The Atom-Smasher

by Victor Rousseau

Release: May 1930
Format: Novella
Genre: Science Fiction
Audience: Adults
Content: Definite Time Travel
Original Language: English

We've got the evil Professor Tode (who modifies an atom-smasher into a time machine that travels to the Palaeolithic and to Atlantis), a fatherly older professor, his beautiful young daughter (menaced by evil Tode), casually written racist pronouncements (by Rousseau), and our hero scientist, the dashing Jim Dent. But my favorite sentence was the brief description of quantum mechanics, which I didn’t expect in a 1930 science fiction tale.

— Michael Main

The Planck-Bohr quantum theory that the energy of a body cannot vary continuously, but only by a certain finite amount, or exact multiples of this amount, had been the key that unlocked the door.

DEBUT

“The Atom-Smasher,” Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May 1930.

VARIANTS

3 English variants

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Stone Age (3.4 Ma to 3000 BC: Paleo/Epipaleo/Meso/Neo/Chalcolithic): “We are on what will be the Russian steppes some fifty thousand years ahead of us in time,” grinned Tode.
Circa AD 1930 to 1939: presumed starting time

Timeline Models

Outside of Time: “Nothing mattered, therefore, even though they two were plunged into that awful nothingness of the fifth dimension, where neither space nor time recognizably exists.

Time Travel Methods

Time Ships: The machine was inside what looked like a flat boat, but more circular than a boat, and apparently was made of some metal resembling aluminum.

Themes

Anachronistic Dinosaurs and Other Prehistoric Creatures: a great dinosaur, fifty or sixty feet in length [in the time of Atlantis]
Blur of Days and Nights During Travel: The blur of nights and days began to slow.
Free Will, Fate, and Determinism: The future isn’t quite clear, like the past. There’s a cloud moves across the spectral lines and blurs them. I think it's the element of free will—or God!]/i]
[ex]tag-3345 | Technology and Science from the Future[/ex]: Tode has a laboratory inside the cave, fitted up with apparatus that he brought from Chicago, the world capital of theyear 3000 A.D., after disintegrating the atoms and recombining them.
[ex]tag-3382 | Travelers Must Account for Earth's Movment[/ex]: You see, Earth has moved a good many millions of miles through space since the time of Atlantis.
True Histories: the true story of the sinking of Atlantis

Real-World Tags

Neanderthals and Other Cavemen

Fictional Tags

Atlantis: He’s taken us back twelve thousand years or so to the island of Atlantis.
Mad Scientists: For it was the visage of Lucius Tode, and on those huge and distorted features was something that looked like a diabolical smile. And Parrish lacks a few marbles, too.

Groupings

Astounding · Analog (periodical): May 1930
Cited in Time Machines by Paul J. Nahin ()

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From Peconic Bay, Long Island, New York, 1930 ⋙ to a future stone age on the Russian steppes, circa 50,000 BC. Note: Near the start of the story, Tode kidnaps Jim, Lucille, and Professor Parrish in the time boat.
From an unknown time ⋙ to Atlantis, circa 10,000 BC.
From an unknown time ⋙ to Peconic Bay, Long Island, New York, some time in the 1920s. Note: Jim, Lucille, Professor Parrish, and Cain—but they are too unstable to stop.
From an unknown time ⋙ to Atlantis, circa 10,000 BC. Note: They reverse course back to Atlantis because they have no idea how to stop anywhere else.
From an unknown time ⋙ to Peconic Bay, Long Island, New York, 1930. Note: Thanks to Andy Lumm!