Monster of the Day #3134

Updated on November 24, 2020 By Ken Begg 8 Comments

I’m sure The Ghost Table fostered gigantic sales, but how could you follow it up? (That would be achieved for years, until Clark Ashton Smith’s epic multi-part The Ottoman Empire.) So for a while after that there were a run of fairly normal Damsels Being Threatened by Lesser Races sort of covers. You know, Arabs and the like. It wasn’t until February of 1929 that Weird Tales went all in on BEMs.

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  • Gamera977

    I’ve read quite a few of Hamilton’s and the story itself is always good and inventive. But they almost always end with the bad guys having some sort of generator that the hero simply throws the switch causing their whole city, starship, base, etc to blow up. I just read one, will not give the name for spoilers, but the monsters have a ventilation system to cool their city. And allies of the heroes turn it up to eleven causing hurricane force winds to destroy the whole city. Why on earth would you have a ‘destroy everything’ setting to your ventilation system!?!?!

  • Gamera977

    Someone call Giorgo Tsoukalos, the aliens built the pyramids to look like themselves!!!

  • KeithB

    This is the conehead relative from Beldar they don’t talk about much.

  • Beckoning Chasm

    I look at her dress and wonder, why did she even bother putting it on?

  • Beckoning Chasm

    My recollection is that a lot of early science fiction had that trope. It’s been years since I read them, but I think E.E. Smith’s Skylark stories had a lot of that.

  • Eric Hinkle

    While Ed ‘World-Wrecker’ Hamilton had his flaws, I have to tell you, I’d take his work over many another SF author of the time and since.

    And he got much better as time went on. His ‘Alien Earth’ is one of the best SF-horror stories of all time. And a fine corrective to all those ‘nature is inherently peaceful and gentle’ types.

  • Gamera977

    I did approach Hamilton with some trepidation considering his nickname ‘World-Wrecker’ but as I said I’ve found his stories even the early ones good and inventive. It’s just the whole ‘pull a lever at the end and destroy the entire alien civilization’ trope which I’ve found a little hard to swallow.
    I’ll look out for ‘Alien Earth’, thanks!!!

  • Eric Hinkle

    Just so you know, ‘Alien Earth’ is a short story and not a novel. One place I know it’s found is his collection ‘The Best of Ed Hamilton’, but you may need interlibrary loan for that.