Ray Cummings
Ray Cummings (1887-1957) was a prolific American science fiction writer who created an impressive body of work, contributing over 750 stories to the genre well before the term "science fiction" was officially recognized. One of his most notable works is "The Girl in the Golden Atom," published in 1919, which explores themes of shrinking to a microscopic world and remains a classic. Cummings was distinguished not only as a writer but also for his role as an assistant to famed inventor Thomas Edison, where he wrote labels for Edison records. His literary career primarily unfolded in pulp magazines, where he published works in notable publications such as "Weird Tales," "Astounding," and "Amazing Stories." Despite being compared to other influential writers like H.G. Wells, Cummings maintained a consistent style rooted in traditional pulp narratives, focusing more on adventure than on evolving scientific themes. His stories often exuded a "sense of wonder," appealing to early science fiction readers. Cummings continued to be recognized posthumously, with many of his novels being republished during the resurgence of interest in science fiction in the mid-20th century. He passed away in 1957, leaving behind a legacy that helped shape the genre of science fiction.
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Ray Cummings
Pulp magazine writer
- Born: August 30, 1887
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: January 23, 1957
- Place of death: Mount Vernon, New York
Biography
Ray Cummings, born August 30, 1887, as Ray King Cummings, published more than 750 science fiction stories in a career which started more than a decade before the term for the genre was even coined. He published “The Girl in the Golden Atom” in 1919 in All-Story Weekly magazine, and followed it in the same publication with “People of the Golden Atom” in 1920. He combined the two stories into one of his earliest and by far his most popular novel, “The Girl in the Golden Atom” (1922). In this book, the hero scientifically shrinks himself in size to the point where he joins inhabitants of a microscopic world, based on the later-discredited idea that atoms revolving around a nucleus could be miniature solar systems including worlds like our own. Scientifically plausible or not, it remains a classic of the genre. In fact, Cummings could be said to be one of the founding fathers of pulp magazine science fiction.
Cummings, who attended Princeton University, had the distinction of being the only SF writer to have been an assistant to Thomas Alva Edison (from 1914 to 1919), who invented the phonograph, among other devices. Cummings wrote labels for Edison records. He also collected some three thousand prints of paintings.
Essentially a pulp magazine writer, Cummings continued publishing regularly into the 1930’s. Critics during his early writing called him “the American H.G. Wells. Ace Books, which launched an SF line in the 1950’s, often including magazine reprints, brought ten of his novels to the attention of a new generation in the 1950’s and 1960’s when SF was gaining popularity. Other publishers then revived some of his stories as well. Cummings also published under the pseudonym of Ray King and wrote a number of detective stories.
His first SF novels were The Shadow Girl (1921, republished by ACE in 1962) and The Fire People (1922), followed by the novel version of The Girl in the Golden Atom, first republished by Hyperion in 1975 and continuing to be republished in contemporary editions. Most of Cummings’s more than twenty novels were originally serialized in magazines such as All-Story Weekly, Science and Invention, Weird Tales, Argosy, and Astounding. His shorter work appeared in those magazines plus Super Science Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories, Amazing Stories, Planet Stories, Uncanny Tales, Startling Stories, and other popular magazines of the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s.
Cummings’s writing style, however, remained in the mode of the pulps and he never adapted to more modern styles and themes, as did some of his contemporaries. He remained in the “space opera” mode throughout his career, with the scientific element taking a back seat to fast-paced adventure, but he did instill his stories with the “sense of wonder” so highly valued by early SF readers. Cummings died January 23, 1957, in Mount Vernon, N.Y., following a stroke.