Hollywood On The Moon by Henry Kuttner

Book Details

Hollywood On The Moon by Henry Kuttner features Tony Quade, ace cameraman for Nine Planets Films, Inc., as he travels throughout the Solar System in order to film some of the biggest movies ever made. Surrounded by stars and moguls he has a glamorous lifestyle and a brilliant career as long as he doesn’t get eaten by one of the monsters he encounters during his productions.

Tony Quade creates the monsters of various planets synthetically, or reproduces them on the screen via trick scientific photography. Glamorous Gerry Carlyle is the female Frank Buck of the future, bringing back alive the strange organisms of alien planets for the London Interplanetary Zoo. Carlyle, an advocate for realism, refuses to see the public hoaxed by fake spectacles such as Nine Planet Films, Inc. creates. Hence, a flaming feud which has blazed its way through the System.

Hollywood On The Moon (1938) – Drive Along Lunar Boulevard and Dine at the Silver Space-suit with Tony Quade, Camera Expert for Nine Planets Films, Inc., at the Movie Capital of the Future!
Chapter I – FADE IN: Mare Imbrium
Chapter II – CUT TO: Space Cruiser
Chapter III – CLOSE SHOT: Ganymede
Chapter IV – DISSOLVE TO: Hollywood on the Moon

Doom World (1938) – Deep Within the Sub-Lunar Caverns of Hollywood on the Moon, the Most Glamorous City in the Solar System, a Horde of Radio-Controlled Robots Menace the Movie-Makers of an Ultra-Modern Era!
Chapter I – INTERIOR: The offices of Nine Planets Films, Inc., Hollywood on the Moon. Close shot—Day.
Chapter II – INTERIOR: The Silver Spacesuit — Quade and Kathleen seated at a table. Night, a month later.
Chapter III – INTERIOR: Kenilworth’s laboratory. One week later. Close shot.
Chapter IV – EXTERIOR: Quade’s camp in the Plutonian set. Long shot. Noon.
Chapter V – EXTERIOR: The Plutonian set, near Quade’s camp. Afternoon.
Chapter VI – INTERIOR: Fronton’s Mercurian Theatre. Night.

The Star Parade (1938) – Many a man’s plans to film the Great Martian Inferno had gone up in smoke – But when Tony Quade had to shoot it, there were Fireworks!
Chapter I – Quick Montage: Trouble on the Moon
Chapter II – Follow Shot: Moon to Mars
Chapter III – Close-up: Jigsaw
Chapter IV – Angle Shot: End of Jigsaw
Chapter V – Fade-Out: The Big Scene

The Energy Eaters (1939) – Nothing in the Solar System daunted Gerry Carlisle – Except Hollywood on the Moon!
Chapter I – Storm Over Gerry
Chapter II – The Prometheans
Chapter III – Panic on the Moon
Chapter IV – The Ark Arrives
Chapter V – Short Circuit

The Seven Sleepers (1940) – The movie-makers of tomorrow blast off from Hollywood on the Moon in quest of the greatest show in space—the secret locked within Almussen’s comet!
Chapter I – Coming of the Comet
Chapter II – Gerry Takes Dictation
Chapter III – Blasting Off
Chapter IV – Repairs in Hell
Chapter V – Humiliation
Chapter VI – Horror Without End
Chapter VII – Battle in the Tower
Chapter VIII – Dreams Walking
Chapter IX – Fire and Water
Chapter X – Too Near the Sun!

Trouble On Titan (1947) – The sub-human denizens of Saturn’s largest moon were said to be harmless — but when the ace director of Nine Planets Films was sent to photograph them, he was in for a shock!
Chapter I – Von Zorn Is Perturbed
Chapter II – Trip to Titan
Chapter III – Location Site
Chapter IV – Crackup
Chapter V – Perilous Valley
Chapter VI – Poisoned Javelins

Henry Kuttner (1915-1958) is one of the great Science Fiction writers of the 1940s and 1950s but less well known than many for two important reasons. The first reason is that he used approximately twenty different pseudonyms, the best known of which were C. H. Liddell, Lawrence O’Donnell, and Lewis Padgett. The second reason was that his later writing career was, in large part, a literary collaboration with his wife C.L. Moore.

Arthur Kelvin Barnes (1909–1969) was an American science fiction author most noted for his vivid and believable portrayals of alien life. He was the creator of the Gerry Carlyle Interplanetary Huntress series.

Hollywood On The Moon contains 25 illustrations.

Files:

1. HollywoodOnTheMoon.epub

Excerpt: Hollywood On The Moon

Chapter I

FADE IN: Mare Imbrium

MARE IMBRIUM is the most desolate spot on the Moon. It is a bleak, fantastic inferno of jagged rocks and volcanic ash, airless and frigid. The monotony of the scene is broken only by craters of varying sizes, ominous reminders of the meteors that plunge like bullets through the void, a deadly, ever-present menace to the Earthman hardy enough to venture there. Yet in this lunar no-man’s-land two figures in bulky spacesuits were racing desperately toward a high outcropping of stone.

Though apparently nothing pursued them there was stark horror in the glances they threw over their shoulders One was a girl, her dark hair a cloudy mass within the transparent helmet. The other was a man whose face was curiously expressionless, and whose movements, somehow, failed to match the animation of the girl’s. Yet when she stumbled and fell he paused and helped her to her feet. About to resume her flight, the girl’s mouth gaped in an open square of terror. She flung up a pointing glove.

The shining thing had sprung into existence without warning. Its brilliance eclipsed the dim globe of the Earth, low on the horizon, and the white splendor of the stars. It seemed to be a gigantic shell of flame, spinning madly in a blaze of glaring colors, the poles of its axis elongated into two thin cords of light that trailed into nothingness. It hesitated, hovering, then dipped as though in mocking salute. It swept down toward the two.

From its flaming core, streamers of light flared out, and abruptly the man in the spacesuit was lifted as though by giant, invisible hands. Writhing and twisting, he was pulled closer to the shining thing. The girl made a frantic clutch at her belt and drew a slender tube, but before she could use it the inexplicable power had dragged her feet clear of the ground. She hung for a moment motionless.

From above a beam of light fingered out, but the girl did not glance up. She was staring, horror-stricken, at her companion.

His eyes were distended hideously. All over his spacesuit a dim, lambent radiance seemed to play. Then, abruptly, fire spouted from the neckband of his suit. A flower of flame blossomed where his helmet had been. Instinct with a weird and terrible beauty, it flamed up into a tapering spire—elongated and stretched, until a lambent thread stretched out toward the spinning thing of light.

And from every joint in the space-suit—wrists and feet and waist— streamers blazed out, gleaming traceries that united and reached out avid fingers toward the whirling blaze.

From the tube in the girl’s gloved hand a thin, bluish beam sprang. But already her suit was glowing ominously as she was drawn inexorably closer. Her face was drained of blood, contorted in an agony of fear.

“HO hum,” said Anthony Quade sleepily. “Take it over, Peters. The chief’s buzzing me.”

Tony Quade, turning from a camera in the transparent nose of the space ship, cast a last glance at the scene below, vividly distinct in the searchlight’s beam. Valyne Ross was a good stunt girl. There wasn’t a star on the payroll of Nine Planets Films, Inc., who would risk her skin on this side of the Moon, but the job had to be done, and Quade knew Valyne would do it. Quade had a trick of knowing such things. That was why, when Nine Planets wanted special effects that entailed plenty of risk, they hired Quade for the job.

And Space Bandit needed Quade. It was the biggest picture on Nine Planets’ schedule this year, and they had already expended a fantastic sum on its production. Van Zorn, the chief, would get it back, of course, provided Quade did his job well. Space Bandit would be big box-office on its special effects—and Tony Quade, with his picked band of film experts, was the only man who was able enough and courageous enough to tackle the assignment. On a contingent basis at that.

Excerpt From: Henry Kuttner. “Hollywood On The Moon.”