Number 1794: Spacy Stories Week: A machine to take you under control

This is another in our theme week, Spacy Stories. In this story an alien entity, in the form of a metal box, takes control of human minds. That sounds a lot like the Influencing Machine, made famous in psychiatric circles by Victor Tausk in 1919, in an essay titled “The Influencing Machine in Schizophrenia.” Tausk, described as a disciple of Sigmund Freud, quoted several cases of mental illness where the patient believed he was under the control of a machine. I don’t know who wrote the Space Ace story, but it was probably Gardner Fox, who wrote regularly for Magazine Enterprises. It would not surprise me if Fox wrote it, because Fox was an educated man who had a large reference library to use in his writing.

In some cases, the Influencing Machine was described as projecting images. In the pre-movie era, more like a magic lantern, but to our modern minds sounding like television. Our worst nightmares are realized...the Influencing Machine is real and in everyone’s home.

Where was I? Oh, yeah...there is a comic book story involved. “The Thing in the Box” is a reprint, drawn by Fred Guardineer. It was originally published in ME’s Manhunt #2 (1947) as “The Being in the Box,” and scanned here from its appearance in Space Ace #5, a one-shot comic book from 1952.

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