If you missed the last one…
We all remember the video game Space Invaders if you are over fifty. But you’d need to be a lot older to remember these 1930s space invaders as they appeared in the early SF Pulps. H. G. Wells wrote the prototype (and still the best one by far) in 1898 with The War of the Worlds. Thirty plus years later the Pulps are serving up new invasions (many from the bowels of the earth and other dimensions. More on those in another post!) on a regular basis. Some like Marius’s “Vandals of the Moon” (Amazing Stories, July 1928) read like direct imitations of Wells, in this case, moved to the Los Angeles area.
By the 1930s, the Pulpsters aren’t quite so literal in Hugo Gernsback’s advice to imitate Poe, Verne and Wells. They begin to do their own thing with all this invasion from outer space stuff. (I should mention here that Edmond Hamilton made a cottage industry of invasion stories as early as 1926, and he shows up more times here than anyone.) Writing a tale of Lunarians or Venusians attacking our planet had a good chance of seeing print by one of these editors: Farnsworth Wright, Hugo Gernsback, T. O’Conor Sloane, Harry Bates or Mort Weisinger. They all bought tales of space invaders for their 1930s Pulps.
1930
“Spawn of the Stars” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, February 1930) by Charles W. Diffin has space amoebas attacking the world in five gigantic ships. Diffin arms them with atomic weapons that form mushroom clouds. (This is 1931, remember.)
“The Space Visitors” (Air Wonder Stories, March 1930) by Edmond Hamilton has aliens in our atmosphere harvesting the planet. More of a Fortean story than an actual invasion.
“The Gray Plague” (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November 1930) by Lloyd Arthur Eshbach has meteorites fall with a virulent plague as a precursor to invasion. Also features alien abduction long before the UFOs of 1947.
1931
“The Gate of Xoran” (Astounding Stories, January 1931) by Hal K. Wells has a robot-like alien planning an invasion. For more on Hal K. Wells. go here.
“Doom From Planet 4” (Astounding Stories, July 1931) by Jack Williamson has a scientist build a transporter so the Martians can invade our planet. Beware of aliens bearing gifts. For more on the early Jack Williamson, go here.
“When the Moon Turned Green” (Astounding Stories, May 1931) by Hal K Wells is a better invasion story with Alpha Centaurians putting everyone asleep with a green ray.
“The Earth-Owners” (Weird Tales, August 1931) by Edmond Hamilton has light globe creatures killing whole cities with poisonous clouds.
“A Shot From Saturn” (Weird Tales, October 1931) by Edmond Hamilton starts in the Wellsian manner, having humans watch as alien ships approach from Saturn. Later, Saturnian spies will be found inside the bodies of Earthmen!
“The Tetrahedron of Space” (Wonder Stories, November 1931) by P. Schuyler Miller was one of Isaac Asimov’s favorite stories from the Before the Golden Age. He wrote:
What fascinated me in this story and what caused it to live on in my memory was the picture of extraterrestrials who were utterly nonhuman. This wasn’t often done in those days, or, for that matter, in the more primitive forms of science fiction even today.
Miller’s story certainly does offer an invasion by a strange form of life, but it also points to the primitiveness of humans. Unlike most space opera, a humanocentric POV isn’t used. The idea that humans aren’t so very important almost whispers of H. P. Lovecraft, but not quite.
1932
“The Terror Planet” (Weird Tales, May 1932) by Edmond Hamilton has Hunt visit Uranus and bring back an invasion.
“Room For the Super-Race” (Amazing Stories, August 1932) by Walter Kateley has aliens take over the world with an eye to removing all human life. Oddly, the story starts like a Northern in the Arctic. For more on Walter Kateley and this story, go here.
“Revolt of the Star-Men” (Wonder Stories Quarterly, Winter 1932) by Raymond Z. Gallun has invading Martians allied to gigantic humanoids who can walk in space without spacesuits. For more on Raymond Z. Gallun, go here.
1933
“Invasion” (Astounding Stories, March 1933) by Murray Leinster has half of Earth siding with Martians to conquer the planet. Yup, we are that stupid.
“The Men Without Shadows” (Amazing Stories, October 1933) by Stanton A. Coblentz has giants from Saturn force the human race to peace. They fail to change us. Interesting, that Harry Bates’s “Farewell to the Master” (Astounding Science-Fiction, October 1940) uses similar ideas with more fame. It’s probably because of the movie.
“Invisible Monsters” (Wonder Stories, December 1933) by John Beynon Harris (John Wyndham) has the Earth invaded by invisible aliens. This one is more of a problem story on how to make them visible. For the early John Wyndham, go here.
1934
The Legion of Space (Astounding Stories, April May June July August September 1934) by Jack Williamson is a great novel, even today. Borrowing from The Three Musketeers and Shakespeare, Williamson creates a fun bunch of guys to go on a dangerous mission to save a princess and the Earth from the Medusae. For more on The Legion of Space go here and here.
“Subjugating the Earth” (Amazing Stories, June 1934) by Walter Kateley is another Strange Northern, with more aliens come to take the Earth. The Cudors treat the humans like pets.
“One Prehistoric Night” (Wonder Stories, November 1934) by Philip Barshofsky is one of the shortest stories to ever get a cover. Aliens invade Earth but do it during the Age of the Reptiles. It doesn’t go well.
1935
“The Robot Aliens” (Wonder Stories, February 1935) by Eando Binder is a unusual one here in that it is a parody of Wells. He wasn’t the first. The War of the Wenuses by Charles L. Graves and E. V. Lucas (1898) did it almost immediately after Wells’s classic. The Binders don’t focus on the aliens, which are giant robots, but on the humans who react to them, usually in very stupid ways. This story used the word “alien” to mean visitors from space rather than foreigners for the first time. For more on this story, go here.
1936
“Frictional Losses” (Astounding Stories, July 1936) by Don A. Stuart (John W. Campbell) has a scientist trying to counter friction to help save the Earth. For more on John Campbell’s fiction, go here.
1937
“Out of Night” (Astounding Stories, October 1937) by Don A. Stuart (John W. Campbell) was the first of two stories about the Sarn, an invading alien race that worships an immortal Mother figure.
1938
“The Cosmic Hiss” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1938) by Edmond Hamilton is interesting to me because it shows that Ed could still write about a robot invasion four years after doing it first. He used the idea for his Interstellar Patrol series back in “Corsairs of the Cosmos” (Weird Tales, April 1934). But Ed’s not done yet…
1939
“Invasion’s End” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1939) by Myer Krulfeld has Martian invaders frozen in the ice. Too bad they thaw out.
“Cloak of Aesir” (Astounding Science-Fiction, March 1939) by Don A. Stuart (John W. Campbell) is the sequel to “Out of Night”. The humans finally rise up and take back their freedom.
“Prisoner of Mars” (Startling Stories, May 1939) by Edmond Hamilton is an appropriate place to stop. Hamilton serves up the invasion again, this time at novel length! The following year, Ed would start writing the famous Captain Future series where each month the intrepid Curt Newton and his friends would have to head off an invasion by hostile forces.
Just a note: the worm-like machines in this story look an awful lot like the ones in the story I mentioned at the beginning: “Vandals of the Moon” by Marius.
Conclusion
The theme of alien invasion has been evergreen through the decades. The Pulps of the ’40s and ’50s used it but with tongue-in-cheek tone, as if the idea was just too silly. For example, Damon Knight’s classic “To Serve Man”. (Yes, it’s a cookbook.) The details of the invasion are a given and the authors focus on other aspects. Scenes of giant ships attacking cities that thrilled 1930s (and earlier) readers have become the props of 1950s B-movies. But the space invaders aren’t gone, not by a long shot. These days, once in a while, we get a new adaptation of Wells’s The War of the Worlds or a film like Independence Day (1996). There is something comforting in an alien invasion, like a zombie apocalypse or worldwide volcanic eruptions. They are immediately exciting, and yet familiar enough we don’t have to work too hard to understand what is going on. Some small band of brave humans will appear and all will be well….
