The Robot God

By Ray Cummings and John Betancourt

The Golden God ruled a nation of walking nightmare statues—machines with lust and murder in their hearts! Classic pulp fiction by the author of The Girl in the Golden Atom. Introduction by John Betancourt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wildside Press
• Release date: Mar 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781667600680

Ray Cummings

Ray Cummings (born Raymond King Cummings) (August 30, 1887 – January 23, 1957) was an American author of science fiction literature and comic books. Cummings is identified as one of the "founding fathers" of the science fiction genre. His most highly regarded fictional 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 (where Cummings combined the idea of Fitz James O'Brien's The Diamond Lens with H. G. Wells's The Time Machine) and a sequel, The People of the Golden Atom, published in 1920. Before taking book form, several of Cummings's stories appeared serialized in pulp magazines. The first eight chapters of his The Girl in the Golden Atom appeared in All-Story Magazine on March 15, 1919. Ray Cummings wrote in "The Girl in the Golden Atom": "Time . . . is what keeps everything from happening at once", a sentence repeated by scientists such as C. J. Overbeck, and John Archibald Wheeler, and often misattributed to the likes of Einstein or Feynman. Cummings repeated this sentence in several of his novellas. Sources focus on his earlier work, The Time Professor, published in 1921, as its earliest documented usage.

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Table of Contents

THE ROBOT GOD, by Ray Cummings

INTRODUCTION

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

THE ROBOT GOD,

by Ray Cummings

INTRODUCTION

To anyone interested in the roots of modern science fiction, the name of Ray Cummings (1887–1957) should already be well known. He wrote at the dawn of the science fiction field, publishing genre stories in mainstream magazines like Argosy, Munsey’s Magazine, and other top publications of the day. Of course, as soon as the science fiction pulp magazines debuted, he moved to them, where his work received a hearty welcome from fans. He continued publishing through the 1950s.

Cummings was born in New York City. He worked with Thomas Edison as a personal assistant and technical writer from 1914 to 1919, which provided much background for his fiction. His most famous work remains the novel The Girl in the Golden Atom, first published in 1922. It combined a short story by the same name first published in 1919 (in which he combined an idea of Fitz James O'Brien’s The Diamond Lens with H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine), and its sequel, The People of the Golden Atom, which appeared in 1920.

During the 1940s, with his literary career in decline—his work was decidedly old-fashioned in comparison to that of Asimov, Heinlein, van Vogt, and the other new authors—Cummings found himself relegated to second-tier science fiction magazines. He began to turn to comic books for a market, and he soon found work writing for Timely Comics, the predecessor to Marvel Comics. In those days, comics appealed to a much younger and far less sophisticated audience. For Timely, he recycled the plot of The Girl in the Golden Atom as a two-part Captain America tale, Princess of the Atom (Captain America Comics #25 & 26). He also contributed stories to the Human Torch and Sub-Mariner, sometimes in collaboration with his daughter, Betty Cummings (who also wrote comics scripts by herself, often using her father’s more famous name). He also began to write mysteries, often with a science-based or fantastic twist.

Enjoy!

—John Betancourt

Cabin John, Maryland

COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Copyright © 2022 by Wildside Press LLC.

First published Weird Tales, July 1941.

Published by Wildside Press LLC.

wildsidepress.com | bcmystery.com

CHAPTER 1

Voyage of Doom

To young George Carter the girl seemed more beautiful tonight than he had ever seen her. The shine of spacelight was in her eyes—soft pale-blue glow of the million million starry worlds. It filtered down through the overhead glassite dome of the little space-liner, bathing him and her in its soft effulgence.

 ‘Flinging back a million starglints,’  he quoted softly,  ‘the depths of space remind me of thine eyes.’ That’s literally true, tonight, Dierdre.

The Starfield Queen was a day out from Earth on its voyage to Ferrok Shahn, capital of