Pulp Fiction, 1931 · page 40 of 68
10-Story Book, July 1931 — page 40: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# Page 38 of 10-Story Magazine This is an interior story page featuring a satirical cartoon illustration of "Panhandle Percival's physiognomy" — a caricatured gentleman with an exaggerated expression, apparently heading toward Iowa's Bean City dumps. The accompanying prose depicts a mad scientist explaining to his captive subject Dorris Graydon that science is the greatest force in the world. The scientist rambles about great thinkers like Edison and Darwin, then discusses his bizarre experiments involving plants, beetles, and hybridized reproduction. The text suggests this is pulp science fiction with horror elements, though the exact story title and author remain unclear from this excerpt alone.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
38 10-STORY BEGINS ITS 30TH SUCCESSFUL YEAR! The above reproduction of Panhandle Percival’s physiog- nomy shows that worthy gentleman with an expectant look on his otherwise unelegant pan, as he makes a patient pil- grimage toward the city dumps at Bean City, Iowa, where, according to a fellow bum, an absent-minded professor threw away a copy of the new 1931 10-Story Girl Photo Revue. Dorris Graydon chilled as though she had been suddenly immersed in icy water ! —for she saw that the man before her was mad!—criminally insane!—and she was in his power! “Science is the most amazing force in the world today,” her captor continued. “Where would we be but for Edison, Wright, DeForrest—the Naturalist Bur- bank,—together with a host of the world’s great thinkers including myself? And I shall be the greatest of them all; for with me will clear up the hitherto unfathomable mystery of the age—the secret of perpetuated hybridized life. “Ah, my dear Subject: What an honor you should feel has been thrust upon you, in being selected by me as the medium for the demonstration of a great scientific truth! “Ah, those great brother thinkers of mine! Darwin, in his ‘Origin of Species,’ began with pistil and protoplasm, and went gloriously on! I was reading him yesterday and he came right out of the printed page and conversed with me, heart to heart, making his book clearer and much more beau- tiful than ever before. ‘““Fresh-water and salt-lov- ing plants,’ he says, ‘generally speaking have very wide ranges, and can be successfully diffused. So, scientifically han- dled, Nature might yield even to co-ordination between salt- water plants and fresh-water fishes. ““Many facts clearly show how susceptible the reproduc- tive system is to surrounding conditions. (Species page 8.) ““T have a long list of ‘Sporting Plants,’ the fertile eggs of which I have mixed with beetles,’ producing thereby, a cur- ious and beautiful monstrosity in minia- ture.’ “Ah, my dear Subject: I can also say with him, that ‘many laws regulate varia- tion and only a word can be said of cor- related variations. Important changes in embryo or larvae, will also entail changes in the mature animal. ECORNICMHOOKS.EO©