Balladeer’s Blog
THE PROFESSOR’S EXPERIMENTS (1910) – By Paul Bo’ld (sic) – real name: Edward George Paul Bousfield. (Not to be confused with John Paul George Ann Ringo.) A possible influence on H.P. Lovecraft’s Herbert West, Reanimator in style but not in content. This collection of six short stories centered around mad scientist Jerome Mudgewood and his assistant Dr Gertrude Delaney.
Mudgewood’s envelope-pushing experiments unleash forces beyond his control, resulting in death and tragedy. The stories in order:
The Retardatory Force – Professor Mudgewood tries to harness a pair of sub-atomic and extra-atomic forces, believing that eternal life can be achieved by doing so. He, Dr Delaney and their housekeeper instead find themselves confined in an energy field that slows matter down and eventually dissolves it into nothingness. Jerome and Gertrude survive but the housekeeper isn’t as lucky.
The Magnetic Essence – The Professor isolates a particle in iron, a particle which he believes causes iron to be attracted to magnets. Dubbing this particle “the magneto component” he plans to implant it into any object he wishes to magnetize. It turns out the force is also responsible for maintaining an atom’s integrity and so extracting “the magneto component” figuratively splits the atom, unleashing incredibly deadly explosions. Continue reading
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