apocalyptic fiction

If life is a bit heavy these days, consider the starry-eyed wonder of the science fiction pulps of the 1930’s and 1940’s for a breath of clean air. One well I eternally find refreshing is Planet Stories, a pulp of substance that ran from 1939 to 1955 and which gave birth to many of the mainstream writers of the genre. Today, I want to bring you a low-key page turner of a short story from the Fall of 1944 that highlights the bold energy and high concept speculation typical of the time.

Welcome to Henry Kuttner’s The Eyes of Thar and our latest entry in the Pulp Gems series! (and yes, they misspelled his name on the cover)

Follow the link above to download the Fall 1944 Planet Stories (Kuttner’s story is on page 45), just to keep traffic flowing to the wonderful folks at the Internet Archive. Should you have any troubles with that, download it here.

She spoke in a tongue dead a thousand years, and she had no memory for the man she faced. Yet he had held her tightly but a few short years before, had sworn eternal vengeance – when she died in his arms from an assassin’s wounds…

I really think some of those zingers from the tables of contents back in the day were wonderful! This one caught my eye with its dense and compelling mystery summed in those few lines: how was Kuttner going to explain a lady who was dead returning at all, much less one speaking a thousand-year old dead language? And this illustration by Joe Doolin that accompanied it – I was hooked before I started. If you’re unfamiliar with Doolin’s work, read up on him here.

Henry Kuttner co-wrote (with his extremely talented wife, C. L. Moore), one of the first science fiction novels I ever remember reading: Earth’s Last Citadel. I almost hate to re-read that one now, just because I have fond memories of it from then.

Anyway, our tale for today swings right into the action:

“He had come back, though he knew what to expect. He had always come back to Klanvahr since he had been hunted out of that ancient Martian fortress so many years ago. “

Samuel Dantan is a bloodthirsty terror to those on ancient Mars who had killed his lover years ago, returning to kill them mercilessly between bouts in the spacelanes.

“When Dantan came back to Klanvahr, men died, though if all the men of the Redhelm tribe were slain, even that could not satisfy the dull ache in Dantan’s heart.”

Unfortunately, the tables have turned on him this time, and he’s being hunted. In fact, it’s while he’s desperately on the run that he encounters a mysterious artifact in a canyon that has been exposed by a landslide. Climbing inside, he finds it to be an ancient laboratory, buried under the stream for maybe as many as ten thousand years. Then, locked inside and hiding from his pursuers, a familiar voice calls for someone named “Sanfel”…

At first, it’s just her voice speaking in the dead language of old Mars. Dantan knows it because his grandfather was a shaman and used it for ancient rituals. It’s the voice of his dead lover, for sure, though the mystery woman has no idea who he is. She, too is being hunted by nightmare beast-men of her own foreign universe. And she’s just as desperate.

There are different physics in her world, not only slower time passage but also things such as light and thought work very differently. The weapons and aid that Dantan promises her should they open the doorway between worlds would be useless to her. So she says, though he’s ready to die trying. Sanfel so many centuries ago was following her instructions to build a weapon able to help, but he was long turned to dust.

“No, Dantan, you speak in terms of your own universe. We have no common ground. It is a pity that time eddied between Sanfel and me, but eddy it did, and I am helpless now. And the enemy will be upon me soon. Very soon.”

So her beastly enemies are at her door in an unimaginably faraway universe even as the vicious thugs of Redhelm are at Dantan’s own. Somehow, it’s his lover, and she needs him. What can he do?

I’ll let you pick the story up from there, just to avoid spoilers. It’s maybe a half-hour read at most. Definitely worth it. Kuttner’s always great, and this one was a fresh take on Burroughs’ old Mars.

Planet Stories never disappoints.