Victor Rousseau - The Beetle Horde

[dem bones]

Victor Rousseau - The Beetle Horde (Astounding Stories of Super-Science, Clayton Magazines 1930)

cover of eStar Books, 2010 edition

Here's an exciting early 'when insects attack!' pulp romp for you to enjoy. Victor Rousseau's short novel was published over the first and second issues of Astounding Stories of Super-Science in January and February 1930. The Beetle Horde is currently available in physical book form from create-space, e-publications abound and both issues of the magazine are available in their entirety from project gutenberg. Through the marvels of cut and paste, have stitched together the complete story, so those who dig such capers can download it below. There really is no point in my attempting a synopsis when Astounding Stories already provided the following superb recap in the February number.

Tommy Travers and James Dodd, of the Travers Antarctic Expedition, crash in their plane somewhere near the South Pole, and are seized by a swarm of man-sized beetles. They are carried down to Submundia, a world under the earth's crust, where the beetles have developed their civilization to an amazing point, using a wretched race of degenerated humans, whom they breed as cattle, for food.

Bullets, shrapnel, shell—nothing can stop the trillions of famished, man-sized beetles which, led by a madman, sweep down over the human race.

The insect horde is ruled by a human from the outside world—a drug-doped madman. Dodd recognizes this man as Bram, the archaeologist who had been lost years before at the Pole and given up for dead by a world he had hated because it refused to accept his radical scientific theories. His fiendish mind now plans the horrible revenge of leading his unconquerable horde of monster insects forth to ravage the world, destroy the human race and establish a new era — the era of the insect.

The world has to be warned of the impending doom. The two, with Haidia, a girl of Submundia, escape, and pass through menacing dangers to within two miles of the exit. There, suddenly, Tommy sees towering over him a creature that turns his blood cold—a gigantic praying mantis. Before he has time to act, the monster springs at them!

Attachments:

The Beetle Horde.pdf (350.69 KB)

[ripper]

I read some of this last night and am enjoying it. It's very fast-paced and those man-sized beetles are rather creepy, as is the humans' diet of giant raw shrimp, plucked from the sand. I don't blame our two heroes for sticking to fruit instead.

[dem bones]

Sept 1, 2014 9:48:58 GMT ripper said:

I read some of this last night and am enjoying it. It's very fast-paced and those man-sized beetles are rather creepy, as is the humans' diet of giant raw shrimp, plucked from the sand. I don't blame our two heroes for sticking to fruit instead.

It's good fun, ain't it? Reminds me of those "nerve-chilling saga"'s Rev Lionel Fanthorpe would later bash out for Supernatural Stories.

[ripper]

It is, indeed, great fun, Dem. Many years ago, I owned a book showing covers and interior illustrations from the sci-fi pulps, but back in those pre-internet days--mid-1970s?--I never dreamed that I would someday be able to read some of them without having to move from my chair and track down paper copies. Don't know if you read the editor's introduction but I had to smile at his predictions that readers' children or grandchildren would enjoy trips to the moon, would be able to make themselves invisible and be able to be teleported across continents. The most intrigueing statement being that the problem of invisibility had already (in 1930) already been partially solved.

[Jojo Lapin X]

Sept 2, 2014 7:12:05 GMT ripper said:

The most intrigueing statement being that the problem of invisibility had already (in 1930) already been partially solved.

This is true insofar as there are parts of me that are invisible.

[ripper]

I finished this one off last night. I read most of the stories in the first issue of Astounding Stories before moving on to the second part of The Beetle Horde in issue 2. It was good fun and suitably melodramatic. I liked the final part of the story, where Dodd and his girl are left alone at a remote station in the aussie outback when a pilot picks up his friend to whisk him away to advise on combating the beetle menace. To prevent the sensibilities of 1930s readers being offended the pilot just happens to be a parson, who marries Dodd and the girl :-).

[Alf]

Just read it, excellent pulpy goodness 

It manages to secure a good Biggles stylistic tone while cramming in as many scientific inaccuracies as possible. 

A good starting pount is always note "deep rasping breaths" from giant sized insects ... CF Eat Them Alive
(Apologies for constantly referring to ETA, but it's a benchmark on many levels, and is the  Anna Karenina of horror)