The Gods Hate Kansas Inspired "The Inheritors'

I was writing an article on meteorites for my Girl Scientist blog, and using as a resource once of Isaac Asimov's essays in which he mentions that in the 1930s, when people first starting finding a "disproportionate" number of stony meteorites in Kansas, and they thought that "God hated Kansas." Someone actually wrote a novel, which appeared in a 1941 issue of Startling Stories.

Here's the plot of the novella:

THE GODS HATE KANSAS by Joseph Millard
INVASION FROM THE STARS

It began with the landing of nine meteors in Kansas. Then, suddenly, it exploded into a massive catastrophe.

First, the meteorite investigating team were turned into automatons, ruled by an unknown, alien intelligence. They barricaded themselves
from the world and began building a rocket project, aimed at traversing the stars.

Then the Crimson Plague struck, sweeping over Earth’s population, destroying human capacities and defying scientific probing.

Only a few escaped the invasion from outer space, among them astrophysicist Curt Temple, whose girlfriend, Lee Mason, was enslaved, her personality changed.

Curt knew he had to pit his slim knowledge against the most perfect intelligence in the cosmos to save the world – and the woman he loved.

Doesn't that first part sound like "The Inheritors" - the two part episode from The Outer Limits, starring Steve Ihnat as Lt. Minns and Robert Duvall as Mr. Ballard?


(You can see the complete episode at YouTube, or better yet, purchase the complete Outer Limits set from Amazon, via the links on this page!)