The Mad Moon

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The Mad Moon is a science fiction short story by Stanley G. Weinbaum that first appeared in the December 1935 issue of Astounding Stories. As was the case with his earlier stories "A Martian Odyssey" and "Parasite Planet", "The Mad Moon" showcases Weinbaum's talent for creating alien ecologies. "The Mad Moon" was the only Weinbaum story set on Io.

1 Weinbaum's Io
2 Plot summary
3 Collections
4 External links

[edit] Weinbaum's Io

Jupiter and Io.

In Weinbaum's Solar System, Jupiter radiates enough heat to create Earthlike environments on the Galilean moons. Io, the innermost Galilean satellite, has a tropical climate, so that the two human settlements are located at the poles, Junopolis in the north and Herapolis in the south. Extending partway around the equator are the Idiots' Hills, whose peaks extend beyond Io's dense but shallow atmosphere. (Weinbaum apparently didn't realize that Io is tidally locked, since he has Jupiter rise and set during the course of the story.)

There are two intelligent races native to Io: first are the loonies, a humanoid race of only moderate intelligence with large balloonlike heads at the end of long, slim necks; second are the slinkers, small and ratlike with nasty tempers. (Members of the Harrison Expedition to Mars ran across a slinker in the ruins of a Martian city in the story "Valley of Dreams".) Another Ionan life-form is the parcat, a cat-sized animal with a single hind leg and the ability to mimic sounds, including snippets of human conversation. Ionan flora includes ferva leaves, which are used by pharmaceutical companies on Earth to create medicinal alkaloids; bleeding-grass, which oozes red sap; and stinging palms, whose barbs can cause infection among humans if not treated.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Grant Calthorpe is a young sportsman who lost his fortune in a stock market crash in 2110. Two years later, he is on Io, collecting ferva leaves for the Neilan Drug Company. Calthorpe has a shack just south of the Idiots' Hills, which he shares with a parcat named Oliver. Due to the presence of stinging palms in the Ionan jungle, he has to rely on loonies to collect the ferva leaves for him, trading chocolate to them for the leaves.

One day, while suffering an attack of white fever and its attendant hallucinations, Calthorpe follows Oliver out of his shack and into the Ionan jungle. There he finds Lee Neilan, daughter of the owner of Neilan Drug, who also appears to be suffering from white fever. The two of them have an odd, pleasant conversation in which each assumes the other is a hallucination. Neilan warns Calthorpe about a newly-built slinker village, and it isn't until he comes across it while returning to his shack that he realizes that she isn't a hallucination after all. He returns to Neilan, chases off two slinkers who are slicing up her dinner gown, and brings her to his shack. He gives her medication for her white fever, and learns that she had been flying a jet plane from her father's home in Junopolis to a party in Herapolis. Coming upon the Idiots' Hills, she tried to hurdle over them where they left the atmosphere, and wound up crashing near Calthorpe's shack.

When a party of slinkers undermines the shack, Calthorpe and Neilan are forced to flee. The two make their way up towards the peaks of the Idiots' Hills, hoping the slinkers won't be able to follow them into the rarified atmosphere. Thousands of slinkers do follow them, though, as do four loonies. When Calthorpe and Neilan enter a narrow valley between two of the peaks, they find a deserted city. At first they assume it was built by slinkers, but then realize by its proportions and artwork that it was actually built by loonies, who are evidently the degenerate remains of a once great race. The loonies who accompanied them fight off the slinkers, clearly determined to keep them from entering the city. The mob of slinkers crowds into the pass leading to the valley, and Calthorpe uses his flame pistol to blast them.

The light and noise from the flame pistol's discharge attracts the notice of a passing rocket plane. The plane lands in the valley, and Neilan's father Gustavus Neilan emerges. In gratitude to Calthorpe for saving his daughter, Gustavus offers to place him in charge of a ferva plantation he has begun near Junopolis, and Lee tells him that she wants to be his wife.