The Great God

cover art by Brian Salmon

Continuing my Sci Fi story reading project for May 2021, I read "Temple of Han" by Jack Vance. "Temple of Han" was published in the July 1951 issue of Planet Stories. In his story "Overlords of Maxus", Vance depicted a human being (Arman the Otros) as declaring himself to be a god and the editor (Sam Merwin) went as far as to create a blurb saying that the story included a "galactic god". In "Temple of Han", an enterprising Earthman named Kelly gets to meet and "kill" the great god Han.

"Temple of Han" begins with Kelly walking into the "queer dark temple" at North City. The setting is an Earth-like exoplanet in the Magra Taratempos star system, 30 light-years from Earth. In the text of the story, Vance described "salt-crusted mudflats" near the Temple, but Brian Salmon had another idea (see the image to the right on this page).

Kelly vs the god Han with
 some other gods looking on.
Interior art by Herman Vestal

Since "Temple of Han" appeared in Planet Stories, I feel like I was cheated by Vance. "The covers tended to emphasis sex, with pinup-style astrobabes and space princesses embroiled in scenes of derring-do and peril." and Chris Jager added, "At the time of publication, the sexual content contained in Planet Stories was considered risque and explicit." In "Temple of Han", Vance briefly mentions Kelly's love interest, Miss Lynette Mason, and how he would like to see a big green jewel gracing her brown neck, but otherwise in this short story Kelly is too busy for additional concern with the opposite sex. None of the characters in the story is female.

Upon seeing the internal art for "Temple of Han" I began suspecting that Herman Vestal might have been a comic book illustrator. When Planet Stories began as a Sci Fi magazine, there was also Planet Comics. However, as far as I can tell, Vestal did not work for Planet Comics.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original art by Brian Salmon

For "Temple of Han", we are at the frontier of galactic space where Kelly, a computer switchman, works at the astrogation center of a far exoplanet. What does a computer switchman do? We are told nothing about this mystery by Vance, but I imagine it is a job rather like that of a telephone switchboard operator. On a lark, Kelly decides to visit the Temple of Han which is sacred to the local people. While there, he steals a sacred jewel called the "Seven-year Eye".

Long-Range Teleportation. I love teleportation as a plot element in Sci Fi stories, but maybe if a god is involved I shouldn't call it teleportation. As soon as Kelly makes his escape from the Temple, the planet that he is on gets magically teleported into intergalactic space. The god Han is dependent on the Temple of Han for a supply of green jewels (which are obtained by temple monks from the bottom of an 18 mile-deep mine shaft), and now Han is upset by Kelly's theft of the Seven-year Eye. 

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original art by Herman Vestal

As any hero in Planet Stories would do, Kelly fearlessly passes through a magic mirror into the domain of the gods, engages in hand-to-hand combat with Han, wins the fight, and returns home with not just the Seven-year Eye but also two other jewels which he plans to sell for big buck$ to collectors on Earth. Also, the Leader of the gods returns the teleported planet to its original place in the galaxy.

While investigating Planet Comics I was amused to discover that for the 80th anniversary of the original comic book, some new issues had been released in 2020. One of the original characters in Planet Comics was created by Henry Kiefer: a spaceman named Spurt Hammond. Spurt was apparently a defender of the Queen of Venus against the evil King of Mars. I'm glad that Vance did not restrict himself to making stories about planets in our solar system, but Planet Stories may be most famous for continuing the tradition of Sci Fi adventures set on Mars.

Top: 80th year revival of Planet Comics. Bottom: from the original 1940 comic.

inside the water-temple on Mars

I have no idea if editor Jerome Bixby was responsible for publishing "Temple of Han" in Planet Stories. I first discovered Bixby through Star Trek or by reading "The Holes Around Mars". As mentioned here, Bixby was rumored to have investigated Dianetics, but I've found no evidence that he took an interest in it. 

The September 1951 issue of Planet Stories announced that Bixby was no longer editor, but that issue ran his story "Vengeance on Mars!". The story begins with attention focused on a water-temple of Mars where a guardian has been shot, apparently as part of yet another attempt to steal a pair of twin-stones. Bixby tells us that the Martians are getting tired of temple looters. 

The adventures of Captain Spurt Hammond

Bixby has all kinds of "useful" information for his readers such as stating that the setting of his story is a "moon-lit night" (Phobos) with towering cacti growing on the sand dunes. The main character, Hale, arrives at the temple, packing a ray-gun and smoking a cigarette. He must try to talk his old friend Randy (the looter) out of the temple.

I'm surprised that people were still publishing stories in 1951 that read like a John Carter story from 1912. Bixby, like many Sci Fi story tellers, was apparently in love with the idea of canals on Mars. Hale and Randy started out on Mars as farmers, but nothing worked out right for Randy, and now he wants to finance a return trip to Earth with a pair of looted twin-stones. 

Over in Planet Comics, we can see the parallel development of the same corny tradition of silly stories about Mars, Venus and the rest of our Solar System. When Venus is attacked by evil Martians, Spurt comes to the aid of the Queen of Venus (see the image to the left on this page). I'm not sure if I'm more impressed by Spurt's blue miniskirt or the Queen's twin stones that are poking out against the fabric of her red top.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original art by Brian Salmon

Apparently, in "Vengeance on Mars!", the sacred twin-stones represent the two moons of Mars. As silly as "Vengeance on Mars!" is, I have to wonder if it influenced Jack Vance. He later created Nion, the "world of the 19 moons" for his Cadwal Chronicles. The lurking "shadow men" of Nion remind me of the lurking Martians in Bixby's story.

Vance's first novel, Vandals of the Void was written for the kind of young audience that Planet Comics seemed to be catering to. I'm glad that Vance set most of his stories on distant exoplanets rather than fantasy versions of Mars and Venus. In the case of "Temple of Han", I wish Vance had written a sequel about Lynette Mason and what she might do when she gets her hands on the Seven-year Eye. A casual glance at the table of contents for Planet Stories indicates that it was a boys club with an occasional story by female authors like Leigh Brackett or Margaret St. Clair.

interior art by Hank Kass

Planetoid Romance. St. Clair had one clear advantage over many of her fellow authors: she was well educated in the Greek Classics. St. Clair began publishing stories in the Sci Fi magazines at a time when people like Bixby and Ray Bradbury were quite content to continue writing fantasy stories about life on Mars. Her story "The Inhabited Men" treats "planetoids" in much the same way as planets in our Solar System had long been imagined to hold an abundance of life-forms. If there is rock, there must be life, right? We are told that after an emergency stop at a planetoid for spaceship repairs, the crew members of the repaired spaceship are all "inhabited" by alien lifeforms. 

women are writing!

As shown in the image above, some of the aliens get "surgically" removed from the body of a human host. These aliens have an interesting biological life-style when they "inhabit" a host body. They can convert radiation into sugar, so the infected humans become uninterested in eating. Pushing the fantasy to full gear, St. Clair tells her readers that these plant-like alien parasites from the planetoid are intelligent and speak good English. They even get lines of dialog in the story! This got me thinking about Howard Treesong and the multiple "personalities" that seem to inhabit his body (see Vance's The Book of Dreams).

In the cave. Interior art by Vincent Napoli (1949)

Speaking English must provide a great evolutionary advantage for creatures living on airless planetoids and waiting for human hosts to come along.

Apparently St. Clair (born 1911) tried her hand at other types of writing before she discovered the Sci Fi magazines. According to the ISFDB her first speculative fiction story was published in 1946. I was intrigued by the title of her 1949 story "The Hierophants". "The Hierophants" begins with an emergency landing of a spaceship (the Lyra) on an asteroid. Soon enough, the human passengers of the spaceship are in the tight pickle shown in the image to the left. St. Clair tells us that this asteroid is made of old lava, so there are plenty of lava caves.

The Planet Stories dress code: miniskirts in space.

Doll from Nowhere (see).

Zeno and the art of spaceship repair. I must confess to being disappointed by the spacesuit style that was used for interior art accompanying "The Hierophants" (image shown above, drawn by Vincent Napoli). 😞 I thought it was well known that women in space always wear as little clothing as possible (even when on icy asteroids) and show plenty of skin. The usual attire is mini-skirts and pointed bikini tops, the sight of which (by union rules) can't be obscured by spacesuits. 👙 

The crew of the Lyra consists of "the girl" and "the man" who are headed for Aphrodition. Although "the man" calls "the girl" by the endearing terms "kid" and "baby", we eventually learn that her name is Nais, a name derived from the Greek river nymphs. Yes, St. Clair had a masters degree in Greek Classics, so be prepared for Greek immersion. Right there on the first page of the story we learn about Omega power™.

Green Queen

The repairs of Lyra are facilitated by the fact that this lonely asteroid already has another disabled spaceship on its surface. Nais must scavenge the "lateral coils" from the derelict spaceship (Star Rover) for use in the Omega power engines of Lyra. 

Not only do future spaceships have Omega power, they also have other technological wonders including handy gravity control devices. When Nais must stroll across the surface of the asteroid from Lyra to the Star Rover, she simply adjusts her spacesuit's built-in "anti-gravs" and she instantly experiences one g of gravity. 

Yet, in this Hi Tek™ future, once Nais is inside Star Rover, she finds and reads the hand-written (on paper) ship's logs. Poor Nais also finds the crumbly body of the 30-years-dead crewman of the Star Rover. 

In the Ekcolir Reality
Original cover art by Allen Anderson

You'll have to read "The Hierophants" to learn what Nais found on the asteroid; I'm not sure that the hideous creature drawn by Vincent Napoli conforms to the text of the story. St. Clair describes the residents of the asteroid as being "creatures of pure energy".

As St. Clair tells the tale, judging from what was previously found in an archeological dig on Venus, a dying race of humanoids native to the planet Venus already had a long history of interactions with the asteroidal Hierophants. Now it is the time for we humans to begin interacting with these "energy beings". I'm not sure which bothers me more, building the plot of a story around magic crystals or beings of "pure energy". Oh well, such are the standard tools of Planetoid Romance and Galactic Fantasy.

original cover art by Henry Van Dongen

Like Vance's "Brain of the Galaxy", I'll label "Temple of Han" as Galactic Fantasy, just one slight step up from the Planetary Romances like "Vengeance on Mars!" Why did the "god" Han need green crystals? Vance tells us that Han wears a green jewel embedded in his neck. During his fist fight with Han, Kelly rips the magical crystal out of Han's neck and the "god" disintegrates.

In his attempt to get published in Astounding, Vance had to depict his World-Thinker as a space alien. Writing for Planet Stories, Vance did not have to be bothered with small details like having the "gods" in "Temple of Han" make sense. 

In the Ekcolir Reality. (original art)

The super-powerful "gods" (such as Han) who can teleport people and planets across the galaxy can't defeat a single bumbling human, Kelly. I wish Vance had taken the time to turn Han into an alien. In any case, as disappointing as "Temple of Han" was for me as a science fiction fan, I still love the idea of moving planets around the galaxy, so I imagine that the Phari assembled Alastor Cluster over the course of 2,000,000,000 years by bringing together in one place all the star systems of the galaxy where human-like species evolved.

interior art by Vincent Napoli

While I was inside the April 1949 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories, I read "Quest of the Starhope" by Leigh Brackett. I'm a sucker for stories that include telepathy and "Quest of the Starhope" quickly introduces readers to Butch, a tiny telepath from Venus. In the image to the left, you can see Butch clinging to the neck of Quintal, a human who makes money and seeks fame by searching the Solar System for items to take back to Earth and $ell.

Chicken People of Mars. Quintal and Butch are searching Mars and they find the half-burried city of an ancient Martian civilization that had the secret of "antigravity metal". However, Quintal can't defeat the the remnants of an ancient Martian race, the winged "People of the Sky". I'd label this story as Planetary Romance, except Planetary Horror seems more fitting. 😒

Next: Vance and aliens in 1951 - the Dicantrops.

See also: Chapter 11 of "Meet the Phari".

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