Edmond Hamilton was one of the great originators of Science Fiction. What he did not create himself, he used in new ways. He gave us the space patrol, killer robots or cyborgs, winged mutants and a host of other ideas. One of these was the evolved plant monster.
“Evolution Island” (Weird Tales, March 1927) has Dr. Walton and his assistant Brilling buy an island so they can test their new evolving ray. They leave Owen, the narrator, behind. A year later Walton seeks out Owen and tells him what has happened. The experiment allowed them to see animals evolve into future forms then die off. Eventually all the animals died out, leaving the plants to change. One species of plant outlives all the rest, becoming a thinking and moving form of plant-man.
“‘I call them plant-men, for they were roughly human in shape, more human-shaped, in fact than Brilling himself. They walked erect on two limbs, and had two arms or feelers, and between their — shoulders — they carried a bulbous mass in which were set their eyes, two circles of blank, dead white, with which they could see. But there all human resemblance ceased, Owen. There were no other features in their blank faces, and the bodies, the mass of the things, seemed to be composed of dark-green fiber, coarse and stringy-looking. And, as Brilling told me, they remained true plants, for all their intelligence and activity, since they took in their food as inorganic material, and utilized it by means of the chlorophyll in their bodies, a thing that only a true plant can do…”
Walton needs a break from the experiment so he goes off to Cuba for a month. When he returns he finds Brilling has used the ray on himself and has become a future human, with a bulbous head and tentacle limbs. He has joined forces with the plant-men and plans to evolve and unleash the plant life of the world against the animals. Owen and Walton return to the island to stop them.
Edmond Hamilton was fascinated by the Theory of Evolution. He wrote at least a half dozen stories around it. The ray in this story most likely inspired the devolving ray used in Leigh Brackett’s “The Beast Jewel of Mars” (Planet Stories, Winter 1948) twenty-one years later. The two authors were married and worked together on another Hamilton evolution story, The Valley of Creation (1948).
“The Plant Revolt” was first published in Weird Tales, April 1930. Two scientists, Harley and Holm, go to Hartville to discover what is causing all the plants in the world to become ambulatory, shedding their leaves for tendrils. At first the world takes little notice, but eventually the plants combine into large predatory masses that kill and digest animal life.
“Plant masses in hordes, in hundreds, in thousands, that thronged thick in the street before me, that swarmed through all the village. Plant-masses that had gathered in a mass at one place in the street, their numberless tendrils gripping the dead, crushed body of one of the villagers, exuding sticky green fluid upon it. Plant-masses that had swiftly gripped with those tendrils the astounded, half-clad people who had ventured into the street in answer to those wild screams, and who now were themselves screaming as the hordes of plant-things pulled them down…”
Harley escapes the destroyed village of Hartville by climbing the nearby mountain, in search of barren ground. There he discovers Holm, who he had assumed died in the attack, has been captured by Dr. Mandall, a colleague who had disappeared. Mandall has an atomic pile powering a machine deep in the mountain that releases the necessary nutrients into the air that allows the plants to become mobile. Harley tries to free Holm but is knocked out. When he wakes he finds Mandall and Holm fighting to the death. Mandall dies when he ventures too close to a mountainside tree that eats him. The two remaining men destroy Mandall’s machine.
The letters in the Eyrie ranked “The Plant Revolt” number one and “Evolution Island” a close second. E. F. Bleiler dismisses “Evolution Island” as too typical to be interesting, but I think the longer view shows otherwise. Yes, Hamilton’s story is typical Hamilton (in the Wellsian mode that he used in the early days) but what SF writer had written about all plants attacking humankind? The “typical” story before 1930 has a singular plant, often large, that threatens singular people. Hamilton takes things to a Wellsian level. In 1966, in Seekers of Tomorrow, Sam Moskowitz would say: “In the following issue, ‘Evolution Island’, an imaginative tour de force… At the age of 23, Hamilton was off to an auspicious writing start.”
Three years later John B. Harris (the future John Wyndham) would write “Spheres of Hell”, a dry-run for the Triffids, but that novel didn’t come until 1951. So at least until 1947 and Ward Moore’s Greener Than You Think, Hamilton’s story is “the” plant invasion story. I have to wonder if “The Plant Revolt” inspired John Wyndham in any way.
“The Seeds From Outside” (Weird Tales, March 1937) is a short tale about a man named Standifer who discovers two extraterrestrial seeds from a meteor and plants them. One grows into a beautiful green Eve and the other her Adam.
“For where they had curled back at the tips, they disclosed what looked strangely like the tops of two human heads. It was as though two people were enclosed in those sheathing sepals, two people the hair of whose heads was becoming visible as masses of fine green threads, more animal than plant in appearance.”
Standifer talks to the plant woman, falling in love with her, while her brother eyes him evilly. One day, the male plant finishes growing and kills the female in a jealous rage. Standifer makes short work of him with a scythe then gives up gardening for the rest of his life.
This short short is filler of the most forgettable kind. The Eyrie made no mention of the tale. The only interesting thing about it is that Clifford D. Simak would write “Green Thumb” (Galaxy, July 1954) and do little more with it. Gardening just isn’t that cool….
“Alien Earth” is, without doubt, Hamilton’s plant masterpiece. It was so good Isaac Asimov chose it for Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories 11 (1984). Originally appearing in Thrilling Wonder Stories, April 1949, it opens in the jungles of Laos where teak-hunter, Farris, stumbles upon a hanuti, a person who has had their bodily processes slowly to a frighten speed.
His guide brings Farris to the botanical station he is seeking. Farris presents his letter to Monsieur Andre Berreau, asking for help in the harvesting of teak. Along with the Frenchman is his sister, Lys. Berreau has been successful in keeping the Burmese Blight, a gray mold he shows Farris in a test tube, from infecting the jungle.
When Farris is ready to find workers to gather teak, Andre goes missing. He is found, motionless, a victim of the hanuti drug, a green, super-concentrated chlorophyll. Farris and Lys take him to the cabin but must watch him constantly as he slowly tries to escape.
Once out of the trance, days later, Andre explains that the locale shaman gave him the drug as a reward for stopping the Blight. As a biologist, the slowing of the mind allows him to see a world no one else experiences, the world of plants. Before, Farris can stop him again, he drugs the others and then injects them with hanuti. Farris and Lys get to see the world in a new way, as day and night fly by:
The great forest that loomed before them was now a nightmare sight. It seethed and stirred with unearthly life — great branches clawing and whipping at each other as they fought for the light, vines writhing through them at incredible speed, a rustling uproar of tossing, living plant-life.
It gets worse when they can hear the telepathic voices of the plants calling to kill them. Farris destroys the jungle with the sample of Burmese Blight he has taken from the station. When the foliage attacks it is Andre who saves them, dying in the rescue attempt. The drug wears off and Farris and Lys leave immediately, never to return. Farris will never harvest another tree.
The nineteen years between “The Plant Revolt” and “Alien Earth” show how Hamilton matured as a writer. Inspired by time-lapsed photography of plants, he finds a new way to enter the world of monstrous plants. No Wellsian invasions but a more personal and human experience.
Hamilton wrote for DC Comics for twenty years but never penned a plant revolt story for Strange Adventures or Superman.
