Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the
Speaker 2: Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow
Speaker 2: Your Mind, focusing in no mythical creatures, ideas and monsters
Speaker 2: in time. I'd like to offer this episode as an
Speaker 2: imaginative side show to our core episodes on the moons
Speaker 2: of Uranus. As we discuss in those episodes, it's not
Speaker 2: beyond the realm of possibility that one of the icy
Speaker 2: Uranian moons contains or may have once contained life. But
Speaker 2: the planet itself is a cold, dead world, and its temperatures, pressures,
Speaker 2: and materials simply don't correspond to life as we know it. However,
Speaker 2: if we venture back far enough in science fiction, we
Speaker 2: can find some interesting dreams regarding what life on the
Speaker 2: seventh planet might consist of. American author Stanley G. Weinebombs
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five story The Planet of Doubt is just
Speaker 2: such a dream. The story, which you can find in
Speaker 2: various collections today, is very old fashion in many respects.
Speaker 2: It takes place in an action packed Solar system where
Speaker 2: humans have encountered various alien life forms on the inner
Speaker 2: planets and moons and continue to discover new wonders on
Speaker 2: the outer planets. Where the story excels, however, is in
Speaker 2: its imaginative description of strange creatures lurking in the planetary fog.
Speaker 2: Of this imagined take on Urinus, a planet the author
Speaker 2: describes as quote a wild, alien, mystery choked planet with
Speaker 2: only icy Neptune and Pluto between it and the interstellar void.
Speaker 2: Our human adventurers encounter two dissimilar life forms on the planet.
Speaker 2: The first encountered organism resembles some sort of vague dark
Speaker 2: gargoyle in the fog, but the second is a truly
Speaker 2: inspired creation quote. The thing was featureless, just a dull
Speaker 2: black circle and a tubular body that stretched off into
Speaker 2: the fog. Or not quite featureless. Now they could perceive
Speaker 2: an organ that projected from the center of the circle,
Speaker 2: a loose, quivering member like a large pancake on a
Speaker 2: finger thick stem, whose edges quivered and cupped toward them
Speaker 2: as if to catch sounds or scent. The creature was blind.
Speaker 2: The adventures in the story are quick to fire their
Speaker 2: automatics and their flame pistols, but quickly realize they're facing
Speaker 2: not one creature composed of multiple segments, but multiple individuals
Speaker 2: joined together in a lengthy chain quote. Suddenly the thing
Speaker 2: was roaring past them, black and huge as a railroad train.
Speaker 2: It was a segmented being. It was composed of dozens
Speaker 2: of eight foot links, like a train of miniature cars.
Speaker 2: There's three pairs of legs to a section. The adventures
Speaker 2: in the story quickly learn that if you blast the
Speaker 2: front or leader segment, the next section behind takes over
Speaker 2: as leader. Blast a middle segment, and now you have
Speaker 2: two alien trains to contend with. The biologist on the
Speaker 2: team and the story, Patricia quickly draws parallels to a
Speaker 2: real life terrestrial organism processionary caterpillars, the larval form of
Speaker 2: some Domatopina moths that move in columns in search of food.
Speaker 2: Only the segment aliens on this fictional uranus actually physically
Speaker 2: connect their nervous systems in a way that allows them
Speaker 2: to share sensations and, perhaps pat speculates, even memories. While
Speaker 2: not mentioned in the story, shrews are known to engage
Speaker 2: in a similar procession, with a mother's young following behind her,
Speaker 2: each holding onto the tail of the shrew in front
Speaker 2: of it with its mouth on this fictional version of Urinus. However,
Speaker 2: the segm minted aliens prove aggressive and Pat is separated
Speaker 2: from the party in the fog. But she takes inspiration
Speaker 2: from actual experiments with processionary caterpillars by French naturalist Jean
Speaker 2: Henri Fabre, who lived eighteen twenty three through nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 2: who found that you could manipulate these caterpillars into forming
Speaker 2: a loop, an unbroken circle that would continue around, say
Speaker 2: a potted plant, until one of the individuals in the
Speaker 2: circle in this unbroken segment dies, forcing them to break
Speaker 2: off in a new leader to emerge, Pat dodges the
Speaker 2: front of the alien procession as it's coming at her,
Speaker 2: then doubles back toward the rear segments, tricking this alien
Speaker 2: train into forming an unbroken, roaring alien freight train circle
Speaker 2: in the fog. Her crewmates rescue her from the center
Speaker 2: of the circle with ropes, and they leave the Planet
Speaker 2: of Doubt, but not before they saw the riddle of
Speaker 2: the gargoyle like shadow creatures in the fog as well.
Speaker 2: These strange forms, they realize are the shadows cast in
Speaker 2: the fog by the flying adult forms of the lauval
Speaker 2: creatures they've encountered on the ground. It's a fun tale,
Speaker 2: and one that nicely uses the weirdness of the natural
Speaker 2: world to populate imagined worlds. Stanley G. Weinbaum only lived
Speaker 2: nineteen oh two through nineteen thirty five, but pen to
Speaker 2: number of sci fi tales, including A Martian Odyssey, which
Speaker 2: has headlined a number of anthologies of his work over
Speaker 2: the years, including some that are commercially available today. A
Speaker 2: handful of his stories were adapted for film or television
Speaker 2: in the nineteen fifties, including nineteen fifty seven's She Devil.
Speaker 2: Tune in for additional episodes of The Monster Fact each week.
Speaker 2: As always. You can email us at contact at stuff
Speaker 2: to Blow your Mind dot com.
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