The following review is the 36th installment of my series searching for “SF short stories that are critical in some capacity of space agencies, astronauts, and the culture which produced them.” Some stories I’ll review in this series might not fit or are poor quality. And that is okay. I relish the act of literary archaeology.

Why John Wyndham? I snagged a copy of David Seed’s new book John Wyndham (2025) out via University of Liverpool Press and realized how little I knew about his pre-War science fiction.¹ This story, among a few others, jumped out to me due to its critical stance on human exploration.

Previously: E. C. Tubb’s “Without Bugles” (1952), “Home is the Hero” (1952), and “Pistol Point” (1953)

Up Next: TBD

---

3.5/5 (Good)

John Wyndham, writing as John Benyon Harris, published “The Man from Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) in Wonder Stories, ed. Hugo Gernsback (September 1954). You can read the story online here.

The Contours of Venusian Wonder

Somewhere on the Venusian surface the Valley of Dur, with its amalgamation of gasses, traps unsuspecting denizens who wander into its depths. In the city of Takon, Venusians, six-limbed creatures with silvery hair, ogle the strange beasts extricated and caged and exhibited from the Valley. These scenes remind me of a vast Victorian museum or World Fair. The story begins with a group of Venusian school children who behold the unusual sights. One precocious child stays behind in front of a “solitary curious creature which stood erect upon two legs though it appeared to be designed to use four” (423). The origins and nature of this “puzzling find” remains an enigma to the Venusians (423). The child, transfixed by the man’s noises and scrawls, pushes his stylus and pad under the bars. And Morgan Gratz, stranded astronaut and self-confessed murderer, draws for the child the respective locations of their planets.

The Nature of Humanity’s Exploration

After the fortuitous meeting with the child, the Venusians realize that Gratz is quite unlike the other trapped specimens of the Valley. The story Moran Gratz recounts lays bare humanity’s rapacity and exploitive desires and his own role as victim, spy, and manipulated instrument of industrial espionage. Two industries dominate this future earth: Metallic Industries and International Chemicals. Beware, Gratz begs the Venusians: “do not listen to them. However honeyed their words or smooth their phrases, distrust them, for they will be liars and the servants of liars” (425). In secret, International Chemicals builds a spaceship capable of traveling to Venus. Gratz holds a violent grudge against IC. The company killed his father after exposure to “unshielded rays” (428); his mother died penniless after failed litigation against the industrial behemoth and its legion of lawyers. Under an assumed name, Grantz infiltrates the IC project on behalf of Metallic Industries. He approaches the MI’s titans of industries with his report. They accept his plan to sabotage the vessel. As the door to the conference rooms closes, the debate among the titans continues. There’s something afoot. Grantz is but a tool for their games of economic domination.

There’s a final twist of course: a blasted surface, a final calculus, authorial refusal to indicate escape from the cyclical net.

Final Thoughts

Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” is bleak in every calculation. Initial pretense at wonder (the Venusian landscape) and adventure (a mysterious valley) clashes spectacularly with humanity’s reasons for exploration (massive business trusts desperate to suck the next world dry) and the story of lost astronaut (a calculated serial killer). Beyond the straightforward anti-capitalist stridency, Wyndham eviscerates grandiose narratives of racial superiority. Similar to humans from Grantz’s era who believe themselves destined for conquest, the Venusians likewise consider themselves the pinnacle of progress: “There was something magical in evolution, something glorious in the fact that he and his race were the crown of progress” (422). The pulp stylings of the Wyndham’s early descriptions of the Venusians, still discovering and exploring and uncovering the nature of their world, run into an all-too-real human motivations. Perhaps the Venusians too will follow humanity’s path.

Due to Wyndham’s ruminative and depressive air, I wonder if Gernsback’s managing editor David Lasser (1902-1996) acquired “The Man From Beyond” (1934) before he was fired in 1933. “The Man from Beyond” fits Lasser’s attempt to “bring some realism to their fiction.” According to Mike Ashley and others, Lasser is a “much neglected revolutionary in science fiction” as under his tutelage the genre “started to mature.”² Multiple earlier Wyndham stories, such as “The Venus Adventure” (1932) (which I also plan on reading soon), appeared during Lasser’s stewardship.

Despite my frequent frustration — on the literary side of things — with 1930s SF, I found “The Man From Beyond” a solid read. I rarely enjoy opening the brittle pages of Wonder Stories due to often stodgy and predictable reading experience. Thus, I can’t help but rate Wyndham’s dark vision a bit higher than I might otherwise. The end must have shocked.³ Somewhat recommended.

---

Notes

1. I also acquired Amy Binns’ Hidden Wyndham: Life, Love, Letters (2019) which I haven’t yet read. See Ch. 1 of David Seed’s John Wyndham (2025), 7-25 for discussion of his pre-War fiction. Seed covers “The Man from Beyond” (1934) in a paragraph on page 22. ↩︎
2. Mike Ashley’s The Time Machines: The Story of the Science-Fiction Pulp Magazines from the Beginning to 1950 (2000), 69; In Gernsback’s magazines, David Lasser had an important role in attempting to integrate realism. See Ch. 1 “The Age of Wonder: Gernsback, David Lasser, and Wonder Stories” in Eric Leif Davin’s Pioneers of Wonder for Lasser’s role and a wonderful interview; See John Cheng’s Astounding Wonder: Imagining Science and Science Fiction in Interwar America (2012), 311-313 for Lasser’s labor-oriented career after he was fired ↩︎
3. I need to go through the letters of later issues to see what people said about Wyndham’s ending! ↩︎

---

For book reviews consult the INDEX

For cover art posts consult the INDEX

For TV and film reviews consult the INDEX