You’ve cracked open a few histories of science fiction if you’re familiar with the name Hugo Gernsback. He’s usually Chapter One, unless Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Albert Robida have pushed him into Chapter Two. He once climbed out of Chapter Eleven with nothing but a subscription list and a promise to his faithful readers to re-enter the field with two new periodicals.
Gernsback, the father of “scientifiction” edited the magazines pictured here as well, and as an engineer, writer, and former radio station owner, he was uniquely qualified to do so. Everyday Science and Mechanics wasn’t above publishing the occasional speculative piece about what wonders we could expect centuries hence, but mostly it trafficked in touting technical advances and project proposals for the do-it-yourself set that we’ve come to associate with Popular Mechanics and the like. There were articles on helpful household repairs, little science experiments, work for idle hands (“$500.00 Cigar Boxcraft Contest”) and a section each month devoted to radio.
More than a box that sat on the floor, more than a medium that wafted The Green Hornet, the Jack Benny Program and ads for Jell-O into the air, radio carried a participatory vibe. What boy experimenter of the period hadn’t built a crystal set, or strung an antenna to pick up stations in other cities? He could graduate to amateur radio, short wave, citizens’ band, stocking his ham shack with the store-bought and the jerry-built.
This wasn’t new. Young Tom Edison was obsessed with telegraphy when he wasn’t extinguishing the fires from his chemistry experiments gone awry. You could draw a straight line from this impulse to the Homebrew Computer Club of the 70s, guys who likewise had great hopes – and envisioned endless applications -- for the boxes they were building. Did they think computers would unite people over long distances? Dream even then of interconnectivity and a wired nation, united by a sense of community? Make everybody a part of something larger while still enjoying the comforts of home?
Frank R. Paul was the cover artist on both of these. They show restraint, for him, since the magazine was meant to inspire the guy with the garage full of tools, the weekend handyman. More often, Paul’s illustrations depicted “The Man from Mars” or “The City of the Future.” Calling his work on Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories visionary would not be overstating it. His draftsmanship at first seems cruder or more naïve than that of his contemporaries, but reveals a breadth of imagination that leaves one dissatisfied with the heroic and glamorous figures everyone else purveyed. The timeline of the best of his output runs oddly parallel with the glory days of the Surrealists, and Paul would have no reason to be abashed in their presence. He was trippy before trippy was the rage. These contraptions defy gravity, safety regulations, and common sense.
Paul is known for the cover painting for the issue of Amazing Stories that featured the debut of Philip Nowlan’s Buck Rogers. Google around for the image. It’s actually meant for E.E. Smith’s “The Skylark of Space,” another groundbreaking sf story in the same issue, and shows our hero, in what looks like a leatherhead football helmet, levitating with the help of a device he may have launched from his garage in the picture’s background. When he wasn’t serving up aliens that looked like spaghetti and meatballs, Paul’s oeuvre was sometimes earmarked by little haimish touches to bring them down to Earth. Just as there’s a woman flagging down the protagonist in his backyard on the Amazing cover, the flying cycle cover depicts houses with smoky chimneys, hearths ablaze providing a backdrop to the inventor’s exploit.
Another kind of domesticity is in order in WLS Family Album 1931, from which these pictures are excerpted.
“We have worked always to have WLS with its cheery voice bring good, clean entertainment into your home.
“But behind every song and laughter there is deep and serious purpose. Our country today needs right-thinking citizens in solid support of institutions our forefathers gave their lives to build. Throughout the world is disturbance, ideals being lowered, false standards advanced. We thank God for the stability and unyielding conscience of the American farmer and of every right-thinking and square-dealing American citizen.
“Without self-seeking, we have demanded and held a place on the air for The Voice of Agriculture.”
“Charlie Stookey presides over the Dinner Bell Program…To the left is Charlie with the famous Dinner Bell that you hear every day…”
“Jim Poole, whose voice comes to you several times every day, direct from the Union Stock Yards in Chicago, is the most experienced live stock market reporter in America…He has been in the Chicago Stock Yards so many years that only the old timers can remember when he started…and brings to the market quotations each day, experience and insight which make this service of immeasurable value to live stock producers.”
“The Swift Rangers who take part in the Swift Roundup each day over WLS.”
“Here’s ‘Speed’ Freeman, our southern ‘blues’ singer of Merry-Go-Round fame. Her brothers named her ‘Speed’ because she was so slow. There’s lots of melody when she starts strumming her ‘uke’.”
“Marian Syndergaard of Iowa and William Bodenhamer of Missouri, 1930 4-H Club Health Champions at the International Live Stock Exhibition.”
“Ever since the post-man delivered the first bag of ‘fan’ letters to WLS back in April, 1924, we’ve looked upon reading the daily mail as one of the most important duties at the studio. It’s a pleasant task. We get the ‘pulse’ of our audience through these letters and cards. If a certain program brings an extraordinarily large response, we know it is pleasing you. A broadcast that fails to bring the expected letters is carefully analyzed to determine its faults.”
Interconnectivity? A sense of community? Of something larger? This is the 1931 model of our wired nation.
WLS still broadcasts, and you can stream it. I’ll leave it to you to discover if they still ring the Dinner Bell.
That any household appliance in any century would carry the cure for society’s ills, or even just for loneliness is another kind of a science fiction, a change anybody can believe in.
I leave you with these words of encouragement. They’re from The Radio Boys at Ocean Point or the Message That Saved the Ship by Allen Chapman, author of The Radio Boys at Mountain Pass, and The Radio Boys’ First Wireless, all published by Grosset & Dunlap, copyright 1922:
“But valuable as radio was in war,” Brandon went on, “I believe it is going to be still more valuable in the matter of maintaining peace. I think, in fact, that it may do away with war altogether.”
“I don’t quite get you,” said Bob, with a puzzled air.
“In this way,” explained Brandon. “It’s going to make all the people of the world neighbors. And when people are neighbors they’re usually more or less friends. They have to a large extent the same interests and they understand each other.
“Now, most wars have been due to exclusiveness and misunderstandings. Each nation has dwelt in its own borders, behind its own mountains or its own rivers, and they’ve shut out of their minds and interests all people outside of themselves. They’ve grown to think that a stranger must necessarily be an enemy. Some little thing happens that makes them mad and they’re ready to fight.
“But the radio is going to break down all those barriers of exclusiveness and remove these misunderstandings. When people get to talking together each finds that the other isn’t such a bad fellow after all. When a man in Paris picks up his telephone and has a chat with one man in England and then another man in Spain and still another in Italy he finds that they are all human beings and very much like himself. If he had the Englishman, the Spaniard, the Italian in his office together, he’d probably invite them out to dinner and they’d all have a good time. When the time comes that in every country in South America men can tune in on the radio and listen to the inaugural address of the President of the United States coming from his own lips, they’ll know that we have no unfriendly designs on their country and are only anxious to see them happy and prosperous. We’ll hear the same speeches, we’ll listen to the same concerts, and gradually we’ll come to feel that we’re all neighbors. That’s why I say that the radio may in the course of time make all wars impossible, or at least, very improbable.”
“It sounds reasonable,” commented Bob. “I only hope that you’re right.”
