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The Radio Man #1
The Radio Man
The exciting first novel in the "Radio Man" series of stories starring Myles Cabot. Read about his advent on the planet Venus, his encounter with the Ant-Men and the Cupians (human-like beings). Fully illustrated with the original artwork from the pulp magazines in which the story first appeared.
188 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1924
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About the author
Ralph Milne Farley
103 books6 followersPseudonym used by Roger Sherman Hoar for writing science fiction stories.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
February 9, 2020
Wäre ich 40 Jahre früher geboren, hätte ich als Jugendlicher mein Taschengeld für die Argosy=Ausgaben verjubelt (die Pulps waren noch das, was die Comics erst werden sollten), in denen die Reihe um den Radio Man erschien. Schon wegen der fantastischen Umschlagbilder hätte ich die ganze Radio Man=Reihe von Farley gekauft:
(Aber ach, es ist eine allgmein anerkannte Tatsache, dass bei den Pulps, SF-Romanen und Comics der Inhalt nur in den seltensten Fällen hält, was Titel und Coverbild versprechen.)
Auch wenn THE RADIO MAN eigentlich alles hat, was ein SF-Pulp braucht (den Helden verschlägt es auf die Venus, wo der auf Riesenameisen und -spinnen trifft, aber auch auf die unausweichliche Wunderschöne), fehlt es ihm für meinen Geschmack erzählerisch ein wenig an dem, was dieses Genre ausmacht: ein schneller, spannender Plot, so erzählt, dass der Leser durch die Seiten gepeitscht wird. Zu nüchtern und unbeteiligt ist mir der Erzählstil des Protagonisten, der so gar nicht zu den hanebüchenden Abenteuern passen will, die es zu bestehen gilt. Während Burroughs Held sich ohne jede Erklärung plötzlich auf dem Mars wiederfindet und sofort mitten in einem Konflikt ist, der keine Zeit zum Luftholen lässt, versucht Farley der erstaunlichen Reise zur Venus einen wissenschaftlichen Anstrich zu verleihen. Die Helden von Burroughs und Farlay reisen nicht nur planetar, sondern auch erzählerisch in unterschiedliche Richtungen. Schlecht ist deswegen der Radio Man nicht, aber ich finde, wenn schon Pulp, dann besinnungsloser.
(Meine Review zum Comic findet man hier: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
(Aber ach, es ist eine allgmein anerkannte Tatsache, dass bei den Pulps, SF-Romanen und Comics der Inhalt nur in den seltensten Fällen hält, was Titel und Coverbild versprechen.)
Auch wenn THE RADIO MAN eigentlich alles hat, was ein SF-Pulp braucht (den Helden verschlägt es auf die Venus, wo der auf Riesenameisen und -spinnen trifft, aber auch auf die unausweichliche Wunderschöne), fehlt es ihm für meinen Geschmack erzählerisch ein wenig an dem, was dieses Genre ausmacht: ein schneller, spannender Plot, so erzählt, dass der Leser durch die Seiten gepeitscht wird. Zu nüchtern und unbeteiligt ist mir der Erzählstil des Protagonisten, der so gar nicht zu den hanebüchenden Abenteuern passen will, die es zu bestehen gilt. Während Burroughs Held sich ohne jede Erklärung plötzlich auf dem Mars wiederfindet und sofort mitten in einem Konflikt ist, der keine Zeit zum Luftholen lässt, versucht Farley der erstaunlichen Reise zur Venus einen wissenschaftlichen Anstrich zu verleihen. Die Helden von Burroughs und Farlay reisen nicht nur planetar, sondern auch erzählerisch in unterschiedliche Richtungen. Schlecht ist deswegen der Radio Man nicht, aber ich finde, wenn schon Pulp, dann besinnungsloser.
(Meine Review zum Comic findet man hier: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
July 11, 2019
Sometimes, it seems, a man must go through any number of occupations before hitting on the one for which he will be best remembered. Take, for example, the case of Massachusetts-born Roger Sherman Hoar, who, before he turned 37, was an assistant attorney general and state senator, taught classes in engineering and math, and wrote books about patent, tariff and Constitutional law; after moving to the Midwest, Hoar would also become a state senator in Wisconsin. An impressive enough career for any man, to be sure, but today, Hoar is undoubtedly best remembered for the science fiction novels that he somehow found the time to write, hidden behind the pen name Ralph Milne Farley. The first novel of Farley's to see the light of day, "The Radio Man," was initially serialized in the pages of the 10-cent weekly "Argosy" magazine, a four-part affair stretched over the June 28 – July 19, 1924 issues; that first issue featured gorgeous cover artwork for the serial by famed illustrator Stockton Mulford. Farley's novel was later reprinted as a three-part serial in the 12/39 – 2/40 issues of "Famous Fantastic Mysteries" (which, despite its name, reprinted prodigious amounts of sci-fi and fantasy), and was finally released as a hardcover book, in 1948, by the Fantasy Publishing Company, featuring another impressive cover, this time by one O. G. Estes, Jr. This reader was fortunate enough to pick up the highly collectible Avon Pocket Size Book edition of 1950 (cover artist unknown) while browsing around at the Greenwich Village Antiquarian Book Fair last winter. (I happily forked over the $10 asking price, despite the book's frail-looking condition.) For this Avon edition, Farley's tale was released under a new title, for some reason: "An Earthman on Venus." (Please note that the front cover makes two words out of "Earthman," although it appears as one everywhere else.) In addition, one year later, Avon came out with another version of the by-now-classic tale, this time as a 10-cent comic drawn by the great Wally Wood. And today, an economically priced edition has been made available by the fine folks at Armchair Fiction. A rather far-fetched but highly entertaining story, "An Earthman on Venus" functions as a well-done pastiche of Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars books, especially 1912's "A Princess of Mars"; Burroughs and Hoar, as it turns out, were indeed friends! Farley's story is fast moving, remarkably action packed, and ultimately rather pleasing; a tale at which ERB himself most likely smiled with great approbation.
In it, the reader encounters Boston bachelor and electronics genius Myles S. Cabot, who had disappeared under mysterious circumstances four years earlier. But a crash-landed meteorite (discovered by a Mr. and Mrs. Farley!), containing a lengthy manuscript from Cabot himself, serves to tell his story. Cabot had been working on a device that would hopefully take matter apart, send it off, and put it back together again; what my fellow Trekkers today would call a transporter beam. Following a freak explosion in his lab, Cabot had lost consciousness and awoken...he knew not where. Subsequent events, however, would prove that the Bostonian had somehow been transported to the planet Poros, which we here call Venus! Cabot was immediately captured by one of the planet's dominant races, the Formians: 10-foot-tall ants with a highly evolved culture. Cabot was taken, via a gyroscopically controlled flying machine, to the Formian garrison known as Wautoosa, where he befriended one of the soldiers, whom he nicknamed Doggo, while making an enemy of the aptly monikered Satan. From this point on, Cabot's manuscript cleaves into two fairly discrete sections. In the first, our hero learns the Formian language, gaining great respect after inventing a device that enables him to hear the antmen's otherwise silent, antennae-produced speech. He espies, in his courtyard, a delectable sample of the planet's other dominant race, the Cupians, in the form of their Princess Lilla. The winged and antennaed Cupians, it seems, had been subjugated by the Formians around 400 years earlier, and Lilla had recently been kidnapped to serve as a possible breeding experiment with the young Minosian. (The Porovians know the planet Earth as "Minos.") Cabot falls head over heels in love with the beautiful blonde kewpie doll...I mean, Cupian...and thus is easily used as a cat's-paw by Lilla’s cousin Yuri, who gets the Earthman to spirit the princess back to her homeland. In the book's second section, Cabot, having been declared a criminal by the ant queen, Formis, woos the princess at her father's--King Kew XII's--castle in the Cupian capital of Kuana (try saying that three times fast!), meanwhile fighting off the advances of the lustful brunette countess Bthuh, rising higher and higher in Cupian society, inventing some novel weapons of war, and finally, leading a Cupian revolt against their Formian masters. So it's humanoids vs. antmen in a no-holds-barred battle for planetary dominance, as Cabot's story edges closer to its conclusion....
With this, his first piece of fiction, author Farley manages quite a piece of impressive world building. To flesh out his planet Poros, he gives us giant spiders; the cowlike green aphids that provide both populaces with milk; carnivorous plants; green kangaroolike lizards called "brinks"; giant bees with which the Formian airships do battle, dogfight style; 4" long purple grasshoppers; beetlelike pets called "buntlotes"; "mathlabs" (no, not meth labs!), a rabbitlike pet; the dreaded "woofus," a vaguely feline, hairless and lavender killer; and flying snakes. He gives us a thumbnail history of both the Formians and the Cupians; shows us several modes of transportation (I especially like those two-wheeled automobiles called "kerkools"); discusses the narcotic of choice on the planet, the "saffra" root; provides any number of words in the language of the planet (for example, a "kerkool-ool" is a garage, while a "kerkool-oolo" is a garage keeper); and details what the Cupians like to do for fun (mainly games and athletic competitions, it would seem). Adding further credibility to his conceit is the fact that Cabot requires painstaking months to learn the language of the two peoples, first assimilating the alphabet, then constructing his device that turns silent antennae vibrations into sound, and finally taking more months to learn to understand what he is hearing. I have never found it believable, in so many sci-fi and fantasy novels that I have read, when one of the protagonists is able to communicate with an alien species in a matter of days. Farley, to his great credit, gets it just right here. His central character, I should add, is a highly likable and sympathetic one. Though a scientific sort, he is obviously also well read and highly literate, and a little light research reveals that the quotes that he is prone to dish out hail from such varied sources as Alfred Tennyson, Robert Herrick, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain and Omar Khayyam. Secondary characters are economically but vividly sketched in, and the writing style is concise, clear and pleasing.
Still, seemingly unavoidably, some problems do crop up. First of all, we are told that the only areas of Poros that are uninhabitable are those surrounding the Boiling Sea; the rest of the planet seems to have a merely warmish albeit humid climate. Of course, today we know that the average surface temperature of Venus is something on the order of 864 degrees Fahrenheit (much worse than where my sister lives in South Florida!), rendering it completely unfit for Cabot or any other Earthman. Farley tells us that the days on the planet are around 24 hours long, as on Earth; in actuality, they are something like 5,832 hours long, or around 243 of our days. And Farley shows us the sun rising over the planet's eastern horizon and setting in the west, as it would here, but on Venus, in actuality, it would be the other way around. So, yes...author Farley's conception of Earth's closest planetary neighbor is fantasy oriented at best, lending his tale an almost fairy tale-like aspect. The reader, thus, is more than ready to agree with Cabot when, wondering if he might only be dreaming all the fantastic events that have transpired, he refers to them as "a very interesting set of imaginary adventures"....
By the end of Cabot's narrative, following the havoc of the Formian-Cupian war, his only antman friend, Doggo, as well as his archenemy, Yuri, are missing and unaccounted for, surely leaving the door wide open for a possible sequel. And those sequels would indeed soon be forthcoming, in books such as "The Radio Beasts" (1925), "The Radio Planet" (1926) and "The Radio Menace" (1930). Having hugely enjoyed this opening salvo in the series, I certainly would not mind reading more about the exploits of Myles Cabot on the planet Poros...if I can only lay my hands on some copies. Stay tuned....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Ralph Milne Farley....)
In it, the reader encounters Boston bachelor and electronics genius Myles S. Cabot, who had disappeared under mysterious circumstances four years earlier. But a crash-landed meteorite (discovered by a Mr. and Mrs. Farley!), containing a lengthy manuscript from Cabot himself, serves to tell his story. Cabot had been working on a device that would hopefully take matter apart, send it off, and put it back together again; what my fellow Trekkers today would call a transporter beam. Following a freak explosion in his lab, Cabot had lost consciousness and awoken...he knew not where. Subsequent events, however, would prove that the Bostonian had somehow been transported to the planet Poros, which we here call Venus! Cabot was immediately captured by one of the planet's dominant races, the Formians: 10-foot-tall ants with a highly evolved culture. Cabot was taken, via a gyroscopically controlled flying machine, to the Formian garrison known as Wautoosa, where he befriended one of the soldiers, whom he nicknamed Doggo, while making an enemy of the aptly monikered Satan. From this point on, Cabot's manuscript cleaves into two fairly discrete sections. In the first, our hero learns the Formian language, gaining great respect after inventing a device that enables him to hear the antmen's otherwise silent, antennae-produced speech. He espies, in his courtyard, a delectable sample of the planet's other dominant race, the Cupians, in the form of their Princess Lilla. The winged and antennaed Cupians, it seems, had been subjugated by the Formians around 400 years earlier, and Lilla had recently been kidnapped to serve as a possible breeding experiment with the young Minosian. (The Porovians know the planet Earth as "Minos.") Cabot falls head over heels in love with the beautiful blonde kewpie doll...I mean, Cupian...and thus is easily used as a cat's-paw by Lilla’s cousin Yuri, who gets the Earthman to spirit the princess back to her homeland. In the book's second section, Cabot, having been declared a criminal by the ant queen, Formis, woos the princess at her father's--King Kew XII's--castle in the Cupian capital of Kuana (try saying that three times fast!), meanwhile fighting off the advances of the lustful brunette countess Bthuh, rising higher and higher in Cupian society, inventing some novel weapons of war, and finally, leading a Cupian revolt against their Formian masters. So it's humanoids vs. antmen in a no-holds-barred battle for planetary dominance, as Cabot's story edges closer to its conclusion....
With this, his first piece of fiction, author Farley manages quite a piece of impressive world building. To flesh out his planet Poros, he gives us giant spiders; the cowlike green aphids that provide both populaces with milk; carnivorous plants; green kangaroolike lizards called "brinks"; giant bees with which the Formian airships do battle, dogfight style; 4" long purple grasshoppers; beetlelike pets called "buntlotes"; "mathlabs" (no, not meth labs!), a rabbitlike pet; the dreaded "woofus," a vaguely feline, hairless and lavender killer; and flying snakes. He gives us a thumbnail history of both the Formians and the Cupians; shows us several modes of transportation (I especially like those two-wheeled automobiles called "kerkools"); discusses the narcotic of choice on the planet, the "saffra" root; provides any number of words in the language of the planet (for example, a "kerkool-ool" is a garage, while a "kerkool-oolo" is a garage keeper); and details what the Cupians like to do for fun (mainly games and athletic competitions, it would seem). Adding further credibility to his conceit is the fact that Cabot requires painstaking months to learn the language of the two peoples, first assimilating the alphabet, then constructing his device that turns silent antennae vibrations into sound, and finally taking more months to learn to understand what he is hearing. I have never found it believable, in so many sci-fi and fantasy novels that I have read, when one of the protagonists is able to communicate with an alien species in a matter of days. Farley, to his great credit, gets it just right here. His central character, I should add, is a highly likable and sympathetic one. Though a scientific sort, he is obviously also well read and highly literate, and a little light research reveals that the quotes that he is prone to dish out hail from such varied sources as Alfred Tennyson, Robert Herrick, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, Lewis Carroll, Mark Twain and Omar Khayyam. Secondary characters are economically but vividly sketched in, and the writing style is concise, clear and pleasing.
Still, seemingly unavoidably, some problems do crop up. First of all, we are told that the only areas of Poros that are uninhabitable are those surrounding the Boiling Sea; the rest of the planet seems to have a merely warmish albeit humid climate. Of course, today we know that the average surface temperature of Venus is something on the order of 864 degrees Fahrenheit (much worse than where my sister lives in South Florida!), rendering it completely unfit for Cabot or any other Earthman. Farley tells us that the days on the planet are around 24 hours long, as on Earth; in actuality, they are something like 5,832 hours long, or around 243 of our days. And Farley shows us the sun rising over the planet's eastern horizon and setting in the west, as it would here, but on Venus, in actuality, it would be the other way around. So, yes...author Farley's conception of Earth's closest planetary neighbor is fantasy oriented at best, lending his tale an almost fairy tale-like aspect. The reader, thus, is more than ready to agree with Cabot when, wondering if he might only be dreaming all the fantastic events that have transpired, he refers to them as "a very interesting set of imaginary adventures"....
By the end of Cabot's narrative, following the havoc of the Formian-Cupian war, his only antman friend, Doggo, as well as his archenemy, Yuri, are missing and unaccounted for, surely leaving the door wide open for a possible sequel. And those sequels would indeed soon be forthcoming, in books such as "The Radio Beasts" (1925), "The Radio Planet" (1926) and "The Radio Menace" (1930). Having hugely enjoyed this opening salvo in the series, I certainly would not mind reading more about the exploits of Myles Cabot on the planet Poros...if I can only lay my hands on some copies. Stay tuned....
(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at http://www.fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Ralph Milne Farley....)
September 22, 2018
I had fun with this. Fairly standard Sword and Planet kind of tale. While experimenting with radio, an earthman, Myles Cabot, accidentally projects himself to Venus, which he finds ruled by a population of intelligent, horse-sized ants. There's a humanoid population that is subservient to the ants, and, of course, a princess. The usual adventures ensue.
Although Farley's books are fun, they don't contain nearly the amount of action and derring-do that you find in ERB's John Carter tales. The villains are not as black and the heroes not as heroic. Still, I found it worth a read.
Although Farley's books are fun, they don't contain nearly the amount of action and derring-do that you find in ERB's John Carter tales. The villains are not as black and the heroes not as heroic. Still, I found it worth a read.
June 18, 2016
+++ WARNING: SOME SPOILERS AHEAD +++
__________
AN EARTH MAN ON VENUS a.k.a. The Radio Man
TRAPPED ON A PLANET OF PERIL, HE DARED CHALLENGE ITS MONSTER RULER!
SEE–MYLES CABOT'S EXPERIMENTS THAT ACCIDENTALLY TRANSMIT HIM BODILY TO THE PLANET VENUS!
SEE–MYLES CABOT PROTECT PRINCESS LILLA FROM THE GIANT ANT-MEN!
THRILL–TO THE DANGEROUS FIGHT BETWEEN AN ALMOST UNPROTECTED EARTHLING AND A MONSTER SPIDER!
… GO ALONG ON THE THRILL-A-MINUTE FLIGHT FROM THE ANT-MEN INTO THE COUNTRY OF THE CUPIANS!
WITNESS–THE DUEL TO THE DEATH BETWEEN MYLES AND THE EVIL PRINCE YURI!
FIGHT–WITH THE ENSLAVED CUPIANS FOR THEIR FREEDOM FROM THE HORRIBLE PEOPLE AND ENJOY HIGHT ADVENTURE AND STRANGE ROMANCE ON A WORLD OF MYSTERY…
__________
That’s what this pulp-novel from 1924 promised, and also what I expected. I had to get my mind off things and thought this kind of “trash-literature” was just the thing I needed.
The cover of the comic-book version looks like this:
So I started this book putting myself in the role of Myles Cabot, the “Earthling”, rescuing this beautiful princess Lilla from one of the ant-man … and I’m going like pew pew pew and the ant-man becomes an ex-ant-man and me and Lilla are going to marry and live happily every after. At least that was my plan … But it seemed like the book had different plans for me.
It started off alright with Myles Cabot, a scientist, experimenting with radio waves in order to build some kind of teleporting device, when one of the experiments went wrong and he found himself catapulted to another world … the planet Venus! … sans clothes!! where he soon was attacked by a detail of giant ant-men. He managed to kill some of these horrible creatures (whack whack whack with a club), but got bitten, passed out, and was taken to the ant’s city.
Then the story takes an unexpected turn, at least for me, and for a novel from this genre. Myles Cabot became friends with one of the ant-men, Doggo, and from him Myles learned about the conditions on this queer planet. It seems the ant-men are as much interested in this strange new creature from another planet as Myles is interested in them. In order to communicate, the earth-man had to learn the language of the ant-men first. Since ant-men, the Formians as they call themselves, don’t communicate by means of sound (they don’t have ears to start with), the two of them can only exchange written messages at first. There are actually quite a few themes mentioned from these chapters that make for an engrossing read, one of them being the “great intellectual dispute” whether or not the Formians are merely a superior species, or whether they are an entirely distinct type of being, specially created, and not a part of the animal kingdom at all. I also liked the way the author incorporated some characteristics of real ants into the story, especially the behaviors of the leafcutter ants which happen to be my favorite insect species.
One day Myles saw another creature from his window, one that almost looked like another human being! Except she (as it turned out to be) has two additional fingers and toes, antennae instead of ears, and rudimentary butterfly wings. So, I guess, she doesn’t look much like a human being at all, unless Myles referred to other parts of her body. In any case, Myles instantaneously fell in love with this new creature. From Doggo he learned that there dwells another race on Venus, called the Cupians, and she is one of them. Formians and Cupians live in some kind of master-slave-relationship for several hundred years with the Formians being the masters. Every male Cupian has to labor for two years in the Kingdom of the Formians upon coming of age. Now for Myles his objective is clear. Freeing the Cupian girl, escape the Formians, and bringing her back to her own people, and then possibly marry her.
After several more twists and adventures Myles did indeed get to Cupia, and even to won the heart of his beloved (it wouldn’t be pulp-novel otherwise). Sometime around the end of the book though, the story takes another sharp turn. This is not entirely unexpected. As a scientist and engineer, Myles appeared to have no better plan to help the Cupians than to provide them with some weapons (he invented himself), and to go to war against the Formians. This final part of the story has disappointed me greatly. Of course it had to come to this at some point and the intended audience expects something like that. But the character “development” of Myles seems very strange. From Paul to Saul, so to speak, in the course of only two small chapters.
The language in the book is fairly basic, humorous, critical, ironic, even self-ironic in parts and really worth reading. All of this except for the last part, roughly one fourth of the novel. I meant to read the other books in the series, but now I’m not so sure. This one is available for free at Project Gutenberg.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
__________
AN EARTH MAN ON VENUS a.k.a. The Radio Man
TRAPPED ON A PLANET OF PERIL, HE DARED CHALLENGE ITS MONSTER RULER!
SEE–MYLES CABOT'S EXPERIMENTS THAT ACCIDENTALLY TRANSMIT HIM BODILY TO THE PLANET VENUS!
SEE–MYLES CABOT PROTECT PRINCESS LILLA FROM THE GIANT ANT-MEN!
THRILL–TO THE DANGEROUS FIGHT BETWEEN AN ALMOST UNPROTECTED EARTHLING AND A MONSTER SPIDER!
… GO ALONG ON THE THRILL-A-MINUTE FLIGHT FROM THE ANT-MEN INTO THE COUNTRY OF THE CUPIANS!
WITNESS–THE DUEL TO THE DEATH BETWEEN MYLES AND THE EVIL PRINCE YURI!
FIGHT–WITH THE ENSLAVED CUPIANS FOR THEIR FREEDOM FROM THE HORRIBLE PEOPLE AND ENJOY HIGHT ADVENTURE AND STRANGE ROMANCE ON A WORLD OF MYSTERY…
__________
That’s what this pulp-novel from 1924 promised, and also what I expected. I had to get my mind off things and thought this kind of “trash-literature” was just the thing I needed.
The cover of the comic-book version looks like this:
So I started this book putting myself in the role of Myles Cabot, the “Earthling”, rescuing this beautiful princess Lilla from one of the ant-man … and I’m going like pew pew pew and the ant-man becomes an ex-ant-man and me and Lilla are going to marry and live happily every after. At least that was my plan … But it seemed like the book had different plans for me.
It started off alright with Myles Cabot, a scientist, experimenting with radio waves in order to build some kind of teleporting device, when one of the experiments went wrong and he found himself catapulted to another world … the planet Venus! … sans clothes!! where he soon was attacked by a detail of giant ant-men. He managed to kill some of these horrible creatures (whack whack whack with a club), but got bitten, passed out, and was taken to the ant’s city.
Then the story takes an unexpected turn, at least for me, and for a novel from this genre. Myles Cabot became friends with one of the ant-men, Doggo, and from him Myles learned about the conditions on this queer planet. It seems the ant-men are as much interested in this strange new creature from another planet as Myles is interested in them. In order to communicate, the earth-man had to learn the language of the ant-men first. Since ant-men, the Formians as they call themselves, don’t communicate by means of sound (they don’t have ears to start with), the two of them can only exchange written messages at first. There are actually quite a few themes mentioned from these chapters that make for an engrossing read, one of them being the “great intellectual dispute” whether or not the Formians are merely a superior species, or whether they are an entirely distinct type of being, specially created, and not a part of the animal kingdom at all. I also liked the way the author incorporated some characteristics of real ants into the story, especially the behaviors of the leafcutter ants which happen to be my favorite insect species.
One day Myles saw another creature from his window, one that almost looked like another human being! Except she (as it turned out to be) has two additional fingers and toes, antennae instead of ears, and rudimentary butterfly wings. So, I guess, she doesn’t look much like a human being at all, unless Myles referred to other parts of her body. In any case, Myles instantaneously fell in love with this new creature. From Doggo he learned that there dwells another race on Venus, called the Cupians, and she is one of them. Formians and Cupians live in some kind of master-slave-relationship for several hundred years with the Formians being the masters. Every male Cupian has to labor for two years in the Kingdom of the Formians upon coming of age. Now for Myles his objective is clear. Freeing the Cupian girl, escape the Formians, and bringing her back to her own people, and then possibly marry her.
After several more twists and adventures Myles did indeed get to Cupia, and even to won the heart of his beloved (it wouldn’t be pulp-novel otherwise). Sometime around the end of the book though, the story takes another sharp turn. This is not entirely unexpected. As a scientist and engineer, Myles appeared to have no better plan to help the Cupians than to provide them with some weapons (he invented himself), and to go to war against the Formians. This final part of the story has disappointed me greatly. Of course it had to come to this at some point and the intended audience expects something like that. But the character “development” of Myles seems very strange. From Paul to Saul, so to speak, in the course of only two small chapters.
The language in the book is fairly basic, humorous, critical, ironic, even self-ironic in parts and really worth reading. All of this except for the last part, roughly one fourth of the novel. I meant to read the other books in the series, but now I’m not so sure. This one is available for free at Project Gutenberg.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
December 13, 2018
I own the entire series and have read the first three entries thus far. This was the strongest of the three. Written to compete with the kind of fantasy adventures in which Burroughs had found success, this is a refreshing change from the bleak and pessimistic political and social satires common in 1920s sci-fi from Europe. This is a grand example of the kind of heroism and escapism Americans craved after WWI and into the Great Depression.
To give you a little more insight into how it is written, I read this and two of the sequels to my kids, and they enjoyed it in different ways. My 4 year old daughter loved the romance with the butterfly princess, Lilla; whereas my pre-teen son was inspired to start experimenting with crystal radio. The series does challenge young readers to experiment with wireless, and does contain a lot of hard science mixed in with the light adventure that I myself found very interesting and educational.
As an adult, I also enjoyed the surreal Venutian landscape and creatures. I particularly liked the aphid-like milk cows and the culture of the Formians. I especially liked the relationship between Myles and Doggo, one of the giant ant-men, who later in the series proves to be even more interesting. Myles himself is a rather wooden and unbelievable over-man protagonist, but he is a nice mix of brains and brawn, and you can't help but enjoy his exploits and adventures.
Recommended family reading or just as a personal guilty pleasure.
To give you a little more insight into how it is written, I read this and two of the sequels to my kids, and they enjoyed it in different ways. My 4 year old daughter loved the romance with the butterfly princess, Lilla; whereas my pre-teen son was inspired to start experimenting with crystal radio. The series does challenge young readers to experiment with wireless, and does contain a lot of hard science mixed in with the light adventure that I myself found very interesting and educational.
As an adult, I also enjoyed the surreal Venutian landscape and creatures. I particularly liked the aphid-like milk cows and the culture of the Formians. I especially liked the relationship between Myles and Doggo, one of the giant ant-men, who later in the series proves to be even more interesting. Myles himself is a rather wooden and unbelievable over-man protagonist, but he is a nice mix of brains and brawn, and you can't help but enjoy his exploits and adventures.
Recommended family reading or just as a personal guilty pleasure.
February 16, 2018
This is pulp, but it's good pulp. From the golden age of pulp sci-fi, an exciting tale of the Earthman Myles Cabot and his journey to Venus, the Radio Planet. Full of adventure, it may not be great literature, but it's a lot of fun to read. Recommended.
October 19, 2018
An Earthman On Venus (originally titled The Radio Man) by Ralph Milne Farley is a fun read from the pre-golden age of science fiction. Published in 1924, it undoubtedly has its origin in the John Carter novels of Mars.
Miles Cabot an inventor and radio and electrics innovator is experimenting with a matter transporter and is caught in a short circuit of sorts, which has the effect of transporting Miles to the planet Venus. 'As he wakes up on an unknown beach a plane lands and horrors climbs out, a group of four gigantic six foot ants. Though he tries to fight them he is soon overcome and taken aboard. Thus begins Miles' adventures on this mysterious planet we call Venus.
Yes, the story was a bit dated, but considering the date when it was written, it was a good story. More than half of the story describes Miles' acceptance as an intelligence that the ants had not come across before. There is another race that is almost human except they have fairy wings and antenna also six fingers and toes. Both the ants (Formians) and the fairy-like people (Cupians) are in an uneasy truce for over 500 venus years. This is all brought out in the first 2/3 of the story, then suddenly Miles as a result of his adventures and other complications is in a position to win Lilla's hand, the princess of the Cupians, a short but bloody war of independence is fought and at books end (this is book 1 of 3) the Cupians have won their independence from the Formians. I do plan on reading more of this saga, as I am deeply in love with the early SF. I will also be reading other series and singles from this era.
Miles Cabot an inventor and radio and electrics innovator is experimenting with a matter transporter and is caught in a short circuit of sorts, which has the effect of transporting Miles to the planet Venus. 'As he wakes up on an unknown beach a plane lands and horrors climbs out, a group of four gigantic six foot ants. Though he tries to fight them he is soon overcome and taken aboard. Thus begins Miles' adventures on this mysterious planet we call Venus.
Yes, the story was a bit dated, but considering the date when it was written, it was a good story. More than half of the story describes Miles' acceptance as an intelligence that the ants had not come across before. There is another race that is almost human except they have fairy wings and antenna also six fingers and toes. Both the ants (Formians) and the fairy-like people (Cupians) are in an uneasy truce for over 500 venus years. This is all brought out in the first 2/3 of the story, then suddenly Miles as a result of his adventures and other complications is in a position to win Lilla's hand, the princess of the Cupians, a short but bloody war of independence is fought and at books end (this is book 1 of 3) the Cupians have won their independence from the Formians. I do plan on reading more of this saga, as I am deeply in love with the early SF. I will also be reading other series and singles from this era.
January 6, 2025
It is difficult to do this book justice, as it was written in the 1920s. It is a sword-and-sandal story, this time set on Venus. Our hero is an expert on all things to do with radio (hence its original title - The Radio Man); however, he isn't entirely expert, as he accidentally beams himself to Venus, where he materialises safe, well and nude-despite the absence of a receiver on Venus.
From here on we have the usual stuff of the time: Giant Ants who rule over humanoids; humanoids who are extremely similar to Homo sapiens except they have antennae and gossamer wings. In fact, so similar are they that one of their princesses falls in love with the Earthman. The one novel feature is that all the creatures, including Giant Ants and humanoids, are mute and communicate by radio waves. Fortunately the hero, being a radio expert, is able to build a transmitter/receiver set and learns their radio language.
Farley (who was actually a prominent legal expert) was a friend of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which makes one wonder why he wrote his series of Venus books as ERB did it better. As mentioned, this volume was the first of a series of Venus adventures but I won't be reading any more.
From here on we have the usual stuff of the time: Giant Ants who rule over humanoids; humanoids who are extremely similar to Homo sapiens except they have antennae and gossamer wings. In fact, so similar are they that one of their princesses falls in love with the Earthman. The one novel feature is that all the creatures, including Giant Ants and humanoids, are mute and communicate by radio waves. Fortunately the hero, being a radio expert, is able to build a transmitter/receiver set and learns their radio language.
Farley (who was actually a prominent legal expert) was a friend of Edgar Rice Burroughs, which makes one wonder why he wrote his series of Venus books as ERB did it better. As mentioned, this volume was the first of a series of Venus adventures but I won't be reading any more.
March 21, 2017
" The Radio Man: An Earthman on Venus" was first published in 1924. So it is another of my time travel via Project Gutenberg adventures. I believe the desire for this stems from watching old monster movies on channel 43 from Cleveland hosted by the intrepid "SuperHost". The movies were so bad they were good.
That's what " The Radio Man: An Earthman on Venus" was for me. Stephen Jay Gould ruined forever for the the notion of giant insects wreaking havoc in "Size and Shape", but he at least did it in a marvelous way. " The Radio Man: An Earthman on Venus" purports that after a radio experimenter accidentally transports himself to Venus he finds it populated with giant insects with a dominant ant-like race enslaving a humanoid fairylike people.
Our hero has many adventures, romances the lovely princess and frees the slaves. Don't judge this book by our standards, to us from our standpoint in the work's future, it seems silly and sexist. However it is fun and a glimpse back to a time before there were two world wars, the great depression and a great many other travails.
Available for free at Project Gutenberg: The Radio Man: An Earthman on Venus
That's what " The Radio Man: An Earthman on Venus" was for me. Stephen Jay Gould ruined forever for the the notion of giant insects wreaking havoc in "Size and Shape", but he at least did it in a marvelous way. " The Radio Man: An Earthman on Venus" purports that after a radio experimenter accidentally transports himself to Venus he finds it populated with giant insects with a dominant ant-like race enslaving a humanoid fairylike people.
Our hero has many adventures, romances the lovely princess and frees the slaves. Don't judge this book by our standards, to us from our standpoint in the work's future, it seems silly and sexist. However it is fun and a glimpse back to a time before there were two world wars, the great depression and a great many other travails.
Available for free at Project Gutenberg: The Radio Man: An Earthman on Venus
February 23, 2018
no spoilers below
If it's pulpy 1920s sci-fi that you want, you will not be disappointed. Available for free from project Gutenberg, it is chock full of imaginative adventure and expected gender stereotypes, with a dose of post-WWI war justification.
And there are little nuggets even for hard sci-fi fans, and all those who wondered what it would be like on our sister planet Venus - well, before we found out what it would really be like. (Still, I vote for a try at a cloud city colony on Venus!) Enjoy this gem from before out era of gloomy, dystopian, zombie-ridden fiction. Certified free of multifaceted characters!
If it's pulpy 1920s sci-fi that you want, you will not be disappointed. Available for free from project Gutenberg, it is chock full of imaginative adventure and expected gender stereotypes, with a dose of post-WWI war justification.
And there are little nuggets even for hard sci-fi fans, and all those who wondered what it would be like on our sister planet Venus - well, before we found out what it would really be like. (Still, I vote for a try at a cloud city colony on Venus!) Enjoy this gem from before out era of gloomy, dystopian, zombie-ridden fiction. Certified free of multifaceted characters!
July 29, 2020
Another Burroughs-style sword and planet adventure. Very similar to the Otis Kline’s Venus book. Kline probably bit off a lot of ideas from here. I think Farley is a little better at the science fiction (it’s 1920s sci-fi though, so like airplanes and television) but Kline was better at writing action. Farley can’t really write action. He keeps building up moments only to to drop them before anything exciting happens. There’s a big war at the end so you’d think that would be exciting but it’s mostly described abstractly. But then the Venus he comes up with is actually a pretty interesting fully realized world. Unlike Kline’s Venus which was a planet practically identical to earth but with a lot of oversized flora and fauna (woopee, so imaginative right).
Worth taking a look at if you like this sort of thing. I’m not sure this or Kline’s book are especially essential reading, both of them have their good points but I wouldn’t say either have that thrilling combination of adventure and imagination characteristic of the best of Burroughs. But they are short breezy reads, so it’s fine for light entertainment.
Worth taking a look at if you like this sort of thing. I’m not sure this or Kline’s book are especially essential reading, both of them have their good points but I wouldn’t say either have that thrilling combination of adventure and imagination characteristic of the best of Burroughs. But they are short breezy reads, so it’s fine for light entertainment.
November 14, 2019
This was an audiobook from LibriVox.
https://librivox.org/an-earthman-on-v...
https://librivox.org/an-earthman-on-v...
June 28, 2022
I read this in the Project Gutenberg e-book edition. It was pretty good, well-written. A lot of these old books don't hold up well, but this one is OK.
August 25, 2024
Part 1 - https://archive.org/details/Famous_Fa...
Part 2 -
Part 3 -
Full Novel: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52167
Part 2 -
Part 3 -
Full Novel: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/52167
January 7, 2017
Wow, this is one of those books that's somewhat difficult to review with a straight face nearly 100 years after it was first published. Yes, the original copyright was 1924. That's pretty close to the dawn of the radio age, in the immediate aftermath of World War One. Keep that in mind.
I actually read the Project Gutenberg EPUB edition, PG #52167.
The premise of the book is that the protagonist, an inventor named Myles Cabot, goes missing. Turns out, he accidentally transported himself to the planet Venus while doing experiments with 3D "television". He was working on a prototype matter-transmission machine using radio because, you know, that was the whiz-bang technology of the day.
OK, fine, we'll check our incredulity at the door and go with it. On Venus, Cabot finds giant insect life, mainly ants called Formians, who have flying cars and communicate via short-range radio waves. Unrealistically, while being held captive (for purposes of study) he learns their written language in just a few days, then bootstraps that knowledge into obtaining a laboratory where he invents a headset that can turn radio waves into sound and vice-versa, so thereafter he can communicate with his hosts.
OK, meanwhile, there is another intelligent "race" on the planet, called the Cupians. They likewise communicate via radio, and they're humanoid with antennae and little vestigial fairy wings. Uh huh. Oh, and the first Cupian that Cabot meets is a captive princess named Lilla who faints at the initial sight of him and then haughtily snubs him, of course, because he's pretty ugly with "ears" and only five fingers per hand and a beard and no antennae and stuff like that. (But hold onto your hats, kiddies: Lilla is a knock-out blonde babe who's going to be the love interest in a few chapters.)
These two "races" are in an uneasy peace, the giant ant-people Formians having long ago conquered the beautiful humanoid Cupians. And they have a sort of Great Wall between their countries. (Part of the border is a deep canyon full of radioactive rocks some of which, at one point, our hero gathers up and carries around for analysis later. WTF? Oh, right this was 1924.)
So this book has all the usual ingredients: warring races, beautiful babes (one plucky and forward brunette who's hot for Cabot; and one winsome but not overly intelligent blonde for whom he is of course very hot; just by the way). It has whiz-bang vacuum-tube technology and an adventurous inventor ready to take on anything.
Some of the scenery, technology, and cultural descriptions are interesting, with a heavy dose of what in our time I'd call "naïve charm". It's a book squarely intended for bashful nerd boys of the era, I guess. Female readers of the 21st century would probably want to just skip it: there are no interesting female roles to see here.
Now... The last few chapters utterly horrified me, but I don't want to spoil it for you... Unless you don't plan on reading the book, in which case you can read the spoiler below.
I actually read the Project Gutenberg EPUB edition, PG #52167.
The premise of the book is that the protagonist, an inventor named Myles Cabot, goes missing. Turns out, he accidentally transported himself to the planet Venus while doing experiments with 3D "television". He was working on a prototype matter-transmission machine using radio because, you know, that was the whiz-bang technology of the day.
OK, fine, we'll check our incredulity at the door and go with it. On Venus, Cabot finds giant insect life, mainly ants called Formians, who have flying cars and communicate via short-range radio waves. Unrealistically, while being held captive (for purposes of study) he learns their written language in just a few days, then bootstraps that knowledge into obtaining a laboratory where he invents a headset that can turn radio waves into sound and vice-versa, so thereafter he can communicate with his hosts.
OK, meanwhile, there is another intelligent "race" on the planet, called the Cupians. They likewise communicate via radio, and they're humanoid with antennae and little vestigial fairy wings. Uh huh. Oh, and the first Cupian that Cabot meets is a captive princess named Lilla who faints at the initial sight of him and then haughtily snubs him, of course, because he's pretty ugly with "ears" and only five fingers per hand and a beard and no antennae and stuff like that. (But hold onto your hats, kiddies: Lilla is a knock-out blonde babe who's going to be the love interest in a few chapters.)
These two "races" are in an uneasy peace, the giant ant-people Formians having long ago conquered the beautiful humanoid Cupians. And they have a sort of Great Wall between their countries. (Part of the border is a deep canyon full of radioactive rocks some of which, at one point, our hero gathers up and carries around for analysis later. WTF? Oh, right this was 1924.)
So this book has all the usual ingredients: warring races, beautiful babes (one plucky and forward brunette who's hot for Cabot; and one winsome but not overly intelligent blonde for whom he is of course very hot; just by the way). It has whiz-bang vacuum-tube technology and an adventurous inventor ready to take on anything.
Some of the scenery, technology, and cultural descriptions are interesting, with a heavy dose of what in our time I'd call "naïve charm". It's a book squarely intended for bashful nerd boys of the era, I guess. Female readers of the 21st century would probably want to just skip it: there are no interesting female roles to see here.
Now... The last few chapters utterly horrified me, but I don't want to spoil it for you... Unless you don't plan on reading the book, in which case you can read the spoiler below.
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