This post is brought to you by Whisperers of Ice and Sand by G. W. Thomas. This collection of Space Opera is split between the Space Westerns of Neely, a former Ranger on the planet Utukku where the sands are so fine that tracks disappear in minutes. The other half belongs to Sudana and Zaar, a human pilot and her android companion, who begin on Hel III, an ice-bound prison hellscape, before they find adventures on jungle planets and on barren asteroids. The pair were featured in “The Hidden Heart” in Ships of Steel.
The mathematical concept of a fourth dimension has been around since Jean le Rond d’Alembert “Dimensions” in 1754, but it was H. G. Wells’s “The Time Machine” (The New Review, January-May 1895) along with “The Remarkable Case of Davidson’s Eyes” (Pall Mall Budget, March 28, 1895) and “The Plattner Story” (The New Review, April 1896) that brought the concept into focus for Science Fiction writers. That novel is about traveling in time, but it did set the format for most of the stories that would travel beyond our world into any dimension. Writers outside the Pulps used the idea in stories like Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin A. Abbott (1884) which predates Wells and “A Victim of Higher Space” (The Occult Review, December 1914) by Algernon Blackwood used it in a more Horror fiction way.
The Science Fiction Pulps only began in April 1926 with the first issue of Amazing Stories. Hugo Gernsback was not slow to look for new stories of dimensional thrills. He purchased a series of tales from Bob Olsen in 1927. For the rest of the 1920s, Gernsback was the editor who brought you dimensional travels and horrors. In the 1930s, the idea would really blossom and fill many other publications than those of Experimenter Publishing Company.
Fourth Dimensional fiction tends to fall into certain types of tales. The most common is the traveler who like the Time Traveler, goes beyond our world to find an universe that sits beside our own. These wayfarers usually get attacked by the locals. In a related types of tale, the machine brings the dimensional monster to the earthly lab before it goes on a rampage. The tales found here fall mostly into a third category, a more Wellsian one, where a dimensional device will have some kind of strange but localized effect on the scientist. (Plenty get their organs reversed, for some reason.) Or a fourth, a watcher through a device that can’t go to that other world, only watch harkens back to “The Diamond Lens” (The Atlantic Monthly, January 1858). The 1930s would require a transfer and a Burroughsian adventure.
“Into the Fourth Dimension” (Science and Invention, September 1926-May 1927) by Ray Cummings was reprinted in Science Fiction Quarterly, Winter 1941. This novel has a supernatural element in hat ghosts invade the earth. Rob Manse invents a machine that will take him to the fourth dimension where the ghosts are coming from. Only after he transcends the dimensions does he learn that the ghosts are actually fourth dimensional creatures that humans interpret as ghosts. For more, go here.
“The Four-Dimensional Roller-Press” (Amazing Stories, June 1927) by Bob Olsen begins the series with a scientist named Sidelberg creating a fourth dimensional machine that in effect enlargens anything put into it. He tests it on his pet baboon, Jocko, before using it on himself. Jocko monkeys with the controls (see what I did there?) and the scientist is expanded into a gigantic balloon that floats off with the machine.
“Four Dimensional Surgery” (Amazing Stories, February 1928) by Bob Olsen has Sidelberg’s assistant, and the narrator of the stories, approached by two famous men, Mayer and Banning. They want to use Sidelberg’s invention to perform surgery, removing Banning’s kidney stones. The two men are sent into the fourth dimension but are saved by the assistant at the last minute. In that other realm, Banning literally picks out his kidney stones himself. Shades of Ant Man’s Quantum Realm!
“The Fourteenth Earth” (Amazing Stories, February 1928) by Walter Kateley has a guy working in the Patent Office exploring the experiments of a Dr. Kingston. When he touches a strange disk, he is sent via the fourth dimension to the fourteenth layer of the Earth. This is the home of Feli,a race who manipulates atoms for all their needs. The narrator asks the Feli to return him to our first level, which they do. No killer plants, mutants or monster attacks. Oh well, you can’t have everything. For more Kateley, go here.
“Four Dimensional Robberies” (Amazing Stories, May 1928) by Bob Olsen has another sequel with the forceps that are part of the device stolen by a thief and used to rob a bank. The assistant helps private detective Dern capture the culprit. The idea of a new invention being used for crime is not new but will become a standard of the comic books.
“The Blue Dimension” (Amazing Stories, June 1928) by Francis Flagg has a scientist’s assistant accused of murder. His boss, Professor Crewe has disappeared. The man claims Crewe created a machine and went into the fourth dimension. First the scientist made a pair of glasses that could see into that space before making the machine. It is the assistant’s job to watch and send food to Crewe in the blue dimension where nothing is edible. The glasses fail and the scientist is trapped. For more on this story and all the fiction of Francis Flagg, go here.
“The Space-Eaters” (Weird Tales, July 1928) by Frank Belknap Long One of the first of Lovecraft’s friends to explore the fourth dimension in Horror fiction. This tale features a caricature of HPL in the writer who ends up badly for visiting other dimensions. This will become a standard Mythos plot with Robert Bloch having used the same idea for “The Shambler From the Stars” (Weird Tales, September 1935). Long’s tale owes something to Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” (1907).
“Four Dimensional Transit” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1928) by Bob Olsen is the final sequel of the 1920s and of greater length since it appeared in a Quarterly. Banning is back with a plan to create a plane that uses the fourth dimension to remove friction and gravity from flight. He and the assistant build the craft and get famous pilot Berghlin (That’s an anagram of Lindbergh, of course) to fly it. The team is challenged by posturing explorer, Pontius Bragg (see what he did there?) to circumnavigate the Earth in eighteen hours. The plane works so well they circle the planet then check out the Moon, which is a dead world. It looks like they have lost the race, of course, but they do all this in only fifteen hours. The Jules Verne elements are pretty obvious. The series will continue in the 1930s.
“The Appendixes and the Spectacles” (Amazing Stories, December 1928) by Miles J. Breuer M. D. has a scientist, Bookstrom, who is abused by a rich banker named Cladgett. Later when Bookstrom has graduated, he invents a machine that puts a person into the fourth dimension where surgery can be performed quickly. Cladgett pays a high price for the removal of his appendix. Later he becomes ill. X-rays show that Bookstrom has left his spectacles inside him. Cladgett sues but loses because he has no scar to prove any operation. Bookstrom agrees to remove the glasses in exchange for a trust to fund new scientists. Breuer seems to be building on Olsen’s tale of only none months previous.
“The Captured Cross-Section” (Amazing Stories, February 1929) by Miles J. Breuer M. D. begins with a scientist named Heagey creating a machine that can go to the fourth dimension. From this, he brings strange beings that looked like a watermelon made of human skin. Like all SF monsters, they grab Heagey’s fiancee and return to their world. Heagey is accused of murder by the disapproving father-in-law to be. Heagey goes to the fourth dimension but can’t navigate the strange landscape. Instead, he returns to our world and has artists create sculptures that the 4-di creatures can understand. The artwork ask for the woman to be returned.
“The Hounds of Tindalos” (Weird Tales, March 1929) by Frank Belknap Long has Chalmers exploring the dark worlds of the Cthulhu Mythos. Unfortuantely, while stepping into other dimensions, he gets tagged by a pack of dimensional hounds. These creatures can travel through angles. It doesn’t end well for the mystic. He is found with his head cut off and covered in blue goo. This is Long’s second Mythos tale to look at other dimesnions.
“The Book of Worlds” (Amazing Stories, July 1929) by Miles J. Breuer M. D. uses the fourth dimension to act as a viewer to all Earthly history. Cosgrave invents a viewer that shows the rise of life on the planet, dinosaurs and humans, and into the future where terrible wars rage on with death rays. Cosgrave swears the slaughter must be stopped. A cautionary tale for us all.
“Beyond Gravity” (Air Wonder Stories, August 1929) by Ed Earl Repp is only marginally about the fourth dimension. The tale is mostly about a super-fast airplane that gets trapped in orbit and the lengths the ground crew go to rescue it. (The magazine was dedicated to SF airplane stories.) The fourth dimension comes in at the end when the pilot Alison explains that the plane entered the fourth dimension and surgery was done on him.
“Gold Dust and Star Dust” (Amazing Stories, September 1929) by Cyril G. Wates is a detective story with the scientist Corwin solving the case of the missing gold. He determines the gold has not disappeared but went into the fourth dimension because of a faulty transmitter nearby. The gold returns and is covered in a dust that could only have come from the distant planets near the star of Andromeda. S. P. Meek will write a Dr. Bird story that feels much the same as this one and Olsen’s robbery tale in the 1930s.
“When Space Ripped Open” (Air Wonder Stories, November 1929) by Ralph W. Wilkins is an apocalyptic tale of a passing green star that tears a hole in fabric of space and dimension, allowing giant insects to come from the fourth dimension and flood the planet. The tale follows humanities attempts to survive, by building a giant redoubt William Hope Hodgson style while planes and tanks try to destroy the giant bugs. Slowly, after centuries the humans take back the planet. More of a big bug tale than a fourth dimensional one.
Conclusion
I think it is interesting that in the late 1920s that many of these authors used the same idea with several variations. Usually a Science Fiction Pulpster writes one or maybe two tales on a subject then moves onto other ideas. Bob Olsen and Miles J. Breuer returned again and again to the fourth dimensional concept for different variations, often more time travel or super-tech tales. A related type of story is the submicroscopic story where the scientist shrinks and visits a strange world inside an atom. How the travel happens (fourth dimension, space travel, shrinking) is not as important as the fact that the hero is taken to a place that is not here. Once they arrive, Edgar Rice Burroughs proportioned adventure can ensue.
Next time…1930!
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