"The Radio King Novelized by George Bronson Howard from the Universal Chapter Play of the Same Name by Robert Dillon" - from The Radio News for November and December 1922
Some preliminary comments:
- to call this "novelized" makes a Reader's Digest story look like a trilogy. There's only about a dozen pages devoted to The Radio King in both issues and most of these pages are 2/3 advertisements.
- The Radio News was an early Hugo Gernsback publication and everything page I read is pure "Gernsbackian". And this includes the aforementioned ads. How's about such great marketing lines like "If you have been vainly attempting to get satisfactory results with inferior equipment, the Morse-O-Phone will give you an altogether new idea of the possibilities of radio" or "This fall is going to be the greatest in the history of wireless! Dozens of new broadcasting stations are opening-and each one will cover a wider radius as soon as the summer static clears up. - and the Benwood Co. is ready to take care of you RIGHT NOW!"
Photocopies of the story were sent to me by the curator of The Radio History Society Museum.
And truth be known, I eagerly opened the package he sent as thought I were a wide-eyed kid growing up in the twenties. And somehow, in some strange way, these advertisements actually added to all that.
If good science fiction is supposed to evoke a "sense of wonder", well at the very least I enjoyed a good feeling of "gee whiz, golly gee!!".
The story pits "Marnee", "the so-called 'Wizard of the Electrons'" "his right-hand man Ivan Renally, 'Ivan of the Silver Tongue'" and his cohorts against "Bradley Lane, international radio detective". Hanging in the balance is who will benefit by an invention to recall "from the air those messages already sent". Tilting the scales is the mysterious "Man-in-the-Cloak".
SPOILERS
I guess that it won't be giving to much away to reveal that the "Man-in-the-Cloak" is John Leyden, inventor of the device or that his daughter Ruth provides the love interest.
And, aw gosh-darnit, how can I forget to mention Fatty Evarts… a loyal reader of The Radio News whose contributions stem from his homemade radio…which of course he learns how to build from his favorite magazine?
Well, that's the idea of this one. I can't help but think that this serial was fun. Too bad it's lost. (unless somebody comes up with an invention to recall films already projected? Hmm….)
written: 12/22/2003
