Synopsis
A man goes to a valley where his father had visited along with a team of friends. The valley contains a lost city with advanced technology, but all of the inhabitants have been put into suspended animation by a blue mist.
History
First publication: Amazing Stories February 1939
Review
This story is my third by the Binders. While it is definitely much better than The First Martian, it is a simple and predictable early SF story, complete with lost world, mad scientists hell-bent on world domination, lots of super-science rays and a damsel in distress. The heroes get captured and enslaved. The pulps churned out a large number of these stories. They are not really up to the tastes of modern readers, but they are at least readable and even kind of fun. While I did enjoy this story, I can’t really recommend it. It was published in the issue following the story “I, Robot,” but this isn’t nearly as good. Almost hard to believe it is from the same authors. The story creates an interesting world rich with imaginative and adventurous possibilities, but then doesn’t explore that world, choosing to focus on a pedestrian story where the heroes have to escape and destroy the mad scientists in order to save the world. They created a cool world and then did nothing with it. Early SF was good at this sort of unrealized potential.
-Greg K
