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 con sist of American author Stanley G.
Speaker 2: Weinebombs nineteen thirty five story The Planet of Doubt is
Speaker 2: just such a dream. The story, which you can find
Speaker 2: in 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: Theres 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 in 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 semented aliens prove aggressive and Pat is separated from
Speaker 2: the party in the fog. But she takes inspiration from
Speaker 2: actual experiments with processionary caterpillars by French naturalist Jean Henri Fabre,
Speaker 2: who lived eighteen twenty three through nineteen fifteen, who found
Speaker 2: that you could manipulate these caterpillars into forming a loop,
Speaker 2: an unbroken circle that we continue around, say a potted plant,
Speaker 2: until one of the individuals in the circle in this
Speaker 2: unbroken segment dies, forcing them to break off in a
Speaker 2: new leader to emerge, Pat dodges the front of the
Speaker 2: alien procession as it's coming at her, then doubles back
Speaker 2: toward the rear segments, tricking this alien train into forming
Speaker 2: an unbroken, roaring alien freight train circle in the fog.
Speaker 2: Her crewmates rescue her from the center of the circle
Speaker 2: with ropes, and they leave the Planet of Doubt, but
Speaker 2: not before they saw the riddle of the gargoyle like
Speaker 2: shadow creatures in the fog as well. These strange forms,
Speaker 2: they realize, are the shadows cast in the fog by
Speaker 2: the flying adult forms of the lauval creatures. They've encountered
Speaker 2: on the ground. It's a fun tale, and one that
Speaker 2: nicely uses the weirdness of the natural world to populate
Speaker 2: imagined worlds. Stanley G. Weinbaum only lived nineteen oh two
Speaker 2: through nineteen thirty five, but pen to number of sci
Speaker 2: fi tales, including A Martian Odyssey, which has headlined a
Speaker 2: number of anthologies of his work over the years, including
Speaker 2: some that are commercially available today. A handful of his
Speaker 2: stories were adapted for film or television in the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 2: including nineteen fifty seven's She Devil. Tune in for additional
Speaker 2: episodes of The Monster Fact each week. As always. You
Speaker 2: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind dot com.
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