Under the Moons of Mars: A History and Anthology of "the Scientific Romance" in the Munsey Magazines, 1912-1920 (55 page)

Not as imaginative, but still one of the most thrilling serials to appear, was William Murray Graydon's
The River of Darkness
in THE ARGOSY, May-November, 1897, in which a group of explorers is carried hundreds of miles under Africa by the current of a submerged river to a subterranean lake inhabited by monstrous serpents of an unknown variety. The novel originally appeared in GOLDEN ARGOSY, July 19-October 18, 1890, as
Under Africa; or, The Strange Manuscript of the White Slave
. It was also reprinted as a paperback book by the U.S. Book Company. A sequel,
Over Africa, Captives of the Red City
, took the readers to the skies, like Jules Verne's
Five Weeks in a Balloon
, and was published in THE DAILY CONTINENT, February 1, 1891. William Murray Graydon was a most unusual writer. He was born in Harrisburg, Pa., lived in England, and, before his death April 5, 1946, wrote 269 Sexton Blake detective novels, spread over the period 1904 to 1930. His son, Robert Murray Graydon, in addition to many Sexton Blake stories of his own, wrote a series of science-fiction novels under the pen name of Murray Roberts for MODERN BOY (England) built around the exploits of a flying superman Captain Justice. He died in 1937. Another significant serial was
The Golden Deluge
(June-October, 1897), by Otto M. Moeller, which, from internal evidence appears almost certainly to be a translation from the German and tells in synoptic form of the invention of a method for manufacturing gold, of the breakdown of the monetary system, of a war that wipes out half of humanity, and of a new world currency based on land value. The story ends in 1923 with an element of Utopia emerging from the shambles.

It should be noted that during the four months of June, July, August, and September, 1897, the three science-fiction novels discussed—
A Month in the Moon
,
The River of Darkness
, and
The Gold Deluge
—ran concurrently. In addition to the serials, there were four other short stories and novelettes of science fiction that year.

There was no science fiction of any importance during 1898, but in 1899, THE ARGOSY more than made up for it, serializing
A Queen of Atlantis
, by Frank Aubrey (February-August), who had enjoyed an international best-seller in 1897 with
The Devil Tree of El Dorado
. A unifying character of both books is Monella, a two-thousand-year-old son of Manoa, the legendary city of the Spaniards upon which Edgar Allan Poe based his poem
El Dorado
. In
A Queen of Atlantis
, the remnants of the Atlantean civilization is discovered on an island in the Sargasso Sea. Vampires and elf people play a part in this book, though it nevertheless manages to remain science fiction. Chronologically,
A Queen of Atlantis
precedes
The Devil Tree of El Dorado
.

It is of parenthetical interest to note that Upton Sinclair's novel of the Italian Renaissance,
In the Net of the Visconti
, was serialized in 1899.

Beyond the Great South Wall
(September-February) was another bell ringer for 1899 which attained hardcovers. A great barrier wall is found to seal the antarctic from the outside world. Swept by a storm through a passage to the other side, a group of explorers finds that ancient Mayans had migrated there and dinosaurs still live in that unknown land.

During these years THE ARGOSY used no pictures on the cover, but in that space, made crude printed appeals for readership. Occasionally they featured single story titles, and
Beyond the South Wall
received such treatment, as did a number of the major science-fiction novels, before and after.

The big novel for 1901,
At Land's End
(May-November), was an exciting story of the exploration of the arctic by airplane. Since there were no airplanes then, Jared L. Fuller's effort was bona-fide science fiction.

The Land of the Central Sun
(July, 1902-January, 1903) told of a world inside the earth, heated by the molten core suspended in the center, as in Edgar Rice Burroughs' later
At the Earth's Core
, with opposing civilizations and fierce wars. The reprint of
The Lake of Gold
(December 1902-July, 1903), by British author George Griffith, whose sales of science-fiction novels would exceed those of H. G. Wells in hardcover, was the only appearance of that fabulously popular author in a magazine edited in the United States. It involves the discovery of a lake of pure gold, which find finances the building of airplanes, submarines, and battle ships which effect the conquest of Europe by the United States.

William Wallace Cook was a pen name for W. B. Lawson, who had first gained notice as a dime-novel writer of considerable competence, particularly for the Street & Smith publications. When dime-novel work became erratic, he submitted fiction to Matthew White, Jr., editor of THE ARGOSY since 1889. THE ARGOSY became the stabilizing influence on his finances, and among the many novels of his they published was
A Round Trip to the Year 2000
(July-November, 1903). Cook wrote smoothly, but with tongue in cheek. He was a satirist, and as his characters move one hundred years forward into the year 2000, they deal with sociological extensions of their times, which makes this novel well worth serious study. The revolt of the mechanical robots (the Muglugs) precedes Karel Capek by seventeen years. Had Cook been a more literary writer, the term "robot" would never have become popular and an automatic working device might today be called a "muglug." Nine years later THE ARGOSY would run a sequel,
Castaways of the Year 2000
(October, 1912-January, 1913), which enjoyed considerable popularity and contained significant social criticism despite its lighthearted mood.

During the years 1903 to 1907 William Wallace Cook was undoubtedly the leading writer of science fiction for THE ARGOSY, contributing
Castaway at the Pole
(March, 1904),
The Blue Peter Troglydyte
(August, 1904),
Adrift in the Unknown
(December, 1904-April, 1905),
Marooned in 1492
(August-December, 1905), and
The Eighth Wonder
(November, 1906-February, 1907). One thing Cook's stories had in common. Whether they dealt with a trip to the future, a journey to the past, space passage to the planet Mercury, a lost civilization at the poles, or a plan to stop the rotation of the earth, they were concerned with the betterment of society. Five of his science-fiction novels were later reprinted in paperback in the Adventure Library published by Street & Smith in the twenties. They are today badly dated, contain questionable science, were hastily conceived, but are still easy to read and imaginative enough to make understandable why, for a brief period, they were so popular.

There were two years when THE ARGOSY ran no science fiction except the conclusion of a serial begun the previous year. Those were 1898 and 1900. Such a notable omission may have been sheer coincidence, or it might have had some relationship to the appearance of H. G. Wells' great fantastic novels in the United States.
The War of the Worlds
was serialized in COSMOPOLITAN in May-December, 1897, and
The First Men in the Moon
in November, 1900-June, 1901; and both scored a veritable publishing sensation.

It was at the same time as the publication of
The War of the Worlds
in 1897 that THE ARGOSY ran three science-fiction serials simultaneously, and it was during the appearance of
The First Men in the Moon
that it resumed, after a year's lapse, a heavy schedule of science fiction which was maintained.

The probability is strong that science fiction became a regular diet in the pulps because H. G. Wells was scoring so great a success in the slicks. It was obvious that its subject matter aptly fitted the category of high adventure, even when it was but the cerebral adventure of scientific discovery and invention.

During the early part of the century, when THE ARGOSY was building in popularity so rapidly, it was unillustrated. It predominantly featured the works of new writers, former dime novelists, and second-raters. Subscriptions made up a minor part of its sales; most copies had to sell on the newsstand and were subject to the competition of scores of other publications. Yet, at its peak in 1907 it was one of the most successful and beloved magazines in the world.

During an age when radio and television were unknown, when moving pictures were jumpy short subjects at five-cent admission, it provided 192 pages, or 135,000 words, of entertainment for only ten cents. Printed on the cover of the July, 1902, issue (along with a poster-type announcement of the science-fiction thriller Land of the Central Sun) was the following: "192 pages—All stories—stories of rapid action and stirring adventure, stories with sweep and go to them. Stories without tiresome descriptions or baffling dialect."

Sometimes THE ARGOSY stories were so stripped of description (a dime-novel characteristic) that they verged on becoming a lengthy synopsis. Frequently the writing could best be described as amateurish (though a few authors ranked very high, including early fiction by O. Henry and James Branch Cabell), but
always
there was a
story
, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. There was no slice of life, no grim realism, no character studies, no stream of consciousness, no sermons in the form of stories or fictionalized propaganda or promotions. But there was an enveloping human interest, an extraordinary ingenuity of plot, far-reaching imagination, a romantic view of life, slapstick humor, limitless variety, and true escapism.

The magazine was male-oriented but had a high woman readership, running many forthright love stories in action settings or sentimentally heart-warming situations.

In the parlance of today's trade magazines, THE ARGOSY had found a "niche," substantially more adult than the dime novels and considerably less "precious" than the popular magazines like COSMOPOLITAN, MCCLURE'S, PEARSON'S, STRAND, or THE BLACK CAT. THE ARGOSY matched or topped them all in circulation and even eclipsed in readers the five-cent weekly, COLLIER'S. There would be periods from 1907 on when THE ARGOSY would claim the second-largest circulation in the world.

IN A NATION devoted to the free-enterprise system, such a comfortable situation could not be a monopoly for long. With the issue dated November, 1903, THE POPULAR MAGAZINE appeared on the newsstands, published by Street & Smith, for many years one of the great dime-novel houses and recently entering the popular-magazine field, with AINSLEE'S. Street & Smith was aware that the era of the dime novel and boys' weeklies was drawing to a close. The demise was being slowed by color covers and more readable type, but was inevitable. Street & Smith was in the early stages of entering the general magazine field through both the launching of new periodicals and the conversion of famous dime-novel series into pulps. The purpose of THE POPULAR MAGAZINE was to establish a boys' magazine with such a note of respectability that it would win the approval of parents. Its strategy for accomplishing this was to stay away from the sensational action cover, which had been the forte of the boys' magazines, and publish something serene and respectable. Finally the still-life cover was struck upon.

In the first period there were colored photographs of wooded, grassy hillsides; a man's fox hunting equipment hung on the side of a barn; ears of corn with pumpkin, and the legend: "Harvest of Good Stories in this issue." This policy brought two unexpected reactions. First, an inordinately high percentage of purchasers developed to be adult males rather than boys or teen-agers, fooled by the respectability of the magazine's appearance, and secondly, everybody's magazine, in the January, 1905, number, blasted them for "copying" their cover design.

Henry Harrison Lewis, veteran dime-novel editor, had been given the job of putting THE POPULAR MAGAZINE over because of his knowledge of the boys' market. One of his greatest claims to fame was hiring seventeen-year-old Upton Sinclair to write a series of dime novels featuring West Point hero Hal Maynard. These stories appeared in a publication called THE STARRY FLAG WEEKLY, which was launched in time for the Cuban War. Sinclair, in an interview, claimed to have written up to eight thousand words a day for Street & Smith dime novels for four years between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one, contributing to the "True Blue Library" and "The Columbia Library," among others.

Lewis was himself a prolific contributor to THE POPULAR MAGAZINE as well as later pulps. One of the most interesting things he did as editor was to rebut EVERYBODY'S on their claim that THE POPULAR MAGAZINE had picked up the idea for still-life covers from them. He devoted four pages to the matter in the February, 1904, issue of THE POPULAR MAGAZINE, in which he presented cuts showing that EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE had copied not only the idea but also the subject matter of many of its covers from THE BOOKLOVER'S MAGAZINE. He rubbed salt in the wound by presenting a series of quotes and ideas borrowed by EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE from MUNSEY'S MAGAZINE. Of course, since Forman J. Ridgway, president of EVERYBODY'S MAGAZINE, had worked seven years for Frank A. Munsey on sales before becoming a publisher in 1903, similarity of outlook and method was not unexpected.

Far more significant was the change of policy of THE POPULAR MAGAZINE with its February, 1904, number. It dropped all pretense of juvenility, beefed up the magazine from ninety-six to "194 pages of Adventure Fiction" for ten cents, and called it "The Biggest Magazine in the World," since it had two pages more than THE ARGOSY. In actual count, THE ARGOSY ran 135,000 words an issue, as compared to 126,000 words for THE POPULAR MAGAZINE (and had a more readable type face), because it sets its columns more than one inch deeper on every page. THE POPULAR MAGAZINE, with its February, 1904, number, provided THE ARGOSY with the first direct competition it had ever had— a pulp identical in size, format, and basic policy, differing only in its full-color, pictorial covers. With that issue appeared the first science fiction, a short story,
At Jupiter's Call
, by R. H. Farnham. A scientist theorizes that the pull of the planet Jupiter will draw an aerolite toward it if that object is raised to a height of five thousand feet. He attaches a cable to the stone, which is in turn fastened to a railroad flatcar. A balloon carries the aerolite to the five-thousand-foot height, at which the attraction of Jupiter, drawing it westward, pulls the flatcar at seventeen miles a minute, resulting in a disastrous collision.