Lybblas in the Spotlight: "The World is Mine"
The ROCKETEER is focusing on pulp-era aliens for the next several weeks in honor of the Chehalis Flying Saucer Party.
This week’s alien story is, “The World is Mine” (1943) by Lewis Padgett (pen name of Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore writing together.) It was first seen in Astounding Stories magazine in the June, 1943 issue.
There are five Gallegher stories: “Time Locker” (1943), “The World Is Mine” (1943), “The Proud Robot” (1943), “Gallegher Plus” (1943), and “Ex Machina” (1948). All of them were originally published in Astounding magazine under the Lewis Padgett pseudonym.
Gallagher is an eccentric genius inventor who’s only a genius when he’s blindingly drunk. Sober, he’s clueless about how, or even why, he’s created any of his brilliant devices. Most of the time he doesn’t remember anything from his virtuoso binges. He says of himself that he creates by ear. In other words, on the fly. The more he drinks, the more his subconscious takes over. This is an interesting thought-experiment by Kuttner who was fascinated by the field of psychology. When Gallegher is sober he simply can’t access that exceptional part of his mind. So he ends up drinking—a lot. Even by the standards of the day when the story was written he’s an excessive drinker. He invents a “liquor organ” at which he can recline and have mixed drinks of varying types, but always strong, available through a tube or long straw.
Much of the time Gallagher is climbing hazily out of a colossal hangover and discovering that something profound has occurred during his latest binge. Readers do see him when he’s drunk, it’s just that the sober Gallagher doesn’t remember all the details. Certainly, he won’t remember the nature of what he’s created or who’s commissioned whatever it was that he’s just thought up.
In the case of this story, Gallegher wakes to see three rabbity-looking creatures through the window demanding entrance into his house. He thinks initially that they are just “pink elephants” —part of the hangover. The little creatures have large, round, furry ears, enormous eyes, and pink buttons for noses. They have mitten hands and are about eleven inches tall. Immediately, they insist that Earth belongs to them and they plan to conquer it.
Of course, Gallagher has no idea who, or what, they are. His grandfather wakes from sleeping off a drunken binge and does remember. Apparently, Gallagher has built a time machine and these rabbity creatures called, Lybblas, are from Mars five hundred years in the future. The cute, not-too-smart, aliens admit that they are not the dominant species on Mars at that time (you get the idea that the “Earth-people” are) but they have read many books about the Earth. Since they’re now in the past they figure it’ll be easy to conquer the planet, taking their cues from the storybooks they’ve read while at home in their quaint little valley. The would-be conquerors are quickly distracted by milk and cookies from the kitchen while the action part of the plot kicks off.
The time machine has had another effect that sober Gallagher can’t account for: a dead body has appeared in his backyard with a charred blast mark in the center of his chest.
What follows is a wonderful romp of Kuttner and Moore’s best writing. It features: spontaneously appearing corpses (and all of the same man), a slick blackmailer, police trying to arrest Gallegher for murder, vanishing corpus delecti, a wry, and oft-drunken grandfather, and the three adorable Lybblas.
Here is how the story was first described in Astounding:
The World Is Mine by Lewis Padgett — Gallegher, the mad — or at least cockeyed — scientist, got himself in real trouble that time. Corpses — several of them, but all, unpleasantly, his own —kept haunting him. And the Martians he'd accidently brought up out of Time kept insisting, somewhat plaintively, the world was theirs.
During the story our soused hero invents two historically important devices thanks to the knowledgeable little aliens—a heat ray gun and a “mental hookup.” According to the dull-witted Lybblas, the latter was invented by a man named Gallegher a long time ago (from their perspective.)
Grandpa starts out as a savvy hillbilly but in the end saves Gallegher’s bacon with a smart plan. The character of Grandpa adds a nice counterpoint to Gallegher, as he can fill his grandson in on what’s happened when he’s drunk and his subconscious takes over.
As for the Lybblas— those silly, roly-poly creatures who insist at every turn that the world is theirs—eventually they do conquer the Earth, in a way. And they do it with cookie crumbs on their whiskers. After that, Gallegher sends them home to Mars with exciting stories to tell their rabbity-friends.
As with all of the Gallagher tales, “The World is Mine” is delightfully fun. Kuttner and Moore’s stories are fast-paced and many are quite funny. The Lybblas might only be a plot device to get some knowledge into Gallegher’s head but they sure are cutest Martians I’ve ever read about.
Motto: If you have alien visitors it pays to have milk and cookies handy.
This is the Rocketeer signing off for today.