Puzzle of the Space Pyramids is a fix-up

Fix-up

A fix-up is a novel created from short stories that may or may not have been initially related or previously published. The stories may be edited for consistency, and sometimes new connecting material—such as a frame story—is written for the new novel. The term was coined by the science fiction...

 science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

 novel by Eando Binder

Eando Binder

Eando Binder is a pen-name used by two mid-20th-century science fiction authors, Earl Andrew Binder and his brother Otto Binder . The name is derived from their first initials ....

. It tells the story of several successive space expeditions to Mars

Mars

Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun in the Solar System. The planet is named after the Roman god of war, Mars. It is often described as the "Red Planet", as the iron oxide prevalent on its surface gives it a reddish appearance...

, Venus

Venus

Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...

, Mercury

Mercury (planet)

Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 87.969 Earth days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt. It completes three rotations about its axis for every two orbits...

 and Jupiter

Jupiter

Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest planet within the Solar System. It is a gas giant with mass one-thousandth that of the Sun but is two and a half times the mass of all the other planets in our Solar System combined. Jupiter is classified as a gas giant along with Saturn,...

. As each planet is found to harbor various (usually hostile) alien

Extraterrestrial life

Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...

 life, each expedition must survive both the elements and the attacks by the natives. The continuing thread through the expeditions is the discovery of an ancient pyramid

Pyramid

A pyramid is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge at a single point. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilateral, or any polygon shape, meaning that a pyramid has at least three triangular surfaces...

on each planet they explore. These puzzling pyramids were apparently built by an unknown primeval civilization far older than and unrelated to the current inhabitants. When a final pyramid is found on Jupiter, its existence may point the way to their builder's secret.

The novel is a fix-up novel taken from stories published in Thrilling Wonder Stories.

• Via Etherline [as by Gordon A. Giles; Via] Thrilling Wonder Stories Oct ’37; [ch. 1-2]
• Via Asteroid [as by Gordon A. Giles; Via] Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb ’38; [ch. 3-4]
• Via Death [as by Gordon A. Giles; Via] Thrilling Wonder Stories Aug ’38; [ch. 5-6]
• Via Venus [as by Gordon A. Giles; Via] Thrilling Wonder Stories Oct ’39; [ch. 7-8]
• Via Pyramid [as by Gordon A. Giles; Via] Thrilling Wonder Stories Jan ’40; [ch. 9-11]
• Via Sun [as by Gordon A. Giles; Via] Thrilling Wonder Stories Mar ’40; [ch. 12-13]
• Via Mercury [as by Gordon A. Giles; Via] Thrilling Wonder Stories Oct ’40; [ch. 14-16]
• Via Catacombs [as by Gordon A. Giles; Via] Thrilling Wonder Stories Nov ’40; [ch. 17-19]
• Via Intelligence [as by Gordon A. Giles; Via] Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec ’40; [ch. 20-22]
• Via Jupiter [Via] Thrilling Wonder Stories Feb ’42; [ch. 23-33]