"Edmond Hamilton - The Three Planeteers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Edmond)

THE THREE PLANETEERS
By
EDMOND HAMILTON
A Renaissance E Books publication
ISBN 1-58873-631-8
All rights reserved
Copyright 1940 Edmond Hamilton, Renewed
This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission.
For information:
[email protected]
PageTurner Editions/Futures-Past Science Fiction
 ABOUT THIS AUTHOR AND BOOK
Jules Verne Award winner Edmond Hamilton (1904-1977) was one of the three formative pioneers of
what some dismissively refer to as тАЬspace operaтАЭ and others as тАЬthe novel of intra- and interstellar
adventure.тАЭ His earliest works, like the Federation of Suns or Interstellar Patrol series (1928-30), or
Comet Doom (1927), The Three Planeteers (1940), and The Star Kings (1949), available from
Renaissance E Books), are colorful, pell-mell adventure stories as befits Hamilton's youth. Later, in the
1960s, he would return to his roots for a series of novels and stories that combined the vivid interstellar
settings early work with the more thoughtful perceptions and the moody, poetic style he had developed
as he matured. These include The City at World's End (1957, available from Renaissance E Book), The
Star of Life (1959), and The Haunted Stars (1961). What Hamilton did best, according to Donald
Tuck's Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy, тАЬinvolved the creation and popularization of the
classic early space operas [presenting] galaxy-spanning conflicts between humans and other races,
piratical or merely monstrous, [which in turn] did much to define the field's sense of wonder...тАЭ That
Hamilton did all this without ever losing the human scale, indeed, the human touch, is a tribute to his
genius and evident in such a thundering adventure as The Three Planeteers (which, as the title implies, is
his homage to one of his favorite childhood novels, as The Star Kings pays homage to The Prisoner of
Zenda, only in Hamilton's version of The Three Musketeers, his D'Artagnan, fittingly for a man married
to a tomboy who grew up to be a celebrated writer of tough-guy fiction, is a woman!).
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE
TOMORROW'S WORLD'S WORLDS
Instead of talking about myself, I'd like to talk a little about The Three Planeteers. A very common
supposition in science fiction seems to be that when interplanetary travel is finally achieved, and there are
populations of colonizing Earthmen on the other worlds, they will all be ruled by the same government
and law, and that war and strife will be forgotten. Now, I never could see that as inevitable. In fact, it
always seemed more reasonable to me to suppose that every world would have its own government.
And here's why:

Just think of what an effect distance has right here on Earth. Englishmen migrate to America, and a
century or so later they find they just can't get along with the parent country any more, and declare their
independence. The same thing happens to the Spaniards who colonized South and Central America. It's
happening right now to South Africa and Australia.

Now, if that is true right now on Earth, surely it will be even more true in the future in the Solar System!
Think of yourself, a few hundred years from now, on Mars. Your father was born on Mars, and your
grandfather. You know that several generations back one of your ancestors came here from Earth, but
you don't feel any loyalty to Earth. Mars is your world. And yet here you are, with a government on
Earth making the laws by which you live. Those Earth people don't know Martian conditions, and don't
know what is or is not practical out here on your world. What would you do, in a situation like that? If
precedent or history mean anything, ten to one you'd shine up your trusty atom-gun and go out with a lot