If you missed the last one…
This post is brought to you by Ships of Steel edited by G. W. Thomas. This anthology of Space Opera and SF Adventure tales features four novellas, each with its own illustration by M. D. Jackson. If you enjoy your Science Fiction with more action, this is the book for you. Manhunts across a giant spaceship, a quest for stolen space pirate treasure with killer androids, a lost child that is the key to a mystery and a planet with a deadly secret that may cause a galactic war. These are stories that move but will also move you.
Henry Kuttner was a writer who not only experimented with each story, he was also a champ at giving the editors what they wanted. “Avengers of Space” (Marvel Science Stories, August 1938) is both a great short novel and at times a teeth-clenching piece of Space Opera. The editor in this case was Robert O. Erisman. “Avengers of Space” was one of two “novels” in this first issue of Marvel Science Stories. And we can only guess what directions Erisman gave his writers. He must have wanted everything to be BIG. Big Action! Big Science! And Big Sex! For Kuttner this means a wild and fun Space Opera tale that stops every so often to admire the partly exposed body of the heroine, Lorna Rand. In the middle of a rescue:
The glass that remained played havoc with the girl’s dress, ripping it nearly off her slim body. For a second Shawn felt the warm firmness of her half-bared bosom hot against his cheek. Even at that moment the blood pounded dizzily in his temples at the girl’s alluring nearness, at the musky perfume that was strong in his nostrils. Shawn’s throat felt dry. His pulses beat faster at the touch of his hands upon her rounded, vibrant body…
You get the idea. Those rocket scientists don’t get out much. If you can forgive these adolescent intrusions, the tale is still pretty good.
Into the Void
The tale begins with scientist and space explorer, Terry Shawn and his crew preparing The Eagle for its maiden flight. These include Sam Heffley, Hooker Flynn and Pete Trost. They are waiting for a reporter from The Tribune, the newspaper that paid for some of the ship’s equipment. Cars approached but at high speed. Bullets fly as a car crashes near the Eagle. Shawn pulls a half-naked woman from the wreck. She is Lorna Rand, a reporter from the paper. The dead man in the car is Mac, the reporter who was supposed to get the interview.
The attackers are thugs hired by International Power, a conglomerate that wants Shawn’s new invention, the power source for the rocket. The crew, along with Rand, lock themselves in the ship. The baddies place dynamite around the Eagle’s base, which helps it to gain outer space, flying past their original destination, the Moon. From a vantage point well beyond Earth, the space flyers witness a golden fleet of aliens destroy both the Earth and the Moon. The Eagle’s crew is now the last remnant of all Terran civilization. With no real choice, Terry and his companions, along with Lorna, agree to hunt down the fleet and kill as many of the aliens as they can. They have become the avengers of Earth.
Red World of Fear
The Eagle lands in a remote place on Mars near a city. The goal is to determine whether the Martains are the owners of the golden fleet. Terry Shawn and his brainac pal, Pete Trost, leave the ship to find information. First they encounter a giant sand worm (with some early flashes of Dune here.) They come across Martians who wear skull masks. They can communicate using telepathy. The Terrans shoot them and take their masks, allowing them to enter the nearby city of Kathor. Once there the pretenders are betrayed by one of the city’s beast-men, ugly brutes used by the skull-masked priests. Terry Shawn is knocked unconscious.
Black God of Kathor
When Shawn wakes he finds himself in a cell with a guard and a completely naked (of course!) Lorna Rand. The guard tells them that they will be sacrificed to Droom who rules Kathor. The Earthman attacks the guard who has a sword and almost fails. It is Lorna who turns the tide and Shawn kills the man. They escape their cell but wander into a dark tunnel where a terrible two-headed monster lies dead. They witness a shadowy form re-animate the beast that comes for them. They flee up a staircase. (Henry spends some time throwing in some Lovecraftian description of the beast-men, I think just in case he has to sell this one to Weird Tales. He was writing his Mythos tales at this time.)
The Brain
The room fills with beast-men but it is the re-animated one that chases the couple up the stair that leads nowhere. Shawn battles the beast with his sword while other monsters claw at the naked Lorna. Terry kills the two-headed beast by stabbing it in its single eye. The swordsman hears a voice in his head. It is Droom, who is a giant brain in a jar. (This was the scene Norman Saunders chose for the cover of Marvel Science Stories #1.) Droom explains that he was once a beast-man brain too, but was worked on by scientists until it had evolved into a god.
The beast-men capture Terry and Lorna. For fun, Lorna is taken to an arena where she is attached to a giant metal ball that is blistering hot. She must dodge and roll or be fried like an onion. Terry watches helplessly but spots a prison door where the rest of the Eagle crew are being kept. He also notices a beast-man wearing his automatic pistol on his leg. Terry manages to fight his way to the gun and shoots Droom, destroying the brain and its jar. Freed from the brain’s telepathic powers, the beast-men flee the city, no longer interested in the Earthlings. The killer ball also stops working and Terry frees Lorna and the rest. They go back to their ship.
The influence of Edgar Rice Burroughs is obvious in Kuttner’s version of Mars. It is a place of swords and beasts. ERB’s shadow will show up again in the next section. The brain in the jar is a classic trope that began with Edmond Hamilton’s “The Comet Doom” (Amazing Stories, January 1928) only ten years earlier. Followed by H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Whisperer in Darkness” (Weird Tales, August 1931) and Eando Binder’s “Enslaved Brains” (Wonder Stories, July 1934) as well as others. For more, go here.
Titan
Pete Trost learned one thing while in prison on Mars. The golden fleet is not Martian. The golden invaders had attacked some Martian cities as well. The answer lies farther out into space, so the Eagle flies for Saturn and its largest moon, Titan. They land and are almost immediately captured by the local fauna–dinosaurs!
The Serpent World
Shawn isn’t with the dinos long as they take him underground where he escapes and discovers the world of the ruling Serpent People. These creatures have humanoid bodies but snake heads. Their bite is instantly deadly. Shawn rides upward, hiding in an elevator. Next he discovers Linda Rand (naked, of course) in the hands of the Serpent Chieftain, on his chariot pulled a large dinosaur. This beast escapes, leaving the ruler without a steed.
Unable to leave Lorna to her fate, Shawn surrenders and the two humans become the horses. Pulling the chariot to a village of huts, the home of the snake rulers. Terry manages to free a hand long enough to get to his matches. He starts a fire, which is unknown to his captors, causing the village to burn down and many Serpent folk to die. He also frees their hands so he can fight one-on-one with the chieftain. Shawn kills him with a super punch. Terry falls in a pit trap, and while getting out Lorna and the others disappear. Terry returns to the Eagle alone.
Edgar Rice Burroughs here again, his Horibs from Pellucidar. Kuttner does a great job of making the Snake villains villainous. The final punch-up with the chieftain was a little lack-luster. Robert E. Howard’s Serpent Men seem less of an influence. Kuttner is writing his Sword & Sorcery series about Elak at this time, too.
Strange Summons
Inside the ship, Shawn faces off with a single amoeboid alien. This is one of the creatures from the golden ships. The thing covers Terry but he stabs it in the nucleus with one of the swords from Mars. Having slain the creature, he discovers a glowing red gem. This proves to be another alien, one that is silicon based and lives in the Asteroid Belt. The stone being wants to help Terry to get his friends and destroy the amoeba invaders. The stone creature also explains that Earth and the Moon are not destroyed but sitting in another universe, the one where the invaders came from. Using a form of telepathy, the two navigate to a secret world where the Golden Fleet lies.
The Last Battle
Terry allows himself to be captured and taken to the leader of the Aliens. The stone being wants this too. When Shawn arrives at the ship’s HQ he sees amoebas torturing Martains and humans for information. The next victim is a very naked (again!) Lorna Rand. The stone creature wants Terry to wait but he will not because it is Lorna. The Earthman does manage to evade his captors long enough to throw the red stone into the Emperor of the Amoebas. Taking control, the stone being tells Terry to save his friends and leave. No one tries to stop them. The Aliens are a kind of hivemind and follow the leader’s commands to the letter. The Earth and the Moon are brought back into our universe before the humans flee while the Golden Fleet sails into the Sun. Terry asks Lorna to quit her job at The Tribune to become his First Mate, and his actual mate.
Conclusion
In a previous post I looked at Henry Kuttner’s “The Raider of the Spaceways” that appeared in Weird Tales. “Avengers of Space” is only a year later. In fact, it may be the next Space Opera tale he wrote. During this time he composed mostly Cthulhu Mythos tales for Weird Tales and Weird Menace for Thrilling Mystery. “The Bloodless Peril” appeared at Thrilling Wonder but it is a rather racist tale of killer plants and Chinese invasions, not really a space-born fiction. I am impressed at how much Kuttner improved in that year between “Raider” and “Avengers”. “Raider of the Spaceways” was a clunky space pirate tale that Kuttner pretty much had to sell to Weird Tales, a low paying magazine. “Avengers of Space” is a fuller plot, with planet hopping and many times longer. I don’t know if Robert Erisman paid more than Farnsworth Wright but I think Kuttner would have been happy to be in an actual Science Fiction magazine. (And on the cover too!) Weird Tales was snobbishly disregarded by many SF fans. For more on Kuttner’s reputation, go here. Henry and his wife, C. L. Moore, would write several Space Operas later that are classics.
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