 |
|
|
||||||||||||||||
 · · · · · · · · · · · · ·
|
|
|
|
Miles J. Breuer, M. D.
| ||||||||||||||
 The works of Miles J. Breuer, M.
D. have passed out of currency, but he was a major figure in the
early sf magazines from 1927 to 1942, the date of his last published story. An early collaborator with (and
influence on) Jack Williamson, Breuer was noted for his fertile imagination and wide range of ideas.
Unfortunately, there has never been a collection of his stories, nor has his novel,
Paradise and Iron (1930, Amazing Stories Quarterly) been reprinted. This story (1930) is one of his more amusing pieces, and is one of the foundations
in sf for the story of the giant creature.
Breuer, perhaps under the influence of those old-fashioned postcards of tomatoes the size of
boxcars, decided to think big, but in the manner that was becoming characteristic of the emerging genre. A doctor, he
introduced the everyday procedures of laboratories and lab animals, and made his humble guinea pig
the monster, just by allowing it to be itself and ignoring the square-cube law. This is both amusing and may be
rigorous, an effect rediscovered or recreated many times since in a spate of monster films, but also in
such stories as Edward Bryant's "giANTS" and Kit Reed's "The Attack of the Giant Baby." Playing with scale is one
of the major devices of science fiction. Giantism, though, remains hard sf today -- see Blish's "Beanstalk"
or Schenck's "Send Me A Kiss by Wire" -- only so long as the square-cube law is plausibly not violated
(sorry about that, giant baby). Otherwise, as in the Reed story, it is satirical sf, far removed in affect from hard sf
in general.
| ||||||||||||||||||
|
The Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1994 by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. | ||||||||||||||||||
Cramer: On Science & Science Fiction || Hartwell: Hard Science Fiction
David G. Hartwell || Kathryn Cramer || About Tor Books || Ordering Info
Interactive Intoduction to THE ASCENT OF WONDER copyright © 1995-1997 by Kathryn Cramer.