Howard Wandrei: "Time Haven," "Vine Terror," "The Other," and "The Hand of the O'Mecca"

In an April 27, 1935 letter to C. L. Moore, H. P. Lovecraft writes,

Another weird artist--& perhaps the most technically advanced of all--is Howard Wandrei, brother of Donald & author of many good stories of his own.

Many times in his correspondence Lovecraft talks about how Howard Wandrei is a genius artist destined to go far, but it doesn't seem as if these predictions came to pass--at least Wandrei has not achieved the notoriety of Virgil Finlay or Hannes Bok, and I didn't find very many high quality images of Wandrei's illustrations online (though you should check out the back cover of the 1995 collection Time Burial, which you can see at Amazon, on which is reproduced a quite absorbing black and white line drawing by Wandrei.)  As for Wandrei's stories, some are right there at our fingertips, at the internet archive.  Let's read four stories by Howard Wandrei that appeared in 1934 and 1935 in two of the most important of the genre magazines, Astounding (then edited by F. Orlin Tremaine) and Weird Tales (edited by Farnsworth Wright.)  

"Time Haven" (1934)

"Time Haven" starts in medias res, as Vincent Merryfield wakes up in the year 2443 in a miles-high skyscraper whose massive base encompasses all of Manhattan and the outer boroughs, even covering the Hudson and the East River, now relegated to running through tunnels.  Then we get the background.  Vincent's grandmother, Hattie Merryfield, was a clever businesswoman who found herself in a position of authority in her wealthy family and carefully organized the family's property via trusts.  Her son wanted to be an architect, so Hattie purchased six blocks of Manhattan on which he could fulfill his architectural dreams, but via legal prohibitions kept control of the vast Merryfield fortune out of his hands, and the hands of his children--instead, wise counsellors ran the business.  Over the centuries, as Hattie's descendants followed in her son's footsteps to become ambitious architects and continue growing the skyscraper until it reached almost 37,000 feet tall, the business also grew, so that by the 25th century the Merryfield clan practically rules the world.

Vincent, back in the late 1930s, Hattie's grandson, didn't pursue architecture but instead science, and built a time machine, which he was bold enough to test on himself.  When he wakes up in 2443 he thinks the time machine worked, but closer examination and discussion with Merryfield staff reveals the sad truth--all it did was put him into a coma that slowed his biological processes almost to zero.  Over the centuries, employees of the Merryfield business empire have been keeping him alive, feeding him, bathing him, etc.  His time machine a failure, Vincent can't go back to the 20th century.

Vincent learns all about life in the 25th century in which he is stranded, and he doesn't like it.  The government controls all aspects of life, and is totally intertwined with the Merryfield organization, so that even though Vincent practically owns every piece of property in the world and can choose who wins elections and so forth, he is shackled by complex and stifling networks of laws just like everybody else--he can't even fire his own employees.  (In defense of this socialistic government, the man who is Vincent's advisor says that "There have been no depressions, no governmental calamities for two hundred years...If many trivial restrictions have been placed on the pursuit of happiness, it is for the universal good."  Ugh.)  Full of nostalgia for the past, unwilling to live in this future world, Vincent commits suicide by jumping out of the skyscraper and falling two miles as the woman assigned by the government to be his "companion" (hubba hubba) watches in horror.

"Time Haven" is serious science fiction, full of descriptions of technology and speculations on future political, economic and social developments.  It also tries to portray the psychology of a man who not only must face the shock of realizing the project he risked his life for has failed but also finds himself trapped in a world with different--constricting!--values than those of the world he grew up in.  

Maybe a little bland, with more background and descriptions of technology than anything else, but not bad.  "Time Haven," after its debut (under a pseudonym) in Astounding next to major space operas by E. E. Smith and Jack Williamson (and a story by Howard's brother Donald Wandrei), would be reprinted in the 2003 Howard Wandrei collection The Eerie Mr. Murphy, the cover of which features an illustration by the author.

"Vine Terror" (1934)

Here's another story collected in The Eerie Mr. Murphy.  This one debuted in the same issue of Weird Tales that had as its cover story the first installment of Robert E. Howard's Conan serial "The People of the Black Circle."

"Vine Terror" starts with a scene of rural working-class immigrants (Wandrei renders their dialogue phonetically and one refers to "the old country") remarking on recent strange phenomena.  A tree in one guy's front yard has moved a few feet, and everybody agrees there have been fewer birds, squirrels, garter snakes, rabbits, etc., around lately.  One guy says the machines at the nearby laboratories must be to blame, but his friend suggests he is just a bitter machine-hater because he was injured by a machine while working at a mill some years ago.  

The lion's share of the story stars the scientists who work at the laboratories.  Three months ago there was an accident during an experiment, chief engineer Keene touching a live wire and being killed--the strange way his body glowed as he was killed, and even after the electric current had been shut off, haunts the memories of the man who witnessed it, Haverland.  Haverland also has on his mind the way his negligence destroyed the evidence of one of Keene's experiments--he had left on a counter a bulb of inert gas in which crystals had formed, apparently in response to exposure to an electric current, and the lab cat knocked it into the sink, where it broke.

(Howard Wandrei's stories, I'm finding, are full of horrible accidents.)  

The scientists are also talking about the mysterious disappearance from the area of small animals and birds, noting that the wildlife vanished soon after Keene's untimely death.  As the story proceeds, Haverland and another scientist have encounters with vines, and Haverland conducts experiments at home upon vines, that make it clear to us readers that the local plants have become mobile and carnivorous and perhaps even intelligent enough to plot against the humans and recognize the danger posed to them by blades!  

The story is resolved when there is a terrific night-time thunderstorm.  The electricity gives the nearby forest energy and the trees, glowing as the dying Keene glowed, march on the laboratories, where Haverland is alone, working late.  Haverland defeats the vegetal menace, rolling three barrels of gasoline into the advancing forest where a lightning bolt ignites them--the ensuing inferno wipes out the offending plants.  The next day everybody notices that the small animals are back.

This story is just OK; it feels cluttered and somewhat vague, or maybe I should say opaque or oblique.  In part this is probably deliberate, Wandrei wanting to give readers a chance to figure out the mystery themselves, rather than just having the characters or omniscient narrator come right out and tell us.   

Except for Haverland, nobody in the story wants to believe that the plants have become intelligent, ambulatory, and carnivorous, and the absurd "logical" explanations people come up with to account for a tree travelling across a stretch of ground ("sliding substrata") or vines obstructing the roadway and then retreating off the road when a Finnish laborer starts chopping them down with a scythe ("I t'ink maybe vind blow him back") are a little hard to take seriously.  Some readers will be skeptical of the scenes in which vines take defensive measures when Haverland draws a knife (they can see?) and of the scenes in which vines press a doorbell in order to lure a victim into reach (did the vines learn about human behavior when they ate from Keane's dead body?)

I also have to wonder about the role of electricity in the story; Haverland muses that the glowing of Keene's body as he died is much like the halos associated with deities throughout world history--what is the point of this passage, just to tell us that electricity can have miraculous effects on organisms?  I can't help but feel that Wandrei's focus on electricity is superfluous--aren't the crystals that go down the drain reason enough for the plants to become mobile, intelligent and carnivorous?  Doesn't all this jazz with electricity and lightning just muddy the issue?  Did Wandrei just really like the ironic parallel of lightning giving intelligent life to the plants and then starting the fire that kills them?

One interesting aspect of the story is the portrayal of the European immigrants as ignorant and superstitious luddites; the scientists call them "hunkies," a term I'd never heard before that wikipedia is telling me is an ethnic slur applied to Poles and other Central Europeans who came to America to work in mines and perform other manual labor.

"The Other" (1934)

"The Other" first appeared in an issue of Astounding which includes three stories by the future editor of the magazine, John W. Campbell, Jr., two under pseudonyms, and Howard Wandrei's story also appears under a pen name.  Damon Knight included "The Other" in his anthology Science Fiction of the Thirties, a book I have several times seen in used bookstores and antique stores but always held off buying.  It also appears in Time Burial. 

This is a strange story with a very inconsistent tone.  It starts off like a pastiche of P. G. Wodehouse, with goofy characters and slapstick.  Basil Sash is a self-important ace reporter, ringing the door bell of the Manhattan apartment of Bjoern Ingvaldssen.  Ingvaldssen is a huge muscleman as well as a brilliant engineer.  Recently, he commanded an expedition to the North Pole, where he deployed a device to measure cosmic rays.  While up there, Ingvaldssen's team discovered the frozen body of a mastodon--oddly, only the rear part of the mastodon was found.  When Ingvaldssen arrived in New York, Sash did a little snooping and spotted something amazing--the expedition had discovered not  only the frozen mastodon, but a frozen woman!  Sash has come to the engineer's apartment to get the scoop on this woman, who must have been frozen tens of thousands of years ago.

Ingvaldssen is a man of passion with a ferocious temper, and much of the attempted humor in the first part of this tale has to do with his violent rage at Sash for bothering him.  But then he relents and shows the frozen woman to Sash--she is in a high-tech freezer Ingvaldssen designed and built himself. The woman is of no identifiable race, her hair and skin being hues unseen before--her fingers and thumbs are also unusual, the thumb almost as long as the fingers.  Her clothes are also novel, and in her hand is an unidentifiable device.

This woman is breathtakingly beautiful, and Ingvaldssen tells Sash his insane plan: he has never before met a woman he could love, but this woman, whom he believes came to Earth from outer space, has won his heart.  Confident her alien tissues survived freezing, he plans to thaw her and marry her!  Sash, however, is worried.  First there is the woman's face--sure, it is the most beautiful face he has ever seen, but it bears an expression of chilling contempt and cruelty.  Second, Sash is a reader of Astounding, and he fears the thing in her hand is an atomic ray gun. 

Sash is permitted to hang around to observe the thawing process.  Wandrei spends quite a bit of time discussing science stuff--cosmic rays, the freezer, the defrosting method.  And then comes our horror story finish.  The instant the woman is defrosted she pulls the trigger on her ray gun.  The cone of energy disintegrates most of Ingvaldssen--Sash watches in horror as the engineer's legs and fingertips fall to the floor.  The journalist looks back to see that the woman's weapon is so powerful it has not merely disintegrated the wall of this building, but burned through other buildings and the ground to set the Hudson River beyond them to boiling.  When he turns to face the woman again he shrieks in horror as she laughs.  I guess we are to assume she murders him and, perhaps, takes over the world?

Despite its inconsistent tone and lame jokes, I have to admit I like this story.  The pacing and structure are good, and the plot is good--after all, the basic building blocks of the plot are some of my favorite things: the femme fatale, the disastrous sexual relationship, longevity, New York, exploration.    

"The Hand of the O'Mecca" (1935)

Like "The Other," "The Hand of the O'Mecca" appears in Time Burial; in addition, August Derleth in 1944 included it in his anthology Sleep No More.  (We here at MPorcius Fiction Log have already read several stories that appear in Sleep No More, like Robert Bloch's "The Mannikin," Robert E. Howard's "The Black Stone," Carl Jacobi's "The Cane," and Hazel Heald and H. P. Lovecraft's "The Horror in the Burying-Ground.")

"The Hand of the O'Mecca" takes place in Minnesota farmland.  (Mankato, a place I have been more than once, is mentioned.)  In the first past of the story, Elof Bocak gets drunk with his friends, and then marches into the fog, headed for the O'Mecca farm to propose to Kate O'Mecca.  On the way two mysterious figures take hold of him, but Elof is very strong and grapples with them and drives them off.

Then the scene shifts and we go back in time some weeks, to witness Elof's decision to court Kate O'Mecca, learn about his own family, like his mute ("dumb") sister who has strange powers (she can tell Kate O'Mecca will never be her brother's, but cannot tell him), and to see Elof visit the O'Meccas, Kate and her widowed mother.  Skinny and pale, the O'Meccas don't look like other farm women, but like city women who never work, and they don't hardly talk; there are hints that maybe they are werewolves or vampires or something of that nature. 

We return to the foggy night for the final scene.  Drunken Elof arrives at the O'Mecca farm to meet Kate.  He pulls from his pocket a trophy from the fight in the foggy--he thought it must be a werewolf's paw, but when he produces it he sees it is a pale woman's hand--it looks like Kate's hand!  Kate smiles for the first time since Elof has known her, to reveal sharp teeth, and extends her arm, which ends in a stump!  Elof flees and the story ends with a pun on the phrase "asked for my hand."

Like "The Other," "The Hand of the O'Mecca" mixes explicit horror/gore elements, male sexual yearning (there is quite a bit of talk about Kate's beautiful blonde hair, her high breasts and narrow feline hips) and goofy jokes.  But while "The Other," like "Time Haven" and "Vine Terror," is chock full of scientific and technological descriptions, here in "The Hand of the O'Mecca" Wandrei expends a lot of time and ink trying to recreate the cultural milieu of Finnish-American farmers, talking all about life on the farm and Finnish folklore.  

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I'm not really on board with every decision Wandrei made in his construction of these stories, but I can't help but admire the work he put into crafting them (especially after reading those shoddy stories by Hugh B. Cave and Frank Belknap Long so recently.)  With the possible exception of "Vine Terror," the passages in these four stories all seem purposeful, intentional, pieces of an edifice or steps toward a goal--Wandrei isn't just trying to fill up pages, but to transmit a mood, portray psychological states, and to present mysteries that are accompanied by clues that allow the reader to figure out what is going on before the characters do.  In the three science fiction stories he writes in an interesting way about science and technology, and in the fantasy story he offers vivid evocations of Finnish folklore.  All of the stories include scenes of terror or gore that are effective.

These four stories are interesting and memorable--expect to see more Howard Wandrei here at MPorcius Fiction Log.