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Title:
Across Space
Series: -----
Author:
Edmond Hamilton
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre:
SF
Pages: 67
Words: 21K
This was a serialized story in one of those old pulp magazines, Weird Tales, and was a decent adventure novella. The beginning, where the populace of the world panics reminded me EXACTLY of When Worlds Collide. So much so that I went and looked up the publication date for this and Worlds to see which came first. Worlds was published in 1933. Across Space was published in 1926, which leads me to speculate whether the authors of Worlds had read this story originally and allowed it to color their story telling. We’ll never know.
I’m also giving this the “Scyenze” tag because it’s obvious the author worships Science as his god and thinks it will solve every problem encountered by mankind. I don’t hold that personally against him, as a lot of people thought that, but it is something to be aware of as that kind of thinking still persists today. If you find yourself automatically obeying some Butcher (who explicitly wants to experiment on death viruses without thought of the possible consequences, aka Anthony Fauci) because he has some letters after his name, you too might belong to the Cult of Scyenze. Don’t reject what they say automatically, but understand their background and the biases they are hiding while they proclaim their “great wisdom”.
Ok, I’m getting off my soapbox now.
This was a good story with cosmic horror overtones. Call of Cthulhu wasn’t published until 1928, but Lovecraft had published other stories in Weird Tales previous to this story, so it is entirely possible Hamilton was influenced. Either way, it didn’t feel like a rip off, just gave off that weird vibe. Which is what most stories needed I suspect to be included in Weird Tales.
This was also a straight up adventure story with no characterization, very little setting and most of that was held for the underground world inhabited by the ancient Martians.
When I read Hamilton’s Starwolf Trilogy, I wasn’t sure if wanted to read more by him or not. After reading this novella, I definitely want to explore more by him. I have collection of his works that’s about 6800 pages long. Not sure if it’s a complete collection, but it is in publication order and it should give me enough. I suspect I’ll read a story or two and then take a break and then come back. Let him steep in the Bookstooge Percolator as it were.
★★✬☆☆
From Bookstooge
One night astronomers discover that Mars has stopped dead in its orbit. The next night Mars begins falling towards Earth. This causes chaos and hysteria among the populace. One man, our hero, knows a famous Scientist. He goes to him and asks what is going on. Said scientist goes all “secret’y” on him and flies him down to Easter Island, where a previous scientist and his group have gone missing. They find that a group of subterranean Martians, with their super scyenze rays, are drawing Mars close enough to Earth to facilitate an invasion, allowing them to rule the earth. Our Hero and The Scientist figure everything out, overcome their psychic guards and reverse the deadly ray, thus putting Mars in orbit around one of the other large gas giants. The Scientist sends Our Hero away ostensibly to get reinforcements but uses the time to explode the Ray Machine and trap all the malevolent Martians underground, and quite possibly killing them all. Our Hero sheds a tear and goes on with his life.
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