Joe: Alright Lewis, I'm going to give you a book title: The Heads of Cerberus. What do you think it's about? Lewis: The Heads of Cerberus? Sounds like a heavy metal band's failed concept album about Greek mythology. Or maybe a very, very intense dog grooming manual. Joe: I would listen to that concept album. But no, it's actually one of the first-ever novels about parallel universes, written over a century ago. Today we’re diving into The Heads of Cerberus and Other Stories by Francis Stevens. Lewis: Francis Stevens. Okay, sounds like a classic, early sci-fi guy. Probably had a tweed jacket and a pipe. Joe: That's what everyone thought. Here’s the twist. Francis Stevens was actually the pseudonym for Gertrude Barrows Bennett, one of the first American women to be widely published in science fiction and fantasy. She was writing from home to support her daughter and ailing mother during the 1918 flu pandemic. Lewis: Whoa, hold on. A woman writing this kind of stuff in 1919? That’s incredible. Joe: It gets better. She was so good that for years, people thought she was a rival to the famous fantasy author A. Merritt. And H.P. Lovecraft himself was a huge fan of her work, praising her incredible imagination. Lewis: Okay, my mind is officially blown. Lovecraft was a fan? Then why have I never, ever heard of her? It feels like she should be up there with H.G. Wells or Jules Verne.

Joe: That question, Lewis, is the perfect entry point. Bennett was a star of a forgotten era that scholars are now calling the "Radium Age" of science fiction. Lewis: 'Radium Age' sounds cool, but what does it actually mean? Why radium? Joe: The name is a perfect metaphor for the period, roughly 1900 to 1935. It’s named after Marie Curie. Her career fits the timeline perfectly. She discovers radium in the early 1900s, revealing this awe-inspiring, terrifying new force that shows the atom isn't solid but is in constant, chaotic flux. Then, in 1934, she dies from radiation exposure. Lewis: Wow. So the name captures both the wonder and the danger of new discoveries. Joe: Exactly. The Radium Age was this period of immense social and scientific upheaval. You have the rise of women's suffrage, anti-colonial movements, and new technologies changing everything. But you also have World War I, racial segregation, and eugenics. The science fiction of this era reflected that chaos. It was experimental, genre-bending, and often deeply cynical about power. Lewis: That makes sense. But if it was so creative, why did it get forgotten? You’d think that would be celebrated. Joe: Because history is often written by the winners. In the late 1930s, a new generation of editors, most famously John W. Campbell at Astounding Stories, came along. They wanted to define science fiction in a very specific way—more focused on engineering, problem-solving, and a kind of American optimism. They dubbed their era the "Golden Age." Lewis: And in doing so, they cast a shadow over everything that came before? Joe: Precisely. They effectively curated their own history. Isaac Asimov, a giant of that Golden Age, even wrote an introduction to a collection of earlier stories where he called the pre-Campbell stuff "clumsy, primitive, naive." The weird, dark, satirical, and politically charged stories of the Radium Age didn't fit the new brand. Lewis: So they just memory-holed an entire generation of writers? That's wild. It sounds like we lost a lot of the genre's rebellious spirit. Joe: We did. These "proto-SF" works were blending dystopia, horror, social satire, and adventure tales in ways that were incredibly innovative. They weren't bound by the rules that came later. And Gertrude Barrows Bennett, or Francis Stevens, was right at the heart of it, creating stories that were decades ahead of their time.

Lewis: Okay, so let's get into it. You said The Heads of Cerberus is a perfect example of this. Sell me on the plot. Joe: It's a blast. The story starts in 1919 Philadelphia. Three friends—a disgraced lawyer named Drayton, his larger-than-life buddy Trenmore, and Trenmore's sister Viola—are hanging out. They come across a mysterious vial called "The Heads of Cerberus," which contains a strange gray powder known as the "Dust of Purgatory." Lewis: 'Dust of Purgatory.' I love it. That's such a Radium Age name. Let me guess, they inhale it? Joe: Of course they do! One by one, they touch the dust and vanish. They find themselves transported not to another place, but to another time: Philadelphia in the year 2118. Lewis: And what's future Philly like? Flying cars and utopia? Joe: The exact opposite. It's a rigid, stagnant dystopia ruled by an elite group called the "Penn Service" and its "Superlatives." All citizens are just numbers, identified by mandatory buttons they have to wear. Innovation is outlawed, history is censored, and the populace is kept docile through bizarre, brutal "contests" for social positions. Lewis: This sounds like The Hunger Games meets 1984, but written in 1919. That's insane. Joe: It really is. The city is ruled by fear, specifically the fear of a giant, blood-red bell in the old City Hall, which is now called "The Temple." The government has convinced everyone that if the bell is ever struck, it will release a power that will destroy the entire city. It's the ultimate tool of social control. Lewis: A weaponized superstition. That feels incredibly modern. So our heroes from 1919 are just stuck there? Joe: They're stuck, and they immediately get in trouble for not having their citizen buttons. They're arrested and condemned to be executed in a machine called the "Pit of the Past." They only escape by agreeing to enter the rigged contests, which pulls them deep into the corrupt politics of the ruling class. Lewis: This plot is relentless. How does it all end? Do they get back? Joe: The ending is what makes this book a classic. In a final, desperate act of defiance, the hero, Trenmore, fights his way to the Red Bell. He's had enough of the tyranny. And as the rulers and guards close in, he takes a giant metal sword and strikes the bell with all his might. Lewis: And it destroys the city? Joe: It destroys the entire reality. The book describes the future Philadelphia, its people, its buildings—everything—dissolving into nothingness. The protagonists then find themselves right back in 1919, standing in the familiar City Hall, as if the whole two-hundred-year-future was just a fragile, parallel timeline that they shattered. Lewis: Wow. That is an audacious ending. So, the plot sounds amazing, but I have to ask about the criticism. Some reviews say the prose is dated and the characters are a bit flat. Is it a tough read? Does it feel like a 100-year-old book? Joe: That's a fair question. The style is definitely of its time. The dialogue can be a bit formal, and it doesn't have the lean, fast-paced prose we expect today. You can feel the pulp magazine origins. But the sheer force of its imagination completely overcomes that. It’s recognized as one of the very first stories to use the "alternate time-track" or parallel worlds idea in this way. You read it and you can feel the raw, untamed energy of a writer exploring brand new territory.

Lewis: That’s a great way to put it. It feels like the core tension here is between these incredibly prescient ideas and the fact that the author and her entire era were almost lost to history. Joe: Exactly. And that's why rediscovering a book like The Heads of Cerberus is so important. It’s more than just enjoying a vintage sci-fi story; it's an act of literary archaeology. Lewis: Literary archaeology. I like that. What do you mean by it? Joe: It reminds us that history, even the history of a genre like science fiction, is a narrative that gets constructed, often by a very small group of people with a specific agenda. By digging up these Radium Age gems, we're not just finding cool old stories with 'Dust of Purgatory.' We're rediscovering a more diverse, weirder, and arguably more adventurous foundation for the science fiction we love today. We're finding the lost roots. Lewis: It makes you wonder what other masterpieces are just sitting there, waiting to be rediscovered. It’s like there’s a whole parallel universe of literature we’re only now getting a glimpse of. Joe: Absolutely. And we'd love to hear from our listeners. Have you read any 'Radium Age' sci-fi? What lost classics should we know about? Let us know on our social channels. It’s a treasure hunt we can all be a part of. Lewis: This is Aibrary, signing off.