The Girl in the Golden Atom

Matter, Space, and Time

by Ray Cummings

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Ebooks, Audiobook, Short Stories, Science Fiction Fantasy

Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Raymond King Cummings. His career resulted in some 750 novels and short stories, using also the pen names Ray King, Gabrielle Cummings, and Gabriel Wilson.

See Wikipedia

Reviews

[Frank Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

The "Girl" is Lilda and the "Golden Atom" is her subatomic home at the bottom of a valley carved out by an indentation on a gold ring. We find out about her by way of The Chemist, as the story begins he is recounting his discovery to a bunch of the lads; The Doctor, The Wealthy Businessman, The Banker and The Very Young Man. To my best recollection their names were never given and these descriptors were how they were referred to throughout the story.

While peeking around the surface of his gold ring under a microscope The Chemist discovered the world which Lilda inhabits. After perving for a little too long one afternoon, the lenses of his microscope unexpectedly shatter and instead of recreating the experiment, he sets his mind to developing a drug which can reduce size instead. He also synthesises a pill to do the opposite and a pill that simulates death but from which the patient may still be revived. I'm not sure why the latter, but I think it was part of an early plan to visit the world on the gold ring which he later discarded in favour of the shrink-and-grow pills.

With some successful experimental results The Chemist convinces himself to give it a try and manages to find his subatomic sweetheart. On returning he gathers his friends to recount his most impressive adventure. His friends then agree to look after the ring while he departs on yet another solo voyage but when he fails to return they decide to keep the ring in safe storage at a museum.

Eventually he gets a message back to the gang and they decide to go in after their long lost pal. This is where the real adventure begins because we get to follow the journey all they way to Lilda's world and it's an epic of its own kind.

During chapter 18 the party of travellers are resting in the woods when The Very Young Man points out "this beats anything we've done yet, gee it's nice here" at which point I couldn't help realising that the journey to the woods had been not much more than terror and gruelling effort in the almost never-ending (or rather ever-extending) descent down the valley walls.

As they shrink distances between points increase, but this also means that smooth surfaces eventually become rough and contoured meaning that the smaller they get the easier it is to climb down a slope but the further away the end of their journey gets.

The pills work with a cumulative effect and counteract each other equally so ultimate growth or shrinkage is controlled by how many of each pill has been consumed. This feature is used to produce various comical effects one of the first examples being when they decide to crush a pill and try to each consume equal portions of their pill, but the minute difference in what they each consume leads to all 3 of the travellers progressing to different heights.

Well, they eventually find The Chemist and Lilda and learn about their society and help quell a rebellion and The Very Young Man falls ridiculously in love. It's a simple kind of narrative written in what I thought was a pretty dry descriptive language.

The joy in this is the creativity and imagination that went into Cummings' world. The grow and shrink pills are put to great use. The characters and relationships I found a bit dull but overall the adventure is quite a bit of fun.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Irish author Fitz James O'Brien's classic novella of 1858, entitled "The Diamond Lens," a scientist, employing his newly invented supermicroscope, is able to observe a beautiful young woman who lives in the impossibly small world of a droplet of water. Flash forward 77 years, and we find British author Festus Pragnell, in the novel "The Green Man of Graypec" (1935), giving us the tale of a man who is accidentally sucked, via his scientist brother's new supermicroscope, into the subatomic world of Kilsona, where he is forced to abide for some time. Sandwiched between these two works, however, is a book that has, over the decades, managed to achieve for itself pride of place in these kind of microverse affairs, in which entire worlds are discovered in the heart of an atom, and that book is one that I have finally caught up with, Ray Cummings' highly influential novel "The Girl in the Golden Atom."

The NYC-born Cummings, as I have mentioned elsewhere, was, from 1914 – 1919, the personal assistant of Thomas Edison, and even went on to marry Edison's daughter. In 1919, Cummings began his career as a writer, his very first sale being the novella-length "The Girl in the Golden Atom," which initially appeared in the March 15, 1919 issue of "All-Story Weekly," its front cover sporting the blurb "A Romance of a World Within a World." That issue sold for 10 cents and contained 176 pages of prime pulp fiction...including Part 5 (of 6) of Abraham Merritt's "The Moon Pool." Cummings' first-ever story proved so popular with readers that, the following year, he came out with a sequel that was four times as long! That novel-length sequel, "The People of the Golden Atom," ran as a six-part serial in the January 24 – February 28, 1920 issues of "All-Story," and in 1922 the two tales would be cobbled together into one novel, "The Girl in the Golden Atom," issued as a hardcover by Harper & Brothers. Since its initial appearance as a novel 100 years ago (as of this writing), the book has understandably seen dozens of reprints. The edition that this reader was fortunate enough to acquire is the 2005 one from Bison Books, which happily includes a wonderful introduction by sci-fi Grand Master Jack Williamson, and I see that Steeger Books is currently selling a very beautiful copy today, as well. Perhaps Cummings' most famous piece of work, "The Girl in the Golden Atom" would turn out to be just one of the almost 750 (!) stories that this flabbergastingly prolific author ultimately gave to the public before his death in 1957, at the age of 69.

For the most part, Cummings' novel transpires inside a single room in NYC; to be specific, one of the rooms in the Scientific Club, the setting for several dozen other Cummings stories. Here, in the novella section of the novel, a Chemist relates to four friends--a Doctor, a Banker, a Big Business Man, and a Very Young Man--his latest theories. (Incidentally, it is not till much later in the book that we ever learn the actual names of the five men.) The Chemist had concluded that there is no reason why life shouldn't be able to exist in the subatomic world, and indeed, using a new microscope of his own design, he had recently seen, inside the golden wedding ring that once had been his mother's, a beautiful but sad-looking woman sitting at the entrance of a cave! The Chemist had later concocted some remarkable drugs that could instantly miniaturize or enlarge his own person, and in front of the other four, demonstrates those astounding substances. A fly in the room is enlarged to grotesque hugeness, and a sparrow and lizard are shrunk down to micro size and allowed to enter a scratch that the Chemist has made upon the ring. And while the others watch dumbstruck, the Chemist himself shrinks down to nothingness and enters that golden scratch. Two days later, the Chemist returns, and proceeds to tell the others the story of his five-day adventure. (Time, apparently, progresses at a different rate in the subatomic universe.) He had indeed, after many travails in journeying downward into the ring, been able to find the lovely woman by the cave, and had learned that her name is Lylda, the daughter of one of the chief scientists of the Oroid people. Lylda and her people had pleaded with the Chemist from the upper world for his assistance in their recent war against the aggressive Malites, which the Chemist, after growing hundreds of feet in height (measurements in the book being relative, naturally), was more than capable of providing. At the end of the novella section, the Chemist decides to return to Lylda, and the golden ring is placed inside a museum for safekeeping.

The story then jumps five years later, to the fall of 1923. The Chemist, Rogers, has not returned, and so, in observance of instructions contained in a letter that he'd left with the Doctor in 1918, three of his friends decide to use those same wonderful drugs (the formulas for which were contained in that letter) and attempt to find him. Thus, the Doctor (Frank Adams), the Big Business Man (Will), and the Very Young Man (Jack Bruce...hmm, why does that name seem so familiar?) make the hazardous journey, the elderly Banker (George) being tasked with watching over the ring in the club room. The three men, after a harrowing descent into the microverse, are indeed successful at finding Rogers, who is now, after 12 years, happily married to Lylda, living in the Oroid capital city of Arite, and the father of a 10-year-old boy, Loto. But trouble soon attends the arrival of the upper-world adventurers. The economic revolutionary named Targo, from the neighboring city Orlog, manages to stir up the populace not only against their kindly king, but against the newcomers, as well. On the trio's second day in Arite, both Lylda's scientist father and the king are murdered, and Loto is kidnapped by Targo's followers. Jack takes off to Orlog to rescue the youth, accompanied by Lylda's sister, the lovely Aura, and that is just the beginning of an increasingly dangerous time for our quartet, deep inside the world of a golden atom....

As you may have discerned, Cummings' novel borrows a little bit from O’ Brien's work, as well as from Jonathan Swift's 1726 satire "Gulliver's Travels" (specifically, its Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians) and Lewis Carroll's 1865 classic "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (which had similarly contained shrinking and enlarging substances), mixes in a bit of H. G. Wells' short novel of 1895, "The Time Machine" (specifically, the setup of a scientist explaining his latest invention to a group of friends), and comes up with something original, as well as seminal. The book itself was an obvious influence on Pragnell's, and possibly even on Richard Matheson's "The Shrinking Man" (1956). Cummings' novel is hardly heavy on the science, and the workings of the Chemist's marvelous pills are only briefly detailed, the net effect being more a book of adventure fantasy, rather than science fiction. But once the author's central conceit is accepted, everything else does logically and consistently follow, to Cummings' great credit. Like another book by the author that I had recently experienced, "The Sea Girl" (1929), "The Girl in the Golden Atom" is simply but compellingly written, almost on the order of a YA novel, in what "The Science Fiction Encyclopedia" has called "[Cummings'] rather roughshod prose." Still, the book is endlessly imaginative and filled with any number of pleasing details. For example, I enjoyed reading of the houses and the street layout of Arite, both of which are triangular in nature; of the truly ingenious clock that Reoh (Lylda's father) had invented; and of how the horizons in this subatomic world curve upward! The scene in which Jack and Aura shrink drastically in size to escape from Targo's minions, and then manage to walk under a door, is nicely done, too.

Cummings takes the time to show us something of the idyllic domestic and economic setup of the Oroid people, and our five leading men are a nicely differentiated bunch. Perhaps best of all, though, are those highly convincing growth and shrinking segments, in which the subject feels no change, other than some mild dizzying nausea, but notices his surroundings growing smaller or larger, as the case might be. Cummings' story is often mind-boggling, especially when the Chemist blithely announces that Arite is situated, again relatively, some 160,000 miles from the surface entrance of that wedding ring! ("This is all tremendously interesting...but not very comprehensible," says the Big Business Man at one point; "It’s too wonderful--really to understand," Aura declares later on.) And the book is often quite thrilling, such as when its increasingly frenetic plot branches into two parallel story lines, with Jack and Aura going off to rescue Loto in one, while the others remain among the Arite revolutionaries in the other. As Williamson mentions in his intro, Cummings "weaves an engaging and suspenseful narrative."

In a book filled with any number of tremendous sequences, several managed to stand out for this reader: the Doctor, Banker, Big Business Man, and Jack battling a cockroach in the Scientific Club that had accidentally ingested some of the growth formula and thus turned into a 3-foot-long monstrosity (probably worse than anything to be found in any other NYC dwelling!); the three adventurers finally reuniting with Rogers and meeting his family; Loto's rescue from the castle of Targo; the desperate fight that our towering heroes engage in with hundreds of enraged Oroids, inside a subterranean tunnel; the battle to the death between a gargantuan Jack and a gargantuan Targo, after the latter purloins some of the growth pills; and the dilemma of Jack accidentally taking too much of the miniaturizing drug--with none of the growth drug on his person--and thus becoming lost from the others, and compelled to face off against that now-dinosaur-sized lizard (again, all things being relative). Cummings also throws in some charming romantic bits, too--between Rogers & Lylda and Jack & Aura--and concludes his book with a lovely coda, on a snowy Christmas Eve in upstate New York. So yes, the author's novel does end happily for our heroes and heroines, yet with the world of the Oroids in complete disarray. With Targo's revolution seemingly a success, but Targo himself probably (although not conclusively) dead, the future of the once-Edenic subatomic realm is certainly in question. A second sequel to this classic piece of work, thus, would surely have been a welcome one.

In all its length, very few problems cropped up to distract this reader from his enjoyment of Cummings' most famous work. Yes, there are a few ungrammatical bits here and there (such as the author writing "try and take" instead of "try to take"). And Cummings manages to misquote the lines from Irish writer Justin Huntly MacCarthy's poem "If I Were King" no fewer than three times! Perhaps worst of all is the fact that our heroes seemingly forget to recover the supply of growth pills from Targo's inert body; drugs that could seriously alter the future history of the Oroid people. But no matter. Even with these slight gaffes, Cummings' book remains a truly imaginative wonder that I can recommend unreservedly for both younger readers and adults. I find myself now wanting to experience all 28 of the tales that Cummings wrote regarding the Scientific Club. Fortunately, I see that Steeger Books has a beautiful-looking volume containing all those 28 stories currently available! Unfortunately, I also see that the selling price of this volume is a whopping $85! Well, at least you all know what to get me for my next birthday now, right?

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of Ray Cummings....)

[William · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining Sci-Fi listening 🎶🔰

Friends are gathered for dinner when one announces that there is a world 🌎 within the ring. He travels within the ring and comes back with an amazing story. He returns to the world 🌎 in ring and does not return. Five years later three of the friends follow and the fun begins. I would recommend this novel to 👍 readers of Sci-Fi adventure novels 👍🔰. 2023 👒😀💘🏡

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ray Cummings' 1919-1923 science fantasy channels H. G. Wells with a nod (in the first section) to Hope Hodgson before descending into a more conventional pulp adventure and a rather sweet period piece love story between an irritatingly named 'Very Young Man' and the atom girl's sister.

Descending is the 'mot juste' because this is a journey into inner space not outer space. Cummings postulates the ability to shrink to such miniscule levels that the atom proves to be just a planet on which adventures are to be had.

It certainly requires a great deal of suspension of disbelief as the large cast of characters shrink and grow to order on the basis of a chemical powder. We even get a classic lost world monster struggle between a giant lizard and an even larger sparrow (don't ask!).

In fact, it is not at all as bad as it may sound. The best lies in the first part where the Chemist travels alone to the atom planet, marries the beautiful girl he has seen through a microscope (of ridiculous power for the period) and waits for his comrades to come and visit.

Time passes differently so a relatively short time after his departure and before the clubland pals arrives is still time enough on the atom planet for the Chemist to fall in love, marry a child and become chief adviser to the King.

This first section is only a step away in interest and pleasure from a Wellsian fantasy. It was written not that far distant in time from the master's best work. The rest is perhaps less interesting but will pass muster as rollicking adventure in the Burroughs tradition.

Like many science fiction novels from the last century, the joins can show between original short stories for magazine use and the subsequent beefing up of a novel. In this case, the difference in tone within a quite lengthy novel is down to the 1923 consolidation of two earlier stories.

What makes the story rise above the level of mere pulp is Cummings' exuberance. He does not care if it is believable. He has an idea - of exploration of the atomic world - and he clearly intends to enjoy himself and pack as much incident into his story as he can.

The characterisation - despite the irritating refusal to give the humans proper names - is actually quite good. There is a nice progressive slant to his politics even if this is vitiated somewhat by the slaughter of angry mobs which seems to reflect the callousness of the recent world war.

The women are strong and intelligent but obviously fantasy figures - very much that period yearning of the intelligent male for an equal that recognises male heroism - although at the end of the day the morality and expectations are nothing if not conventional.

It ends peculiarly but quite sweetly with a touching Christmas scene. All the blokes giving the aliens a taste of human innocence after the mayhem. It is chocolate box but somehow it works because Cummings is actually quite a good writer.

[Len · Rating 4 out of 5]

Start with a large dollop of pseudo-science, add in a sizeable portion of H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, a spoonful of Plato's utopia, then a strong-willed young hero, some stalwart friends, an alien heroine with a character stronger than most, a medieval-type alien world - swords preferred over ray guns, give it all a good stir and you have The Girl in the Golden Atom. The scientific idea stems from the discovery of atoms and subatomic particles making up all of us and everything around us. Extend that to a theory that there is no such thing as a universe: just as atoms form us so our planets, stars and galaxies are actually the atomic particles of an immense other body and an immeasurably large other world. Then suggest that, if we exist within that giant whatever it is, perhaps our atoms are also inhabited worlds within us.

The Chemist - for a long time he has no name - has devised drugs which can alter a person's size, either making that person gigantic or as tiny as you like. Although it is not explained how it would possibly work, taking the drugs also alters the subject's clothing, anything he may have digested and anything he is carrying proportionately. The Chemist plans to make himself so small he will be able to stand on the surface of a single atom of a gold ring and study its landscape and hopefully its people. The Chemist must be a silver-tongued chap as he manages to persuade a Big Business Man, a Banker, a Doctor and a Very Young Man who is there to fall in love with the first attractive humanoid female he comes across, to back him - and even go to his rescue when the time comes.

The interest of the story comes and goes. The science is on the silly side, yet the description of the Oroids and their city of Arite is quite remarkable for a science fiction novel of 1922. The Oroids believe in female equality, well almost. Lylda, the Oroid whom the Chemist marries, may be a leading jurist and politician but the lot of the servile class is a great deal closer to that of 1920s humanity. The adventure story is nothing exceptional for its time. Sword-wielding rival factions are at war and the human travellers must decide whether to join in or escape back to their own world. There are stirring fight scenes, much growing and shrinking of the protagonists as they use the Chemist's drugs to their best advantage, flight from what appear to be a large dinosaur and a monstrous flying raptor - actually they are a small lizard and a sparrow made to appear huge by the drugs - and a sentimental happy ever after Christmas ending.

It is all good fun and cleverly written. It just needs a substantial pinch of salt to accept that such things are happening over and over again inside our lumbering great bodies.

[April · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of my first thoughts, as I read, was about those old, old text based computer games where, if you wanted the program to repeat a full description every time you entered a room, you could type the command "maximum verbosity"... Someone typed that command with this book!

Keeping in mind this book was written in the wee small years of 1900 this book is a delightful glimpse into the beginnings of Science Fiction. I was tickled with the titles the five men were given as they sat around together in their gentlemen's club in the beginning, and continued to be amused by their use throughout the entire book... we have The Chemist, The Big Business Man, The Banker, The Doctor and The Very Young Man... you do find out The Chemist's and The Very Young Man's name through the character's natural usage of it, but the narrative always goes back to their "title".

There isn't much science to this book, and what there is can be very spotty, something we can forgive the author for considering how much science he had to go by at the time, and because it really is, when you come down to it, a delightful little romance. I did enjoy Mr. Cumming's descriptions of how the surroundings changed as the characters shrunk small enough to get inside an atom, but had to giggle at some of his world mechanics.

I read this in a digital version and found it was rife with uncorrected format translation mistakes... gaps in the wrong places, capitols letters separated from their word... even missing sentence beginnings... nothing, however that kept you from understanding or surmising what was meant.

I gave this book a rating of three, because I want it to stay in my library (anything below 3 gets sent to the charities at PCS time)... however... I doubt I will read it again. I will, however recommend it to certain friends.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story, faults and all

[D. Dorka · Rating 3 out of 5]

1922-es sci-fi, úgyhogy a női karakterekről szinte felesleges szót ejteni. Viszont az elmélet, miszerint minden atomban egy a miénkhez hasonló világ létezik emberszerű lényekkel, érdekes. Még ha nem is igaz. De látszik a beletett idő és energia, és ha elfogadjuk axiómaként, hogy így van, akkor Cummings elég jól használja az ebből következő fizikai-biológiai dolgokat. Helyenként felületesen, de mindent nem lehet. Meg hát 1922.

Az atomi világ társadalma pedig egy utópia, ahol minden ember egyenlő, tehát a nők is (!), viszonlyag primitív formában élnek. Ámde a háború itt is jelen van (megintcsak 1922, ne feledjük, hogy az I. világháború még friss élmény az írónak, sőt meg is jelenik konkrátan a saját világunk szintjén is érintőlegesen), amibe főhős kémikusunk beleszól egy kissé.

A történet folytatása, miszerint a kémikus 5 évig ott marad az atomi világban, és a többiek utána mennek, annyira már nem kötött le. Szinte teljesen új történenek érződött, és bár teljesen jogos, hogy a saját világunkból ott ragadt entitás felborítja az atomi világ békéjét, valahogy mégsem volt elég újító, a maga korához képest sem. És átment kalandregénybe, amit kevéssé szeretek, és a fő ellenérzéseim forrása a régi sci-fik iránt.

Apropó, idő: díjaztam, hogy a speciális relativitás után ennyire nem sok évvel már használha a tudományos irodalom az idő gyorsaságának különbségét az atomi világ és a mi világunk között.

Ami szerintem nagy hátránya a kötetnek, hogy iszonyatosan unalmasan és igazából rosszul van megírva. Sok szép rétestészta kinyúlt... Eredetileg egy novella volt ez a történet, és pár évvel később ezt dolgozta át regénnyé. Azt hiszem, nem sikerült megtalálni az arany középutat. Sőt (köszi, wikipedia), egy Amerika Kapitány képregénybe is átdolgozta ugyanezt a történetet. Biztos nagyon szerette. Egy jó szerkesztővel én is jobban szerettem volna.

[Denis · Rating 2 out of 5]

An early, pre-Doc Smith and Burroughs old school sci-fi (written between 1919 and 1920). "The Chemist said... to the Doctor next to the Banker... who sat by the Big Business Man and the Very Young Man". In spite of the time it was written, is a decent story. The miniaturization theme has often been used since. "The Incredible Shrinking Man", "Fantastic Journey" right up to Michael Crichton's posthumous "Micro".

A little long for what it was (it is actually two novellas combined as one novel). I did enjoy it over all (once I finally finished it).

[Ema · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've recently discovered the fascinating world of early Sci Fi, like this 1922 classic. The plot centers around individuals discovering the ability to shrink themselves at will to a subatomic size, and the subsequent discovery of an entire universe hitherto unknown to us. An interesting feature of this ability is that it can be scaled ... by adjusting the amount of the body-size-changing-drug/substance, you can increase and/or decrease in size to whatever extent you wish.

A delightful narrative. Not super high on the suspense scale (by today's standards), but it makes up for it by the imaginative and evocative way that the author describes the shrinking/expanding experience from the perspective of the person undergoing the change. Also interesting are many of the "I wouldn't have thought of that" practical/everyday challenges they encounter as they change size.

I couldn't tell you why, but I got a real kick out of the fact that the author refers to the main charactes as "The Chemist," "The Doctor," "The Wealthy Businessman," "The Banker," and "The Very Young Man." It wasn't until almost 3/4 of the way into the book that one of the characters refered to another character by their given name, but the narrator consistently only refers to them as "The Chemist," etc.

[Angus · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a rather odd book, but not without charm. It is 1920s SF—but even by 1920s standards, the science is barking mad. The protagonist theorises that every atom contains a literal universe of its own, and naturally he turns out to be right. He invents a method of seeing inside atoms—apparently it just takes a fancy new lens on your microscope—and inside one of the atoms of his gold ring, he is startled to see a human-like girl.

Naturally, he falls in love, and just as naturally he invents a method to shrink himself so he can join her. Delightfully, this method is a drug: one pill makes you larger, one pill makes you small (ho, ho). Fortunately for 1920s readers, the drug is so powerful that it even affects one's clothes! And, gosh, it really is splendid luck that, each time the protagonist shrinks himself (he makes several trips), he manages to find the exact same atom...

But don't misunderstand me. I enjoyed the book, I really did. Though I did laugh at some inappropriate places.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's always an experience to read books from the 1900s. Although I found the story interesting and it kept me wanting to read more, there were many moments that pulled me back to reality. For example, the men test a new drug on an animal, then beat it to death with a poker for a fireplace with no qualms. These are scientists! Or when the Chemist, having just arrived in a new world a day before, decides to commit genocide, just because he finds the first woman he has met compelling and attractive. It is clearly a man's fantasy - go to a secret world with a primitive population, find an attractive and obedient woman, become leader of the secret world, and then return home triumphant with a beautiful trophy wife. The idea of infinitely smaller worlds is great, but the execution is very very 1920s.

[Bipin · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read.
I came across a quote from this book in 'Recursion' by Blake Crouch. When I looked up the book, the premise seemed interesting. Remember that this book was first published back in 1922. (I will agree that the concept seems absurd from a modern scientific point of view. Although the Nuclear model and Bohr's model of atomic structure, with a nucleus and mostly empty space, were proposed in the earlier 1910s, this book seemed to base the story in the Thompson's model. This book also gives a glimpse of the then societal norms as the author doesn't stray too far from home in materializing the universe within the atom. The book itself seemed quite long due to the extensive, rather drab, descriptions.
One thing that bugs me is that how did the lizard and the sparrow survive so long (between five and twelve years) in the uninhabited regions if the ring?

[Al Cormier · Rating 4 out of 5]

I actually listened to this at Librivox.org as I worked on other projects. The reader was decent enough, and through him, I was able to visualize, and become part of the story. It was a good adventure, and sociological experiment, as were a lot of the SciFi novels of its time. I would not hesitate to recommend it to my friends.

[Les · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story was good. And the "science" was pretty much what you would expect from the era.

What really stood out for me was the not so subtle struggle between socialism and fascism (or capitalism, depending on your political viewpoint). A lot of these issues can easily apply to our society.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

I probably wouldn't recommend this book to most people unless you like early sci fi. As with most books from the early 1900's the book drags on at points and had some questionable race/female comments but I still finished it and thought it was an ok read.

[Jerimy Stoll · Rating 4 out of 5]

The slow starter that reminded me of a mix of "Journey to the Center of the Earth," "Alice in Wonderland," and "The Time Machine." Like most Science Fiction novels of the 1920s and 1930s, there is a solid undertone of the socialist utopia that writers seemed to believe was the best way of life. Orson Wells had "1984," Aldous Huxley had "Brave New World," all of the Star Trek novels also portray Socialist living where money is an outdated form of living and people are provided everything they need by a government with total control. There is no need for privacy, and there is no need for ambition, people simply exist and are made to be happy about it. The novel does liven up a bit towards the middle and the action begins to happen. A new leader emerges and plans to make a new government and is portrayed as evil and the rest of the novel focuses on defeating the new leader's "evil" agenda. I ranked the novel with four stars, but I felt it only deserved 3.5. I rounded up because I enjoy reading Ray Cummings' works. I would recommend the novel to Sci-Fi enthusiasts, and possibly those who like Fantasy, and Adventure stories.

[John Payton · Rating 3 out of 5]

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

[Michael Hill · Rating 1 out of 5]

It is like a talented kid's first book. Too much unwanted detail in places, like their interminable journey to the atom world (second journey) where every sentence is "The Very Young Man" this or "The Big Business man" that. It grated after a while.
A chemist invents drugs which can endlessly shrink (or grow) living things, allowing four people to go to an atomic world (always the same atom) which turns out not to be the idyllic paradise they first thought it was.
I thought the Timely stories (in Captain America 25 and 26) written by Cummings in the forties and even the forties Tex Avery cartoon, King Sized Canary, were far better.

[Chris Stephens · Rating 2 out of 5]

A whole other universe could be in this orange, (from the movie "The Trip)
in this case a ring,
way too much adventure,
even for a very early version of the shrinking man idea,
it just felt kinda slow and dated,
but it did have its moments,
enough that I don't want my time back.

[Vincent Konrad · Rating 1 out of 5]

read this because someone in a twin peaks facebook group recommended it as relevant somehow. it's not. and it's dead boring.

[Regine]

Interesting scientific romance.

[Carl · Rating 3 out of 5]

vintage sci-fi from 1923
twas ok

[Daniele · Rating 2 out of 5]

Il mio voto sarebbe 2.5. Non è il genere di fantascienza che prediligo, la "scienza" su cui si basa il romanzo non ha molto senso, nemmeno considerando che è stato scritto nel 1922, e i personaggi sono piuttosto stereotipati. Detto ciò, l'idea di un altro universo minuscolo contenuto in un atomo è piuttosto originale e carina e la lettura è comunque piacevole.

Il romanzo finisce con i protagonisti che fuggono dal "mondo dell'anello" dopo averne messo in crisi la società. Avrei preferito una soluzione alla situazione piuttosto che una fuga che lascia un po' un senso di incompiuto. Motivo per cui do due stelle invece di tre.

[Dfordoom · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of the early classics of American science fiction. It was originally published in the pulp magazine All-Story Weekly in 1919. Book publication followed in 1922. It was an immediate success and the basic idea was one that the author retuned to rather obsessively in his subsequent incredibly prolific career.

It’s undeniably a clever idea. A scientist develops an ultra-high power microscope and makes a startling discovery. There really are worlds within worlds. Within the atoms he observes an entire world, with people in it. He speculates that our world may in fact be such a world contained within another infinitely vaster world, and that there may be an infinite numbers of worlds within worlds within worlds.

Within this microscopic world he sees a girl. And he becomes obsessed by her. Somehow he must find a way to enter this microscopic world. He finds a way to do just that. In the process he finds that he may be able to save not just this miniature world but also our own world.

This is definitely not hard science fiction. You just have to accept that these scientist chappies are terribly clever and if they need to reduce themselves to less than the size of atom they just whip up a special potion that does the trick. But this was 1919. This was still the age of the scientific romance, the age of Verne and Wells and Burroughs, when playing around with cool ideas (often with political overtones especially in the case of Wells) was more important than working out plausible theories to explain the events of the tales.

Cummings was less political than Wells but he was influenced by the Great War and uses his story to make some observations on war and the fate of human society. Or in this case human societies. In some cases his observations on these matters become a bit disturbing when he intervenes in a war in the microscopic universe and ponders the possibility of doing something similar in our world. There’s certainly an element of scientific hubris here although I’m not sure just how conscious he was of this or of the staggeringly naïve approach of his scientist hero.

He was also presumably influenced by the scientific ferment of that time, with quantum theory and relativity suggesting that universes could be more strange and complex than had ever previously been imagined. In some ways this tale can even be seen as an anticipation of the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum theory although obviously Cummings’ idea of a multiplicity of universes is very different from the quantum one.

It’s an interesting curiosity from the earlier days of science fiction. Not a masterpiece but definitely worth a look.

[Estott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad- and considering this from 1919 pretty good. Starts out a bit slow- after the setup (a chemist discovers a sub-atomic world in the gold of his mother's wedding ring and shrinks himself to explore it) we have a long first person narrative of the "I saw this and that and met so and so" variety, with very little action. After the chemist goes into the ring a second time and his friends enter it to find him the action picks up- and after a couple of infodump lectures about the cultural and political life of the world the conflict starts- Cummings does keep the action moving nicely.

The title is perfect- makes you want to pick it up immediately.

Though the ring world is a fairly conventional one (basically earthlike with a few tweaks) it is something of a socialist utopia- property is shared but belongs to the government: you are free to build as large a house and kkive as well as you are able, but after you die everything your share goes back to the government for redistribution. Women have nearly as much power in the city as men, though things are still male-centric In a time of crisis it's "Woman must not kill unless her man wishes it...or in defense!"

The science- it doesn't bear thinking about. It's literally "One pill makes you larger, the other makes you small". Cummings does at least work with this- there are dramatic changes of topography with each change in size, and cautions not to get "Lost in size". At one point the Chemist focuses a microscope in the Ring World on a bit of porous stone, and succeeds in finding yet another sub-atomic world.

Characters - one dimensional cardboard (faintly flexible) though the "Very Young Man" who is the primary action hero does develop a quirk or two.

Nice touch: the conflicts which eventually wreck the society are pre-existing, but the visitors realize that their presence in the world, and their efforts to fix things by using their drugs to grow to enormous size and stop a war (bu stamping thousands of the opposing forces into the ground) has made the situation far worse and their very presence has harmed the world.

[Kenneth · Rating 3 out of 5]

They don't write adventure stories like this, any more! The characters have names like "the Chemist" and "the Very Young Man," the prose style seems torn from the pages of a Victorian-era National Geographic, and the natives of the tiny world inside the atom - the "Oroids" - are described with the sort of gravely stated praise that can never seem to emphasize enough how virtuous, comely, and noble they are. Not that there's anything wrong with that. It's a remarkable, if scientifically ludicrous, work of fantasy, which draws you into a world as outlandish, alien, and bizarre as you could ever dream: the imagination of a sci-fi writer of a century past.

GIRL seems to be generally published along with its sequel, "The People of the Golden Atom," which continues with the same characters, who get involved in subatomic politics, to great dramatic effect... or so I'm guessing, since I couldn't bring myself to finish the book. Not to suggest that it's dull, but there are so many books to read, after all, and so very little time...

[Kimbolimbo · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was a BIG waste of time. But it was what I chose to listen to when I was stuck at work without having planned in advance to have another book available. I don't even want to discuss this book because my brain is SO bored. Basically I think you could write a paper on what the author thinks is the ideal woman based on his descriptions of the girls found in the interior of a ring. Maybe the reader caused the book to be more undesirable because he sounded so pompous and bored so that means the protagonists sounded pompous and boring. The science behind the whole book was flawed from the getgo - who can believe that by eating a chemical concoction you can not only shrink or grow but so do your clothes, your backpack, and everything and anything you are holding on your being. OH, PLEASE!

[David Cain · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mediocre science fiction from the very early twentieth century. This is basically a pulpy combination of Gulliver's Travels and Journey to the Center of the Earth. The author seems to have a callous disregard for human life, as he has most of the main characters kill thousands of people without a second thought or any sort of moral qualms. His treatment of the female characters is quaint at best, and fairly sexist at times. One of the themes is socialism (good) versus a poorly-defined non-socialist governmental structure (bad). Nothing too intellectual here though.

[Victor Mabuse · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you are a fan of vintage science fiction, this is an acceptable book. It does tend to drag in places particularly where politics and government is discussed. The concept of a world, contained on an atom of a gold wedding band is rather intriguing to me. As a Green Lantern fan, fantasy ring stories appeal to me. As one who also wears a gold wedding ring, it just feeds the science fantasy side of my brain.
Not a great read, but it does have some good moments. Be mindful, it is a product of its time.

[charles hudson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Golden

This would make a great movie. It takes the concept much further than the movie of," The Incredible Shrinking man". That movie was quite a few years ago. I have always thought that the universe goes both ways. Giant and small. Or should I say smaller. We won't know till our homecoming.