SHORT STORY WEDNESDAY: SOLD TO SATAN

 "Sold to Satan" by Mark Twain (from Europe and Elsewhere, 1923; reprinted several times, including in The Light Fantastic:  Science Fiction Classics from the Mainstream [1971, edited by Harry Harrison.], The Arbor House Treasury of Science Fiction Masterpieces [1983, edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg, also published as Great Tales of Science Fiction, 1985], The Science Fiction of Mark Twain [1984], Tales of Wonder [2003, by Mark Twain], and Sympathy for the Devil [2010, edited by Tim Pratt]; a casual check of the internet did not reveal any earlier print of the story than the 1923 collection.)

Can a deal-with-the-devil story be considered science fiction rather than fantasy?  It can, if it is in the capable, inventive, and satiric hands of Mark Twain.  "Sold to Satan" takes the latest (and often misnderstood) findings of Marie Curie and uniquely applies them to this trope.

At a time of economic downturn, the author devises a way to raise a stake in an effort to make his fortune.  The obvious way to do this, of course, is to sell one's soul to the devil.  After making contact with Satan's local agent, the devil appeared, -- not with a crash of thunder or the stench of brimstone, but at least in his tradition garb:  "tall, slender, graceful, in tights and trunks, a short cape mantling his shoulders, a rapier at his side, a single drooping feather in his jaunty cap, and on his intellectual face the well-known and high-bred Mephistophelian smile" -- the traditional appearance of Lucifer on many a theatrical stage.

After half an hour of the usual negotiations and chat, the author remarks that Satan appeared surprisingly different from tradition, despite his physical looks.  The reason, Satan said was because of his body makeup:  he was made of radium, and at six foot one, he would have weighted some two hundred fifteen pounds had he been made of flesh; being made of radium his weight was close to nine hundred.

This started the author to thinking.  At, say, $3,500,000 a pound, that would amount to an incredible sum.  Satan laughed and remarked that the author was "the first person who has ever been intelligent enoiugh to divine the large commercial value of my make-up."

But how to take advantage of this newly-found store of wealth?

Radium, as Madame Curie has determined is spontaneously luminous.  It can spontaneously charge itself with electricity and has the property of liberating heat spontaneously and continually.  Barium (which she names radium) is covered with bismuth (which she names polonium); if a way can be devised to remove the polonium, the aweson power of radium could be unleashed.  "Polonium, freed from bismuth, is the one and only powere that can control radium, restrain its destructive forces, tame them, reduce them to obedience, and make them do useful and productive work for your race."  Satan's skin, in fact, is made of polonium; the rest of him is 100% radium.  If it were not for the polonium shielding them from Satan's make-up, the souls in Hell would have been burned to nothingness eons ago; as it stands, though, they can remain available to be tortured for millennia.

The smallest atom is known to be hydrogen, but the radium atom is actually 5000 times smaller.  A single electron of radium is enough to power a firefly's light, and does.  Were it not for the polonium protecting the firefly from the truly powerful effect of the radium electron, the firefly would be consumed to vapor.  To demontrate the power of radium, Satan pointed a finger at the author's letterpress and "it exploded with a cannon crash. leaving nothing but vacancy where it stood."

Many animals, on knowing that they are going to die, assemble at one spot, as with the well-known elephant's graveyeard.  For extimct mastodons, this was located off the mouth of the Lena.  The bones of the moa can be found twenty feet deep somewhere in New Zealand.  And for millions of years, there has been a firefly cemetery, where thise insects go when sickness falls upon them -- it os located in a scooped-out bowl half the size of a standard room on the top of a snow summit of the Cordileras.  All that remains of the firefly being the single electron of radium, sheathed on polonium -- the firefly cemetery cold provide enough power to light the entire world until the end of eternity.

What an opportunity!  All that is needed is for that remarkable female Fench scientist to isolate the polonium from the bismuth.  Surely, with her genius, that will happen soon.  In the meantime, the author is selling shares in a new venture to be realized when that day happens.  Apply to Mark Twain.

A brief and interesting take on the scientific achievements of the day from a man who was no stranger to fantastic writing, as evidence by his A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, "The Curious Republic of Gondour," "Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven," and others.

"Sold to Satan" is available on online in Europe and Elsewhere.  A quick and amusing read.