Customer Reviews

The Girl in the Golden Atom (Bison Frontiers of Imagination)

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This is the first book I've purchased in the Bison Frontiers of Imagination series. The entire line aims to bring early science fiction stories, from the very beginning of the genre, to a mass audience. It is a worthy series and I plan on buying more in the future.

This book is actually two stories in one, both of which were originally published as serials in the pulp magazine All Story Weekly. The Girl in the Golden Atom was written in 1919 and its sequel, The People in the Golden Atom, in 1920.

Needless to say, the science is extremely dated. Luckily, like most pulp stories at the time, the science fiction element is kept to a minimum.

The plot is relatively simple. A man, identified only as the Chemist, discovers a microscopic world inside a golden ring. Soon, he becomes transfixed with a girl he observes there and determines to shrink himself down and find her. He does this by inventing two drugs, one pill to make him smaller and one pill to make him bigger. He then tells this plan to a group of friends, and asks them to safeguard the ring while he is away. Once he returns, he tells them all the story of his adventures inside the world of the ring. After his tale is over, he shrinks himself down again and returns to his love's side.

It is similar in structure to H.G. Well's The Time Machine. Indeed, this is purposefully done by Cummings, who is attempting to bridge the gap between the science romances of Wells and fantastic voyages of Verne.

The tale is very basic, but it has its charms. The descriptions of shrinking and growing, with the world falling away or rushing up, is very well done. The culture that lives inside the ring is only briefly touched upon. Some might see that as an unimaginative copout, but I think it gives it just the right touch of otherworldliness. Unfortunately, in a story like this, characterization is practically non-existent; it's really the adventure that keeps you reading.

The second story, The People in the Golden Atom, picks up right where the last one left off. The Chemist's friends from the previous novel gather together to read a letter he left behind. It tells them to come find him if has not returned within five years. To aid them, he leaves instructions on how to make his shrinking and growing pills.

The rest of the story follows their own adventures in the world of the ring and what happens when they find their wayward friend. All is not well, for a civil war is brewing and the Chemist is right in the middle of it.

I didn't like the second installment as much as the first. The story lagged in the middle. I think the problem is that it has too many protagonists. Also, it gets bogged down in descriptions of the world of the ring instead of moving the action forward. I also didn't like the resolution of the conflict. It didn't seem inevitable enough. Of course, being a serial, the story isn't supposed to be sophisticated.

Overall, it was an enjoyable read. I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, the pulp stories of the 20s and 30s, or who is interested in learning more about the Golden Age of science fiction.

This book was recommended to me by one of the fellows on the sci-fi community as an example of 'classic' sci-fi. I wasn't disappointed. It reminded me of the style and story of "The Time Machine", which is one of my favorite books.

I won't repeat what the other reviewer stated, as I agree with it and it is very detailed. I guess since I enjoy some of those old stories, I found it more entertaining and so gave it one more star.

One of the earliest true science fiction stories was Fitz-James O'Brien's The Diamond Lens (1858), in which a scientist develops a super-powerful microscope and learns that each atom of matter is a microcosmic world; the scientist sees, and falls in love with, a beautiful but microscopic woman.

"The Diamond Lens" was the obvious inspiration for Ray Cummings' "The Girl in the Golden Atom," although in Cummings' story, the scientist not only sees a microscopic beauty, he actually develops a way to shrink himself so he can visit her.

Cummings originally published the novelette "The Girl in the Golden Atom" in 1919 in All-Story Magazine (a general-interest pulp fiction magazine; there was no pulp magazine devoted solely to science fiction until 1926). It was a hit with readers, and he followed it with a novel-length sequel, "The People of the Golden Atom," which was serialized in All-Story in 1920. In 1922, the two stories were published in book form as "The Girl in the Golden Atom." This Kindle book includes the full 1922 text (i.e., both of the original magazine stories).

Cummings was a good science fiction writer for his day, and "The Girl in the Golden Atom" was his most popular work; he continued to write SF into the 1940s, but nothing he wrote thereafter was as successful. The story is still a pretty good read; the science is of course ludicrous (there are no microscopic people inside atoms, and if there were, they certainly wouldn't speak English!), but Cummings makes an effort to make it sound plausible, and the adventure plot is still somewhat engaging. Cummings also did a bit of political theorizing in the second half of the book, where he describes the society of his microcosmic world; some of his ideas (such as equal legal rights for women, who hold half the offices in the government of the subatomic society) were pretty advanced for 1920.

If you have a taste for early science fiction, this is a fun read, even if not a true classic of the genre.