“The Raider of the Spaceways” is an odd debut in Science Fiction. It wasn’t Henry Kuttner’s first story (his nineteenth) but it was his first SF tale. What makes it so odd is, first, that it appeared in Weird Tales (July 1937), and secondly, that it was such a poor first time out. You have to remember Kuttner’s second tale (in any professional magazine) was the horror classic “The Graveyard Rats” (Weird Tales, March 1936), a Lovecraftian tour-de-force. That story credit haunted Kuttner for his entire career. “Raider” was not cut from the same cloth.
Sam Moskowitz in Seekers of Tomorrow (1961), after dressing Kuttner down for being an acolyte of H. P. Lovecraft because he “imitated Lovecraft’s imitation of Lord Dunsany!”, states that “When the Earth Lived” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1937) may have been written before “Raider” but the Weird Tales space opera appeared first. Moskowitz says:
In Raider of the Spaceways, Kuttner used Stanley G. Weinbaum’s Lotus Eaters as a model. In The Lotus Eaters, a male and female adventurer discover an intelligent talking plant in the twilight zone of Venus. In Raider of the Spaceways, a male and female adventurer discover an intelligent talking plant in the twilight zone of Venus. Kuttner gave it “his own” twist, however: Weinbaum’s plant was friendly, Kuttner’s wasn’t.
Imitating Weinbaum and his style of planetary travelogue is not surprising. Since Weinbaum’s “A Martian Odyssey” (Wonder Stories, July 1934), three years earlier, Weinbaum had been Science Fiction’s fair-haired boy. His early death in 1936, much as the passing of Robert E. Howard (and his Sword & Sorcery) and H. P. Lovecraft (his brand of cosmic horror), left fans and fellow writers waiting to see who would pick up the torch.
Kuttner was not to be that person. His path to SF fame was quite arduous. His early horror and shudder pulp tales, comic books, and Spicy stories as well as Mystery and Adventure sales, left him with a tarnished reputation that drove him to using pseudonyms. In 1942 he would take his place among the stars of John W. Campbell’s Golden Age, when several popular pen names were revealed to be none other than Hank Kuttner and his wife of two years, C. L. Moore. But Science Fiction redemption was still four long years away, and Kuttner was just taking his first steps with “Raider of the Spaceways”.
The plot of “Raider” is familiar to anyone who read SF Pulps such as Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories or the Clayton Astounding Stories of Super-Science. A space pirate known only as “The Raider” comes to Venus to steal the annual Elysia crop. Elysia is a rare plant extract that can cure most psychosis. Dal Kentworth and Thona Trenton are two Elysia collectors who get kidnapped by the pirate, partly because Dal is the son of the powerful Earth president. (In Anthony Gilmore’s space Western “Hawk Carse” (Astounding, November 1931) , pirates steal the valuable crop of Phanti horns.)
To evade capture the heroes flee to the darkside of Venus, a planet that doesn’t rotate. This dark half is entirely unknown as no one has ever returned from there. Dal notices a telepathic vibration on the darkside of this barren world. Thona feels it too. The duo decides to head for the Twilight Zone, avoiding the Raider. Now, we begin our Weinbaumian travelogue at last.
Immediately after starting they encounter a weird tree-like creature. Just beyond it is a large parent tree. Dal and Thona communicate with it using telepathy. The tree explains that all life not rooted to the ground goes to the blue light, drawn by a telepathic call. Despite this friendly warning, the tree grabs both humans, trying to suck their blood. Dal defeats the plant by flashing bright light into its weird plant eyes. Being a darkside creature, it can’t endure the illumination.
The duo escape the tree but the bright light betrays them to the Raider, who is about to recapture them when the distant call from the blue light becomes unbearable. First his crew, then the Raider and his two captives, all walk off under the control of the call. The Raider and his henchman Arn recognize the caller, a gigantic single-celled organism they had encountered in a smaller form on Mars. The humans are powerless to stop the caller from consuming the martian Vakka and then Arn.
Dal saves Thona by stunning her with a ray gun, then himself, at least for a while. Lying on the ground, Dal sees the Raider defying the will of the monster but eventually being consumed as well. The giant amoeba explodes. The Raider had been wearing his money belt filled with Elysia, a dose of chemical emotion of enormous size. The monster is destroyed by a blast of emotion too large for any creature to survive. Dal and Thona return to the Raider’s ship and escape the darkside.
In Moskowitz’s opinion this story is inferior to Weinbaum’s “The Lotus Eaters”. I know it is a matter of taste, but I prefer Kuttner’s tale, with its more sinister villain, inspired no doubt by Clark Ashton Smith’s “The City of the Singing Flame” (Wonder Stories, July 1931) than the sequel to “A Martian Odyssey”. The killer plant monster that attacks them first certainly came from that Weinbaum story but “The Lotus Eaters” (Astounding Stories, April 1935) is a static piece with little to recommend it. Kuttner’s story on the other hand is more Lovecraftian (which Moskowitz would not consider a plus) and Smithian (CAS had his own brand of weird SF that appeared in Gernsback’s magazine between 1930-1933.)
This type of SF/Horror can be found in classics HPL like “At the Mountains of Madness” (that was published in Astounding Stories, February March April 1936) and Smith’s “The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis” (Weird Tales, May 1932). Moskowitz and other critics would not call these good SF (despite the fact that even John W. Campbell would write one classic example, “Who Goes There?” (Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1938). Kuttner is in good company. The horrific content was obviously sufficient for Farnsworth Wright to publish it in Weird Tales. I don’t know if Henry submitted it to any SF mags (probably) but it ended up in WT.
This story did not spawn a rash of Kuttner space travelogues. That torch was passed to Arthur K. Barnes and his Gerry Carlyle series for Thrilling Wonder Stories, though Kuttner did co-write “The Energy Eaters” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, October 1939) and “The Seven Sleepers” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, May 1940) in that series. By 1940 the whole Weinbaum style tale was getting old. SF writers pressed on, Kuttner along with the rest, still pumping out Mythos horror, Sword & Sorcery, thrilling adventures, Spicy detectives and the occasional SF tale. His day would come…
A weird side note. The term “spaceways” was coined by C. L. Moore in “Shambleau” the first Northwest Smith tale (Weird Tales, November 1933). The word became common property among Science Fiction writers, especially those of the more adventurous type, to denote the rough frontier of space. (You know the kind you see in Star Wars.) Henry Kuttner would marry the woman who gave us that term.
Another weird side note. When Marvel Comics adapted “A Martian Odyssey” for Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction Giant Size Special (1976) it bore a cover by Don Newton that didn’t really fit the Weinbaum story. That image of space explorers facing a tentacular alien does work as a version of “Raider of the Spaceways”.
Next time…Edmond Hamilton
