Short Story Review: “Third from the Sun” by Richard Matheson

“Goodbye, this part of my life. Turning off the lamp was like turning off a light in his mind” (230).

I was somewhat surprised by Richard Matheson’s short story “Third from the Sun” (this was the basis for the essential Twilight Zone episode of the same name). It is a very short story, only a few pages long, but it explores some timely themes for twentieth century fiction. “Third from the Sun” depicts a nameless family as they prepare to flee in the night. The tone is nervous and mysterious. Why is this couple and their children fleeing in the night? What about their children? Why do they need their neighbors to join them in order to avoid “interbreeding”? What is going on? As it turns out they are privy to some secret information: “In a few years, probably less, the whole planet would go up with a blinding flash. This was the only way out. Escaping, starting all over again with a few people on a new planet.”

Apparently the lead unnamed male protagonist believes another war is coming in a few years and it will threaten all life. He is the “chief test pilot” for a specialty space ship and he is now sneaking his family and neighbors onto the runway (past a lone sleepy guard who believes it is simply business-as-usual) ostensibly to see him off safely, but in reality the plan is to confiscate the space ship and fly away forever. When they silently board the huge ship, the man points out to his neighbor that they are headed for a new planet in a different solar system, the “third from the sun” a planet with a livable atmosphere and a nearby moon. Here the story ends.

“Third From The Sun” offers a paranoid vision of a foreign version of humanity living on another planet, hoping to escape. Of course, the trademark twist ending reveals that they are actually headed for Earth. Maybe it’s just because I’ve had the ending spoiled for me (after having seen the Twilight Zone episode many times) but I think the Twilight Zone episode for “Third From The Sun” actually hit a bit harder for me than the short story. There is quite a bit more tension in the episode as Will, his family, and neighbors all struggle to hide their true intentions and eventually they sneak away from the ever-watchful gaze of Carling. Unlike in the short story, The Twilight Zone episode actually gives characters names (such as Will Sturka) and they are brought into a tense ongoing conflict with their slinking, slimy, looming boss named Carling (brilliantly played by Edward Andrews) who is completely absent in the short story (he was simply invented for the television episode). And whereas the short story describes the confiscated space ship as a huge towering hulk of machinery, in the The Twilight Zone episode we simply see the reused saucer-shaped space ship (United Planets Cruiser C-57D) from the classic science fiction film Forbidden Planet (1956). One lingering question I had about the short story concerns the timeframe of this story. Is this story intended to take place contemporaneously with current events on Earth happening in our time? In other words, will the group of people fleeing their planet travel all the way to Earth only to find that it already populated with a great many humans who are facing their own threat of nuclear? Or does this story take place hundreds of the thousands of years ago, in which case they would be the “Adam and Eve” seeders of the human race on Earth? I suppose I am inclined toward the latter interpretation especially since there is a brief concern that the children not interbreed with one another.

At any rate, both the short story and the Twilight Zone episode of the same name are excellent examples of 20^th century American speculative fiction. They explore themes of mid-twentieth century anxieties around nuclear war, planetary destruction, human survival, and the emerging age of space travel. “Third from the Sun” was first published in Galaxy Science Fiction magazine in October 1950, but I read it in the wonderful Penguin collected edition of Richard Matheson’s short fiction. 

Matheson, Richard. The Best of Richard Matheson. Edited with an introduction by Victoria LaValle. Penguin Classics. New York, NY (2017).

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