Title: The Eternal Cycle
Author: Edmond Hamilton
Year: 1935
Type: short story
We are almost sorry that author Hamilton did not write this story into a novelette, because the tremendous idea behind it could well support a much longer story.
In this story is propounded a theory so fantastic that you have never heard anything to equal it – but, at the same time, it is not only very logical, but easily understandable. These three qualities are seldom mixed to such a masterful balance as they are in this short story.
Here, indeed, is an excellent example of the type of story we are looking for under our revolutionary policy – so original and utterly different that it will live in your memory much longer than others thirty times its length.
Publications:
- Wonder Stories, Vol. 6, no. 10, March 1935, (Mar 1935, ed. Hugo Gernsback, $0.25, 128pp, magazine) Cover: Frank R. Paul; Illust: SAA???
- Gosh! Wow! (Sense of Wonder) Science Fiction, (Jan 1982, ed. Forrest J. Ackerman, publ. Bantam Books, 0-553-20187-5, $3.50, xxii+561+[2]pp, pb, anth)
Reviews:
- Review by Everett F. Bleiler (1998) in Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years