Review: The World With a Thousand Moons - Edmond Hamilton

Edmond Hamilton continues to be one of my favorite authors of the sort of action-packed adventure science fiction I really enjoy. This novella originally appeared in the December 1942 issue of AMAZING STORIES. There’s a free e-book edition available on Amazon, which is where I read it.

This yarn is set in our solar system, no deep space or space opera in this one. Instead, it has a gritty, hardboiled tone as meteor miner Lance Kenniston (a pulp hero name if I ever saw one) and his hulking Jovian partner trick a group of rich, thrill-seeking space tourists from Earth into helping them try to recover a fortune in loot from a crashed spaceship that belonged to a notorious space pirate. The wrecked ship is on Vesta, the second-largest body in the Asteroid Belt, and since it’s surrounded by smaller asteroids, that makes it the World With a Thousand Moons, according to the title.

Just navigating through those orbiting obstacles and getting there is enough of a challenge, but Vesta is also inhabited by mysterious, deadly creatures that are feared throughout the solar system. Throw in the complication that not everything is as it appears to be at first, and you’ve got the makings of a fast-paced, exciting tale.

It occurred to me as I was reading this novella that it’s the science fiction equivalent of the sort of adventure stories H. Bedford-Jones was so good at. You’ve got a two-fisted sailor (spaceman) protagonist, a beautiful girl, a treasure to be salvaged, treachery all around, and despicable bad guys. I always enjoy this plot when Bedford-Jones uses it, and in Hamilton’s hands, it’s almost as good.

I had a fine time reading THE WORLD WITH A THOUSAND MOONS. If you’re a fan of classic-style science fiction, there’s a good chance you would, too. Recommended.