Retro Review: "Intruders from the Stars" by Ross Rocklynne

"Intruders from the Stars" is a novella by Ross Rocklynne. It was first published in the January 1944 issue of Amazing Stories and is finalist for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The magazine version may be found online here.

Warning: Spoilers beyond this point!

"Intruders from the Stars" opens on a far off planet, where a decisive battle is taking place. It's the battle for the fate of an empire, with insurgent forces led by the unnamed prime minister about to vanquish the forces loyal to the Empress, a former slave girl named Bess-Istra. Her forces beaten, Bess-Istra and her surviving soldiers retreat to their citadel, where an escape ship is being readied.

The reader quickly realises that Bess-Istra, though beautiful, is a nasty piece of work, a typical pulp fiction femme fatale. Her reign was bloody, the revolution necessary to depose a tyrant. The prime minister, who is in love with Bess-Istra, even offers her to rule by his side and rebuilt the planet together. However, Bess-Istra will have none of that. She even knocks out her own general Bandro, when he urges her to negotiate to save his own neck.

Bess-Istra and her surviving forces, including the unconscious Bandro, board the escape ship. Her plan is to leave her homeworld and head to a neighbouring solar system and conquer a planet there. The journey is supposed to take thirteen years, which all aboard will spend in suspended animation courtesy of sleep gas.

However, the inhabitants of the neighbouring planet spot Bess-Istra's ship in time and deflect it away from their world. So Bess-Istra and her loyal troops float through space until they happen to land on Earth.

The scene now shifts to Mozambique in the middle of World War II, where American war correspondent Bill van Astor Smythe encounters two missionaries, the Reverend John Stevens and his assistant Thomas Reynolds, while both parties are hiding from the Japanese, who have invaded Mozambique. The young Reverend and his assistant are on their way to a village, for the locals have abandoned Christianity for a new god and also stolen the Reverend's altar candles. Bill is on the run, for the squadron of British soldiers he was embedded with has been wiped out by the Japanese.

Now there never was any Japanese military activity in Africa during World War II – the only axis countries fighting in Africa were Italy and Nazi Germany and they had largely been driven out by 1944. Furthermore, Mozambique was a Portuguese colony and Portugal remained neutral during World War II, so what a squadron of British soldiers was doing there is anybody's guess. It's interesting that Ross Rocklynne messes up something as basic as World War II frontlines. Though the summary of events he gives is correct up to the point where the British take over Mozambique and the Japanese invade Madagascar and Mozambique. Was this a scenario that was considered plausible at some point, since it seems extremely far-fetched to me? I have no idea.

Bill, the Reverend and his assistant make their way to the village, where they find Bess-Istra's spaceship. It turns out that the new god the locals are worshipping is none other than the sleeping Bess-Istra herself, who is conveniently visible (and conveniently half naked) through a porthole of the spaceship.

The Reverend is deeply upset that his converts have abandoned Christianity to worship scantily clad women. He is even more upset, when Bill points out that the sleeping woman is not from Earth, for the existence of extraterrestrial life is not compatible with his faith. Bill, the Reverend and Reynolds are still arguing what to do, when Bill spots a plunger and pushes it downward, because messing with an alien spaceship is obviously such a brilliant idea. As a result, the sleep gas is vented outside the ship, knocking out Bill, the Reverend and his assistant. Bess-Istra awakes.

The three men are taken prisoner and come to aboard the ship. They are subjected first to an interrogation machine and then taken to see Bess-Istra herself. The Reverend immediately accuses Bess-Istra and her people of planning to conquer the Earth. Bill tries to calm him down, but the Reverend has another fit when Bess-Istra mentions gods – in plural – and informs her that there is only one true god. If Bess-Istra had shot him at this point, I certainly would have understood.

However, Bess-Istra has a different plan. Instead of revealing her intentions outright, she tells Bill and the two missionaries that she has scanned their brains and thus learned not only English, but also much about the Earth, including that the world is at war and that the Allies are losing, which is certainly an interesting interpretation of the situation in early 1944, when the battle of Stalingrad (which is generally considered the turning point for Nazi Germany) was already over, even if the Normandy landings were still several months in the future. However, Bess-Istra can help. She and her people will end the war and bring peace to Earth, using their superior alien weapons.

Bess-Istra's offer quickly convinces the Reverend that she is not evil after all, even though he would prefer world peace to be achieved without bloodshed. I have to commend him for this, especially considering the genocidal tendencies we've seen elsewhere on the ballot ("Arena", cough).

Bill is a little bit more sceptical, probably because he spares the occasional glance for General Bandro and Bess-Istra's subordinates who are having a hard time keeping a straight face at Bess-Istra's sudden commitment to world peace. Furthermore, Bess-Istra is also a little too dominant for Bill's taste, though he quickly becomes as besotted with her as everybody else. Bess-Istra, meanwhile, asks Bill and the Reverend (Thomas Reynolds has wandered out of the story and returned to the mission by now) where her forces shall begin their mission to bring peace to Earth. Bill and the Reverend both suggest liberating beleaguered Mozambique and Madagascar from the Japanese. And so they set off in Bess-Istra's ship to disable the Japanese supply fleet, leaving it floating aimlessly in the Indian ocean. Cut off from supplies, the Japanese will be forced to retreat and surrender.

Next, Bess-Istra directs her spaceship to New York City and lands on the roof of the offices of the newspaper syndicate Bill works for, so he can deliver his report in person and will also be believed.

The next target of the campaign for world peace is Italy. Now by early 1944, the Allies had already invaded Italy and Mussolini had been deposed, arrested and subsequently freed by the German army and installed as a sort of puppet ruler in those parts of Italy that were still under Axis control. Nonetheless, the situation did not look particularly desperate for the Allies in Italy in the real world, though the battle of Monte Cassino happened in the winter of 1943/1944. And even though it's never named in the novella itself, it's clearly this battle that Bess-Istra's forces interrupt by knocking out the Italian and German forces with a gas ray, causing Mussolini to flee to Germany.

The Russian front and the western front are next. Bess-Istra's gas ray and another weapon which causes amnesia take out the German forces and the Allies converge on Berlin, where a revolution breaks out (which would coincide nicely with the group around Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and their ultimately failed plot to assassinate Hitler) and Hitler is deposed.

Once World War II has been ended in Europe – and with less bloodshed than in the real world, though we might have ended up with Stauffenberg and his fellow reactionaries in charge, which would likely have been worse for Germany in the long run – the next aim is ending the war in Asia and the Pacific. This time around, Bess-Istra's forces deploy contracting fire rings around Japanese occupied cities in Asia. These fire rings destroy all sulphur and render gunpowder and therefore all firearms useless, leaving the Japanese soldiers at the mercy of the locals. In his review of the story, Steve J. Wright points out that even with alien super science, this scenario would not have worked, because modern armies including the Japanese forces had abandoned blackpowder by World War II.

As a coup de grace, Bess-Istra also teleports Hitler, Goebbels, Göring (at any rate, I assume that the fat, cruel man is supposed to be Göring, since it's unlikely to be Churchill), Mussolini, Admiral Tojo, Emperor Hirohito and other Axis leaders aboard her spaceship as prisoners. Quisling, head of the Norwegian Nazi puppet government, commits suicide.

Bill finds himself falling hard for Bess-Istra, even though he knows it's a bad idea. Meanwhile, Reverend Stevens tries to convert her – not entirely without success, for Bess-Istra is quite fascinated by the idea of a god who is not in favour of power and cruelty. And of course, the Reverend falls for Bess-Istra, too, because every man in this story eventually falls for Bess-Istra. Bill, however, still has sense enough to wonder just what exactly Bess-Istra's motive is in all this.

During a broadcast to the entire world, Bess-Istra declares herself ruler of the Earth. Bill launches himself at her, only to be shot down by her stun gun. He and the Reverend are thrown into a cell aboard her ship.

Meanwhile, Bess-Istra has been busy. She has set up a world court to try the Axis leaders and other war criminals, has ordered all warships and warplanes scrapped, has redrawn the world map and set up new states, has introduced a world currency, set up a climate control system and overhauled the global transportation system to use the same technology her spaceship uses. In short, she's been remarkably efficient and also hasn't proven herself a cruel tyrant so far, because apparently she has been listening to Reverend Stevens extolling the virtues of Christianity to her and was convinced.

Bess-Istra frees Bill and the Reverend and makes Bill her personal press agent to make her look good, since someone from her own camp is feeding negative stories about her less than glorious past to the press. Bess-Istra refuses to suppress these stories, because she now believes in the freedom of the press. Bill, on the other hand, is still not convinced that Bess-Istra really has the world's best interests at heart, even though she has only done good so far. By now, he's also completely in love with her, even though he hates himself for it. Bess-Istra is also falling for Bill, though she hates the idea almost as much as he does.

Bess-Istra's benevolent dictatorship is interrupted, when her former general Bandro, now head of the international world police, and chief scientist Sab-Hallo revolt against her, because they have had enough of Bess-Istra's sudden desire for peace and democracy. They take Bill and Bess-Istra prisoner and end the trial of the Axis leaders by summarily executing them, turning Hitler into an oily stain on the courtroom floor. Bill and Bess-Istra are about to be executed as well, when Reverend Stevens crashes a power glider into Bess-Istra's headquarters, takes out the rebelling soldiers with the gas ray and rescues Bill and Bess-Istra.

The Reverend explains that a convert among Bess-Istra's soldiers tipped him off about the plot. Together, they head for the Reverend's old mission in the jungle of Mozambique (which is still a Portuguese colony, Bess-Istra not having gotten around to eliminating the evil of colonialism yet), Bandro's forces hot in pursuit. Bandro's forces sweep the jungle with the green ray, a devastating weapon, but luckily Bess-Istra has an energy shield which can protect them – but only one, so they have to huddle together. They make it to the mission, where they find Thomas Reynolds and several of the converted locals dead, killed by the green ray. I honestly wonder why Thomas Reynolds is in this story at all, since his character serves no real purpose, disappears from the story about a third in and only reappears to be killed off.

Bill, the Reverend and Bess-Istra hole up in the mission house, where tension quickly comes to a head. Bill accuses Bess-Istra of not being sincere in her newfound conversion to Christianity and tells her point blank that deep inside, she still worships the terrible goddess Stuz, even though the priests of Stuz abused her and turned Bess-Istra into the warped person she has become. Bess-Istra hotly denies this and declares that she must kill Bill for his presumption, whereupon he hits her repeatedly, even though he normally does not strike woman.

This is one of my least favourite tropes in older works, where the masculine hero hits an "uppity woman" to make her more pliable and she goes along with it instead of kicking the bastard to the curb. This trope usually occurs within the framework of an "I hate you, I hate you, I love" relationship, which is of course what is happened between Bill and Bess-Istra. The "man hits woman" trope that's extremely common in old Hollywood movies and also shows up in genre fiction, though it is not all that common in SFF, probably because golden age SFF is not particularly interested in interpersonal relationships. "I hate you, I hate you, I love you" relationships are somewhat more common. Examples include the relationship between Jirel of Joiry and Guillaume in "Black God's Kiss" by C.L. Moore or the relationship between Eric John Stark and Ciaran in "Black Amazon of Mars" by Leigh Brackett or the relationship between Matthew Carse and Ywain of Sark in "Sea-Kings of Mars" a.k.a. "The Sword of Rhiannon", also by Leigh Brackett.

However, in all three examples attempting to use physical violence against the woman they definitely are not in love with does not end well for the men in question. Guillaume gets magically slain and has his soul banished into hell (Jirel eventually frees him, once she realises that she loves him after all), while Eric John Stark and Matthew Carse get whipped for their trouble and Eric John Stark gets decked by Ciaran, too (they both eventually get the woman after many exciting adventures). And while I suspect that Jirel, Ciaran and Ywain would get along just fine with Bess-Istra, none of them would allow a man to hit them and get away with it. I guess the difference here is that those stories were written by female authors, while "Intruders from the Stars" was written by a man.

And so Bess-Istra does not make Bill suffer, but instead starts crying, while her features becomes softer and less cruel, after Bill hits her. Her conversion to Christianity is also a lot more sincere now. However, Bill is still not happy, because Bess-Istra does start to become a bit too affectionate towards the Reverend John Stevens.

While Bill, Bess-Istra and the Reverend are busy with their own interpersonal drama, Bandro hasn't been idle either. He executes all captured war criminals and completely destroys Berlin and Tokyo. Bill is not at all happy with the former – he believes in trials and due process – but does find some justification for the latter. After all, the Japanese and the Nazis considered themselves superior to others, which apparently excuses killing civilians who may not even have agreed with their respective regimes. It's one of those slap in the face moments I occasionally experience when reading/watching Retro Hugo finalists – the realisation that as far as some long dead author is concerned, I'm not really a human being and deserve to be killed just because of my nationality. The worst examples usually occur in the dramatic presentation and graphic story categories, though I have also seen a few examples in the fiction categories. It's not even limited to the Retro Hugos – there are alternate history novels written in this century that openly fantasize about how wonderful it would be, if the Allies had nuked Germany.

To be fair to Ross Rocklynne, Bess-Istra immediately tells Bill that there won't be any cities destroyed and civilians murdered on her watch, because they are better than that. And indeed, it is also possible to view this scene as a commentary on the large-scale bombing of cities and other civilian targets in which the US and UK were engaged at the time. After all, our heroes have always attempted to deal with their enemies via non-lethal means and with a minimum of bloodshed throughout the novel and also only aimed their operations at military and not civilian targets. The Reverend even feels ill, when he is forced to shoot some of Bandro's soldiers.

Bandro also has temples dedicated to the cruel Goddess Stuz built and all other religions banned. Furthermore, he orders that all power gliders be equipped with a device that allows his police forces to take control of the vehicle, making it impossible to use the power gliders against him. And since Bess-Istra had all other vehicles scrapped in an attempt to make global transport faster and more energy-efficient, Bandro's order effectively makes any resistance against him impossible.

However, Bill, Bess-Istra and the Reverend still have a power glider that Bandro's forces cannot control. And so they embark on a desperate mission to sneak aboard the spaceship that brought Bess-Istra and her people to Earth and take out Bandro and Sab-Hallo.

The plan works, too. The three of them evade Bandro's patrols, sneak aboard the spaceship, while it is en route to San Francisco, make their way to the control room, where they kill Sab-Hallo. Bess-Istra then floods the rest of the ship with sleep gas to render Bandro and his forces unconscious. However, Bandro has managed to make his way into the control room just in time and holds the trio at gunpoint, planning to kill them.

However, the Reverend won't let himself be shot quite so easily. He commands Bandro to stop and drop his weapons in the name of the Lord. Bandro is not impressed by the Reverend's religious fervour, but caught off balance long enough that Bill can jump him. In the resulting struggle, the Reverend is shot, Bill breaks Bandro's neck and the spaceship is about the crash into the San Francisco Bay.

Once the dust settles and Bess-Istra gets the ship back under control, only she and Bill are left standing. Bill tries to comfort the grieving Bess-Istra and says that he knows how much she loved the Reverend. Bess-Istra replies that she of course loved the Reverend – after all, he was a truly good man. However, she only loved the Reverend as a brother. In turn, Bill assures Bess-Istra that it does not matter what she did on another planet millions of years ago, for on Earth she did good. They kiss, finally admitting their feelings for each other.

"Intruders from the Stars" is the first story by Ross Rocklynne I ever read and I have to admit, I wasn't expecting much. I fully expected to read a weak story that would end up at the bottom of my Retro Hugo ballot, either below or just barely above "No Award". And indeed, the only reason I read it before the remaining two novella finalists is because I found "Trog" unreadable and just couldn't face another A.E. van Vogt story after struggling through "The Winged Man".

However, I was pleasantly surprised, because "Intruders from the Stars" is not a bad story at all. True, it's not a timeless classic either and probably wouldn't have made the ballot at all, if 1944 hadn't been a weak year for novellas. However, "Intruders from the Stars" was thoroughly entertaining and genuinely clever in parts in spite of its flaws.

I particularly like that after the alien mass slaughter in the prologue, "Intruders from the Stars" consistently goes for non-lethal solutions and seeks to solve the problems thrown at the characters – including ending World War II – with a minimum of bloodshed. After the "genocide is good" message in stories like "Arena", the fact that "Intruders from the Stars" privileges non-lethal solutions and actually condemns large-scale slaughter was a breath of fresh air. Also, what happens after World War II is ended early by superior alien technology not only partly mirrors what happened in the real world, e.g. war crimes tribunals rather than summary executions, but also tries to envision a more peaceful postwar world. Interestingly, the picture drawn up of Bess-Istra's new world order does mirror some quasi-utopian essays about how science fiction can contribute to a better world after the war that you can find in fanzines of the period.

Another thing I enjoyed was that a character who is introduced as an unambiguous villainess in the prologue and who has bad intentions for at least half of the story nonetheless ends up doing a whole lot of good. It's also interesting that Bess-Istra (and likely Bandro and Sab-Hallo as well) are presented not as intrinsically bad, but as the products of a bad environment. Bess-Istra is a classic example of an abuse victim who becomes an abuser. Except that she changes, once she finds herself in a better environment and meets better people.

Bess-Istra starts out as a 1940s femme fatale, a stereotype that was extremely common at the time, but eventually grows into a character of her own, though I don't like the taming part at all. Nonetheless, Bess-Istra is one of the more interesting female characters I've come across in the course of the Retro Reviews project.

Bill van Astor-Smythe and the Reverend John Stevens similarly start out as stereotypes. The Reverend is a true believer and a pompous fire and brimstone preacher, while Bill is a standard dashing reporter hero – another 1940s stereotype – and speaks in irritating period slang. Like Bess-Istra, both of them eventually grow into more rounded characters and become a lot more interesting. Too bad that the love triangle between the three of them and the "I hate you, I hate you, I love you" relationship between Bill and Bess-Istra never grows beyond cliché.

Those who know me are probably aware that I'm not a fan of religious content in science fiction. Thankfully, golden age science fiction usually doesn't pose much of a problem in that regard, because if religion plays a role at all, it's more likely to be a scam like the fake religion from the early Foundation stories or the equally fake and vastly more oppressive religion from Gather Darkness by Fritz Leiber. "Intruders from the Stars" in unusual, for religion not only plays an important role in the story, but even serves as an agent of character development, because it is the encounter with Reverend Stevens and his brand of Christianity that causes Bess-Istra to change. Nonetheless, the religious content in "Intruders from the Stars" does not bother me beyond some eye-rolling moments, probably because religion is also used as a shorthand for how the prevailing culture of a society influences character. After all, Rocklynne makes it clear that the cult of the goddess Stuz is the reason why Bess-Istra and presumably Bandro and Sab-Hallo are the sort of people they are. Once Bess-Istra comes into contact with a less violent culture and religion, she changes and becomes a better person.

Considering how prolific Ross Rocklynne was during the golden age and how long his career lasted (long enough that he embraced the New Wave and even had a story in Again, Dangerous Visions), surprisingly little is known about him. According to the Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction, "Rocklynne had one of the most interesting, if florid, imaginations of the Pulp-magazine writers of his time, and wrote very much better than most." The first bit certainly applies to "Intruders from the Stars". As for the second, I didn't find "Intruders from the Stars" badly written, in spite of some clunky passages,  and dated slang (which is a common problem with older pulp fiction in general). However, I didn't find it exceptionally well written either, compared to the likes of Clifford D. Simak or Ray Bradbury or C.L. Moore.

Rocklynne debuted in Astounding during the F. Orlin Tremaine era and published several of his early stories there, but by the 1940s, his fiction was more likely to appear in other venues like Amazing Stories, Thrilling Wonder Stories or Fantastic Adventures. Was Rocklynne one of those science fiction writers of the golden age who just didn't get along with John W. Campbell? Based on "Intruders from the Stars" at any rate, Rocklynne's fiction wasn't particularly Campbellian (the aliens triumph, religion saves the day, genocide is bad and non-bloody solutions are preferred), but then much of what Campbell published in Astounding wasn't particularly Campbellian either. Given the role religion plays in "Intruders from the Stars", I also wonder whether Rocklynne was a religious man. Does anybody who has read more of his work know whether Christianity appears frequently in his work?

That said, "Intruders from the Stars" does have its share of flaws. I've already pointed out some of them above. And while calling Joseph Stalin of all people gallant might be excusable in 1944, when the Soviet Union and the US were allies in World War II and little was known about the system of gulags and general regime of terror in the USSR, it has not aged well at all. Calling Winston Churchill gallant has not aged well either, even though people in the US and UK are only now getting around to recognising the many problematic aspects of the man. Still, it's a known risk of contemporary set stories – and I'm surprised how many SFF stories I've read for the Retro Reviews project that are either directly or indirectly about World War II – that some things will age badly.

Another flaw that the story shares with Henry Kuttner's "A God Named Kroo" and many other stories with non-western settings from the period is that it is full of dated racial and ethnic stereotypes, which can make a modern reader cringe, even though you have to give props to Rocklynne, Kuttner and others for at least remembering that the world does not solely consist of White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Americans and maybe the occasional Irish stereotype. Rocklynne also remembers that World War II was a truly global war and mentions Chinese and Senegalese soldiers along with various westerners.

In the end, the flaws of the story are too many to make "Intruders from the Stars" a true classic and viable Retro Hugo contender, especially considering that "The Jewel of Bas", "Killdozer" and "A God Named Kroo" are all better. Nonetheless, this novella was a lot more entertaining and enjoyable than I expected and takes an anti-genocide stand, which is more than can be said for many other stories of the period. That said, it does feel like a throwback to an earlier era of science fiction, namely the super science stories of the so-called radium era of the 1930s.

Retro Review: "Iron Mask" by Robert Bloch

This cover by Margaret Brundage is actually an accurate depiction of a scene in the story.

"Iron Mask" is a novelette by Robert Bloch, which was first published in the May 1944 issue of Weird Tales and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The story may be found online here.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following.

"Iron Mask" starts out at the headquarters of the local Resistance movement in the French town of Dubonne. American Eric Drake, an AP correspondent who got stuck in France after the beginning of WWII, confronts Pierre Charmand, the former mayor of Dubonne and now head of the Resistance. Eric is furious because Charmand has sent his girlfriend, Charmand's daughter Roselle, to the ruined Chateau D'Ivers to retrieve some important papers Charmand has hidden there. For not only is the Chateau supposedly haunted, the local top Nazi Gauleiter Hassman is also heading there with a squad of soldiers, presumably to look for the same papers as Roselle.

Charmand is a lot more sanguine than Eric. He assures Eric that the Chateau is definitely not haunted (famous last words that). As for why he sent Roselle rather than one of the male members of the Resistance, a woman is less likely to arouse suspicion. But when dusk falls and Roselle still hasn't returned, a determined Eric goes after her, Nazi patrols be damned.

Braving patrols and bats, Eric makes his way to the Chateau. Once inside, he hears Roselle scream. He follows the scream and finds Roselle unconscious on the floor, a sinister cloaked figure bending over her, clutching the papers. As Eric approaches, the figure vanishes.

Once Roselle comes to again, she insists that she was attacked by a thing wearing an iron mask. And this thing was not a ghost, but real. Eric agrees that the attacker was real enough, because ghosts don't steal important papers and they don't leave footprints.

Eric tells Roselle to return to her father. Meanwhile, he will go after the attacker and get the papers back. Roselle, on the other hand, doesn't want Eric to go alone. For Roselle shot her attacker in the head, which didn't even slow him down. "He's a monster," she insists. Eric, on the other hand, points out that Roselle's bullet must have hit the iron mask, which is why the attacker was not injured or killed.

So Eric follows the footprints of the attacker deeper into the ruined castle. When they lead to seemingly dead end, Eric finds a secret passage through which the attacker escaped outside. He chases the attacker down a hill, only for both of them to run into a squad of Nazi soldiers coming up the hill. Soon, Eric finds himself fighting side by side with the masked stranger against the Nazis. Eric uses his gun, while the masked stranger hurls rocks at the Nazis with superhuman strength.
Once the fight is over, Eric demands that the masked stranger – whose mask is not made from iron but velvet – hand over the papers. Turns out that the stranger is working for the Resistance as well and also planned to procure the papers, before they could fall into the hands of the Nazis. As for why he wears a mask, the stranger tell Eric that he was a French soldier whose face and hands were burned by flamethrowers. The doctors attempted to save his life, but left him disfigured. So the stranger donned a mask and started his solo crusade against the Nazis.

Eric wants to take the stranger to the Resistance meeting (he is rather trusting – after all, the stranger could be anyone, even a Nazi in disguise), but the stranger doesn't want to come. Eric assures him that his damaged face doesn't matter. "You don't understand," the stranger says, "I have no face." Then he takes off his velvet mask to reveal an iron mask where his face should be. So Roselle had been right after all.

Eric nonetheless takes the stranger and the papers to Charmand, who also accepts him a lot more readily than I would in his position. Only Roselle remains sceptical. Charmand also tells the stranger that there is an important Resistance meeting taking place at midnight (when else?), where the Resistance will plan their campaign against Gauleiter Hassman's attempt to conscript French men as forced labourers. However, Charmand is still missing an important report, because two of his men have not returned yet. The masked stranger offers to procure the report, though he won't say how he plans to do that with only an hour left until midnight. "I have developed a certain – technique – in such matters," he declares.

Indeed, the stranger returns with the report just in time for the Resistance meeting. But almost as soon as he has handed it over, the Nazis storm the Resistance headquarters, led by Gauleiter Hassman himself. By this point, this reader at least became even more suspicious, because the Nazis' timing is mightily convenient.

In the ensuing battle, Charmand is killed. Eric escapes with Roselle, the papers and the masked stranger who is seemingly impervious to bullets. Not knowing where else to go, they retreat to the Chateau, where Eric demands to know just how the stranger could survive being hit by at least fifty bullets. Now, the stranger finally admits that he is no flamethrower burned French soldier. Instead, he is the legendary Man in the Iron Mask. Oh yes, and he is immortal, too.

Iron Mask tells his story. He is the grandson of Nostradamus and was supposed to continue the family trade of alchemy and prophecy in Paris, advising the aristocracy. Over time, the future Man in the Iron Mask became extremely influential, until he was the de facto ruler of France. Alas, King Louis XIV suspected him of having an affair with his secret wife Madame de Maintenon and therefore ordered him arrested, imprisoned and locked into an iron mask for the rest of his days. However, neither the King nor the Man in the Iron Mask realised how long this life sentence would last. For just before he embarked for Paris, Iron Mask had been given a potion by his alchemist father that grants eternal life.

After thirty-four years of imprisonment, the Man in the Iron Mask finally managed to escape by passing off the body of a recently deceased prisoner in the Bastille for his own. The entries in the prison records of the Bastille containing his true identity vanished at around the same time. But even though Iron Mask was immortal, his face still aged, so he continued to hide it beneath his mask. Ever since then, he has reappeared to aid France in her hour of need. And so he joined the Resistance.

Alas, the Resistance in Dubonne has been all but wiped out – only Eric, Roselle and the Man in the Iron Mask are left. Their headquarters has been discovered as well. Luckily, Iron Mask knows of an alternative: The sewers under the old townhall, now the Gauleiter's headquarters and the last place where the Nazis would think to look.

So the three of them retreat to the sewers, where Eric informs the others that he has an important meeting with a representative of the Paris Resistance. He plans to hand over the papers they rescued to this representative and receive his instructions what to do, when the Allies land in France (it's notable that the Normandy landings did not take place until June 1944, i.e. a month after this story was published). However, the Nazis are on the warpath and have patrols everywhere, so Eric has little chance of reaching the representative. Luckily, he has a plan.

He sends out Roselle to check if the Resistance representative is at the meeting point. Meanwhile, Iron Mask will keep the Nazi patrols busy and draw them away. Since he is immortal, their bullets can't hurt him. Once Roselle gives the all clear, Eric will head to the meeting. However, as soon as Roselle and Iron Mask have left, Eric opens the cask with the papers, finds one that is of interest and sneaks into the Nazi headquarters instead.

Roselle and Iron Mask return just in time to see Eric returning from his spying expedition, the Nazis hot on his heels. The three escape through the sewers, the Nazis in pursuit. During the ensuing fight, a pipe bursts and drowns the Nazis. Once again, only Eric, Roselle and Iron Mask escape.

Iron Mask demands that Eric turn over the papers to him and he's not asking nicely. Eric, however, wants to give them to the Resistance representative. He draws his gun and when that doesn't stop the Man in the Iron Mask – well, he is immortal, after all – Eric fires.

The bullet does not hurt Iron Mask, but it tears a hole into his cloak, revealing metal underneath. The stranger isn't just wearing an iron mask, his entire body is made from iron. He's a robot and a rampaging one, too.

Eric and the robot fight. Eric finally gets lucky and hits the robot with the butt of his gun, splitting its iron skull. And that's the end of Iron Mask.

Eric now reveals that he had his suspicions about Iron Mask from the beginning. If he had really been a burned soldier, there was no way bullets wouldn't have hurt him, iron mask or not. And while Iron Mask was clearly immortal, he was no saviour and protector of France, but instead her mortal enemy.

Iron Mask was created in the thirteenth century by Roger Bacon, when Bacon was imprisoned in the Bastille. Indeed, Iron Mask was the fortune-telling Brazen Head that legend attributes to Bacon. And because Bacon was furious at the French for imprisoning him, he programmed his immortal robot to take revenge and destroy France, which the robot proceeded to do in the centuries that followed.

Iron Mask was an adviser to kings, true, but he inevitably gave bad advice. He whispered the policies that would eventually lead to the French revolution into the ears of the respective monarchs, he set Napoleon Bonaparte on his way to become a tyrant, he advised Bismarck in the Franco-Prussian War (maybe that is the reason Otto von Bismarck was known as the Iron Chancellor) and he made a deal with Hitler, allowing the Nazis to conquer France. In fact, Gauleiter Hassman was taking orders from the robot, while Iron Mask set about to destroy the Resistance. As for why he was so keen to get his hands on those papers, among the papers were the vanished prison records of the Bastille which would have revealed Iron Mask's secret, so the robot had to procure and destroy them. Conveniently, those papers also revealed that Bacon had built a weakness into the robot, a weakness Eric exploited to destroy Iron Mask.

I'm not sure what I had expected when I decided to read and review "Iron Mask", but it certainly wasn't a gonzo WWII spy adventure cum Tim Powers-esque secret history starring a malevolent medieval robot with a pathological hatred of French people. Because honestly, there is no way you could expect a story like that. As a matter of fact, "Iron Mask" is an excellent example of how very strange the pulps could be at times. With a few tweaks, this story could be one of the more offbeat adventures of Captain America, Peggy Carter and/or the Howling Commandos.

"Iron Mask" is an action-packed tale and follows the pulp school of plotting with frequent twists, turns and reveals. In fact, I am pretty sure that the major reveals map onto Lester Dent's pulp fiction master plot, even though "Iron Mask" is a long novelette rather than a six thousand word short story. But unlike with e.g. A.E. Van Vogt, whose random plot twists often don't make sense, the plot twists and reveals in "Iron Mask" all fit naturally into the story.

"Iron Mask" is very well written. The action scenes – and there are many of them – are  thrilling and visceral. The descriptive moments, whether it's Eric disturbing some bats in the ruined chateau or a fire fight with Nazi soldiers in the cellar of a disused brewery, are suitably atmospheric. Bloch was only twenty-seven, when "Iron Mask" was published, but then he was something of a prodigy and had been writing professionally for more than ten years at this point. Bloch's first story "Lilies" appeared in Marvel Tales in 1934.

Nowadays, Robert Bloch is mostly remembered for Psycho and his contributions to the original Star Trek, but his range was much greater. He wrote Cthulhu mythos stories, while still in his teens, he was responsible for the mid-century Jack the Ripper renaissance (via the 1944 Retro Hugo finalist "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper") and also for our modern obsession with serial killers in general. And at least based on "Iron Mask", I'd also say that Robert Bloch originated the secret history subgenre, eight years before Tim Powers, the SFF author most associated with secret history fiction, was even born.

Because "Iron Mask" is certainly a secret history. Bloch uses historical facts – the legend of the mysterious man in the iron mask, the fact that records regarding the man's identity went missing from the Bastille (they were eventually recovered in 2015 and didn't reveal the identity of the man in the iron mask, though they did reveal that his jailer was a greedy jerk), Roger Bacon's stay in Paris (though he was never incarcerated in the Bastille, because it was built almost a century after Bacon was in Paris), the rumours that Bacon had a metal head which could foretell the future, the various points in French history where things went disastrously wrong – to create a wholly fictional narrative of a villainous robot manipulating French history through the centuries. The secret history subgenre sits on the borderline between SFF and thriller and "Iron Mask" is no exception. There even if a classic MacGuffin in the form of the secret papers that the Nazis, the Resistance and Iron Mask are after. The story certainly is thrilling stuff, even though I find it a little hard to swallow that kings, generals and political leaders all took the (highly questionable) advice of a masked man with a metal head. I mean, I could almost see Hitler making a deal with a malevolent robot, but Bismarck? Sorry, but the old Iron Chancellor strikes me as way too practical for that.

While we're on the subject of history, I have some minor nitpicks regarding the accuracy of the story. And yes, I know it's strange to say that about a story starring an immortal francophobic robot collaborating with the Nazis. That said, Gauleiters were a kind of provincial governor during the Nazi era in Germany, Austria, occupied Czechia and occupied Poland, i.e. what the Nazis considered their Reich. However, there were no Gauleiters in occupied France with the exception of Alsace, which was (and still is in part) largely German speaking, was part of Germany from 1871 to 1918 and was still considered part of Germany by the Nazis. From 1940 on, it was part of the Gau Baden-Alsace, ruled over by a particularly nasty piece of work named Robert Wagner. However, Dubonne is clearly not in Alsace, because the naming pattern is wrong for the region (speaking as someone with Alsatian ancestry) and therefore wouldn't have had a Gauleiter. Furthermore, Gauleiter resided in major cities, not provincial small towns. So Bloch used the wrong title for his Nazi official, but then internal Nazi hierarchy is rather opaque. Also, the various Nazi patrols wouldn't have been Gestapo men, but regular Wehrmacht soldiers. Not that any of this matters much, because Gauleiter Hassman's role is mainly "generic evil Nazi" in this story. And I have to applaud Robert Bloch for giving his evil Nazi official the name Hassman, which literally means "hate man" in German. But then, Bloch was the son of German Jewish immigrants, so it's likely that he spoke at least a little German.

Compared to the positively lurid villain (Iron Mask, not the mistitled Gauleiter Hassman), protagonist Eric Drake remains a tad bland. He's your typical two-fisted pulp hero, quick with his gun, his wits and his fists, dedicated and heroic, but with few characteristics that set him apart from a dozen other pulp heroes. Before the war, Eric was a foreign correspondent for Associated Press, making him the third reporter hero I came across in the course of the Retro Reviews project. But then, journalist and reporter was a popular occupation for heroic characters in the first half of the twentieth century. Note how many superheroes work as journalists in their civilian identity and how many superheroes have journalists as their significant other. The heroic journalist, once such a common figure in popular culture, has sadly almost died out and journalist protagonists are thin on the ground in the twenty-first century, reflecting increased distrust of and disenchantment with the news media.

Roselle Charmand, female Resistance fighter, theoretically sounds like an awesome character, but in practice she remains bland as well and is given little to do aside from screaming and running. Though I did like the fact that Bloch casually mentions that many of the Resistance members are female, including seemingly harmless and pious looking housewives.

In spite of the stunningly gothic (and accurate for once) cover art, courtesy of Margaret Brundage (who is eligible for the Retro Hugo for Best Professional Artist again this year and who I really hope will win one day), "Iron Mask" is another contemporary tale, albeit one with gothic trappings. In fact, all of the Weird Tales stories I have reviewed for this project so far were contemporary tales. "Iron Mask" is also one of only two stories I reviewed for the Retro Reviews project that directly mentions World War II (the other is "Undersea Guardians" by Ray Bradbury), though several other stories address the war indirectly.

"Iron Mask" is also one of several robot stories I have reviewed for this project. Robots were certainly having a pop cultural moment in the 1940s, just as they are having a pop cultural moment now. And as Isaac Asimov said in the introduction to The Complete Robot, robots came in three flavours during the golden age, robot as menace "Iron Mask", "The Jewel of Bas" by Leigh Brackett), robot as pathos ("No Woman Born" by C.L. Moore, even though Deirdre is theoretically a cyborg, and Jenkins from the "City" stories by Clifford D. Simak) and robot as a machine ("Catch That Rabbit" and pretty much any golden age robot story by Isaac Asimov). Bloch also reminds us that robot-like figures have been appearing in myth, legend and popular culture for centuries, even though the term "robot" only goes back to Karel Capek's 1921 play R.U.R.

"Iron Mask" is a highly entertaining spy thriller cum secret history that will keep you on the edge of your seat. It's also a fine example of how strange the pulps could occasionally be and how little they cared about genre boundaries.

Retro Review: "Highwayman of the Void" by Dirk Wylie a.k.a. Frederik Pohl

"Highwayman of the Void" by Dirk Wylie is a space opera novelette, which appeared in the fall 1944 issue of Planet Stories and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The story may be found here.

Regarding the author, Dirk Wylie was the name adopted by Joseph Harold "Harry" Dockweiler, a member of the Futurians and frequent collaborator with Frederik Pohl in the 1940s. However, Frederik Pohl subsequently stated that he wrote "Highwayman of the Void" alone and submitted under Wylie's name. So I will refer only to Pohl as the author from this point.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following!

"Highwayman of the Void" has an absolute killer of a first paragraph:

Steve Nolan was three years dead, pyro-burned in the black space off Luna when a prison break failed. But Nolan had a job to do. Nolan came back.

After this promising start, we follow the undead Steve Nolan across the icy surface of Pluto towards a domed city called Port Avalon. Gradually, we learn that Nolan was once a reporter for the Interplanetary Telenews Company. Now, he' s looking for revenge on his sworn enemy Alan Woller, his former boss and the man who framed him for treason for supposedly collaborating with a terrorist group called the Junta. Woller's lies got Nolan a life sentence on Luna. Nolan managed to escape and nearly died. And because he was presumed dead, he decided not to correct the error. But as a result he can never return to the inner worlds. And now Woller is on Pluto, heading a shipping company. Nolan will make sure that he pays for his crimes.

Nolan still has fifteen miles to trudge across Pluto, when he gets lucky and a skid breaks down right in front of him. Nolan forces his way into the skid and persuades the pilot, a young woman, to give him a lift to Port Avalon. In return, he'll fix the broken skid. The young woman agrees, not that Nolan gives her much of a choice. After an encounter with some local fauna – a giant crab-like critter – Nolan and the young woman reach the city. The young woman – neither we nor Nolan learn her name at this point, with good reason – is quite taken with Nolan and offers to buy him dinner, which is remarkably progressive by 1940s standards. However, Nolan rebuffs her. He has other things on his mind.

He heads to a disreputable bar (are there any other bars in space opera?) named The Golden Ray, where he meets with an old acquaintance, a gambler named Petersen who rescued Nolan after his nigh-fatal prison break and is the only one who knows Nolan's true identity. Petersen warns Nolan not to go after Woller, because Woller is even more influential than he used to be. But Nolan is determined. He will see Woller dead.

So Nolan sneaks into Woller's hotel, into what he believes is Woller's bedroom, only to get the surprise of his life, when he finds not Woller, but the young woman who'd given him a lift, in the bed. "Where is Woller?" Nolan demands, but the young woman refuses to answer. The encounter ends with Nolan retreating, because he can't bring himself to shoot an innocent woman, even if she is Woller's mistress, whereupon the woman raises the alarm and the guards come running.

Nolan braces himself for a shoot-out. But suddenly, alarms go off all over Port Avalon. The dome that protects the city against the harsh environment of Pluto has cracked and is rapidly losing air. Soon, everybody in Port Avalon will be dead.

Nolan knows that he should use the chaos to escape, but instead he goes back into the hotel room and tells the young woman to put on a spacesuit (though Pohl calls them heatsuits). Then he flees, desperate to find a spacesuit for himself. But just outside the hotel, he is intercepted by Petersen, who triggered the dome breach alarm to give Nolan to chance to escape the guards. Petersen also informs Nolan that Woller was called away to Mars in a hurry and that his ship will be leaving in the morning.
Nolan tries to bribe his way aboard Woller's ship. When that doesn't work, he just forces his way aboard and hijacks the ship. But when Nolan finally comes face to face with Woller, he doesn't kill his sworn enemy. Instead, he wants Woller to confess and clear Nolan's name. But before it come to that, the captain – who is a black man, by the way – and the crew overpower Nolan and lock him up.
When the ship lands, Nolan causes an explosion and escapes in the confusion. He also realises that the ship never travelled to Mars at all. Instead, it just landed in another part of Pluto. Nolan is quickly recaptured – there are a lot of escapes and recaptures in this story. Woller, who was wounded in the explosion Nolan caused, very much wants to kill him. However, first he has other business to attend to and so, in the manner of careless villains everywhere, exposes his grand plan.

Turns out that Woller is the one who is collaborating with the Junta to build a fleet of warships in a secluded part of Pluto. When intrepid reporter Nolan accidentally stumbled upon Woller's schemes, Woller framed him to get rid of him. Nolan also learns that Woller is not actually the head of the Junta. A man in a mirrored helmet everybody only calls Chief is.

The Chief is not at all pleased to see Nolan and orders one of the others to give him a gun. But once he has it, the Chief aims his gun at his co-conspirators and tells Nolan to disarm them. For the man behind the Chief's mirrored helmet is not the man the Junta were expecting. But that's a risk that all villains who hide their identity behind a mask run and in fact I am surprised that it doesn't happen more often. The fake Chief tells Nolan to put on a spacesuit and blows a hole into the side of Woller's hideout. The explosion and the loss of air kill many of the conspirators. Nolan and the false Chief flee through the hole and commandeer a skid.

Once aboard the skid, the fake Chief finally takes off his mirrored helmet and reveals none other than Nolan's good friend Petersen underneath. Petersen finally comes clean and admits that he is no gambler at all, but an agent of the interplanetary police force known as Tri-planet Law. Tri-planet Law knew about Woller's treachery all along and they also knew that Nolan was being framed. Nolan was never supposed to go to prison, instead he would have been questioned and given a new identity or taken into protective custody. But Nolan messed up that plan with his escape attempt. So Nolan was officially declared dead. Petersen was sent to rescue and befriend him to find out what Nolan knew.

When Nolan couldn't be deterred from going after Woller, Petersen did his best to protect him, including disguising himself as the Chief to infiltrate the meeting of the Junta leaders.

Nolan insists that since the Junta leaders are all at Woller's hideout, they must do something about it. Petersen says that's already being taken care of. Together, he and Nolan watch as Tri-planet Law bombs Woller's hideout, killing everybody inside and putting an end to the Junta.

But there is one more revelation to come. For Petersen also tells Nolan that the young woman he met in Woller's hotel room is not Woller's mistress but his stepdaughter Ailse. Ailse found out what her stepfather was up to and was planning to confront him. Before Petersen could intervene, she vanished. Petersen fears she may have been at Woller's hideout, when it was bombed.

Nolan is devastated, until he remembers a coffin-like box he saw aboard Woller's ship, a so-called sleep box wherein human beings can be kept in suspended animation. And that same sleep box is now in the cargo hold of the skid Petersen and Nolan commandeered. So Nolan rushes to the hold to kiss Snow White – pardon, Ailse – awake.

"Highwayman of the Void" is a cracking good, action-packed space adventure, even if the title is misleading, because there is no highwayman anywhere in the story, unless Nolan sort of hijacking Ailse's skid makes him a highwayman.

Action-packed space adventure is not really something I associate with Frederik Pohl. Nonetheless, his two pseudonymous stories I reviewed for the Retro Reviews project are just that. And in fact, Pohl's pseudonymous contributions to Planet Stories feel very much as if Frederik Pohl was trying to channel Leigh Brackett.

The opening scenes of "Highwayman of the Void" with Nolan trecking across the icy wastes of Pluto and later walking the mean streets of Port Avalon sound very much like Brackett in her noir mode. And in fact, I wouldn't have been surprised if "Highwayman of the Void" had turned out to be a forgotten golden age Leigh Brackett story. Though I suspect that Leigh Brackett would have given Ailse a more active role than spending the bulk of the story as Snow White in a sleep box.

The most notable difference between Leigh Brackett's and Frederik Pohl's takes on noir space opera is that in Pohl's stories, representatives of the authorities are portrayed mostly positively. Petersen, the Tri-planet lawman posing as a gambler, is a good example. Meanwhile, Leigh Brackett has much less faith in the system. In her stories, interplanetary police officers mainly exist as a foil for the outlaw heroes, Lundy from "Terror Out of Space" and Simon Ashton from "Queen of the Martian Catacombs" and the Skaith trilogy being notable exceptions.

And even though Steve Nolan is a convict on the run with revenge on his mind, he is not a typical outlaw protagonist like the ones Leigh Brackett favoured. Instead, Nolan is the heroic journalist, a common character type in popular fiction during the 1930s and 1940s, who took on the wrong corrupt capitalist and was framed for a crime he did not commit. There are several crime movies of the 1930s with this very plot. One example that comes to mind is the 1939 prison drama Each Dawn I Die starring James Cagney. There were others as well. Indeed, it is often forgotten that golden age science fiction drew on influences from beyond the SFF genre spectrum, influences which are more difficult to detect today, because the tropes in question have often vanished.

"Highwayman of the Void" suffers a bit from what I call Van Vogt plotting, i.e. there is a random plot twist every 800 words or so. Though attributed to A.E. van Vogt, the frequent plot twists were a common technique in the pulp era. Lester Dent's famous pulp fiction master plot, requires a plot twist every 1500 words, though Dent was better at pulp plotting than van Vogt (but then pretty much everybody was) and his plot twists usually make sense.

"Highwayman of the Void" has plenty of plot twists and several of them seem rather random at first glance. Our hero is trapped by the goons of the villain with no way out. Oh look, a handy dome breach alarm, quell coincidence. No wait, there is no dome breach – the hero's pal has triggered the alarm to give our hero a chance to escape. And then our hero has been captured by the villains – again – and is only seconds from execution, when he is rescued by an unknown saviour wearing the mirrored helmet of the conspirators' leader. What a coincidence – again. And then the unknown saviour is revealed to be the hero's best pal – again. Hmm, that guy sure gets around and also knows a whole lot for a guy who gambles for a living in dingy spaceport bars. Oh, he's really an undercover policeman – that explains a lot.

Pohl is already a skilled enough writer at this point of his career to come up with logical explanations for his seemingly random plot twists, though he isn't yet skilled enough to avoid the pulp school of plotting with its random plot twists altogether. There also are some loose ends, for example the true identity of the Chief in the mirrored helmet is never revealed. That said, it is notable that Frederik Pohl was a better writer at this point of his career than his friend and near contemporary Isaac Asimov, though not yet as good as his other contemporary Ray Bradbury. Pohl is mostly remembered for his fandom activities during the 1940s, but he was already a good writer and editor at this time. Even if "Highwayman of the Void" and his other stories from this period have been reprinted only once in a collection fittingly entitled The Early Pohl.

Another problem with "Highwayman of the Void" is that there is too much plot for a novelette length story. Usually, golden age science fiction stories are exactly the right length for what the idea and plot will support. Occasionally, they are too long, padded out with technobabble and random plot twists. "Highwayman of the Void" is the rare example of a story from this era that I wish would have been longer. Because a novella or even novel-length story would have given Pohl the chance to flesh out the plot and the characters more.

After reading a lot of golden age science fiction stories in a row, including several from the more lurid end of the market such as Planet Stories, Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories, I've noticed that many of those stories are set in the same consensus version of the solar system. In this pulp science fiction shared universe, Earth is the dominant force and the tri-planet configuration of Earth, Mars and Venus is the centre of civilisation. Sometimes, Mars and Venus have native humanoid populations, sometimes their populations are the human descendants of early colonists (see "Double-Cross", also by Frederik Pohl). But whichever is the case, Martians and Venusians are usually considered primitive and not on the same level as Earth people. Mercury is inhabited, but a hell world. The rest of the solar system all the way to Pluto (which was still a planet) is inhabited as well, though anything beyond Mars is the wild frontier. Space cops patrol the space lanes.

Earth's Moon serves a prison in this universe (and would still be portrayed as a prison world all the way to Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in 1966 and beyond – e.g. the Second Species Trilogy by Jane O'Neill features a prison on the Moon in a 21^st century series) from which the protagonists either escape or try to prevent being sent there. I've never actually read a golden age story set in the prison on the moon (The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress doesn't count, since it’s a 1960s story), but the place sounds about as cheery as a Soviet gulag of the same period.

Science made this pulp science fiction shared universe obsolete in the 1960s, when space probes reached Mars, Venus, the Moon and later on the other planets of the solar system. But nonetheless, we can still see the influence of this pulp science fiction shared universe in contemporary science fiction. The Expanse is set in an updated version of the pulp science fiction shared universe. Earth and Mars are the human core worlds (and perpetually at loggerheads), though science has taken Venus and Mercury out of the game. Meanwhile, the belt and the moons of Jupiter are the wild frontier, populated by marginalised and exploited people and beset by space pirates, murderous capitalists, local revolutionaries and terrorists, space Mormons and fedora-wearing detectives who walk the mean streets of Ceres.

A far more common approach is just transposing the pulp science fiction shared universe to another solar system with more habitable worlds than our own or just the entire galaxy. How many space opera universes feature core of wealthy, high technology worlds (which we rarely visit, because the protagonists usually can't show their faces there) and a galactic rim of much more primitive frontier worlds, which are often oppressed by the core worlds? It's an extremely common set-up in space opera, used by Star Wars and Firefly among others. Even my In Love and War universe features a similar set-up. This trope is so common that we have almost forgotten where it came from.

"Highwayman of the Void" is a good example of a story set in the pulp science fiction shared universe of the golden age.  A fine noir space adventure that deserves more recognition than it got.

Retro Review: "The Monster Maker" by Ray Bradbury

"The Monster Maker" by Ray Bradbury is a science fiction short story, which appeared in the spring 1944 issue of Planet Stories and is therefore eligible for the 1945 Retro Hugos. The story may be found here.

Warning: There will be spoilers in the following!

I liked "Morgue Ship" so much that I decided to read one of Ray Bradbury's two other stories published in Planet Stories in 1944. And while I did not like "The Monster Maker" quite as much as "Morgue Ship", it's still a good story. It's also a very different story, showcasing Bradbury's range.

"The Monster Maker" hurls us right in medias res, as a spaceship carrying newsreel photographer Click Hathaway (not his real name, we presume) and Interplanetary Patrolman Irish Marnagan (not his real name either – he's actually called Steve, as we learn on the last page) is hit by a meteor and crash-lands on an asteroid. Both Click and Irish (and Click's camera) survive the crash, but their ship is destroyed. Worse, they only have oxygen for sixty minutes.

Click suspects that the meteor strike was no accident, but the work of the man Irish is hunting, a space pirate called Gunther. It's 1944, so of course the villain of the piece has a Germanic name. And since they have only sixty minutes of air and nothing to lose, Click and Irish decide to go in search of Gunther and his base.

During the trek across the surface of the asteroid, Click and Irish first come across an area, where the gravity is lower, suggesting that Gunther used a super-gravity trap to hasten the crash of their spaceship. But before they can figure out what all that might mean, they are attacked by monsters. And Irish's gun doesn't even slow them down.

Our dynamic due hides in a cave, where the monsters can't reach them. Click argues that Gunther has built the perfect trap on the asteroid, because the meteors and the gravity well make the attacks on spaceships look like accidental crashes. And if some crewmembers happen to survive the crash, the monsters will deal with them and it will all seem like a tragic accident.

To pass the time, while they're trapped in the cave, Click takes the film – self-developing film, his own invention – out of the his camera and inserts it into a viewer to admire the great footage he got, footage that no one will likely ever see. And he promptly gets the surprise of his life, when the film doesn't show the monsters, but only Irish aiming his gun at empty vacuum.

Click correctly deduces that the monsters are not real, because film does not lie. But then, he does not live in our era of fake news and doctored photographs. Irish is sceptical, but still volunteers to step outside the caves, whereupon the monsters promptly vanish. Click muses that the monsters are another trick by Gunther to keep his base hidden, because anybody who happens to land on the asteroid for whatever reason (apparently, space tourism is a thing in this future) will be quickly persuaded by the monsters to take off again.

Click and Irish resume their search for Gunther's base, but their oxygen is getting low, Click's more than Irish's. Click suggest following the monsters – which are just telepathic projections – to their source. However, that requires willing the monsters to return. And if Click and Irish believe that the monsters are real again, the monsters can also hurt or even kill them. And in fact, Irish almost succumbs to a monster attack, until Click tells him to snap out of it.

They finally find the base, but Irish is captured and disarmed. Click escapes, but he has no weapon, only his camera. Which he promptly points at the guards who have captured Irish and pretends it's a weapon. Lucky for him, the guards aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer and drop their weapons. So now, both Click and Irish have real guns. They tie up the guards, procure fresh oxygen tanks and infiltrate the base.

Our dynamic duo finds the telepathic projector that creates the monsters, but they're still outnumbered and outgunned. "If only the US Cavalry would ride over the hills", Irish laments. "That's it", Click exclaims and quickly explains his plan to Irish, if not to us. But I suppose most readers will have gotten it anyway by this point.

Click now allows himself to be captured and is taken to Gunther. When Click (and we) finally see the feared pirate, he turns out to be a shrivelled, old man who relies on smoke and mirrors to maintain his reign of terror.

But Click is about to outsmoke and outmirror Gunther. He informs the pirate that the Interplanetary Patrol has landed on the asteroid with a thousand men and has Gunther surrounded. "You're bluffing", Gunther says, but then the Patrol attacks and Patrolmen advancing towards Gunther's headquarters with raised guns. Gunther's men fight back, some are killed and absolutely no one notices that the Patrolmen all look suspiciously like Irish Marnagan.

Because Click had noticed that the telepathic projector used film images to project the monsters, so he took some shots of Irish and used them to turn the projector on the pirates. Gunther is captured, Irish is a hero and Click has some first-rate footage that will make him famous.

Unlike the melancholic "Morgue Ship", "The Monster Maker" is a fun romp, a pulpy science fiction adventure, where the focus is more on the fiction and adventure than on the science. It's also a fairly atypical tale for Ray Bradbury. If not for his byline in the magazine, I'd never have taken this for a Bradbury story.

In my reviews of "The Lake" and "Morgue Ship", I noted that Ray Bradbury's stories feel more timeless than most other golden age stories, because instead of getting bogged down in technical details, which usually age badly, Bradbury focussed on memories, emotions and experiences.

"The Monster Maker", however, is dated. This is not Ray Bradbury's fault, for how could he have known that newsreels would vanish within a few years, as television increasingly took over the function that newsreels once had? And though newsreels go back to the silent era and lasted into the 1950s and early 1960s, I mainly associate them with the 1940s. Because when I was a young girl, there was a TV program – broadcast on Saturday evenings of all times – which consisted of World War II newsreels intercut with interviews with survivors of the events shown. My Dad liked that program a lot – just as much as I hated it, because it was basically just footage of people dying in various awful ways, followed by interviews with people describing in great graphic detail about how other people around them had died in various awful ways.

The fact that Click's camera uses actual physical film also dates the story, though Bradbury had no more way of knowing that film would go digital than he could know that newsreels would die out. Though I was stunned how much I have gotten used to film being digital by now that the reminder that film used to be a physical medium almost threw me out of the story. That said, Bradbury does capture the mindset of a photographer well, because you really do experience events differently when you're behind the camera (I was a member of a film group documenting local events in the 1990s) and "Did I get that?" or "Wow, what great footage…. Ahem, I'd better get away from here" really are common sentiments.

The science – what little there is – is the usual magic by another name with a slight scientific veneer that can often be found in Planet Stories. The gravity well and the meteors used as weapons are both at least plausible and not uncommon even in the harder science fiction of the era, but the telepathic projector is pure magic technology and its function is also very convenient to allow Click to use his filmic skills to turn it against Gunther and his men.

Though it's interesting that Click saving the day with his camera and his filmic knowledge is the second example after "Morgue Ship" of a non-combatant saving the day with their specialist skills in a 1944 Bradbury story. I guess Bradbury really wanted to make the point that yes, non-combatants also serve and can be vital to the war effort. But whereas "Morgue Ship" was a tragedy, "The Monster Maker" is closer to  farce.

But even though "The Monster Hunter" is dated, it is still a fun story. The plot zips along and the reveals that the monsters are fake and that Gunther is a withered old man are nicely done. And since this is a Ray Bradbury story, the writing is well above the standards of the time and the descriptions of the crash and later of Click rushing to rescue Irish, even though he's running out of oxygen, are suitably visceral. Even in this comparatively slight story, Bradbury proves once again what a good writer he already was at this early point in his career.

What is more, Click and Irish have a great odd couple dynamic and in fact, I'm surprised that Bradbury never revisited the characters. They reminded me a bit of Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and Gray Mouser – a big redhead who is the muscle and a short fellow who is the brains. And yes, Steve "Irish" Marnagan is our second waking Irish stereotype after Mike Donovan from Isaac Asimov's "Catch That Rabbit". Considering that there was still lingering discrimination against people of Irish ancestry in the 1940s (and beyond), maybe those Irish stereotypes (and the Italian stereotypes and the Brooklyn guys) were the golden age's idea of diversity?

"The Monster Maker" is another golden age story with no female characters at all and in fact the third one in a row I have reviewed. And as it tends to happen, when you have two male characters in close contact and no women at all, there also are definite homoerotic vibes between Click and Irish. When their ship crashes, Click finds himself "cradled in Irish's arms". Later in the story, Click ends up on top of Irish during a fight with the fake monsters and at one point Click even sheds some tears, when Irish survives a particularly dangerous moment unscathed. Of course, you could find plenty of similar moments in the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories and we have Fritz Leiber's word for it that those two were really just good friends. But so many moments in one story are certainly notable.

Like "Morgue Ship", "The Monster Maker" has never been reprinted until the three volume The Collected Stories of Ray Bradbury: A Critical Edition in the 2010s. But while "Morgue Ship" is an unjustly forgotten gem, "The Monster Maker" really is just a fun romp that's not particularly deep and dated besides. But a slight Bradbury story is still better than eighty percent of stories by other writers. And so "The Monster Maker", while not a classic, is nonetheless well worth reading.