Edmond Hamilton’s Interstellar Patrol

Space Opera

The term “Space Opera” was coined in 1941 by Wilson “Bob” Tucker, SF fan and writer. Obviously old “Bob” was not a fan of Space Opera. Before this time the sub-genre was usually called “Interplanetary Romance”. Space Opera rolls off the tongue much better. But the term is a pejorative, equating tales of spaceships and thundering stars to pedestrian fare such as the over-worked Western, a “horse opera” or the common Romance, or “soap opera”, the first to bear that title. Romantic radio programs were usually sponsored by soap companies. Today they are known as “The Soaps” and Proctor & Gamble is still a sponsor.

For people living in our days, ninety plus years removed from the Pulps of 1928, this seems the norm. With franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek, who needs to worry about Space Opera. It is obviously here to stay. But what we miss is that in 1928, there was no actual Space Opera until Edmond Hamilton invented it with “Crashing Suns”. No Buck Rogers, no John Hanson, no Flash Gordon, no E. E. “Doc” Smith. None of what the 1930s were all about.

Edmond Hamilton

Lester Del Rey’s The World of Science Fiction (1976) says : “Asimov didn’t invent this idea [the galactic empire in his Foundation stories]. Edmond Hamilton wrote about an empire of stars in the “Interstellar Patrol” series for Weird Tales in the twenties…”

This isn’t to say there weren’t precursors, because there were. Even as early as 1901, George Griffiths’ A Honeymoon in Space shows signs of what is to follow. Edgar Rice Burroughs and his brand of interplanetary romance was a big influence on Ed Hamilton, who read him in the original “Soft Magazines” like Argosy. Marshall B. Tymn and Mike Ashley in The SF Magazines (1985) trace the future war story back to Sir George Tomkyns Chesney’s “The Battle of Dorking” in Blackwood’s Magazine (Spring 1871).

“…One has little difficulty tracing the evolution of that basic plot from those late Victorian jingoistic narratives—emulated both on the Continent and in America—through the narratives of the “space operas” of writers like “Doc” Smith and Edmond Hamilton to the contemporary treatments of the motif, ranging from Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War (1974) to such films as Star Wars and Return of the Jedi. Indeed, one realizes the irony of how deeply a part of modern popular culture these forecasts of future struggles have become when the Newsweek cover referring to the outbreak of the Falkland Islands affair in the spring of 1982 was entitled “The Empire Strikes Back.”

Assembling the Pieces

Hamilton was the first to put the pieces together. As Leigh Brackett, his wife, wrote in 1977:

“But Hamilton was writing other things as well: stories which earned him the nickname of World-Wrecker, or World-Saver. He was an innovator from the first, and let it be said that he did not think small. In a day when science fiction was concerned chiefly with laboratories and test tubes, he wanted the stars. And he got them. His Interstellar Patrol stories set the pattern for the many others that followed later on…He wrote about the ‘great booming suns of outer space’ — and if they don’t boom, they by God ought to! — and the readers loved it. Hamilton more than anybody opened up the horizons of science fiction, taking it out beyond Earth, out beyond the solar system, out to the farthest star, and still onward and onward to other galaxies.” (The Best of Edmond Hamilton, 1977)

Hamilton began this amazing transformation in the pages of Weird Tales, a horror magazine that actually embraced horror, science fiction and fantasy. Mike Ashley in The Time Machines (2000) talks about how this innovation trickled down to Hugo Gernsback, the man who had published the first all SF magazine in April 1926:

The readers soon demanded something more exciting, and they urged Gernsback to develop the type of science fiction that had been appearing in the Munsey pulps. It was the Burroughsian planetary adventure that won through, tempered slightly by the Merrittesque exotic lost world, so that within two years, Gernsbackian sf gave way to space opera, Phase 2 of its evolution. This was developed by E.E. Smith and Edmond Hamilton, and then rapidly ruined by scores of opportunist writers. Space opera was already the common denominator of sf, and in fact always remains so. It has never gone away, but in capable hands can develop into quality sf. It dominated sf throughout the thirties and did much to give it a bad image. It was typified by the hero-rescues-heroine-from- monster school, and because it gave rise to the hero-pulp style of fiction is best typified as hero sf.

Buck Rogers

Let’s take a second here to talk about Buck Rogers, or to be more accurate “Anthony Rogers”. The first Rogers story to appear was “Armageddon 2419” by Philip Francis Nowlan (1888-1940). It appeared in Amazing Stories in August 1928, the same month Hamilton’s “Crashing Suns” appeared. (Fair to say, neither man influenced the other…so far.) In this novella we meet Anthony Rogers, an American who is put into suspended animation by a mysterious gas and sleeps for 500 years. Upon waking he finds America has been conquered by the evil Asians, the Han. Weird gadgets and derring-do commence. There was a sequel “The Airlords of Han” (Amazing Stories, March 1929) in which Anthony and Wilma Deering defeat the Han and the world is “safe for white people again” (sigh). No spaceships, flying belts and airships, yes, but no traveling to distant worlds. That had to wait until Nowlan developed his story into a comic strip (January 7, 1929) when an adaptation of the two novellas began. It was only after this that the hero, now named “Buck” (after a matinee idol cowboy, Buck Jones) took to the stars. In this way, Edmond Hamilton was there before Buck and later Flash and all the rest.

So what are the Interstellar Patrol stories like? Sam Moskwitz in his Seekers of Tomorrow (1967) explains:

Even more significant and far ahead of its time was “The Star Stealers” (Weird Tales, February 1929), the first of a series which projected the reader into a far-distant time when the planets around most of the suns were inhabited and formed an interstellar council called The Council of Suns. To keep order in the galaxy and enforce its edicts, the council’s tool was the Interstellar Patrol. The problem raised by the problem of diverting an invading black star is the first one solved by the patrol. Galactic Patrol by E. E. Smith, based on a similar concept, would not appear until the September 1938, Astounding Science-Fiction. After that, such cosmic agencies would become science-fiction cliches. A. Merritt was so taken with the idea of an interstellar patrol that he descended from his editorial Olympus and tried with might and main to get his own book publisher, Boni, to issue the Interstellar Patrol Series as one volume, to no avail.”

Films of Today

This would not be the last time publishers and filmmakers would doubt the appeal of Space Opera to their own detriment. Gene Roddenberry in 1965 would have to sell Star Trek as “Wagon Train to the stars” to see it made. George Lucas only twelve years later in 1976 struggled hard to finance a movie about robots and light swords.

Despite what Moskwitz said, the Interstellar Patrol begins with “Crashing Suns” (Weird Tales, August-September 1928) not “The Star Stealers”. The story opens on the bridge of the Patrol Cruiser 79388, where its captain, Jan Tor is steering the ship to Earth. His engineer, Hal Kur, jokes with him briefly. The Council of Suns has called for an emergency meeting. When Jan Tor arrives at the massive senate-like room he finds out his crew has been chosen to investigate a roving sun that headed directly towards earth. The star acts in unusual ways and foul play is suspected. Jan Tor and his men fly off to save the Earth.

Now if that seems familiar to modern readers and viewers it is because it describes the beginning of at least two Star Trek films, Star Trek, the Motion Picture (1979) and The Undiscovered Country (1991). Stories in which whole planets are used as weapons can also be found in The Wrath of Khan (1982), Generations (1994), Nemesis (2002) and Star Trek: Beyond (2016). And that not even considering the Death Star that blows up Alderaan. Ed Hamilton did it in 1928. Think about that.

The Interstellar Patrol Series

“Crashing Suns” (Weird Tales, August 1928)

“The Star Stealers” (Weird Tales, February 1929)

“Within the Nebula” (Weird Tales, May 1929)

“Outside the Universe” (Weird Tales, July, August, September, October 1929)

“The Comet Drivers” (Weird Tales, February 1930)

“The Sun People” (Weird Tales, May 1930)

“The Cosmic Cloud” (Weird Tales, November 1930)

“Corsairs of the Cosmos” (Weird Tales, April 1934)

Just a word of caution if you are thinking these stories will be like reading modern Space Opera. Being the prototype, the Interstellar Stories may seem crude to many. Try to imagine a world without Space Opera before you read them. The wonder, the potential for what is to come, is truly amazing.Edmond Hamilton deserves more credit than he usual gets. Read them and you decide…