Not
every story containing tentacled horrors has its origins in Cthulhu or the
pantheon he inhabits. However, when a
pulp fiction author in the early 1930s combines tentacles, the North Pole, an
all-powerful pre-human entity and graphic cosmicism, it is likely that H.P. Lovecraft’s
famous cephalopod monster was the inspiration.
Edmond Hamilton’s 1932 novella The
Earth-Brain is markedly different from his usual fare, an interesting
transformation of Lovecraft’s mythos of Great Old Ones into the vernacular of a
pulp science fiction story. (Lovecraft
enthusiasts will recall that The Call of
Cthulhu appeared in 1928.)
Edmond
Hamilton was a younger contemporary of Lovecraft’s, best known for his
world-wrecking space operas, his Captain
Future serial, and his prodigious
output of pulp fiction. He is credited
with developing such familiar science fiction notions as cloud-high cities,
extraterrestrials in metallic bodies, matter transmitters, and accelerated
evolution, among other concepts. Several
of his space operas contain motifs that are recognizable in such later
entertainments as Star Trek and Star Wars, decades later.
In The Earth-Brain, adventurer Clark Landon
has become a human epicenter for unusual earthquakes and seismic activity
wherever he travels in the world. He
avoids the interiors of tall buildings and keeps far away from mountains to
avoid avalanches. Cities in Newfoundland,
Norway, Russia, Egypt, Italy and other places are ruined as he travels through
them, and thousands die amidst the rubble.
He is wracked by guilt and terror—cursed for an act of sacrilege
committed a couple of years before.
Mercifully he has enough wealth to travel unceasingly. If he ever ran out of funds, an entire continent
might go under.
While
stopping briefly in New York City he encounters an old friend who happens to be
the narrator of the story. He tells his
friend all about an ill-fated journey to the North Pole, a couple of years
earlier. Landon and his two partners,
with the aid of two increasingly anxious natives, go on an expedition to find a
mysterious mountain, notorious in Eskimo lore, “the forbidden mountain at the
Earth’s top…” Because part of the story
is set in the Canadian Arctic, the “Eskimos” Hamilton describes are probably
representatives of Inuit society.
After
an arduous journey across an icy wilderness, the men finally discover a huge
peak that seems to have one or more tunnels in its side. Naturally Landon and his partners ignore the
warnings of the two Eskimo guides, as well as the agitated behavior of their
dogs, and begin to climb the mountain in order to enter one of the caves.
Impressed
by the Eskimos’ terror of the locale, Landon and his team imagine the earth as
a kind of gigantic organism, indifferent to the life forms that infest its
surface and wonder “…whether we who consider ourselves masters of all are not
but a race of microscopic parasites…”
Inside the mountain Landon encounters the awesome mind of the sentient
planet Earth, a titanic multicolored ovoid with tentacles of light energy and
cable-like projections that burrow into the rock beneath it. There is a horrific struggle with the Earth
Brain and Landon alone barely escapes—but only for a while.
Hamilton
offers the interesting idea that Earth is one of many sentient planets
travelling in various trajectories across space, each with its own brain, and each
in communication with the others.
Insofar as life exists on these planets, it does so only superficially
and inconsequentially. The cosmic image
unites what is essentially a monster-in-a-cave story with a cosmicist vision
more congenial to the author of numerous space operas.
Hamilton’s
explanation of the nature of the Earth Brain will remind New Age enthusiasts of
the concept of Gaia. This was originally
the name of a primal mother goddess from Greek mythology, but later became
elaborated as a figure in Neo-pagan worship.
Gaia was also the name for an ecological insight popular in the 1980s
and 1990s, that the Earth can be viewed as an organism that regulates itself as
other life forms do, (i.e. the “Gaia hypothesis”). This is very close to Hamilton’s conception
of the Earth-Brain—which he developed in the early 1930s.
Unlike
much of Hamilton’s work, The Earth-Brain does
not end happily, and the hero is not saved by pluck, technical know-how or
unbelievably good luck. In fact, because
of his reckless presumption and for his violence against the Earth-Brain,
Landon has rendered himself beyond redemption, a damned soul. “All Earth will be wroth against you!”
prophesizes one of the Eskimo guides.
It is here
where Hamilton parts ways with Lovecraft and with Cthulhu. The latter would destroy all of humanity
without any desire to single out particular individuals for abuse—nothing
personal here. True, the depredations of
the Earth-Brain are a bit heavy-handed at times, and thousands die in various
seismic events. But the author seems uncomfortable
with a strictly cosmicist approach. His
weird vengeful deity singles out Landon for doom, pursues him, takes a close personal interest in him, and does not
rest until she finds him. The
Earth-Brain is a kind of wrathful Old Testament god reconfigured as a spiteful
Gaia.
The Earth-Brain was originally published in the
April 1932 issue of Weird Tales. It shared that issue with H.P. Lovecraft’s In the Vault, Henry S. Whitehead’s Mrs. Lorriquer, and Clark Ashton Smith’s
The Gorgon. A number of Hamilton’s stories have been reviewed
in previous posts; here are several earlier discussions that show both his
scope and development as a genre writer.
For example, compare an early work like Crashing Suns (1928) with a more nuanced late career story like What’s It Like Out There (1952). One of the fascinations of reading this
literature in depth is observing how an author’s work changes over time.
3.
Almost But Not Quite Eden (The Seeds From Outside)
A “World-Wrecker’s” First Publication (The Monster-God of Mamurth)
A “World-Wrecker’s” First Publication (The Monster-God of Mamurth)
Our
Cerebral Future (The Man Who Evolved)
Captain
Future and the Restless Natives of Titan (The Harpers of Titan)
Doomsday
Deferred for the Eight Worlds (Crashing Suns)
Mars and
P.T.S.D. (What's It Like Out There)
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