Hack, Hack, Hack Away

Spicy Science Story no. 6 "Some Ill Planet Reigns" is working up to be the filthiest of the lot somehow. I think it's because when fictional characters have good chemistry with each other they run away with your plot and do bad, bad things to it. Thus is the case with the triad from "Three On An Asteroid," Corporal Buck Nekkid and Ensigns Gemma Moorcock and I.P. Freely. They've gone at it like rabbits to the point that I'll have to turn the hose on them just to get back to my actual plot, the exploration of some weird planet or other which was originally where the real kinky stuff was meant to happen but to other crew members with ummm, something else.

I dunno what the deal is. Even though they're fun to write, like Dr. Miles Long and batshit-crazy Dr. Luscious O'Quim, Buck Nekkid's kind of a tool and not even a likeable tool so I have no idea how they've managed to take over the story. 

Spankings all around, then.

Now on to non-filthy stuff... Captain Future, Quest Beyond the Stars (Radio Archives link is working again). I bought this one because I thought the cover was cool, my other favorites being the one for The Seven Space Stones and Magic Moon, neither of which I've found an affordable copy of yet. This is the first one where the cover image has nothing whatsoever to do with the actual story plot. No monster men capture Joan since she's barely mentioned and there aren't even any monster men, Grag doesn't get busted up by monster men, and Captain Future doesn't wear this weird anti-grav floaty contraption to threaten monster men with his proton pistol. Dammit, I've really wanted to find out what the fuckity-fuck is going on ever since I saw the cover last year but that ain't gonna happen unless I reanimate the corpse of Earle Bergey and ask him what the hell he was doing when he painted it. 

I can do that, right? No? Lovecraft was lying? Balls.

Back to the novel. Otho doesn't mention the girl who died saving his life in The Lost World of Time, even though he was so pissed off he killed two people so he should've mentioned her at least once. Capt. Future decides to save the people of Mercury by taking off for a few months to the center of the universe because for some reason he thinks the way to save their planet is to go like a billion light-years away on a wild goose chase otherwise these Mercurians would all have to live on other planets. Seems nobody thinks there's enough room to spread them out on all the other planets in the system, their moons and all the asteroids which have breathable atmospheres. Really, Mercury isn't that big so it's not like these refugees will suck up all your air and eat all your food, you jerkass people. 

He also doesn't mention to anyone he's going, not even solar system President Carthew. Did he tell his good friend Planet Police Marshal Ezra Gurney? Nope. He'd just tell him it's too risky. Did he tell his imaginary girlfriend Joan Randall? Hell no, the pod people took Danger!Joan back and gave Curt a replacement Cardboard!Joan who doesn't do anything more than gush over Capt. Future. Danger!Joan would've called him a big red-headed idiot and gone with him because it sounded like a fun adventure.

Anyhow, he eventually reaches the birthplace of the universe and finds a machine that makes stuff out of nothing, supposedly by rearranging atoms to make matter or something so after preventing a war between two planets who both want this fantastical doodad so they can use it to kill each other he copies the machine to take back to help the people of Mercury since it can make the minerals they need to support their atmosphere generators. Like it somehow isn't a horrible idea to hand over a contraption that can literally whip up out of nothing all the weapons or riches or crack you'd ever want.

To continue, this crapola leads to the next novel, Outlaws of the Moon. Curt and his Futuremen have been away for six months saving Mercury so he's been declared dead and a mining company is digging up the moon looking for his secret moon base so they can steal all Captain Future's cool moon stuff. They find a hitherto unknown cache of radium that Future didn't want anyone to know about so it could be used when the system ran out, but the evil mine owner tells everyone Future has been hoarding it, which technically he has.

Isn't saving shit for later the raison d'être of a hoarder's very existence? "I'm saving that rotten meat for later!" screams the crazy lady on at least two-thirds of all the episodes of Hoarders. On the other third they're screaming that they're saving all those cats for later.

Whatever. Captain Future turns up to tell the President of the solar system he's not dead (and Joan gets her second weak-ass kiss) so they can stop digging up the moon but the mine owner convinces one of his lackeys that he'll be cut out of the radium profits unless he kills the President and frames Captain Future for it. Yup, it all comes down to assassination for radium profits so that means a radium monopoly for Capt. Future to bust up. I should start calling this series Captain Anti-Trust. 

Grag also calls the mine owner a "lying four-flusher" which if you didn't already know this was written in the early 1940s you certainly do now.

So Curt and the Futuremen are on the run from the law, blah blah blah, they sneak back to the moon and find Moon Men who've been hiding underground all this time and Curt and the guys never noticed. He clears his name yadda yadda yadda. The End.

The cover has absolutely nothing to do with the main plot, just the last couple pages after everything is tied up in a neat bow. Curt decides to go back home for a nice long rest, not bothering to say goodbye to Joan who goes on an expedition with Grag and Otho while goofing off from their job of relocating all the Moon Men to one of the moons of Jupiter. You know, one of those places that didn't want any of those filthy Mercurian refugees. They wind up trapped in a diving bell on the bottom of the ocean and he has to rescue them from Jovian sea people. I particularly love the expression on his face. It's the same one someone stoned out of their gourd has when they're concentrating really hard on appearing normal.

Weirdly, in the next novel that I just started, The Comet Kings, he suddenly loves Cardboard!Joan. You really gotta worry about these home schooled guys. Two kisses that barely add up to first base and suddenly he's in love. Jeez. Again, I have no idea when this happened since any time she's around he barely speaks to her except to argue and when he's sitting around with no monopolies to break up he doesn't call her up to go on another half-assed date. Two wimpy kisses do not equal any sort of expression of, well, anything. In The Comet Kings he rushes up to hug her, which he's never done, but he can't because she's electrified and he gets all morose about it. Y'know, like that hug he should've given her months ago when she turned up with the Futuremen that time he was stranded in another dimension but all he did was give her that pathetic light kiss, like he was afraid to get her girl cooties or something.

I'll end this with the very first description of synthetic rubbery man Otho from the unpublished original two chapters of the first Captain Future novel "The Horror on Jupiter," which was rewritten as Captain Future and the Space Emperor.

 

I'll also offer this comment about Simon Wright, otherwise known as the Brain, who raised Curt with the nekkid rubbery Otho and Grag the spanking robot. It may help to explain the romantically confused Captain Future.

 

Now back to writing some truly filthy comedy space porno. Heh-heh-heh.