The Crack of Doom

by Leonard William King

Excerpt from The Crack of Doom
The rough notes from which this narrative has been constructed were given to me by the man who tells the story. For obvious reasons I have altered the names of the principals, and I hereby pass on the assurance which I have received, that the originals of such as are left alive can be found if their discovery be thought desirable. This alteration of names, the piecing together of somewhat disconnected and sometimes nearly indecipherable memoranda, and the reduction of the mass to consecutive form, are all that has been required of me or would have been permitted to me. The expedition to Labrador mentioned by the narrator has not returned, nor has it ever been definitely traced. He does not undertake to prove that it ever set out. But he avers that all which is hereafter set down is truly told, and he leaves it to mankind to accept the warning which it has fallen to him to convey, or await the proof of its sincerity which he believes the end of the century will produce.
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Genres: Science Fiction

234 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1895

About the author

Leonard William King, F.S.A. (1869 – 1919) was an English archaeologist and Assyriologist educated at Rugby School and King's College, Cambridge. He collected stone inscriptions widely in the Near East, taught Assyrian and Babylonian archaeology at King's College for a number of years, and published a large number of works on these subjects. He is also known for his translations of ancient works such as the Code of Hammurabi. He became Assistant Keeper of Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities at the British Museum.

Reviews

[MH · Rating 1 out of 5]

A useless young gentleman joins a scientific cult, in order to "protect" a pretty girl. Hilarity ensues. It is not a complete stinker, but it has dated very badly, the characterisation is inconsistent, and parts of it are utterly comical to modern eyes. The first parts, about the scientific cult and its unexplained wonders, made me think of Lovecraft's Nyarlathotep; the second, in which the cult ventures to an isolated island in the Arafura Sea in order to destroy the world, is like a Call of Cthulhu adventure from the other side. But sillier. Of historical interest only.

[Chad · Rating 2 out of 5]

The inconsistent behavior of the characters make this a very disjointed story. It also seems unfinished due to some apparent gaps in the sequence of events.

[Susan Molloy · Rating 4 out of 5]

✒️ Amusing 1895 novel about a man who believes the Earth and its inhabitants were a mistake and must be destroyed. (Sounds like the crackpots of today, eh?) He constructs an atom bomb-like device to destroy the universe. The characters were presentable, but a little flat. No matter, this was a fascinating story.

CONTENTS
I. THE UNIVERSE A MISTAKE!
II. A STRANGE EXPERIMENT
III. "IT IS GOOD TO BE ALIVE"
IV. GEORGE DELANY—DECEASED
V. THE MURDER CLUB
VI. A TELEPATHIC TELEGRAM
VII. GUILTY!
VIII. THE WOKING MYSTERY
IX. CUI BONO?
X. FORCE—A REMEDY
XI. MORITURI TE SALUTANT
XII. "NO DEATH—SAVE IN LIFE"
XIII. MISS METFORD'S PLAN
XIV. ROCKINGHAM TO THE SHARKS
XV. "IF NOT TOO LATE"
XVI. £5000 TO DETAIN THE SHIP
XVII. "THIS EARTH SHALL DIE"
XVIII. THE FLIGHT
XIX. THE CATASTROPHE
XX. CONCLUSION

📕Published — 1895. In the public domain.
જ⁀🍋 Read on Project Gutenberg.
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[Two Envelopes And A Phone · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it. In terms of obscure 19th century proto-Sf that most people don’t bother with, this was a satisfying recovery from the last sampling I read, An Inhabitant of the Planet Mars. After all, I am a sucker for mind control shenanigans, and also ship-at-sea mayhem, and I was pleasantly surprised to get both in The Crack of Doom. This was 98 pages, and a morning at the coffee shop, and what I got was a fairly fast-moving action-adventure yarn, with the stakes being the fate of the world. A mad scientist wants to crack Earth to bits and has the means to do it. Our average-joe, plucky British hero pokes about the fringes of our villain’s nefarious secret society, at first out of love for a woman who is in its clutches either voluntarily or through mental manipulation - and then out of a desire to keep Earth from being shredded by “etheric” conflagration or whatever. Basically, you have an early “impending nuclear apocalypse” scenario - atoms and molecules being fiddled with - but it’s about messing with the “ether”, not the atomic.

The two main women characters are strong, and right in the middle of the action; they also dress outside the norms for proper women of their time, smoke cigarettes whenever they feel like it (not the healthiest way to piss off stick-up-ass 19th century men with strong notions of what a lady should not do, but…), and talk as the emancipated free-thinkers they are. Just when I thought of them as the welcome wave of the future, in creeps this secret society business, plus a creepy dude’s idea that the universe would be better off if the suffering of living beings were eliminated and the cruelty and chaos of Nature being converted back to pure peaceful nothingness…and, depressingly, nobody represents the wave of the future if there is no future.

Not much time to be depressed, though; this is a fairly lively action-based romp…moving so fast that not everything seems filled in. The mind control is never really explained; apparently we just have to accept that we have here the one secret society that has achieved it. Related to that, the secret society aspect is probably the first thing jammed in here that could have been left out; it does increase the potential body count, in terms of people who have been lured to ground zero at the finale…but I’m left thinking of how SPECTRE slowly got overshadowed by its leader, Blofeld, and what seemed a group effort morphed into practically a solo threat: snakehead seeming to live without the rest of the snake. We have a bit of that here - and I suppose the message, if perfunctorily presented, is that an apocalypse-minded madman can attract followers, and that’s pretty scary.

I appreciated that the love story aspect was a lot less predictable than usual, and I also liked that our heroic narrator emerges as quite clever and resourceful, as do Natalie and Edith. Considering that hypnotism, telepathy, and mind control feature among the weapons of the baddies - meaning also that some characters may actually turn out to be not quite themselves - this was never going to be a routine love triangle anyway.

It just happens that this story, which I did not read a synopsis of before starting (I pick books from reading guides but try to avoid any essays provided), has a lot of trappings that I fall for easily. But the author never messed up and spoiled my enthusiasm; it all works, with some of the coolest elements not getting explained enough to really make sense, and only if you leave 20th century Physics at the door as you put yourself at sea.

[Martyn Vaughan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A most unusual book and sorely neglected. It is a fast-moving story about a medical man who encounters a group of telepathic supermen, who have determined that things would be better off if the universe - or at least the world - did not exist. The leader has developed two compounds which when mixed reduce matter to its "etheric components." The protagonist falls in love with the leader's daughter but his love is not reciprocated until the end when it is all too late. He joins the group, knowing that once you have joined, you cannot leave and they travel to a remote island where the leader will combine the chemicals and destroy the world. Fortunately for the world, the protagonist sees the leader has been given too much of a medical drug which temporarily removes his telepathic powers. He contrives to give him regular doses to keep him helpless and subtly alters the formula for the chemical reaction.
Thus when the supreme moment arrives, the protagonist and another female escape the island which is totally destroyed.
The book is of its time in its attitude to women, and it is fortunate that the alterations to the chemical formulae made a weaker explosion, rather than a more powerful one.
The book is notable for supposedly being the first to include an atomic explosion - but this is debatable as the means of bringing about the explosion are chemical.
But the book deserves to be better known.