Beyond the Stratosphere

Beyond the Stratosphere is a 1936 pulp science fiction novel by William Lemke. At least that’s how he was credited on the cover of Amazing Stories for June 1936, which is where the novel was originally published. Inside however there’s an illustration of the author and his name is given William Lemkin, Ph.D. Either way he’s a very obscure author.

The narrator is stratosphere pilot Earl Norton. He and his buddy, rocket engineer Bob Hart, work for Stratosphere Transport Inc. That’s the company that operates the great stratosphere rockets that carry passengers to any destination on Earth at speeds up to a thousand miles an hour.

The company has been experimenting with really high altitude rockets, rockets that will fly well above the stratosphere. The trouble is that every time they launch an unmanned rocket to an altitude greater than 115 miles the rocket just disappears. This has now happened six times.

Bob thinks the answer is to send a manned rocket to find out just what the heck is going on. Earl thinks that’s a fairly dumb idea but he allows himself to be talked into piloting the rocket. And Stratosphere Transport Inc allows itself to be talked into giving the project the go-ahead.

You have to remember that in 1936 nobody actually knew, from personal experience, what happened when you reached outer space. Scientists may have thought they knew but knowing something theoretically is not the same as knowing it because you’ve actually done it. Was space travel actually possible? Could people live in outer space? Could people live in zero gravity and in zero atmospheric pressure in the long term? What would actually happen if we left the Earthy’s atmosphere? In 1936 nobody knew the answers with one hundred percent certainty.

The premise of this novel seems today to be totally nuts but in 1936 it was simply at the furthest edges of wild speculation about the unknown.

Earl and Bob reach an altitude of 133 miles before they hit the wall. They literally hit a wall. They burst through the wall and find themselves in a bizarre world. The Earth’s atmosphere is encased in a kind of gigantic eggshell, an eggshell made of material with very peculiar properties. We on Earth do not realise we are surrounded by this eggshell because it is invisible from Earth.

Earl and Bob are surprised, to say the least. To find that at an altitude of 133 miles they can open the hatch to their rocketship and go for a walk. They have to wear their spacesuits. There’s no atmosphere. But there’s gravity. There’s a solid surface on which to walk.

And there are living creatures. As you would expect these creatures are very alien and very strange. Are they hostile or friendly? That’s hard to say, because they’re so very alien. They certainly have their own agenda, but that does not make them hostile. But there are certain peculiar rules that these strange little cubical creatures expect everyone to obey.

The problem for Earl and Bob is how to get back to Earth, and it really is a problem. Their rocketship is badly damaged. They have limited fuel. They have food and oxygen but their supplies of these necessities are by no means unlimited. The damage to their ship is actually the least of their problems. They are now separated from the Earth by that eggshell. They cannot contact Earth. They have no idea how thick the eggshell is, or whether it would be possible to make an opening, or what would happen if they tried to make an opening in the shell.

It’s a very pulpy novel and yes, it’s all pretty silly. But it’s silly in an original and imaginative way. And the aliens are genuinely alien - they are most definitely not just humanoid creatures with funny shaped ears. Everything about them is weird and bizarre. Their entire physiology and psychology is totally non-human.

Beyond the Stratosphere is worth checking out just for its sheer oddness.

Armchair Fiction have issued it in one of their two-novel paperback editions, paired with Henry Kuttner’s excellent Crypt-City of the Deathless One.