Part Sherlock Holmes, part Professor Challenger, Doctor Bird faced sixteen encounters with the strange and fantastic and inspired such characters as Doc Savage.
Captain Sterner St. Paul Meek (1894-1972) was the perfect writer to create a scientist-adventurer. Meek was a military chemist who worked on ordinance in WWI and wrote as a hobby. He sold his first story to Field and Stream in 1928. Only two years later he would be a prolific producer of Science Fiction adventure yarns.
It was in 1930, for the very first issue of the Clayton Astounding Stories of Super Science that Meek created his alter-ego in scientist-adventurer, Professor Bird. Part Sherlock Holmes, part Professor Challenger, Doctor Bird and his military side-kick, Operative Carnes, faced sixteen encounters with the strange and fantastic.
“The Cave of Horror” (Astounding, January 1930) introduces Doctor Bird :
“Carnes sat on the edge of a bench and watched with admiration the long nervous hands and the slim tapering fingers of the famous scientist. Dr. Bird stood well over six feet and weighed two hundred and six pounds stripped: his massive shoulders and heavy shock of unruly black hair combined to give him the appearance of a prize fighter– until one looked at his hands.”
Later in the story we learn that Bird had been an athlete of note during his college days as he easily catches up to his two fleeing companions. Here is the first inkling of Doc Savage, scientist-adventurer yet to be invented in 1933.
Bird and Carnes are off to Mammoth Cave in Kentucky, where tourists and soldiers keep disappearing. Screams and shots are heard, a strange musky odor lingers but few other clues exist. After an initial encounter with the monster, Bird realizes it is invisible and brings in special military equipment to deal with it. His ultra-violet photos prove the beast is flat and able to worm its way through cracks despite being very tall and vicious.
In the end he kills it but isn’t able to secure the body as evidence.
Haunted cave stories were nothing new, even in 1930. Two that may have inspired Meek were C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne’s “The Lizard” (1898) and Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Terror of Blue John Gap” (1910). The horror feel of the story was one of the reasons that Lester Del Rey described the contents of the first issue of Astounding as “a sadly mixed business.” (The Worlds of Science Fiction, 1976). As a kind of scientific ghostbreaker tale it works fine, having the required Gernsbackian goobly-gook to explain the technology. A similar plot would be used on Star Trek’s “The Devil in the Dark” episode (June 15, 1967) thirty-seven years later.
The second adventure of Dr. Bird, “The Radio Robbery”, appeared in Astounding’s competition, Amazing Stories, February 1930. I am not sure why this happened but we can surmise that Meek sent one story to Harry Bates at Astounding and another to T. O’Connor Sloane at Amazing, hedging his bets that one of the editors would bite. It appears both did.
As the title suggests, this plot involves the theft of gold bars and the solution lies in radio technology. A man is killed and a vault full of gold bricks turned to copper. Carnes calls Dr. Bird in and using radio detection equipment he triangulates the location of the villain, a Dr. Wallace, the creator of unstable synthetic gold.
The tale is not so much a Science Fiction tale as a Mystery solved using Science. This format would dominate the rest of the series.
As the title suggests, this plot involves the theft of gold bars and the solution lies in radio technology. A man is killed and a vault full of gold bricks turned to copper. Carnes calls Dr. Bird in and using radio detection equipment he triangulates the location of the villain, a Dr. Wallace, the creator of unstable synthetic gold. The tale is not so much a Science Fiction tale as a Mystery solved using Science. This format would dominate the rest of the series.
“The Thief of Time” (Astounding, February 1930) has another bank robbery by a seemingly invisible man. When Dr. Bird finds a track star who is doping he quickly collars the bank robber, Dr. James Kirkwood, formerly of Bird’s own Bureau of Standards. Kirkwood stole a metabolic steroid that allowed him to move faster than the eye can perceive. As with “The Radio Robbery”, Bird has become the scientist who hunts down other scientists turned bad, thwarting their plans to use Science for ill-gotten gain. The terms “Superhero” and “Super-Villain” have yet to be invented but Meek leads the way.
“Cold Light” (Astounding, March 1930) pulls Dr. Bird from his holiday to find what device could freeze an airplane mid-flight, scattering its occupants like glass. Bird tracks the cold source to a lonely shack in the mountains near the plane crash. After an exciting shoot-out and an exposure to the deadly freeze ray, Bird and Carnes find the dying scientist who created the beam weapon. They also find and kill a Russian spy. The anonymous scientist, who goes only by John Smith, dies after admitting to stealing the diamonds on the plane. His Russian cohort was after War Department plans. Smith blows up his cold weapon, not wanting Bird to discover its secrets.
In “The Ray of Madness” (Astounding, April 1930), Operative Carnes is now in the Secret Service, protecting the President of the United States. He brings in Dr. Bird when the head of state begins to act strangely with the coming of each full moon. Sadly, it’s not lycanthropy but a Russian agent using a machine that directs lunium, a band of light found in moonlight, to drive the President crazy.
The next two stories appeared in Gernsback magazines, one specially designed for a Bird type character. “The Perfect Counterfeit” (Scientific Detective, January 1930) features the creation of a matter duplicator (shades of Star Trek‘s replicator) that is used to make perfect counterfeit twenty dollar bills. Bird tracks down the wayward scientist by knowing all the researchers in the field of matter duplication.
“The Gland Murders” (Amazing Detective, June 1930) has the Russians poisoning America by introducing glandular chemicals into expensive whiskey. The essence of a murderer’s glands is targeted at the rich, the only ones who buy expense scotch. The killer’s psychotic behavior is transferred to the drinker, who attacks those around him. Bird calls in the help of a bootlegger, who though a criminal, still believes in the Capitalist system. This is the last story to appear in a Gernsback magazine until Dr. Bird’s final story.
“Stolen Brains” (Astounding, October 1930) is a creepy adventure worthy of a 45,000 word Doc Savage novel. Bird and Carnes go fishing but in reality they are meeting their doubles so Bird can track down the villains who have been stealing brain fluid from the smartest men in America. The bad guys show up in a sphere-shaped ship and abduct the Bird look-a-like. The duo and their pilot track the ship back to Bald Mountain, a remote spot on the Canadian border. There they find an underground lab right out of a Bond movie and the head of the gang, a deformed dwarf named Slavatsky. Bird witnesses the Russian draining “menthium” from a victim’s brain and injecting it into his partners’. (After “Cold Light” Meek’s bad guys all become Russians.) The villains capture the doctor and are about to extract all the menthium from his brain, reducing him to an idiot, when Carnes shows up with the cavalry. Dr. Bird in turn takes the menthium from Slavatsky’s brain to save a man who has come with the President of the United States. Carnes does not recognize him as the President’s brother. This episode predates all the controversial Doc Savage brain operations that Lester Dent will write about. It also shows for the first time just how brutal Bird can be with his enemies.
“The Sea Terror” (Astounding, December 1930) sees a return to the monster story (at last!) A man supposed killed along with the entire crew of his ship, the Arethusa, seeks out Dr. Bird. He tells a tale of a gigantic monster that attacked his ship that was carrying a supply of gold. Bird creates a special glass diving bubble to investigate, finding the gold is gone. Bird surmises a plot by the gland specialist Dr. Saranoff, to steal the gold by using an octopus grown to magnificent proportions. The bubble is re-equipped and a fishing expedition for the giant squid begins, using the sphere as bait. Bird discovers Saranoff’s sub and his secret cave that he uses to house the monster and its baby. When the monster tries to swallow the diving bubble, Bird pumps it full of Prussic acid, killing it. In its death throws, it destroys Saranoff’s sub. This story introduces Saranoff, who will become the recurring villain for the rest of the series. He is, of course, Russian.
“The Black Lamp” (Astounding, February 1931) follows an invasion into Dr. Bird’s lab on the top floor of his building at the Bureau of Standards. Bird has created a new explosive called radite and the gun designed to shoot it has been stolen. Breslau, the gun’s designer, has been reduced to unconsciousness by some new device that also caused Bird’s windows to become foggy in color. The evil device is used again in a prison where a Communist weapons expert, Karuksa, is detained. Bird learns from one guard that a helmet made of vitrilene, the glass he invented for the diving bubble in “The Sea Terror”, blocks the effects of the new weapon. Karuska is taken and subjected to a lethal electrical and ultra-violet treatment for information. Bird learns the device is called the Black Lamp and that the Communists have a secret platform outside Washington from which they plan to shell the city with radite bombs. He also learns Saranoff is not dead and that there is a mole in the Bureau of Standards. Bird and the secret service track the Communists to a warehouse but they escape, leaving a gruesome message, three men turned to red glass by the lamp. Two booby-traps fail to kill Bird and the men are off to the swamp to find the bombing platform. With two tanks and two airplanes, Bird, Carnes and the others destroy the platform (and its impervious vitrilene dome), shooting the fleeing helicopter with a radite shell.
“When Caverns Yawned” (Astounding, May 1931) begins with an attack on the President. While out campaigning in Charleston, his train is almost swallowed by a sudden collapse of the earth. Saranoff is back and he has a new device that can level cities. Carnes and Dr. Bird attempt to locate his submarine that is carrying the borer, an underground digging machine that works by reducing the space between atoms. With this machine Saranoff destroys two Navy destroyers as well as Charleston and Wilmington, NC. Washington DC and the President are next. Bird has only one night to build a similar weapon but can not. Instead he creates a machine that reverses the atom reducing ray. When the borer comes for Washington, Dr. Bird simply reverses the beam, crushing the borer under tons of re-expanded rock.
“Port of Missing Planes” (Astounding, August 1931) has Carnes and Bird captured quickly by Saranoff. With the help of a race of intelligent, telepathic moles, called the Selim, Saranoff has been kidnapping pilots for an air force of zombie-flown planes that will bomb America into submission. (Saranoff found the Selim during his attack on Washington. This fact saved his life.) Bird studies the Selim and realizes they are an intelligent and fair-minded race, only misled by Saranoff’s version of human politics. The Russian attempts to lobotomize Dr. Bird but King Astok arrives in time to stop him. The two human minds are studied by the Selim but they find both scientists truly believes he is right. The Selim remain neutral, wiping all knowledge of their super-science from Saranoff and Bird’s minds.
“The Solar Magnet” (Astounding, October 1931) begins with a failed assassination attempt on the President, which might actually have been intended for Dr. Bird. Someone is messing with the tilt of the Earth’s axis, with the intention of turning Northern hemisphere into a land of sun while the Southern hemisphere dwells forever in shadow. Bird immediately suspects Saranoff and is off to Russia aboard The Denver. Using a plane from the ship, Bird’s attempt to bomb Saranoff’s base is a failure because the Russian neutralizes his ordinance with a new ray. Carnes and Bird are shot down and captured. They escape with the help of Feodrovna Androvitch, a Communist woman who owes Dr. Bird a debt. Bird had been kind to her brother, Stefan, who had worked at the Bureau of Standards. (He died when Bird’s crew blew up the helicopter in “The Black Lamp”.) The men kidnap the woman for her own good and a running gun battle follows. When McCready, Bird’s pilot, steals a truck, he gets a battery to start their plane and they escape. The Denver shells the base with the solar magnet and the earth responds with a massive storm.
“Poisoned Air” (Astounding, March 1932) has a mysterious fog that causes polymerized oxygen crystals to form in the lungs. Dr. Bird actually solves a medical mystery in this one. His new assistant, Miss Andrews is actually Feodrovna Androvitch, taken in by Bird and given a new identity. When Carnes and Bird go into the swamp to stem the second wave of the plague, Peter Denberg, Saranoff`s agent captures him. Denberg has been helped in his ambush by Androvitch, who has gone back to her Communist brothers. When Denberg tries to kill Bird with the plague, Feodrovna comes to his rescue, flashing a deadly knife until Carnes can ride in as the cavalry. Bird wakes in the hospital to hear that all of Saranoff’s deadly microbes have been captured and Carnes learns that Miss Andrews was not a traitor but a double agent.
“The Great Drought” (Astounding, May 1932) begins with a massive fleet of airplanes flying over a certain spot in Maryland. The United States has been suffering a drought for two years and Dr. Bird knows it must be Saranoff behind it. The planes discover an area in which to search for a device throwing off negative particles and affecting the weather. Miss Andrews seems to have gone AWOL again but in truth has discovered Saranoff’s secret base. While meeting her, Bird is captured by Saranoff. In true villain style he doesn’t put a slug in Bird’s brain but straps him to a bomb and sends Carnes unwittingly to detonate it. Bird escapes his shackles by creating an electromagnet and getting the keys. When the Russians spring their trap they get a surprise. One of their own turns against them, shooting them in the dark. It is Thelma Andrews, who assumed the identity of one of Saranoff’s thugs weeks before. Saranoff has escaped an hour earlier.
The Clayton Astounding was in trouble and Meek may have jumped ship early. Since three of the stories had appeared with Gernsback it made sense to finish the series in a Gernsback’s magazine. “Vanishing Gold”, the final Dr. Bird tale appeared in Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories, May 1932. This story is for the most part a re-write of “The Radio Robbery” showing Meek was running out of ideas. This time the gold is not turning into copper but slowly losing weight. Bird tries to triangulate the direction that the device causing the breakdown, while at the same time Thelma Andrews goes undercover and is only able to send one message, “Under Central Park”. Looking at old maps Bird finds a tunnel where Saranoff might be working from and attacks from both ends. His squad and Carnes’ break through in time to save the machine but not capture Saranoff. The villains’ guns fail to work during the attack because Bird uses Saranoff’s own weapon from “The Solar Magnet” to render firearms useless. Thelma is stabbed during the hostilities but Bird gives her medical treatment. She expresses her love and the Doctor reprimands her for being emotional. This is the third story to end this way and suggests that Bird’s Doc Savage-like celibacy might have eventually lead to something. If not, Della Street-like, Thelma might have gone on loving and serving. We’ll never know since the series ended here.
Meek claimed he dropped the series because of complaints by left-wing readers who did not like his attacks on Russian Communism. It is just as likely that he found Science Fiction played out. Meek finished with Science Fiction in 1932, finding the juvenile animal story better suited to his talents. He is remembered as one of the pioneers of the early SF pulps creating a series character to stand beside Anthony Gilmore’s Hawk Carse and Sewell Peaslee Wright’s Hanson of the Space Patrol. Isaac Asimov writes in Before the Golden Age (1975): “Something else that was very prevalent in the science fiction of the 1930s was the adventure story fitted out with just enough scientific trappings to enable it to pass muster. And in the science fiction magazines of the early part of the decade, no one was better at it than Captain S. P. Meek.” Samuel R. Delany called him “unbelievably bad” (Silent Interviews, 1994) but the ideas found in his stories, super speed, freeze beams, insanity rays, mole men, sinister rays have all become part of the SF mix, especially in the superhero comics. Delany might say these are “unbelievably bad” too but I watched Captain Cold on The Flash this week and have yet to see a Dhalghren mini-series.
Robert Sampson said: “The series is the tramp art of science fiction, mildly interesting ideas, told badly.” (Yesterday’s Faces 2: Strange Days, 1984) There has been a tendency to ridicule Meek, and in particular, the Dr. Bird stories, which I think is unfortunate. While the series is not anything approaching Campbellian Science Fiction, it was a precursor to Doc Savage, and later, comic books. In this respect, Meek is an important link in the history of Fantastic literature.
