I find Micah Hanks’s work to be infuriating for a number of reasons, but not least because he tends to write about the exact same things that I wrote about years earlier, but with less detail and insight. His latest piece on the history of ray guns in science fiction and science fact is another example of his light skimming of history. It is maddening that Hanks, who claims to be an explorer of all things Fortean and outré, misses several important connections between sci-fi death rays and the weirder side of history. We should start with what Hanks gets right. He correctly notes that H. G. Wells developed the first death ray in the directed energy beams used by the Martians in The War of the Worlds (1897). And then, bizarrely, he simply skips over everything until the 1950s with a sentence: “After humanity fumbled their way to triumph over its Martian invaders (with a helping hand from a few friendly terrestrial viruses), later fiction cast these futuristic weapons in the hands of human characters the likes of Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, and other characters.” And that is that. The rest of the article provides a potted history of the use of lasers in the military. Hanks missed some very interesting parts of the story. I briefly alluded to these in a footnote in my anthology Foundations of Atlantis, etc., when I noted that Edgar Cayce spoke about death rays in Atlantis (reading 364-11) and was obviously drawing on earlier pop culture. As I discussed back then, a ray capable of destroying people and airplanes from afar caused a frenzy in 1923 when Edwin R. Scott claimed to have invented one and in 1924 when another man tried to sell one to the British government. Similar beams were in use in science fiction years before. As I wrote in 2013, “In 1898 [Garrett P.] Serviss had given Edison a disintegration ray in Edison’s Conquest of Mars, modeled on H. G. Wells’s heat ray from War of the Worlds. Undersea Kingdom, borrowing from Flash Gordon, made a death ray a key part of the weapons of Atlantis four years after Cayce had done the same from similar source material.” And I only touched on some of the ways death rays were deployed in pop culture between 1898 and the 1950s. In the 1915 movie serial The Exploits of Elaine, for example, the ninth chapter was literally called “The Death Ray” and featured an infrared beam that killed anything struck by its light. “The conclusion of this scene,” wrote the early cinema magazine Motography at the time, “in which the scientific detective turns the death-dealing ray back upon its wielders is a splendid climax…”. But the movie versions pale before the fact—which Hanks entirely misses—that world governments in the 1920s were actively trying to develop death rays. Let me quote in full one contemporary article on the subject, which describes how Nicola Tesla’s alleged death ray influenced the subject. It appeared in the Amalgamated Sheet Metal Workers’ Journal for June 15, 1924: It is said to be an ill wind that doesn't blow good to and for somebody and so it is with the death ray episode that finds daily space in the world's press. Nicola Tesla claimed to have invented a death ray in the 1930s, as did Antonio Longoria. As I wrote in my recent article about Hitler’s wonder-weapons, the Nazis also tried to make death rays, including one that would use directed x-ray beams to kill its targets.
Now, I don’t know about you, but to my mind that strongly implies that death rays were more than just a minor science fiction trope that bizarrely exploded in popularity when Hollywood started making flying saucer movies. Instead, the death ray was an established part of popular culture and became important to science fiction because they were the futuristic weapons that actual governments had explored using but did not yet have the technology to bring to fruition. Contrary to Hanks’s claim, you can see that rays of various kinds were widespread in pop culture before the 1950s, at which point they were so commonplace that Looney Tunes could make fun of them, particularly in the hands of Daffy Duck’s Duck Dodgers, whose Serviss-inspired disintegration ray famously disintegrated. In short, Hanks once again missed the interesting parts of the story because he skipped over the hard work of researching the subject in detail.
16 Comments
William Fitzgerald
1/19/2019 08:53:45 am
Wouldn't Archimedes's heat ray be an antecedent to this type of theme? Now, whether Archimedes actually invented, deployed or had any success with a heat ray device is another thing; but, the legend of a heat ray seems to establish a clear enough link to later science fiction ideas of death rays.
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Not to forget the thunderbolt of Zeus.
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William Fitzgerald
1/19/2019 10:22:03 pm
First, it doesn't really matter whether the ancients understood the concept; only that the concept become a legend which could've been used as inspiration by modern science-fiction writers starting with H. G. Wells.
LIGHTFOOT
1/20/2019 10:06:02 am
Plato - And with all things, a myriad of ideas which run in sync are written. Thus, given a toil from which to ponder. No one idea shall rise above all else. Insight assigned to a genome of thoughts, so any thought can be procured.
Ralf Buelow
1/19/2019 09:21:06 am
Once again, everybody forgets Soviet Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_Ray_(1925_film)
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TAYLOR MANCINI
1/19/2019 10:16:20 am
What's the opposite of death ray?
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Joe Scales
1/19/2019 11:04:15 am
"I find Micah Hanks’s work to be infuriating for a number of reasons, but not least because he tends to write about the exact same things that I wrote about years earlier, but with less detail and insight."
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Jockobadger
1/21/2019 02:19:26 pm
I wasn't going to mention it, but...…..
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American cool "disco" dan
1/19/2019 11:35:43 am
If Buck Rogers is from the 1920s and Flash Gordon is from the 1930s how is mentioning them "skipping over everything until the 1950s"?
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SADDAM HUSSEIN
1/19/2019 03:51:38 pm
I would like to note this is classified information:
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TAYLOR MANCINI
1/19/2019 03:54:57 pm
What's the opposite of death ray?
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V
1/19/2019 11:03:03 pm
Opposite of death: life
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EAGLE FEATHER
1/20/2019 09:49:35 am
You have just discovered "the Archimedes Principle for one-third!"
Ronald Bowel
1/20/2019 10:32:55 am
American Cool "Disco Dan" and Joe Scales, I am appealing to you, as the actually operators and owners of this blog to support something that is needed desperately in this country. The need is for affordable bathroom facilities. I ask you, and the sixty-seven people who actually come on to this blog for your support. Please, please, please support the bowel movement. Future generations will thank you.
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Howdy Doo-Doo
1/20/2019 02:52:59 pm
American Cool "Disco Dan" will be happy to contribute but on a couple conditions. He will only fund the construction of Mens Rooms and wants to be in charge of the design of all the bathroom stalls.
Reply
TOIDY WIPE
1/20/2019 04:13:22 pm
International reserved women are pissed off by a freelancer? Women always get paid to destroy an exposed woman who has a need of subordination to freely bathe with filth? Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
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