got along."
The autumn of 1933, Williamson showed up at New Castle and the two hied off to Florida, ending up as beachcomb-ers.
There were two trips to the ranch of Jack Williamson's parents in 1935 and 1937 and the pair traveled about the Southwest and the border country regularly.
The years of good times together were also the years in which Hamilton's powers as a writer matured. Evolution had been a recurrent theme in his stories and he reached a peak in his handling of it in The Man Who Evolved (wonder stories, April, 1931), in which the pace of natural change is artificially stepped up by a machine. A scientist experiment-ing on himself moves from level to level, eventually being transformed into a tremendous brain feeding itself on pure energy and capable of moving interdimensionally. Still, prod-ded by curiosity, the brain commands that the experiment progress. The result: protoplasm. Evolution proves to be circular. The fascination and power of the idea compensates for occasional weakness in writing.
Hamilton has written so much that it is possible to record only the most memorable of his stories. High on the list of selections is A Conquest of Two Worlds (wonder stories, April, 1932), a strong protest against colonial psychology in dealing with the less technologically advanced creatures of other worlds that is prophetic in its weaponry.
The theme of A. Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger novelette When the World Screamed (in The Maracot Deep, 1929), that this planet is a living entity, capable of physical feeling, is made vivid in Hamilton's handling of The Earth Brain (weird tales, April, 1932). In this story, a man who has tracked the intelligence center of the globe to the North Pole defies it, and is forced to flee perpetually for his life as tremors and quakes seek him out in each new hiding place and threaten destruction of the entire community unless he leaves.
The favorable reaction of readers to Laurence Manning's three-part novel Wreck of the Asteroid, which began in wonder stories for December, 1932, a story stressing real-ism rather than romanticism in projecting what the world of Mars might be like, prompted Hamilton to try the same tack. While wintering in Key West with Jack Williamson in 1933, he pounded out What's It Like Out There? which stressed man's weaknesses, the heartbreak, the pettiness, and the political expediency, which might be part of the first expedi-tion to Mars. Editors drew back from Hamilton's approach and the story remained buried in his trunk for nearly twenty years.
Then, at the urging of his wife, he dusted it off, did some revision and sent it to thrilling wonder stories. Editor Samuel Mines waxed poetic about "the new Edmond Hamil-ton" who rose, "phoenix-like, from the ashes of Captain Future." The story was acclaimed a modern masterpiece and it was said: "Now science fiction has grown up. And so has Edmond Hamilton."
"Give a dog a bad name ..." Hamilton was no longer the "World Saver," and in the early thirties was not only writing stories of outstanding merit, but stories far in advance of the time. The Island of Unreason (wonder stories, May, 1933) deservedly won the Jules Verne Prize Award for the best story of the calendar year 1933; A Conquest of Two Worlds took a similar award as the best science-fiction novelette of 1932. In the future, as Hamilton saw it in The Island of Unreason, American society has an island to which are sen-tenced all antisocial men and women who must live there for varying periods, unguarded, with their fellow malcontents, so they can experience the problems of life and survival where no law and order exist. The sociological and psychological implications of the story make it an early milestone in the maturation of magazine science fiction.
Nor were Hamilton's talents applied only to science fiction. The Man Who Returned (weird tales, February, 1934) has forced his way out of his tomb where he has been premature-ly laid to rest and seeks
The autumn of 1933, Williamson showed up at New Castle and the two hied off to Florida, ending up as beachcomb-ers.
There were two trips to the ranch of Jack Williamson's parents in 1935 and 1937 and the pair traveled about the Southwest and the border country regularly.
The years of good times together were also the years in which Hamilton's powers as a writer matured. Evolution had been a recurrent theme in his stories and he reached a peak in his handling of it in The Man Who Evolved (wonder stories, April, 1931), in which the pace of natural change is artificially stepped up by a machine. A scientist experiment-ing on himself moves from level to level, eventually being transformed into a tremendous brain feeding itself on pure energy and capable of moving interdimensionally. Still, prod-ded by curiosity, the brain commands that the experiment progress. The result: protoplasm. Evolution proves to be circular. The fascination and power of the idea compensates for occasional weakness in writing.
Hamilton has written so much that it is possible to record only the most memorable of his stories. High on the list of selections is A Conquest of Two Worlds (wonder stories, April, 1932), a strong protest against colonial psychology in dealing with the less technologically advanced creatures of other worlds that is prophetic in its weaponry.
The theme of A. Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger novelette When the World Screamed (in The Maracot Deep, 1929), that this planet is a living entity, capable of physical feeling, is made vivid in Hamilton's handling of The Earth Brain (weird tales, April, 1932). In this story, a man who has tracked the intelligence center of the globe to the North Pole defies it, and is forced to flee perpetually for his life as tremors and quakes seek him out in each new hiding place and threaten destruction of the entire community unless he leaves.
The favorable reaction of readers to Laurence Manning's three-part novel Wreck of the Asteroid, which began in wonder stories for December, 1932, a story stressing real-ism rather than romanticism in projecting what the world of Mars might be like, prompted Hamilton to try the same tack. While wintering in Key West with Jack Williamson in 1933, he pounded out What's It Like Out There? which stressed man's weaknesses, the heartbreak, the pettiness, and the political expediency, which might be part of the first expedi-tion to Mars. Editors drew back from Hamilton's approach and the story remained buried in his trunk for nearly twenty years.
Then, at the urging of his wife, he dusted it off, did some revision and sent it to thrilling wonder stories. Editor Samuel Mines waxed poetic about "the new Edmond Hamil-ton" who rose, "phoenix-like, from the ashes of Captain Future." The story was acclaimed a modern masterpiece and it was said: "Now science fiction has grown up. And so has Edmond Hamilton."
"Give a dog a bad name ..." Hamilton was no longer the "World Saver," and in the early thirties was not only writing stories of outstanding merit, but stories far in advance of the time. The Island of Unreason (wonder stories, May, 1933) deservedly won the Jules Verne Prize Award for the best story of the calendar year 1933; A Conquest of Two Worlds took a similar award as the best science-fiction novelette of 1932. In the future, as Hamilton saw it in The Island of Unreason, American society has an island to which are sen-tenced all antisocial men and women who must live there for varying periods, unguarded, with their fellow malcontents, so they can experience the problems of life and survival where no law and order exist. The sociological and psychological implications of the story make it an early milestone in the maturation of magazine science fiction.
Nor were Hamilton's talents applied only to science fiction. The Man Who Returned (weird tales, February, 1934) has forced his way out of his tomb where he has been premature-ly laid to rest and seeks
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