Book Review 3: Captain Future And The Space Emperor ⭐⭐⭐½

Transcript

Hello, I’m Greg Bulmash and welcome to my third video book review.

(makes cheering noises)

Today I return to classic pulp fiction with Captain Future And The Space Emperor by Edmond Hamilton. As I mentioned in my first review, I’m also a novelist and I’m reading pulp fiction because in book two of The New Heroes of Old, Sodom All Over Again (due in August… hopefully), two of my characters read this and the book from my first video… The Spider Strikes.

So, if you couldn’t tell by now, I’m a big ol’ geek and there’s so much to geek out on with the print edition I read. Just a sec… let’s get this so the background eliminator isn’t eliminating it. Hold on. There we go.

This first issue was scanned and republished in 2017, featuring almost all of the ads. The 15-cent cover price from Winter 1940, adjusted for inflation, would be around $3.15 today.

For that fifteen cents, readers got a “novel-length” story of Captain Future, two short stories, the beginning of a “Scientifiction Serial” (Scientific with a tion added), an editorial, an author’s note, and three articles.

The novel has an interesting history. While Edmond Hamilton wrote most of the stories, starting with the 1940 premiere, the character was created by Mort Weisinger and Leo Margulies in 1939 and introduced at the first World Science Fiction Convention — currently known as Worldcon and still going strong.

There’s a difference between the current Worldcon and the inaugural Worldcon in 1939. The 1939 con had approximately 200 attendees according to Wikipedia. In 2025, Worldcon in Seattle attracted over seven thousand in-person attendees from 59 countries. This year’s WorldCon will be held in Anaheim, California.

This novel would be followed by 19 more and 9 stories with one of the Captain Future stories appearing in the famed Amazing Stories.

Now… Let’s get into the origin story of Curtis Newton, aka Captain Future. In 1990, inventor Roger Newton took his wife and his best friend, Simon Wright (whose life had been extended by putting his brain in an artificial life support system that was basically a box of serum) to hide out on the moon. They were hiding from an evil politician named Victor Corvo, who was trying to steal Roger and Simon’s inventions.

Roger and Simon succeeded in creating a 7-foot-tall nuclear powered robot, named Grag, and an Android made of artificial flesh, named Otho. Roger and his wife Elaine also had a baby boy, Curtis.

But they were found… Corvo and his henchmen killed Roger and mortally wounded Elaine before Otho and Grag killed him and his henchmen. With her dying breaths, Elaine asked the three—brain, robot, and android—to raise baby Curtis on the moon, keeping him safe from the forces on Earth who would exploit him.

He grew up with the brain teaching him science, the robot focused on fighting and strength training, and the android helping hone his reaction times. Captain Future, humanity’s greatest hero (and member of the Heroes with Dead Parents club), is a broad-shouldered 6’4″ ginger with an easy laugh, a brilliant mind, and physical strength and skills beyond normal men. But he’s not superhuman. It’s just from training.

Now to the main story…

The solar system has been colonized by humans… and evil is afoot.

The President of Earth waits in his office for word of a threat spreading on Jupiter when word comes that a rocket from Jupiter just landed. He’d sent one of his best spies out there to investigate and awaits his arrival with a report.

A woman’s scream breaks the evening silence, then a gorilla in a zipper suit bursts through the door. Before the president can stop him, a guard shoots it. The president recognizes it by its eyes. It’s the man he sent, but it’s been turned into a gorilla. With it’s dying breath, the gorilla says the Space Emperor is causing atavism (basically genetic regression). There ain’t no pussyfooting around in this establishing of the novel’s prime bad guy and a good reason to consider him dangerous.

A special magnesium flare, Captain Future’s equivalent of the bat signal, is set off at the North Pole so it will be visible from the moon. Within hours, Captain Future arrives and accepts the mission to stop the Space Emperor’s dastardly plan.

Thanks to the “gravity equalizer” that can make humans subject to earthlike gravity on the smallest moon or the gigantic surface of Jupiter, humanity is colonizing the solar system, from Mercury’s dark side to the frozen wastes of Pluto. On Jupiter, men find 50 continents, jungles, and a breathable atmosphere beneath the outer layers of methane. There’s also a native species called Jovians who apparently worship the Space Emperor.

As with any great pulp hero, Captain Future’s reputation precedes him everywhere. There’s no romance—no time—as Captain Future must determine who the Space Emperor is, what he wants, and how to stop him.

Fans of pulp novels will not be disappointed as Captain Future escapes certain death multiple times and the story chases one red herring after another. It’ll be no spoiler that Captain Future stops the Space Emperor. There’s even an almost Scooby Doo reveal when the Space Emperor is ultimately defeated.

So, to wrap up…

It was a good read and it’s old enough that some of its tropes and cliches possibly weren’t so… familiar… back then. Still the breathless hero worship with which he was always greeted quickly felt tired and the lack of real science hidden behind sciency buzzwords felt a little “off.”

Three and a half stars for the story, but four for the book itself because it contains the old ads too. Imagine the comic book ads from when you were a kid, but with a grown up slant: money-making opportunities, why chocolate Ex-Lax isn’t just for kids, a 30-shot BB pistol for a quarter, and more. Like I said, I’m a big ol’ geek and these were as fun for me as the story was… maybe even more.

For the full text of this review, go to bounce.ws/booktok3 that’s bounce dot double-you ess slash bee oh oh kay tee oh kay three. You’ll also find links to my own writing which I hope you’ll check out.

For the next review, we’ll get into MY genre, with some dark fantasy. Click Like and Subscribe so you don’t miss it and join me then!

Looking forward to it. Bye bye.

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Three-and-a-half stars out of five. ⭐⭐⭐½

RELATED LINKS:

1. Other reviews by Greg

2. Captain Future And The Space Emperor

3. Greg’s dark and brutal tale of a journey through the afterlife: Hell on $5 A Day ^* – BUY / More Info & Sample

^* Book 1 of The New Heroes of Old™