Nowadays the youngsters have a much harder time.

I've just friended you at the suggestion of superversive (Tom says that you and I have a great deal in common.)

Nah, you don't have to write really good from the very first story.

You just have to accept that until you write really good, the end product ends up in the trunk.

Ed Hamilton is your idol? But why? I mean, the old-fashioned space opera, nothing intellectually close to Van Vogt, no sevagrams, so to say. I am more than ironic, of course. But it's really interesting: what do you see in Edmund Moore Hamilton or his stories almost no-one reads today?

What I admire about Mr. Hamilton is

(1) his professionalism: when the writing field changed and left many a pulpster in the dust, he changed with it -- I think only Jack Williamson made the transition along with him. It is a transition as noticeable as the change from Silents to Talkies.

(2) He blows up planets. Please note that STAR TREK INSURRECTION did not have a planet blow up in it, and it was a failure; whereas STAR TREK the reboot did have a planet blow up in it, and it was a success. STAR WARS blew up the planet Alderaan, and was a commercial success; whereas PHANTOM MENACE merely blew up a space station, and starred Jar-Jar Binks. What can we learn from this? Any story where a planet is blown up is good science fiction. Really good science fiction (SECOND-STAGE LENSMEN) blows up solar systems; really REALLY good science fiction (SKYLARK DuQUESNE) blows up a galaxy. However, absurd and over-the-top science fiction (NULL-A CONTINUUM) blows up the timespace continuum, and that is simply an unrealistic, hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn space-ship yarn.

(3) I like his attitude. Read the interview and you'll see what I mean.

I am not saying Mr. Hamilton is a good writer, or even my favorite writer, but he invented my genre. He was writing science fiction before Hugo Gernsbeck dubbed it science fiction.

Thank you. Indeed.

I like his (and her) attitude, too. I've read this interview almost immediately after it was posted. I look for Hamilton and/or Brackett interviews and other pieces of information for years. There was something strangely un-biographical about them. E.g. it's clear that Edmond Hamilton read a lot, maybe in some languages other than English, and very rarely he shows it, as in "The Inn Outside the World" (great story, I think), but usually it's not on the surface (the only "conspiracy theory" about "Star Kings" is whether John Gordon is based on the case of Paul Linebarger, you know). And so on.

And, concerning the blowing up the planets, here's the quote from Adam Roberts' "Yellow Blue Tibia" I've read yesterday:

Writers, you see, daily inflict the most dreadful suffering upon the characters they create, and science fiction writers are worse than any other sort in this respect. A realist writer might break his protagonist's leg, or kill his fiancée; but a science fiction writer will immolate whole planets, and whilst doing so he will be more concerned with the placement of commas than with the screams of the dying. He will do this every working day all his life. How can this not produce calluses on those tenderer portions of the mind that ordinary human beings use to focus their empathy?

Fact or fiction? :)

I once read a comment on the Warhammer 40000 universe: that it was the only universe where having your home planet blown up would not be considered a legitimate source of angst.

In Stargate SG1, they blow up a sun to destroy an enemy fleet :)

I have two of his books: City at World's End and The Haunted Stars that I think, modulo tastes in writing style, could stand up with some of the best of today's. The latter especially.
http://www.amazon.com/Haunted-Stars-Vintage-Pyramid-F-698/dp/1515006980
http://www.amazon.com/City-Worlds-End-Edmond-Hamilton/dp/0345309871

An interesting note: when I first read City at World's End as a teenager, I thought one character's choice at the end of the book was the clear and obvious choice. Rereading it as an adult, I find the other character's choice at least understandable.

I too love EH's THE HAUNTED STARS.

And I especially adore his 1932 "A Conquest of Two Worlds". If only James Cameron had based a certain movie on this tale...

http://thenostalgialeague.com/olmag/hamilton-con2worlds.html

One of these days, I need to dig up some Leigh Brackett stories. I mean, between being one of the writers for the best Star Wars movie evar, and writing the screenplay for one of my favorite movies evar (The Big Sleep) I figure she's gotta be worth a read.

I remember hearing the discussion about killing the chauffeur in the commentary on my DVD of the Big Sleep, and then promptly forgot about it until about two weeks ago, when one of the guys in my writing group asked me a question about something in the scifi-noir story I'm working on, and I confused myself trying to answer him. The story about the chauffeur came back to me and I realized I had actually gotten a grasp on hardboiled plotting at that point. I was absurdly happy. ;)

About that...

I can't seem to remember, was the ending re-write (my only sore spot with the movie) something she added. It's so out of sync with the rest of the film it seems like something that must have been hammered into place by studio fiat.

The Empire Strikes back

Reputedly, George "I Have Dubious Literary Abilities" Lucas used almost nothing of Brackett's script, instead handing it to Lawrence Kasdan to rewrite.

He wanted Brackett's name on it for the SF pulp/film noir cachet.

Pertinently, I had a conversation with a well-established female SF writer [whose name escapes for the nonce] who felt plagued by a sense of failure with ardent reader-fans comprising panel audiences that insisted on knowing aspects of her characters' lives or explanation of plot elements outside the purview of her stories.

As a balm to the diligent and unreasonably flustered writer, I offered the Brackett-Bogie-Hawkes-Chandler anecdote that I learned in my college course on "Spies & Dectives in Film & Fiction", presented by the respected James Bond and First Amendment scholar Dr. Joan DelFattore.

JJB

Joan DelFattore

Dr. DelFattore, because I co-wrote an adaptation of Casino Royale with my cousin RBS when I was 13-14 [he contributed a mere 98% -- but I acted as his essential sounding board, adding the vital genetics know-how and useful snarky line or three], invited me to lecture in her class which I declined.

However, my formal study of Bond in DelFattore's class and the term paper I wrote on the St. George themes in the Fleming canon, led three years later in 1983 to my first professionally submitted SF story, "The Quantum of Saul S.", to IASFM.

Shawna McCarthy told me over the phone when I called to ask about the manuscript's status that A] she remembered it, but B] thought it unpublishable because of the licensing rights -- Bond is a literary character drawn into **this** universe by Dr. Saul Scott's quantum-stapler invention -- however, C] she liked it and did I have anything to sell her.

I honestly demurred her polite brush off and did not turn my hand to complete another story for another year, which Charlie Ryan rejected in a very nice handwritten note telling me he had just purchased a story with a similar them but "please send me anything else you might want me to consider."

I could see the SF profession was not for me, as I had been soundly if kindly rejected.

John, should I point out here to the non-published writers here what it took me several years later to learn when I began attending conventions for the first time?

JJB

You are mistaken rejection for non-acceptance

If you got a handwritten note, that means you can write publishable material, and merely that that particular editor could not use it in that particular form in that particular time. I am shocked that you quit after that! I would have committed many dark deed, in my early days, to win a handwritten note from an editor.

That was an acceptance. You should have been inspired as if with a muse of fire.

Re: You are mistaken rejection for non-acceptance

Yes! I always received hand-written polite notes from editors from stories I submitted. The first story I brought to a writers' workshop hosted [during the summer of 1988] by Darrell Schweitzer after my initial PhilCon in the fall of 1987, Darrell looked up from the manuscript copy he held and announced, "This is publishable as is."

Color me obtuse. [That's similar to puce but more orthogonal, as in "blockheaded".]

You see, I had the handicap of sending for in advance, reading, and adhering to that market's submission guidelines. Clean, grammatical, **typed**, dark 12-pt/10-pitch Courier on white, unwrinkled, letter-size, 20- or 24-lb bond, inch minimum margins, numbering with LASTNAME/TITLE/PAGE# at the top corner opposite the paperclip.

Which, of course, all wannabe professional writers follow to the letter and editors routinely receive in the their slush pile.

Also years later I learned my cousin RBS received a personal letter from the head of Hammer Studios in England a few weeks after he visited there to hand-deliver a vampire script during his newlywed novice-tramp around Europe.

"Sorry, we just wrapped a vampire script and we can't use your otherwise fine screenplay. Do you have anything else we can use?"

Richard had the same reaction as I had: polite dismissal, with subtext translation, "Don't waste our valuable time anymore, kid." It must be a familial trait.

Now I have developed two stock replies. "Thanks for the kind encouragement. Offhand, what changes would you recommend to improve the story for the needs of your magazine?" and "Thank you for setting aside your valuable time to advise me. I do just happen to have another story in my typewriter [rolls clean sheet under platen] as we speak. Are there any special themes or subject matters you consider lacking or, inversely, over-represented in your inventory at the moment just so I don't send in my current piece and waste more of your time. Too many Space Princess stories? Guy in Virginia has sent you forty-two last week alone [overstrikes working title "Star Empress of the Rose Nebula] and you say you seriously need a good, literary yet fast-moving, provocative tale of vast, intelligent, migratory, interstellar-dwelling organisms, encountered by spacefaring mankind but mistaken for belligerents because of a fateful racial stimulus-response [types "Hyperspace Considered as a Bifrost School of Gamma-Ray Splendens"]. Well, we both may be in luck because that's exactly the type of story of which I'm presently polishing the final draft. I can have it to you in the mail tomorrow or the next day if you're interested. You are?"

JJB

Are these two still alive!?

Northwest Smith! The only story I remember is the one about the space Medusa. Northwest had self heating canned roast beef and Martian canal cream-apple for lunch before he set off to waste the Gorgon. Used a mirror and raygun.

Star Kings! The Disruptor! Invaders from the Lesser Magellanic Cloud! The space pricess of Throon!

"Carman is a child who pulls wings off flies. Neither of my daughters has any more moral sense than a cat. Neither have I. No Sternwood ever had."

Re: Are these two still alive!?

Not still alive. They both passed away shortly after giving this interview.