what to see on dione

The scene on Saturn's fourth main moon...

castles on dione

…The brown swordsmen clanned together in castles, or degs, while the red swordsmen lived in walled cities and were more civilized though none the less skilled with their swordarms…  The red swordsmen, better organized and more law abiding, had cast their lot with the civilizations of colonized Mars and Venus.  The degmen, always lawless and at odds with the red swordsmen, were allies of the space pirates.

Lindquist remained watchful.  He wondered which deg Strower was visiting.  There was probably a plot afoot to enslave more red swordsmen…  Lindquist saw Strower and the group of degmen approach a castle.  Its towers and battlements rose in the distance.  With the keen scrutiny of a hawk, Lindquist watched it grow closer.  A broken tower loomed higher than the rest.  It drew a soft exclamation from the lone space pirate…

Neil R Jones, The Dark Swordsmen of Saturn (Planet Stories, Summer 1940)

>>  Guess The World - Open

a landing on dione

…the saucer, nearing its goal, sank through dense atmosphere.  Henrik was relieved to note that the thick blue air did not hide, though it tinted, the rising features of the landscape.

Details emerged against the bluish grey ground: its flecks of red and green became identifiable as vegetal pavilions on oblique, wide-straddled stilts, which allowed through-ways underneath and between.  Some cracks in the ground might be artificial fissures or natural rilles, crossed by plentiful bridges.  A mound of complication, briefly glimpsed before it receded over the curve of the world, had the size, dignity and regularity of a city.  As the ship lost more altitude a very few dots, about five or six, which might be native wheelers, could be seen in motion, till the field of view narrowed and, like the city, they vanished beyond the horizon's tightening noose. 

Henrik would have preferred more time to digest all this, but he had about a minute in which to examine the scene in detail from the air before the vessel touched down on a flat area surrounded by some of the "pavilions".  They stood ranged against that almost dizzily close horizon which hugged any small moon…

Robert Gibson, Rescue on Dione

>>  Guess The World - Third Series

winged monsters of dione

Shadowy forms slunk ominously out of sight. Once they saw two large, spidery creatures on long, spindly legs. They charged fiercely into the killing flashes from the electric pistols. Presently, two bird-like animals, resembling bats, circled above them on leathern wings. Long, taloned claws hung beneath them. They swooped low, uttering cries.

One of them dashed at Hilton, clutching at him. He fired. The second bird attacked from the rear, his talons tearing viciously at Rose Baynes, entangling her clothing, while the huge wings flapped fiercely in an effort to raise her from the ground. Bret Carson seized one of the bird’s six legs. Old Jasper Jezzan courageously seized a wing and held tight. Rose screamed. Claws bit cruelly into Bret’s arm. With his free hand, he beat at the cruel head with its snapping black beak. He dared not use his gun with Jasper and the girl so near.

With a wild scream of pain, the giant bird released the girl and struggled free. Like a shot, it was gone, swooping out of sight through the tangled strands of trailing vines. One of the birds lay dead. Bret nursed a bleeding hand...

...When the feeble rays of the far off sun penetrated the gloom of the fearful swamp, the little party continued its way once more. They anticipated another attack from the winged monsters, but they did not return. The weak light changed to red as Saturn’s dull brilliance lit up the satellite. Presently, the yellow vegetation thinned out and they stood on the swamp’s edge.

Before them lay a broad expanse of lifeless country. The red, barren surface supported no plant life. Curls of smoke arose from scarred depressions and fissures. At the rim of the horizon, beyond the red vista of melancholy wasteland, a yellow line of vegetation was plainly visible, broken in spots by open country.

Above, the sky was a deep purple. The tiny disc of the remote sun shone feebly. Many stars were visible. Three of Saturn’s moons were above the horizon, while Saturn itself represented a magnificent spectacle.  The enormous globe occupied a large share of the sky, the vast ring crossing it like a huge bar...

Neil R Jones, Swordsmen of Saturn (Science Fiction, October 1939)

>>  Guess The World - Fifth Series

Note from contributor Lone Wolf:

This story is not exactly a continuation of Hermit of Saturn's Rings, but rather the latter was written as its prequel and published about a year later. Here Jasper Jezzan is one of the characters and his rescue from the Saturnian rings happens shortly after the beginning of the story. It seems that Neil R Jones [like John Russell Fearn] also had its own version of the OSS, in which a lot of his early loosely related stories are set, covering more or less a consistent "future history" of several centuries. Not all of them were written and published in chronological order though, and it seems that the online bibliography on isfdb.org is not entirely complete. Meanwhile the Internet Archive is offline again, they say it's under  some sort of hacker attack...

Comment from Zendexor:  Hackers attacking the Archive?  How mean can you get?  If I had my way they'd all be marooned somewhere in the Oort Cloud.
Re the status of prequel: Swordsmen of Saturn is I dare say also a prequel to Dark Swordsmen of Saturn - see the extract above, Castles on Dione.

Reply from Lone Wolf, 16th October 2024:

Well, it's not exactly a prequel, since there isn't a continuation of story and characters in the later story, only that it is set on the same moon and in the same universe, so it has the same sword-armed inhabitants (which by the way make me wonder how they could possibly build a civilization, working with only one hand...). But this second story (The Dark Swordsmen of Saturn) happens in a much later age and it belongs to the series of stories about the "Durna Rangue" cult, although in the bibliography on isfdb.org it is not included in it, but it's given separately, while at the same time the first two stories put in this series (The Asteroid of Death and The Moon Pirates, from which I've sent excerpts before), although related and set in the same universe (here it can be said that the first one is a prequel of the second, since it explains the origin of one of the main villains), are not actually about Durna Rangue, but happen in an earlier age. And the same is the case with Hermit of Saturn's Rings and The Swordsmen of Saturn, which are respectively about the second and the third expeditions to the system of Saturn in the XXIV century.  On the other hand the characters of The Dark Swordsmen of Saturn and Little Hercules appear again in Vampire of the Void, so it can be said that Vampire of the Void is a sequel of those two. But as I said before, these stories, although belonging to the same universe, are not always published in the chronological order of the fictional "future history", which the author had in mind. And also there are not so many details about the planets in this version of the OSS: thus it is said that Mars and Venus are colonized by the humans from Earth and the cities of Fomar and Deliphon on those planets are often mentioned in most of the stories, but only about Venus do we learn that there are native inhabitants (since one of the the characters is a Venusian troglodyte, obviously humanoid, but never actually described), while whether Mars has native inhabitants or not is unclear (at least in the stories that I have been able to find so far). And thus the only other planetary race except Venusian troglodytes and humans seems to be that of the red and black swordsmen from Dione (which according to The Swordsmen of Saturn was renamed "Dian" for some unknown reason, while its native name was "Grish"). And it seems that this bibliography is probably not exhaustive too, since in a self-presentation of the author in one of the magazines which I came across, he says that he considers his own best novel to be The Outlawed World and there is not such a title in the whole list on isfdb.org. It is becoming progressively difficult to find and read the stories of the bibliographical lists of one or other author now, with the Internet Archive down. And I also noticed that on other sites I use (like Comic Book+, which has a good collection of old pulps, but for some reason I can't download them anymore), it has suddenly became difficult to switch the pages of the magazines, as if the internet connection interrupts all the time and thus the reading sometimes becomes a very unnerving experience. I wonder if this isn't some hidden campaign, trying to destroy all online libraries...