Ray Cummings (1) (1887–1957)
Author of A Brand New World
For other authors named Ray Cummings, see the disambiguation page.
Ray Cummings (1) has been aliased into Raymond King Cummings.
About the Author
Image credit: Image from Wonder Stories Quarterly Vol. 2 No. 2 - Interplanetary Number [Winter 1931]
Series
Works by Ray Cummings
Works have been aliased into Raymond King Cummings.
Juggernaut of Space 3 copies
Dimensione Infinita 3 copies
Dissolvenza Infinita 3 copies
Princess of the Moon 2 copies
Tarrass the Conqueror 2 copies
The Other Man’s Blood 2 copies
Space-Liner X-87 (novella) 2 copies
World Upside Down 2 copies
Arton's Metal 2 copies
The Planet Smashers 2 copies
Onslaught Of The Druid Girls 2 copies
Bandits of the Cylinder 1 copy
Science Can Wait 1 copy
Portrait 1 copy
Wings of Icarus 1 copy
Monster Of the Moon 1 copy
Death by the Clock 1 copy
Little Monsters Come 1 copy
Crimes of the Year 2000 1 copy
Studio Crime 1 copy
The Great Transformation 1 copy
World of Doom {novelette} 1 copy
Bandits of Time 1 copy
New York 5000 1 copy
Around The Universe 1 copy
The Three Eyed Man 1 copy
Requiem for a Small Planet 1 copy
The Shadow People 1 copy
Blood of the Moon 1 copy
Shadow Gold 1 copy
Trapped in Eternity 1 copy
Associated Works
Works have been aliased into Raymond King Cummings.
Ackermanthology: 65 Astonishing, Rediscovered Sci-Fi Shorts (1997) — Contributor — 97 copies, 1 review
Under the Moons of Mars - A History and Anthology of The Scientific Romance in the Munsey Magazines 1912 - 1920 (1970) — Contributor — 70 copies, 1 review
Fantastic Novels Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, September 1940 (1940) — Contributor — 2 copies, 1 review
Famous Fantastic Mysteries Combined with Fantastic Novels Magazine, Vol. 03, No. 5, December 1941 (1941) — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Cummings, Ray
- Legal name
- Cummings, Raymond King
- Other names
- King, Ray
Cummings, Gabrielle
Wilson, Gabriel - Birthdate
- 1887-08-30
- Date of death
- 1957-01-23
- Gender
- male
- Occupations
- personal assistant to Thomas Edison
writer - Relationships
- Edison, Thomas (employer)
- Short biography
- Raymond King Cummings was one of the "founding fathers of the science fiction pulp genre".
Cummings worked with Thomas Edison as a personal assistant and technical writer from 1914 to 1919. His most highly regarded work was the novel The Girl in the Golden Atom published in 1922, which was a consolidation of a short story by the same name published in 1919 and a sequel, The People of the Golden Atom, published in 1920. In total he wrote some 750 novels and short stories, using also the pen names Ray King, Gabrielle Cummings, and Gabriel Wilson.
During the 1940s, with his fiction career in eclipse, Cummings anonymously scripted comic book stories for Timely Comics, the predecessor to Marvel Comics. He recycled the plot of The Girl in the Golden Atom, for a two-part Captain America tale, "Princess of the Atom". (Captain America #25 & 26) He also contributed to the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, which his daughter Betty Cummings also wrote.
Ray Cummings wrote in 1922, "Time... is what keeps everything from happening at once", a sentence repeated by scientists such as C. J. Overbeck, and John Archibald Wheeler. - Cause of death
- cerebral hemorrhage
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- New York, USA
- Place of death
- Mount Vernon, New York, USA
- Map Location
- USA
Members
Reviews
“A desperate madness was on us all. The lives of thousands of people who might still be alive on Manhattan were at stake; and other millions would be menaced if the robots renewed their energy and spread the revolt into other cities.”
Ray Cummings is one of Science Fiction’s Founding Fathers, and though you may not be as familiar with his name as you should be, it doesn’t diminish his contributions to the genre. If you’ve ever heard the quote concerning time being that thing which show more prevents everything from happening at once, which is all too often attributed to Einstein and others, then you inadvertently know Ray Cummings. That quote is from The Girl in the Golden Atom, a pulp story which appeared for the first time — at least in part — in 1919! Time would be a recurring theme for Cummings in those burgeoning pulp days of Science Fiction. He wrote tons of stories, from weird menace and mystery to fantastic tales of time. Even the more prestigious Argosy published his stories.
This novel, The Exile of Time, despite first appearing in four parts in Astounding Stories Magazine in 1931, is a splendid example of his talent. And what a fun tale! George Rankin and his pal Larry are walking along in New York when they hear a scream, and discover a small and dainty, strange but beautiful girl behind a window in a house on Patton Place. Her name is Mary Atwood, and she’s screaming because she has suddenly found herself transported to the future from 1777!
Cummings set this tale in 1935, four years into the future, and it must have made the transition to other times easier for those reading it in 1931. Mary’s story of General Washington, a robot named Migul who told her he would return, and an evil cripple who tried it on with her and failed, seems utterly fantastic. Yet George and Larry, and Dr. Alten want to believe her. Research reveals that Tugh, the man Mary describes, in fact murdered a girl in 1932 who spurned his advances. Then he disappeared. George and Larry lay in wait for the robot named Migul, who is under the control of the evil Tugh, but the battle goes wrong, very wrong. Mary’s stories are all true!
A time cage is traveling through time so that Tugh can repair his damaged body, and wreak havoc on mankind. But the time cages are plural, as Princess Tina, from an American future yet to exist, and a man named Harl are chasing Migul, trying to prevent Tugh from changing everything. Our heroes get separated and Larry finds himself — at first — back in 1777. The cops think Dr. Alten is mad when he tells them his story of what he saw, but then the robots begin to emerge from Patton Place, and a battle ensues between these powerful robots from the future and a New York nearly helpless to stop the ensuing massacre.
Though this may sound a bit cheesy in describing it, it is only slightly pulpy during brief sections. In the hands of Cummings it is exciting and fun. Like Jack Williamson, Cummings included some theories and extrapolations that made it all seem grounded — at least for a pulp story. The characters and their reactions mirror our own, and we feel both the pull of romance and derring do as we ride along to 1777 on one front, are witness to the robot revolt of 1935 in the present (though 1935 was four years in the future when this was written), and witness the very far future of 2930 when all work is done by slave machines who have become almost human, and are on the cusp of revolt.
There is an explanation of time and time travel that refreshingly credits the Creator with creating time, and there are concepts here in Exile of Time which no doubt served as inspiration for those who came after pioneers of Science Fiction such as Ray Cummings and Jack Williamson. It certainly shows, that while an elevation beyond pulp was both inevitable, and a move forward for Science Fiction, something was lost as well; movement, excitement, and a magical sense of wonder.
The first section and the last of The Exile of Time are perhaps the best portions, but it’s all great fun, even quite thrilling in parts. Cummings creates a moral dilemma for the robot Migul, and manages to extract sympathy from the reader for Migul’s plight. The conclusion is very exciting, with a chase atop a dam, the rescue of Larry and Princess Tina, and then a final chase across time for George in order to save his Mary, and perhaps all mankind.
The story has wonderful movement, likable characters we root for, and even manages to elicit sympathy for robots like Migul. Wonderful fun for fans of early Science Fiction, this novel is sadly out of print. However, by downloading for FREE the April, May, June and July issues of Astounding Stories from Gutenberg, you can read it in its entirety, as it originally appeared in four parts! As a bonus, Jack Williamson’s Lake of Light is also in one of these issues, as is another good Williamson story. The Exile of Time is clean, old-fashioned fun, from those early days of wonder when anything and everything seemed possible.
“Is this perchance an explanation of why the pages of history are so thronged with tales of ghosts? There must, indeed, be many future ages down the corridors of Time where the genius of man will invent devices to fling him back into the past. And the impressions upon the past which he makes are called supernatural.”
“Who can say, up to 1935, how many Time-traveling humans have come briefly back? Is this, perchance, what we call the phenomena of the supernatural?”
Here is the Gutenberg link — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=the exile of time ray cummings show less
Ray Cummings is one of Science Fiction’s Founding Fathers, and though you may not be as familiar with his name as you should be, it doesn’t diminish his contributions to the genre. If you’ve ever heard the quote concerning time being that thing which show more prevents everything from happening at once, which is all too often attributed to Einstein and others, then you inadvertently know Ray Cummings. That quote is from The Girl in the Golden Atom, a pulp story which appeared for the first time — at least in part — in 1919! Time would be a recurring theme for Cummings in those burgeoning pulp days of Science Fiction. He wrote tons of stories, from weird menace and mystery to fantastic tales of time. Even the more prestigious Argosy published his stories.
This novel, The Exile of Time, despite first appearing in four parts in Astounding Stories Magazine in 1931, is a splendid example of his talent. And what a fun tale! George Rankin and his pal Larry are walking along in New York when they hear a scream, and discover a small and dainty, strange but beautiful girl behind a window in a house on Patton Place. Her name is Mary Atwood, and she’s screaming because she has suddenly found herself transported to the future from 1777!
Cummings set this tale in 1935, four years into the future, and it must have made the transition to other times easier for those reading it in 1931. Mary’s story of General Washington, a robot named Migul who told her he would return, and an evil cripple who tried it on with her and failed, seems utterly fantastic. Yet George and Larry, and Dr. Alten want to believe her. Research reveals that Tugh, the man Mary describes, in fact murdered a girl in 1932 who spurned his advances. Then he disappeared. George and Larry lay in wait for the robot named Migul, who is under the control of the evil Tugh, but the battle goes wrong, very wrong. Mary’s stories are all true!
A time cage is traveling through time so that Tugh can repair his damaged body, and wreak havoc on mankind. But the time cages are plural, as Princess Tina, from an American future yet to exist, and a man named Harl are chasing Migul, trying to prevent Tugh from changing everything. Our heroes get separated and Larry finds himself — at first — back in 1777. The cops think Dr. Alten is mad when he tells them his story of what he saw, but then the robots begin to emerge from Patton Place, and a battle ensues between these powerful robots from the future and a New York nearly helpless to stop the ensuing massacre.
Though this may sound a bit cheesy in describing it, it is only slightly pulpy during brief sections. In the hands of Cummings it is exciting and fun. Like Jack Williamson, Cummings included some theories and extrapolations that made it all seem grounded — at least for a pulp story. The characters and their reactions mirror our own, and we feel both the pull of romance and derring do as we ride along to 1777 on one front, are witness to the robot revolt of 1935 in the present (though 1935 was four years in the future when this was written), and witness the very far future of 2930 when all work is done by slave machines who have become almost human, and are on the cusp of revolt.
There is an explanation of time and time travel that refreshingly credits the Creator with creating time, and there are concepts here in Exile of Time which no doubt served as inspiration for those who came after pioneers of Science Fiction such as Ray Cummings and Jack Williamson. It certainly shows, that while an elevation beyond pulp was both inevitable, and a move forward for Science Fiction, something was lost as well; movement, excitement, and a magical sense of wonder.
The first section and the last of The Exile of Time are perhaps the best portions, but it’s all great fun, even quite thrilling in parts. Cummings creates a moral dilemma for the robot Migul, and manages to extract sympathy from the reader for Migul’s plight. The conclusion is very exciting, with a chase atop a dam, the rescue of Larry and Princess Tina, and then a final chase across time for George in order to save his Mary, and perhaps all mankind.
The story has wonderful movement, likable characters we root for, and even manages to elicit sympathy for robots like Migul. Wonderful fun for fans of early Science Fiction, this novel is sadly out of print. However, by downloading for FREE the April, May, June and July issues of Astounding Stories from Gutenberg, you can read it in its entirety, as it originally appeared in four parts! As a bonus, Jack Williamson’s Lake of Light is also in one of these issues, as is another good Williamson story. The Exile of Time is clean, old-fashioned fun, from those early days of wonder when anything and everything seemed possible.
“Is this perchance an explanation of why the pages of history are so thronged with tales of ghosts? There must, indeed, be many future ages down the corridors of Time where the genius of man will invent devices to fling him back into the past. And the impressions upon the past which he makes are called supernatural.”
“Who can say, up to 1935, how many Time-traveling humans have come briefly back? Is this, perchance, what we call the phenomena of the supernatural?”
Here is the Gutenberg link — https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?query=the exile of time ray cummings show less
Published in Exciting Detective Magazine in the winter of 1947, The Thing in the Marsh is a fabulous little swamp pulp story from Ray Cummings. It is short in length but long in enjoyment. Cummings has it so dripping with swamp atmosphere you might need to wipe some goo off your Kindle before you’re finished reading. He throws in a bit of creepiness, a dose of murder, and before it’s all wrapped up in exciting fashion in a mere seventeen pages there is even a show more romance!
Twenty-eight-year-old Dr. Chet Abbott has come to investigate whether the dreaded Anopheles mosquito has been causing the sickness near the swamp. He knows every swamp has its legends; the vapors exuded by gasses beneath the surface often give birth to strange sightings that frighten nearby residents. But this marsh is different. Strange events have definitely been occurring. Dark-haired and pretty Grace Raleigh is frightened, even if the male members of her family are not. Watching from the veranda with the others one evening, Dr. Abbott witnesses something that he can’t explain. He is certain, however, that the silvery thing the size of a large man is no Anopheles carrying malaria! But something unnatural in the swamp might be carrying death, all the same.
There is an unexplained murder, and then a second, before Cummings brings this atmospheric weird-menace swamp mystery to an exciting conclusion. This one moves quickly in all the right directions, and the ending has a nice touch. A splendid little short story I highly recommend to fans of '30s and '40s pulp! show less
Twenty-eight-year-old Dr. Chet Abbott has come to investigate whether the dreaded Anopheles mosquito has been causing the sickness near the swamp. He knows every swamp has its legends; the vapors exuded by gasses beneath the surface often give birth to strange sightings that frighten nearby residents. But this marsh is different. Strange events have definitely been occurring. Dark-haired and pretty Grace Raleigh is frightened, even if the male members of her family are not. Watching from the veranda with the others one evening, Dr. Abbott witnesses something that he can’t explain. He is certain, however, that the silvery thing the size of a large man is no Anopheles carrying malaria! But something unnatural in the swamp might be carrying death, all the same.
There is an unexplained murder, and then a second, before Cummings brings this atmospheric weird-menace swamp mystery to an exciting conclusion. This one moves quickly in all the right directions, and the ending has a nice touch. A splendid little short story I highly recommend to fans of '30s and '40s pulp! show less
Ray Cummings' 1919-1923 science fantasy channels H. G. Wells with a nod (in the first section) to Hope Hodgson before descending into a more conventional pulp adventure and a rather sweet period piece love story between an irritatingly named 'Very Young Man' and the atom girl's sister.
Descending is the 'mot juste' because this is a journey into inner space not outer space. Cummings postulates the ability to shrink to such miniscule levels that the atom proves to be just a planet on which show more adventures are to be had.
It certainly requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief as the large cast of characters shrink and grow to order on the basis of a chemical powder. We even get a classic lost world monster struggle between a giant lizard and an even larger sparrow (don't ask!).
In fact, it is not at all as bad as it may sound. The best lies in the first part where the Chemist travels alone to the atom planet, marries the beautiful girl he has seen through a microscope (of ridiculous power for the period) and waits for his comrades to come and visit.
Time passes differently so a relatively short time after his departure and before the clubland pals arrives is still time enough on the atom planet for the Chemist to fall in love, marry a child and become chief adviser to the King.
This first section is only a step away in interest and pleasure from a Wellsian fantasy. It was written not that far distant in time from the master's best work. The rest is perhaps less interesting but will pass muster as rollicking adventure in the Burroughs tradition.
Like many science fiction novels from the last century, the joins can show between original short stories for magazine use and the subsequent beefing up of a novel. In this case, the difference in tone within a quite lengthy novel is down to the 1923 consolidation of two earlier stories.
What makes the story rise above the level of mere pulp is Cummings' exuberance. He does not care if it is believable. He has an idea - of exploration of the atomic world - and he clearly intends to enjoy himself and pack as much incident into his story as he can.
The characterisation - despite the irritating refusal to give the humans proper names - is actually quite good. There is a nice progressive slant to his politics even if this is vitiated somewhat by the slaughter of angry mobs which seems to reflect the callousness of the recent world war.
The women are strong and intelligent but obviously fantasy figures - very much that period yearning of the intelligent male for an equal that recognises male heroism - although at the end of the day the morality and expectations are nothing if not conventional.
It ends peculiarly but quite sweetly with a touching Christmas scene. All the blokes giving the aliens a taste of human innocence after the mayhem. It is chocolate box but somehow it works because Cummings is actually quite a good writer. show less
Descending is the 'mot juste' because this is a journey into inner space not outer space. Cummings postulates the ability to shrink to such miniscule levels that the atom proves to be just a planet on which show more adventures are to be had.
It certainly requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief as the large cast of characters shrink and grow to order on the basis of a chemical powder. We even get a classic lost world monster struggle between a giant lizard and an even larger sparrow (don't ask!).
In fact, it is not at all as bad as it may sound. The best lies in the first part where the Chemist travels alone to the atom planet, marries the beautiful girl he has seen through a microscope (of ridiculous power for the period) and waits for his comrades to come and visit.
Time passes differently so a relatively short time after his departure and before the clubland pals arrives is still time enough on the atom planet for the Chemist to fall in love, marry a child and become chief adviser to the King.
This first section is only a step away in interest and pleasure from a Wellsian fantasy. It was written not that far distant in time from the master's best work. The rest is perhaps less interesting but will pass muster as rollicking adventure in the Burroughs tradition.
Like many science fiction novels from the last century, the joins can show between original short stories for magazine use and the subsequent beefing up of a novel. In this case, the difference in tone within a quite lengthy novel is down to the 1923 consolidation of two earlier stories.
What makes the story rise above the level of mere pulp is Cummings' exuberance. He does not care if it is believable. He has an idea - of exploration of the atomic world - and he clearly intends to enjoy himself and pack as much incident into his story as he can.
The characterisation - despite the irritating refusal to give the humans proper names - is actually quite good. There is a nice progressive slant to his politics even if this is vitiated somewhat by the slaughter of angry mobs which seems to reflect the callousness of the recent world war.
The women are strong and intelligent but obviously fantasy figures - very much that period yearning of the intelligent male for an equal that recognises male heroism - although at the end of the day the morality and expectations are nothing if not conventional.
It ends peculiarly but quite sweetly with a touching Christmas scene. All the blokes giving the aliens a taste of human innocence after the mayhem. It is chocolate box but somehow it works because Cummings is actually quite a good writer. show less
The more Ace Doubles I read, the more I come to appreciate how varied the experience of reading them can be. For all of their similarity of their size, their plot-driven approach, and their cover art (which typically consists of square-jawed white dudes inflicting violence on aliens or some other evildoers, often with a woman somewhere in the scene recoiling in terror), the quality and nature of the books can vary widely.
This pair provided the best reflection yet of these differences. Ray show more Cummings's The Man Who Mastered Time was unusual in that it was not an original work but a reprint of a 1920s story which reads like a riff on H.G. Wells's famous work [b:The Time Machine|2493|The Time Machine|H.G. Wells|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327942880l/2493._SY75_.jpg|3234863]. In it, a father-and-son duo of scientists stumble across a process that allows them to peer into the indeterminate future. Witnessing a beautiful girl imperiled by a thuggish brute, the two turn a hoverable aeroplane into a time machine, which the hormonally-driven son uses to travel thousands of years into the future to rescue the maiden. He soon finds himself in the midst of a political struggle between the people of an ice-age north and the remaining civilization, which has retreated to the Caribbean and reflects a class divide that ol' Herbert George would have found familiar (seriously, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find that he sued for copyright infringement). The young man soon summons his father for aid, and with the help of a friend, aid the civilized underdogs against the barbarian hordes. There are some aspects of the novel – such as the employment of "girls" in combat – that but for the most part it's a prime piece of pulp science fiction, and while it had it's share of problematic elements (the scientist's friend zeroing in on the beautiful girl's teenage sister seemed a little predatory even for the time) I enjoyed it for the action adventure it was.
The other novel was Joseph Kelleam's Overlords from Space. Here there was a real contrast with Cummings's novel; whereas Cummings has heroic adventurers as his protagonist, Kelleam's novel centers around humans enslaved by the Zarles, an alien species who conquered the Earth two centuries before. Though their domination of the Earth seems absolute, the ostensibly immortal Zarles are slowly dying from terrestrial disease. Worse they cannot reproduce, and the remaining Zarles are contemplating destroying the Earth and moving on elsewhere. It's a different premise from the ones I expect from the time, though the plot itself moves to familiar beats involving freedom, the discovery of resources and allies that can even the odds, and a climactic battle in which the outcome isn't really in doubt. In this respect it's as much a product of its time as Cummings's older novel (which ends, I kid you not, with a Jazz Age party), though one that proved entertaining enough to see through to its end. show less
This pair provided the best reflection yet of these differences. Ray show more Cummings's The Man Who Mastered Time was unusual in that it was not an original work but a reprint of a 1920s story which reads like a riff on H.G. Wells's famous work [b:The Time Machine|2493|The Time Machine|H.G. Wells|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1327942880l/2493._SY75_.jpg|3234863]. In it, a father-and-son duo of scientists stumble across a process that allows them to peer into the indeterminate future. Witnessing a beautiful girl imperiled by a thuggish brute, the two turn a hoverable aeroplane into a time machine, which the hormonally-driven son uses to travel thousands of years into the future to rescue the maiden. He soon finds himself in the midst of a political struggle between the people of an ice-age north and the remaining civilization, which has retreated to the Caribbean and reflects a class divide that ol' Herbert George would have found familiar (seriously, it wouldn't surprise me in the least to find that he sued for copyright infringement). The young man soon summons his father for aid, and with the help of a friend, aid the civilized underdogs against the barbarian hordes. There are some aspects of the novel – such as the employment of "girls" in combat – that but for the most part it's a prime piece of pulp science fiction, and while it had it's share of problematic elements (the scientist's friend zeroing in on the beautiful girl's teenage sister seemed a little predatory even for the time) I enjoyed it for the action adventure it was.
The other novel was Joseph Kelleam's Overlords from Space. Here there was a real contrast with Cummings's novel; whereas Cummings has heroic adventurers as his protagonist, Kelleam's novel centers around humans enslaved by the Zarles, an alien species who conquered the Earth two centuries before. Though their domination of the Earth seems absolute, the ostensibly immortal Zarles are slowly dying from terrestrial disease. Worse they cannot reproduce, and the remaining Zarles are contemplating destroying the Earth and moving on elsewhere. It's a different premise from the ones I expect from the time, though the plot itself moves to familiar beats involving freedom, the discovery of resources and allies that can even the odds, and a climactic battle in which the outcome isn't really in doubt. In this respect it's as much a product of its time as Cummings's older novel (which ends, I kid you not, with a Jazz Age party), though one that proved entertaining enough to see through to its end. show less
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