#Rjalker reads Astounding Stories of Super-Science

[rjalker]

the black lamp is definitely a cool weapon.

This is a public domain concept from the short story The Black Lamp by Sterner St. Paul Meek, originally published in the August 1931 edition of Astounding Stories of Super-Science magazine, which you can read for free here on Project Gutenberg.

This weapon concept is 100% free to use for literally anything you want. That's what Public Domain means.

It's a black light(?) that acts like a shroud or something and covers up electrical lights so you can't see, compared to putting black ink a bottle that had red ink. The red ink is still there, but you can't see it anymore.

It also causes "paralysis of the brain" as well as making you unable to talk while you're under its effect. The "paralysis of the brain" will make you comatose if exposed long enough.

It is cured by exposure to sunlight or other ultraviolet lights.

A small exposure makes you a little confused and makes you not able to talk above a breathy whisper and requires around an hour of standing under a UV light before you can talk audibly again. The confusion fades as soon as you have protection in the form of a vitriline helmet.

Those exposed to higher concentrations of the lamp have to be laid in sunlight and UV lamps for probably several days.

If they didn't know how the cure worked, we can assume people would eventually wake up on their own just from regular sunlight and other lights in whatever hospital they're in.

At a higher level, possibly with the help of other technology, the lamp can be turned into a ray weapon (they love their rays in the 1920s and 30s) with a red bean will turn living objects into glass statue that glow red from the inside. No known cure or treatment for this version yet.

It hasn't been revealed the exact nature of this lamp yet but I'll keep you posted.

Edit: almost forgot -- evidence of its use is that any non-vitriline glass nearby will become opaque. Short exposure makes it "foggy" like it's just dirty, longer, intense exposure makes the glass almost completely opaque.

Edit: The advanced beam version can disarm bombs.

[rjalkers-polls]

this is a poll

to show how ridiculous most of these character competition polls are.

Option 1: Arlok from The Gate to Xoran

Option 2: Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation

please do vote genuinely. that's kinda the point.

there is no third option because this poll is only lasting a day, and it's pretty fucking guaranteed that no one is going to pick Arlok, because no one knows who Arlok is!!!

this is your reminder that if you're setting up character competitions from multiple fandoms, pitting an extremly popular and well-known meme characters vs a much more obscure character is fucking useless, because you're not actually asking which character people like better, you're just asking which character's existance people are aware of.

[rjalker]

if you read old stories or articles from like the 30s to 50s (idk when it starts falling out of favor), if someone is described as "swarthy" it means dark-skinned, or at least darker skinned enough to be noticeably not white.

Pirates being constantly called swarthy? it's because they're people of color.

[rjalker]

Dr. Bird this is the worst idea I've ever heard.

"I am building a horrible weapon so that we can convince everyone everywhere to destroy their weapons and have world peace because I will destroy this weapon and the plans to build it as a show of good faith"

[rjalker]

put Dr. Bird in Flatland, I'm sure he could invent a bathysphere without the help of Spacelanders.

If we go off of the.........................

I forgot the word. the "I'll pretend you're being nice". way.

then he'd be an Isosceles. If we're going the "yeah. I know what you're doing it's not subtle" way then he'd be like a Septagon or something.

but we'll pretend for the sake of not murdering people that we don't know that.

[rjalker]

Judging from the sheep, the monster stood about twenty feet tall, and its frame was surmounted by a head resembling an overgrown frog. Enormous jaws were opened to seize the sheep but, to the amazement of the three observers, the jaws were entirely toothless. Where teeth were to be expected, long parallel ridges of what looked like bare bone, appeared, without even a rudimentary segregation into teeth. The body of the monster was long and snakelike, and was borne on long, heavy legs ending in feet with three long toes, armed with vicious claws. The crowning horror of the creature was its forelegs. There were of enormous length, thin and attenuated looking, and ended in huge misshapen hands, knobby and blotched, which grasped the sheep in the same manner as human hands. The eyes were as large as dinner plates, and they were glaring at the camera with an expression of fiendish malevolence which made Carnes shudder.

[rjalker]

okay!!!!

[ID: Two photos of vintage covers for Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern book series, portraying the dragons as long-necked dinosaurs with massive bug-like eyes. The first is for "Weyr Search", and the second is for "Dragonrider". The first shows a massive dragon sitting on the ground with two humans facing eachother in front. The second shows one flying against a dark blue sky with the long necks of other dragons viisble, as well as a crowd of cheering humans. End ID.]

[rjalker]

In the voice of SpongeBob saying imagination: cosmic vibrations

A staple of early 1900s scifi

Any thing can do anything with the power of vibrations at the atomic level

It can make you a werewolf

It can make a disintegration ray (they love their many rays)

If can make you invisible

It can make you giant or tiny

It can help you transcend dimensions

[rjalker]

I remembered the meme I wanted to make yesterday.

[ID: The Simpson's meme of the principal talking himself, saying "Am I so out of touch?" Then, firmly, "No, it's the children who are wrong.". He has now been labeled, "Sarka", and is saying, "Should I respond to this threat in a reasonable manner? No. I'm gonna vaporize the oceans.", with the last sentence in giant letters for emphasis. End ID.]

[rjalker]

Dick Purdy: Ah, so that's what they call the Port of Missing Planes. Doesn't look scary to me!

Dick Purdy's plane: *immediately starts crashing*

[rjalker]

"I'll believe you, Doctor," replied the detective; "but I'd believe you just as quickly if you swore that the moon was made of cream cheese made from the milk taken from the milky way. One would be just as understandable to me as the other."

[rjalker]

uhhhhh

Her name, Luar, was a strange one, and Sarka studied it for many minutes, rolling the odd syllables of it over his tongue, wondering where, on the Earth, he had heard names, or words, similar to it. This produced no result, until he tried substituting various letters; then, again, adding various letters. When he achieved a certain result at last, he gasped, and his brain was a-whirl.

Luar, by the addition of the letter n, between the u and the a, became Lunar, meaning "of the Moon!" Yet Lunar was unmistakably a word derived from the language of the Earth!

that's not how this works.

[rjalker]

Okay so he is using the correct term at the correct time, not actively being racist. whether the Black characters are treated well is another matter.

[rjalker]

Arthurian legends and many fairy tales:

using exoticized, mystified portrayals of real disabled people (and many times, explicitly Black disabled people to add extra racist exoticism) so often in mystical ~exotic~ unearthly roles that european fantasy and every offshoot thereof now treats "dwarves" like a completely separate fantasy species

Astounding Stories of Super-Science in 1930: *continues the tradition*

so many things in 2024: *continues the tradition*

[rjalker]

I'm still not done reading it because it's so absurd but it's very funny that Earth: The Marauder answer the question no one was asking: "Would rich people start trying to solve climate change if they became immortal and would have to live with the consequences of their actions?"

And the answer is a resounding "no, they'll keep making it worse including literally vaporizing all of the oceans".

[rjalker]

anyways, this is just gonna be me for this whole story lofl.

[ID: A screenshot from the show The Good Place, showing a demon in the form of a white woman laughing excitedly and fist pumping, saying, "This is so exciting! I hope everyone gets hurt!". End ID.]

Whether it stays funny remains to be seen, however, but I guess we'll see, won't we?