P. Schuyler Miller: "The Red Plague," "Dust of Destruction," and "'The Man from Mars'"

In our last episode, one full of car wrecks, Hollywood-bashing and dangerous women, we read a good story by the Hugo- and Locus-Award winning P. Schuyler Miller, and thought it good enough that further exploration of the Miller body of work was warranted. Let's start in Miller's early days with stories he saw printed in Hugo Gernsback's Prophetic Magazine of Mystery, Adventure and Romance, Wonder Stories, in the dawn of that periodical's existence.(In response to public demand, embedded in the first para of each section below are links to a scan of the early-1930s magazine in which I will be reading the story under discussion so that you can experience the mass destruction, pioneering space journeys and curious social commentary the stories provide with trivial ease.)"The Red Plague" (1930)The July 1930 issue of Wonder Stories was only the second issue of the magazine to appear under that title--the magazine was a merger of Air Wonder Stories and Science Wonder Stories, periodicals…