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Fantasite, v. 1, issue 5, September 1941

Page 7

trol" tales fit in about here, except that they are to some extent benevolent. It would be a blunder to omit mention of Weinbaum's famous "Oscars" on the dark side of Venus. These vegetable-like creatures had minds capable of deducing the structure of the universe from any given fact, yet were philosophically resigned to destruction at the hands of howling savages, or the Venusian equivalent thereof. Speaking of vegetable-types brings to mind Stapledon's mention of such beings in "Star Maker", where the most advanced race is pictured as being a mixture--vegetable by day, animal by night--with intelligence, but not sufficient intelligence to avoid disastrous experiments with extreme attempts to become first wholly animal and then wholly vegetable.
   In general, the humanoid races have been pictured as friendly, a trend which is markedly evident in the writings of Jack Williamson and EESmith, among others. Take, for instance, the case of the "Cometeers," where the human inhabitants of the comet join forces with earth-humans against the peculiar sort of light and energy beings forming the "villains of the scene." Where the humans have been described as inimical, we often find reconciliation effected at the close of the story, as in the case of Burtt's "When the Universe Shrank" in which the humanoids come from Sirius, and JWC's "Uncertainty", with its amazingly unpredictable but devastating "nick-of-time-weapon."
    Lovecraft has introduced us to many most interesting forms of non-human life, but his readers do not need to be told that they are almost all without affection for the human race. On the other hand, the race of ancient reptiles in Williamson's "Xandulu" is not only amicable but also thoroughly pacifistic. It is interesting to speculate on whether or not a race must necessarily lose belligerency as it grows older; in this connection we must return again to "Star Maker," where Stapledon sets forth the cases of several "insane" power-mad races which sallied forth with the notion of conquering the universe. The analysis of how they got to be that way is quite interesting; it is one of the few faults of Dr. Smith that <underscore>his</underscore> evil races, the Fenachrone, and "Boskone" are supposed to be somehow "innately" wrong-headed, a rather too mystical doctrine to appeal to me, although reasonably acceptable for the purposes of the stories.
   The creatures that we have been discussing so far, if not human, at least fit in under the heading of "life as we know it." The question of "life as we do not know it" has naturally come in for much consideration. A story I recall vaguely told of a type of radioactive mineral life which, on encountering human beings failed to recognize them as living creatures, while the humans also failed to discern the presence of radically alien life. We have had several stories of types of life capable of taking on any desired appearance, the creature in "Who Goes There" being best presented. The difference in time sense and time rate was the basis of another story I recall in which investigating aliens found "no life or movement" on earth, because their time sense was so much faster that the fastest human movement would seem to take weeks of their time. A third tale told of interplanetary voyagers who travelled out to Neptune to meet a friendly race of non-humans, but found nothing. On returning a second time, they located gaseous beings whose movements took up days of earth-time.
   The notion of living worlds has occurred on several occasions. Jack Williamson used the idea in "Born of the Sun", and there was another tale, "The Planet Entity" by CA Smith, in which the entity was vegetable in nature, and covered the whole sur-

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trol" tales fit in about here, except that they are to some extent benevolent. It would be a blunder to omit mention of Weinbaum's famous "Oscars" on the dark side of Venus. These vegetable-like creatures had minds capable of deducing the structure of the universe from any given fact, yet were philosophically resigned to destruction at the hands of howling savages, or the Venusian equivalent thereof. Speaking of vegetable-types brings to mind Stapledon's mention of such beings in "Star Maker", where the most advanced race is pictured as being a mixture--vegetable by day, animal by night--with intelligence, but not sufficient intelligence to avoid disastrous experiments with extreme attempts to become first wholly animal and then wholly vegetable. In general, the humanoid races have been pictured as friendly, a trend which is markedly evident in the writings of Jack Williamson and EESmith, among others. Take, for instance, the case of the "Cometeers," where the human inhabitants of the comet join forces with earth-humans against the peculiar sort of light and energy beings forming the "villains of the scene." Where the humans have been described as inimical, we often find reconciliation effected at the close of the story, as in the case of Burtt's "When the Universe Shrank" in which the humanoids come from Sirius, and JWC's "Uncertainty", with its amazingly unpredictable but devastating "nick-of-time-weapon." Lovecraft has introduced us to many most interesting forms of non-human life, but his readers do not need to be told that they are almost all without affection for the human race. On the other hand, the race of ancient reptiles in Williamson's "Xandulu" is not only amicable but also thoroughly pacifistic. It is interesting to speculate on whether or not a race must necessarily lose belligerency as it grows older; in this connection we must return again to "Star Maker," where Stapledon sets forth the cases of several "insane" power-mad races which sallied forth with the notion of conquering the universe. The analysis of how they got to be that way is quite interesting; it is one of the few faults of Dr. Smith that his evil races, the Fenachrone, and "Boskone" are supposed to be somehow "innately" wrong-headed, a rather too mystical doctrine to appeal to me, although reasonably acceptable for the purposes of the stories. The creatures that we have been discussing so far, if not human, at least fit in under the heading of "life as we know it." The question of "life as we do not know it" has naturally come in for much consideration. A story I recall vaguely told of a type of radioactive mineral life which, on encountering human beings failed to recognize them as living creatures, while the humans also failed to discern the presence of radically alien life. We have had several stories of types of life capable of taking on any desired appearance, the creature in "Who Goes There" being best presented. The difference in time sense and time rate was the basis of another story I recall in which investigating aliens found "no life or movement" on earth, because their time sense was so much faster that the fastest human movement would seem to take weeks of their time. A third tale told of interplanetary voyagers who travelled out to Neptune to meet a friendly race of non-humans, but found nothing. On returning a second time, they located gaseous beings whose movements took up days of earth-time. The notion of living worlds has occurred on several occasions. Jack Williamson used the idea in "Born of the Sun", and there was another tale, "The Planet Entity" by CA Smith, in which the entity was vegetable in nature, and covered the whole sur-