Human nature is unchanging and will probably not change fundamentally for countless ages in the future. We look back now to the days before the automobile and before electricity and the hundred and one other mechanical conveniences that simplify life in so many ways. Just so people of the future will in all likelihood look back on pre-television and pre-flying days and wish themselves back in the exciting days of primitive life. Our well-known author gives us here a thought-provoking bit of literature of scientific interest. The Cosmic Express by Jack Williamson, that’s next on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, with at least one lost vintage sci-fi short story in every episode.

 

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Jack Williamson was born in 1908 in the Arizona territory when covered wagons were the primary form of transportation and Apaches still raided the settlers. His father was a cattle man, but for young Jack, the ranch was anything but glamorous. "My days were filled with monotonous rounds of what seemed an endless, heart-breaking war with drought and frost and dust-storms, poison-weeds and hail, for the sake of survival." Young John, he was born John Stewart Williamson but went by Jack, saw an ad for a free issue of Amazing Stories Magazine and soon his goal was to be a science fiction writer. He started writing and his first story, The Metal Man, appeared in the December 1928 issue of Amazing Stories. Jack was only 20.

 

Two years later, the year was 1930, the first football World Cup took place, Mickey Mouse made his first appearance in comic form, Pluto was officially discovered and named as a planet and although the decade had just begun, author Jack Williamson was already being talked about as one of the most popular science fiction writers on the planet. The short novel The Green Girl is one of the reasons why he was so popular.

 

In November 1930 today’s story was published in Amazing Stories magazine. They must’ve numbered pages differently back in the day because our story begins on page 752 and there aren’t 752 pages in that magazine. Well anyway, go to page 752 and you will find,The Cosmic Express by Jack Williamson…

 

Tomorrow on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast, Venus wasn’t the virgin planet Mankind had always assumed. It was simply that we got there too soon. Before Eden by Arthur C. Clarke. That’s tomorrow on The Lost Sci-Fi Podcast. 

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