Forty-five years ago today, Edmond Hamilton died. Tonight, we celebrate his literary legacy. Specifically, the legacy of Merrittesque stories he wrote for Weird Tales during the 1930s and 1940s. In my opinion, those tales are some of his finest, albeit lesser-known. Hamilton could write a gripping weird tale, though he became more famous for his straight-up science fiction, especially his space operas.

Ed Hamilton started out in Weird Tales with the patently A. Merritt-inspired "The Monster-God of Mamurth". He would go on to sell many, many stories to both Farnsworth Wright and then Dorothy McIlwraith. Hamilton's favorite author--like so many of the young SFF pulp writers at the time--was A. Merritt. More than a few of Ed's fictions sold to WT during the '30s and '40s were squarely in the Merritt mode.

During the mid-'40s Hamilton met a leggy young sci-fi author by the name of Leigh Brackett. They hit it off. How could they not? He was a tall, worldly, successful pulp veteran, respected by his peers. They both admired H. Rider Haggard, Edgar Rice Burroughs, A. Merritt and Robert E. Howard. When we're talking two authors marrying, that's a solid foundation for a nuptial union spanning four decades, as it turns out.

Leigh remained proud of her husband until his dying day. Check out what she has to say in The Best of Edmond Hamilton.

So, what are the best Hamilton Weird Tales stories? DMR Books editor, Dave Ritzlin, a man of erudition and taste, has very helpfully compiled those stories of adventure, menace and wonder in two volumes: Twilight of the Gods and The Avenger from Atlantis. I've read all of those tales plus roughly twenty others from Ed's WT work. These are easily some of the best, if not the best, especially for the readers of the DMR Blog. Let's get to it.

Twilight of the Gods was released in December of 2020. The title story is a ripping yarn, taking place in Scandinavia, following the quest of a man who has forgotten his past and how that past relates to the Norse gods. I won't go further into this because I plan on discussing it further in a future post on the influence of A. Merritt's Dwellers in the Mirage. All I'll say is that it would appear that this story was one of the major influences upon Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber. It's well worth reading, regardless.

Here are the opening paragraphs from "Priestess of the Labyrinth"--the first time in print since the glory days of the pulps:

Marlin felt the Lightning [aircraft] buck and shudder like a wounded horse as a shell hit the right wing. The stunning shock of the explosion smacked him hard against his belt. He came groggily out of his daze to find that his plane lacked a wing and was tumbling downward through the darkness.
“I would have to run into flak on my last mission!” he thought sickly. No time for further thought! The crippled plane was screaming down through the night toward the Nazi-held island of Crete at increasing speed.

Marlin is a Texan. As with so many of these tales, the ghost of Robert E. Howard also stalks through the texts. Wonder, menace, savagery. Hamilton's combination of his influences is gripping. Soon, Marlin will face the genetically-engineered horrors of Minoan Crete.

Hamilton was of Scottish extraction. So, it's no surprise that he saw the possibilities for weird tales utilizing Celtic mythology, just as Robert E. Howard did before him. "The Shining Land" and "Lost Elysium" both employ the Celtic legendarium to tell tales of suspense and adventure.

"The Valley of the Gods" uses Mayan myths as a basis and "The King of Shadows" employs Erlik. I found the end of this tale quite poignant. "The Serpent Princess" slides over into Mesopotamian-flavored horror that is almost Lovecraftian, but Merritt taught HPL how to do that sort of thing anyway.

The final story is "The Daughter of Thor". Here are the first paragraphs:

From far in the north, colossal banners of cold radiance streamed up across the brooding night sky. They pulsated in a shifting glory of red and green, waving stronger and reaching higher toward the zenith. Beneath that weird, quivering glow of the Northern Lights, the snow- clad mountains were like cowled white giants guarding the black reaches of Narvik Fjord.
Mart Fallon watched from the barred window of his dark prison. His lean, tired faced, haggard and unshaven, showed deep lines of fatigue in the shifting glow. His black eyes were dull and somber, and his shoulders sagged inside his torn RAF uniform jacket. He was feeling a bitterness of despair that was not his alone in these first fateful weeks of the Nazi invasion of Norway.
The heavy, rumbling voice of his fellow-prisoner came out of the darkness behind him. “There will be battle and death tonight,” Helverson muttered. “When those lights flame in the sky, the Valkyries are riding.”

Fallon, an Irish-American, and Helverson, a Norwegian, end up escaping. They crash their plane far to the north and encounter the 'Aesir'. They are brought before Brynhild, queen of the Aesir and Daughter of Thor:

Brynhild instantly moved her white hands faster than the eye could follow, in a curious weaving gesture. Her whole body seemed to flame. Dancing brands of lightning blazed from her hands to form an awful, dazzling curtain of electric fire in front of her.
Crashing thunder shook the great stone hall. Fallon recoiled staggeringly from that curtain of lightning—and swiftly, it was gone.

What we have here is a combo of Lur from Dwellers in the Mirage and Norhala from The Metal Monster. What follows is Grade-A pulp adventure. The fact that Hamilton borrows from Merritt is immaterial. Lovecraft borrowed from Merritt. REH borrowed from Merritt. Brackett borrowed from Merritt. Get used to it.

Dave Ritzlin ends this volume as he began it, with a pulse-pounding tale of Merritt-inspired Nordic pulp adventure.

The Avenger from Atlantis begins with "The Six Sleepers". I'll let Hamilton set up the action:

Garry Winton ran down that gloomy, narrow defile of the Atlas Mountains with bullets whining past his head and the yells of blood-lusting fanatics in his ears. His gun was empty and he sought desperately with his eyes for some place of refuge as he ran.
The frowning black cliffs on either side of him, sheer, vertical battle- ments of black basalt, offered no visible shelter. Then he glimpsed a round dark hole in the rock wall just ahead, and with his last strength he ran to it and stumbled into the darkness inside it.
Crouched there, panting, the young American prospector waited tensely for his pursuers. His lean, wiry figure was taut; his tanned face and serious gray eyes were distorted into a mirthless grin as he saw the yelling, white-burnoosed Berbers come running down the defile.

The cave wherein Winston takes refuge holds hidden dangers. Overcome with a strange lethargy, he awakes to find himself in the far future with other fighting men--victims of the same cave--alongside him. What follows is a headlong adventure of strange humans, stranger demihumans and abysmal cults.

"The Avenger from Atlantis" and "Child of Atlantis" are catnip to an Atlanteophile like myself. Both have a bit of C.J. Cutliffe-Hynes' The Lost Continent about them, as well as Doyle's "The Maracot Deep".

"Comrades of Time" starts out in this Howardian fashion:

Ethan Drew’s rifle was hot in his hand, and not from the scorching desert sun but from desperate firing. There were just two of them left, just two of this patrol of the Foreign Legion that had been ambushed here deep in the Sahara.
As he crouched in the scant shelter of the sandy gully, firing at the white-burnoosed riders out there in front of him, he laughed harshly. His browned, aquiline young face was taut, his nostrils flaring, gray eyes icy, as he called to his single companion. “They’re going to charge, Emil! Looks as if we won’t be seeing the cafés at Sidi again.”
“We’re going to die!” wailed the other legionnaire, a swarthy, stocky Swiss, terror on his features. “We’re going to—”
Thuck! The Swiss tumbled sidewise with a hole in his face, and lay sprawled half across the bodies of the other dead men. And the Tuaregs were now riding forward in their charge, white-garbed, veiled demons, flourishing their rifles and sabers and yelling like fiends as they came on.

Ethan Drew soon finds himself a million years in the future, fighting beside other time-lost warriors. "Armies from the Past" is its worthy sequel.

"Dreamers' Worlds" is borderline Sword-and-Sorcery. The mind of one man 'dreams' the life of the other. One of those men is a warrior living in a world of magic and savagery.

"The Shadow Folk" finishes out the volume. The poignant tale of a lost and legendary people. A. Merritt would approve.

There you have it. I keep seeing references out on the Interwebz to 'classic pulp fiction', ‘Pulp SFF’ and whatnot. This is it. Perhaps not quite equal to the best of Robert E. Howard or Merritt, but well-told and absolutely in that mold.

Raise your mead-horns to the shade of Edmond Hamilton, sword-brothers! A neglected titan, but a titan, nonetheless.