Thu 6 Apr 2017
SF Stories I’m Reading: EDMOND HAMILTON “What’s It Like Out There?”
Posted by Steve under Pulp Fiction , Science Fiction & Fantasy , Stories I'm Reading[5] Comments
EDMOND HAMILTON “What’s It Like Out There?” Thrilling Wonder Stories, December 1952. First anthologized in The Best from Startling Stories, edited by Samuel Mines (Henry Holt, hardcover, 1953). Reprinted elsewhere many times. The first Hamilton collection in which it appeared was What’s It Like Out There and Other Stories (Ace, paperback, 1974).
I’m working my way through the latter collection, if reading only the first story so far qualifies as “working my through” it. Although he had an extraordinarily long writing career, “What’s It Like Out There?” is probably Hamilton’s most well remembered story, and it came along toward the beginning of what I consider the last third of it.
In his early days — the 20s and 30s — Edmond Hamilton was an out and out “space opera” kind of guy, writing stories with titles such as Crashing Suns, The Star-Stealers and The Comet-Drivers, all appearing first in Weird Tales. In the 1940s his career took a nosedive (my opinion) when he spent most of writing time dreaming up new adventures for Captain Future, again for the pulp magazines.
Whether “What’s It Like Out There?” was his first story written for readers at an adult level, I’m not sure, but from what I’ve read, it turned heads around in SF fandom almost immediately. It’s the story of a survivor of the second expedition to Mars, who before making his way home in Ohio from the hospital where he spent a number of weeks recovering, has to stop along the way to visit the families and loved ones of his friends who didn’t make it.
He would like to tell them the truth — that their loved ones died in vain, perishing on a cruel and uncaring planet, with their only purpose for being there being the uranium people on Earth need to continue going about their merry and equally uncaring ways — but he finds that he can’t. People on Earth still need their heroes, he discovers, no matter how little they actually care, except when of course it’s personal, and even then, as he discovers, most are happier not knowing the truth.
There are lots of nuances in this story that the preceding paragraph does not begin to go into. Last night was the first time I’d read this story in years, and it surprised me as to how much I read into it this time that I suspect I didn’t before. More than I remembered, at any rate.
April 7th, 2017 at 8:44 am
I wasn’t particularly impressed with the rest of this collection, but the book is worth buying for the title story alone.
Also of note is the striking wrap-around cover art, which has a moody, otherworldly quality.
April 7th, 2017 at 8:59 am
I haven’t dipped into the rest of the book yet, but since most of the other stories are from the 40s, I’ve half feared that perhaps, as you tell me, I’ve already skimmed the cream off the top.
The book cost me 95 cents when I bought it new in 1974. Not bad by present standards, but back then, it was almost like spending ten dollars today. When I sample more, I’ll report back later.
I agree. The cover art is very nice. It’s not signed nor otherwise identified, nor does ISFDb know, either.
April 7th, 2017 at 10:32 pm
It was quite a change at the time for World Smasher Hamilton, a statement of sorts that he could write the new kind of SF as well as any of the young upstarts.
April 11th, 2017 at 3:40 pm
Hamilton anticipated later work…he actually wrote “What It Like Out There?” in the late ’30s, but decided there wasn’t much of a market for it, so held onto it till he thought the magazines might be ready for it, and the rather sophisticated TWS of the early 50s qualified. Similarly, Poul Anderson held back “Goat Song” for several years for the same reason. This is, to my mind, pretty foolish behavior…happily, it didn’t occur to, say, C. M. Kornbluth or Alfred Bester or Carol Emshwiller to do likewise. Hamilton wrote work aimed at adult audiences for WEIRD TALES and others along with the CAPTAIN FUTURE-level adventures from the beginning of his career…but he let another side flower after finally publishing this story.
April 11th, 2017 at 5:01 pm
I’d heard that before, that Hamilton wrote the story back in the 30s but couldn’t find (or decided there wasn’t) a market for it. I wonder if John Campbell at ASTOUNDING would have published it back then?
There are quite a few stories from WEIRD TALES from the 40s in the rest of the collection I’m still working on. So far, they’re OK, perfectly suited for the magazine, but there’s nothing special about them. Hamilton married fellow writer Leigh Brackett in 1946. I’ve never looked into it, but it seems to be that’s around the time his non-Captain Future stories began to improve (from my point of view).