B. R. Bruss (1895–1980)

A strangely old-fashioned tale of an interstellar "bring 'em back alive" trapper.
It took four chapters, a couple of meals, a swim in the swimming pool, and a couple of postprandial strolls round the trapper's magnificent country estate before he softens enough to start to recount his adventures to a visiting reporter. It's the sort of long-winded set up you would expect from a late Victorian, or Edwardian era book.

Episode one - Did I tell you about the time I went after the 'several hundred show more metre long, six or seven storey high,' beastie that weighed 'several thousand tonnes' on an unexplored planet so savage and teaming with prehistoric dangers we considered dropping an atomic bomb to clear a space for us to land? We dug a hole and it fell in.

Episode Two - Albino electric telepathic cave-dwelling jungle octopuses. Our reporter hero (who has now joined the trapper's team as the narrative suddenly lurches from being the trapper's recounted stories to his current adventures) rescues the Trapper's beautiful daughter from the clutches of albino electric telepathic cave-dwelling jungle octopuses - and the two young people realise they are in lurve. Albino electric telepathic jungle octopuses are captured - somehow - the author can't actually think of a way to do it, without going back and rewriting some of the corners he's painted himself into so it happens off the page between paragraphs and between two of the large number of vegetarian, round the table, meals these characters get through. Every new character, it is carefully explained to the reader, is a vegetarian!. Very Strange.

Episode Three - Rocks. On a recently-discovered planet stuffed full of Ingredient X, miners discover a rock-based lifeform which bizarrely (and in no way explained or even theorised about) is unable to be registered on film, so no one can take a photo of it. Usually totally inert and immobile, the rock beasts will, when approached, disappear underground with lightning rapidity. There is much head scratching. How to catch something that can just disappear underground like that? After a fortnight's frustrated thought, reporter lad has the bright idea of digging a hole for them to fall into. So they do. They tunnel under the things and go 'boo!' at them and they fall into the specially created steel trucks knocked up by the miners. Simples! But there's more! unbeknownst* to our human heroes, the telepathic beasties are fully aware of what's going on and two of them have willingly fallen into the humans' clutches to be whisked off to the galactic zoo on another planet.

Hero and obligatory beautiful daughter get married and go on an exploring honeymoon (with Dad in tow - the French are weird). The first planet they visit is covered with the self-same rock beings they found on their previous voyage with no other life forms anywhere. On the next planet they encounter more of them! Just as they are beginning to suspect something might not be right in the universe they are all killed...!

...but brought back to life by a bunch of blue-skinned aliens who happened to be passing.

The blue-skinned aliens are engaged in a centuries-long war against the rock beasts who are each capable of destroying entire ecosystems of 'soft ones' with their mental 'zrok rays'. Luckily the blue-skinned ones have come up with a whole bunch of anti-rock monster weaponry including superfast intra-dimensional rock boring thingies which they are more than happy to show our heroes in Captain Nemo like guided tours. (The second Fleuve Noir novel I read in a row to feature an alien giving our human protagonist a pair of sunglasses to wear to stop them going blind as they gaze upon marvels - this time underground!)

Meanwhile, at the zoo, the captive rock things have laid eggs which have hatched and the zoologists there are about to send mental 'zrok rays' emitting, baby rock monsters to research centres all over the known universe... just like the blue-skinned aliens did centuries before!

Can our heroes and their blue-skinned, (vegetarian), alien friends get there in time with their short-range, modified, cosmic-ray emitter?

Of course they can! and with a few pages to spare for some happy family snaps and promises of eternal friendship.

Fin

One thing I find odd about the French SF of this period** is the fact that there are very few French people in them. For anything set outwith a recognisably local French setting - I.E. anything set in a far distant future, in or Space Opera Time, everyone has Anglo-Saxony names. Maybe in an attempt to make the work look more American and therefore more "authentic" somehow? I don't know but I do know that some of the Anglo-saxony names that French authors come up with are more than a bit odd. The old trapper here is called 'Harp Loser' and other characters rejoice in names like: Harry Song, Pater Patless, and Rog Willy.

*I love that word.
**That I have read so far and I am fully aware I'm talking about a pretty small sample base here. show less

Un giorno un contadino svedese, Jarl Olsen, trova sul sentiero che porta verso la sua casa una scatoletta contenente strani semi, neri e lucenti, con una macchiolina bianca. Li semina nella striscia di terra che costeggia il muretto di cinta del suo orto, e quando otto giorni dopo, in uno dei rari momenti che il lavoro dei campi gli lascia liberi, va a vedere cos'è successo dei semi, trova alcune alte piante che portano appesi ai rami una enorme quantità di baccelli rossi. Qualche giorno show more dopo, il bambino di Jarl corre trafelato dal padre per dirgli che ha visto tanti ometti rossi correre nell'orto. Il contadino scuote la testa e ammonisce il bimbo a non lasciar volare troppo la sua fantasia. Eppure il bambino ha ragione: dai semi neri sono nati davvero gli ometti scarlatti. Sono i Djarns, e provengono da altri pianeti. E i Djarns invasero intere regioni, e dove essi arrivavano gli uomini diventavano apatici, come immersi in letargo, ridotti ad assurdi schiavi pronti ad agire supinamente secondo tutti i comandi che arrivavano al loro cervello attraverso le onde magnetiche lanciate dal Grande Kirn. show less

Di B. R. Bruss sono già stati pubblicati due interessanti e avventurosi romanzi: Attenzione, dischi volanti e Marte all'attacco. Questo è il seguito dei primi due, e in esso ritroverete lo stesso spirito audace che animava i protagonisti dei precedenti racconti, una uguale atmosfera di tensione, colpi di scena degni di un film "brivido", e personaggi simpatici ai quali vi affezionerete sin dalle prime pagine. Bruss è un autore spigliato e fertile di originali trovate che tengono viva show more l'attenzione del lettore, e lo spingono a voler sapere " come andrà a finire".Gli imprevedibili sviluppi della trama ben costruita fanno di Cortina magnetica una divertente fantascienza che si legge d'un fiato, sentendosi portati a partecipare alle avventure dei suoi protagonisti, uomini di un futuro abbastanza vicino a noi, e vicini quindi alla nostra mentalità. Infatti, quanti giovani come James e John, generosi e impulsivi, circolano oggi per le strade di tutto il mondo! Non volano ancora in astronavi capaci delle più fantastiche velocità, ma non è detto tuttavia che non possano riuscire, nel corso della loro vita, a partecipare almeno a quello che sarà il primo viaggio dell'uomo verso la Luna. show less

En este libro (?Le grand Kirn, 1958), el autor relata la invasión de la Tierra por unos entes de naturaleza vegetal. Estos aparentes invasores no son en realidad tales, sino esclavos de una potencia mental llamada Kirn, ciega y sorda, obligada a esclavizar seres inferiores para sobrevivir. Los acólitos de Kirn, una raza de hombrecillos vegetales llamados Djarn, serán los encargados de dirigir los deseos de Kirn a un nivel material, organizando en particular a los humanos hipnotizados para show more construir ciudadelas que alberguen partes de Kirn. Los héroes de esta novela son un grupo de parasicólogos estacionados en los Estados Unidos, y que, mediante visiones y premoniciones, reconocen el peligro de la expansión de los Djarn. show less