Robert Silverberg's Cosmic Kill

Robert Silverberg wrote Cosmic Kill for the April 1957 issue of the pulp magazine Amazing Stories. He had been given two days to write the novella and with the aid of handfuls of benzedrine tablets he made the deadline.

Lon Archman has been given a top-secret (and entirely illegal) mission by Earth’s Universal Intelligence Agency. He has to kill Darrien. Darrien is a brilliant renegade Earth scientist who has created a vast and powerful criminal empire on Mars.

In a seedy space bar on Mars Lon sees an opportunity. A blue-shelled Mercurian has just bought a beautiful near-naked human slave girl from two drunken black-tailed Venusians. The Mercurian, named Hendrin, intends to offer the girl as a gift to Darrien. Hendrin has his own sinister reasons to wanting to get close to Darrien and the slave girl, Elissa, is the means by which he intends to achieve that objective. Lon Archman quickly forms a plan by which he will use the girl to achieve his objective. He also hopes he’ll eventually be able to free her. Lon doesn’t like seeing Earth girls sold as slaves.

Getting into Darrien’s palace is just the first step. Even if he finds himself in Darrien’s presence he can’t be sure it will really be Darrien. The renegade scientist has created three robots in his own image. There is no way to tell the real Darrien from the robots. The only person who can do that is Darrien’s mistress Meryola.

Meryola isn’t too happy about Darrien’s pretty new slave girl. Meryola is a very jealous woman. She has already decided to have Elissa executed, on the grounds that the girl is just too pretty. Meryola does not tolerate rivals. Both Lon Archman and Hendrin have devised plans in which both Meryola and Elissa will play parts, not necessarily willingly and not necessarily with any understanding of the ways in which they will be manipulated.

Lon Archman and Hendrin might be able to work together but they cannot trust each other. Hendrin has his own agenda. He is working for the ruler of Mercury who wants Darrien’s scientific secrets. Once those secrets have been obtained he wants Darrien dead.

Neither of then can trust Meryola.

Lon, Hendrin and Elissa all find themselves in Darrien’s dungeon. Plenty of narrow escapes and mayhem follow. And lots of temporary alliances are formed, all practically certain to lead to double-crosses.

Lon Archman is a ruthless hero. He is an assassin and he’s not overly worried about leaving a trail of corpses in his wake. He really does hope to save Elissa but saving himself will be difficult enough. Assassinating Darrien is the priority and the Universal Intelligence Agency doesn’t care what he has to do to achieve that and they don’t care if he comes back alive. You might think that the Universal Intelligence Agency sounds a little bit like the Central Intelligence Agency, and you’d probably be right.

Armchair Fiction have published Cosmic Kill in one of their two-novel paperback editions, paired with John W. Campbell’s Beyond the End of Space. Silverberg provides a brief introduction to Cosmic Kill. He has a very refreshing attitude towards his early work. In the late 50s and early 60s his output was enormous. He wrote sleaze fiction, crime and men’s adventure fiction as well as pulp science fiction, all churned out at breakneck pace. He thoroughly enjoyed that early part of his career, he’s quite unembarrassed by those early stories and in fact has a certain fondness for them. He considers Cosmic Kill to be pulpy fun and he’s right.

As he explains in his introduction by 1957 everybody knew that the idea that the other planets in the solar system were inhabited was scientific nonsense but Cosmic Kill was supposed to be a sequel of sorts to a 1951 novella by Paul W. Fairman and that novella included Martian, Mercurians, Venusians and Plutonians so Cosmic Kill had to have those things as well.

Cosmic Kill is an enjoyable little science fiction action potboiler. It’s very pulpy but it’s supposed to be. Silverberg knew what his editor wanted - fast-paced action with lots of exotic aliens and robots plus naked slave girls. That’s what Silverberg provides and he does it with plenty of energy and the results are satisfying. Recommended.