NORTHWEST SMITH: LIKE HAN SOLO IN THE UNIVERSE OF THE ALIEN FRANCHISE

Female author C.L. Moore’s space traveling smuggler of the 2500s A.D. – Northwest Smith – was like a 1930s forerunner of Han Solo but set in a forerunner of the Alien franchise’s gritty universe.

THE HERO: Space traveling anti-hero Smith was created by the female writer C.L. Moore in the 1930s. Four decades before Han Solo, Northwest Smith was a ruthless swashbuckling smuggler, thief and all-around mercenary. Smith’s less than sterling character made him a refreshing change from the usually wholesome pulp heroes of the time.  

THE STORIES: Northwest Smith’s adventures take place in the far future, when regular trade exists between Earth and the native inhabitants of Mars and Venus. The other planets in the solar system have been colonized by those Big Three worlds. Wielding a blaster like a six-gun and piloting his deceptively fast and maneuverable spaceship The Maid, Smith and his Venusian partner Yarol roam the solar system making a living by plying various illegal trades.

My reviews of their 13 stories from back in 2014:

SHAMBLEAU (1933) – While trying to lie low between smuggling runs, Northwest Smith stays in New Chicago, a dangerous Martian hotel with a deadly clientelle. Walking the nighttime streets, he saves an eerily seductive woman from a mob who want her dead for being one of the sinister race called the Shambleau. Can Yarol save Smith from himself as the Shambleau lures him into deeper and madder indulgences? Click HERE.   

BLACK THIRST (1934) – On Yarol’s home world Venus, he parties with old criminal associates while Northwest gets into trouble of his own. Smith gets on the bad side of the Mingas, a caste of glorified alien pimps who run their harems of biologically altered women from their Hutt-like lair Far-Thursa Castle. One of the genetically engineered temptresses wants Northwest to help her escape the Mingas, and Smith, thinking purely with his man-parts, tries to oblige. Click HERE.

SCARLET DREAM (1934) – An enigmatic object that our main character gets from a derelict spaceship with no sign of the crew winds up being a portal to a prison dimension. The thousands of other life-forms – humanoid and otherwise – stranded in the red-tinged realm struggle to survive the countless perils of the place. Eventually, Smith dares the only way out: confronting the being which brought them all there. Click HERE.

DUST OF GODS (1934) – Low on funds from having gone too long between smuggling capers, Northwest Smith and Yarol sign on for a different kind of illegal undertaking. A shady dealer in rare objects hires our antiheroes to recover relics and possibly the physical remains of Pharol the Black. Millions of years ago Pharol died in the destruction of an entire planet and Smith & Yarol’s client knows where fragments of the entity’s tomb landed. Click HERE. 

JULHI (1935) – In the kind of lowlife establishments frequented by Northwest and Yarol in between smuggling runs life is cheap. The danger of being shanghaied is also ever-present and sets this tale in motion. Waking up unarmed on an extraterrestrial island is bad enough, but a psychic vampress plays The Most Dangerous Game with shanghai victims left for her there. Click HERE.

NYMPH OF DARKNESS (1935) – The Venusian port city of Ednes is on a peninsula that juts so far out into the black ocean waters that it is overrun at night by predatory amphibious beings who hunt prey to eat – or mate with. While honest citizens hunker down for safety overnight, the most daring of the criminal element conduct thefts and other dirty business. And that’s how Northwest winds up risking worse than death alongside a beautiful (of course) lady named Nyusa. Click HERE.

THE COLD GRAY GOD (1935) – In the cold and snowy Martian city of Righa, Smith is hired by an unusual client named Jaida. Years ago, she was the most popular singer in the cabaret circuit on Jupiter’s colonized moons. At the height of her fame she threw it all away to join a vile religion which worships the Un-Nameable One, a Lovecraftian entity from the universe’s ancient past. She wants Northwest to recover a stolen relic central to the religion’s practices. Click HERE.

YVALA (1936) – Smith and Yarol are in another period of tight finances. They’ve even been forced to put their spaceship the Maid into drydock and hock their blasters just for food money. Desperate, they hold their noses and sign on with a crew working for the Willard Family, who traffick in slaves. The Willards have discovered unregistered lifeforms on a jungle moon of Jupiter. Those lifeforms are ripe for enslaving since they are unknown and are protected by no planet’s laws or treaties. Northwest, Yarol and the rest of the crew encounter unimaginable risks in the moon’s jungle. Click HERE.   

LOST PARADISE (1936) – In the multi-level New York City of the 2500s, Smith and Yarol recover technology stolen from a member of the Seles race – former inhabitants of the Moon who long ago migrated to Earth’s subterranean regions. Rather than just accept their fee our boys get tempted into a caper involving time travel and wind up fighting for their lives. Click HERE.

THE TREE OF LIFE (1936) – While fleeing the authorities when a smuggling job goes wrong, Northwest Smith hides in a long-dead Martian city. It turns out the place contains a portal to a pocket dimension in which live Ewok-type beings, a beautiful but nameless woman and an ancient alien once worshipped as a god. Click HERE.

QUEST OF THE STAR STONE (1937) – It’s crossover time! More time travel hijinks, this time involving Franga, a sorcerer from 1500s France. That villain is after the title object, which will grant a Black Magic practitioner like himself ultimate power. To recover it for him he plucks from the time-stream Northwest Smith, Yarol and C.L. Moore’s warrior woman of the 1500s – Jirel of Joiry, whose adventures I reviewed years ago. Click HERE.

WEREWOMAN (1938) – Ignore the monumentally misleading title. This Northwest Smith tale opens with our man partying in the 2500s American West. He winds up in a marathon firefight with bounty hunters and when his blasters have exhausted their charge he flees into the Forbidden Desert to avoid going to prison. That desert was the scene of nuclear and biological catastrophes long ago.

           Smith faces dangerous, mutated lifeforms including an entire pack of humanoid wolf-like women. They aren’t furry, they just lead feral lives in the mutated hell-beast eat mutated hell-beast world of the Forbidden Desert. One of the “werewomen” gets the hots for Northwest. Click HERE.   

SONG IN A MINOR KEY (1940) – The last Northwest Smith story. He and Yarol are back on Earth to visit the spot where Northwest committed his first crime exactly 20 years earlier, setting his life on its present course. A beautiful woman, a powerful man who disapproved of her relationship with our main character and the revelation that his name isn’t really Northwest Smith. (I always figured it was really Northwest Rabinowitz but I’m kind of weird.) Click HERE.