The Internet American Indian Science Fiction Database

I have been writing about Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950), most recently about his Moon trilogy. The last book in his trilogy is "The Red Hawk," a novella set in the far future and in the American West. There are American Indians in "The Red Hawk." They are mostly peripheral. The title character, though, dresses something like an Indian. His people live a nomadic existence.

Ace Books published the second and third books of Burroughs' Moon trilogy--"The Moon Men" and "The Red Hawk"--in a single volume entitled The Moon Men (1962). Although it has the same title as the second book, The Moon Men has as its cover illustration a scene from the third. You can see the influence of American Indian dress in Julian 20th's getup:

The illustration is by Ed Emshwiller (1925-1990). The woman is (almost) from another work named "hawk," "Nighthawks" by Edward Hopper (1942), which you can see at the Art Institute of Chicago.

I halfway joked about an Internet American Indian Science Fiction Database (IAISFDb). Then I started thinking about it more seriously. I have already had an entry on "American Indians and the American West on the Cover of Weird Tales" on December 15, 2016. I have also written on "Middle American Indians on the Cover of Weird Tales" on December 5, 2016. Using the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDb), I did a search for the word "Indian" in titles. I can't say that this is definitive, but for stories appearing in Weird Tales, I found only one, "The Indian Spirit Guide" by Robert Bloch, illustrated by Joseph Doolin, from November 1948. I'm sure there are many more stories about Indians and with Indian characters in Weird Tales. Although The Lurker at the Threshold by August Derleth (1945) was not published in Weird Tales, it of course grew out of H.P. Lovecraft's work in that magazine. One of the characters in that book is Misquamacus, an Indian sorcerer.

The first piece of American Indian science fiction that came to my mind is the Star Trek episode "The Paradise Syndrome," first broadcast on October 4, 1968. We watched that episode not very long ago. It has its good points and bad. It's one of many odd episodes from the third and final season of the show. One noticeable thing about "The Paradise Syndrome" is that it takes place over several months, making it by far the longest episode in terms of time elapsed from beginning to end.

I know there are many science fiction and fantasy stories and novels about American Indians. One that practically jumped off my bookshelf is The Sioux Spaceman by Andre Norton (1960):

The cover illustration is unsigned but is credited to Ed Valigursky (1926-2009). I have never read this book, so I'm not sure what's going on here exactly. If the white men are in bonds, then the situation from "The Red Hawk" is more or less reversed. By the way, Edgar Rice Burroughs was from Chicago, which has as its NHL hockey team the Chicago Blackhawks. Andre Norton was from Cleveland, which has as its Major League Baseball team the Cleveland Indians. Unfortunately, the Indians have gone the way of the Washington Redskins. Fortunately, the Atlanta Braves, a great young team, won the World Series this year.

That's a start to the Internet American Indian Science Fiction Database. Feel free to send in more entries in the comments section below.

Update (Dec. 4, 2021): Here is an additional entry and an obvious one: Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932), part of which takes place on an Indian reservation in New Mexico.

Text copyright 2021, 2023 Terence E. Hanley