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Robert Duncan Milne (1844-1899)
THE Scottish-born author Robert Duncan Milne, who lived and worked in San Fransisco, may be considered as one of the founding-fathers of modern science-fiction. He wrote 60-odd stories in this genre before his untimely death in a street accident in 1899, publishing them, for the most part, in The Argonaut and San Francisco Examiner.
In its report on Milne's demise (he was struck by a cable-car while in a state of inebriation) The San Fransico Call of 17 December 1899 summarised his life as follows:
"Mr. Milne was the son of the late Rev. George Gordon Milne, M.A., F.R.S.A., for forty years incumbent of St. James Episcopal Church, Cupar-Fife. and nephew of Duncan James Kay, Esq., of Drumpark, J.P. and D.L. of the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, through which side of the house, and by maternal ancestry (through the Breadalbane family), he was lineally descended from King Robert the Bruce.
"He received his primary education at Trinity College, Glenalmond, where he distinguished himself by gaining first the Skinner scholarship, which he held for a period of three years; second, the Knox prize for Latin verse, the competition for which is open to a number of public echools in England and Ireland, and thirdly, the Buccleuch gold medal as senior and captain of the school, of the eleven of which he was also captain.
"From Glenalmond Mr. Milne proceeded to Oxford, where he further distinguished himself by taking honors, also rowing in his college eight and playing in its eleven.
"After leaving the university he decided to visit California, a country then beginning to be more talked about than ever, and he afterward made the Pacific Coast his residence. In 1874 Mr. Milne invented and exhibited in the Mechanics' Fair at San Francisco a working model of a new type of rotary steam engine, which was pronounced to be the wonder of the fair.
"While in California Mr. Milne for a long time gained distinction as a writer of short stories and verse which appeared in current periodicals. The character of his work was well defined by Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, who said:
"'He has an extravagant imagination, but under it is a reassuring and scientific mind. He takes such a premise as a comet falling into the sun, and works out a terribly realistic series of results: or he will invent a drama for Saturn which might well have grown out of that planet's conditions. His style is so good and so convincing that one is apt to lay down such a story as the former, with an anticipation of nightmare, if comets are hanging about. His sense of humor and literary taste will always stop him the right side of the grotesque.'"
A caricature showing Robert Duncan Milne and a San Francisco cable-car.
I RETURNED to the cabin and assisted the major to direct the rays from Venus upon the screen. While the fixed stars were passing over the screen before the expected advent of the planet, I noticed that a bright orb, presenting somewhat the appearance of a gibbous moon, suddenly made its appearance upon the field. I knew that it could not be a fixed star, since it subtended an arc of some six inches on the screen, and I felt equally confident that it was not the planet we were in search of, since Venus, though now past her western elongation, and therefore at least seventy millions of miles away, would certainly present a picture extensive as that of Mars, owing to her superior diameter. Nevertheless the gibbous aspect of the body bore a marked resemblance to what might be expected of Venus in her present relation to the sun, and I consequently hailed the major, asking him whether it was possible that any sudden accident had happened to the lenses to account for the mysterious diminution in size of the supposed celestial object.
"No," he answered presently; "everything is right out here. Nevertheless, I am at a loss to account for the body you mention. See if anything has happened to either of the concave receiving lenses. The displacement of one of them would materially affect the size of the image."
I felt for the lenses, and found that their position was unchanged, and so told the major.
"Focus your binocular upon the object," said he; "it may possibly be one of the asteroids; a new one, perhaps, and may present an interesting study."
"But," returned I, "were it one of those diminutive planets which circle round the sun, midway between Mars and Jupiter, that would not account for its gibbous appearance. In that case we should behold a perfect orb, at all events, should we not?"
"You are right," replied the major, "it is evident that this body must revolve in an orbit between ourselves and the sun."
"Is it possible," I asked, struck by a sudden idea, "that it can be a satellite of Venus?"
"That must be it," cried the major, with emphasis. "I have always thought that the moon of Venus, as seen by Cassini, by Short, by Montaigne, by Rödkier, was not wholly a myth. Examine it carefully and note what you see."
I did as desired, and kept this moon well in the field of vision. It resolved itself into an almost absolute epitome of our own moon approaching the full, and seemed to shine with two kinds of reflected light, one radiant, such as might be referred to a solar source, and one much fainter, flooding the darkened regions of the sphere with a species of twilight. I noticed that the surface was rough and mottled by volcanic action, like the surface of our own satellite, and apprised the major of the fact.
"It merely bears out the analogy of nature," said he. "There can be no good reason to suppose that a satellite of Venus should exist lander other conditions than our own. Its small size—since, by your description, it can not be more than half the diameter of our own moon—would necessitate the extinction of its internal heat long ago, and render it unfit for the sustenance of life. Still, I am glad you have discovered it, and thus put an end to the astronomical uncertainty regarding it," he added, as the orb swept slowly out of telescopic view.
It was presently succeeded by a spectacle before which the cloud-atmosphere of Jupiter, and the well-defined, though monotonous seas and continents of Mars paled into insignificance. A landscape of surpassing beauty was passing beneath my gaze, as if at the distance of five or six miles away. Green meadows, resplendent with rainbow-hued flowers in such profusion as to be distinctly visible even at this distance, seemed to pass swiftly by with the diurnal rotation of the planet. Forests of trees, whose genus I could not exactly determine, though their foliage was dense, "umbrageous, and luxuriant, stretched over vast expanses of land, beside limpid rivers and placid inland lakes, which gleamed beneath a radiant sun through a particularly translucent atmosphere. Then came a strange and interesting spectacle. A collection of dwellings of dazzling white, seemingly constructed of porcelain or alabaster, for their graceful outlines, their aerial curves, their hanging domes, seemed to preclude the idea of marble, though their glistening sheen suggested the purest Parian, reared their fronts on the shore of a lovely and island-dotted lake. There appeared to be people, clad in shining garments, moving in the streets, which were irregular, and bore rather a resemblance to the arrangement of a country town than of a business city. Elegant structures, of a size which is rarely paralleled upon our earth, and whose symmetrical proportions naturally evoked the idea of temples, lyceums, or other buildings dedicated to the higher culture of life, were not wanting to complete the pleasing picture. As the panorama passed on, the city gave place to a succession of country houses—or rather palaces," judging from their size—all built of the same dazzling white material, and surrounded by ample pleasure-grounds, stretching as far as the eye could reach. Then a serene and shining sea passed in upon the field of vision. Ships and argosies sailing upon its bosom served to convince me that the inhabitants of Venus bad acquired, among other arts, that of navigation. I was peculiarly struck with the serenity and peacefulness of everything I saw, both on the sea, which, after a few hundred miles, again gave place to land, and on the land itself. I could see no mountains, but pleasantly rounded and verdure-clad bills; no abrupt gorges, bold bluffs, stupendous water-falls, but silvery brooks threading their way through copses, or larger rivers gliding gently over smiling and peaceful plains. Many more cities and stately buildings, built upon the same symmetrical plan, passed beneath my gaze. Continents and islands glided on with the slow and majestic movement of a panorama, necessitating re-focusing of my lenses as the body of the planet gained curvature toward the horizon, till at length the pleasant landscape vanished from the screen. Greatly pleased with what I had witnessed after the unpleasant ideas suggested by the wild and abnormal conditions of Jupiter and Mars, I went out upon the roof and talked to the major.
"Yes," said he, as I referred to what I had just seen, "Venus is the beau ideal of a world in the golden or Saturnian age; and why not? Her physical conditions are exactly suited to produce and foster a race of the most perfect development Through what degrees of development her inhabitants attained their present advanced stage in arts, in luxury, in government, we have, of course, at present, no means of knowing. I shall, however, have far greater facilities when I procure my new power of eight hundred diameters, which I told you about I can then observe and study their actions almost as well as if I were among them. I do not despair even of formulating a code of signals, after I have succeeded in attracting their attention, by means of which I can open up intelligent communication with them. You need not start and look amazed, as if the idea were wild and beyond the power of human intelligence to conceive or carry out I should have supposed that what you have witnessed here on two occasions already would have rendered you somewhat diffident as to the present penetrative powers of humanity in general, and scientists in particular. Remember that George Stephenson was laughed down and hooted at by the so-called savants of his day as a maniac, because he gravely asserted that his locomotive would drag a. train of cars along a pair of rails at the rate of six miles an hour, Morse had immense difficulty in persuading the sapient legislators of his day that the transmission of signals by electricity was a practicable thing; And will you then dare to say that I can not throw a signal to the inhabitants of Venus by the converse of that method which I employ to gather their light, and approach almost within hailing distance of that planet?" And the major turned away with considerable heat.
"No, no," he went on, as, after walking half a dozen paces, he turned laughing, "I cannot blame you for being nonplussed by my remarks. Of course, you have been brought up in the old grooves, and must religiously believe, what is told you in your schools and colleges. Hut when you are old enough to think for yourself, why shouldn't you? Tell me that." And he stopped abruptly.
I confess to having felt particularly ashamed and uncomfortably abashed at this tirade of the major's, and drew several prolonged whiffs at an uncommonly good cigar before I regained sufficient composure to hazard a remark.
"Then you do not think," said I, "that the inhabitants of Venus have passed through the same chain of circumstances, through the same processes or gradations of development, that we have?"
"I do not," he replied. "I am compelled to believe, from all I have witnessed, that the conditions of that planet have been, and are, eminently favorable to the production and development of only the best and highest types of animal and vegetable life, and, per contra as eminently unfavorable to the procreation and continuance of all that is vile, depraved, and inferior in the vital scale. The conditions necessary to the development and procreation of the latter class being wanting, I am confident that, when we have fuller opportunities for observation, we shall find that Venus is not only free from all ferocious and predatory animals, noxious reptiles and insects, but also from their congeners of the human species. Imagine, if you can, a planet devoid of Bengal tigers, crocodiles, rats, scorpions, tarantulas, lying politicians, thieving officials, hypocritical religionists, ignorant teachers, cheating; merchants, criminals and desperadoes of every class, divine-right usurpers of other peoples' labor, puny and sickly beings whose only claim to manhood is the name, and you can form some conception of the condition of society in Venus. Now for the reason. First and foremost, plenty of sunlight, with the attendant heat tempered and rendered grateful by the transparency, rarity, and buoyancy of the air. Next, a surface crust whose sharp edges were all worn off by short and sharp elemental action before it became the repository of life. On a sphere such as this, the profusion and variety of vegetable forms would naturally attract the attention of those developing types of animal life, which, upon our own unfortunate, accursed, and convulsed planet, were driven, however unwillingly at first, to prey upon one another until habit became nature. Man followed suit. Elemental convulsions have, again and again, aye, for millions of years, swept him all but entirely off the surface of this earth, so that he has lost his records, and been obliged to depend upon those mountainous and nearly barbarous races which escaped, for the slight inklings of the arts and sciences by which he has again laboriously worked his way up to some poor glimmer of knowledge and comfort during the last few thousand years of dim tradition. But he still possesses within himself a possibility of higher things, a natural memory and inalienable hereditary reminiscence of those ancestral glories which illustrated this planet before the last tremendous cataclysm swept everything before it. Now," continued the major, "you see the moon is making its appearance above the horizon, as also is the comet. We shall not have much time for the examination of both. Which had you rather see, the war-worn surface of our satellite, or the strange and puzzling composition of the nucleus and shining tail of one of those bodies which have puzzled astronomers since the days of Zoroaster and Ptolemy? If you choose the former, you will see unexpected things—deep abysses opening upon hidden central seas, and other sights as fearful as grotesque; if the latter, you will have the privilege of analyzing the most mysterious body which sounds the depths of space."
"Although," I replied, after a moment's deliberation, "I am curious to learn all that can be known about the physical constitution of our satellite, whose great proximity, occupying as she does a position more than one hundred times nearer than any other of the heavenly bodies can ever attain to, renders her a desirable object for astronomical investigation, yet I am content with your assurance that our moon is absolutely destitute of all forms of life, animal or vegetable; that she is, in fact, a ruined world, and as such can awake but a scientific interest, such as one might bring to bear upon a rare geological specimen, or some primitive rock strata. I presume nothing of any great physical moment can be learned from a minute examination of the surface of our satellite."
"That," answered the major, "depends entirely on how you look at it. An inspection of its arid wastes, its interminable lands, its gigantic crater-beds, might afford a solution of the vexed problem whether the moon ever possessed large bodies of water or an atmosphere, and, if so, where I they have disappeared to. At present there is no atmosphere such as ours existing there; taj is to say, none composed of the elements nitrogen and oxygen. Water there is, but it is all subterranean, long ago drawn and sucked into central caverns left void by the cooling down of the interior of the sphere. I am merely waiting tall I procure the higher magnifying power I told you of to institute a thorough examination of this subterranean sea through an immense opening in the great crater Tycho. I then do not despair of discovering some ghastly forms of amphibious animal life, to which the octopus, the devil-fish, and the spider-crab will appear gentle and symmetrical. Some dark hints of the existence of such fearful monsters I have already got; but, perhaps, on the whole, it will be better to defer the examination, and direct our attention to the comet, which will have vanished into space before I return again from the seaside, whereas there is no fear of a like catastrophe with the moon."
I gladly assented to this proposition, and together we directed the instrument upon She comet, which bad already attained several degrees elevation in the east. It was a matter of ease to bring so large a body upon the screen, and presently I commanded a portion of the tail, through which shone several fixed stars of great brilliancy. At first I had some difficulty in bringing what seemed an extremely attenuated and nebulous mass to a focus through the binocular. The substance of the tail, with the power I employed, seemed to defy analysis or resolution into its constituent elements.
"We must remember," said the major, as I referred the matter to him, "that the comet is more than a hundred millions of miles from us at present, and therefore not seen under nearly so favorable conditions as those under which we observed Mars or Venus. I am not sanguine of being able to analyse with our present power the minute particles of which the tail is undoubtedly composed."
I persevered, however, and at length thought that I made out a congeries of countless myriads of globules moving among themselves in ever-changing gyrations and with in credible velocity. As the scene passed across the screen, there remained no doubt about the fact. The globules grew more luminous, more numerous; their involuted motion, though still surprisingly rapid, not so agile as at first, and I argued that my vision was approaching the nucleus.
I was not disappointed as, suddenly, a sea of fire burst upon the scene. An intense white light, which was almost blinding in its brilliancy, occupied the field, seemingly proceeding from a molten or vaporous mass of inconceivably high temperature. My eyes were pained by the spectacle, and I was presently compelled to remove them, having first noted, however, that this ocean of fire and light was convulsed within itself by some fierce and potent agency which I could not understand. I again turned my glass upon the tail, but found that the extreme brilliancy of the nucleus had dazzled my sight into impotency. I mechanically arose and went out.
"Well," said the major, slowly, as I detailed what I had seen, "I can not help thinking that the nucleus of a comet is composed of electrical substances of opposite polarity, whose immense speed while near the sun at perihelion excites such powerful action as to cause them to become incandescent in the highest degree. Those particles or globules which you noticed as composing the tail, are thrown off or repelled from one of the poles—in the case of some observed comets from two or more poles, according to the polarity of the substances composing the nucleus. This electrical repulsion would account for the terrific and inconceivable speed with which the end of a comet's tail moves while rounding the sun, a speed, in some cases, certainly reaching many hundreds of millions of miles per hour. As a common dynamical simile upon this point in our every-day experience, I may cite the repulsion of steel filings from the end of a magnet, or even so light an object as a pith ball; so that actually neither the small mass, gravity, or density of a body would necessarily present a bar to such electrical action as I have described. I think we have at last got upon the track of the laws which regulate these cometary bodies, but I shall study the matter more fully with my higher power. We can do nothing more now," continued he, looking at the east. "Let us go in." We left the roof.
"Come again," said the major, as I said good-bye, "when I return from the seaside, which will be in about a month's time, and we will continue our investigations if you care to do so."
—Robert Duncan Milne, San Francisco, September, 1881.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.