This author is often called one of the fathers of the genre of modern science fiction. In the twenties of the last century, he was part of a small group of writers publishing their works in the magazine Weird Tales, which specialized in the genres of mysticism, fantasy and detective thriller. Thanks to their works, modern science fiction and the detective thriller become popular and compete with mysticism, which the reader of that time was more interested in. Cinema also did not remain indifferent to the works of Hamilton, they were used in writing scripts for such famous films as Star Wars: Episode 5 - The Empire Strikes Back, Batman, Superman, Rio Bravo, Big Dream .
Edmond Hamilton: biography (childhood and adolescence)
In the city of Youngstown , Ohio , October 21, 1904 in the family of a cartoonist was born the son of Edmond, who was already the third child of the Hamilton couple. Therefore, after his birth, the family moved to the settlement of Poland, Ohio, where Edmond's father bought a small farm. When the children grew up a little, his father was lucky to find work in the city newspaper of Newcastle , Pennsylvania, after which the whole family moved there in 1911. Edmond Hamilton studied well at school, which he graduated early. At the age of fourteen, he entered Westminster College in New Wilmington and proved to be a very capable and promising student at the Department of Physics. For success, he was noted by the leadership of the educational institution, but in the third year he lost interest in studying and was expelled for omissions. Having said goodbye to the intention to devote himself to science, Hamilton Edmond decided to try his hand at the literary field.
Collaboration with Weird Tales Magazine
Hamilton's writing talent showed up at the age of twenty-two when he published his first story, “God is the Monster of Mamurata,” in Weird Tales, an alternative fiction magazine. The young writer’s fantastic stories were popular with the reader, and he quickly became one of the best authors of the remarkable writing team assembled by the editor of the magazine, Fairnsworth Wright, which also included Howard Lovecraft and Robert Howard. Over the twenty-two years of collaboration with this magazine, Edmond Hamilton has published 79 works of art, including The Horror on the Asteroid, The Cursed Galaxy, The Man Who Saw Everything, The Earth-Brain, The Man Who Evolved, Interstellar Patrol ", consisting of eight stories, the story" Who Has Wings. "
Cosmoopers and work with other publishers
In the late twenties and early thirties, Edmond Hamilton writes his science fiction stories for many literary magazines, as well as stories in the sub-genre horror thriller. In 1933, his story “The Island of Recklessness” was awarded the Jules Verne Prize following a vote of readers. The period of the great economic depression in the United States affects the work of the author, and in the late thirties, Hamilton also wrote detective and criminal stories. In the forties, the writer worked on a large series of stories intended primarily for children and teenagers. The main character of these fantastic stories is the superhero Captain Future. The stories and the series, based on them, brought Hamilton fame and many fans. Thanks to the multi-part saga about the adventures of Captain Futures, such fantastic series were called "cosmoopera" and began to be very popular with the viewer.
A special place in the heart of the reader was occupied by romantic works in the style of fantastic adventures, and perhaps the best works of the writer in this direction are the novels “Three Gliders” of 1940 and “Star Kings” of 1947. For a long time, Edmond Hamilton was an extremely prolific and traded author. The bibliography of the writer has 16 independent novels, 13 collections, stories for several science fiction series, which were later published as 13 novels and many separate stories.
Comics
Since 1946, for twenty years, the author has also collaborated with comic book magazines and writes numerous stories for such popular characters as Superman and Batman. One of his best-known stories about Superman is Superman under the Red Sun. The comic was published in 1963 and has many common elements with Hamilton's 1951 City of the End of the World novel.
Marriage and collaboration with writer Lee Douglas Brackett
On December 31, 1946, Edmond Hamilton married a co-worker, writer Lee Brackett, who also worked in the science fiction genre. A few years later, the writer and his wife moved to Ohio. After marriage, the author wrote some of his best works: “Valley of Creation”, “City at the End of the World”, “What is There?” and a number of famous space novels, including Star Wolf and The Battle for the Stars.
Although Hamilton and Lee Brackett have been working side by side for a quarter of a century, they rarely co-wrote. The fruit of their official collaboration, Stark and the Star Kings, appeared in print in 2005.
The writer died in 1977 in the city of Lancaster, California from complications from kidney surgery, leaving behind a rich creative legacy.