| Posted: 23 August 2013 at 5:02am | IP Logged | 9
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THE STAR OF LIFE - Edmond Hamilton (1959)As many of you know, Hamilton's CITY AT WORLD'S END is my absolute favorite book, read and reread many, many times since my Dad first handed it to me when I was 14 or so. In recent years I have tried several times to find another Hamilton book that whispers the same magic to me as does CITY, and thus far that quest has been unsuccessful. Last week I found this later work (CITY was published in 1950) on Amazon, and decided to give it a try. Maybe, I thought, what I find so compelling about CITY springs from something that came to Hamilton's work as he grew older. Sadly, no such luck. Just a few pages in, and I started to find Hamilton repeating themes and elements from CITY. A man of the 20th Century finds himself "thrown" into a distant future, where humans and "aliens" (actually humans who have evolved to live on alien planets) intermingle. The man, Kirk Hammond, first realizes he is in the Future when he notices that the constellations have shifted, which is just what happens in CITY. One of the characters is even named "Lund", as is a key figure in CITY. In addition to CITY AT WORLD'S END, Hamilton also wrote "The Map of Mystery", the very first Batman story I ever read (when I was 8!), and I think I may have to resign myself to those being my only Edmond Hamilton stories! This was my week for disappointment on the "Hamilton front". I also ordered a book collecting the work of science-fiction illustrator Richard Powers. He'd done the cover painting for that paperback copy of CITY my Dad gave me in 1964, and I had long been intrigued by his unique stylings. I ordered the book in no small part in the hopes there would be a larger reproduction of the CITY cover. Guess which of Powers' many paintings ISN'T in the book? 
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