If you want to read the original story, click here. If you want the real pulp magazine reading experience, click here and print it out on sheets of acrid brown paper.
Mutant Museum did a hilarious read-through i'd recommend to anyone.
The story begins in the underground city of Sub Atlan. A painter named Mutan Mion is showing his work to the blunt and boisterous Artan Gro.
Upon seeing the canvas, Gro tells him he sucks so bad at painting he should head on to medical school to learn how to cook up a potion that would improve his art skills.
Humiliated, Mutan leaves Artan Gro's studio. On his way out he recalls his childhood in a "culture forest" on Surface Atlan which we now know as Atlantis. A "culture forest" is a place where human beings are produced asexually, which makes Mutan a test tube baby, or a "culture man".
As narrator, Mutan kindly informs us of the positions of Surface Atlan, Sub Atlan, and Tean City, which are more or less directly below each other. He also tells us that Tean City was built by a race of giants known as Titans, who pretty much run the city.
Mutan gets into an anti-gravity vehicle and drives over to an inter-city elevator which plummets down the shaft at a terrifying speed. It falls so quickly he almost feels weightless. Eventually the elevator reaches his destination. Relieved, Mutan is just about to venture out into the fantastic metropolis of Tean City but is taken aside by the elevator's control-man, who gives him an ominous warning.
"Fear rides the ways down here," he whispered, his sharp-pointed, cat-like ears quivering an alert. "Fear is a smell down here that is ever in the nose—a bad smell, too. Try to figure it out while you are down here; and tell me, too, if you get an answer."
As soon as he enters the city, a frantic crowd of Variform women pass by him. After gawking at them for a bit he steps on a "rollat platform" or what we would now call a travelator to ring up the medical school with a telescreen, which is like a zoom call except you have to pay for it. You'll notice there are many bizarre futuristic names for everything in this story, although in this case I can forgive Shaver for coming up with a silly sci-fi synonym for "travelator" since they wouldn't be in commercial use until a decade later.
His call is answered by a six-armed, fourty foot tall Titan "Sybyl" (which is a word that Shaver doesn't define for us so we'll have to guess) who makes fun of him and gives him directions to the Hall of Symbols. Mutan feels her life energy and so finds her really, really hot. While doing this he also realizes she's scared deep down, which he finds a tad a bit unusual since they're supposed to be living in a utopia. After the call ends, Mutan imagines the Sybyl giving him a hug.
As the rollat brings him to the Hall of Symbols he sees a female Variform who happens to have the lower half of a giant snake. Naturally he also imagines her giving him a hug.
Mutan soon comes to his senses. According to him the reason he finds them so ridiculously attractive is because...
- He needs to get laid quick
- He's a closeted furry
- "The gen of these variforms was certainly more vital; possibly because the Titan technicons Who lived here kept the people healthier. Perhaps the hybrids were naturally more fecund of micro-spore. It had indeed been a day of brainstorms, I mused, when some old technicon had realized that not only would a strong integrative field with a rich exd 8 supply cause all matter to grow at an increased rate, but would also cause even the most dissimilar life-gens to unite."
Translation: The scientists (technicons) responsible for slapping these mutant freaks (variforms) together realized they needed a little bit more of that magic energy juice (exd) to glue on the alien parts. This makes them way hotter as a side effect.
Anyhow, the Hall of Symbols has a cavernous entrance that looks like this:
Upon entering, it turns out it's an art gallery. Didn't know medical schools in Tean City had those. While looking at some of the paintings he gets distracted by one of the medical students who has the tail and legs of a deer.
Her name is Arl. She's a very pleasant, knowledgeable and interesting person. It doesn't take long for Mutan to really hit it off with her.
Thus ends chapter one.