page 1
of the story's first publication,
in Science Fiction Adventures for
1956
The Starcombers
A NIGHT LAND inspired fiction by Edmund
Hamilton.
Hamilton is well known as a perpetrator of
crude SF juveniles, and later as a creator of
Space Opera, but towards the end of his career
he became a much better and more serious writer.
His output from this period includes the
interesting short novella "The Starcombers,"
which contains elements clearly based on
Hodgson's THE NIGHT LAND.
Brief review (spoilers)
Four spaceships - scavengers and junk merchants
as much as explorers - descend towards a dead
planet under a dead, black, sun. They are
looking for alien technologies and treasure to
rip out (the story title is a riff on
"beachcomber") and on a plateau ornamented by
the ruins of vast, ancient structures they think
they've found it. They land, and begin to tear
the ruins up looking for anything salable.
Their crews are borderline criminals, drunks,
whores and junkies. Sam Fletcher, decent guy
fighting alcoholism, turns his eyes away from
the money-grubbing for a moment of peace and,
scanning the ruins around them, sees something
else: a humanoid figure, watching them.
The plateau is split by a vast crevasse, miles
deep, and the humanoid has apparently just
climbed up out of it. Sam suits up and
investigates, but the alien retreats and leaves
him on the edge of the great deep looking down
for what seems to be tens of miles to a vista of
fires, mists, and volcanic lights at the bottom.
The other starcombers follow him and bring him
back, but he manages to convince them that the
watchers are genuine: a guard is accordingly set
and quite soon one of the child-sized humanoids
is captured and bought back to the ship.
The little man has vacuum gear that weighs
next to nothing and other evidence of a high if
decadent tech including a formidable pen-sized
beam weapon. He is subdued - with some loss -
and forced to unhelm.
"For a minute nobody spoke. Then Lucy
muttered, "He looks so wild." She
stepped back, half sheltering herself
behind Harry.
. . . It was a man's face, losing nothing
of strength in its smallness. The cast of it
was alien, but not so much so as many that
Fletcher had seen that were still classed as
humanoid. The bone structure was very
sharp . . the lines were deep, and the mouth
was bitter."
(It should be mentioned at this point
that the "humanoid" aliens in Hamilton's cosmos
are more or less classifiable as other branches
of humanity, no more alien than distant human
races. Sometimes a sop to plausibility is
thrown out in the form of legends of ancient
colonization, but the real reason is probably
that "Space Operas" are cultural echoes of the
last heroic era of European exploration and
conquest on Earth.)
They attempt to communicate, by sign language:
an understanding is reached. The little man and
his people live at the bottom of the crevasse.
They will trade goods for food. A single ship is
loaded with food and, piloted by Fletcher,
descends into the pit. Ten, fifty, miles down,
and they enter thick atmosphere. The little man
is anxious, and no wonder: they are attacked by
a vast flying thing, and escape only by turning
their jet exhaust onto it. The little man
directs them toward one of the volcanoes and a
vast ruined building, two miles square, beside
it. They land.
The rest of the story can be summarized quite
quickly. The trade is harassed by mountain-sized
crawling beasts and by rival enclaves of
survivors: it breaks down in mutual treachery,
but not before Fletcher has a chance to see some
part of the crevasse dwellers' culture at close
hand. The humans escape, the little men are left
victorious over their enemies but still
ultimately a doomed race, and Fletcher gets a
shock that may cure him of drinking.
Analysis: links to THE NIGHT LAND
It's an effective little story, but its whole
force is in the image of the dwindling colony of
humanoids in their ruined and monster-haunted
Night Land far below the planet's surface. And
this is of course a direct steal from WHH,
unacknowledged anywhere in the text, though I'm
sure Hodgson wouldn't mind.
The parallels between "The Starcombers" and its
inspiration are obvious.
First is the physical position of the two Night
Lands - at the bottom of enormous cracks or
canyons in the surface of their respective
planets, planets which circle dead suns.
Hamilton's planet is split by "A hell of a big
crack" which extends "Right across the
planet," while the Great Valley in THE NIGHT
LAND has two branches a thousand miles
long. Their depth is comparable - they
both contain the planet's only breathable
atmosphere.
Hodgson recounts X's musings at one point in
his journey:
And this thing did strike me very
solemn, as I did lie; and I do trust that
you conceive how that there was, in truth,
afar above in the eternal and unknown
night, the stupendous desolation of the
dead world, and the eternal snow and
starless dark. And, as I do think, a cold
so bitter that it held death to all living
that should come anigh to it. Yet, bethink
you, if one had lived in that far height
of the dead world, and come upon the edge
of that mighty valley in which all life
that was left of earth, did abide, they
should have been like to look downward
vaguely into so monstrous a deep that they
had seen naught, mayhaps, save a dull and
utter strange glowing far downward in the
great night, in this place and in that.
Compare Fletcher's first look into the Crevasse
. He flung himself back from that
shocking brink, and gasped and trembled,
bathed in cold sweat. Presently he got
down on his hands and knees and began to
crawl forward, placing his hands
carefully. When he reached the edge again
he was flat on his belly. He looked down.
And down. And still down, and there was no
end to his looking. He. closed his eyes,
took a deep breath, and tried again. There
were stars in the bottom of the cleft. Not
bright and clear like the ones overhead,
but misty, burning with an unsteady
flicker..
The landscape at the bottom of the
Crevasse is one of darkness, smoke, mists, fire,
volcanoes, and Cyclopean ruins.
Presently he was able to make out a
group of three squat cones with fire
coming out of their tops. They shed light
over the surrounding country much in the
manner of gigantic flambeaus, and Fletcher
thought he saw something else. He thought
he saw a very large building in the plain
below the cones, caught and half crushed
in the terminus of a lava field. He
pointed at it inquiringly. The little man
gave it a brief glance, shook his head,
and motioned Fletcher on. Joe Leedy,
though, was curious. "Must of been a lot
of people living there once," he said.
"That looks to be a good mile broad, if it
was all in one piece." "Remember the
bearings on it," said Harry Axe to
Fletcher. "Why?" "Ought to be a lot of
salvage there. We might bring one of the
ships down." Fletcher said, "It beats me,
Harry, why you aren't a millionaire." The
scout passed out of the fire-lit area into
darkness again. But it was a darkness in
which other torches burned. The little man
looked and peered and pondered, and then
fastened on, one of them as a beacon.
The monsters at the bottom of Hamilton's
Crevasse also seem quite familier, if a bit
nippy on their feet
. . .the snarling beams snapped out from
the roof batteries, probing along the
edges of the light. The faces of the
cleft-dwellers tightened. They all stopped
what they were doing and waited, poised
for instant flight or action, their hands
on the firetubes at their belts. The
Earthmen stopped, too.
A THING like a mountain heaved into
sight. It moved slowly, as a mountain
would move, and it bawled as it came, in
the kind of a voice a mountain might have.
Fletcher, peering out of the lock, thought
he could see a head on a thick high neck,
a head shaped square and rough as a
boulder, and a great jaw hanging to it
like the scoop of a power shovel.
The weapon-beams found it.
White fire sparked and flash-ed, and the
mountain floundered heavily aside, but it
was not killed. It lay quiet behind a
ridge of rock and watched.
The little men grabbed up cases and
threw them out of the ship.
The mountain piped, boomed, and charged.
Harry Axe jumped in through the port.
"Good God," he said. "That thing'll crush
us. It'll crush the ship." He shoved past
Fletcher and made for the pilot's chair.
"Come on, let's get out of here. Fast, for
Godsake!"
Outside the white beams struck again,
and this time the mountain rolled
completely over, a stunning and titanic
vision, but still it was not dead. It
flopped back behind its ridge and sulked,
making the cliffs ring with its hunger and
its rage.
Harry Axe, his hands shaking, began to
paw at the controls. The little man who
had guided them here went up to Harry. He
shook his head and pointed to the stack of
crates still remaining. His fellows were
still passing them out as fast as they
could while Zakarian and Joe Leedy stood
petrified.
Harry reached around without even
looking and gave the little man a
backhanded blow. "Get 'em out of the
ship," he said. "Hell with 'em. It's not
worth getting' killed for."
From where he sat on the deck, the
little man burned two neat holes through
Harry Axe's wrists, one to each arm. Harry
screamed. He looked at his wrists and then
he clapped them between his knees and
rocked back and forth. He began to cry.
The little man moved, very fast. . .
One more thing here is familiar from
Hodgson's NIGHT LAND - the indomitable will
and courage of the remaining human
inhabitants. Despite their violence and
treachery, one is moved to admiration.
Of course this is not The Night
Land, It's an alien-world scenario
based on THE NIGHT LAND. As such it does
not have any supernatural elements: there are
monsters of various sorts, but no Forces. no
soul-eating Dark Powers, no Doorways in the
Night. But it does have people, trapped
in essentially the same situation, fighting to
the end.
Hamilton on Hodgson
Hamilton's attitude to Hodgson was positive:
he is quoted in an interview
in TANGENT ONLINE
6
HAMILTON: (Pointing to a fanzine with
a photo in it) But this chap here,
William Hope Hodgson, he had the most
supreme imagination in his stories even
though he had some awful faults in them.
His stuff is hard to read, dreadful, and
yet the world would be poorer without
him, because he broke every rule--
Interview
originally appeared in Tangent No. 5,
Summer,
1976
Conclusion - final words
"The Starcombers" a late story by Hamilton,
is a fine piece of work, a real pleasure to
read, and it should be better known.
It is not a story of the true Night Land,
though it contains many elements derived
from it. But it shows that Hodgson's
influence spread further and earlier than
many understand.
I have purchased this story
in the usual way, and can lend copies of
it to students of Hodgson's work
Send
me your comments on this essay and
I'll post them here next time I update the
site.
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