OPUS#012 Star-Stealers, The [IP#2]

by

OPUS: #012
Title: The Star-Stealers
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: novelette
Series: Interstellar Patrol
Series Number: 2
“A dread menace from outside the universe threatens to drag the solar shystem to destruction in the cold of outer space”–TOC
“The vast globe stretched from horizon to horizon beneath them.”

“Nowadays, the seasoned reader of science-fiction has come to take his stories of interplanetary travel with an almost blase air, an attitude of ” I-have-been-here-before,” noting only the funny character or the new technical twist introduced into the yarn, seeing nothing of the essential eerieness and multifaceted complexity of space and its worlds. Therefore it is something of an experience to encounter again Edmond Hamilton’s famous stories of the Federation of Stars, with their hints of multiple worlds and myriads of oddly shaped yet allied inhabitants . . Written some twenty years ago, when science fiction had not yet strait jacketed itself with a routine set of backgrounds and accepted pseudo-scientific spaceship fixtures, Hamilton’s Interstellar Patrol stories have a coloring and aura of fantasy about them now almost entirely lost in modern space-flight tales. Though “literatteurs” could find fault with the plots and characterizations of these stories from science-fiction’s pioneering days, the wonder and awe of the infinite stellar universe seems actually enhanced by Hamilton’s fast-moving style.” – Avon Fantasy Reader, No. 6

Publications:

  • Weird Tales, Vol. 13, no. 2, February 1929, (Feb 1929, ed. Farnsworth Wright, publ. Popular Fiction Publishing Co., Chicago, IL, $0.25, 144pp, Pulp, magazine) Cover: Hugh Rankin; Illust: Rankin
  • Avon Fantasy Reader, No. 6, 1948, (Mar 1948, ed. Donald A. Wollheim, publ. Avon Book Co., $0.35, 124pp, Digest, magazine)
  • Crashing Suns, (1965, Edmond Hamilton, publ. Ace, #F-319, $0.40, 192pp, pb, coll)
  • Galassia #75, (Mar 1967, ed. Ugo Malaguti, publ. Casa Editrice La Tribuna, #75, 300 Lit, 190pp, Digest, magazine) Cover: Paola Pallottino
  • The Space Opera Renaissance, (Jul 2006, ed. David G. Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, publ. Tor, 0-765-30617-4, $39.95, 941pp, hc, anth) Cover: NASA
  • The Space Opera Renaissance, (Aug 2006, ed. David G. Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, publ. Tor / SFBC, #12-15904, $34.95, 941pp, hc, anth)
  • The Space Opera Renaissance, (Jul 2007, ed. David G. Hartwell, Kathryn Cramer, publ. Orb, 0-765-30618-2, $24.95, 941pp, tp, anth) Cover: NASA
  • Crashing Suns, (Aug 2008, Edmond Hamilton, publ. Baen, 978-1-4014-0319-5, $4.00, ebook, coll)
  • The Star-Stealers: The Complete Adventures of The Interstellar Patrol, The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Two, (Jul 2009, Edmond Hamilton, publ. Haffner Press, 1-893887-33-2, $40.00, 754pp, hc, coll) Cover: Hugh Rankin

Reviews:

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

ebook: https://archive.org/details/Weird_Tales_v13n02_1929-02_AT-sas