Exploring the Pulps: “The Day Time Stopped Moving” (1940) by Bradner Buckner

 

This particular story is not a time travel tale per se, but rather a-stepping-outside-of-time-to-exist-between-the-seconds kind of story. This time travel tale really felt like an episode of The Outer Limits (The 1990s remake - I absolutely loved that series). “The Day Time Stopped Moving” just had that The Outer Limits “feel” if you know what I mean.

This story also addresses the deeply profound and intimately personal question: What do we do when we come to the realization that the source of our sorrow and pain is ourselves?

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“The Day Time Stopped Moving” by Bradner Buckner was published in the October 1940 issue of Amazing Stories. This story has subsequently been reprinted several times since. 

Bradner Buckner was the occasional pen-name of Ed Earl Repp. He was born on 22, May 1901 in Pittsburgh, PA and passed away on 14, February 1979 in Butte City, CA. Repp was 77 years old.

From the October 1938 issue of Amazing Stories

Repp was a very prolific writer. His first published sci-fi pulp story appeared in 1929. Following World War II, his sci-fi writing waned; he refocused his writing to westerns. Repp was also a screenwriter, specifically westerns, and many successful films were produced from his work. It has even been claimed that Repp conducted the final interview with Wyatt Earp before Earp’s death in 1929. However, I have not been able to verify this. 

Amazing Stories is an American pulp magazine dedicated to science fiction stories; its first issue appeared in 1926. Amazing Stories was the first magazine devoted exclusively to publishing sci-fi tales.

More impressively, despite going through changes including some breaks in print, Amazing Stories is still in publication! The magazine ceased publication after 2005 and returned in 2012 as an online magazine. In late 2018, Amazing Stories became available in print again. 

The Summer 2021 issue (volume 77, number 3) was the most recently published. 

As of the time of this blog post’s publication, I have not been able to confirm whether Amazing Stories is still in publication.

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For some tales, it is necessary that I summarize the story in some detail so that relevant points and themes can be highlighted ( as well as to espouse my own crazy theories.).

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Dave Miller was drunk – again. This time, standing against the kitchen sink with a gun to his head. He had found a letter from his wife calling him a coward and  telling him that she was leaving him. With his business failing, Dave had fallen to drink and gambling. He knew it was his fault she left.

His finger tightened on the trigger. The hammer of the gun fell. 

*

And he opened his eyes. 

Dave was standing at the register of his drugstore thinking “what is going on?” How did he get here? Was his suicide only a dream? Pretty quickly, he realized that something was really, really off in his store. People appeared frozen in place, in mid-step or mid-action. Cigarette smoke hung stationary in the air. Dave reached out and touched a lady customer on the cheek. Her cheek was warm but hard as rock. Dave tried shoving her with all his strength to absolutely no effect. The lady did not move or react at all.

Now Dave started to panic! Running out of the drugstore, Dave realized that everything was  not moving. People and cars were frozen in mid-action. A bird appeared to hang in the air. Even flames from an open fire were still. Ending up at his own house, he could not get in. His unlocked door would not open. Not that it was difficult, but rather that it was like a great, immovable door of a bank vault.

*

“Seated on the porch steps, head in hands, he slipped into a hell of regrets.  He knew now that his suicide had been no hallucination. He was dead, all right; and this must be hell or purgatory.

Bitterly he cursed his drinking, that had led him to such a mad thing as suicide. Suicide! … If he just had the last year to live over again, he thought fervently.

And yet, through it all, some inner strain kept trying to tell him he was not dead.” (page 74) 

He had no idea what was going on. Everything was immovable – from rocks to doors to plants to steam in the air – and as solid as a brick wall. In despair, he cried out for his wife. And, something actually answered! Charging out from between parked cars, Dave was tackled by a police dog whose tag read “Major.” Seeing another living thing, both man and dog were excited and happy.

The joy and relief in finding another animate living creature suppressed in his mind the distant sound of sobbing that he had been hearing. The fact that the dog gave no reaction to the sounds either, led this tidbit to slip right out of Dave’s mind.

Dave decided to head for the town library. Where better to go if one needed some information in 1940’s America. And there, along with Major, he was surprised by an animate elderly, old man, who informed Dave that he himself was the one responsible for all the weird goings-on. The old man introduced himself as John Erickson, head scientist at the Wanamaker Institute, specializing in atomic science.

*

In struggling to understand what was going on, Erickson supposed that the dog had been on the point of death (maybe hit by a car) just as the time effect took over. Then, ashamedly, Dave admitted that he had been drunk and had shot himself in the head. He asked Erickson to try to explain what had happened to them. So Erickson told Dave that, as best as he understood,  he switched on his Time Impulsor to full power in the very instant that Dave shot himself and the dog, Major, met his end. Also, Erickson assumed that something bad had happened to himself as well, to put him at the moment of death as the machine powered up.

The three of them (Dave, Erickson and Major) walk the hour-long trip back to the Wanamaker Institute to look at the Impulsor. In Erickson’s lab, they figure out what went wrong and how to fix the machine. They just have to jury-rig another power connection. They understood that as they are trapped in an instant of time, they are free from hunger and disease; but madness lies in their future. 

Following several near failures, Dave and Erickson are able to complete the power connection and get the Impulsor working again. The machines hummed and glowed. “There was a snap in his brain, and Erickson, Major and the laboratory faded from his senses.” (page 80)

Surrounded by blackness, the only sound Dave could hear was sobbing. The same sobbing he had been hearing since he had shot himself. 

*

Dave opened his eyes. 

His wife, Helen, was holding and crying over him. She had come home and heard the gunshot – 6 or 7 minutes ago! It turned out the gun misfired and knocked him out rather than killing him. It had all been a dream. He couldn’t believe it! Dave promised Helen that he would be better from this point on. 

(epilogue)

That evening, Dave read an article in the newspaper concerning Erickson’s death in his lab. The facts of which would trouble Dave for many days. Mysteriously, near his corpse was the body of a German Shepard dog that looked to have been struck by something. Also, there was found a jury-rigged power connection between the machines. 

The Police could not explain it. 

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In Search of Atonement: 

The Meaning Behind Modern Time Travel Tales.

The sins of our past haunt us. 

Time travel tales allow the reader, even if only through fiction, to undo a mistake that haunts everyday of one’s life. This post continues the new occasional series exploring select time travel tales.  This section will expand as more blog posts are added to this series. Each time travel story or film will be as a rung on a ladder leading to a richer understanding of the search for atonement and redemption.

Writing these blog posts covering this subject matter is far more challenging than anticipated. Not because it is so difficult, the theme of this blog series is interesting and intellectually stimulating. Rather, the idea of these stories, conveying the very human desire for atonement, penance and forgiveness, bring out such powerful emotions within this Old Sinner. So much so, that clarity becomes a challenge. Hence, the slow production of blog posts. 

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Interesting Asides

•In like vein as “The Jaunt” and “Time travel is not what you think it’s like” (both covered in previous blog posts dated 07/14/2020 & 12/15/2020), “The Day Time Stopped Moving” touches upon what happens when one is stuck in-between one second and the next. In another interesting side note, the previous blog post covering “The Mosiac” was published in the July 1940 issue of Astounding Science Fiction; while “The Day Time Stopped Moving” was published in the October 1940 issue of Amazing Stories. I have also noticed time-travel-related stories in other pulps from 1940. I don’t know if there is any significance to that, but I do find it curious.  

•“The Day Time Stopped Moving” is the earliest time travel story I have found so far that even comes close to addressing the theme of atonement or remorse and the search for forgiveness as a significant plot element. The “action” in the story is brought down to the individual level. The historical timeline of the entire world is not at stake (see this blog's previous post on “The Mosaic”), only the existence of a single man. 

This tale has four characters (in order of appearance in the story):

*Dave Miller – a drunk and a failure – The Penitent Man

*Major – Police Dog (a German Shepard) – innocent blood

*John Erikson – scientist from Wanamaker Institute – cause of time problems

*Helen Miller – wife, object of atonement.

This interpretation of the characters is entirely mine and does not necessarily reflect the author’s intent.

To add a further layer of interpretation to the characters and their relation to the story, Dave the Penitent Man is forgiven by Helen, the object of atonement. But, not all the characters are forgiven. Or, indeed even spared. The scientist and source of the time disruption, John Erickson dies by his own experiment. And even Major the Police dog is violently killed and represents the only blood shed in this story. Furthermore, seeing as it was the dog that provided the final piece to fix the machine and free them, it was as if Major paid for that saving piece with his life . . . a sacrifice of innocent blood. 

•There is also the question of ambivalent reality. In other words, did the events in the story actually happen or was it all the trick of a disturbed mind? This concept manifests three times throughout the story. The first two support the idea that this tale is a figment of Dave’s imagination, resulting from the gun misfire. But then comes the third manifestation and everything is thrown into question. 

The first instance is indirect. The tale opens with Dave very drunk. So drunk in fact to attempt suicide! However, over the course of the several hours of the story, he has time to sober up. Yet at the conclusion of the story, Helen informs Dave that only a few minutes had passed since his suicide attempt. Thus, he should still be outrageously drunk. But Dave exhibits no signs of drunkenness. I can only assume the knock to the head and the realization of what he nearly achieved had a sobering effect. 

The second instance is a very subtle blink-and-you-missed-it sort of thing. Since being trapped in time, at the edge of his senses, Dave noticed, every so often, the sound of distant sobbing. Interestingly enough, the police dog, Major, never reacted to the sound and this fact convinced Dave that the sound was just a figment of his imagination. The sobbing is mentioned several times in the text. Finally, as Dave is returned to normal time, at first the only sound he hears is sobbing. It is heavily implied that it was Dave’s wife, Helen, who is the one sobbing as she held his unconscious body. But the text never states the connection outright.

Lastly, this final instance stands opposed to the previous two. The “sort-of-epilogue” to the story is an article from that evening’s newspaper. It reported on the strange circumstances surrounding the death of renowned scientist Jon Erickson in his lab at the Wanamaker Institute: the dead body of a German Shepard dog with a terrible injury was found in the lab and a make-shift power connection was found laid out in the lab. The police could find no reason behind either circumstance. So, if the events in the story were truly the fabrication of Dave’s injured head and he was only unconscious for a few minutes, how then did he accurately recollect the situation in the lab.

And this is why this story has The Outer Limits feel.

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Regret and remorse are their own kind of penance.

The time travel fantasy in these stories gives us false hope: to right some wrong and gain forgiveness from another or from one’s self, to correct some deed done long ago or even to spend more time with a dear loved one long since gone. The pull of such fantasy is deep and profound. And, it is only in fantasy that, sometimes, there can be second chances…and forgiveness.

Good Evening.