Teaser

The starwolves are feared across the galaxy for their barbarous and piratical ways. Not even the starwolves themselves are safe from such predations, as Morgan Chane is about to find out . . .

Review

When it comes to pulp space opera, I don’t think it gets much better than Edmond Hamilton. His Chronicles of the Star Kings was my introduction to his work, and one of the reasons I’m hunting down the rest of the Venture SF collection. That book took an ordinary man of the twentieth century and flung him into the distant future. His other work collected by Venture SF is the Starwolf trilogy, which is written in a very similar vein, but without the time travel conceit. This time, it’s futuristic action from start to finish.

When I was reading Before the Golden Age recently, I cam across a new term. Super-science epic. It’s a label given to the works of authors like E.E. ‘Doc’ Smith, and I kind of like it. There’s some vague scientific idea lurking in the background of these works, but the idea is pushed to such a ludicrous extent that it becomes a genre somewhere beyond the rest of science fiction. The term was quickly dropped in favour of space opera, which may or not have started as a pejorative depending on who you ask, but which is now widely accepted as one of the most popular genres falling under the banner of science fiction.

The Starwolf trilogy absolutely fits under that super-science label. It’s a story where spaceships zip across the galaxy and back in a matter of days, where the stars are filled with mercenaries and pirates, and where humans already existed on a thousand worlds before Earth even got to the stars. In that, it feels a little like Stargate, but it’s an interesting approach to the human-only universe that we see in other works from the era. Another story it reminds me of is Conan the Barbarian. Slap Conan onto a spaceship, and you’d have a man very much like Morgan Chane. Chane is a terrifically brutal man, far more muscular than Earthmen, but he’s also got an animalistic cunning about him.

As a bonus point, he’s Welsh! There’s a very surreal chapter in the second book in which Chane visits Wales, the land of his parents, and gets drunk while learning Welsh songs. The fact that one of those songs is Men of Harlech makes me think Hamilton was influenced by the film Zulu, which released only a few years before The Closed Worlds, but it’s still a fun scene. It’s possibly the earliest reference to Wales I’ve come across in science fiction, though I will happily be pointed in the direction of earlier examples.

Each of the three stories in this omnibus is very direct, and simple in the way of most pulp fiction. Everything about them is larger than life, from the rugged and manly heroes to the pretty young women they encounter along the way. Thankfully, Hamilton avoids the pitfalls of his contemporaries by not focusing on romance. the best relationships are those between brothers in arms, and there is some terrific banter in here. At times, it’s genuinely funny. I could have read a couple more stories about these likable mercenaries without getting bored. Pair them up with some ruthless villains, exotic locations, and great action scenes, and you’ve got a winning combination.

Coming at the end of the 1960s, Starwolf feels like a natural end to the pulp era. At the time, authors like R.A. Lafferty and Philip K. Dick were pushing the genre in more experimental directions. Hamilton was probably starting to feel a little dated even then. Looking back nearly sixty years later, I find there’s more charm in his works than those of his more famous contemporaries. There’s an honesty and an earnestness that is lacking in those other experimental works, even if Hamilton makes no effort to push the boat out. But then, he’s not interested in changing the genre. Hamilton, like all great authors, was just here to tell a great story. And that is exactly what the Starwolf trilogy has to offer.

Book Stats

• Contains The Weapon from Beyond, The Closed Worlds & World of the Starwolves
• Originally published 1967-1968
• Republished under the Venture SF banner
• 456 Pages