Interplanetary Circus Freak Show

Read/Watch 'em in Order #57

You know, I think you can argue that Edmond Hamilton had too many good ideas and didn't always spread them out as much as he should have.

I would hold "Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones" (Winter 1941) up as evidence of this. The 5th Captain Future adventure is crammed to overflowing with wonderfully imaginative ideas, but there simply isn't time within this relatively short novel to properly develop all those ideas.

The plot here is different in one important way from the previous four Captain Future adventures. Previously, the identity of the main villain was unknown, with there being a number of suspects to choose from. This time, we know who the bad guy is right from the start--Doctor Ul Quorn, a Martian/Venusian/Human hybrid who once went to prison for performing horrible experiments.

Now he's free and trying to acquire the Seven Space Stones, relics of an ancient Martian scientist and the key to a mysterious super-weapon.

The mystery here is two-fold: What can Ul Quorn do with the Space Stones if he acquires them all and why does he seem to already have a grudge against Curt Newton (aka Captain Future) and the Futuremen?

This premise leads into a competing treasure hunt, with Ul Quorn and Captain Future each trying to get the Space Stones before the other does. It's a race that takes them from Earth to Venus to Mars to an outlaw asteroid called the Pleasure Planet.

Within this story, Hamilton really does cram in one cool idea after another. For instance:

1. Ul Quorn is traveling with an interplanetary circus, using his scientific skill to put on a magic act. His minions (aside from a mind-numbingly beautiful Martian femme fatale) are genetically-engineered members of the circus freak show whose skills come in handy when its time to steal a Space Stone. For instance, one guy has enlarged cup-like ears that give him super-hearing, while another has a chameleon ability to change his skin color and blend in with the surroundings.

2. Captain Future at one point encounters a space hermit who despises technology and lives on a remote asteroid.

3. Another asteroid, the Pleasure Planet, is outside planetary police jurisdiction because the crook who owns it slapped some huge rockets on it and stopped its orbit, thereby using a legal technicality to become a world outside the law.

4. The effects of the super-weapon and the final fight this leads to are cool and awesome and absolutely epic--but I can't tell you about it in detail without spoiling the surprise for anyone who hasn't read it.

5. Since the Futuremen have no evidence against Ul Quorn at first, they go undercover at the circus in various disguises. Grag the robot's disguise and the personality he assumes is hilarious.

6. Ezra Gurney, the aging Space Marshall who is one of Curt's regular allies, has a legitimately touching encounter with an aging space pirate he had tried to catch years before.

7. There's a cult of Martians who are determined to bring back the scientific glories of their planet that were lost 2000 centuries ago.

8.  Did I mention that there's a mind-numbingly beautiful Martian femme fatale?

All this makes "Captain Future and the Seven Space Stones" the most fun of the first five books in the series. But, ironically, it also borders on being unsatisfying. The above ideas simply aren't fleshed out as much has they might have been.

For instance, several of Ul Quorn's "freaks" assist him, but several others are simply introduced, described well enough to wet our interest, then left unused. The coolest of them is probably the Moon Wolf, a six-legged wolf from Io who had a human brain transplanted into it, giving it intelligence and the power of speech. You simply do not introduce us to a six-legged talking wolf from Io and then not do anything with him! I was expecting a fight between the Futuremen and the freaks, but we never get to see this.

The Hermit, the femme fatale, Ezra's former space pirate nemesis, the Martian cultists--all these are interesting characters. All are underused.

Other plot points come and go too quickly. At one point, Captain Future and Planetary Police agent Joan Randall are undercover in the gambling dens on Pleasure Planet. The normally straight-laced Joan is posing as a spoiled rich girl, which is a fun idea. But we get only one line of dialogue from her while playing this role, then the story moves on to other things.

There are two more important items to bring up. Ul Quorn is taken alive at the end--I think he's the first major villain in any of the stories to be taken alive. This is because his back-story and his scientific genius are setting him up to become Captain Future's re-occurring arch-enemy. I have no complaints about this. The hybrid mad scientist is a great villain.

Also, Otho the Android gets a pet. This is a "meteor mimic"--a small animal that can shape-change--which Otho names Oog. Remember that Grag the robot had a metal-eating "moon pup" named Eek. Remember also that Grag and Otho are always arguing--mirroring Ham and Monk from the Doc Savage novels. Giving both a pet further mirrors Ham and Monk, who had an ape and a pig respectively that they employed to annoy each other. That Hamilton (perhaps under editorial order) was deliberately lifting this dynamic from Lester Dent's Doc Savage tales  becomes even more apparent when Oog is tossed into the mix. I'm a bit conflicted about this. As much as I love Hamilton's work as a writer, I would have preferred to see the Futuremen develop their own unique personalities. On the other hand, Oog and Eek are pretty cool.

But "The Seven Space Stones" is still a great story. Reading this one leaves you very aware of just how well-qualified Edmond Hamilton was to eventually switch to writing comic books and produce so many great Legion of Superheroes and Superman tales. That same sense of pure fun and internally consistent logic is there. Heck, Captain Future and his men would have fit into DC's Silver Age universe perfectly.

There are 15 more Captain Future novels and 5 short stories, so there's a good chance we'll talk about him again in the future. But that's it for Captain Future as a part of the "In Order" series. We still have two Perry Mason movies to go and we'll also get back to Jongor of Lost Land for his last two stories. After that--well, as of this writing (about two months before it posts) I haven't decided yet.

Robot Cities and Fungus Forests

Read/Watch 'em in Order #55

Captain Future's fourth adventure (cover dated Fall 1940)  has a different vibe to it from the previous three. This time, the bad guy isn't trying to overtly conquer the Solar System. Instead, he's just trying to make a ton of money.

The villain--known as the Life-Lord--has found a Fountain of Youth on one of the worlds in our system. If you drink some of the water from it, you become young again. But its highly addictive, so you have to keep drinking it or you'll abruptly re-age and die. The Life-Lord gets people hooked, then drains them of all their wealth to keep them supplied.

The novel was given the generic title Galaxy
Mission when republished as a paperback.

The set-up seems like a deliberate metaphor for drug addiction. That seems just a little bit odd for a story from 1940--certainly drug addiction existed, but it wasn't in the public eye anywhere near to the degree it would be a decade or two later. So the metaphor might be accidental.

In either case, the story is a good one, playing out like a police procedural. Captain Future and gang start on Venus, setting up a sting operation to catch one of the Life-Lord's pushers. This goes awry and Grag the Robot is captured.

Grag's escape involves blowing himself into space, then getting rescued by a passing space liner. Circumstances require him to pose as a nearly-mindless automaton and he's claimed by a guy who runs a traveling freak show, which is performing on Mars. Grag's exit from the freak show is truly hilarious.




By this time, Captain Future is also on Mars, following a clue that takes him to the Machine City--a city run by robots whose organic masters died off millennia ago. From here, the next clue takes him to Saturn, where the villain at one point releases various creatures from a zoo in an attempt to kill the hero. There is more investigation, a couple of murders and a nice twist at the end involving the Life-Lord's true identity. Future finds one hide-out in the poisonous Fungus Forest, then eventually finds the location of the source of the drug in yet another supposedly inaccessible area of the ringed planet.

I really like the balance Hamilton strikes with this story. It is indeed a police procedural, but Space Opera elements are still there to fire up our imaginations as the story progresses.

"If the third mine is smashed, hell'll let out across the whole system!"

Read/Watch 'em In Order #51

The villain of  Captain Future's Challenge (Summer 1940) is smarter than most. He realizes that if you take out the superhero BEFORE you instigate your evil scheme, then you eliminate your greatest threat before he even realizes there's a scheme afoot. 

The scheme is to destroy the Solar System's supply of gravium, the most essential element needed to keep civilization running. The villain, known as the Wrecker, launches attacks on several gravium mines while simultaneously sending another ship to kidnap Captain Future.

Edmond Hamilton gets the story moving quickly right from the get-go. At the same time, he concisely explains to us what's going on. Gravium is used to make gravity equalizers, which allows the natives of the various planets to live and work normally on other worlds of greater or lesser gravity. Without gravium, interplanetary travel and trade would collapse. It's a good, solid plot device that gives the Wrecker a believable motivation and creates suspense as gravium mines are steadily destroyed.

There's even a good reason for capturing Captain Future rather than just killing him--we eventually learn that the Wrecker can transfer minds from one body to another. Obviously, a Captain Future body with the mind of one of the Wrecker's minions would give the villain a major advantage.

But, on the other hand, trying to keep the good Captain a prisoner isn't really a good idea. He's soon given the bad guys the slip and rejoins the Futuremen aboard the Comet. Soon, they're in a dog fight with two ships amidst the asteroid field, while Grag the robot ends up on an asteroid inhabited by a primitive tribe that is soon worshiping him as a god.

The trail eventually leads to Neptune, which is (of course) an ocean world. The last three gravium mines are here, located beneath undersea domes. I love this version of Neptune--a world with only a few small island chains, giant sea monsters and legends of mysterious sea devils that are spoken in whispers among the natives. Once again, a Captain Future novel has frustrated me that the real Solar System isn't like this. Stupid, stupid physics!

Anyway, Captain Future needs to not just stop the Wrecker, but also figure out who the heck he is. The list of suspects is narrowed when it becomes certain that one of the mine owners or a mine official must be the villain. The motive, at least, is obvious--the Wrecker will eventually have a monopoly on gravium production. I like that twist. Usually, villains want to take over the Solar System through fear or violence. Here, the bad guy wants to pretty much buy his way to the top. 

The ending involves a pair of action set-pieces, both of which are exciting and full of imagination. First, Captain Future has to escape from an inescapable cage located in a completely alien environment while trapped in a completely alien body. 

Then, he has to lead a fleet of small submarines in an undersea battle against an army of alien creatures riding atop ill-tempered sea monsters.

Many Captain Future fans prefer the later novels, when Edmond Hamilton was paid a higher rate and spent more time re-writing before submitting the finished manuscript. In general, these later efforts had more polish and imagination, so I largely agree with this view.

But Captain Future's Challenge is one of my favorites, nonetheless. It's not lacking at all in imagination and Hamilton's Neptune is a great setting for a space opera. Hamilton was a superb storyteller and even when he didn't do quite as much manuscript polishing as he might have, he still gave us exciting and engaging tales. 

Sea Monsters on Pluto

Read/Watch 'em In Order #49

The nefarious Doctor Zarro has an unusual scheme for taking over the Solar System--convince the populace that a "Dark Star" approaching the system will destroy everyone and that only he--Doctor Zarro--knows how to save us all. This will create a panic reaction and mass protests that will sweep him into power.

And something is approaching the Solar System, though scientists cannot detect any significant mass to it despite its large visible size. But then scientists begin vanishing. Doctor Zarro announces that they are fleeing the Solar System because they know it is doomed. Only Zarro can save us!

This is the set up for "Calling Captain Future," the story that appeared in the second issue (Spring 1940) of his magazine. It's another fun entry in the series--like other Space Opera stories I've talked about in recent weeks it creates a fictional version of our Solar System that's so cool, it leaves you perpetually disappointed with real life space.

Captain Future, along with his odd companions (a disembodied brain; a shape-changing android; and a robot) investigate, hoping to find the truth before the frightened human race makes Zarro a dictator.

Of course, Zarro is kidnapping the scientists. Future manages to rescue one of them, along with Planetary Police agent Joan Randall. He then sets a trap, but this backfires and he is himself captured by Zarro's Legion of Doom.

From here, there's a mini-adventure in space when Future, Joan and the rescued scientist end up stranded in a Sargasso Sea of wrecked space ships, battling blood-sucking and multi-tentacled aliens. I find that interesting, because it recycles an idea Hamilton had used in the story "The Sargasso of Space," published in Astounding Stories in 1931.  (Though that story had space pirates rather than aliens as the antagonists.) Apparently, Hamilton like the general idea of a Sargasso Sea in space. And why not? An area in space where wrecked or stranded ships from centuries of space travel eventually drift together? That's a cool enough idea to use over again.

Eventually, various clues bring the Futuremen to Pluto. They need to find Zarro's base, which seems to be on one of Pluto's three moons. This leads to another series of action set pieces--escaping rapidly moving glaciers and fighting a sea monster on Pluto; escaping a prison riot on one of the moons; fighting a six-legged grizzly bear-like monster on another moon. While all this is going on, Simon Wright--the brain-in-the-box--is kidnapped. Eventually, Captain Future finds Zarro's base, but he and his men are all paralyzed by a gas that freezes your metabolism but leaves you fully aware of your surrounding environment. Well, except for Simon Wright, who doesn't breath. Zarro then simply sets him in a corner and unplugs his speech device. Oh, and Grag the robot doesn't breath either, does he? So his control circuit is severed.  The point is that the villain incapacitates all the good guys in such a way that there is no hope of escape. Doctor Zarro is not a nice person.

All seems doomed. But perhaps there is hope in the form of Grag the Robot's frightened metal-eating

pet. Eek the Moon-Pup might be the key to saving the Solar System.

The first Captain Future story was set primarily on Jupiter and was a lot of fun. This time, the action is set mostly on or near Pluto and its moons and the result is, I think, even more fun. The story is fast-paced, constructed around a series of action set-pieces, but also logically laying out the clues that the heroes must follow to find Doctor Zarro and deduce his real identity. Few writers did Space Opera better than Edmond Hamilton.

I mentioned Eek the Moon-Pup. This is the new addition to the cast and its easy to see where the idea comes from. Grag the Robot and Otho the Android are modeled after Doc Savage's companions Monk and Ham, who were always bickering with each other. Eventually, the two each got an unusual pet (a pig and an ape respectively), which they constantly used to further annoy each other.

Eek is Grag's pet and its metal-eating habits constantly annoy Otho, so the additional parallel to Doc is obvious. But there is a difference. As much as I love the Doc Savage stories, I will admit I always hoped those stupid useless pets would just eat each other and be done with it. But Eek is unusual enough to be interesting and Hamilton actually uses him a a key plot device. That's definitely a step up.

And, gee whiz, I love the idea of Pluto and its moons being habitable and populated by furry natives, sea monsters and six-legged grizzlies. Why isn't the real Solar System more like that? Stupid physics!

"A Complete Book-Length Scientifiction Novel!"

Read/Watch 'em in Order #48

By 1940, there were truck-loads of heroes running around the pulp magazines, fighting crime and saving the world on a regular basis. But though some of those heroes had science fiction trappings, few of them lived in a pure science fiction world.

Mort Weisinger--he who would one day rule over Superman at DC Comics--filled this hole when he created Captain Future. Initially set in the far-future year of 1990, when the entire Solar System had been colonized and all nine planets (yes, PLUTO was still a planet! Take that, real-life scientists!) were found to support life. It's during this time that Curt Newton is orphaned while still a baby and gets raised inside a hidden base on the Moon by a disembodied brain, a robot and a shape-changing android.

As an adult, Curt turns out to be surprisingly well-adjusted. He's a brilliant scientist and in perfect physical shape, so naturally, with his surrogate family as his assistants, he fights evil throughout the Solar System in the guise of Captain Future.

It's not really a secret identity, since everyone knows who he really is. But its easy to be forgiving of this--Captain Future is a pretty cool name. And if you are the smartest guy in all of space with a robot, an android and a disembodied brain for sidekicks, then you can darn well call yourself anything you please.

It's pretty obvious that Weisinger was unashamedly lifting ideas from Doc Savage. Clark Savage and Curt Newton parallel each other in a number of ways--raised by scientists and trained to physical perfection; dedicating their skills to battling evil; heck, Grag the Robot and Otho the Android even bicker with each other in the same manner Doc's friends Monk and Ham fight.

But the science fiction setting still gives Captain Future a unique feel. Besides, Weisinger made the wise choice of getting Edmond Hamilton to write the series.

Hamilton was the perfect choice. He created an internally consistent vision of our Solar System that might have little to do with scientific reality (even by 1940 standards), but by golly it's a fun place that is wildly imaginative and allows for a true sense of wonder.

When we first meet Captain Future and his gang, they've already built up quite a reputation for saving mankind. There are nifty references scattered throughout this first story to previous adventures--an "atomic trap" they avoided on Neptune; Curt being tied to a rock on the hot side of Mercury; and a conflict with "Mind Men" on one of Saturn's moons. It makes me wonder if Hamilton was borrowing a trick from Arthur Conan Doyle--who would often drop in intriguing references to cases Sherlock Holmes had worked in the past ("the giant rat of Sumatra!").

The first Captain Future tale is "Captain Future and the Space Emperor," published in the premier issue of the good captain's own magazine. (Winter 1940)  This would run for 17 issues before being cancelled in 1944. Captain Future stories, though, would continue to appear in Startling Stories magazine until 1951.

The Space Emperor is causing trouble on Jupiter. And, yes, Jupiter is inhabited. Go deep enough into the atmosphere and it becomes breathable, with land masses heated by internal radiation. Humans have to wear "gravitation equalizers" while on the planet, where they now co-exist with native Jovians (a squat green-skinned race with flipper-like hands and feet).

But Human/Jovian relations are a bit strained. First, a strange plague of atavism--humans reverting first into ape-like beasts and eventually into reptiles--is raging across the planet. The Space Emperor claims to be the "Living Ancient," a member of a highly advanced civilization that lived on Jupiter centuries ago. He's gotten many of the Jovians to worship him and he's convinced the natives that the humans are cursed and must be wiped out. This will leave him effectively in charge of the whole planet.

Captain Future is asked to look into this. He encounters the Space Emperor several times during the adventure, but quite literally has a hard time putting a hand on him..Though the villain's real identity is certainly a human being, he does have access to ancient Jovian technology. This is both the source of the atavism plague AND a device that renders him incorporeal, making it impossible to touch him or shoot him. It also makes getting away easy, as he can walk through solid rock or even dive into the ground. He also wears a suit that both hides his face and allows him to breath even when immaterial.

All this makes for a fun story that combines elements of several genres. There's the overt science fiction stuff, of course, but there's also a mystery to be solved in deducing the bad guy's real identity. And Jupiter is essentially a Frontier world that is analogous to the Old West, with the Jovians representing Indians.  There's even a grizzled tough-guy marshal keeping the peace in a remote Jovian town.

Hamilton makes good use of all the characters. While the good guys gather clues and avoid death traps, each of Curt's sidekicks gets a moment in the sun. Otho uses his shape changing abilities to mingle with the Jovians and gather some vital information. Grag joins Captain Future on an expedition that includes following a lava flow into a giant cavern, where the robot's strength and the fact that he doesn't need to breath allows him to save a few lives. Simon Wright (a scientist who is now a brain in a case after disease wrecks his body) develops a cure of the atavism.

Hamilton was a wonderful storyteller, able to introduce fantastic elements into his stories and then follow the ensuing consequences to their logical conclusions. Despite the deliberate analogy to the Old West, Hamilton creates a truly alien world with his version of Jupiter. This is highlighted by an exciting set piece in which Curt and Planet Police agent Joan Randell run into some dangerous fauna, as well as by passages such as this:

"The jungle was weird tonight! The drenching radiance of the four moons made it a fantastic fairyland of deep black shadows and dappled silver light. High overhead stretched the great tree-ferns' masses of feathery fronds, tipped with spore-pods. Gleaming bright in the moons towered the metallic copper-trees. The blindly swaying snake-vines hung like dark pendulous serpents from the branches."

There are passing references to tree-octopuses, balloon-beasts, stun-flowers and a giant ocean of lava big enough to swallow the Earth--all reminding us that this is an alien world full of bizarre dangers.

Captain Future gets off to a great start with this story. When he wraps up the case, he and his friends return to his secret base on the moon to await their next mission. Joan Randall and Ezra Gurney (the aforementioned grizzled marshal) are left behind, but they'll both be turning up again as well. The Solar System according the Captain Future is a dangerous place, so there's always plenty of heroic deeds that need to be done. We'll be looking at the next four Captain Future novels as part of the "In Order" series before moving on to something else.