After Worlds Collide

by Philip Wylie, Edwin Balmer

Overview

After Worlds Collide (1934) was a sequel to the 1933 science fiction novel, When Worlds Collide, both of which were co-written by Philip Gordon Wylie and Edwin Balmer. After Worlds Collide first appeared as a six-part monthly serial (November 1933–April 1934) in Blue Book magazine. Much shorter and less florid than the original novel, this one tells the story of the survivors' progress on their new world, Bronson Beta, after the destruction of the Earth, as two ships carrying American colonists, as well as two colonizing ships made up of German, Russian, and Japanese survivors, all explore a new and dangerous landscape.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781429991162
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	04/12/2016
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	164,317
File size:	401 KB

About the Author

Philip Gordon Wylie (1902 – 1971) was a prolific American author of works ranging from pulp science fiction, mysteries, social diatribes and satire, to ecology and the threat of nuclear holocaust. He served as director of the Lerner Marine Laboratory, and also was an advisor to the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy. As his scientific and philosophical views were present in his novels, so were his love of pulp-style serials, and his earliest work influenced the creation of Flash Gordon and later, Watchmen, while at least nine movies were made from his novels and stories, including When Worlds Collide.

Edwin Balmer (1883-1959) was a writer of detective stories and speculative fiction. He was also the editor of Redbook, and later associate publisher. Balmer also collaborated on the comic strip Speed Spaulding, which was based on the co-authored (with Philip Wylie) novel When Worlds Collide.

Philip Gordon Wylie (1902–1971) was a prolific American author of works ranging from pulp science fiction, mysteries, social diatribes and satire, to ecology and the threat of nuclear holocaust. He served as director of the Lerner Marine Laboratory, and also was an advisor to the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy. As his scientific and philosophical views were present in his novels, so were his love of pulp-style serials, and his earliest work influenced the creation of Flash Gordon and later, Watchmen, while at least nine movies were made from his novels and stories, including When Worlds Collide.
Edwin Balmer (1883-1959) was a writer of detective stories and speculative fiction. He was also the editor of Redbook, and later associate publisher. Balmer also collaborated on the comic strip Speed Spaulding, which was based on the co-authored (with Philip Wylie) novel When Worlds Collide.

Read an Excerpt

After Worlds Collide

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By Philip Wylie, Edwin Balmer

Tom Doherty Associates

Copyright © 1934 Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4299-9116-2

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CHAPTER 1

THE FIRST DAY ON THE NEW PLANET

Eliot James sat at a metal desk inside the space ship which had conveyed a few score human beings from the doomed earth to safety on the sun's new planet Bronson Beta. In front of Eliot James was his already immemorial diary, and over it he poised a fountain pen.

He had written several paragraphs:

"April — what shall I call it? Is it the 2nd day of April, or is it the first? Have we, the last survivors of the earth, landed upon our new planet on All Fools Day? That would be ironic, and yet trivial in the face of all that has happened. But as I meditate on the date, I am in doubt about how to express time in my diary.

"The earth is gone — smashed to fragments; and the companion of its destroying angel, upon which our band of one hundred and three Argonauts holds so brief and hazardous a residence, is still without names, seasons and months. But April has vanished with the earth; and for all I know, spring, winter, summer and fall may also be absent in the new world.

"I have pledged myself to write in this diary every day, as Hendron assures me there will be no other record of our adventures here until we have become well enough established to permit the compilation of a formal history. And yet it is with the most profound difficulty that I compel myself to set down words on this, man's first morning in his new home.

"What shall I say?

"That question in truth must be read by the future generations as a cry at once of ecstasy and despair. Ecstasy because even while the heavens fell upon them, my companions remained firm and courageous — because in the face of earthquakes, tornadoes, bloody battles and the unimaginable holocaust of Destruction Day itself, they not only preserved whatever claims the race of man may have to majesty, but by their ingenuity they escaped from the earth to this new planet, which has invaded and attached itself to our solar system.

"And I am in despair not only because, so far as we can tell, all but one hundred and three members of the human race have perished, not only because my friends, my home, the cities that were familiar to me, the trees and flowers I knew, the rivers and the oceans, the scent of the wind and the accustomed aspects of the sky have forevermore disappeared from the universe, and not only because I am incapable of setting down the emotions to which those cosmic calamities give rise, but for another reason: as vast, as stirring, as overwhelming to the mind as those foregoing, the responsibility for half a billion years of evolution which terminated in man rests upon myself and one hundred and two others.

"They stand there in the sunshine under the strange sky on our brown earth — forty-three men, fifty-seven women, two children. They have been singing — a medley of songs which under other circumstances might seem irrelevant. Many of them are foreigners and do not know the words, but they also sing — with tears streaming down their faces and a catch in their voices. They sang 'The Processional' and they sang 'Nearer, My God, to Thee.' After that they sang 'Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here.' Then they sang 'The Marseillaise' with Duquesne leading — leading and bellowing the words, and weeping.

"What a spectacle! Beside it, the picture of Leif Ericsson or Columbus reaching green shores at last is dimmed to insignificance. For those ancient explorers found the path to a mere continent, while this band has blazed a trail of fire through space to a new planet.

"Cole Hendron is there, his magnificent head thrown back, and his face grave under its thatch of newly whitened hair. No doubt replicas of Hendron's head will be handed down through the ages, if ages are to follow us. His daughter Eve has been near him, and near to Tony Drake. In young Drake one sees the essence of the change which has taken place in all the members of our company. The fashionable, gay-hearted New Yorker is greatly changed. So many times in the past two years has he resigned himself to death, and so many times has he escaped from it only through courage, audacity and good fortune, that he seems superior to death. His face is no longer precisely young, and it contains, side by side, elements of the stoniest inflexibility and the most willing unselfishness. I have no doubt that if this colony survives, when the time comes to bury our leader and our hero, — the incomparable Cole Hendron, — it will be Drake who supersedes him in command. For by that day I am sure the great person in that young man will have availed itself of all our technical knowledge as a mere corollary of his remarkable character.

"And now," — the pen wavered, — "to what I imagine whimsically as the new future readers of my notes, I make an apology. This is our first day on Bronson Beta. My impatience has exhausted my conscience. I must lay down my pen, leave the remarkable ship wherein I write, and go out upon the face of this earth untrod by man. I can restrain myself no longer."

Eliot James stepped to the gangplank that had been laid down from the Ark. The earth around the huge metal cylinder had been melted by the blasts of its atomic propulsion-jets. But now it was cool again. A space of two or three hundred yards lay between the Ark and the cliff which beetled over the unknown sea. In that space were the planetary pilgrims. They had stopped singing. Half of them stood on the top of the precipice regarding the waters that rolled in from a nameless horizon. The others were distributed over the landscape. With a smile James noted the botanist, Higgins, leaping from rock to rock, his pockets and his hands full of specimens of ferns and mosses which he had collected. Every few seconds his eye lighted upon a new species of vegetation, and he knelt to gather it. But his greediness resulted invariably in the spilling of specimens already collected, and the result was that he continued hopping about, dropping things and picking them up, with all the energy and disorganization of a distracted bird.

James walked down the gangplank and joined Tony, Eve and Cole Hendron.

The leader of the expedition nodded to the writer. "You certainly are a persistant fellow, James. Some day I hope to find a situation so violent and unique that it keeps you from working on your diary."

"We have been through a number of such situations," James answered.

"Nevertheless —" Hendron said. He checked himself. Several of the people on the edge of the cliff had turned toward the Ark and were marching toward him.

"Hendron!" they hailed him again. "Hendron! Cole Hendron!"

Their hysteria had not yet cleared away; they remained in the emotional excitement of the earth-cataclysm they had escaped but witnessed, and of the incomparable adventure of their flight.

"Hendron! Hendron! What do you want us now to do?" they demanded; for their discipline, too, yet clung to them — the stern, uncompromising discipline demanded of them during the preparation of the Ship of Escape, the discipline of the League of the Last Days.

Too, the amazements of this new place paralyzed them; and for that they were not to be blamed. The wonder was that they had survived, as well, the emotional shocks; so they surrounded again their leader, who throughout had seen farther ahead and more clearly than them all; and who, through Doomsday itself, had never failed them.

Hendron stepped upon an outcrop of stone, and smiled down at them. "I have made too many speeches," he said. "And this morning is scarcely a suitable hour for further thanksgiving. It may be proper and pleasant, later, to devote such a day as the Pilgrims, from one side of our earth to another, did; but like them, it is better to wait until we feel ourselves more securely installed. When such a time arrives, I will appoint an official day, and we shall hope to observe it each year."

He cast his eyes over the throng and continued: "I don't know at the moment how to express my thoughts. While I am not myself a believer in a personal God, it seems evident to me in this hour that there was a purpose in the invention of man. Otherwise it is difficult to understand why we were permitted to survive. Whether you as individuals consider that survival the work of a God, or merely an indication that we had reached a plane of sufficient fitness to preserve ourselves, is of small moment to me now. And since I know all of you so well, I feel it unnecessary to say that in the days ahead lies a necessity for a prodigious amount of work.

"Your tempers and intelligences will be tried sorely by the new order which must exist. Our first duty will be to provide ourselves with suitable homes, and with a source of food and clothing. Our next duty will be to arrange for the gathering of the basic materials of the technical side of our civilization-to-be. In all your minds, I know, lies the problem of perpetuating our kind. We have, partly through accident, a larger number of women than men. I wish to discontinue the use of the word morality; but what I must insist on calling our biological continuum will be the subject of a very present discussion.

"In all your minds, too, is a burning interest in the nature and features of this new planet. We have already observed through our telescopes that it once contained cities. To study those cities will be an early undertaking. While there is little hope that others who attempted the flight to this planet have escaped disaster, radio listening must be maintained. Moreover, the existence of living material on this planet gives rise to a variety of possibilities. Some of the flora which has sprung up may be poisonous, even dangerous, to human life. What forms it will take and what novelties it will produce, we must ascertain as soon as possible. I think we are safe in believing that no form of animal life can have existed here, whether benign or perilous; but we cannot ignore the possibility that the plant life may be dangerous. I will set no tasks for this day, — it shall be one of rest and rejoicing, — except that I will delegate listeners for radio messages, and cooks to prepare food for us. Tomorrow, and I use an Americanism which will become our watchword, we will all 'get busy.'"

There was a pause, then cheering. Cole Hendron stepped down from the stone. Eve turned to Tony and took his arm. "I am glad we don't have to work today."

"No," said Tony. "Your father knows better. He realizes that, in our reaction, we could accomplish nothing. It is the time for us to attempt to relax."

"Can you relax, Tony?"

"No," he confessed, "and I don't want even to attempt to; but neither do I want to apply myself to anything. Do you?"

Eve shook her head. "I can't. My mind flies in a thousand different directions simultaneously, it seems. Where are those cities which, from the world — our ended world, Tony — our telescopes showed us here? What remains may we find of their people? Of their goods and their gods and their machines? ... What, when they found themselves being torn away from their sun, did they do? ... That monument beside the road that we found, Tony — what was it? What did it mean? ... Then I think of myself. Am I, Tony, to have children — here?"

Tony tightened his clasp upon her arm. Through all the terrors and triumphs, through all their consternations and amazements, instincts, he found, survived. "We will not speak of such things now," he said. "We will satisfy the more immediate needs, such as food — deviled eggs and sandwiches; and coffee! As if we were on earth, Eve. For once more we are on earth — this strange, strange earth. But we have brought our identical bodies with us."

* * *

"Sardines!" Duquesne said. He patted his vast expanse of abdomen — an abdomen which in his native land he had often maintained, and was frequently to assert with pride on Bronson Beta, consisted not of fat but of superior muscle. Indeed, although Duquesne was short of stature and some fifty years of age, he often demonstrated that he was possessed not only of unquenchable nervous energy, but of great physical strength and endurance. "Sardines!" He rolled his eyes at half a dozen women and several of the men who were standing near him. He took another bite of the sandwich in his hand.

Eve giggled and said privately to Tony: "All this expedition needed to make it complete was a comedian."

Tony grinned as he too bit a crescent in a sandwich. "A comedian is a great asset, and a comedian who was able even years ago to help Einstein solve equations, is quite a considerable asset."

"So many things like Duquesne's arrival have happened to us," Eve said. "Purely fortuitous accidents."

"Not all of them good."

"Who's in charge of lunch?" Eve asked a moment later.

Tony chuckled. "Who but Kyto? He, and an astronomer, and a mechanical engineer, and a woman who is a plant biologist like Higgins, are all working in happy harmony. Kyto seems to understand exactly what has taken place. In fact, there are moments when I think he is a high-born person. I had a friend once who had a Japanese servant like Kyto, who after seven years of service resigned. When my friend asked him what he was going to do, the Japanese informed him that he had been offered the chair of Behavioristic Psychology at a Middle Western university. He had been going to Columbia at night for years. Sometimes I think Kyto may be like that."

Eve did not make any response at the moment, because Duquesne was again talking in his loud bombastic voice. He had attracted the attention of Cole Hendron and of several others, including Dr. Dodson.

Dodson's presence on the Ark was due to the courage of a girl named Shirley Cotton. On the night of the gory raid on Hendron's encampment, Dodson had been given up for dead by Tony. The great surgeon's last gesture, in fact, had been to wave to Tony to carry his still living human burden to safety. However, before the Ark rose to sear and slay the savage hordes of marauders, Shirley Cotton had found the dying man.

In the space of a few moments she had put a turniquet around his arm, partly stanched a deep abdominal wound, and dragged him to a cellar in the machine-shop, intending to hide him there. It saved both their lives, for soon afterward the whole region was deluged by the atomic blast of the Ark as it rose and methodically obliterated the attackers of the camp.

Dodson had recovered, but he had lost one arm. As Tony was Hendron's chief in the direction of physical activities, Dodson became his creator of policies. He listened now to Duquesne.

"A picnic in the summer-time on Bronson Beta, children," Duquesne boomed. "And it is summer-time, you know. Fortunately, but inevitably from the nature of events, still summer. My observations of the collision check quite accurately with my calculations of what would happen; and if the deductions I made from those calculations are correct, quite extraordinary things will happen." He glanced at Hendron.

The leader of the expedition frowned faintly, as if Duquesne were going to say something he did not wish to have expressed. Then he shrugged.

"You might as well say it. You might as well tell them, I suppose. I wasn't going to describe our calculations until they had been thoroughly checked."

Duquesne shook his head backward and forward pontifically. "I might as well tell them, because already they are asking." He addressed those within earshot. "We will have a little class in astronomy." He put to use two resources — the smooth vertical surface of a large stone, and a smaller stone which he had picked up to scratch upon the bowlder.

As Duquesne began to talk, all the members of the group gathered around the flat bowlder to watch and listen.

"First," he began, "I will draw the solar system as it was." He made a small circle and shaded it in. "Here, my friends, is the sun." He circumscribed it with another circle and said: "Mercury." Outside the orbit of Mercury he drew the orbits respectively of Venus, Earth and Mars. He looked at the drawing with beaming satisfaction, and then at his listeners. "So this is what we had had. This is where we have been. Now. I draw the same thing without the Earth."

He repeated the diagram — this time with three concentric circles instead of four. A broad gap was left where the earth's orbit had been. Again he stepped away from the diagram and looked at it proudly. "So — Mercury we have; Venus we have; and Mars we have. The Earth we do not have. Bear in mind, my children, that these circles I have drawn are not exactly circles. They are ellipses. But they vary only slightly from circles. Mr. Cole Hendron's associates will give you, I do not doubt, very fine maps. This rock-scratching of mine is but a child's crude diagram. I proceed. I set down next the present position of this world on which we stand — Bronson Beta."

Every one watched intently while he drew an ellipse which, on one side, came close to the orbit of Venus, and on the other approached the circle made by the planet Mars on its journey around the sun.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from After Worlds Collide by Philip Wylie, Edwin Balmer. Copyright © 1934 Edwin Balmer and Philip Wylie. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Title Page,
Copyright Notice,
Foreword,
Chapter I: The First Day on the New Planet,
Chapter II: Civilization Recommences,
Chapter III: Solitude,
Chapter IV: What was it?,
Chapter V: The Other People,
Chapter VI: Salvation,
Chapter VII: Reunion,
Chapter VIII: The City of Vanished People,
Chapter IX: The Mysterious Attack,
Chapter X: War,
Chapter XI: "Tony, I Throw the Torch to you!",
Chapter XII: A Surprising Refugee,
Chapter XIII: Fear of the unknown,
Chapter XIV: The Funeral of Cole Hendron,
Chapter XV: Von Beitz Returns,
Chapter XVI: History,
Chapter XVII: At The Mercy of the Midianites,
Chapter XVIII: The Fate of the Other People,
Chapter XIX: The Pioneers Plan Reprisals,
Chapter XX: Justice Tips the Scales,
Books by Philip Wylie and Edwin Balmer,
About the Authors,
Copyright,