First published in
Planet Stories, Fall 1940.
This is an early
example of one of sci fi’s hoariest yet most enjoyable genre
mash-ups: Robinson Crusoe In Space. It’s a great way for a writer
to explore a setting and the main character’s conflict against the
environment provides constant spikes of suspense. At the same time,
the hope of rescue gives the whole thing forward momentum. You can
even have an alien Man Friday if you like.
SF fit right into a
whole bunch of existing story types: the adventure thriller, the
traveller’s tale, the western and the military novel. These are all
genres of the frontier, of taming the fringe zones and keeping the
lid on the natural world. These are all frontier genres and they fit
with SF so well because SF is the ultimate frontier genre. This story
is a great example of why.
Jezzan is a great
character, a classic SF competent man with an incurable love of
adventure:
He thanked his lucky stars that he was living in the twenty-fourth century that saw mankind pushing back the boundaries of the unexplored solar system with exploits in space pioneering. In his younger days Jack had been on the first expedition to Mars. Now, both Mars and Venus were been colonised. Jasper had figured in many strange adventures on both worlds as well as on several of Jupiter’s sattelites and the asteroids.
Much is made of his age
and experience: he only survives the attack of the white mist because
he ‘had travelled the space lanes too much of his life not to sense
something unusual.’ He has only one line of speech in the whole
story, and sets about the task of survival with determined efficiency
and expertise. He’s the kind of laconic jaded pro you see in so
many action movie stars late in their careers. It would have been a
great Sean Connery movie in about 1987.
In the early 20th
century America was a still warming its hands in the after glow of
the frontier era. In the real world the frontier was disappearing
into film noir cities and regimented white picket suburbs. At the
same time, The yearning lingered in the American soul but popular
culture found the old clichés increasingly unconvincing. Readers
were interest in the unrealistic tales of savagery or brutality in
what were now suburbs and tourist spots. SF gave popular writers new
frontiers, from ripe space operas barely covered over with a SF gloss
to tight and tense stories with a more down to Earth scope like this
one.
I really enjoyed this
one. According to Ashley’s story into it’s one of a series of
connected stories that sketch out a future history. This is one of
the few stories I’ve read here that makes me want to go and look
out more of them.
Themes: The final
frontier, man vs the environment, space exploration, mysterious alien
predator, Robinson Crusoe In Space, competent man
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