If you missed the last one…
This post is brought to you by Ships of Steel, an anthology of space adventure in the Swords of Fire format. None of the stories are set on Venus but T. Neil Thomas does place his space environment, JoJo Station, next to Jupiter. G. W. Thomas has the crew of the Boudicca crossing the galaxy to a hidden planet where a secret treasure lies buried under the planet’s surface. M. D. Jackson offers a luxury space liner as a place for intrigue and murder to happen. And Jack Mackenzie’s Solis DeLacey returns in “The Price of Redemption”, set on a moon of a planet that threatens to bring the galaxy to all-out war. If you enjoy Space Operas, Space Westerns or just Science Fiction that moves, check out this book.
Donald A. Wollheim collected stories for an anthology called The Hidden Planet in 1959. He used no stories from the 1920s. Despite being an awesome title, the book displays how Science Fiction quickly moved on from the simpler tales of the early Hugo Gernsback era. Almost every story here, outside the Argosy serials, was used by Gernsback. Beginning in 1927, Amazing Stories added Venusian locales to go along with the more popular Martian and terrestrial stuff. When Hugo recreated his Pulp empire with Science Wonder, Venus was there too.
The planet Venus, as we are quite aware today, is a 464 degree Celsius hothouse that could support no life as we know it. The jungle adventures envisioned there are ridiculous but in the early Pulp days, the cloudy curtain concealed the truth and so Fantasy reigned. Edgar Rice Burroughs would not create his planet of Klaangan and Thorian spies until the 1930s, but his imitators, Ralph Milne Farley and Otis Adelbert Kline did a pretty good job of it. Whether transferred by radio waves or exchanging mind with another, Venus offers a paradise of adventure. Burroughs would take Carson Napier there via spacecraft in September 1932, so he will have to wait for the next segments when we break down the 1930s.
“The Radio Man” (Argosy All-Story Weekly June 28- July 19, 1924) by Ralph Milne Farley (Reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, December 1939 January February 1940) This novel serial starts a long-running series with Myles Cabot, a scientist experimenting with radio, sent to Venus by accident. On Venus he discovers the humans there are slaves of giant ants. Using gunpowder, he helps the Cupians (humans) revolt against the Formian (ants). The novel got a comic book adaptation in 1951 by Wally Wood called An Earth Man on Venus.
“The Radio Beasts” (Argosy All-Story Weekly March 21-April 11, 1925) by Ralph Milne Farley (Reprinted in Fantastic Novels, January 1941) This sequel to “The Radio Man” has a palace takeover threatening the newly freed humans. Myles Cabot enlists the giant bees to help him defeat Prince Yuri and his alliance with their old enemies, the Formians. For some reason when the reprinters get going on this series they usually forget the first book and begin with this one. Because of this, The Radio Man is hard to find while The Radio Beasts and The Radio Planet are not.
“The Radio Planet” (Argosy All-Story Weekly, June 26-July 24, 1926) by Ralph Milne Farley (Reprinted in Famous Fantastic Mysteries, April 1942) Cabot returns to Earth to tell of his adventures on Venus then goes back. When he gets back to Venus, he discovers Prince Yuri has taken over along with the Formians. After dealing with the fantastical Whoomangs, animals (including a pterodactyl) with slugs inserted in their heads, he defeats Yuri’s latest coup, bringing the original trilogy to an end. Farley would go on using “Radio” in the titles of more stories that really don’t belong to the planet Venus.
Ralph Milne Farley’s quasi-Burroughsian adventures set the tone for the fiction that will follow. Venus is often seen as a jungle planet from here on in, with giant insects, and later dinosaurs. Even Edgar Rice Burroughs himself will adopt this trope when he brings Carson Napier there in 1932. For more on The Radio Series, go here.
“The Star of Dread Love” (Amazing Stories, May 1927) by Will H. Gray has a ghostly woman from Venus appear on Dr. Joyce’s veranda. She is very intelligent and teaches him Venusian super-science. When she finally materializes, she is only inches tall. Her people, other women from Venus (all the males died out) take her away. Silly, of course, but it lays the foundation for ERB’s use of Tibet telepathy in Pirates of Venus (1932).
“Rice’s Ray” (Amazing Stories, January 1928) by Harry Martin (Harold A. Lower) has Rice discover an anti-grav ray that powers a spacecraft. He and his buddies go to Venus to find it covered in jungle and inhabited by intelligent dinosaurs. The dino-filled Venus has arrived!
‘The Miracle of the Lily” (Amazing Stories, April 1928) by Clare Winger Harris begins by telling of Earth’s history in which plant, insect and humans war against each other. The bugs end up eating all the plants and then the insects die off. Rebirth comes with the finding of new seeds. Communication with Venus brings news of an insect problem there, too. When the Earthmen see the callers, they realize the beetles are on the other end and the insects are humans. Harris was one of the few women writing for Hugo Gernsback. She defined the genres themes in 1931.
“A Flight to Venus” (Amazing Stories, December 1928) by Edwin K. Sloat has Professor Morteshang trying to defraud everyone by pretending to go to Venus in his new rocket. Unfortunately for him, he ends up going to the second planet, has some adventures that are sadly not really described, then returns with a delegation from Venus. Morteshang’s deception is discovered and no one will believe him or the Venusians. He decides to go back to Venus, for he had fallen in love with the beautiful Princess Loama.
“The Space Bender” (Amazing Stories, December 1928) by Edward L. Rementer has a message in a bottle appear. It is from Professor Livermore, a radical experimenter. He has created a machine, his space bender, that allows him to go to Venus via the Fourth Dimension. The planet is ruled by cat people. (They are descended from cats as we are from apes.) Livermore learns all about the cats and their laws. They are ruled by a King Tabi. Livermore expects to fix his broken machine but never returns. One of the first cat aliens, which SF has many. Livermore and his machine echo Wells’s “The Time Machine”.
“The Roger Bacon Formula” (Amazing Stories, January 1929) by Irvin Lester & Fletcher Pratt has a manuscript of Roger Bacon’s that contains the formula for a drug that allows astral travel. The hero of the tale takes the drug and visits Venus and its six-tentacled inhabitants. Night falls, causing the drug to fail. Lightning flashes give him enough energy to return to Earth before they dispose of his body. An odd mix of Science and Sorcery in a Clark Ashton Smith mode.
“The Planet of Peril” (Argosy All-Story Weekly July 20-August 24, 1929) by Otis Adelbert Kline is the first of a trilogy about the hero Grandon. This time, travel to Venus is done with mind-swapping (as Edmond Hamilton would use in his Kaldor and more famous “Star Kings” series.) Grandon finds himself in the body of a slave, so, of course, Burroughsian tale that this is, he escape then leads a rebellion, freeing all slaves. He will eventually get the princess and the empire. Kline would be a little ticked when Edgar Rice Burroughs used Venus for his Carson Napier series, having staked out that planet first. The two men were said to have feuded but there is no evidence of this.
“Venus Liberated” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, July 1929) by Harl Vincent begins with Ralph Prescott going to a shrink because his dreams are driving him mad. Doctor De Polac has a new invention, a dream projector. They watch Ralph’s dream of monsters and princesses to see that it is actually a message from Queen Thalia of Venus. Her people are being conquered by space invaders. Two scientists have developed a vessel for interplanetary travel called the Comet. All concerned fly off and arrive in hours. The Venusians turn out to be seven feet tall and telepathic. The invaders are the Kellonans. The Earthmen, using their superior ship, send the Kellonians packing, follow them to their homeworld and destroy that, too. No Prime Directive here. There was a sequel “Faster Than Light” (Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall-Winter 1932).
“The Onslaught From Venus” (Science Wonder Stories, September 1929) by Frank Philips has Venus destroyed by volcanoes, causing a mass exodus to Earth. The Venusians come as invaders. Our hero and narrator is a member of the Aerial Patrol. He describes how the Venusians fight but lose to cool Earth minds. The Venusians are white-skinned with thin lips and orange hair. Otherwise, human in appearance. They have ray projectors, magnetic shields that bounce bombs and mushroom-shaped aircraft. Obviously riffing off of H. G. Wells, but an early alien invasion tale for the Pulps.
“The 21st Century Limited” (Amazing Stories, December 1929) by Paul Slachta has liners running between Earth and Venus. Though not a terribly interesting tale (do we really care about the business affairs of space liners?) it does help establish a trope that will be big in the 1930s: the planetary space lanes, or The Spaceways, as they are sometimes called. This includes a typically dry Mars, a Jungle Venus, a harsh Mercury, etc. This idea would fill the 1930s then go onto the 1940s of Leigh Brackett, that would spawn Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles and eventually return in The Expanse. Here is the beginning of some very good things…
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