty advanced concept.
 |
| "On the Martian Way", Amazing Stories Feb 1927, Art: F.S. Hynd |
LORD BEDEN’S MOTOR by J. B. Harris-Burland, The Strand Magazine, December, 1901
The narrator, a man named Scott, describes Lord Beden, an unpleasant old man whose brother had died in an insane asylum many years before. One night, Lord Beden takes Scott on his motor car where he then engages them in the harrowing pursuit of some kind of mysterious vehicle which spews smoke and leaves a trail of sparks in its wake. When Lord Beden's car catches up to the black vehicle, they see a much younger version of Lord Beden feeding its coal engine. Lord Beden's car overtakes and then somehow passes through the phantom engine car (as if it were a ghost). Lord Beden's car then crashes and he is killed when he lands on some scrap metal. Scott later learns that the scrap metal Beden had died from is from the remains of a vehicle which Lord Beden's brother had tried to build many years ago. However, his plans had gone missing (probably stolen by Lord Beden himself), which had eventually driven him insane.
Hariss Burland also wrote The Gold Worshippers (G. W. Dillingham, September 1906, about the artificial manufacture of gold) as well as "The Blot of Ink" (The Blue Book Magazine, May 1921), where a man coming out of surgery makes out the face of a murderer he has never seen in the outlines of an ink blot on the white walls (after the criminal is caught, it turns out that there had never been an ink blot on the wall in the first place).
 |
| "The Death Trap", Pearsons Magazine, March, 1908, Art: Sigurd Schou |
"...what good is the science of the ring when ye fight the devil in the dark?"
In Chicago, a strange tentacle is seen at night dragging men down into the sewer. The speaker and another witness named Woods decide to try and destroy whatever horror they find underground. While exploring the sewer tunnels, they encounter a policeman named Kindelon who has been hunting and grappling with the creature for the last three days. Together, they discover a tentacled creature apparently left over from Mesozoic times. Woods uses an acid gun on the monster while the narrator uses a pistol. At the same time Kindelon attacks it by hand, trying to strangle it. Finally, the creature is killed, although Kindelon also dies from his wounds.
Although this is Daulton's only memorable sf story, it shows the characteristics of a modern horror story. Its monster arises from the dankness and filth of a city’s waste, anticipating the methods of later writers. For example, Fritz Leiber conjured ghosts from the smoke and industrial ash of today’s industrial complex in "Smoke Ghost" (Unknown Worlds, October 1941) and Robert Barbour Johnson described half-human things in the subways of New York in "Far Below" (Weird Tales, June-July 1939). The Star Trek TV episode "The Devil In the Dark" also features a tunneling monster, and may have taken its title from the above quote from this story.
THE AIR SERPENT by Will A. Page, The Red Book Magazine, April, 1911
While trying to break the world altitude record, the narrator (an aviator) and his mechanic ascend 6 miles into the stratosphere. There, they discover a gigantic serpent monster, supported in the air with 30 pairs of wings. When the air serpent begins to pursue the narrator's triplane, he is forced to make some extreme maneuvers in the air to evade it. Unfortunately, his mechanic falls out of his seat during a hard turn and is eaten by the air serpent in mid-air. The narrator manages to land safely, but no one believes his story.
Page's story is effective during this period because the upper stratosphere had not yet been fully explored (obviously this would not work so well in modern fiction). In any case, other authors also explored this concept, including Conan Doyle in "The Horror of the Heights" (Everybody’s, November 1913) and much later Robert A. Heinlein in "Goldfish Bowl" (Astounding, March 1942).
 |
| "The Monster Of Lake Lametrie", Pearsons Magazine, September, 1899, Art: Stanley L. Wood |
A scientist named McLennegan and his frail friend Framingham arrive in Lake Lametrie, where abound rumors of strange prehistoric creatures being sighted. McLennegan believes that the bottom of the lake is connected to the "hollow Earth", where prehistoric lifeforms may still thrive. One day, after a whirlpool appears in the lake, McLennegan is attacked by an Elasmosaurus. He mortally wounds it and takes out its brain so that it will not escape. Framingham comes to inspect the still breathing dinosaur, but suddenly has a fit of agony and decides to cut his own throat. McLennegan immediately transplants Framingham's brain into the brain cavity of the dinosaur, and over a period of weeks Framingham becomes fully conscious in the gigantic creature's body. However, after about a year the dinosaur body seems to take over the human brain, and Framingham becomes more and more beastlike. Eventually the creature kills McLennegan just as an artillery squad arrives on the scene. After the creature is killed, the captain of the squad finds McLennegan's notes and forwards them to McLennegan's colleague.
Little is known concerning Wardon Allan Curtis. He authored at least one science fiction novel, The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton (H. S. Stone, Chicago, 1903). His "The Seal of Solomon the Great" (The Argosy, February 1901) was an effective variant in a serious vein of the fictional gambit of a genie in a bottle.
THE VOICE IN THE NIGHT by William Hope Hodgson, The Blue Book Magazine, November, 1907
Lost at sea, a man and his lover drift aimlessly in their raft until they come across a derelict ship floating in the harbor of a small island. They find that the ship is covered in a form of grey fungus. The pair try to survive on the ship's remaining supplies but the fungus somehow begins to infect them. Fleeing to the island, the pair try to fight off the fungus growing on their bodies. One morning, the woman decides to eat the fungus and finds it delicious. Later, the man explores the island interior and comes across some human-shaped fungus growths. He is horrified to discover that the survivors of the derelict ship have become still-living fungus beings. One night while trying to catch some fish, the man encounters a schooner and, from afar, tells them his story. As the man departs, the men from the schooner catch a glimpse of a figure entirely covered in fungus.
British writer William Hope Hodgson's four unique novels of science fiction and the supernatural were later collected under the title The House on the Borderland and other Novels (Arkham House, 1946). Arkham House also published Carnacki, the Ghost Finder (1947, a collection of short stories concerning a detective who solves cases involving psychic phenomenon) and Deep Waters (1967). The Nightland (1912) is another notable Hodgson novel. He is probably one of the most important writers featured in this anthology. "A Voice In the Night" was the inspiration for the movie "Attack of the Mushroom People" ("Matango").
 |
| "The Land Ironclads", The Strand Magazine, January, 1904, Art: Claude A. Shepperson, R.I. |
A war correspondent describes his army's defense against an opposing force. His commander is confident that they will destroy the enemy when they try to cross the trenches lying in their path and succumb to the commander's horse-mounted riflemen. However, the enemy employs "land ironclads" (tanks) which are able to withstand any kind of concentrated fire and are also able to cross over the trenches. The advance of the ironclads is followed by enemy riflemen on bicycles. The narrator's army is easily defeated and the reporter is taken prisoner. He expects that his own nation will soon start to develop their own "iron mongers".
This story functions as a prophetic work of fiction rather than as a fantasy adventure tale. In the years that followed, Wells also proposed the use of aircraft for bombing cities (The War in the Air, 1908) and the use of atomic energy for the destruction of civilization (The World Set Free, 1914). The concept of using tanks for warfare was previously introduced by Leonardo da Vinci and, closer to Wells' time, dime-novel writer, Luis P. Senarens (in his stories 1878 to 1902 involving Frank Reade and Jack Wright). However, Wells introduced the idea of caterpillar treads and explored in greater detail the tactical nature of tanks in warfare. Nonetheless Wells' novels The Land Ironclads, War in the Air, and The World Set Free are essentially anti-war stories.
THE DAM by Hugh S. Johnson, The Red Book Magazine, April, 1911
When the Japanese army lands on the North American west coast, U.S. Forces are driven back east towards the mountains. When Major Bolles is charged with making a stand in an area near the Santa Symprosa Dam, he finds himself outnumbered by a Japanese force approaching through the canyon. In a bluff, he calls a meeting with the Japanese general and tells him that the dam is rigged to explode, and if it does, the entire Japanese force will be destroyed. The Japanese general fall for this bluff and calls for his men to surrender.
Before Johnson became a WW I Brigadier General and later a politician, he wrote fiction. This story may have been inspired by Japan's victory over Russia at the turn of the century.
SUBMARINED by Walter Wood, Pearsons Magazine, February, 1905
A battleship named the Samson puts in to a small bay with a very narrow entrance for repairs. Unfortunately, an enemy scout spots the Samson before she is ready for battle. In an act of bravery and sacrifice, Lieutenant Hardin brings an underwater mine to the narrow entrance of the bay, and when he sees an enemy submarine pass above him, he detonates the mine, destroying the invader as well as himself.
A naval expert, Wood's story is one of the first to address submarine tactics in war, as well as a way of countering them. However, Conan Doyle's story "Danger!" (1914, which described Great Britain's merchant shipping being destroyed by a fleet of 8 foreign submarines) became more well-known due to its closer proximity to WW I and the appearance of German U-Boats.
 |
| "The Purple Terror", The Strand Magazine, September, 1899, Art: Fred M. White |
THE PURPLE TERROR by Fred M. White, The Strand Magazine, September, 1899
A soldier named Scarlett is ordered to cross a Cuban jungle in order to deliver a letter. The night before his departure, he offends a native Cuban. However, the Cuban offers to lead his team through the jungle in order to show him a rare species of purple orchid. On the way, they discover a desiccated body hoisted up into the trees. Later, they discover a circle of bones in a tree clearing. The Cuban, Tito, promises that the area is safe and that they must make camp (although Tito sleeps outside the circle of bones). During the night, Scarlett is wakened when their guard dog is snatched up into the air by animated, hooked vines, with the purple poppies blossoming along their lengths. Soon more vines descend from the trees and attack the sleeping soldiers. Using knives, Scarlett and his men escape the lethal foliage. The next morning, they threaten to tie Tito up under the trees until he confesses to his plan to destroy the unwelcome Americans.
The first great man-eating plant story was Frank Aubrey's The Devil Tree of El Dorado (Hutchinson & Company, London, 1897), which probably helped inspire White's story. White also wrote a fantasy novel named The White Battalions (Pearson, 1900).
PROFESSOR JONKIN’S CANNIBAL PLANT by Howard R. Garis, The Argosy, August, 1905
An eccentric professor named Jonkin shows his friend Adams his newly-acquired pitcher plant (a carnivorous plant which lures flies into its maw with a sweet scent and then drowns them). Over the following months, Professor Jonkin begins feeding the plant more and more meat-based food, until it grows to 25 feet in height. When Adams visits, he sees Jonkin has fallen into the plant's maw and is being sucked in. He uses chloroform to sedate the plant and then extract the Professor.
Howard R. Garis was best known for his humorous "Uncle Wiggily" stories, featuring a cast of “humanized” woodland creatures. However, he also poked fun at new inventions and inventors in stories like this one and others, including "Professor Jonkin and His Busier Bees", "Quick Transit by Beanstalk, Ltd.", and "His Winged Elephant". Garis also wrote the first 35 of the Tom Swift juvenile adventure books under the house name of "Victor Appleton". He also wrote titles in The Great Marvel Series, including Through Space to Mars (1910, in which a radioactive material called Cardite is discovered on Mars) and Isle of Black Fire (concerning a search for radium in the South Seas).
 |
| "An Experiment in Gyro-Hats" Amazing Stories, June 1926, art: Frank R. Paul |
Because his daughter is in love with a "staggering" man, a hatter invents a "gyro-hat", which, when attached to a person's head, spins an internal gyroscope, keeping that person's balance indefinitely. It is revealed that the man, Walsingham staggers because as a child he had been stuck on a revolving platform for many hours, and since then experiences a permanent form of dizziness. The hatter gives Walsingham the hat to wear but it goes out of control and begins spinning the wearer. Fortunately, the direction of the spin is opposite to the spin he experienced as a child and his dizziness is cured.
Also known for the satire "Pigs is Pigs", two of Butler's science-fictional stories were reprinted in early issues of Hugo Gernsback's seminal sf magazine Amazing Stories. Besides "An Experiment in Gyro-Hats", Butler's "Solander’s Radio Tomb" (1923) was also reprinted in Amazing Stories. This story describes an eccentric millionaire who has a radio station set up to broadcast sermons, hymns, and inspirational sayings from his tomb after his death. The entire plan functions well until the government reassigns the radio wavelengths and a permanent diet of red-hot jazz replaces the more solemn program.
 |
| "The Hybrid Hyperborean Ant", Hampton’s Magazine, December, 1910, Art: Roy L. McCardell |
A man named Frank Dodge builds a center where he breeds ants for unusual, specialized purposes (such as to be an edible form of food, to be employed as cleaning assistants, etc.). One day he breeds a "hybrid hyperborean ant" which consumes the boll weevil, the scourge of cotton farmers. He plans to get rich by introducing these ants to the government. Unfortunately, just as a government agent visits to inspect the ants, a pair of aardvarks from a nearby travelling zoo escape and eat all of the hybrid hyperborean ants.
This is a story of "biological invention", and also explores the grass-roots exploitation of new developments (with an unusually tragic outcome). Howard R. Garis’ "Professor Jonkin and His Busier Bees" (The Argosy, March 1906) also had a biological angle, in which a lightning bug is crossed with a bee so that it will have the light to work at night and make twice as much honey.
 |
| "Where The Air Quivered", The Strand Magazine, December, 1898, Art: Piffard |
In Saudi Arabia, a man named Archie and his friend Fletcher approach the Muslim holy stone in Mecca. When Fletcher disguises himself and kisses the stone, the other Muslims become angry. After Archie kills one of the Muslim priests (ostensibly in self-defense), the two Englishmen hastily escape back to London. There, Fletcher suddenly dies of no apparent cause. Archie's friend Dr. Kennedy (and the father of Archie's fiance) decides to seek help from a Persian professor named Dr. Khan in order to protect Archie from being the victim of the vengeful Muslims. When Archie goes to the window to get some fresh air, he falls in a seizure. Dr. Khan realizes that Archie has been poisoned with concentrated cyanide gas (projected from a small box), and resuscitates him.
"Where the Air Quivered" is an early example of the employment of scientific invention for the purposes of crime, usually a device that never existed or did not exist at the time the story was published. Later, this would evolve into the scientific detective stories of Edwin Balmer and William B. McHarg (concerning Luther Trant) and Arthur B. Reeve’s tales involving Craig Kennedy, both employing devices that had not yet been built or used for the purposes of crime detection.
IN RE STATE VS. FORBES by Warren Earle, The Black Cat, July, 1906
A doctor named Forbes and his sister Rhoda are so close that they can communicate across rooms through Morse code (their entire family has been involved with the telegraph business for generations). One evening, Rhoda is found dead by her brother. Forbes soon goes out and kills a man named Lapham, one of two men whom Rhoda had been flirting with and then rejected. A lawyer interrogates Forbes to learn why he had decided to kill Lapham and not the other suitor. Forbes tells him that even though seemingly dead, Rhoda had managed to telegraph an SOS, although her message ended before identifying her murderer. Forbes hadthen used a modified X-ray device of his own invention to examine his sister's blood. He had noticed that the arrangement of the corpuscles telegraphed the name "Lapham".
Nothing is known about Warren Earle. However, this story hinges on the X-ray, discovered by Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen on November 5, 1895.
 |
| "Old Doctor Rutherford", The Ludgate Monthly, September, 1891, Art: D.F. Hannigan |
In the mid-17th century, a man named Rutherford develops a formula to extend his life indefinitely. However, upon marriage, his wife mysteriously disappears into thin air. Now in the late 19th century, he tires of life and takes a "spoiled" brew of the elixir, hoping that with death he will be reunited with his lost love. Concerned, Rutherford's servant calls in the town doctor, Melville, to check on Rutherford. When he arrives, Melville notices that his own daughter looks very much like the portrait of Rutherford's lost wife. When informed of this, Rutherford makes out his will to Melville and his daughter and asks to see the girl. When she arrives, Rutherford is ecstatic to be finally reunited with his lost love, and then drops dead.
The theme of immortality has always been a popular one, going back to ancient times. In the 19th century immortality had been explored by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley in "The Mortal Immortal" (1834, about the problems of a man who had drunk an alchemist’s elixir and the problems he met with his aging wife) and Nathaniel Hawthorne in "The Fountain of Youth" (1837) and "Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment" (a story of four people momentarily made young again). In 1903, Herbert D. Ward published "Dr. Cox’s Discovery", wherein a vaccine that restores youth is discovered and administered to a middle-aged woman on behest of her daughter, with the unusual result of both of them competing for the attentions of the inventor. In 1929, Amazing Stories ran Earl L. Bell's "The Young Old Man" which featured an ageless man who has formulated and drunk an elixir formula of Roger Bacon's in a secluded small village in the Ozarks. Robert A. Heinlein's character Gramps Schneider dwelled among the Amish (Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1942), and Clifford D. Simak's 163-year-old hillbilly, Joe, is still an adolescent ("Census", Astounding Science-Fiction, September 1944).
ITSELF by Edgar Mayhew Bacon, The Black Cat, May, 1907
A flood destroys a poor family's house, but a new home floats down the river and replaces the one destroyed. The family are amazed to discover that the bed in the master bedroom has a beautiful portrait at its head (called "Itself"), and that anyone who sleeps in the bed is apparently cured of any illness or handicap. Regarded as a religious miracle, a skeptical scientist decides to investigate. He recognizes the house as his own laboratory, one which had washed away during the flood and disappeared. He tells the local priest that he had put radium-irradiated vials of water in the bed frame, which is probably the reason for the "miraculous cures". He allows the priest to decide on whether to reveal the truth or not.
When this story was written, it had been only five years since Marie and Pierre Curie had actually been able to isolate radium in a measurable amount.
CITIZEN 504 by Charles H. Palmer, The Argosy, December, 1896
In the 23rd century, marriages are decided by a ruling council rather than by individual (romantic) choice. Although Eric opposes this policy, his beloved Alora supports it. However, when Alora receives a notice that she will be married to Citizen 504 (a person she despises), she considers escaping the city with Eric. In the end she decides to stay. Fortunately, she then receives a note stating that her assignment to 504 was a clerical error, and that the correct choice is to be Citizen 405, who happens to be Eric. After Eric and Alora marry, they successfully campaign against the current marriage assignation process.
This story might have been inspired by Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward (1888). It is notable as an early dystopia or anti-utopia story, depicting the impact of certain scientific or ‘‘ideal” societies by focusing on only a few individuals.
THE MANSION OF FORGETFULNESS by Don Mark Lemon, The Black Cat, April, 1907
A man named Munson invents a Purple Ray which can remove specific memories from a person's brain. He opens a Mansion of Forgetfulness so that people can be cured of their sad memories. However, he himself does not wish to remove the memory of his own lost love, who had died at sea. One day a veiled woman appears, who desires to be rid of her sad memories. Munson (cowled to avoid curiosity-seekers) escorts her to the treatment room himself. However afterwards, he recognizes the woman as his lost love, apparently rescued at sea without his knowledge (and since then ignorant of her lover's fate). Unable to bear the agony of knowing that his lost love is alive but now no longer remembers him, he decides to undergo the memory-removal treatment himself.
Lemon also wrote "The Whispering from the Grave" (July 15, 1919, where a phonograph is planted in the grave of a murdered man to trap his killer through superstitious fear) and "The Spider and the Fly" August 1, 1919, in which a woman bitten by a “whistling” spider gradually adopts a spider’s attitudes, with dire results for her husband). Another gaslight era story featuring a psychological theme is "The Platinum Web" by William Hurd Hillyer (Pearson’s Magazine, January 1906) in which a girl volunteers to be the subject in a demonstration of a machine that decodes an individual’s thoughts and emotions, changing them into images (however the images turn out to be more disturbing than expected).
 |
| "The Platinum Web", Pearsons Magazine, January 1906, Art: William Hurd Hillyer |
Some of these stories can be found through links posted at https://classicsofsciencefiction.com/2018/09/20/19th-century-science-fiction-short-stories/
