thumb|The August 1926 Weird Tales featured Hamilton's first published story.

thumb|"The Star-Stealers" was first published in the February 1929 issue of [[Weird Tales.]]

thumb|The first "Star Kings" story was cover-featured on the September 1947 issue of [[Amazing Stories.]]

thumb|Hamilton's novella The Daughter of Thor was the cover story for the August 1942 issue of [[Fantastic Adventures.]]

thumb|Hamilton's short novel Starman Come Home, the cover story in the September 1954 issue of [[Universe Science Fiction, was published in book form as The Sun Smasher five years later.]]

thumb|Hamilton's novella Last Call for Doomsday!, written for Imagination under the [[Pen name#Collective names|house name "S. M. Tenneshaw", has never been included in an authorized Hamilton collection.]]

thumb|Hamilton's short novel Fugitive of the Stars, cover-featured on the December 1957 issue of Imagination, was revised and published in an [[Ace Double in 1965.]]

Edmond Moore Hamilton (October 21, 1904 – February 1, 1977) was an American writer of science fiction during the mid-twentieth century. He is known for writing most of the Captain Future stories.

Early life

Born in Youngstown, Ohio, he was raised there and in nearby New Castle, Pennsylvania. Something of a child prodigy, he graduated from high school and entered Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pennsylvania at the age of 14, but dropped out at 17.

Writing career

Edmond Hamilton's career as a science fiction writer began with the publication of "The Monster God of Mamurth", a short story, in the August 1926 issue of Weird Tales. His story "The Island of Unreason" (Wonder Stories, May 1933) won the first Jules Verne Prize as the best science fiction story of the year (this was the first science fiction prize awarded by the votes of fans, a precursor of the later Hugo Awards). In the later 1930s, in response to the economic strictures of the Great Depression, he also wrote detective and crime stories. Always prolific in stereotypical pulp magazine fashion, Hamilton sometimes saw four or five of his stories appear in a single month in these years; the February 1937 issue of the pulp Popular Detective featured three Hamilton stories, one under his name and two under pseudonyms. In the 1940s, Hamilton was the primary force behind the Captain Future franchise, a science fiction pulp designed for juvenile readers that won him many fans, but diminished his reputation in later years when science fiction moved away from space opera. Hamilton was associated with an extravagant, romantic, high-adventure style of science fiction, perhaps best represented by his 1947 novel The Star Kings.

In 1942 Hamilton began writing for DC Comics, specializing in stories for their characters Superman and Batman. His first comics story was "Bandits in Toyland" in Batman #11 (June–July 1942). loosely based on Captain Future. He and artist Sheldon Moldoff created Batwoman in Detective Comics #233 (July 1956). Hamilton co-created Space Ranger in Showcase #15 (July–Aug. 1958) with Gardner Fox and Bob Brown. He also wrote the well-regarded three-part story "The Last Days of Superman" in Superman #156 (Oct 1962). Hamilton was also among the first regular writers for Legion of Super-Heroes, where he created Timber Wolf, the Time Trapper, and the Legion of Substitute Heroes, among other characters. "The Clash of Cape and Cowl" in World's Finest Comics #153 (Nov. 1965) is the source of an Internet meme in which Batman slaps Robin. Hamilton retired from comics with the publication of "The Cape and Cowl Crooks" in World's Finest Comics #159 (August 1966). On December 31, 1946, Hamilton married her in San Gabriel, California, and moved with her to Kinsman, Ohio. Afterward he would produce some of his best work including his novels The Star of Life (1947), The Valley of Creation (1948), City at World's End (1951) In the year before his death, Toei Animation had launched production of an anime adaptation of his Captain Future novels and Tsuburaya Productions adapted Star Wolf into a tokusatsu series; both series were aired on Japanese television in 1978. The Captain Future adaptation was later exported to Europe, winning Hamilton a new and different fan base than the one that had acclaimed him half a century before, notably in France, Italy and Germany.

Joint interviews of Brackett and Hamilton by Dave Truesdale were published in Tangent (Summer 1976),

Selected works

Captain Future

  1. Captain Future and the Space Emperor (1940)
  2. Calling Captain Future (1940)
  3. Captain Future's Challenge (1940)
  4. The Triumph of Captain Future (1940), reprinted as Galaxy Mission
  5. Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones (1941)
  6. Star Trail to Glory (1941)
  7. The Magician of Mars (1941)
  8. The Lost World of Time (1941)
  9. Quest Beyond the Stars (1942)
  10. Outlaws of the Moon (1942)
  11. The Comet Kings (1942)
  12. Planets in Peril (1942)
  13. The Face of the Deep (1943)
  14. Worlds to Come (1943)
  15. Star of Dread (1943)
  16. Magic Moon (1944)
  17. The Tenth Planet (1969)
  18. Red Sun of Danger (1945), reprinted as Danger Planet
  19. Outlaw World (1946)

Volumes #14 (Worlds to Come, 1943) and #17 (Days of Creation, 1944) were written by Joseph Samachson while #20, The Solar Invasion (1946) was by Manly Wade Wellman. The main series was followed by a set of seven novelettes from 1950 to 1951: "The Return of Captain Future", "Children of the Sun", "The Harpers of Titan", "Pardon my Iron Nerves", "Moon of the Unforgotten", "Earthmen No More" and "Birthplace of Creation".

Interstellar Patrol

A space opera sequence based on the seminal "Crashing Suns". With the exception of "The Sun People", the stories were assembled as Crashing Suns in 1965.

  1. "Crashing Suns" (1928)
  2. The Star-Stealers (1929)
  3. Within the Nebula (1929)
  4. Outside the Universe (1929)
  5. The Comet-Drivers (1930)
  6. "The Sun People" (1930)
  7. "The Cosmic Cloud" (1930)

The Star Kings

A space opera sequence: the first, The Star Kings, is a reworking of The Prisoner of Zenda while Return to the Stars is a fix-up of four stories: "Kingdoms of the Stars", "The Shores of Infinity", "The Broken Stars" and "The Horror from the Magellanic". A crossover between this universe and Brackett's, "Stark and the Star Kings", was released in 2005, having originally been submitted to The Last Dangerous Visions. Two further stories in the same universe, "The Star Hunter" (1958) and "The Tattooed Man" (1957), were reissued in 2014 as The Last of the Star Kings.

  1. The Star Kings (1949), originally published in Amazing Stories in 1947, and as a paperback in 1950 under the title Beyond the Moon
  2. Return to the Stars (1968)
  3. "Stark and the Star Kings" (2005)
  4. The Last of the Star Kings (2014)

Starwolf

Interstellar adventure with mercenary Morgan Chane.

  1. The Weapon from Beyond (1967)
  2. The Closed Worlds (1968)
  3. World of the Starwolves (1968)

Other novels

{| class="sortable"

|+

|-

! title !! year !! comment

|-

| The Abysmal Invaders || 1929 ||

|-

| The Life-Masters || 1929 ||

|-

| The Sea Horror || 1929 ||

|-

| The Invisible Master || 1930 ||

|-

| The Space Visitors || 1930 ||

|-

| Evans of the Earth Guard || 1930 ||

|-

| The Man Who Saw the Future || 1930 ||

|-

| World Atavism || 1930 ||

|-

| The Sargasso of Space || 1931 ||

|-

| The Door into Infinity || 1936 ||

|-

| The Fire Princess || 1938 ||

|-

| The World with a Thousand Moons || 1942 ||

|-

| Forgotten World || 1945 ||

|-

| Come Home from Earth || 1946 ||

|-

| Proxy Planeteers || 1947 ||

|-

| The Knowledge Machine || 1948 ||

|-

| A Yank at Valhalla || 1950 ||

|-

| The Monsters of Juntonheim || - || reprint of A Yank at Valhalla

|-

| Tharkol, Lord of the Unknown || 1950 ||

|-

| The Prisoner of Mars || - || reprint of Tharkol, Lord of the Unknown

|-

| City at World's End || 1951 ||

|-

| Last Call for Doomsday! || 1956 ||

|-

| Citadel of the Star Lords || 1956 ||

|-

| The Legion of Lazarus || 1956 ||

|-

| The Sinister Invasion || 1957 ||

|-

| The Sun Smasher || 1959 ||

|-

| Starman Come Home || - || reprint of The Sun Smasher

|-

| The Star of Life || 1959 ||

|-

| The Man Who Missed the Moon || - || reprint of The Star of Life

|-

| The Haunted Stars || 1960 ||

|-

| Battle for the Stars || 1961 ||

|-

| The Stars, My Brothers || 1962 ||

|-

| The Valley of Creation || 1948 ||

|-

| Fugitive of the Stars || 1965 ||

|-

| Doomstar || 1966 ||

|-

| The Lake of Life || 1978 ||

|-

| || 2015 ||

|}

Collections

  • The Horror on the Asteroid and Other Tales of Planetary Horror (1936)
  • Murder in the Clinic (1946)
  • What's It Like Out There? and Other Stories (1974)
  • The Best of Edmond Hamilton (Doubleday Science Fiction Book Club, April 1977), edited and introduced by Leigh Brackett

Sources

  • Moskowitz, Sam (1966). Seekers of Tomorrow: Masters of Modern Science Fiction. Cleveland, OH: World Publishing Co. .
  • Reprint (1973). Westport, CT: Hyperion Press. . .
  • Gombert, Richard W. (2009). World Wrecker: An Annotated Bibliography of Edmond Hamilton. Borgo Press imprint of Rockville, MD: Wildside. . .
  • Cadigan, Glen, "Writer of Two Worlds: The Science-Fiction & Comicbook Careers of Edmond Hamilton," Alter Ego #187, May 2024
  • The Collected Edmond Hamilton (series) at Haffner Press