Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930

In Short

This second issue of the classic pulp magazine features six fast-paced tales of futuristic peril, alien incursions, and mad science. Across its pages, a murderer attempts to turn back his biological clock, monstrous extra-terrestrial invaders drop from the sky to incinerate human cities, and a mad scientist's genetically engineered super-man threatens humanity with total annihilation. Elsewhere, courageous researchers confront subterranean swarms of giant beetles, mystery satellites, and sonic architecture collapses. It endures as an authentic, high-octane artifact of early twentieth-century speculative fiction, capturing the raw imagination, dramatic energy, and techno-optimism of the pulp era.

The Story

The anthology opens with Harl Vincent's "Old Crompton's Secret," in which a prosperous man returns to his small hometown to confess to a murder committed twelve years earlier, leading into a story where extraordinary technology literalizes the desire to strip away decades of age while leaving the dark memories of crime intact. In Charles Willard Diffin's "Spawn of the Stars," terrifying yellowish alien horrors sheathed in comet-like globes rain down from the sky, laying waste to cities like Vancouver and Portland with icy hydrogen blasts. As military leaders and scientists gather in panic at the War Department, researchers Thurston and MacGregor examine a fallen alien craft, risking their lives to dismantle its ultra-dense projectile weapons to crack the secret of the invaders' propulsion and gas weapons before the remaining fleet annihilates humanity.

Hugh B. Cave's "The Corpse on the Grating" takes a darker, Gothic turn as a narrator ventures past a gloomy, windowless warehouse to discover a horrifying sight pinned against an iron barrier: a dead man whose twisted face is frozen in stark horror, yet whose decayed body seems unnaturally, maliciously alive. In Sophie Wenzel Ellis's "Creatures of the Light," young academic John Northwood joins the brilliant scientist Dr. Emil Mundson in a hidden domain called New Eden. Having isolated the Life Ray to produce a deathless, hyper-evolved super-man named Adam, Mundson discovers too late that his cold creation views normal humans with utter contempt. Adam develops a horrific Death Ray capable of turning living organisms to instant rot. Alongside the beautiful Athalia and a mysterious woman named Eve who can manipulate fourth-dimensional space, Northwood must thwart Adam's genocidal scheme before the world is reduced to a decaying waste.

Sterner St. Paul's "Into Space" presents an interview with a brave astronomer embarking on a risky spaceflight to the moon, utilizing steady gravitational acceleration in a self-contained rocket sphere while maintaining contact via ultra-short-wave radio. Victor Rousseau's "The Beetle Horde" concludes a serialized epic in the Australian outback, where Tommy, Dodd, and the native girl Haidia face millions of man-sized, flesh-eating beetles led by the lunatic Bram. When the swarm suddenly moults and burrows underground in a defenseless state, the survivors team up with a former-clergyman aviator to execute a petrol-fire counterattack, saving Australia and celebrating with an impromptu wedding. Finally, short urban mysteries explore sonic destruction of skyscrapers by a violin-playing "Mad Musician" and high-speed bank robberies investigated by the cunning Dr. Bird.

How It Unfolds

An unusual confession A well-dressed stranger enters Judge Culkin's dusty office in Laketon, startling the old small-town magistrate by announcing that he has come to surrender for a forgotten local murder.

Incineration from the heavens Alien globes descend upon the Pacific Northwest, prompting military officials and scientists to scramble for a defense while brave researchers inspect a downed craft to untangle its mysterious catalytic weapons.

Nightmare at the warehouse Walking along a dark, deserted alley past a massive storage vault, a passerby stumbles upon a terrifying corpse chained to an iron grating that inexplicably retains an agonizing, monstrous vitality.

The nightmare of perfection In the secluded paradise of New Eden, Dr. Mundson displays his advanced laboratory and his perfected creation, Adam, who promptly rebels against his creator by inventing a horrifying beam of instant biological decay.

A leap into the unknown An ambitious scientist walks an interviewer through the mathematics of gravitational acceleration before sealing himself inside a sealed sphere to make the very first journey to the moon.

Combating the swarm Trapped in the Australian wilderness by millions of giant beetles, Dodd and Tommy discover the monsters have shed their hard carapaces, allowing them to burn the soft creatures out with petrol before returning to civilization.

The People

• Judge Asa Culkin: The sharp-witted, dwarf-statured magistrate of Laketon who has managed local legal affairs for thirty years and must evaluate an incredible, decade-old murder confession.
• Thurston: A practical investigator who coordinates with the War Department and risks his life inside an alien vessel to discover how the celestial invaders generate their freezing hydrogen blasts.
• MacGregor: A precise scientist from the Bureau of Standards who analyzes the extraordinary physical properties and extreme specific gravity of foreign alien weaponry.
• John Northwood: An eager assistant professor who gets swept into the hidden compound of New Eden, falls in love with the lovely Athalia, and fights to save humanity from a hyper-evolved tyrant.
• Dr. Emil Mundson: A hunchbacked genius who masters the Life Ray to create a deathless super-man, only to realize his child has turned into an unfeeling monster intent on wiping out natural human life.
• Adam: The first "perfected" man of the future, whose immense intellect and cold, pitiless eyes hold only disdain for his human creators as he crafts a deadly weapon of decomposition.
• Dodd & Tommy: A pair of resolute explorers in the Australian outback who survive the terrifying assault of a giant beetle army and discover the key to destroying the swarm.

In Its Own Voice

"The Earth Lay Powerless Beneath Those Loathsome, Yellowish Monsters That, Sheathed in Cometlike Globes, Sprang from the Skies to Annihilate Man and Reduce His Cities to Ashes."

This vivid editorial tagline encapsulates the grand scale and apocalyptic dread driving the atmospheric alien invasion tales within the issue.

"He was hanging on the grating... His face--the image of it still haunts me whenever I see iron bars in the darkness of a passage--was the face of a man who has died from utter, stark horror."

This chilling description illustrates the story's dramatic shift into horrific, visceral suspense when an urban walk turns into a nightmare encounter.

"Every grave that has yawned to receive its prey hides corruption no less shocking. Nature's forces of creation and destruction forever work in partnership."

A character reflects upon the terrifying duality of science, balancing the life-giving properties of evolution against the horrific decay brought on by the artificial Death Ray.

What It's Really About

Beneath the dramatic adventure and colorful cover art, this issue wrestles with the double-edged nature of modern scientific advancement. Published on the cusp of the 1930s, the magazine reflects a culture mesmerized by technical possibility yet deeply anxious about where it might lead. Stories like "Creatures of the Light" interrogate the hubris of bio-engineering and the eugenics-adjacent quest for human perfection, arguing that intellect stripped of empathy creates a monster. The alien invasion and giant beetle tales project fears of industrialized warfare and total annihilation, where advanced technology easily turns against humanity. At its core, the issue questions whether human morality and wisdom can evolve fast enough to safely control the formidable physical forces—from ray energy to space travel—that modern science continues to unlock.

Why Read It Today

This issue offers a fascinating, unvarnished window into the golden dawn of American science fiction magazines. It captures a moment when the genre was forging its core tropes in real-time, untangled from modern cynicism. Readers who enjoy vintage pulp, retro-futurism, and historical pop culture will find immense charm in its enthusiastic pace, imaginative leaps, and iconic melodrama.

The prose exhibits the typical signatures of its period: dramatic exclamations, simplified character archetypes, brief bursts of period dialect, and a cheerful disregard for modern physics that favors high-concept thrills over hard scientific accuracy. In addition to the fiction, the inclusion of original period advertisements—promising motorcycle thrills, saxophone lessons, and home aviation training—adds a wonderfully authentic cultural context to the reading experience. It reads fast, hits hard with colorful imagery, and reminds us how today's sci-fi traditions first captured the popular imagination.