“And people, Charles, are the same everywhere.”
Originally published in the March 1952 edition of Fantastic Adventures magazine, Paul W. Fairman’s short story “Brothers Beyond the Void” was made into the classic Season 1 Twilight Zone episode “People Are Alike All Over” (the different title is actually a quotation from the short story). Paul Warren Fairman (1909–1977) was a prolific pulp fiction writer of science fiction and detective stories. He often published under a series of pseudonyms and became a founding editor of If magazine, and later editor of both Fantastic magazine (which merged with Fantastic Adventures magazine) and Amazing magazine from 1956-1958. Some of his other short stories made it onto the big screen, aside from just “Brothers Beyond the Void,” including “Deadly City,” which appeared in the March 1953 issue of If magazine under the pseudonym Ivar Jorgensen (it was later made into the 1954 science fiction alien invasion post-apocalyptic film Target Earth), and his story “The Cosmic Frame” was published in the May 1955 Amazing Stories and later adapted into the 1957 science fiction movie Invasion of the Saucer Men and then remade, uncredited, in 1965 as The Eye Creatures. His short story “Beast of the Void” was published in 1956, and apparently introduced the science fiction concept of amorphous intelligent matter in space capable of re-forming as perfect living copies of creatures from the memories of human explorers, including the protagonist’s lost wife. A similar theme was expanded upon in Stanislaw Lem’s classic 1961 novel Solaris which was later made into a film by Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and again by Steven Soderbergh in 2002.
In “Brothers Beyond the Void,” Sam Conrad enjoys a night of drinking with his friend Charles Marcusson “on the eve of his grand adventure.” We learn this night is actually Charles Marcusson’s last night on earth before he is dispatched by the “Foundation” on a solo voyage to Mars. They enjoy each other’s company and speculate about what he will find on the red planet. Will he find people just like himself?
“We’ll look at it this way: you are a lone Earthman hoping to set your feet on the planet Mars. Therefore, your instinctive interest is in your own safety. What sort of people will you find there—if any? Will they haul you from your ship and kick the life out of you? Will they find pleasure in tearing you to pieces?”
In the second half of the story, Charles Marcusson arrives on Mars where he encounters a planet populated by Martians living in a grey city far beyond a series of rolling hills. They are creatures wearing brightly-colored tunics, with seagreen eyes, and who speak with a musical pleasant warbling bird-like language. One of them is armed with a stick.
Despite carrying a gun, Charles Marcusson declares that he comes in peace to these mysterious creatures and they quickly start trying to communicate via a series of drawings back and forth. Charles is placed in a square windowless room with artificial lighting and he draws a sketch for the Martians of a Terran cottage. And when he wakes up, he is surprised to find they have built him a house based on his sketch. He is delighted to find many of his earth amenities inside the domicile, but when he wakes up the next day, he discovers many Martians coming to gawk at him. This cottage is actually a cage with a sign above it reading:
“EARTH CREATURE—IN ITS NATURAL HABITAT”
The story ends as Charles Marcusson grips the bars of his cage and starts screaming.
Final Thoughts:
There is something so delightfully nostalgic to me about these old pulp stories. From raw hardboiled detective stories to shiny midcentury visions of mystery and adventure in space, the stories and artwork represent the glory of an age gone by. In the case of “Brothers Beyond the Void,” we are offered a first contact story of supposedly benevolent aliens who wind up being little more than zookeepers of a human prison (in some ways, it contains the seed of Star Trek’s “The Cage” and “The Menagerie”). The story holds up a mirror to humanity, asking us to contemplate whether or not we would behave as those same zookeepers if a Martian had visited Earth instead? Who is the real villain, us or them? This all fairly cliche and commonplace in the sci-fi genre today, but for the early ‘50s it was still a novel concept. It’s no wonder that Rod Serling was drawn to this story for both its science fiction merits, as well as its ethical considerations.
Click here to return to my survey of The Twilight Zone series.
Click here to read my review of The Twilight Zone episode “People Are Alike All Over.”
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