[PW] Re: ? Ray Cummings Quote (Quotation Query #634)

[Dennis Lien]

At 04:56 PM 11/12/2006, you wrote:

>You didn't think the publication of the book would stop the Quotation 
>Queries, did you?  Second edition, you know.
>
>In The Yale Book of Quotations I have the following quote:
>
>Time is what keeps everything from happening at once.
>         Ray Cummings, "The Time Professor" (1921)
>
>A purchaser of the YBQ has written to me to say that "The line is in 
>Cummings' most famous story, 'The Girl in the Golden Atom', which was 
>originally published in All-Story Weekly, March 15, 1919."  His source is 
>The Giant Anthology of Science Fiction, edited by Leo Margulies and Oscar 
>J. Friend, Merlin Press, Inc., New York, 1954. The quotation is from 
>Chapter V, "The World in the Ring", on p. 148 of his copy. Here is the 
>quotation, with some context:
>
>"To get a conception of this change you must analyze definitely what time 
>is. We measure and mark it by years, months, and so forth, down to minutes 
>and seconds, all based upon the movements of our earth around its sun. But 
>that is the measurement of time, not time itself. How would you describe time?"
>
>The Big Business Man smiled. "Time," he said, "is what keeps everything 
>from happening at once."
>
>"Very clever," laughed the Chemist.
>
>Is anyone able to verify whether the same passage appears in the original 
>magazine publication?  Denny?
>
>Fred Shapiro


Wish I could, but I don't have that ALL-STORY.  I would be able to check a 
reprint
closer to the original than the 1954 GIANT ANTHOLOGY though, since the Cummings
story was reprinted in the first issue (Sept/Oct 1939) of FAMOUS FANTASTIC
MYSTERIES, a pulp started to specifically reprint stories from ALL STORY 
and other
Munsey magazines.  I'll try to check that tonight and report back.

The online text of the (out of copyright) story at

http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue22/atom6.html

does show the exchange just as you have it, but I don't know the source of
their copytext; listowner contact information is at

http://www.bewilderingstories.com/contact.html

Bison Books at the U of Nebraska did a recent reprint, and at least some
of their texts have been drawn from first pulp appearances, but I don't
know if this one was; since the blurb online for it cites the 1923 book
version, probably not:

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bookinfo/4915.html

and there have been numerous other reprints over the years.

I'll also run this question by one of my other lists, which contains
a number of pulp collectors, and see if anyone there owns the original.

Dennis Lien / U of Minnesota Libraries // d-lien at umn.eu