The Pulps did not invent the idea of “The Yellow Peril”. Science Fiction had been promoting this racist fear since at least 1880 and Last Days of the Republic (1880) by Pierton W Dooner and “The Battle of the Wabash: A Letter from the Invisible Police” (The Californian, October 1880) by Lorelle. One of the biggest promoters was M. P. Shiel who wrote The Yellow Danger in 1899, a book that suggested Asians would take over the world simply by out-populating everybody else. This silliness got another booster shot when Sax Rohmer began a franchise of adventure novels named after its villain in The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu (1913). Fu would inspire writers as diverse as Ian Fleming’s Dr. No (1957) and Robert E. Howard’s “Skull Face” (Weird Tales, October November December 1929). Jack London even got into the game with “Unparalleled Invasion” (McClure’s, July 1910) that had Chinese using genocidal bio-weapons on America.
Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon
The sad truth is Pulp Science Fiction as we know it had its start in racism. One of the foundational texts is “Armageddon 2419 A. D.” (Amazing Stories, August 1928) by Philip Francis Nowlan, that gave the world Anthony Rogers (who would get renamed “Buck” after the Western hero, Buck Jones.) Though not the first, it did become a popular comic strip and inspire another, Flash Gordon. The Asiatic villains of this story and its sequel “The Airlords of Han” (Amazing Stories, March 1929) would ultimately give us Ming the Merciless. Nowlan’s two stories revolve around a man from our time who wakes up five hundred years in the future to find America fighting a guerilla war against Asiatic oppressors. Using courage, cunning and flying belts, Anthony leads the Yanks to victory over the Han.
“Buck Rogers” debuted on January 7, 1929, adapting the original stories. Later Nowlan, who also wrote the strip, would take Buck out into space. “That Buck Rogers stuff” was first that “race war stuff”. Alex Raymond’s much better drawn “Flash Gordon” began exactly five years later on January 7, 1934. Both cartoon heroes would be featured in movie serials based on the comics, both portrayed by Larry “Buster” Crabbe. The initial offering, of course, featured evil Asian villains.
Early Examples
Even earlier was “The Invading Horde” (Weird Tales, November 1927) by Arthur J. Burks. Weird Tales often used Science Fiction stories in the early years. Burks had a reputation as “million a year man”, writing that many words for all kinds of Pulps. This long story has a thousand year old Asian cult take over the world. The heroes try to fight back but ultimately lose. The story ends with the last two white people sacrificing themselves in defiance. Burks would feature cliche Asians in other stories.
“The Crystal Ray” (Air Wonder Stories, November 1929) by Raymond Z. Gallun was part of the author’s dual debut. He also had “The Space Dwellers” appearing in Science Wonder Stories the same month. “The Crystal Ray” starts right in the middle of an American-Asia war with the invaders holding sway over most of the rest of the world. Only America is holding out, but slowly losing ground. Two men go on a short vacation in South America to get over their war-weariness. They stumble upon a crystal, that when filled with light, kills. One of them is zapped by the discovery, while the survivor uses it to make a secret weapon for the war. The Asians press their zeppelin attack, with plans to plague bomb Chicago (the new capital). The crystal rays cut down the zeppelins and even though the inventor dies in an aerial dogfight, he knows he has won. The scent of Buck Rogers is more than a little strong here.
More Pulps
“Wizard’s Isle” (Weird Tales, June 1934) by Jack Williamson has another Asian mastermind in the Fu Manchu mold. I wrote about this story here.
“The Bloodless Peril” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1937) by Henry Kuttner (as Will Garth) has America losing again. Chicago is once again the new capital of the USA. Professor Ryder Storm learns that his girl, botanist Laura Hart, has created a lab full of deadly man-eating plants. The bloodless terrors attack them but they win through with some desperate chopping. Ryder realizes he has the perfect weapon to drop on the Asians and win the war.
“Secret of the Observatory” (Amazing Stories, August 1938) by Robert Bloch was Bloch’s first Science Fiction story. After writing Lovecraftian horror for five years, he turned to other markets. This is probably his worst story. (It’s really bad.) It has fifth columnists using an observatory for invasion purposes. I wrote about it here. (Just a side note: in the September 27, 2020 episode of Lovecraft Country, “I Am”, there was a weird machine in an observatory. I immediately thought of this Block story.)
Zagat Does an Epic
Arthur Leo Zagat wrote the novelettes “Tomorrow” (Argosy, May 27, 1939) and its sequels “Children of Tomorrow” (Argosy, June 17, 1939), “Bright Flag of Tomorrow” (Argosy, September 9, 1939), “Thunder Tomorrow” (Argosy, March 16, 1940), “Sunrise Tomorrow” (Argosy, June 8-15, 1940) and “The Long Road to Tomorrow” (Argosy, March 1-22, 1941) before Pearl Harbor and the US entering World War II. These stories are usually grouped under post-apocalyptic fiction. Its heroes, Dikar and the Bunch, survive a war-torn America, fighting to free it from the Asian invaders. The Rudolph Belarksi images begin to look like Tarzan covers after awhile.
Pre-War Stories
“Fifth Column of Mars” (Amazing Stories, September 1940) by Robert Moore Williams is a good example of how racism goes underground. The villains this time are not Asians, but Martians, who look like fanged versions of Asians. Keenan of the F. B. I. thwarts an invasion plot by Thordon of Mars and his fifth columnist, Carson, also a bureau agent. The plot is typical daring-do. That cover says it all.
“Sixth Column” (aka The Day After Tomorrow) by Robert A. Heinlein (as Anson MacDonald) was serialized in Astounding, January February March 1941. This novel has China conquer Russian and India to become PanAsia, and now has taken America. The conquered Americans create a false religion to house their secret revolution, a “sixth column”. The conquerors allow religion because it has been known to quell dissent in other times. The scientists behind the fraud create super-tech that gives the illusion of magic. The Americans win back their country by making a weapon that kills only certain racial groups. If this novel had appeared a year later after Pearl Harbor, it could be written off as wartime patriotism or propaganda like so many comic books. Heinlein shows racism on both sides, with the conquerors treating the defeated as slaves while the heroes use slurs against the oppressors. The worst part of this book, besides poor Science, is that the Asian overlords are too stupid to realize what is going on. As in so many Pulp stories, the hero wins because the villains are idiots.
1950s
“The Timeless Ones” (Science Fiction Quarterly, November 1952) by Eric Frank Russell seems like an unusually late Yellow Peril tale. By the 1950s all the bad guys resembled Russians, openly or covertly. Russell does a great job of playing with the Panspermia concept. The hero of the tale is a four-legged alien named Professor Xtith Vjarm, one of a dozen alien races that occupy the galaxy. Slowly through the story the professor explains his theory that all life came from Earth and that the two-legged Miggies went out of their way to take as much of the universe for themselves. Miggies are low status aliens, controlling poor occupations such as “hand laundry”. This slow invasion is insidious, unconscious and unstoppable. Eventually the Miggies will own it all.
Williams has taken that same idea of Shiel’s that Asians will simply out-populate the rest of humanity and applied it to a cosmos of other life forms. (David Attenborough’s latest film, Extinction: The Facts (September 13, 2020) on how humans are quickly killing off other species and habitats rings in my ears here.) Williams is certainly aware of the idea of the Yellow Peril, turning it into the Human Peril. The artist, Paul Orban, chose a particularly Asian-looking human for the illustration.
Conclusion
As with so many Pulp discussions, the question of censorship comes at last. Should we read these old stories or hide them away as if we never had them? I have stated before that I think it does a disservice to edit the past. Better to acknowledge it and understand it (and not repeat it). These particular selections (only a small, obvious pile) are largely forgotten already. Only Buck Rogers and the Heinlein novel have any real staying power. I always wondered why Sixth Column was not promoted along with his juveniles. Wisely, it was not a novel for children and wasn’t sold as one.
Once again we see in our daily lives tensions between China and the US (Canada as well). Politically, we are rife for another wave of Yellow Peril Science Fiction (if not in books then in conspiracy theory YouTube videos). One thing that may save us from this is that SF is now a world-wide genre. Back in the Pulp days, editors weren’t worried about offending Asian readers. The publishers assumed that their audience was white. For this reason they didn’t worry about offending African-American readers either. (Or women, who made up a very small portion of SF reading audience).
But not today. Now we have readers and writers of all persuasions (including LGBTQ, who weren’t even acknowledged to exist back in 1930s SF.) China is producing its own SF writers like Liu Cixin, Han Song, Wang Jinkang, Xing He, Qian Lifang, and He Xi. With many perspectives, it becomes much harder to fall back into xenophobic and isolationist philosophies. We can be better, just as the old SF writers imagined people of the year 2020 to be.
Good, well balanced analysis