Recently I've been thinking about checking out some of Hamilton's sci-fi stories. I was wondering if anyone was particularly familiar with his work, and could make any recommendations. I guess that one of things I'm interested in is whether there is anything that seems "relevant" to his Legion stories, maybe due to similar plots or sci-fi elements or something. I guess that more generally I'm just intrigued by the fact that the most important early Legion writer was also one of the pioneers of the sci-fi genre.
[ March 08, 2006, 07:35 AM: Message edited by: Eryk Davis Ester ]
Posted by Yellow Kid on :
I sort of remember reading some of Hamilton's works when I was a teen but it's been So long since then.. ..
I did enjoy the read though, I think it was something called 'the Rimworlds' a series (though not a lot of them) set in a "tramp freighter" that limped along from star to star making a little money and getting mixed up in local problems. Character driven stuff, if I remember correctly.
I guess his idea of aliens and human colonies on other worlds might be applicable to his Legion run. More philosophically than anything, I suppose, I don't recall any specific races or situations that I thought were Legion-esque.
Posted by Glen Cadigan on :
A really good sampler for Edmond Hamilton's work is The Best of Edmond Hamilton, which, like other Hamilton books, can be found in used book stores if you're lucky. I paid ninety cents for my copy, and I'd never part with it! 381 pages of small type, all chock full of good stuff. Easily the best penny-per-page purchase which I've ever made.
Hamilton also wrote the Captain Future series of pulps for Mort Weisinger, and his Intersteller Patrol stories were much enjoyed by a young science-fiction fan in Cleveland by the name of Jerry Siegel, who wrote Hamilton fan letters about them. Pretty ironic when you consider that the two used to alternate on the Legion years later! Both are super-heroic enough to appeal to Legion fans.
As far as "relevant" goes, in 1927 Hamilton wrote a four-part story called "The Time Raider" about a character very much like The Time Trapper. In his own words, he described it as "... a wowser. The Raider of the title was a mysterious entity of mind and force that could travel into the past and future, and could drag people along with him from other ages. Intent upon a total conquest of Earth, the Raider brought thousands of fighting men from past ages and penned them up, until he needed them, in a vast underground pit. The story really had five heroes instead of one... at the climax of this tale, the five friends, by dint of heroic swordsmanship, held a stair that was the only exit from the pit, preventing the ravening hordes of the past from surging out to attack all Earth. There, I tell you, was a fight!"
Unfortunately, as far as I've been able to determine, the story has never been reprinted. It originally ran in Weird Tales from Oct. 1927 - Jan. 1928, and would certainly be in the public domain by now. (You can see the covers here.) Hamilton died without an heir (actually, he died before his wife, Leigh Brackett, who wrote the screenplay for The Empire Strikes Back, and she died without a known heir), so his stories don't really get reprinted anymore. Your best bet to find Hamilton's work is either online via eBay or a used book seller, or offline at a used book store or library. Any decent library is actually a pretty decent bet, especially if we're talking about hardcovers.
[ March 08, 2006, 07:59 PM: Message edited by: Glen Cadigan ]
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Thanks, Glen. "The Time Raider" sounds like the kind of thing I was looking for.
One thing I've found already just reading about his work on the web is that at least one of his novels features a familiar-sounding villain called "Zarth Arn". Not sure if he's an android, though.
Posted by Glen Cadigan on :
Son of a gun! I just found a used copy of The Best of Edmond Hamilton over at amazon.com for seventy cents! And there's a review of it by Greybird, too!
Posted by LaurelGand on :
Ed was one of my favorite authors long before I realized his Legion connection. Here is a page with reviews of some of his work
UPDATE: I've ordered a copy of the Best of Hamilton, and picked up City at World's End from the library to read this weekend!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
And I just read City at World's End! This groovy story features ordinary twentieth century Americans flung a million years to a barren dead Earth, like where people in the Legion used to imprison space criminals! And it's got a blonde, man-stealing hussy of the future in a position of authority!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
My copy of "The Best of..." just arrived!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"The Man Who Evolved" is a cool tale of a scientist who uses cosmic rays to mutate himself into various forms that the descendants of human beings will take far in the future!
It turns out that we will one day all be large craniumed bald people! And then later than that we will all be bodiless brains!
Posted by Glen Cadigan on :
How did you like "The Monster-God of Mamurth"?
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
I generally find the idea of giant spiders or insects to be one of the most frightening concepts in science fiction. And what's more frightening than that? Giant invisible spiders!
I liked the story, but it kind of felt like it should be the setup to a longer story (with people going back to explore Mamurth after the archeologist's death).
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Jillikers! I just read some more of this!
"Thundering Worlds" features the people of far future Earth moving the planets of our solar system to another sun, Brain Globes of Rambat style!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"The Seeds from Outside" features plant people from another world sending their seeds to Earth!
Fortunately they manage to defeat themselves, because there's no Substitute Heroes around to stop them!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Mental note: Must get back to reading this.
In the meantime, every else should check out the extremely cool The Man Who Evolved! Posted by Fat Cramer on :
Why, Pollard, you old oyster - or something.
Looks like Sketchy was onto some early Hamilton when he drew this:
Posted by Chemical King on :
In Germany, Hamilton is most famous for his Captain Future series which was made into a groovy cartoon in the late 70s. This japanese cartoon was translated into German, given a whole new soundtrack which still sounds great today (and is sometimes even played in Clubs nearly 30 years later).
Kind of a "cult hit" for every boy growing up back then. Captain Futures adventures were a must-see - and nearly every 30 something can relate to it when you bring up the topic... so yes, Edmond Hamilton was one of the big ones! Try to get some of the original novels - they are kind of cool too!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
That's pretty cool. I knew about the Captain Future cartoon but wasn't really sure how popular it had been.
Posted by Dain on :
The novels are great! It's like reading comics in book form. The stories are reminiscent of Mystery in Space or Strange Adventures.
Some of his earlier novels are definitely passe now and may be a little silly (entire fleets of spaceships hurtling suns or comets against each other like playing a cosmic softball game) but they are enchanting nonetheless!
Posted by Portfolio Boy on :
quote:Originally posted by Eryk Davis Ester: Recently I've been thinking about checking out some of Hamilton's sci-fi stories. I guess that one of things I'm interested in is whether there is anything that seems "relevant" to his Legion stories, maybe due to similar plots or sci-fi elements or something.
Ranging somewhat off Hamilton, but delving on to sci-fi antecedents of the Legion, I have seen an old Buck Rogers comic strip in which Buck and crew find their way blocked by a super-hard indestructable wall made of inertron.
I never did find out when the strip was originally published, but I suspect it was in the 1930s. Hamilton never wrote Buck, but his most celbrated creation, from the 1940s, is a similar character called Captain Future.
If you are going to research Hamilton, it might not be a bad idea to also look into the works of his wife, Leigh Brackett, who is largely credited with improving the overall quality of Hamilton's work after their nuptules.
You can probably score copies of the old Pulp magazine, Weird Tales, for not a lot of money on ebay. Hamilton wrote 79 stories for the mag between 1926 and 1948. That's probably the best place to find concepts later recycled for comics, considering Unca Mort's pencahnt for recycling ideas that, in theory, predated the average age of his readership. I would not be surprised to find that Hamilton canabalized many of his old pulp works. Probably less likely to find similar reuse in novels and short stories from collections that might have remained in print.
That said, Hamilton's "Superman under the Red Sun," from Action Comics #300 (1963) has been indentified as sharing many common elements with his 1951 novel, City At World's End. The character Chris KL-99, who appeared in Strange Adventures is said to have been based on Captain Future.
For his sci-fi pulp writing, the best souce is probably Wonder Stories, especially from the 1930s. Again, the pulps are cheap enough on ebay, mostly becasue pulp collectors have fastidiously resisted the publication of any kind of price guide for their hobby, for fear of Overstreet type impacts on their wallets.
His 1947 novel The Star Kings is said to be typical of his space opera stuff, although I've never read it.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
One of the cool things is Hamilton's ability to write widely different types of stories. This is exemplified by two stories I read this afternoon.
"Easy Money" is a comedy about about a former prizefighter who volunteers for a scientific experiment which teleports him to a faraway planet, which he thinks is Egypt. It features a gorilla with a mind-control helmet!
"He That Hath Wings" is a rather tragic tale about a mutant born with wings and the power of flight. Things are pretty cool until he falls in love with a woman who wants him to give up his wings in order to marry her. It's actually pretty heartbreaking.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Just noticed this groovy collection!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Check out the publisher, Haffner Press, who have already published three volumes of Hamilton's stuff, plus who are reprinting tons of other classic sci fi writers works!
Posted by Fat Cramer on :
Killing time in a bookstore the other day, I found a scrappy old paperback edition of The City at World's End - and, inspired by this thread, bought it.
A few Legion-y connections: a character named Lal'lor and the highly competent female Administrator, described as "an ice-cold blond".
The science was pretty dated - 1951 - but the question of whether humans are innately explorers of the new or clinging to the familiar old way of life was pretty interesting. The protagonist's girlfriend blames technology for all their problems; it struck me as unusual for someone to be questioning science back in the 50s. Unfortunately, Hamilton didn't explore that idea much; it was just an aspect of the girlfriend's old thinking.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
My review of "City at World's End". I can't believe I missed the Lallor connection!
quote:Originally posted by Eryk Davis Ester: And I just read City at World's End! This groovy story features ordinary twentieth century Americans flung a million years to a barren dead Earth, like where people in the Legion used to imprison space criminals! And it's got a blonde, man-stealing hussy of the future in a position of authority!
Posted by Fat Cramer on :
That Lal'lor character only appeared two or three times, and didn't really do anything.
I'd really like to read that Interstellar Patrol collection, since that sounds like an early Legion.
There are a few audio versions of Hamilton stories at Librivox.
Posted by Blue Tyson on :
Interstellar Patrol not really like the legion, but you can have a look at Baen webscriptions for a taste.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
quote:Originally posted by Eryk Davis Ester: Just noticed this groovy collection!
Two years later, I've finally ordered the first Hamilton collection!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Re-read "The Monster God of Mamurth", which still seems to me like the setup for a much longer story.
Currently reading "Across Space", which features scientists racing to Easter Island to find a way to stop Mars, which has left its orbit and is on a collision course with Earth!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"The Metal Giants" totally reads like an early version of "Computo the Conqueror!"
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"The Atomic Conquerors" is apparently one of the earliest stories about the inhabitants of microscopic universe invading our world!
You know, the more I think about it, the more I'm shocked that something like that wasn't used for Shrinking Violet's origin.
Posted by googoomuck on :
A lot of Edmond Hamilton's books were reprinted in paperback in the 50s & 60s. City at World's End was one of the first SF books I ever read.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Cool things from Evolution Island: Plant Men, futuristic humanoids that are giant heads with tentacles, and lots of stuff (including a chicken) turned to protoplasmic slime!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"The Moon Menace" features a scientist perfecting the amazing new technology of television, only to discover messages being broadcast from people from the Hollow Inside of the Moon, who, after teaching him how to build a matter transmitter so they can come to Earth, quickly proceed to plunge the entire planet into darkness (since they can't survive in direct sunlight) and to conquer it for themselves!
While the basic idea of beings who live in near complete darkness broadcasting tv signals seems implausible at best, the coolest bit of this story was the description of the effects of the plunge into total darkness upon human civilization (which apparently collapses pretty quickly once we can't see).
Posted by Dev - Em on :
You've inspired me. Since I have no money right now, I just grabbed the free books for my Kindle. I'll report back after reading.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Yay! I hadn't even thought about looking for free Hamilton stuff for the Kindle. Hope you enjoy!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Currently reading "The Time Raider", mentioned by Glen back on page one of the thread. Only four chapters in, and my impression thus far is that the Time Trapper can only wish that he'd ever had a story this cool.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
So, the Time Raider is more of a Lovecraftian monster than anything recognizably a precursor to the Time Trapper (though it now occurs to me a Lovecraftian take on the purple-robed one might be interesting...), but the story is pretty much awesome! It's one of those things you read and thing, "Man, how has this never been made into a movie"! It's got science fiction, fantasy, swash-buckling with characters from a bunch of different time periods thrown in, it's just incredibly cool!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"The Comet Doom" features a race that's evolved into brains in robot bodies trying to steal our planet for it's resources after depleting their own. Their plot involves changing the orbit of Earth, Brain Globes of Rambat style, until it revolves around their comet homeworld!
Also features two scientists on a Brokeback Mountain-style "camping trip"!
[ January 07, 2012, 05:55 PM: Message edited by: Eryk Davis Ester ]
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"And in the same way, granted the existence of a fifth dimension, two worlds might occupy the same space, four-dimensionally, but lie at different places along the fifth dimension; lie next to each other along that dimension-- two worlds, both occupying the same space at the same time, but each separated from the other by the unknown fifth dimension, if that dimension exists."
Jeepers! I find this "The Dimension Terror" story really confusing! I wish there were some sort of Crisis or something that would straighten it all out!
Anyway, apparently the fifth dimension is inhabited by beetle-men, who want to invade our planet because they're overcrowded in their own dimension. And they've mastered transmutation enough so that they can destroy our civilization by turning all the iron to hydrogen!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
In "The Polar Doom" scientists exploring ruins near the North Pole inadvertently revive prehistoric Frog-men from suspended animation! The Frogmen then proceed to wipe out humanity with their matter-compressor rays!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
^^Forgot to mention the coolest scientist name yet: Angus McQuirk!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
An ancient civilization of slug-people at the bottom of the ocean threaten to flood the surface world in "The Sea-Horror"! Fortunately the plot is uncovered by a scientific expedition that just happens to stumble on the civilization right before they unleash their plans!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Okay, so the premise of "Locked Worlds" is that for each atom in our universe, there is another atom whose electrons circle the nucleus in the opposite direction, thus "locking" the two atoms together by their common nucleus. Then there's a whole reality formed by these atoms, invisible to us, but connected to our world. By reversing the flow of the electrons that make us up, we can change places with the equivalent lump of matter in the other world. And meet the evil spider-people who live there and the heroic bird-people.
Even though I'm pretty sure the pseudo-science doesn't hold up if you think about it too much, it's kind of a fun story.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
And the last story pf the collection is "The Abysmal Invaders". This time, we have prehistoric lizard men who ride dinosaurs and are armed with heat rays who try to destroy humanity when their own underground home is threatened by lava. Fortunately, there's a heroic scientist on the scene at the Illinois swamp where the entrance to their underground kingdom is located!
Summary review to follow tomorrow!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Summary Review of The Metal Giants and Other Stories!
Okay, so let's begin with the fact that the stories in this volume are incredibly formulaic. Most of them follow pretty much the same basic pattern. The narration begins by talking about the great cataclysm that almost destroyed humanity, and that the story will be reconstructed as well as possible. There's pretty much always a scientist who is exploring some unknown field/area. Often the scientist mysteriously vanishes. There's usually a young assistant or colleague of the scientist, who either goes looking for them or at least becomes the POV character until they show up again. Mysterious destruction begins to rain down on civilization. Then the cause of the destruction is revealed, usually by the scientist who often is responsible for it in the first place. Then there's a desperate attempt to defeat the invaders who are usually the cause of the destruction. Often, at the last minute the scientist sacrifices himself in order to stop the invasion (getting shot as he pulls the switch that destroys the invasion force, for example). The young assistant is often left alone as the only source for the tale.
Vary it by changing the exact nature of the threat and the exact details of the plot structure, and you get almost every story in the volume, the notable exceptions being the "Monster God of Mamurth" and "The Time Raider". Interestingly, "Locked Worlds" combines the standard pattern with some of the plot elements of "The Time Raider".
The characters are pretty much stock, and largely interchangeable from one story to the next. I don't believe there's a single named female character in the volume. The variety of tales that I praised in the "Best of Edmund Hamilton" is pretty much absent here.
Having said all that, the stories are quite a bit of fun, and it's pretty interesting seeing what zany idea Hamilton will come up with to put the entire world in danger next! And his descriptions of humanity facing destructive forces which they can't understand are often pretty powerful. I'd have to pick "The Time Raider" as easily the strongest story of the lot, however, and I'm hoping future volumes will quickly get to more stories that break the pattern established in these early tales. I'm assuming that since the next volume features The Interstellar Patrol, it will pretty have to.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Volume Two is currently in my hands!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"Crashing Suns" takes place in a time in which Earth has colonized the solar system, but not yet moved beyond the orbit of the sun. Fortunately, the tech needed for interstellar travel is invented just in time for Jan Tor* of the Interplanetary Patrol to investigate the strange phenomenon of a sun that has changed direction until it is on a collision course with our own! You can bet there's creepy aliens behind it!
Random cool outdated scientific concept: Ether Holes! Strange holes in the fabric of the ether permeating space in which light can't pass!
*Legion fans will note the similarity of the name to Jan Jor, aka False Pretences Lad!
[ January 23, 2012, 07:45 PM: Message edited by: Eryk Davis Ester ]
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"The Star Stealers" features the threat of a giant "dark star" that's traveled across the space between galaxies and whose course threatens to take it close enough to our sun to "kidnap" it with it's greater gravitational force. To deal with the emergency, Earth calls home Starship Captain Ran Rarak of the Interstellar Patrol, where he has been hanging out with the diverse members of the Federation of Stars, such as the strange brain-men of Algol and the bird-men of Sirius. Anyway, he has to go investigate the dark star and to figure out what to do about it.
This story also features the introduction of a bizarre new thing in Hamilton stories, a named female character! Dal Nara, the second-in-command of the Starship, is totally a woman! Well, apparently she was a man until the editor changed her sex in order for "cover design purposes", basically so they could put a "damsel-in-distress" on the cover. The result, however, is that she's written basically the same as a man, up until the end of the story, where we discover that she "after the manner of her sex throughout the ages, sought a beauty parlor" after returning from the mission!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
So, in the far-flung future of the Federation of Suns, one of the greatest dangers in space are nebulae, such as the Orion Nebula! Nebulae are basically vast regions of intense fire in space, hotter than most suns, and ship lanes have to be routed to avoid them. Well, in "Within the Nebula" the Orion Nebula starts spinning wildly, threatening to break up and release its super-heated flame in random bursts throughout the galaxy, potentially destroying all planets and solar systems in their paths!
And so the Interstellar Patrol sends Sar Than (a bulbous tentacled man from Arcturus), Jor Dahat (a plant-man from Capella), and Ker Kal (a human from Earth) in an experimental starship that can withstand great heat to investigate. Soon they discover by accident that the Nebula is in fact hollow and that there is a whole universe (well, at least a planet) inside the nebula!
And who should live on this planet but creepy protean blobs who change their shape in order to communicate!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
So, "Outside the Universe" features our galaxy under attack by weird serpent beings from another galaxy! The fleets of the Interstellar Patrol fall before the might of the invader. The only hope lies in human captain Dur Nal and his two lieutenants: Korus Kan of Antares, whose metal flesh guards his internal organs and prevents him from needing rest, and Jhul Din of Spica, whose large Crustacean body is quite imposing. These three and their crew must travel in a stolen serpent-ship to the Andromeda galaxy to seek the aid of its inhabitants, who have already beaten the serpent-folks once, before the invaders can complete their super-weapon, which will ultimately allow them to dominate all three galaxies!
Coolest bit in this story: the serpents have this creepy "museum of the living dead" in which they keep specimens of vanquished races in a kind of conscious suspended animation!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
In "The Comet Drivers", our galaxy is once again threatened by a danger from outside! This time it is in the form of a giant comet headed straight towards our galaxy, big enough to seriously disrupt the gravitational balance of the galactic system. It turns out that this comet actually houses a whole solar system of strange disc-worlds orbiting its nucleus and protected by its coma, on which weird liquid-beings live and intentionally drive their comet-system into other galaxy to absorb the energy of their suns. It's up to the chief of the interstellar patrol with his three sub-chiefs, Gor Han (a giant, shaggy eight-limbed creature from Betelgeuse), Jurt Tul (an amphibian-man from Aldeberan), and Najus Nar (one of the insect-men of Procyon), to find some way of diverting the comet from it's immanent course of destruction! And not all of them will survive!
Cool bit in the story: I'm guessing the scene where all of the liquid-creatures unite into one single being to share their thoughts as well as to rest is probably the first of its kind.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
In "The Sun-People", we find the Council of Suns, governing body of the Federation of Suns, meeting in desperation. It turns out that some strange force is negating the gravitational pull that attracts the stars together and binds them into our galaxy. Already, solar systems have begun drifting away from the galaxy, and soon they will begin to fly off into outer space. It has been discovered that the source of the problem are strange vibrations coming from within Canopus, the giant star around which the capital world of the Federation floats and which is located near the center of the galaxy. And so the Interstellar Patrol has put together a new ship that is capable of entering Canopus to investigate. And so Nort Norus, human Chairman of the Council of Suns, J'Han Jal, birdlike Sirian Chief of the Interstellar Patrol, and Mirk En, Chief of the Science Bureau, together lead the mission into Canopus.
There they find that, surprisingly, the star is in fact hollow, and there's a whole solar system inside the sun! And there they find a race of cube-people who are desperately trying to save themselves from the destruction caused by the fact that the gravitational force of the other stars in the galaxy has been slowly pulling their worlds outward into the sun. Thus their attempts to neutralize this gravitational force.
And, of course, our heroes set about destroying the mechanism whereby this force is being projected, thus keeping the stars of the galaxy together and projecting a message of peace and unity of a variety of different species coming together to work for the common good, even if they have to commit genocide to achieve it!
Cool bit in the story: I actually really liked the cool vacuum sheath method of protecting them from the sun. And the generator that projects vibrations to neutralize heat is totally reminiscent of early explanations of Polar Boy's power!
Posted by Set on :
I have to get my hands on these stories, they sound amazingly cool!
quote:Cool bit in the story: I'm guessing the scene where all of the liquid-creatures unite into one single being to share their thoughts as well as to rest is probably the first of its kind.
How many decades was this before Deep Space Nine did the same thing with it's Changeling Founders and their 'great link?' Way, way cool!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
These stories were published around 1929-1930, so that's, like, 65-70 years before DS9?
Whatever weaknesses Hamilton has as a writer at this point in his career, these stories are incredibly fascinating from the point of view of how much stuff he must be inventing practically from scratch. This has to be one of the first, if not the first, continuing sci-fi universe, so it really is the ancestor of Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. According to the Introduction, Hamilton was the first to introduce the idea of a space suit, which seems like such a fundamental concept that I wouldn't have even thought about it being something new if it weren't pointed out.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
So, in the hundreds of thousands of years of space travel, no one who has ever entered "The Cosmic Cloud" at the center of the galaxy has ever returned from it. In fact, some years before this story opens, famed Denebian Bat-scientist Zat Zanat had tried to explore the cloud, but had never been heard from again! The cosmic cloud is an area of darkness where no light-vibrations can exist. So, the interstellar trade routes have to be routed around this cloud.
Then, suddenly, one day a strange force begins compelling ships that come near the cosmic cloud to fall into the cloud! After this happens for the third time, the Interstellar Patrol sends one of their bravest crews to investigate. This crew consists of Dur Nal, Korus Kan, and Jhul Din of "Outside the Universe" fame! Apparently Hamilton decided that maybe these stories would be even better with recurring characters!
Anyway, of course it turns out there's a race of aliens living inside the cosmic cloud who are causing the problem as part of a plan to invade the rest of the galaxy. These aliens apparently live their lives entirely by sound, with no light to see by. And so our heroes, with the help of Zat Zanat, have to foil the invasion plan.
Cool bits of the story: the most interesting part of this story really is Dur Nal's attempts to simply maneuver around/evade capture/figure out what the heck is going on while in total darkness. I don't quite buy the fact that the aliens could get along with only a sense of hearing. At one point it's suggested that have some limited echolocation ability, which makes a lot more sense, but also defeats the point of Dur Nal's hiding from them by being very quiet. And, oddly, the bat-folk of Deneb apparently don't use echolocation, which surprised me. Kind of a short and underdeveloped story, but an interesting idea, nonetheless.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Dur Nal, Korus Kan, and Jhul Din return once more for "Corsairs of the Cosmos", the last of the Interstellar Patrol tales (there are, however, two non-IP stories in this volume). The plot of this one kind of revisits the territory of the "The Star-Stealers", only this time there's twenty dark stars that are intentionally driven to our galaxy to steal our suns for another galaxy. The other galaxy is inhabited by machines whose builders have long since died out.
It seemed to me that Hamilton was trying to add a bit more characterization to the main players in this story, and, maybe it's just me reading stuff into it, but I definitely got a Kirk/Spock/McCoy vibe from the trio of Nal/Kan/Din this time around. The Star Trek comparison was heightened by the evil robots freakish love of telling them that "resistance" would not accomplish anything (they never quite say "resistance is futile", but they do seem to really like the word "resistance"!).
Anyway, this was another story that seemed too brief for the actual scope of the plot. Choice dialogue: "By the suns, this is better than driving ships!... Driving dark stars to battle!"
Groovy Legion-esque thing: We are briefly introduced to young pilot Jan Allon, who really seemed like he was going to play a bigger role in the story than he did!
[ February 11, 2012, 03:58 PM: Message edited by: Eryk Davis Ester ]
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Okay, so moving on to non-Interstellar Patrol stories, we have "The Hidden World", which features four adventurer-scientists investigating a series of strange beams of lights that have been appearing at regular intervals around the equator. They soon discover that these lights are the prelude to an invasion by ancient flesh-things from inside the Earth! Which, of course, they have to stop!
Among the cool things about this novel-length story were the fairly elaborate pseudo-scientific explanations of how the flesh-things's world worked in relation to ours and the cause of its imminent destruction. Definitely stuff that would make Jules Verne proud!
Apparently Hamilton must've been a fan of the Battle of Thermopylae, because this is the second time he's used the motif of a small band of warriors defending a "pass" against overwhelming odds!
Groovy Legion-esque thing: the flesh-things travel in transparent spheres, though, unfortunately for them, they don't travel through time!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
So, I finally read the last story of The Collected Hamilton vol. 2, "The Other Side of the Moon".
So, we open up with the scientist from Midwestern University named Howland who is traveling to the Yucatan to gather evidence of his theory that there used to be a series of islands in the Atlantic Ocean which allowed human and animal life to migrate from Africa/Europe to the Americas. This idea, while pretty cool on its own, plays no role in the story, however. Instead, Howland and his party come across turtle-men from the moon who kill most of them, except Howland who they kidnap and take back to the moon, and another man, Carson, who escapes.
So, what does Carson do? Call in the army, perhaps? No way! He does what any main character in a Hamilton novella would do... he travels back to Midwestern University and recruits the aid of two fellow college professors to help him rescue Howland and discover and thwart the no doubt nefarious plans of the moon-turtles!
This story actually has a lot of cool stuff, with the elaborate explanation for the craters on the moon as the result of an ancient Earth-Moon war, and the groovy airtight city that the turtle-men live on, which covers the entire dark side of the moon. And even though it's pretty full of what were becoming cliches in Hamilton's writing by this point, it's still an exciting tale, and another one that I could just see being adapted into a movie (at least a cheesy SyFy movie or something!).
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Hmmm... I suppose I should do a summary review of the second volume, so here goes...
Summary Review of The Star-Stealers: The Complete Tales of the Interstellar Partol
It's totally awesome! Hamilton's still playing with set formulas, though the longer stories especially give him the chance to branch out, with "Outside the Universe" being probably the strongest. The characters are still pretty much stock, and the aliens pretty much massive hordes of invaders, but, hey, there still a lot of fun!
Next up: Vol. 3, in which it looks like we finally start getting a more diverse set of stories, the first one of which features groovy floating cities!
Posted by Set on :
I *must* get ahold of these. Now that I have work again, and, soon, teh monays, I have to order these books. I love silver age-y sci-fi goodness!
Posted by Cobalt Kid on :
This sounds so groovy. And your reviews are as fun to read as anything else I've been checking out!
I really want to delve into Hamilton's early work. Its amazing that, as you pointed out a few posts earlier, so much of this he was making up for the very first time in sci-fi!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
Volume Three opens up with "Cities in the Air".
So, by the mid-21st century, after a series of "air wars" has left the surface of the earth "unsafe" for human habitation, all of humanity has moved to into giant flying sky-cities! Also, the world now consists of three great nations: the American Federation (consisting of both North and South American air-cities); the European Federation (consisting of European and African air-cities); and the Asian Federation (consisting of Asian and Australasian cities). A delicate balance of power is struck between these three, given that each fears to attack another, lest it make itself vulnerable to the third. However, recently the European and Asian Federations have reached an alliance, and together have declared all out war on the American Federation! Not only do they outnumber the Americans two-to-one, but they are rumored to have developed a new secret weapon that will give them a massive advantage in the upcoming "Last Air War"!
This is a fairly long story, and also very action-heavy, with chapter after chapter detailing the battles between the airfleets and eventually the flying cities themselves. Hamilton's descriptions of battles in other stories have tended to get a bit tedious, but it seems to be getting better at it here, with the huge final battle being especially cool. There's a fairly typical Hamilton-sequence where the heroes are captured by the enemy, and have to make a daring escape to warn everyone about the evil army's secret plans.
Definitely another story that I could see being used as the basis for a Hollywood summer action movie. The images of, for example, Chicago flying around shooting at London is all kinds of awesome!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"The Life Masters" is up next, and it is a pretty awesome little story!
Protoplasm, the stuff from which life originated, suddenly washes up on coastlines all across the globe one day. Scientists argue over where it came from, and the rest of the public are annoyed about not being able to go to the beach. And then one night the protoplasm begins slowly moving inland, grabbing people with tentacle arms and absorbing them into itself! Police and soldiers are helpless to fight it off!
Anyway, it turns out there's a group of mad scientists who are responsible for it, and fortunately there's a standard Hamilton device of a button that can be pushed to destroy the menace once and for all if only some imprisoned heroic young scientists can get to it and push it in time!
Hamilton is definitely growing as a writer at this point. Though it's got some pretty standard Hamilton cliches in it, his description of the horror of the protoplasmic slime slowly encroaching into New York city is especially terrifying.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
The whole plot of "Space Visitors" is based on an analogy. The atmosphere of Earth is kind of like an Ocean. And just as we sail upon the ocean, and our fishing trawlers drag the ocean bottoms to collect valuable stuff, so aliens "sailing" upon the ocean of our atmosphere might drag great shovels down upon the surface of the Earth to search for stuff they need! And in doing so they would cause great havoc on our civilization! So, assuming there were intelligent life forms at the bottom of the ocean who were annoyed at us for disturbing them, how would they fight us? And how can we adapt that method to fight the aliens?
Overall, this is a pretty weak story. Definitely a let down after the last two.
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
By contrast, "Evans of the Earth Guard" is completely awesome!
In the early 21st century, travel, both commerical and for pleasure, between Earth and the domed cities and mines of the Moon has become commonplace. This travel is regulated by the Earth Guard, who, among other things, protect travelers from space pirates who strike from hidden bases on both the Earth and the Moon! While many of the brutal pirates have been eliminated, the dashing Hawk, anti-hero of the public, remains at large.
Enter Evans, captain of an Earth Patrol vessel which saves a small, one-man ship that is under assault by the Hawk. It turns out that the ship contains a special agent who is supposed to be apprehending the Hawk on the Moon, but is currently en route to Earth to rendezvous with an ex-employee of the Hawk for info on where he is based. So, Evans agrees to escort him to Earth and then back to the Moon. After the informant disappears after giving his information, Evans's commander warns him that the Hawk may try to take his vessel in order to eliminate the special agent, which would be the first time in history an Earth Guard vessel has been taken by an enemy! So, Evans has to ferry the special agent back to the Moon, not knowing when or how the Hawk might strike! There's a groovy twist ending, and the whole thing is excellently told in a very short story!
Some random groovy things:
--Humans started launching rockets to the Moon in 1954 per this story, and it apparently took them twenty-two tries to get there! --Earth travel is restricted to visiting the Moon because the natives of Venus and Mars have destroyed anyone who approached their planets!
In summary, lots of groovy stuff in this little twenty-pager!
Posted by Eryk Davis Ester on :
"The Planet Revolt!" is another pretty solid story.
So, apparently, plants need nine basic elements to survive, three of which they get from the air, and the remainder of which they have to get from the soil. If, however, the six elements they normally get from the soil were somehow introduced into the atmosphere, this will cause the plants to rapidly evolve in such a way that they loose their roots, become mobile, and eventually grow into giant man-eating creatures.
Or, at least that was the theory of Dr. Mandall, a leading botanist who disappeared two years earlier. Amazingly, his theory is proven true when said elements start appearing in the atmosphere and plants all over the place start revolting! Hmm... I wonder who could be responsible?
The premise of this story may be a bit hokey, but it's got some fantastic scenes. The narrator's narrow escape from becoming plant-food in a small town that's being overrun is the sort of thing you can just visualize as a groovy B-movie scene. And the villain's whole "plants are superior to animals!" spiel does a nice job of establishing him a completely crazy.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
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