A. W. Bernal: The Man Who Was Two Men

For A. W. Bernal, fame was localized. What I mean is for a short time, to a small audience he was very famous but after a moment, it all disappeared. Andy Warhol’s “fifteen minutes” of fame and all that. Science Fiction is filled with such blips of greatness. Take for instance, A. W. Bernal of Oakland, California. He is entirely ignored by most of the SF histories and with good reason. He was only famous among the readers of Weird Tales for a short span of time before moving off into journalism. When he is remembered at all (according to Robert Weinberg) as the guy who wrote “the worst SF story ever”, “The Man Who Was Two Men”. But there is more here. Let’s not write him off just yet. Because for that brief flash of importance, he did matter. (Wait for it. I will explain at the end.)

The first writings we get from Arthur William Bernal (1913-1991) are fan letters he wrote in 1930 when he was only seventeen. The first to Astounding Stories of Super-Science (June 1930) tells us that this fan from Oakland, CA knows his Science Fiction from the earlier magazines, mentioning A. Merritt, George Allan England, Harl Vincent, Murray Leinster and Captain S. P. Meek. His mention of H. P. Lovecraft shows that he is also a reader of Weird Tales. He raves about the cover artist Wesso, showing both an interest in fiction and its illustration. He discusses the types of stories he wants to see in the new magazine.

In the second letter to Amazing Stories (August 1930), Bernal claims to have a complete collection of Amazing, which he feels gives him the privilege to make some suggestions. This letter is similar in that it focuses mostly on the artists of the magazine. He glorifies Wesso again then suggests the magazine use reprints (which the editor, T. O’Connor Sloane disregards, as the magazine used many reprints in the early Gernsback days. Sloane has finally got the magazine to the point where he doesn’t need to use old material.)

When Bernal finally makes that important step from fan to writer at eighteen, his first story is “Cosmic Menace” for Sloane (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1931). The story concerns a cosmic dust that is obliterating the solar system. Those fleeing from Mars and Venus try to gain the Earth but the Terran fleet destroys them rather than allowing massive overcrowding. The Earth men device a plan to force the Earth out of its orbit. The planet speeds through the dust cloud and wins safety beyond.

E. F. Bleiler in Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1998) said of this story: “Very overwritten with purple apostrophes and exclamation points.” I disagree this is the worst thing about this story. It has not one character to focus on but is told like a history. Edmond Hamilton would write such galactic scale stories that fared better because he always anchored them with a focal character.

“The Man Who Played With Time” (Weird Tales, March 1932) is a time travel story that is quite slow to start. Told by the neighbor, Arthur, about the inventor, Austin, it wastes eight pages debating time travel theory. The second half is the real story. The two men go back to the year 1917 and see men enlisting for World War One. They think to go to the pub for a beer but decide not to. Instead they go back to 1492.

In the farther past they see a band of native hunters. Austin realizes that to step off the platform of the time machine would mean being thrown into the fifth dimension. The native men want the newcomers to step down and follow them. Austin refuses. By the time Arthur has pulled the lever to return, Austin has been shot with an arrow.

Dying of the arrow, Austin does the math to get them home, for even a day’s time off and stepping off the platform will mean destruction. Arthur makes it back, suffering some with the time dislocation but Austin succumbs to his wounds. The survivor is accused of killing his friend and thrown in an asylum.

For the longest time, I was wondering what this story was doing in Weird Tales. The beginning is dull and the second half a time adventure. Only the asylum ending with it’s “Get me out of here!” reads like a Weird Tale.

“Vampires of the Moon” (Weird Tales, May–June–July 1934) is another space adventure in the Hamilton style, a three-parter. Captain John Starr,  Hal Bradley and Rusty Steele of the Trans-spatial Service Legion go to the Moon in search of two missing ships taken by mysterious agents. One of the crewmen on those ships is Starr’s brother, Jack.  Navigating a cavern in the Moon’s surface, the crew find the pirates. The terrible invaders are hideous:

Nose there was none, unless a shrivelled flap of skin in the grisly face could be flattered by the name. But it was the mouth that chilled Steele with horror. This was merely an ugly gash above the bony chin. The lips were drawn tightly back over the bloodless guns, disclosing a double row of rotten yellow fangs in the mirthless grin of a skeleton.

Steele is taken captive. He devises a helmet that allows him to talk with the mummy-like captors using telepathy. They are ruled by a committee known as the Ten. Steele finds Jack Starr, but the man is like a zombie, knocking him down cruelly.

Captain Starr meanwhile takes his ship, the Meteor IV, into a giant pit in the Moon’s surface. The ship crashes, injuring the crew. Meanwhile Steele gets an audience with the Ten and a history lesson. The Haxomelians, a race living on the surface of the Moon, was devastated by volcanoes. The race moved underground and found two separate groups, the Controllers or Xinthquuls, and the workers or Yultats. The Controllers learned of the Earth and began planning an invasion. The Xinthquuls are now ready to take over the planet and enslave the Earthlings as they did to the Haxomelians. The captured spacemen are to serve as the pilots for the invasion.

The crowning horror is that the invaders have a red gas that literally melts human flesh. Any who oppose them will suffer this terrible death. Captain Starr escapes, rescues his brother and leads his men to defeat the bad guys. He destroys the Xinthuuls with their own red gas.

Not bad as Space opera goes. Bernal hasn’t really done anything Edmond Hamilton hadn’t in his Interstellar Patrol stories or do again in the Captain Future novels of the 1940s. Readable if predictable.

“The Man Who Was Two Men” (Weird Tales, April 1935) has Harry Preest down on his luck so he allows Dr. Emmett D. Porthet conduct an experiment on him for a thousand dollars. The doctor has created a transmat machine to teleport living beings. The device uses Radio to send subjects. The last volunteer was transported perfectly, only he was dead.

Harry takes some convincing but eventually takes the offer. The experiment goes perfectly except two Harry Preests exit the machine. When the doctor suggests one of the Harrys go back and be disintegrated, trouble starts. Neither man will enter the machine. One of the Harrys gets the idea to change his name and disappear with the thousand dollars. The other Harry suggests using the machine to turn the money into two piles of money. Porthet is horrified and refuses to be a counterfeiter.

One of the Harrys wants to go back to his wife. The other Harry claims the wife. The two men begin fighting over the same woman. In the fight, one of the men gets tangled in a wire and the other grabs the money and runs. The trapped man thrashes his way out, destroying Porthet’s machine. The absconder rushes into the street and is run over by a car. He is not killed but has a broken arm and is unconscious. The other Harry goes home but his wife has gone away to visit a sick relative. He returns to watch over his other self.

In the end the injured man has memory loss so Harry changes his identity to Dixwood Carter Brent and sets him up in a job. the remaining Harry takes the thousand dollars but can’t get over one idea: is he the real Harry or a copy? So ends Harry’s tale, told in a cell. The man listening to story is Napoleon. Like all the others in the asylum.

Worst story ever? It has some important points. The story predicts several Star Trek transporter episodes. The two Kirks that have to be put back together owes a lot here. The idea, expanded by Harold Ramis, became the funny (if financially unsuccessful) film Multiplicity (1996), where Michael Keaton becomes four versions of himself. So, perhaps not the best story in Weird Tales but a glimpse of things to come.

“Anaphylaxis” appeared in the fanzine, Fantasy Magazine, June 1935. This would be a bit of vanity sale since Julius Schwartz paid nothing for stories. Still, as part of the SF community, Bernal must have enjoyed the attention. Schwartz would publish “A Biographical Sketch of A.W. Bernal,” by Alvin E. Perry, a few months later (January 1936) though the author was only twenty-three.

It is ironic that Bernal’s one novel, “Satan in Exile”, serialized in Weird Tales from June–July–August–September 1935, appears to feature a supernatural character. Bernal’s letter to Astounding in 1930 had disparaged “ghost stories” over Science Fiction. The reality is that Prince Satan is a space pirate with the silver arm, not the Lord of Hell.

Prince Torgeny is exiled by the High Prince Fane, Overlord of Earth. Along with the blind scientist Feloth, the young man is sent to the prison planet of Triton. (Isn’t Triton a moon?) Torgeny leads a mutiny on the prison ship and becomes head of a pirate crew. He loses an arm to a ray gun blast and adopts a robotic limb. All his daring-do gets him a small underground kingdom on Ganymede. He has become Prince Satan, Lord of the Great Blackness. Feloth brilliantly invents the fastest of ships, the Space Waif, giving him the advantage in space. No one can catch him, though a detective named Drexx is on the job.

Meanwhile Fane and his scientist, Lavorkis, kidnapped Thorg Lua, a Venusian inventor. Lua will make for them the ultimate death weapon. With this, Fane will conquer Mars. Prince Satan tracks the bad guys to a base on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. The hero shows up as the evil ones are torturing Thorg Lua. Satan gets the drop on the culprits and Fane recognizes who the pirate hero is. Lavorkis gets ideas of his own and pulls a lever that will flood the chamber. Satan blasts him.

Fane and Satan battle it out until Inspector Drexx, the policeman in pursuit of the pirate, intervenes. Satan gets his revenge and blasts Fane but Drexx is bent on arresting him. Even though Satan stopped an interplanetary war! The detective and pirate fight but Satan wins out. With Fane dead, Torgeny could take off the guise of Prince Satan but doesn’t. He remains a pirate, a protector of the galaxy until next time…

It is hard to believe this appeared before the Flash Gordon serial of 1936 starring Buster Crabbe. Perhaps Bernal was a fan of the comic strip? This novel feels like it has silver underwear in it. Whatever the case, the illustrator for the novel was Jack Binder. The following year he would draw the infamous “Zarnak” comic for Thrilling Wonder Stories. Jack was older brother to writers Earl and Otto Binder, who wrote as Eando Binder. Both Jack and Otto would end up at DC Comics creating Mary Marvel and other Shazam-related comics.

“Draft of Immortality” (Amazing Stories, December 1935) has a 13th Century casket found in a wall. Inside is a manuscript and a bottle of elixir. The papers tell of a wizard, Munster, who created a potion of immortality. His wife grows ill and is going to die so he creates another but she dies before he can save her. This is the vial that was in the casket.

The man drinks the vial. He is excited to be immortal when an old man comes to his door. It is a monk who reveals himself to be Munster, still alive all these centuries later. He tells of the torment of being eternal, losing all ambition, friends, everything in one great sameness. The man cries for help but Munster has disappeared. Waking he sees he hasn’t actually drunk the vial yet and throws it in the fire. He says he never regretted that decision.

E. F. Bleiler again: “Very Amateurish.” Mostly I found the story over-long for the pay-off and misses plenty of opportunities to say more. The 1837 “Dr. Heidigger’s Experiment” by Nathaniel Hawthorne said more a hundred years earlier.

“So Very Strange!” (Weird Tales, April 1937) has a man named Netter amazed at all the sensations around him, the sounds and smells and sights. Later he hears someone say “Poor Netter is dead.” He is a ghost and didn’t know it. This may be Bernal’s only supernatural story and he approaches it like an SF writer.

Bernal moved away from Science Fiction writing to pursue a career in journalism. He produced a couple of stories for Ray A. Palmer’s new Amazing Stories before getting drafted in 1943.

“Paul Revere and the Time Machine” (Amazing Stories, March 1940) tells of a machine that swings into the past and pulls people from their time. The scientist, Walter Amesvent, grabs Paul Revere. Of course he is just about to go on his famous ride and the scientists have to save America from falling to the British. The two men accompany Paul back before getting back and taking an axe to the time machine. Bernal has a lot of fun writing 1775 dialogue with plenty of “‘Struth ’tis” and “‘Swounds”.

“King Arthur’s Knight in a Yankee Court” (Amazing Stories, April 1941) is a direct sequel to the last story. Walter Amesvent hasn’t learned his lesson. He didn’t destroy the time machine. This time he pulls Sir Galahad out of time so that he can reverse the famous Mark Twain title. Played for laughs like the first one. Galahad returns home with the grail, a souvenir from the World of Tomorrow World’s Fair.

Looking over all of Bernal’s tales certain themes arise. He was very interested in time travel, both for horrific and comedic purposes. He liked the sweeping vistas of Space Opera. He had a propensity to use the info-dump and have long dull expository sections, but these lessened as he went on. It is unlikely he would have ever evolved into a John W. Campbell writer and perhaps he left the field when it was time.

During the war Bernal made training films, an opportunity that allowed him to move into cartoons and film work after the war. Eventually he would become a restaurant critic under the pseudonym “Stendahl” and write and make films on food and wine. The early days of Science Fiction were long gone when he died in 1991 at the age of seventy-eight.

Now to return to the beginning, and explain how such an obscure and unimportant Science Fiction writer made a difference. Terence E. Hanley’s website Tellers of Weird Tales explains, Bernal provides his recollection of a meeting with a young fan at a Science Fiction convention. “…He ran into one of those young writers at a science fiction convention. The young man had one of Bernal’s cover stories pinned to his garage door and told him that someday he would be a good writer like Bernal. “I can remember his name,” wrote Bernal. “It was Ray Bradbury.”