the intrepid travelogue:
slaves of venus
An investigation by
Dylan Jeninga

The menace of slavery is unfortunately common throughout the system, and it may be found anywhere from the scorched rocks of Mercury (Slaves of Mercury, Nat Schachner) to the ochre plains of Mars (A Princess of Mars, Edgar Rice Burroughs) to the green hills of Earth (real life).  While it is undoubtedly a great injustice no matter the planet, I have recently had the opportunity to read two fine stories of subjection beneath the overcast skies of Venus, one from the NOSS collection Old Venus and one from the golden age of OSS fiction.

The first is Pale Blue Memories by Tobias S. Buckell. It takes place in a timeline where World War Two never ended, but stretched into the space race, with Nazi moon bases and a race to be the first to reach a planet. The Allies seem poised to claim that prize, but enemy machinations bring the Allied rocket crashing to the surface of Venus, taking our hero, called only “Charles”, with it.

Charles’ mother is caucasian and his father’s skin is light in tone, but in 1950’s America his African ancestry makes him keenly aware of a divide between him and his crewmates. He knows he would not be accepted by them if they knew where his father’s family came from.

People from my kind of family didn’t end up becoming astronauts. My kind of family had aunts and uncles who had to drink from the other fountains and couldn’t order stuff from the front.

My dad came from Jamaica, towing behind the rest of his family. They came looking for jobs and ended up working out in the Illinois countryside. White folk could tell Dad wasn’t white, but they weren’t sure what exactly he was, due to his kinky hair and skin that browned when he worked outside too long.

His heritage, though concealed, drives him to join the air force when he hears about a blacks-only fighter squadron devastating Hitler’s Luftwaffe. As he says,

The Red Tails were breaking records in their section of the sky. I was secretly doing it over here. And one day I’d reveal myself. And it would be known that I was as good as any other pilot.

When his rocket comes down on the surface of Venus, Charles fears that the world will never know what he has accomplished “despite” his ancestry. But the landing is not as fatal as he fears. Most of the crew survives, and Commander James Heston orders Charles and another crewman named Eric out into the jungle in search of clean water while the rest of the crew inspects the damage to the rocket.

The jungles of Venus are strange and alien, with purple vegetation and giant insects, but when the two finally encounter Venusians they find them disconcertingly familiar: mounted, armed with guns, and apparently aggressive. They and the rest of the crew are captured and brought to a nearby fortress, where their captors trade them for guns. Despite their predicament, the commander holds out hope.

“They don’t know we came from the sky,” Eric said, his voice quavering slightly.

“Then we learn the local lingo,” Commander James said quietly. “However long it takes us. And we tell them. They can see, with their own eyes, that we look different.”

“For all they know,” I said, speaking for the first time that morning, “we’re strange Venusians from some unknown location on their planet.”

“Stow that talk,” Heston ordered.

Even through a grueling walk and a dehumanizing auction, Heston remains convinced that if he can just make himself understood, he will win the crew their freedom. However, when a translation-slug inserted through his nostril gives him his chance, things don’t go as he hoped.

Heston held onto my shoulder. He was excited. “We’re visitors! We’re from another world.” He pointed up at the dark, grey clouds that stretched from horizon to horizon. “We’re from beyond the clouds.”

The Venusians around us laughed. A yipping, barking sound. “There is nowhere else but the surface, and there is nothing beyond the clouds but more clouds and emptiness.”

Heston wouldn’t let it go. He kept arguing. And eventually his shouts led to warnings, then the Venusians clubbed him until he shut up. They forced me to carry him, dazed, across the courtyard into a small, cramped common house.

Still, the Commander doesn’t give up.

“If we can just talk to the right people,” Heston whispered, as we walked back. “We need to find a politician or a scientist. We need to talk to their leaders, not workers and overseers. Talk to just the right person in power, it will be okay.”

The commander believed that. He believed that because for him it had always been true. His life had ups and downs, but for true injustices, he’d always been able to find the right person to set things right.

Heston’s naive optimism highlights an often purposeful misunderstanding of the system of slavery on the part of the oppressors. The idea that it isn’t so bad, that it’s just in some way, or that it only happens to certain sorts of people and that it could never happen to the ones who do the enslaving. For the captain, this delusion springs from the American need to avoid guilt over the African slave trade.

I tended to a dazed Heston after his beating, trying to get him to drink water. I was trying to get him oriented because he was floundering. “You know free economies are rare, Commander. Even on Earth. It’s not surprising, really. If aliens were to land on Earth and look vaguely like us, it might not have been good for them either, being different. Imagine if aliens had landed in the South, before the Civil War that we had to fight so bloodily to get rid of this stain…”

Through bruised lips and swollen eyes, Commander James said, firmly, “The War of Northern Aggression was fought over states’ rights.”

And with a grunt of pain, he picked up his blanket, his dog tags that he’d been allowed to keep, and dragged himself over to the other side of the common house.

Pale Blue Memories goes on to depict the psychological and physical toll enslavement takes on its victims, especially the pervading sense of hopelessness it creates. It’s a deeply moving story, and one I recommend to any fan of science fiction, OSS or otherwise, as part of an education for being a “citizen of the world”, so to speak.

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