JF Ptak Science Books    Post 610   Blog Bookstore

 
I am very attracted to the innocence and softly bizarre category of my store’s Naïve Surreal Collection, like this little pamphlet that came out New York in 1945.   The titles in this category are odd but still understandable, and the “what the ____!” response to the subtle ones isn’t quite so high and the exclamation points not so many as in the cases of the Naive Surreal titles.  Bizarre is just that, certainly not hiding behind any lesser or ambiguous title–it seems to be a parody of  small magazines and their advertising sponsors,  and copyrighted by the very far-reaching Hugo Gernsback, who in 1926 started the first magazine dedicated to the genre of science fiction (Amazing Stories) and for whom the World Science Fiction Society’s annual award for Science Fiction Achievement is named (the “Hugo”).  Gernsback evidently had a taste for cheeky parody, producing similar magazines to this called Quip, Forecast, Jolliers, Tame and Newspeep.

I guess that this was deeply weird for mass-production publication, and it was probably funny–now it is just weird, odd, and somewhat discomforting–a successful and intentional reach for being part of the Naive Surreal right from the start.

Most of the magazine is dedicated to imaginary electronic delights–analog electronics (though it is still fairly early to be having such dreams and using the word “electronics”, as it was just barely two decades old at this point).  One of the oddest of these inventions of the near future was the Electronic Odoranalyzer, which was necessary for reasons I couldn’t discern.  There were hats of weeping willow Platina fox tails; some hats had tanks (as with the Le Chapeau Tank hat, modeled for the magazine and “worn pugnaciously at a slant”); other hats had canons (the French Mitrailsuese).  You could also relax to your favorite tunes in style with a $125,000 radio–it was made for war profiteers who couldn’t find banks enough to hold their cash and was billed as too expensive to steal.

Then there’s the EBC–the Electronic Bed Company–with their magnificent new product, an invention “by the great sage of Hackensack” so spectacular  as to make ordinary sleeping obsolete.  The bed was an air-conditioned, self-washing, self-adjusting, self covering, fiberglass-cushioned, telephone-capable, air pillowed, air conditioned masterpiece that looked like it was about ready for anything but sleep, which I guess would make it revolutionary.

Another wonderful bit in Bizarre was the assembly line beauty parlor that was staffed mostly by robots–I think that this is the very first display of robot-reach in the world of coiffure.  This was an attempt at “beauty for the
masses”, producing the normal human three-hour/20-dollar “ladies’ hairstyling” experience into a 2 dollar, one hour affair.  The production room was 150 feet by 30 feet, with room for 100 women, all moving, though it did not look very satisfying, though perhaps the savings and the quickness of it all made the experience worthwhile. 

There were contributions to future-think elsewhere:  the six-foot wide pocketbook was funny, as was the electronic lipstick (available in the “ultra-reckless” “strumpet pink”. The Chamembert Inferno CheeChee perfume was also interesting–the claim for this product was that it was so infernally devastating that Satan himself could succumb to it.

All-in-all I suspect that the pioneer and inventor (and the coiner of the phrase “Science Fiction”) Gernsback had a good time with this pamphlet, enjoying a few or too many adult beverages while sharpening a skeptically fiction-laden eyeball on the wonderful world of soon-to-be electronic conveniences.