“Fish-Men of Arctica” by John Miller Gregory appeared in the hard-to-find Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories (June-July 1931) from Adventure House. This Pulp lasted two issues. It was edited by Douglas M. Dold and illustrated by his brother, Elliott Dold Jr. Douglas was known for adventure stories like “The Creeping Terror”. Elliott became the primary artist for the Tremaine Astounding Stories.
A Strange Tale of the Arctic
“Fish-Men of Arctica” is a pretty typical SF tale of its time as well as a strange Northern. Weird occurrences are taking place on the Moon such as a red glow and the appearance that the satellite is getting closer. During this strange time, deep-sea explorer, Jim Fentress, is getting ready to journey to the North Pole in a submarine. He receives what he thinks is a crank call, warning him not to go to the Arctic. At a dinner in his honor, he meets socialite and actress, Hope Wilkins, who wants to join the expedition. Jim refuses. Hope tells him to wait and see. At the dinner he encounters the crank caller who again warns him away from the Arctic.
Fentress’s expedition leaves the next day. All looks good when a stowaway is discovered onboard. It is Hope Wilkins. She has Jim radio a certain frequency. The mysterious conversation that follows changes everything. Fentress and his crew go to a private island where Hope’s uncle, Professor Carmine, has a new experimental sub called the Black Whale waiting for the crew. Hope is now part of the expedition. Jim and his crew learn about the weird science that is threatening the world. They agree to go to the North and try and stop it.
The Black Whale
The Black Whale sails quickly under the ice. When they arrive at the North Pole they see a purple finger of light that shoots up towards the Moon. Here is the beam that is destroying the world. The sub dives and is caught in a whirlpool that draws it to the bottom. There they find a cavern that is surrounded by fish-men. Jim and Hope don underwater gear and enter the cave entrance. It is an airlock.
Inside the cave, the duo find a city of gold. The fish-men have an advanced technology that includes cars that whisk about the city that is lit like an interior world. They soon meet the ruler, King Reyfuld and his son, Kentor. More important is the man behind all the tech, Ektom. The immortal priest, in his sun-clad robe, is the real ruler of Arctica.
Strangers in a Golden City
With the use of thought translators, Jim and Hope soon learn that they are able to wander the city at their leisure. The only thing they are not allowed to do is tamper with the machine that draws the Moon to the earth. They get a nice history lesson on how Arctica and the Moon came to be. The worshipers of Surt the Sun God blasphemed against their god. In retaliation, Surt tore the Moon out of the top of the planet and sent it into the sky. The gigantic hole filled with water forming the Arctic Ocean. The former surface-living worshipers were changed into fish-men and sent to live at the bottom of the icy ocean.
But now Ektom will reverse that retribution. The Moon is coming back to the Arctic. When it fills the ocean it will trigger a second ice age, killing most or all of humanity. The fish-men will return to the surface and the sun. Jim and Hope know they must stop the machine that creates the purple finger of energy. They keep their eyes open and wait.
Enter Lora
While they are doing this, Jim meets Lora, an oddly different fish-girl. He rescues her from a classic man-eating plant that lives in the woods behind the house where he and Hope stay. Lora is golden-haired and looks more like a surface-dweller. Jim falls instantly in love with her. When Lora is lit-up in the “beauty ray” she is even more gorgeous and irresistible. Lora is Kentor’s fiancee. (Hope pretends to not care.) Prince Kentor doesn’t care that Jim claims his intended because he now wants Hope.
Jim convinces Lora to show him the machine that makes the purple finger. While trying to destroy this, Fentor comes to take Hope. He gets shoved against a strange machine that pulls his soul from his body. His soul can’t return and the body becomes like a zombie. Jim tries to destroy the machine as Ektom shows up. Ektom reveals Lora’s real identity. She is actually Lorelei, one of the mythical sirens that Ullysses met. At Jim’s insistence, Ektom zaps her with a ray that will return her to her original form.
Jim Fentress Makes His Play
Fentress dares to touch the high priest. Supposedly anyone who strikes him will be disintegrated in a puff of lightning. Jim risks it, tying up the old liar. The three return to the airlock with their underwater gear, taking Ektom along. Lora swims off to return to Greece. Hope and Jim take Ektom to the sub. He laughs with victory. When Jim tried to destroy the machine he set it off. They all see that the ray is still working and that the Moon will soon arrive. They plunge to the surface to see the burning sky.
The final chapter comes very quickly and very little is explained. Ektom escapes out onto the ice. He heads for an ice cave and is supposedly killed. The purple ray turns off and the earth is saved. The Moon returns to its proper spot in the heavens. Jim and Hope admit their love for each other and everything is roses. The end. There is no explanation of why the ray turned off. I suppose the author didn’t kill Ektom off for real because Gregory hoped to turn this into a series, with Ektom playing the continuing villain. It is an abrupt and very unsatisfying happy ending.
A Strange Idea
Gregory does a lot of building for little reason. He creates a team of scientists on the sub but never uses them. They don’t even get to see the golden city. He devises an Abraham Merritt style love triangle and doesn’t do much with it. He develops an underwater city of gold but despite its high tech, throws esoteric things at us like soul machines and Greek sirens. It should be no surprise that Gregory’s three previous stories were in Ghost Stories. This tale would be his last.
We do have to give Gregory credit for the idea of the Moon coming from the Arctic region of the planet. This is not an accepted theory for where the Moon came from but it is an intriguing one. The impact of the Moon hitting the planet would do more than simply start an ice age. The impact would most likely destroy both planetoids. This is 1930s SF and planets and moons get thrown around like footballs.
Origins of Submarine Science Fiction
The idea of a submarine traveling under the ice of the Poles goes back at least to Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870), where Nemo goes to the South Pole and finds ruins of Atlantis. This, of course, has been proven incorrect as Antarctica is a large land mass that Verne knew nothing about. In his time, it was legitimate speculation that the South Pole was mostly water. Despite the error, Verne was one of two writers to inspire the magazine Science Fiction of Gernsback’s Amazing Stories in 1926, along with H. G. Wells.
Astounding Submarines
One of Gernsback’s competitors (besides Miracle Science and Fantasy Stories) was Astounding Stories of Super-Science. In that Pulp, H. G. Winter wrote two stories about traveling under the North Pole, “Seed of the Arctic Ice” (February 1932) and “Under the Arctic Ice” (January 1933). “H. G. Winter” was actually the two editors, Harry Bates and Desmond W. Hall. They were more famous as “Anthony Gilmore” with their space hero, Hawk Carse. Twenty two years later, Frank Herbert would write his first novel, The Dragon in the Sea (Astounding Science-Fiction, November December 1955 January 1956) about the psychological effects of an Arctic submarine mission. In the real world of Science, it was the 1958 Nautilus mission that took a nuclear sub to the geographic location of the North Pole under the ice. John Miller Gregory, H. G. Winter and Frank Herbert all went there first.
Submarine and other aquatic voyages are part-and-parcel of the Northern genre. Whether Science Fiction or not, the brave men (and women) who sailed these ships were occasionally heroes for Pulp stories. The real sailors of the North were the inspiration for such adventure fare as the Doc Savage novel The Polar Treasure that features the submarine Helldiver.
Conclusion
Science Fiction would continue its love affair with underwater vessels in film and television. Walt Disney’s 1954 adaptation of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea still holds up today. Television gave us Irwin Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (based on the 1961 film) and Steven Spielberg’s Seaquest DSV. Other aquatic SF includes The Man From Atlantis, James Cameron’s The Abyss and Michael Crichton’s Sphere.