The Red Peri
| "The Red Peri" | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Author | Stanley G. Weinbaum |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction short story |
| Published in | Astounding Stories |
| Publication type | Periodical |
| Publisher | Street & Smith |
| Media type | Print (Magazine) |
| Publication date | November 1935 |
"The Red Peri" is a science fiction novella by Stanley G. Weinbaum that first appeared in the November 1935 issue of Astounding Stories. Sam Moskowitz has noted that Weinbaum planned to write a series of sequels to "The Red Peri" but died before he could do so. "The Red Peri" is the only Weinbaum story set on Pluto. The novel also inspired Arthur C. Clarke, who stated that David Bowman's helmetless spacewalk in 2001: A Space Odyssey was inspired by Frank Keene's escape from the pirate base in "The Red Peri".
"The Red Peri" was written only five years after the discovery of Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh, when the only things known about it were its orbit and the fact that its apparent magnitude was 14.90, too dim to be a gas giant. Given its known distance from the sun, this meant that the higher Pluto's albedo was assumed to be, the smaller it would have to be. Weinbaum assumed that Pluto's surface was as dark as coal, and that its diameter was greater than Earth's, with a correspondingly greater gravity. Weinbaum also assumed that Pluto was airless and had a twenty-hour period of rotation and a surface temperature of 10 kelvins. Despite its harsh conditions, Weinbaum's Pluto includes a number of life-forms, all of them crystalline creatures called crystal crawlers that consume various elements, including aluminum, iron, and carbon.
Around the year 2080, the Dutch spaceship Aardkin out of Venus is approaching Earth when she is boarded by a notorious pirate ship, the Red Peri. Passenger Frank Keene, an American radiation engineer and spaceship pilot, sees that one of the pirates has red hair before that pirate literally tweaks his nose and leaves.
A year later, Keene and astrophysicist Solomon Nestor are on board the Limbo, conducting a survey of cosmic radiation in the outer reaches of the Solar System for the Smithsonian Institution. One of the Limbo's stern jets melts, leaving the ship crippled. They are forced to land on Pluto, in the hope of finding a deposit of some refractory metal they can use to build a new jet. Shortly afterwards, they are captured and taken to a secret base which turns out to be the lair of the pirates.
...
Wikipedia