Skulls in the Stars

Yep, I’ve still got more invisibility stories to discuss! In fact, I found 4 more through searching old magazines today. Reminder that I’ll have a book on the history of invisibility physics coming out next year!

Although invisibility is a science fiction trope, we haven’t seen that many invisibility stories yet that really embrace the traditional “outer space” setting of sci-fi. We’ve seen Slan, although invisibility plays a minor role in the story, and “The Attack From Space,” which mostly takes place on Earth, though the alien invaders are from Mercury.

Let’s look at something much more Golden Age sci-fi with “Salvage in Space,” by Jack Williamson! It first appeared in the March 1933 issue of Astounding Stories of Super-Science. It features a meteor miner coming face to face with an invisible alien that has annihilated the crew of a now derelict spaceship.

Before discussing the…

Another invisibility story! The number and variety of stories continues to amaze me.

You know what we haven’t really seen yet? A good invisible spy story! “Raiders Invisible” came close, but its invisible spies were the bad guys; we need a story about a heroic invisible spy!

So let’s take a look at “The Radiant Shell,” by Paul Ernst, which appeared in the January 1932 issue of Astounding Stories.

Yet another blog post about invisibility in fiction! Just as a reminder, this is to celebrate the completion of my book draft on the history of invisibility physics, coming next year (I hope).

Let me recap and build upon a list I started a few posts ago: so far, we’ve had invisible people, invisible monsters, invisible buildings, invisible cars, invisible dogs, invisible spacecraft, invisible robots, and invisible superheroes. But we haven’t yet seen invisible aliens, so let’s rectify that!

Today’s story is from another addict of invisibility, Captain S.P. Meek, who also wrote “The Cave of Horror,” which appeared in the January 1930 issue ofAstounding Stories of Super-Science. Fast forward to September of 1930, and we find that Meek has another story, “The Attack From Space!”

As noted in the image, this story is a sequel to Meek’s “Beyond the Heaviside Layer,” which appeared in the…

Yet another post of invisibility fiction, driven by all the stories I found while researching my invisibility book!

Here we have a curious case: an invisibility story written by a lawyer-turned-author, Arthur Leo Zagat (1896-1949)! Zagat wrote for many pulp magazines, and published one novel, Seven Out of Time, that was released the year of his death. But let’s look at his invisibility story, “Beyond the Spectrum,” which appeared in the August 1934 issue of Astounding Stories.

This particular story doesn’t do much of anything that hasn’t been done by other tales, but does introduce a race of invisible monsters that seem very Lovecraftian!

Okay, this story seemed at first to be a pretty silly and stupid invisibility tale, but it leads down a fascinating historical rabbit hole. So follow along…

The setting: the city, late at night. A young couple in love are walking to the subway after leaving a party, when a voice from the shadows says, “Stick ’em up!” A robber, at gunpoint, demands their valuables.

After a hopeless glance up and down the street, the young man gave up his wallet, watch and gold stick­pin. The girl was forced to give her pocketbook, ear­rings and silver bracelets. She fumbled nervously. Impatiently, the gunman clutched at the locket around her neck.

“Oh, not that!” gasped the girl. ”I’ve had it all my life-please-“

“Shut up!” growled the bandit. “I take what I want. I’ll 1have that locket, too-“

Does this scene sound familiar? You might be thinking that a young Bruce…

Continuing my run of stories of invisibility to celebrate finishing the draft of my book on the history and physics of invisibility! I probably should’ve waited to do this until my book is actually out… ah, well.

With so many invisibility stories having been written, it was inevitable that I would come across one that seems like a re-run of earlier classics. Such is the case with “Beyond Power of Man,” by Paul Ernst, which appeared in the December 1928 issue of Weird Tales!

This story seems like a striking mishmash of several classic stories about invisibility! Let’s take a look.

Yet another invisibility story! So many invisibility stories.

So, in the list of stories we’ve looked at so far, we’ve seen invisible people, invisible monsters, invisible buildings, invisible cars, invisible dogs, and invisible spacecraft. But you now what we haven’t seen yet? Invisible robots!

Our invisible robots appear in Harl Vincent’s “Terrors Unseen,” which appeared in the March 1931 issue of Astounding Stories. It is not a particularly astounding story, but it does has invisible robots, so let’s take a look!