Abner J. Gelula (1906-1985) was one of the early scientific hobbyists who wrote occasional “Scientifiction” stories. According to his “Meet the Author” he was based out of New Jersey where he worked as a newspaperman and in radio advertising. He stopped writing before the Golden Age but was lured back for one more by Ray A. Palmer in 1939. It would prove to be a one-off.
“Automaton” (Amazing Stories, November 1931) offers a fascinating idea though awkwardly written. Professor Holtz creates robots that become leaders in society, moving humans away from sentiment and towards machine-like efficiency. The handsome young lead, Martin, is thrown into an asylum for twenty years for trying to destroy the robots, while his ex-fiancee rises to become the Secretary of the Treasury. The robots are defeated largely by accident when the original robot kills itself. The rights to this story were sold to a Hollywood studio for a Boris Karloff film that was never made.
“Hibernation” (Amazing Stories, July 1933) has Professor Gordon Anderson develop hyper-sleep. He volunteers to try it and sleeps 170 years into the future. There General Marsden runs the Hibernation Center. Gelula gets to speculate on history with the Depression lasting into the 1950s, when the scientists take over. To combat unemployment, workers are placed in hyper-sleep until needed. (Philip Jose Farmer would turn this idea into his Dayworld trilogy in the 1980s, beginning with “The Sliced-Crosswise Only-on-Tuesday World” in New Dimensions (1971). Gordon falls for Marsden’s radical daughter, Alicia, and the two cook up a plan to release everyone.
“The Valley of the Blind” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Summer 1933) is an obvious re-hash of H. G. Wells‘s “The Country of the Blind” with Ralph Standish discovering and joining a society of sightless people. There are two differences though, the blind men can control the jungle animals with telepathy and Ralph ultimately has his eyes removed as the Wells character refused to do.
Gelula was part of the massive story jam known as “Cosmos”, writing “Chapter 9: Menace of the Automaton” (Fantasy Magazine, February 1934) Alan Martin discovers the robots of the world are taking over. Martin builds a zeppelin-like ship to escape to the Moon… (Martin builds “his dreamship” in New Jersey, of course.)
“The Vengeance of a Scientist” (Wonder Stories, February 1934) is the story Gelula refers to as “Farrington” in his bio. Probably Hugo Gernsback changed the title. Farrington is a doctor who is wrongfully imprisoned for conducting abortions. After three years in prison, during which his wife dies and his daughter is adopted out, he vows revenge. Using x-rays, he makes himself invisible. Using this ability, he ruins all the members of the medical board that imprisoned him: bankrupting the miser, revealing the hypocrites, catching the lawyer in a shady deal and making a brain surgeon kill his patient, the governor of the state. The surgeon has the smarts to trap Farrington in the operating theater. He escapes but the cops are closing in so he commits suicide.
“Peace Weapons” (Amazing Stories, June 1934) has Morton Hardy of the League of Nations stop the war between England and Germany by using a formula that can make gigantic bugs. The humans are so busy fighting the giant insects that they stop fighting each other. The Food of the Gods makes peace. E. F. Bleiler in his Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1998) says: “Too much of a romp, but superior to Gelula’s earlier stories.” I personally like the romp.
“The Whistling Death” (Amazing Stories, June 1939) has William Porter, American patriot fighting the forces of Moravia, rising world power. To do this, he becomes a covert agent, pretending to give up his citizenship and becoming a Moravian. Moravia infects America with plague (boy, does that ring bells today!) It is up to whiz-kid Porter to save America, even if it costs him his life. This reads like so much of what will come later in the Cold War era but here the villains seem to be from the Czech Republic, not Russia. The character of Ivan Stemenov aside. This story appeared only months before the invasion of Poland by the Nazis.
I think it is interesting that Palmer included character portraits of the characters like they did in Thrilling Wonder and Startling Stories (usually by Wesso). Personally I always found these dull, preferring an extra image of monsters or daring-do to static portraits. I think Palmer was trying it out but would ultimately not use them.
In the end, Abner J. Gelula proves to be an interesting but unimportant writer. He was not afraid to play with politics in his stories. He chose big ideas though didn’t always use them to full effect. He was obviously inspired by H. G. Wells though again perhaps not original enough to work that material beyond the obvious. His magnificent return in 1939 was sadly pedestrian and I can’t really cry over any lost stories he might have written afterwards.
