Plant Monsters of the 1950s

If you missed the 1940s…

With the Plant Monsters of the 1950s we see the last of the Pulps and the transition to digest-sized SF. We also get the biggest plant monster hit since the days of H. G. Wells. John Wyndham, a Pulp writer, now rebranded a novelist, gave us The Day of the Triffids (1951). This book proved many things besides that Wyndham was fun to read. It proved that plant monsters could be a bestseller. It proved old SF ideas could be re-modeled for new purposes. And it proved that the 1950s was going to be an exciting time for plant stories.

1950

“Flowering Evil” by Margaret St. Clair (Planet Stories, Summer 1950) is an unusual tale since Planet Stories’ policy was that their tales take place off planet. St. Clair’s story has a woman back on Earth who has a fantastic menagerie of plants from other planets. One in particular looks like a giant spider, ready to pounce. This is the Venusian Rambler that finally tries to devour Aunt Amy. She takes him out with a bar of soap!

“The Salad Citizens” by Walt Sheldon (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1950) has an expedition to Venusian consume the local vegetation only to become the same. Sheldon has his spacemen swearing in the usual SF fashion: “For Jupiter’s Sake!” That kind of thing. I thought “Oh, Rocket gas!” was a new one. The title pun probably inspired the whole.

“The Dreaming Trees” by John W. Jakes (Fantastic Adventures, November 1950) was this future paperback bestseller’s first sale. I wrote about this story in comparison with Robert Silverberg’s “The Fangs of Trees” (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1968) here.

“Kiss and Kill” by P. F. Costello (Author Unknown) (Amazing Stories, December 1950) has humans on Venus turning into hybrid mushroom men after several generations. The law tries to curb this by allowing people to live there only ten years, and if they stay single.

“Process” by A. E. von Vogt (Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 1950) is an odd story about the war between the trees and a spaceships that ends in nuclear destruction.

1951

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (1951) appeared in Colliers‘ as Revolt of the Triffids (1951) and is the plant monster classic that revived a theme (or put it to bed, we will see.) Wyndham’s triffids are hybrids created by humans for their oil. When flashing lights in the sky blind humanity, the triffids get free and take control. Perhaps the best Wellsian novel written after Wells and a personal favorite I like to re-read every ten years or so. I’m still waiting for a truly brilliant film version. My favorite so far is the 1981 BBC TV version.

“Mushroom Men of Mars” by Lee Stanton (Authentic Science Fiction #1, January 1951) is a pretty old-fashioned space opera with humans arriving on Mars to find it inhabited by mushroom men. This is a British throwback to the 1930s.

“The Seed From Space” by Fletcher Pratt (Startling Stories, May 1951) is lengthy novel about a group of scientists who are controlled by the Avna Overmind, a strange presence from space linked to trees.

“Son of the Tree” by Jack Vance (Thrilling Wonder Stories, June 1951) offers the planet Kyril with its ruling group of Druids who worship a gigantic tree. This story was combined with “The Houses of Iszm” (below) to form a novel.

“The White Fruit of Banaldar” by John D. MacDonald (Startling Stories, September 1951) features the Free Lives, man-eating plants with a thousand needle teeth and a telepathic siren call. John D. Macdonald wrote Science Fiction for several years in the 1950s before turning to Crime and Mystery writing. He felt Science Fiction was “too easy”.

“Tree of Wrath” (Worlds Beyond, January 1951) (aka “The Tree” (New Worlds, Autumn 1951) has a plant that is virtually a god. It is one man’s job to find a way to kill it.

“The Song of Vorhu” by Walter M. Miller Jr. (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1951) has a man return to an Earth wiped clean by a plague. The woman who greets him is of another variety, a green one.

1952

“Garden in the Void” by Poul Anderson (Galaxy, May 1952) has an asteroid covered in green. Two visitors find a very strange hybrid gardener and a terrible fate waiting for them.

“The Hellflower” by George O. Smith (Startling Stories, May 1952) is a hard-boiled crime story about running the drug called the Hellflower or “love lotus” from Venus. If you don’t get it, “Let me Spillane it to yah!”

“The Plants” by Murray Leinster (reprinted in American Science Fiction, June 1952) gives us the planet Aioli where the plants live happily and humans don’t last very long. An unusual tale for Leinster because of its bummer ending. If he had written this one for John W. Campbell the plants would have lost.

“Sort of Like a Flower” by Jerome Bixby (Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1952) has earthly plants growing on Mars. The Red Planet changes them in strange ways, just like the gardeners.

“Tree, Spare That Woodsman” by Dave Dryfoos (Galaxy, October 1952) has the plant Mazda and the first colony of humans. The local trees are telepathic and not really friendly. When an Earth child plays with a tree, a mother discovers how to destroy them.

1953

“The Three” by Gordon R. Dickson (Startling Stories, May 1953) gives us the Klantheid of Pelao, a garden planet in Arcturus. To protect the local orchids, the humans place them in a preserve. When humans gets murderous around the empathic plants, they must flee to survive.

“Man” by Dave Dryfoos (Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1953) gives us the impression of a human spaceship arriving on an alien planet from the plant’s point-of-view.

“The Tree” by Bryan Berry (Authentic Science Fiction #36, August 1953) does the same thing as Dave Dryfoos but he gives us the human POV as well. The humans are oblivious to the tree’s reaction, of course.

“Flower Girl” by Chester Cohen (Rocket Stories, September 1953) has an exploration team on a planet with old-fashioned plant monsters. (The space ship is the Gernsback. Perfect.) One of the crew is rescued by a female plant. He dreads what will happen when he gets back to Earth and his jealous wife hears about it.

“Mr. Heinkle’s Green Thumb” by Charles A Stearns (Thrilling Wonder Stories, November 1953) has a mysterious orchid juice acting as a super aphrodisiac. Eric thinks the men who are trying to take it from him are competitors but they are aliens who want their juice back.

1954

The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron (1954) is the first in a children’s series with the secret Earth moon of Basidium. On this “planet” are amazing mushroom varieties and little green men. There were four sequels all by Cameron who was Canadian.

“Daisies” by Fredric Brown (Angels and Spaceships, 1954) has Dr. Michaelson working on telepathy with daisies. The plants rat him out to his wife about his affair with the cute assistant, Miss Wilson.

“The Houses of Izsm” by Jack Vance (Startling Stories, April 1954) is the sequel to “Son of Tree”. An Earthman tries to steal the female of the race of giant trees, now used as living homes.

“Green Thumb” by Clifford D. Simak (Galaxy, July 1954) has a man discover an alien that looks a lot like a sunflower. In Simak’s usual quiet way, no monsters go on any rampages or much of anything else.

1955

The other classic novel of the 1950s, after Triffids, is The Body Snatchers by Jack Finney (1955). Filmed several times, this novel features “pod people”, human replicas from alien plants. Often seen as a Cold War novel about Communists, it is a masterpiece of paranoia, which is why it keeps getting filmed.

“Property of Venus” by L. Sprague de Camp (Galaxy, July 1955) has a man selling Venusian plants to Earthmen. The results are predictably humorous.

1956

Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet by Eleanor Cameron (1956) has a stowaway to the Mushroom Planet almost get everybody killed.

“Each an Explorer” by Isaac Asimov (Future Science Fiction, August 1956) has us observing aliens growing plants on a far world but as the visitors realize in the end, the plants are the real masters. And they have just used the humans to help spread them across the galaxy.

“Prima Belladonna” by J. G. Ballard (Science Fantasy, December 1956) offers us Arachnid orchids that can sing. They can also grow into giant man-killers!

“The Reluctant Orchid” by Arthur C. Clarke (Satellite Science Fiction, December 1956) has ACC riffing on H. G. Wells for his Tales of the White Hart. Harry Purvis raises a man-eater but it takes his Auntie to tame it.

1957

“Bright Flowers of Mars” by Curtis W. Casewit (Super-Science Fiction, April 1957) as the title suggests has Mars is covered in flowers. Powers has always wanted to visit the planet. He does with strange results.

1958

“Growth of Lichen” by Clark Ashton Smith (Spells and Philtres, March 1958) is a short three-lined poem suggesting that lichen will outlast us all.

“Eripmav” by Damon Knight (Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1958) has a title that could only be inspired by The Son of Dracula (1943) and Mr. Alucard. Knight creates the cellulose vampires of Veegel for a bad pun. I won’t spoil it by telling.

“Slaves of the Tree” by Eric Rodman (Robert Silverberg) (Super-Science Fiction, June 1958) has humans and “Forest People” becoming hybrids over the centuries. When new Earthmen come they fall under the power of the Tree, which the hybrids worship.

“Garden of Evil” by Henry Slesar (Amazing Stories, August 1958) has the narrator hired to go to Planet MV-5 to rescue a professor and his daughter. The only problem is the trees can think, and better than most humans. This one ends as an Adam and Eve story.

“The Terribly Wild Flowers” by Gerald Kersh (Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1958) is a more literary story about the mental diseases of plants. But the humans end up in the sanitorium…

1959

“Creatures of the Green Slime” by James Rosenquest (Super-Science Fiction, June 1959) tells of a slime creature from the canals of Mars. Rosenquest borrows from Edward Lucas White’s “Lukundoo” for the ending, with carbuncles exploding to reveal the faces of the man it ate…

“To Fell a Tree” by Robert F. Young (Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1959) tells of Omicron Ceti where grows a tree the size of a skyscraper. A team of explorers try to figure out why it is dying. It proves to be the last survivor of a race of fifty million.

Conclusion

The plant monsters of the 1950s are a new variety in the Pulps (magazines about to expire like a rare orchids and be replaced by the far less pretty digests). We still get the man-eaters but authors try to use them for new purposes. The obvious one in stories like “To Fell a Tree” or even the much earlier one “The Dreaming Trees” is increasingly environmental. This is sometimes done by having plant-human hybrids. J. R. R. Tolkien wasn’t the only one writing the 1950s to feel for the trees. In the next decade this will become even stronger.

I suggested that The Day of the Triffids may have been the final plant monster masterpiece. I do believe the novel had a double effect. The number of SF plant novels certainly shrank (not that they were many). The next one will be John Wyndham’s Trouble With Lichens (1960) and a far cry from the fun that was Triffids. In short fiction, we can see there was a bit of a revival of the theme, making the 1950s a good crop of plant stories. The next decade will see far fewer, with stories like Robert Silverberg’s “The Fangs of Trees” an unusual throwback.

Finally…The 1960s