April Aliens & April Invasions

The cover story and lead story in the April 1925 issue of Weird Tales is "When the Green Star Waned" by Nictzin Dyalhis. The "Green Star" of the title is Earth as seen from the planet Venus. The men of Venus have noticed that the green light of Earth has faded and that their neighboring planet has gone silent. These two developments have raised the alarm on Venus. The great men of that planet decide to travel to Earth to find out what has happened. (1, 2)

"When the Green Star Waned" is about an alien invasion of Earth. The aliens of the story have enslaved Earthmen and it is we who prove weak, helpless, and powerless to save ourselves. The heroes and rescuers in "When the Green Star Waned" are in fact Venus-Men rather than Earthmen. That alone makes for an unusual story. There are other ways in which "When the Green Star Waned" is unusual or innovative.

Nictzin Dyalhis' story is an early example of weird fantasy, science fantasy, space fantasy, or the weird-science type of story. Later science fiction would treat the same kind of situation--going up against alien invaders of other planets--except that it is Earthmen who are the heroes and rescuers. It is we who free the oppressed, enslaved, or exploited peoples of those planets. The same kind of plot became a staple of the television show Star Trek, broadcast four decades after "When the Green Star Waned" was published. The episode "Operation--Annihilate!", first broadcast in April 1967, is an example. The plot of that episode has similarities to The Puppet Masters by Robert A. Heinlein before it (1951) and the movie Alien afterwards (1979).

There was a contrary development during the Flying Saucer Era of 1947 to 1968 or 1973. During that era, aliens from outer space were often represented as good and caring and benevolent. They were our space brothers, or like angels from on high. Their purpose in coming to Earth was to save us from ourselves. This is what much of the Contactee phenomenon of the 1950s was about. The space brother/space angel/space savior idea was captured pretty well in the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, released in 1951.

A description of the alien invaders in "When the Green Star Waned" must have sounded familiar to readers of what was then called the pseudo-scientific story (see "Ooze" by Anthony M. Rud in Weird Tales, Mar. 1923), scientifiction (Hugo Gernsback's name for stories of this type), or the scientific romance (a term more commonly used in Great Britain, I think). A passage from "When the Green Star Waned":

     And here we found life, such as it was. I found it, and a wondrous start the ugly thing gave me! It was in semblance but a huge pulpy blob of a loathly blue color, in diameter over twice Hul Jok's height, with a gaping, triangular-shaped orifice for mouth, in which were set scarlet fangs; and that maw was in the center of the bloated body. At each corner of this mouth there glared malignant an oval, opaque, silvery eye.

     Well it was for me that, in obedience to Hul Jok's imperative command, I was holding my Blastor pointing ahead of me; for as I blundered full upon the monstrosity it upheaved its ugly bulk--how, I do not know, for I saw no legs nor did it have wings--to one edge and would have flopped down upon me, but instinctively I slid forward the catch on the tiny Blastor, and the foul thing vanished--save for a few fragments of its edges--smitten into nothingness by the vibrations hurled forth from that powerful little disintegrator.

Here is a similar passage, of the narrator's first encounter with an alien, in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, first published in Pearson's Magazine from April to December 1897:

    A big greyish rounded bulk, the size, perhaps, of a bear, was rising slowly and painfully out of the cylinder. As it bulged up and caught the light, it glistened like wet leather.

    Two large dark-coloured eyes were regarding me steadfastly. The mass that framed them, the head of the thing, was rounded, and had, one might say, a face. There was a mouth under the eyes, the lipless brim of which quivered and panted, and dropped saliva. The whole creature heaved and pulsated convulsively. A lank tentacular appendage gripped the edge of the cylinder, another swayed in the air.

    Those who have never seen a living Martian can scarcely imagine the strange horror of its appearance. The peculiar V-shaped mouth with its pointed upper lip, the absence of brow ridges, the absence of a chin beneath the wedgelike lower lip, the incessant quivering of this mouth, the Gorgon groups of tentacles, the tumultuous breathing of the lungs in a strange atmosphere, the evident heaviness and painfulness of movement due to the greater gravitational energy of the earth--above all, the extraordinary intensity of the immense eyes--were at once vital, intense, inhuman, crippled and monstrous. There was something fungoid in the oily brown skin, something in the clumsy deliberation of the tedious movements unspeakably nasty. Even at this first encounter, this first glimpse, I was overcome with disgust and dread.

Dyalhis' aliens aren't quite the same as Wells', but his description of them is close enough that I sense the influence of the latter upon the former. Wells' prose here found echoes in that of H.P. Lovecraft, too, I think. Maybe there was an influence there as well.

By the way, Nictzin Dayalhis was the originator of the term Blastor, later blaster, a weapon that will forever be indispensable in our fight against alien invasions.

Next: Andrew Brosnatch's Cover.

Note
(1) Light as an indication of life has been in the news as I write, for a spectrographic analysis of the atmosphere of a planet called K2-18b shows signs of what some scientists believe could be life on that planet. (A skepto-graphic analysis might show something different.) The indicating compounds are sulfurous. Sulfur has of course been associated with Hell, the Devil, and a general wickedness or evil. Hold onto that thought for next time.

(2) The silence of the planet Earth in "When the Green Star Waned" makes me think of Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis. In Lewis' version, Earth is "silent" because we are under a kind of cosmic quarantine, the reason being that human beings are "bent," another way of saying, I guess, that we are fallen in our nature. Hold onto the idea of a fallen man for next time as well.

Original text copyright 2025 Terence E. Hanley