High Moon

THE natural affinity that horse operas and space operas have for each other has often been remarked upon, almost always with derision, yet the similarities in both almost guarantee some sort of comparison. With that in mind, let's go over the top with . . .

"The Sheriff of Thorium Gulch."

By Miles J. Breuer (1889-1945; Wikipedia HERE; the ISFDb HERE; the SFE HERE; Mathematical Fiction HERE; SFFAudio HERE; and the RGL bibliography HERE).

First appearance: Amazing Stories, August 1942.

Reprints page (ISFDb HERE).

Novelette (32 text pages as a PDF).

Online at Roy Glashan's Library (HERE).

   "There'll be ol' Billie Hell poppin' in Thorium Gulch tonight!"

WHERE can you go after you've hit rock bottom? Most of us would say Up, but for a smart young engineer it's Out—out on the untamed frontier of the Great Plains of Copernicus . . .

Principal characters:

~ Joe Jepson ("He did not know exactly to what to turn for a living. In fact, he cared little about living anyway. What in particular did he have to live for?"), Alice Dawson ("There wasn't any money"), Grandfather Jepson ("had had the vision of this vast Moon Empire"), Dead-Eye Ike ("toppled heavily to the pavement with blood welling from a hole that the stream of electrons from the cathode gun had bored clear through his chest"), Judge Hermsen ("Bless you, my children"), the County Clerk ("'Cordin' to law a person't ain't ben seen by nobody for seven years, is presumed to be dead!"), Wishbone Gus ("pitched backwards, clawing the air, with blood welling from the front and back openings of a hole straight through his chest"), Lefty Wagner ("I don't want to be sheriff nohow"), and the Hall brothers ("stalked sullenly away under the cover of a dozen levelled guns, muttering incoherent vengeance").

Note: This story, like several others that we've read, seems to confirm our suspicion that the farther out into space English speakers move the more their language badly deteriorates. Someone might want to notify NASA.

References:

- "the Serenity and Tranquility Seas".

  After eighty years, there's a lot more information available about the Moon than when our story was published:

  ~ The Sea of Serenity (HERE).

  ~ The Sea of Tranquility (HERE).

  ~ The Moon in general (HERE).

  ~ The Moon's geology in particular (HERE).

  ~ "the seas of treacherous pumice-sand" (HERE)

  ~ Thorium on the Moon (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), (HERE), and (HERE).

  ~ Copernicus crater (HERE) and (HERE).

  ~ The lunar Apennines (HERE).

  ~ The crater named Archimedes (HERE).

  ~ The colonization of the Moon (HERE) and getting around on it (HERE).

  ~ "He rented a caterpillar-cycle, the native vehicle of the Moon, upon which he was an expert rider. These machines have ten 24-inch wheels, each with independent drive and knee-support, and can climb up steep hills, over rocks, up and down rills, balance on rays and ridges, progress axle-deep in dust and mud." (Atomic Rockets HERE).

- "Cyrano de Bergerac's Moon Balloon propelled by swans" (HERE).

- "chiseling yttrium" (HERE).

Resources:

- In several respects our story resembles a classic Western movie (WARNING! SPOILERS! HERE), which got an all-too-obvious updating thirty years later (WARNING! SPOILERS! HERE).

- "The Sheriff of Thorium Gulch" is just one example of a sub-sub-genre called the Space Western (HERE), which still struggles for respectability.

The bottom line:

Unless otherwise noted, all bibliographical data are derived from The FictionMags Index created by William G. Contento & edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne.

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