The Moon Terror by A.G. Birch

Book Details

Weird Tales debuted in March 1923, providing a venue for fiction, poetry, and non-fiction on topics ranging from ghost stories to alien invasions to the occult.

The Moon Terror and Other Stories was originally sold by Weird Tales but was eventually given away free with a subscription to the magazine. Published in 1927, the book reproduced one novel, one novelette and two short stories from the beginnings of the magazine’s run.

The title story, The Moon Terror, (1923) by A.G. Birch was a two part serial novel originally published in the May and June issues of 1923 and was the cover story of the May issue. It is a combination of science fiction and yellow menace that is somewhat reminiscent of the Fu Manchu stories. This novel is the only known writing by A.G. Birch.  In the landmark reference book Science Fiction – The Early Years , Everette Blieler writes, “nothing is known about Birch.” It is speculated that Birch was a pseudonym for Farnsworth Wright.

The second story is the novelette, Ooze (1923) by Anthony Rud. It originally appeared in the very first issue of Weird Tales in March, 1923, and was the cover story. Ooze is the story of experiments in biology run amuck.

The third entry is the short story Penelope (1923) by Vincent Starrett (1886-1974). This short fantasy involves the inordinate effect that the stars, or one star in particular, had upon one man.

The final story is An Adventure In The Fourth Dimension (1923) by Farnsworth Wright from the October 1923 issue of Weird Tales. Was it real or was it a dream?

The Moon Terror has 6 illustrations

Files:

1. MoonTerror.epub

Excerpt: The Moon Terror

Chapter I.

The Drums Of Doom.

THE FIRST WARNING of the stupendous cataclysm that befell the earth in the third decade of the twentieth century was recorded simultaneously in several parts of America during a night in early June. But, so little was its awful significance suspected at the time, it passed almost without comment.

I am certain that I entertained no forebodings; neither did the man who was destined to play the leading role in the mighty drama that followed—Dr. Ferdinand Gresham, the eminent American astronomer. For we were on a hunting and fishing trip in Labrador at the time, and were not even aware of the strange occurrence.

Anyway, the nature of this first herald of disaster was not such as to cause alarm.

At 12 minutes past 3 o’clock a. m., when there began a lull in the night’s aerial telegraph business, several of the larger wireless stations of the Western hemisphere simultaneously began picking up strange signals out of the ether. They were faint and ghostly, as if coming from a vast distance—equally far removed from New York and San Francisco, Juneau and Panama.

Exactly two minutes apart the calls were repeated, with clock-like regularity. But the code used—if it were a code-was undecipherable.

Until near dawn the signals continued—indistinct, unintelligible, insistent.

Every station capable of transmitting messages over such great distances emphatically denied sending them. And no amateur apparatus was powerful enough to be the cause. As far as anyone could learn, the signals originated nowhere upon the earth. It was as if some phantom were whispering through the ether in the language of another planet.

Two nights later the calls were heard again, starting at almost the same instant when they had been distinguished on the first occasion. But this time they were precisely three minutes apart. And without the variation of a second they continued for more than an hour.

The next night they reappeared. And the next and the next. Now they began earlier than before—in fact, no one knew when they had started, for they were sounding when the night’s business died down sufficiently for them to be heard. But each night, it was noticed, the interval between the signals was exactly one minute longer than the night before.

Occasionally the weird whispers ceased for a night or two, but always they resumed with the same insistence, although with a newly-timed interval.

This continued until early in July, when the pause between the calls had attained more than thirty minutes’ duration.

Then the length of the lulls began to decrease erratically. One night the mysterious summons would be heard every nineteen and a quarter minutes; the next night, every ten and a half minutes; at other times, twelve and three-quarters minutes, or fourteen and a fifth, or fifteen and a third.

Still the signals could not be deciphered, and their message—if they contained one—remained a mystery.

Newspapers and scientific journals at last began to speculate upon the matter, advancing all manner of theories to account for the disturbances.

The only one of these conjectures attracting widespread attention, however, was that presented by Professor Howard Whiteman, the famous director of the United States naval observatory at Washington, D. C.

Professor Whiteman voiced the opinion that the planet Mars was trying to establish communication with the earth —the mysterious calls being wireless signals sent across space by the inhabitants of our neighboring world.

Our globe, moving through space much faster than Mars, and in a smaller orbit, overtakes its neighboring planet once in a little over two years. For some months Mars had been approaching the earth. At the beginning of June it had been approximately 40,000,000 miles away, and at that time, Professor Whiteman pointed out, the strange wireless calls had commenced. As the two worlds drew closer together the signals increased slightly in power.

The scientist urged that while Mars remained close to us the government should appropriate funds to enlarge one of the principal wireless stations in an effort to answer the overtures of our neighbors in space.

But when, after two more days, the ethereal signals ceased abruptly and a week passed without their recurrence, Professor Whiteman’s theory began to be derided, and the whole thing was dismissed as some temporary phenomenon of the atmosphere.

It was something of a shock, therefore, when, on the eighth night after the cessation of the disturbances, the calls were suddenly resumed—much louder than before, as if the power creating their electrical impulses had been increased. Now wireless stations all over the world plainly heard the staccato, mystifying challenge coming out of the ether.

Excerpt From: A.G. Birch. “The Moon Terror and Other Stories.”