I previously posted on Sterner St. Paul Meek (1894-1972), who used “S.P. Meek” for his published works, when I reviewed his The Drums of Tapajos. He was an ordinance office and military chemist, worked up from captain to colonel, and used his rank with some of his fiction. He briefly wrote science fiction and some other pulp fiction on the side from 1929 to 1933, before moving to children’s fiction.
His SF appeared in Astounding and Amazing Stories, and his major series featured Dr. Bird and Secret Service Operative Carnes. I obtain a recent collection of most of the Dr. Bird stories, 11 of the 14 stories, The Astounding Adventures of Dr. Bird published by Resurrected Press in 2010.
The series consists of:
- “The Cave of Horror” (Astounding Stories, January 1930)
- “The Radio Robbery” (Amazing Stories, February 1930)
- “The Thief of Time” (Astounding Stories, February 1930)
- “Cold Light” (Astounding Stories, March 1930)
- “The Ray of Madness” (Astounding Stories, April 1930)
- “Stolen Brains” (Astounding Stories, March 1930)
- “The Sea Terror” (Astounding Stories, December 1930)
- “The Black Lamp” (Astounding Stories, February 1931)
- “When Caverns Yawned” (Astounding Stories, May 1931)
- “The Port of Missing Planes” (Astounding Stories, August 1931)
- “The Solar Magnet” (Astounding Stories, October 1931)
- “Poisoned Air” (Astounding Stories, March 1932)
- “The Great Drought” (Astounding Stories, May 1932)
- “Vanishing Gold” (Wonder Stories, May 1932)
As noted, the collection has only 11 of the 14 stories. It does not have the first two stories, nor the last. And a couple of those don’t appear to have been reprinted.
These are all interesting science-based mysteries and threats, many times dealing with threats to the U.S. Usually these threats are from communists or Russian agents. Yes, the science is sometimes hokey, but the characters make the stories more interesting.
Dr. Bird and Operative Carnes are not your typical pair. Dr. Bird is a researcher at the Bureau of Standards, what is today called the National Institute of Standards and Technology, in the area of chemistry and physics. He is a large, six-foot man with massive shoulders and chest, and is more a man of action than Carnes, and sometimes pushing him aside. This is not your stereotypical bookish scientist. And Bird seems important enough that he can call upon senior government officials during some of their adventures, rather than relying on Carnes. Carnes is chief of a sector of the Secret Service dealing with counterfeiting, though in other stories this changes. In one he’s head of the Washington Bureau. We never get first names for either characters, but they know each other enough to go on vacations together. Only a couple of other characters show up more then once, one being Carnes’ boss in the Service, the other the president’s physician. Yes, the U.S. president shows up in a couple of stories.
The stories are varied. Some deal with non-existent items, like an element from the Moon whose radiation causes insanity, a fluid taken from the brain that is the source of intelligence, a ray that projects cold, etc. Sometimes it’s a criminal element behind it, most times it’s communists and Russian agents. In fact, in one of the earlier stories we are introduced to one particular Russian agent/scientist, who is the mind behind the “Young Labor Party” in the U.S., which is just a Russian front group. He then becomes the hidden mastermind behind most of the rest of the scientific threats they deal with, which I was a little disappointed by. I preferred a variety of threats behind these cases.
Setting aside some of the hokey elements, I found the stories interesting and inventive. I wonder why we only got this many? And why the last one showed up in another magazine. Did it not sell to Astounding? Check out this series of stories.
