Pulpity-Pulp-Pulp

Took a break from Captain Future and read Hamilton's The Three Planeteers, Startling Stories, Jan. 1940. Pretty entertaining, as far as lightweight space opera pulp stuff goes. It takes place a couple hundred years after men first went into space and all the planets are populated not by old civilizations like in the Captain Future stories (which take place only a generation after spaceflight was developed) but by Earthmen who have evolved to cope with that planet's conditions. A high gravity makes the people short and squatty, minerals in the atmosphere makes skin yellow, etc. Not as much stupid, goofy fun as when the populations are non-Earth humanoids with civilizations older than Earth's, but still worth a read.

The Three Planeteers are Earthman John Thorn, Venusian Sual Av and Mercurian Gunner Welk, who are wanted for the thefts of stuff all over the system, but not really. They're actually undercover spies--robbing ships and such gets them access to all sorts of information they couldn't have gotten otherwise. The only person who knows what they're really up to is the Chairman of the Earth Government who's been sending them out to spy on the League of Cold Worlds (Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus) since they're plotting to take over the Inner Alliance (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars). Apparently nobody wants Pluto.

"You take it!" 
"No, you take it!"
Rejected Pluto makes sadface.

The Inner Alliance has a honking big secret weapon to use against the League's invading ships, since the Alliance couldn't be bothered to build up their defenses even though they knew full well something was brewing, and decided to throw everything into this fancy weapon they haven't even tested. Whatever. It also uses a shit-ton of radite (an isotope of radium, old-timey SF's favorite thing) and they can only get huge quantities of the stuff on Erebus, the tenth planet, so the Planeteers volunteer to go. 

The problem with Erebus is that only one explorer has come back from there and nobody knows why. Martin Cain has been dead for years and never told anyone but his daughter Lana how he escaped. She's now the leader of a community of pirates called the Companions of Space who use the asteroid belt as their hideout and base of operations. Hamilton will recycle these pirates and how they're able to hide and navigate in the asteroids in the fairly juvenile Captain Future novel Outlaw World.

Since this one is actually worth reading, if only for Erebus and what happened to the disappeared explorers, I'll stop here and ruin another story later.

On to the last Captain Future magazine put out before the magazine went under without warning due to wartime paper shortages. I thought there'd be a mention in the Startling Stories that picked up the novel meant for the Summer 1944 issue but I've flipped through my ratty Spring 1945 copy and haven't seen anything. Balls. Of course it's in an earlier 1944 Startling Stories I don't have.

Yeah, whatever. After a couple of "ehh" entries we have a pretty good one, Days of Creation, Spring 1944, a story full of the kind of goofy stuff you'd find in Outlaws of the Moon or in half of The Seven Space Stones, so no plot spoilers for this one. No major ones anyway.

The Solar System is overpopulated like all of a sudden and so Captain Future proposes they build a whole new planet (completely ignoring all those countless asteroids in the system with atmospheres people could go live on) using that fancy matter-creating doodad from Quest Beyond the Stars. Easy-peasy, lemon-squeezy, right?

This plan is opposed by sleazy Hartley Brooks, who has the--wait for it--monopoly on all the slum towers on all the planets in the system and he'd rather not have his slumlord empire ruined by some damn-fool science dink. Not like he couldn't get the contract to throw together some slum towers for this new planet or anything.

Anyhow, he decides to have Future and the guys killed when they're off putzing around on an archaeological expedition but only manages to bury the Futuremen and give Curt amnesia. Another random criminal guy steals Curt's atomic-powered ring and the Comet and thinks it'd be awesome to hire some Futuremen impersonators and pretend to be their assistant so he could whoosh around space in this whiz-bang hotrod spaceship.

Don't worry, pirates pick up amnesiac Curt and a random prospector finds the Futuremen when they dig themselves out of the dirt like a month later. You were worried, right? No?

Joan also gets to make out with three guys in this story but two of them are Captain Future. One is scraggly grabby pirate Curt with amnesia, one is normal boring Curt after the brain surgery shown on the cover, and the third guy is an actor paid to impersonate Captain Future but he's kind of stupid and also a lush so everyone says it's a shame he hit his head in that explosion. Good times.

You really want to read it now, right? Especially the grabby pirate bit? No? Not even the part at the end where Curt gets his memory back and Joan tells him she liked things about scraggly Curt but won't say what but we all know it's the grabby pirate stuff?

As expected neither the Plutonian slug-horse nor the mind-meld crystal deus ex machina thingy from Worlds to Come are mentioned. Maybe Joan said the hell with Curt being able to read her mind so the crystal is in whatever passes for a junk drawer in the future and the slug-horse is just dead.

This is a Planet Police uniform, by the way. You can tell that room is really cold because of Joan's pointy . . . gloves.

Now for the first Startling Stories Captain Future, Red Sun of Danger, Spring 1945, by Edmond Hamilton writing as Brett Sterling. Not one of my favorites, mostly because there's a planet called Roo and an ancient people called Kangas. Damned distracting if you ask me. Despite that it's not a bad story even though it has yet another monopoly for Captain Future to break up, this time it's a chemical called vitron which combats the poisons that cause the human body to age.

Vitron is only grown on the planet Roo way out in another star system. The human colonists are worried about the native Roons going wacko and killing colonists, and meanwhile somebody's stirring up the Roons so they go wacko and kill colonists. They believe if the colonists don't leave Roo then the Old Ones (Kangas) will destroy the universe. Meanwhile, the colonists don't believe there really are Old Ones, especially the guy who's stirring up the Roons so he can have the vitron production all to himself.

Captain Future sneaks to Roo by pretending to be a criminal who shoots Future who's really Otho in disguise, instead of just dressing up like somebody else like he always does, then the rest of the Futuremen turn up in disguise, as do Joan and Marshal Gurney. Really, they all should've taken the same spaceship and saved some space bucks.

It turns out there really are Old Ones, vaguely Lovecraftian black blobby things that had been defeated by the ancient Denebians with a psycho-amplifier that amplifies brain waves so they've been sleeping for thousands of years until somebody disturbs them--like that guy who wants the vitiron monopoly, so he stirs up the natives by blowing up the Kangas' resting place. Nice.

That deely-bobber psycho-amplifier's a great look, Curt. You should make that a permanent part of your Captain Future outfit. You should also pay way more attention to your half-dressed girlfriend. Her pointy . . . boots . . . tell me it's a little cold there on Roo.