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Fantascience Digest, v. 3, issue 3, whole no. 15, November-December 1941

Page 5

(always "mad" scientists roaming about, aren't there?) changed human beings into animals or part-animals, by judicious use of this chemical or that, or by ray-treatments, glandular operations, etc. Have these authors, numbering into the hundreds, considered the innovations of Circe, who without fanfare or mumbo-jumbo, converted men into swine? Or have they consulted the copyright of Zeus himself, who metamorphosed Io into a heifer that he might continue a rather clandestine affair unknown to Hera? Hera, by the way, beat contemporary monster-makers to the punch by creating the hundred-eyed Argus and the intelligent and implacable gad-fly, the duo which persecuted Io no end.

Which, inadvertantly and speaking of monsters, reminds me of Scylla. Scylla, to quote, was: "A fearful monster, barking like a dog, with twelve feet, six long necks  and heads, each of which contained three rows of sharp teeth". Shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs! Even some of John Carter's Martian enemies were not so awesome, although the Barsoomian ape had too many arms, the calot too many teeth.

And Charybdis, guarding the strait between Italy and Sicily in conjunction with Scylla himself "thrice every day swallowed down the waters of the sea, and thrice threw them up again." Sounds rather like the maelstrom mentioned in England's DARKNESS AND DAWN, doesn't it? Could Charybdis have been only a problem in hydraulic engineering, so far as the ancients were concerned?

Which brings us back to Theseus again, in a roundabout way, because Hercules killed Scylla (according to some accounts) and Theseus emulated Hercules, his boyhood hero. Theseus was the Don Juan of his day. He was many times married and seldom divorced. His wives were merely abandoned or met unfortunate deaths. At any rate, it was Theseus who aided his friend Pirithous against the centaurs. Centaurs are hybrids. You'll come across centaurs quite often in scientifiction. Recently Clifford D. Simak wrote "The Loot of Time" and introduced a few villainous centaurs -- remember?

Pirithous aided Theseus in abducting Helen from Sparta as a girl, (Cradle-snatcher Theseus) and in return Theseus assisted Pirithous when that worthy tried to rescue Persephone from the lower world.

The lower world! Inside earth! There are literally hundreds of accounts in the classics concerning adventurous comings and goings to and from the earth's core. Burroughs and Verne and a thousand other writers carry on the legend. Maybe -- maybe there is an inner world. There's so much smoke, and always has been. All legends of all races -- all mythology, is replete with tales of men who journeyed into the bowels of the earth on some pretext or other, and returned to tell of it!

One of the many who went to the lower world was Hercules, who had to abstract Cerberus as one of his twelve labors. Pluto gave him permission to seize this monster -- (was there once an open road connecting the upper and lower worlds? And did this inner realm have a king, as all the old tales say?), -- provided he could do so without force of arms. Quite a task, since Cerberus had three heads, the tail of a serpent, and the serpents around his neck. Cerberus, let us mention since we have spoken of hybrids in scintifiction, was the child of Eohidna

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(always "mad" scientists roaming about, aren't there?) changed human beings into animals or part-animals, by judicious use of this chemical or that, or by ray-treatments, glandular operations, etc. Have these authors, numbering into the hundreds, considered the innovations of Circe, who without fanfare or mumbo-jumbo, converted men into swine? Or have they consulted the copyright of Zeus himself, who metamorphosed Io into a heifer that he might continue a rather clandestine affair unknown to Hera? Hera, by the way, beat contemporary monster-makers to the punch by creating the hundred-eyed Argus and the intelligent and implacable gad-fly, the duo which persecuted Io no end. Which, inadvertantly and speaking of monsters, reminds me of Scylla. Scylla, to quote, was: "A fearful monster, barking like a dog, with twelve feet, six long necks and heads, each of which contained three rows of sharp teeth". Shades of Edgar Rice Burroughs! Even some of John Carter's Martian enemies were not so awesome, although the Barsoomian ape had too many arms, the calot too many teeth. And Charybdis, guarding the strait between Italy and Sicily in conjunction with Scylla himself "thrice every day swallowed down the waters of the sea, and thrice threw them up again." Sounds rather like the maelstrom mentioned in England's DARKNESS AND DAWN, doesn't it? Could Charybdis have been only a problem in hydraulic engineering, so far as the ancients were concerned? Which brings us back to Theseus again, in a roundabout way, because Hercules killed Scylla (according to some accounts) and Theseus emulated Hercules, his boyhood hero. Theseus was the Don Juan of his day. He was many times married and seldom divorced. His wives were merely abandoned or met unfortunate deaths. At any rate, it was Theseus who aided his friend Pirithous against the centaurs. Centaurs are hybrids. You'll come across centaurs quite often in scientifiction. Recently Clifford D. Simak wrote "The Loot of Time" and introduced a few villainous centaurs -- remember? Pirithous aided Theseus in abducting Helen from Sparta as a girl, (Cradle-snatcher Theseus) and in return Theseus assisted Pirithous when that worthy tried to rescue Persephone from the lower world. The lower world! Inside earth! There are literally hundreds of accounts in the classics concerning adventurous comings and goings to and from the earth's core. Burroughs and Verne and a thousand other writers carry on the legend. Maybe -- maybe there is an inner world. There's so much smoke, and always has been. All legends of all races -- all mythology, is replete with tales of men who journeyed into the bowels of the earth on some pretext or other, and returned to tell of it! One of the many who went to the lower world was Hercules, who had to abstract Cerberus as one of his twelve labors. Pluto gave him permission to seize this monster -- (was there once an open road connecting the upper and lower worlds? And did this inner realm have a king, as all the old tales say?), -- provided he could do so without force of arms. Quite a task, since Cerberus had three heads, the tail of a serpent, and the serpents around his neck. Cerberus, let us mention since we have spoken of hybrids in scintifiction, was the child of Eohidna