Wednesday, March 16, 2011

1930’s short story: "The Foreign Legion of Mars" by Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr.

Thanks to Doc Mars of the amazing French-language website Mars & la Science Fiction, you can download and read “The Foreign Legion of Mars” (pdf), a short story penned by  American pulp sci-fi writer Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr. and illustrated by Polish American artist Julian S. Krupa, as it was originally published in the May 1939 issue of Amazing Stories magazine. Set on a frontier Mars, the storyline revolves around hard-bitten legionnaires, a mercenary Earthman, and a fervent missionary that seem to have the upper hand over the “bulge-eyed, web-fingered desert aboriginals.” Here are the opening lines:

IT happened when I was just a youngster, holding down a trading station on Mars. I was a sergeant in the Alien Legion at the time. You remember the Legion. Scum of the cosmos, picked up in gutters throughout the Solar System, and supposed to keep the Martians in order while our traders stole the fillings out of their teeth. And me thinking it all glorious adventure and high romance!

My post was a place called Jerala. Smack in the middle of the Red Desert, twice as hot as hell and three times as dry. One scummy well, five forlorn-looking holu trees, and a dirty rabbit warren of a native village, all filth and fleas. In front of the village and strung out along the edge of the space-port were our barracks, the radio shack, and Blackie Slane’s ramshackle trading post. And that damned desert, flat as a table, as far as the eye could see. Oh, it was a lovely spot! ...

Surprisingly, the “Meet the Author” column in the May 1939 issue of Amazing Stories reveals few biographical details about the young Frederic Arnold Kummer Jr. (1913-1990), noting that he was residing in Baltimore at the time of publication.

Merci beaucoup, Doc Mars!

4 comments:

  1. Very cool. I love the line "Scum of the cosmos, picked up in gutters throughout the Solar System, and supposed to keep the Martians in order while our traders stole the fillings out of their teeth." Can't you just hear Bogart or one of the Dimension X/X Minus One actors reading this story?

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  2. Dave: I, too, noticed the beautiful writing style! How about Robert Mitchum?

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  3. Definitely, any of the great actors from the 30s to the 50s who could do that stock film noir voice.

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  4. Dave: Maybe you should give it a try and upload the results to Librivox?

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