“The Man Who Walked Through Mirrors” (Amazing Stories, August 1939)

Bloch, Robert. “The Man Who Walked Through Mirrors.” Amazing Stories, August 1939, pp. 52-61.
archive.org/details/Amazing_Stories_v13n08_1939-08_cape1736/page/n51/mode/2up

Stanhope is the editor of a science-fiction magazine, a position that draws wackos and dreamers to him on a daily basis. One such specimen, a man named Volmar Clark, arrives at his office agitated and potentially violent. Clark demands to know if Stanhope read the story he submitted and rejected. Stanhope says ye, he did read it, and it was rejected because it was not scientifically plausible. The angry and physically intimidating author claims that it is accurate that he has built a machine that allows him to use mirrors in such a way as to allow transport to other dimensions. He produces a metal tube with levers on the sides that he claims relies on sound science. Clark brought the invention to Stanhope first because, “Now instead of taking it to the scoffers higher up, I decided this time to start at the bottom; with you, the most insignificant of my critics. You, and your ‘scientifically accurate’ stories couldn’t swallow my theory. Therefore, you shall be the first to swallow my proof. You shall be my guineapig. Editor Stanhope. How would you like to see that Fourth Dimension your ignorant authors are always babbling about?” (56). Stanhope extends the conversation to buy himself time to allow others to discover his precarious situation. Two men burst into the room. They restrain Clark and tell Stanhope that Clark has escaped from an asylum. They take Clark away. Stanhope discovers that Clark has left his device behind, perhaps by accident or by design. Stanhope begins to fiddle with it. He looks through the device and adjusts the mirrors. He feels himself being sucked inside somehow. He attempts to escape but discovers he now inhabits a world where everything is written backwards. he has fallen into the mirror dimension!

One of my favorite parts of Amazing Stories is its commitment to scientific accuracy. Like Stanhope in this story, Raymond A. Palmer, the new editor at Amazing Stories, was devoted to accuracy or at least plausibility in the stories the magazine would publish. Along with Bloch and other luminaries, Palmer was member of the Milwaukee Fictioneers, a writing group that continues to this day in a slightly different form. If you don’t know about the Shaver Mysteries, please look them up now. That was Palmer’s doing, abetted by the author Richard Sharpe Shaver. About this story, Palmer, in the editor’s chair, has this to say: “Your editor takes a neat little kick in the pants from the first science fiction writer who has ever dared to aim an indiscreet toe in the general direction of editorial dignity” (5). Palmer also adds an editorial note clarifying what current science knew about the properties of glass; this kind of thing makes me really like the Gernsback / Sloane / Palmer era of Amazing Stories in general and Palmer’s editing in particular. Finally, please use the link above that brings you to page scans of this story from Amazing Stories. Proceed to page 124-125 to read Bloch’s “Meet the Authors” entry. It is very, very, very, very funny!