“The Heat Wave: A Strange Story of Ancient Rome and Modern New York,” by Marion Ryan and Robert Ord, ran in the April 1929 issue of Munsey’s Magazine — months before a real ten-day heat wave blistered New York that September. The story opens in a city dripping with sweat: relief agencies dole out ice, congregations pray for rain, the grass in Central Park turns black, paint bubbles off the walls.
Paul Feron, about twenty, is newly out of work — fired for defending a coworker, “poor little Lou Harding,” against the boss’s “cold, cruel insults.” He falls asleep on a bench and wakes up in Rome as Ferronius, in the third month of a drought:
- The Tiber runs low and oily; seventy thousand spectators sprawl on the marble benches of the Colosseum
- He had bribed Marcellus, the director of blood sports, to smuggle his Christian lover Vedia out of prison — and been double-crossed
- Vedia is torn apart by three lions in front of him; he strangles Marcellus in revenge
He wakes to rain and walks home. His wife Beth opens the door in horror: an hour ago her husband was seen leaving Mr. Behren’s office, and Behren was found strangled. The imperial spectacle and the petty office cruelty are the same violence, wearing different costumes.
The story’s afterlife is its own kind of theft. Almost nothing is known about the authors — Robert Ord is thought to be a pseudonym of W. Gayer Mackay (née Edith Ostlere), who collaborated with Ryan on stage adaptations. Four years later the text reappeared nearly word for word in Amazing as “Across the Ages” by Allen Glasser, an editor of science-fiction fandom magazines. When the plagiarism was exposed, Glasser vanished from view.
Two heat waves, one dream, and a plagiarist who bolted. A tidy specimen of what cheap pulp circulation actually looked like.