The Heat Wave
- by Marion Ryan and Robert Ord
- Short Story
- Fantasy
- Adults
- Debatable Time Travel
- English
- “The Heat Wave,” as by Allen Glasser, in Munsey’s Magazine, April 1929.
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?
Tags
(7)
- 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.
- Possible Dream, Hallucination, et al.: Perhaps, rather than an emotional outcry, it was all Feron’s dream.
- Real-World Tags
- Groupings
Variants
(2)
- “The Heat Wave,” as by Allen Glasser, in Munsey’s Magazine, April 1929.
- “Across the Ages” by Marion Ryan and Robert Ord, in Amazing, Aug/Sep 1933.
Robert Ord [uncredited]
Allen Glasser (possible plagiarism)
Indexer Notes
(1)
- Variant—Bleiler indicates that the reprint titled “Across the Ages” under the byline of Allen Glasser 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 the original with the reprint found no differences.