Page 53 - James Rodger Fleming - Fixing the sky

and, with a flying ring and super-powerful Lavender Ray, diverts the Mediter-
ranean Sea into the Sahara and destroys a German siege gun as it fires on Paris.
These phenomena are accompanied by geophysical marvels: strange yellow auro-
rae, earthquakes, tidal waves, and atmospheric disturbances. An international
assembly of scientists is formed to respond, but it is designed by the diplomats to
stall and fail in the hope that particular nations might gain special advantages by
capturing the inventor and learning his powers.
PAX controls a source of power—atomic disintegration—that would allow
the Earth to blossom “like the rose! Well-watered valleys where deserts were
before. War abolished, poverty, disease!” This is reminiscent of the rhetoric,
some forty years later, hyping the potential of atomic energy. Impressed, physicist
Bennie Hooker sets out to find PAX and the secret behind “the greatest achieve-
ment of all time!” (111).
Meanwhile, disappointed by cease-fire violations, PAX sends his final warning
to humanity, declaring that he will “shift the axis of the Earth until the North
Pole shall be in the region of Strasbourg and the South Pole in New Zealand”
(172). Hooker eventually finds PAX’s laboratory in Labrador and witnesses his
demise in an explosion near a gigantic outcrop of pitchblende: “This radioactive
mountain was the fulcrum by which this modern Archimedes had moved the
Earth” (216). Anticipating the founding of the League of Nations by several years,
the nations of the Earth form a coalition government coordinated at The Hague
and destroy all their armaments, an event that inaugurates a new age of interna-
tional cooperation, peace, and never-before-experienced prosperity. In a setup to
a possible sequel, Hooker is last seen exploring the solar system in his “Space-
Navigating Car,” powered by the Lavender Ray.

The Air Trust

The Air Trust (1915), by George Allan England, combines both geochemical and
political fantasy in telling the story of a dedicated band of socialists who thwart
the plans of ruthless capitalists aiming to control the world’s air supply. The book
is dedicated to Eugene V. Debs, “Comrade Gene, Apostle of the World’s Emanci-
pation.” The author depicts scientists for hire as the willing servants of capitalists
and the obedient executioners of both corporate plans and, possibly, humanity.
England writes in the foreword: “I believe that, had capitalists been able to bring
the seas and the atmosphere under physical control, they would long ago [have
done so].”

36 | StorieS of Control