The Sunless World

Professor Jameson Space Adventure #2

by Neil R. Jones

Forty million years after the death of Earth, one man's brilliant mind lives on - although strangely encased in an indestructible metal body of a Zorome. Professor Jameson and the machine men of Zor continue their danger-laden explorations of the wonders of the infinite universe.

Into the Hydrosphere: In the kelp cities of a watery hydrosphere planet they encounter the race of the Plekne fish-men, eternally enslaved by the alien Uchke...

The Sunless World: In the core of a hollow world, the Zoromes discover a cavern of bones, picked clean by the flesh-devouring predators who feed upon the humanoid Aytans...

Time's Mausoleum: And through the marvels of a time machine, Professor Jameson views the mausoleum of his planet's history: from the glorious birth of Earth as it splits from Sol, to its ultimate devastated end...

Genres: Science Fiction

189 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Neil Ronald Jones (29 May 1909 - 15 February 1988) was an American author who worked for the state of New York. Not prolific, and little remembered today, Jones was ground–breaking in science fiction. His first story, "The Death's Head Meteor", was published in Air Wonder Stories in 1930, recording the first use of "astronaut". He also pioneered cyborg and robotic characters, and is credited with inspiring the modern idea of Cryonics. Most of his stories fit into a "future history" like that of Robert A. Heinlein or Cordwainer Smith, well before either of them used this convention in their fiction.

Rating not even a cover mention, the first installment of Jones' most popular creation, "The Jameson Satellite", appeared in the July 1931 issue of Amazing Stories. The hero was Professor Jameson, the last Earthman, who became immortal through the science of the Zoromes. Jameson was obsessed with the idea of perfectly preserving his body after death and succeeded by having it launched into space in a small capsule. Jameson's body survived for 40,000,000 years, where it was found orbiting a dead planet Earth by a passing Zorome exploration ship. The Zoromes, or machine men as they sometimes called themselves, were cyborgs. They came from a race of biological beings who had achieved immortality by transferring their brains to machine bodies. They occasionally assisted members of other races with this transition (i.e. the Tri-Peds and the Mumes), allowing others to become Zoromes and join them on their expeditions, which sometimes lasted hundreds of years. So, much like the Borg of the Star Trek series, a Zorome crew could be made up of assimilated members of many different biological species. The Zoromes discovered that Jameson's body had been so well preserved that they were able to repair his brain, incorporate it into a Zorome machine body and restart it. The professor joined their crew and, over the course of the series, participated in many adventures, even visiting Zor, the Zorome homeworld, where he met biological Zoromes. The professor eventually rose to command his own crew of machine men on a new Zorome exploration ship. "The Jameson Satellite" proved so popular with readers that later installments in Amazing Stories got not only cover mentions but the cover artwork.

Being cryopreserved and revived is an idea that would recur in SF, such as in Gene Roddenberry's Genesis II. One young science fiction fan who read The Jameson Satellite and drew inspiration from the idea of cryonics was Robert Ettinger, who became known as the father of cryonics. The Zoromes are also credited by Isaac Asimov as one of the inspirations behind the robots of his Robot series.

Masamune Shirow paid homage to Jones in his cyborg-populated Ghost in the Shell saga by including a no-frills brain-in-a-box design, even naming them Jameson-type cyborgs.

Jameson (or 21MM392, as he was known to his fellow metal beings) was the subject of twenty-one stories between 1931 and 1951, when Jones stopped writing, with nine stories still unpublished. In the late 1960s, Ace Books editor Donald A. Wollheim compiled five collections, comprising sixteen of these, including two previously unpublished. In all there were thirty Jameson stories written (twenty four eventually saw publication, six remain unpublished), and twenty-two unrelated pieces.

Reviews

[Tomislav · Rating 2 out of 5]

Neil R. Jones (1909-1988) was prolific science fiction writer of the pulp era. His most popular series of stories, published beginning in the 1930s, features Professor Jameson, a man of our own times who now explores the universe 40 million years in the future, as an immortal cyborg. The Jameson stories are known to have inspired Isaac Asimov as a child, and were known to other writers of the later golden age. In all, there were twenty-three Professor Jameson stories published between 1931 and 1951. A few more were published posthumously, or never published. In 1967, Ace Books re-published many of the stories in the form of five short books, each collecting several stories, in order. Collection #2, “The Sunless World”, contains the second three stories:

Into the Hydrosphere, Amazing Stories, October 1933.
Time's Mausoleum, Amazing Stories, December 1933.
The Sunless World, Amazing Stories, December 1934.

By this point, Professor Jamison is a well-established member of the cyborg Zorome crew. These three adventures involve the crew on its way to Zor. They stop first a world seemingly made up entirely of water, then time-travel back through the geological history of the Earth, and then a world in intergalactic space associated with no sun. Along the way, they battle with intelligent deep-sea frogs, and headless brutes. The science of these stories seems preposterous to modern sensibilities, but it is important to remember that the human experience of space travel did not start until decades later.

[Tom Britz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Three more adventures of Professor Jameson and the Metal Men of Zor. These early space opera stories were some of the best received stories of the early science fiction magazines. At a time when Science fiction was finding its footing, these stories would inspire the next generation of writers and they would be the ones that brought science fiction into respectability. As with all endeavors each advance is built upon its predecessors.