The Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana

by Jess Nevins

The Auroraphone. A Romance (1890) 

copyright © Jess Nevins 2022

The Auroraphone: A Romance was written by Cyrus Cole (?-?), a Kansan about whom little is known.

The Auroraphone begins with a pair of young men who move to the American West to prospect for gold. They have the usual adventures and hard times in the Colorado Rockies before meeting Gaston Lesage. Lesage is an old Frenchman who moved to Colorado to work on his “pet hobby,” which is “to invent and perfect an instrument for the transmission of sound-signs by natural electrical currents.”1 Lesage is a monomaniac about this, having abandoned his previous life and moved to the Rockies just to take advantage of the mountains’ altitude. With the help of his freed slave assistant Pete King, Lesage perfects his invention, which he calls the “Auroraphone.” As the two young men are visiting Lesage, the Auroraphone begins picking up transmissions from outer space. As Lesage et al soon discover, they are being contacted by “Rulph Bozar...a human being much like yourself.”2 Rulph is a Saturnian, and he begins telling Lesage, in a series of long lectures, about life on Saturn, their society and history. The Saturnians have a technologically advanced culture. They have air ships, flying machines, and “electrical road carts.” Rulph uses an “optigraph, attached to our plano-electraphone,”3 to observe events on Earth, including Lesage's reactions to his words. The Saturnian society is a peaceful one, although their robot laboring class is revolting. The robots are called “dummies;” they are made out of metal (“matal”) and are powered by battery-like “electromotors” and are physical duplicates of the Saturnians. Unfortunately, they are discontented with their position in society and are rebelling against Saturnian rule.

Just as things are getting interesting the conversation is terminated. Pete King is a superstitious type who believes that it is Satan who is communicating with Lesage. King is a particularly foul racist stereotype who is given to saying things like “Fo’ de Lawd's sake, Marse Gaston, smash de deb’lish ting an’ frow um in de lake.”4 One day, while Lesage and the others are out, King gets on the Auroraphone and tells off Rulph Bozar: “So I jes’ goes to dat telegraph’n’ ‘sheen an’ sends ole Beelzebub er telegram myse’f. ‘Yo’ ole debil,’ says I, ‘jes’ get clar behind me an’ neber let me see yo’ talk’n’ to Marse Gaston agin.’”5 The Saturnians then cease communication with Lesage, destroying the Auroraphone through electrical feedback. It is not until ten years later that communication is restored, with a new Saturnian, named “Smith,” transmitting messages to Lesage. Smith tells Lesage how Bozar was presumed killed during the war with the robots, who were defeated in the war and have all been destroyed. Smith shows Lesage visions of important events from the past, including the destruction of Pompeii, and tells Smith that the Saturnians are forming a league of planets. But the Saturnian government orders Smith to cease communication with Lesage, and the Auroraphone is again destroyed.

The Auroraphone was originally published by Charles H. Kerr & Company, a publisher of socialist and politically radical material; The Auroraphone’s lack of political content (apart from its weak satire of Christianity and generic other-planetary utopia) displeased members and supporters of Kerr & Company, “who deemed it an intrusion in the series and not in keeping” with the character of the publisher’s other books.6 Reviewers were kinder, and the novel was issued in a second edition in 1891. But The Auroraphone has not aged well, and modern readers will not take to it. The Auroraphone is imaginative, and can charitably be described as "heady mixture of utopianism, romance, religious debate, and soul transmutation."7 But the novel’s graceless narration and racism will quickly diminish whatever pleasure the modern reader might derive from the novel; as Peter Nicholls and John Clute wrote, “the racism here is perhaps even more defacing than normal for an American novel of this period.”8 

Of note is the fact that The Auroraphone is another good example of the “Revolt of the Machines” trope (see: A Mexican Mystery). Unlike the Engine in A Mexican Mystery, the revolting machines in The Auroraphone are androids (the revolting machines are shaped like Saturnians, who in turn are identical to human beings); and unlike the Engine, the rebellious androids in The Auroraphone are robot servants. The plot device of a rebellion of robot servants became common in pulp science fiction and continues to appear today, as in the television show Westworld (2016-present).

The Auroraphone is a novel better read in summary, when modern readers can get all of the ideas that the novel has to offer without being exposed to its deplorable racism.

Recommended Edition

Print: Cyrus Cole, The Auroraphone: A Romance. Charleston, SC: Nabu Press, 2010.

Online: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008661049

 

 

1 Cyrus Cole, The Auroraphone: A Romance (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1890), 86.

2 Cole, The Auroraphone, 90.

3 Cole, The Auroraphone, 90.

4 Cole, The Auroraphone, 89.

5 Cole, The Auroraphone, 134.

6 Allen Ruff, “We Called Each Other Comrade:” Charles H. Kerr & Company, Radical Publishers (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011), 58.

7 Neil Harris, Cultural Excursions: Marketing Appetites and Cultural Tastes in Modern America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 154.

8 Peter Nicholls and John Clute, “Cole, Cyrus,” The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, accessed Feb. 11, 2019, http://www.sf-encyclopedia.com/entry/cole_cyrus

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