The plant monsters of David H. Keller appeared in his early career in the 1920-30s though a few were published in the 1940s. The idea of a killer plant was considered one of the staples of SF at the time according to Clare Winger Harris in her August 1931 catalogue from a letter to Wonder Stories. “Gigantic man-eating plants” certainly appear in Keller’s seven tales though he did not restrict himself to them.
The Shrink Who Wrote Strange Tales
David H. Keller M. D. (1880-1966) was a psychiatrist who wrote Pulp as a hobby. He often got ideas, especially for his horror stories, from patients’ ailments. Unlike most Pulpsters, Keller didn’t chase popular trends but wrote what interested him. Because of this, much of what he wrote still holds interest (for me anyway) today. His attitudes towards women are terribly chauvinistic as was his dislike for African-Americans. E. F. Bleiler described him as “an ultra-conservative ideologically” (Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years). He also had a very high opinion of himself. The Science Fiction Encyclopedia put it this way: “It is clear enough that Keller’s conceptual inventiveness, and his cultural gloom, are worthy of more attention than they have received; it is also clear that he fatally scanted the actual craft of writing, and that therefore he is likely never to be fully appreciated.”
Keller began his career writing for Hugo Gernsback and the first all-Science Fiction magazine on the market, Amazing Stories. Gernsback called the doctor’s stories “Keller Yarns”. Hugo did not get an exclusive though, as Keller sold to his rivals, T. O’Connor Sloane (who succeeded Gernsback as editor of Amazing) and Farnsworth Wright, whose Weird Tales predated both of them.
Hugo Gernsback
“The Yeast Men” (Amazing Stories, April 1928) is technically about a fungi rather than a plant but SF rarely worried about the distinction. The country of Moronia is about to be invaded by their aggressive neighbors, Eupenia. The dictator of that country expels one of his staff, Von Dort, who flees to Moronia. With the help of an American scientist, Billings, the Yeast Men are created and released on Eupenia.
Imagine a six-foot man of dough, with a crust hard enough to hold it erect, yet viscid enough to allow it to move forward. A creature with a head but no face, with spade-like hands without fingers, and instead of two legs and feet, simply—simply a body like a skirt, which rested firmly on the ground on a two-foot base. It was the convulsive movement of this base and the mass of fermenting yeast above it that in some way enabled it to move slowly over the ground. It was such a creature, with a broad canvas band around its waist, that the Moronians saw being led around the track.
Invasion of the Bread Monsters
These mindless man-shaped sacks of yeast seem harmless. The Eupenians laugh and play with them, not realizing that after three days the Yeast Men degrade and become a puddle of goo. This oozy mess rots quickly creating a vomit-inducing smell that no one can abide. When the Yeast Men have marched into Eupenia by the hundreds of thousands then die, the Eupenians kill their leader then sue for peace.
E. F. Bleiler said of the story in Science Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1998): “One of Keller’s stories where folksy primitivism gets in the way of the narrative.” I agree with him. The whole thing reads more like a joke rather than a serious extrapolation of an idea.
A Supporting Role
“The Evening Star” (Science Wonder Stories, April May 1930) is a sequel to “The Conquerors” (Science Wonder, December 1929). The plot of the first story and even the second are not of real consequence here. The small portion that features a plant monster is Chapter XI in the final segment where Charlotte Carter (who Keller describes as a brave sort of non-Victorian woman) is surrounded by Monstrosities, killer mutants, and is rescued by a plant creature. A Venusian man explains the tree-like creature to her:
“To make a long story short, we had at last a plant which, dormant, measured nearly three feet in height by a foot in thickness and a foot and a half in width. By a system of pneumatic sacks, this dormant plant could throw out pseudopodia which we gradually developed to look very much like the human extremities. Of course, all this took time…But at last we had a plant that could talk and that could even learn a vocabulary in other languages. As we wanted these plant servants for defensive purposes, we especially bred them for the development of electrical discharges. Finally, we grew some that were very deadly in this respect, and it was one of the most powerful of these that saved you…
The plants are largely a one-off but a fun bit in a very long tale.
T. O’Connor Sloane
“The Ivy War” (Amazing Stories, May 1930) is a truly Wellsian piece finally. A British explorer disposes of a plant-like animal from a past geological age. The ivy establishes itself in a local swamp, eating a dog and then a real estate developer. The ivy is cut back but attacks the city of Philadelphia. It can’t be stopped. It looks like it will overwhelm the entire planet. Dr. White develops a shot that kills the ivy almost instantly. The good old US saves the world. This story reminds me a little of Edmond Hamilton’s “The Plant Revolt” (Weird Tales, April 1930) but the short month between them makes it unlikely the two authors were aware of what the other was writing.
Farnsworth Wright
“The Seeds of Death” (Weird Tales, July 1931) is one of Keller’s anti-feminist pieces. Like the later “Tiger Cat” (that would get the cover spot in that issue of Weird Tales) it features an utterly ruthless and evil woman. The Duke of Freud falls on hard times so he accepts a job. He is to go to Spain four days after his employer, James Garey. Garey wants to know how his brother died there in a castle owned by a beautiful rich woman, Lady Helen Moyennes. Many others have disappeared as well.
He goes to Spain and finds no clue about Garey or his brother until Lady Helen gives him the jewels he had been robbed of in New York. Among the stones is Garey’s ring. Knowing the man is dead, the Duke assaults the lady’s butler. When he has the man at gun-point, Helen herself offers to tell him all her secrets.
Lady Helen shows the Duke rooms filled with bodies, some paralyzed but not quite dead. Others are very old and have fallen apart.
On the bed in this room was what had once been a man. Now he seemed little more than a bag of skin and bones, but the room was filled with rustling, saying vines, and a dozen flowers, like those the tigress had worn on her corsage, filled the room with a cloying fragrance that was almost unearthly and unendurable. The Lady Helen took one by the stem and held it near her bosom, and at once the pistils began tenderly to brush her skin.
The Source of the Seeds
These alive-dead men include Garey, his brother and all the others. From the bodies of these men grow tall orchid-like plants. The plants produce a seed that looks very much like a pomegranate seed. Helen explains that all these men had played a game in which the loser eats one of the strange seeds, the winner the pomegranate seed.
She offers the same to the Duke. He will write a letter to the local authorities, clearing her of all wrong-doing. She guarantees that her armed servants will not stop him from leaving if he wins. He takes her up on the offer because he has been perfecting his three card monte through out the story. He knows he can win and make her take the evil seed.
He, of course, loses. They wait the eight hours for the seed to take effect. After seven or so he begins to feel paralyzed. He will join the others in living death. Helen merely shakes her head at the arrogance of men. She will go on playing her evil game.
Back to Sloane
“The Tree Terror” (Amazing Stories, October 1933) features a lumber king who bullies his scientists for new innovations. Dr. Simcox comes up with an x-ray that makes moss gigantic and fast-growing. Unfortunately the stuff gets loose and begins taking over farmland and city. Humankind is saved when another inventor, Carl von Renstein, creates a machine that turns cellulose into food. The tree terror becomes a food bonanza. E. F. Bleiler said of the story: “…The reader may be less sanguine than Dr. Keller. In any case, weak.”
The Last Gernsback
“The Tree of Evil” (Wonder Stories, September 1934) is part of the Taine series. Taine is a short detective “who never fails”. He and his allies, Dr. Riordan and Harley, go to the town of Glendale because something has taken over the townsfolk. They are wicked, evil and greedy beyond the usual degree. Taine disguises himself as a female waitress (yes, he is that good!) and learns that everyone in town eats the leaves of some kind of tree found out back of the local church.
Harley falls under the influence of the leaves and has to be knocked out and taken to an asylum. Taine sends the doctor with the afflicted man and faces down the evil tree on his own. First, he locates the tunnel under the church that leads into a kind of grotto. There he sees the root of the tree as well as Mrs. Sweetley acting as a kind of voodoo priestess. The Sweetleys murder their accomplice, the banker, then kill each other. Taine spends a little time destroying a giant snake that Mrs. Sweetley used in her evil ritual then cuts the tree’s root before blowing it all up with dynamite. Bus loads of shrinks are brought in to help the townsfolk get over their evil ways.
Subtext and Prejudice
The leaves of the tree are probably Keller’s euphemism for drug addiction. This story has the worst of his prejudices in it, with many misogynistic and racist scenes. The Rector Sweetley says some terrible things to a small African-American boy (described only with the N word and is, in fact, Taine in another disguise) and even though Sweetley is a villain, you have to wonder if Keller’s own voice is not talking there.
Keller did use trees in two other stories though they are a long ways from being monsters. “The Golden Bough” (Marvel Tales, Winter 1934), reprinted in Weird Tales by Dorothy McIlwraith in November 1942, has mistletoe collected from oak trees in a quest for the great God Pan. “Calypso’s Island” (Stirring Science Stories, April 1941) has another tiger cat type woman who takes men to her island to eat from a tree. Those who eat the red fruit are turned into animals. She eats the last piece and becomes a cat.
Donald A. Wollheim Gets The Last One
“The Red Death” (Cosmic Science Fiction, July 1941) is Keller’s final plant monster tale, a long novella about a plague of red mushrooms that cause civilization to fall. Three couples return from a camping trip in New Brunswick with the fungal infection. Very quickly the red plague spreads through out New York as people refuse to follow medical advice. The city is quarantined but the disease escapes. Soon only a handful of people remain, including Thinsell, a radio man who is immune.
As humanity spreads the disease, small pockets of survivors hide away, shooting anyone who comes near. Thinsell’s friends have prepared a place near the Gaspe Peninsula to start over. He is invited to join them but he declines. Instead he returns to New York to find the apartments of the original six victims. Combing through letters, he discovers the first victim was given two capsules when he caught a cold. Thinsell wants to find the man who gave him those pills, Jack Johnson, because he wants to track down the villain who started the plague.
On the Trail of the Plague
He travels to New Brunswick, seeing no one, only animals turned wild, like packs of dogs. Later he finds the daughter of the man he is looking for in a abandoned village. She does not know about the plague. Thinsell goes with her, and a big supply of food for the winter, to the Johnson cabin. He meets John and learns that the capsule were not the cause. He also learns of a spice shaker that was given to Johnson by a hunting client, a man named Van Doren.
Thinsell spends the winter in the cabin with Jean and her father. The reporter learns about Jean’s past, being adopted from two people who had hired Johnson as a guide but died when they crossed some rapids. Johnson raised the three year old as his own. He dies, and Thinsell and Jean fall in love but he is too preoccupied with his quest to tell her. Finding a map of where Van Doren lives, they leave in the Spring. Thinsell insists Jean go on to the colony at Gaspe while he takes on Van Doren.
The reporter goes to the cabin and meets the man. He tells a false story about how he found Johnson and his daughter, both dead. He sleeps that night holding a revolver in case Van Doren tries to kill him. When he wakes he finds the man and a dead man sitting in the room. Van Doren explains that the dead man is an Italian scientist named Viletti. The Italian was insane and created the fungi plague. Van Doren had unwittingly assisted him. Van Doren, filled with guilt, has also poisoned himself. He talks of his son-in-law and daughter who were the people who had hired Johnson but died in the rapids. He dies before Thinsell can tell him that his grand-daughter is still alive.
A Final Challenge
The story is not quite over yet. A band of thugs enter the cabin. Thinsell is able to assume the appearance of a plague victim. The men leave but not before saying they are going to the Gaspe colony to kill all the men and take the food and women. Thinsell is desperate to get to the colony first. He has a revolver but isn’t that good with it. Jean appears at the last minute and shoots all the bad guys. Thinsell asks her how she got behind him. She admits she never went to the colony but had been following him all the time.
The character of Jean is not a typical Keller female. She is intelligent, level-headed, more able than her husband-to-be. She is an atypical Pulp heroine in that she doesn’t really need a man. And to be written by David H. Keller is surprising, indeed. She is one of the reasons why this novella is one of his better outings along with a Wellsian feel that the author sustains through a long tale.
Keller makes some chilling predictions about how people will behave in a pandemic. He would have been a young resident doctor at the time of the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic. I have to think he is extrapolating from that experience. The story has a new relevance in 2021 that SF fans for decades could not really appreciate.
Conclusion
Looking at all of the plant monsters of David H. Keller, we see a nice variety. Keller liked his bloody killers but he also used yeast, fungi and other types of plants and toxic herbiage. The influence of H. G. Wells is evident in many stories. Other times he appears to be writing almost Fantasy rather than Science Fiction. (Keller had a fascination with Cornwall and its fantastical background.) After 1941, he left the plant monsters for other things, his writing output dropping dramatically after World War II. Many of his “Keller Yarns” were reprinted in the 1960s.
