The following reviews are the 33rd, 34th, and 35th installments 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. And that is okay. I relish the act of literary archaeology.

For this post I’ve selected three short stories about the horrific conditions on a colonized Mars by E. C. Tubb (1919-2010) that appeared in the British SF magazine New Worlds. Along with three additional tales, they were fixed-up as the novel Alien Dust (1955).¹ I “blame” the “Friend of the Site” John Boston for my renewed interest in Tubb’s bleak stories. I recently acquired Boston’s three-volume commentary on pre-Moorcock New Worlds and Science Fantasy.² Boston correctly describes Tubb’s earlier stories as preoccupied with the “domestic lives of spacefarers” in often overwritten and maudlin strokes.³ Regardless, I found the topics he explored worth my time. I’d only previously read his later short story “The Seekers” (1965) and The Space-Born (variant title: Star Ship) (1955). Considering his hard-boiled sensibilities, I imagine a substantial slice of his fiction would fit this series.⁴

Previously: Philip K. Dick’s “Explorers We” (1959) and James Tiptree, Jr.’s “Painwise” (1972).

Up Next: John Wyndham’s “The Man From Beyond” (variant title: “The Man from Earth”) (1934)

3.5/5 (Good)

“Without Bugles” first appeared in New Worlds, # 13, ed. John Carnell (January 1952): You can read it online here.

As with most E. C. Tubb stories, “Without Bugles” starts with a punch: “The man writhed on the narrow cot, and fought for his life” (52). The man in question is one of many colonists on Mars afflicted with a futuristic black lung–“an industrial disease. Silicosis they called it once”–caused by radioactive dust (54). The origin of the radioactivity isn’t clear. Dust cannot be avoided on Mars. It seeps through all seals. It gathers in corners. It bypasses masks. Into the colony of the dead and dying and those that tend them, Anders, the Secretary for Extra-Planetary Affairs, and Pat Easton, a vivacious and idealistic reporter for Trans-World Communications arrive on an infrequent rocket. The purpose of the commission? Anders gets straight to the point: “Congress has poured billions of dollars into this project. When are you going to start paying it back?” (56). Pat proposes the fate of the colony can be swayed by a positive depiction of the heroic colonists.