The Pool of Life by P. Schuyler Miller

Book Details

The Pool of Life – From out of the primordial ooze comes an entity that plots to conquer the Earth. This volume includes The Red Plague, the 1st Prize Contest Winning Story sponsored by Hugo Gernsback’s Air Wonder Stories in February, 1930. This was the story that launched Miller’s career as a science fiction writer.

The Red Plague (1930)
The Plague Spreads
On the Way!
On Mars!
The Examination

Dust of Destruction (1931)
As a feathery avalanche, the “dust” fell, while in the craters of the moon the rays of destruction stabbed out on a defenceless earth. . . .
Chapter I – The City of the Dead
Chapter II – The Threat from Beyond – The Second Attack!
Chapter III – The Army Moves Up – The Great Deluge!
Chapter IV – Toward the Tube!

The Pool of Life (1934)
Chapter I – The Man on the Train
Chapter II – The Granby Massacre
Chapter III – The White Killers
Chapter IV – The Missing Girl
Chapter V – The Cave in the Mountainside
Chapter VI – The Battle in the Cave
Chapter VII – The Buried World
Chapter VIII – The Sub-Men
Chapter IX – Victory by Flame
Chapter X – The Pool of Life
Chapter XI – Captives of the Pool
Chapter XII – The Threat of the Buried World
Chapter XIII – Silica Gel
Chapter XIV – Madness of the Pool
Chapter XV – The Last of the Buried World

Peter Schuyler Miller (1912–1974) was one of the most popular American science fiction writers and critics of the pulp fiction period. His work appeared in such magazines as Amazing Stories, Astounding, Comet, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Marvel Tales, Science Fiction Digest, Super Science Stories, Unknown, Weird Tales, and Wonder Stories, among others.

The Science Fiction Writer Next Door is a very good article about Miller’s life.

The Pool of Life contains 4 illustrations.

Files:

1. Miller-PoolOfLife.epub

Excerpt: The Pool of Life

Chapter I

The Man on the Train

THE man in the seat ahead of me bought an extra at Bennington in Vermont. The newsboys were making a big fuss over it, but they do that over things as unimportant as a merger of local cheese-merchants. I distrust extras.

The fellow ahead looked like the sort who always buys them, if only to see what horse came in at Saratoga. He was obviously from the city—New York, probably—for he had been there when I got on at Albany. For all that, I liked his looks. Then he raised the paper a little higher and I came up standing with a yell, that woke the whole car.

Big red headlines sprawled across the page.

“Granby Massacre. Village Wiped Out”

“I snatched the paper out of his hands. Granby was my village—my home town! I was bound there for my cousin’s wedding. And now—this!

Granby Massacre. Village Wiped Out. Nude Maniacs Slaughter Villagers. Outlying Farms Razed

Rutland, Aug. 31.—William Cooney, an employee of the Rutland Post-Office, this morning made a discovery that has horrified the entire state. Delivering mail to the smaller towns east of Rutland, he found the village of Granby a mass of smoking ruins, its streets littered with the horribly mutilated bodies of its three hundred inhabitants. Returning immediately to the nearest town, Hawford, he notified the local authorities and telephoned to Rutland.

A posse from Hawford found the entire population of Granby and of the neighboring farms, slain among the ruins of the town. A pitched battle had been fought in the streets between the half-clad villagers and their fiendish assailants. The bodies of the dead were hideously mangled by jagged instruments and their scalps torn from their heads. Men, women and children alike were destroyed in the mad frenzy of the killers.

“No survivor exists in Granby or the outlying farms to describe the attack. The sole clue to the nature of the slayers lies in three naked bodies found among the smoking ruins of the village church, in which women and children had gathered for protection. Badly charred by the flames, these bodies have been pronounced those of microcephalic idiots of an extraordinary type, who may have escaped with other maniacs from a private asylum and attacked the villagers in an insane fear of capture. Police officials are investigating this possibility.

PEOPLE were crowding around me, pointing, asking questions. The man ahead had turned in his seat and was trying to make himself heard. Then someone came elbowing down the aisle and took me by the arm.

“Come on,” he said into my ear. “Let’s get out of this. We have to talk.”

He led me back into the smoking car. I noticed that the young fellow from the seat ahead had followed us. He closed the door behind him and stood with his back against it, staring at us. I, for my part, was looking at the man who had brought me here—a square-jawed, blonde Hercules with keen gray eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, and blunt-fingered, powerful hands. He seemed to be about my own age.

The man from the seat ahead spoke first. We had instinctively waited for him. He was wiry and dynamic, the sort who always speaks first.

“I’m Ted Hewitt,” he announced, “reporting this thing for the ‘World.’  Who’re you, and what do you know about it?”

The other man answered for me, “This, I imagine, is Dr. John Cady, whose family has lived in and near Granby for a good many years. I am Howard Prentiss.”

“I was to marry his cousin, Dorcas, to-morrow.”

Excerpt From: P. Schuyler Miller. “The Pool of Life.”