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Interplanetary Odysseys
INTERPLANETARY ODYSSEYS: Classic Tales of Interplanetary Adventure Including A Martian Odyssey, Its Sequel Valley of Dreams, the Complete Ham Hammond Stories & Others
"One of the novas of the SF cosmos." The New Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction Interplanetary Odysseys collects together all of Stanley G. Weinbaum's tales set on the planets and moons of our own solar system. With their colony cities and fast, easy space travel, these stories from the great romantic tradition of SF remain entertaining, readable and relevant. Weinbaum was noted as the first SF writer to create believable aliens that were a product of their own planetary environments and eco-systems. The lead story, the classic "A Martian Odyssey", demonstrates this talent perfectly and with the nine other tales included here it gives readers new and old a chance to relive the sense of wonder that sprang from the glory days of science fiction.
"One of the novas of the SF cosmos." The New Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction Interplanetary Odysseys collects together all of Stanley G. Weinbaum's tales set on the planets and moons of our own solar system. With their colony cities and fast, easy space travel, these stories from the great romantic tradition of SF remain entertaining, readable and relevant. Weinbaum was noted as the first SF writer to create believable aliens that were a product of their own planetary environments and eco-systems. The lead story, the classic "A Martian Odyssey", demonstrates this talent perfectly and with the nine other tales included here it gives readers new and old a chance to relive the sense of wonder that sprang from the glory days of science fiction.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
288 pages, Paperback
First published August 11, 1963
9 people are currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
Stanley G. Weinbaum
359 books71 followersFull name: Stanley Grauman Weinbaum.
"In his short career, Stanley G. Weinbaum revolutionized science fiction. We are still exploring the themes he gave us." —Poul Anderson
"Stanley G. Weinbaum's name deserves to rank with those of Wells and Heinlein—and no more than a handful of others—as among the great shapers of modern science fiction." —Frederik Pohl
"In his short career, Stanley G. Weinbaum revolutionized science fiction. We are still exploring the themes he gave us." —Poul Anderson
"Stanley G. Weinbaum's name deserves to rank with those of Wells and Heinlein—and no more than a handful of others—as among the great shapers of modern science fiction." —Frederik Pohl
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June 21, 2022
Here's an author who's a deep dive if there was ever was one. If I've commented about the potential of a legend like Roger Zelazny receding from common memory only twenty-five years after his death, what about an author who died nearly ninety years ago but for a brief period was one of the most famous SF writers of his era? There's a very good chance that unless you know your SF history fairly well or are related to him, the name Stanley Weinbaum may not mean too much to you.
Yet, he warrants not only one but four volumes collecting almost everything he wrote (some of which was published posthumously), all of which are still in print so while Time may eventually erase all of our names from history and make the universe forget we ever existed, the bell hasn't quite tolled for Stanley Weinbaum it seems.
Why is that? Much like Roger Zelazny he basically came out of nowhere and wowed everyone with a (for its time) innovative short story. Unlike Zelazny, who eventually lost some critical luster after that early rush but maintained a steady output of good quality for the next thirty years or so, Weinbaum had the misfortune of dying from lung cancer in 1935 at the age of thirty-three. He had been writing SF for about eighteen months. In that extremely brief time he had come to be regarded as one of the foremost SF writers of his age and to some extent marked the moment when the pulp SF started to transition from the Edgar Rice Burroughs "Princess of Mars" style stuff to something a bit more sophisticated in outlook.
Still, he's not someone who is in the tip of most people's tongues when it comes to the greats and some of that is the fault of time and some of that is the fault of Stanley Weinbaum. As readable as his stories are, as we'll see, once you get past the setup the presentation itself often isn't any great shakes, with a lot of the aspects that readers thought were the bees' knees back then having been improved and built upon by subsequent generations of writers (you can definitely make a case, as some have, that Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" is his attempt to close the book on the era that Weinbaum ushered in) so that the early innovations don't seem that innovative anymore. If you're one of those people who watches "Citizen Kane" and thinks "What's the big deal about all this?" because directors have spent the last eighty years ripping it off you're probably going to find yourself in familiar territory reading Weinbaum at times. And if the radical stuff seems a bit humdrum, what's left sometimes isn't enough to put it over the top.
In a way you could compare him to CM Kornbluth, a SF writer that came slightly later (mostly active in the Fifties), wrote a bunch of stories that caught everyone's eye and then proceeded to also die young, in case of a heart attack at thirty-four. But today Kornbluth's stories (with or without frequent collaborator Frederik Pohl) still can read as remarkably contemporary, mostly because of how goshdarned savagely cynical they are at times. Which may be why Kornbluth's stories are collected in a fancy NESFA hardcover with some commentary while poor Weinbaum is relegated to a four volume paperback series with barely anything in the way of context.
That may be my biggest complaint about this series . . . while it does a service by putting these stories back into print in a convenient and affordable manner there is absolutely zero attempt made at even trying to sketch out what made them so important when they were initially published. Since Weinbaum died so young there probably isn't much in the way of background material to draw upon and by this point almost all of his contemporaries are certainly passed on but even a minimal amount of scholarship would have been nice. At least publication dates! He's ripe for rediscovery but I think its important to clue people in on what was so impressive in the first place because its definitely not self-evident.
Instead the four books are arranged mostly thematically, with no doubt a mix of stories published both before and after his death, not there's any real way to tell which is which. The first volume shoots it shot immediately by leading off with probably the only Weinbaum stories that even casual fans have heard of, the depth charge that started it all, "A Martian Odyssey".
The oldest story in SFWA's "Science Fiction Hall of Fame", its probably graced many an anthology since its publication, especially since a lot of SF published in the early 30s was . . . not that good (you've basically got Olaf Stapledon keeping the quality high mostly by himself and I don't even know if everyone even understood what he was doing). Read today, it admittedly does seem a bit quaint . . . recently rescued astronaut Jarvis is explaining to his crewmates the rigors of his ordeal. They're, of course, on Mars and because its 1933 its got breathable air and life so its not quite Matt Damon learning how to grow plants or something.
The biggest difference between this story and what came before is how weird everything is. Not a Lovecraftian kind of weird but alien weird. Jarvis, in recounting his adventures, describes running into a friendly Martian by name of Tweel, and while traveling together for a bit wind up running into several of the other dangerous lifeforms that make up Mars.
Its impossible to grasp the impact of this today but Tweel showing up on the page was like the moment Popeye showed up in "Thimble Theater" . . . the ground shifted and everything changed. Prior to Tweel most aliens in SF were understandable and just variations on people, more or less, just some obstacles to fight, typically to rescue a scantily clad lady. Tweel is much different . . . while humanoid in shape its extremely difficult to communicate with him and its not even clear how much overlap there is between Martian and human understanding . . . enough so the story doesn't turn into "Solaris" but there are several moments where its clear they are not working from the same frame of reference.
And he's not the only weirdo hanging out on Mars. In what will be a trend with Weinbaum stories set on other worlds, his planets are populated with aliens that seem to be long in the environments they inhabit even if their habits are extremely puzzling . . . even odder than Tweel are the cart creatures, who seem to have definite reasons for doing what they do, it just doesn't make any rational sense and there's no possible way to figure it out. Stuff like this now is fairly standard in modern SF (at least during the "New Wave" error, where sometimes the only normal aspect of the book was the copyright page) but back then it had to have seemed just outright bizarre.
Unfortunately for people who like tidy tales, "A Martian Odyssey" just ends, only to be immediately picked up in "Valley of Dreams". Not so much a sequel as a continuation, it runs briefly through the greatest hits of the first story (if you like dream-beasts, get ready for enough to make even Neil Gaiman's Morpheus go "Okay, maybe this is too much") before giving us a possible origin for ancient Egyptian civilization (its no worse an idea than "Chariots of the Gods", frankly). Then the humans somehow convince the Martians to abandon clean energy for the chance to have giant piles of radioactive everywhere, which seems like the kind of good idea we'd have.
Both of these are pretty straightforward, although if you were hankering for more that's all you're getting of Mars as Weinbaum decided to take a tour of the entire solar system and showcase his penchant for offbeat aliens. The two stories set on Venus are actually kind of charming since they show some actual progression, although they set a trend that will become very apparent later. In "Parasite Planet" American trader Hamilton Hammond is trying to make some money in the hot part of Venus. Encountering a snag in his adventures he has to hotfoot his way across Venus to reach a friendly American settlement, but not before running into British explorer Patricia Burlingame. Its opposite attract at first sight, so get ready for a bunch of screwball bickering with those two wacky kids as they navigate their way across a planet where everything wants to eat everything. Do they fall in love in the process? I'm not telling you, but I will tell you this, in almost any Weinbaum story from this point on a guy and a girl who are not together when the story starts are almost inevitably going to be together by the finish. Whether its just a cliche of the times or Weinbaum had a real soft streak I have no idea but you will notice it after a while.
It makes "The Lotus Eaters" a little more interesting because you have Hammond and Burlingame back but acting more as equals, with her scientific brilliance matched with his Yankee pluck . . . though of course Weinbaum can't resist by making her a shrinking violet when something weird happens, which is often. But he postulates another strange race of seemingly intelligent plants and then tries to slot them into the nutty ecosystem he's created for the planet . . . its moments like that when our two heroes are trying to reason out why the plants are what they are that the story tries a little harder (though he resorts to the "they're in danger from gaseous spores!" twice). I don't know if it rises above the shackles of its time but it probably stood out compared to all the other stories around it in the magazine.
But at least we get one more round with them in "The Planet of Doubt", where they venture to (get it out of your system now) Uranus, with a foggy world and aliens who do an eternal conga line . . . he's at his best with purely inexplicable aliens and while his prose isn't going to set the world on fire just the sheer strangeness of the images themselves are worthwhile as everyone staggers through a mysterious fog trying to avoid a line of speechless aliens that seem to be trying to kill them purely on impulse.
"Flight on Titan" features married couple Tim and Diane Vick . . . having lost their money in an economic crash, they decide to try their luck on Saturn's moon mining flame orchids that would make them rich back on Earth. That is, if they survive a long trek back through pretty bad conditions and the usual menagerie of not even remotely humanoids that would like to kill them. This one works for me because Diane is just as (if not more) clever than her husband and you do get the sense the two of them are in this together, which is a nice change of pace in SF of that era. They're not trying to do anything heroic, they're just trying to survive.
Its probably "The Red Peri" that impressed me the most. An epic length tale compared to the others, it features engineer Frank Keene . . . having been attacked by a space pirate ship once, he then encounters it again some time later only to realize that the head pirate is a young woman who is wrecking things like an even angrier Captain Nemo. What follows then are some maneuvering as Frank tries to keep himself alive while plotting how to get free. The story's dragged down a bit by the "I hate you so much I love you" romance between Frank and the Red Peri, both of whom can't seem to quit each other, or admit as much (told you Weinbaum is a fool for love . . . . though let's not forget that the Red Peri is nineteen?). Fortunately everyone has their own love secrets, which add some spice to all the manipulations . . . the biggest surprise for me was the downbeat ending. Its melodramatic but it probably works better than if everyone just kissed.
"The Mad Moon" takes us back to romance between two crazy kids but this time literally everyone in the story is crazy in some way, so much that there's a definite "Alice in Wonderland" vibe going on at times. The fevered sections are probably the best but the whole scenario itself is pleasingly bonkers, with two sets of nutty aliens.
"Redemption Cairn" lets the aliens take a backseat for a bit with a mystery as former pilot Jack Sands has to confront a bad incident in his past and figure out he's been recruited to pilot again. Its one of those stories where the bones are good enough you wonder how someone with a little more flair would have handled it . . . the mix of personalities and the lingering possibility of a mole makes this one stand out a little, even if the story can't help but take a capable woman down a peg or two.
Lastly, "Tidal Moon" is the only collaborative story in this collection, although that wasn't intentional. After only finished a small portion before his untimely death, Weinbaum's sister finished the rest and frankly the results aren't too different from the other stories in the collection. Once again featuring someone mining the useful minerals of another planet, it has another mystery and assumed identity, a plucky young girl and Weinbaum's by now typical array of kooky aliens.
Its fine, but you could say that about all these stories. Weinbaum's talent lay in his imagination but his imagination unfortunately didn't extend to hard hitting memorable plots. For all the many, many aliens in these stories, its not exactly "Dune" in terms of incorporating them into the ecology (he's definitely trying and one thing to keep in mind when reading these is that he's operating on a 1930s understanding of what these planets/moons were like) and while the parade is a step up from barechested multi-armed aliens with big swords without compelling plots to match his aliens its mostly Weinbaum trotting out one oddball alien after the other. Which is fine! And as I said, in a 1930s SF magazine these probably all stood out quite a bit . . . nowadays they can read a bit simplistic though I can behind the notion that everyone deserves love.
Regardless Weinbaum is definitely worth exploring, though I wonder if he's more of historical interest than anything else these days. That's why this series feels like a bit of a missed opportunity in terms of including biographical information or pieces from other writers on his impact . . . anything really. He's an author who needs a bit of explaining to really understand what made peoples' jaws drop back then and even if now the stories seem a bit humdrum once in a while you feel a little of the frisson readers must have felt back then seeing his name on the cover of a pulp and thinking "Where is he taking us now?" Before space exploration replaced the fascinating conceptions of worlds teeming with alien life with the reality of worlds vacant of life but far stranger than we could have imagined there's something to be said for that feeling of looking up at the sky and imagining hacking your way through Venusian jungles or racing through Jovian clouds. If reading Weinbaum today can't quite conjure that then its less his fault than perhaps ours . . . more knowledgeable but more cautious about our wonders, we can't forget what we know and so can't recapture the sense of every future having its own adventure, always about to happen, one scientific advance or newspaper headline away.
Yet, he warrants not only one but four volumes collecting almost everything he wrote (some of which was published posthumously), all of which are still in print so while Time may eventually erase all of our names from history and make the universe forget we ever existed, the bell hasn't quite tolled for Stanley Weinbaum it seems.
Why is that? Much like Roger Zelazny he basically came out of nowhere and wowed everyone with a (for its time) innovative short story. Unlike Zelazny, who eventually lost some critical luster after that early rush but maintained a steady output of good quality for the next thirty years or so, Weinbaum had the misfortune of dying from lung cancer in 1935 at the age of thirty-three. He had been writing SF for about eighteen months. In that extremely brief time he had come to be regarded as one of the foremost SF writers of his age and to some extent marked the moment when the pulp SF started to transition from the Edgar Rice Burroughs "Princess of Mars" style stuff to something a bit more sophisticated in outlook.
Still, he's not someone who is in the tip of most people's tongues when it comes to the greats and some of that is the fault of time and some of that is the fault of Stanley Weinbaum. As readable as his stories are, as we'll see, once you get past the setup the presentation itself often isn't any great shakes, with a lot of the aspects that readers thought were the bees' knees back then having been improved and built upon by subsequent generations of writers (you can definitely make a case, as some have, that Zelazny's "A Rose for Ecclesiastes" is his attempt to close the book on the era that Weinbaum ushered in) so that the early innovations don't seem that innovative anymore. If you're one of those people who watches "Citizen Kane" and thinks "What's the big deal about all this?" because directors have spent the last eighty years ripping it off you're probably going to find yourself in familiar territory reading Weinbaum at times. And if the radical stuff seems a bit humdrum, what's left sometimes isn't enough to put it over the top.
In a way you could compare him to CM Kornbluth, a SF writer that came slightly later (mostly active in the Fifties), wrote a bunch of stories that caught everyone's eye and then proceeded to also die young, in case of a heart attack at thirty-four. But today Kornbluth's stories (with or without frequent collaborator Frederik Pohl) still can read as remarkably contemporary, mostly because of how goshdarned savagely cynical they are at times. Which may be why Kornbluth's stories are collected in a fancy NESFA hardcover with some commentary while poor Weinbaum is relegated to a four volume paperback series with barely anything in the way of context.
That may be my biggest complaint about this series . . . while it does a service by putting these stories back into print in a convenient and affordable manner there is absolutely zero attempt made at even trying to sketch out what made them so important when they were initially published. Since Weinbaum died so young there probably isn't much in the way of background material to draw upon and by this point almost all of his contemporaries are certainly passed on but even a minimal amount of scholarship would have been nice. At least publication dates! He's ripe for rediscovery but I think its important to clue people in on what was so impressive in the first place because its definitely not self-evident.
Instead the four books are arranged mostly thematically, with no doubt a mix of stories published both before and after his death, not there's any real way to tell which is which. The first volume shoots it shot immediately by leading off with probably the only Weinbaum stories that even casual fans have heard of, the depth charge that started it all, "A Martian Odyssey".
The oldest story in SFWA's "Science Fiction Hall of Fame", its probably graced many an anthology since its publication, especially since a lot of SF published in the early 30s was . . . not that good (you've basically got Olaf Stapledon keeping the quality high mostly by himself and I don't even know if everyone even understood what he was doing). Read today, it admittedly does seem a bit quaint . . . recently rescued astronaut Jarvis is explaining to his crewmates the rigors of his ordeal. They're, of course, on Mars and because its 1933 its got breathable air and life so its not quite Matt Damon learning how to grow plants or something.
The biggest difference between this story and what came before is how weird everything is. Not a Lovecraftian kind of weird but alien weird. Jarvis, in recounting his adventures, describes running into a friendly Martian by name of Tweel, and while traveling together for a bit wind up running into several of the other dangerous lifeforms that make up Mars.
Its impossible to grasp the impact of this today but Tweel showing up on the page was like the moment Popeye showed up in "Thimble Theater" . . . the ground shifted and everything changed. Prior to Tweel most aliens in SF were understandable and just variations on people, more or less, just some obstacles to fight, typically to rescue a scantily clad lady. Tweel is much different . . . while humanoid in shape its extremely difficult to communicate with him and its not even clear how much overlap there is between Martian and human understanding . . . enough so the story doesn't turn into "Solaris" but there are several moments where its clear they are not working from the same frame of reference.
And he's not the only weirdo hanging out on Mars. In what will be a trend with Weinbaum stories set on other worlds, his planets are populated with aliens that seem to be long in the environments they inhabit even if their habits are extremely puzzling . . . even odder than Tweel are the cart creatures, who seem to have definite reasons for doing what they do, it just doesn't make any rational sense and there's no possible way to figure it out. Stuff like this now is fairly standard in modern SF (at least during the "New Wave" error, where sometimes the only normal aspect of the book was the copyright page) but back then it had to have seemed just outright bizarre.
Unfortunately for people who like tidy tales, "A Martian Odyssey" just ends, only to be immediately picked up in "Valley of Dreams". Not so much a sequel as a continuation, it runs briefly through the greatest hits of the first story (if you like dream-beasts, get ready for enough to make even Neil Gaiman's Morpheus go "Okay, maybe this is too much") before giving us a possible origin for ancient Egyptian civilization (its no worse an idea than "Chariots of the Gods", frankly). Then the humans somehow convince the Martians to abandon clean energy for the chance to have giant piles of radioactive everywhere, which seems like the kind of good idea we'd have.
Both of these are pretty straightforward, although if you were hankering for more that's all you're getting of Mars as Weinbaum decided to take a tour of the entire solar system and showcase his penchant for offbeat aliens. The two stories set on Venus are actually kind of charming since they show some actual progression, although they set a trend that will become very apparent later. In "Parasite Planet" American trader Hamilton Hammond is trying to make some money in the hot part of Venus. Encountering a snag in his adventures he has to hotfoot his way across Venus to reach a friendly American settlement, but not before running into British explorer Patricia Burlingame. Its opposite attract at first sight, so get ready for a bunch of screwball bickering with those two wacky kids as they navigate their way across a planet where everything wants to eat everything. Do they fall in love in the process? I'm not telling you, but I will tell you this, in almost any Weinbaum story from this point on a guy and a girl who are not together when the story starts are almost inevitably going to be together by the finish. Whether its just a cliche of the times or Weinbaum had a real soft streak I have no idea but you will notice it after a while.
It makes "The Lotus Eaters" a little more interesting because you have Hammond and Burlingame back but acting more as equals, with her scientific brilliance matched with his Yankee pluck . . . though of course Weinbaum can't resist by making her a shrinking violet when something weird happens, which is often. But he postulates another strange race of seemingly intelligent plants and then tries to slot them into the nutty ecosystem he's created for the planet . . . its moments like that when our two heroes are trying to reason out why the plants are what they are that the story tries a little harder (though he resorts to the "they're in danger from gaseous spores!" twice). I don't know if it rises above the shackles of its time but it probably stood out compared to all the other stories around it in the magazine.
But at least we get one more round with them in "The Planet of Doubt", where they venture to (get it out of your system now) Uranus, with a foggy world and aliens who do an eternal conga line . . . he's at his best with purely inexplicable aliens and while his prose isn't going to set the world on fire just the sheer strangeness of the images themselves are worthwhile as everyone staggers through a mysterious fog trying to avoid a line of speechless aliens that seem to be trying to kill them purely on impulse.
"Flight on Titan" features married couple Tim and Diane Vick . . . having lost their money in an economic crash, they decide to try their luck on Saturn's moon mining flame orchids that would make them rich back on Earth. That is, if they survive a long trek back through pretty bad conditions and the usual menagerie of not even remotely humanoids that would like to kill them. This one works for me because Diane is just as (if not more) clever than her husband and you do get the sense the two of them are in this together, which is a nice change of pace in SF of that era. They're not trying to do anything heroic, they're just trying to survive.
Its probably "The Red Peri" that impressed me the most. An epic length tale compared to the others, it features engineer Frank Keene . . . having been attacked by a space pirate ship once, he then encounters it again some time later only to realize that the head pirate is a young woman who is wrecking things like an even angrier Captain Nemo. What follows then are some maneuvering as Frank tries to keep himself alive while plotting how to get free. The story's dragged down a bit by the "I hate you so much I love you" romance between Frank and the Red Peri, both of whom can't seem to quit each other, or admit as much (told you Weinbaum is a fool for love . . . . though let's not forget that the Red Peri is nineteen?). Fortunately everyone has their own love secrets, which add some spice to all the manipulations . . . the biggest surprise for me was the downbeat ending. Its melodramatic but it probably works better than if everyone just kissed.
"The Mad Moon" takes us back to romance between two crazy kids but this time literally everyone in the story is crazy in some way, so much that there's a definite "Alice in Wonderland" vibe going on at times. The fevered sections are probably the best but the whole scenario itself is pleasingly bonkers, with two sets of nutty aliens.
"Redemption Cairn" lets the aliens take a backseat for a bit with a mystery as former pilot Jack Sands has to confront a bad incident in his past and figure out he's been recruited to pilot again. Its one of those stories where the bones are good enough you wonder how someone with a little more flair would have handled it . . . the mix of personalities and the lingering possibility of a mole makes this one stand out a little, even if the story can't help but take a capable woman down a peg or two.
Lastly, "Tidal Moon" is the only collaborative story in this collection, although that wasn't intentional. After only finished a small portion before his untimely death, Weinbaum's sister finished the rest and frankly the results aren't too different from the other stories in the collection. Once again featuring someone mining the useful minerals of another planet, it has another mystery and assumed identity, a plucky young girl and Weinbaum's by now typical array of kooky aliens.
Its fine, but you could say that about all these stories. Weinbaum's talent lay in his imagination but his imagination unfortunately didn't extend to hard hitting memorable plots. For all the many, many aliens in these stories, its not exactly "Dune" in terms of incorporating them into the ecology (he's definitely trying and one thing to keep in mind when reading these is that he's operating on a 1930s understanding of what these planets/moons were like) and while the parade is a step up from barechested multi-armed aliens with big swords without compelling plots to match his aliens its mostly Weinbaum trotting out one oddball alien after the other. Which is fine! And as I said, in a 1930s SF magazine these probably all stood out quite a bit . . . nowadays they can read a bit simplistic though I can behind the notion that everyone deserves love.
Regardless Weinbaum is definitely worth exploring, though I wonder if he's more of historical interest than anything else these days. That's why this series feels like a bit of a missed opportunity in terms of including biographical information or pieces from other writers on his impact . . . anything really. He's an author who needs a bit of explaining to really understand what made peoples' jaws drop back then and even if now the stories seem a bit humdrum once in a while you feel a little of the frisson readers must have felt back then seeing his name on the cover of a pulp and thinking "Where is he taking us now?" Before space exploration replaced the fascinating conceptions of worlds teeming with alien life with the reality of worlds vacant of life but far stranger than we could have imagined there's something to be said for that feeling of looking up at the sky and imagining hacking your way through Venusian jungles or racing through Jovian clouds. If reading Weinbaum today can't quite conjure that then its less his fault than perhaps ours . . . more knowledgeable but more cautious about our wonders, we can't forget what we know and so can't recapture the sense of every future having its own adventure, always about to happen, one scientific advance or newspaper headline away.
November 18, 2018
*A Martian Odyssey. I never quite could understand what is so popular about this. It's fine, with truly alien aliens, but not worth being in just about every anthology of the era ever, imo.
*A Valley of Dreams. The sequel. Better written, but not as interesting. Don't know why I've never seen it before; seems like the two could go together.
*Parasite Planet. Venus. Not very enjoyable; Ham is a jerk and he and Pat have a sort of Sam and Diane thing going which is always annoying. But at least it got Weinbaum on the path that leads to:
*The Lotus Eaters. Excellent. I don't know and don't care about the validity of the science. Ham is less of a jerk. Pat gets to do science. And the aliens are truly interesting and alien. Venus.
*The Planet of Doubt. The processionary multi-creature. Uranus. And Pat figures things out. But gets no credit for her courage or intelligence, is instead blamed for being a woman. :sigh:
*Flight on Titan. New couple, new planet, new aliens... but the only thing vividly depicted here was the winter. The "man" and "girl" are types, and the aliens just sketched.
*The Red Peri. Another Sam & Diane thing. Partner is an old man... 55! Emphasis on the couple and on trying to dispel 'superstitions' about what a vacuum does to a body. Aliens minimal Setting Pluto.
*The Mad Moon. Io. Insta-love. And thinking of the natives as monsters worth only extermination, despite evidence to the contrary.
*Redemption Cairn. Europa. Mystery, romance, not nearly enough aliens or science. No idea why he wrote so much of the stuff he wasn't good at.
*Tidal Moon. Ganymede. A girl chooses a man because he grabbed her and kissed her "roughly." Boring story.
Overall, pretty sad. This is why the pulps have a bad name. Plenty of writers, even earlier, had more enlightened/ progressive ideas... don't excuse this stuff because it's "dated." The science is interesting though, and at least some is valid. The aliens are sort of interesting.
But I do *not* recommend this to anyone. I have no idea how or why I finished it.
*A Valley of Dreams. The sequel. Better written, but not as interesting. Don't know why I've never seen it before; seems like the two could go together.
*Parasite Planet. Venus. Not very enjoyable; Ham is a jerk and he and Pat have a sort of Sam and Diane thing going which is always annoying. But at least it got Weinbaum on the path that leads to:
*The Lotus Eaters. Excellent. I don't know and don't care about the validity of the science. Ham is less of a jerk. Pat gets to do science. And the aliens are truly interesting and alien. Venus.
*The Planet of Doubt. The processionary multi-creature. Uranus. And Pat figures things out. But gets no credit for her courage or intelligence, is instead blamed for being a woman. :sigh:
*Flight on Titan. New couple, new planet, new aliens... but the only thing vividly depicted here was the winter. The "man" and "girl" are types, and the aliens just sketched.
*The Red Peri. Another Sam & Diane thing. Partner is an old man... 55! Emphasis on the couple and on trying to dispel 'superstitions' about what a vacuum does to a body. Aliens minimal Setting Pluto.
*The Mad Moon. Io. Insta-love. And thinking of the natives as monsters worth only extermination, despite evidence to the contrary.
*Redemption Cairn. Europa. Mystery, romance, not nearly enough aliens or science. No idea why he wrote so much of the stuff he wasn't good at.
*Tidal Moon. Ganymede. A girl chooses a man because he grabbed her and kissed her "roughly." Boring story.
Overall, pretty sad. This is why the pulps have a bad name. Plenty of writers, even earlier, had more enlightened/ progressive ideas... don't excuse this stuff because it's "dated." The science is interesting though, and at least some is valid. The aliens are sort of interesting.
But I do *not* recommend this to anyone. I have no idea how or why I finished it.
Read
December 2, 2012Classic Tales.
1) A Martian Odyssey
Eine vierköpfige Mannschaft ist auf dem Mars gelandet. Der Chemiker Jarvis, der nach einem Absturz von einem Expeditionsflug zu Fuß von der Absturzstelle zurück zu seinen Begleitern gelangen muss, trifft unterwegs einen ungewöhnlichen Weggenossen und gemeinsam begegnen sie sehr exotischen Wesen. Die Geschichte ist nur gut 20 Seiten lang und besteht im wesentlichen aus der Schilderung der fremdartigen und unbegreiflichen Marsbewohner, deren Weg Jarvis kreuzt. Der Reiz liegt in Weinbaums Versuch, die Fremdartigkeit der Wesen zu beschreiben, die Jarvis trifft und deutlich zu machen, dass menschliches Denken und unsere Vorstellung von intelligentem Leben nicht der absolute Maßstab sind, an dem sich alles Sein im Kosmos messen muß.
Am Ende der Erzählung stellt sich heraus, dass Jarvis eine Art Kristall von seinem Abenteuer mitgebracht hat, der möglicherweise Krebs heilen kann. Wie ist Weinbaum darauf gekommen, dieses Detail, dass keine inhaltliche Verbindung zum Rest der Handlung hat, als überraschenden Schluß zu verwenden? Weinbaums Erzählung wurde 1934 in Wonder Stories veröffentlicht. Es erschienen laut wikipedia noch elf weitere Stories, bis Weinbaum am 14. Dezember 1935 an Kehlkopfkrebs starb. Demnach liegt die Vermutung nahe, dass Weinbaum, als er die Martian Odyssey schrieb, bereits an Krebs erkrankt war und wußte, dass nur ein Wunder ihn heilen könnte; so liesse sich diese Erzählung als ein längeres Gedankenspiel lesen, in dem Reisen in fremde Welten nicht nur wundersame Beobachtungen mit sich bringen, sondern auch Lösungen für Menscheitsprobleme. Die Demut, die hierfür ein angemesswener Preis ist, zeigt sich dann eben in Jarvis häufig wiederholten Äusserungen, dass sein fremdartiger Begleiter, der von Jarvis Kollegen ob seines Aussehens, seines Verhaltens und seiner fremdartigen Sprache verspottet und als dem Menschen unterlegen angesehen wird, von Jarvis als ebenbürtig, wenn nicht überlegen betrachtet wird.
Der für das SF-Genre typische Paranoia-Topos, der in den 50iger Jahren dann stellvertretend für die Angst vor dem Kommunismus dominierte und demgemäß alles Fremdartige feindlich ist, wird in Weinbaums Story nicht bedient. Hier ist fremd nicht gleich feindlich, und gerade die uns am wenigsten verständliche Kultur könnte Lösungen für Probleme haben, die wir Menschen nicht in den Griff bekommen.
Gut zu lesende bündige Geschichte, die vier Sterne verdient.
1) A Martian Odyssey
Eine vierköpfige Mannschaft ist auf dem Mars gelandet. Der Chemiker Jarvis, der nach einem Absturz von einem Expeditionsflug zu Fuß von der Absturzstelle zurück zu seinen Begleitern gelangen muss, trifft unterwegs einen ungewöhnlichen Weggenossen und gemeinsam begegnen sie sehr exotischen Wesen. Die Geschichte ist nur gut 20 Seiten lang und besteht im wesentlichen aus der Schilderung der fremdartigen und unbegreiflichen Marsbewohner, deren Weg Jarvis kreuzt. Der Reiz liegt in Weinbaums Versuch, die Fremdartigkeit der Wesen zu beschreiben, die Jarvis trifft und deutlich zu machen, dass menschliches Denken und unsere Vorstellung von intelligentem Leben nicht der absolute Maßstab sind, an dem sich alles Sein im Kosmos messen muß.
Am Ende der Erzählung stellt sich heraus, dass Jarvis eine Art Kristall von seinem Abenteuer mitgebracht hat, der möglicherweise Krebs heilen kann. Wie ist Weinbaum darauf gekommen, dieses Detail, dass keine inhaltliche Verbindung zum Rest der Handlung hat, als überraschenden Schluß zu verwenden? Weinbaums Erzählung wurde 1934 in Wonder Stories veröffentlicht. Es erschienen laut wikipedia noch elf weitere Stories, bis Weinbaum am 14. Dezember 1935 an Kehlkopfkrebs starb. Demnach liegt die Vermutung nahe, dass Weinbaum, als er die Martian Odyssey schrieb, bereits an Krebs erkrankt war und wußte, dass nur ein Wunder ihn heilen könnte; so liesse sich diese Erzählung als ein längeres Gedankenspiel lesen, in dem Reisen in fremde Welten nicht nur wundersame Beobachtungen mit sich bringen, sondern auch Lösungen für Menscheitsprobleme. Die Demut, die hierfür ein angemesswener Preis ist, zeigt sich dann eben in Jarvis häufig wiederholten Äusserungen, dass sein fremdartiger Begleiter, der von Jarvis Kollegen ob seines Aussehens, seines Verhaltens und seiner fremdartigen Sprache verspottet und als dem Menschen unterlegen angesehen wird, von Jarvis als ebenbürtig, wenn nicht überlegen betrachtet wird.
Der für das SF-Genre typische Paranoia-Topos, der in den 50iger Jahren dann stellvertretend für die Angst vor dem Kommunismus dominierte und demgemäß alles Fremdartige feindlich ist, wird in Weinbaums Story nicht bedient. Hier ist fremd nicht gleich feindlich, und gerade die uns am wenigsten verständliche Kultur könnte Lösungen für Probleme haben, die wir Menschen nicht in den Griff bekommen.
Gut zu lesende bündige Geschichte, die vier Sterne verdient.
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