The Islands of Hugo Gernsback takes us in a slightly different direction than our last trip. Last time it was Weird Tales and terror tales. Even in the comics the emphasis was on horror. This time it is Science Fiction and Adventure that reign. Derived from the same wellspring, Hugo’s islands can be terrible places, filled with giant spiders or awful beasts, but as often there is wonder and invention.
Classic Stories
Hugo Gernsback understood the mystery of an island. In his first all-fiction magazine, Amazing Stories, he reprinted the great islands of Science Fiction. The very first was The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) by H. G. Wells. The short novel was serialized in Amazing Stories October November 1926. This classic novel has Prendrick washed ashore on an island where the doctor is turning animals into men. Moreau’s mad scheme goes the way of all Frankenstein-inspired scientist, poorly. Wells wrote it as an anti-vivisection tale.
Next Edgar Rice Burroughs’ The Land That Time Forgot was a serial from1918’s Blue Book and reprinted in Amazing Stories February March April 1927. The eleven year old triptych of lost world adventures is set on the island of Caspak (or Caprona). Dinosaurs, cavemen and all manner of Burroughsian fun happens there. The creatures evolve as they move up island, ending in the terrible Wieroos. Frank R. Paul did most of the artwork on this page including the Caspak illos.
Hugo wasted no time. He followed Caspak with Ponape, in A. Merritt’s classic “The Moon Pool” (All-Story Weekly, June 22, 1918) and “The Conquests of the Moon Pool” (All-Story Weekly, February 15-March 22, 1919). It was serialized as The Moon Pool in Amazing Stories May June July 1927. This tale of the South Seas has a race of fish-frogs who will later inspire H. P. Lovecraft’s Deep Ones.
“Aepyornis Island” by H. G. Wells (The Pall Mall Budget, December 24, 1894) appeared in Amazing Stories, October 1927. The plot concerns a castaway who hatches and befriends a prehistoric bird. The animal becomes aggressive in maturity and the man has to kill it. The people who rescue him don’t believe his tale.
New Stories
All these stories were older examples that Gernsback wanted his writers to emulate. The first to do this was Stanton A. Coblentz in “The Making of Misty Isle” (Science Wonder Stories, June 1929), writing a brand new island tale about the US using atomic bombs to create a volcanic island. From there, the US will invade Japan, China and Russia. The island is unstable and sinks, killing the schemers. Coblentz’s work is often satiric and E. F. Bleiler in Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1998) says of it: “More Political fable than fiction.”
“Islands in the Sky” by Lowell H. Morrow (Air Wonder Stories, July 1929) is another man-made island, this time hovering above the earth. A scientist named Stiener invents an anti-grav island. Unfortunately his rival, Van Beck, steals the plans and makes one as well. Stiener crashes his island into Van beck’s, killing both of them. The narrator is on a second platform that has a problem: it is drifting up into space. Stiener’s daughter (every mad scientist must have a pretty daughter) flies her plane onto the island and rescues him at the last second. This story introduced the new magazine Air Wonder with a bang.
“The Tragedy of Spider Island” by S. P. Meek (Wonder Stories, September 1930) has handsome quarterback type, Bill Webster, washed ashore to find Myra, daughter of the mad scientist, Professor Collins, being attacked by giant spiders. It is her cool head that saves them both. Bill joins forces with the professor resulting in bigger and more poisonous spiders. Webster and the Collins flee as the spiders attack as well as the neighboring cannibals. The young lovers survive but the doc dies of heart failure. Bleiler calls it “routine” and he is not wrong. Despite this truth, I always enjoy S. P. Meeks‘ work even when it is not the most innovative. Like Edmond Hamilton, there is something that attracts me to how he tells a story, even a familiar one.
“The Island of Terror” by Ransome Sutton (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Fall 1930) has Henry Haveland off to South America to find his lost treasure-hunting brother, Carl. The trail leads to the tabu Fantasmas Island. The island is home to a prehistoric throwback who has eaten Carl. Henry uses his leg bone as a club to escape. Sutton calls the creature a loupgarou or werewolf, supposing an explanation for the legend. Hugo says in the story’s intro that the atmosphere of the tale come from the author’s experiences. Sutton was a one-hit wonder.
“The Gland Men of the Island” by Malcolm Afford (Wonder Stories, January 1931) is a one-hit wonder from Australia. Gernsback did accept a second story but it did not see print. The story was reprinted in Amazing Stories, February 1933 as “The Ho-Ming Gland” through a misunderstanding. The story was sent to T. O’Conor Sloane at Amazing Stories but the editor shelved the story. Afford, not hearing from the magazine for years, sent it to Gernsback at Wonder Stories. The two versions vary slightly.
Three scientists in the Solomon Islands takes refuge from a storm on an island. There they find a compound inhabited by giant men. The giants are the product of a Chinese scientist, Ho-Ming, who is producing the monsters for an army. The Chinese will take over the world with such super-soldiers. The giants have faults: the inability to speak or reproduce. Ho-Ming forces the three newcomers to help him improve the brutes. The storm strikes and all but our heroes are killed.
Afford was a popular writer of stories and radio scripts. He was quite aware of the popularity of such characters as Sax Rohmer’s Dr. Fu Manchu, Australia’s version, Guy Boothby’s Dr. Nikola, as well as H. G. Wells’ Dr. Moreau. Elements of all these famous characters show up in this tale.
“Pithecantros Island” by I. R. Nathanson (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Winter 1931) has an airplane land on a mysterious island because of a storm. The flyers discover herds of mammoths and prehistoric men who hunt them. The Pithecanthropines take their plane and the crew must be daring to get it back. E. F. Bleiler calls it “routine’ but it is the kind of story I love, having grown up on Edgar Rice Burroughs.
“The Sargasso Monster” by Edsel Newton (Wonder Stories, April 1931) is a William Hope Hodgson story with Pulpy fun added. A saboteur causes a plane to crash in the Sargasso Sea. The survivors must face whirlpools and gigantic monsters by running over the solid beds of kelp. They are rescued but the secret saboteur gets eaten by a monster. Newton includes romantic Pulpiness between the main characters as well, not going for the moody feel of a Hodgson tale much at all.
“Utopia Island” by Otfrid von Hanstein was written in German in 1927. The translation was done by Francis Currier and appeared in Wonder Stories, May June 1931 as a two-part serial. The novel takes place in the fictional Iguana Islands off Peru. The plot is weak, with many wonders in advanced science but little action. A rival country plans to take over Utopia Island for its great wealth. Bleiler calls it a “Ralphism”, referring to Gernsback’s own “Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660”, an unreadable tale filled with wonders and no story.
“The Island of the Giants” (Wonder Stories, August 1931) by A. Rowley Hilliard is a sequel to his “The Avenging Ray”. The two heroes from that story, Jerry and Howd, are on an island called Neeya to find a missing scientist, Jerry’s father, sent there to find out about the strange goings on. A society of ruthless scientists has created giants as menial servants. The two men broker peace with the giants, who are short-lived and will be gone in twenty years.
“The Island of Unreason” by Edmond Hamilton (Wonder Stories, May 1933) is a benchmark tale for the Science Fiction writer. This story, though quietly appearing in Wonder Stories, won the Jules Verne Prize as the best science fiction story of the year (this was before the Hugos). It was a nice departure from his earlier Wellsian invasion stories. Leigh Brackett selected it for The Best of Edmond Hamilton. It was reprinted in Startling Stories, Spring 1945.
Allan Mann lives in a society devoted entirely to reason. He commits the crime of unreason when he refuses to turn over his work to another. He is sent off to a prison island where anarchy rules. He doesn’t know how long his sentence will be because the law doesn’t disclose this. Once on the island he has to save a woman from a gang of men. These prove to be the rulers of the prison, who take what they want. Allan and Lita hit it off. The police come to pull Allan out after a day but he refuse to leave. He likes this new freedom. He and Hara discuss how some day, when there is more unreasonables than the other, they will take back the earth.
Bleiler calls it “routine” but I think he may have missed what was appealing about this story. Perhaps in terms of “literature” this tale is no more better or worse than most 1930s Science Fiction. What makes it appealing to Hamilton’s audience is the way Science Fiction fans felt around non-SF people (Mundanes). It wasn’t uncommon to hear “Why do you read that junk?” as well as accusations of liking something unreasonable. Hamilton has written the ultimate fan-boy tale.
“The Isle of Madness” by Lilith Lorraine (Wonder Stories, December 1935) seems to be a riff on Hamilton’s tale. America is ruled by mind-control. Those who can resist the mental power are sent to an island in the Pacific. In isolation, the islanders become supermen. Leaving their haven centuries later they explore America to find humans have devolved into wolfish creatures. Like most of Lorraine’s work there is a strong Horror edge. Lorraine (Mary Maude Dunn Wright) was one of the few women writing SF in the 1930s (along with C. L. Moore and Clare Winger Harris) and was a correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft’s.
“Isle of the Gargoyles” by William Lemkin (Wonder Stories, February 1936) begins with an info-dump on endocrinology. Dr. Stannard and his pal, Newhall, plan to take thyroid medicine to an island off Peru. The inhabitants are horribly deformed and the medicine should cure them. The expedition doesn’t go well, with the medicine lost and Stannard devolving into what he really is, one of the islanders. He joins his people as one of the gargoyles.
Conclusion
The Islands of Hugo Gernsback weren’t the last to appear in the Pulps. Hugo Gernsback and his old-style, clunky SF faded after 1936. Hugo sold Wonder Stories to Beacon Magazines and Mort Weisinger, turning it into the more adventure-driven Thrilling Wonder Stories. Hugo would try to revive his SF empire in the 1950s with Science Fiction Plus but it was not to last long. For more islands we have to look elsewhere. John W. Campbell and the other editors at Astounding used the bottleneck as well. Next time, we look at the Islands of Astounding!
