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
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
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