Moon Mist on a Planet with No Moon

Venus is, of course, a tropical planet overrun with thick jungle and nigh-impenetrable swamps. That's how its often described in the excellent Sword-and-Planet stories of Leigh Brackett and--by golly--no one should question to will of she who wrote the first draft of The Empire Strikes Back.  Her husband, Edmond Hamilton, also wrote about a Venus like that in his Captain Future novels.

Of course, her Venus and his Venus don't quite match up with one another, nor do they match with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Venus or any of the other Venus' of fiction. So each inhabits their own universe, but still give us swamps, jungles and dinosaurian monsters of various shapes and sizes. They beat our boring Solar System in just about every area. NASA should do something about that.

Brackett's best Venus story--what is also considered one of her best short stories period--is "The Moon That Vanished," published in the October 1948 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories.  Here we meet expatriate American David Heath, who spends most of his time in a drug-induced stupor in a tavern located on the shores of the Sea of Morning Opals. Desperate to bring back a dead lover, he had once tried to sail into an area called the Moonfire--where legends say a person can become a god if he survives the ensuing agony and makes it to the center of the area. David had not gotten past the outskirts and, though he now had the minor ability to manipulate free electrons in the air and form a ghost image of his dead girlfriend, he hadn't achieved godhood.

He gets another chance when a couple of Venusians--a man named Broca and a woman named Alor--kidnap him and force him to sail his own ship back to the Moonfire. By doing this, though, they may have saved--or at least prolonged his life. The priests called the Children of the Moon figure that Heath should die for the blasphemy of entering the Moonfire and, since he hasn't been courteous enough to die on is own, they have decided to help him along.

The two Venusians are also on the priests' hit list, though Broca wants to get to the Moon fire primarily because he wants to become a god and make Alor his woman. Alor isn't necessarily on board with this. In fact, during the long voyage, she falls for David Heath. Broca is very displeased with this.



A reader might be wondering how a planet that has no moon developed a cult revolving around the idea of one. Heath's idea is that there was one once, but it eventually crashed into Venus, forming the area called the Moonfire. Whether the powers said to be available there were granted by the gods or a result of radioactive contamination doesn't really matter in a practical sense--in either case, the results are the same.

The journey itself takes up the bulk of the story, with the priests pursing them in another ship, storms and sea monsters to keep things exciting. When they reach the Moonfire, they do penetrate far enough to find out exactly what the power you get does. In a sense, it does make you a god. But it can also lead to self-destruction. David Heath has to decide whether to embrace that power and gain back an illusion that his lost-love still lives or accept that life goes on and that Alor is living and real and that he loves her now. Of course, there's also the necessity of rescuing Alor from a madman who has embraced godlike powers. But no one ever said love was easy.

That's the sort of Venus we should have. There really ought to be someone to complain to about this sort of thing.

I think in a few weeks, we'll take a look at one of the Sword-and-Planet stories of Brackett's husband Edmond Hamilton--one of my favorite pulp and comic book writers. We'll tag along with him to another solar system rather than make the short hop to Venus, but I expect we'll still have a good time.