Skulls in the Stars

Just a reminder again that I’ll (hopefully) have a book out on the history and physics of invisibility next year, so keep an eye out!

Here we have a first in our discussion of invisibility in fiction — a sequel! “Land of the Shadow Dragons,” by Eando Binder, appeared in the May 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures, and it is a direct sequel to Binder’s “The Invisible Robinhood.” It even merited a cover image:

It was weirdly thrilling to see the return of The Invisible Robinhood in print, even in this era of endless superhero movies and their sequels. This example, because it was much less common in that era, seems somehow more magical and precious to me. I’ll do some spoilers again, so read the story here first if you’re worried about that.

Still more invisibility in fiction to come! It seems like an almost endless subject.

I didn’t have particularly high expectations for this next story. “The Invisible Bomber,” by Lieutenant John Pease, appeared in the June 1938 issue of Amazing Stories. My initial thought: “An invisible airplane? That’s been done, and doesn’t seem like a particularly exciting concept.”

However, this story, which is relatively short in comparison to others I’ve read (7 pages instead of an average of 14), has a few clever twists and surprises to it, as well as a novel description of invisibility! I will talk spoilers in this post, so read the story here first if you want.

Yet another invisibility story! It is simply amazing how many of these are out there. And I haven’t even really looked past the year 1960.

If you look at the cover of the January 1927 issue of Amazing Stories, you could be forgiven for thinking that it contains a reprint of H.G. Wells’ classic The Invisible Man — I mean, Wells’ name is right on the cover!

That cover image, however, depicts a scene from a different story, “The Man Who Could Vanish,” by A. Hyatt Verrill, which is our next invisibility story to discuss!

Have we found the ultimate invisibility story? Read on…

In hindsight, I should have realized that I would find a story that takes invisibility to the extreme! Once we’ve had invisible people, invisible monsters, and invisible cities, it was inevitable that we would get to an entire invisible planet!

“The Invisible Planet,” by Ed Earl Repp, first appeared in the October 1940 issue of Amazing Stories, which was the very first science fiction magazine. Ed Earl Repp was a regular contributor to the pulp magazines, though after World War II he focused his energy on writing screenplays for Westerns. One can understand the passion for Westerns, because “The Invisible Planet” is very much an action-packed adventure with lots of gunplay and a cartoonish villain!

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…