The Heat Wave

by Marion Ryan and Robert Ord

Release: 1929
Format: Short Story
Genre: Fantasy
Audience: Adults
Content: Debatable Time Travel
Original Language: English

Two stories, millennia apart, connected by office worker Paul Feron in a 20th-century New York heatwave and Roman gladiator Ferronius in a heatwave of his own. Time travel? Or a dream?

— Michael Main

A dazzling streak of lightning, a mighty clap of thunder, and Paul Feron, suddenly awakened, sprang to his feet with white face and staring eyes. What had happened? God, what had happened?

DEBUT

“The Heat Wave,” in Munsey’s Magazine, April 1929.

VARIANTS

2 English variants

TAGS(SPOILERS!)

Time Periods

Ancient History (3000 BC to AD 476: Bronze/Iron Ages)
Circa AD 1930 to 1939: presumed time of Paul Feron

Time Travel Methods

Emotional Outcries through Time: The time travel aspect may be debatable, but we think Ferronius’ despair at the loss of Vedia traveled through the millennia to Paul Feron.

Themes

Just a Dream, Hallucination, et al.: Perhaps, rather than an emotional outcry, it was all Feron’s dream.

Real-World Tags

Groupings

Amazing Stories (periodical)

TIME TRAVEL ITINERARY (SPOILERS!)

From the Colosseum in Rome, circa the first to third centuries AD ⋙ to New York City, circa 1933. Note: We believe this to be an emotional outcry from Ferronius to Feron (or possibly both ways), but then again, perhaps it was just Feron’s dream.

INDEXER NOTES (SPOILERS!)

Variant—Bleiler indicates that the reprint titled “Across the Ages” under the byline of <a href='Allen_Glasser'>Allen Glasser</a> was “a blatant word-for-word plagiarism of the earlier story and that “Glasser was responsible for at least one more plagiarism” and also “stole plot from Mort Weisinger” for another story. Our comparison of <a href='https%3A%2F%2Funzcloud.com%2Fprint%2FMunseys-1929apr-00429%2F'>the original</a> with <a href='https%3A%2F%2Farchive.org%2Fdetails%2FAmazing_Stories_v08n05_1933_08-09%2Fpage%2Fn83%2Fmode%2F1up'>the reprint</a> found no differences.