Science Fiction Short Story Review: "Monsters of Mars" by Edmond Hamilton

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Allan Randall receives an odd invitation from his eccentric neighbor, Milton, asking him to go to Mars that night. Space travel by spaceship is something for the future. What Milton proposes it travel by a form of radiowave. Seems Milton has been in radio communication with beings from Mars for two years now and has learned from them how to build a transmitter and receiver for this sort of thing. And tonight’s the night! Mars is approaching opposition with Earth! With another friend, Nelson staying home to man the controls, Randall, Milton and a fourth friend, Lanier, set off to explore the civilization of Mars with its canals. But could the Martians have ulterior motives? (Cue the theremin) I found this a curious piece of writing. On one level, it’s a simple there-and-back-again adventure story, with REALLY bad bad guys and dashing good guys. On another, it mentions—in 1931—television as a technology rather than an entertainment medium. I had to look this up. Television was commercially available beginning in the late 1920s, but obviously quite rare. The story also talks about an opposition of Mars with earth without explaining it. The reader is sparred the author’s efforts of having to work this in as so much pulp fiction does—painfully—with one character explaining it to another (“As you know, Allan, that means…”) or with interior dialogue, i.e., (“Allan knew that meant…”).Perhaps author Edmond Hamilton was lazy or maybe—just maybe—he assumed the reader knew what it means. If not, there are enough clues in context the reader can puzzle it out. And, interestingly enough, the author had a form of transporter long before Star Trek. Even if this particular story didn’t make my top ten, I’m going to be looking for more by this author, space opera aside. Edmond Hamilton was a prolific science fiction writer in the mid-twentieth century who wrote under multiple aliases. He specialized in space opera and adventure/horror. He also wrote comic, contributing to Batman series. In 1946, he and science fiction writer Leigh Brackett married. Bracket was known for her work on screenplays such as The Big Sleep (1945), Rio Bravo (1959), The Long Goodbye (1973) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980). This story is available from Project Gutenberg: _____ Title: “Monsters of Mars” Author: Edmond Hamilton (1904-1977) First published: Astounding Stories April 1931 Source: ISFDB