The Green Girl by Jack Williamson

Again, I had to admit that Sam had advanced a most plausible explanation for an amazing thing, but still I prefer my plants fastened to the ground.

I recently bought a copy of Jane and Howard Frank's The Frank Collection, which is about the authors' collection of SF-related art.  Early in the book there is a reproduction of the cover of the 1950 Avon paperback edition of Jack Williamson's The Green Girl, the illustration of which shows some kind of flying plant monster carrying off the sexalicious title character.  I like Williamson, and this wild and alluring cover was enough to push me over the edge into wanting to read this novel, which debuted in Amazing in 1930 as a serial that stretched across two issues.  I'll be reading The Green Girl in a scan of 1999's The Metal Man and Others, Volume One of the Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, where it takes up fewer than 100 pages.

The Green Girl's plot has the structure of one of those Edgar Rice Burroughs stories in which a modern man is transported to another world where he meets a princess whose people are in some war; he becomes a leader of her people's army and wins the war and wins her hand in marriage.  But Williamson's narrator and male lead is not the confident, self-starting, astoundingly capable man these stories generally have as their heroes; instead, he is the junior partner in a male relationship much like that of a father and son.  Through most of the story, the senior partner, the world's greatest scientist, makes all the decisions and performs all the feats, and The Green Girl feels like some kind of wish fulfillment fantasy in which everything is just handed to the protagonist--a hot girl just falls into his lap without him having to do anything to win her love and his friend the super genius whips up elaborate scientific inventions on the fly that protect the narrator and propel him through awesome adventures of which he is more spectator than participant.  The narrator isn't particularly brave or handy or even ambitious--when humanity is under alien threat of extinction, he figures he will be fine if civilization collapses as long as he can live out his life on an oasis with his dream girl.  He's selfish!  But in the final quarter or so of the novel the genius scientist father figure appears to have been killed and the narrator steps up to fill "Dad"'s shoes and save the world, the father figure has successfully trained his surrogate son to do the right thing and use his gifts to serve society.

Stylistically, one of the most prominent characteristics of The Green Girl is all the long descriptions of unique and dramatic phenomena the narrator observes (but often doesn't really interact with), descriptions that focus in particular on color.  Rays or vibrations of opposing wavelengths or valences or whatever collide and an "etheric storm" of brilliant pulsating lights fills the sky.  Our heroes approach and then penetrate an alien jungle of flowering plants of a hundred riotous colors.  The red ambient light of a subterranean world casts a crimson gloom on everything, while its human inhabitants have green skin.  And so on.  Williamson advances speculative explanations of these phenomena--the red light is from radium gas (or something, I didn't quite get it) and the red light makes people's skin tan green--under the light of Sol they would tan like we surface people do (I didn't get this, either.)  Williamson buttresses his speculations with real-life science; in the course of explaining the monsters that are central to the story--mobile intelligent plants--Williamson provides a description of euglena viridis, a single-celled creature that, we are told, straddles the boundary between plant and animal.  Williamson also offers lots of science trivia; e.g., the Pacific Ocean, we are told, is 2.7% solid matter, and escape velocity from Earth is seven miles a second.  Like so much early science fiction, The Green Girl glamorizes science and technology, expresses tremendous optimism about what man can achieve, and even tries to teach you some science.

“What can’t we do? We have the Omnimobile. We have machines and tools. We have knowledge, and our hands. We can go anywhere, and do anything! But the first thing is to study, to find out what we have to deal with, and how to fight it.”

The Green Girl is not bad, though the fact that for three-quarters of the narrative the protagonist is constantly playing second fiddle to his friend and doesn't really have to do anything to win the love of the female lead perhaps makes it less thrilling than tales of such heroes as John Carter, Tarzan, and Conan--those guys are always making the decisions that drive the narrative, using their abilities to defeat enemies and overcome obstacles, and attracting women with their good looks and dashing deeds.  But maybe a narrative arc in which a father figure teaches a selfish kid to become a better person is more sophisticated, more realistic and more elevating?  

I can mildly recommend The Green Girl.  To us students of the history of speculative fiction, any story by a Grand Master that appeared in Hugo Gernsback's flagship magazine (though by this time Gernsback had lost control of the magazine and this issue was edited by scientist T. O'Conor Sloane) is valuable reading, and it is fun to know the story behind those wild book covers.  But I think The Green Girl may have entertainment value even for general readers.  The vivid images of strange phenomena and of the equipment the scientist cooks up are actually fun, even if I found much of the science material to be opaque, and the war stuff in the end is engagingly melodramatic, with mass destruction and all the named characters suffering injury and/or risking their lives in the effort to save their fellows.  

For a more detailed synopsis and a little more analysis of The Green Girl, read on!  

It is the high tech future of 1999!  Machines do all the work so people have lots of free time!  There is no poverty or inequality!  Because all problems have been solved, there is no scientific advancement, and almost no scientists.  Our narrator, 25-year-old Melvin Dane, is best friends with the last scientist, a man of 70 years, Sam, inventor of nuclear power plants and many of the other devices that helped create this utopia.  These two occupy their days by sitting on the beach or doing extensive travelling, including lots of off the beaten path exploring.

You see, our narrator Mel has a vivid imagination and spends a lot of time day dreaming about his fantasy girlfriend, a beautiful woman with greenish skin.  Mel actually prefers being alone with his own thoughts to spending time with other people so he can focus all his mind on this dream girl of his.  Of course, Williamson makes clear to us that this green woman is real and that our guy is in telepathic contact with a real woman in some other world; genius Sam recognizes this truth, and the reason he takes Mel on so many trips to exotic locales is in hopes Mel will recognize the alien environment the Green Girl describes to Mel in his "dreams."  Their travels have not yielded success, however, and as an adult the narrator has more or less abandoned the idea that his dream girl is real, even as he spends all his free time daydreaming about her.

One day, the sky turns red and the sun's light is diminished.  The color of the sun, as perceived by those on Earth, runs through a spectrum of color changes and then all turns black as the sun's light is totally extinguished!  Sam explains that some hostile alien force has filled "the ether" with "interfering waves" that are blocking the rays of the sun, apparently in an effort to freeze the surface temperature of the Earth down to "absolute zero," which will of course destroy human civilization.  Sam has expected something like this would happen eventually, and secretly been working on a machine to cancel out such enemy waves.  He throws considerations of work-life balance into the crapper and throws his productivity into high gear in an effort to finish his machine in time to save our civilization.  Williamson shovels on the science talk:

"With these instruments I can pick up and analyze any disturbance in the ether, whether it be Hertzian or wireless wave two miles long, or any of the shorter waves that extend down to heat or infra-red, through the visible and ultra-violet spectrums, and even below, to the Cosmic Rays."

Sam finally activates his machine and Mel observes the sky as the conflict of Sam's and the enemy's waves produces a "pulsating" and "coruscating" display of colors, an "etheric storm."  Sam's waves triumph over the enemy's and the daytime sky is again blue and the good old sun is back after thirty hours of frigid cold that have left thousands across the globe dead.

Sam and the narrator figure another attack on Earth's relationship with the sun is imminent, and prepare.  One of Sam's long term public projects has been a space ship with tank treads and propellors to allow it to travel with ease both over land and under the sea, the Omnimobile, and Sam and the narrator rush to finish this thing before the sun is again blocked out.  The vehicle is stocked full of food, equipped with a library of science fiction magazines and a nuclear power plant and armed with a rapid-fire two-inch automatic gun and electric bolt projectors, and Mel figures he and Sam can survive indefinitely within the Omnimobile no matter what threats arise; Mel thinks he can happily live out his life, enjoying his dreams of the Green Girl and rereading all those of SF stories, even if all of humanity is extinguished.

Sam puts his many inventions and his vast expertise to work trying to figure out where the solar-radiation-obstructing rays originated, and it turns out the human race's unseen enemy is trying to figure out where Sam's jamming device is located!  A flying silver sphere appears and Sam and Mel escape their house on the beach shortly before its atoms are separated into their component protons, neutrons and electrons by the globe's disintegrator ray attack.  Luckily Sam has determined the location of the source of the enemy waves, and he and Mel climb into the Omnimobile and set out for the Pacific--the enemy attack is emanating from a spot some miles below the surface of the ocean.

Our heroes descend deep into a natural trench and emerge in a bizarre world within the hollow Earth, a world illuminated by the red glow of radioactive gas.  I guess this gas also produces the pressure needed to keep the Pacific Ocean from falling down on this inner world--the "roof" of this subterranean universe is the waters of the Pacific.  (This is one of the things in the story I found confusing.)

Sam and Mel spot something flying above a dense jungle--the monsters from the cover of the 1950 American paperback and the 1966 German printing, flowers larger than a man with wings of leaves and grasping tentacles.  One seems to carry a human figure, so they shoot it down with the 2-inch gun.  When they investigate the plant-monster carcass they find its victim is a gorgeous nude girl with green skin--she is in a coma but Mel would recognize his dream girl in any condition!  Sam isn't just an inventor of vehicles and wave projectors but also a medical doctor and he treats the odd burns on the Green Girl's back and revives her.  They also put clothes on the Green Girl, whose name we learn is Xenora.

Xenora recognizes Mel from their telepathic communications, and explains that she is a princess of a dying race.  Ages ago her people dominated this world, but then appeared a monster god, a Lord of Flame in the form of a huge serpent of green fire that has hypnotic powers and gathered to it worshippers that soon outnumbered those who resisted its telepathic seductions.  Only a small number of Xenora's people are independent today, living in the woods and in the ruins of their formerly magnificent cities, always at risk of capture; if taken, the Lord of Flame's worshippers attach an apparatus to the backs of Xenora's countrymen that makes zombie slaves of them.  Xenora herself was captured recently and impressed into the Lord of Flame's flying navy of silver globes; the apparatus fell off when the globe ship she was on was destroyed in a battle against the flying flower monsters.  No doubt the Lord of Flame is the entity trying to freeze the surface of the Earth.  (Why?  Sam later theorizes that freezing the Pacific will make it a more sturdy roof.)

In the body of the monster they shot down, Sam finds a baby flying flower monster, a thing less than a foot long,  and decides to keep it and study it.  He and Sam leave Xenora with the Omnimobile to hunt for food for Sam's new pet, and proceed to get lost in the jungle.  The Lord of Flame tries to hypnotize them, but Xenora sends a psychic message to our heroes, clearing their minds just as they were about to fall into the clutches of the monster god's minions.   

   

Over the next two weeks, Sam develops helmets that protect the wearer from the Lord of Flame's hypnotic rays and trains his rapidly growing pet flying flower monster to act as a servant who can help wash the dishes.  The trio takes off in the Omnimobile, and wins a gun battle with a flying globe crewed by the Lord of Flame's slaves; from the wreck Sam recovers interesting artifacts.  Months go by, the pet monster growing larger than a man and Sam learning more and more about the Lord of Flame.  Williamson stresses how, while the pet monster disturbs the narrator, Sam and the monster come to love each other--Sam is the picture not only of human ingenuity but of the ability of love to overcome prejudice; he is the kind of father who knows how important and awesome weapons, vehicles and nuclear energy are, but also knows that what matters in life are relationships based on love.

Sam and his pet go off hunting and don't return, and Mel figures the worst and decides to attack the Lord of Flame himself, leaving Xenora behind.  The Lord of Flame turns out to be a giant metal tower in a deep crater, apparently a metallic life form--the green snake of fire is a projection of its power.  Mel flies the Omnimobile into the crater and pits its 2-inch gun and the electric arc projectors against the flying globes and other firepower of the Lord of Flame.  Our guy scores some hits but the Omnimobile crash lands and Mel's helmet falls off so he falls under the control of the Lord of Flame's telepathic hypnotism.  A few days later Xenora shows up--an expert hiker and woodsman, she climbed down into the crater to save her boyfriend.  She takes off her helmet and gives it to Mel; Mel flees on foot and now Xenora is once again a zombie slave of the Lord of Flame.

Mel is now committed to destroying the Lord of Flame.  Williamson describes over multiple pages how Mel, using his chemistry knowledge, makes nitroglycerine from naturally occurring materials, a process that takes months.  He plants a huge mine where, upon exploding, it should open a channel from a sea into the crater and drown the Lord of Flame and its worshippers.  Just after he has placed the mine and is lighting the fuse, Xenora climbs out of the crater--thanks to their psychic connection with him she knows what he is up to and as a slave of the Lord of Flame she has come to kill him with a spear!  Will Mel have to fight his beloved hand-to-hand to save the human race from freezing to death?

Nope.  In another of those coincidences we are always finding in our genre literature reading, from the sky appears Sam, riding his pet flower monster, at the head of an air fleet of hundreds of the monsters.  Sam was captured by the monsters months ago but soon made himself their leader.  Xenora is carried off in the tentacles of Sam's pet and Mel sets off the mine while Sam's botanical air force battles the silver globe slave air force.  The explosion of the mine not only floods the crater but changes the air pressure down here so that the Pacific Ocean starts leaking down into the inner world.  (At least I think that is what is happening.)  Our three heroes get to the Omnimobile and escape to the surface of the Pacific--Sam's pet is left behind, killed saving the Omnimobile from a sneak attack by one of the globes.  Under the light of the sun, Xenora's tan changes from green to a healthy brown and everybody lives happily ever after.