{"id":4765,"date":"2015-12-08T10:00:32","date_gmt":"2015-12-08T15:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/?p=4765"},"modified":"2026-02-02T13:48:25","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T18:48:25","slug":"exploring-this-island-earth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/2015\/12\/08\/exploring-this-island-earth\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring ‘This Island Earth’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Raymond
Raymond F. Jones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The news that actor Rex Reason<\/a><\/strong> died last month brought back fond memories of watching This Island Earth<\/em> as a teenager in the ’70s. Back then, late nights on Friday and Saturday television were devoted to old movies before the TV stations signed off the air. (Remember that?)<\/p>\n

This Island Earth<\/em> from 1955 was one of the stand-out movies among the many low-grade horror and science fiction that often showed up on local TV at that late hour. Of course, this was before home video tape recorders — let alone DVRs. So when it aired, it was always worth watching.<\/p>\n

I vaguely knew that the movie was based on a novel, but I hadn’t read it. The Rex Reason news sent me online to find out more about it. Turns out the story by Raymond F. Jones<\/a><\/strong> originally ran in Thrilling Wonder Stories<\/em>. Sometimes referred to as the “Peace Engineers Trilogy,” the three novelettes appeared in the June and December 1949, and February 1950 numbers of that pulp magazine.<\/p>\n

A quick search showed that the three issues had been scanned and were available in comic book reader — .cbr — format online. So I promptly downloaded them and copied them to my iPad for reading during our Thanksgiving travels.<\/p>\n

\"Open<\/a>
Open pages of “The Greater Conflict” (Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1950)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The trilogy — “The Alien Machine,” “The Shroud of Secrecy,” and “The Greater Conflict” — is familiar to anyone who has seen the movie (at least until the action leaves Earth).<\/p>\n

In “The Alien Machine,” we meet Cal Meacham<\/strong>, a hot-shot engineer at Ryberg Instrument Corp. on the East Coast. After electronic parts that he’d ordered are replaced with smaller, unfamiliar components from a mysterious Electronic Service, Unit 16, he asks for more details about them and is sent a catalog printed on some futuristic, indestructible paper.<\/p>\n

The back of the catalog lists “a complete line of interocitor components. In the following pages you will find complete descriptions of components which reflect the most modern engineering advances known to interocitor engineers.” Meacham promptly orders the parts, and when they arrive, begins to assemble them using the catalog as a guide.<\/p>\n

After some trial and error, the interocitor is completed, and Meacham switches it on. The interocitor that he has built turns out to be a communication device. The man on the other end congratulates Meacham for successfully completing the test and offers him a job with an unknown organization called the Peace Engineers.<\/p>\n

\""Thrilling
“Thrilling Wonder Stories” (December 1949)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The man, later identified as Dr. Warner<\/strong>, explains that the Peace Engineers are a group of scientists who want to maintain control of their discoveries to prevent them from being used for war, using as an example the atomic bomb in World War II.<\/p>\n

Dr. Warner offers the idealistic Meacham a job, which he accepts. Warner tells Meacham that the job starts immediately, and that a plane will pick him up at noon tomorrow.<\/p>\n

Meacham gives notice at Ryberg the next morning, boards the pilot-less plane when it arrives, and as it lifts off to take him to the Peace Engineers at a mysterious destination the first novelette ends.<\/p>\n

“The Shroud of Secrecy” opens with Meacham arriving at a plant complex in the desert just north of Phoenix, Ariz., run by the mysterious “Engineer,” a fellow named Jorgasnovara<\/strong>. Meacham meets Dr. Ruth Adams<\/strong>, a psychiatrist in the plant’s employment office, and engineer Ole Swenberg<\/strong>, a close friend from Meacham’s college days. Both Adams and Swenberg act nervous and seem to know more about the Peace Engineers than they let on.<\/p>\n

What’s being built at the plant, and who is it for? What are the real motives of the Peace Engineers? And who is this “Engineer” who is in charge?<\/p>\n

Jones keeps the story tight and on track through the three novelettes, with ample mystery building to the climax. Even being familiar with the movie version, I found the story gripping, particularly having read that the movie veers from the trilogy toward the end. That kept me guessing just how far does it vary?<\/p>\n

I haven’t read the expanded novel, but based on the plot summary on Wikipedia<\/a>, I think I prefer the original trilogy of novelettes.<\/p>\n

Jones rewrote the trilogy into a longer novel published in 1952 under the title This Island Earth<\/em>. Some characters’ roles are changed, and the third novelette is expanded — and possibly restructured — with much more detail about the interstellar war, the two sides fighting in it (they are even given names — Llanna and Guarra), and a new ending.<\/p>\n

\"Joe
Joe Wilson (left, played by Robert Nichols) and Dr. Cal Meacham (Rex Reason) listen to Exeter (Jeff Morrow) speaking from an interocitor in 1955’s “This Island Earth.”<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The film version deviates from the written story when Meacham and Adams leave Earth (and in the brief opening jet sequence). Up to that point, it had tracked along fairly closely to the novelettes. After that it becomes a standard ’50s sf movie, complete with a Bug-Eyed Monster — the Mutant — which isn’t in the original trilogy. (Neither is one of the main characters, Exeter<\/strong>, played by Jeff Morrow<\/strong>, who is something of an amalgam of Warner and Jorgasnovara.) The film is enjoyable for what it is.<\/p>\n

In typical film fashion, there isn’t much depth to it. Meacham (played by the deep-voiced Reason) is a typical 1950s movie jet pilot\/scientist, motivated by action and less by thought. In the trilogy, Meacham is constantly questioning the motives of other characters, the Peace Engineers, and even himself.<\/p>\n

Curiously, the title is never addressed in the movie. And it always puzzled me why it was titled This Island Earth<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In the novelettes, Jorgasnovara likens Earth to a primitive island in the Pacific during World War II. Earth is contributing a small part to the war effort — the interocitors being like a landing strip carved out of a jungle island — without fully comprehending the scope of the much larger conflict.<\/p>\n

I have one quibble with the trilogy. The budding relationship between Meacham and Adams moves exceedingly quick. They meet for the first time at the beginning of the second novelette as Cal arrives at the Phoenix plant. Meacham, Adams, and Swenberg get together for beers and sandwiches that evening. It’s six months before Meacham sees Adams again, but by that evening he’s calling her “darling.” At the beginning of the third novelette, which starts hours after the previous evening, she’s wearing “his diamond.” Talk about fast romances. Such is life in short serialized fiction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news that actor Rex Reason died last month brought back fond memories of watching This Island Earth as a teenager in the ’70s. Back then, late nights on Friday and Saturday television were devoted to old movies before the TV stations signed off the air. (Remember that?) This Island Earth from 1955 was one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4772,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_has_post_settings":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"At Yellowed Perils: Exploring 'This Island Earth.' #pulpmags #scifi #classicmovies","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_wp_rev_ctl_limit":""},"categories":[6,11,13],"tags":[],"hashtags":[],"class_list":["post-4765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-movies-tv-radio","category-pulps","category-review"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/files\/2015\/12\/interocitor.jpg?fit=550%2C395&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2qgXO-1eR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4765"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6971,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4765\/revisions\/6971"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4772"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4765"},{"taxonomy":"hashtags","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepulp.net\/yellowedperils\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtags?post=4765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}