Famous (and forgotten) Fiction-Writings-The Legend of Interplanetary by Neil R. Jones

The Legend of Interplanetary

by Neil R. Jones

The Fanscient
Vol. 2 No.2 Summer, 1948
Cover by G. Waible

In the May, 1941 issue of Astounding Science Fiction, editor John W. Campbell wrote a two-page editorial entitled, “History to Come.” He begins the piece by stating “Fundamentally, science fiction novels are ‘period pieces,’ historical novels laid against a background of a history that hasn’t happened yet.” After a short explanation of the construction of a historical novel and how the same precepts could be applied to science fiction, Campbell spends the rest of the editorial discussing “Heinlein’s ‘History of Tomorrow.’ ”—the Heinlein in this case being Robert A. Heinlein, an author cultivated by Campbell, who was extremely popular among the readers of Astounding. The remainder of the editorial praises Heinlein’s work and explains how to read an early version of Heinlein’s chart, reprinted in the same issue. The chart maps out the ‘History of Tomorrow,” which consisted of a series of stories that lay out a possible future for the human race. Campbell makes this idea seem new and fresh, but he seems to have overlooked Neil R. Jones.

Exactly when Jones conceived his future history is a bit of a mystery. In the final chapter of the 1933 story, “Time’s Mausoleum,” published some eight years before Campbell’s announcement, Professor Jameson travels back in time and witnesses many events thoughout Earth’s history—events that, in many cases, appear in stories that were published after 1933. In a 1934 letter to Amazing Stories, Jones states that his science fiction stories can be grouped into Tales of the 24th Century and Tales of the 26th Century (discounting his Professor Jameson stories). Subsequent newspaper articles (which we suspect may have been written by Jones) assign upcoming stories to these two groups and in “An Autobiographical Sketch of Neil R. Jones” (Fantasy Magazine, 1937), Neil discusses all of his work to date and where the stories fall in his chronology, but makes no mention of when he first conceived of the idea. Yet, in the another part of the “Sketch,” he mentions that “My own favorite science fiction story has not yet been placed…” referring to his novel, The Outlawed World—a story that, more or less, wraps up his 26th Century tales—and later states, “I dreamed this novel for five years.” Assuming that The Outlawed World was completed in 1936, this would suggest that Jones may have begun planning his future history at the very start of his professional career.

“The Legend of Interplanetary,” the essay reprinted below, lays out Jones’ version of humanity’s future history, beginning with the formation of the Earth and ending some thirty-five million years in the future. As with Heinlein’s future history, there are two references to stories untold. At the end of the sixth section after the discussion of space flight, the character Clay Birch is mentioned, who is described as “the first man to reach the moon's pitted surface.” This story has never seen print, assuming it was ever written. The second reference, found next to the cover for “The Dark Swordsmen of Saturn,” mentions a character named Lindquist and his heroic end. Lindquist’s demise occurs at the end of The Outlawed World (published as Citadel of Space), which, although completed around 1936, did not see print until 1951.

Exactly when “The Legend of Interplanetary,” was written in not known. It covers published stories through 1942, the last year that Jones had any works in print, so it may, or may not, have been penned after 1945, when he returned from his military service, but that is only a guess. Stylistically, it reads like a later work, but the possibility always exists that it was written prior to 1942 and then brought up to date when publication seemed imminent. The Editor’s Page of The Fanscient only mentions Jones’ article in passing and offers no clue to its origins.

A more important question, of course, is why Jones chose to write “Interplanetary.” One can speculate that Jones, an avid science fiction reader, was familiar with Heinlein’s future history and wanted to make it known that he had done it first. Possibly he wrote the piece as a kind of finale to his writing career not realizing that he would be back in print in 1948—a likely scenario, considering that the two published “Electrical Man” stories are included, although they have no mention in the overall narrative. One other possibility is that Jones wrote it at the behest of Don Day, the editor of The Fanscient, and this would also explain how “Interplanetary” ended up being published in a fanzine in Oregon when Jones never strayed far from his native New York. Suffice to say, whatever its origin, the article clearly shows that Jones was likely the first science fiction author to construct a future history using multiple stories and novels.

And, contrary to popular belief, Campbell never used the term “future history” in the May, 1941 issue of Astounding Stories. The use of the term we have been able to find occurred in the February, 1941 issue of Astounding in the “In Times to Come” column, where “future history” is used in promoting Heinlein’s story “Logic of Empire.” As the column is attributed to “The Editor,” it can still be assumed that Campbell coined the term, albeit at an earlier date than is found in most references.

“The Legend of Interplanetary” originally appeared in The Fanscient Vol. 2 No.2 (Summer, 1948) and, as far as can be determined, has not been reprinted since that time.

Bob Gay
November, 2020
Introduction © 2020 by Bob Gay

Editor’s Note: As it originally appeared in The Fanscient, “The Legend of Interplanetary” consisted of six-and-one-half pages with the story titles, magazine titles, month and year of publication in a small inset alongside the relevant content. We have changed that layout considerably. All of the items found in original are included and we have also reproduced the cover of each magazine (something not really feasible in 1948) and have added the name of the cover artist. Additionally, we have grouped the covers with the storylines mentioned in the text.
All the covers have been digitally cleaned up and, in a couple of cases, restored using parts from various sources. Clicking on a cover will bring up a larger version of the cover or, if desired, all the larger covers can be viewed one after the other in a rotating gallery.
Story titles that appear as links lead to a complete reprinting of the story.
All misspellings in story titles and the main body of the text have been corrected.

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION (from The Fanscient)

In the annals of science-fiction, there have been a number of cases where a series of stories was set against a single “history of the future.” One of the first of these, as well as one of the longest and best known is that of Neil R. Jones. His “Professor Jameson” as well as his “Durna Rangue Cult” tales are well known. It is not commonly realized, however, that all of these, as well as virtually all of his other stories, are laid against one consistent “history of the future”.

It is with a great deal of pleasure, therefore, that we present Mr. Jones’ own outline of this future history, with a complete bibliography of his published works, arranged in roughly chronological order to parallel the outline. Inasmuch as several of the stories cover a period of several centuries, this integration cannot be entirely accurate. Mr. Jones’ stories fit mostly into 3 groups, Tales of the 24th Century, Tales of the 26th Century and the “Professor Jameson” series set some 40 million years in the future.

Four more stories in the Professor Jameson series are awaiting publication, as well as manuscripts in the 24th and 26th century series. Included in this latter group is a 93,000 word novel, “The Outlawed World”, scheduled for book publication later this year.

——The Editor

BORN from out of the sun’s incandescent mass, the earth, with its sister planets, was hurled at worldbirth upon the threshold of an amazing career. Ages passed before the earth cooled sufficiently to allow the first simple forms of life to exist upon its surface. Millions of years were also necessary before these simple forms of life changed and grew through the gradual process of evolution into the present day animals, of which man is the most intelligent and complex species, therefore reigning predominant.

“Martian and Troglodyte”
Amazing Stories
May 1933
Cover by A. Sigmond

MARS, farther from the sun than the earth, and much smaller, cooled sooner and gave birth to a civilization while prehistoric man still dwelt in caves or lived in trees. The Martians mastered space flying and sent an expedition across space to the earth two hundred thousand years before Rome’s legionaires set forth to conquer the world for the Eternal City.

But if the rise of Martian civilization was rapid, its downfall and disappearance was even more so. By the time mankind on earth had reached a preliminary stage of civilization, all intelligent life on Mars had disappeared.

“The Electrical Man”
Scientific Detective Monthly
May 1930
Cover by Jno Ruger

“Shadows of the Night”
Amazing Detective Tales
Oct. 1930
Cover by Howard V. Brown

STEEPED in progressive eras of ignorance and bigotry, men of the earth, up until the time of the Renaissance, religiously adhered to the principle that the earth was the center of everything and that stars, moon and sun moved around it; moreover, the earth was flat. A very few, like Columbus, believed it was round. Earnest seekers after the truth, however, found it dangerous to reveal their discoveries, as Galileo found. Copernicus, during the 15th and 16th centuries, did much to upset these antiquated ideas, and upon his heels, during the Renaissance’s surge of learning, Tycho Brahe dedicated a good share of his life in determining the relative positions of the heavenly bodies, laying the groundwork for those who came after him in classifying some seven hundred or more sun-illumined bodies of our own solar system, not to mention the far off stars and more distant nebulae beyond. In the l6th and 17th centuries, Johann Keppler established the laws of planetary motion, and beyond his own lifetime, even into the l8th century, Sir Isaac Newton carried on this work and outlined the laws of gravitation. About this time, the improvement of telescopes took definite shape and purpose, and during the 19th century, such men as Proctor, Lowell and Flammarion helped push back the boundaries of space. Among other discoveries, they found that our solar system is rushing toward the constellation Lyra at twelve miles per second. Neptune was discovered in 1846, while Pluto was found nearly a century later, in 1930.

“The Electrical Man”
Scientific Detective Monthly
May 1930
Cover by Jno Ruger

“Shadows of the Night”
Amazing Detective Tales
Oct. 1930
Cover by Howard V. Brown

“The Kiss of Death”
Amazing Stories
December 1938
Cover by Robert Fuqua

“Suicide Durkee’s Last Ride”
Amazing Stories
September 1932
Cover by Leo Morey

HAVING conquered the air with flying machines, men looked beyond, to the realms past the upper reaches of earth’s atmosphere; to the depths of space, and their next port of call, the moon; and then to the nearer planets glowing steadily in the evening sky. Professor Goddard’s experiments with rockets laid the groundwork for what was to come. Even more significant was the realization of atomic power, yet men stood in awe of this fearful Frankenstein they had created in war, and the work of harnessing it to useful purposes was sluggish.

“The Kiss of Death”
Amazing Stories
December 1938
Cover by Robert Fuqua

“Suicide Durkee’s Last Ride”
Amazing Stories
September 1932
Cover by Leo Morey

“The Ransom for Toledo”
Comet
May 1941
Cover by Frank R. Paul

DURING the 21st Century, a cosmic veil of meteoric dust buried the earth in a mantle of gloomy darkness for forty years before the sun once more shone upon the earth, and the human race emerged upon the surface of the earth from the underground cities they had built.

IT was not long after this that actual attempts at space flying were made, producing dismal failures in the initial phase. The improvised space craft never left the earth sufficiently far behind but what they always curved back. Daring and foolhardy adventurers met horrible deaths, while others, less confident, sacrificed only empty projectiles on the altar of forlorn hope. Finally, space ships hurled themselves from the face of the earth, and free of the tenacious gravity reaching its long, invisible fingers far into space to drag back luckless space craft. Yet progress was gained only at the shrine of catastrophe. The martyred heroes became legion. Like an irresistible gambling wheel, the prospect of space navigation lured men to their doom, and death waved its menacing sceptre upon mankind’s persistent efforts to reach other worlds. The new fuel was still uncontrollable. Ejector tubes and even entire rear ends were burned out. Human passengers were roasted. And there were explosions. Mechanisms failed, leaving human beings to die in space from starvation, exhaustion of oxygen supplies and the bitter coldness of space. Space ships became unmanageable and were destined to drift forever throughout the realms of space manned by a sepulchral crew. Most awful were the tragic and drawn out horrors of space ships pulled into the mighty attraction of the sun’s vast flaming body.

Clay Birch was the first man to reach the moon’s pitted surface. This was in the year 2178, but his moment of glory was brief. The space ship raced down from the sky at sub-meteoric speed and buried its wreckage beneath the lunar crust.

“Spacewrecked On Venus”
Wonder Stories Quarterly
Winter 1932
Cover by Frank R. Paul

THROUGHOUT the 23rd Century. space flying became better perfected, and not only was the moon safely reached, but Mars and Venus as well. Further worlds and their satellites were reached in the 24th century, and the colonization of Mars and Venus was started. No intelligent life was found on Mars, but on Venus a species of slate-colored troglodytes was discovered on the highlands among the great swamps.

“Swordsmen Of Saturn”
Science Fiction
October 1939
Cover by Frank R. Paul

THREE expeditions were sent to the moons of Saturn before one finally returned. Two races of swordsmen were found on Dione; one red, the other brown. They were hereditary enemies. They bore a distinct resemblance to men of the earth, even as the troglodytes of Venus, but one arm terminated in a long, bony sword blade. Only one man survived the crash of the first expedition. Old Ben Cartley became the leader of the red swordsmen in their walled cities.

“Hermit Of Saturn’s Ring”
Planet Stories
Fall 1940
Cover by A. Drake(?)

CURIOUSLY enough, the only survivor of the second expedition, lost in Saturn’s ring, was Ben’s crony, white-haired Jasper Jezzan, who for three years lived a hermit among the myriad small moonlets of the great ring of Saturn until the Baynes Expedition came and rescued him. This happened in the year 2364.

“Spacewrecked On Venus”
Wonder Stories Quarterly
Winter 1932
Cover by Frank R. Paul

“Swordsmen Of Saturn”
Science Fiction
October 1939
Cover by Frank R. Paul

“Hermit Of Saturn’s Ring”
Planet Stories
Fall 1940
Cover by A. Drake(?)

MEANWHILE, with the dawn of the 24th Century, the Durna Rangue, a semi-scientific cult banished from the earth for practices in condemned sciences, found a haven in the gray cliffs near the Silmono Desert on Mars. But they preyed too consistently upon fellow colonists for victims of vivisection and experiment, and once again the cult had to fly. Civilization did not again hear from the cult for two hundred years, and the organization was generally supposed to be broken up and dead.

“Durna Rangue Neophyte”
Astounding Stories
June 1937
Cover by H. W. Wesso

“Priestess of the Sleeping Death”
Amazing Stories
April 1941
Cover by J. Allen St. John

“Captives of the Durna Rangue”
Super Science Novels Magazine
March 1941
Cover by Leo Morey

“Escape From Phobos”
Wonder Stories
February 1933
Cover by Frank R. Paul

AS the colonization of Mars and Venus went forward, the little Martian moon of Phobos was employed as a penal moon for interplanetary criminals. The most famous was probably Ern Hantel, who with the aid of a rocket stolen from a space ship supply base, fled the hermetically sealed prison yards in a space suit, shooting off the face of the moon to nearby Mars, where he came down through the atmosphere by means of an improvised parachute. But he was not very lucky, for he fell into the hands of the Durna Rangue, and in trying to escape blundered through the cult’s aging chambers, going in a young man and coming out aged and white haired.

“The Death’s Head Meteor”
Air Wonder Stories
January 1930
Cover by Frank R. Paul

THROUGHOUT the 25th Century, space travel grew swifter and more efficient, and the most obscure and furthermost ramparts of the Solar System were explored. Even the myriad meteors flitting through the system were often visited by meteor miners, who, mooring their tiny space flyers to the craggy surfaces. crawled over the small cosmic bodies in space suits, extracting any valuable minerals their detectors revealed.

“Escape From Phobos”
Wonder Stories
February 1933
Cover by Frank R. Paul

“The Death’s Head Meteor”
Air Wonder Stories
January 1930
Cover by Frank R. Paul

THE 26th Century found Mars and Venus as well established as the mother world, and interplanetary commerce flourished in spite of the numerous bands of space pirates, having their hangouts on the moon, and farther out in space on uninhabited moons. Probably the most famous among these pirates of the early 26th Century was Nez Hulan, half man and half robot, who lay dead in space a long time after a meteor crashed a space ship on which he was one of the crew. He was brought back to life, but without a soul, and was given metal arms, metal legs, a rubber heart, radiophone ears and an aluminum skull. The resurrection stimulated his intellect but perverted it to evil.

“Spoilers of the Spaceways”
Planet Stories
Winter 1942
Cover by Allen Anderson

“The Asteroid of Death”
Wonder Stories Quarterly
Fall 1931
Cover by Frank R. Paul

“Liquid Hell”
Future Fiction
July 1940
Cover by J. W. Scott

“The Moon Pirates”
(Pt. 1)
Amazing Stories
September 1934
Cover by Leo Morey

“The Moon Pirates”
(Conclusion)
Amazing Stories
October 1934
Cover by Leo Morey

INTO this era of interplanetary prosperity exploded a swift reign of terror and conquest of the earth. This happened in 2578. When banished from Mars, the Durna Rangue had retreated to distant Oberon, a satellite of Uranus. In the depths of this remote little moon, they had hidden and worked for two hundred years while shaping their plans for conquest of the earth. At the eleventh hour, they enlisted the aid of the numerous space pirates and later set them up as territorial rulers, dividing up the earth’s surface into small districts of jurisdiction. Over all, in their grim sanctuaries, among their monsters and weird creations, ruled the cult. The Durna Rangue had leaped out of obscurity like a conquering archangel, and they held the earth secure against the Interplanetary Guard from the sister worlds by throwing a protective barrier of rays about the earth.

“Little Hercules”
Astounding Stories
September 1936
Cover by Howard V. Brown

“Vampire of the Void”
Planet Stories
Spring 1941
Cover by A. Drake

“Invisible One”
Super Science Stories
September 1940
Cover by Robert C. Sherry

“The Dark Swordsmen of Saturn”
Planet Stories
Summer 1940
Cover by A. Drake

THE cult and space pirates ruled the outlawed world for nearly a generation before the Interplanetary Guard found a way to penetrate the barrier rays and reclaim the earth, destroying the cult, once and for all. The heroic and deadly figure who finally cracked the cult and paved the way for the reclamation of earth was Lindquist, the lone pirate, sworn enemy of the cult and space pirates alike, yet outlawed by the civilization of the other worlds. The only man the cult feared, he fell in a death duel with earth pirates during the reconquest of the earth, his blazing atom pistols cutting down his enemies even as he fell.

“The Astounding Exodus”
Thrilling Wonder Stories
April 1937
Cover by Howard V. Brown

FROM here on, civilization rose and fell, ebbed and flowed beneath the ceaseless changes of evolution and events, as dynasties and nations grew and changed. Meanwhile, the sun cooled, and planetary motion grew slower, while cosmic bodies commenced to draw closer together in their travels, as if to conserve and exchange their dwindling heat. Five million years after the 20th Century, mankind deserted the chilled earth and its cooling sun for a planet of the great double star, Sirius. But now men little resembled their barbarous predecessors. Their bodies were smaller and they had developed another pair of arms. The digestive tract and organs of respiration had gradually disappeared with the increase of energy broadcasts from huge power stations. Man of this far-flung age had neither mouth nor nostrils, and where hair had once grown upon their heads there now grew instead, fully two dozen antenae, like those of insects; these antenae receiving the broadcast energy. They had long since done away with sleep, and a normal lifetime was 10,000 years. They left the earth lonely and untenanted, with but a scant bit of lichen-like growth clinging here and there to the rocks. Earth’s atmosphere had now grown so rare that stars were often visible in the daytime.

“The Jameson Satellite”
Amazing Stories
July 1931
Cover by Leo Morey

THIRTY-FIVE million years later, a group of immortal wanderers from the planet of another star in a far corner of the universe stopped in their tour of eternal exploration, in the shadow of the dying world. They were machine men of Zor, organic brains in the metal heads of machines. They had achieved immortality by removal of their brains from flesh and blood bodies to coned, metal heads, directing a metal cubed body supported by four metal legs and carrying six metal tentacles. A ring of television eyes surrounded the coned head, and when a part of their bodies wore out, it was replaced.

They found the rotation of the earth slowed to a stop, one side forever facing the dull, bloated sun, to which the slow moving earth had now drawn close. They also found the rocket satellite of Professor Jameson who had died during the 20th Century and had left orders to have his body shot into space in a special rocket he had invented, where it would always remain preserved in the vacuum of space. The rocket, like the moon, had become a satellite of the earth. The Zoromes found him perfectly preserved, and they recalled his brain to life after removing it from his body and placing it in one of the metal coned heads. He became one of them and was henceforth known among them as 21MM392, joining them on their never-ending adventures from world to world throughout the universe in their search for the unusual.

“The Planet of the Double Sun”
Amazing Stories
February 1932
Cover by Leo Morey

“The Return of the Tripeds”
Amazing Stories
May 1932
Cover by Leo Morey

“Into the Hydrosphere”
Amazing Stories
October 1933
Cover by Leo Morey

“Time’s Mausoleum”
Amazing Stories
December 1933
Cover by Leo Morey

“The Sunless World”
Amazing Stories
December 1934
Cover by Leo Morey

“Zora of the Zoromes”
Amazing Stories
March 1935
Cover by Leo Morey

“Space War”
Amazing Stories
July 1935
Cover by Leo Morey

“Labyrinth”
Amazing Stories
April 1936
Cover by Leo Morey

“Twin Worlds”
Amazing Stories
April 1937
Cover by Leo Morey

“On The Planet Fragment”
Amazing Stories
October 1937
Cover by Leo Morey

“The Music Monsters”
Amazing Stories
April 1938
Cover by Leo Morey

“The Cat-men of Aemt”
Astonishing Stories
August 1940
Cover by Unknown

“Cosmic Derelict”
Astonishing Stories
February 1941
Cover by Leo Morey

“Slaves Of The Unknown”
Astonishing Stories
March 1942
Cover by H. W. Wesso

“Doomsday on Ajiat”
Astonishing Stories
October 1942
Cover by Leo Morey

THE END

A careful search of copyright records has shown that this article is in the Public Domain.

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