Another Game of "Name the Predecessor"

Cafe Society
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Quite a while ago I gave descriptions of woeks of fiction that seemed awfully familiar, but were actually describing earlier works. (Example: "Science fiction novel set in the far future on an alien desert world in which descendants of Earthly desert dwellers raise giant animals for the indispensible drug produced by their bodies and craved by the rest of the human interstellar civilization. Published well before Frank Herbert’s “Dune”.*)
I admit that I couch the question in those terms, but I don’t distort or lie. Here are the new ones:

1.) Inhabitants from elsewhere in the Solar System invade the Earth using light-beam weapons and suceed in defeating the forces of the Earth, in a story that the writer acknowledges was intended to put Western Civilization in the position of the Third-World peoples it subjugated and exploited, just to show what it’s like. Published by a famous author 89 years before H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds”

2.) A French novel about a mysterious figure in a black robe and mask who lurks in the dark among secret passages, killing those who invade his realm. It has an Underground Lake. The Mysterios Figure is protecting his beautiful young female ingenue, who falls in love with one of those the mysterious figure is trying to destroy. Published 33 years before Gaston Leroux’s “The Phantom of the Opera”. I wouldn’t be surprised if Leroux had read this one.

3.) A female stowaway on a space ship is using up too many resources and all aboard will die unless someone is tossed out. The female stowaway goes herself, dying to save the ship. There are claims that several people wrote stories like this before Tom Godwin’s 1954 story "The Cold Equations (Such as E.C. Tubb’s 1949 “Precedent”), but the one I’m looking for was published 25 years before Godwin was even born 9he was born in 1915)

2

Forgot the Footnote:

  • It’s Cordwainer Smith’s Norstrilia. Stroon from Giant Sheep trumps Melange from Sandworms.
3

The first portion of Nostrilia was published in 1964 (as “The Boy Who Bought Old Earth”) Title: The Boy Who Bought Old Earth

“Dune World” (which was the original title of "Dune) was published in 1963. Title: Dune World

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True enough, but Smith’s “Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittons,” established Norstrilia and stroon in 1961.

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:smack: I didn’t catch that, & I’ve read both *Norstrilia *& “Mother Hitton’s Littul Kittuns.”

Somehow I was thinking worms.

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Oh. Thanks! I didn’t realize that.

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So no guesses on the new ones?

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I’ve read the issue of Analog with “Dune World” (which surprised me when I fou nd it in the library – for a brief period there Analog was a BIG magazine), but forgot that it was as early as 1963. I thought it was from later in the 60s.

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Number 1 is “The Conquest of the Moon” by Washington Irving.

10

Bingo! A surprisingly little-known work, despite being by a famous author.

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I wonder how many well-known works have been inspired by earlier forgotten ones. Not just published as fiction either: a lot of conspiracy theory reminds me of a short story about about a man watching a hypnotist show who when told to ‘wake up’ really wakes up and sees the reptiles in charge.

I notice Terry Pratchett keeps very quiet about his two unsuccessful science-fiction novels, one set on a prototype magic discworld - except that this version is a complicated technological resort.

And if anybody familiar with PERN and ‘thread’ is old enough, wasn’t there a BBC radio children’s serial in the 1950s featuring regular falls of something burning?