Strange Old Worlds

Interior art for "The Pillows".
On Eschaton. "Toots" the hexapod (right).

Back in April, I read the stories that were assembled by Groff Conklin in his anthology called Great Science Fiction by Scientists. Having recently been underwhelmed by the aliens in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, I began searching for interesting aliens in old science fiction stories from the pulp magazines. Having seen mention of interesting aliens to be found in "The Pillows", a 1950 short story by Margaret St. Clair, I was led to Conklin's 1951 anthology Possible Worlds of Science Fiction. Here in this blog post, I'm going to mine Possible Worlds in search of interesting aliens.

 #1. The End is Near. There, in the image to the right, is the icy asteroid Eschaton. Poor Toots the hexapod hates being taken to Eschaton where he helps find the mysterious native lifeform known as the Pillows. The Pillows, about the size of sand dollars, are warm and cuddly, sort of like Tribbles, yet, paradoxically, they also seem like rocks.

cover art by Fred Gambino

The Pillows of Eschaton would be much more interesting if 1) there was some way to account for their existence and if 2) St. Clair provided an account of how the Pillows were discovered by the intrepid explorers of Interplanetary Novelty Company. However, at the start of the story, the mining of Pillows is in full swing and nobody at Interplanetary Novelties asks questions about the magical ability of the Pillows to maintain a constant temperature of 44°C... even when they are found stacked like mineral deposits under the frozen surface of Eschaton.

 Mr. Science. Nobody, that is, except Kent from the laboratory. He has experimented on Pillows in the lab where they don't stay hot, but instead always cool down to room temperature when under scientific observation. Puzzled both by the inexplicable thermodynamics of the Pillows and the unquestioning attitude of all the other Company employees (who robotically say, "Oh well, they're just novelties," when asked about the Pillows), now Kent is off to Eschaton to see for himself the origin of the Pillows. 

Spock telepathically links to the Horta.

 Truffle Hunting. Soon after arriving on Eschaton, the crew of the spaceship Tryphe has soon stuffed all cargo compartments full of a million newly-mined Pillows and they are ready to return to Earth. Strangely, while on Eschaton, the crew of the S.S. Tryphe found a dead scientist, frozen solid. When Kent asks if there will be an investigation into the man's death, nobody seems interested. In fact, while on Eschaton and mining Pillows, the entire crew seems to exist in a hypnotic daze, unconcerned about anything. Only Toots the hexapod complains (continually) while being used as a Pillow detector and Kent, as a scientist, can't stop wondering about the many unexplained mysteries of the Pillows.

Alien Invasion. Yes, "The Pillows" is an alien invasion story. The Pillows have telepathic powers in addition to their ability to withstand an atom blaster and defy the laws of thermodynamics. 

 Figure 0. In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original cover art by Earle Bergey
and Rudolph Belarski.

I've long been puzzled by Asimov's Solarians who had been genetically engineered so as to have "transducer lobes" which gave them the magical ability to gather geothermal energy and use that collected energy to power their robots (see Foundation and Earth). I wonder if Asimov was influenced by St. Clair's story about "Pillows". The Pillows remind me of the Horta from Star Trek. The ancient Greeks, who had no understanding of the cellular and molecular basis of life, developed the idea that living things could spontaneously generate inside mineral deposits. I wonder if either St. Clair or Gene Coon (who is credited with creating the Horta) had any significant science education. Apparently not, so they both went right ahead and created complex fictional creatures "living" inside solid rock. I put "living" in quotes because nobody has ever caught the Pillows reproducing. Spock was able to communicate telepathically with the Horta, illustrating the utility of keeping a few telepathic Vulcans around while you explore the galaxy.

Oona the modern housewife.

St. Clair depicted the Pillows as being rock-like lumps, but with the magical ability to not only control human thought patterns, but also the ability to quickly freeze into a lump of ice any human who started suspecting that the Pillows were taking control of human minds.

I like to imagine that in another Reality, the Ekcolir Reality (Figure 0), there were many female science fiction story writers who had a strong science education and who wrote somewhat different stories than their analogues in our Reality. Two of St. Clair's early science fiction stories (published in 1947) were her first two Oona and Jick tales. In those fine days before viagra, in order to put some zip into her husband Jick, Oona buys and deploys a Henderson's Vitalizer (see "The Soma Racks"). 

St. Clair's autobiographical blurb in 1947. (mss.)

And in "Super Whost", Oona gets suckered into buying 10 large packages of Super Whost™ in an attempt to enter a contest and win a prize. However, Super Whost is chronometrized carbohydrate, which means it only lasts a short time on the shelf before disintegrating. Ah, the travails of the housewife of the future. I'm not going to complain about the silliness of the Oona and Jick stories or "The Pillows". Writing for her introduction to readers in the March 1947 issue of Startling Stories, St. Clair emphasized the fact that she had fun writing her Sci Fi stories.

interior art for "Not Final!"

 #2. Sometimes you just have to laugh. To justify not judging St. Clair's Sci Fi stories too harshly, we need look no further than Isaac Asimov's 1941 story "Not Final!" that was originally published in the October 1941 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction and also collected by Conklin in Possible Worlds of Science Fiction. 

As I've previously discussed in this blog, when Asimov began writing Sci Fi, he adopted the standard idea that every planet in the Solar System would be found to have human-like creatures living there. For "Not Final!", Asimov imagined life on the "surface" of Jupiter. "Not Final!" gets off to a bad start with interior art by William Kolliker showing two people on the surface of Ganymede (average temperature -160C) wearing what looks like scuba diving equipment. But relax; Asimov assures his readers that these protective suits worn on Ganymede are electrically heated.

A force field generator being tested (see).

 Force fields. Last year, I blogged about Asimov's 1951 story called "Breeds There a Man... ?" in which Earthlings developed a force field that was designed to provide protection against nuclear bombs. I have to wonder if Asimov was influenced by "The Pillows" when he wrote "Breeds There a Man... ?". For "Not Final!", Asimov imagined that there were lifeforms living "on"  Jupiter who would only be able to travel through outer space if they could devise a super-strong spaceship hull able to contain the extremely high pressure gas that they normally lived in.

Moon Tobacco!

Asimov expected his readers in 1941 to accept the idea that the surface of Ganymede was covered with plants. Now, Asimov grew up in New York City, so it is no surprise that he knew nothing about agriculture, but his idea that the nitrogen-fixing plants of Ganymede were harvested and shipped to Earth as fertilizer is a tad hard to swallow. Asimov was fixated on tobacco, and he insisted that tobacco grown on Ganymede "has terrestrial tobacco beat hollow". I suppose each tobacco plant growing on the surface of Ganymede was also electrically heated.

 The Jovian Problem. In "Not Final!", the Evil™ people of Jupiter are intent on ruling the Solar System. As Asimov put it: "They intend to destroy us. That's all we know and all we need to know!" Never mind that everything known about the people of Jupiter comes from a few snippets of coded signals exchanged between humans on Ganymede and the unseen alien life-form on Jupiter. 

"Men, if you can get this stove pipe to work
then I'll let you take off those silly hats."

The entire scenario in "Not Final!" is quite similar to the "plot" that was used in "Balance of Terror"; we've never seen the Evil™ enemy, but we must kill them before they kill us! Until now, the Jovians have been trapped on Jupiter because no material exists that would make spaceship walls hard enough to prevent a Jovian spaceship from exploding. This assumes that the Jovians (who have atomic power) are too stupid to make a robotic spaceship that would not need to contain a high-pressure atmosphere like that on the "surface" of Jupiter. In any case, what if the Jovians make a SuperDuper™ force field that can hold their spaceships together?

Possible Worlds

 Strengthen the Force Field, Hal. Hard at work in his laboratory on Ganymede is Dr. Prosser, exploring the upper limits for force field strength. He concludes that it will be impossible to make a force field that is strong enough to allow the Jovians to send spacecraft off Jupiter and into outer space. Prosser insists that his theoretical analysis of the upper limit for force field strength is the final word on the issue. But just then, Hal Tuttle arrives at Ganymede in the newly constructed spaceship Transparent that uses force fields for walls, not metal. Hal has found a way to make force fields as strong as you want, so Prosser's claimed solution to the Jovian problem is NOT FINAL. In a sense, Asimov's "Not Final!" is little more than a technological gizmo story. At the same time, it is also a silly alien invasion story and we readers are forced to conclude that eventually the Evil™ Jovian's will be able to make powerful force fields, travel off of Jupiter and go to war with the humans of Earth. 😱

hard luck force field? Figure 1.

Eventually, Asimov began giving serious thought to the planetary conditions that would allow for life and he stopped writing science fiction stories about intelligent natives on Mars, Venus and Jupiter. But if Asimov must be forgiven for silly stories about biologically impossible fictional lifeforms, then I must also hold my nose and accept Margaret St. Clair's "Pillows" of Eschaton.

 #3. No, that's not really a force field saving the life of Magnus Ridolph in Jack Vance's story "Hard Luck Diggings" (Figure 1). Since I've previously discussed all of Vance's stories that feature galactic trouble-shooter Magnus Ridolph, I'll not say very much here in this blog post about "Hard Luck Diggings" and its inclusion in Conklin's Possible Worlds of Science Fiction. 

brainy Talosian

I will say that Vance was one Sci Fi author who was not restricted to depicting intelligent aliens as being like Earthly animals. Vance had starring roles for plants in several of his stories. If you imagine intelligence to be a magical substance that is present in some lifeforms, then why not imagine intelligent plants? 

However, in my case, as a biologist, I do object to Sci Fi story tellers who imagine intelligent lifeforms randomly appearing in the form of assorted plants, rocks and even nebulae. Intelligence depends on information processing and information processing requires some kind of physical memory storage system. The brains of animals are the best such information storage and processing systems that evolved on Earth. There is no reason to suppose that plants, rocks or nebulae would ever become intelligent. After centuries of crafting magical fantasy stories about talking animals and sentient broomsticks, many misguided folks have brought magical fantasy aliens into their science fiction tales. 😖

Before departing from the October 1941 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, I must comment on "Manic Perverse" by Winston K. Marks. Having read Asimov's story about force fields in that issue I felt obligated to investigate the Marks "force fields", one preventing suicide and another preventing murder.

 Figure 2. The brain field of man!

Shown to the right (Figure 2) is the "explanation" for human immortality in the futuristic world of "Manic Perverse". According to Marks, the human brain produces an electrostatic field that can be modulated by microwaves. The insurance company that controls the future planet Earth has put in place the "apandemic field" which constantly and automatically prevents brain synapses from functioning to support suicidal thought. 

I've previously commented on the pseudo-science "theory" that brains have "thought vibrations" that might be controlled or guided by an external, machine-generated wave. Mary Wright envisioned a "thought transmitter" that could place good, healthy socialist thoughts into people's brains. 

cover art by Virgil Finlay

When imagining his planet-wide thought-control "field", Winston Marks was not quite as ambitious as was Wright. Winston's futuristic microwave transmitters were specifically tuned so as to prevent just a few specific thought patterns, leading to practical immortality for the people of Earth. 

One of the more bizarre plot elements in "Manic Perverse" was the idea that the upper atmosphere somehow creates an impenetrable barrier for humans, apparently trapping Humanity on Earth. When every other science fiction story teller was enthusiastically writing stories about space travel, I'm tempted to label Winston Marks as being manic perverse when he decided to write and publish a science fiction story suggesting that space travel is impossible due to a Sciensy™ barrier at the top of the atmosphere.

cover art by Boris Vallejo

 #4. Vega. Should we question Conklin's decision to include in Possible Worlds the story "Second Night of Summer" by James H. Schmitz? As described here, "Second Night of Summer" is part of a series of stories called Agents of Vega and it could be argued that Conklin should have anthologize the first story in the Vega series rather than "Second Night of Summer". The first story, "Agent of Vega" has the distinct advantage of starting out like a James Bond movie. In place of James Bond as a secret agent on Earth, "Agent of Vega" features Zone Agent Iliff, who ranges the galaxy dealing with threats to King and Country.

For "Agent of Vega", the equivalent of the "Bond girl" is a beautiful alien named Pagadan (see the image to the right for the hyper-sexual 1982 version of Pagadan). Pagadan looks quite human, but she is a Lannai with impressive telepathic abilities. I would not be surprised to learn that Gene Roddenberry based his character Spock on Pagadan and the Lannai.

1949 interior art by Quackenbush

Schmitz had the Confederacy of Vega, but Roddenberry had the Federation of Planets for Star Trek. 

I'd be interested to know how much Jack Vance was influenced by Schmitz's agents of Vega. Was Vance's character Ifness named in honor of Zone Agent Iliff?

Iliff and Pagadan stumble upon a devious alien invasion: an alien force, the Evil™ Ceetal. Originated from beyond our galaxy, the Ceetal are in the process of infiltrating hundreds of worlds in our galaxy and using their great mental powers to take control of the helpless populations of entire star systems.

a cubical Quizzer

The human Agents of Vega are not helpless when confronted by the Ceetal. Humans have various HiTek™ devices such as the Quizzer (image to the right) which can probe into the minds of criminals and assorted evil-doers. Also in use are a Vegan mind-lock™ and a telepath transmitter that agents like Iliff can use to keep in contact with Confederacy H.Q. even across vast interstellar distances. If you like space opera gadgets then you'll like all of the robots, shields, tractor beams and other devices deployed by Iliff.

However, poor Pagadan gets deployed like any other piece of equipment and ends up being subjected to a form of telepathic psychological torture. She is mentally abused and assaulted until she is almost broken, but in the end she has helped Iliff defeat the Evil™ Ceetal. I don't enjoy Schmidtz's brand of contrived story which seems aimed at putting beautiful women or children in harms way in order to generate "thrills".

text from "Second Night of Summer"

 Trickster from Treebel. I really have to wonder how much "Second Night of Summer" influenced the writing of Jack Vance. The setting for "Second Night of Summer" is shown in the text snippet to the left on this page. This sounds exactly like the galactic setting for many Vance stories such as his Durdane series. In 1968, Vance even provided a blurb that was printed on the back of one of Schmitz's novels, so we have reason to believe that Vance was reading at least some of the works of Schmitz.

Grandma and alien side-kicks

In addition to the secret agent "Grandma" (she's human), "Second Night of Summer" features a talking alien "rhinocerine pony" from the planet Treebel and a telepathic pet lortel (see the small, monkey-like creature on Grandma's shoulder in the image to the right).  

It would be interesting to know when Schmitz wrote "Second Night of Summer". Maybe this story was written before "Agent of Vega" but could not be sold to Campbell. Maybe with the proliferation of new Sci Fi magazines such as Galaxy in the 1950s, "Second Night of Summer" finally got published long after it was written.

In any case, Grandma uses her ability to control the emotional state of her pony and thus trick some alien invaders and lure them into a trap.

agent Trigger Argee

Grandma's mission on the back-water world called "Noorhut" is as much concerned with recruiting into the secret service a young boy, Grimp, as it is the typical space opera task of defeating Evil Alien Invaders™, the Halpa.

Not all of Schmitz's secret galactic agents had to be sexy young women like Pagadan, Trigger Agree or Telzey Amberdon. She's no spring chicken, but Grandma has the right stuff; she ruthlessly eliminates all the alien invaders on Noorhut by efficiently incinerating them. "Second Night of Summer" features the same sort of "plot" that was used in "Balance of Terror"; humans have been at war with the Halpa for a thousand years, and so when the Halpa begin their latest incursion on Noorhut, the defenders of the galaxy, including Grandma, expect the worst, and are prepared for it. At the end of the story, Grandma is expecting Grimp to take over her duties in the not too distant future, after she retires.

Grandma cooks the Halpa

 Home Cooking With Grandma. A critical part of Grandma's preparations for defeating the Evil Alien Invaders™ is positioning the young boy Grimp where he can be used as a kind of biological detection device which identifies the precise time when Grandma should incinerating the aliens. The Halpa are sneaking into Noorhut via some mysterious extra-dimensional portal that must be slammed shut at just the right moment because... plot. Since Grimp sleeps through the massacre of the Halpa, "Second Night of Summer" is probably the least offensive of the Schmitz "psi powers" stories that was available for Groff Conklin to anthologize.

image source

 #5. Another story that was collected in Possible Worlds is "Proof", originally published by Hal Clement in 1942. I've previously commented extensively on "Proof" back in January of this year, so I won't say more here about Clement's imagined lifeforms composed of neutronium.

 #6. Also in Possible Worlds is "Contagion" by Katherine MacLean. I previously discussed "Contagion" and since it does not include any aliens, I'll move on.

 #7. One more story in Possible Worlds that I've previously discussed is "Limiting Factor" by Clifford D. Simak. "Limiting Factor" fails to provide a first contact story with aliens, but it is a type of alien archeology story featuring the remnants of an alien culture that seem to consist almost entirely of a gigantic computer system. Sadly, the age of computer miniaturization eventually undermined Simak's vision of planet-scale computers.

Grandma (upper left), the lortel (bottom right)

 Of these first 7 stories (#1-7, above) from Possible Worlds, which provides readers with the most interesting aliens? I'm strongly attracted to Simak's mysterious aliens who seemed to have a fetish for building computers (#7), but sadly we readers never get to meet those long-extinct computer-savy aliens. 😖

The killer plant-like aliens of "Hard-Luck Diggings" (#3, above on this page), Asimov's high-pressure Jovians in "Not Final!" (#2), Clement's neutronium aliens in "Proof" (#5) and the telepathic rock creatures in "The Pillows" by Margaret St. Clair (#1) all strike me as biological absurdities.

original cover art by Bob Eggleton

I'll give Vance a break: maybe his aliens only look like plants. However, Vance's murderous plant-like aliens win no awards from me. 

 A Second Chance for Vega. The armor-plated "pony" from Treebel gets far more lines of dialogue, but I'm most intrigued by the alien lortel who is given to Grimp by the scheming Grandma in "Second Night of Summer". The lortel is telepathic, and as Grimp's companion the alien lortel will be able to test and develop Grimp's telepathic abilities, preparing him to eventually become an interstellar agent of Vega. I don't know if Schmitz ever provided a fictional science explanation for telepathy in his stories, but I get the idea that Schmitz adopted the assumption that humans have some latent telepathic abilities that can be developed with practice and amplified by technology. After reading "Second Night of Summer", I'd like another story expanding on the telepathic abilities of the lortel.

genetically engineered telepath
Should you bring a knife
to a telepathy fight?

Towards the end of "The Lion Game", Schmitz hinted that Telzey is a genetic mutant with telepathic abilities similar to the Alattas, a telepathic human variant that arose through genetic engineering.

green aliens helping Telzey

Included in "The Lion Game" (an amusing review) are quite a few alien species, but many of them do not have telepathic abilities and they are forced to act like slaves of telepaths. For the cover of the August 1971 Analog Science Fiction, Kelly Freas illustrated one such type of "telepathic puppet" alien; these two green-skinned aliens are helping care for Telzey after she has been assaulted by a crazed Evil Telepath™. With Schmitz's focus on "psi powers", any aliens who lack telepathic abilities don't get much attention in the story. 😒

Figure 3. Let's torture Telzey...

I only skimmed through most of "The Lion Game" because I was not entertained by the disgusting child abuse that is offered up by Schmitz (see Figure 3). In the image shown to the right, that's a crazed Evil Telepath™ (one of these genetically-engineered giant telepaths is referred to as "Bozo the Beast" in the story) viciously assaulting poor 15-year-old Telzey after she has been used as bait by the scheming Klayung, a high-ranking executive of the Psychology Service. 

Telzey falls into a trap that has been laid for her and she then spends most of the story trying to survive. The whole contorted plot of "The Lion Game" seems designed by Schmitz as an excuse to heap abuse on Telzey, with our heroine ultimately "enjoying" a bath in the blood of the top "beast" in the story. 😝

Thriller - 1961

 SIHA. As I go through the stories from Possible Worlds of Science Fiction I'm going to be watching for television shows and films that were based on the works of story writers like Margaret St. Clair. SIHA is my annual Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens. 

First example; in the July 1950 issue of Weird Tales was the Greek mythology story "Mrs. Hawk", short and sweet as spiced doughnuts, clocking in at only 4 pages. Later, television had the rather bloated one-hour-long Thriller episode "The Remarkable Mrs. Hawk".

interior art by Vincent Napoli

Ever since I saw "Who Mourns for Adonais?", I've liked the idea of "ancient astronauts", alien visitors to Earth during the far past. In Star Trek, we were asked to believe that figures from Greek mythology such as Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite, Hera, Hermes, and Artemis might have been alien visitors to Earth. If so, then why not also Circe? 

Having been published in Weird Tales, "Mrs. Hawk" seems like fantasy, but maybe in an alternate Reality the story would have been written as science fiction with a technological explanation for how to quickly and dramatically transform the physical appearance of Mrs. Hawk's victims... and even better, a reason may have been provided for her apparent immortality.

Mickey and Austin before Scully and Mulder.

 Probe. Speaking of alternate Realities, it is an amusing fantasy to imagine that Isaac Asimov actually helped write "Plan 10 from Outer Space". Asimov is listed by IMDB as a writer for this episode of Probe, but I'm skeptical. More about the show here. I love the idea that a prolific author such as Asimov or Truman Smith III might have been "fed" story ideas by an alien being, or his time-traveling copy.

Lost TV shows of the past: "Pictures Don't Lie" by Katherine MacLean for Out of This World. (original story) and "Beach Head" by Clifford D. Simak for Out of the Unknown (original 1951 story).

Beach Head

 What, no Aliens?: "Research Alpha" by James H. Schmitz was filmed as a 1998 episode of Welcome to Pardox.

Honorable Mention: NBC radio "The Potters of Firsk" - Dimension X

Related Reading: the 2022 SIHA

Next: more stories from Possible Worlds...

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