Seekers of Tomorrow

by Sam Moskowitz

  A. Merritt was so taken with the idea of an interstellar patrol that he descended from his editorial Olympus and tried with might and main to get his own book publisher, Boni, to issue the Interstellar Patrol Series as one volume, to no avail.

  During the period 1927-1929, though the weird tales roster included such legendary notables as H. P. Lovecraft, Seabury Quinn, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Henry S. Whitehead, Donald Wandrei, August W. Derleth, Frank Belknap Long, S. Fowler Wright, Gaston Leroux, Otis Adelbert Kline, E. F. Benson, Murray Leinster, Ray Cum-mings, Victor Rousseau, and David H. Keller, M.D., to name a few, Edmond Hamilton was the most popular author, as a simple adding up of first and second places in the readership polls of those years proves. That Hamilton's stature today is not greater presents an apparent paradox—until the facts are analyzed.

  There are two reasons basically. First, only a minority of the regular readers of amazing stories and, later, the other science-fiction magazines, ever read weird tales at all. amazing stories claimed a readership of about 100,000. It is doubtful if weird tales had more than 50,000 readers at any time during its 30 years of publication. Of that, probably 25 percent, at a generous estimate, represented readership of both magazines. Most of the readers of amazing stories were unaware of Hamilton's fine contributions elsewhere and the truth is that the majority of ideas innovated by Hamilton were not directly copied from him at all but were rediscov-ered at a later date by other authors. Issues of the early weird tales containing his stories are so few and so rare that only a handful of people own them. As a result, even if someone deliberately adapted an old Hamilton idea, extreme-ly few would suspect the origin. As substantiation: when Hamilton submitted his first story to amazing stories, The Comet Doom, the editor bragged about discovering a great new talent, although when the story appeared in the January, 1928, issue, Hamilton stories had been appearing and had been exceptionally well received in weird tales for more than a year. A story of a race of aliens who have transferred their brains to metal bodies and do the same for an earthman, offering to take him around the universe (probably the genesis of the famed Prof. Jameson series by Neil R. Jones as well as H. P. Lovecraft's The Whisperer in Darkness), The Comet Doom was thought by the editors to be good enough for a scene from it to be used on the cover, but they did not think Hamilton's name suffi-ciently well known to be mentioned on that cover.

  The second reason for Hamilton's comparative lack of stature lies in the repetitious plot structure of his early stories. The framework of each story was very nearly the same. A menace threatens to conquer, enslave, or wipe out the world (or the universe) and is thwarted by a single man. To this must be added a sprinkling of major scientific faults, frequently so glaring as to all but negate believability. Typi-cal of these scientific sins of omission was the questionable premise in Across Space that Mars could be pulled to the very edge of the Earth's atmospheric envelope and left dan-gling there while Martians flew down to the surface. Even worse is the complete disregard for distances and time fac-tors in the Interstellar Patrol series, in which ships zip past star systems thousands of light years apart in days or some-times only hours, with no explanation from the author.

  In addition, characterization was virtually nonexistent and dialogue was frequently on the Frank Merriwell level.

  Despite these considerable faults, Hamilton had imagina-tive vitality and narrative ability of considerable power. A Stapeldonian thoroughness in delineating the history, culture and philosophy of his aliens was not completely appreciated by the reader distracted by the vividness and swiftness of unfolding events. It was the extraordinary variety of his locales and the striking originality of his secondary themes that gave Hamilton popularity, even while some readers injected a note of criticism by bestowing on him the appella-tion "World Saver."

  When he began writing novels for amazing stories quar-terly and amazing stories, he did not vary the formula that had enjoyed such success in weird tales. In Locked Worlds (amazing stories quarterly, Spring, 1929) he saves Earth from the menace of the spider men, inhabitants of a simul-taneous world whose electrons move in the opposite direction from Earth's; The Other Side of the Moon (amazing stories quarterly, Fall, 1929) finds the turtle men of the moon thwarted in their evil design to conquer the earth; in The Universe Wreckers, a three-part novel beginning in amazing stories for May, 1930, a marvelously enthralling and infinitely detailed account of the metal-roofed planet of Neptune cloaks the well-worn plot of the defeat of a plan to split the sun and destroy the earth.

  No story of his of this genre was ever rejected by any editor, but Hamilton, almost hopelessly typed, could abide the stigma no longer. For his declaration of independence, he wrote The Man Who Saw the Future (amazing stories, October, 1930), a tale of a fifteenth century apothecary, transferred to the twentieth century to the accompaniment of a clap of thunder, who is sentenced to death as a sorcerer when he returns to his own time and relates the marvels he has seen. His narration of the wonders of our times, told in the figures of speech of the Middle Ages, remains memorable in its effective simplicity. Eric Frank Russell was to popularize the bizarrely logical intimations of Charles Fort in Sinister Barrier (unknown, March, 1939), but it was Edmond Hamilton who had actual-ly introduced Fortean themes to the science-fiction field ten years earlier. After reading The Book of the Damned (1919) and New Lands (1923), he had sent a batch of newspaper clippings about strange phenomena to the Bronx belittler of science, Charles Fort, and they struck up a correspondence. In one letter he asked Fort what he would do if the Fortean system were taught in the schools as right and proper. Fort wrote back, "Why, in that case I would propound the damna-bly heterodox theory that the world is round!" The Space Visitors, published in the March, 1930, air wonder stories (a short-lived experiment of Hugo Gerns-back's), was taken right out of The Book of the Damned and tells of a gigantic scoop that periodically descends from the upper atmosphere, scraping up samples for some un-imaginable group of intelligences to examine. It was a strong-ly Fortean symbolic effort.

  More than a year later, the identical idea of Sinister Barrier, that "Earth is property," was used in Hamilton's The Earth Owners (weird tales, August, 1931) and impressed no one at all except Julius Schwartz, a specialist in science fiction, in a few years to become Hamilton's agent, who wrote a letter to the magazine.

  Somewhat earlier, in air wonder stories (November and December, 1929), Hamilton had presented another of his pioneering ideas in Cities in the Air. Though the concept of a floating aerial city had been used as early as Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (Laputa), Hamilton's spectacle of ranks of mighty cities wheeling through the air to join in stupendous conflict may well have inspired James Blish's spindizzy's in that author's popular series of the foot-loose space Okies.

  Hamilton did not live all of his adventures vicariously. Through correspondent Jerome Siegel he had made contact with Jack Williamson, a New Mexico writer, who had in common the fact that he was inspired to write by reading A. Merritt. The two decided to sail down the full length of the Mississippi in the manner of Huckleberry Finn, agreeing to meet in Minneapolis the first week of June, 1931, there to begin the trip.

  On the way to Minneapolis, Hamilton stopped in Chicago to see the editor of weird tales, Farnsworth Wright, as well as two of that magazine's most popular authors, Otis Adelbert Kline and E. Hoffman Price. Warm personal friendships were thus formed.

  In Minneapolis, Hamilton and Williamson bought a 14-foot skiff, two outboard motors, and a camping outfit. Armed with nautical ignorance, they sailed forth to conquer Old Man River. A summer of blunder, near-danger, explora-tion, and fun followed, until even the emergency engine sputtered its choking last cough and they completed the trip to New Orleans aboard the only remaining stern-wheel steamer still operating on the river.

  The two men were a contrast in personalities: "Jack was then," Hamilton reported, "one of the most patient and restrained people alive. I was then mercurial, explosive, im-patient
. In spite of that we got along."

  The autumn of 1933, Williamson showed up at New Castle and the two hied off to Florida, ending up as beachcomb-ers.

  There were two trips to the ranch of Jack Williamson's parents in 1935 and 1937 and the pair traveled about the Southwest and the border country regularly.

  The years of good times together were also the years in which Hamilton's powers as a writer matured. Evolution had been a recurrent theme in his stories and he reached a peak in his handling of it in The Man Who Evolved (wonder stories, April, 1931), in which the pace of natural change is artificially stepped up by a machine. A scientist experiment-ing on himself moves from level to level, eventually being transformed into a tremendous brain feeding itself on pure energy and capable of moving interdimensionally. Still, prod-ded by curiosity, the brain commands that the experiment progress. The result: protoplasm. Evolution proves to be circular. The fascination and power of the idea compensates for occasional weakness in writing.

  Hamilton has written so much that it is possible to record only the most memorable of his stories. High on the list of selections is A Conquest of Two Worlds (wonder stories, April, 1932), a strong protest against colonial psychology in dealing with the less technologically advanced creatures of other worlds that is prophetic in its weaponry.

  The theme of A. Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger novelette When the World Screamed (in The Maracot Deep, 1929), that this planet is a living entity, capable of physical feeling, is made vivid in Hamilton's handling of The Earth Brain (weird tales, April, 1932). In this story, a man who has tracked the intelligence center of the globe to the North Pole defies it, and is forced to flee perpetually for his life as tremors and quakes seek him out in each new hiding place and threaten destruction of the entire community unless he leaves.

  The favorable reaction of readers to Laurence Manning's three-part novel Wreck of the Asteroid, which began in wonder stories for December, 1932, a story stressing real-ism rather than romanticism in projecting what the world of Mars might be like, prompted Hamilton to try the same tack. While wintering in Key West with Jack Williamson in 1933, he pounded out What's It Like Out There? which stressed man's weaknesses, the heartbreak, the pettiness, and the political expediency, which might be part of the first expedi-tion to Mars. Editors drew back from Hamilton's approach and the story remained buried in his trunk for nearly twenty years.

  Then, at the urging of his wife, he dusted it off, did some revision and sent it to thrilling wonder stories. Editor Samuel Mines waxed poetic about "the new Edmond Hamil-ton" who rose, "phoenix-like, from the ashes of Captain Future." The story was acclaimed a modern masterpiece and it was said: "Now science fiction has grown up. And so has Edmond Hamilton."

  "Give a dog a bad name ..." Hamilton was no longer the "World Saver," and in the early thirties was not only writing stories of outstanding merit, but stories far in advance of the time. The Island of Unreason (wonder stories, May, 1933) deservedly won the Jules Verne Prize Award for the best story of the calendar year 1933; A Conquest of Two Worlds took a similar award as the best science-fiction novelette of 1932. In the future, as Hamilton saw it in The Island of Unreason, American society has an island to which are sen-tenced all antisocial men and women who must live there for varying periods, unguarded, with their fellow malcontents, so they can experience the problems of life and survival where no law and order exist. The sociological and psychological implications of the story make it an early milestone in the maturation of magazine science fiction.

  Nor were Hamilton's talents applied only to science fiction. The Man Who Returned (weird tales, February, 1934) has forced his way out of his tomb where he has been premature-ly laid to rest and seeks to return to his family, friends, and business associates; this is at once a tale of horror and of philosophical insight. Hamilton used his real name for this one, but when the spirit moved him he was prone to spin terror yarns for weird tales under the nom de plume of Hugh Davidson.

  To supplement his science-fiction writing income, Hamilton tried his hand at detective stories, selling his first to Street & Smith's detective story magazine in 1932, then the leader in the field. The same year he introduced the mystery ele-ment into The Space-Rocket Murders (amazing stories, October, 1932), prophetically using Braun as the name of the leading German rocket scientist, who was appropriately con-ducting liquid hydrogen fuel experiments in Berlin. Braun is merely one of eleven savants involved in rocket research who is mysteriously murdered. The culprits prove to be Venusians disguised as earthmen; they have achieved controlled atomic power, enabling them to project their rockets across space. No Hamilton story before 1933 had any love interest whatsoever. Very few even mention women. Hamilton was frequently quoted as being cynically against marriage. Per-haps the preponderance of sisters who outvoted him in his youth had jaundiced him; perhaps it was his mother's favorite quip whenever a man of the town got married: "Ah, he'll get his wings clipped now."

  His mother's remark, however, gave him the idea for He That Hath Wings (weird tales, July, 1938). A child born of parents seriously affected by radiation develops wings. When he grows to maturity, the only terms under which the girl he loves will agree to marry him is if he has his appen-dages surgically removed. He does so and their marriage appears to be happy. Soon a child is on the way, but he notes that his wings have begun to grow back. Shortly after the birth of the child he is determined to have his new wings removed but succumbs to the desire of feeling the exhilara-tion of flying one last time. Airborne, he compulsively starts south, even though the long-unused pinions are rapidly tiring. Over the water his strength gives out and he finds himself "glad to be falling as all they with wings must finally fall, after a brief lifetime of wild, sweet flight, dropping con-tentedly to rest."

  In 1940, by prearrangement, Hamilton met Jack William-son in Los Angeles. Julius Schwartz, Hamilton's agent since 1934, was also in town with Mort Weisinger, then editing thrilling wonder stories, startling stories, and captain future, to all of which Hamilton was a regular contributor. They introduced him to Leigh Brackett, a young lady who had joined the fraternity of science-fiction authors only that year with Martian Quest (astounding science-fiction, February, 1940). Hamilton and she found that they had a number of things in common: there were strains of Mohawk and Sioux in the Brackett family line; she, too, had read Edgar Rice Burroughs avidly, as early as the age of seven. Edmond returned to Los Angeles the next summer and met Leigh almost weekly at a salon presided over by Robert A. Heinlein and attended by Ray Bradbury who would eventual-ly collaborate with Brackett in The Lorelei of the Red Mist (planet stories, Summer, 1946). She would write the first 9,000 words and Bradbury the remainder of a long novelette of a man who dies to find himself on Venus in the superb body of a character named Conan. But despite mutual attraction, nothing happened between Hamilton and Brackett because he was expecting momentari-ly to be inducted into the armed services. Two days before his induction was scheduled to occur, a ruling was passed exempting men 38 years or older. Then both his mother and father became ill, to remain practically invalids until 1945.

  When Hamilton arrived in Los Angeles in 1946 he was greeted warmly by Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury, and, on December 31, 1946, Hamilton and Brackett were married in San Gabriel, California. Among their close friends were C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, another notable marriage of science-fiction personalities with whom they motored back east in 1949, "debarking" at Kinsman, Ohio, where Hamilton had some relatives. There they became enchanted with a 120-year-old farmhouse set on 35 acres, and made it their permanent home.

  Had Leigh Brackett continued writing science fiction, her achievement would have been great because she possesses unusual ability. Her forte was swashbuckling, romantic ad-venture set on another world, a kind of story much appreci-ated by readers. Parenthetically, the writer who at present is most popular for the same type of story is also a woman, Andre Norton, probably the outstanding science-fiction writer currently writing in the
romantic tradition. One of the last important things that Brackett did in science fiction, before Hollywood claimed her, was a novel for Doubleday titled The Long Tomorrow (1955). This was a serious work on the struggle against reaction in the post-atomic world which J. Francis McComas, reviewing it in the new york times of October 23, 1955, characterized as coming "awfully close to being a great work of science fiction."

  Her screen work made her and Hamilton virtual com-muters between Kinsman, Ohio, and Hollywood, where her credits include collaborating with William Faulkner on the screen adaptation of The Big Sleep, as well as Rio Bravo and Hatari!

  While Hamilton's personal life had eventually arrived at a happy beginning, he had permitted his writing career to take a direction which was destined to put off almost indefinitely the creation of a new image for him as a quality writer of science fiction.

  It came about this way. While attending The First World Science Fiction Convention in New York City, July 2, 1939, Leo Margulies, editorial director of Standard Magazines, after listening to the proceedings for a few hours, emitted his now famous line: "I didn't think you fans could be so damn sincere." He followed it with action, plotting on the spot a new science-fiction magazine. It was to be called captain future, a pulp aimed at the younger teen-agers, each issue to feature a novel about the same character. There must be a superscientist hero. There must also be aides: a robot and an android and, of course, a beautiful female assistant. Each story must be a crusade to bring to justice an arch villain; and, in each novel, the hero must be captured and escape three times, captain future was the pure distillation of stereotyped science-fiction gimmicks brought to bear on a single-character magazine.