War with the Gizmos by Murray Leinster

Telephones hummed; short-waves flickered through darkness.  A voice said authoritatively that it was a Gizmo, meaning a radar blip with no known cause except a belief that it was an area of extra-high ionization in the air.  But it was the great-grandfather of all Gizmos. 

Avid followers of the endless quest that is MPorcius Fiction Log are likely aware that we have read quite a number of stories by Murray Leinster in the last few years.  Here’s a list of some 1930s stories by Leinster I have blogged about with links to my scribblings about them:

"The Murderer"
"Uneasy Homecoming"
"Side Bet"
"The Fourth Dimensional Demonstrator"
"The Mole Pirate"
"Proxima Centauri"

With that advertising behind us, now to the main event, a novel by Leinster that was printed over 20 years after all those stories were presented to readers of Weird Tales, Collier's and Astounding, 1958’s War with the Gizmos.  My copy of the 35 cent Gold Medal edition has a terrific Richard Powers cover with beautiful colors and queer mysterious shapes.  The same year it appeared in this form, a version of the novel was published in Satellite Science Fiction as “The Strange Invasion,” which you can read for free at the internet archive.  After reading my paperback I took a look at a page of the scan of the magazine and found it substantially different than the book version.  War with the Gizmos/"The Strange Invasion" was something of a success, appearing in multiple European editions.

I'd always used "gizmos" as a sort of synonym for "gadgets," but Leinster quickly informs us that "gizmo" is the slang term applied by radar operators and pilots to blips on a radar screen which do not correspond to any visual phenomena and are presumed to be caused by something invisible and harmless, like "excess ionization of the air."  The basic conceit of Leinster's novel is that at least some of these blips are living creatures made entirely of transparent gas, predators who suffocate their prey by covering their mouths and nostrils and suffocating them, and then feed off the gases produced by putrefaction of the corpse.  War with the Gizmos chronicles the story of how in the middle of the 20th century the gizmos suddenly grew in number and began attacking human beings on a large scale.

War with the Gizmos is sort of reminiscent of those science fiction disaster stories like Edmond Hamilton's "The Polar Doom" or Donald Wandrei's "The Blinding Shadow" that read  like popular histories from the future that offer a narrative of a large-scale cataclysmic event of the past and are characterized by journalistic detachment and the integration of a wealth of brief illustrative episodes from a variety of locations.  War with the Gizmos is also an example of the SF story that provides explanations for elements of ancient literature and religion, like C. L. Moore's famous "Shambleau," which explains the source material of the story of Medusa the Gorgon, and Hamilton's A Yank in Valhalla, in which we learn the origin of Norse mythology.  The Gizmos, you see, inspired the human belief in ghosts, demons and pagan gods, as well as such superstitious traditions as the use of herbs against evil spirits by West African witch doctors and the use of garlic to ward off vampires--strong smells of these sorts are actually of some value in deterring attack from Gizmos.

While we do witness Gizmo activity from all over the United States, most of Leinster's text concerns three people who meet in the mountains of western Virginia: Dick Lane, a journalist who writes for the outdoorsman's magazine Forest and Field; Professor Ann Warren, a woman biologist of mature age known for her eccentric theories; and the prof's pretty niece, Carol.  Lane is investigating the mysterious deaths of animals in the area when he runs into Warren and Carol, who are doing field work and have noticed some of the same weird phenomena as Lane.  Lane is one of the first humans attacked by the Gizmos, and soon he and the women are confined to Warren's trailer, besieged by the invisible monsters.  The Gizmos capture them briefly, but our heroes learn how to fight the monsters and escape, and then travel towards civilization, striving to reach either Washington where Warren has academic colleagues or a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey that employs a friend of Lane's; as they travel they fight Gizmos they encounter and try to raise awareness of the peril faced by the still unsuspecting human race and possible defensive measures.  These three educated middle-class types are brave and competent, but their party is joined by a fourth, the working-class man Burke, who serves as a foil for them; Burke suffers delusions of grandeur, is stricken with fear and commits blunders, earning the contempt and derision of the three heroes.

One of the themes of the novel is the inability of people, including (and maybe especially) scientists, to accept and assimilate new information.  People refuse to believe in the reality of murderous gas creatures, instead suspecting a disease is causing the mysterious deaths and imposing quarantine measures; at the same time vocal minorities blame the Soviet Union or alien invaders when a massive radar blip appears over Chicago right before an episode of mass death among livestock in the Windy City.  A man whom Lane rescues from a Gizmo is positive his near-suffocation was not the result of a monster attack but of a heart attack and insists on seeing a doctor.  Warren is enraged when her academic colleagues ignore her theories and when a newspaper interview of her is given a skeptical headline.  Eventually, though, our heroes get evidence of the truth through to the authorities, who, with the  info Land and Warren provide, develop means to defeat the Gizmo menace; as the story ends we learn Lane and Carol will get engaged.  

War with the Gizmos is mediocre filler.  The basic concepts and plot are serviceable, but Leinster's writing is weak.  For one thing, the prose style reminded me of that of a book intended for juveniles.  Worse, the characters lack personality and the action scenes and chase scenes, of which there are many, felt long and laborious.  Quite a bit of text is devoted to debates among the four main characters: are the gizmos animals who act on instinct or intelligent beings who are pursuing a grand strategy and developing tactics in response to changing human tactics?  Are the gizmos terrestrial or alien in origin?  These debates feel divorced from the drama of the war because they are academic--the human response to the gizmos is not affected by how intelligent the gizmos are or what planet they hail from.  Neither these debates nor the actual fighting and chases spark any emotion, any thrills or suspense, merely a mild curiosity.

Not embarrassingly bad, but not memorable, either.