OPUS#026 Plant Revolt, The

OPUS: #026
Title: The Plant Revolt
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1930
Type: novelette
“The street was full from end to end with hundreds of slow-crawling plant masses.”
“On a mountain-top was created a horror that set the plant kingdom in wild revolt against man and animals”

Publications:

  • Weird Tales, Vol. 15, no. 4, April 1930, (Apr 1930, ed. Farnsworth Wright, publ. Popular Fiction Publishing Co., Chicago, IL, $0.25, 144pp, Pulp, magazine) Cover: Hugh Rankin; Illust: Rankin
  • The Earth in Peril / Who Speaks of Conquest?, (1957, Lan Wright, Donald A. Wollheim, publ. Ace (Ace Double #D-205), #D-205, $0.35, 158+160pp, pb, omni) Cover: Ed Emshwiller , Stanley Metzoff
  • The Universe Wreckers, The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Three, (Aug 2010, Edmond Hamilton, publ. Haffner Press, 978-1-893887-41-1, $40.00, 670pp, hc, coll)

Reviews:

  • Review by Everett F. Bleiler (1991) in Science Fiction: The Early Years

ebook: https://archive.org/details/WeirdTalesV15N04193004jvhSas

OPUS#267 Pro, The

OPUS: #267
Title: The Pro
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1964
Type: short story

Almost we would omit references to the Grand Old Days of Magazine Science Fiction for fear of conjuring up images that either we or the author of this story are confined to a bath-chair and gout-stool (neither of us is; and mind your clumsy feet)- but accuracy forbids. In the Grand Old Days of Magazine Science Fiction, videlicet the otherwise non-grand 30s, then, a querulous reader wrote to one SF magazine and complained that
“Edmond Hamilton is always saving worlds … The implication was not that Mr. Hamilton collected them in a morocco album, but that his stories often dealt with their rescue from evil. Pax. He was and is not only a realist but an optimist—both attributes being manifested in this cool and competent and utterly believable story which links the Science Fiction past with its already beginning-to-be-realized-and-vindicated-present. Edmond Hamilton appears here for the first time since 1954. It is nice to have him aboard again.

Mr. Hamilton writes of himself:
“I sometimes feel like a time-traveller, for this reason: I’m 59 years old, which isn’t so old these days (it isn’t, is it, honest?) But my formative first 7 years were spent on a Ohio farm so far back in, that it must have had a time-lag of a decade. Horses reared up in buggy-shafts at sight of an automobile, and a steam-
threshing-machine was a thing which frightened me horribly.
Yet last month I flew home from London in a jet in 5 or 6 hours, and the rockets stand on the launching-pads ready to make for the moon, and only the fact that I was blessed or cursed with a science fictional imagination has prevented me from exclaiming, “Stop the world, etc. …”

I wrote my first s-f story when I was 14. It was “The Plant That Was Alive.” It was also Terrible. No one bought it. I was at that time, however, unquenchable. … I was a freshman in college and supposed to be a child prodigy, and I took that seriously and loftily ignored study and broke rules and got canned out of school
after three years. But I kept trying to write s-f, and in February, 1926, succeeded in selling the old Weird Tales.

What a thrill it was when, a month later, a science-fiction magazine appeared! A couple of years later when a second s-f magazine appeared, I decided to become a professional writer. I’m filled with retrospective admiration for a decision so costnically heroic and stupid. To make matters worse, my next 42 stories sold without a refection … only then did I start to get the bumps and learn.

But I’ve stuck to it ever since. I love to tell adventure stories and have told hundreds … but every now and then I want to write something quite different. THE PRO is one of the different ones.”

Publications:

  • The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Vol. 27, no. 4, October 1964, (Oct 1964, ed. Avram Davidson, publ. Mercury Press, Inc., $0.40, 132pp, Digest, magazine), pp. pp. 21-32. Cover: Chesley Bonestell
  • Great Science Fiction Stories About the Moon, (1967, ed. T. E. Dikty, publ. Frederick Fell, 221pp, hc, anth)
  • The Best of Edmond Hamilton, (Apr 1977, Edmond Hamilton, publ. Nelson Doubleday / SFBC, #1561, $2.98, xvii+334pp, hc, coll) Cover: Don Maitz
  • The Best of Edmond Hamilton, (Aug 1977, Edmond Hamilton, publ. Del Rey / Ballantine, 0-345-25900-9, $1.95, xviii+381pp, pb, coll) Cover: H. R. Van Dongen
  • Inside the Funhouse: 17 Sf Stories About SF, (Aug 1992, ed. Mike Resnick, publ. AvoNova, 0-380-76643-4, $4.99, 246pp, pb, anth) Cover: Tim O’Brien
  • The Best of Edmond Hamilton, (Nov 2010, Edmond Hamilton, publ. Phoenix Pick, 978-1-60450-489-7, $14.99, 348pp, tp, coll)

ebook:  https://archive.org/details/Fantasy_Science_Fiction_v027n04_1964-10/page/n19?q=edmond+hamilton+uk+science+fiction+adventure

OPUS#257 Planet of Exile

OPUS: #257
Title: Planet of Exile
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1958
Type: novella
“Interplanetary science fiction novel”
“What had become of the Earth Farrow had known? Gone were the proud cities and teeming millions. He found only desolation – and fear!”
Publications:

  • Space Travel, Vol. 5, no. 4, July 1958, (Jul 1958, ed. William L. Hamling, publ. Greenleaf Publishing Company, $0.35, 132pp, Digest, magazine) Cover: Malcolm Smith; Illust : D. Bruce Berry

ebook: https://archive.org/details/Space_Travel_v05n04_1958-07

OPUS#230 Pardon My Iron Nerves [CF#24]

OPUS: #230
Title: Pardon My Iron Nerves
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1950
Type: novelette
Series: Captain Future
Series Number: 24
“If you think Grag’s an insensitive robot, read his own account of getting psychoanalyzed and repairing to Pluto’s forth Moon!”
Publications:

  • Startling Stories, Vol. 22, no. 2, November 1950, (Nov 1950, ed. Sam Merwin, Jr., publ. Better Publications, Inc., $0.25, 164pp, Pulp, magazine), pp. 78-96. Cover: Earle Bergey; Illust : Orban
  • Startling Stories (Canada), Vol. 22, no. 2, November 1950
  • Thilling Novels, No. 49, 1996

Contents:
Chapter 1 Metal Man 78
Chapter 2 Mission to Pluto 84
Chapter 3 The Machs 87
Chapter 4 Crazy Moon 92
Reviews:

  • Gammell, Leon L., The Annotated Guide to Startling Stories, Starmont House, 1986, p. 68. “Amusing story of Captain Future’s robot pal, Grag, and the nervous breakdown he imagined he was about to suffer, caused from being in intimate contact with humans so much of the time. How he quells the revolt of the “free” mining machines on Dis, remote satellite of Pluto, is a riot.”

ebook: http://www.unz.org/Pub/StartlingStories-1950nov-00078

OPUS#216 Proxy Planeteers

OPUS: #216
Title: Proxy Planeteers
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1947
Type: short story
“When robots go hunting for uranium on Mercury, a pair of scientists fall under a radio-active spell of hypnotism!”

Publications:

  • Startling Stories, Vol. 15, no. 3, July 1947, (Jul 1947, ed. Sam Merwin, Jr., publ. Better Publications, Inc.; Chicago, $0.15, 116pp, Pulp, magazine), pp. 88-96. Cover: Earle Bergey; Illust: Marchioni

Book review:

  • Gammell, Leon L., The Annotated Guide to Startling Stories, Starmont House, 1986, p. 58. “Robot proxies explore hostile Mercury for Earthling scientists, unaware of indigenous intelligent life-forms that have a thing or two to say about this invasion.”

ebook: http://www.unz.org/Pub/StartlingStories-1947jul-00088

OPUS#198 Priestess of the Labyrinth

OPUS: #198
Title: Priestess of the Labyrinth
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1945
Type: novelette
“When you hear the blood-chilling bull-bellow you’ll know you’re in the haunt of the Minotaur – from which no man can escape.” — TOC
“The ancient world dreaded the Labyrinth for in it strange magic worked and horror walked curing ways.”
Publications:

  • Weird Tales, Vol. 38, no. 3, January 1945, (Jan 1945, ed. Dorothy McIlwraith, publ. Weird Tales, $0.15, 100pp, Pulp, magazine), pp. 8-26. Cover: Margaret Brundage; Illust: Brundage

 

ebook: https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v38n03_1945-01

OPUS#186 Planets in Peril [CF#12]

OPUS: #186
Title: Planets in Peril
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1969
Type: Novel
Series: Captain Future
Series Number: 12

“Through and Unguessable Abyss Fraught with Peril, Curt Newton and the Futuremen Set Out to ave the Remnants of a Great Civilization from Suicide and Destruction!”

Publications:

  • Captain Future, Vol. 4, no.3, Fall 1942, (Oct 1942, ed. Oscar J. Friend, publ. Better Publications, Inc., $0.15, 132pp, Pulp, magazine) Cover: Rudolph Belarski; Illust: Morey
  • Planets in Peril, (1969, Edmond Hamilton, publ. Popular Library, #60-2416, $0.60, 128pp, pb) Cover: Herbert J. Bruck

OPUS#144 Prisoner of Mars, The

OPUS: #144
Title: The Prisoner of Mars (Complete Novel)
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1939
Variant Title of: Tharkol, Lord of the Unknown (by Edmond Hamilton)
Type: NOVEL
「[註:後の『スター・キング』の原型となった作品。] 若いアメリカ人フィリップ・クレインが、偶然ある機械を見つけだすのだが、たちまちその機械によって火星に運ばれてしまう。そこで彼は自分が亡き王の息子であり、現在の君主ラヌーの異父兄弟だということを知る。ところで、このラヌーは誘拐されたばかりなので、フィリップは何も状況が分からないままに、自分の役割を演じなければならない。そのうえ、彼は兄弟とあまりにもよく似ているので、ラヌーの婚約者マーラ姫も間違えてしまう。マーラはラヌーをまったく愛していなかったけれども、政治的な理由でラヌーと結婚することになってしまっていたのである。マーラはフィリップに心を奪われてしまうが、フィリップはすでに地球人の婚約者ケイがいたので話はややこしくなる。」- ジャック・サドゥール著; 鹿島茂,鈴木秀治訳『現代SFの歴史』(早川書房, 1984.12) p. 187-188
Publications:

  • Startling Stories, Vol. 1, no. 3, May 1939, (May 1939, ed. Mort Weisinger, publ. Better Publications, Inc., $0.15, 132pp, Pulp, magazine) Cover: Howard V. Brown; Illust: Wesso
  • Tharkol, Lord of the Unknown, (1950, Edmond Hamilton, publ. World Distributors / Sydney Pemberton, 1/6, 160pp, pb) Cover: H. W. Wesso

Review:

  • Gammell, Leon L., The Annotated Guide to Startling Stories, Starmont House, 1986, p. 4. “Interplanetary Prisoner of Zenda-type pastiche, by the late grand old master of the space opera, largely forgotten and neglected nowadays. Though born of an Earthly mother, Philip Crain discovers that his father was the advance guard of a Martian invasion force, accidentally marooned on Earth for his entire lifetime, and his look-alike cousin is the ruler of Mars. Accidentally transported to Mars via matter-transmitter, he becomes quickly involved in the political intrigue, swashbuckling action and eventual exchange of identities that is the usual hallmark of this kind of story, but Hamilton’s novel is fast-paced and exciting, and should make good reading even today, interspersed with interesting characters to liven up the plot, among whom are a diabolical mechanical brain manipulating the inhabitants of two worlds for its own obscure purposes and a giant robot servant, almost human in its faithfulness and loyalty, perhaps a foreshadowing of the irrepressible Grag of the Captain Future series. At the end of the story, Hamilton offers an ingenious solution for resolving the difficulties of the two warring planets, which stem largely from the Red World’s desperate need for water for her dead and desiccated oceans, very simply accomplished by transporting the terrestrial polar ice-caps to Mars through the matter-transmitters that were to provide passage originally for her invading armies. Who knows? Perhaps this will be the very method used in terraforming Mars to make it livable for our first colonies in the not-so-distant future, even as Hamilton’s storybook space-suits were the prototype for the ones used by today’s astronauts! “

OPUS#125 Power Pit 13

OPUS: #125
Title: Power Pit 13
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1938
Type: short story
Publication:

  • Thrilling Adventures [v24 #3, February 1938] ed. J. S. Williams (Standard Magazines; New York, 10¢, pulp) , pp. 56-66.

OPUS#121 Prize Title Contest Story

OPUS: #121
Title: Prize Title Contest Story
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1937
Type: short story
Note: “Name This Story – Win a Cash Prize”–TOC

Publication:

  • The Phantom Detective [v20 #3, October 1937] (10¢, pulp), pp. 102-111.