Hellflower
Reviewed date: 2025 Jul 8
Rating: 1
160 pages
Bizarro Lensman
This is my first George O. Smith book, and it's absolutely wild. It feels like a bizarro Lensman story. We have a shadowy drug-smuggling operation that turns out to be an enemy invasion, which mirrors the space pirates and drug smugglers that were the tip of the Boskonian spear in the Lensman series. But instead of incorruptible Lensmen serving the honorable Galactic Patrol, we've got a SAND agent giving a forged license to a disgraced pilot and telling him to go smuggle hellflowers.
It doesn't work for me.
Charles Farradyne
Charles Farradyne is toiling away in the fungus fields of Venus when Howard Clevis, agent of the Solar Anti-Narcotics Department (SAND), approaches him about a job. The job is to infiltrate a hellflower smuggling ring so that SAND can take out the whole operation. Farradyne is just the guy to do it: he's a disgraced pilot who crashed the Semiramide four years ago. Clevis will set Farradyne up with his own spaceship and a forged pilot's license. In return, Farradyne will take any transport jobs he can get around the solar system, and keep a particular eye out for any hellflower smuggling opportunities. When those arise, he will work his way into the gang, then tip off SAND who will swoop in and clean up the operation
Semiramide?
This is revealed in bits and pieces, but Farradyne was the piloting the Semiramide when he was interrupted during the crucial landing phase. As a result, he crashed the spaceship into the bog, killing almost everybody on board. Farradyne testified that there were other people on the control deck, who distracted him and caused the accident, but this was never proven. He lost his license.
Hellflowers
The hellflower, also known as the love lotus. It's indistinguishable from a gardenia, but its fragrance is a powerful drug that affects women. Only women, it seems. It's called the love lotus because its primary effect is to cause a woman to fall madly in love with whoever is nearby. It's also called the hellflower because its addictive effects can leave a woman strung out. They are highly illegal but apparently relatively easy to procure. SAND has been unable to determine where they come from.
Norma Hannon and Michael Cahill
Clevis sets Farradyne up in his own Lancaster model spaceship. Farradyne is flying high: all he ever wanted in life was to be a pilot, and he's back in the game. At the first space bar he stops into he manages to pick up Norma Hannon. She's strung out on love lotuses, and what's worse, she has a grudge against Farradyne: her brother died on the Semiramide. Norma has been burned out by long-term hellflower usage, and all that's left in her is hatred, which she directs at Farradyne. She doesn't try to kill him; rather, she boards his Lancaster and refuses to leave. She intends to make him suffer by her presence. Also she thinks he's a love lotus smuggler and demands that he give her some, as her supply has run out. These hellflowers are bad stuff.
Farradyne also picks up another passenger who may actually be connected with the hellflower operation: Michael Cahill. Farradyne thinks Cahill will be his ticket into the operation. Unfortunately, during the voyage, Cahill makes a move on Norma, and she kills him. Farradyne sends the body out the airlock. As Cahill was never an official passenger, he gets away with it—for now.
Planet X
Farradyne does eventually make it into the hellflower smuggling operation, through meeting Carolyn Niles, a young woman whose family is in the business. But little inconsistencies keep Farradyne thinking, and eventually he catches onto the bigger story: the hellflower operation is not just drug smuggling, it's an alien invasion. Carolyn and her family are not human, they are the vanguard of an alien military operation to invade and conquer Earth. The hellflowers are a great way to weaken Earth from within. Yikes.
Farradyne hides himself on his Lancaster and lets it be captured by one of the alien spaceships, who take it back to their Planet X. Farradyne snoops around, figures out the whole scheme, and takes off back to Earth.
It's a close-run thing, with the enemy spaceships hot on his tail, and enemy operatives in Earth's military and governments trying to silence Farradyne, but he gets the word out. Crisis averted.