Since the first edition of Ralph 124C 41+ in 1925, an eventful quarter century has passed. Since I first wrote the story, 39 amazing years have been swallowed into the Einstein space-time-continuum—years pregnant with scientific progress. Since 1925, the 5,000-edition volume has had a rather remarkable career. It has been quoted by hundreds of authorities both great and small, in hundreds of publications—not only in the United States but also in many other countries. Whenever a history of science-fiction was written, Ralph nearly always was included routinely, much to my surprise.
In the meanwhile the book became a sort of museum piece. Early in 1950 the quoted price in the second-hand book market was $50.00 for a single copy. Left with only two copies of the 1925 edition I myself endeavored to buy a copy for a friend in France, but no copies were forthcoming even at $50.00!
Authors avowedly never read their own books—I am no exception to that rule. So the other day when I was reading proofs for the 1950 edition, after a lapse of 25 years, I began to ask myself a lot of questions.
Why for instance was Ralph written, in the first place?
In 1911 I was a young publisher—not yet 27 years old.[Pg 8] I had started publishing Modern Electrics in 1908, three years before. It was the world's first radio magazine. By 1911 it had attained a print order of around 100,000 copies and was for sale on all the principal newsstands in the U.S. and Canada, and sold by subscription all over the world.
Yet, today I must confess I do not recall just what prompted me to write Ralph. I do recall that I had no plan whatsoever for the whole of the story. I had no idea how it would end nor what the contents would be.
The story began in the April, 1911, issue of Modern Electrics and ended with the March, 1912, number. On the twelve covers of the magazine for that year there was a monthly illustration depicting some Ralph exploit as divulged in the current installment. Thus for instance the first (April, 1911) cover showed Ralph at the Telephot—not the broadcast television of today but person-to-person television by phone, which has as yet to be realized. (See illustration.)
Indeed the word television was practically unknown in 1911. (The first technical article in print, using the term, was written by me: "Television and the Telephot," Modern Electrics, December, 1909).
As the story developed from month to month there was the age-old scramble to beat the deadline—but somehow or other I always made it—usually under duress, finishing the installment at 3 or 4 A.M. on the last day. That the literary quality suffered painfully under such continuous tours de force every month, there can be no question, but somehow the scientific and technical content came through unscathed most of the time.
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After 39 years I could point out a number of minor[Pg 9]
[Pg 10] technical flaws in some of my early predictions, but on the whole I probably could not do much better today. To be sure, I would not think of a gyroscopic propelled space flyer now, but then in 1911 no one was thinking of rocket-propelled or atomic-powered space flyers. In 1911 too, scientists still thought of a universal ether permeating all space. Today we seem to get along very well without it.
While quite a number of the scientific predictions made in Ralph have come to pass, many more are still unrealized. I have, however, little concern that all—or most of them—will come about in the not too distant future. I am certain that all of them will be commonplace by 2660, the time in which the action of this novel moves.
Perhaps I can do no better than reprint the foreword of the original 1911 "Ralph":
This story which plays in the year 2660, will run serially during the coming year in Modern Electrics. It is intended to give the reader as accurate a prophecy of the future as is consistent with the present marvelous growth of science. The author wishes to call especial attention to the fact that while there may be extremely strange and improbable devices and scenes in this narrative, they are not impossible, or outside of the reach of science.
We are now at the beginning of a new and fantastic era—the electronic-atomic age—an age that makes the impossible come true overnight. If Ralph 124C 41+ can fire the present-day young minds with the same enthusiasm for scientific research and accomplishment as it did their fathers in the past, I shall feel amply repaid in having instigated this new, 1950 edition of Ralph.
Hugo Gernsback
New York, May 1950