Milo Hastings

Hastings contributed several entries to The Olympian System, a four volume set of books published by Macfadden to promote his notions of “developing physical and mental efficiency.” When Macfadden started the New York Graphic newspaper Hastings wrote a series of articles on "Food, Health, and Happiness".

Hastings wrote on other topics as well: commerce (The Egg Trade of the United States), philosophy (an introduction to Brann The Iconoclast), urban planning (promoting the linear city idea of Edgar Chambless), social commentary (the stage play Class of ’29), and an occasional short story ("The New Chivalry").

Three of Hastings’ science fiction works are known to survive: In the Clutch of the War-God (1911), The Book of Gud (with Harold Hersey, 1919), and City of Endless Night (1920).

Clutch of the War-God was serialized in three parts in the July, August, and September 1911 issues of Physical Culture magazine.

What is known of the origin of Clutch comes from the Sam Moskowitz article “Bernarr Macfadden and His Obsession with Science-Fiction” that appeared in Fantasy Commentator in 1986.

He commissioned Milo to write a futuristic fiction story promoting his (Macfadden’s) views on physical health and scolding the federal government, hoping to shame officials into granting him a pardon.

Macfadden wrote a signed introduction to the story: Foreword: In this strange story of another day, the author has "dipped into the future" and viewed with his mind's eye the ultimate effect of America's self-satisfied complacency, and her persistent refusal to heed the lessons of Oriental progress.

Here is an excerpt: But with all her material glory, there was not strength in the American sinews, nor endurance in her lungs, nor vigor in the product of her lions.

Her people were herded together in great cities, where they slept in gigantic apartment houses, like mud swallows in a sand bank.

They smoked and perfumed and doped with chemicals and cosmetics — the supposed virtues of which were blazoned forth on earth and sky day and night.

[2] It was eventually published in Hersey's magazine, Main Street, issue of July 1929, although Hastings' byline was changed to the pseudonym, Dan Spain.

[3] "Children of Kultur" was later revised, retitled City of Endless Night and published by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc., copyright 1919, 1920.

Here is an excerpt from his introduction putting the work in its place in the development of science fiction: Of the pioneering anti-Utopian novels, one of the finest and least known is City of Endless Night by Milo Hastings, first published in book form by Dodd, Mead in 1920.

This unusual work, filled with uncanny prescience about impending events, was born out of the experience of World War I and the impact on Americans of imperial Germany’s statist creed, which believed in the subjugation of the individual for the sake of the nation.

On all counts of inventiveness, social significance, narrative flow and intrinsic worth, it ranks with When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells, Messiah of the Cylinder by Victor Rousseau and We by Eugene Zimiatin, all written and published about the same period.

City of Endless Night was written as World War I was ending and anticipates the resurgence of Germany and the rise of fascism.

o Nazi religion: "We supermen long ago repudiated that spineless conception of the soft Christian God and the servile Jewish Jesus."

Some say that City of Endless Night was the original inspiration for Fritz Lang’s 1927 science fiction film Metropolis.

It was a “curtain-front” house, the idea being a big frame covered with heavy white cloth on the south side instead of glass windows.

In 1909 while still working for the Department (he left in 1910) he wrote The Dollar Hen, which became the classic guide to free-range chicken farming.

The book is full of practical advice and Hastings’ witticisms: On the most successful New England poultry farms, warm houses for hens have been given up.

The running stream with its fringe of trees, brush and rank growing grass, forms daylight quarters for the hen par excellence.

In the spring of 1912 Milo went to Petaluma, California, then the chicken capitol of the West, trying to generate interest in a million egg incubator.

With interest lacking he then went to Port O’Conner, Texas and built a 150,000 egg incubator with financial support from a local businessman.

Hastings wrote magazine articles based on the same ideas for The Independent (May 5, 1910) and Sunset, The Pacific Monthly (January, 1914).

Hastings entered a competition for "The Best Solution of the Housing Problem," sponsored by the American Institute of Architects and the Ladies' Home Journal.

The essential idea was a continuous linear house owned by the occupants with farmland on either side and the utilities beneath.

Here is an excerpt from Milo’s Sunset article providing some of the details: In giving Roadtown a hearing remember that it is not a town and not a rural community.

In the basement of the house are to be placed means of transporting passengers, freight, parcels and all utilities which can be carried by pipe or wire.

In 1936, during the Great Depression, Hastings and Orrie Lashin (secretary to Walter Lippmann) wrote the play Class of ’29 under the auspices of the Federal Theatre Project.