Edmond Hamilton
The Godmen
INTRODUCTION
Edmond Hamilton (1904–1977) has been hailed as one of the three pioneers of the space opera. Indeed, of the three writers credited with creating this beloved science fiction subgenre, Hamilton, Edward E. Smith, Ph.D., and Jack Williamson, Hamilton's first space opera, “The Comet Doom,” beat both his colleagues into print, by almost a year, in the case of Smith's unprecedented universe-spanning epic,
In the 1930s Hamilton was approached by a pulp editor who wanted him to create a science fictional equivalent of the then bestselling Doc Savage novels which appeared in the magazine that bore his name. Hamilton's character was Curt Newton, Man of Tomorrow, known to the world as Captain Future (also the magazine's title). Captain Future opposed interplanetary crime as well as menaces from beyond the solar system, accompanied everywhere by his closest friends, the giant metallic robot, Grag and the pasty-faced android Otho, who bickered comically throughout the books over which was the most valuable to the Captain. Titles of some of the novels Hamilton wrote about Curt Newton included
But Edmond Hamilton's contributions to science fiction and to popular culture don't end with the creation of space opera. They begin there. As science fiction matured, Hamilton's colorful adventure sagas matured, and he produced a series of poignant, poetic space operas that helped extend the form and widen its possibilities. Among them were
At the same time, one of Hamilton's magazine editors, Mort Weisinger, had been picked to helm the DC comic book line, including its new hits,
Most of this is a matter of public record. What few people seem to know, for as far as can be determined the fact appears in no history of SF so far written, is that Hamilton was a genre pioneer in another way. Most SF histories credit Robert A. Heinlein with the creation of the first future history (a consistent idea of how things might turn out over several hundred or even thousand years against which a number of stories are set). Heinlein first disclosed the existence of his future history in the March 1941 issue of
Yet Hamilton's revelation, a year earlier that he had set the majority of his stories against a common future background covering some two thousand centuries went almost unnoticed (perhaps because it appeared in the less distinguished pulp magazine,
A fuller description of this future history, and a selection of key stories showing its development across centuries will appear in a forthcoming PageTurner Editions ebook. Hamilton himself did not title this history, but we have chosen to call it “The Two Thousand Centuries.” However, in brief, Hamilton tells us that: “By the end of the 20th Century, atomic-powered rockets guided by radar had reached the Moon, Mars and Venus.'
There followed:
The Era of Interplanetary Secession—2247–2621.
The Era of Interstellar Exploration—2300–2621.
The Era of Interstellar Colonization—2621-62,339.
The Era of the Federation—62,339–129,999.
The Era of the Star Kings—130,000–202,115.
July 12, 2006
CHAPTER I
He had broken free. Forgotten and petty now were the first feeble attempts, the Sputniks, the moon and Mars rockets that had followed them, all those stumbling baby steps. Now, with the star-drive, man had broken free and for the first time the stars were conquered—
And suddenly it seemed to Mark Harlow that all the universe was laughing at him, at the vanity of man, a cosmic laughter ringing across the galaxies.
And the gargantuan laughter of that jest rocked and shook the constellations, and Harlow cried out in disappointment and shame.
He cried out, and awoke.
He was not in space. He was in his bunk in the
'I came to wake you, sir — and you gave a yell.'