The Astounding Discoveries of Doctor Mentiroso

The Astounding Discoveries of Doctor Mentiroso

Author: A Hyatt Verrill

Publisher: eStar Books

Published: 2012-10-15

Total Pages: 14

ISBN-13: 1612105815

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Doctor Mentiroso made an astounding discovery! That is it is possible to eliminate time and enter either the past or the future: these things have actually been accomplished!


Astounding Wonder

Astounding Wonder

Author: John Cheng

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-03-19

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0812206673

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When physicist Robert Goddard, whose career was inspired by H. G. Wells's War of the Worlds, published "A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes," the response was electric. Newspaper headlines across the country announced, "Modern Jules Verne Invents Rocket to Reach Moon," while people from around the world, including two World War I pilots, volunteered as pioneers in space exploration. Though premature (Goddard's rocket, alas, was only imagined), the episode demonstrated not only science's general popularity but also its intersection with interwar popular and commercial culture. In that intersection, the stories that inspired Goddard and others became a recognizable genre: science fiction. Astounding Wonder explores science fiction's emergence in the era's "pulps," colorful magazines that shouted from the newsstands, attracting an extraordinarily loyal and active audience. Pulps invited readers not only to read science fiction but also to participate in it, joining writers and editors in celebrating a collective wonder for and investment in the potential of science. But in conjuring fantastic machines, travel across time and space, unexplored worlds, and alien foes, science fiction offered more than rousing adventure and romance. It also assuaged contemporary concerns about nation, gender, race, authority, ability, and progress—about the place of ordinary individuals within modern science and society—in the process freeing readers to debate scientific theories and implications separate from such concerns. Readers similarly sought to establish their worth and place outside the pulps. Organizing clubs and conventions and producing their own magazines, some expanded science fiction's community and created a fan subculture separate from the professional pulp industry. Others formed societies to launch and experiment with rockets. From debating relativity and the use of slang in the future to printing purple fanzines and calculating the speed of spaceships, fans' enthusiastic industry revealed the tensions between popular science and modern science. Even as it inspired readers' imagination and activities, science fiction's participatory ethos sparked debates about amateurs and professionals that divided the worlds of science fiction in the 1930s and after.


The Psychological Solution

The Psychological Solution

Author: Alpheus Hyatt Verrill

Publisher: eStar Books

Published: 2012-01-30

Total Pages: 23

ISBN-13: 1612104622

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A body appeared mysteriously in the trash can...ExcerptHenry Columbus, khaki clad, his ebon face gray with ashes and dust, and driver of one of those two-wheeled abominations maintained by the municipality of New York for the reception of rubbish and the dispersal of dust over passengers, was industriously emptying the ash cans on the north side of West 85th Street.It was a charming spring morning, and Henry, well content with the world and himself, was whistling cheerily while he worked. As he rolled the battered iron containers to the curb, and raising them, dumped their contents into his vehicle, he glanced at the miscellaneous odds and ends that poured from them, ever on the watch for some discarded but still serviceable article which he might salvage.Farther down the street, and working east from Amsterdam Avenue on the opposite side of the thoroughfare, was Tony Celentano with his wagon. Like Henry, the Italian was also on the alert for chance treasure-trove among the rubbish.As the dusky namesake of the famous discoverer reached the group of cans before a block of brown-stone front houses, he noticed that one of the receptacles was filled to overflowing with a bulging, patched, burlap bag.Whatever the contents were they were heavy, and wondering vaguely what the can contained, Henry heaved it over the edge of his cart. The bag however, was tightly jammed into the can, and, in order to dislodge it, he was forced to clamber onto the half-filled wagon. Grumbling a bit at the extra labor involved, he grasped the sacking with a huge black paw and tugged at the bundle.


The Gernsback Days

The Gernsback Days

Author: Mike Ashley

Publisher: Wildside Press LLC

Published: 2004-01-01

Total Pages: 502

ISBN-13: 0809510553

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"In recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in Hugo Gernsback, and the start of a serious study of the contribution he made to the development of science fiction. . . . It seemed to me that the time was due to reinvestigate the Gernsback era and dig into the facts surrounding the origins of Amazing Stories. I wanted to find out exactly why Hugo Gernsback had launched the magazine, what he was trying to achieve, and to consider what effects he had-good and bad. . . . Too many writers and editors from the Gernsback days have been unjustly neglected, or unfairly criticized. Now, I hope, Robert A. W. Lowndes and I have provided the grounds for a fair consideration of their efforts, and a true reconstruction of the development of science fiction. It's the closest to time travel you'll ever get. I hope you enjoy the trip."-Mike Ashley, Preface


The Inner World

The Inner World

Author: A. Hyatt Verrill

Publisher: eStar Books

Published: 2012-01-03

Total Pages: 47

ISBN-13: 1612104487

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Thurlow was a man ahead of his time, his theories might have seemed outrageous but later were proved to be true, could this strange tale about a mysterious inner world be true as well?ExcerptRecently I have received a most remarkable, I might even say astounding, communication. A communication so amazing and incredible that did I not possess the tangible and unquestionable evidence of its authenticity I would not dare to make it public. But as it is, with concrete proofs of the origin of the communication where anyone may see and examine them, I feel that the communication is of such great and universal interest and importance that it should be given to the world.This astonishing document came to me by the most matter-of-fact and ordinary means-the United States Mail. It was posted at St, Thomas in the Virgin Islands and was accompanied by an explanatory letter which read as follows: Dear Sir: I am mailing you under separate cover by parcel post an object which belongs to you and which I have been directed to send to your address.A day or two ago, while bathing at Throm Bay, my attention was attracted to a floating object which resembled a small mooring-buoy. It was conspicuously colored with red and white stripes and was of globular form.Upon securing it I discovered it was not a buoy, for there was no ring at the lower side, and upon lifting it I heard something move or rattle within.Curiosity now being aroused, I examined the strange object and discovered that it was formed of two sections, and after a little time I managed to separate the two halves which were fastened with a cleverly-designed interrupted screw much like that on the breech-block of a modern gun. At the time I was astonished to note that, although the container was constructed of some metal and was nearly half an inch in thickness, yet its weight was less than that of a similar sized sphere of thin aluminum.Within this spherical shell was a metal cylinder with a screw cap, and within this was a second cylinder and a sheet of some parchment-like material bearing writing in English, French, German, Italian. Portuguese, Norwegian, Dutch, and several other languages which I could not identify, as well as in Chinese, Hebraic and other characters. As the English, French and others with which I am more or less familiar, were practically identical in meaning I assume that all the others carried the same message, which was a request that whoever might find the object would at once forward it to you at the address I have given and that the finder would not disturb the contents of the smaller cylinder.I have therefore replaced the sheet of parchment and the larger cylinder and am sending you everything exactly as it was when I found it."


The Treasure of the Golden God

The Treasure of the Golden God

Author: A. Hyatt Verrill

Publisher: eStar Books

Published: 2012-01-01

Total Pages: 39

ISBN-13: 1612104517

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Thornton and Belmont embark on an adventure to find the lost city of El Dorado. excerpt"What do you make of those?" Thornton asked, as he tossed two bits of shining yellow metal upon the table. Belmont, the mining engineer, picked up the objects and examined them curiously. They were obviously gold; thin, crescent-shaped; perhaps two inches in length by an inch in width, and with small eyes or rings at the points of the crescents."They're gold of course," he replied. "Indian ornaments of some sort, I should say.""Yes, you're right both times," laughed Thornton. "But do you realize that you are holding something which no white man since Raleigh's day has ever seen? Those things, Frank, are the 'gold moons' that Sir Walter Raleigh reported having seen in the noses of Guiana Indians.""Jove, is that so!" exclaimed the other. "Discovered a lost tribe, eh? Bully for you. What were they, freaks, cannibals or Amazons?""Neither," declared the explorer, who had recently returned from months in the interior of Guiana and Brazil, and who was dining with his old college chum."The people who wore these," he continued, "are quite ordinary in as far as appearances go. But they prove that Raleigh was right, and, this is what may interest you, the tribe that uses the moons has a secret, unlimited supply of gold.""What?" cried the engineer, instantly interested. "I suppose you mean that they have a rich placer mine. Now you're talking business, old man.""I thought that would wake you up," laughed the explorer. "I can't say as to the placer. Did you ever hear of El Dorado and the City of Manoa?"