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Scientifictionist, v. 1, issue 6, August-October 1946

Page 6

ventor, Malbourne. In both stories the spectator-protagonist plays the part of a visitor to a fictitious utopia wherein everything must happen according to plan. For example, one of Wertenbaker's character's says:
   "When a child is born, we know already what he will have, the woman he will marry. The Bureau could tell you at this moment when my great-grandson will be born, when he will die, and what his life will do for the State. There re never any accidents in our lives."
   While the bucolic existence of Weinbaum's "Paracosma" seems outwardly unlike the somewhat austere perfection of Wertenbaker's utopian world, their underlying philosophies are the same, as Galatea in Professor Ludwig's drama, tells us:
   "'I told you everything has been foreseen, from the beginning until eternity -- everything. The house and trees and machine were ready for Leucon and my parents and me. There is a place for my child, who will be a girl, and a place for her child -- and so on forever."
   In both stories the visitor falls in love with the dream girl and wishes to remain in the fictitious world, but, as the dramatist will have it, this he cannot do because he is not part of the plan -- there is no place for him in its completely ordered existence. And in both cases the realism of the new motion picture proves all too successful when the play is done and the player returns to reality to find himself still desperately in love with a photographic illusion. While Weinbaum resolves this impasse with a stock happy ending ("'Tea's real enough,' said the professor. 'My niece, a senior at Northern, and likes dramatics. She helped me out with the thing. Why! Want to meet her!'"), Wertenbaker permits his unfortunate protagonist only the gloomy reflection:
   "It was only a dream. I had lost the only girl I had ever loved, in a dream. ... It wouldn't do to be late at the office, where I, too, was a maker of sometimes cruel dreams."
   Of the two stories, it is this reviewer's opinion that THE CHAMBER OF LIFE handles the theme in a manner far superior to that of PYGMALION'S SPECTACLES. Though the latter is entertainingly and even beautifully written, in fact is Weinbaum at nearly his best his chronological, third person narration renders the reader's view-point an objective one. With Wertenbaker, however, the treatment is intensely subjective; the story is told not in the order that the narrator participated in it, but thereby conveyed to the reader in a most effective fashion. A particularly novel turn is given to the plot when the narrator, who is given to sleep-walking, leaves the Chamber at the height of the drama to wander forth into the night-shrouded city while he still remains mentally in the sunlit utopia created by this machine. Thru-out this latter part of the drama there occur momentary, and to the dreamer inexplicable, obtrusions of the real world into the imaginary. As the narrator relates:
   "From time to time I heard inexplicable noises -- the whirring of motors, the skid-skid of tires on invisible streets, the rumble of carts around corners of a world where there were no carts. Again and again those moments of confusion would come over me, when I seemed to be looking into two worlds at once, one superimposed upon the other, one bright, the other dark with faint points of light in the distance."
   The dream ends on a tragic note, when the protagonist despondent over his imminent departure to his proper world, takes his life, in the dream, by throwing himself into a river. He then awakes in the real world to find that he has indeed fallen into a pond of icy water. The conclusion of the drama presumably was not that which would be portrayed by the Chamber of Life, but rather was a product of the protagonist's mind, which carried out the story in its own way after he had left the Chamber.
   The story is rather well illustrated with two drawings by an impression-
        (Continued on page 12)

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ventor, Malbourne. In both stories the spectator-protagonist plays the part of a visitor to a fictitious utopia wherein everything must happen according to plan. For example, one of Wertenbaker's character's says: "When a child is born, we know already what he will have, the woman he will marry. The Bureau could tell you at this moment when my great-grandson will be born, when he will die, and what his life will do for the State. There re never any accidents in our lives." While the bucolic existence of Weinbaum's "Paracosma" seems outwardly unlike the somewhat austere perfection of Wertenbaker's utopian world, their underlying philosophies are the same, as Galatea in Professor Ludwig's drama, tells us: "'I told you everything has been foreseen, from the beginning until eternity -- everything. The house and trees and machine were ready for Leucon and my parents and me. There is a place for my child, who will be a girl, and a place for her child -- and so on forever." In both stories the visitor falls in love with the dream girl and wishes to remain in the fictitious world, but, as the dramatist will have it, this he cannot do because he is not part of the plan -- there is no place for him in its completely ordered existence. And in both cases the realism of the new motion picture proves all too successful when the play is done and the player returns to reality to find himself still desperately in love with a photographic illusion. While Weinbaum resolves this impasse with a stock happy ending ("'Tea's real enough,' said the professor. 'My niece, a senior at Northern, and likes dramatics. She helped me out with the thing. Why! Want to meet her!'"), Wertenbaker permits his unfortunate protagonist only the gloomy reflection: "It was only a dream. I had lost the only girl I had ever loved, in a dream. ... It wouldn't do to be late at the office, where I, too, was a maker of sometimes cruel dreams." Of the two stories, it is this reviewer's opinion that THE CHAMBER OF LIFE handles the theme in a manner far superior to that of PYGMALION'S SPECTACLES. Though the latter is entertainingly and even beautifully written, in fact is Weinbaum at nearly his best his chronological, third person narration renders the reader's view-point an objective one. With Wertenbaker, however, the treatment is intensely subjective; the story is told not in the order that the narrator participated in it, but thereby conveyed to the reader in a most effective fashion. A particularly novel turn is given to the plot when the narrator, who is given to sleep-walking, leaves the Chamber at the height of the drama to wander forth into the night-shrouded city while he still remains mentally in the sunlit utopia created by this machine. Thru-out this latter part of the drama there occur momentary, and to the dreamer inexplicable, obtrusions of the real world into the imaginary. As the narrator relates: "From time to time I heard inexplicable noises -- the whirring of motors, the skid-skid of tires on invisible streets, the rumble of carts around corners of a world where there were no carts. Again and again those moments of confusion would come over me, when I seemed to be looking into two worlds at once, one superimposed upon the other, one bright, the other dark with faint points of light in the distance." The dream ends on a tragic note, when the protagonist despondent over his imminent departure to his proper world, takes his life, in the dream, by throwing himself into a river. He then awakes in the real world to find that he has indeed fallen into a pond of icy water. The conclusion of the drama presumably was not that which would be portrayed by the Chamber of Life, but rather was a product of the protagonist's mind, which carried out the story in its own way after he had left the Chamber. The story is rather well illustrated with two drawings by an impression- (Continued on page 12) page 6