The Comet Kings by Edmond Hamilton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I approached this old SF space-opera adventure from 1942 with some trepidation, expecting something of a Buck Rogers vibe, especially with a protagonist who calls himself Captain Future.

*guffaws*

But what I found wasn't an abject travesty, but a plain fantastic adventure pitting a motley crew of a dashing scientist, a robot, a brain in a jar, a telepathic dog, a .... oh, wait... this is just like Buck Rogers... against aliens from the fourth dimension (read alternate dimension rather than time) who had transformed the peoples of Haley's Comet into shiny electric people who are forever doomed to exist in pale immortal caricatures of their former humanity on the hurtling ball.

It really wasn't that bad.

You get bluster and bravado and heroic professions of love, derring-do, and general space cowboy shit.

It's kinda refreshing. Light fun.

No horribly embarrassing misogyny. Or maybe just a little. But what can you expect out of a genuine space-opera? Like, one of the original space-operas? This is the Saturday morning cartoon equivalent of SF, folks. :) And for those of you not old enough to remember that little cultural artifact, it's the time where all the good (and corny) adventure cartoons with magic and robots were stacked up for you all morning. Some were okay. Some were trash. Some were the kinds you could binge watch because they were completely empty of calories.

Guess which kind of SF this was?

:)

View all my reviews