I’ve been reading stories by Murray Leinster, whose real name was Will F.
Jenkins, for more than 50 years. I’m sure some of his stories were in various
science fiction anthologies I read in junior high and high school. His novella “The
Man in the Iron Cap” is the lead story in this issue of STARTLING STORIES. I’d
barely started reading it when I came across this gut-punch of a passage:
The world, of course, was bright and new and shining on its sunlit side, and
restful and peaceful and secure where night clothed it. In the countries where
the sun shone men and women worked and children played and where the stars
looked down they slept quietly.
But all assured themselves that they were secure. They were perfectly,
perfectly safe. The world was made safe by Security, which was an organization
of quite the wisest men on earth. They were at once the greatest scientists and
the most able administrators. They had the welfare of everybody in mind.
They had begun, of course, by forbidding anybody to experiment with atom bombs
because the human race could be wiped out by so few of them. They could make
all the earth's atmosphere poisonously radioactive. Then everybody would die.
But Security prevented that.
And presently it forbade the use of atomic energy as such in any form because,
of course, any generator of atomic power makes radioactivity which may escape
into the air. Not long after that, the wise men of Security learned that
someone had been experimenting with germs and by accident had created a new and
very deadly mutation.
It could have been used in biological warfare, but also it could have released
a new and very deadly plague upon the world. So Security forbade experiments
with germs. And still later a physicist discovered the principle of a very tiny
generator which developed incredibly high voltages. Beams of deadly radiation
became possible. So Security had to take steps to protect the world from that.
Security was very wise and very conscientious. It did not stop all scientific
advance, of course. Its scientists experimented very carefully, in especially
set-up Experimental Zones, with all due care that nothing could happen to
endanger the people of Earth. Which meant, naturally, that they did not make
any very dangerous experiments.
In time Security took a fatherly interest in public health because new plagues
sometimes arise in nature. It issued directives governing quarantine and
medicine in general and, of course, travel by individuals because individuals
are sometimes disease carriers. And presently it was inevitable that Security
should give advice on education, and arrange that technical knowledge should be
restricted to stable personalities.
In a complex modern civilization a single paranoiac could cause vast damage if
he were technically informed. So presently everybody took psychological tests,
and those who received technical educations were strictly licensed by Security.
Then libraries were combed and emptied of dangerous facts that lunatics could
use to the detriment of mankind.
The people of Earth were very secure. They were protected against everything
that Security could imagine as happening to them. But they weren’t free any
longer. The tragedy was that many of the guiding minds of Security were utterly
sincere, though there were self-seekers and politicians merely seeking soft
jobs and importance among Security officials.
The guiding minds believed devoutly that they served humanity by using their
greater knowledge and wisdom to protect human beings from themselves. But
somehow, knowing their own motives, they did not see that they had created the
most crushing tyranny ever known to men.
Looking around at our world, that’s chillingly prescient and would keep
this story from being published in any mainstream SF market today. It’s also a
little long-winded and repetitive, which is this story’s main flaw. Leinster
recapitulates what’s going on a lot. Also, the plot depends on several huge
coincidences.
That said, “The Man in the Iron Cap” has some real strengths, too. The
protagonist is a scientist named Jim Hunt, who has been sentenced to life in
prison for unauthorized experiments involving telepathy. He escapes, but then
he stumbles into an alien invasion of telepathic, blood-sucking creatures from
outer space that have taken over a mountainous, rural area and are gradually
expanding into nearby cities. The Little Fellas, as their mind-controlled
victims refer to them, are some of the creepiest villains I’ve ever encountered
in science fiction. This story is really a cross between SF and horror. Leinster
throws in some nice twists, as well, as Jim Hunt tries to figure out a way to
defeat the aliens, and the ending is very satisfying. Leinster expanded this
into a novel called THE BRAIN STEALERS, which was published as half of an Ace SF
Double in 1954. I haven’t read that version and likely never will, but I really
enjoyed “The Man in the Iron Cap” despite the somewhat dated writing.
Wyatt Blassingame was one of the top Weird Menace authors over at Popular, so
it’s no surprise to find him leading off this issue with a novelette called
“The Flame Demon”. I’ve liked everything I’ve read by Blassingame, but
unfortunately, this yarn about a villain calling himself the God of Fire comes
across to me as pretty uninspired. There are some nice action scenes—lots of
big fires, and the protagonist finds himself in a really harrowing position—but
Blassingame seems to have phoned in the muddled plot, which requires quite a
bit of unconvincing exposition in the final pages to explain. I don’t have any way
of knowing, of course, but I suspect that Rogers Terrill at Popular rejected
this story and Harvey Burns, the editor at THRILLING MYSTERY, snapped it up
because of Blassingame’s name recognition in the genre.
“Voice From Hell”, a short story by Jack D’Arcy (really D.L. Champion, creator
of the Phantom Detective), is a Poe-like tale with a clever twist to it about a
murderer tormented by his crime. It’s a slight but enjoyable story and an
improvement over Blassingame’s novelette.
This issue really begins to pick up steam with “Ghouls of the Green Web”, a
novelette from the dependable G.T. Fleming-Roberts. It’s set in a small Kansas
city during the Dust Bowl, one of the few pulp stories I’ve read to use that bit
of real-life history in its plot. Fleming-Roberts does a really nice job with
it, too. The writing is excellent. Fleming-Roberts’ prose can be lurid, over
the top, and genuinely creepy when it needs to be, and then turn around and
achieve a terse, hardboiled, poetic effect. The menace seems a bit more
realistic than some, as well. I really enjoyed this one.
I don’t know anything about James Duncan, author of the novelette “Blood in the
Night” except that his real name was Arthur Pincus and that he wrote dozens of
mystery, detective, and Weird Menace stories for a variety of pulps. His story
in this issue is a bit of a kitchen-sink tale, with a witch’s curse, murders
that appear to have been committed by a vampire, and an old house full of heirs
to a fortune who benefit by knocking each other off, a set-up reminiscent of an
Agatha Christie novel, plus a master detective who is, at least, nothing like
Hercule Poirot. Duncan pulls it all together and makes it work in a reasonably
entertaining fashion.
Likewise, I know very little about Saul W. Paul, author of the short story
“Forest of Fear”. That appears to have been his real name, and he sold about a
dozen stories in the Thirties, mostly to the Spicy pulps. This story, about a
honeymooning young couple who encounter a deadly menace in the woods, is only
borderline Weird Menace and has nothing even apparently supernatural about it,
but it does strike a few nicely creepy notes.
Arthur J. Burks was a million-words-a-year man, so I’m surprised I haven’t read
more by him, only a few stories here and there. His novelette in this issue, “Demons
in the Dust”, is another Dust Bowl yarn, but Burks carries the situation so far
that this story reads more like post-apocalyptic science fiction than Weird
Menace. And as post-apocalyptic SF, it’s not bad, although the plot—the protagonist
and his newlywed wife try to escape from a particularly bad dust storm—is a
little thin. But there’s lots of action and it’s well-written, making for a
bleak but satisfying tale.
H.M. Appel is another author I’m not familiar with, except for seeing on the
Fictionmags Index that he wrote several dozen stories for various Weird Menace
and detective pulps. His short story “Hooks of Death” isn’t really Weird
Menace, either, despite being fairly grisly in places. It’s about a young
highway patrolman’s pursuit of a serial killer stalking a particular stretch of
road. The prose has plenty of momentum and the hero’s background furnishes a
nice twist.
Jack Williamson isn’t a name I expected to encounter in the Table of Contents
in a Weird Menace pulp, but in addition to being one of the giants of science
fiction, Williamson also wrote a considerable amount of fantasy and horror, so
it’s not that much of a stretch. His novelette “Grey Arms of Death” is about
some very Cthulhu-like creatures from the depths of the Atlantic Ocean stalking
some deep-sea explorers and invading a lonely cliffside mansion. I don’t know
if Williamson ever read Lovecraft, but based on this story I feel like there’s
a good chance he did. This is pure Weird Menace, and Williamson, already a very
seasoned pro in 1935, throws himself into the breakneck, lurid prose with great
gusto. This is a fast-moving and very entertaining story, probably my favorite
in the whole issue.
Overall, this issue of THRILLING MYSTERY is a satisfying read, even though some
of the stories don’t fit the Weird Menace genre that well. I have no way of
knowing, but since it was only the second issue, I suspect that the stories by
Duncan, Paul, and Appel were intended originally for POPULAR DETECTIVE or
possibly as back-ups in THE PHANTOM DETECTIVE and were pulled out of inventory
to go in THRILLING MYSTERY. But that’s pure speculation on my part.
The protagonist is young asteroid miner Thad Allen, who leads a lonely existence wandering among the asteroids searching for valuable metals. But then he comes across what appears to be an abandoned space liner and immediately thinks that if he can get it back to Mars and claim it as salvage, he stands to make a lot of money from the discovery. Unfortunately for Thad (and I'm sure you saw this coming), something is still alive on the spaceship, as he discovers after coming across some ominous bloodstains while he's exploring the seemingly deserted corridors. Then there's the coffin-like apparatus containing the body of a beautiful young woman whose fate greatly intrigues Thad. But will he survive long enough to figure out what happened here?
"Salvage in Space" is basically a suspense yarn, and a very good one. The level of tension that Williamson creates in this story reminded me a little of John W. Campbell's "Who Goes There?" "Salvage in Space" isn't quite on that level, but I had a really good time reading it. Williamson leaves one plot point unresolved, which I found a little annoying, but other than that I found it to be a very good story. There's a free e-book version of it available on Amazon, if you don't happen to have a copy of that 1933 pulp sitting around. It was also reprinted in the anthology THE EARLY WILLIAMSON and the Haffner Press volume WIZARD'S ISLE.
