The Day of the Dragon

Science Fiction and Fantasy has always been on a seesaw. At one time it is considered to be worthy of the word “literature” and then suddenly it is not. The seesaw falls and it is called “trash”, “sub-literary” or worst of all “Pulp”. A good example of this is Guy Endore’s “The Day of the Dragon” from Blue Book, June 1934. (The story was reprinted eight times including Donald A. Wollheim’s Avon Fantasy Reader #2, 1947 and  Alfred Hitchcock’s Monster Museum, 1965) edited by Robert Arthur. This story by the author of The Werewolf of Paris (1933) demonstrates how an author is perceived and accordingly considered literary or not. The story itself may not be all that different than what is offered in lesser magazines but somehow is not held to the same derision. Which I suppose means: it ain’t what you do but how you do it.

First a word about Blue Book. This magazine was considered a Pulp but the very best illustrated Pulp of all time. To be published in Blue Book was far better than to appear in Thrilling Wonder Stories or Weird Tales. Certain authors such as Nelson S. Bond, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Achmed Abdullah and H. Bedford-Jones, appeared there frequently, offering more fantastical material than the usual. And I guess, Guy Endore is another.

“The Day of the Dragon” has a plot right out of Edmond Hamilton’s book. In many ways it isn’t all that different than Hamilton’s “The Abysmal Invaders” (Weird Tales, June 1929) or any other number of Hamilton tales. (I wrote about his Wellsian invasions here.) In these stories there is either a single friend or two friends of a scientist driven mad by the rejection of the scientific community. The friends are the only people who know what really happened and can do anything about it. Endore borrows that format for his tale of how the dragons destroyed humanity.

Endore begins by recounting several Science Fiction plots he is not going to use: the idea of the insects growing large and taking over the Earth, with ants enslaving humans as workers, the rate of insanity growing so much everyone is a lunatic or the use of oil in ships creating a black sludge across the seas. These are all ideas worthy of H. G. Wells and can be found in most SF Pulps, some of them by Edmond Hamilton. Endore is not in a hurry though. We get the story through the eyes of a newspaper reporter (who is the friend character). We see Professor Paul Crabshaw, his old science prof, as a sadly neglected researcher who has been passed up for promotion. The reporter gets the idea to have Crabshaw write for his paper about a recently discovered frog that hybernated for a billion years. Crabshaw’s wife is domineering and wants the two hundred dollars for the piece. This leads to more and more articles, each a little more ridiculous.

The college that Crabshaw works at finally challenges him to go back to research or become a Pulp writer. Crabshaw’s response is to begin secret work in a New Jersey factory. He explains (as do all mad scientists) to his friend how he performed surgery on alligators until he corrected their inefficient hearts. Two specimen survive and instantly begin to change as they gobble up sheep and cows. Eventually the gators morph into dragons, with pointed tails and wings. Crabshaw plans to show them to the college board to gain his long neglected fame but the creatures escape. They begin to pick off human for food so Crabshaw finds them. His wife receives telegrams from all over the world as the man travels with the monsters. Eventually, these stop and we can assume the prof has become food too.

The world forgets the dragons and Professor Crabshaw. For a while. The dragons are off breeding, and they eventually take over the world. Humanity is a frightened food source living in caves and in the subway. Humanity is lost because of the vanity of one scientist.

So why is this Wellsian/Hamilton retread so different? I think it is because the story focuses more on Crabshaw’s personality (a bit of a Walter Mitty) and how his wife and circumstance give him an opportunity to really mess things up. There is Thorne Smith and James Thurber behind all this as much as Wells. Since the focus is the weakness of Crabshaw’s character and not the idea of dragons dominating the world, it is more literary. And I have to agree. As a lover of Pulp fiction I wanted glorious scenes of dragons eating people and burning down cities. We only get this off stage and by implication despite John Clymer’s excellent drawing to the contrary. Endore does a lot of work in this tale to make the idea of growing dragons and a dragon invasion work as Science Fiction but ultimately doesn’t really care about any of that. It’s all about Crabshaw as the final paragraph show:

What is to be the end of all this, I ask myself. Are we to perish utterly? I think I shall cause this tale to be engraved on stone so that if ever the human race rises again, it may read and know how the damnable inferiority complex of one Paul Crabshaw made all mankind the prey of fabulous monsters.

Conclusion

In conclusion I want to mention a favorite film which I think you’re all thinking about. Reign of Fire (2002) does the after effects of this plot, showing us how humanity will regain the Earth from the dragons, something Endore has no interest in. Christian Bale and Matthew McConaughey get to do this with some exciting dragon fight scenes. Hardly the stuff of Thurber, but Edmond Hamilton would have got it.

I have to wonder if the writers, Gregg Chabot and Kevin Peterka, had read Endore’s tale? They certainly did not credit the writer or the story. They may have come up with the idea on their own. Something like: “Hey, what if we had modern guys fighting dragons?” The tradition exists in Science Fiction and Fantasy for sure. perhaps a little Endore crept through the decades to that movie screen. Either way, it is as close as we are going to get to see the idea in Hollywood. Noone is going to call Reign of Fire great literature. But I don’t care. It is great Pulp.