If you missed the last one…
This post is brought to you by The Cryo Game and Other Stories, the latest short story collection from Jack Mackenzie. (Be sure to check out the free story, “The Cryo Game” here.) This gathering of spaceships and other SF themes features three of GW’s favorite Jack Mackenzie stories: “Roadblock”, “Father Mars” and “The Old New Ensign” (along with “The Cryo Game”). I remember these from our Dark Worlds Magazine days. Jack has an understanding of modern SF that I really admire. (He’s not trapped in an alternate Pulp dimension like I am. It’s probably why we disagree about the virtues of 1930s oldies like the ones featured in this post.) Check out this collection.
Continuing with our look at all things Space Opera, we have tackled Space Pirates, Space Invaders, Slavers from Space, Castaways and Exiles, Dead Planets, Ice Planets, Winged Humans, Human Zoos, Moon Maids and Hunters…and they all intersect with Asteroids. Pirates love asteroids for hideouts. People who are castaways in space usually end up on an asteroid. You see where I’m going with this, right?
An asteroid is, of course, just a rock in space. It can act as a small environment for exploration and daring-do, but it can also hide a secret like gold, or murder, or anything you want. Now there is one type of asteroid story that I have avoided here. That is the asteroid that threatens Earth like in I. R.
Nathanson’s “The Falling Planetoid” (Science Wonder Stories, April 1930) or crashes into spaceships like “The Mark of the Meteor” by Ray Cummings (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Winter 1931). These very real scenarios deserves a post of their own. Instead I have focused on asteroids as places for things to happen, so ‘asteroid as locale’.
I would have thought this entire topic too old-fashioned to talk about but the recent success of The Expanse showed me this isn’t true. That TV show (and the novels it is based on) has the Belters, asteroid miners with their own culture, slang and dialect. They proved to be the fans favorites, and it isn’t surprising. The idea of humans who have developed a way to dwell among the space rocks is fascinating. Much more interesting than the Terrans and Martians who resemble the politicians of today.
The 1930s
There aren’t any real highlights from the 1920s or earlier. (I may discover these later but so far, nope.) The 1930s and the three magazines of Amazing Stories, Wonder Stories and Astounding are where the asteroids lie. As the 1930s went on more came along but these will mostly be in the next decade.
“Before the Asteroids” (Science Wonder Stories, March 1930) by Harl Vincent tells us how we ended up with an Asteroid field between Mars and Jupiter. This is because there was a fifth planet called Voris. The Vorisians are warlike and get zapped by a weapon that destroys the planet and kills the population of Mars, leaving it a red desert.
“The Hornets of Space” (Wonder Stories, November 1930) by R. F. Starzl is our first tale set on or near Eros. This tale of the I. F. P., the interstellar cops who fight space pirates (of course), has a space battle end with pirates crashing on Eros.
“The Planetoid of Fear” (Astounding Stories, November 1931) by Paul Ernst gives us the man trapped on a rock with a monster plot. The monster is indestructible, which makes matters worse. It’s a short one but a classic scenario.
“The Invading Asteroid” (Science Fiction Series #15, 1932)Â by Manly Wade Wellman has an asteroid filled with Martian ships for an invasion. The asteroid serves as a way to hide the fleet until the invasion. A massive space battle saves the Earth.
“The Sages of Eros” (Amazing Stories, February 1932) by John Francis Kalland has two Earthmen build a rocket for Mars but end up on Eros. There they meet a race of dwarfish men who tell of their long history. Eros was originally a gigantic planet but the people were driven underground by giant insects. These creatures burrowed so deep that the planet exploded, reducing it to an asteroid.
“Beyond the Planetoids” (Amazing Stories, August 1932) by Edwin K. Sloat has an Earthman, Tom Basil, playing two rival gangs of space pirates against each other on an asteroid. Tom must not get fed to the deadly Space Mice, the land piranhas belonging to Corvus.
“Master of the Asteroid” (Wonder Stories, October 1932) by Clark Ashton Smith takes us to the asteroid Phocea and a crashed ship. Of the three survivors, one commits suicide and another goes berserk. He is shot, leaving one man to write the diary that tells of his last days. He observes the strange life forms on the planet until one of them kills him.
‘The Asteroid of Gold” (Wonder Stories, November 1932) by Clifford D. Simak keeps turning up over and over in posts. This is because it has space pirates and an asteroid made of gold. Two spacemen must navigate the spinning rock or be killed.
“Universal Merry-Go-Round” (Amazing Stories, April 1933) by Roger Bird is a one-hit wonder. A professor and his daughter and her lover go to space in a new ship. They crash on an asteroid and become the slave-pets of the locals, giant squidgy-things. The asteroid is due to strike the Earth so the aliens flee with the professor. The lovers make parachutes from the curtains and float down to Earth. Gee, I wish he’d written more!
“Murder on the Asteroids” (Wonder Stories, June 1933) by Eando Binder is a Northern story placed in space. Two space miners fight over an asteroid full of platinum. One of the men kills the other, hiding his body in space. Later the miner’s daughter’s ship collides with the body and is destroyed. The plot could have happened in the Sierra Madres or in Alaska.
“Adrift on a Meteor” (Amazing Stories, August-September 1933) by Jack Winks is an ocean mutiny transferred to space. Asteroid miners mutiny, stranding our hero out in space in a spacesuit. They retrieve him when they realize no one knows how to navigate.
“The Horror on the Asteroid” (Weird Tales, September 1933) by Edmond Hamilton and this story have appeared before. But I had to include it because it is the only Weird Tales piece here. People trapped on asteroid are devolved into hairy apemen. For more on this story and the Star Trek episode it inspired, go here.
“The Story of Buck Rogers on the Planetoid Eros” (1934) by Dick Calkins and Philip Francis Nowlan gave us an unusual prose trip into the life of Buck Rogers, who by 1934 was strictly a cartoon character. Buck had begun his existence as a Pulp hero in Amazing Stories but switched to the newspaper comic strip in 1929. Buck gets stranded on Eros and has some amazing encounters.
“World of Doom” (Thrilling Adventures, January 1935) by Ray Cummings has Earthmen taken to a passing asteroid filled with monsters and wonder. Cummings uses a little H. G. Wells to solve the plot with terrestrial germs wiping out the invaders. This story appeared in Thrilling Adventures to draw readers from their mainstream Pulps to their fantastic ones like Thrilling Wonder Stories.
“The Golden Planetoid” (Amazing Stories, August 1935) by Stanton A. Coblentz has the Golden Planetoid land on Earth. It is a spaceship used by peaceful aliens from Umgu. They want five volunteers from Earth to become zoo specimens. It is up to Chester Wilde to find them. He ends up in an asylum since no one believes him. He is prepared to bring the lunatics with him to the planet but the aliens crash into an asteroid and die.
“Diamond Planetoid” (Astounding Stories, May 1937) by Gordon A. Giles (Otto Binder) has asteroid miners fighting over a”diamond ‘toid”, which they try to haul back by attaching to their ship. The character Wade Welton may have been a tip-of-the-hat to Manly Wade Wellman.
“The Treasure of Asteroid X” (Amazing Stories, January 1939)Â by Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr. has an Earthman and a Venusian searching an asteroid for a fortune in radium in a race to the death. It ends in a shoot-out. Could have been a Western.
“Little Planet” (Science Fiction, October 1939) by Thorp McClusky has two miners, one an old man and the other a villain, who kills him for a platinum-rich asteroid. But the old geezer gets his revenge from the grave. Again, could have been a story in any Mystery Pulp.
Conclusion
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised to see so many names I have noted in past Space Opera posts. Others are more surprising like Roger Bird and Jack Winks. Who were they? Thorp Mclusky is well-known to Weird Tales fans as a Horror writer but he actually sold a few SF pieces to both Farnsworth Wright and Ray A. Palmer. Manly Wade Wellman is familiar. He appears with a booklet that Hugo Gernsback sold between Pulp magazines but Manly will be back several times with “The Devil’s Asteroid”, “Treasure Asteroid”, “Asteroid Castaways” and “Gambler’s Asteroid”. It’s safe to say Wellman must have used just about every angle on a space rock possible. I look forward to seeing those other titles in the 1940s along with later classics like Murray Leinster’s The Wailing Asteroid.
Next time…The 1940s…
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