If you missed the Plant Monsters of Hugo Gernsback, go here…
The Plant Monsters of Astounding continues our look at 1930s Science Fiction. Weird Tales had the creepy stuff and Hugo Gernsback had the classic stuff. It was up to Harry Bates to offer us the new stuff. Which he doesn’t really do. Bates created Astounding Stories of Super-Science because he had an opening in his roster of four new Pulps. He admittedly didn’t know much about SF back in 1930 but by the 1940s he would be writing classics like “Farewell to the Master” for John W. Campbell. His Hawk Carse series was popular space opera but it reads more like a Western than Science Fiction. Bates struggled at first to find good SF material. He called in writers from other genres, like the popular Western writer, Tom Curry to help. The Clayton chain that Bates worked for offered two cents a word (to Hugo’s quarter to half a cent a word and Amazing Stories one cent a word. Weird Tales paid on publication). Being the best paying market soon paid off, attracting writers like Jack Williamson, Charles W. Diffin, Harl Vincent and Edmond Hamilton. Early on, Astounding became the place to be, a reputation later editors would continue to foster.
Plant monsters, like so many other Science Fiction icons (along with space cowboys, robots, time travel, dimensional beings and space ships), appeared in Astounding. Like with other Pulps, this can be a small mention in the background to a full-blown story about a plant.
Harry Bates
“The Forgotten Planet” by Sewell Peaslee Wright (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, July 1930) is the first of the John Hanson series. Early space opera, you might think you were reading a Star Trek story. The rulers of the Forgotten planet have a killer fungus that the space patrol see in action.
“The Planet of Dread” by R. F. Starzl (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930) is a plant monster classic, with an entire planet of killer plants after our heroes. Collecting orchids on Inra, Forepaugh and his Martian Friday, Gunga, lose the safety of their cabin and must face the terrors of the jungle. This story reminds me of Weinbaum’s “Parasite Planet” but that story hasn’t been written yet (see below). Starzl deserves more credit as one of the forerunners to Stanley G’s fame. For more on R. F. Starzl, go here.
“The Terrible Tentacles of L-472” by Sewell Peaslee Wright (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, September 1930) is John Hanson’s second trip in space. The Patrol go in search of a lost ship. They find it on L-472 and its killer trees.
“Dark Moon” by Charles W. Diffin (Astounding Stories, May 1931) has Harkness and friends travel to a second moon where its jungles are filled with giant man-eating plants.
“Brood of the Dark Moon” by Charles W. Diffin (Astounding Stories, August September October November 1931) offers more giant man-eaters but at a longer length.
“The Moon Weed” by Harl Vincent (Astounding Stories, August 1931) has seeds from space growing and covering most of America. Good thing they hate ultra-violet light. Nature takes care of the invasion eventually.
“The Copper-Clad World by Harl Vincent (Astounding Stories, September 1931) has Earthmen falling for beautiful Venusians and fighting off the carnivorous plants of Io.
“The Seed of the Toc-Toc Birds” by Francis Flagg (Astounding Stories, January 1932) has alien bird-like creatures who drop seeds that grow into iron trees that form barriers. The Toc-Toc birds want nothing more than to take over the world! For more on the SF of Francis Flagg, go here.
F. Orlin Tremaine
F. Orlin Tremaine inherited the Astounding editorship when the Clayton chain went bankrupt in 1933. Street & Smith acquired the title, and the magazine that disappeared in Spring 1933 suddenly re-appeared in October 1933. Along with the title he also got the assistant editor, Desmond W. Hall (the other half of the Hawk Carse team). Tremaine is famous for his editorial policy known as “the thought variant stories”. This was to push writers to come up with new ideas in Science Fiction. It was this thrust that made the new Astounding better than what the competition were offering. It was this concept that John W. Campbell would assume and expand in the Golden Age of the 1940s.
Both Tremaine and Hall appeared in Weird Tales as writers. They knew the reputation of H. P. Lovecraft from that magazine as well as Gernsback’s Amazing Stories. When the chance to publish two pieces by the Providence master came up, they grabbed it willingly. Some fans complained “At the Mountains of Madness” and “The Shadow Out of Time” were Horror and not SF. That’s a matter of opinion but the first one does have a plant monster of sorts.
“A Race Through Time” by Donald Wandrei (Astounding Stories, October 1933) has rival time travelers go into the future when the planet is inhabited by giant mushrooms.
“Farewell to Earth” by Donald Wandrei (Astounding Stories, December 1933) has more time traveling and this time, in Egypt, they encounter mobile carnivorous plants. Time travel can be so dangerous.
“The Demon of the Flower” by Clark Ashton Smith (Astounding Stories, December 1933) is an anomaly, a Fantasy tale among SF. Smith, in his best Weird Tales mode, tells of a world ruled by plants. The top dog is a demon flower named Voorqual. The humans try to defeat it with another demon but fail. For more CAS and Science Fiction, go here…
Art by Elliott Dold Jr.The Legion of Space by Jack Williamson (Astounding Stories, April May June July August 1934) features the planet of the Medusa where the Green Slime lurks in the woods. This novel and later series was very influential. For more on this novel and its monsters, go here.
“The Green Plague” by Stanton A. Coblentz (Astounding, April 1934) has another world war in which killer fungus is used as a weapon, this one known as “the Green Plague”. It devours all plant and animal life. No one wins.
“Succubus” by K. F. Ziska (Astounding Stories, May 1934) has the botanist, Boronoff, combine humans and plants. The beautiful plant woman is a vampire and the scientist has fallen in love with her… Feed me, Seymour!
“Parasite Planet” by Stanley G. Weinbaum (Astounding Stories, February 1935) has Ham and Pat in the hot zone of Venus, surrounded by killer fungus and other Venusian plants. They have to leave the safety of their home to travel across Venus to its cold zone and safety. This is one of Weinbaum’s space travelogues with plenty of weird critters to attack them. R. F. Stazl’s “Planet of Dread” seems like an earlier version.
“Proxima Centauri” by Murray Leinster (Astounding Stories, March 1935) is perhaps the most famous plant alien story of the 1930s. Leinster supposes a space-faring race of plant aliens who search for food: meat. When they encounter the humans, their response is to eat them, not talk to them. Like “Parasite Planet”, this tale was selected by Isaac Asimov for his collection, Before the Golden Age (1975).
“The Lotus-Eaters” by Stanley G. Weinbaum (Astounding Stories, April 1935) has Ham and Pat, now in the cold zone, discover an intelligent plant race on Venus. The Lotus-eaters are telepathic and peaceful. They are dying out because they are being picked off by the Trioptes. Humans can acquire their sadness and despair if they inhale their spores.
“Fruit of the Moon-Weed” by J. Harvey Haggard (Astounding Stories, November 1935) has a planet with javelin trees. The trees shoot long spear-like seeds at their enemies.
“The Lichens From Eros” by Frank Belknap Long (Astounding Stories, November 1935) has space lichen that attach itself to travelers. Looking at the lichens under a microscope, it is discovered to be a fantastic microscopic city.
“The Mad Moon” by Stanley G. Weinbaum (Astounding Stories, December 1935) has the whiplash trees that inspired Arthur K. Barnes’ many weird Venusian plants like the Slingshot trees in Thrilling Wonder Stories.
“The Green Doom” by Richard Tooker (Astounding Stories, December 1935) is another future war story with a cloud of spores as a weapon. This time it causes leprosy.
“At the Mountains of Madness” by H. P. Lovecraft (Astounding Stories, February March 1936) has explorers in the Antarctic discover a lost city built by a race older than mankind, the Old Ones or Elder Beings. These creatures are more plant than animal. They were wiped out by their servant race, the Shoggoths. Lovecraft wrote this tale as a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.
“The Glowworm Flower” by Stanton A. Coblentz (Astounding Stories, June 1936) has seeds brought from space. The glowworm flowers have a narcotic scent that puts people into comas. The dreams of the glowworm addicts are all the same, visions of a far world.
“Nightmare Island” by Douglas Drew (Astounding Stories, October 1936) has a mad scientist grafting animal and plant together (Dr. Moreau calling?), including a vicious moray eel. The scientist and friends have to traverse the island filled with terrors to escape. Their reward? Getting grafted to a tree. Everything ends in fire.
“The Saprophyte Men of Venus” by Nat Schachner (Astounding Stories, October 1936) are plant invaders who cast a zone of darkness over Vermont. Our brave captives manage to blow up their darkness machine and survive.
Conclusion
John W. Campbell took over Astounding in 1938, after working as Tremaine’s assistant. Campbell rebranded the Pulp Astounding Science-Fiction. Monster plant stories do not become more common in the 1940s or under Campbell. The editor himself penned the nightmare classic, “Who Goes There?” (Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1938) as Don A. Stuart, about an alien that can take other forms. In the film version, James Arness plays The Thing From Another World, revealed to be more plant than animal, making it a giant space carrot. The 1982 John Carpenter remake did not repeat this vegetable nickname, instead made the Thing an ooey-gooey polymorph.
Next time… sad also-ran, T. O’Conor Sloane’s Amazing Stories.
