Gee whiz, Aliens ARE jerks!

 

cover art by George Wilson

Space Family Robinson #21 (April 1967) brings the "medieval" story arc to an end. The issue, though, starts out with writer Gaylord Du Bois and artist Dan Spiegle bringing the Robinsons and the medieval refugees new troubles.

They are boarded by an alien race called the Xotalec, who are-- well, they are jerks. A lot of aliens in this series are jerks, but these guys are particularly obnoxious.

They decide to take the space station for study and strand the humans on a nearby planet, stating that microbes found on board might be a threat to the Xotalec. Tim sneaks away to hide, but the other humans are forced aboard the Xotalec ship and brought to the planet.

Fortunately, the planet is a nice place. The humans explore, finding eatable flora and fauna, a goat-like creature to provide milk, a wheat-like plant that can be cultivated, and a strategic spot to build a defensive wall. They seen nothing threatening yet, but better safe than sorry.

Spiegle's depiction of the planet, by the way, is perfect. There's enough slightly-odd plants and animals to remind us its an alien environment, but it also looks beautiful. It's BOTH alien and inviting.

The defensive wall does prove to be a good idea. They are spotted by a tribe of savage humans (or humanoids--this is never made clear), who soon attack, bringing us a superbly depicted battle scene. The Robinsons and their allies are outnumbered, but have better weapons and a good defensive position. They push back the savages. When a leader of the enemy demands the issue be settled by a context of champions (Craig has a small language translator to understand what he's saying), Sir Gilbert rises to the challenge. He knocks out the enemy chief with the flat of his sword and wins final victory.

The enemy chief is given a translator and soon the two sides make peace. The savages thought the humans were working with the Xotalec, who come by to snatch a few of them for unknown reasons every so often.

In fact, that happens now. A small Xotalec craft lands, shooting out metal tentacles to grab Sir Gilbert and Tam.

Fortunately, Tim has been busy. After the space station had been put into orbit around a frozen planet, the Xotalec had left it. Tim comes out of hiding and uses a spacemobile to travel to the planet on which his family had been stranded. He shows up in the nick of time, using the spacemobile jets to cut the tentacles holding Gilbert and Tam. A side effect of this is it causes the Xotalec ship to blow up. Those guys really were jerks--so its difficult to mourn their loss.

The medievals decide to stay on this planet. Craig leaves them an industrial laser to both cut rocks to build a castle and defend against any future Xotalec incursions. The Robinsons then return to the space station. When the Xotalec are about to catch them, they use the broken phase-shift device to teleport to another part of the galaxy. They still have no idea where they are, but at least they got away from their rather unpleasant persecutors. 

That ends the four-issue story arc, with the Robinsons' friends happy building a new civilization on another planet, but with the Robinsons themselves still lost in space. It brings an end to an intelligently-written, suspenseful, action-packed, and beautifully illustrated Space Opera. There's a few minor glitches--peace with the savages comes conveniently quickly after a brutal battle, but that's probably a reflection of having to tell the story within a set page count. And this is indeed a minor glitch. I still love this story.

For next week--we haven't visited the Looney Tunes comic universe in a while, so let's do that.

I Didn't Know It Was a Time Machine!

 

cover art by George Wilson

Space Family Robinson #20 (February 1967) is the penultimate chapter in the "medieval" story arc--with writer Gaylord Du Bois and artist Dan Spiegle literally taking the characters back in time to mediveval Earth.

The story begins with the crew using a new gadget installed on the space station to bring them through a wormhole back to their home galaxy. (By the way, the script does not use the term wormhole, but it is so obviously the go-to term that a modern writer would use, I think it's a pretty accurate description.) This works, bringing them to the Milky Way galaxy. 

The next step is homing in on Earth. This is the dangerous part, as even a slight miscalculation could plunge them into a star. Craig elects to try a test run in one of the spacemobiles, taking only his son Tim and Sir Thomas with him.

The test flight seems to work great, with a jump to Alpha Centauri followed by a jump to Earth. But when Sir Thomas bumps against the controls, they also travel back in time. You would think the aliens who gave them this tech in the last issue might have casually mentioned "By the way, it's also a time machine." But they didn't. Sometimes, aliens are just jerks.

They figure out the time frame and discover that they are on Earth only four years after Sir Thomas and his fellow kidnappees were taken from Earth by the Iklatalians. Eager to see his wife and young son, he asks to be taken to his castle.

There's a neat bit here when they fly over a medieval village--Spiegle adds a nice touch of realism by showing us a muddy street, chickens, a dog and a few other touches that make the environment look real.

They discover Sir Thomas' castle is besieged by brigands. Sir Thomas charges across the field and gets inside. Craig and Tim are chased by the bad guys, but get back to the spacemobile and scare the brigands off by buzzing them with the craft. They then fly off, leaving a happy Sir Thomas behind, standing next to his wife and holding his young son.

It's human elements like this that add a lot to the story. The way the Robinsons worry about each other when they are seperated is another aspect of this. We are presented with people who care about each other and, thus, make us care about them.

But the heck with human touches. There is still cool science fiction stuff that has to happen. 

+

The space station had landed on a planet to wait for the return of the spacemobile. They are forced to take off when the weather turns violent. The spacemobile finds its way back to that planet, but has to perform several time jumps and a tense search before finally finding its way home. 

BUT, the space-phasing device has broken down. A key element has gone kla-blooie, which prevents them from easily locating Earth again. The Robinson family (and the 13 remaining refugees from the 12th Century) are still lost in space.

Once again, I'm very impressed with Spiegle's dynamic art, but perhaps even more impressed with Du Bois' skilled plot contruction. As I said last week, if this had been a prose story, I can easily imagine it as the cover story in an old issue of Amazing Stories. It is intelligent, imaginative Space Opera.

Next week, we'll look at the final chapter in this saga.

Never Bring a Sword to a Laser Fight

 

cover art by George Wilson

Space Family Robinson #19 (December 1966) picks up right where the previous issue left off, with Gaylord Du Bois' intelligent script still highlighted by Dan Spiegle's dynamic art.  But before we dive into this issue, I have a confession to make, by golly.  I left off an important plot point in my review last week! I shall report to the closest Agony Booth for punishment.

Kor, the alien, had explained that there are "holes" (a modern story would probably say "wormhole") in space and the Robinson family's space station had travelled through one of these and is in a different galaxy. But before he can give any concrete navigation advice, he keels over with a high fever.

So this issue picks up with the Robinson family and their 14 guests from medieval Earth believing that Kor is probably doomed. Kor believes it as well, asking the humans not to revive the other Iklatalians and expose them to the same disease. 

Knowing they might be stuck on this planet, the humans decide to explore. They divide into two teams and take the two spacemobiles, with Craig flying one of them and Tim flying the other.

One of the many smart elements of the script is that Du Bois never forgets that all this technology is brand new to the medieval guys and gals. They adapt quickly, but are continually surprised or intrigued by each knew thing. 

One of those things is a shower. This leads to a  very human touch when one of the men going with Tim is delayed because he's enjoying taking a shower for the first time in his life. I love it.

An impish young lady named Elaine puts on the guy's armor and thus tricks her way onto Tim's spacemobile.

She soon has reason to regret her impishness. When investigating yet another set of ruins, Tim's crew encounter some ancient and ill-tempered robots. Tim's laser pistol helps even the odds, though he temporarily loses the pistol in the struggle and has to use a sword to deactivate one of the robots.

Soon after, Tim's spacemobile gets targeted by a missile:

There's no radio contact with Tim after this happens, which understandably worries Craig and June. In the meantime, though, Kor recovers. He uses antibodies from his blood to give the other Iklatalians immunity to the disease, then the lot of them form a telepathic ring to contact Tim. He and his crew were okay, but the blast knocked out radio and radar, so he was trying to fly home by dead reckoning. The aliens guide him home telepathically.

Both the alien ship and the space station are repaired. Kor is able to give directions to a wormhole that will take the Robinsons and their friends back to the Milky Way, but he can't direct them to their specific sun. Still, it's a start. The four Robinsons and the 14 medieval people take off for (hopefully) home.

Like the previous issue, this chapter in the 4-issue story arc is solid science fiction in the Space Opera vein. Had this been a prose story written in the '30s or '40s, I could easily see it being the cover story in an issue of Amazing Stories.

We'll check back in next week to see how they're doing.

Cover Cavalcade

 APRIL IS KILLER ROBOT MONTH!

A 1931 cover by H.W. Wesso. 

The Red Comet

 

cover art tentatively credited to Nick Cardy

Planet Comics (published by Fiction House) began life with an issue cover-dated January 1940 (so probably came out in late 1939). It had a nice run of 73 issues before ending in 1953.

The first 20 issues (and occasional issues after that) featured a superhero called the Red Comet, who had the ability to change his size. He apparently also has the ability to survive unprotected in space or in oxygen-less atmospheres, though that might be more a result of carefree scripts rather than a power deliberately given to him.

It's not until Planet Comics #9 (September 1940) that we learn of Red Comet's origins. (The writer of the story is Thomas Marlin; the imaginative art is by Alex Blum.) 

While in space, he flew through "some outer space force" that gave him his powers. He was outside his ship when this happened and NOT wearing a spacesuit, so let's assume his costume generates a life support field. (To be fair, I haven't read all the Red Comet stories and his ability to survive in space might be explained at some point. I kinda doubt it, but it's possible.) 

I sound like I'm making fun of the story, don't I? And I am a little. But I'm not really bothered by this. The Red Comet exists in Space Opera Universe that plays fast and loose with real science. And, by golly, it's more interesting than real science. I want my own private spaceship and the ability to breath in space. Who doesn't?

Anyway, trouble is afoot. The planet Uranus is dying and the inhabitants plan to move to Earth, wiping out humanity to make room for themselves. They build a miniature planet, shrink themselves down to fit inside it, then launch the mini-planet towards Earth.

Earth scientists have detected the Uranians and somehow figured out their purpose. They dispatch Red Comet to the planet, who lands on it, shrinks himself down, enters the planet, and immediately gets hit by a "negative-growth ray"--which keeps him from changing size again.

 

The Uranians offer Red a chance to join them and he pretends to consider it, but then eventually makes his way to the gravity generators. There's a fight in which a number of Uranians meet a gruesome end, then Red breaks the gravity machines. 

This causes the Uranians to fall "up" to the rim of the mini-planet. Red, in the meantime, has found out that oxygen is deadly to the aliens. After more fights and after the planet has landed in the ocean on Earth, Red manages to crack it open. The Uranians all die. Earth is saved.

So did Red Comet commit genocide? We don't see any women or children Uranians. So... well, lets say that are a race of clones that are produced as grown men, with full moral responsibilities for their actions. So the heck with 'em all. Yeah, that's it.

The art is indeed imaginative and is fun enough to carry the story along. The story itself has unclear plot points and wonky science. I wouldn't be surprised if the script was written in almost stream-of-consciousness without thought about internal logic. Perhaps this was to meet a tight deadline. Perhaps the writer didn't care. Perhaps he realized he didn't have to care. There are times when story logic should simply step aside and let illogic have fun. This is one of those times. 

You can revel in the illogic HERE.

Next week, the Fantastic Four battles the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Tryst in Time

 

cover art by Howard V. Brown

The December 1936 issue of Astounding Stories features an atmospheric and bizarre time travel tale written by the great C. L. (Catherine Lucille) Moore. 

We immediately meet Eric Rosner and get his backstory--by the time he's 30, his life as an adventurer has left him feeling as if he's done everything. And Moore establishes this effectively in the first few paragraphs, giving enough examples of Eric's accomplishments to make us feel that maybe he has done everything:

At thirty there was not a continent nor a capital that had not known him, not a jungle nor a desert nor a mountain range that had not left scars upon his Viking body. 

Then he meets a scientist who has invented a sort of time machine. You were it as a back pack and everytime you activate it, it unanchors from inertia and essentially tosses you at random into another time and place.

Well, Eric wants to give this a try, with full understanding that he will be lost in the time stream without being able to navigate back to his home time.

But perhaps it's not so random. Eric jumps back and forth along the time stream, but he keeps meeting the same beautiful woman with "smoke blue eyes" and a confident, aristocratic manner. Or perhaps he's meeting different incarnations of her.  Twice, he arrives at a time and place just as she's being killed.

On another occassion, he saves her from being sacrificed by barbarians, but--though they feel an instant connection towards one another--she's promised to another and will not dishonor that promise. 

Once, he finds her while she's still a child. But each time they meet, she recognizes him a little quicker than the last time--even though he's not meeting her in historically chronological order.

In the end--well, its one of those endings that is open to interpretation and that only a author with Moore's skill can pull off and leave the reader feeling satisfied. 

"Tryst in Time" is a great example of Moore's ability to endow a story with an otherworldly atmosphere and great characters in just a few words. You can read it yourself HERE. 

I've been reviewing a lot of short stories recently. This wasn't on purpose--my Thursday posts are randomly chosen other than when I'm doing a Read/Watch 'em In Order post. So it's just been random chance up until now. But I'm thinking of going through an issue of Adventure from the 1920s as my next Read/Watch project, so more short story reviews will be forthcoming.

The Robot Rocket

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #174

We--sadly--come to the last Tom Corbett novel, published in 1956, about six months after the TV show had been cancelled.

It is, in fact, based on one of those final episodes, though the ebook edition I own does not include a credit. "The Space Projectile," written by Richard Jessup, was broadcast on April 30, 1955. Jessup, by the way, had a successful career as a novelist and screenwriter, with his best known book being The Cincinnati Kid (1963).

Here's the episode:

The novel takes the idea of recovering a robot rocket that is about to crash into a star and adds a couple of villains out to hijack that rocket to the mix. 

Also, during the last season of the TV show, Jan Merlin (who played Roger Manning) left the show. He was replaced by Jack Grimes, who played Cadet TJ Thistle. I don't know if the TV show gave a reason for Roger's departure, since, as far as I can tell, the early episodes from the final season don't exist. Or at least I can't find them streaming or on YouTube. In the early days of episodic TV, cast changes were often made without explanation.

But the novel dives head first into this. We find out that Roger has been reassigned to the Mars Academy, while a Mars Academy student (Thistle) has been transfered to Earth and takes over for Roger aboard the Polaris.

This is a big deal for Tom Corbett and Astro. Roger's abrasive personality brought him into conflict with the other two in the first novel, but since then they've all become best friends and trusted each other completely. They hate the idea of Roger leaving and Astro at least is resentful of his replacement.

But soon, they are on a mission to recover a possibly malfunctioning robot rocket, orbiting a world near the star Sirius. A cadet trained in astrophysics--Alex Monroe--joins them for the mission. Monroe is openly disdainful of the other cadets, allowing Astro and Thistle to bond over their dislike of the guy.

More serious problems soon arise, though. Aside from the discovery that the robot rocket is hurling towards Sirius, there are a couple of crooks following the Polaris. They plan to hijack the information contained in the rocket and use it to lay claim to a planet rich in uranium. This, of course, means they can't leave any witnesses behind.

Several nifty action sequences follow one after another. Astro and TJ crash in a jet boat on a dangerously radioactive planet where the atmosphere is thick with methane and visibility is virtually nil. 

This is followed by an attempt to capture the off-course robot rocket before it crashes into the star. This is a particularly good sequence, with each cadet (including Monroe, who is finally proving his worth) to use their respective skills to both reach the rocket in time and recover the information it contains. Skill, training, intelligence and determination are emphasized perhaps more effectively than in any other novel in the series except the first.

At one point, Monroe asks permission to do something very dangerous to ensure success. Tom tells him no, which sets off the normally easy-going Astro, who gives an absolutely epic speech on the responsibilites of leadership:

“I know my job,” Astro continued, “Roger and T.J. know their jobs, but I’m beginning to doubt if you know yours! Being in command of a ship and of men, being responsible for the lives of your passengers and crew is more than just turning a few switches and giving orders on the control deck. We’ve got automatic gear that can handle a ship better than you or anyone else. They put a commander on a ship to make decisions! Big decisions like the one you’re avoiding right now. Have you ever thought about what it’s going to be like when you get that black-and-gold officer’s uniform? You think it’s all going to be a bed of roses? You’re going to have to tell me to do things that are dangerous and that you want to do yourself, but you don’t dare, because if you’re lost, then the crew is without a skipper and the ship is lost. Of course it’s dangerous for Monroe to go out in the rocket— of course you want to go yourself and would go, if I wasn’t big enough to stop you. So what do you do? Instead of facing the decision of sending a man— possibly to his death— so he can find out the depth of his courage, you back out! You haven’t got the guts to be a commander, Corbett!” roared the big cadet. “You haven’t the courage to be able to tell a guy ‘Go out there and get yourself killed, because I’m the commander and I’m telling you to!’”

I love that this is included in a novel aimed at kids. It doesn't hold back at all in its lesson about leadership and trusts the kids reading the novel to get it.

In the meantime, the bad guys have hijacked the Polaris and captured Captain Strong. They plan to lure Tom and the other cadets into a trap, but Tom deduces what's going on and lays a countertrap...

It's a good novel and a solid ending to the book series. It would have been nice if we could have seen Tom, Astro, Roger and TJ eventually graduate, but with the TV series gone, it was inevitable that the books would come to an end.

Here, by the way, is the Tom Corbet fan page, which has good information about the TV show and its various iterations on radio, comic books and novels. 

Dinosaurs, Space Battles and Fist Fights

 

Read/Watch 'em In Order #170

I don't care what NASA says! Venus is a jungle planet populated by dinosaurs. It's true! Everyone knows that!

By golly, Tom Corbett, Roger Manning and Astro know it. In Revolt on Venus (1954), the three space cadets are given thirty days leave. They decide to take a trip to Astro's home planet of Venus and hunt a tyrannosaurus. Astro has some experience in this, though the story he tells about it leaves no doubt that T-Rex hunting is dangerous.

But the poor cadets are soon involved in much more than a hunting trip. There is trouble afoot on Venus. A group called the Nationalists is pushing to secede from the Solar Alliance. They've stepped over a legal line in the sand by threatening farmers who don't join them and have several times burned down buildings.

A side-note: This book was written for young American readers. It's likely the author realized that our natural sympathies might lie with a colony wanting to break away from a distant government. So the point that Venus has equal representation in that government is quickly made--as well as gradually revealing the Nationalists to be brutal and hypocritical in their actions. This is an action-adventure novel, so the politics are dealt with very lightly, but the story quickly zeroes in on the Solar Alliance being the good guys and the Nationalists being the bad guys, with no grey zone inbetween.

Anyway, the cadets get involved in this even before they get to Venus, when they find a bomb planted on their spaceship during the trip there. Once on Venus, the cadets go hunting, while a Solar Guard officer named Connell begins to investigate the Nationalists.

Tom and his friends get involved after being chased out of the jungle by a T-Rex and stumbling onto a plantation being attacked by Nationalists, with Major Connell desperately trying to fight off the attackers. 

So the cadets find their vacation cut short. After they foil an attempt to kidnap them, the cadets and Connell pretend to go hunting while really searching for the secret Nationalist base. That leads to another encounter with the T-Rex that chased them earlier. Then they end up getting captured.

But getting captured is not necessarily a bad thing. If one of them can escape and bring back the Solar Guard fleet, while the others sabotage the Nationalists' early warning system, then the movement can be crushed.

This leads to more action, including a large-scale space battle, some brutal ground combat, a hostage situation, a double-crossing "friend" and a last-minute save. 

I've been enjoying the Corbett novels enormously, but this is my clear favorite so far. The action is varied--covering the gamut from hungry dinosaurs to fisticuffs to ray guns-- and often intense, with each of the cadets getting a few Moments of Awesome along the way. The plot twists are good ones and the overall atmosphere generates quite a bit of tension. Especially good are the scenes set in the Venusian jungle, with thick foilage and dangerous fauna keeping both the protagonists and the readers on edge.

And, by golly, the book describes Venus properly. It's a jungle planet full of dinosaurs. It really is. Why would we accept the existence of a universe that allowed anything else?

How to Save a Civilization

 

cover art by Albert Drake

"The Planet That Time Forgot," by Donald A. Wollheim appeared in the Fall 1940 issue of Planet Stories.

It's set entirely on Planet P, a large newly discovered planet outside the orbit of Pluto. But there's a human civilization on Planet P, despite what SHOULD be freezing cold temperature. The first half of the story is set amidst that civilization. 

We discover that the despotic ruler of Nimbor has invented a heat ray of some sort and is planning on conquering the freedom-loving nation of Toom. Toom's beautiful queen Oomith refuses to give in and announces that the people of Toom will fight rather than submit to tyranny. But Oomith is kidnapped and, well, Nimbor has a heat ray. The poor Toomians seemed doomed.

But then weird stuff starts happening Oomith has a brief vision of a man she doesn't know. Then she suddenly finds herself back home in Toom. The heat ray mysteriously appears in Toom as well, giving the good guys a sudden advantage in the Planet P arms race. To top it all off, the rulers of Nimbor appear in the dungeons of Oomith's castle. The good guys win, but have no idea how.

The second half of the story takes us aboard an Earth spaceship on its way to explore Planet P. We're told this is a flashback. Well, I think to myself while reading the story, that's it. The Earthmen will reach the planet, figure out what's going on and use some sort of teleportation technology to save the day.

But I was wrong. The twist--involving what exactly the expedition discovers on Planet P and the method through which they help the nation of Toom--is cleverer than that. I don't want to hint at it, because I don't want to spoil anyone's fun in reading it. You can read the story for yourself HERE.

If anyone reads this and DOES figure out the twist, let me know. I freely admit I didn't see it coming and had a lot of fun being fooled. But another, perhaps more attentive reader, might catch on quicker.

Cover Cavalcade

 JANUARY IS FRANK R. PAUL MONTH!

A cover from 1929.

Cover Cavalcade

 JANUARY IS FRANK R. PAUL MONTH!

A 1928 cover.

Cover Cavalcade

 JANUARY IS FRANK R. PAUL MONTH!

Another cover from 1927.

Cover Cavalcade

 JANUARY IS FRANK R. PAUL MONTH!

A 1927 cover.